Dingo's Dangerous Quest to Reclaim a Stolen Family Heirloom

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
CHAPTER 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
1

DINGO
by Michael Alan Nelson
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.
About the Book
When a family heirloom given into Daniel Asher's protection is stolen, he must get it back before it can be
used to unleash his family's dark secret upon the world. But the closer he comes to finding it, the deeper he
slips below the surface of the mundane and into a deadly world of magic and myth where he will be forced to
confront the darkest demon of his past: how he came to be called DINGO.
About the Author
Michael Alan Nelson is the author of "Severance" and "Riot Grrrl," published in the comic anthologies of
ZOMBIE TALES and ZOMBIE TALES: OBLIVION from BOOM! Studios. He is a winner of the 2004 New
Times 55 Fiction contest for his short-short "The Conspirators" and is currently working on several projects
for BOOM! Studios including the upcoming series WAR OF THE WORLDS: SECOND WAVE. He lives in
Los Angeles.
Table of Contents
* Chapter 1: Saddle Up
* Chapter 2: Luna
* Chapter 3: Cerberus
* Chapter 4: The Box
* Chapter 5: Sharp Dressed Man
* Chapter 6: Room With a View
* Chapter 7: A Hallmark Moment
* Chapter 8: Peas In a Pod
* Chapter 9: A Man Named Terry Hut
* Chapter 10: This Is Your Life
* Chapter 11: Aunt Sarah
* Chapter 12: Cthulu Marching
* Chapter 13: Hack in the Back
* Chapter 14: Bowling Zygotes
DINGO 2

* Chapter 15: "On the Banks of the Wabash"
* Chapter 16: Trolls Under the Bridge
* Chapter 17: 5001
* Chapter 18: Peaches
* Chapter 19: 'Tis Pity She Ain't A Whore
* Chapter 20: Queen of the Stone Age
* Chapter 21: Garden of Gethsemane
* Chapter 22: Zen of the Mosh
* Chapter 23: There Was A Man Who Had A Dog...
* Chapter 24: Darby's Inferno
* Chapter 25: The Sad Fate Of Benedicto Morales
* Chapter 26: Family Reunion
* Chapter 27: Animal Spirit Guide
by Michael Alan Nelson 3

Chapter 1
: Saddle Up
This was the first time that sex with Julie really scared me. Her macabre desires had always been a little
unnerving, like some dark and uncomfortable thing she kept in a mason jar that she would never open, just
twist the lid enough to get a smell of the thing inside as it tried to get its tentacles through. It was her thing.
Hell, I didn't mind. We all have our things. But this time... Christ.
This time the lid came off.
"Leave your socks on," she said.
I stopped pulling then started to unbutton my jeans. "Socks? That's new."
"Just wait."
Julie disappeared into the bathroom, came out ten minutes later wearing black vinyl pants and a thick, riveted,
wire-only bra. Her pants were on the verge of dripping off and her breasts looked like a tie-on Halloween gag
gift.
"I've seen this before," I said.
She just smiled and hummed as she tied my hands and feet to the bedposts with silk scarves so orange they
made my teeth ache.
"Nothin' new here either."
"Patience, Dingo," she said. "Patience."
When she was satisfied that I wasn't going anywhere, she took a fistful of my chest hair and twisted, varying
pressure and speed that made my grunts and groans jump and jerk.
"It's like playing the piano. You're like my own little instrument, Dingo. My very own Dingo-phone. Didn't
know I had any musical talent, did you?"
"I've been too distracted by your other talents to notice."
She bent forward and bit my lower lip. "My, how you underestimate me. Don't go anywhere. I'll be right
back."
This time she left the room. I heard her walk through the kitchen, followed by the sound of the garage door
opening and things being moved and pushed around. A little later I heard something heavy hit the floor just
outside the bedroom door. Julie walked in the bedroom with a small plastic bag cupped in her hand. She gave
me a wink as she put three fingers inside the bag and then started to sprinkle tiny green flakes over my socks.
"I think you're a little south, baby," I said.
"Oh, Dingo. You're not man enough for that yet. But we'll work on it."
"What is that? Is that weed? You gonna smoke my socks or something."
Chapter 1 4

"No, no, Dingo." She laughed. "You're so silly."
"Uh huh. Silly. Yeah. What is it?"
Julie gave me a crooked smile. "It's catnip."
"You buy a cat?"
"No, Dingo." She reached into the bag and pulled out another pinch.
"Then what? My feet smell?"
"It has nothing to do with how your feet smell."
"So they do smell."
"Hush." She put the bag down and stepped outside the door.
When she came back in, I almost ripped my arms from their sockets trying to sit up. I could hear my tendons
popping over the straining bed frame. "Julie, what the hell!"
She just smiled as she placed three items on the bed between my legs, one by one:
1) a saddle
2) a melon baller
3) and a fucking ferret.
She bounced her finger between the wire bars of the animal's cage while she gave it baby cooing sounds. The
rat-dog just hissed and spat while it spun after its tail like a furry pile of shit caught in a blender.
Cold air from the garage moved into the room, slid up my legs and across my scrotum, short circuiting every
synapse in my body. I gave an involuntary shiver and asked the only question I could think of.
"Jesus Christ, Julie. What's the saddle for?"
When I was twelve I saw a National Geographic Special on a pack of wolves living in the wilds of Montana.
One of the local farmers had actually set traps in the hopes of snaring the more adventurous animals that tried
to wander onto his land to hunt his sheep. One unfortunate wolf, a mangy animal the documentary host called
Shane, got its hind leg caught in the wire mouth of one of the farmer's traps.
As Julie centered the ferret cage between my legs I couldn't help but think about Shane, that scrawny animal,
chewing its way to freedom, leaving behind a bloody and twisted "fuck you, Farmer Joe" lying in the dirty
pink snow. The lucky bastard.
While I was trying to figure out which arm I could most likely live without, the phone rang. Julie grabbed the
cordless and held it to her ear as she taunted the ferret with her free hand.
"He's busy," she said. After a moment, she rolled her eyes then jumped on the bed, straddled my chest and put
the phone to the side of my head.
Chapter 1 5

"H...hello?" I said.
"Danny, what the hell you still doin' with that Rebound Rita?"
"What? Rick? It's 2 o'clock in the morning."
"I don't have a watch."
Julie started to bounce on my chest. Her lips twisted into a sneer then formed the words 'hurry up.'
"What do you need Rick?"
"Um, we've got a bit of a problem."
The exhilaration of being rescued by a phone call in the dead of night suddenly vanished. "Don't you mean
you have a bit of a problem?"
I could hear Rick light a cigarette and breathe smoke onto the receiver. "Danny..."
"You know what, Rick? I don't want to know about it. You figure it out."
"Danny, come on..."
"Stop calling me Danny, Ricky. And no, I will not come on."
I pulled my feet up as much as I could, trying to keep them as far from the ferret cage as possible, but I could
feel its movements disturbing the air around my ankles. Julie grabbed my chest hair with her other hand.
"Okay, fine," Rick said. "I have a problem. Can you help me out?"
"No."
"What do you mean 'no'? I'm your own flesh and blood, man. Christ, we shared the same womb. Doesn't that
count for something, Dingo?"
"Indiana, Rick!" It came out a mix of growls and gasps as Julie's minimal weight squeezed my lungs and her
hand twisted my chest hair. "Indiana! I'm not talking about a bar or a country club. I was banned from a whole
fucking state for helping you with one of your problems! Do you know how hard it is to get banned from a
state?"
"Dude, what's in Indiana anyway?"
"That's not the fucking point, Rick!"
Julie sighed. She fidgeted for a moment, shaking her breasts as she reached behind her back and pulled out a
small knife. She reached forward and cut the scarf tied to my right wrist. She jumped off the bed and tossed
the phone to me. I caught it just in time to hear Rick's tinny bleating of Indiana's ills.
"Rick, Rick, stop, look. I'm busy right now. Can I call you back, say during daylight?"
"Come on little brother, this is important."
Chapter 1 6

"Fine. What's the problem?" I took a quick swing with the phone at Julie when she started to tickle my feet
with her Jack Rabbit.
"I sold my Z on Wednesday."
"Yeah, you told me. You also told me you got ripped off."
"Yeah, yeah, that's beside the point. Look, I was in a hurry and I forgot to clean out the trunk."
"I'm sure the guy'll hit a car wash−--"
"No man, you don't understand. I left something in there and he's driving the car out to Buffalo." I could hear
Rick hot-boxing his cigarette.
"Well, just call the guy and have him Fed Ex it to you."
"Yeah. I, uh, don't think that would be a good idea, Dingo."
I stretched and tried to lean on my elbow. "Why not, Rick?" I could feel the skin on the back of my skull start
to tingle. "What exactly did you leave in the trunk of that car? And Rick, it better be drugs or a dead body."
"It was the box, Dingo." Well, my brother was right. 'We' had a problem. "Dingo? Dingo?"
"I am going to kill you dead." My knuckles were white around the phone.
"Okay, I know you're pissed, but just calm down."
"Dead, you hear me? Kill. You. Dead. Oh, and by the way, your band sucks!"
"Jesus, I'm sorry, man."
"Sorry?" The bed frame squeaked as I pulled on the scarves. "I gave it to you to put in your vault. To keep it
safe. What the hell was it doing in the trunk of your car?"
I heard Rick pound his cigarette into an ashtray. "We were recording at Damon's. We needed a short mic
stand for the PZM and the box was the perfect size and--"
"Stop, just...stop. Let me tell you what you're going to do, Rick. You're going to get into whatever fancy ride
of yours moves the fastest, and then you're going to go get that box back."
"I can't, man. That's the problem. I'm leaving for Europe in the morning. We've got seventy shows in ninety
days and I'm booked solid. I'm sorry, Dingo. I would if I could."
Julie was poking her knife into the cage and rattling it against the bars. She didn't seem to be scaring the
animal, just pissing it off.
"Ah, puke. All right," I said. "Where is this guy?"
"I'll leave all the info with Luna. Just swing by here tomorrow and she can give you all the details. I'm sorry,
little brother. I'll make it up to you, promise." The phone clicked and Rick was gone.
I dropped my head against the pillow and tossed the phone against the wall.
Chapter 1 7

"What's your brother doing calling this late?"
I rested my forearm over my eyes and said, "I've got to leave town for a couple of days, baby."
Her vinyl pants creaked and pouted as she tilted her hips. "Well, you're not going anywhere until I say you
are." I peeked out from under my arm when her voice dropped an octave. "Now, where were we?"
When the latch on the ferret cage fell open, I remembered that Shane the wolf didn't hobble off into the
blissful western sunset. No. Farmer Joe followed his bloody trail through the gray sludge of the forest floor
and shot that three legged mutt dead.
The lucky bastard.
Chapter 1 8

