Black Dogs Read online

  Alex was quiet in the backseat. We were all scheming of ways to come up with two thousand dollars. There was no legal way to get that much money as quickly as we needed it. Not for guys like us. It would have to be something bad, something on a bigger scale than any of us were used to pulling off. Robbing Zeppelin was sounding better and better. Danny turned to Alex.

  “Do you still talk to that Angie girl you used to sneak around with?” he asked.

  Angie was an ugly girl. Dumpy with big, weird-shaped teeth and tiny eyes set too far apart on her face. A few years earlier Angie had won ten thousand dollars on Let's Make a Deal. Alex hooked up with her, convinced her to buy him a bunch of shit and then bailed once he'd cleaned her out. She never made the connection between the money drying up and Alex leaving and she still loved him madly. I dreaded running into her with Alex.

  “Naw. I haven't talked to her in a long time. Why?”

  “Isn't she a bank teller?”

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “Downtown.”

  “We're not robbing a fucking bank,” I said, shaking my head.

  “Maybe she'd be into it? We could cut her in for the ten grand Alex took from the poor girl,” Danny joked. Alex laughed. “No, seriously. Do you think she'd help us?”

  “No way,” Alex said. “She's a nerdy chick, man. She ain't helping us rob a bank.”

  “What if we rob one anyway, you know, without her help?”

  “I'm not robbing a bank,” I said. “That's serious shit. People get shot doing that.”

  “And this town is so fucking small everyone working there would know us,” Alex added.

  “Not if we got some really cool masks.”

  “Forget it!” Alex and I yelled at the same time.

  The Doors came on the radio. “Roadhouse Blues.” I always liked the Doors. They never got caught up in the hippie bullshit. They did their own thing. They didn't play Woodstock or Monterey or any of that crap. They drank whiskey and wore black leather and Jim Morrison yelled at the crowd and pulled out his dick. You either loved or hated the Doors. I loved them.

  I thought about a few quick ways to make the money to pay Boogie but none of them really worked out. Alex and Danny rambled about robbing banks or stealing cars. I knew the Zeppelin heist was our best chance. We'd just have to hold off Backwoods Billy until Zeppelin hit New York City that weekend.

  On the radio, Morrison sang, “The future's uncertain and the end is always near.”

  THIRTEEN

  ACROSS THE CARNIVAL GROUNDS, SWEATY AND SHIRTLESS AND LOADED OUT OF HIS MIND ON BLACK BEAUTIES AND BEER. THE BEER MADE KEITH CLUMSY BUT THE SPEED MADE HIM MOVE EVERYWHERE AS QUICKLY AS POSSIBLE. THE COMBINATION WAS HILARIOUS. I LEANED AGAINST MY CAR WITH ALEX AND FRENCHY AND WATCHED KEITH HURL TOWARD US WITH UTTER FUCKING ABANDON. HE MOVED AS FAST AS HE COULD IN A ZIGZAG. HIS ARMS FLAILED AS HE PLOWED THROUGH THE CROWD AND STAGGERED OVER THE UNEVEN GRASS.

  We'd spent most of the day sitting at Keith's kitchen table drinking beer and plotting. We needed a tight plan if we still planned to rob Zeppelin. Every time one of us came up with a workable plan, someone else found a hole in it. By the time we came up with something we could all agree on, we were drunk.

  We decided to hit the annual carnival on the Inner Harbor to celebrate. Every summer the city put together a carnival in honor of the city's goodwill and every year it turned into a drunken riot. The families cleared out by sunset when the festival turned into a circus of drugged-up kids and drunken criminals. There were fistfights and stabbings and wasted kids puking everywhere, more from the beer and drugs than the rides. It was the highlight of our summer.

  First, we needed to hit the beer tent. The bartenders didn't take cash, only colored tickets sold at a table manned by an off-duty cop who checked IDs. We worked around this every year by stopping at the party supply store and buying rolls of tickets in every color and smuggling them into the tent.

  We sent Keith to scope out which tickets they were using and he'd just returned. The speed made him talk in a jumble of words even before he got close enough for us to hear what he said.

