Barking Dogs - A Mitch Helwig Book Read online

  But, he knew, he could have none of these. Not now. Not yet.

  6

  Business was slightly more active on Saturdays. At least there were usually lots of lookers. The salesman, who was also the store’s owner, liked to sit back and watch the lookers, trying to figure out what they were making of his wares. The older ones were generally perplexed. He was used to that. His own father couldn’t make head or tail out of what he sold, or of what was happening in general in the world that would make such things marketable on a large scale. But compared to some of the bigger companies that had stepped in to fill the void, Guardian Intelligence and Protective Services was still small potatoes. At least he’d managed to get into Thorncliffe before one of the giants did some basic market research and realized it was prime territory.

  There wasn’t a true single-family dwelling for miles. It was all high-rises, apartments, condominiums, townhouses. There was a much higher than average influx of immigrant population, and virtually all of it was transient. Even condo ownership in the area was negligible; renting was bad enough. Something in the range of about 60 percent of all the kids were part of single-parent families. Still, it was clean—amazingly—and centrally located. It couldn’t match Don Mills Plaza for potential buyers, but then again it didn’t have to pay Don Mills rent.

  The kids—the teens who stopped in to gaze in fascination—were generally in line and seemed to appreciate the store’s goods in a way that their parents seldom grasped. This was the Gap in its latest incarnation. The world was their world. They went out in it; their parents stayed at home, with dead-bolts and security guards and video surveillance provided by the management. It wasn’t much like home to people who hailed from the Philippines, the West Indies, Asia—you name it; but it was apparently the price you had to pay to establish a foothold in the Good Life of North America that they wanted their kids to be heir to. And having lived the alternative, it didn’t seem unacceptable. At least they had clean rooms, hot and cold running water, and—among other wonders—cable TV and optional heated garages in winter. And the nearby Miracle Food Mart was a Disneyland.

  He was watching a middle-aged Chinese couple pointing at the items on display in his window and talking in muted tones when he saw him walk in. It was the same guy who had bought the Barking Dog two weeks ago. The salesman wasn’t certain if he should be glad to see him returning or not, for either he was coming to buy again or he had a complaint. At least it should break the boredom.

  The salesman painted a smile on his face and wrinkled his eyes in what he thought was a friendly manner. “How are you today, sir?”

  The man’s eyes met his sharply. “Fine.”

  “And how is everything? Your Barking Dog, I trust, is performing beyond your expectations?”

  “I’m quite pleased.”

  The salesman felt a surge of relief, and it animated him further. “Excellent! I’m pleased, too. And what can I help you with today?”

  “I’ve been reading the literature on your Silent Guard and am quite interested.”

  The salesman showed only a flicker of surprise before adopting the professional pose of Step-Right-This-Way-It’s-None-of-My-Business. “The Silent Guard. Yes, sir! I’ve got one in the back; wait right here.” He gave the customer a confidential nod and disappeared for a moment. When he returned, he was holding an unmarked cardboard carton. Placing it on the counter, he opened one end and took it out, holding it aloft in both hands. “There she is. A beauty. Finest bit of body armor on the market today—and you can feed that statement right through your Barking Dog, sir!” He smiled.

  Mitch Helwig’s face lightened, and he smiled slightly in return. “I already have.” He paused dramatically. “It passed with flying colors.”

  “That’s because you, sir, have done your homework and already know the value of this item. If you’re going to purchase such an item, you might as well get the best. After all, how much is your life worth? Can you afford to scrounge around for a few bucks to buy an economy model? Or do you decide that you’re going to do it right, and then do it right?”

  “You do it right.”

  “Good for you. Now, can I fill you in on this beauty’s virtues, or are they all known to you?”

  “Actually, you flatter me. I don’t do that much homework. It’s a habit I got into as a kid. But I do know it’s ranked as the top model.”

  “You must have some familiarity with protection or military fields then?”