Chapter 2
: Luna
The drive up to Rick's place in the hills always made me sick. Just after he bought the house with his ill gotten
gains from his band's over-hyped, over-marketed, and over-bought sophomore Disc, he drove me out to see it
in his beautiful but nauseating '70 Datsun 240 Z. All the smog combined with the pinball effects of winding
up the hill at teeth-numbing speeds had me puking for an hour after we got there.
I took the last turn at the top of the hill and watched the rising sun crest over the black blocks of the city, her
angel wings soiled and cheapened with the soot of 12 million get-away drivers. Rick's house came into view
out of the fog, its large glass panes sparkling like the last clean surface of an oversized ashtray.
I parked between a blue hatchback and Rick's favorite toy: a 350 horsepower Impreza he had smuggled here
from Japan. All his more expensive rides were in the garage, collecting dust and gaining vintage resale value.
I rang the bell. I waited and watched a couple of squirrels fight over a small treasure in the bushes. The door
opened.
"Dingo."
"Hey, Luna."
Her job as Rick's assistant was to take care of his place while he was out being a rock star. She made sure all
his bills were paid, his animals were fed, and that the subsequent fallout from any parties she might have in
his absence didn't leave any lasting damage.
She was pretty by most standards, gorgeous by others. Short with a tight schoolgirl body and raven hair that
teased her avian shoulders. But by whatever standard, her beauty was like a rare and exotic bird she kept
caged behind the bars of her perfect teeth. As soon as she opened her mouth it flew away.
"Want something to drink, Dingo? I just made a rutabaga and avocado smoothie with egg substitute. It's great
brain food."
"No, thanks. My brain isn't hungry." I walked into the living room and cringed at the painting clinging to the
wall above the grand piano. Rick simply had too much money and too little taste. He would buy "art" based
on the gossip of some self-important intern fetching coffee at a museum who always knew of some Vincent
van Gogh-ingNowhere destined to be the next big thing. Common sense should have told him that a life-sized
acrylic of Winston Churchill giving birth to a Madonna figure beneath the Golden Arches would never be
considered art in this or any other universe, but Rick was never one for exercising common sense. If he was, I
wouldn't have been there in the first place.
Luna must have seen my reaction. "You need to relax, Dingo. It's all that garbage you eat."
"Yeah. Wanna tell me exactly what's going on?"
"Sure. Here, taste this." She held out a glass filled with a thick, mucous colored concoction. I took it from her
and lifted it to my mouth. Anything to take my mind off the unsettling painting on the wall. After I took a
swallow, I stared as hard as I could at mother Winston, bloated and suffering with labor pains. Anything to
take my mind off the taste in my mouth.
"Well? How is it? How's it taste?"
Chapter 2 9

"Like a diaper."
"There's no need to be mean. Come on."
She lead me to the den where a reality show was droning away on a larger-than-life plasma screen. "More
'brain food?'" I asked nodding at the television.
"Just something I TeraTellied last night. Here. I think that's what you're looking for." She pointed to a stack of
papers on the coffee table. I sat down on the couch, the leather creaking and whining like Julie's pants from
the night before. I shook my head trying to get the pleasant-yet-horrifying memories out of my head. I took a
long gulp of green goo. Winston Churchill. Winston Churchill.
"This the guy he sold it to?"
"Yep. Peter Waciejowski. He was in town with a couple of days to burn, so he decided to do a little car
shopping. Rick didn't really want to sell it, but he needed to make room for his Enzo."
"Why didn't he just build a new garage?"
"He's thinking about moving."
"What, this place not big enough for him?" I watched a couple argue on the screen in high definition. Nothing
like HDTV to see the veins and spittle fly when two people go at it in earnest.
"I called Peter's wife to get his cell phone number, but he's turned it off. She thinks he's planning on stopping
in Vegas to do a little gambling and doesn't want her checking up on him. She was a really sweet lady. A very
old soul. She told me she knew the guy who--"
"You didn't tell her what was in the box, did you?"
"Do I look stupid?"
I took a sip of sludge.
"Peter probably got to Vegas this morning. I'll keep trying his cell, find out exactly where he is. Rick said you
could take any of his cars you'd like. Except the Enzo. He's still breaking that in."
"I'll stick with my Jeep, thanks."
"Suit yourself. I MapQuested directions." Luna displayed a couple of print-outs, then started tracing several
lines on a foldout map, explaining the astrological implications of each one. Then she devolved into a
rambling diatribe about the choices we all have to make in life and that I was somehow 'chosen' to make this
journey. A journey through the desert in the middle of August. Yeah, I was chosen all right. Because God
hates me.
"Yeah, thanks, Luna. I'm sure I can find Vegas, no problem."
"You know what you need, Dingo?" she asked.
"A sane girlfriend? A life? Hope?"
"An animal spirit guide," she said.
Chapter 2 10

"You have got to be fucking kidding me."
"No, come on. It'll be fun!"
She muted the television then grabbed my hands and pulled me off the couch. Luna then sat me down on the
floor in front of her, her legs crossed, knees touching mine. "All right. Now, each person has a different
animal spirit guide. An animal unique to them. Some people have lions, dolphins, monkeys--"
"Luna, really."
"Hush. If you don't learn to relax, you'll be dead before you're forty."
"All right, fine. But if my spirit guide is a ferret, I'm going to kill you."
"Huh?"
"Never mind, let's just go."
"Okay, close your eyes."
As I did, I became acutely aware of her hands, how soft they were and the way they were nearly engulfed
inside mine. I could hear her breathing slow, then become steady and rhythmic. My own fell in time with hers
and I could feel our combined exhales stirring the hair on my arms.
"Now, Dingo, I want you to think of a place. A place deep in the forest. The sun is shining overhead, the soft
breeze rustling the leaves. You can smell flowers and honeysuckle. You are at peace."
I was surprised when the image came to my mind rather quickly. I've always had a vivid imagination, though
it usually involved bikini clad playmates stranded on a desert island and me with the only bottle of Evian. But
never about forest breezes, rustling leaves, or honeysuckle for chrissakes. Must have been something in that
damn drink.
The first thing that came was the sky. That soft, pale blue that you can only get with Photoshop. There were a
few clouds, rather just the idea of clouds floating by. But the trees were the most vivid. Massive oaks towered
over me like angry parents, their rustling leaves harping at me with serpentine curses.
"Across from you is a small stand of bushes. They begin to rustle as your animal spirit guide moves behind
them. Relax, let your breathing summon your guide into the clearing. Call her forth."
We sat there, holding each other's hands for what seemed like half an hour while I watched a stand of bushes
with my mind's eye sway in some imaginary wind. But nothing came out. No monkey, no lion, not even a
ferret. Nothing.
When she let go of my hands she asked, "So? Did you communicate with it? What kind of guide do you
have?"
"None. Nothing came out, Luna. Is this your way of telling me that your Earth Goddess hates me too?"
"Nothing? That's strange. Well, sometimes it takes a few times before your guide shows up."
"Well, I've got GPS."
Chapter 2 11

"That's not a spirit guide, Dingo. But don't worry, yours will show up."
"I'm sure it will."
I stood up and let the blood flow back into my legs. The giant lithograph of Rick's band's logo hung over the
plasma screen like some lackluster hieroglyph. A giant letter 'P,' yellow and blocked in black on a white
background with an oversized period next to it. P·
"Why on earth would they name their band P-dot?" I asked myself.
"You know their label is having a contest to see who can figure out what it means."
It was one of those mysterious things that fans argued over endlessly on blogs, in chatrooms, on fansites. They
all seemed to know what it meant or where it came from. None of them did. Not even close. But all that
mystery and speculation still didn't change the fact that it was a stupid fucking name for a band.
"All right, Luna, I'm going to get on the road."
"Okay," she said. "I'll call you as soon as I get a hold of him."
I stared at the printout for a moment. "Are we sure this guy's going to Vegas?"
"That's what his wife thinks. Why?"
The longer this guy had the box, the greater the chance he'd open it. And if he didn't go to Vegas, that meant
I'd have to track him down cross country. There wouldn't be time for any detours.
I pointed to the maps splayed out on the coffee table. "Well if he doesn't stop in Vegas, he'll probably head
straight home. Which means he'll most likely take this route instead."
She watched as I ran my finger along a red line that wound across the map. And then stopped. "Oh. That
sucks," she said.
"Yeah. Little bit. Little bit."
We both stared in silence at my finger as it rested where the red line stopped at the Indiana border. Fucking
Indiana.
Winston Churchill, Winston Churchill.
Chapter 2 12

Chapter 3
: Cerberus
I was lost.
As I sat parked at the old service station, I pulled out the maps and tried to do a little backtracking. It didn't
take me long to figure out where I had made the wrong turn. I had tried following my memory instead of
Luna's directions and wound up about eighty miles off course. My gas tank was pushing 'E' but fortunately the
service station was open.
When I stepped out of my Jeep, I could feel the soles of my boots melt on the asphalt. The heat coming off the
cracked and pitted cement peeled off in waves that rolled out in every endless direction. The barren mountains
in the distance looked unstable, like I was looking at them through a window pane slicked with olive oil.
I slogged my way over to the gas pump and wrapped my shirt around the handle to keep my skin from
burning against the desert-baked metal. The heat was so great I worried the fumes would ignite.
A dirty round man stood in the shadowy doorway of the ramshackle service station and stared at me while he
rubbed his hands inside an oily red rag. The oval name-patch stitched to his coveralls was loose at one end
and curled like a leaf in the heat. His name was Jack.
I topped off the tank and then walked over to him. "You work here?" I knew it was a stupid question the
second it left my mouth. He and I were the only living things for fifty miles in any direction. Who the hell else
would be working here?
"Who the hell else would be working here?" he said.
I shrugged my shoulders and pulled out my wallet. Jack wobbled inside behind a glass counter filled with
everything from belt buckles to oil funnels. "That your momma's car?" he asked.
It's impossible to tell what kind of psychological impact this heat would have on a man who lived out here
alone, but I was sure it wasn't positive.
Jack clocked in at about two-fifty and had hands perfectly suited to crushing the skulls of small children.
Unfortunately, I was in the mood to see how I would stack up to Jack Skull Crusher. So I played along.
"My mom's dead. Doesn't have much use for a car these days." I handed him a twenty.
Skull Crusher smirked as he snatched the bill in his meaty hand. "Good thing, I suppose. Not havin' to see her
son drivin' around in that girly thing."
"What's girly about a Jeep?"
"The Jeep? Oh, nothing,'" he laughed. "Just that it's such a pretty color is all."
"You don't like yellow?" I asked.
"Yellow's a pretty color for a flower."
I slowly began to turn the cheap plastic carousel of aluminum key chains by the cash register. "Yellow's also
the color of infection oozing from a man's open skull after he's been beaten and left for dead in the middle of
Chapter 3 13

