The Good Boy (3 page)

The window comes down incrementally as the driver—presumably Jeffery Edwards—thumbs the button one, two, three.

Edwards and his front-seat passenger are in the middle of lunch, a half-dozen small paper boxes of sliders and fries in each’s lap, the passenger with at least one whole burger stuffed into his mouth.

“Hi,” Edwards says, which he must be, judging by the way his eyes are glazed. “What’d I do?”

Besides the obvious, Pete doesn’t know what else the guy has done, or how he plans to explain the obvious, so he decides to let Edwards confess. He asks, “Do you know why I stopped you?”

“No.” Edwards glances over at his passenger. “Cedric, you know why?”

Cedric looses his wet lips around the straw of his giant Coke to say, “I ain’t ’bout to guess.”

Edwards turns to Pete, says, “Cedric don’t know neither.” He tilts his chin back, looks in the rearview. “Whitey, you got some idea?”

“Got some,” says the kid in the backseat, and then Pete angles in to get an ID and no shit: it’s Ja’Kobe White, the haunting, spitting image of his twin brother, Felan.

“Do tell, Mr. White,” Pete says, because now there’s got to be a good reason, nothing but trouble happening with this gangbanger in the car.

White says, “You stopped ’cause of me.”

“Oh yeah? What is it you did?”

White leans forward, eyes half open, halfway to gone. “I ain’t done shit. It’s because who I am. You know me, and you mean to fuck with me.”

A backup car turns the corner and parks behind the squad and the driver cuts its siren and Pete gets the feeling this is about to turn into a real shit show.

“I know you,” Pete says to White, “but the first I saw of you today was your left hand when you threw that trash here on the street. So I think that means you mean to fuck with me.”

“For real: he know you, J.K.?” Edwards asks the rearview.

“Doesn’t matter if I know him or not,” Pete answers. “What matters is if you boys are breaking the law. Sit tight.”

Pete turns to meet his backup and he’s thinking
fuck, fuck,
and then he sees it’s Frank Majette getting out of the car, which makes him think worse, think,
I’m fucked.
That’s because the last time they saw each other, Jetty was the architect of a long-running investigation that Butch dismantled in a matter of minutes. It was a drug case at a westside dive where a bartender was allegedly moving crack through the joint with money from the nightly drop. Jetty had a warrant and he was ready to tear the place apart; naturally he was pissed when his sarge pulled rank and decided Butch should give the place a once-over first.

It was also natural that he was more pissed when Butch didn’t find anything.

After the search, Jetty cornered Pete and went into this whole thing about how he thought K9 was nothing more than a public relations unit the bosses liked to parade around—to schools, the occasional crime scene, and, well, parades—so that moms and kids in nice neighborhoods thought the police were nice, too.
That’s magic,
he had said, except that the real part—the
work
part—might as well have been part of the act. Butch was trained above all else to please his master, and would sooner have sniffed out a packet of mustard than come away with nothing.

Pete said Jetty’s argument was backward, because what it implied was that Butch would find something that wasn’t there, and in saying so, he realized that what Jetty was actually pissed about was that Butch hadn’t found the drugs that Jetty didn’t have the chance to put there.

Everybody knows Jetty is loyal to the blue, third-generation CPD, all that. They also know he thinks a junkie he talked to six years ago qualifies as today’s snitch if he’ll help move a case. But until that night, Pete didn’t know evidence was as adaptable, and that Jetty was the one planting the mustard.

“Pony,” Majette says, stalking brick-shouldered toward Pete, hands in fists, eyes dilated, the Job his drug of choice. “What the hell are you doing police work for?”

“Vehicle matched the description for the Hustler car that Dispatch put out citywide. Turns out the bangers inside are just regular assholes.”

Majette looks at the van. “It’s not them.”

“I just said.”

“So you stop them and what, you’re waiting around for them to get themselves arrested?” Jetty’s being a dick, but he knows—hell, every cop who works the street knows—that all it takes to arrest a guy like Ja’Kobe White is a little time. And that’s because a banger is always up to something; it’s just a matter of waiting long enough to catch him while he’s up to it.

The rub of the Job, once again, is that Pete can’t do anything. A badge doesn’t give him the right to stop White from doing wrong; a badge only gives him the so-called privilege to go get the guy after he’s done it.

