“I thought they was all gone, all his friends,” she said. “And Daddy keeps his dogs locked in cages the nights there’s fights, so I didn’t have to worry about them, either.”
Wrong. Two of her father’s drunken “friends” cornered the girl outside the machine shop. When one of the men grabbed her, she screamed. Her old retriever, Davey, came charging to the rescue.
“He bit one of ’em, this motorcycle jock named Jason. So Jason let his pit bulls loose on poor ol’ Davey dog. It was awful to watch, and there wasn’t nothing I could do. By the time I got back here with the shotgun, they was gone. The bastards! I was hopin’ you was one of ’em, mister, I surely was. I’d’a used it. I swear I would’a. So now it’s your turn. Why are you here?”
I’d stopped much of the dog’s bleeding by using dental floss sutures to ligate the open vessels. Then took the plastic tubing and measured the distance from the Lab’s nose to its stomach and dented the tubing to mark it.
Davey had lost a lot of blood and was in shock. He needed to be rehydrated quickly or he would die. By touching the back of his tongue with my index finger, I forced him to gag the tubing down. Because it slid cleanly to my mark, I was pretty sure it was in his stomach, not his lung. Just to be certain, though, I laid my ear to the dog’s stomach and blew gently into the tube. I heard a telltale blub-blub.
I took the funnel and began to pour the Gatorade into him. As I did, I told the girl the truth. A heavily edited version of the truth, anyway. I told her about my diver friends lost at sea. I told her I had reason to suspect that they’d been picked up by the Nan-Shan. I told her that aboard the boat was an albino man whose name might be Hassan Atwa Kazan.
When I spoke the name, she began to shake her head, saying, “That could be his real name, but it ain’t what Daddy calls him. Those two freaks, I know exactly who you mean. The albino, nobody calls him Hassan, what they call him is Puff. I don’t know why unless it’s ’cause he’s a doper. The guy he runs boats with, his partner, his name’s Earl. Big fat colored man, only not like African colored, a different kind. He makes my daddy look skinny.” She touched an index finger to her cheek. “This side of his face, the colored man I’m talking about, he’s got a burn mark or something. His whole cheek.
“Both of them are pretty gross to look at, but the albino, though, he’s the worst. Gives me the spooks just bein’ in the same room with him. His face is so white, like the belly of a fish, and his eyes look like they’re made out of yellow glass. He wears like a towel on his head, shaped like a tent. It ain’t no turban, but something like a turban. I’ve seen ’em around here a few times, usually pickin’ up and droppin’ off the shrimper.”
“Do they run the boat for your father?”
She thought for a moment, shrugged. “I don’t know what it is they do. But it ain’t shrimpin’. I don’t ask. All I know is, they’ll take the boat and be gone for three, four weeks at a time, and they never come back together. The colored man, he usually brings the boat back here alone. I guess the albino gets dropped off somewhere. Like he’s the boss and the colored man does the dirty work. And stink? Man, that boat stinks so bad you can’t hardly stand it.”
“What about a man named Baker? Does he work with them?”
She made a flapping gesture of dismissal with her hand. “No-o-o-o. That’s that idiot Timmy Baker, just an ol’ boy that shrimps for Daddy sometimes when he ain’t sleepin’ on the dock drunk.”
I had pulled the skin together around the Lab’s ear as best I could, then around his ruined tail, and was stitching the wounds closed, applying Neosporin as I went. The tranquilizers had kicked in, and the dog was asleep, breathing rapidly. I said, “I need to find those two, Shanay. They may know something about my friends.”
“Mister, you don’t want to mess with those men. They’re not going to tell you nothin’ unless you make them tell you and, no offense, but you just ain’t the type. You remind me of a algebra teacher I had back when I was still goin’ to class. He played some weird, funny game. Badminton, I think it was.”
“Would you tell me where to find the men if you could?”
“Daddy’s probably got them down in his book. People that pay him money, he keeps track of where they live. The colored man, he’s got an accent. I don’t know where from. Same with the albino.”
I said, “While I finish up here, why don’t you go have a look. Write whatever information you find on a piece of paper.”
She’d been sitting at the dog’s side, stroking his back. Now she stood. I noticed for the first time that she had a small butterfly tattooed on her ankle, and she wore a bracelet of blue string around her wrist. She stared at her sleeping pet for a moment before she said, “Why is it people are so much meaner than dogs and such, but we call them animals?”
Tomlinson is fond of saying that a Godlike greatness is available to humanity only because we are balanced with an equal capacity for evil. My view of the world, however, is more clinical, so less certain. I replied, “I don’t know. I’m more worried about how much blood he lost.”
“Is he gonna live, mister? He’s slept with me every night since my mama ran away. Never left me alone. I don’t know what I’d do without my Davey dog.”
I wanted to tell her that, sooner or later, her companion would die, leaving her alone in her father’s nightmare world. I wanted to tell her that if she did not break away from that world soon, it would drag her in and destroy her.
Sometimes we get the urge to help even when we know we can’t.
Instead, I said, “I hope he’s okay, Shanay. He seems like a nice dog, and you seem like a nice girl. I really do hope the best for both of you.”
I was waiting on the dock when she returned and handed me a sheet of paper. The security lights were bright enough that I could read her childlike printing: Hassan Atwa Kazan had a P.O. box in Tangier, Morocco.
Tangier?
Years ago, I’d been in Marrakech and in Casablanca. Just a week or two, then gone. But my knowledge of the region’s geography wasn’t good, though I’d certainly heard of Tangier.
Kazan’s telephone number, however, had a familiar prefix: 57-5. It was the country and city code for Cartagena, Colombia. Same with a man named Earl Stallings. Not surprisingly, his address was the Hotel de Acension, Cartagena.
As I read the names, the girl said, “Hassan whatever-the-rest-of-it-is, I guess that must be the albino’s name. He’s sick-white looking, but his features ain’t what you’d call American. He was in daddy’s book under P for Puff.”
I said, “Thanks. This helps me a lot. Something else, Shanay? I’d really appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone you gave me this information. You’d be doing me a big favor.”
“I’m going to tell you again, mister: Stay away from them two. I think they even scare Daddy a lil’ bit.”
“I’ll be careful. But it’s not going to help if they know I’m looking for them. Would you promise me?”
Her voice had a touching, needy quality as she replied, “I don’t even know your name, mister. I couldn’t get in touch with you even if I just wanted to talk, so why would I make you a promise?”
I reached out, squeezed her shoulder, saw her face tilt upward toward me, felt her body soften. Sometimes, you have to operate on instinct, and I decided to trust her. I told her my name and that, if she was ever in trouble, day or night, she was welcome to contact me. As I talked, I opened my little waterproof pouch, stored the paper therein, and walked to where the Nan-Shan was moored to retrieve my mask and fins.
The girl said, “Marion? That’s a funny name for a guy. You don’t mind, I think I will call you. Just to talk some nights. It might be nice to have a man friend who isn’t tryin’… well, it just might be nice to have a man friend.”
Then she stopped as if stunned at the sight of my snorkeling gear, and added in a voice of surprise, “You’re kiddin’ me, dude-don’t tell me you swam up this river?”
Her concern made me smile. “Not far, don’t worry. My skiff’s just around the first bend, less than a hundred meters from here. I’ve had a lot of experience swimming at night.”