the desert." I smiled and shrugged my shoulders. "But hey, if yellow makes you think of pretty flowers, well,
to each their own I guess."
Jack Skull Crusher gave me a wad of change and a scowl.
"You got an air pump?" I asked.
He smiled, his tiny tobacco-stained teeth arrayed in his mouth like rows of misaligned baked beans. "Out
back. But good luck."
"It doesn't work?"
"Wouldn't know. Haven't been able to get to it for three days." Obviously delighted by my confusion, he
waved and said, "This way."
We rounded the building and he pointed to a small pump about fifty feet off. Just a lone slab the size of a
mailbox sticking out of the ground. But there was something next to it. A dark shape lay next to the pump in
an amorphous heap. "What is that?"
"A dog." Jack Skull Crusher's voice was no longer playful or malicious. He now sounded like a man
desperately trying to keep his warped sense of reality from slowly caving in around him.
"What the hell is your dog doing out there?"
"It's not mine. Don't know whose it is. Been chained up there for three days."
I could see little bits of fur disturbed by the minimal breeze moving over the desert sands. "What kind of
asshole would leave their dog chained up in this heat with no shade? Poor thing's probably dead."
The dog looked up at us for a moment then rested its head back down on its paws.
"Sweet God, the thing is huge!"
Jack nodded his head.
"Any idea who left it?"
"You're my first customer in a week," Jack said. "I don't know how that dog got here."
"Well, did you try to unchain it? Give it some water or something?"
"Damn thing won't let me near it. Just growls whenever I get close." Jack turned to me, his pale forehead
turning pink in the heat. "There's something wrong with that animal. And I don't mean like it being sick or
anything. Can't tell what it is, but there's just something...wrong. You get close enough to look, you'll see what
I'm talking about. You can feel it." He pulled his rag out from a pocket and swiped the sweat from his face.
"The switch is on the side. If that thing'll let you get close enough." He started walking back to the station.
"But if it mauls you, don't think you'll get a chance to sue me." He turned and smiled. "Because I think
yellow's my favorite color now."
I pulled the Jeep up to the pump and hopped out. The dog still lay on its side, not paying me any attention. It
sat directly underneath the switch on the side of the pump. Its black fur was still the only thing moving in the
slight breeze.
Chapter 3 14

I reached over to the switch and flipped it. The pump sputtered to life with a god-awful racket and began to
vibrate. That's when the dog moved.
The dog stretched, then stood up and faced me. It faced me. The damn thing didn't have to look up. Its
shoulders came close to the height of my chest and its head was twice the size of a Virginia ham. Its mane of
black hair stood out in thin jagged lines that intersected at the nexus of its bared finger-length fangs. And I
could hear its growling over the thrum of the air pump.
But it didn't move toward me. I slowly pulled the hose and filled my tires, taking time out every thirty seconds
or so to cool my face with a blast of air. The dog followed me with its black eyes as I went from tire to tire,
but it never moved from that spot. When the pump shut off, I put the hose back, careful not to get too close to
the dog.
But Jack was right. Something was not right about it. Something was just wrong, but for the life of me, I
couldn't tell what it was.
It stopped growling and now was just sitting there in the blazing heat, staring at me, its thick tail slowly
kicking away the dust on the concrete. For three days it had been baking under the desert sun with no shade,
no food, no water. Hell, even Shane the wolf was able to chew himself free. But this poor thing had no way to
get loose. It was simply chained up and left here to die. I couldn't let that stand.
I pulled a bottle of water out from a cooler in the back and went to the animal. I reached forward with the top
of my wrist held out in front of me. The dog snorted at me, took a step forward and sniffed.
I poured the water into my hands and let it drink. It smelled the water before lapping it up with a tongue as
wide as my splayed hand from pinky tip to thumb. It didn't take long for it to finish the entire bottle. When it
was done, it took another step forward and gave me a wet, foul-smelling lick on the face. I couldn't help but
laugh.
As I scratched the dog behind the ears, I noticed an old, tattered leather collar buried in its fur. I followed it
around its neck until I came to a rusty iron plate the size of a cigarette pack dangling from a metal loop. I
moved the fur aside and wiped some dust from the giant tag to see if there was an address, phone number, or
something else that showed who might own this thing. But the only thing it had was a name:
CERBERUS.
"Well, your owners aren't very original, are they?" The dog wagged its tail once and then barked. It was a
deep, bowel shaking burst of sound that made me second guess my proximity to the thing. But it continued to
just stare at me. "Okay, Cerberus. You hungry? Let's get you into some shade with some water and some
food. How does that sound?"
Again, Cerberus licked me then sat back on its haunches, motionless and staring. I followed the collar around
its broad neck until I found where the chain was connected. The chain that held it to the pump scraped against
the concrete when I pulled on it. It was rusty, made with the kind of thick and heavy links found in a shipyard.
It was a wonder the dog could breathe at all with this thing weighting it down.
I went cold. Even though I was in one of the hottest parts of the country on one of the hottest days of the year,
a chill ran down my scalp and along my spine. I realized what it was that made the dog seem so wrong.
It wasn't panting.
Chapter 3 15

Chapter 4
: The Box
Cerberus just stared at me. The dog didn't blink, he didn't pant, he didn't move. He just sat in the passenger
seat as I drove, relaxed, mouth hanging slightly open, looking at me the way someone examines a menu but
can't decide on the chicken or the veal.
The desert sky was on fire when the city came into view. Cerberus turned away from me and stuck his head
out from the side of the jeep, his giant tongue flapping in the eighty mile an hour wind while I dialed Luna's
number. The dog pulled his head back in, then rested his chin on top of the overhead roll-bar, his fur blowing
back along his head like the spines of a porcupine.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Luna."
"Dingo! Are you there yet?"
"No, not yet. I'm just outside the city." Vegas flashed and blinked under the starless sky. "You get in touch
with Mr. Waciejowski?"
"Sure did. He's at the Denny's near the Excalibur. He's trying to stay away from the blackjack tables."
"Yeah, good for him. He has the box?"
I could hear Luna stuffing something disgustingly healthy in her mouth. "Mmm hmm."
"He hasn't opened it, has he?"
She swallowed. "Nah. I told him it was filled with old photos."
Cerberus shifted in the seat and scratched behind his neck with such force that the whole Jeep shook; a rather
unsettling motion at 80 miles an hour. "Hey Luna, I've got a question for you."
I looked over to see the dog's nostrils flared out in the wind while his lips blew back and revealed his
frightening set of teeth.
"This, uh, this animal spirit guide you had me try to find. Do they ever show up, you know, in person?"
"What are you talking about?"
I switched hands and tried to speak a little more softly into the phone, but the dog's eyes rolled toward me,
fixing me with a black stare. "Do they ever show up for real? Like in corporeal form?"
"Corporeal form? Dingo, are you stoned?"
"No, no. It's just that someone abandoned a dog at some nowhere gas station. I kinda adopted him."
"Oooh, a puppy!" Her squeal got Cerberus' attention. He pulled his head down and stared at me. His fur stood
out in wild directions.
Chapter 4 16

"Puppy. Yeah, um...nevermind. Look, I'll call you when I have the box. In the meantime, if you talk with
Rick, tell him he owes me big."
Luna gave me the man's cell number and then hung up. Cerberus started to wag his thick tail at the throngs of
people milling the streets as we entered the city. By the time I pulled into the Denny's parking lot, the dog was
halfway out of the Jeep. I stopped and the dog jumped out and pissed on the side of a Thunderbird parked next
to me. It looked like a damn good idea.
I got the dog back into the Jeep then called Mr. Waciejowski. When he answered, his voice sounded like it
had been abused from years of tobacco use. "This is Pete."
"Mr. Waciejowski, my name's Dingo. My friend Luna called and told you I was coming. I'm in the parking
lot. Yellow Jeep." I paused. "And a big dog. Can't miss me."
A few seconds later, an older man with that classy touch of grey in his hair stepped out of the restaurant,
scanned the lot, saw me, then waved. He was about my height, but had a slight stoop in his posture that made
him seem smaller. He shirt was all palm trees and sail boats. "You're Dingo?"
"That's me. Sorry about all of this but my brother can be a bit absent minded."
"Got a couple myself. They're nothing but trouble," he said. "I'm parked over here."
I turned to Cerberus and said, "Stay." The dog ignored me and turned its attention to sniffing the steering
wheel. I was going to have to get a leash before this thing started to get hungry and eat one of the passersby.
Eh, as long as he didn't eat me, I guess.
As we walked to Pete's car, I saw a man skirt us about five cars away, slowly walking parallel to us. "You got
a saddle for that thing?" Pete asked.
"The dog? No." I took a glance back at the Jeep. "Just the ferret."
"How's that?"
I could see Rick's old Z about thirty feet away. I stopped, bent down and pretended to tie my shoe. Underneath
the cars I could see through to the Z but couldn't tell if anyone was standing near it or not.
"So what do you do, Dingo?"
I stood up and gave a quick scan of the parking lot. The man who had been skirting us was gone. "I solve
problems for people."
Pete's face crinkled. "You mean like tech support or something? I got a cousin who used to work for a small
software company. Did theirs until they shipped his job off to India."
"That's too bad."
"Yeah, well he was a bum anyway."
We reached the Z and Pete started fumbling for the keys. It was strange seeing this familiar car belonging to
someone else. Kind of like watching a stranger fondle your ex-wife in that secretive and intimate way that
only lovers do. He popped the hatchback, pulled back a black cloth to reveal the box.
Chapter 4 17

