Pound for Pound (29 page)

Dan eyed the list. Hungry. “¿Tee-yeh-nes
ahm-bre?”
He said it slowly a few times, then sped it up.

Barky went on immediate alert. Doc Sally said, “Not bad. Need more practice?” “If I do, I’ll grab hold of some Mexican.” “I’m a Mexican.”

Dan wanted to kiss the shit out of her, but got in the car instead. “You’re not like any Mexican I ever knew.”

Doc Sally went to the dog and scratched him between his poor ears.
“Eres tan lindo, mi Barquito.”
She looked at Dan. “In Spanish,
barquito
means little boat.”

Doc Sally crossed to Dan, then leaned down and kissed him on his undamaged eye. Dan had forgotten how the soft lips of a woman could make him shiver, could make him melt. He cleared his throat with difficulty.

Dan said, “Well, listen, thanks for all your help. I guess.”

“That’s okay, easy.”

“It isn’t as if I was set up by a certain border lady, rat?”

“¿Quién sabe,
who knows?”

“Yeah, well, how’m I supposed to afford an eighty-pound dog?” Dan saluted. “See ya, Doc.”

“Váyanse con Dios, go with God.”

Instead of hunting for a Wal-Mart, Dan bought an army blanket in a surplus store to keep Barky warm and his sheepskins clean. He also bought a six-pack of Negra Modelo beer in a convenience store, and some Mexican food at a taco stand next door. Two pork tacos; a beef tamale with thick red sauce and melted cheese; rice and beans; guacamole, or mashed avocado salad; corn tortillas. He planned to snack along the way on what he didn’t finish, wash it down with the rich beer. But once Dan was back in the car, Barky smelled the food and leaped around as if he were electrified.

“Sit down, you fuck. I’m trying to eat.” Dan looked straight ahead, but talked to the dog through rice and beans. “Just don’t get any ideas about this deal bein permanent, okay? I’ll get you lookin fat and sassy, but once somebody takes a shine to you, I’m hittin the bricks, get me?”

“Gnuff.”

Dan looked over. Barky slobbered and begged. He licked Dan across the face, the long pink tongue quick as a champion’s jab.

Dan wiped himself with a sleeve. “You been fed once today.”

“Gnuff-gnuff.”

Dan said, “I want you to understand that this will be the last time I ever eat in your presence.”

“Gnuff.”

“Lucky for you I don’t understand Spanish.”

Dan got out of the car, let the dog out, and put half of the tamale and one of the tacos in the blue dish. Two gulps and both were gone.

Dan checked Doc Sally’s list. “All right, wise guy.
Bebe,
drink.”

Dan poured half a bottle of the foamy dark beer into the blue plate. Barky inhaled it, no hesitation, his tongue a scoop. He belched. He licked his chops. He wanted more. Dan dragged his drunken ass back into the car, opened another beer for himself, then went back to the trunk of the car where he could eat and drink out of Barky’s reach. The dog settled down, began to nod from the beer, then flattened out. He was snoring by the time Dan got back in the car.

“You lush.”

Dan drank more vodka, and had to stop to buy more OJ. He missed some turns, got turned around, and drove around awhile somewhere on the east side of El Paso. He passed a small park where little boys and girls were playing. He stopped to watch and pet Barky. He heard the sounds of his own children mixed in with the laughter of these little Mexican kids.

Dan pointed. “Barky, see? Kids?” He spelled it out. “K-I-D-S. P-L-A-Y-I-N-G. Understand?”

Barky didn’t understand a damn thing, especially since he’d never heard any part of the alphabet in Spanish, much less in English. But he made a sound that was somewhere between a whine and a wheeze, and Dan understood that the dog had to pee, understood that Barky couldn’t whine right because he had nothing to whine with.

Dan hooked up the leash and let Barky out of the car. He ran straight for a pole and peed, but he was careful not to let all of it go. He ran to a tree. Then he ran to another tree.

One of the little kids tripped over another, who dropped his faded yellow tennis ball. All the kids began to pipe Spanish words like little birds. Their playfulness was infectious, but their words were unintelligible to Dan. But not to Barky, who bounced around and tugged at the leash. Dan allowed himself to be pulled along, grateful to be near the joy of children. They ran and tumbled and when the ball rolled free again, Barky snapped it up. The kids swarmed after him, and he ran in a tightening circle until he was stuck fast against Dan’s legs. As the kids squealed, Barky rolled on his back and pawed the air and they jumped on him.