  When the customer didn’t answer, the salesman moved on swiftly, realizing his error in judgment. The customer wanted to remain anonymous, and that was his privilege. Your job, he told himself, is to sell the thing, not to nose around. “O.K., then, I’ve done my homework, and you, as we used to say in school, can borrow it. The Silent Guard is a state-of-the-art body vest. Its T-shirt design is unique. It’s the first successful combination of lightweight cotton and first-rate body armor. Total weight: two and one quarter kilos. There are ten layers of thirty-one by thirty-one count, one thousand denier, specially treated by a patented process. The final layer, the one that sets the Silent Guard apart from the crowd, is the solid alloy—thin as foil—that’s been impact-tested to unheard-of standards. Most other vests will stop a .357 Magnum. This one, it’ll stop a .45 Magnum.” He let the impressive fact sink in.

  “And,” he continued, “the addition of the alloy foil makes the Silent Guard a viable defense against a hand laser. Lasers are strong. But they take a bit of time to burn through this baby, and if you’re at a reasonably close enough range, you could rush your assailant and disarm him before any damage could be done.” He shrugged convincingly. “At least it’s something. Most reasonable we’ve come up with yet, right?”

  Mitch nodded. “So I’ve heard.”

  “The Barking Dog agreeing with me?” He grinned.

  “Not even a whimper.”

  “That should be testimony enough. I can’t send you to Consumer Reports for these, since they’ve been ignored by the general public for the most part. But, if you want, I can provide the data and results from the NCPF study that set the national standard for body armor. A lot of manufacturers cut their costs by using something less.”

  “Yeah. I’d appreciate that.” Mitch knew the study’s report almost verbatim.

  “It’s the ultimate in protection of its type. You know,” the salesman said, “that thirty percent of all police officers that are killed in the line of duty are shot with their own or with their partner’s gun. The police forces usually skip around this, regarding it as too much protection, since they can get one that’ll stop a .38 for about a hundred bucks. And they’re even too cheap to buy them. Cops have to buy them themselves. Funny kind of values, eh?”

  Mitch knew all about it.

  “Seems to me that they ignore the seventy percent who don’t get killed with their own or their partner’s weapons! What about them?” He was actually working himself up slightly—his concern, according to Mitch’s Barking Dog, quite legitimate.

  Mitch knew what about them. They were dead. Like Mario, who’d be alive if he’d had one of these. He clenched his jaw grimly and his eyes suddenly became hard and far away.

  The salesman was studying him, curious. But his bottom line was selling, and what happened after he sold an item wasn’t his business. The world had gone nuts long ago. And all I’m trying to do, he thought, is make an honest buck.

  “How much?” Mitch asked.

  “Nine hundred and fifty dollars.”

  Mitch was silent.

  “Best life insurance you can buy. There’s more chance, statistically, if your occupation is at all hazardous, or if you need to be out a lot at night on the streets, or if you’re a cabby, that you’ll use this than there is that you’ll need your seat-belt.”

  Mitch’s Barking Dog confirmed this.

  “O.K.,” Mitch said. “I’ll take it.”

  The salesman relaxed. He wondered what his father would say when he told him about this sale at
Sunday dinner tomorrow night. Three teenagers were looking at the window, from outside, and nudging each other with interest. He fixed his eyes back on his customer. “An excellent buy,” he said. “Good value.”

  “Anything else I should know about it?”

  “No. Except maybe color.”

  “Color?”

  “It comes in Jungle Camo, Desert Camo, Ninja Black, or Undercover White.”

  Mitch grinned wryly. “Undercover White.”

  7

  “Your turn,” said Mitch, turning to Mario. Mitch had been driving that day.

  “You sure?”

  Mitch smiled. “I’m sure.”

  “Yeah. I guess you’re right. I forgot yesterday, at Country Style.” He opened the door reluctantly nevertheless. “What kinda donut you want?”

  “Cinnamon twist.”

  “Ain’t we got it made?” he said as he slammed the door behind him and sauntered into Honey Dip Donuts. He emerged a few minutes later carrying a white bag with a wet, brown-stained bottom.

