Snarls, growls, howls, barks, yips–flood-lights on the yard and two pit bulls circling each other in a ring enclosed by fence pickets. Spectators yipping, yelling, howling, growling and laying down bets–and off to the side of the action my beloved Basko being primed for battle.
Two burly shvartzes were fitting black leather gloves fitted with razor blades to his paws; Basko was wearing a muzzle embroidered with swastikas. I padded back and got ready to kill; Basko sniffed the air and leaped at his closest defiler. A hot second for the gutting: Basko lashed out with his paws and disemboweled him clean. The other punk screamed; I ran up and bashed his face in with the butt of my roscoe. Basko applied the _coup de grace_: left-right paw shots that severed his throat down to the windpipe. Punk number two managed a death gurgle; the spectators by the ring heard the hubbub and ran over. I grabbed Basko and hauled ass.
We made it to my sled and peeled rubber; out of nowhere a car broadsided us, fender to fender. I saw a white face behind the wheel, downshifted, brodied, fishtailed and hit the freeway doing eighty. The attack car was gone–back to the nowhere it came from. I whipped off Basko’s muzzle and paw weapons and threw them out the window; Basko licked my face all the way to Beverly Hills.
* * *
More destruction greeted us: the Bendish/Klein/Basko pad had been ransacked, the downstairs thoroughly trashed: shelves overturned, sections of the satellite dish ripped loose, velvet flocked Elvis paintings torn from the walls. I grabbed Basko again; we hotfooted it to Gail Curtiz’s crib.
Lights were burning inside; the Lab was lounging on the lawn chomping on a nylabone. She noticed Basko and started demurely wagging her tail; I sensed romance in the air and unhooked my sidekick’s leash. Basko ran to the Lab; the scene dissolved into horizontal nuzzling. I gave the lovebirds some privacy, sneaked around to the rear of the house and started peeping.
Va Va Va Voom through a back window. Gail Curtiz, nude, was writhing with another woman on a tigerskin rug. The gorgeous brunette seemed reluctant: her face spelled shame and you could tell the perversity was getting to her. My beady eyes almost popped out of my skull; in the distance I could hear Basko and the Lab rutting like cougars. The brunette faked an orgasm and made her hips buckle–I could tell she was faking from twenty feet away. The window was cracked at the bottom; I put an ear to the sill and listened.
Gail got up and lit a cigarette; the brunette said, “Could you turn off the lights, please?”–a dead giveaway–you could tell she wanted to blot out the dyke’s nudity. Basko and the Lab, looking sated, trotted up and fell asleep at my feet. The room inside went black; I listened extra hard.
Smutty endearments from Gail; two cigarette tips glowing. The brunette, quietly persistent: “But I don’t understand why you spend your life savings renting such an extravagent house. You _never_ spell things out for me, even though we’re…. And just who is this rich man who died?”
Gail, laughing. “My daddy, sweetie. Blood test validated. Momma was a car hop who died of a broken heart. Daddy stiffed her on the paternity suit, among many other stiffs, but he promised to take care of me–three million on my twenty-fifth birthday or his death, whichever came first. Now, dear, would you care to hear the absurdist punch line? Daddy left the bulk of his fortune to his dog, to be overseen by a sharpie lawyer and this creep who looks after the dog. _But_–there has to be some money hidden somewhere. Daddy’s estate was valued at twenty-five million, while the newspapers placed it as much higher. Oh, shit, isn’t it all absurd?”
A pause, then the brunette. “You know what you said when we got back a little while ago? Remember, you had this feeling the house had been searched?”
Gail: “Yes. What are you getting at?”
“Well, maybe it _was_ just your imagination, or maybe one of the other paternity suit kids has got the same idea, maybe that explains it.”