The quiet became oppressive. He went into the bedroom. She was back in bed, where they would find her.
He returned to the kitchen and rinsed his hands, stacked the dishes and utensils in the dishwasher, all but the bread knife, which he dried carefully and put in the oak block on the counter.
The afternoon was waning.
“Please, David,” she said, “Patrick will be home soon.”
“We were working it out,” he said. He was on the terrace again, walking around. He looked at the canvas-covered hot tub with its blanket of withered leaves and crusty pigeon droppings, the Adirondack chairs around the table. The empty mug someone had left under the table wore a moldy crust.
He took off his glasses and placed them on the table.
He looked at his Rolex. There was blood on the face. He raised it to his lips and licked the blood off. It was four o’clock. Patrick would be home soon.
He listened to the sound of the elevator, the key in the lock.
“Mom? Dad? I’m home.”
For a brief moment David stood on the low brick wall that enclosed the terrace, then he stepped off.
Arful by JOHN LUTZ
“ARE YOU TRYING to tell me dogs can talk?”
Braddock had been in Hollywood three long years now. He hadn’t been able to sell a screenplay, but he was sure he’d heard and seen just about everything, much of it right here in Savvie’s bar, within spitting distance of Wilshire Boulevard. But here was something he hadn’t expected, like an opening scene from an old Twilight Zone episode.
The old man sitting across the table from him smiled, wrinkling his seamed face even more and giving him the look of one of those dolls with heads and faces made from dried apples.
“No,” he said, “not every dog. But some dogs sometimes, if a certain operation is performed on their palates and if they are properly trained.” He took a swig of blended Scotch and twinkled an eye at Braddock. “I know how to train ’em.”
Braddock was barely in his twenties, but he knew he was no fool. “Who trained you?” he asked.
Mitty-that was the old man’s name-twisted his lips in an odd mobile line that changed his smile to a tight grin. He had small, even teeth that were yellowed and probably false. “Dr. Darius,” he said, “the veterinarian surgeon who discovered and perfected the operation.”
“Sure,” Braddock said. “I think I met him once.”
“Doubt it,” Mitty said. “He’s been dead for over fifty years. But before he died he taught me not only how to develop the facility of speech in certain dogs of a particular combination of breeds, but the operation that makes it possible.”
It was dim in Savvie’s. Outside the tinted windows only an occasional pedestrian trudged past in the ninety-degree heat. This time of the afternoon there were no other customers in Savvie’s. Braddock, Mitty, and Edgar the part-time bartender had the place to themselves. Braddock considered what Mitty had told him. How naive did the old joker think he was?
“I suppose you’re a rich man,” Braddock said.
Mitty raised bushy gray eyebrows high on his deeply furrowed forehead. “I wouldn’t be sitting here with you and Java sipping this cheap Scotch if I was rich, now, would I?”
“Java?”
Mitty nodded and glanced down and to the side, toward a dog that had been so still and quiet that Braddock hadn’t noticed it. Java was a small black and white pooch sitting patiently on its haunches near his chair.
“I didn’t see it there,” Braddock said.
“Java’s a he,” Mitty corrected.
“Sorry, fella,” Braddock said to the dog. For only an instant, he half expected the dog to answer.
Java resembled one of those miniature collies, only his hair was shorter. And he did have a funny look around the mouth, as if he were sort of smiling. As if he knew something.
“Why didn’t Java introduce himself?” Braddock asked.
“Introduce yourself, Java,” Mitty told the dog.
At the mention of his name, Java woofed.
“That’s talking?” Braddock asked.
“Not at all. You can’t expect a dog to know the English language without learning it. And I didn’t give him the proper commands. What he is, he’s shy, not much of a performer. That’s why I said he wouldn’t talk here and now. But he’s getting better, more outgoing.”
“Where have you performed?” Braddock asked, being careful to look at Mitty when he asked. “I mean, you and Java?”
“Nowhere yet. We’re working up to it.”
“Uh-huh.” Braddock sipped his drink, a club soda with a lime twist. He never drank before evening, keeping his mind clear to write. He’d soon discovered that many of the powerful people in the film industry were blatant con men, not to be believed. If he’d been naive when he arrived in L.A., he was long over it. Now there were calluses on his cynicism.
Mitty leaned back and regarded him. Braddock regarded the old man right back. He had to be in his eighties, and he dressed like a racetrack tout in Guys and Dolls, tan checked sport coat, red shirt, redder bow tie. The tie had a sprinkling of tiny black polka dots and was perched in an oddly rapacious way at his Adam’s apple like a brilliant exotic butterfly, carnivorous and going for the throat.
“As I recall from seeing you in here before,” Mitty said, “your first name is James.”
“Correct.”
“Like James Braddock, heavyweight champion of the world.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He was long before your time. But shouldn’t you still know yours is the same name as a heavyweight champion?”
Braddock almost pitied the old man for the question. “That kind of ancient knowledge is useless now. It’s a new world. Linear logic is dying. If something comes up and I need that kind of information, I can always get it from the Internet.”
Mitty shook his head with unexpected violence, as if trying to jar loose the persistent butterfly tie clinging to his throat. “You have to be able to think, to synthesize, not just have a lot of facts at your disposal. Everything’s connected to everything else.”
“That’s what I’m telling you,” Braddock said. “The Internet.”
“But the world didn’t start when the Internet was invented. Or just as you were born.”
“I think it pretty much did,” Braddock said. “At least, when it comes to useful information.”
Mitty appeared saddened by this statement. He looked down at Java. Java looked back. He still seemed faintly amused and, yes, rather shy. A strange thing in a dog.
A fat man in oversized Levi’s and a tropical-print shirt waddled in from the heat and breathed in the air conditioning with a smile as he wiped a wrist across his perspiring forehead.
“Glad I could find somewhere to get a drink,” he said. “Everyplace else is closed because of the election.” He settled his bulk on a bar stool that seemed to bend beneath his weight, though that was probably an optical illusion. “How come you’re not closed?”
Edgar, who was a huge man himself, in his sixties with the build and misshapen ears of a former pro wrestler, said, “ ’Cause last election day, we knew who to vote for. Fact is, though, we were about to close.”
Mitty winked at Braddock and smoothly and slowly tugged on Java’s leash until the little dog was out of sight on the other side of his chair. Then he raised a gnarled forefinger to his lips in a signal for Braddock to be silent.
“What’s the big secret?” Braddock whispered across the table.
“Java,” Mitty said. “Even if you don’t believe me, he’s a valuable piece of show business property. But I must trust you with him for a few minutes.”
No one spoke, not even Edgar, busy behind the bar, as Mitty wrapped Java’s leash around the table leg, using an elaborate kind of slip knot. He hand-signaled for the dog to sit and stay, then went shuffling off toward the men’s room. Java didn’t move or make a sound. Braddock had to admit the pooch was well trained.