By Hook or By Crook Page 4

  That morning, Marv was looking a hair on the mournful side, lighting one Camel while the previous one still smoldered, so Bob tried to cheer him up by telling him about his adventure with the dog. Marv didn’t seem too interested, and Bob found himself saying “You had to be there” so much, he eventually shut up about it.

  Marv said, “Rumor is we’re getting the Super Bowl drop.”

  “No shit?”

  If true (an enormous if), this was huge. They worked on commission — one half of one percent of the drop. A Super Bowl drop? It would be like one half of one percent of Exxon.

  Nadia’s scar flashed in Bob’s brain, the redness of it, the thick, ropey texture. “They send extra guys to protect it, you think?”

  Marv rolled his eyes. “Why, cause people are just lining up to steal from coked-up Chechnyans.”

  “Chechens,” Bob said.

  “But they’re from Chechnya.”

  Bob shrugged. “I think it’s like how you don’t call people from Ireland Irelandians.”

  Marv scowled. “Whatever. It means all this hard work we’ve been doing? It’s paid off. Like how Toyota did it, making friends and influencing people.”

  Bob kept quiet. If they ended up being the drop for the Super Bowl, it was because someone figured out no Feds deemed them important enough to be watched. But in Marv’s fantasies, the crew (long since dispersed to straight jobs, jail, or, worse, Connecticut) could regain its glory days, even though those days had lasted about as long as a Swatch. It never occurred to Marv that one day they’d come take everything he had — the fence, the money and merch he kept in the safe in back, hell, the bar probably — just because they were sick of him hanging around, looking at them with needy expectation. It had gotten so every time he talked about the “people he knew,” the dreams he had, Bob had to resist the urge to reach for the 9mm they kept beneath the bar and blow his own brains out. Not really — but close sometimes. Man, Marv could wear you out.

  A guy stuck his head in the bar, late twenties but with white hair, a white goatee, a silver stud in his ear. He dressed like most kids these days — like shit: pre-ripped jeans, slovenly T-shirt under a faded hoodie under a wrinkled wool topcoat. He didn’t cross the threshold, just craned his head in, the cold day pouring in off the sidewalk behind him.

  “Help you?” Bob asked.

  The guy shook his head, kept staring at the gloomy bar like it was a crystal ball.

  “Mind shutting the door?” Marv didn’t look up. “Cold out there.”

  “You serve Zima?” The guy’s eyes flew around the bar, up and down, left to right.

  Marv looked up now. “Who the fuck would we serve it to — Moesha?”

  The guy raised an apologetic hand. “My bad.” He left, and the warmth returned with the closing of the door.

  Marv said, “You know that kid?”

  Bob shook his head. “Mighta seen him around but I can’t place him.”

  “He’s a fucking nutbag. Lives in the next parish, probably why you don’t know him. You’re old school that way, Bob — somebody didn’t go to parochial school with you, it’s like they don’t exist.”

  Bob couldn’t argue. When he’d been a kid, your parish was your country. Everything you needed and needed to know was contained within it. Now that the archdiocese had shuttered half the parishes to pay for the crimes of the kid-diddler priests, Bob couldn’t escape the fact that those days of parish dominion, long dwindling, were gone. He was a certain type of guy, of a certain half-generation, an almost generation, and while there were still plenty of them left, they were older, grayer, they had smokers’ coughs, they went in for checkups and never checked back out.

  “That kid?” Marv gave Bob a bump of his eyebrows. “They say he killed Richie Whelan back in the day.”

  “They say?”

  “They do.”

  “Well, then...”

  They sat in silence for a bit. Snow-dust blew past the window in the high-pitched breeze. The street signs and window panes rattled, and Bob thought how winter lost any meaning the day you last rode a sled. Any meaning but gray. He looked into the unlit sections of the barroom. The shadows became hospital beds, stooped old widowers shopping for sympathy cards, empty wheelchairs. The wind howled a little sharper.

  “This puppy, right?” Bob said. “He’s got paws the size of his head. Three are brown but one’s white with these little peach-colored spots over the white. And — ”

  “This thing cook?” Marv said. “Clean the house? I mean, it’s a fucking dog.”