  “Careful,” Mario said as he handed it in the window. “It’s leakin’.”

  “I guess gettin’ it here, all the way from the counter there, is pretty tough, eh?”

  “Wise apple. Here’s yours,” he said, rooting around in the soggy bag he’d taken from him after getting himself comfortably settled in the passenger seat. The shotgun seat, he called it.

  Mitch looked at the donut with a grimace.

  “And here’s the brew.”

  The coffee was more welcome. “Thanks.”

  They sat back and ritualistically opened the plastic lids, letting the endearing aroma fill the car. Tentative sips. Cops, Mitch thought. And cabbies. And bus drivers. What would donut stores do without them? An entire service industry teetered on the brink of financial collapse, he thought wryly, and we shore it up.

  And then Mitch found himself thinking about Mario’s better half—Angela. Further evidence, he reflected, that people matching was far too complex to be entrusted to something as simple as a computer. No one could have planned this one. As small as a minute, and twice as educated as her husband, Angela Ciracella was a teaching assistant in English literature at the University of Toronto. Mario was blatantly proud of her, and loved to toss the title of her doctoral thesis around playfully. Mitch had always assumed that there was more to the innuendo in the title than he would ever be privy to. She had called it, Mario had told him, “The Novels of Philip K. Dick: How To Find What You’re Not Looking For.” Every time Mario recited the title, he would add, “I’m still trying to find what I’m not looking for,” and shake his head.

  And now Angela was pregnant.

  Mario tilted his head, smiled, and lilted off in his own direction. “So the doctor, see, comes out of the office where he’s just been examinin’ this guy’s wife, see, and he says, ‘I must tell you that your wife has acute angina,’ and the guy says, ‘I know, I know. But what’s wrong with her?’” He grinned from ear to ear. Then he turned to Mitch. “You know how you know you’re getting old?”

  Mitch, smiling, decided to try again. “You get winded playing chess.”

  “Nah,” said Mario, dismissing him as usual. “You know all the answers, but nobody asks you the questions.”

  Mitch shook his head with mock wonder. “How an asshole like you could have done anything as difficult as have sexual intercourse is beyond me.”

  Mario gave his high-pitched one-noter in quick response.

  “But,” he continued, “at least you had the good fortune to do it with someone of class and breeding.”

  “I think it’s gonna be a boy.”

  Mitch smiled. “You’re too dumb to have a boy.”

  “Whadda ya mean, too dumb to have a boy?”

  “Havin’ a boy takes some planning. I read about it.”

  “You read about it. Well, where’d you read about it? Eh?”

  “I read it somewhere.”

  “Yeah. Sure. Somewhere. In Mechanics Illustrated. Or in the SWAT Weapons and Tactics Manual. C’mon, Helwig. You’re barely alive, let alone literate—let alone literate enough to read an entire article! A book”—he shook his head—“now that’s out of the question.”

  Mitch laughed as he watched his partner sip his coffee. “Well,” he said, “it seems that there’s androsperms and gynosperms—”

  “I love it when you talk dirty.”

  “And the andros unite with the ovum...”

  “The what?”

  “The ovum, you asshole, the egg, the egg!”

  “Just testing you. Wanted to make sure you just hadn’t memorized something from high school health class without fully comprehending it.” He bit off a hunk of soggy cherry turnover.

  “And the andros produce the boys, and the gynos make the girls.”

  “I’m glad it’s not the other way around.”

  “But the andros aren’t as hardy as the gynos, so nature balances the scales by producing more of them than it does the gynos, so that every time you blow off—”

  “Hey. Watch your language! I’m eatin’.” He continued chewing, with relish.

  “You release way more andros than gynos.”

  “Whadda ya mean, they aren’t as hardy?” Mario was becoming interested in spite of himself. This Helwig guy sure knew some strange things, he thought.

