The Miraculous Plot of Leiter & Lott (31 page)

She looked around in embarrassment, to see if anyone had seen it happen, and in the distance she spied a lone man, who sat in his ‘
ramada
inn,' watching.
 
The man grinned with rotten teeth. He was a thin, harmless-looking soul, emaciated and pale. He wore an old sweater, despite the warmth. Patches at the elbows. As she neared, intending to move past him, his smile seemed friendlier than she first supposed. It was a complicit smile. As though he'd encountered the same rude awakening earlier.
 

“Surprise, surprise,” she said, smiling bravely.

“Oh yeah,” the man replied in memory, the hoarse evenness of his plaintive voice a peek at his apparent gentleness.

She paused. "What's
your
. . . name?" she asked.

"Al," he replied.

“Al?”

“Yeah, Albert. What's
yers
?”

“Val.”

She stepped close enough to hold out her hand to the frail man.
 
They shook, but she immediately regretted it.
 
His hand was damp.
 
Then she saw that his eyes were damp too.
 
And she noticed the brown bag at his foot--the top of a bottle.

“Al,” she said, “do you know a guy who gets dogs for homeless people?”

“Why, ya wanna dog?
 
Ya don't look homeless.”

“No, I'm looking for the man who acquires dogs. Late thirties, dark glasses, with a cane?”

Al studied her shoes. “Nope,
dunno
him. You a cop?”

Val smiled at the sense of déjà vu. “You been questioned?”

Al nodded.
 
“Frisked too.”

Another rotten toothed smile, of a sort. A sad smile. Val opened her purse and withdrew a business card and a ten dollar bill. Handing these to him, she asked, “Would you call me, if you see the man I'm looking for?”

The man nodded. “Okay.”

She mimicked the nod. “You don't sleep here, do you, Al?”

“Here? No. Won't let ya.”

“Then why---” she began, but quickly stopped herself.

“Why am I here?” he finished.
 

“Yeah. Why here?”

“Years back, used
ta
be an orange tree here. Right here.” He pointed at the ground. “Big, beautiful oranges, not the woody kind don't get enough water.
 
My girlfriend Genie and me? We used
ta
come here and
eat'em
. Last place I saw her.
 
See?”
 
He pointed, now, at nothing. Or rather at the ghost girl standing there, as real to him as the ghost tree that had long been cut down and hauled away.

“I'm sorry," Val said. "She died?”

Al looked at her curiously, then shook his head vigorously. “No, no, she still alive. Live in Florida now.”

“Oh.”
 
Val didn't know what to say to that. How to continue such a conversation? Genie had left him with a bottle. Genie had moved on with her life, leaving her boyfriend trapped in the past, returning to the same place where she'd left him. It was another story that might be told, if anyone could be made to care. Like Greg. Or Claire Robinson. Knowing the impossibility of that, Val smiled sadly back at the feeble man, instead, and then gave him a little wave as she left him, too. Back, toward the vacant ball field. Walking steadily, self consciously, not once looking back. Just as Genie had.

 
When she reached the fence, the lights had already begun to sputter to life high above the freshly mown grass in front of her. Perhaps it was in anticipation of a night game, or maybe to make the area less attractive to criminals. There were certainly no kids in the park, anymore. They were safe at home, watching television. Like everyone else.
 

Val put one hand against the fence, entwining her fingers into the mesh.
 
She looked up at the halogens atop their high aluminum poles, and realized that time had run out, just as time had always seemed to run out before.

Time.
An illusion?
 

She flipped open her cell phone to check her messages. There were nine.
 
Five from her boss, two from police, and two from reporters. The final message from Greg suggested that if she didn't answer within fifteen minutes she'd be out of a job. Looking at her watch, she realized that this interval of time had already expired. Fifteen minutes prior.

Her finger hovered over the return call button. Then, in the distance, she caught a glimpse of movement. Turning, she saw a dog running free. A mixed German Shepherd, the dog trailed a long leash behind it, and ran to chase ducks and geese off the walk surrounding the lake.

Val squinted toward the other side, but couldn't see anyone over there. So she walked quickly toward the dog, her steps turning into a run as she whistled after it, and glanced warily around for sight of its master.
 

When she arrived at the lake, the daft animal stopped on the other side and just stared at her, quizzically. Having just herded all the ducks toward the center of the pond, the dog now panted in satisfaction. Focused on her, it seemed to be waiting to see what she'd do next.

“Picasso!” she called, as a test.

The dog's ears perked up. Then it crouched slightly down onto its front legs as if about to bound in one direction or the other, depending on which way a stick is thrown.

Quirky mutt,
she thought.

“Picasso!” Val hissed again. “Here, boy!”

She pretended to take a treat from her purse--her cell phone concealed in her palm. No use. The dog straightened, bored. Game over.
 

Too late, she found a stick and hurled it toward her right. But the mongrel wasn't even watching her anymore. It now eyed a duck that had bravely flapped back up onto the sidewalk surrounding the water thirty feet away.

It ran. Val did too, circling to intercept. But just before she got there, the dog reversed directions and took off once more.

"Come here!” she commanded. But her words felt powerless, even in her own throat. She tried to catch up with the trailing leash, but that was no better.
 
The beast wouldn't let her get that close.

Exhausted after two complete circles of the oval lake, Val finally slumped onto a concrete bench and just watched the animal, talking to it as she did.