  “… then they told me I had to go I had to leave you know get out but I wasn't gonna until I saw the tickets but it was too dark to tell and a woman spilled her beer down my back but I didn't care so I went to the—”

  “Keith!” Alex interrupted. “What color are the tickets?”

  “Red. I think they're red. Hard to tell. I need some water or something my mouth is dry …”

  Keith talked to Frenchy, who ignored him. Alex leaned into the trunk and rummaged through a shopping bag filled with rolls of tickets. When he found the red tickets we each pulled off a long strip and stuffed it into our pockets.

  The beer tent barely covered the crowd under it and no one noticed when we ducked under the ropes in the back. We decided Alex looked the oldest and he shoved off through the crowd with a fistful of tickets to buy the first round of beers.

  Sara showed up to hang out with Frenchy. They stood to the side talking. Now and then I caught her glaring at me, still mad about the incident with her purse. The speed kicked in hard and Keith babbled about everything from UFOs to his uncle's Mustang then back to UFOs and into a rant about how much he hated Soul Train. Alex returned with the beers.

  “There are nothing but old women in here,” he griped between sips of beer.

  I couldn't see much over the wall of bodies but I knew he was right. The women in the beer tent looked like sad single mothers and forty-year-olds on a girls night out. Most of the girls our age hung out in the carnival, not the beer tent.

  I turned to watch the neon-lit crowds moving around the dirt path that wound through the rides and games. Kids surrounded the bumper cars and a dinky roller coaster or tried to win prizes at any of the rigged games. Santana pumped through the speakers, mixing with the noise from the crowd. One laugh cut through it all.

  “Emily!” I yelled toward her. She stood eating a foot-long corndog covered in ketchup.

  “Oh my God!” She giggled as she walked over. “Great! And here I am eating a big-ass corndog.”

  “Who are you here with?”

  “Tina and my friend Brandy.”

  “Tina's here?” Alex asked. “Where's she at?”

  “Over there buying a funnel cake.”

  Alex drained the rest of the beer then ducked under the rope and walked off into the crowd. Emily licked ketchup off her fingers.

  “I don't know if Tina wants to see him after everything that went down,” she said.

  “It'll be fine. No girl can stay mad at Alex.”

  “I don't know. He just got out of County! Tina is pretty tough.”

  “We'll see.” I smiled.

  The carnival crowd parted and Alex walked toward us laughing loudly, his arm around Tina. I never knew how he did it. Brandy walked alongside them. She was chubby but not quite fat. The bright yellow button-up shirt she wore fought to keep from bursting open around her tits, and her blond ponytail swung as she hurried to keep up with Alex and Tina.

  “Come on,” Alex told the girls. “I'll buy you a beer.”

  Soon we were all drunk and clustered in the corner of the tent talking. Tina tried to convince us that Elton John had talent, which caused me and Keith to groan. Alex claimed that white music died in the sixties and black music was the only thing worth buying. Frenchy kept bringing up the Kinks.

  “Have you seen Live and Let Die?” Emily asked everyone. “James Bond is so fucking sexy.”

  “I always hated those movies,” I said.

  “How can you hate James Bond?”

  “It's corny.”

  “It's not corny!”

  “Criminals aren't like that. They don't sit around plotting big scams.”

  “They're criminal masterminds! That's how their minds work.”

  “There are no criminal masterminds. Trust me. Criminals just make shit up as they go along.”

  “Just like you're doing now.” She laughed, leaning in to kiss m
e.

  I overheard Keith chatting up Brandy. The beer he had drunk mellowed out the speed a little but he still rambled nervously.

  “If you told me you gave the worst blow job in the world, I would say prove it.”

  “Oh really?” Brandy laughed and rolled her eyes.

  “That's all I'm saying,” Keith said, shrugging. He wobbled a bit.

  I nudged him in the ribs.

  “Keith, man. What the fuck are you doing?”

  “No. No. It's cool. We're just talking. It's cool.”

  Brandy looked at me and giggled. I couldn't believe she actually found Keith amusing.

