Блейз Клемент - Duplicity Dogged Тhe Dachshund

I finished grooming the cat and set him on the floor; then I pulled out my cell phone and called Paco. The phone rang several times before he answered, and his voice sounded breathless.

He said, “They’re here now—the snake guys. They’ve got him.”

I said, “Paco, before they leave, have them pull my bed out from the wall. There’s a drawer on that side of the bed. Ask them to open the drawer, but tell them to do it carefully.”

There was a pregnant silence on the other end of the line. Then I heard Paco’s muffled voice as he held the phone to his chest and called to the men in my apartment. I waited. In a minute or two the line became clear, and I heard thundering footsteps and shouts in the background.

A man yelled, “Use the hook! Use the hook! Goddamn it, use the hook!”

Somebody else laughed, and another man yelled, “Wahoo!”

Paco said, “Sweet Jesus.”

I said, “I slept on top of rattlesnakes last night, didn’t I?”

“Just one.”

“Are you standing on the couch?”

“You bet your sweet ass.”

“Are the guns still in the compartment?”

He held the phone to his chest again and yelled a question, then came back to me.

“They say there are three guns in Styrofoam niches. A nine-millimeter Glock, a Colt three-fifty-seven, and a Smith and Wesson thirty-two.”

A cold shiver ran up my spine. The gun drawer hadn’t exactly been a secret, but I hadn’t told anybody about it, not even Michael or Paco.

He said, “Those were Todd’s personals, weren’t they?”

“The Glock and the Colt were. The thirty-two is mine.”

Paco’s voice was grim. “I’ll have them check every inch of the place, Dixie.”

I said, “More than likely they won’t find anything. Somebody just wanted me to know I don’t have any secrets.”

There was more shouting in the background, and Paco began speaking in a rush.

“Michael just got home, Dixie. He’s a little bit—uh, rabid. I’ll call you later.”

He clicked off, and I grimaced in sympathy for him. Every man gets in a bad mood when he feels that he’s failed to protect his loved ones. When Michael gets in a bad mood, he’s like Godzilla on steroids. I was glad I wasn’t there to hear it.

I pressed the hang-up button on my phone. Now the phone showed only two batteries on its screen. As if I didn’t have enough stress, my stupid phone was nagging me to charge it. You’d think some electronic wizard could design a battery-free phone so our lives wouldn’t be controlled by little passive-aggressive boxes and their blinking demands.

I told the cat good-bye, gathered up my grooming equipment, locked the front door behind me, and went out to the Bronco. I felt numb, too scared even to work up a decent case of the shakes. I started the motor and let the AC run while I called Guidry. Surprisingly, he answered on the first ring.

I said, “Thanks for the tail.”

“Don’t mention it.”

“Do you know about the snake in my apartment?”

“Sorry about that. I thought you’d be okay last night with Paco. We didn’t watch your place while you were gone.”

“I was just on the phone with Paco. There was another one in a drawer under my bed where I keep my guns. I slept on it last night.”

My voice went up an octave, and I recognized, with a kind of clinical detachment, the sound of rising hysteria.

Guidry must have recognized it too, because he said, “We’re not going to let anything happen to you.”

I clicked off and laid my head on the steering wheel. I felt the way a lobster must feel when it’s been out of salt water too long, like I was shrinking inside my own skin. Every instinct told me Denton Ferrelli was responsible for his brother’s death and for those rattlesnakes in my apartment. Every instinct told me he was responsible for the truck that had tried to run me down. If he hadn’t done it himself, he had hired somebody to do it.

This is war, I thought, and then almost laughed at myself for thinking it. How many times had I heard our grandfather say that? Probably half a million at least. If the county sent a tax bill he thought was outrageous, if the fishing commission declared a quota on red snapper, or if an invasion of no-see-ums sent him running for cover, he would bellow, “This is war!” Well, okay, so I’m my grandfather’s progeny. I don’t take injustice.

I got out my nagging phone and called Information to get Denton Ferrelli’s office phone number. When I called it, a woman with a voice all in her nose obliged with the address. With the tail following me like exhaust smoke, I headed for one of the glass-fronted mainland high-rises facing the marina. I took a glass elevator to the penthouse and stepped into a lobby the size of my entire apartment. A sleek young woman wearing a red power suit sat in front of a telephone at an antique library table. She gave my hairy shorts a sneering glance and smiled frostily. If she’d known I had a .38 in my pocket and venom in my heart, she might not have looked so friggin’ smug.

I said, “Tell Denton Ferrelli that Dixie Hemingway is here to see him.”

She gave me a bunched-mouth little smile and said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Ferrelli isn’t in.”

This was definitely a woman who had let a career of answering a phone go to her head.

I wheeled away toward the row of closed doors. “Never mind, I’ll find him.”

She scrambled under the edge of her desk for an alarm bell, and I hotfooted it to the widest, most impressive-looking door and turned the knob. Denton Ferrelli and another man were sitting opposite each other in deep black leather chairs. Behind them, a glass wall overlooked the sun-sparkled blue marina and its rows of boats. It was a view that must have given relief to eyes strained from studying multimillion-dollar deals.

The woman in the red suit ran up behind me and screeched, “I told her you couldn’t see her, Mr. Ferrelli!”

Denton Ferrelli smiled lazily, those cobra-lidded eyes fixed in place. “Never mind, honey, I’ll take care of it.”

I said, “The rattlesnakes were cute, Mr. Ferrelli.”

He gave me a blank look that was either a terrific act or genuinely ignorant.

He said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about, but I assume it has something to do with your fetish for animals.” He tilted his head toward the man with him. “Leo Brossi, this is Conrad’s dog-sitter. She’s a big animal lover.”

Brossi was a lot smaller than Denton, probably not taller than me, and slim as a knife blade. He had a deep leathery tan and hair the brassy pink of a copper pan that’s had tomato juice spilled on it. He looked up at me with a smirk.

“Does that mean you like being fucked by big dogs?”

I don’t remember what happened next because I sort of blacked out for a minute. When I came to I was punching Leo Brossi’s head with both fists and he was cowering in the chair and cursing. Denton had risen to stand next to Brossi, and he was leering at me. It was the leer that stopped me. Denton was getting a hard-on from watching me beat the crap out of Leo Brossi.

I jerked my hands away and stepped back, breathing hard and thinking how nice it would be to see Denton Ferrelli sail through the glass wall into the marina.

Behind me, red suit whinnied, “Do you want me to call the police, Mr. Ferrelli?”

Denton Ferrelli shook his head. “That won’t be necessary. The dog-sitter just got a little carried away.”

Leo Brossi’s nose was streaming blood down his shirt-front, and it looked like one of his eyes was on the way to swelling shut. He was glaring from me to Denton like an agitated tennis fan.

I said, “My name is Dixie Hemingway. I suggest you remember it.”

I spun around and went through the door, feeling their eyes on me as I marched across the lobby to the elevator. I felt good. I felt damn good. I’d done a stupid, irresponsible thing, and I was glad.