* * *
THE MAN WHO
LIKED DOGS
* * *
ONE
There was a brand-new aluminum-gray DeSoto sedan in front of the door. I walked around that and went up three white steps, through a glass door and up three more carpeted steps. I rang a bell on the wall.
Instantly a dozen dog voices began to shake the roof. While they bayed and howled and yapped I looked at a small alcove office with a rolltop desk and a waiting room with mission leather chairs and three diplomas on the wall, at a mission table scattered with copies of the Dog Fancier’s Gazette.
Somebody quieted the dogs out back, then an inner door opened and a small pretty-faced man in a tan smock came in on rubber soles, with a solicitous smile under a pencil-line mustache. He looked around and under me, didn’t see a dog. His smile got more casual.
He said: “I’d like to break them of that, but I can’t. Every time they hear a buzzer they start up. They get bored and they know the buzzer means visitors.”
I said: “Yeah,” and gave him my card. He read it, turned it over and looked at the back, turned it back and read the front again.
“A private detective,” he said softly, licking his moist lips. “Well–I’m Dr. Sharp. What can I do for you?”
“I’m looking for a stolen dog.”
His eyes flicked at me. His soft little mouth tightened. Very slowly his whole face flushed. I said: “I’m not suggesting you stole the dog, Doc. Almost anybody could plant an animal in a place like this and you wouldn’t think about that chance they didn’t own it, would you?”
“One doesn’t just like the idea,” he said stiffly. “What kind of dog?”
“Police dog.”
He scuffed a toe on the thin carpet, looked at a corner of the ceiling. The flush went off his face, leaving it with a sort of shiny whiteness. After a long moment he said: “I have only one police dog here, and I know the people he belongs to. So I’m afraid–”
“Then you won’t mind my looking at him,” I cut in, and started towards the inner door.
Dr. Sharp didn’t move. He scuffed some more. “I’m not sure that’s convenient,” he said softly. “Perhaps later in the day.”
“Now would be better for me,” I said, and reached for the knob.
He scuttled across the waiting room to his little rolltop desk. His small hand went around the telephone there.
“I’ll–I’ll just call the police if you want to get tough,” he said hurriedly.
“That’s jake,” I said. “Ask for Chief Fulwider. Tell him Carmady’s here. I just came from his office.”
Dr. Sharp took his hand away from the phone. I grinned at him and rolled a cigarette around in my fingers.
“Come on, Doc,” I said. “Shake the hair out of your eyes and let’s go. Be nice and maybe I’ll tell you the story.”
He chewed both his lips in turn, stared at the brown blotter on his desk, fiddled with a corner of it, stood up and crossed the room in his white bucks, opened the door in front of me and we went along a narrow gray hallway. An operating table showed through an open door. We went through a door farther along, into a bare room with a concrete floor, a gas heater in the corner with a bowl of water beside it, and all along one wall two tiers of stalls with heavy wire mesh doors.
Dogs and cats stared at us silently, expectantly, behind the mesh. A tiny chihuahua snuffled under a big red Persian with a wide sheep-skin collar around its neck. There was a sourfaced Scottie and a mutt with all the skin off one leg and a silky-gray Angora and a Sealyham and two more mutts and a razor-sharp fox terrier with a barrel snout and just the right droop to the last two inches of it.
Their noses were wet and their eyes were bright and they wanted to know whose visitor I was.
I looked them over. “These are toys, Doe,” I growled. “I’m talking police dog. Gray and black, no brown. A male. Nine years old. Swell points all around except that his tail is too short. Do I bore you?”
He stared at me, made an unhappy gesture. “Yes, but–” he mumbled. “Well, this way.”
We went back out of the room. The animals looked disappointed, especially the chihuahua, which tried to climb through the wire mesh and almost made it. We went back out of a rear door into a cement yard with two garages fronting on it. One of them was empty. The other, with its door open a foot, was a box of gloom at the back of which a big dog clanked a chain and put his jaw down flat on the old comforter that was his bed.
“Be careful,” Sharp said. “He’s pretty savage at times. I had him inside, but he scared the others.”
I went into the garage. The dog growled. I went towards him and he hit the end of his chain with a bang. I said: “Hello there, Voss. Shake hands.”
He put his head back down on the comforter. His ears came forward halfway. He was very still. His eyes were wolfish, black-rimmed. Then the curved, too-short tail began to thump the floor slowly. I said: “Shake hands, boy,” and put mine out. In the doorway behind me the little vet was telling me to be careful. The dog came up slowly on his big rough paws, swung his ears back to normal and lifted his left paw. I shook it.
The little vet complained: “This is a great surprise to me, Mr–Mr.–”
“Carmady,” I said. “Yeah, it would be.”
I patted the dog’s head and went back out of the garage.
We went into the house, into the waiting room. I pushed magazines out of the way and sat on a corner of the mission table, looked the pretty little man over.
“Okay,” I said. “Give. What’s the name of his folks and where do they live?”
