Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017
- Автор: Фузилли Джим, Харрис Шарлин
- Год: 2017
- Язык: английский
- Год: Dell Magazines
- ISBN: 0013-6328
- Жанр: Другие детективы
Электронная книга - «Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 150, Nos. 5 & 6. Whole Nos. 914 & 915, November/December 2017». Краткое содержание книги:
“You’re pretty for a Saturday,” Lonnie said to J.T., and he was. Clean jeans, snap-front shirt, and cowboy boots that winked when he walked they shined so good. He smelled good too. You could smell him where we was, fifteen, twenty feet away.
J.T. give Lonnie no more than a courtesy snort. He said, “Got a dog for you.” He was looking at the double-wide when he said it.
“Don’t want a dog. Deb says I shot enough animals to last a lifetime already.”
“That’s surprising. She’s a woman that likes a dog.”
Lonnie tucked a finger in his belt and pulled his mouth tight.
“You would know that how?”
J.T. finally looked at Lonnie. “I ’spect you told me.”
Too quick, J.T. reached over the side of the mite, opened the door on the crate, and yanked a bluetick pup out by the scruff.
“How you going to turn down a dog pretty as that?” says J.T. He held the dog up, offering him to Lonnie, but his eyes were back on the doublewide. Dog seemed aimed that way too.
The dog’s head was black and the rest of him speckled black on white. A white Y rode upside down on his nose. There was a car’mel dot above each eye, close to the nose. They made him look worried or curious, depending on how he held his head. When my dad used to say something was pretty as a speckled pup, he could’ve been thinking of that dog.
Deb come out ’bout then, I suppose to see the dog. Now she had on a yellow T-shirt, extra-short, cutoff jeans, and sandals. She’d combed her hair and put on just enough makeup so’s her eyes grabbed yours. As usual, conversation stopped.
“Who’s that pup for?”
J.T. had to clear his throat before he said, “You,” in his big-balls voice. Then, a little more quiet: “If you want it.” I’d never seen him shy before. He seemed to be having a time keeping his eyes above her neck.
She took the dog into her arms, flipped him over onto his back, and rubbed his belly and up under his chin.
“What’re you calling this guy?”
“Owner ought to name him,” J.T. said. “Why don’t you do it?”
“I like Grady.”
She looked to Lonnie to see what he’d say.
“That’s not the way you treat a working dog.” Lonnie tipped his chin toward the way she handled the pup.
“ ’Course it is. Everybody needs a little attention.” She held up one of the dog’s ears, stroking the outside of it with her thumb like it was satin. “Some affection.”
Lonnie studied the woods. Acted like he needed time to measure the truth of it.
“It’s a fine name,” J.T. said. Lonnie bit his lips.
After things were quiet for a minute, Deb said: “He’s bigger than last time.”
Spank and me were gathering up splits and kindling and I was trying not to eavesdrop, but damn, that kind of brought my head up. Lonnie, too.
He considered Deb. She’d dropped the tailgate on the mite and taken a seat, googy-talking and rubbing the dog in her lap like she hadn’t said a thing.
The look Lonnie gave J.T. was hot, sparky. Enough to arc-weld a trailer hitch, but J.T. took it with a cocksure grin and not one blink.
“How much?” Lonnie said.
J.T. clearly didn’t see that coming. Lonnie’d already told him he didn’t want it and maybe he’d never come out to sell the dog anyway. Whatever. J.T. horked up a number that was too high by half. If he thought Lonnie’d dicker, he was wrong about that too.
“He gun-shy?”
“Ain’t they all, that age?” J.T. was stalling while he tried to figure out what Lonnie had in mind.
“Let’s see,” Lonnie said.
Lonnie took the dog from Deb’s arms and handed him to J.T. Like she was the prom queen, he helped Deb down off the tailgate by her elbow and escorted her back to the double-wide. I couldn’t hear a word. He was talking low, but there was edge, hiss with the piss. You could tell. Her too, giving it back to him for some reason. Didn’t think that was possible.
