But before she can speak he says, “You ever meet his goons?”
She stares at him.
“Guy named Raban,” he says. “And a guy named Blumfeld.”
He watches the recognition turn her around, put their entire encounter, instantly, into a brand-new framework.
“So you know them.”
“They did this?” pointing to his midsection.
“Grabbed me in an alley off Voegelin.”
“But why?” suddenly wondering, he can tell, if it has something to do with her.
“That,” he says, “is why I went to see Rudy Perez.”
“I don’t understand,” she says, sitting again.
He lowers his shirt, folds his arms.
“They think I’ve got something that Mister Kroger wants,” wishing but unable to avoid the sarcasm.
“A book?”
“It’s Kroger. What do you think?”
“You’re sure it was—”
“Look, Wylie, just tell me if he’s been expecting something new. Was there something coming into the city that he had his eye on? Something Leo Tani might’ve had a hand in moving?”
She looks past him, her head shaking slowly. “There’s nothing. If there was, I’d be the buyer. I’d have set up the transaction. I swear, if Kroger had a purchase in mind, I’d know about it.”
“Have there been any brokers calling—”
He breaks off and looks outside, about five feet beyond the greenhouse, and sees a dog standing rigid, staring back at him. Gilrein is no dog expert, but it looks like a Rottweiler, stocky with short black fur and tan markings on the face and snout. Wylie turns and sees it, then looks back to Gilrein.
The animal carries a sense of foreboding with it, a vibration of purposeful menace. There’s no play in its body, no sense of random wandering. Its tongue is tucked and sealed in its mouth, its ears look brittle and taut. It stands motionless, doesn’t nose the ground, doesn’t give any sign of distraction from bird noise or a scent in the breeze.
The closest neighbor is half a mile away and Gilrein knows they don’t own any dogs. He squats down slowly, picks up a rock from a mound of silt and rubble.
“I think maybe we should walk back to your car,” he says, and without responding, Wylie steps next to him and takes hold of his arm.
They exit the greenhouse and start to walk slowly toward the path into the orchards. The dog moves up behind them, keeping an even five feet or so between them.
“I hate dogs” is all Wylie says and it comes out in a tight whisper.
Gilrein keeps the rock in his right hand, but when they reach the tree line and see the second Rottweiler he knows what he needs is his gun. Unfortunately, it’s sitting in the drawer of the nightstand next to the bed. The second dog drops into place on Wylie’s left and keeps perfect pace with them. Wylie’s grip on Gilrein’s arm tightens up, but he tries to keep their steps even and deliberate. The animals could just be someone’s demented choice of a hunting dog, some idiot with a rifle who wandered into the bird sanctuary to knock down some protected fowl and managed to get lost in the wood. But though they appear well trained and cared for, the dogs have no collars or tags.
When the path forks right, a third dog is waiting, sitting patiently on its haunches, inanimate as a piece of sculpture until they pass and it falls into a trot on Gilrein’s right. The dogs don’t acknowledge each other. It’s as if they’ve been bred only to anticipate Gilrein’s intentions and match his movements.
“What do we do?” Wylie’s voice in a tone he can’t ever remember hearing before. He can feel her straining to pick up speed, and he tries to pull her back, stay at a level march. So far, all threat has been implied. But then they come to the small slope that leads to the rear yard of the farmhouse. And at the bottom of the hill is another Rottweiler in the center of the path.
Gilrein stops and the dogs follow suit simultaneously, turning into pieces of bristly stone. It’s as if he can feel their joints tightening, ready for the spring. As if he can sense the run of salivation increasing over their gums and teeth and in their throats.
He looks out, scans the spread of forest that breaks right and left to either side of the pathway. And his eyes start to pick out the rest of them. He counts four more, off the path, guarding the periphery, staring back at him through the brush, waiting to see his next move.
“Oh, Jesus,” Wylie says, the voice fighting the burn of tears already in her throat, panic coming off her skin like heat.
The dog blocking the way forward seems to lean toward them. Gilrein slowly raises his throwing arm. The animal pulls back the rubbery folds of its mouth, reveals the teeth and lets an almost inaudible growl emerge from low in the throat. It’s a sound Gilrein has heard before and never forgotten, a noise that guards the scrap pounds around the edge of the city. The feral voice of the alleys that back the noodle joints in Little Asia. And it means that in a matter of seconds, this animal is going to launch itself on top of them and tear into their flesh.
The surrounding dogs modify their posture and join into the chorus. Wylie is hugging into him, trembling into his arm, something like a horrible, muted keening seeping out of her own throat.
And Wylie’s cry is the thing that launches him into motion. He pitches his rock like a bullet into the blocking dog’s head and runs, pulling Wylie down the slope and breaking off the path and toward the clearing. He’s got the momentum of the hill, but it’s not enough. The pack converges, snapping at his legs and ass and arms. Wylie breaks from him, runs to the left. The dogs ignore her and form a circle around Gilrein, charging in, their heads swinging, teeth tearing and snapping in air. Gilrein grabs a fallen branch, swings it like a baseball bat, everything he’s got, connects with a head, breaking something, the dog falling to the ground in a pile, not even time for the roar to turn to yelp.
He’s hit from behind. He manages to roll as he goes down, but the dog jumps onto his chest and makes a swipe at his throat. He gets his arm up in time to block the teeth.
And then there’s a gunshot and the dogs freeze, begin to retreat, back off several feet and hover until a whistle sounds and they bolt in full gallop in the direction of the house.
Gilrein starts to get up, but has to lean back down on a forearm, take a breath to keep his stomach under control. He looks to the tree line and sees a figure approaching, shotgun up on the shoulder. Gilrein gets to his feet, ready to charge the stupid bastard, coldcock him before the idiot can explain. But as he takes a step forward, he realizes the shotgun is being leveled at him.
And the face behind it belongs to August Kroger’s meatboy Blumfeld.
12
Who can explain this city? Whose job or duty would this be? Everyone draws his own map. And this is probably as it should be. Think about the physiognomy of the streets. They seem to exist to be pure spectacle. Absolute form and accidental function.
Understand that while a currently fashionable breed of critic defines the standard metropolitan nexus as “faceless,” the city of Quinsigamond is the antithesis of this. It is a burg too intensely there for its own good. Unlike some urban districts that seem to lack a center, Quinsigamond’s center appears, always, to be everywhere at once, radiating a malignant intensity that, for reasons not readily manifest and despite our best intentions, can never be dissipated into something harmless. It’s as if the closed-down factories that built and grew this town were still operating on some hidden and secret level, pumping out a new kind of toxin, an unsensed but fully noxious pollutant determined to change us all in unknown ways.