'How did it go?' asked Maggie when Marlene at last arrived at the Dobbs home. 'You don't seem to have any visible claw marks.'
'I think it went well,' said Marlene. 'We had a nice conversation about the case, and about your late father- in-law. And Harley Blaine. Tell me, do you know Blaine at all?'
'Mmm, I'm not sure. He's a hard man to know. He has that perfectly opaque front that guys of that generation cultivated, charming, hail-fellow, slightly boozy, courtly manners. He used to come into town every Christmas with crates of expensive presents. Now the birthday and Christmas presents come by mail. I got the feeling he wanted to be sort of a foster dad and grandparent around here, but he didn't have the… I don't know, emotional energy, or whatever. We haven't seen him for a couple of years, although Hank flew out there a couple of months ago. He's very ill, I think.' Then she asked, hesitantly, her voice thin and nervous, 'Was she angry that I gave you his number?'
'It didn't come up,' Marlene lied.
Parking her car in the Federal Gardens lot, Marlene noticed that the next bay was empty. She recalled that she had not seen the old pickup truck owned by Thug 'n' Dwarf for several days. Now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen either of the pair around since an unusually violent fight three nights ago, and she hadn't heard any country music through the party wall either. This was odd, because their dog had whined throughout the previous night. Holding Lucy's hand, she walked from the parking area to the back door of the couple's apartment and pressed her ear against the peeling paint of the door. All she could hear was a faint mewling sound and a rhythmic scratching thump. She peered through the back window into the small kitchen, a dirtier replica of her own, except that several of the cabinet doors hung open and one of the kitchen chairs was lying on its side. She put her ear to the window. No sounds but the persistent scratch-thump-scratch-whine.
Entering her own apartment, Marlene settled the napping Lucy in her bed, then dialed the manager's office. The manager was a lazy redneck who had a reputation for shakedowns and hustling single mothers short on the rent. The phone rang fifteen times before she slammed it down. Federal Gardens was not a high-service establishment. She could, of course, hear the same lugubrious noises through her walls. The dog was obviously still there.
She bore it for ten minutes, pacing, smoking, and then with a curse she grabbed a table knife from a drawer and dashed out. It took less than a minute to pop the cheap lock on the back door of Thug 'n' Dwarf's apartment. She slipped inside.
As she had suspected, the place was abandoned. The refrigerator held only a few condiments, a moldy package of sliced bologna, and half a stick of butter. The living room was merely filthy and disordered, but the large bedroom bore the signs of serious fighting: a smashed lamp, holes in the plaster, chairs broken, and the bed torn apart. All the drawers had been pulled out of the bureau, and one of them had been flung against the wall hard enough to smash it. If Marlene had been made to guess, she would have said that the couple had engaged in an ultimate argument, Dwarf had cleared out while Thug was at work, and he had come home, observed this fact, taken out his rage on the place itself, and then made his own escape. Leaving the dog.
Who was locked in a closet in the small bedroom.
'Ah, you poor baby!' she cried when she opened the door, and then she drew back, gagging. The beast was lying in its own filth, ribs staring, its black coat matted and dull. It had obviously been half-starved for a long time and deprived of water for days at least. Marlene ran back to the kitchen, put the bologna and the butter in a bowl, filled a small pot with water, and carried both back to the dog. It lapped up the water. The food disappeared in two great gulps. Then it stood up and walked slowly on shaky legs out of the closet.
Marlene drew in her breath. The animal was huge, well over two feet high at the shoulder, with a great, sad-eyed slobbering head. She judged it to be the result of some ill-advised mating between a St. Bernard and a black retriever.
Cautiously, Marlene patted its head. It licked her hand, coating it all over with hot dogspit.
'Come on, Buster, let's get you cleaned up,' she said, tearing the cord from the shattered lamp and tying it to the dog's chain collar. It followed her docilely next door. She found Lucy awake and curious.
'What's his name?' was her first question when she saw the dog, and then, 'Why does he smell so yucky?'
'I don't know his name, dear, and he smells bad because he hasn't had a bath in a long time. That's what we're going to do now. Go run and get your baby shampoo.'
