favorite, by the feeder, unmoving, head cocked, eyes alert. He sensed danger. Dancer, his favorite, was on Maverick’s left in the same position. All the other birds were in their orange crate nests. Never had he seen them like this.
He walked around the cage, knowing something was out there. He wanted to turn and run back to the house and crawl into his bed, but something told him he was no safer there than he was out back with the birds. Besides, his mom was out there somewhere. He hoped she was okay.
He saw something move beyond the clearing, twenty feet from the loft. He turned to face it. Nothing there. But something was there, in the bushes. He knew it sure as Maverick and Dancer knew it.
He took a step forward, squinting into the morning sun. He remembered from the Louis L’Amour stories that his mom read him, that a gunfighter liked to have the sun at his back, and he was staring into it. What would a Louis L’Amour gunfighter do? He would move, try to get a better position. J.P. moved away from the loft, toward Rick’s house, never for an instant taking his eyes of the area where he’d seen the bushes move.
He stepped sideways, one step, two, three and the bushes moved again. It was only the breeze, he told himself. Then he heard something, a low growl. Black Fang, he thought. Four steps, five, six, seven, the bushes moved again and this time it wasn’t the wind. Eight steps, nine, ten, his angle was better, the sun no longer directly in his eyes. Eleven steps and then the largest animal that he had ever seen gracefully appeared from the bushes as if by magic. It seemed to be walking on air.
It was Black Fang, the Ghost Dog. Its blue-black, short fur glistened in the sunlight and its red eyes bore into him, like the electric drills that Mr. Keeper sold in his hardware store. He wanted to turn and run, but he stood his ground. Sure as a Louis L’Amour villain would shoot him in the back, this thing would come for him if he ran. He stood fast, meeting its glare full on, afraid to move and afraid not to. If the thing charged him, he was done for. He wasn’t a gunfighter. No way could he shoot. He was a boy and he wanted his mother.
The blue-black beast raised its right paw as if it wanted J.P. to get a look at it, and he did. He saw the steel- like claws reflecting the sun’s glow like diamonds. It was the animal’s way of telling him it was going to rip him apart. Then it pawed the ground, digging, no not digging, demonstrating its power by ripping up great chunks of earth as easily as one of Mr. Keeper’s buzz saws ripped through pine.
Paralyzed, J.P. watched as the beast glided toward the loft and the birds inside. J.P. felt a new fear, not fear for himself, but for the birds he loved. The Ghost Dog or whatever it was, was going to kill the birds before it came for him. It was going to rip through the chicken wire cage and turn his birds into blood pudding.
No way.
“ No, you’re not!” He was getting mad. The beast was halfway to the cage, taking his time, making J.P. suffer, trying to make him more afraid. But it wasn’t working. J.P. was getting more mad than afraid. He raised the gun, holding it with both hands, like a TV cop. He pointed it at the beast and pulled the trigger.
The noise was louder than any firecracker and his arms were thrown up and back with the kick of the blast, but he held onto the gun and kept the animal in sight.
The animal faced J.P. The shot had gone wide and to the right, throwing up a divot of dirt halfway between it and the pigeon cage. The animal looked first from J.P. to the loft, then back to J.P., like it couldn’t make up its mind to go for the birds first, then J.P., or the other way around. Then it turned back to the loft and continued its slow glide to the pigeon cage.
J.P. brought his arms back down, back into the TV policeman shooter’s position, tried to aim and pulled the trigger again. This time the gun didn’t jerk as much. He was ready for it and had tightened the muscles in his hands and arms. This time the shot didn’t go wide. He hit the beast square in the chest, right where his dad told him to aim, when he’d taken him deer hunting. “Make the shot clean,” his dad had said, “and you won’t have to go crashing through all hell and gone trying to put a wounded animal out of its misery.”
The beast stopped and regarded J.P. with its red eyes. J.P. saw that it was bleeding. He shot again and missed. The beast didn’t move. He shot again and again hit it full in the chest. His dad would have been proud, but the beast didn’t go down. It stood stock still, baring its fangs, longer teeth than J.P. had ever seen, and he shot again. Another miss. Another shot, another hit, again in the chest. He pulled the trigger again and heard the metallic click that told him the gun was empty.
He’d seen enough television to know that when the gun was empty you threw it at your attacker. They always did that in old cowboy movies. But that would be dumb, far smarter to run, but that would be useless. He could only stand and watch as the hot breath closed in on him. The animal advanced slowly, no longer interested in the birds. This was no television monster. This was real.
He saw the Ghost Dog prepare to spring and knew that he was finished. Then he heard the car coming fast. The blue black Ghost Dog heard it too. The car was getting close. It was out front. The Ghost Dog, with a bullish snort, turned and vanished into the woods.
Chapter Eleven
Tom Donovan left the freeway at Colorado and turned north toward Pasadena City College. The rented Chevy came with a broken air conditioner and it was hot. He made a mental note to complain to the company about it as he wiped the sweat from his forehead. Even with both front windows cranked down, it was a gesture he had to repeat every few minutes.
He had been coming to Southern California off and on for the last five years. He didn’t like it. It was too hot and too smoggy, but this time he was excited, as excited as he was the first time he had seen Led Zeppelin that great day in 1975 at Earl’s Court in London.
He patted his shirt pocket, feeling the folded letter. The letter that was a gateway to a lot of money, maybe a quarter million or more, but the money was secondary, as it always would be when it came to Led Zep. It was the board tapes that he was after. The fact that he would make a small fortune was bloody great, but to hear stereo soundboard recordings of the greatest band on earth before anyone else, that was to die for, and the letter promised him that.
In his heart he had never forgiven Rick Gordon for scoring Zep board tapes and putting them out. The man cared nothing for the band, didn’t even like them. He was only in it for the money. If anyone should make money off the band, Tom felt it should be him. He hated it that he had put out over two dozen Zep boots and Rick Gordon put out five and made ten times the money.
True, his own titles were seriously lacking in the sound quality department. They were mostly recorded from the audience, with cheap cassette players, but they were great shows that documented the history of the band. It was also true that before he started doing business Rick’s way, he was slugging along, making barely enough to keep out of work and to keep up his Zep Collection. By signing on with Rick, he’d made enough money so that he wouldn’t have to work for ten, maybe fifteen years.
But Rick shouldn’t have put out the Zep board tapes without consulting him first. And he never should have put out Earl’s Court. That tape was sacred. That show was the one that had shown him the way. He should have been able to lie in bed at night and listen to it with his headphones and enjoy. He couldn’t enjoy it to the fullest knowing somebody else was enjoying it, too. The true collector lived to have a one of a kind thing. He should have been the only person in the world to be able to listen to that tape.
“ When are we going to Disneyland, Dad?” his son, named after Led Zeppelin’s famous guitarist, Jimmy Page Donovan asked from the back seat.
“ Don’t bother your father,” Sylvia, Tom’s new wife, said.
J.P. was glad to be with his father. It had been so long since he’d seen his dad. He couldn’t believe it last week when he’d called his mom and asked if she would let him fly to L.A. and spend two weeks in Southern California, going to the beach, Disneyland, Magic Mountain and, of course, the Pasadena Meet. But he was surprised when his dad met him at the airport with a new wife. He wasn’t sure how he should act around her or what he should call her. She seemed nice and he didn’t want to not like her, just because she’d married his dad.
“ It’s okay, Sylvia,” Tom said. Then, catching his son’s eyes in the rearview mirror, he added, “Just as soon as I meet the guy at the meet and collect the tapes.” He bet his son was the only eight-year-old in the world that