  Emily whispered something to me but I couldn't hear her. The noise on the other side of the tent suddenly grew louder. Voices shouted back and forth. The crowd surged toward us. Someone stumbled into me, knocking the beer out of my hand. Something was wrong. Me and Alex traded worried looks and he pushed off through the crowd. Seconds later he broke through the wall of bodies.

  “We gotta get the fuck out of here,” he said, wide-eyed. “Right now. Let's fucking go.”

  “What going on?” Emily asked.

  “We gotta go.”

  Clusters of people dropped their beers and scurried away. They shoved past us, ducking under the rope and hurrying away from the beer tent. Frenchy slipped through the crowd with his arm around Sara.

  “What the fuck is happening?” he asked Alex.

  Spend enough time around violence and bullshit and you develop a sense for it. You can smell a fight before it happens, while it's still just two guys trading hard looks from across a room. Having had the crap kicked out of me more than once before, my sense for trouble felt damn sharp. Something was going down on the other side of the tent and I didn't want any part of it.

  “What the fuck are you gonna do about it, pretty boy?” someone shouted.

  “Let's go. Come on. Let's just leave,” a woman's voice pleaded.

  “Hit that motherfucker!” another voice yelled.

  “Do it, man! Do it!”

  A fat man with a beard waddled past me shaking his head.

  “It's those damn motorcycle riders,” he said. “They're drunk and looking for trouble again.”

  I dropped my beer and bolted from the tent, pulling Emily along behind me. All of us moved in a group through the crowd and around the merry-go-round. No one wanted to look back. Terror crept up my spine and I finally glanced behind us. On the other side of the crowd a long, tattooed finger pointed right at me. The skull ring glistened in the neon lights.

  “Shit! Shit!” I hissed under my breath. “He saw me.”

  Emily couldn't take any more.

  “Tell me what is going on. Right now.”

  “You know the Holy Ghosts motorcycle gang?”

  “Yeah.”

  “They don't like me very much.”

  “Patrick! What did you do? Shit. Goddamn it.”

  Backwoods Billy, Rabbit and a gang of dingy Holy Ghosts barged through the crowd and closed in on us. We ducked behind the concession stand then snaked between two tents and came out the other side behind the Tilt-a-Whirl. I led the way, hooking around a few carnival games and the fun house. Keith stumbled over a mess of cables and nearly knocked Alex to the ground. Frenchy looked worried.

  We hurried through a path around the bumper cars and I felt like we had lost Backwoods Billy. I finally looked back. A pair of Holy Ghosts in leather jackets and bandannas walked through the crowd but they didn't seem to be after us. I turned back around just as Backwoods Billy and Rabbit rounded the corner up ahead and moved toward us. We were surrounded.

  “Come on. We'll ride the Ferris wheel,” Alex told everyone. “They won't see us.”

  “No fucking way,” I said. “I'm not going on that thing.”

  “He's scared of heights,” Frenchy told Sara.

  “What a sissy,” she sneered.

  “Come on. We're getting on,” Emily ordered me.

  She pulled me up the metal steps to the bright green Ferris wheel. We cut the line of kids and began piling into cars. Me and Emily were last and I caught a glimpse of Backwoods Billy passing in the crowd just as a carny with thick arms locked the safety bar across us. The wheel jerked into motion and we rose above the crowd. I closed my eyes.

  “Tell me what's going on. Can you see them?” I asked Emily.

  “I think we're okay. It looks like they're leaving.”

  I exhaled the breath I had been holding since the beer tent and lay my head on the back of the metal seat. She leaned into me and squeezed my hand. I really fucking hated heights. The night air felt cooler as we climbed and I clenched my eyes tighter. Someone above us screamed and I heard metal rattling.

  “What's that sound?” I panicked.

  “Just Keith being an asshole. He's rocking the car and making Brandy scream.”

  Emily leaned forward, causing our car to tip.

  “Hey! Hey! Cut it out!” I yelled.

  “Sorry! Just trying to see where they went. I think they're gone.”

  The sound of the carnival quieted as we rounded the peak of the Ferris wheel. We were high enough to see the lights of the city. The skyline probably looked beautiful but I couldn't open my eyes.

  We started our climb back toward the top and Emily shifted in her seat nervously. She leaned forward, tipping the car again, and I held my breath and clung to the metal safety bar.

