Danny turned off Pacific Coast Highway at the Canyon Road and climbed inland through scrub-covered hills laced with little streams and valleys. The road was a narrow two-laner, the left side featuring kiddie camps, stables and occasional nightclubs, the right a wood retaining wall and a long drop into green-brown bush forest. Signs pointing into the scrub indicated clearings and houses and people; Danny saw the roofs of villas, Tudor steeples, the chimneys of extravagant log cabins. Gradually, the quality of the real estate declined–no ocean view, no sea breeze, the scrub thicker and thicker, no dwellings at all. When he hit the top of Malibu Ridge and started rolling downhill, he knew the dog farms had to be nearby–his vista was now dotted with tarpapered shacks and the heat was zooming up as the shade-producing foliage thinned out.
The Vice officer he’d talked to had the three farms tagged as a mile in on a dirt access road marked by a sign: PIT PUPS–AUTO PARTS. Danny found the sign just as the two-lane leveled off into a long, flat stretch, the San Fernando Valley in the distance. He swung onto it and wracked his Chevy’s undercarriage for three-quarters of a mile, sharecropper-like shacks on both sides of him. Then he saw them–three cinderblock huts encircled by a barbed-wire fence; three dirt yards littered with axles, drive shafts and cylinder blocks; three individually penned broods of squat, muscular dogs.
Danny pulled up to the fence, pinned his badge to his jacket front and Side 48
Ellroy, James – Big Nowhere, The tapped the horn–a little courtesy to the hut dwellers. The dogs barked at the noise; Danny walked over to the nearest stretch of wire and looked at them.
They weren’t the dogs from his dreams–black and sleek with flashing white teeth–they were brindle and tan and speckled terriers, barrel-chested, jaw-heavy and all muscle. They didn’t have the outsized genitalia of his dogs; their barks weren’t death snaps; they weren’t ugly–they were just animals bred for a mean utility. Danny eyed the ones penned up closest to him, wondering what they’d do if he gave them a pat on the head, then told them he was glad they didn’t look like some other dogs he knew.
“Rape-o, Hacksaw and Night Train. Them dogs won sixteen altogether.
Southern California record for one man’s stable.”
Danny turned to face the voice. A very fat man in overalls was standing in the doorway of the shack just off to his left; he was wearing thick glasses and probably couldn’t see too well. Danny unpinned his badge and slipped it in his pocket, thinking the man was garrulous and ripe for an insurance agent ploy.
“Can I talk to you for a second about your dogs?”
The man ambled to the fence, squinting and blinking. He said, “Booth Conklin. You in the market for a good pit hound?”
Danny looked into Booth Conklin’s eyes, one a free-floating waller, the other cloudy and pocked with cataracts. “Dan Upshaw. You could start me off with some information on them.”
Conklin said, “I kin do better than that,” waddled to a speckled dog’s pen and flipped the latch. The beast made a dash, hit the fence with his front paws and started licking the wire. Danny knelt and scratched his snout, a slick pink tongue sliding over his fingers. He said, “Good boy, good fellow,” putting off Doc Layman’s theories as long longshots then and there.
Booth Conklin waddled back, holding a long piece of wood. “First lesson with pits is don’t talk baby talk to ’em or they won’t respect you. Rape-o here’s a leg pumper, just wants to get your trousers wet. My cousin Wallace named him Rape-o ’cause he’ll mount anything with bad intentions. Down, Rape-o, down!”
The pit bull kept nuzzling Danny’s fingers; Booth Conklin whacked him in the ass with his stick. Rape-o let out a shrill yowl, cowered away and started rubbing his backside in the dirt, all fours up and treading air. Danny felt his fists clenching; Conklin stuck the stick in Rape-o’s mouth. The dog clamped down his jaws; Conklin lifted him up and held him out at arm’s length. Danny gasped at the feat of strength.