By the time he was six months old, Joe weighed twenty pounds and his adult form had taken shape. From his Labrador mother, Mabel, he inherited a blockish head, an intelligent face, a long tail, and her pale skin and coat. He got Street Mutt’s slender torso, long legs, tan ovals, and the jaunty terrier button-rose ears.
Day after day, he became more adept at finding the very small amounts of whatever Teddy hid around the house and in the yards and garage: dabs of peanut butter, a clove, orange seeds, a piece of toilet paper brushed with alcohol and allowed to dry, scraps of flavored dental floss, chips of bath soap, dandelions from the yard, single flakes of breakfast cereals. New things every day.
Once Teddy had given him a good whiff of the target item and said, “Joe, find!” the dog would set off, drop his nose low, and begin quartering the area — sidling oddly, switching back, veering suddenly, then switching back again. And when he stopped and raised his nose to the air, it meant he had entered the scent cone, and his motion would become more direct, with fewer changes of direction and longer angles as he quartered, narrowing the cone, following the smell to its source.
Joe enjoyed this game almost as much as chasing tennis balls or chewing cow hooves. He was always so happy to see his Boy smile, and to get that treat. Simple: all he had to do was take the target scent into his dense, copious, detailed scent-cataloging memory, then follow his nose to the thing. Some things took longer because their scent was weaker. Some took longer because Teddy tried to confuse him with hot sauce, vinegar, mouthwash, milk, mustard, ketchup, deodorant, mothballs, and the scented fishing bait that Teddy and his father used at the beach. But the smells that his Boy put with the target smells only added to Joe’s voluminous capacity to detect and isolate and find. Joe had no idea what scent receptors were, or that he would have three-hundred-plus million of them when he grew up, or that great Teddy, his Boy, would have only six million.
One day, Joe was excited to have Dad join him and Teddy for a game of finding things. Joe liked Dad, but Joe couldn’t make him happy. His face rarely changed, even when he talked. He was calm and tired and sometimes looked and smelled like he wanted to bite something or somebody. Dad left home every morning and came home in the evening. He wore dark pants and a light shirt with a patch with a word on it, but Joe had no idea what Tony might mean. He drove a large white thing with a picture of a man who looked like Dad running fast with a box in one hand and a tool raised in the other. Under the picture were more words that meant nothing to Joe, and never would:
Delgado Heating and Air — Call Us First!
That day Joe found the hidden things very easily. It seemed like his nose was working better, or maybe Teddy had chosen stronger smells.
When the game was over, Joe laid himself down and listened to Teddy and Dad talk. Their voices sounded hopeful and excited, made him feel good.
Ted, I think Wade Johnson should see Joe in action.
He’ll be amazed, Dad.
Joe, of course, understood only his own name and that good things were going to happen.
9
Dan Strickland can’t believe what he’s seeing on his phone.
Heart pounding, he watches the Coastal Eddy video of Joe, not dead, not injured, but looking healthy, though a little subdued.
“Felix: The Rescue of a Mexican Street Dog,” has come to Dan from one of his graduates, a Newport Beach woman who remembered Joe from her time in Dan’s penthouse, and hadn’t minded at all if the cute dog joined her in Dan’s bed after she was finished with him.
Strickland watches the video again. Joe looks kind of stunned, really, but whole and alert. The doctor talks about what the bullet did and how he had to suture the intestine and seal the artery and follow up with strong antibiotics. Dan witnesses the reporter lady — very attractive — falling in love with Joe over the five-minute segment. It comes as no surprise that she takes him home. Dan looks at the closing clip of Joe in his new home in Laguna Beach with a joyous but troubled heart.
How is he going to get Joe back from his new and obviously devoted owner? He can’t exactly tell her what Joe was doing the night he was shot. Certainly not what he was doing. Reporters can always pry into and expose you. That’s what they do. But no matter how believable and sympathetic Dan’s cover story might be, he knows the reporter would never let him have Joe back.
It takes Dan Strickland all of two more seconds to realize how to get Joe back: drive to Laguna, find the Coastal Eddy offices and where the reporter lives, and wait for Joe to be alone. Then leash him and trot him to the Maserati and let Joe leap in, as he loves to do. Drive home.
Simple, clean, and easy. Bettina Blazak will never see him, and Joe will be happy, and the team will be back together for some much-needed profit in romantic old Mexico!
He hires two of his former associates to teach his next week of classes.
He wonders who else has seen the video and would be able to link the dog to him. Only one other man in the United States knows of his moonlighting, or of Joe’s adventures south of the border. Not even Aaron knows exactly what Strickland is doing with Joe. But there are Strickland’s associates in Tijuana — the New Generation Cartel, a handful of Municipal Police, and of course the Sinaloans they steal from — who know that a button-rose-eared apparent street dog has so far cost them $1,500,000 in cash, five uncut kilos of Mexican-made fentanyl, seven kilos of Mexican brown heroin, and over twenty pounds of top-grade Columbian cocaine for a total street value of... well, Dan has no damned idea except that he gets one-third of everything Joe finds. One-third of the currency, and the cash value of one-third of the drugs’ wholesale value. Dan trusts the New Generation to do the math fairly. He counts the cartel’s Tijuana faction leader — Carlos Palma, who accepted him as a partner in this risky venture — as a friend. As he does Tijuana Municipal Police captain Benicio Zumbaya, who protects and answers to Carlos. There is indeed honor among thieves.
Success breeds loyalty, Dan thinks as he packs. His secrets are safe with them as long as he’s taking the risk and making them mountains of money. Mountain ranges of money.
That evening, just after sunset, Strickland sits in the curbside Havana Café, directly across Coast Highway from the Coastal Eddy offices in Laguna Beach.
Glancing at the intro of “Felix: The Rescue of a Mexican Street Dog” on his phone, Dan confirms that Bettina Blazak and Joe are now coming out the glass front door held open by a young man in shiny cowboy boots, pressed jeans, and a dumpy yoked blazer.
Joe looks great: composed, and even at this distance and through the hectic two-way traffic on the busy highway, Dan can see that Joe is attentive to the woman. He limps but not badly. Bettina Blazak is larger than Dan had expected. Probably six feet, he guesses, which, in her heeled boots makes her almost as tall as the Cowboy in the bad coat. Her dark brown hair has nice bounce, and it shines in the streetlight. She reminds Dan of his Newport Harbor High School art teacher, Miss Waters, who drove him utterly bats and damned near got him expelled and herself arrested.
Strickland leaves plenty of cash on the counter and parallels them up Coast Highway north, cars whizzing past, a river of headlights and taillights. He pulls his snap-brim fedora low, keeping one eye on Joe and his captors. At the lights he pulls almost even with them and thinks of crossing here at Thalia, but the Cowboy beats him to the crosswalk button. Dan turns his back on them as they approach, drifts into a clot of tourists looking through the Thalia Surf Shop window, noting Joe’s progress reflected in the glass. He loves the way Joe’s ears flap as he trots. Just incredible you can get so attached to a dog, he thinks. Irrespective of the money. Part of the sidewalk crowd, he follows them north again to the Cliff Restaurant, where a congressman whom Dan once protected from a death threat liked to dine and drink. Easy money and good food, Dan remembers.