It was made of walnut, roughly the size of a bread loaf, and polished to a smooth shine. Oak leaves and acorns
were carved along its edges while five names were etched onto the top in rich, flowing script:
Rick Asher, Sr.
Adie Asher
Rick Asher, Jr.
Daniel Asher
Michael Asher
"It's beautiful," Pete said.
I've never been one for overt emotion, especially in front of strangers while standing in a Denny's parking lot
in Vegas, but sometimes these things hit you when you least expect it. I wanted to say something, take the box
and leave, but I couldn't move. I was lost in those names, the way the script flowed along the lines of the
carved leaves, the way the wood grain usually hid the crease of the hinges where the box ope--
"Did you open this?"
Pete gave me another crinkled look. "Well...hey look, friend. When that Luna girl called and said that your
brother left something in the car, I thought it was drugs or something. I don't want to get mixed up in any of
that. So yeah, I had to see if--"
I grabbed his shirt and pulled him close. I could smell the cheap coffee and cheaper cigarettes on his breath.
"She told you not to open it! How long ago?"
"Hey man, back off." He struggled to get away but I held him fast.
"How long ago, Pete?"
"Get your hands off me!"
Whenever a person feels threatened, it's a natural reaction to turn and run or stand and fight. Fight or flight
response. The way this joker was pulling at me, I could tell he was more of a flight kind of guy. It was
disappointing. "I'm going to ask you one more time. How long ago?"
"I don't know. Two, three hours ago." I let go of him. He straightened his tiki shirt over his round belly. "You
know, technically that box belongs to me," he said. "I don't have to let you have it."
I reached in, snapped the lid completely shut, then wrapped the box in the cloth and pulled it out. "Pete, get in
your new car and go home. You have no idea what you've done."
"What I've done? I sat around here for five hours waiting to give you that thing. I think you should..."
Pete's voice trailed off. I stopped and looked at him. He was pale and slowly creeping around the side of his
car. I turned to see what he was looking at. Cerberus was there, standing like a small horse, a deep growl
rumbling between his bared fangs.
"Oh, puke." But then I noticed that the dog wasn't growling at me. Or Pete. I turned to see what it was that had
Chapter 4 18

the dog on edge.
That's when I saw the crowbar coming at me.
Chapter 4 19

Chapter 5
: Sharp Dressed Man
I ducked, Cerberus pounced, and Mr. Waciejowski screamed like a dying ferret--a soothing and pleasant
sound under most other circumstances, but now only distracting.
I felt the rush of air against my face as the crowbar skimmed my head. The man wielding it was in a black
three-piece suit and built like a Texas linebacker. His mass seemed to bend space-time in the parking lot as he
barreled down on me. All I could see was nearly seven feet of Armani silk.
I stood upright and brought my knee into his groin and gave him a swift elbow in the small of his back and a
fist to the base of his skull. Now, I wasn't the biggest guy in the world, but I certainly wasn't the smallest
either. And I was also acutely aware of how much damage I could do to another human being. But this
hulking mass in Italian finery didn't even seem phased. The blows I sent this guy should have dropped him
like a bag of wet cement, but he just turned and hamstringed me with that damn crowbar.
I fell so hard that one of my teeth chipped. The box flew out of my grip and landed just a few feet away. Out
of the corner of my eye I could see Pete on the ground, fumbling with his cell phone while Cerberus mauled
another suit trying to sneak up behind me. If the fall hadn't knocked the wind out of me, seeing Cerberus tear
into this guy certainly would have.
The dog was all fangs and fur, making sounds like construction machinery. Thick and heavy. The guy was
screaming all kinds of nonsense as he kept his shredded arms in front of his face and neck. Blood and fabric
flew about as the animal tossed its head in violent arcs.
I reached for the box but the linebacker gave me a quick swipe over the head with his crowbar, then bent and
grabbed it himself. I could feel a gash on my forehead as blood began to trickle down the side of my face and
along my neck. I tried to stand, but I was too woozy and I still couldn't breathe.
The linebacker brought the crowbar down on Cerberus' head with all of his substantial weight behind it. It
landed with a deep thud, but the dog's head didn't move from the blow. Cerberus just stopped and slowly
turned to the man in the Armani while the other guy used the distraction to crawl out from underneath the dog.
I had a visceral dislike toward Mr. Armani and would do just about anything to see him broken in half. But
watching Cerberus stare him down, his growl thundering at 80 hertz, almost made me feel sorry for the guy.
Almost.
The dog went at him, hitting him hard enough that he moved back three steps. Cerberus was latched onto the
arm that held the box while the guy tried to pound him with the crowbar. I wanted to get in there and help the
dog tear him to pieces, but one: there was no way in hell I was getting anywhere near that animal and two: I
felt like I was going to throw up.
Blood started getting into my left eye making it difficult for me to see, but I could tell that Mr. Armani was
faring better against the dog than his partner had. I was finally able to take a breath and get up on one elbow
when I heard tires squeal as a black Mercedes came to a screeching halt just a few feet away.
Mr. Armani dropped the crowbar, then took the box and tossed it to his bloody partner waiting inside the car
with the window down. The driver was pale and parts of him seemed to be missing. He caught the box then
screamed, "Let's go! Come on!"
Chapter 5 20

The linebacker tried to pry himself from Cerberus but the dog had too firm a grip on him. The guy was able to
weasel out of his jacket, leaving the Italian silk hanging from Cerberus' mouth like a weather worn Jolly
Roger. Instead of making a break to get in the car, Mr. Armani jumped onto the roof, the car's shocks
squeaking and shifting with his weight. He started pounding on the car. "Drive! Drive!"
The car barked and started to speed away while Cerberus chased after it, snapping at its tires. After seeing that
dog fight, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if it actually stopped the damn thing. But when the car hit the
road, it was gone.
Pete ran over. "Oh my god, oh my god. Are you okay?" He knelt down next to me, oblivious of the pool of
my blood he was kneeling in. "I thought that dog of yours was going to kill me. And then I thought that guy
was going to kill you. And then I thought your dog was going to kill him. And then I thought...seriously, are
you okay?"
I sat up and pressed the palm of my hand against my leaking head. The surrounding area of concrete was
spotted with patches of blood. Sadly, a lot of it was mine. "Right now you should be thinking that I'm going to
kill you. You had to open the box, didn't you. You had to look inside."
Pete stood up and took a step back. "I don't want any trouble, Mr. Dingo. I just thought you might have drugs
or something in there and I didn't want to get mixed up with that kind of thing. That's all. I told you, I don't
want--"
"Shut up, Pete. There are no drugs." I forced myself to stand. I was dizzy and wanted more than anything to
puke all over this guy, but to my mild disappointment, the nausea had passed.
"But I don't understand what they would want with a--"
"You know, Pete. Right now I should be chaining my girlfriend to an old cast-iron furnace. But no. Instead,
I'm here, bleeding in a Denny's parking lot listening to you ask me questions about things that don't concern
you. This is a problem, Pete. And like I told you before, it's my job to solve problems. But how I solve this
particular problem is entirely up to you."
I wiped a fistful of blood out of my eye. "Now, I can solve this problem my way, orrrrr...you can get in you
car and just...go...home."
For a moment, he looked as if he wanted to continue asking questions, but then reason finally entered his tiny
brain and he hopped into my brother's old Z and sped off. As I watched him leave, Cerberus approached me at
a playful gallop. My fight or flight instinct was telling me to get the fuck out of Dodge before this thing could
get within eating distance of me, but I was too fazed to move. Fortunately the bleeding seemed to have
stopped, or at the very least slowed. But if Cerberus had a mind to eat human flesh, there wasn't going to be
much I could do to stop him.
But when he got to me, he just licked my bloody hand and then nudged me until I scratched him behind his
ears. I gently felt the area where the linebacker cracked him over the head with the crowbar but the dog didn't
flinch. And there was no swelling. Damn, this dog was wrong.
I walked over to where the Armani jacket lay in a tattered heap on the ground. I picked it up and fished
through the pockets, trying to ignore the disgusting feel of fine Italian silk covered with blood and dog saliva.
In the inside breast pocket I found his wallet. There were numerous credit cards, roughly six hundred dollars
in cash, and this joker's driver's license. Mr. Armani had a name.
And an address.
Chapter 5 21

I pocketed the cash and the license, wiped the wallet down with the filthy jacket, and then tossed it. Cerberus
pressed against my leg and licked my hand again. I gave him a pat on his furry head. "Come on, boy. Mr.
Julius Benoit was in such a rush that he left some of his things behind. So we're going to do the responsible,
neighborly thing..." I bent over and picked up the crowbar.
"...and return them."
Chapter 5 22

Chapter 6
: Room With a View
The nice thing about a city like Vegas was that when a man walked into a drug store covered in blood and
reeking of sweaty dog, it was business as usual. I stepped up to the counter and threw down the bandages,
handi-wipes, some sports drinks, and three pounds of beef jerky. Some girl with green hair and a pierced head
was behind me chatting on her cell phone about flying out to Amsterdam to catch a P show at the end of the
month. It took all I had not to turn around and strangle the life out of the waifish little nit.
"--means Power. Fargo18 said it's a reference to Damon's first girlfriend, but he's full of shit. Paula was his
sister, not his girlfriend. Hey, did you know their guitar player is related to a serial killer? That's so hot. I
hear--"
I leaned in close toward the cashier. "Can you ring this shit up a little faster?"
As I walked out to the Jeep with my booty in hand, Cerberus sat in the passenger seat and casually watched
me approach. In the few hours I've been with the dog, it never once threatened me. But its mindless stare
made my skin crawl. And I was going to have to put the top up soon. This dog was far from predictable and
the last thing I needed was him jumping out and running off with someone's kid. I would probably have to put
the chain back on him.
I threw the beef jerky at Cerberus' feet then spent the next fifteen minutes doctoring myself. I was going to
have a nasty scar over my left eye to match the one on my right temple.
After I put on a clean t-shirt I threw back the sports drink and waited a few minutes for the electrolytes to kick
in. While I waited, I punched Mr. Benoit's address into my GPS system. A little dot began to flash on the
screen.
I looked over to see that Cerberus had eaten all three pounds of jerky, including the plastic packaging. "Have I
mentioned that you are just wrong, dog?" He stared at me for a moment before giving a noncommittal lick of
his chops. "Just remember, I'm your friend. And we don't eat friends."
Still, he just stared.
"And why do you smell like creosote?"
I parked a few hundred feet from Mr. Benoit's house. It was a stylish ranch house in a cookie-cutter
subdivision sitting at the end of the road. The black Mercedes that Benoit rode away on was parked in the
driveway at an odd angle. Mounds of dirt and sod from some recent landscaping project were piled in front of
the large bay window, but not high enough that I couldn't see directly into the house.
Using a pair of binoculars that I fished out of the glove box, I watched Mr. Benoit as he talked on the phone,
pacing through his living room and throwing his hands around like he was swatting at flies. The driver was
sitting back on a couch, pale and barely clinging to consciousness. But there were three other men in the
house with them. All big, all well dressed, and all standing around the coffee table on which sat my box.
"I hope you're still hungry, dog." I buckled up, started the Jeep, and hammered the pedal. There was no need
to turn on my headlights. The street lamps gave me enough visibility to tell where I was going. Besides, I
didn't want the bastards to see me until I was sitting in their laps.
Chapter 6 23