A light rain starts, angling off Jetty’s balding head, and Pete knows he should cut them loose—Ja’Kobe and friends, because they’re more trouble than the bust is worth and Jetty, because he’d base a narc case on the munchies—so he says, “I’m going to let them slide.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” Majette says. “Is this how it goes with you? You stop them. You’re the one with the dog. And you’re going to waste my time?”

“You can go, Jetty.”

“What I mean is, I’m on this BFM case now three weeks, and I come over here, and you’re
not
going to take your dog for a walk around the vehicle?” He licks a raindrop from his upper lip. “What. Is he still afraid of the rain?”

“Butch is fine,” Pete says. It’s Jetty who’s jonesing for a bust, and he must figure Pete owes it to him.

“Then how about you get your sidekick, and I’ll get mine.” Majette waves a stiff hand toward his squad, summoning a young cop Pete doesn’t recognize. He gets out, gets rain gear from the trunk.

“Who’s that?” Pete hopes it’s somebody who doesn’t recognize him, either.

“Name’s Bellwether. Comes over here from Twenty-three after the redistrict. Curious as a retarded cat.” Majette has a habit of saying everything in the present tense. It bothers some people, mostly the kind of people who pick a stupid thing to get bothered about and then let it be important enough to be the basis of an opinion about the guy, an opinion which can’t be any good, especially if it’s based just on the one stupid thing. What should bother them is that talking like that makes him sound like he’s telling the truth—the story as it happens, facts over recollection or hearsay—and that seven times out of ten, he’s good and full of shit.

Still, he’s here, now, so this story remains to be told. And since it’s well within the law for Butch to sniff the exterior of a vehicle, and a positive alert equals probable cause for a search, Butch’s nosing around could confirm what Pete already knows—that Ja’Kobe and his pals are up to something. Or at least buzzed up on something. And it could also provide Jetty with a reason to make an arrest.

And that’s all Jetty wants: a reason. Then maybe he’ll have a good story, and he’ll quit being such a prick. Now or later or whenever.

And right now, White won’t get away with being an asshole.

So, okay. “I’ll walk him around.”

“Do that,” Majette says, a shitty smile before he goes back to meet Bellwether.

Pete gets into his trunk again to retrieve Butch’s leash and blue KONG—his find reward—which he pockets before he releases the rear locks and opens the back door.

“C’mon, Butch,” Pete says, hooking the lead into a pinch collar.

Butch sits there, his most pitiful face. It’s true, he is not a rain dog—but there’s a reason he doesn’t like rain, and that reason is thunder. And that’s because when Butch first came to the Murphy household, Sarah accidentally left him in his run during a storm. In her defense, the front came in quickly; the sun was out when she went to the Jewel. But while she was in the store comparing hot dog prices, Butch was going batshit. When Pete finally rescued the dog, he’d torn all the siding off the garage.

“C’mon,” Pete says to him. “You won’t melt.”

The dog looks up, blinks away raindrops, and damn if he doesn’t nearly shake his head no.

“Fuss!”
Pete commands so that the dog understands it’s time to work; there are no fear words in their shared language.
“Hier!”
he says, and Butch obeys, his front paws hitting the pavement just as a band of lightning cuts across the western sky. He heels to Pete’s left, hindquarters trembling.

“Pass auf!”
Pete says, demanding Butch’s attention. He shouldn’t be so skittish; Pete’s been too easy on him lately.

“Okay, Pony,” Majette says on approach in wide steps, making room for himself while his partner trails behind, “Bellwether here hasn’t seen your magical show. So how about you and your nosy dog get on with it?”

Pete’s neck goes tight: a nerves thing. He is so sick of the nickname, and the way any cop thinks he can use it.

He looks down at Butch, sitting at attention, tail sweeping the rain-spotted street, an eye on Jetty. It’s as though he gets the subtext: that there’s some kind of challenge posed. But what’s he supposed to do? Of course he wants to please his master. And he won’t lie—can’t—it isn’t in his makeup. And he won’t feel bad whether he alerts or not. So why should Pete give a rat’s ass?

He decides he won’t, and offers a hand to Bellwether. “Pete Murphy.”

“Jim,” Bellwether says, shaking his hand and then self-consciously running knuckles over his mustache, awkward and thin and probably kept in protest of last week’s rank-wide reprimand about sideburns, beards, and goatees.