  “Yeah, but it was — ” Bob dropped his hands. He didn’t know how to explain. “You know that feeling you get sometimes on a really great day? Like, like, the Pats dominate and you took the ‘over,’ or they cook your steak just right up the Blarney, or, or you just feel good? Like...” Bob found himself waving his hands again “... good?”

  Marv gave him a nod and a tight smile. Went back to his racing sheet.

  • • •

  On Sunday morning, Nadia brought the puppy to his car as he idled in front of her house. She handed it through the window and gave them both a little wave.

  He looked at the puppy sitting on his seat and fear washed over him. What does it eat? When does it eat? Housebreaking. How do you do that? How long does it take? He’d had days to consider these questions — why were they only occurring to him now?

  He hit the brakes and reversed the car a few feet. Nadia, one foot on her bottom step, turned back. He rolled down the passenger window, craned his body across the seat until he was peering up at her.

  “I don’t know what to do,” he said. “I don’t know anything.”

  • • •

  At a supermarket for pets, Nadia picked out several chew toys, told Bob he’d need them if he wanted to keep his couch. Shoes, she told him, keep your shoes hidden from now on, up on a high shelf. They bought vitamins — for a dog! — and a bag of puppy food she recommended, telling him the most important thing was to stick with that brand from now on. Change a dog’s diet, she warned, you’ll get piles of diarrhea on your floor.

  They got a crate to put him in when Bob was at work. They got a water bottle for the crate and a book on dog training written by monks who were on the cover looking hardy and not real monkish, big smiles. As the cashier rang it all up, Bob felt a quake rumble through his body, a momentary disruption as he reached for his wallet. His throat flushed with heat. His head felt fizzy. And only as the quake went away and his throat cooled and his head cleared and he handed over his credit card to the cashier did he realize, in the sudden disappearance of the feeling, what the feeling had been: for a moment — maybe even a succession of moments, and none sharp enough to point to as the cause — he’d been happy.

  • • •

  “So, thank you,” she said when he pulled up in front of her house.

  “What? No. Thank you. Please. Really. It ... Thank you.”

  She said, “This little guy, he’s a good guy. He’s going to make you proud, Bob.”

  He looked down at the puppy, sleeping on her lap now, snoring slightly. “Do they do that? Sleep all the time?”

  “Pretty much. Then they run around like loonies for about twenty minutes. Then they sleep some more. And poop. Bob, man, you got to remember that — they poop and pee like crazy. Don’t get mad. They don’t know any better. Read the monk book. It takes time, but they figure out soon enough not to do it in the house.”

  “What’s soon enough?”

  “Two months?” She cocked her head. “Maybe three. Be patient, Bob.”

  “Be patient,” he repeated.

  “And you too,” she said to the puppy as she lifted it off her lap. He came awake, sniffing, snorting. He didn’t want her to go. “You both take care.” She let herself out and gave Bob a wave as she walked up her steps, then went inside.

  The puppy was on its haunches, staring up at the window like Nadia might reappear there. It looked back over his shoulder at Bob. Bob could feel
its abandonment. He could feel his own. He was certain they’d make a mess of it, him and this throwaway dog. He was sure the world was too strong.

  “What’s your name?” he asked the puppy. “What are we going to call you?”

  The puppy turned his head away, like, Bring the girl back.

  • • •

  First thing it did was take a shit in the dining room.

  Bob didn’t even realize what it was doing at first. It started sniffing, nose scraping the rug, and then it looked up at Bob with an air of embarrassment. And Bob said, “What?” and the dog dumped all over the corner of the rug.

  Bob scrambled forward, as if he could stop it, push it back in, and the puppy bolted, left droplets on the hardwood as it scurried into the kitchen.

  Bob said, “No, no. It’s okay.” Although it wasn’t. Most everything in the house had been his mother’s, largely unchanged since she’d purchased it in the ‘50s. That was shit. Excrement. In his mother’s house. On her rug, her floor.

  In the seconds it took him to reach the kitchen, the puppy’d left a piss puddle on the linoleum. Bob almost slipped in it. The puppy was sitting against the fridge, looking at him, tensing for a blow, trying not to shake.

