There was an unpaid ticket on the seat of the Caddy. I took down the information. Jackie had been tagged for speeding— fifty-five in a twenty-five, a four-pointer. This was good news: the last time I’d looked at his record he had had nine points against his license. Jackie liked to drive fast, and it was costing him. I knew he hadn’t paid the ticket because of the points: he’d have his lawyer go in and plead it down, try to get two points knocked off in the city attorney’s office before it ever got to a judge. A word from me in the ear of the city attorney might not be out of order. Anything that hassled Jackie Newton was a good use of my time. From little things big things grow. Get Jackie’s license suspended and I knew he’d drive anyway. Then I could bust him for something bigger. Al Capone never got indicted for murder, just tax evasion, but it was enough.
I put everything back the way it was. Hennessey was standing at the door, the man of action watching for headlights. I looked along the shelves. There were paint cans, tools, boxes of screws, all meticulously in their places. Jackie Newton was a neat man: the compulsively neat killer.
“Cliff,” Hennessey said. His voice fluttered in his throat.
“All right,” I said. “There’s nothing here.”
I turned off the lights and locked the door. We started across the yard but a vision brought me up short. I thought I saw a body hanging from a tree. It was one of those sights that makes you wonder if your eyes are getting old. “Look at that,” I said, but Hennessey still didn’t see. I took out a penlight and cut across the lawn, and slowly the thing came into focus. It was a dog, the Doberman, hung by the neck like some western desperado. “It’s Bruno,” I said numbly. Again I realized what an obsession Jackie Newton and I had become to each other: I knew everything about the guy, even the name of his dog. Supposedly, Jackie had loved the dog: the only thing Jackie Newton had ever been said to love. This was what happened if he loved you: you didn’t ever want to give him cause to hate you, as I had.
“Looks like somebody’s got it in for Jackie,” Hennessey said.
“I don’t think so, Neal. I think he did it himself.”
I was playing my light around the barbecue grill, which had been turned over and spilled. There was a half-eaten steak in the grass, many hours old. The steak had been chewed as if by an animal. Beside it were two upset plates. “I’ll tell you what happened here,” I said, “you tell me how it sounds. Jackie had been entertaining somebody— probably a woman since there were just the two of ‘em. Something happened to take him away for a minute… maybe the phone had rung… but something made him go inside. When he came back, the dog had turned over the grill and eaten one of the steaks and was starting on the other. Jackie went into a rage. We’ve seen him in action, we know how he can be. He strung the poor bastard up with the clothesline. Then he did what he always does when he gets like that. Took his fastest car, the Lamborghini, and went out for a drive. That’s where he’s been tonight, out in the country driving at a hundred and fifty miles an hour.”
“You could make me buy that,” Hennessey said.
“Then I’ll tell you what else he did. He couldn’t get rid of it, the rage just wouldn’t go away. Nothing worked. He hated killing that dog, hated himself for doing it, so he went down-town and killed the bookscout. Somebody he didn’t know or care about… just an outlet for all that murderous energy. That’s why the bookscout wasn’t beaten before he was killed: that’s why he was different from all the others. Jackie didn’t do this one for pleasure, he did it because he needed to.”
“I don’t know about that part,” Hennessey said.
“What’s the matter with it?” I snapped.
“For one thing, you want it too much. You want it to fit, Cliff. I know where you’re coming from with Jackie Newton, you’d pin the goddamn Kennedy assassination on Jackie if you thought you could make it stick.”
“It does fit,” I said impatiently. “It fits, Neal.”
Hennessey didn’t say any more, which was probably a good thing. We didn’t touch the dog except to confirm that it had been dead for some time. It was very stiff. Its eyes were open. If a dog’s face can show feelings, this one showed shock, sadness, and, finally, disbelief. Its front paws had been clawing the air and had finally come to rest, frozen there, in a posture much like a man in prayer. I had to fight an impulse to cut it down. Hennessey was right: we had no warrant, no authority, no right to be here. This was very bad police work. The dog didn’t exist for us, even assuming that it might be relevant to our case, until we established some proper groundwork.
We had pushed luck about as far as it can go. We went around to the front of the house, where Officer Nasses again told us his opinion, no offense intended, that we were out of our minds. I still wanted to be here when Jackie came rolling in: I wanted to see what time it was, how he looked, what his car looked like. I wanted to see as much as possible of what he did, what the state of his mind was. I put Hennessey and Nasses out front, in the trees across the road, and I went around to watch the back. This could be a very long wait. Jackie might be in Wyoming by now: that’s the kind of state a Lamborghini was made for, empty roads and wide-open spaces and cops who didn’t care how fast you went. He might be gone for a week.
So I’d wait. If the wait got too long, I’d let Hennessey and Nasses go in, but I would stay. Jackie Newton was turning me into an eccentric. I had a disturbing vision of myself waiting here for days, then weeks, into the changing seasons, my beard coming in, my clothes becoming tattered and worn, Hennessey bringing me food and water once a day. I was like Fred Dobbs in
I snuffed that thought fast. One of my problems was beginning to resolve itself. In another twenty minutes it would be daylight: then, I thought, we could see the dog from the road. That would make it legitimate discovery, as long as Jackie didn’t find out that we’d been here earlier. I wasn’t going to tell him. Hennessey wasn’t. Nasses was the unknown factor. I gave up the idea of confronting Jackie as he stepped from his car. I decided to do it by the book from here on out. I would join the boys in the bushes across the road. When Jackie did come home, we’d go get the car and pull up in front and ring his doorbell, as proper as Emily Post.
Let the fun begin, I thought.