“Probably says 'finders keepers' on those dog tags of yours," she muttered, wearily. "Like to play games, do ya, Picasso?”

She said the name again, a little louder. Then again, louder still. The dog definitely seemed to react to the name, ears lifting at each repetition as though hearing a dog whistle. She could see some unusual markings on the beast's fur, too. Patterns.
 

Connect the dots, and you have. . .what?

She looked around her in the gathering gloom. It wasn't safe here anymore. Maybe it had never been safe here, not even for David. And where was he? Maybe the dog knew that. Maybe, if she didn't try for the leash, but just watched from a distance, this man's-best-friend might hear his master's voice. The only other option was to stuff a letter to David into a bottle and float it in the Reid Park Lake. Yet what might such a letter say?

Dear David--

I'm sorry I walked away from you. It was an impulsive thing. After our conversation, I realized my mistake. Since then I've felt kinda numb and disconnected, trying to get somewhere, but not really knowing where "there" is. Maybe I want to be like you, free of the past, but I just don't know how, or what I can give you in return, other than friendship and fear. I guess I'm like everybody else, willfully blind to what's good for me, or for the world. So maybe I don't deserve to know the truth.

Valerie
  

She could insert her business card in the bottle too. Or maybe not. Maybe she didn't have a job or business anymore, either.
   

When the few lampposts nearby flickered to life, her new canine adversary got bored with ducks, and suddenly left the pond, trotting off in a new direction.
 
Val jumped to her feet and rushed to follow, only to trip on a slick of bird dung on the sidewalk.
 
Losing her balance, she pitched forward, and only blocked her fall by extending her arms.
 

Her purse flew in front of her. The cell phone inside rolled out. Tumbling end or end, it flipped over the edge and plopped right into the water.

“No!” she cried.
 
She crawled to retrieve it from the shallows.
 

The phone dripped water as she lifted it to see a tiny stream of liquid in place of the more familiar glowing of numerals on the screen.

“Great,” she breathed, then shoved the dead device into her purse.
 

What happens now?

~ * ~

Picasso, if it really was Picasso, obviously had a mind of his own. According to David, it lived in the present, as dogs do. Each scent, each sound new.
 
Impulsively, its decision this time was to veer out of the park to the north, right into the mesquite trees and cactus over there.

Great.
 

Purposefully or otherwise, the creature's motivation was impossible to gauge. So in the deepening twilight, with little time before total darkness, Val followed. It was crazy, of course, she realized. She was on a wild goose chase, although there wasn't even a goose anymore.

Ahead of her, the dog found a trail, either by scent or habit. It trotted along in the gloom, dipping its head out of view on occasion amid the prickly pear, oblivious to her presence behind. Together yet separated by fifty yards, they traversed an undeveloped area between stately older homes.
 
A natural desert landscape, this neighborhood north of the park was untouched, for privacy's sake.
 
Val hadn't explored it earlier, knowing it hid exclusive estates, some with secluded pools and tennis courts. Now, from the trail, she spied the first house in passing. Illuminated by flood lamps, it was a two story adobe structure with a high wall to the left that partially eclipsed a Winnebago and basketball hoop.
 
The next shape that emerged from the near dark appeared to be a long, low red brick edifice with giant cottonwood trees on either side, protecting an elaborate courtyard from the Arizona sun's heat.

Still, the dog did not leave the trail for either property. Instead, it meandered ahead until a wood shingled house with a vast picture window appeared, all ablaze with light amid the thick mesquite trees and saguaro cactus.
 
At this, the animal bounded forward across the sand, as though in recognition, its long leash jumping up behind, catapulted high in recoil whenever it snagged a passing shrub.

As she followed, Val caught a bramble on her pant leg. She ripped at it, then almost walked right into a barbed
cholla
with fruit like giant prickly green grapes. Crouching instinctively behind the cactus for better cover against the glare, she suddenly flashed on images of tarantulas and Gila monsters, and so quickly side-stepped the cactus and approached the house cautiously, crossing a narrow, winding driveway to do so. When the dog disappeared through a space in the picket fence leading to the back, she hesitated again and watched.
 
Oddly, there was no movement inside. Despite all the lights, no one passed the long front window. No flickering light indicated any TV set was on.
 
Instead, that steady glow, like the eerie laser light of a motion detector.

“Picasso!” she called as loudly as she dared, out of the darkness.
 

She waited in the shadows, focused on the gate through which the dog had run.
 

After a moment, she repeated the name.
 

“Picasso!”

Still no movement inside the house.
 
But then, as though hearing a silent dog whistle, the dog poked its head through the space, looking out from the back yard.
 
It barked, once. Then it disappeared again.

Val's heart pounded hard several times in her chest.
 
Because the bark had seemed like an invitation.

She moved toward the fence slowly, wary of the front window.
 
Then a small sign appeared at her feet. She almost tripped over it.
 

ADT Security Systems
, it read.

She stepped over the hexagonal emblem, now expecting that a vigilant homeowner would suddenly appear with a shotgun to protect his valuables from border-crossing drug dealers. Yet she heard no doors open, no footsteps or whispers. Nothing.
 

Finally arriving at the fence, she peered over it. To her surprise, she saw the dog sitting in front of a trailer parked at the rear of the property, on a circular dirt driveway. The dog studied her in curiosity. Beside it, a bent metal stake projected two feet out of the ground at a slanted angle. The ring atop the stake appeared to be broken.