Bluetick Revenge Page 3

  “I’ll take care of it,” I said. “If something happens, grab the bags and walk—don’t run—to the truck. I’ll meet you there.” I turned to look at the man. He looked right at me and began walking deliberately in our direction.

  “Be careful,” she said. “He’s crazy.”

  Now he was at our table. “Well, looky here,” he said in a deep and gravelly voice, “Bugg’s gonna be real happy when I tell him I saw his little whore having lunch with a cop.” What can I say? People see my dark, closely cropped hair and my thick build, and they think I’m a cop. She lowered her cup and glared at him.

  “He’s not a cop, Anvil,” she said, “so go away.”

  “Is that your real name,” I said, “or just a nickname?” He ignored me and glared back at Karlynn. “The reason I ask,” I said, “is that I’m kind of interested in how people get their names.”

  “Nobody’s talkin’ to you,” he said.

  “I mean, was your father a blacksmith or something—”

  “Go away, Anvil,” Karlynn repeated. He leaned over, placed his beefy hands on the table, and looked at me. It was hard to miss the “SPD” tattoo on his wrist.

  “You the guy that took Bugg’s mutt?” he whispered. “’Cuz if you are, Bugg’s paying five large to the man who ices you.”

  “Of course, sometimes a cobbler will use an anvil,” I said. “Was your father a cobbler?”

  “You’re real funny, mister,” he said. “Maybe I’ll just kill you right here.” He opened his jacket to reveal a large knife in a leather sheath attached to his belt.

  “I doubt it,” I said. I opened my blazer to reveal my Glock 17. “See ya around, Anvil,” I said.

  He took a few steps back, then pointed his index finger at Kar-lynn and said, “You’re dead, bitch.”

  4

  WE ARRIVED AT MY HOME at midafternoon. Buck and Wheat greeted us at the door. Prince started barking as soon as we entered. Karlynn ignored my dogs, followed Prince’s voice straight to the basement, and began stroking his head. Then she knelt down and caressed his floppy ears as he joyfully licked her face. It was a side of her I hadn’t seen.

  “He needs to go out,” she said.

  “Just for a minute,” I said. “I don’t want my neighbors knowing I’ve acquired another dog.”

  “What neighbors?” she said. I live in a log home a few miles out of Nederland, on the edge of the Roosevelt National Forest. Three thousand square feet on an acre lot. Nederland, population 1,894, is seventeen miles west of and three thousand feet above Boulder. My nearest neighbors, a pair of aging hippies named Luther and Missy, live a few hundred yards west of me in an old summer cabin they have converted into a year-round residence. We are separated by a fair number of pines and aspens, so it’s easy to accept the illusion of privacy, but they share the house with others, and the composition of the group is constantly changing. I never know when one of them might light up a joint and go for a walk. And there are plenty of other homes hidden behind the trees in the mountains surrounding Ned. Not to mention hikers, hunters, fishermen, skiers, campers, miners, squatters, fugitives, and some dreadlock-wearing kids who call themselves “The Rainbow People.”

  “There are more people up here than you think,” I said, “and word spreads fast in a small town.” I walked upstairs and they followed me to the back door. “Will he stay near the house,” I asked, “or should I tie him to something?”

  “He won’t run away,” she said. I opened the door and let all three dogs out. We watched Prince bound among the trees for a moment. He was a well-muscled hound, about eighty pounds, with plenty of black or blue specks adorning the white areas on his back, ears, and sides. His head and ears were predominantly black. There were patches of tan over his eyes and on his cheeks. After a few minutes I opened the door and Prince trotted up to it, so I let him in, leaving Buck and Wheat to play outside. “I’m so glad you got him,” she said.

  “Is he really a champion?” I asked.

  “Sure is,” she said. “He won awards for tracking, too.”

  “Because it didn’t look to me like he was living the life of a champion,” I said.

