I said, “You’ve been pointing for five minutes. Want to narrow it down?”
Wax brushed dandruff off his lapels. “I was illustrating a point, the point being that my largest client is not on that wall because he was never arrested.”
I feigned shock. “No shit, Dick Tracy?”
“No shit, Sherlock. I’m referring, of course, to Sol Bendish, entrepreneur, bail bondsman supreme, heir to the late great Mickey Cohen’s vice kingdom. Sol passed on recently, and I’m handling his estate.”
I sighed. “And the punch line?”
Wax tossed me a keyring. “He left a twenty-five million dollar estate to his dog. It’s legally inviolate and so well safeguarded that I can’t contest it or scam it. You’re the dog’s new keeper.”
* * *
My list of duties ran seven pages. I drove to Beverly Hills wishing I’d been born canine.
“Basko” lived in a mansion north of Sunset; Basko wore cashmere sweaters and a custom-designed flea collar that emitted minute amounts of nuclear radiation guaranteed not to harm dogs–a physicist spent three years developing the product. Basko ate prime steak, Beluga caviar, Haagen-Dazs ice cream and Fritos soaked in ketchup. Rats were brought in to sate his blood lust: rodent mayhem every Tuesday morning, a hundred of them let loose in the back yard for Basko to hunt down and destroy. Basko suffered from insomnia and required a unique sedative: a slice of Velveeta cheese melted in a cup of hundred-year-old brandy.
I almost shit when I saw the pad; going in the door my knees went weak. Stan Klein enters the white-trash comfort zone to which he had so long aspired.
Deep pile purple rugs everywhere.
A three-story amphitheatre to accommodate a gigantic satellite dish that brought in four hundred TV channels.
Big screen TVs in every room and a comprehensive library of porn flicks.
A huge kitchen featuring two walk-in refrigerators: one for Basko, one for me. Wax must have stocked mine–it was packed with the high-sodium, high-cholesterol stuff I thrive on. Rooms and rooms full of the swag of my dreams–I felt like Fulgencio Batista back from exile.
The I met the dog.
I found him in the pool, floating on a cushion. He was munching a cat carcass, his rear paws in the water. I did not yet know that it was the pivotal moment of my life.
I observed the beast from a distance.
He was a white bull terrier–muscular, compact, deep in the chest, bow-legged. His short-haired coat gleamed in the sunlight; he was so heavily muscled that flea-nipping required a great effort. His head was perfect good-natured misanthropy: a sloping wedge of a snout, close-set beady eyes, sharp teeth and a furrowed brow that gave him the look of a teenaged kid scheming trouble. His left ear was brindled–I sighed as the realization hit me, an epiphany–like the time I figured out Annie “Wild Thing” Behringer dyed her pubic hair.
Our eyes met.
Basko hit the water, swam and ran to me and rooted at my crotch. Looking back, I recall those moments in slow motion, gooey music on the sound track of my life, like those frenchy films where the lovers never talk, just smoke cigarettes, gaze at each other and bang away.
* * *
Over the next week we established a routine.
Up early, roadwork by the Beverly Hills Hotel, Basko’s A.M. dump on an Arab sheik’s front lawn. Breakfast, Basko’s morning nap; he kept his head on my lap while I watched porno films and read sci-fi novels. Lunch: blood-rare fillets, then a float in the pool on adjoining cushions. Another walk; an eyeball on the foxy redhead who strolled her Lab at the same time each day–I figured I’d bide my time and propose a double date: us, Basko and the bitch. Evenings went to introspection: I screened films of my old fights, Stan “The Man” Klein, feather-fisted, cannon fodder for hungry schmucks looking to pad their records. There I was: six-pointed star on my trunks, my back dusted with Clearasil to hide my zits. A film editor buddy spliced me in with some stock footage of the greats; movie magic had me kicking the shit out of Ali, Marciano and Tyson. Wistful might-have-been stuff accompanied by Basko’s beady browns darting from the screen to me. Soon I was telling the dog the secrets I always hid from women.