“This is Butch,” Pete says.

“What kind of dog is he?”

“Oh boy,” Majette cuts in, “here we go with the questions. You bring hula hoops for him to jump through, Pony?”

“He’s a shepherd-Malinois mix,” Pete tells Bellwether.

“Is it true they can find things under water?”

“Jesus, you’re a regular
Jeopardy
contestant,” Majette says. “Listen, you think we could do some work here? I mean, I’m happy letting these assholes squirm, but I think it’s really going to storm—”

“Butch is trained for narcotics,” Pete says, ignoring him. “But I do know a search-and-rescue dog who found a body in a seam below the Yorkville dam.”

“Because searching downstream is counterintuitive.” Majette again.

“Kendall County sheriffs had been looking for weeks. They were ten miles downstream from where the dog alerted.”

“Wow,” Bellwether says, “that’s unbelievable.”

“
Absurd
is the word I think you mean,” Majette says. “Or
implausible
. Or
preposterous,
maybe—”

“If I ever need a thesaurus,” Pete says, but still to Bellwether.

Bellwether tugs at the corner of his moustache. “The Job would be a hell of a lot easier if
we
could smell shit, don’t you think?”

Pete isn’t sure if the comment is directed at Jetty or what, but the jab never connects because thunder rolls in and drives Butch into high gear, the end of his leash.
“Fuss!”
Pete commands, striking the dog’s right flank twice, directing him toward Edwards’s van.

Bellwether asks, “Is that German?”

Majette says, “You can pet the fucking dog after he’s done, okay? Do your job, Bellwether. Get the traffic.”

“It’s German,” Pete says to Bellwether, glad the cop’s curiosity got him some grief instead of Butch, who, given the option, would probably be searching for a place to hide.

Pete eases off the leash, says, “Butch!
Rauschgift. Suche!
”

Butch barks once and takes the lead.

Bellwether reroutes westbound traffic while Jetty follows the team from about five paces back; he’s watching out for Pete because Pete’s watching Butch, putting much of the big picture out of focus. When they reach the van’s back bumper, Pete begins to direct Butch by hand: “Check here,” he says, pointing to random spots on the vehicle as they round the driver’s side. “What about here?” They work at a quick pace; as Butch takes prompts, Pete watches the dog to see if he begins to follow his own nose instead.

The rain stops but when thunder comes again, a low rumble, Butch stops to look at Pete, ears back. “Check here,” Pete commands, directing him to the front wheel well. Butch gives it his best shot, but he’s visibly distracted, his outstanding ball drive no match for bone-deep fear.

If only he understood thunder as a warning for a storm’s real dangers.

Pete leads him around the van. “How about here.”

Butch runs his nose over the front grille though his ears are back, submissive. In front of the headlights, Pete glances up, two pairs of eyes watching from the front seat, a captive audience—literally.

He looks again. Two pairs of eyes. Two and not three.

Pete backs away from the van and he says, “Jetty—” or he starts to, but then Butch gets what’s going on and drives right toward the van’s side door at the same time as Ja’Kobe White rolls it open.

Pete jerks back, pulling the dog off his forefeet; as he resists, the leverage in his strong hind legs drives him up, standing, barking at White, inches from his ghost-face.

Majette yells, “Stop, asshole! Do not move!” as Pete gets weight on his back leg and enough slack on the leash to turn Butch sideways, and then back onto all fours, and then so far behind the van that all Pete can see is Ja’Kobe’s red Adidas dangling above the curb, tongues out.

“Stay in the vehicle!” Majette warns, approaching Ja’Kobe gun-first.

“You all gonna search in here anyhow,” he says, “why can’t we get out?”

Majette nods toward Butch, who’s still barking. “Because he said so.”

Bellwether comes from the street, stands with Pete. “Is he giving us the go-ahead?”

“You mean Butch, or the animal?” He pulls up on the leash.
“Fuss!”

Butch takes it down to a growl, to let Pete know there’s still a threat.

“Ruhig,”
Pete commands, to silence him.

“C’mon, man,” Ja’Kobe says, “there’s no A/C up in here.”

“You want to come out of there,
man,
” Majette says, “you put your hands on your head and you turn around real slow and face the vehicle.”