Barking Dogs - A Mitch Helwig Book Read online

  Mitch rose from his seat. “Let’s go.”

  Eddie glanced over at Hollow-eyes and the group at the bar. Mitch’s eyes followed his line of vision, then jerked back to the two before him.

  “You’ll never get out of here. We’ve got an audience.” Some of Eddie’s confidence was returning.

  “You mean you’ll never get out of here, if any of those flycatchers come over here. Think about it.”

  Eddie was obviously thinking about it, letting the possibility run through his little mind like a rabbit through long grass. He didn’t like the odds at all.

  They began to move toward the door.

  Hollow-eyes moved laterally to meet them, reaching the door a few feet ahead of them. “Eddie, my man. What’s happenin’?” In the same instant, a butterfly knife, with a twelve-centimeter skeleton handle appeared in his hand, as casually as if he had been unrolling his fingers from an entertaining bit of legerdemain.

  For five seconds nothing happened. Sounds of steel and smoke curled lazily about them. Nobody moved.

  A pencil-beam of blue light appeared with no warning, one end attached to Mitch Helwig’s pocket, where a small burn-hole blossomed darkly to three centimeters in diameter, the other attached to Hollow-eyes’s knife hand, hitting the soft flesh of the palm just below the wrist. His mouth and eyes widened in shock, and a yelp of crystallized pain escaped from his white lips before the knife could even fall from his shaking fingers. In the same instant, Mitch’s right leg shot out and kicked the youth full in the crotch, doubling him over, dropping him to the floor, where he shrank into the fetal position, eyes and mouth still wide in soundless shock.

  Eddie and the Loon remained frozen. Behind him he saw a scrabbling of random, mostly defensive, movement. But no one came forth. No one challenged.

  “Move!”

  This time they moved, no questions asked.

  Outside, they strode briskly along the sidewalk, the darkness covering them like a blanket.

  12

  Elaine Helwig sat numbly in front of the family computer monitor. Nothing had prepared her for this.

  There was over ten thousand dollars missing from their savings.

  Her mind could not, for a moment, even form coherent thoughts. What had happened?

  She saw the numbers. She thought of Mitch. She thought of his behavior this evening—his behavior, in fact, for quite some time now. I know, she thought, that all marriages go through high and low periods. That’s only logical. In the realm of human affairs, nothing travels on a steadily inclining plane. There are always going to be periods of time—sometimes extended periods—when you have to simply ride it out. That was what she believed. It was what she had seen, by example, even in her parents’ marriage. When things got rough, you thought of the family, you put it all in perspective. There was more at stake than your own convenience—always.

  But there were limits. There was always a limit.

  She and Mitch had never been able to afford a home of their own; they had been content to live in the Thorncliffe apartment complex. For ten years now. Not owning a home was something they had gradually inured themselves to. They had both abandoned the newlywed dream, accepted the unreality of such a goal, given the unbreachable gap between their incomes and real estate costs. It was one of the reasons that they had limited themselves to one child. They had both felt that raising a family of more than Barbie—once they had her and realized what was involved in terms of energy and commitment—was unrealistic. And she hadn’t minded, not really. There were compensations.

  One of them was that they had some extra savings—savings that other families ended up sinking into their homes, in one way or another. She and Mitch had seen graphic examples of it: Shirley and Jack’s new roof and family room; the Perlmans’ new paved driveway, lifting the sunken front porch; the second-mortgage payments, the taxes, the upkeep, the insurance, the you-name-it. Over the decade of their marriage, they had managed to amass, proudly, twelve thousand dollars, all of which, they knew, wouldn’t amount to much if applied to the purchase of a house.

  So they had other things instead—things that alleviated the pressure that could accumulate when you finally buried a dream. They took nice vacations. They ate out more often than most of their friends. Mitch never decried any money that Elaine spent on her own clothes or grooming, saying that it was a small price to pay for a wife so lovely. He also knew that if these things were taken away, life, in its unrelenting monotony, could close in on them mercilessly, suffocating the occasional gasps that made life memorable. And he had an unwavering faith in his wife’s good sense, and knew that she, too, understood all this and would never do anything so outrageous as to tip the balance and throw the finely tuned way they could both deal with life out of kilter.

