The big car barely changed its tone while climbing the hill. Hooker finally broke the silence. “How bad?”
Uncle Willie thought for a moment. “Remember those pieces of bread you put in the toaster back when you were fifteen? The ones when you thought the toaster wasn’t working right, so you batted the flipper down a third time?”
Hooker rolled his eyes and looked over his shoulder back at the lights of San Jose twinkling in the distance. “The ones that caught fire and burnt the house down?”
The older man stuck his index finger into the air. “Just the kitchen, young man, it was just the kitchen. I had to use a cutting torch to get the rest of the house to go up.”
“But kind of like the toast, huh?”
Willie nosed the large car into the driveway and brought it up to the gates. He set the brake and turned off the ignition. “Not just like the toast, but exactly like the toast.”
“Toast.”
“You may say so.”
“So the block is...”
“Cracked.” The man opened the door and stepped out. “In five or six places I can see with my naked eye, two I can stick my thumbnail in. There is one crack I stuck a dime in, just for you.” The man’s humor could run to the macabre. Hooker had destroyed the engine in an effort to stop the killer who had nearly dimed him to death.
“What are the chances of finding another Marmon engine these days?”
“Working on it.” They walked through the outside gate to see the house lights were still very much active. “Oh, Gawd, help me wrestle Hanky to the ground and drag him out of here.”
The two were still laughing as they entered the quiet house. “Hello?”
“We four are in here.”
Willie looked at Hooker and mouthed the word four?
The two empty wine bottles on the island were an indication. The empty quart Ball jar with the characteristic reusable glass and wire top was the final giveaway. Stella and Hank were lounging in the sunroom, plowed.
As the two men entered, the two drunks chorused, “Hello, dear.”
Willie looked at his cross-eyed partner as he leaned over to Hooker. “I’ll bet they see more than two of each other.”
Hooker giggled. He had never seen Stella so plowed. “Two bottles of wine, and then a quart of Maddie’s moonshine…. It’s amazing they are anything short of catatonic.”
“What about Box?” Stella slurred.
“Nothing, dear.” Hooker leaned into Willie. “I’ll help you with Hank, and then I’m just going to throw a blanket over the other body.”
Box entered through the cat door behind the large couch. Sensing all the activity was on the couch, he jumped up onto the back. He took one sniff and headed for the sanctuary of Hooker’s bedroom.
The two men watched the orange commentator as he stalked from the room in stiff-legged disgust. Willie commented about him being a very smart cat, and then they laid-to on the aqueous body of Hank.
Hooker returned and locked the door. As he heard the big V-8 leave down the hill, he started turning off lights.
He stood in the archway of the sunroom. Stella was already snoring lightly. Hooker brought a light blanket and tucked her in on the couch.
“I don’t think she has been tucked in since she was maybe twelve.”
Hooker turned to find Manny sitting in the archway. “I’m sure she was looking after other people long before she was twelve.”
The old detective pursed his lips as he thought. “I can’t remember which, and I would be stupid to ask, but Dolly is three years older or three years younger?”
“Dolly is the older, and it’s five years.” Hooker leaned over and turned off the three lights on the wall switch. He looked at the surprised look on Manny’s face. “You didn’t hear that, and certainly not from me.”
“I was just curious as to how you knew.”
“I saw a photo of when Dolly was six and holding Stella. If I hadn’t loved them both already, I would have fallen in love with them then. Of course, neither one resembles those two little girls in any way, shape, or personality.”
“And you would probably get slapped on the back of the head for even mentioning the picture.”
“Got that right, buster,” slurred from the couch.
They both froze and then listened to the resumption of snoring before they moved into Manny’s office.
“How does she do that?”
“Scary, isn’t it?” Manny forced his eyes open wall-eyed and crazy. “She’s been scaring me since we first met. The scarier thing is she will never mention it again. I don’t know if she doesn’t remember, or if she just holds onto it until it’s the right time to bring it back up.”
Hooker shook all over and closed the office door behind them.
He walked to the chalkboard and wrote:
“The killer is known. The Dog gets a bone.
Secure the death, but only when the debt is paid.
They meet they will, on Fox’s Eve,
Be by the old mill when the moon hits the trees.”
And then on the other end, he wrote:
When?
When the satellite crosses the Dog Star, Sirius?
What day?
A blonde woman will be killed.
Who? Where?
Manny read and then leaned back in his chair. “This is your sister.”
Hooker nodded. “Even more interestingly, she fed me the message verbally through Peter.”
“He’s the night dweller you see at midnight and give a cigarette to?”
“The same.”
“But I thought he was afraid of her? She beat him or terrorized him or something.”
“I don’t think she does any of it personally. I think it would be more of a psychological threat if it came directly from her. But it could have been one of her thugs. I think they are all afraid of her, anyone on the streets. I have no idea what the size of her tribe or army is, but I know it is more than a few dozen... um, bodies.”
“So what do you think?”