Lonnie come back out with a Ruger. Might’ve been a Mark III, maybe a II. No scope, though. After his time in the service, I doubt Lonnie’d need it. Not for a ’coon.
J.T.’d put the dog back in the crate. When Lonnie reached over the side to open the door, J.T. put a hand on him, his gun arm. “Wait a minute there. What’re you doing?”
The eyes Lonnie put on him made J.T. pull his hand back.
“You want to sell me a dog,” Lonnie said, “I want to know if he’s gun-shy.”
“You’ll spook him, ruin him. He ain’t trained to a gun yet.”
“It’s fairly simple, J.T. How bad you want to sell me that dog?”
Everybody but Spank — J.T. specially — understood Lonnie’d just called J.T.’s bluff, whatever it might’ve been. I’d seen J.T. fight for less and he got the look he usually gets. His eyes cut away, and he smirks crooked. He probably saw it in some movie. Thinks it makes him look cool, but it don’t, just dumber.
“I reckon you can leave Grady in the crate,” J.T. said. “Grady can bounce ’round in there, Grady don’t like it.”
Calling that dog Grady was a scab I wouldn’t’ve picked, but Lonnie just stuck out his lip and nodded to himself like he’d already thought ’bout what J.T. said. Or more likely, ’bout J.T. I don’t know.
“Doubt that’d tell us a thing,” Lonnie said. He reached into the crate, pulled the dog out, and hiked him up under his arm. J.T. didn’t try to stop him.
The dog was squirmy. Lonnie checked the safety on the Ruger and tucked it in his back pocket. He took the dog out from under his arm, talked to him low, and scratched him behind the ears to gentle him. When the dog’d calmed down some, Lonnie stepped several feet away from us, set the dog on his belly flat on the ground, and knelt there. He held the pup down with his free hand, massaging his back between his front shoulders.
“Yea or nay,” Lonnie said, looking up at J.T.
“This here’s the china shop. You break him, you buy him,” J.T. said, sounding all beefy. “And I ain’t coming off my price.”
Lonnie nodded again and shrugged, like maybe that’s the way it would have to be. He took the Ruger out his pocket and pointed it in the air. We all kind of ducked and peeked ’cause you don’t fire in the air — you never know where a round’ll go — and while we was ducked and twisted, Lonnie brought the barrel down, nestled it up under the back of the dog’s skull, and popped it. Popped it. Damned thing didn’t even yelp.
Lonnie wiped blood and brains off his free hand on his jeans — just pretty damn casual about it — and stood. The Ruger he kept loose at his side, eye-dotting every one of us, see what we’d do.
No problem with Spank. He just stood there, split hung in his mitt, his big Adam’s apple bobbing, calling down his Lord. “Sweet Jesus.” Sounded like yodeling. “Dear God, I swear. Jesus, he shot that dog.” I ’magine Jesus probably knew that, if He’d bothered to watch.
I wasn’t going to be a problem either. I held up both hands, bowed my head, and slowly shook it once. When I looked up, J.T. was advancing on Lonnie.
“Don’t,” Lonnie said, and I heard a click that had to be the safety coming off. Those circumstances? It’s louder than you think.
J.T. likely heard it too. He stopped.
Lonnie leaned down and picked up the carcass by the hind legs. He moved toward J.T., who backed up step for step. Lonnie tossed the dog in the truck underhand, leaving a trail of blood along the ground that jumped onto the bed and across it. The dog hit the crate, then the floor. We flinched.
“Why, you son of a bitch,” J.T. said.
“Don’t,” Lonnie said again, holding up his forefinger this time.
“Look what you did.” But J.T.’d lost his steam. “Now I got to wash the truck.”
Lonnie gave him a thought-so smirk. He reached into his jeans’ front pocket with his free hand, thumbed off a couple of tens from a small roll he pulled out of there, and stepped up to J.T., who was rooted, not knowing what Lonnie’d do.