It took about two and-a-half seconds to cover the distance to the house. The Jeep hit the mounds of dirt and
launched over the little cobblestone porch. When the grille hit the bay window, there was enough resistance to
throw me against my seatbelt. Cerberus bounced and hit the dash, but didn't seem terribly bothered by it. Just.
Wrong.
Shit flew in every direction. Glass and splinters rained down on the marble tile, singing out like a thousand
wind chimes. An ottoman went airborne across the house and slammed into the far wall. Lamps, tables, sofas,
all erupted in a storm of broken house-bits.
I hit the brakes and skidded to a halt in the middle of the living room. I unbuckled my seat belt, reached back
and grabbed the crowbar, then hopped out.
Mr. Benoit was sprawled on the ground, his mouth hanging open as he tried to form words. The driver was
still on the couch, covered in shards of glass and a thousand new cuts. Cerberus must have messed him up
pretty badly because the guy didn't seem to be reacting to the Jeep that just crashed through the window.
The others were picking themselves up off the floor, all cut and bleeding from flying debris. One was only a
few feet away when he started to reach into his jacket.
"What the fu--," was as far as he got before I opened his face with the crowbar. The other two sprang forward.
The first to reach me got a knee in his face. As he was falling away, I brought the crowbar up and fish-hooked
the second guy, ripping his cheek open and sending small streaks of his blood across the cream colored walls.
That just left Benoit.
Cerberus was already out of the car and on top of him. The dog had the man's throat in his massive jaws.
Benoit wasn't moving. His eyes were the size of baseballs as the dog slowly squeezed.
"...call him off...can't...breathe...," he said, like I gave a rat's ass.
I saw the box on the floor next to the driver who was now completely unconscious. I picked it up and tossed it
in the back of the Jeep.
"Julius Benoit, how you doin' there? Is the dog playing too rough with you?"
"...fuck...yoauugghh--." Cerberus started his twelve-cylinder growl as he tightened his grip.
"You might want to be careful about what you say there, Mr. Benoit. I think he can understand you."
The guy who got fish-hooked was cursing and stumbling toward the gaping hole in the front of the house.
Blood pooled between his fingers and dripped to the ground with sickening plops. "...oooo...stupig moder
fuugghhrrr..." He got around the Jeep, but when he tried to step over the debris and out onto the porch, he lost
his balance and fell out of sight. He didn't get up.
Wood and glass crunched underfoot as I walked over to the only upright chair in the room. I swept away
chunks of window frame and took a seat. "Nice place you got here."
He didn't move. Cerberus had his meaty jaws wrapped around the man's neck so thoroughly that if he closed
his mouth, Mr. Benoit's head would come clean off. A small trace of blood started to line away from the man's
nose.
"...what...do you...want..."
Chapter 6 24

Down by my feet were the contents of a spilled humidor. I found a cigar cutter and a book of matches amidst
the rubble at my feet. "What everyone wants. Peace on Earth, goodwill toward men. But today I'll settle for
some answers." I took a big draw and blew a cloud of smoke into the air. "Hmm. Not bad. Now, Julius. How'd
you know about the box?"
He made some sort of gurgly noise mixed with some broken vowel sounds when my cell phone rang. I
checked the caller i.d. Julie.
"Hold on a second. Yeah?"
"Hey, baby. Watcha doin'?"
"Helping a friend redecorate. You?"
A steady buzz came through the receiver for a moment, then she said, "Thinking of you."
"Oh. That's...sweet." Benoit's eyes were getting even larger now and Cerberus' growl was getting deeper.
"Look, I'd love to play but I'm in the middle of something at the moment."
"You still looking for your box?"
"Already found it. I should be on my way home any minute now."
"Okay, baby. I'll be waiting."
"Don't have too much fun while I'm gone." I put the phone back in my pocket. The man with the open and
bleeding face started groaning as he faded back into consciousness. I stood up and walked over to Benoit.
"Look, Julius. I've got places I'd rather be. So answer my questions so I can get out of here. How'd you know
about the box?"
Benoit breathed heavily through his nose for a moment then said, "Darby."
I figured as much. "How do you know her. Ease up a bit, Cerberus." The dog relaxed his grip and Benoit
sucked in a deep draught of air. I swore the dog actually did understand what we were saying.
He coughed. "Carson."
"You do some work for him?"
Benoit made a croaking noise that sounded vaguely like a "yes."
I took another draw from the cigar. "When did Darby tell you about the box?"
"...this afternoon...five, six hours ago." Right about the time short-bus from Buffalo opened it. Damn, Darby
worked fast.
"Well, make sure to tell Darby that I'm viewing this little visitation from you no-necks as a violation of her
restraining order. Next time I'll have her ass hauled off to jail."
"You...better...better kill me..."
I knelt down next to Cerberus, staring into Benoit's eyes as I scratched the dog behind his ears. "Julius, I may
Chapter 6 25

be a lot of things, but a murderer isn't one of them." I stood up. "Don't know if I can say the same about the
dog, though."
I tossed the cigar onto the chair, whistled, and then the animal and I got into the Jeep. As I backed out of
Benoit's living room, I could see him rubbing his throat as the chair caught fire.
Cerberus shoved his head in the back seat and started sniffing at the box.
"Hey, get away from that. Hey!" I pulled at his head but it wouldn't budge. When I pulled a little harder, the
dog growled and sneered at me. "Whoa, okay. Smell all you want. Jeesh."
The dog went back to running his nose over the box, sucking in air through his giant nostrils. But after a few
seconds, Cerberus gave a snort and then faced the front of the Jeep.
When I got back out onto the road, I dialed Rick. It took three tries before he finally answered.
"What..uuuhh...the fibbik...say him where?"
"Rick, you babbling idiot, wake up!"
"I'm up I'm up. What? Dingo?" Rick sounded like he had been gargling rocks. "What's up?"
"You owe me a new Jeep."
I heard him take a swig of something then light a cigarette. Rick gave out a belch and said, "So why do I owe
you a new Jeep? There something wrong with yours?" I could hear a woman's voice mumbling in the
background.
"Yeah, I just remodeled a home with it." Rick started laughing. Cerberus nudged over from the passenger seat
and sniffed the phone against my ear. His breath smelled of blood and rotten eggs. I gently pushed the dog
back, half expecting to lose my arm in the process, but the dog acquiesced.
"What the hell did you do that for?"
"The guy you sold the Z to decided to have a peek."
Rick's laughing stopped. It was a few seconds before he spoke. "What happened?"
"What do you think? Darby sent a local goon squad after it."
"Damn, she could sense it all the way out there?"
I pulled onto the Strip and came to a stop, letting the throngs of people shuffle from one temple of flashing
lights to the next. "It doesn't matter where it's at. If the box is open, she can sense it."
"How'd she get muscle out there so fast?"
"Carson."
"You're shitting me?"
"Nope. Guess they're a thing now."
Chapter 6 26

Rick laughed again, but it was more from nerves than humor. "Well, did you get it back?"
"Yeah, lucky for you." I was only able to make it two more blocks before I had to stop for another herd of
people. "All right, bro," I said. "I'm on my way back home. Break a leg."
"Yeah, thanks. And Dingo. I really am sorry, man."
"It's cool. Just don't expect a Christmas card this year."
I put the phone in my pocket and waited for the lines of people crossing the road to clear. I was tired, torn, and
dying to take a hot shower. I entertained the notion of grabbing a hotel, but I didn't want to spend any more
time in this city than I had to.
I gave Cerberus a scratch on his head but then stopped when I saw the people in front of me running away in a
panic. It didn't make any sense until something hit the Jeep like two tons of angry gorilla.
My head hit the side window, spiderwebbing the glass as the back end of the Jeep swung around in a violent
arc. I could hear people screaming, their voices wavering from the Doppler Effect created by my spinning
Jeep. The front left tire hit the curb and then the Jeep lurched up onto two wheels, balancing for what seemed
minutes. Cerberus slid off of the passenger seat and landed on the other side of my head. Gravity disappeared.
The flashing lights of the strip danced in awkward ways, but then stopped when the Jeep finally fell on its side
in a loud, anguishing screech of metal and concrete.
Outside I could hear more people talking, a few of them shouting. I crawled out of the top of the Jeep and
slowly pulled my way onto the sidewalk. Even though the sun had set hours earlier, the pavement was still hot
to the touch. But the freshly opened wound over my left eye was distracting me from the pain of burning
asphalt. A few people moved closer, chattering away and pointing, but no one moved to help me. They all
gawked at me for a moment, some even taking quick little snapshots before continuing on toward the pretty,
pretty lights. Lights which for me were quickly fading.
Yep. Business as usual.
Chapter 6 27

Chapter 7
: A Hallmark Moment
The clouds looked made of spider silk. Thin, white, wisps tendrilled out from underneath the bulbous
extrusions in their slow parade across the sky. And there were stars, shimmering by the thousands. The sun
was bright, the sky the bluest I'd ever seen, but there were stars.
The trees in front of me leaned back and forth in the wind, their leaves singing an autumnal hymn that sent the
clouds to dancing. The bushes and tall grass waved like the waters of a great green ocean, breaking against the
clearing in which I sat. I caught a scent of jasmine. And something else.
I wasn't alone.
There was movement in the grass. Something swam toward me through the reeds and out from under the
shadowy canopy of the forest. There were glimpses of color, all unnatural and foreign in this paradise.
The wind picked up, blowing my hair into my eyes. I couldn't see. I brushed it aside and tried to focus on the
movement that crept toward me. Again, my hair fell into my eyes. But it was odd. My hair wasn't long enough
to get into my eyes. Still, there it was, annoying and obtrusive. I brushed it away again.
The thing was closer. More wind. More hair. I had to clear my vision, see what was coming, but as I moved to
brush my hair away again, my hand froze, unable to move. I struggled against whatever invisible force held
my hand fast, but it was no use. It wouldn't move. I couldn't see and the thing in the grass moved closer. I
could feel it near, watching me, stalking me.
"Mr. Asher."
It called to me. The beast in the rushes knew my name and called to me. I pulled at my invisible bonds but
they would not break. I screamed, thrashing to get away from the thing that held me.
"Mr. Asher!"
The wind disappeared, taking with it the sound of rustling leaves and flowing reeds. Now I could hear only
the high hum of fluorescent lights. And people breathing heavily.
"Mr. Asher, you have to settle down."
I tried to sit up, but a hand pushed me back down. I couldn't see. There was light but I couldn't see. Something
was over my face.
"Get this off me!" My voice came out thick and heavy.
"Mr. Asher, please. Only two more stitches left."
Stitches? Then I remembered.
"Let me up. Let me UP!"
I could feel three sets of hands on me, all pushing me down. "Sedate him."
Chapter 7 28