Dan realized that Barky had been part of a family. A family was where he belonged, not with some old man. When one little girl got the ball back, the kids scampered away, each laughing and piping. Barky wanted to keep on playing, but his tongue was hanging out and Dan could see that he was already tired. As Dan untangled him, one of the children’s mothers got between them and the unknown dog, and worriedly moved them farther away. She smiled at Dan. He smiled back. Both nodded.

Once Dan got the dog unwound, Barky immediately tugged the leash in the direction of the children. Dan tugged back, and headed for the Mercedes. Barky remembered his bladder and knew he had to finish in a hurry. As they walked back to the car, he let go full bore against another pole. As Dan waited, he noticed the weathered sign.

GUADALUPE PARK

“Damn.”

Guadalupe was that girl’s name, Lupe’s name, Guadalupe Ayala. He hadn’t thought of her since way back. Now he saw her face, and then he
saw Tim Pat’s face. He leaned against the park’s old iron fence, his hands covering his eyes in shame. He wept for the first time since the accident. Half cowed, Barky huddled behind Dan’s legs. Snot and drool rolled out of Dan, tears soaked his hands and sleeves. As the sobs trailed off, Dan felt some of the bitterness that he’d felt toward the girl come back. He didn’t want these feelings, but if he had to have them, it was better here than in Los Angeles. He didn’t want to hate the girl. Tim Pat’s death was not her fault, it was his. His mind told him that, but he realized that there was something still bubbling inside, and that troubled him. The fire he’d planned for himself would have ended all this. He patted the dog, who was suddenly happy again. Dan wasn’t.

“Forgivin’s a bear when you got nothin holdin you up inside.”

Dan Cooley took a good, hard look at his face in the rearview mirror. What stared back at him was an aging alcoholic, gray bristles on his cheeks and chin, red-rimmed and bloodshot eyes. “I’m a fucking wreck,” he muttered.

Dan drank more vodka to stay loose and to forget. He pulled over and fished out a coin. Heads, and it was back to Los Angeles through Las Cruces, New Mexico. Tails, Miami, Little Havana. Both had plenty of people who spoke Spanish, didn’t they? Somebody would take Barky, why not?

Dan didn’t flip the coin. Lit as he was, even if tails came up, Dan knew he would be heading for Los Angeles. He wasn’t kidding anybody. At least in Los Angeles there was the shop. Once he got Barky installed there on the pretense that the business needed a watchdog, he could always go finish the job on himself that the four-footed fuck had interrupted.

The sun started down over the desert. Dan got back on the 10, and soon passed through the adobe town of Las Cruces. He stopped at several motels, but none took dogs. He tried the Motel
6.

“Is he housebroke?” asked the desk clerk.

“He better be.”

“Fill out the form.”

Dan fed the dog Doc Sally’s formula, and took him for a walk on the leash. Barky stayed close to Dan, pulled away only to go off to do his business. When he came back from a tree or a pole or a squat, he’d nuzzle Dan’s hand.

“Air-es
tahn leen-doh.” Dan felt like a dummy speaking Spanish so poorly, but the dog didn’t seem to mind.

Dan had his usual vodka and OJ to start the day, bought a six-pack of Bohemia, then drove to a Taco Bell. He got one burrito for himself and two for the dog. The dog looked up for more. Dan checked the list. There was nothing on it that said “No more,” or “That’s all you get,” or “Look there goes a cat.”

“Ven,”
come.

Barky had gained a little more weight, and he tried to jump into the car, but he still didn’t have the legs for it. He climbed into the car instead, and his snout poked out through the window. As they rolled along, he would look from time to time over at Dan to make sure he was real. Dan practiced from Doc Sally’s list. Maybe he should give the dog lessons in Gaelic. He took a little sip of the raw, clear stuff. Tried out some of the few words in Gaelic he remembered. Barky looked at him, cocked one eyebrow, and went to sleep.

A wave of self-disgust washed over Dan. All of this dancing around, this grand “plan”—pure bullshit. If he had really wanted to kill Lupe, he would have blasted away at her while she stood helpless on the sidewalk. If he had wanted to kill himself, he would have done so sitting on the cool concrete floor of the garage. Whatever happened, he had a life sentence—and he had to finish out that sentence as best he could. He turned around and looked at Barky sleeping on the backseat. Then he reached under the seat and pulled out the road atlas. He could make L.A. in two days. Easy.

But he didn’t want to show up looking like someone who had just crawled out of a flophouse. He had to get his shit together.

Dan decided to stay a week in Del Mar. He’d eat seafood and fresh fruit, and take long walks twice a day with Barky, and try to dry out some before heading back to the shop to face Earl.

W
hen Dan showed up, he was still bloated and had a touch of a lush’s stink on him, but he was upright, and Earl was grateful to God that he was still alive.