  “I bought him as a present for Thad,” she sighed. “About two years ago. From a breeder in Arkansas. Thad grew up in Arkansas and was always going on about getting a bluetick coonhound and hunting raccoons like when he was a kid. So I bought him a dog that had been trained by a professional. Cost me fifteen hundred bucks.” She stopped, but I got the impression she hadn’t finished what she had started to say.

  “And?”

  “And,” she said, “Thad takes him hunting now and then, and sometimes they enter tracking competitions, but other than that, Thad doesn’t pay much attention to him.”

  “The dog’s been neglected,” I said. “A short-haired hound like that shouldn’t be kept outside in the winter, not in this climate. He shouldn’t be chained up with no room to run. And he should have fresh water; the water in Prince’s bowl was frozen solid.”

  “I know,” she said. “It made me sad, the way he treated Prince. In his own way he loves Prince, but that’s how he was raised. If the dog’s not helping you hunt or track or do some chore on the farm, you chain him up and forget about him.” I said nothing, but she knew I had something on my mind. “What?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “No, what?”

  “You didn’t mind that he was a murdering drug dealer, but you didn’t like the way he treated the dog?”

  “Jesus Christ,” she shot back, “I don’t need you to judge me. I can get that from the feds.” I started back to the living room. “I’ve been doped up for seven years,” she added, “so give me a break.”

  “All right,” I said, “forget I mentioned it. Let me show you around.” I gave her a tour of my home, showed how the kitchen was organized, taught her how to work the remote, then led her upstairs to the guest bedroom and let her dump her belongings. “There’s a bathroom in there,” I said. “If you need anything, let me know.” I left her there and went to my study on the main floor.

  I hadn’t held a salaried job since leaving the practice of law, but I kept busy. I did investigative work for my former law partners and most anyone else who could pay me. I worked out every day, spent time at my brother’s gym in Denver, read lots of philosophy in an attempt to make some sense of this thing we call life, and sometimes showed up at a karate class taught by my best friend, an unemployed astrophysicist named Scott McCutcheon.

  I sat at my desk and pondered what to do. The Anvil incident concerned me because word would be out that Karlynn was still in the area and keeping company with a man matching my description. We were lucky it hadn’t happened in Nederland. Once they knew I lived up here, it wouldn’t be hard to find me.

  I picked up the phone and dialed Matt. A woman answered and told me he was in a meeting. I asked her to interrupt. My need to speak with him was not urgent, but I abhor phone tag. After thirty seconds of elevator music, Matt came on the line.

  “We need to revisit the money issue,” I deadpanned.

  “A deal is a deal,” he shot back. “You’re stuck with her. The two of you having fun?”

  “Yeah, she’s a laugh a minute,” I said. “I pull you away from something important?”

  “No, what can I do for you?”

  “After helping Ms. Slade buy lingerie this afternoon,” I said, “I had the pleasure of meeting a gentleman named Anvil. Anvil is an acquaintance of Mr. Bugg, and he told us Mr. Bugg is most unhappy with Ms. Slade. He also indicated Mr. Bugg has put a five-thousand-dollar bounty on the head of the gentleman responsible for stealing his canine companion. I’m paraphrasing, of course, but I thought it might be prudent to ask you for copies of any documents in your possession pertaining to Anvil or Bugg or the Sons of Satan.”

  “You done?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Because that was entertaining. If you’ve got more, I want to hear it. It beats the hell out of goi
ng over tax returns with the IRS.”

  “I’m afraid that was it,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “The answer to your question is that prior to finalizing an agreement on behalf of Ms. Slade, I insisted—as any competent attorney would-that the feds provide me with sufficient documentation to convince me they had a case against her. I’ll have a courier deliver copies to you tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving,” I said.

  “Friday, then.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I don’t know how much it will help,” he said. “Most of the reports I have pertain only to Karlynn and the prostitution operation. You can’t show them to her, by the way. That would contaminate her testimony. She has to testify from her own personal knowledge. The feds don’t want some slick half-Jewish defense lawyer arguing she was just parroting what she’d read in their files.” It was a rare example of Matt making an attempt at humor. Self-deprecating humor in this instance. His father was Jewish and his mother a Baptist from Alabama. Or as Matt likes to say, he’s half Elijah, half Kawiiga. Elijah, for those who don’t know, was a Jewish prophet, and Kawliga was a wooden Indian made famous by Hank Williams.