He thought it over sullenly. “Their name is Voss. They’ve moved East and they are to send for the dog when they’re settled.”
“Cute at that,” I said. “The dog’s named Voss after a German war flier. The folks are named after the dog.”
“You think I’m lying,” the little man said hotly.
“Uh-uh. You scare too easy for a crook. I think somebody wanted to ditch the dog. Here’s my story. A girl named Isobel Snare disappeared from her home in San Angelo, two weeks ago. She lives with her great-aunt, a nice old lady in gray silk who isn’t anybody’s fool. The girl had been stepping out with some pretty shady company in the night spots and gambling joints. So the old lady smelled a scandal and didn’t go to the law. She didn’t get anywhere until a girl friend of the Snare girl happened to see the dog in your joint. She told the aunt. The aunt hired me–because when the niece drove off in her roadster and didn’t come back she had the dog with her.”
I mashed out my cigarette on my heel and lit another. Dr. Sharp’s little face was as white as dough. Perspiration twinkled in his cute little mustache.
I added gently: “It’s not a police job yet. I was kidding you about Chief Fulwider. How’s for you and me to keep it under the hat?”
“What–what do you want me to do?” the little man stammered.
“Think you’ll hear anything more about the dog?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “The man seemed very fond of him. A genuine dog lover. The dog was gentle with him.”
“Then you’ll hear from him,” I said. “When you do I want to know. What’s the guy look like?”
“He was tall and thin with very sharp black eyes. His wife is tall and thin like him. Well-dressed, quiet people.”
“The Snare girl is a little runt,” I said. “What made it so hush-hush?”
He stared at his foot and didn’t say anything.
“Okay,” I said. “Business is business. Play ball with me and you won’t get any adverse publicity. Is it a deal?” I held my hand out.
“I’ll play with you,” he said softly, and put a moist fishy little paw in mine. I shook it carefully, so as not to bend it.
I told him where I was staying and went back out to the sunny street and walked a block down to where I had left my Chrysler. I got into it and poked it forward from around the corner, far enough so that I could see the DeSoto and the front of Sharp’s place.
I sat like that for half an hour. Then Dr. Sharp came out of his place in street clothes and got into the DeSoto. He drove it off around the corner and swung into the alley that ran behind his yard.
I got the Chrysler going and shot up the block the other way, took a plant at the other end of the alley.
A third of the way down the block I heard growling, barking, snarling. This went on for some time. Then the DeSoto backed out of the concrete yard and came towards me. I ran away from it to the next corner.
The DeSoto went south to Arguello Boulevard, then east on that. A big police dog with a muzzle on his head was chained in the back of the sedan. I could just see his head straining at the chain.
I trailed the DeSoto.
TWO
Carolina Street was away off at the edge of the little beach city. The end of it ran into a disused interurban right of way, beyond which stretched a waste of Japanese truck farms. There were just two houses in the last block, so I hid behind the first, which was on the corner, with a weedy grass plot and a high dusty red and yellow lantana fighting with a honeysuckle vine against the front wall.
Beyond that two or three burned over lots with a few weed stalks sticking up out of the charred grass and then a ramshackle mud-colored bungalow with a wire fence. The DeSoto stopped in front of that.
Its door slammed open and Dr. Sharp dragged the muzzled dog out of the back and fought him through a gate and up the walk. A big barrel-shaped palm tree kept me from seeing him at the front door of the house. I backed my Chrysler and turned it in the shelter of the corner house, went three blocks over and turned along a street parallel to Carolina. This street also ended at the right of way. The rails were rusted in a forest of weeds, came down the other side on to a dirt road, and started back towards Carolina.
The dirt road dropped until I couldn’t see over the embankment. When I had gone what felt like three blocks I pulled up and got out, went up the side of the bank and sneaked a look over it.
The house with the wire gate was half a block from me. The DeSoto was still in front of it. Boomingly on the afternoon air came the deep-toned woof-woofing of the police dog. I put my stomach down in the weeds and sighted on the bungalow and waited.
Nothing happened for about fifteen minutes except that the dog kept right on barking. Then the barking suddenly got harder and harsher. Then somebody shouted. Then a man screamed.
I picked myself up out of the weeds and sprinted across the right of way, down the other side to the street end. As I got near the house I heard the low, furious growling of the dog worrying something, and behind it the staccato rattle of a woman’s voice in anger, more than in fear.
Behind the wire gate was a patch of lawn mostly dandelions and devil grass. There was a shred of cardboard hanging from the barrel-shaped palm, the remains of a sign. The roots of the tree had wrecked the walk, cracked it wide open and lifted the rough edges into steps.
I went through the gate and thumped up wooden steps to a sagging porch. I banged on the door.
The growling was still going on inside, but the scolding voice had stopped. Nobody came to the door.
I tried the knob, opened the door and went in. There was a heavy smell of chloroform.