"Wait, stop! Just wait." I eased back onto the bed and relaxed. I couldn't afford to be knocked out again. "No
more. Just finish this so I can get the hell out of here."
The nurses and orderlies kept their hands on me while the person pulling at the hole over my left eye finished
his work. I couldn't have been out that long if they were just now finishing stitching my head.
I did a quick assessment of the rest of my body, first my toes and then slowly worked my way up. As I tensed
the areas where my captors held me, they squeezed and leaned into me, obviously afraid I'd try to get up
again. But when the tension passed, they relaxed their grip. Everything seemed to be in working order. A little
sore and stiff, but nothing felt broken or torn beyond what a day or two of bed rest couldn't fix.
When the gauze over my face was lifted, I squinted at the sharp light overhead. "All done."
I sat up and turned to the man who had been sewing my face together with all the grace of an epileptic
working a jackhammer. He looked 12. "Good. Now where's my dog?"
"Mr. Asher, we're going to be taking you back to a room. So--"
I kicked my legs over the side of the bed and brushed him aside. The nurses all rushed to restrain me but the
kid doctor waved them off. "No. If he wants to go so badly, let him."
I sneered at him. "Smart kid." The boy in man's clothing just smiled at me. I stood up, took a step and felt the
world turn upside down. It seemed as if all the blood in my head had drained away to pool at my feet. I looked
at the kid and said, "You smart-ass son of a..." then collapsed to the ground.
My head started to pound as blood flowed upward. I took a deep breath, sat against the wall and said, "...ow."
"Would you like us to take you to your room now?"
If I wasn't a quart low of A Pos, I'd bounce this brat off the walls. "No, I think I'll stay here and bleed a little
more." I turned to the nurse on my right. "I can see up your skirt, you know." She blushed and moved to
unfold a wheelchair. "How soon can I get out of here?"
"Dr. Epstein will be able to answer your questions."
I didn't have the energy to press the kid, so I let the nurses ease me into the wheelchair and take me to my
room where Dr. Epstein met me shortly after.
"Mr. Asher, how do you feel?"
"Like I've been skull fucked with a Volkswagen. But I've been worse." The local anesthetic was starting to
wear off and I could feel the length of the wound in my head.
"Yes, I know."
"What?" I looked up and noticed that Dr. Epstein had a file a half inch thick resting on his clipboard.
"Cedar Sinai faxed these over. Makes for some interesting reading."
"Yeah, well it made for some interesting living."
The doctor chuckled. "I imagine. How's your vision?"
Chapter 7 29

Great. It was time for the game show portion of my hospitalization. Every time I've had blunt head trauma, the
docs all asked the same questions: How's your vision? What's your name? Who's the President of the United
States? Answering the questions right got me a prescription to some heavy-duty pain-killers. Not a bad parting
gift for the most part. However, answering the questions wrong usually meant being awarded with a cocktail
of Demerol and myriad anti-seizure medications to be followed by the grandest prize of them all: a
diamond-tipped drill-bit to the side of the head.
Dr. Epstein asked his questions and I gave him my answers. I've been banged on the head enough times to
know whether or not it was serious and this little boo boo may have hurt like hell, but it was all superficial.
My brain was still intact.
Twelve stitches and a headache. Not too high a price to pay for getting rolled in a car.
When he was done, the doctor scribbled on his notepad and said, "I'll have a nurse come get you and take you
down for some routine tests. In the meantime, the police have some questions for you."
Wonderful. The lightening round. I wondered what prize THIS was going to get me.
Two uniformed officers came into the room and stood on either side of my bed. One pulled out a tiny notepad
while the other rested her hand on her hip. The one with the notepad started asking questions: Did you see the
kind of car that hit you? Do you remember seeing anyone follow you? Were you drinking?
No. No. No. It became a mantra. After about the eighth question, I'd had enough. "Look. I was stopped when
something hit me. I didn't see who or what it was. Now can you tell me, do you know what happened to my
dog?"
The female officer said, "It was sent to the pound. Miracle the thing wasn't killed."
There was a polite knock at the door. A young blonde in a candy striper outfit poked her head inside and said,
"I'm sorry, I'm looking for Mr. Asher."
One of the cops gave the little girl a smile and nodded in my direction. The candy striper walked over to me
and handed me an envelope. She stood next to me, shuffling from foot to foot as the cops and I all watched
her. "There's a little speech," she said, "but I can skip it." We all smiled and she left the room.
One cop said, "Mr. Asher, we believe this might not have been an accident. Do you know anyone who might
have been angry with you? Someone who might want to hurt you?"
"Grab a phone book." I knew exactly who did it and the second I got out of that damn hospital I was going to
pay Mr. Benoit another visit. "Officer, I have a lot of people angry with me. But none of them live in Vegas."
My head began to throb. "What happened to my Jeep?" I asked as I started opening the envelope.
"Impounded."
"Where? I need to get...I need to get some clothes out of there." It was believable since my t-shirt was
practically crusted over with dried blood.
The female officer smiled and said, "Don't worry. The hospital will take care of--"
"No!" A spike of pain shot through my temples. "Look, I don't like having my belongings just lying around."
"Your stuff will be fine, Mr. Asher."
Chapter 7 30

"No, it won't," I mumbled.
"Is there something you're not telling us, sir?"
I wanted to blurt out 'Yes, you stupid cow!' but I knew that I would never get out of Vegas if I did. So I tried
to breathe through my nose, out of my mouth, and rid myself of this growing headache. "No. It's just that I
had some valuables in the Jeep and I don't want them stolen."
"Like I said, your stuff is fine. Your wife came in and picked up your things about an hour ago."
The skin on the back of my skull went numb. "What did you say?"
"Your wife. You are married to a..." she flipped through her notepad. "...Darby Asher, yes?"
The numbness spread until the only thing I could feel was a tiny pinprick of pain over my left eye. Both of the
cops stared at me, stone faced and unblinking. Then I noticed the get well card in my hands.
On the front of the card was a black and white photo of a young boy handing a colored rose to a young girl.
But on the inside of the card there was no type, no charming or goofy pictures, no saccharin message
lamenting the wonders of my existence. There was nothing except four tiny words scrawled across the inside
in black ink:
'Get well soon, motherfucker.'
Chapter 7 31

CHAPTER 8
: Peas In A Pod
As Julie kept asking question after question, all I could think of was how desperately I needed a normal,
healthy relationship. As far as most of my relationships went, mine with Julie was great. But it was great in all
the wrong places. There really wasn't much more to it than sex. Even though it was a mind-numbing,
bathe-in-gasoline-to-slough-the-shame-from-my-soul kind of sex, it didn't matter. At the end of the day we
were just objects to each other. We couldn't talk about anything else. We'd tried before, but it had usually led
to an afternoon of power-fucking in every changing room on Rodeo Drive. It was a fun ride, but nothing
more. And like every great ride, Julie was beautiful, fast, and could turn on a dime in the blink of an eye.
"I don't understand, Dingo." I couldn't tell if it was the 12 stitches over my eye giving me the headache or
Julie's prattling. I bit off a stretch of red tape and put it over the empty socket where my taillight should have
been while I balanced the phone between my shoulder and swollen cheek.
"Julie, I told you. Darby took the box."
"I get that, but--."
"The box my dad hand-carved just before he died." I could feel the two edges of skin stitched together pull at
each other every time my jaw moved.
"Yes, yes, and the box protects your family's dirty little secret or your mother's pride and joy or whatever the
hell it is you're calling it this week."
"Hey, I told you not to go digging--. "
"I don't care what it is, Dingo! I couldn't give a shit about that damn box or what's inside. The only thing I
want to know is what the fuck your ex-wife was doing there."
So there it was. And I thought she was jealous just because somebody else got to beat the living crap out of
me for a change. "Julie, I didn't even know she was in town until after I was in the hospital."
"Bullshit. Let me ask you, Dingo. Did your brother really leave that box in the trunk or was this just an excuse
to see her again?"
"Oh, for the love of..." I checked under the rear tire well to make sure the tire wouldn't scrape against the
dented frame. Fortunately, the damage was mostly cosmetic. Still, I was going to have Benoit's balls on a stick
for this.
"Answer the question, Dingo. Was this just a trick?"
"She shot me in the face, Julie! Do you understand that? She pointed a pistol directly at my head and pulled
the trigger. What, in all that is unholy on this planet, makes you think I would ever want to see that psychotic
bitch again after that?"
"I thought you let her shoot you?"
"No!" Everything was part of some twisted sex game with Julie. The one time I had opened up to her about
my ex-wife, she saw it as just another tawdry tale of my sex life.
CHAPTER 8 32