  Until now.

  Without consulting her, Mitch had spent—somehow, on something—most of their life’s savings.

  For Elaine Helwig, it represented an irrevocable break with the past. This had been their money; they had both contributed to it, both seen it grow, and always discussed major expenses or purchases. It was the only way.

  Until now.

  Mitch had gone out. Where? What was happening?

  She scarcely let herself think it. Another woman? An array of convoluted scenarios swept through her brain, marching into dim, faceless corners, making her head spin in disbelief.

  Yet, how could she disbelieve it? There it was—in white on green readout—the cold equations of financial truth.

  The money was gone. So, tonight, was Mitch.

  For the first time in her life, Elaine Helwig could see no part of the future with any certainty.

  Nothing.

  And it left her more alone, more isolated than she had ever thought possible.

  13

  “Where you takin’ us?”

  “You’ll recognize the spot, Eddie. I have a feeling you’ll know it.”

  He led Eddie Stadnyk and Lionel “The Loon” Santos ahead of him as they turned north off Danforth and headed toward the mouth of the approaching, darkened alley.

  “In here.”

  The two slowed apprehensively. The Loon was scared, but with his limited wits he lacked any alternate plan of action, so obeyed unhesitatingly. Eddie was scared, too. But he was scared in a different way—in the way that made him truly dangerous. Fear made his adrenaline pump faster, seemed to sharpen his mind; he used this edge to keep him going, waiting for the moment when the man behind them would relax his guard, however minutely, and he might turn the fulcrum of power in the opposite direction. It kept him going, this belief that eventually he would gain the upper hand, and he fantasized the moment and its succulent aftermath. Eddie had been in tight spots before, and it had never occurred to him that a spot might appear that could squeeze him dry and shake the husk. So he watched. And he waited. And for him, time seemed elongated, and everything transpired in a blackly lyrical slow motion of suffused, violent potential.

  The lone street lamp was a high, distant glimmer when they finally stopped, and shadows spun off into darker shadows, embracing one another with the starkness of urban geometry.

  Mitch eased the laser out into the open. “Turn around.”

  Eddie and the Loon turned and stood, unmoving.

  “I’ll kill you if you move. Understand?”

  The Loon nodded anxiously, his dull eyes crazed. Eddie waited a strategic moment, then nodded, much less dramatically. His whole body was a steel wire, ready to garrote this stranger who had been so brash, so open. He stood still, waiting.

  Mitch opened his jacket at the waist, letting the Barking Dog see and sniff and fix on the two before him. The gesture was lost on them, since the wallet-sized unit was anything but obvious, especially in the muted light that cast a pall upon the wearer.

  Mitch looked at Eddie. “You killed him, didn’t you?”

  Eddie did his best to look perplexed. “Who?”

  “The man in the photo. The one I showed you.”<
br />
  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The cold lanced into Mitch’s side, shaking a fist at the speaker. Mitch actually felt a tingle of anger course through him.

  “You killed the man in the photo, didn’t you? You gutted him and left him here—right here—to die.”

  Eddie said nothing.

  “You did, didn’t you?”

  “No. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  The frozen icicle speared him deeply, seeming to enter his vitals, where it lodged and refused to thaw.

  For Mitch, it was better than a signed confession. He turned his attention to the Loon. “And you, asshole. Were you there, too? Did you help this scumbag gut that man? Eh?”

  The Loon’s eyebrows shot up and he twitched with fear. “No...I don’t know nothin’. I never seen the guy before. Honest!”

  It was the truth, Mitch realized. He had just snared this man in his net when he gathered in Eddie. Jumpin’ Eddie, he reminded himself, glancing at the killer’s lean, sunken cheeks. Should he throw this fish back, he wondered, returning his attention to the Loon? Or was there some advantage in having him here, flopping about on deck, gills snagged in Mitch’s skein?