  “I understand,” I said.

  “Hey, before I hang up, what kind of shape is Anvil in?”

  “It didn’t come to that,” I said. “Anvil’s cards weren’t very good. He decided to fold and play another day.”

  “You take care,” he said.

  “Roger that,” I said.

  It wasn’t quite time for dinner, so I picked up a book I’d been reading, leaned back in my chair, and put my feet up on the desk. Presently I was working my way through Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, by Robert Pirsig. I’d read it many times before, but it’s a wonderful examination of philosophy and well worth rereading every few years. Philosophy had interested me since college, and I had even tried graduate school for a year. Later, when I left the practice of law, one of my goals was to study the entire history of philosophy from pre-Socratic Greece right up to the twentieth century. I attained that goal, though by the time I got up to American pragmatism I had forgotten what distinguished the stoics from the epicureans. That’s one of the dangers of studying philosophy. You’re never quite done.

  I heard water running and assumed Karlynn was taking a shower. Sometime after five she and Prince wandered into my office. She wore a new pair of jeans and what sure as hell looked like one of my size 44 white cotton T-shirts. Her hair looked a little less stringy, and I could see how she might make it into the “good-looking” category with a little bit of effort. “I’m bored,” she said.

  “My job is to protect you, not entertain you.”

  “Whatcha reading?” she asked as if I’d said nothing. I held up the book so she could see its title.

  “I didn’t know you were into bikes,” she said.

  “It’s not about bikes,” I said. “It’s about values.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you see one you like,” I said, “feel free.” Two of the walls in my study are lined with books, mostly books on philosophy and some fiction by authors such as Edward Abbey and Thomas McGuane. She glanced at a few of the titles, then scanned the rest of the office. It’s only about two hundred square feet, but it’s more than adequate. I’d furnished it with a mahogany desk and added color by creating a cactus garden atop the matching credenza against the south window.

  “You must like bears,” she said. The other walls boasted several paintings of grizzly bears, including an original by Robert Bate-man that I had purchased after one particularly profitable year during my legal career.

  “Bears are cool,” I said. “In my next life I want to be a grizzly. I want to live on the Alaskan coast and eat salmon and berries all day.”

  “Is that you?” she asked, pointing to a framed black-and-white photo of young Pepper in full boxing regalia. It was clear she was going to continue to make conversation, so I put the book down.

  “That’s me,” I said. She moved closer to the photo. Beneath the photos on a small silver band, was an inscription: “Capt. Pepper Keane-Heavyweight Champion MCB Camp Lejeune for 1984. An officer AND a lawyer-who’d have thunk it?”

  “Most heavyweights are taller,” she said. That definitely should’ve been strike three, but I’d heard it so many times that I’d become more or less immune to it. She wasn’t going away, so I removed my feet from my desk and stood up.

  “I guess we should feed the dogs and make some dinner,” I said. She followed me to the kitchen. I let Buck and Wheat in, then handed her a large metal mixing bowl and told her where the dog chow was. “I’ve been feeding him in the basement,” I said, “so he won’t fight with my dogs.” While she was doing that, I ushered Buck and Wheat into the garage and fed them. Then I returned to the kitchen and started boiling water for spaghetti.

  She returned from the basement and stood against the counter while I chopped tomatoes, onions, mushrooms, and garlic. “Joe Frazier is only five-ten,” I said. “And Tyson isn’t even six feet.” She didn’t respond. I melted some butter in a frying pan and slid the vegetables into it.

  “You one of those men who like to cook?” she asked.

  “No,” I said, “I’m one of those men who like to eat.” Then I opened a jar of Ragu and poured it into a large pot. I dumped some cabernet into it, then squeezed a little lemon juice into the mixture, and finished by sprinkling in some ground cinnamon and clove. “Pepper’s secret recipe,” I said.

