The Mad and the MacAbre (12 page)

Charlie didn't answer. He tugged on Kutter's
leash to draw his attention away from the other dogs and began to
walk down the sidewalk.

"Don't walk away from us!" the man said. "We
just wanna see your dog!"

Charlie kept walking for a few moments, then
stopped. He really didn't want to talk to these guys, but if they
decided to turn their scary dogs loose he could be in a lot of
trouble. He had a knife in his inside jacket pocket, so if they
intended to mug him he'd take them by surprise with a blade to the
face.

Kutter growled as the men and their dogs
approached. Charlie shushed him. They probably wanted nothing more
than to laugh a good laugh about how they had big monster dogs and
he had a silly looking clown-faced dog. Or else they just wanted
directions.

The men walked their dogs across the street.
They were both smiling, but they were some of the least friendly
smiles Charlie had ever seen. He wanted to pick Kutter up to keep
the dog out of harm's way; however, that would prevent him from
using the knife if the men truly did intend to mug him. Though he
wasn't worried about losing money, since he only had seven dollars
in his wallet, some muggers got mad if you couldn't pay them off
and stabbed or shot you to vent their frustration.

The men were of equal height--probably over
six feet tall--and both had facial hair, though the first had a
neatly trimmed mustache and goatee while the second had an unkempt
full beard. The first man seemed to have bathed much more recently
than the second.

"Nice dog," said the cleaner man.

Charlie tightened his grip on the handle of
Kutter's leash. "He's mine."

"Nobody said he wasn't."

"What do you want?"

"I thought I already said that we wanted to
see your dog." The pit bull sniffed at Kutter, and Charlie took a
step back, pulling Kutter away. "It's a pretty nice dog. How much
does one of those things cost these days?"

"I didn't steal him."

"Why would you think that we're accusing you
of stealing him? I'd think that the owner of such a fine dog would
be used to people wanting to see him."

Charlie took another step back. "Keep your
pit bull away from him."

"Pit bull? This isn't a pit bull. This is an
American Staffordshire terrier. And even if he was, you're not one
of those people who think that pit bulls go around mauling babies,
are you? They got a bad rap. Pit bulls are great dogs if the owner
takes care of them. When you hear about them ripping some kid
apart, it's almost never the dog's fault."

"I don't have any money," Charlie said.

"Paranoid, paranoid, paranoid." The man
laughed, but there was no humor to it. "We've seen you around and
we liked your dog. You're acting like you have a guilty conscience.
You do something you shouldn't have?"

"I need to get home," Charlie said.

"Why?"

"I'm meeting my girlfriend."

"Then by all means, don't let us keep you."
The man gestured grandly toward the way Charlie had been walking.
"I wouldn't want to stand in the way of a man who's gonna get
himself some."

Charlie led Kutter away from them. Behind
him, one of the dogs growled.

"None of that, Bear," said
the first man. "He's going to get himself
laid
. Let's not ruin his
night."

Charlie wanted to run, but didn't dare. He
settled for walking very, very quickly, tugging hard on Kutter's
leash when the dog tried to stop for sniff breaks.

* * *

Charlie and Kutter sat on the couch. What
had those men wanted? Were they simply jerks? Were they friends of
Byron? Maybe Byron had never really owned Kutter, and these men
were after him to take the dog back.

"You're being ridiculous," Charlie said out
loud. It wasn't part of some elaborate hoax.

Then again, Byron might not have been
Kutter's original owner. Charlie might be his third owner, and one
of the men in the park might have been the first.

If so, why wouldn't they just ask for him
back? Why be all weird about it?

Either way, he didn't feel like going out
with Liz tonight. He called her, claiming that he was sick to his
stomach (which was technically true, even if he blamed it on food
poisoning) and cancelled their movie date. She told him that she
hoped he felt better tomorrow, and made a very pleasant suggestion
for an evening activity if he did.

Charlie wished that he could report the men
for harassment, but having the police investigate why he might have
people angry with him was probably not the best course of action.
He'd just have to wait this out and be on the defensive.

