tone-deaf warbling sound.
“Jasper?” It was Ange; she sounded beyond panic.
“What happened?” I asked, adrenaline rushing through me, burning away the muddle of sleepiness.
“Uzi’s gone.”
“He’s gone? From where?”
“I tied him to the bike rack and went into the grocery store, and when I came out he was gone.”
“Is the leash gone too? Did he break it?” I got out of bed, pulled a pair of jeans from the mound of clothes I’d worn yesterday.
“No, it’s gone too.”
“He still could’ve pulled loose. He’s probably nearby.”
“He wouldn’t run away, even if he got loose. Not Uzi.”
“But he must have,” I said. “Who would steal a big old mutt?”
Ange started to cry. “I don’t know. But he’s gone.”
“I’m on my way,” I said. “I’ll bring Colin and Jeannie. We’ll find him.”
I ran to get Colin and Jeannie. A lost dog—it was the sort of old-fashioned problem you didn’t often get to tackle these days. For a second I pondered the possibility that the bamboo outbreak had stifled food supplies to the point that people were kidnapping dogs and eating them, but that didn’t make sense. There were plenty of strays out there if you wanted to eat dogs, and besides, no one would tangle with a big, mean-looking dog like Uzi.
“Shhh, shhh, we’ll find him,” I said, my arm wrapped around Ange as we sat on the steps of her house. The sun would be down in a few hours. I knew what Ange was thinking: Uzi would be alone, in the dark.
An electric wheeming announced that Chair was coming around the corner. Ange stood, stared expectantly at the corner.
Chair was alone. He looked at Ange hopefully as he rounded the corner; she shook her head no. He pounded the arm of his wheelchair. Sebastian, Colin, Jeannie, and a few others were still out. There was hope.
“He’s okay,” I said. “There are a thousand strays wandering the streets. No one would take him, he just got loose. We’ll find him.”
Just as I spotted Sebastian, alone, heading toward us, I heard a pitiful whine from the other direction. I snapped my head around, seeking the source. It had come from the square, but there was nothing there.
I began to suspect it was my imagination, but then I heard it again. Ange heard it, too. She leapt from the stoop, calling Uzi’s name. I was right behind her.
We spotted him in the street across the square. He was moving slowly, slowly, his head hanging almost to the pavement.
“Uzi!” Ange screamed. Uzi howled miserably; Ange launched herself toward him. Uzi stopped at the edge of the square. There was something terribly wrong with him. He looked… twisted. As we closed the gap I saw something dangling from his stomach.
It was a wire.
I grabbed Ange’s shirt from behind and pulled, shouting for her to wait. She struggled to get free, screamed at me to let go, then she managed to break my hold.
“Wait!” I shouted, chasing her.
“What’s wrong with him? What’s wrong with him?” Ange shouted as she wrapped her arms around Uzi’s big head. He licked her face feebly.
I squatted, examining the wire. “Oh, Christ. Get back! Get away!” I screamed at her.
“What’s wrong with him?” Ange screamed back.
Sebastian appeared, wrapped his arms around Ange’s waist and pulled her backward; her feet bounced over the curb and across the grass as she struggled to get free.
I pushed Uzi; he fell onto his side in a pathetic heap, howling in pain. Ange screamed his name. His underside had been shaved, and there was a long, ragged incision on one side of his belly.
“Bomb!” I heard myself yell. I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to run, wanted to get far away from Uzi, but I couldn’t just leave him there, howling in pain.
I tore open the incision, pushed my hand inside Uzi and fished around until I felt something hard, something that didn’t belong inside a dog. Ange was screaming at me from across the street, asking over and over what I was doing to him.
I pulled the bomb out of Uzi, leapt to my feet, and hurled it down the street. A trailing wire spun in the air. The device hit the pavement, bounced twice, then lay still.
An explosion ripped the air, throwing up fire and dust and chips of asphalt. I was knocked backward. Pebbles rained down on me.
Then Sebastian was leaning over me, cradling my head. He asked if I was okay. My whole body was throbbing. I looked down at it, afraid there would be some bloody hole in me, but everything looked fine. I turned to locate Ange.
She was hunched over Uzi, who gave one final, misguided attempt at a lick that missed badly, then twitched and lay still. Ange held his head and rocked him.
With Sebastian’s help I got to my feet, went over to Ange.
“Are you all right?” I asked.
Ange grabbed my hand, clutched it hard. “No.” She kissed Uzi’s nose, gently lowered his lifeless head to the ground, and stood. A crowd had formed in the square. Ange scanned them, standing at a distance in their white masks.
“You,” she said. Her voice was shaking with rage.
And then I saw him, our Dada neighbor, wearing his fucking mailman outfit and sporting a fucking maskless grin like his horse had just finished first by a fucking nose.
Ange stormed into the square with me right behind, pushed through the crowd until she was right in Rumor’s face. “Did you do this?” she screamed. “Did you?”
He shrugged. “Who put these sharks in the water? Hard to say.”
Ange lunged at him, tearing at his eyes with a clawed hand. Rumor grabbed her by the throat, spun her around and slammed her to the ground. She hit the ground hard, his hand pinning her throat.
I launched myself at him. I had no plan, no idea how I could hurt him—I just went for his throat. He cuffed me aside like a mosquito, a blow to my temple that made me see stars.
“Unclench those little fists,” I heard Rumor say to Ange as I struggled to my knees. He let go of her throat; air squealed into her lungs. Rumor stood, turned his back to us. “You’re not going to live long in this world, Little Peanut,” he said.
Ange struggled to a sitting position as I crawled over to her. She screamed in rage and lunged to her feet to go after Rumor again, but I held her firm.
“He’ll kill you without a second thought,” I said. “We can’t fight him head-on, not even if Cortez was here.”
I looked at Uzi, sprawled on the sidewalk, his lips pulled tight in a rictus snarl. Uzi. Who was more innocent in all this than Uzi?
I hated feeling so powerless. Once, there would have been police cruisers filling the square, courts to prosecute this bastard, and prisons to put him away. Now, whoever was most willing and able to kill had all the power.
Beyond Uzi a young boy was laying down colored dots, smiling under his mask, water gun clutched in one hand. The game went on, whatever the tragedy of the moment. He raised his gun, test-squirted a girl standing forty feet away from him. I watched the water spurt in a tight, perfect arc…
“Chair,” I said, my voice calm. He rolled closer to us. “Stay with her a minute?” Chair nodded.
I dug into my pocket, pulled out a twenty and approached the boy with the water gun. “I’ll give you twenty bucks for your gun,” I said, holding the bill between two fingers.
His eyes opened wide. “Okay.” He grabbed his gun by the muzzle and held it out to me. I gave him the bill, said thanks, and headed inside Ange’s apartment with the gun.
There was a half bag of blood in the fridge. I emptied most of the water from the gun and poured in the blood. Some of it missed, spilling across my knuckles, and over the plastic base and trigger of the gun. I rinsed my
