Get off the Unicorn

"Maria! We're your friends! We want to help!" Pete called, oblivious to the stares. He was sure she could hear him. He waited, apprehensive, unsure.

No! came the one disembodied word, filling his skull till his head rang. There was no arguing with it. "At least tell Wiz if you're hungry, Maria. He can bring you food. I promise I won't follow."

Twice in the next three weeks, Wizard darted into a deli, whining pathetically. The first time, it took Pete a minute or so to grasp what the big dog wanted.

Then he'd get a sandwich and a Coke to go, put it in a bag, roll the top into a handle for Wizard to carry. Then he'd wait till the dog returned. He was determined to prove to Maria that he'd keep his promise. He didn't want to lose contact with her.

In the meantime, he did a little library research on telepathy, but the textbooks were too much for him. When he asked the librarian for something a guy could understand, he was shown the science fiction shelves.

Maria didn't act like fictional telepaths. According to the stories, she should be able to get food when she wanted it, commit robberies undetected, start fires, transport herself and anyone else anywhere, aid society, and perform minor miracles. Like heal herself, even. The prospects were magnificently endless. Yet she was stuck in some hideous, hot horrible back room, half-starved and slowly dying of neglect.

The one thing Pete had to accept was the fact that Maria kept in touch with Wizard but excluded him. Since Pete considered Wizard every bit as smart as most men, he wasn't offended; but he felt powerless to help her as only another human could.

The next set of inexplicable incidents began about four weeks after Pete and Wizard first encountered Maria. They were pacing the beat on the hotel side of Rodney Square when the dog got restless. He strained against the leash until Pete let him go to see where he'd head. At a dead run, Wizard streaked down Eleventh Street, right over into Harry West's beat.

Harry walked with Pirate, the biggest dog on the force. Pete couldn't figure Harry in trouble. But he was wrong. He heard the sullen rumble of an angry crowd by the time he reached French Street. Wiz was already around that corner and in the middle of a fight. Pete whistled for squad cars as he broke into the edge of the crowd, swinging his nightstick. He could hear Wizard growling angrily. He heard a yelp and then the growling of a second dog. He stumbled over Harry, bleeding from a head wound. Pete got Harry clear of the stampede just as the squad cars arrived.

Both dogs were at work, snapping, snarling, darting around, and the crowd thinned rapidly. In a matter of minutes, all but the bitten, bruised, and brained had evaporated into the hot night.

"How'd you get here so fast?" Harry demanded as he came to. "I heard Wiz just as some kook pelted me with a bottle."

"Well, Wizard just took off," was Pete's unenlightened reply.

"Glad he did. We came down on a Code One, but when Pirate and I got to the edge of the mob to get them moving, they closed in like we was Christmas in July. Somebody got Pirate in the head and I couldn't turn anywhere without getting clobbered." Harry dabbed at the cuts on his hands. "I'd sure like to know what set them off."

Wizard and the bigger dog were wandering around the street, nervously sniffing. The paddy wagon arrived, and Wiz and Pirate assisted in rounding up the incidentals, just begging for one legal bite. Then they started whiffling around again.

"What's with the dogs?" Harry asked Pete as he helped him into a car. "Look at old Wiz pumping."

Wizard's tail was wagging like he was on his way to a steak fry.

"Maria!" Pete gasped and called Wizard to heel. The dog came bounding over, wriggling with delight. "Find Maria!" But Wizard barked three times, sneezed, and shook his head. Pirate came up, nuzzled Harry, sniffed Wizard, and then he barked three times.

"I got a girl that only talks to dogs yet," Pete said in bitter disgust.

Back on their own beat, Pete tried to figure out why Maria would have called Wizard. Harry and Pirate weren't in trouble at the time Wiz took off. Maria must have been worried… yeah, that was it! Worried about her old man! She'd called Wizard because her old man had been in that crowd.

And that explained why Wizard was so happyacting. He'd found Maria's father's trail leading away from the rumble. '

Pete left a note for Harry to keep an ear and an eye open for any crippled kids on his beat and to let him know if Pirate ever acted… strange. She might keep in touch with Pirate, too, since the big dog had been involved in getting her father out of a tough scrape.

Two of the men picked up that day were known numbers runners. They stuck to they story that the cop had come busting in where he wasn't wanted and his damn dog had spooked the crowd into the rumble. They just "happened" to be there.

For the next few weeks Pete got no signs from Wizard that Maria was in any distress. This bothered him almost as much as hearing from her when she was hungry. At headquarters they were hearing nasty rumors about a new numbers racket. Certain hoods were being seen in new cars, in new quarters, acting up. Two runners were picked up on suspicion, in the hope of cracking them. They had to be released twenty-four hours later, clean, but one of them had bragged a little. Pete heard one of the detective lieutenants complaining bitterly about it.