Doghouse (13 page)

“Like carrying-live-animals crates, I think. Which would tie into . . . everything else. Mostly everything else.” He dropped the coaster, frowning. “Something funky is going on, involving dogs stashed in Deke's basement. That much yeah we know. But it still raises the question of
what
? I mean, if you're going to have dogfights, you need people to watch 'em, right? That's where the money's to be made.
So where were they? And considering they didn't have enough room . . . was this just a way station?”

“Maybe, but I don't think it was for fighting dogs,” Ginny said, waking up her tablet and pulling up a screen. “That's what I was busy looking into when you called. I did some more research after you and Georgie left, trying to get the pieces to fit, and then I remembered something the vet said, about Parsifal. Because there was no way even if he was full grown and healthy he'd be a fighting dog, okay? I mean, seriously. A ratter, yes, but if another dog went after him he'd just show his belly, or try to escape. Even if they made him mean, he'd be too little, unless they matched him against a Chihuahua.”

“And?”

Ginny pushed the tablet over to him, not wanting to actually say the words.

“Jesus. Mallard.” Tonica was reading the screen, his eyes flicking down over the text and then back again, as though he couldn't quite believe what he was reading.

“Yeah.” Her stomach had been churning ever since she'd read the article, and the urge to gather up every small animal in sight and just hug them had pretty much swamped her.

“They . . . you think that they . . .” He stopped, running a hand over the top of his head as though he were smoothing the inch-long strands down. Not for the first time, she wondered if he used to have longer hair, and that was where the habit came from. “Jesus. Just when I think this entire thing can't get any sicker . . .”

She'd hoped Tonica would dismiss her fears, tell her that she was wrong. “It makes sense, though. Bait animals: cats, smaller dogs, rabbits . . . anything that won't fight back, I guess.” Unwanted animals, from a shelter or the streets, anything they could get cheap or free. Bad enough to think of Georgie being trained to be vicious; when she thought of Parsifal being used that way, being hurt or killed, she had to swallow hard against the urge to either throw up or hit something. Or maybe both.

Tonica swore not quite under his breath words she was sure his mother would not approve of. “I want to take these bastards down so hard . . .”

Ginny appreciated the emotion, but they both knew that wasn't possible. “You know we can't, right? I mean, you've been saying it all along. Dogfighting, if that's what this is, it's a major operation. A lot of money involved. And where there's that much dirty money—we are way outclassed.”

Outclassed as in, these were people worse than the guys Seth and Deke had been worried about, maybe. People who were used to violence—and didn't really care about sticking to—what had Seth said?—players the same size as them.

“So what, we throw Deke under the bus?”

“You know that's not what I meant,” Ginny said sharply. “I just don't want us getting shot at or beat up again, okay?”

Tonica laughed, more of an exhausted huff than real humor. “Yeah, I'm on board with the not-getting-hurt part. So, we find a connection, someone who's actually responsible, and then we hand the entire mess over to
someone with a little more firepower and have them clear Deke in exchange, agreed?”

She could do that. They could do that. Researchtigations. They weren't the goddamned Batman, they were goddamned Alfred. Or . . . something like that. “Yeah. I guess.”

Tonica leaned back in the booth. “Well, we have a name, to start with.”

“We do?” That was news to her. “Deke said the guy wouldn't tell him anything.” She stared at Tonica, who was smiling now, just a little smug. She checked his knuckles for bruises, and then looked at his face more carefully again. No, Tonica wouldn't actually use his fists. Especially not if that's what the other guy was used to. “All right, yeah, fine, point to you. That's why we let you hang around. Stop gloating, and give.”

“Lew Hollins. I don't have anything more than that; I didn't think it would be a good time to push. Whoever this guy is, he's tough enough to make a pretty tough twenty-something boxer hesitate to even give a name, much less spill his guts.”

Ginny was already typing into her tablet, pulling up new screens and tapping out commands. “Lew Hollins . . . Lewis Hollins, age fifty-seven?”

“I have no idea, I just got the name.” Tonica sounded cranky, and she gave him the finger out of habit, turning it to suggest that he sit-and-spin, she was
working
on it.