  He was definitely a keeper, Mitch thought, relying on the intuitions developed on street corners, in back alleys, in blue arcades, and in shakedowns over the years. He could be wrung and shaken.

  “You ever kill anybody?” Mitch asked softly.

  The Loon glanced quickly at Eddie, then back at Mitch with a cauterized expression.

  “Answer me.”

  The Loon licked his lips. “No.”

  Another stab of cold, one that spread far up Mitch’s side, slowing only when it reached just below his armpit.

  “Ever kill an unarmed, defenseless man or woman or”—Mitch hesitated—”child?”

  “No. I said no. What do you want from me?” The eyes could not stay still.

  The receding cold was struck by another wave that sent a kind of surf spray of shattered ice bits cascading as far as Mitch’s now-heaving chest. Christ, he thought. I’ve got a pair of them here. Can I do it? Can I do what I know I must do?

  But not yet, he realized. Not yet.

  Then he reached into his pocket again and withdrew the other photo he had there—the one of Mario. He had to try.

  “You.” With a nod, he indicated the Loon. “Take this. Carefully,” he added, “and look at it closely.”

  The Loon reached for it with pudgy, perceptibly shaking fingers, and brought it close to his eyes in the dim light.

  “Ever see him before?”

  The Loon squinted, then shook his head. “Who is he?” he asked.

  Eddie butted in. “Why should we answer your questions? What are you lookin’ for?”

  Mitch turned to stare at him. “You should answer my questions because then, maybe, just maybe, I won’t kill you. At least”—he shrugged—”it’s a chance, right?”

  Eddie showed no reaction. But the words got through to the Loon. “Here, Eddie. Take it. Look at the man’s picture. Go on. Look at it. Maybe we can help the man, then he can let us go. C’mon.”

  Mitch backed up a step as the photo changed hands, the laser poised.

  Eddie, too, gave the photo his cursory examination.

  “Ever see him before?”

  Eddie shook his head, then said, “No.”

  Nothing from the Dog. No prowlers.

  Mitch felt mild disappointment. It had been too much to expect. He had done well enough simply by stumbling upon these two sewer scuttlers, he knew. To have gotten an I.D. on Mario would have been like winning the lottery.

  Out of the corner of his eye, Mitch saw a ten-meter-long laser of light appear instantaneously from the direction from which they had just come, its origin in the shadows, the killing end on his chest. To the astonishment of its operator, instead of slumping dead to the ground, Mitch spun his arm and fired his own Bausch & Lomb at the other laser’s source. The beam of light sprang into life, thin and lethal, and tracked onto his assailant. The laser that was trying to burn through the Silent Guard blinked out of existence, and Mitch heard it clatter to the cement pavement, along with the voiceless sound of a dropping body. Still stunned, Mitch glanced at the smoking hole in his jacket and shirt, amazed that it had worked. In the instant of distraction, Eddie Stadnyk was lunging toward him, his skinner rigid in his right hand.

  Mitch cut him down with a laser through the forehead, tumbling him forward in a heap at his feet.

  Then he turned, breathing heavily, and pointed his shaking hand at the Loon. “All right, you scumbag fucker,” he said in a rasping whisper, through bared teeth. He was prepared to do it, aching to do it, finally. The entire light show of blue arc-beams and death had consumed no more than five seconds, but Mitch felt like he had lived his lifetime in that eyeblink, and the surge of life that ran through him now was like a volcano that could engulf the entire city with ease.

  In total silence the lasers had danced in the darkness, eerie visuals that left behind a wake of afterimages imprinted on their retinas, white-hot streaks that faded with the slow exploding-snowball effect of a series of flashbulbs going off in a dark room.

  Mitch’s hand trembled.

  The Loon licked his lips; his hands jerked with nervous twitches at his sides.

  They waited. Total, awful silence.

