It was even colder at the top of the hill, and Harrison growled a curse at Lex, his black Lab, for refusing to drop his chewed red Frisbee as Harrison tried to free the dog from his choker collar. As he locked the carriage brake and handed a baby bottle to his son, Adam, Harrison clenched his teeth and swore at his soon-to-be-ex-wife and her idiot attorney for withholding the promised cash settlement until Friday, when Harrison desperately needed $16,000 today.
After shaking the Frisbee overhead like a tambourine to get the dog revved up, Harrison shouted, “Here we go, boy! Come on! Bet you can’t catch this one!” Harrison whipped the Frisbee so hard into the wind it sailed toward an abandoned soccer goal at the north end of the park. Lex bolted after it. He caught it easily with an airborne lunge, ending with the enamel crunch of sharp teeth clamped into plastic. As Lex trotted back with the Frisbee, Adam waved a mittened hand from within the baby carriage and squealed, “Dog-geee!”
From behind, Harrison heard the muffled whump-whump of two car doors slamming far away. He turned and saw a black Mercedes with darkened windows parked at the curb. Two figures leaned into the wind as they walked up the hill toward him.
Pretending not to notice, Harrison glanced around the deserted park. The overhead lamps down by the tennis courts were not yet lit, despite the gloomy overcast sky. The gunmetal gray playground equipment — the slide, a row of swings, and a tilted merry-go-round — sat neglected off to the east. The closest house with a porch light burning was across the street at the other end of the park, at least five hundred yards away. In front of him, Lex danced in anticipation, alert for another throw.
Without hesitating, Harrison threw the Frisbee again, and Lex flew after it, following the crimson arc of the Frisbee’s flight as the wind angled it toward the merry-go-round. Like a pro, the dog timed the approach perfectly, caught the Frisbee inches from the ground without breaking stride, and rushed back for another throw.
Harrison glanced sideways at the two men slowly walking toward him. One was tall and skinny, while the other was broad and immense. They both wore long black coats tied at their waists, and their attention seemed focused on Harrison the whole time.
This must be it, then, thought Harrison. Time to pay the piper.
Harrison looked at his son in the baby carriage, bundled in his little blue parka. “You’re my little rabbit’s foot, Adam,” he whispered as he bent down to take the Frisbee from Lex. “My lucky horseshoe. Nothing bad will happen. They only want to talk to Daddy. I’ll just explain the delay. They’ll understand.”
Adam beamed up at his father and grinned. He was a magnificent eighteen-month-old little boy — bright and inquisitive, with round blue eyes and hair the texture of cornsilk. Harrison treasured his son more than any of his possessions, and so far Adam represented the only profit resulting from Dexter Harrison’s dull and dreary marriage to Dr. Lynn Harrison.
As an attorney himself, Harrison had deftly whisked away temporary custody of their son from his wife. While he had been pondering a divorce, Harrison had spent months preparing a detailed and somewhat exaggerated chronology of all the abilities that made him a wonderful parent, while at the same time embellishing accounts of all of Lynn’s shortcomings, lapses in judgment, and blunders. When Harrison filed for divorce, his attorney obtained an ex parte order from the judge granting Harrison temporary custody of Adam, all before any of the divorce papers were even served on Lynn. Harrison had capitalized on the fact that, while Adam spent weekdays in the most expensive day care in town, Lynn could arrange no baby-sitting for the evenings and weekends she was on call at the hospital, especially on such short notice.
Harrison had supported his wife financially while she was in medical school, and now she earned almost ten times what he did with his floundering personal injury practice. The property settlement had already been reached in principle, with Harrison to receive a large part of it in cash this morning. Lynn’s attorney, however, had deliberately withheld the paperwork until Friday, probably out of spite.
I’ll get even at the custody hearing tomorrow, thought Harrison. His own attorney had assured him that all of their witnesses were lined up and that preliminary signs were good that Harrison would win permanent custody of Adam. Harrison smiled at this thought as he regarded his son. The ultimate prize.
The wind carried the steady sound of boot heels slowly approaching. The two men were thirty feet away.
Still composed, Harrison took the Frisbee from his dog’s mouth and let loose with a mighty throw. Lex pounded the ground after it as if his life depended on it. The dog’s head bobbed like a greyhound’s as he raced to get under the Frisbee before it floated to the ground.
That dog sure loved to run. As a sporting dog, Lex understood and appreciated the thrill of the chase, the electrifying rush of pursuit. He savored the hunt and the kill, even though his target may be only a softball, or a piece of flying plastic.
Lynn, on the other hand, simply had no imagination, no sense of adventure. She preferred her heavy medical books and mildewed chess manuals to the frenzied excitement of a race or the wild exhilaration of a home game.
Chess was boring. It was static, monotonous and simply uninteresting. Harrison would rather invest his leisure time tackling a high stakes poker game or watching a small fortune build at the track. The promise of the big payoff surged through Harrison like adrenaline. Although it was sometimes painful to lose money — and yes, a lot of it on rare occasion, Harrison insured against loss by placing only intelligent and calculated bets.
How was he supposed to know that last year’s Super Bowl champion would lose on Sunday to an expansion team?
Lex returned with the Frisbee just as the two men stopped in front of the baby carriage.
The tall one had the sunken sockets and bulging eyes of a fish, as if he spent days in the dark staring into a television screen. As he peered into the baby carriage and smiled, decayed yellow teeth seemed to burst from his mouth. His lips were circled by an untrimmed goatee that made Harrison’s own face itch when he looked at it.
Harrison gripped the vinyl handle of the baby carriage, trying to appear casual. Just keep breathing, he thought to himself. This is just like being in court.
“Cute little boy you got there, Mr. Harrison. Never seen a finer lookin’ little kid. Wouldn’t you agree with me, Mr. Corillian?”
The shorter man said nothing. He was massive and squat, like a sumo wrestler sizing up an opponent. Thick arms, thick neck — even his eyelids were thick slabs of flesh almost squeezing shut his eyes in a menacing squint. Tight ridges of chocolate skin rippled down the back of his scalp and into a blue turtleneck as he looked first to his right, and then left in smooth, fluid movements, checking out the surroundings.
“Yes,” the taller man concluded, as he clapped moist hands together for emphasis. “This is one snapper of a lad.”
Watching out of the corners of both eyes, Harrison quietly said, “Yes, I know.”
“That is a boy in there, ain’t it?” the tall man continued. “Kinda hard to tell when they’re that little, you know? Boys, girls, they’re more or less the same at that age, don’tcha think?”
Harrison suddenly felt crowded as he gripped the carriage handle tighter. “Who the hell are you guys? What do you want?”
“Ooooh, hey! Calm down, Sport. Don’t get all stimulated. By all means, introductions are most certainly in order. This, as you now know, is Mr. Corillian. He’s not very sociable, so I wouldn’t expect him to hold out his hand and shake.”
The taller man thrust out his own blistered hand to compensate, his naked wrist and forearm jutting out from inside the leather sleeve. “Call me ‘Fish-Hook.’ Pleased to meetcha, Mr. Harrison.”