The fence was rusty, too, when they came to it, at the base of the hill. Eight foot high, chain link, it stretched away on both sides, hemming the junked cars in, and topped by a triple strand of barbed wire. The gate was the same height, and also topped by barbed wire, and there was a sign on it that said NO TRESPASSING –
Hughes left the motor running and got out of the car. He went over to the box mounted on the left gatepost, opened the door, and spent a minute talking on the phone. Grofield waited in the car; he rolled his window down and listened to silence. No birds, nothing but the almost-silent purr of the engine.
Hughes came back to the car and slid behind the wheel.
'Best roll your window up,' he said.
Grofield looked at him, but didn't ask any questions. He rolled his window up, and at the same time the two halves of the gate opened inward – electric, remote control.
Hughes drove the Javelin through and started up the hill. Grofield twisted around to watch the gates shut again, and when he faced front there was a Doberman pinscher directly in their path, black, with brown markings.
Hughes was driving slowly up the steep incline, and he neither braked nor hit the horn, but just kept moving toward the dog, which at the last moment padded with heavy gracefulness to one side. It met Grofield's eyes through the closed window as the car went by, and it didn't look sweet-tempered at all.
'Nice playmate,' Grofield said.
'Purgy don't get robbed,' Hughes said.
'I bet he doesn't.'
Grofield looked back, to see if the dog was following them, and now there were two, both Dobermans, both padding along right behind the car. And as he watched, a third came streaking through narrow alleys amid the junk to the right and joined the first two.
Grofield said, 'How many's he got?'
'I don't know. More than enough.'
'One is enough,' Grofield said, and faced front after that.
There was a little open flat area at the top, in front of the house, and standing in it was a short, fat, very wide man with a bull neck and an irritable expression. He was filthy, clothing and skin and hair, wearing stained gray workpants, black work boots and a flannel shirt that had once been several colors but was now mostly a faded grayish pink. There were so many streaks of rust and grease and dirt over his arms and face and clothes that he almost looked like an Indian in war paint.
Grofield said, 'That's got to be Purgy.'
'You're right.'
Purgy gave them an irritable arm wave, meaning to follow him, and tramped on around the corner of the house. Hughes drove slowly after him, and Grofield saw that they were now surrounded by at least five dogs, one of them trotting along in front. He said, 'Is Dobermans all he's got?'
Hughes frowned at the windshield. 'I don't follow you.'
'The dogs. Are they all Dobermans?'
'Is that what they are? They all look alike, so I guess so.'
Purgy had led them along the continuation of the dirt road around the side of the house, and now around to the back. Here the hill fell away more slowly, in broad steps. The first level below the house contained a dozen or more vehicles of a wide variety of kinds, all in apparently good operating order. The level below that had a rickety shedlike ten-car garage, with several cars and parts of cars on the beaten dirt in front of it, and with the chain-link fence running along just behind it. Beyond the fence were trees, a thick woods that stretched on down into the valley.
'I guess that's our truck,' Hughes said.
Grofield nodded. 'Looks all right.'
'The sound is more important,' Hughes commented.
The truck was one of the vehicles on the first level, a big tractor-trailer rig with a dark green International Harvester cab and an unpainted aluminum Freuhauf body. There were no markings on the body, but the cab door bore the legend UNIVERSAL FUR STORAGE,
'It's hot,' Grofield said. 'It's left over from a hijack.'
'I already knew that. That's why we're getting a price.'
'Original plates?'
'I brought my own.'
'We'll have to do something about that door.'
'If we take it.'
And if they didn't? This was Thursday; they were supposed to move tomorrow night. Grofield said, 'You got any others lined up?'
'Not yet. If this one's no good, it costs us a couple weeks.'
Out there in front of them, Purgy was still walking, a steady fat man's waddle. A couple of dogs were flanking him now, and maybe half a dozen of them were around the car. Purgy led them halfway across the rear of the ramshackle house to where the dirt road made a sharp turn downward and to the left, down to the next level.