  And it stopped Bob. It stopped him even as he knew the longer he left the shit on the rug, the harder it would be to get out.

  Bob got down on all fours. He felt the sudden return of what he’d felt when he first picked it out of the trash, something he’d assumed had left with Nadia. Connection. He suspected they might have been brought together by something other than chance.

  He said, “Hey.” Barely above a whisper. “Hey, it’s all right.” So, so slowly, he extended his hand, and the puppy pressed itself harder against the fridge. But Bob kept the hand coming, and gently lay his palm on the side of the animal’s face. He made soothing sounds. He smiled at it. “It’s okay,” he repeated, over and over.

  He named it Cassius because he’d mistaken it for a boxer and he liked the sound of the word. It made him think of Roman legions, proud jaws, honor.

  Nadia called him Cash. She came around after work sometimes and she and Bob took it on walks. He knew something was a little off about Nadia — the dog being found so close to her house and her lack of surprise or interest in that fact was not lost on Bob — but was there anyone, anywhere on this planet, who wasn’t a little off? More than a little most times. Nadia came by to help with the dog and Bob, who hadn’t known much friendship in his life, took what he could get.

  They taught Cassius to sit and lie down and paw and roll over. Bob read the entire monk book and followed its instructions. The puppy had his rabies shot and was cleared of any cartilage damage to his ear. Just a bruise, the vet said, just a deep bruise. He grew fast.

  Weeks passed without Cassius having an accident, but Bob still couldn’t be sure whether that was luck or not, and then on Super Bowl Sunday, Cassius used one paw on the back door. Bob let him out and then tore through the house to call Nadia. He was so proud he felt like yodeling, and he almost mistook the doorbell for something else. A kettle, he thought, still reaching for the phone.

  The guy on the doorstep was thin. Not weak-thin. Hard-thin. As if whatever burned inside of him burned too hot for fat to survive. He had blue eyes so pale they were almost gray. His silver hair was cropped tight to his skull, as was the goatee that clung to his lips and chin. It took Bob a second to recognize him — the kid who’d stuck his head in the bar five-six weeks back, asked if they served Zima.

  The kid smiled and extended his hand. “Mr. Saginowski?”

  Bob shook the hand. “Yes?”

  “Bob Saginowski?” The man shook Bob’s large hand with his small one, and there was a lot of power in the grip.

  “Yeah?”

  “Eric Deeds, Bob.” The kid let go of his hand. “I believe you have my dog.”

  • • •

  In the kitchen, Eric Deeds said, “Hey, there he is.” He said, “That’s my guy.” He said, “He got big.” He said, “The size of him.”

  Cassius slinked over to him, even climbed up on his lap when Eric, unbidden, took a seat at Bob’s kitchen table and patted his inner thigh twice. Bob couldn’t even say how it was Eric Deeds talked his way into the house; he was just one of those people had a way about him, like cops and Teamsters — he wanted in, he was coming in.

  “Bob,” Eric Deeds said, “I’m going to need him back.” He had Cassius in his lap and was rubbing his belly. Bob felt a prick of envy as Cassius kicked his left leg, even though a constant shiver — almost a palsy — ran through his fur. Eric Deeds scratched under Cassius’s chin. The dog kept his ears and tail pressed flat to his body. He looked ashamed, his eyes staring down into their sockets.

  “Um...” Bob reached out and lifted Cassius off Eric’s lap, plopped him down on his own, scratched behind his ears. “Cash is mine.”

  The act was between them now — Bob lifting the puppy off Eric’s lap without any warning, Eric looking at him for just a second, like, The fuck was that all about? His forehead narrowed and it gave his eyes a surprised cast, as if they’d never expected to find themselves on his face. In that moment, he looked cruel, the kind of guy, if he was feeling sorry for himself, took a shit on the whole world.

  “Cash?” he said.

  Bob nodded as Cassius’s ears unfurled from his head and he licked Bob’s wrist. “Short for Cassius. That’s his name. What did you call him?”

  “Called him Dog mostly. Sometimes Hound.”