“There's a Lou—L-O-U—Hollins in Seattle, too. But he's seventy-nine. Probably not? Not if he's the guy who
was paying Deke, based on his description, no. Okay, Lewis Hollins. Lives in Holmes Point, unmarried, a podiatrist? Seriously?”

“That might explain how he met so many boxers,” Tonica said. “Seth said once that the feet gave out before the hands or knees.”

“Huh. Yeah, I guess I could see that. Looking for a visual . . . there we go.” She slid the tablet around and pushed it toward him again. Tonica took a quick look at the photo displayed: a lean, angular face, with silvery blond hair receding slightly at the top, and nodded. “Matches what Deke said about the third guy, don't you think?”

“I wouldn't want to cross him,” Ginny said. “Hell, I wouldn't even want him working on my toes. Deke's right, the guy's got cold eyes.”

She took the tablet back and skimmed the readout.

“And, sadly, a clean surface. He's not pinging anywhere on the usual menace-to-society boards.”

“You expected him to? Really, Mallard?”

She shrugged. “It would have been nice. Right now, we've got nothing other than a low-rung boxer's word that he's connected to anything even remotely criminal, and it's not like the kid's ever going to testify, if what you said is true. We've got no thread to pull.”

“So in other words, we're back where we started, even with a name?” Tonica sounded like he wanted to throw something—a glass, a punch, a temper tantrum. She could feel the tension coiled in his body, even though he still looked perfectly at-ease to a casual observer.

“Please, have I taught you nothing?” She forced a grin at him, feeling a little of her usual self-confidence come back. “When an avenue of research comes up blank? You just go down another avenue, and then another, until you find what you're looking for.”

“You really shouldn't look so happy about that,” Tonica said. “It's indecent.” He shook his head. “All right, how do we drill down and find out if he's a bad guy or not?”

“First, we need to get Deke settled. If this guy's as bad news as we think, it's even more important that he be out of reach, somewhere safe. Especially if the kid he beat on tells anyone.” The first rule of the job was to keep it impersonal, not care about the client. Every time things went wrong, in every detective movie she'd ever seen, it was because the detective was a sap for the client.

“Great. So what, we're going to stash him in a hotel somewhere? Buy him a ticket out of town and hope he can take care of himself? C'mon, Gin.”

She looked across the bar to where Shana and Deke seemed to be trading stories of misspent youth, based on the way Shana was laughing. “Don't worry. I think that's in the bag.”

The office
was modern but still managed to look comfortable, the chairs ones you'd like to sit in, the surface of the oversized wooden table being used as a desk covered with a comfortable clutter of folders and files. There were three people in the room: a woman, sitting quietly in the corner;
the young boxer from Sammy's sitting in one of the comfortable chairs in front of the desk; and the man behind the desk, shirtsleeves rolled up, thinning hair mussed, and reading glasses sliding down his nose.

“No,” he was saying, leaning across the table and looking directly into the younger man's eyes. “It's all right. You did the right thing. You're the working hinge in all this, and the last thing we want is someone looking at you. Better they should think you've given them everything you know, and leave you alone.”

The kid exhaled, resting his elbows on the table like they were all that was holding him up now. “I'm sorry, boss. I just didn't know what to do. He was going to keep pushing and pushing, and I didn't want to hit an old guy.”

“Yeah. First time you've had the spotlight on you, I get it. And those bruises look like they hurt.”

The kid grinned, touching the greenish spot visible under his cheekbone. “Nah. I get worse than this during a fight. The old man's still got some moves on him. But I'm sorry, I—”

“Gerry. It's all right. I'm not angry. When I hired you to keep an eye on things, it was precisely because I knew something like this might happen. Go home, get some rest. We'll be in touch.”

The kid slipped out the back door, and Hollins sighed, shaking his head. “Kids today, I swear. They think they're invincible. Dumb, but invincible.”

The woman who had been sitting off to the side during their conversation looked up from her phone, her
head cocked to the side. “Do we need to teach him differently?”

