THURSDAY MORNING, KEVIN took Mitch around to each house he would be assigned, introducing him to the dog and giving him the instructions for walking and feeding and tips about the dog’s behavior. Mitch committed it all to memory: Don’t let the immaculately groomed Shih Tzu in Gatesville out through the kitchen door or he’ll crap on a $10,000 rug. Make sure Hans the dachshund get his Cosequin tablets. Don’t play with Rex the Rottweiler, because they’re trying to train him to be more obedient. Kevin had prepared papers with each dog’s name, address, and instructions, showing an instinct for organization Mitch would never have suspected he possessed.
When they got to the house with Jeffrey the pit bull, Kevin said, “This guy’s a jerk. He leaves his dog outside in all kinds of weather, and I don’t think he feeds him regularly.” Kevin opened the gate, and Jeffrey came bounding up to him, then noticed Mitch and stopped short. Mitch looked at the dog’s powerful build and massive head, an evolutionary development that had only one purpose-to crush bone. He felt a strong urge to step back behind the gate and slam it shut, but he stood his ground and was rewarded immediately with a tail-wagging frenzy.
“He likes you,” Kevin said.
Mitch wondered what criteria the dog had used to come to that decision. It was, he thought, a system of evaluation completely different from Bob Sutherland’s, who was always looking to find fault, always studying you as if to figure out your angle. This dog just saw him with Kevin and that was it. He had passed the interview. Oh, you know Kevin? Great, you’re in the club.
They walked Jeffrey, then went inside the house to get him a bowl of food. The house was one of those old, stone mansions with a kitchen the size of Mitch’s apartment. Mitch walked around the kitchen, admiring the granite counters, the butcher-block island, and the copper-finished pots hanging from the racks above it. So this is what a rich person’s house looks like, he thought.
“Dude, are you listening?” asked Kevin.
“Yeah. Something about water.”
“Dude, you have to take this seriously. You have to fill his water bowl before you go and he keeps the food in this closet here.”
“I’m taking it seriously,” said Mitch, and he was. Then he stepped on the lever of the garbage can to pop the lid, meaning to throw a used Kleenex away, and noticed a small piece of paper sitting atop the pile of trash. Kevin continued talking as Mitch extracted the paper from the pile and held it up, still dripping what looked like orange juice.
“What the hell are you doing?” Kevin asked.
“Dude, do you know what this is?”
Kevin came over and peered at it. “It’s a piece of paper with some letters and numbers on it. And it’s not yours. Could you stop going through this guy’s trash and listen to me for a second?”
“36-L-18-R-22-L-9-R- 5,” Mitch recited. “This isn’t just letters and numbers. It’s a safe combination.”
Kevin stopped walking around the kitchen filling the dog’s bowls. “It’s a what?”
“A safe combination. Does this guy have a safe?”
“Shit, I don’t know. I’ve never been anywhere in the house except the kitchen.” Kevin walked over and looked at the paper. “OK, even if this is a safe combination, so what? It doesn’t concern us.” He tossed the slip of paper back in the trash can.
Mitch immediately picked it back up and put it in his pocket. Kevin was staring at him.
“What?” Mitch asked.
“Dude, do me a favor, OK? Don’t go wandering around this guy’s house looking for his safe.”
“I promise not to.”
“Really?”
“This week.”
“Dammit, look-”
“Kevin, man, listen. Why do you think this was in the garbage? Huh? Answer me that.”
“I don’t know. What difference does it make? I’ve been doing this shit for a year and I don’t usually go through my client’s garbage.”
“‘Client’? What are you, a lawyer?”
“That’s what I call them. They’re my clients.”
Mitch sighed. “Anyway, I figure it was in the garbage because he just had the safe installed. Has there been anyone working in the house in the last couple of days?”
Kevin thought for a second. “There was a locksmith here yesterday. He was doing some work back there in the den, or the living room, or whatever it is.” Kevin pointed to one of the opulently decorated, paneled rooms off the kitchen.
Mitch nodded. “What do you suppose he was doing back there?” There was silence for a second while Kevin looked concerned, then curious, then concerned again. “Let’s at least have a look.”
Kevin finished filling Jeffrey’s bowl. “Do what you want,” he said, resigned. “But take your shoes off.”
Mitch took his shoes off and stepped over the dog gate into the den. There was a huge cherrywood desk in front of a brick fireplace, and Mitch was struck by the grandeur of the room. Persian rug, leather bound books on inlaid shelves-rich people had some really nice shit. He wondered if they ever appreciated it or if it was just meant to impress, or intimidate, the dog walkers, the maids, the locksmiths, and the plumbers. Perhaps spending gobs of money on opulent rubbish was a way of giving a straight-up middle finger to all the people like him who couldn’t afford things like wrought-iron fireplace pokers and Waterford crystal. He picked up the fireplace poker and looked at it. Probably cost hundreds, he thought. No Accu-mart crap in this house.
Most of all, though, he noticed the smell of freshly cut wood, and there were some splotches of sawdust to the right of the Persian rug. Someone had cut a wall stud right near there. He looked at the walls and saw no marks. Then he touched the gilded frame of a painting and it swung outward. He laughed. Could this shit be any more James Bond?
He was looking at the pristine stainless-steel knob of a safe. Behind him, he saw Kevin standing in the doorway of the den in his stockinged feet.
“You’re a menace,” Kevin said, but Mitch heard grudging respect in his voice.
Mitch gently pushed the painting back against the wall, aware that his heart was pounding. “Let’s go walk some more dogs,” he said.
THEY WERE IN line behind two other cars at the Accu-mart loading dock, and Doug was getting nervous.
“Dude, I don’t think this is a good idea,” he said. Kevin knew Doug thought that because he had been repeating it like a mantra since they had switched the license plate on the truck an hour earlier. The nonstop doubtful mumbling had only made Kevin want to bring him along even more, both because of a sadistic impulse to make Doug face his fears and a genuine desire not to steal the TV alone.
“Good idea or not, man, we’re doing it, OK? We’re in line.”
“It’s not too late to just pull out of the line and go back,” Doug said.
Kevin put the pickup in park. “Look,” he said, holding the invoice up in Doug’s face. “In two minutes, I’m going to hand this piece of paper to the guy on the loading dock, and we’re going to get a TV. And when I do it, the whole thing is gonna go a lot easier if the guy sitting next to me in the passenger seat isn’t covered in sweat and freaking out. OK?”
“OK,” said Doug, softly.
“Just be cool.”
“OK, I’m cool.” He seemed cool for a second, then he said, “But you’re on parole.”
“What the fuck are you bringing that up for? Besides, I’m not on parole anymore. I got released on Wednesday.” The loading dock workers waved the next car up, so that Kevin and Doug were next.
“Hey, congratulations, man. That’s cool.”
“Thank you. That’s more than Linda had to say about it.”
“What do you mean?”
“Bitch couldn’t even congratulate me, you know?”
Doug felt a flush of anger at hearing Linda called a bitch but stopped himself from saying something in her defense. For reasons that were not available to him, he didn’t want Kevin to know he and Linda had gone to the mall the other day, or that they had ever even spoken without Kevin around.