Stuart Kaminsky - The Dog Who Bit a Policeman

“For what?” Sasha had said drunkenly.

“The dogfight,” said Illya. “Now, tonight. Let’s go get your dog.”

“I thought that was tomorrow,” Elena said.

Boris leaned toward her, his breath strong and unpleasant, and said, “The fight between your Tchaikovsky and our Bronson is tomorrow night, if they are both in shape. Tonight is just to get the bettors interested. Promotion, hype, like the Americans with boxers.”

It was Sasha’s call, and Elena hoped that he was sober enough to make the right one. She thought of saying something like, “We haven’t prepared our dog for anything tonight,” or “Dmitri wouldn’t risk his prime animal before a big fight.” But she couldn’t speak. She was a woman. Sasha was supposedly the scheming, fear-less, and ruthless man.

“Fine,” said Sasha with a smile, wiping his face with a napkin and tearing the tail off of a shrimp from the huge chilled pile on the table.

“We had better go now,” said Illya. “After we finish our final drinks. A toast.” He raised his glass. “ Mir i Druzhbah, peace and friendship.”

When his last round of drinks was finished, everyone at the table rose, Sasha reaching for one last shrimp. Neither Boris nor Illya appeared to pay the bill. When the group was out on the street, all six of them climbed into the black limo that appeared at the curb. The failure of the threatened rain to begin falling was beginning to bother Elena. When it finally rained, it might be an omen that something bad was going to happen. It was a thought worthy of Zelach’s mother. Elena shook off the idea. Touches of superstition that were also the legacy of her mother back in Odessa. Anna and her sister, Elena’s mother, had the same general build, the same voice, and almost the same face, but they were nothing alike in background and thought. Elena’s mother was a fish sorter on the docks. She was uneducated and surrounded by demons. Elena had escaped from her mother and her family in Odessa the day she turned eighteen.

And now Elena was surrounded by demons.

The three couples were driven to the hastily built kennel in the garage behind a pair of stores on the Arbat. The three men and Elena had gone single file down a narrow passageway between two buildings. The two young women, fearful of ruining their clothes, had remained behind in the car.

Sasha used his key, went in ahead of them, and turned on the lights.

Elena and Sasha were not sure of what they would see. The space had been prepared during the day by a quartet of carpenters who were accustomed to doing such jobs for people on both sides of the law, though one of them had commented as they had worked that it was more and more difficult to see the difference.

Traffic back and forth between the good guys and the bad had almost erased the line.

The carpenter who had expressed these beliefs was a set designer and builder for television shows and movies. He took each job without questioning, without asking for reasons.

Both the criminals and the law considered him a genius, and when Elena looked around the room, which could easily have held three huge twelve-wheel trucks, she found it difficult to keep from examining the brilliant set. After all, she was supposed to have been here at least several times before.

Along the wall across from the garage doors were a series of large metal cages. In each was a dog. In all there were six dogs. The dogs were silent, which impressed Boris and Illya.

“Well trained,” said Boris.

“I have a clever dog trainer from England,” Sasha improvised.

“And don’t bother to try to find out who he is. He is my prized possession, more important than the animals. The animals, except for Tchaikovsky, are expendable.”

A training ring, basically the ring of a small circus, with a red wooden wall circling it, stood in front of the wall at the end of the line of cages. Directly in the center of the garage was an oval exercise area complete with Astroturf. Two doors of the garage were blocked by shelves of items for the care of fighting dogs.

“No dog food?” said Boris, looking at the shelf.

“We feed them only fresh raw meat and water with vitamin supplements and injections,” said Sasha, who had no idea what he was talking about.

Elena had to admit that he was doing a remarkably good job. Alcohol may have blurred his memory but it loosened his imagination.

“They use the exercise pen,” Sasha said, nodding at the Astroturf-covered ring. “But one at a time. We wouldn’t want valuable dogs killing each other without an audience and the chance to place some bets.”

Illya nodded in understanding and said, “Let’s go. They’ll be waiting.”

There were two large wooden free-standing walk-in storage rooms next to the shelves. Elena knew Sasha was trying to figure out which one might hold transport cages for the animals. Perhaps they both did. Perhaps neither. He walked slowly and a bit un-steadily on his feet to the storage room on his right. He opened the padlocked door with his key and stepped in. Elena was right behind him, as were Illya and Boris.

There were no cages. The small space held an old but still-humming refrigerator and cleaning instruments to take care of the dog refuse. The tools looked used. Sasha went to the refrigerator, opened it, and marveled that his lie about raw meat was supported by the evidence inside the cold, lighted box. There were dozens of half-gallon-sized plastic containers through the sides of which raw, red meat could be clearly seen.

“Good,” said Sasha, closing the door and turning to the others.

“Lokanski prepared a new supply.”

“We are in a hurry,” Boris said impatiently.

“I take care of my dogs,” Sasha said indignantly.

“Get a cage,” said Illya. “Let’s go.”

Sasha moved to the next padlocked storage room and once again took out the keys he had been given. Elena controlled her near panic. If a transport cage were not inside, Sasha would be very hard pressed to come up with an explanation for why he did not know where things were in his own kennel. Relying on his drunken for-getfulness would not work with these men. Elena tried to think of what she could do, but she was still certain that her intervention would not be appreciated by the two men. They had pointedly ignored her all evening, and she had accepted their rudeness with gratitude. She did not have to speak any more than the two young mannequins who were waiting in the car parked on the Arbat.

Sasha opened the door of the second storage room, stepped in, and reached up for the string that turned on the light. Stacked on the far wall were six metal-mesh cages with handles on top. Hanging almost carelessly on the wall on hooks were a wide variety of ropes, muzzles, things she could not identify and was certain Sasha could not either. One other item hung on the wall, one Elena and Sasha both recognized, an electric prod.

Sasha, with some difficulty which required him to ask Boris and Illya to help, got down a top cage and said, “Gentlemen, we are late.”

Sasha, she could see, had glanced at the wall of dog-control items, possibly considering if he should take one, for he had no idea of how to get the pit bull into the cage. He rejected the idea and, carrying the cage awkwardly, had moved past a curious rottweiler, a pair of large mongrels, a German shepherd, and a sleeping St. Bernard, toward the pit bull. Elena was relieved that there was only one pit bull in the garage.

Moving to the front of the cage of the pit bull, who stood looking into the face of the man, Sasha lifted the door which covered the entire front of the transport cage. He pushed the open cage in front of Tchaikovsky’s cage, which he opened, lifting the sliding door slowly.