right next to me, her left hand on my thigh, transmitting. Max and Michelle were in the back, Michelle yammering a nerve-edged blue streak, the mute Mongol warrior probably grateful he couldn’t hear. I had decided the Plymouth wasn’t much of a risk—I always keep the registration on me, and the car got a fresh coat of dull-cream primer last night.
I waved across to where Clarence sat behind the wheel of what would pass for a Con Ed truck if you didn’t look too close. If you did, you’d be looking at the wrong end of the Prof’s double-barreled sawed-off. Somewhere in the back of the truck, the Mole was preparing his potions.
We caravaned along until we got to the pull-off spot on the FDR. I pointed to a white semi-stretch limo with blacked-out glass. “That’s yours,” I told Crystal Beth. “The rollers won’t look twice at a car like that this time of morning. It’ll look like someone’s coming home from clubbing. Besides, it’ll hold everyone.”
“I’m staying with you,” she said.
“No, you are
“Burke, I—”
“Crystal Beth, I swear I will throw your fat ass out of this car right now, no more playing. Drive the limo, or we’ll do this without you.”
She punched me hard on the right arm and got out. She walked over to the limo, opened it with the key I’d given her. I waited until I heard it start up, then I took off.
The Animal Shelter was freestanding—a long, low concrete building, T-shaped at the back end. I pointed out my window for Crystal Beth to pull over. She parked the big limo perfectly, left it with the nose aimed straight out. When she got into the front seat of the Plymouth, I said: “They’re going to take the truck around the back. Mole’ll stay with it. The Prof and Clarence will meet us out front. Then we do it. Ready?”
Everybody nodded. Nobody spoke.
I stashed the Plymouth just around the corner, out of sight from the front door. We all got out. The Prof and Clarence slipped around the corner and linked up with us.
“How we getting in, Schoolboy?” the Prof asked. “Scam or slam?”
“Slam,” I told him, showing the handful of Semtex I was holding. “Me first. Stand back.”
I walked up to the door. Put my ear to it. Nothing but a few random, doleful barks—the Captured Dog Blues —no sound of human activity. I patted the Semtex all around the knob and the lock, then made a long seam-tracer for the door’s edge. I jerked the string loose and ran back around the corner.
The second the door blew off the hinges, we all charged, faces covered with dark stocking masks, hands gloved. I was first in the door. The attendant was at his desk, face slack with shock. I showed him the pistol.
“Touch the phone and you’re dead,” I promised him.
Max slid past me, unslinging the huge set of bolt-cutters from over one massive shoulder. The Prof stepped into a corner, his scattergun weaving, a snake looking for a passing mouse. The lights flickered, then went out—the Mole saying he was on the job.
Crystal Beth stepped up, shoving me aside, shining a halogen flashlight in the attendant’s face.
“This is a message from the Wolfpack Cadre of the Canine Liberation Front,” she proclaimed in a perfect liberal-twit revolutionary’s voice. “You may no longer imprison our brothers and sisters without fear of consequences!”
“Look, I—”
“Silence, lackey!” Crystal Beth snarled at him. “This is a jailbreak, not a debate.”
A soft explosion rocked the back of the building. Then another.
The attendant moved his lips like he was praying, but no sound came out.
I walked past him. Saw Max’s broad back bent over as he severed the heavy lock on the door to the cage area. Then we both popped the cages open, one by one. The dogs milled about uncertainly, until one spotted the gaping hole in the side of the building. He ran for it, and the others followed.
Pansy was there, her cage standing open. On her feet, daring Max to come closer.
“Pansy!” I called to her. “Come here, sweetheart!”
The big beast’s head shot up. She bounded over to me. “Good girl!” I told her, patting her huge head. Then I gave her the hand signal to heel and we merged with the river of dogs flowing to freedom.
As soon as she saw the car, Pansy knew what to do. I popped the trunk and she jumped inside, curled up on the mat next to the padded fuel cell, and looked up expectantly. I handed her a giant marrow bone, whispering “Speak!” at the same time. I closed the trunk lid, knowing the air holes I’d punched in it years ago would let her breathe just fine. And if anyone heard her pulverizing the bone, they’d just think the old Plymouth had a bad differential.
Even with us working the wrong side of the river, some citizen could have called the cops by then. We had to move fast. I stepped back inside the front door just as Michelle was taping up a cardboard stencil warning the world against the unlawful imprisonment of dogs. Clarence sprayed the blood-red paint with one hand, the other holding his pistol steady.
“Don’t think about the phones after we’re gone,” I told the attendant, just to get his attention. As he looked up, Max materialized behind him and did something to his neck. He wouldn’t be making any calls for hours.
“They all out?” I asked Clarence.
“All gone, mahn. Every one.”
“Scoop the Mole—he’s back there somewhere. Then get in the limo and fly. I’ll be right behind you.”
I tossed a smoke grenade into the back of the joint and dashed for the Plymouth.
I read all about it in the afternoon paper, Pansy stretched out next to me in Crystal Beth’s apartment. On the top floor of her safehouse.
The papers were full of it—in all respects—for the next couple of days. The Mayor said it was terrorism. Pansy yawned when she saw his face. Even the camera was bored.
Most of the dogs made it to freedom. The waterfront’s not fully developed over on the Queens side. Yet. Maybe some of them will form a pack like their counterparts had in the South Bronx—go feral, evolve their own breed.
Like we have, the Children of the Secret.
Some of them will bond. Some of them will prey on anything that crosses their path.
Some of us do that too.
I started rebuilding my life.
“You know who this is?” I asked.
“Yeah,” was all the answer I got.
“You want to meet me? In the alley?”
“Yeah.”
“Say when.”
“First thing tomorrow.”
I hit the off button. Even if they traced the call, all they’d get would be the bogus number of the stolen cell phone—the Mole had installed a cloned chip to make it work.
If anyone else had been listening to that few seconds of talk between me and a pit bull of a cop named Morales, they still wouldn’t know that “first thing tomorrow” meant midnight and the alley was Mama’s restaurant. And even if they did know it, they wouldn’t come there without a SWAT team—it’s not a safe place for strangers.
He strolled in five minutes past midnight, a cheap brown suit and wash-and-wear white shirt with clip-on tie covering the surgery scars from the bullet he’d taken a few years back. A bullet from another cop: that homicidally insane Belinda. I’d left her dead on the rooftop of the building where they’d had their last meeting, making my getaway while Morales was being carted off by the EMTs. Later, the brass made it a tidy package by declaring Morales a hero. In their version, he’d killed Belinda in a shootout.
Morales was an old-time harness bull, a dinosaur who couldn’t evolve but refused to die. He’d flake a drug dealer, phony-up probable cause, whatever it took. And he carried a throw-down piece in case he had to smoke a suspect. A brutal man who saw it all in black-and-white. Mostly black—my color in his eyes forever. He wouldn’t pay