“What? Oh, no, no,” he said, waving away her concern. “He's loyal, and useful. You don't screw with that, not without reason. I might have wished he kept his mouth shut, but at least he knew enough to come here and tell me, rather than hide like an idiot and hope I never found out.”

She nodded, less because she was convinced and more because he didn't want to hear her doubts.

“Meanwhile, I'm more concerned about this new player. I want to know about
him.
Is he a competitor? A cop? Or just some poor schmuck trying to help out a friend?” Hollins let out another overly dramatic sigh. “I swear to you, I'd rather he was a cop. They're easier to deal with.”

“I have already started looking into it. I should have that information to you within an hour.” She paused. “And what about Mr. Hoban?”

“Who, Deke? Oh, don't worry about him, poor old bastard. His part in this has ended; he gets to exit off the stage like a good bit player.” Hollins tilted his head, considering something only he could see. “It may be, in fact, that this entire play has run its course, and it's time to draw the curtain down. Take a memo, Jeanine.”

She did no such thing, of course, but listened carefully as he spoke.

It had been a good run, but he was right: nothing lasted forever.

8

P
enny hadn't been sure
how
she was going to question Parsifal. The puppy was so little, its thoughts focused on the moment, not remembering what had gone past or—well, it was much like most dogs, really. Only littler. And it was already scared of her.

But it had to be done.

Ginny came in to feed the dogs then, placing two bowls down on the floor, one with more kibble in it than the other.
Penny's ears flicked forward, alert, as she stared past Georgie's shoulder at the puppy, who had put his entire face into his bowl and was chewing away happily. Food calmed. A puppy with food in its belly would be sleepy and not-scared.

Georgie nosed at her own food, then looked sideways at Penny. “He's only a puppy.”

“I'm not going to bite him,” Penny said. The tip of her tail twitched, but she kept it from lashing: Georgie was upset enough already, her protective instincts engaged.

It was . . . reasonably cute, she supposed. And it needed help. But it was noisy and messy and didn't belong here. The sooner she figured out what was going on, the sooner Theodore and Ginny could get rid of it. “I'm just going to ask it questions. That's all.”

“You don't play nice,” Georgie said, her muzzle lifted in what
might almost be a snarl. Penny waited. Eventually, Georgie relented and let Penny walk past. Not that Georgie could have
stopped
her, not really, but . . .

“Hi.” The puppy had stopped eating, and turned its head sideways to look at Penny. “Who're you?”

“This is Mistress Penny-Drops,” Georgie said. “You met her before, remember? It's all right. She's pack.”

“Oh.” Parsifal studied the cat seriously, then reached forward to lick the side of Penny's face.

Penny sneezed, and backed away, her tail lashing furiously now. The urge to hiss rose in her throat, and she forced it back down. If she scared it, it would be useless.

“Penny . . .” Georgie's whine was anxious, a reminder. “Parsi, Penny doesn't like being groomed by us.”

“Oh.” The puppy looked crestfallen, its ears drooping and its tail tucked between its legs. Georgie gave Penny a long look, and then turned back to the puppy.

“If we ask you something,” she said to it, “could you answer? Tell us everything you remember?”

“I can do that, sure!” The ears lifted slightly, but the tail remained cowed, his body flat against the blanket in submission. Georgie nodded to Penny, who kept her tail still, her ears forward.

“I need you to remember the place where you were,” she said to it. “Before Theo—the big human—found you.”

Those ears dropped again, and the little body shivered.

“Can you do that?” Penny asked, very, very still, like she would wait for a mouse.

“It's okay,” Georgie said, moving around so that she was half on the blanket next to Parsifal, nudging into his side. “We're here,
you're safe.”

“Okay.” The puppy was shivering, but its eyes were bright, and Penny felt a twinge of respect.

“Tell me what you remember, what you saw, heard, smelled. Everything, no matter how small.” Penny didn't trust the puppy to know what might be important: they would figure that out later.

The puppy was obviously trying to think hard. “It was dark most of the time,” Parsifal said. “Warm and dark. Except when the humans came to feed us. Sometimes then we were taken out of the den and ran around. The ground was cold, and the air smelled bad.”

“We?”

“There were seven of us,” Parsifal said solemnly. “I used to count us at night, when we slept, to make sure nobody had gone away.”