  “Oh my God,” she whispered.

  “What? What is it?”

  “I think we're in trouble,” she said.

  “Why? What's happening?”

  “Take a look.”

  I opened my eyes slowly. The entire city spread out in the distance, dotted with glowing orange lights. It did look beautiful. I tipped my head and glanced down. A sea of denim and leather and greasy hair surrounded the Ferris wheel. A few of the Holy Ghosts shoved people passing through the crowd. Someone threw a wild punch. The rest of the faces all pointed up toward us. One face with a long red beard and a tattooed neck stared straight at me.

  Backwoods Billy smiled and waved.

  The Ferris wheel slowed down and stopped. At the bottom, the operator opened the gate to let Alex and Tina out. Keith and Brandy were next. Then Frenchy and Sara. Me and Emily came around last. I stared at the floor of the car. My stomach flip-flopped.

  “You feelin' all right, boy?” the carny asked, laying a large black hand on my shoulder as he helped me out of the Ferris wheel car. “You ain't gonna puke, are you?”

  I shook my head and he stepped aside to let us out.

  Backwoods Billy waited at the bottom of the stairs. He threw his arm around my shoulders as I came down the steps. His beard grated against the side of my face.

  “‘They that hate me without a cause are more than the hairs of my head,’” he hissed, spitting whiskey breath into my face as he talked. I pulled away from him and he yanked on my hair.

  “Having a good fucking time, boy?”

  He tugged harder on my hair, pulling my ear down to his shoulder.

  “Where's my safe, you little asshole?”

  Behind him, a biker with black hair and pockmarked skin leered at Tina.

  “Come on, girl. I'll win you one of them pink elephants. Then we can go behind one of them tents out back.”

  He lunged at her and she darted behind Alex.

  “Leave me alone, you fucking dirtbag,” she shrieked.

  I stared at Alex. He gave me a look that said he didn't know what to do either. Billy caught me looking.

  “These friends of yours?” he asked, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “You better tell me where that safe is before my boys tear 'em apart.”

  He poked a tattooed hand into my chest and twisted my hair as he spoke.

  “‘Destruction cometh; and they shall seek peace, and there shall be none.’”

  “Is that another quote from the Good Book?”

  “You better fucking believe it.” He grinned, showing off a gold-capped tooth.

>   The carny operating the Ferris wheel yelled from the top of the steps, “Hey! What's going on down there?”

  “Everything's fine, bud.” Billy grinned up at him.

  “Well, move along,” the carny said. “You can't stand there.”

  Billy ignored him and turned back to me.

  “Where's the safe, kid?”

  “I don't have it. I swear I don't have it.”

  “Who has it?”

  “A guy we know. He won't give it back until I pay him.”

  He looked genuinely shocked.

  “Some asshole is holding my fucking safe ransom? My fucking safe!”

  He screamed into my face. I prayed someone in the crowd would step in but no one did. Not a single head turned in the passing crowd or the Ferris wheel line. No one wanted to get involved. Most of the crowd spotted the pack of sweaty greasers in Holy Ghosts vests and then walked the other way.

  “Listen, boy. You're gonna show me where this motherfucker lives and we're gonna get that safe if I have to cut his fucking throat.”

  He slid a finger across my neck.

  “I'll get it. I swear. I just need a little time.”

  Behind us, a pair of scraggly Holy Ghosts terrorized Alex and Keith. They looked like lesser members of the gang. Younger guys trying to make a name. A chubby biker with a bald head joined his buddy with the bad skin.

  “Let us borrow your dates, fellas. We'll have 'em back by morning, I swear. They'll have a real good time.”

  “Yeah. We'll be on our best behavior,” the bald guy said, holding a leather-gloved hand over his heart.

  The carny reappeared at the top of the stairs.

  “I told you once already,” he said, pointing at Backwoods Billy. “Move the fuck along.”

  “Mind your own fucking business,” Billy snarled.

  “This is my business, you honky asshole. Now get the fuck out of here.”

  “Shut your fucking mouth, carny,” Billy snapped.

  The carny moved fast for a guy with the build of someone who sits at a Ferris wheel all day.