Marlene tied the dog to a pipe outside the kitchen and washed it with bucket, scrub brush, and Johnson's No More Tears, and dried it with a cheap chenille bath rug she found in a closet. The dog bore this with admirable patience, lapping at puddles, but otherwise staying still. After the bath, it looked a lot better, shiny and bearing, absurdly, the scent of a clean, small child. When it shook itself, its skin flopped about in a peculiar and disconcerting manner, as if it had been sold a suit two sizes too large at the dog store. Its damp coat steamed in the chilly air, giving it the appearance of a hellhound, albeit a sweet hellhound. Big too, very big, and from the disproportionate size of the paws, planning on becoming bigger still. Marlene wondered if she was making one of her famous mistakes.
'Is he our dog now, Mommy?'
'I guess. Do you like him?'
'Uh-huh. He looks like the Peter Pan dog, but black. Could he baby-sit me when you go out?'
'Maybe. Let's go inside, it's too cold out here.'
They went into the kitchen, where the dog downed another quart of water, an elderly Big Mac from the fridge, and four eggs beaten with milk. They all then adjourned to the living room, where the animal plopped himself down in front of the couch where Marlene and Lucy sat, tongue lolling and looking absurdly grateful.
'He looks like Uncle Harry,' said Lucy after studying the dog for a while.
'Gosh, you're right, he does,' agreed Marlene, laughing. The dog's face-its sad, intelligent eyes and its general air of battered dependability-was the image of the detective, Harry Bello. 'Lucy, you know, I'm glad you reminded me. How would you like it if I asked Uncle Harry to come down and visit?'
'Uh-huh,' said Lucy distractedly. 'His name is Sweetie.'
'Who, the dog?'
'Uh-huh.' The dog licked the child's face, throwing her into a fit of giggles. 'He likes it.'
'If you say so,' said her mom.
Arriving at Miami International Airport a few hours after Karp and Fulton, the man who called himself Bill Caballo rented a car and drove west on the Tamiami Trail, out past where the Glades began, until he came to the enormous gun shop that is one of the landmarks of the area. There he paid $435.95 plus tax for a Remington Sportsman 78 bolt-action rifle, with sling, mounting a Tasco 40-mm 4 x scope. He also bought a cheap.22 revolver, a box of.22 long rifle cartridges, a box of 308 Winchester Super-X cartridges, and a bottle of insect repellent, paying cash for all his purchases. He also paid in cash for an hour on the range behind the shop, where he zeroed the rifle until he could put three rounds within the diameter of a half-dollar coin at two hundred yards. He fired a dozen or so rounds from the.22 also, to see if it would fire reliably, which it did. He was not concerned with its accuracy.
Leaving the gun shop, he drove further along the Trail and found a junk market, where he bought an old golf bag and a miscellany of unmatched clubs. He put his new rifle in the golf bag, and bought a meal at a nearby diner.
He then took the Trail to 1-95, went north on that freeway to 922, and then took that east across the Broad Causeway, exiting at the Indian Creek Golf Course. He parked and walked around the southern edge of the golf course with the bag slung over his shoulder. He did not look very much like a golfer, but attracted no particular attention. Indian Creek is a public course and they get all kinds there.
He sat down in a mass of scrub behind a large cabbage palmetto, and smeared himself liberally with insect dope. Then he waited. Night fell. He dozed in short snatches. The sky turned gray, then became streaked with red, then the palest possible silvery blue, flecked with small clouds. He stretched and pulled his rifle out of the golf bag, wiped the scope, inserted four rounds into the magazine, and chambered one of them. He crawled around the side of a palmetto and lay prone in the short grass and looked through his scope at Guido Mosca's house.
At around six-thirty, Guido Mosca, dressed in Bermudas and a flowered shirt, with fishing rod in hand, walked barefoot out of his house and onto his little dock. He did this every morning, although he rarely caught a fish, and he saw no reason to interrupt his routine simply because, in a few hours, he was scheduled to fly to Washington to testify before the House Select Committee on Assassinations. He would have plenty of time to get ready, he