“How’s business?”

“I could use another pair of hands.”

“I can do my best.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

“And this is our new watchdog.”

“So that’s what that is.”

Dan had planned to take Barky and live in his house on Cahuenga, but its mirrors reflected things that were no longer there, and he quickly decided to move back into his bachelor apartment above the gym. The place was too small for Dan and a big dog, so he bought a forest green, extra-large dog cushion for Barky and placed it in a big closet downstairs. He banked the wall behind the cushion with old blankets and installed an electric heater that worked off a thermostat to make sure Barky’s room would always be cozy.

Barky, however, decided to sleep upstairs with Dan. To make his point, the dog spent six fucking nights scratching and leaping at Dan’s door. Dan decided that it was time to show the dog just who was boss, and bought earplugs for bedtime. But Barky was relentless, and no earplugs could blot out the sound of the leaping and wheezing dog. Dan tried putting Barky outside to teach him a lesson, but he immediately suffered profound Irish Catholic guilt when the dog rolled on his back and looked up with the eyes of a second-century martyr.

Earl delighted in this battle of wills, knew that the fight was fixed, even if Dan didn’t. When Dan finally capitulated, red-eyed and bitter, it was no surprise to Earl or the dog. Barky was magnanimous in his forgiveness, however, and smothered Dan with unconditional love.

Earl said, “Man’s best friend.”

“That’s what you hear, anyway.”

“What’s happenin with that watchdog shuck you laid on me? Only thing your dog is watchin for is when it’s time to eat.”

Dan said, “Yeah, well, that’s gonna change, I guarantee you.”

“Sheeuh,” said Earl, talking like a brother in a high whine. He loved the dog for his sweetness, but most of all for his effect on Dan. “Bark be workin by the
book,
man.”

“Earl, dogs can’t read, you forget that somehow?”

“I’m talkin ‘bout
workin
by the
pimp
book. You furry buddy there, he be pimpin off you, man. Dog a stone pimp.”

The boozing was way down. Dan was working, if only to drive the truck on runs to suppliers or to make deliveries with Momolo. But at least he was out in the world, instead of shit-faced in his dark room. Most important, he’d begun to laugh again, especially when telling some story about Barky chasing deer in the Hollywood Hills, or licking some kid’s ice-cream cone. Damn dog made everybody laugh.

Earl cupped his hands to his mouth.
“Gnuff-gnuff.”

Barky cocked his good ear and wagged his loopy tail.

Dan said, “Don’t try to alienate the affections of my dawg.”

Earl was scheming. If he and Barky could only get Dan back into the
gym, and then start going to fights. Earl knew that Dan was staying out of the gym because of the mirrors and the White Fox. But he didn’t know about the stuff locked in the trunk of Dan’s Mercedes.

Dan made an appointment and drove to Plunkett’s office. He left Barky in the pickup to sleep off his latest plate of chiles rellenos, rice, and beans. Plunkett reached for the bottle of Booker’s and two glasses. Dan said, “None for me, but you go ahead.”

Plunkett poured for himself, made a ritual of the way he set the glass down and held the bottle.

“I want you to change my paperwork on Earl,” Dan told him. “Everything’s to be the same, except for the automatic three-year part. Simplify it to go into effect at the time I punch out.” “Anything else?” “That’s it.”

Plunkett finished the first hit and poured another. He said, “It’s good to have you among us.” “Did I leave?”

“Did you really think I wouldn’t figure out what you were up to?” said Bobby P. He raised his glass to Dan and this time sipped slowly. “We’re an island people, Danny, and there are those of us who can’t keep from jumping off the cliffs.” “Thanks, Plunk.”

“Strictly confidential, of course,” said the lawyer. “Strictly.”

Plunkett raised his glass again. “You’ll get my bill.”

Dan could not bring himself to get rid of the deadly stuff in the trunk of his car. He never gave a thought to what might happen if someone rear-ended him.

He doubted that he would ever use it, but the idea that he
could
gave
him a feeling of control. Having gone back to bourbon, he’d picked up a bottle of Basil Hayden’s, and would sometimes take a drink, but usually he’d head to Canter’s for pastrami and Dr. Brown’s cream soda and chocolate marble cake, all to go—one order for himself and one for Barky. They’d eat in the parking lot. Dan tipped the soda bottle and the dog guzzled from it, his head upright. Barky weighed seventy pounds and wanted to weigh ninety. He would belch from the cream soda and plop down, ready for beddy-bye. Dan knew the dog liked beer better than soda pop, but he figured that if he had to cut down on the sauce, so did Barky.