“You and Joe should move around if you can,” says Arnie. “Vary your schedule. Stay two or three days with friends or family, then two or three days with others. Out of town would be preferable. Work remotely from wherever you are — you and Joe are exposed in your office on Coast Highway. Motels are cheap and pet friendly these days. Just a few days, until we get a bead on El Gordo’s friends in Laguna. They might not have been sent here regarding Joe. They might not be here at all.”
“Wait, Arnie, what about a safe house?” asks Billy.
“They’re not designed to be occupied for more than a couple of days. We’ll put you in one, but only in a pinch.”
“This isn’t a pinch, brother?”
“Not by DEA standards. It’s a credible suspicion, a rumor — not an actionable threat.”
Bettina sees the anger in Billy’s usually pleasant eyes. “Bettina, we can trade apartments off and on. And I’ll help cover Felix if you need me to.”
Bettina reaches down and runs her hand over her dog’s smooth round head. Feels his ears soft and relaxed as her palm glides over them. Strangely, since his reunion with Dan Strickland yesterday, Felix has been particularly relaxed and affectionate.
“They can’t take him. He’s mine.”
“That’s the spirit,” says Arnie. “I’m going to give you both my secure numbers. Use them. Text is best. Tell me if you see or hear something that doesn’t seem right. Be reasonable, though. If you start feeling like you’re paranoid, you probably are. We’re working on conjecture here. Rumors. Imaginative informants. Call me if you need me, but be reasonable. I can’t answer you a hundred times a day.”
“I understand,” she says. “Felix will protect me.”
“Not necessarily,” says Arnie. “He wasn’t trained for protection or patrol. He might attack if you say Fass, but he might not. Never had the killer spirit, did you, Joe? Dogs can’t tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys. They just do what they’re told.”
“They sense intent,” says Bettina. “Maybe even character.”
“Oh jeez,” says Arnie. “Dog worshippers.”
Billy looks at her, lips pursed and steady in the eyes. Bettina wonders how can Billy and this asshole can be brothers.
“Let’s get you packed and out of your apartment for a while,” Billy says. “We’ll sit down Jean Rose, tell her you’re fixin’ to work from home — wherever that may be. Don’t worry, Bettina. Felix is going to be fine. You’re going to be fine too. Everything’s going to be okay.”
“I feel like I’m in a story instead of writing them.”
“You’ve felt that way since you rescued Felix.”
She rubs behind Felix’s up-flapped ears the way Billy Ray Crumley and Dan Strickland did. The way she used to do when they had the bird dogs and terriers.
Joe glances back at Arnie and Billy Ray, then turns his pleasured attention to Bettina. After listening to every word of this conversation, he’s sure that she’s Bettina and he’s Billy.
Besides hearing his own name again, the word DEA has conjured in Joe a long chain of memories of Aaron. Some of his memories are good: they were a Team and Joe worked hard for Aaron and DEA, though he was not sure exactly sure which person DEA was. Some memories are bad: Joe remembers going very far to find Teddy, and the great sadness he felt when Teddy wouldn’t come to the door and Aaron leashed him and walked him to his car.
Because in Joe’s dog mind there are not stories, but only one story. There is no beginning, middle or ending. Just one story, ongoing, connected firmly to itself. His story. His People. His Team. There are no surprises to Joe. He knew he’d hear his name again, even if Bettina thought he was Felix. He knows he’ll be with Teddy again and with Dan. He doesn’t want to be with Aaron, or with the mysterious DEA, though they are part of his single, enclosed story.
What Joe feels most strongly now is that he will be with Teddy and Dan again.
And that Bettina might be an important Woman in this story, this world of his experience.
14
By evening Bettina has checked into a motel in Dana Point, the Queen Palms. It’s on Coast Highway and there’s a dog-friendly dirt and pee-burned grass “play area” with three shaggy queen palms growing close together. Not only that but room 212 has a microwave and mini-fridge, in-room coffee, and free internet.
She pays extra for a king bed so there’s plenty of room for Felix and Thunder. Thunder being her trap gun, a Winchester Model 12 with a high-profile comb and a cheek rest and a good recoil pad for the days she’d shoot a hundred, two hundred rounds in tournaments. Heavy as a tank but smooth of swing, and the pump action effortless. Her best friend for years. Her dad, a terrific shotgunner, shortened the stock and gave the gun to Bettina for her twelfth birthday. It was an old gun, one of the pre-1964s. When she outgrew it, she helped Dad put the cut-off piece of butt back on, helped him glue and sand and refinish the whole stock. Blued the steel too. Better than its former glory. Thunder shoots like a dream and kicks like a mule.
In room 212 now, Bettina checks the breach then shoulders the weapon, wondering how many hundreds of thousands of times this makes. She feels the weight and balance, the perfect fit to her face. Even feels a little of that spark inside, the danger and excitement. She tracks an invisible clay pigeon flying through the room. Clicks her tongue to simulate the trigger pull, and swings through the target to lengthen the shot string — trap 101.
She figures she’ll be sleeping with Thunder beside her, no plug in the gun, six shells in the magazine, barrel pointed to the foot of the bed, slide open, ready to be racked and fired. Safety on, too, in case of an active dream or a sudden move by Felix. He hasn’t chosen to sleep with her yet, but he could change his mind while she’s in dreamland.
She feels somewhat overequipped for this DEA “rumor,” but the “better safe than sorry” cliché offers her a mostly believable rationale.
“They better not try to get you,” she says to him. He’s lying just inside the doorway of the bedroom, watching her as always.
She wonders again if she should let him go back to being Joe. He’s responding to Felix by now, and Bettina likes the name, because it tells a story.
“So, Felix or Joe?”
He sits up and stares at her. He almost never backs off a stare-out, unless he gets distracted, which for Felix is not difficult. Any small living intruder in his world — an earwig on the kitchen floor, a fly on a window, a fence lizard on Bettina’s Laguna deck — is enough to snap his reverie and send him tearing off after it. The terrier in him, Bettina knows, bred for hunting and barnyard ratting, bred to kill pretty much anything smaller than himself.
But nothing distracts him now.
“Felix or Joe?”
His brown eyes are intent and intelligent looking, but she has no idea what he’s thinking.
“How can you have thoughts if you don’t have words, little dog? I know you have thoughts, but what form do they take? Do you hear them? Maybe you see them. Or smell them.”
He lies down like a sphinx, paws out and head up, not breaking eye contact with Bettina. Still staring back, Bettina extends her left arm, makes a fist and says “Joe.” Then holds her right arm out in a fist and says “Felix.”
The dog considers each fist, then lets out a faint whimper as he lies back down. Lays his head on his paws and looks at her with what Bettina thinks is profound frustration. He wants words, she thinks.