Tom Schreck: Out Cold

"Karl, how the hell are we supposed to get through the front gate?"

"We can climb it."

"How do we get 40 or 50 hounds out climbing a fence?"

"Er…uh."

"Geez…"

"What if they got guns and shoot at us?"

"We'll be sneaky."

"Great."

People were right. We were both crazy.

We pulled into AJ's, and the three of us headed in. AJ would give me shit about Al, but I've got used to that. The second I stepped in the place I knew something was wrong. The place was packed.

Trina was waiting for me near the front.

"What the hell is going on?" I said. Trina forced back tears.

"I don't want you getting hurt. You may not care but other people do." She started to sob and put her face in her hands. I wasn't quite sure what she was talking about. I looked around the room and realized familiar faces filled the place. I walked to my usual spot at the bar dumbfounded.

Three rough-looking black guys with red bandanas sat on the first three stools of the bar. From behind them stepped a young black woman.

"Oh my God, Shony," The kid I kind of rescued a few years back came forward.

"Mr. Duffy, God bless you," she said and gave me a kiss and a gentle hug. "Miss Trina called and said something about you needing some help."

The three hard-looking black guys stepped around her.

"Who are you guys?"

The guy in the middle, with a Chicago Bulls hat and a toothpick, raised his eyes without raising his head and looked at me.

"Shony called us. I'm her step-brother and these two are my…uh…associates. I do anything the girl say and she say some white guy named Duffy need help. Say it might involve some muscle. Shony say you the one…the only one… came looking for her when she got kidnapped. Said you saved her life." He paused a second and looked me up and down. "That all I need to know. We here to help."

Next to the black guys sat Billy Cramer, my old karate student. He'd put on about 40 pounds of muscle. Next to him some other guy with cauliflower ears and a crew cut leaned against the bar.

"What's up, Duff?" Billy got off his stool and hugged me.

"What the hell are you doin' here?"

"Trina said you needed a hand."

I didn't know what to say.

"Geez, you got big." I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Duff, I'm doing mixed martial arts stuff and you gotta have some upper body stuff. I ain't the skinny, pizza faced kid you stood up for a few years ago." He smiled. He had turned into a confident young man.

"This is Timo, we train together. Timo just likes to fight." I shook hands with Timo, who barely acknowledged me.

"Mr. Duffy! The Frogman is here and at your service." Froggy took a night off from his park rendezvous. "Ms. Trina say Mr. Duffy need help. The Frogman doesn't forget." The bewilderment shifted over. I had a lump in my throat and welled up.

Next to the Frogman Doctor Pacquaio, the Philipino doctor I knew stood. A few years back, I helped a guy get social services benefits by lying on some forms, and it turned out he was Philipino.

"Hello Duffy. Long time no see you," Dr. Pac gave me a big toothy smile.

"What the hell are you doing here, Doctor?"

"You helped a friend of mine, a poor man with no home, get a place to live. From my country, and I know for a fact he's still doing well." He looked me in the eye. "That's because of you."

Standing next to the doctor was Vinci, a boxer from the Crawford Y. Vinci, way past a-not-so-great prime, but he and I had been sparring partners since our teen years. Next to him Jamal, Angel, and Shaquan leaned against the wall

"Yo, Duff, this Trina says you're in trouble and need some back up," Shaquan said.

"Trina's a bit of a worrier," I said.

"She said somethin' about raiding a puppy mill. I ain't even sure what a puppy mill is, but it don't sound like this Trina is exaggeratin'," Vinci said.

"Yeah, well."

"We're in, too," Jerry Number One said. Jerry Number Two and TC both nodded along.

"I thought you guys thought I lost it."

"Oh, we're convinced you lost it," Jerry Number Two said. I couldn't help but smile.

"Rocco will be along," TC said.

Next to them stood Mary Jo, a fellow Elvis fan who lived out in the boonies. Someone once stole her Elvis scarf-one she got from the King. I found the scum who ripped off her trailer on a one of my bad mood days. I gave the guy a beating and got her scarf and some other stuff back.

"I'm not good at kicking any ass, Duffy, but I barely got to thank you for what you did for me. I want to help you do whatever you want to do," she said, and a tear ran down her face. She had a baseball bat with her.

A short man came out of the bathroom tugging at a zipper on a pair of polyester sans-a-belts. I started to lose it at that point.

"You! Meshuganah, you know that," Hymie said. He had founded the clinic and kept Gloria from firing me a bunch of times.

"I don't know what mess you're in. You crazy schmeckle." He pursed his lips and shook his head in frustration. He dug into his pocket and got his roll of cash.

"Here's a grand."

"What's that for?" I said.

"Goddam it. I'm eighty-six years old and I can't go fighting some hooligans. I'd do anything else for you son." He waved a dismissive hand at me and walked away.

Trina wound her way back and stood in front of me with her hands on her hips. Her eyes red and her face puffy, she had the forceful look of a woman on a mission.

"I only had an hour to round people up. These people care about you, you know." She paused and wiped her eyes. "You don't have to do what ever fool thing you're about to do, you know." She stared at me. I stared back without saying a word. She shook her head.

"You're going to tell me whatever it is you're going to do you have to do, and I won't understand. Damn, you're an idiot." I just smiled.

I called out and asked everyone to gather around. They all came here to help, but this thing needed to be organized.

"Look, everyone," I wasn't sure what to say. "I haven't been doing so good lately. As many of you well know, I might not be in my right mind. I'm pretty sure I'm a little nuts. I don't want anyone getting hurt or in trouble because I'm nuts and-" The black kid with the bandana cut me off. "Shony said you crazy. She also say you the only motherfucker crazy enough to save her when she needed savin'."

"I know everyone called you nuts for teaching me karate and, uh, changing my life," Billy Cramer said.

"It was a crazy thing you did for my friend-you almost lost your job. Beautifully crazy," Dr. Pac said.

"You got my scarf back and didn't even know me. We need more crazy people if you ask me," Mary Jo said.

"Look, Duff, everyone here knows you're crazy and been crazy, so why don't you stop the bullshit and tell us what we got to do," Jamal said, speaking for the guys from the gym.

"All right, all right," I said. "Okay, here's the deal. You know this canned food drive everyone's been doing for the soldiers? Well, the place in this region that collects them is also what they call a puppy mill. They call it that because they breed dogs for profit like a mill and they mistreat the dogs. The dogs don't get exercise, they're fat but undernourished, unsocialized, and when they're done breeding, these bastards sell them to the cosmetic people to do awful tests on them. Our job is to go in there, steal the dogs, and get them out." Everyone stared at me, but I had gotten used to that.

"Oh, and one more thing. Al's mom is in there and she's real sick and real pregnant."

"I just got a question," Billy said.

"Shoot," I said.

"How are we getting forty or fifty dogs out of there to wherever we're going with them?"

"That's a problem," I said.