Kutter didn't seem distressed by this.
Charlie wished he could be more like the dog.

Charlie wasn't sure what to do the next
morning. He didn't want to leave Kutter at home--what if the men
broke in and dognapped him? Liz would probably let him drive over
and leave Kutter there for the day, but he'd still be leaving
Kutter unattended, and her place might not be any safer than his if
the men were following him.

So he called in sick. Bob was fine with
it.

"I can't do this forever," Charlie told
Kutter. "They don't give me many sick days each year. But I'll
protect you. I promise."

Charlie kept three guns--fully
registered--around the house in case of emergencies. These
"emergencies" were supposed to be in the almost inconceivable case
that one of his victims escaped from the basement, but dog defense
was an even more valid purpose. He didn't want to keep a gun on his
person, since he couldn't bring himself to trust that it wouldn't
go off accidentally, so he took the one in his sock drawer out and
rested it on the coffee table for easier access.

Under normal circumstances, it would've been
a very pleasant day, since he did very little except watch
television and hang out with Kutter. He took Kutter for a couple of
cautious walks and saw no sign of the men. If he was lucky, they'd
simply been a couple of creeps who were having fun messing with
him, and his life could return to its standard level of paranoia in
a couple of days.

* * *

What his day job needed was a new policy
where dogs were allowed to accompany their masters to work. "You'd
like that, wouldn't you?" Charlie asked Kutter. "You could sleep
under my desk all morning, I'd take you for a walk at lunch, you
could go back to sleep all afternoon, and we'd go home. That would
solve all of my problems."

He thought it might be funny to send Bob an
e-mail with that suggestion, adding a smiley face to the end to
make sure Bob knew he was joking. But it was getting close to time
for his annual performance review, and he didn't want Bob to think
that he was using humor as a brownnosing tactic.

He took Kutter down into the basement and
set some cardboard boxes on their side for Kutter to hide in if it
came down to that. They weren't very good hiding places and he
didn't think that Kutter would figure out what to do with them, but
Charlie wanted to keep open any options he possibly could. He gave
his dog some extra petting, then locked him in the basement.

Around noon, Charlie became too anxious at
work and told Bob that he needed to take a half day off.

When he hurried down into the basement,
Kutter ran out of one of the boxes, perfectly fine.

"We can't live like this," he told Kutter.
"It was just a couple of stupid men playing a joke. They haven't
come back. We'll probably never see them again. Only an idiot would
keep worrying about them, right?"

* * *

The next evening, as Charlie poured some dry
food into Kutter's bowl, there was a knock at the door. He finished
pouring the food, walked into the living room, and looked through
the peephole.

It was both of the men. And their dogs.

Charlie backed away from the door, slowly
and carefully, hoping that the men hadn't heard his footsteps.

The knocking grew in intensity.

"We know you're in there," said the man
who'd done all of the talking before. "It's rude to leave guests
waiting out on your porch."

Charlie picked the gun up off his coffee
table and shoved it into the waist of his pants. He pulled his
shirt over the weapon, but it was too obvious--it looked silly. And
he still didn't trust it not to go off in his pants. If he opened
the door and immediately shoved the barrel into the first man's
face, he ran the risk that the man might simply pluck the gun from
his fingers and turn it on him.

He decided to keep the gun
in his hand and sit on the couch. If they broke in, he'd shoot
them. He had neighbors, so they had to know that they couldn't
make
too
much of a
ruckus or somebody would call the police, even if Charlie himself
couldn't.

Kutter joined him.

The men continued to knock on the door, but
didn't say anything else. After a couple of minutes, they left.

"Don't worry," he told Kutter. "If they try
to hurt you, I'll kill them."

- 12 -

"Dammit!" exclaimed Charlie as the warm
liquid splashed into his face. He wiped the soapy water out of his
eyes. "Quit shaking!"

