Randy White - Twelve Mile Limit

Because the shots were badly framed, I got the impression that one of the three had probably placed the camera on a desk, touched the timer button, then rushed to get into the picture. Strictly amateur.

In one of the photos, both women stared into the camera’s lens, moistened lips and sloe-eyed, their expressions so obvious and salacious that they might have been parodying stage sensuality. Because of certain grotesque characteristics of the man’s anatomy, and because the women looked to be no older than their late teens, I guessed them to be prostitutes. Women doing things they’d never do unless they were getting paid. Because of the man’s dull, glossy stare, I made another deduction: He was very drunk during the session or on drugs.

The rattan furniture in the background had a commercial look, suggestive of a hotel.

The inference got some support. Crumpled with the photos, I found a brochure for a place called Hotel de Acension, Cartagena, Colombia.

I knew the hotel, had even been in the bar a couple of times. High marble ceilings and European prices. It had been a cathedral during the time of the Conquistadors. Now it was a notorious hangout for drug cartel people, informants, and State Department types on the make. With the brochure was a copy of receipts for a one-month stay made out to someone named Hassan Atwa Kazan. He had expensive tastes and liked room service. Moet, smoked salmon, Dunhill cigarettes.

I turned and checked one of the peanut can ashtrays.

Yes. A quill of Dunhill butts in there.

I considered the name: Kazan. Probably Middle Eastern, possibly Islamic, though I have a friend in London named Kazan, and she’s Italian.

Even so, the face did not mesh with the name. Albino or not, the man in the photographs had facial characteristics common to mountain Europeans and certain North Africans.

I stood, studying the receipt, holding the paper close to my face, but then I stopped reading. Stood there listening for a moment, then extinguished the light.

Footsteps?

I decided that, once again, it was just my imagination.

I stored the papers in a waterproof bag, stuffed the bag into my cargo pocket, and retraced my steps up the companionway.

I was just opening the door when the wheelhouse lights suddenly flashed on. I stood with my hand on the knob, frozen.

Behind me, a woman’s voice said, “What I may do is shoot you. Or jes’ feed you to Daddy’s dogs. Sonuvabitch, I’m sick to death of you leeches actin’ like you own the place, hurtin’ me like I ain’t got no feelin’s at all.”

I turned to see a high school-aged girl holding a sawed-off 12-gauge with a pistol grip instead of a butt-a weapon known as a “street sweeper” because of the pattern it fires.

The girl had brown hair layered shag style, cutoff shorts. Abdominal baby fat bulged beneath her midriff T-shirt. Her face was narrow, pinched around thin lips, and the divider that separated her nostrils-the columella-was creased. She was a type: skinny hips, heavy breasts. Physically mature by thirteen or fourteen, emotionally old before thirty; a producer of fertile eggs and barroom dramas.

The girl squinted at me for a moment before saying, “Hey-you ain’t one of Daddy’s dogfight buddies. I don’t remember seein’ you here when they decided to have their fun.”

Her piney-woods accent was familiar. I’d heard it earlier that day on the pay phone. Shanay Money, the girl who was having trouble fending off a kid named Oberlin Carter, only her voice was different now. Some of the steeliness had gone out of it. Her arms and shirt, I noticed, were smeared with blood, and her eyes were bleary, red, perhaps from crying. The intensity with which she held the weapon, the tone of her voice, her expression all communicated a resonant hysteria. I got the feeling I’d stumbled into something very personal. Catch a burglar on any other night, she’d have probably called the cops. Or her father. Tonight, though, she was ready to use the shotgun.

I decided to take a chance. “You’ve never seen me before, Shanay, because I’ve never been here before. Never met your father. But, from what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t like his friends. Probably wouldn’t like him, either.”

That earned me a bitter smile. “I suppose you man enough to want to say that to Daddy’s face?”

“I’d prefer not to.”

“Hoo-eee, I bet you wouldn’t! I once saw him strip one of my boyfriends naked, pants and undies, then spank him like a baby! He likes hurtin’ people, my daddy does. His sick friends, they ain’t no better.” The hysteria in her voice now had acquired a shrill edge.

I said, “Tell me about the blood on your shirt, Shanay. I’m not here to harm you. But I might be able to help you. What happened here tonight?”

She jabbed the barrel of the shotgun at me, as she used her head to gesture vaguely toward shore. “There ain’t nothin’ you or anybody else can do to help my ol’ Davey dog. He’s up there bleedin’ to death right now. You’re the one who needs to do the explaining, mister. If I thought for a minute you was one of ’em, I’d blow your damn head off!”

I raised my hands slowly, palms out. “Your dog’s injured? Then wake up your dad, call a vet.”

“You don’t call a vet for animals hurt in a dogfight. Not unless you want the law stickin’ their nose in, and my daddy’s so fucked up on that powder of his and liquor, he didn’t wake up when I was screamin’, and he ain’t gonna wake up now.”

I put my hands down and took a step toward her. “Then I might be able to help. I’m a doctor. I’m telling you the truth. Take me to your dog, and I’ll tell you why I’m here. Then you tell me what happened.”

She lowered the shotgun, tears now dripping down her face. “You a people doctor or an animal doctor?”

I opened the wheelhouse door, holding it for her, saying, “An animal doctor. Sort of. I specialize in fish.”

Dexter Money was in the dogfighting business, in a big way. Because I’m an obsessive reader, I know that Florida is one of a very few states in which it is legal to own, train, and promote fighting breeds, though it is a felony to actually stage a dogfight-a gigantic legal loophole that the public would not tolerate if some organization, the manatee people, for instance, adopted it as a cause.

I also know that, each and every weekend, there are dogfights taking place somewhere around Florida, and that championship purses have exceeded $100,000. The drug dealer types like owning vicious dogs because they offer an added layer of personal protection, so fighting their dogs, betting on the outcome, is a natural extension of that illegal activity.

I followed Shanay along the dock, through a door into the old machine shop. It looked to be made of cypress, open ceilinged, two stories high, rafters showing, bleachers built around a sawdust pen, bare lightbulbs dangling overhead on cords. Stacked in the far corner of the pen were the corpses of five, maybe six dogs. Most of them were brindled, brown, gray, and yellow, their skin ripped off in places, blood crusted black in their fur. They hadn’t been dead long.

“Davey dog’s over here,” the girl said, as she walked around the pen to the back of the building and knelt, then threw back a blanket. Her voice cracked as she added, “I hope he’s not dead already. I’ve had him since I was a little girl.”

The whimpering, whining noise I’d heard earlier was Davey. He was a yellow Lab, maybe eighty pounds, gray hair showing on his muzzle. He was still alive. Barely. His left ear was gone and part of his tail. When I touched my palm to his ribs, testing for a pulse, the dog opened his eyes slightly and thumped his stub of a tail, acknowledging me.

“Can you save him, mister? It’d break my heart to lose him. It purely would.”