"Then why are you going after her if you don't want to see her?"
I fumbled through my pockets and found my prescription bottle. I knew that if I screamed, my head would
break and my brain would leak through the gaping hole in the side of my head, granting me the sweet, sweet
release of death.
I took in the deepest breath I could muster. "To go after THE FUCKING BOX!"
Oh. So that's what an aneurism feels like.
"You're an asshole. And I'm leaving." I tried to speak but my brain was slowly imploding. "Oh, and Dingo.
I'm taking the ferret with me."
She might have said more, but I couldn't hear her. I was too busy trying not to pass out from the immense pain
ricocheting around inside my skull. By the time I pulled myself up from the concrete skillet that was the
parking lot, she had hung up.
It was the first time a woman ever dumped me without making me bleed first. A rather sad milestone when I
thought about it.
Normal and healthy. Might as well ask to win the lottery.
After a quick stop at a grocery store, I headed to the pound. Fortunately, my headache had dissolved into a
mild migraine by the time I got there. But the second I walked in, it escalated to a constant hammering. The
smell of urine and fear crept through the overbearing stench of a pine-scented antiseptic that was making my
eyes water. A woman with a fake henna tattoo around her neck and no make-up sat behind a faded green
counter. I couldn't imagine how anyone could smile in a place like this.
"Hello! May I help you?" she asked. She gave my broken face a quick scan, but kept smiling.
"Yeah, my dog was brought here last night. Name's Cerberus."
"Oh, thank god!" Her smile disappeared.
"Something wrong?"
She just scowled at me. "Follow me. This way."
I followed her to a back room where I could hear the deep rumble of an air-conditioning unit. Once inside, I
saw cages stacked and arranged in neat rows. The room smelled like bleach.
In the cages there were cats, dogs, and a few of those god-awful ferrets. All of them were cowering in a
corner, shivering or burying their heads underneath their paws. A few of the dogs were mewling weak and
pathetic howls so hoarse that they obviously must have been at it all night. I thought it must be a natural
reaction to being in this place and seeing the humans that kept them here, but as we walked past their cages, I
noticed that they weren't shying away from us. They were recoiling from a larger cage in the center of the
room. Cerberus.
The dog was stuffed inside a wire cage that allowed him to stand up only if he kept his head down. A small
bowl of food sat untouched at his feet. His fur stuck out away from his head in wild strands through the wire
bars of the cage and his fangs were bared through a thick, leather and steel-buckled muzzle that stretched
around his mouth. The noise that I thought was the air-conditioning unit was actually coming from the dog.
CHAPTER 8 33

His growl was shaking the whole room. And though the room was at least thirty degrees cooler than it was
outside, it was by no means cold. Yet I could still see subtle traces of Cerberus' breath.
The girl turned to me and said, "Your dog killed one of the other dogs last night."
"Really? Oh, sorry. Look, he was in a car accident with me and he probably just attacked because--"
"He didn't attack the dog. He just scared it to death. I mean look at them all!" I scanned the room. She was
right. Every animal in there was as far from Cerberus as their cage would let them be. Blood dripped from one
of the ferrets' mouths as it tried to chew through the metal bars of its cage.
"I think you're imagining things, Miss." Even I didn't believe it when I said it.
She crossed her arms and said, "Look mister, I don't know what kind of dog that is, but it isn't healthy."
"Not healthy? What, he's got worms or something?"
"No, that's not what I mean. I mean he's just...just..."
"Oh. Wrong?"
She turned to me and her face relaxed a little. "Yeah. Wrong. That's what he is. Wrong. I think you should put
him down."
I stepped forward and let Cerberus sniff my hand through the bars. He pressed his nose against me and tried to
lick my hand through the muzzle. "I should put him down because he scares you?"
"I know dogs, mister, and this one's dangerous. You can see it in his eyes."
I hit the latch and opened the door. Cerberus unfolded himself out of the cage and stretched, his giant claws
scraping across the cool linoleum. "Oh, you're right. He is dangerous. You'll get no argument from me about
that." I unbuckled the muzzle.
"What are you doing? You can't do that!" She started to back toward the hallway. "He has to be muz--"
I tossed it to her. "Don't worry. You're safe."
"Mister, that dog is dangerous. He's...wrong. You said it yourself."
Cerberus licked my hand and pushed his massive head against me. I scratched him behind the ears. "There are
a lot of wrong creatures in the world, Miss. But just because we're wrong, doesn't mean we're bad."
As the dog and I left the room, the animals all moved about their cages, putting as much distance between
them and Cerberus as possible. When we got out to the lobby I turned to the girl and asked, "How much do I
owe you?"
"Nothing. Please, just go." She stood behind the counter, never once taking her eyes away from Cerberus.
"Come on, dog." When we stepped out of the building, the heat hit us like a blackjack. I could feel the
moisture in my mouth evaporate when I opened it. I was almost tempted to spend a few more minutes inside,
enjoying the cooler air, but it would probably be more comfortable to just stay out in the searing sun.
CHAPTER 8 34

Cerberus didn't seem affected at all as he ran to the Jeep and hopped up onto the hood, vaulted over the
windshield and into the passenger seat. I got in and grabbed a plastic grocery bag from the back. Inside was a
bottle of water and a ten pound ham.
I set the ham down on a paper bag on the floor of the Jeep then tried to unwrap it, but Cerberus kept pushing
me out of the way with his gargantuan head. "Fine, fine. Eat the plastic, I don't care."
I took a swig of water then headed out onto the road. I knew that Darby most likely wasn't still in town, but if
she was, she'd be with Benoit. Or at the very least, that bastard would know where she was. Either way, his
house was still standing. And that was just simply unacceptable.
I grabbed my phone and pulled up Julie's number. I didn't want to call her and I certainly didn't feel guilty
enough to do so, but my finger still hovered over the "Send" button.
Deep down, I knew I should just let it go. Just let Julie and her ferret slouch off to Bethlehem and be done
with it. Normal and healthy, that's what I was looking for now. A normal and healthy relationship.
I looked down and saw that Cerberus had devoured nearly all of the ham. Including the hambone. There were
tiny bits of plastic sticking out of his fur. "Yep. There's no doubt about it, dog." I pressed the button. "You and
I are definitely wrong."
CHAPTER 8 35

Chapter 9
: A Man Named Terry Hut
The neighborhood was quiet and unmoving as if the heat had sterilized and killed every living thing on the
surface of the planet. I parked the Jeep underneath the only tree that provided a semblance of shade on the
street. Even though it was at least 115 degrees, I put the top up to keep Cerberus inside the vehicle. The girl at
the pound was right; he was dangerous. If anything smaller than a fullback walked by, he'd have no problem
snatching them off the sidewalk and using them as a chew toy.
The windows were cracked a couple of inches but it still felt like an oven inside. Cerberus just stared at me as
I peeled myself off of the seat, his mouth open just enough for me to glimpse the arsenal of teeth inside.
If he wasn't occupied, he'd probably just chew his way out, so I tossed him an oversized Mag-lite and said,
"Stay." He went to it like a bone.
Even though I was in the hospital for less than twenty-four hours--much to the annoyance of that doctor who
insisted that I needed a drilling expedition inside my brainpan--Benoit already had time to wrap his house in a
plastic tarp. Wide arcing trenches from my tires scarred his front yard and bits of house littered the empty
driveway.
I scanned the area but didn't see anyone. It made sense. Anyone crazy enough to be outside in this heat
probably had bigger problems than worrying about some guy sneaking around their neighbor's house. As I
pulled the tarp back to slide inside I became acutely aware of how unarmed I was. Benoit and his posse no
doubt had a host of guns at their disposal. And it didn't help that I was never one for guns since every time I
was in the presence of a one I always ended up getting shot. .22s, 12-guages, Berettas, Glocks, hell even
piss-ant BB guns (a childhood game resulted in me spending the better part of an afternoon prying a damn
copper ball out of my chin).
Inside, the living room looked the same as it did the night I got my Martha Stewart on. Black tire marks
painted the floor underneath a carpet of broken wood and glass. Tiny shards littered the blood-stained couch.
The chair I had sat in that night was a blackened husk and a dark smear pooled across the ceiling directly
above it.
I saw Benoit's answering machine lying on the ground next to the remains of an antique end table, but any
hope of getting information from it disappeared as soon as I picked it up and its innards spilled to the floor.
Then I heard it.
Something was...chirping? No, that wasn't it. A soft sound was coming from down the hallway, the only
visible part of the house unaffected by my remodeling. At that moment, having a gun didn't sound like such a
bad idea. But, me being me, I was going to have to do with what was available. There was a hunk of a table
leg sticking out from the bottom of the couch. I grabbed it, pulled it out, and started to move slowly and
deliberately toward the hallway, but the flotsam underneath my feet crunched and crackled.
Every step I took was a Fourth of July fireworks display and I couldn't help but cringe as I made my way
across the room. I was thankful that the chirping at the end of the hall started and stopped, oblivious to the
racket I was making. Fortunately the hallway itself was free of debris.
The noise was a little louder as I came to an open door at the end of the hallway. When I peeked inside, I did a
double take. There, on a perfectly made king-sized bed, was a baby. The boy, if its blue jumper was a proper
indication, was cooing and gurgling at some imaginary thing hovering above his head.
Chapter 9 36

There was no one else in the room.
An open suitcase overflowing with jeans and t-shirts was lying next to the bed. I pulled back, shot a glance
down the hallway behind me but saw no one. Back inside the room the baby squealed a sound akin to a laugh
and drooled over its cherubic face.
It took a few seconds for me to process the idea of Benoit having a baby. The only explanation I could think
of was that one of the locals must have offered it to him as a sacrifice. Even though there were few things in
the world I wanted to do more at that moment than feel Benoit's windpipe crack in my hands, there was no
way I was going to start anything with a kid in the room. Maybe Benoit wouldn't be too eager to have a
throwdown either. But something told me that if he really wanted to start shit here and now, I was going to be
the only one impeded by the baby's safety.
A shadow moved in an adjacent room off the far side of the bedroom. Most likely a bathroom. There was a
clank of plastic and a groan of stiff hinges from a medicine chest closing. If I could get into the bathroom, I
could pummel that son-of-a-bitch and not have to worry about the kid getting hurt. Guess it was someone's
unlucky day.
I stepped inside and moved around to the side of the bed. The baby giggled and kicked its feet in the air, his
round face split with a wide, toothless grin.
"What's so funny, babydoll?" A woman stepped out of the bathroom with a handful of toiletries. She was short
with dark hair, a little wide in the hips, and had a round, pretty face. When she saw me, she froze.
Now, I don't have kids. I'll probably never have kids. But despite the fact that I'd never spawned myself, I was
fully aware of the preternatural instinct that came to the surface whenever a person's child was threatened.
And when a wiry stranger holding a broken table leg with a look of terminal anger on his swollen and stitched
face was standing over your infant child, the concept of self-preservation ceased to exist. Nothing else
mattered but the safety of that child. And I could tell by the look in this woman's eyes that the only thing on
her mind other than protecting that little bundle of joy mewling on the bed was how she was going to dispose
of my body.
I took two slow half-steps back from the bed and away from the baby. I lowered the hunk of solid oak I was
holding to my side and held the other hand out to show her it was empty. "I'm not going to hurt you."
"You're the one, aren't you?" She moved forward, putting herself between me and the baby. "You did this to
my house. My home." She dropped the bottles of shampoo and bars of soap at her feet then brandished the
toothbrush like a shiv. "My baby's home." When she said it, she growled in a way that would have given
Cerberus a run for his money.
I learned long ago that it doesn't matter how bad you are, how tough, how hard. You never...never fuck with a
mom. They will eat your lungs and wash them down with a pint of your spinal fluid if they think you're a
threat to their little tikes. There are no limits to what they'll do to protect their babies. Hell, this whole
goddamn mess was proof of that. And right now there was no doubt in my mind that this little woman wanted
nothing more than to give me an Oral-B lobotomy.
What was it about me that made people want to shove things inside my head?
The only thing missing was an old clock-tower moving ominously toward noon and a set of spurs on my feet.
"Get out." She held the toothbrush in a white-knuckled fist and took a step forward, still keeping herself
between me and the baby.
Chapter 9 37

