Page 42

CHAPTER 42

BABY SAT IN THE driver’s seat of the station wagon, the big dog beside her. It was three a.m. She’d dropped Arthur off at home hours ago and changed out of her nice outfit into a dark T-shirt and jeans. Baby and the dog — whom she’d named Mouse for the same reason bouncers are called Tiny — were watching a neat little house on Truslow Avenue behind the museum in Fullerton. Nothing moved in the quiet neighborhood.

Baby opened her phone again and looked through the criminal record belonging to Chris Tutti, the man who had blacked out the cameras she’d hung at Arthur’s house. A list of burglaries the length of her arm, a couple of extortion beefs. If Chris Tutti had ever killed a person, he’d gotten away with it.

The place was cuter than Baby would’ve expected a guy like Tutti to have. Blue weatherboard with white trim. Potted plants. She recognized the small gray Honda in the driveway.

She unzipped the pouch on her belt and took out a dog treat, something she’d been doing every few minutes for the past half hour or so. The huge black monster dog stared at her with yellow eyes the size of golf balls.

“Let’s do a bit more of our homework, Mouse,” she said. She twisted sideways and locked eyes with him, the treat clutched in her fingers.

“Shake,” she said.

The dog put a paw the size of an oven mitt in her hand. She gave him a treat.

“Danger,” she said.

The dog’s lips twitched.

“ Danger, Mouse,” she said. “It’s danger .”

The dog gave a low growl.

“Good,” Baby said. She gave the dog another treat, then wiped the slobber off on her jeans.

She repeated the training a couple more times:

Danger. Growl. Treat.

Danger. Growl. Treat.

Baby was impressed with how well the animal was responding after a scant few hours of training. She stealthily exited the car, then went around and quietly popped open the passenger-side door. She clipped on the dog’s leash and walked the huge animal to the pretty blue house.

The back door was unlocked. She went in — moving fast so that Mouse’s big toenails clacking on the kitchen tiles wouldn’t wake Tutti before she was ready — full of fear and exhilaration. She noted but didn’t really think about the cross-stitched tapestry hanging on the wall in the corner of the living room, the afghan over the couch, the floral slippers by the back room. She followed the Odeur de Douche-bag drifting from the front bedroom, a mixture of cigarettes, dollar-store deodorant, and wet towels.

When Baby and Mouse entered the bedroom, Chris Tutti sat upright in the bed, knocking the table lamp off the nightstand and onto the floor, scattering water bottles and burner phones plugged into chargers. The room glowed neon green from a big fish tank filled with sad silhouettes of guppies bubbling in the corner.

“What the fu — ”

“Danger!” Baby gave Mouse’s leash a gentle tug to get him listening. “Look, puppy. It’s danger !”

The monster dog exploded, thrashing and hurling himself at Tutti so hard, Baby had to get two hands on the leash and dig her feet into the carpet to hold the animal back. The barks rattled the windows, made her eardrums pulse.

“Chris Tutti!” Baby yelled over the barking. “I’m here about you harassing the owner of the house on Waterway Street!” There was a scream from the back of the house. Baby ignored it. Chris Tutti was cowering on the bed, cornered by the vicious dog. “You’re gonna tell me who at Enorme sent you there!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Tutti clearly didn’t know whether to hold his hands out to protect himself or tuck them defensively by his side to prevent his fingers being chomped off. “Jesus Christ, keep that thing away from me!”

“Get the danger! Get the danger!” Baby told Mouse. He ramped up the noise until fever-pitched hell-barking fired out of his throat. The dog stood on his hind legs, twisting and thrashing. “Tutti, you got three seconds before I let go of this leash.”

“Oh God! Don’t do it! Don’t do it!”

“One.”

“Oh, please! Please!”

“My hands are getting tired.”

“I don’t know anything!”

“Two.”

“Su Lim Marshall!” Tutti’s terrified face was lime green in the light cast by the fish tank. “She’s head of — of land acquisitions or some shit!”

“Put a shirt on,” Baby barked. “You’re gonna sit here and tell me everything she asked you to do. We’re gonna get it on camera.”

“Fuck that shit!” Tutti tried to shuffle to the end of the bed, but Mouse pawed at the blankets, his jaws inches away from Tutti’s bare feet. “I ain’t coppin’ to no murder rap!”

Baby smiled. “Who said anything about murder?”

Then she heard a sound she recognized, barely audible above the dog’s barks — the hammer of a gun clicking. Baby turned. There in the hall was the almost comical sight of a small, frail older woman in a nightgown with a sizable revolver shaking in her little fists. Baby yanked the dog into the hallway with her and backed up a couple of feet toward the front door. Though Baby couldn’t see the old woman’s face, she knew impossible equations must be running through her mind. Should she shoot the dog and take her chances with the girl, or shoot the girl and take her chances with the dog? With a revolver, the milliseconds between shots made either choice a potentially fatal one.

“Nana!” Tutti cried. “Don’t shoot her, for Christ’s sake! I’m on parole!”

Baby threw herself at the front door, opened it, yanked Mouse through it, and slammed it behind her. A shot blasted through the stained glass above the door; the shards made pretty tinkling sounds in the street as she ran for the car.