I was just opening the door when the wheelhouse lights suddenly flashed on. I stood with my hand on the knob, frozen.
Behind me, a woman’s voice said, “What I may do is shoot you. Or jes’ feed you to Daddy’s dogs. Sonuvabitch, I’m sick to death of you leeches actin’ like you own the place, hurtin’ me like I ain’t got no feelin’s at all.”
I turned to see a high school-aged girl holding a sawed-off 12-gauge with a pistol grip instead of a butt-a weapon known as a “street sweeper” because of the pattern it fires.
The girl had brown hair layered shag style, cutoff shorts. Abdominal baby fat bulged beneath her midriff T-shirt. Her face was narrow, pinched around thin lips, and the divider that separated her nostrils-the columella-was creased. She was a type: skinny hips, heavy breasts. Physically mature by thirteen or fourteen, emotionally old before thirty; a producer of fertile eggs and barroom dramas.
The girl squinted at me for a moment before saying, “Hey-you ain’t one of Daddy’s dogfight buddies. I don’t remember seein’ you here when they decided to have their fun.”
Her piney-woods accent was familiar. I’d heard it earlier that day on the pay phone. Shanay Money, the girl who was having trouble fending off a kid named Oberlin Carter, only her voice was different now. Some of the steeliness had gone out of it. Her arms and shirt, I noticed, were smeared with blood, and her eyes were bleary, red, perhaps from crying. The intensity with which she held the weapon, the tone of her voice, her expression all communicated a resonant hysteria. I got the feeling I’d stumbled into something very personal. Catch a burglar on any other night, she’d have probably called the cops. Or her father. Tonight, though, she was ready to use the shotgun.
I decided to take a chance. “You’ve never seen me before, Shanay, because I’ve never been here before. Never met your father. But, from what I’ve heard, I wouldn’t like his friends. Probably wouldn’t like him, either.”
That earned me a bitter smile. “I suppose you man enough to want to say that to Daddy’s face?”
“I’d prefer not to.”
“Hoo-eee, I bet you wouldn’t! I once saw him strip one of my boyfriends naked, pants and undies, then spank him like a baby! He likes hurtin’ people, my daddy does. His sick friends, they ain’t no better.” The hysteria in her voice now had acquired a shrill edge.
I said, “Tell me about the blood on your shirt, Shanay. I’m not here to harm you. But I might be able to help you. What happened here tonight?”
She jabbed the barrel of the shotgun at me, as she used her head to gesture vaguely toward shore. “There ain’t nothin’ you or anybody else can do to help my ol’ Davey dog. He’s up there bleedin’ to death right now. You’re the one who needs to do the explaining, mister. If I thought for a minute you was one of ’em, I’d blow your damn head off!”
I raised my hands slowly, palms out. “Your dog’s injured? Then wake up your dad, call a vet.”
“You don’t call a vet for animals hurt in a dogfight. Not unless you want the law stickin’ their nose in, and my daddy’s so fucked up on that powder of his and liquor, he didn’t wake up when I was screamin’, and he ain’t gonna wake up now.”
I put my hands down and took a step toward her. “Then I might be able to help. I’m a doctor. I’m telling you the truth. Take me to your dog, and I’ll tell you why I’m here. Then you tell me what happened.”
She lowered the shotgun, tears now dripping down her face. “You a people doctor or an animal doctor?”
I opened the wheelhouse door, holding it for her, saying, “An animal doctor. Sort of. I specialize in fish.”
Dexter Money was in the dogfighting business, in a big way. Because I’m an obsessive reader, I know that Florida is one of a very few states in which it is legal to own, train, and promote fighting breeds, though it is a felony to actually stage a dogfight-a gigantic legal loophole that the public would not tolerate if some organization, the manatee people, for instance, adopted it as a cause.
I also know that, each and every weekend, there are dogfights taking place somewhere around Florida, and that championship purses have exceeded $100,000. The drug dealer types like owning vicious dogs because they offer an added layer of personal protection, so fighting their dogs, betting on the outcome, is a natural extension of that illegal activity.
I followed Shanay along the dock, through a door into the old machine shop. It looked to be made of cypress, open ceilinged, two stories high, rafters showing, bleachers built around a sawdust pen, bare lightbulbs dangling overhead on cords. Stacked in the far corner of the pen were the corpses of five, maybe six dogs. Most of them were brindled, brown, gray, and yellow, their skin ripped off in places, blood crusted black in their fur. They hadn’t been dead long.
“Davey dog’s over here,” the girl said, as she walked around the pen to the back of the building and knelt, then threw back a blanket. Her voice cracked as she added, “I hope he’s not dead already. I’ve had him since I was a little girl.”
The whimpering, whining noise I’d heard earlier was Davey. He was a yellow Lab, maybe eighty pounds, gray hair showing on his muzzle. He was still alive. Barely. His left ear was gone and part of his tail. When I touched my palm to his ribs, testing for a pulse, the dog opened his eyes slightly and thumped his stub of a tail, acknowledging me.
“Can you save him, mister? It’d break my heart to lose him. It purely would.”
I said, “Are you sure we can’t call a vet?”
“Daddy would kill me. He’d beat me ’til I couldn’t walk. It’s the law. The vet would have to report us, and Daddy ain’t goin’ to jail again. He already told me that.”
I said, “Okay, so we’ve got no choice. I’ll do my best.” I told her what supplies I thought I needed. She came running back with most of what I asked for. From her father’s own kennel supplies, she brought Acepromazine, an animal sedative, and a length of clear plastic tubing. She also brought several surgical cutting needles, a roll of unflavored dental floss, peroxide, and a bottle of Gatorade.
When I asked for the Gatorade, she seemed surprised and said, “If you’re thirsty, I’ll get you a beer. Anything you want.”
I’d already seen gauze, tape, peroxide, and the antibiotic cephalexin aboard the Nan-Shan, and she brought those articles, too.
“The only thing I couldn’t find is that spray can stuff you wanted. Lanacane? Can you get along without it?”
“I need something, some kind of anesthetic, or your Lab isn’t going to hold still for what I have to do.” I thought for a moment, then remembered the girl mentioning her father’s powder, and said, “Cocaine would be even better. As a topical anesthetic, I mean. I don’t suppose you know where we could get some of that?”
Some of the softness left her face. “Mister, if you’re trying to trick me into something, I still got this shotgun. What I’m thinking is, you already tricked me once today. Did you call me on the phone this afternoon, talking about cemetery plots in an Alabama accent?”
“That was me, yeah. I’ll explain why later. But this isn’t a trick. I’m serious. It’d help your dog.”
She left and returned a few minutes later with an ounce or so of white powder in a plastic baggie. I’d already placed two Acepromazine tablets on the back of the dog’s tongue and massaged its throat until it swallowed. Then I’d used gauze and peroxide to clean the bare flesh around the tail and the missing ear. Now I dabbed the powder on liberally, listening as the girl told me what had happened.
There’d been thirty or forty men at tonight’s fight. Shanay had been grounded by her father for some offense, so she had to stay on the property. She couldn’t stand to watch or hear what happened to the dogs, so she’d remained in her room watching MTV, curled up in bed, her Lab beside her.
By midnight, her father was passed out on the living room floor. Around 1 A.M., she walked down to the river.