  Eric Deeds glanced around the kitchen, up at the old circular fluorescent in the ceiling, something going back to Bob’s mother, hell, Bob’s father just before the first stroke, around the time the old man had become obsessed with paneling — paneled the kitchen, the living room, the dining room, would’ve paneled the toilet if he could’ve figured out how.

  Bob said, “You beat him.”

  Eric reached into his shirt pocket. He pulled out a cigarette and popped it in his mouth. He lit it, shook out the match, tossed it on Bob’s kitchen table.

  “You can’t smoke in here.”

  Eric considered Bob with a level gaze and kept smoking. “I beat him?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Uh, so what?” Eric flicked some ash on the floor. “I’m taking the dog, Bob.”

  Bob stood to his full height. He held tight to Cassius, who squirmed a bit in his arms and nipped at the flat of his hand. If it came to it, Bob decided, he’d drop all six feet three inches and 290 pounds of himself on Eric Deeds, who couldn’t weigh more than a buck-seventy. Not now, not just standing there, but if Eric reached for Cassius, well then ...

  Eric Deeds blew a stream of smoke at the ceiling. “I saw you that night. I was feeling bad, you know, about my temper? So I went back to see if the hound was really dead or not and I watched you pluck him out of the trash.”

  “I really think you should go.” Bob pulled his cell from his pocket and flipped it open. “I’m calling 911.”

  Eric nodded. “I’ve been in prison, Bob, mental hospitals. I’ve been a lotta places. I’ll go again, don’t mean a thing to me, though I doubt they’d prosecute even me for fucking up a dog. I mean, sooner or later, you gotta go to work or get some sleep.”

  “What is wrong with you?”

  Eric held out of his hands. “Pretty much everything. And you took my dog.”

  “You tried to kill it.”

  Eric said, “Nah.” Shook his head like he believed it.

  “You can’t have the dog.”

  “I need the dog.”

  “No.”

  “I love that dog.”

  “No.”

  “Ten thousand.”

  “What?”

  Eric nodded. “I need ten grand. By tonight. That’s the price.”

  Bob gave it a nervous chuckle. “Who has ten thousand dollars?”

  “You could find it.”

  “How could I poss — ”

  “Say, that safe in Cousin Marv’s office. You
’re a drop bar, Bob. You don’t think half the neighborhood knows? So that might be a place to start.”

  Bob shook his head. “Can’t be done. Any money we get during the day? Goes through a slot at the bar. Ends up in the office safe, yeah, but that’s on a time — ”

  “ — lock, I know.” Eric turned on the couch, one arm stretched along the back of it. “Goes off at 2:00 AM in case they decide they need a last-minute payout for something who the fuck knows, but big. And you have ninety seconds to open and close it or it triggers two silent alarms, neither of which goes off in a police station or a security company. Fancy that.” Eric took a hit off his cigarette. “I’m not greedy, Bob. I just need stake money for something. I don’t want everything in the safe, just ten grand. You give me ten grand, I’ll disappear.”

  “This is ludicrous.”

  “So, it’s ludicrous.”

  “You don’t just walk into someone’s life and — ”

  “That is life: someone like me coming along when you’re not looking.”

  Bob put Cassius on the floor but made sure he didn’t wander over to the other side of the table. He needn’t have worried — Cassius didn’t move an inch, sat there like a cement post, eyes on Bob.

  Eric Deeds said, “You’re racing through all your options, but they’re options for normal people in normal circumstances. I need my ten grand tonight. If you don’t get it for me, I’ll take your dog. I licensed him. You didn’t, because you couldn’t. Then I’ll forget to feed him for a while. One day, when he gets all yappy about it, I’ll beat his head in with a rock or something. Look in my eyes and tell me which part I’m lying about, Bob.”

  • • •

  After he left, Bob went to his basement. He avoided it whenever he could, though the floor was white, as white as he’d been able to make it, whiter than it had ever been through most of its existence. He unlocked a cupboard over the old wash sink his father had often used after one of his adventures in paneling, and removed a yellow and brown Chock Full o’Nuts can from the shelf. He pulled fifteen thousand from it. He put ten in his pocket and five back in the can. He looked around again at the white floor, at the black oil tank against the wall, at the bare bulbs.