Hooker sat in the large barrel chair. “Manny, I’m not really sure what to think.” He leaned forward and laid out his right hand from the cast. “I’ve known Peter going on ten years now. I know when he tells me something, he has read... it’s dull and flat. He is just reporting. But this was a rhyme. He recited it in a sing-song fashion. I could almost hear my sister’s voice telling him the rhyme.”
He pulled his hand and arm back in and chewed on his thumbnail. “And if she taught it to him, she would have had to go over it and over it many times.”
Hooker’s eyes were pointed at the desk, but his focus was a long way away and a long time ago.
Manny watched the young man think and then turned his chair to study the rhyme and questions.
“You capitalized the word ‘Dog.’” He sat thinking about it.
“It was the way Peter sang it. It sounded like more of a name or title. I think it may mean something about the knee slave who is never more than a few feet from her knees. I seem to remember her calling him Dog. The whole tribe is about animals because they live like them.”
Manny nodded. “Do you think she might be talking about the killing in the railcar?”
Hooker stopped chewing at his thumb. He rested it gently on the chair arm, thinking.
He looked up at Manny with a question on his face. “I don’t know. For someone who is always on foot with no means of communication, she has always impressed me with how connected to everything she is. It is like every street bum and night dweller is her personal radio station.”
“Do you think she is asking you to meet her on this Fox’s Eve at some mill?”
“The meet and the mill, I am sure of. I’ve met her there before. It is one place she can be sure we’re not being observed by her people. But what I don’t get is this Fox’s Eve. Huckleberries, we don’t even have any fox in this area.”
Manny chuckled to himself. It always amazed him how the young man caught himself from swearing.
Manny considered the lack of foxes. “We don’t have any ravens either.”
Hooker stood up and wrote on the board Raven bone.
“Put a question on that—how close.” Manny looked at the last line. “And I guess that would be moonrise?”
Hooker looked at the corner where the large bookshelves met the ceiling. “Moonset if it’s in the next couple of weeks. The moon has been rising in the afternoon lately. And the trees are to the southwest of the mill so they would be moonset.” He turned and made the notation followed by when does the moon set.
“So now we come to the satellite?”
Hooker chuckled as he collapsed back into the chair. “We’ll get the information when Hank sobers up in the morning. Willie said he’s an amateur astronomer who has a large telescope.” He widened his eyes and made an ‘O’ of his mouth. The joke was lewd, crude, and exactly the kind Willie would make.
The two laughed.
“Have you ever seen your wife that plowed before?”
“Years ago.” His lips sucked hard against his teeth. “When Paul and I worked the King and Story area. It was hard on her.
“When she kissed me goodbye in the mornings, she never knew if I would come home at night, or if she would have to go identify my body. When I made detective, it went in waves. She never had a drinking problem. It was more of a ‘holding it all in’ problem. Sometimes the dam or wall would crack, other times it would flat break.” He leaned on his elbows and rocked his butt off the cushion. “After I got shot, and it looked like I would survive, and you decamped from Willie’s, she got some relief. Her only fear was you might knock up some nice girl or something.”
“But what about you?” Hooker asked.
Manny scrunched his face and farted. “I was out of the picture then. Get me up and dressed in a clean diaper. Feed me and keep me from drooling in my gruel. Stuff me in a corner for the day and put me back to bed with clean diapers. There was nothing to worry about anymore.”
“So it was just me?”
“Kid, you were usually one glass of wine kind of worry. By the time you came to us, you were legal for driving. You hardly ever drank. You never smoked. Hell, I never asked—did you ever do drugs?”
“Is this the dad talk? Because if it is, then you’re years too late.” Hooker thought a moment. “So this nice girl she was worried about, did she have anyone in mind?” His smarmy grin turned into a full Hooker smile, the one he used to get out of most trouble, even with Dolly and Stella.
“Boy, if you have the balls, ask her. But you better do it before Squirt and his sister move in.” He slapped his forehead. “Shoot, I forgot. Put ‘Trace Van De Camp’ on the corner where I’ll see it in the morning.”
“You’re tracing people now?’
“No. His name is Trace. Used to work bunko on the north end, but now he does small construction. I’ve forgotten to call him these last couple of months—what with you in and out of the hospital and all.”
“So you two are serious about Candy and Squirt?”
“Why not? Stella and I could never have kids. We didn’t even know we wanted any. Now, after inheriting you and Willie, we think we did all right. So why not rear up two more? All it would be is a reach back with a hand up. It’s not as if we have to grow them through diapers or pay for their school or anything. And in the end, we are rewarded with a daughter who is a nurse, and we finally get a son who’s in the family business.”
“What, wearing diapers?”
Manny had felt the jab coming. He already had his hand on his tennis ball he used to squeeze all day for muscle tone in his hands and arms. The fuzzy ball hit Hooker square in the forehead and resulted in fits of laughter from both men.
Box scratched on the door.
A still laughing Hooker pushed himself out of the chair and opened the door just as the phone rang.
It was 3:37 in the morning, hardly ever a good sign.
Manny picked up the receiver. “Hello?” His tone was terse and short. He listened and hung up.
Manny turned and looked at Hooker who hung in the doorway. “Go to bed. Danny is picking you up for breakfast.”