  “As soon as they’re released, they start to die. They die faster than the gynos. They don’t swim upstream as fast as the girlies either. And the way it works is, first one to the egg wins. So, it’s harder for the boys to win. Ergo, it follows that it’s harder to make a boy. Hence, it’s impossible for you to have managed it. Q.E.D.”

  “Q.E.D., huh?”

  Mitch shrugged.

  “Q.E. fuckin’ D., eh?”

  Mitch giggled and almost choked on his cinnamon twist.

  “Well, then, wise apple, how come there’re so many boys around, when hardly anybody knows about who the fast and slow swimmers are?”

  “Maximum penetration,” Mitch said.

  “Huh?”

  “That’s how you get ’em. Maximum penetration. That way, they don’t have as far to swim. Makes sense, right?”

  Now it was Mario who was smiling.

  “And that’s why I’m doubly sure you’re not going to have a boy. Not with that little door knocker of yours. No way.”

  “All this from the guy with the daughter.”

  “Even with my vast penetration, Mario, there is still the element of chance to consider.”

  “Vast penetration, huh? That’s not what Elaine was telling us all at the Christmas party. In fact, I learned a new word from her there when she was talking about you.”

  Mitch’s eyebrows rose slightly over twinkling eyes.

  “Yeah, Mitch. Say, what does ‘flaccid’ mean, anyway?”

  It was Mitch’s turn to hoot. “It means steel, Mario. Pure, unalloyed steel.”

  “Steel, huh?” He reached over and took Mitch’s limp, sodden cinnamon twist from his hand and held it aloft, closed one eye, and squinted at it. Then they both laughed.

  “Well, it’s going to be a boy anyway.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause in my house, I make all the big decisions. Angela, she makes all the little ones. We got this system, see. And it works perfect.”

  “Like, what kind of things does Angela get to decide?”

  “She gets to decide where we’re gonna live. What house we’ll buy. How much we should spend on it. What the mortgage payments will be. How it should be decorated.” He paused. “And she decides when we need a new car, what kind it’ll be, the color, and how much to spend.”

  “Those are the little things?”

  “Yeah. Little chicken-shit stuff like that.”

  “What do you get to decide?”

  “The big stuff.” He ate the last bite of his cherry turnover, licking each finger in turn.

  “Like?”

  He frowned, staring deep in thought out the front
windshield. “I get to decide,” he said, with great dignity, “whether the U.S. should invade Costa Rica. Whether the border between Canada and the States should be eliminated. Or whether bisexuals have twice as much fun.” He shrugged. “You know, the big stuff.”

  Mitch’s smile became a chuckle and, glancing at Mario, he saw that the corners of his mouth were curling with shrewd humor, as he enjoyed his successful parry.

  “And that,” said Mario, “is why it’s gonna be a boy.” Smiling, he folded his hands across his stomach and savored the thought.

  8

  Mitch couldn’t decide which was more fun: the skimmer or his old motorcycle. The trouble was, they were both fun. There was nothing like cruising around on one of the department’s big, dirty old Harleys, straddling it like a cowboy of yesteryear. The noise was soothing after a while. And Jesus, they were powerful. A twitch of the right hand could send you deep into the big seat, and you’d better hold on when she began to gallop. He’d only ridden the bikes that one summer and fall. In the good weather, it was like getting paid to ride something at Electro World; going to work was a gas. But in the rain it was like offering yourself up as a sacrifice to insanity, sitting in the lumpy, bright yellow rubber suit, trying to avoid getting splashed by every yahoo on the roads. And the cold weather! Christ. Right through to the bone. You couldn’t wear enough clothes.

  Upon reflection, Mitch realized that each had its good points. But there was no question which was the more sensible, and that was the skimmer. Maybe not as powerful, certainly not as sensual or even as romantic. But a lot dryer. And a whole lot warmer.

  The bikes were becoming a thing of the past, used only for ritual occasions—escorting visiting dignitaries, parades, that type of stuff. The same thing that had happened to the horse of RCMP fame, Mitch thought. Retired. Out to stud. The horse, he mused, smiling, definitely got the better of that retirement.