Kutter tried to jump out of the tub, but
Charlie blocked his escape and pushed down on his back. "This isn't
hurting you," he said. "You want to be all nice and clean so that
people know I'm taking good care of you, don't you?"

The dog obviously had other priorities, such
as getting out of the tub as soon as possible. The slippery, soapy
animal slid out from underneath Charlie's hands and leapt out of
the tub. Charlie grabbed for him and missed. Kutter ran out of the
bathroom.

"Not on the couch!" Charlie shouted.

Kutter jumped up onto the couch and shook
again, spraying suds all over. This was better than vomit, Charlie
supposed. He picked Kutter up, hugged him to his chest, and carried
the struggling dog back into the bathroom. He pushed the door
closed--which he should have done in the first place--with his foot
and then set Kutter back into the tub.

"Don't you want to smell nice?" he asked.
"Not to be rude, but you don't always smell so good. This is
expensive shampoo just for dogs. Not every dog gets this kind of
treatment, so you should be counting your blessings instead of
being a pain in the neck."

He scrubbed Kutter some more, then pulled
out the plug and let the water drain out of the tub. "Almost done,"
he said. He turned on the warm water and filled a plastic bowl,
then gently poured it over Kutter. After a few bowls of water, the
soap was rinsed out of Kutter's fur and Charlie dried him off with
his fluffiest towel.

When Charlie let Kutter out of the bathroom,
he ran happily into the living room, then rolled around on the
floor. Charlie was glad he'd vacuumed.

* * *

Somebody called in the middle of the night
from a blocked number, but didn't say anything. They hung up after
about ten seconds. If Charlie'd had a whistle handy, he would have
blown out the caller's eardrums.

* * *

Kutter stood at the door and let out one
sharp bark, indicating that he was ready to be taken for a
walk.

"Why aren't you a cat?" Charlie asked. "If
you were a cat, you could just use a litter box and you'd never
have to go outside."

Technically, he never had to let Kutter
outside anyway, but the cleanup would be unpleasant and the dog
would be miserable. He wasn't going to let those cretins ruin his
relationship with his pet. He put on his jacket, and put the gun in
his inside pocket.

Charlie had been altering his route every
time these past couple of days, figuring that the men probably
weren't watching his home from an unmarked van, and so if he kept
his path unpredictable he wouldn't run into them. He hated having
to do this. He almost hoped that he'd run into them tonight, put a
bullet in each of their throats, and end the problem.

Almost. Not quite.

It was a nice, long walk, and both Charlie
and Kutter had a great time. Then, as he dug his keys out of his
pocket and unlocked his door, the two men and their dogs ran onto
his front porch. They must have been hiding by the side of the
house.

He threw open the door and quickly stepped
inside. Before he could pull the door shut again, the man with the
goatee stuck his foot in the gap and blocked it. Charlie yanked
harder on the door, hoping to break the man's foot or even pop it
off, but he wasn't strong enough and the man easily forced the door
all the way open.

"Can we come in?" the man asked.

"I have a gun," said Charlie.

"We're not going to hurt you. We just want
to talk."

Charlie and Kutter cautiously backed into
the center of the living room as the men and their dogs came
inside. The man who hadn't said anything yet closed the front door.
The rottweiler and the pit bull (or whatever it was) growled and
strained against their leashes, which looked like they might snap
at any instant. Charlie wondered if these were the kind of dogs
that fought each other while people bet on them.

"Were you worried?" the first man asked.

"What?"

"All this time. Were you worried?"

"About what?"

The man laughed. "Let's make a rule that
during this encounter, we'll all respect each other's intelligence,
okay? I'm talking about the way we entered your lives. Were you
worried?"

Charlie shook his head.

"Bullshit. Do you know when I was
worried?"

"No."

"When my sister didn't come home." The man
reached into his pocket and took out a piece of folded white paper.
He unfolded it and held it up for Charlie to see. "Recognize
her?"

Charlie did. He'd been crying over her eight
months ago, when she died on his table too soon. "No."