Penny blinked once, and her tail slowly curled around her hindquarters. That was important, she thought. “Some of them went away, before?”

“I think so. I don't remember so well. The warm one. And others? It was noisier, once. And then it was quieter.”

“When the humans came. What changed?”

“It was brighter. They handled us, put us on cold things and talked. To each other, not to us. They didn't touch us much.”

Parsifal sounded so sad at that. Penny looked up at Georgie, hoping she would know what to do.

“We'll find you a human who touches,” the shar-pei said, nudging the much smaller dog with her nose. “All the touches and treats. Just tell Penny what she needs to know.”

“I don't remember!” The puppy wailed, loud enough that someone outside might hear. Georgie whined, deep in her chest,
and Penny's ears went flat, then flicked back and forth as she tried to hear if anyone was coming to investigate the noise. They waited until it was pretty certain that no humans had heard. Only then did Penny let her muscles relax, and raised a paw, catching Parsifal's attention with the sharp glint of claws.

“Yes, you can,” she said firmly, and touched the small dog on the tip of his black nose, not firmly enough for the claw to slice, but enough to remind the puppy of how easily she
could
. “You can remember the smells from the time you were born. The feel of the hands on you. The voices. Remember them all.”

The puppy's eyes crossed, trying to keep watch on that claw on his nose.

“Tell me,” Penny said, and the tip of her tail twitched, just once.

“Hard hands. Cold hands. Cold voices, like bones we've already chewed twice. They smell stale, old, and cold. Bones and . . .” The puppy whined, not having words to describe what little he did remember. “Like the high-voiced human.”

Penny cocked her head, then looked at Georgie.

“I think he means the kitchen-man?”

Penny's whiskers twitched, and she tried to identify what Seth smelled like.

“Ash?” she said. “Burnt smoke, harsh in your nose?”

“Yes!” The puppy's tail thumped against the floor, he was so pleased to be understood.

“They smoked,” Penny said to Georgie. “Enough that the smell lingered, like it does on Seth's hands.” She always had to groom herself after he touched her, to get rid of the smell on her fur.

“And . . .” Parsifal seemed relieved when the claw lifted from
his nose, but his eyes remained crossed until he shook his head and sneezed. “And blood.”

“What?” Penny's ears flicked forward, and her whiskers trembled.

“Sometimes they smelled of blood.”

Having settled
the dogs down with an early dinner, Ginny went back to the table they'd commandeered for the evening. The kitchen was still closed, but Tonica had gone back and made them sandwiches, daring any of the customers to say anything. Nobody had. The food wasn't up to Seth's standards, but it was filling.

Not that she was all that hungry, after looking at the materials she'd dug up, yet again, and discussing it all with Tonica. She was pretty jaded about the world in general, she'd thought, but this . . .

“There's absolutely no connection between this guy and . . . anything,” Tonica was saying in disgust. “And you're telling me that he's not even the kind of super-nice guy we could immediately be suspicious of on general principle?”

“If we were real detectives . . . ,” Ginny started to say, yet again, and Tonica cut her off.

“Which we're not.”

“If we were, the next step would be to put a tail on this Hollins guy.” Ginny stopped, her mouth twisting. “Tail, right. Inappropriate puns aside, he's the only real lead we've got. We need to know who this guy is, what he's
doing. He's the key.”

“What, you think we should spend our time lurking after a podiatrist?” Tonica shook his head. “I'm already running on exhausted, Gin. And you are
not
going to do that alone. If this guy's actively involved, he's not a nice guy.”

“Aw, your caveman tendencies are coming out again, Tonica,” she said, drawing a quick, reluctant grin from him before getting back to the topic. “But no, I wasn't going to suggest actual physical stalking. You should know my methods by now, Watson.”

“Cyberstalking?”

“I prefer to call it in-depth digital investigations,” she said primly. “But yes. A full dossier, soup to nuts. We've already exhausted what I can do, though. At least, without getting into the dodgy areas that make you twitch.”

He shrugged at that. She'd never actually broken the law, at least not noticeably, but Tonica had tighter reins on his moral propriety than she did.