  Mitch was calming, gaining slow control of the wash of adrenaline that had raged to every extremity of his body, channeling it cannily into a heightened sense of awareness and predatory shrewdness of his own. On the force, one never saw oneself as a hunter, stalking, closing for a kill. The years of training, the years of civilizing combined to temper the ancient instincts, to shroud the primordial beast within. But thousands of years of evolution did not disappear easily; indeed, they did not disappear at all. They were merely cloaked—thinly. The right prod, the precise danger, and there were no more laws, no more trappings of civilized man. And what could sometimes emerge was more basic, more true, even more necessary. He saw the cowering, shuddering figure before him as a wounded animal, a dangerous one—both to him and to his kind. He glanced down at the laser in his hand and knew that the rules were changing, that technology and human cunning were accelerating far beyond the feeble pace of the lawmakers and the politicians, outdistancing them the way a starship approaching light-speed could outdistance the moon shuttle, about to bolt into hyperdrive and disappear from sight, perhaps forever.

  “The picture that I showed you...”

  The Loon’s ears perked up.

  “The second one. It was of my partner. One of you fuckers killed him.”

  “It wasn’t me. I told you.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know. Honest.”

  It was the truth. Mitch knew this. The rules had changed.

  “Who could tell me about it? I want a name.”

  “I don’t know.”

  But there was a waver, a tremor that tickled the Barking Dog. Mitch seized it like a terrier taking a rat. “You’re lying. I’m going to kill you.”

  “No. No. Don’t do that.”

  Mitch steadied the laser on the Loon’s heart.

  “No!”

  Mitch waited. The Loon sweated, eyes frantic, nearing hysteria.

  “You’re dead.”

  “I’ll give you anything. What do you want? You want money? I can get you money.”

  With his left hand, Mitch touched the Barking Dog on his belt. “See this?”

  The Loon squinted at the silver rectangle.

  “It’s a Barking Dog.”

  The Loon’s eyebrows rose up. He needed to hear no more. He licked his lips again.

  “I want a name.” Mitch paused. “Understand?”

  The Loon nodded.

  From the Danforth, the squeal of tires rent the air. The only other sound was their breathing.

  “You’ve got thirty seconds.”

  “I can’t. They’ll kill m
e.”

  Mitch shrugged.

  They waited.

  “Time’s up.”

  “No. Wait.”

  Mitch aimed the laser with great care.

  “I don’t really know his name.”

  Mitch waited. It was true.

  “You gotta believe me.”

  “Belief has nothing to do with it. I’m not some asshole district attorney, not some little old lady conscripted for jury duty. The game has been thrown out the window. Don’t you get it? There’s just you and the Dog. I merely pull the trigger when the answer is wrong.”

  His eyes jumped like a trout on a hook. “Then you know that I’m telling the truth. You know I don’t know.”

  “I know you don’t know a name. But what do you know? A face? A place? What?”

  “If I tell you what I know, you have to let me go.”

  “Don’t be such an asshole. I don’t have to do anything. You assholes watch too much TV, too many game shows. You think the world works along the lines of ‘Let’s Make a Deal’—that you can trade everything for Door Number Three and maybe you’ll hit the jackpot. Make the deal and you get to go back to mugging and killing and raping and stealing. Game show mentality. You poor simple fucker.”

  “Why should I tell you then? Anything?”

  “Because I’ll kill you if you don’t. You can count on it.”

  “You could kill me anyway.”

  “And that wouldn’t be fair, right? And fair is the operative word here, right? You’re a pig and a moron to boot, but even a moron needs to have a carrot dangled occasionally.” Mitch sighed. “Give me something good, something the Dog can accept, something that might lead somewhere worthwhile, and I’ll think about your future. I’ll give you that. I’ll think about it.”

  The Loon almost relaxed. It was something. He couldn’t believe the guy would do him, right here and now, if he played ball with him, at least a bit. Mitch had been right. Although the Loon could never have articulated it that way, he did subscribe to the barter mentality. It had worked for all of his dull, brutal life, and he relaxed because it was one of the few things he understood. Play ball with a guy who’s got something on you. Give him a soft, fat pitch right up the middle. Then bide your time before tossing the beanball at his skull. It all worked that way; only the chumps, the fish saw it otherwise.