Metzger's Dog

front of them and started waving it.

Grijalvas said, “Can you get around them?”

“No. There’s a steep drop off the shoulder on both sides. The tow trucks are probably here to pull somebody else out.”

The man with the flashlight waved them into the entrance of the Dinosaur Memorial. They drove into the parking lot and saw that there were two other cars ahead of them, moving slowly toward the exit that led back to the highway. “Just a little detour,” said Joachim.

When the first car reached the exit gate it stopped. The second car pulled up behind Joachim and stopped. Joachim honked his horn. The first car’s lights went out. He leaned on the horn. Suddenly the doors of the front car opened and men started to jump out of it. Joachim saw the first one out kneel and level a pistol in his direction. The car behind Joachim moved up and pushed Joachim’s into the car ahead and held it there, its motor whining and the tires spinning.

Grijalvas reacted instantly. He swung the Ingraham to the rear window and fired it, blowing out the remaining glass and demolishing the windshield of the car behind. He could see the two men in the car; their bodies were covered with blood and tiny nuggets of shattered glass. He yelled, “Put it in reverse,” but he turned to see that Joachim had opened his door and was struggling to get out of the car. Joachim sprang out away from the car and took two steps, firing a burst toward the front car. Grijalvas saw the kneeling man kicked backward, and Joachim pivoted to return. He dived toward the open door, but a bullet seemed to turn his head in the air, and his body crashed against the side of the car, making it rock. Jesus fired wildly from the window at the car in front.

“Take the wheel,” Grijalvas shouted, but Jesus seemed not to hear. Grijalvas climbed through the gaping space where the rear window had been and rolled off the trunk to the ground. He looked around him and could see the two pickup trucks blocking the road behind, and the car blocking the exit. Above loomed the bulbous bellies of the gigantic dinosaur statues.

As he looked, a burst of fire caught Jesus from somewhere on the other side of the car. His dead hand hung out the window above Grijalvas’s head.

Grijalvas took a deep breath, then blew it out of his lungs. He crawled quickly toward the front car. When he reached the trunk of the car he stood up and fired a burst into the interior. Suddenly he realized there was no one inside. He opened the door and climbed in, sliding toward the driver’s seat. He had his hand on the key when the man crouching in front of the car stood up. For an instant Grijalvas thought he might somehow be able to start the car and run over the man in time, but the man was already taking aim while he was thinking, and then he knew it was too late. He started to raise his hands, but the gun flashed. He carried with him into the darkness the sight of the man, and far over his head, the long neck of the brontosaur moving outward into the clear sky, and the tiny head with its little mouth gaping in surprise.

32                   It was three-thirty on Monday morning when Porterfield first noticed the car. He heard the idling engine at the end of the street as he was sitting alone in the darkened living room. He pushed the curtain aside and looked out to see the car move down the street as slowly as a man’s walk and then stop, its headlights out. After a few seconds a man emerged wearing a dark sweat shirt and a knitted watch cap that was pulled down to his eyebrows. After he was out he bent over and picked up something from the back seat, then walked up the sidewalk with it. As he passed under the streetlamp, Porterfield released the curtain and made his way to the bedroom. The man had been carrying a thick stack of newspapers.

On Tuesday afternoon Porterfield left the Seyell Foundation office an hour early. That was the second time he noticed the car. When he turned the corner onto the street, the car was stopped in the same place. As he approached, the driver started the dusty brown Ford Galaxie and moved slowly down to the next corner and turned out of sight. There was no question in his mind that it was the same car. The ticking sound of the unbalanced fan when the engine idled was the sound he’d heard the night before.

Porterfield said to Alice, “Do you know if our paperboy—I guess I should say paperman—lives around here?”

“I see him quite often, but I’ve never spoken to him,” said Alice. “Isn’t that terrible? He’s such a sweet- looking little boy, but there’s something about seeing someone at five o’clock every morning in your bathrobe. The only way you can tolerate it is to avoid conversation.”

Porterfield nodded. He was thinking about hunting turkeys. An old farmer had once told him the way he hunted wild turkeys was to take a walk in early summer to a clearing in the forest carrying a broom handle painted dark gray. He’d prop the broom handle on a fallen log or in the low branches of a bush and leave it there. The turkeys would get used to seeing it so that soon they’d strut within a few yards of it. By fall it would be so familiar to them that they didn’t seem to see it anymore. On the first day of the turkey season the farmer would sit in the clearing. He swore the turkeys never noticed that the broom handle had been replaced by the barrel of a shotgun.

On Wednesday at three-thirty in the morning Porterfield heard the car’s ticking fan as it turned the corner onto the street. It was easier to hear on Wednesday because Porterfield was sitting in the lawn chair on his neighbor’s patio, and the redwood fence did nothing to muffle the sound in the still night air.

Porterfield stood up and looked between two boards of the fence. As usual, the man got out of his car and then reached back in for his stack of newspapers. This time when the man passed under the streetlamp Porterfield squinted to see his face. The watch cap was pulled down low over his brows, but Porterfield could see the small, dark eyes and the wide mouth under the bristling blond moustache.

The man walked up the sidewalk of Porterfield’s house, then walked around to the window beside the driveway. Next he moved across the front lawn to a clump of bushes at the corner of the neighboring house. Porterfield watched him walk from house to house, examining shrubbery, standing under windows, and sighting angles and distances.

When the man turned and walked up the driveway toward Porterfield’s garage, Porterfield slipped through the gate of the redwood fence and along his neighbor’s hedge to the street.

It was nearly ten minutes before the man returned to his car. He opened the door and placed his stack of newspapers on the front seat, then slid into the seat beside them. He started the car and let it drift quietly down the street to the corner before he turned on his headlights.

Porterfield said, “Make much extra money peddling papers, Lester?”

The man jerked in his seat and half turned to gape over his shoulder. “Porterfield.” After a second he seemed to collect himself. He steered around the corner and accelerated. “Not much money in papers these days, Ben.”

“You’re supposed to be in Guatemala, Viglione.”

Viglione turned his head to the side and said, “No, you’re wrong. Special assignment, temporary duty.”

Porterfield chuckled. “Lester, when I heard we might be having this kind of trouble, I thought about who might show up, but I didn’t think it would be you. I guess I should have. It’s your specialty. But I didn’t think anybody would take the chance of letting you in on it. You came to see me. Is someone at the Director’s house?”

“What are you talking about? I’m just here for a conversation.”

Porterfield sighed. “Lester, what is all this stuff back here?” Porterfield picked up a short, heavy hardwood stick connected by a few links of chain to a second stick. “Nunchaku.” He opened a paper sack and poured several star-shaped plates of steel onto the back seat, so Viglione could hear the clinking. “Shuriken. What else? Piano wire, push knives. What is it with you, Lester? Don’t they sell nine-millimeter ammo anymore, or are you just getting overconfident?”

“I’m not here for that.”

“If it had been anything else they’d never have picked you.”

“We worked together in the old days.”

“I guess I remember you better than you remember me. Pull over up ahead and let me off, or I’ll be half the night getting home to bed.”

Viglione slowed the car and coasted to the curb. Porterfield swung his legs out on the left side and said, “I