  After dinner we watched TV. I sat in my recliner. She and Prince sat on the couch, with Buck and Wheat on a rug near the fireplace. As best I can recall, we watched a medical drama, a legal drama, and snippets of Scooby-Doo during commercials. I like Scooby-Doo. At ten-thirty, after the sports news, I stood and announced, “I think it’s time for me to hit the hay.”

  “Do you want some company?” she asked.

  5

  THE SADDEST THING was not that she had been willing to sleep with me after knowing me twelve hours, though that was sad. It was not that I had stayed up until one a.m. attempting to convince her I was not rejecting her, though that was sad, too. The saddest thing was that I had been tempted. I had a wonderful woman in my life, but I had been tempted to sleep with Karlynn Slade. Why? For the novelty of it? Simply because I was a man? Or was I subconsciously mad at Jayne because she’d opted to spend nine months teaching in the People’s Republic of China? I would let those questions percolate.

  Despite my lack of sleep, I woke before she did. By seven I was sipping coffee at the long oak dining table and reading the Rocky Mountain News. The dogs had already been out, and all three now lay beside me on the hardwood floor. The paper reminded me it was Thanksgiving, and I gave thanks I’d had the good sense not to sleep with Karlynn Slade.

  Not that there was anything wrong with her body. That was fine, but there was a lot wrong with her mind. I’d spent more than two hours trying to explain that to her. “I don’t think that’s a good idea,” I had said. I saw the hurt in her eyes as soon as I’d said it, and knew it was just a matter of time until the tears began to flow.

  “Aren’t you attracted to me?” she asked from her seat on the couch. A dangerous question under the best circumstances. A potentially lethal question when asked by a recovering meth addict coming off a relationship with the leader of a sadistic biker gang.

  “You’re very attractive,” I said, “but I’m being paid to protect you.”

  “So?”

  “I can’t do that if my judgment is clouded.”

  “I could rock your world,” she said.

  “It’s not hard to do,” I replied.

  “You think you’re better than me, don’t you?” Another dangerous question.

  “No,” I said patiently, “I don’t think I’m better than you.” I paused to consider my words. “I think we are two very different people. And I think you’re vulnerable right now because you’re under tremendous pressure. You’ve just spent thirty days
in a treatment program and your body is still adjusting to being drug free. Your husband wants you dead and the feds are threatening you with prison unless you testify against him and give up the only life you’ve ever known. You’re scared, and I don’t blame you. It’s natural to want to latch on to someone else under those circumstances.”

  Then the tears came. I walked over to the couch, sat down beside her, and held her hands. “I’m not a bad person,” she sobbed.

  “I know that,” I said. “I knew that as soon as I saw you with Prince.” She looked down at him and continued crying.

  “My life is such a mess,” she said. I walked to the bathroom and carried back a box of tissues. She took a few and wiped her eyes.

  “How old are you?” I asked. “Thirty? Thirty-two? You’ve got your whole life ahead of you.”

  It had gone on like that for several hours. During that time we talked about everything from her codependency to my career as a Marine Corps JAG. She seemed to enjoy listening to my anecdotes and tales of my travels. Alaska particularly fascinated her as I recounted an adventure that had taken Scott and me from the rainy coastal areas in the south to the barren tundra of the North Slope, where my seventy-year-old mother still works as a nurse for the U.S. Public Health Service. She thought I was joking when I told her there is a Mexican restaurant in Barrow, three hundred miles above the Arctic Circle. I think it’s called North of the Border.

  Today was a new day. She was a redhead now. She came downstairs sometime after eight wearing a pair of my gym shorts, another one of my T-shirts, and a scowl. This vision inspired me to start singing the theme song from The Mary Tyler Moore Show. “Who can turn the world on with her smile? Who can take a nothing date and suddenly make it all seem—”

  She glared at me, and I interpreted that to mean she did not appreciate my humor or my singing, so I stopped.

  After enjoying her first cigarette of the day in my unheated garage, she poured herself some coffee and joined me at the table. “I never used to drink this shit until I went into treatment,” she said.