...chink...
...chink...
"I'd like to. But I'm looking for the person who...who I thought lived here." If this woman ended up goring me
with that damn thing, I was going to rise from the dead and haunt my brother until he went insane and took his
own life. All this because he needed a mic stand. What the fuck.
"He isn't here. Now get out."
I slowly set the table leg on the ground. "I just want to find him."
The baby was getting a sense of the tension in the room and started to cry, kicking its chubby legs in agitation.
Mom gave a glance to the kid then turned back with a flourish of her toothbrush. "Get out of my house!"
Now I was starting to get agitated. "Look here, lady. I--"
She screamed and charged me. Normally, I'd just side-step her with a swift kick to the knee, throw a little
hand-grab and take the toothbrush away. But this wasn't seven feet of 'roid riddled henchmen. This was five
feet of pissed off mom. And being that I was a big fan of my lungs and spinal fluid, I did the only thing I
could think to do in that situation. I turned and ran like a little girl.
When I rounded the corner out of the bedroom and into the hallway, my feet slipped out from under me. My
hips hit the ground hard and a spike of pain shot up my spine and into the hole in the side of my head.
The violent patter of momma's footsteps stopped behind me. I looked up just in time to see her coming down
on me with the toothbrush in perfect Norman Bates fashion. I rolled out of the way and into the destroyed
living room across the glass and splinters, found my footing and jumped over the couch as she took another
swipe at me.
The bloody couch was between us, but I didn't think it would stop her. "Dammit, woman will you hold on a
second! I don't want to hurt you!"
"Well I want to hurt you. Look what you did to my house!"
She had me there. I suppose I could have claimed that it was an accident, that I was drunk and lost control of
the car, but that wouldn't explain the smackdown with the crowbar. "Yes, I did this to your house and I'm
sorry. I didn't realize you and a baby lived here. But Julius stole something of mine. Something very
valuable."
The baby was screaming in the other room. The mom stood stiff on the other side of the couch, the shattered
remains of the toothbrush sticking out of her tiny fist. She kept glancing back and forth between me and the
crying from the other room. She let out a deep sigh then relaxed. "Well, isn't that just like him." She threw the
broken toothbrush to the ground and crunched her way back to the bedroom.
I followed her at a safe distance, but she completely ignored me. When I stuck my head around the doorframe,
I saw her holding the baby, shushing and singing to it. I wanted to ask her questions but I didn't think it was
safe enough to actually step inside the room. If I was going to poke the bear, it was probably best if I did it
through the bars of its cage with a very long pole. "Um, I know you're busy, but if you could just tell me
where I can find Julius, I'll go ahead and get out of your way."
Mom set the now quiet baby on the bed again. She grabbed the suitcase, tossed it on the bed next to the baby,
Chapter 9 38

and started shoving even more things inside. "What did my husband steal this time? Money? Drugs?" She
snorted a laugh through her nose. "Your girlfriend?" She looked up at me as she twisted a t-shirt into a ball.
"A box."
She folded a yellow onesie and put it on top of the t-shirt. "Just a box, huh. Well, what'd you have in it?
Money, drugs? Your girlfriend?" She chuckled to herself.
"Brother, actually."
Her hands stopped moving. "How's that?"
"Where's Julius now?"
The mom pushed the clothes down into the suitcase and tried to zip it closed. "Don't know, don't care. Bastard
left me to take care of this mess." She grunted as she closed the zipper the last few inches then set the suitcase
on the floor next to the bed. "Fuck him. I'm tired of cleaning up after him." She turned to the baby. "You
didn't hear mommy say that bad word." The kid giggled and grabbed his feet in his pudgy hands.
"When's he coming back?"
The mom picked up the baby and rested it on her hip before bending to grab the suitcase. "Look mister, I'm
sorry that my husband took your box. I really am. But you've ruined his house, so why don't you call it even?"
"I can't do that."
She shrugged her shoulders and moved toward me with the suitcase in tow. "Wait for him then. I don't care."
"Will he back soon?"
She moved past me and dragged the suitcase down the hallway behind her. "Sure, as soon as he's finished
with his latest bimbo. But I'll be damned if I'll take him back again. I'm done with this shit." She stopped and
turned to me. "I suppose I should thank you since you were the straw that finally broke the camel's back."
I tested the bandage on my forehead. My sweat was causing it to slide off. "Glad I could help. So, he's off
with a new girl?"
"He doesn't even bother to hide them anymore. At least before he tried to be discreet. But now I guess he just
doesn't care. He brought this one to the house, my house, grabbed some of his clothes and just left. Well two
can play that game."
I ran up and helped her with the suitcase. She scowled at me instead of thanking me, but at least she didn't
bare her fangs and vamp my throat. "What did this new girl look like?"
"Like a whore." I didn't know it was possible for someone so short to actually look down at me. She shifted
the baby to her other hip. "I thought you said he didn't steal your girlfriend."
"Ex-wife, maybe. And he can have her for all I care. But was she about my height, tiny, long dark hair? Really
pretty?"
The mom started moving toward the front door which now hung at an odd angle in the wall. "Yes. Pretty. I
pop out one kid and I become some sort of freak."
Chapter 9 39

"That's not what I...look, did they say where they were going?"
I held the plastic tarp aside for her but she opened the front door and walked through. "I don't keep tabs on
him and his hussies."
There was a cab melting on the street out in front of the house. The woman stopped and pulled a little pullover
cap on the baby's head to keep it from roasting in the sun.
When we got to the cab, I tossed the suitcase into the trunk. The baby was blowing little bubbles in its spittle
as it played with a string on his mother's blouse. "He didn't say anything about where he was going or when
he'd be back?"
"All he said was that he and his bimbo were going to see some Terry Hut guy and they'd be gone for a couple
days. Which leaves me to call somebody to fix this mess."
"Terry Hut? You mean Terre Haute?"
She pulled her gaze away from her ruined house and said, "Yeah. That was it. You know the guy?"
I started feeling queasy and my head was pounding. "It's not a guy. It's a place."
"Yeah? Well if you find my rat bastard of a husband there, tell him that his wife and son left him. And he
better not come looking for us." She got in the cab and shouted an address to the cabbie.
I leaned in the open window. "I'll make sure to tell him. Thanks. And hey, I really am sorry about your
house."
She twisted her mouth into a sneer, covered her baby's eyes with one hand and flipped me off with the other.
"Fair enough." I smacked the cab on the hood then watched it speed down the road.
Back at the Jeep, Cerberus was inside, turning the Mag-Lite into something resembling a melted Tootsie Roll.
I pulled out my phone and started punching buttons.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Luna. It's Dingo. Things just got bad."
She made a burping sound then asked, "Oh, god, how bad?"
I started to wipe a stream of sweat from my forehead, but I stopped when my fingers felt the thin line of scar
tissue over my right eye.
"Indiana bad."
Chapter 9 40

Chapter 10
: This Is Your Life
My face looked like a Frankenstein creation underneath the jaundiced light of the motel bathroom. My left eye
was purple, swollen, and the stitches just above it stood out like the wiry hairs of an insect. What little white I
could see of my left eye was blood-shot with bright red veins spidering into my cornea. My other scars were
just as pronounced in the light, but they were only thin, pale marks in comparison.
The hum of the fluorescent lights was adding to my migraine and looking at my patchwork face wasn't
helping. It was strange how the marks on my face laid out a timeline of misfortunes, like the stilted and
scarred rings of a tree. Most people had photo albums. I had scar tissue.
The tiny scar on my chin was from when I was nine.
A friend of mine lived on a farm with his grandparents just outside of the town proper. They didn't have any
crops or cows, or sheep, or even chickens for that matter. All they had were just a couple of cats and about
two dozen horses, and not the fancy, lithe equestrian elites that you see prancing around during the summer
Olympics. No, these were draft horses. And they were the size of school buses.
During the summer we'd run around and play in the twelve acre pasture out behind the barn where all those
behemoths would spend their days stampeding over one another. One particularly hot day, we got a bunch of
our friends together, loaded up our BB guns, headed out to the pasture and decided to have ourselves a little
war.
Since the pasture was mostly a flat field of dirt and grass, we stayed near the center where there were three
willow trees, each about twenty yards apart. The trees were always a favorite place for the horses to find
shade, and on that particular day, they were all there trying to keep cool.
The boy who was officiating the event explained the rules thusly: "You can only pump the gun once. And no
crotch shots." That was it. Shooting in the face was okay, but the nads were off limits. Heaven forbid a 9 year
old should get pelted in the balls before they had a chance to drop.
We weren't very bright children.
The war went as smoothly as nine year olds could make it. We all ran from tree to tree, lazy horse to lazy
horse in search of cover as the stinging bites of tiny copper balls nipped at us. They hurt, but we all gave as
good as we got. That was, until I caught one in the face. The BB actually broke the skin on my chin and ran
underneath along my jaw-line, getting stuck about two inches from where it entered. The upshot being that the
pain dropped me to the ground just as the horse I was hiding behind tried to kick me. Lucky shot in more
ways than one. It saved my life.
I got the hooked scar across my nose the day I saw my first dead body. It had been the summer of my
sixteenth birthday and I had been detasseling corn with every other teenager in the state. We had been
marching through the cornfields with small spade shovels cutting down 'rogue' plants when I had tripped and
fallen over something, smacking myself in the face with the spade. When my crew had come over to help, we
all had noticed what it was I had tripped over. A smooth, white rock had been protruding out of the ground.
Someone had gone over and had tried to pry it out with a spade, but when he had kicked it up, we had seen
that it was actually a skull. It had turned out that I had inadvertently uncovered the shallow grave of the
Spilotro brothers. It had been such a monumental discovery that I had my picture in the local newspaper,
grinning from ear to ear and standing over the empty hole in the ground, my face covered in blood and dust.
Chapter 10 41

Dingo's Dangerous Quest to Reclaim a Stolen Family Heirloom

Dingo's Dangerous Quest to Reclaim a Stolen Family Heirloom

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