Роберт Беллем - Pulp Frictions

I sat like that for half an hour. Then Sharp came out of his place and got into the DeSoto. He drove it off around the corner and swung into the alley that ran behind his yard.

Then the DeSoto backed out of the alley. A big police dog with a muzzle on his head was chained in the back of the sedan. I could just see his head straining at the chain.

I trailed the DeSoto.

Carolina Street was away off at the edge of the little beach city. There were just two houses in the last block, so I hid behind the first, which was on the corner, with a weedy grass plot and a high dusty red and yellow lantana fighting with a honeysuckle vine against the front wall.

Beyond that was a ramshackle mud-coloured bungalow with a wire fence. The DeSoto stopped in front of it.

Its door slammed open and Sharp dragged the muzzled dog out of the back and fought him through a gate and up the walk.

I put my stomach down in the weeds and sighted the bungalow and waited. Boomingly on the afternoon air came the deep-toned woof-woofing of the police dog.

Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes except that the dog kept right on barking. Then the barking suddenly got harder and harsher. Then somebody shouted. Then a man screamed.

I picked myself up and sprinted. As I got near the house I heard the low, furious growling of the dog worrying something, and behind it the staccato rattle of a woman’s voice, in anger more than in fear.

I went through the gate and thumped up wooden steps to a sagging porch. I banged on the door.

The growling was still going on inside, but the scolding voice had stopped. Nobody came to the door. I tried the knob, opened the door, and went in. There was a heavy smell of chloroform.

In the middle of the floor, on a twisted rug, Sharp lay spread-eagled on his back, with blood pumping out of the side of his neck. The blood had made a thick glossy pool around his head. The dog leaned away from it, crouched on his forelegs, his ears flat to his head, fragments of a tom muzzle hanging about his neck. His throat bristled and the hair on his spine stood up and there was a low pulsing growl deep in his throat.

Behind the dog a cupboard door was smashed back against the wall and on the floor of the cupboard a big wad of cottonwool sent sickening waves of chloroform out on the air.

A dark handsome woman in a print house dress held a big automatic pointed at the dog and didn’t fire it.

She threw a quick glance at me over her shoulder, started to turn. The dog watched her, with narrow, black-rimmed eyes. I took my Luger out and held it down at my side.

Something creaked and a tall black-eyed man in faded blue overalls and a blue work-shirt came through the swing door at the back with a sawn-off double-barrel shotgun in his hands. He pointed it at me.

‘Hey, you! Drop that gat!’ he said angrily.

I moved my jaw with the idea of saying something. The man’s finger tightened on the front trigger. My gun went off — without my having much to do with it. The slug hit the stock of the shotgun, knocked it clean out of the man’s hands. It pounded on the floor and the dog jumped sideways about seven feet and crouched again.

With an utterly incredulous look on his face the man put his hands up in the air.

I couldn’t lose. I said, ‘Down yours too, lady.’

She worked her tongue along her lips and lowered the automatic to her side and walked away from the body on the floor.

The man said, ‘Hell, don’t shoot him. I can handle him.’

I blinked, then I got the idea. He had been afraid I was going to shoot the dog. He hadn’t been worrying about himself.

I lowered the Luger a little. ‘What happened?’

‘That — tried to chloroform — him , a fighting dog!’

I said, ‘Yeah. If you’ve got a phone, you’d better call an ambulance. Sharp won’t last long with that tear in his neck.’

The woman went along the wall to a window seat full of crumpled newspapers, reached down for a phone at one end of it. I looked down at the little vet. His face was the whitest face I had ever seen.

‘Never mind the ambulance,’ I told the woman. ‘Just call Police Headquarters.’

The man in the overalls put his hands down and dropped on one knee, began to pat the floor and talk soothingly to the dog.

‘Steady, old-timer. Steady. We’re all friends now — all friends. Steady, Voss.’

The dog growled and swung his hind end a little. The man kept on talking to him. The dog stopped growling and the hackles on his back went down. The man in overalls kept on crooning to him.

The woman on the window seat put the phone aside and said, ‘On the way. Think you can handle it, Jerry?’

‘Sure,’ the man said, without taking his eyes off the dog.

The dog let his belly touch the floor now and opened his mouth and let his tongue hang out. The tongue dripped saliva, pink saliva with blood mixed in it. The hair at the side of the dog’s mouth was stained with blood.

The man called Jerry said, ‘Hey, Voss. Hey, Voss old kid. You’re fine now. You’re fine.’

The dog panted, didn’t move. The man straightened up and went close to him, pulled one of the dog’s ears. The dog turned his head sideways and let his ear be pulled. The man stroked his head, unbuckled the chewed muzzle and got it off.

He stood up with the end of the broken chain and the dog came up on his feet obediently, went out through the swing door into the back part of the house, at the man’s side.

I moved a little, out of line with the swing door. Jerry might have more shotguns. There was something about Jerry’s face that worried me. As if I had seen him before, but not very lately, or in a newspaper.

I looked at the woman. She was a handsome brunette in her early thirties. Her print house dress didn’t seem to belong with her finely arched eyebrows and her long soft hands.

‘How did it happen?’ I asked casually, as if it didn’t matter very much.

Her voice snapped at me, as if she was aching to turn it loose. ‘We’ve been in the house about a week. Rented it furnished. I was in the kitchen, Jerry in the yard. The car stopped out front and the little guy marched in just as if he lived here. The door didn’t happen to be locked, I guess. I opened the swing door a crack and saw him pushing the dog into the cupboard. Then I smelled the chloroform. Then things began to happen all at once and I went for a gun and called Jerry.’

‘It was all over then?’ I said. ‘He had Sharp chewed up on the floor?’

‘Yes — if Sharp is his name.’

‘You and Jerry didn’t know him?’

‘Never saw him before. Or the dog. But Jerry loves dogs.’

‘Better change a little of that,’ I said. ‘Jerry knew the dog’s name. Voss.’

Her eyes got tight and her mouth got stubborn. ‘I think you must be mistaken,’ she said in a sultry voice.

‘Who’s Jerry?’ I asked. ‘I’ve seen him somewhere. Where’d he get the sawn-off? You going to let the cops see that?’

She bit her lip, then stood up suddenly, went towards the fallen shotgun. I let her pick it up, saw she kept her hand away from the triggers. She went back to the window seat and pushed it under the pile of newspapers.

She faced me. ‘OK, what’s the pay-off?’ she asked grimly.

I said slowly, ‘The dog is stolen. His owner, a girl, happens to be missing. I’m hired to find her. The people Sharp said he got the dog from sounded like you and Jerry. Their name was Voss. They moved east. Ever hear of a lady called Isobel Snare?’

The woman said, ‘No,’ tonelessly, and stared at the end of my chin.

The man in overalls came back through the swing door wiping his face on the sleeve of his blue work-shirt. He didn’t have any fresh guns with him. He looked me over without much concern.