“I have someone I can call on for help—but I'm going to need a suitable bribe.” She looked sideways at her partner, trying to gauge his willingness to play along. It could go either way, now that he was the bar's manager in title as well as responsibility.

Tonica sighed, knowing what she had in mind. “Yes, all right. But only for a set time period, Gin. Two weeks, max. And I reserve the right to cut whoever it is off if they get drunk.
When
they get drunk
.
”

“Don't worry, Greg's a lightweight. Two drinks and
he'll be a happy little hacker.”

“You guys know the most interesting people,” Tonica said, then got up to snag another round—one ginger ale, and one lager, with a side of coffee—from the bar, and bring the drinks back to the table.

“Useful, anyway,” Ginny said, already entering Greg's number. “He's not actually all that interesting, if you're not heavily into the hacktivist mentality. Hi, Greg,” she said into the phone. “This is the real actual Gin Mallard. Call me when you pick up, I have a challenge for you.”

She put the cell down on the bar, only to have it buzz and vibrate, indicating another call coming in. She picked it up, glanced at the display, and sighed. “I'll be right back.”

She stepped outside, letting the door close gently behind her, and answered the phone. “Hi, Rob.”

“Hey.” His voice was thin through the speaker, familiar and affectionate. “You were going to call me this morning.”

“Yeah, I'm sorry. I got wrapped up in a job, and—”

“A job or a job-job?”

“There's a difference?” There was to him, she knew. Rob loved his job, but he still thought like an office geek, where everything was split between “what I do for money” and “what I do that isn't about a paycheck.”

“Ginny. We talked about this already. You agreed.”

No, she hadn't. For once, she'd kept the peace and not argued with him. That wasn't the same as agreeing.

Her mother's voice whispered in the back of her head: “I like this one. He's got a sensible head on his shoulders.”

So do I, Mom, she thought back at the voice. “Rob,
don't. Don't lecture me on what I should be doing with my life, or where my energy is best spent. I'm not sixteen, and you're not—” She sighed. “You get a voice but you don't make my decisions for me. Okay?”

She waited.

“You're going to get into serious trouble with this hobby of yours, Ginny. I'm just worried about you, that's all.”

“I know.” If she'd thought it was anything else, she would have broken up with him already. “But I promise, there's nothing at all problematic about this; it's just helping out a friend of a friend who's getting harassed by his landlord.”

That was the unvarnished truth. It wasn't the whole truth, but who really wanted the whole truth, anyway?

“All right, not fighting about this. Are we still on for tonight?”

She had to think a moment, trying to visualize her schedule, before she nodded. “Yeah, we're still good.” If Greg got back to her, she could set him on the trail, hand off Deke to Shana and whatever schmoozing was to be done to Teddy, and be home well in time to Skype with her boyfriend. Let him think she'd spent the day in the office, not sitting on a bar stool at Mary's, arguing over tactics and poking into other people's business.

Best of all possible worlds, really.

She wondered, as she said good-bye, if Tonica should feel insulted that Rob was worried about the job, and not the fact that she spent so much time with the bartender, who was not, by any stretch of the imagination, unappealing.

She tilted her head, a smile tugging at the corner of her
mouth. Her and Tonica? She tried to imagine that, and the smile turned into a laugh.

When she went back inside, still chuckling, she refused to tell him why.

That night's
crowd was weirdly mellow. Teddy didn't know why it happened sometimes like that; nobody had started a study of barroom flow the way they studied traffic, but the signs were unmistakable. When he'd been hustling for tips, it had been the worst kind of night, people nursing one drink and not socializing much, but at Mary's that was less of an issue. He kind of liked it, which probably meant that he was getting old.

It also meant that Penny hung around more obviously. The tabby didn't like it when the bar filled up and got noisy, but on slow nights she'd come out and parade through the bar, pausing to let people admire her properly. Right now she had appropriated one of the regular's laps, and the woman—Molly, drank mostly bourbon—was petting her absently, raising her drink with her other hand, and occasionally pausing to turn the page of her e-reader.

There was a lot to be said for quiet nights. Especially when he had other things to do.