In the middle of the floor, on a twisted rug, Dr. Sharp lay spread-eagled on his back, with blood pumping out of the side of his neck. The blood had made a thick glossy pool around his head. The dog leaned away from it, crouched on his forelegs, his ears flat to his head, fragments of a torn muzzle hanging about his neck. His throat bristled and the hair on his spine stood up and there was a low pulsing growl deep in his throat.
Behind the dog a closet door was smashed back against the wall and on the floor of the closet a big wad of cotton-wool sent sickening waves of chloroform out on the air.
A dark handsome woman in a print house dress held a big automatic pointed at the dog and didn’t fire it.
She threw a quick glance at me over her shoulder, started to turn. The dog watched her, with narrow, black-rimmed eyes. I took my Luger out and held it down at my side.
Something creaked and a tall black-eyed man in faded blue overalls and a blue work shirt came through the swing door at the back with a sawed-off double-barrel shotgun in his hands. He pointed it at me.
“Hey, you! Drop that gat!” he said angrily.
I moved my jaw with the idea of saying something. The man’s finger tightened on the front trigger. My gun went off–without my having much to do with it. The slug hit the stock of the shotgun, knocked it clean out of the man’s hands. It pounded on the floor and the dog jumped sideways about seven feet and crouched again.
With an utterly incredulous look on his face the man put his hands up in the air.
I couldn’t lose. I said: “Down yours too, lady.”
She worked her tongue along her lips and lowered the automatic to her side and walked away from the body on the floor.
The man said: “Hell, don’t shoot him. I can handle him.”
I blinked, then I got the idea. He had been afraid I was going to shoot the dog. He hadn’t been worrying about himself.
I lowered the Luger a little. “What happened?”
“That–tried to chloroform–him, a fighting dog!”
I said: ‘Yeah. If you’ve got a phone, you’d better call an ambulance. Sharp won’t last long with that tear in his neck.”
The woman said tonelessly: “I thought you were law.”
I didn’t say anything. She went along the wall to a window seat full of crumpled newspapers, reached down for a phone at one end of it.
I looked down at the little vet. The blood had stopped coming out of his neck. His face was the whitest face I had ever seen.
“Never mind the ambulance,” I told the woman. “Just call Police Headquarters.”
The man in the overalls put his hands down and dropped on one knee, began to pat the floor and talk soothingly to the dog.
‘Steady, old-timer. Steady. We’re all friends now–all friends. Steady, Voss.”
The dog growled and swung his hind end a little. The man kept on talking to him. The dog stopped growling and the hackles on his back went down. The man in overalls kept on crooning to him.
The woman on the window seat put the phone aside and said: “On the way. Think you can handle it, Jerry?”
“Sure,” the man said, without taking his eyes off the dog.
The dog let his belly touch the floor now and opened his mouth and let his tongue hang out. The tongue dripped saliva, pink saliva with blood mixed in it. The hair at the side of the dog’s mouth was stained with blood.
THREE
The man called Jerry said: “Hey, Voss. Hey, Voss old kid. You’re fine now. You’re fine.”
The dog panted, didn’t move. The man straightened up and went close to him, pulled one of the dog’s ears. The dog turned his head sideways and let his ear be pulled. The man stroked his head, unbuckled the chewed muzzle and got it off.
He stood up with the end of the broken chain and the dog came up on his feet obediently, went out through the swing door into the back part of the house, at the man’s side.
I moved a little, out of line with the swing door. Jerry might have more shotguns. There was something about Jerry’s face that worried me. As if I had seen him before, but not very lately, or in a newspaper photo.
I looked at the woman. She was a handsome brunette in her early thirties. Her print house dress didn’t seem to belong with her finely arched eyebrows and her long soft hands.
“How did it happen?” I asked casually, as if it didn’t matter very much.
Her voice snapped at me, as if she was aching to turn it loose. “We’ve been in the house about a week. Rented it furnished, I was in the kitchen, Jerry in the yard. The car stopped out front and the little guy marched in just as if he lived here. The door didn’t happen to be locked, I guess. I opened the swing door a crack and saw him pushing the dog into the closet. Then I smelled the chloroform. Then things began to happen all at once and I went for a gun and called Jerry out of the window. I got back in here about the time you crashed in. Who are you?”
“It was all over then?” I said. “He had Sharp chewed up on the floor?”
“Yes–if Sharp is his name.”
“You and Jerry didn’t know him?”
“Never saw him before. Or the dog. But Jerry loves dogs.”
“Better change a little of that,” I said. “Jerry knew the dog’s name. Voss.”
Her eyes got tight and her mouth got stubborn. “I think you must be mistaken,” she said in a sultry voice. “I asked you who you were, mister.”
“Who’s Jerry?” I asked. “I’ve seen him somewhere. Maybe on a reader. Where’d he get the sawed-off? You going to let the cops see that?”
She bit her lip, then stood up suddenly, went towards the fallen shotgun. I let her pick it up, saw she kept her hand away from the triggers. She went back to the window seat and pushed it under the pile of newspapers.
She faced me. “Okay, what’s the pay-off?” she asked grimly.