Thirteen

“A Dog-Eat-Dog World” proclaimed the Morning Tribune, and an editorial inquired,

How far will people go for profit? We might not like to look at the answer. From time to time an event makes us all pause, gives us the needed wake-up call.

After the newspaper vilification, public outcry was genuine. It quickly moved beyond the local level, for the report about Mr Nice Guy touched deep-rooted feelings. How do I explain? People were hungry. In a world where right and wrong were increasingly hard to get a grip on, where moral questions were vexed, compromised, or the local monopoly of a given group—suddenly everybody agreed about Mr Nice Guy. Only a bastard, pure and simple, could so mistreat a puppy! Who could say the contrary? Mr Nice Guy brought together people of all horizons, appalling everybody regardless of age, sex, religion, race, or political persuasion. He united them in disgust.

Indeed, if one believed public reaction, no rationalization or circumstances could excuse him.

I say, let him be locked up for a while with nothing to eat but his excrement, and see how he likes it!

was a typical letter to the editor, among the printable ones.

Garson was arrested a few days later on an unregistered weapons charge, but he was able to post bail. Meanwhile Mr Nice Guy saw his bail soar to $350,000, far out of reach. This increase was due in part to the public outcry, in part to zoning violations for kennel facilities, and in part to mysterious pressure from beyond the local police force.

“You should know that they brought the feds in,” Mr Nice Guy’s lawyer Roger Vsalik told him one morning, petting the head of a baby boy strapped to his chest. Vsalik often carried along his son Richie when he made the jail rounds. He was the court-appointed counsel and by all appearances a good dad. “Grapevine has it that the FBI has invited itself in, so now the District Attorney is flustered, trying to prove that he’s on top of things. I’ll tell you, Mr Renfrow, somebody high up is taking you mighty seriously.” Vsalik leaned closer, lowering his voice, while Richie’s head wobbled, his mouth a drooling rosebud. “Are you sure that there’s nothing more to this case that you’re not sharing with me? In your interest, I should know everything.”

“But I’ve told you everything!” Mr Nice Guy moaned. “I’ve got nothing to hide.”

“That machine in your garage?”

“It’s for making confetti, I swear!”

Apparently this device had excited and intrigued investigating officers. But it was only a turn-of-the-century Meeber machine originally used for punching holes in shoe leather, which Mr Nice Guy had gotten for free in exchange for moving it out of a landlord’s way. With Garson’s help in adding a kerosene engine, he’d converted it for his own purposes. The thought of strangers tampering with it troubled Mr Nice Guy. “People shouldn’t be fooling around the storage canisters without masks, confetti fiber dust is terrible for your lungs! Any party professional will tell you.”

Vsalik scratched his chin. “It must be the Surimi connection,” he mused.

And he was right—though he didn’t suspect the gravity of the affair—that in the garage the authorities were looking for more than a methamphetamine laboratory or even a bomb factory, that for several days, in fact, under their very noses Mr Nice Guy had been under round-the-clock surveillance. A “car thief” transferred to share his jail cell was in truth a CIA operative. Was this man Renfrow an agent for a hostile foreign power? The abuse of Mr Azid’s diplomatic status had come at a delicate time in U.S./Surimi relations. Though the general public was in the dark, at stake was a deal worth between 1.5 and 2 billion dollars, pending the Sheik’s purchase of F-16 fighter jets (also at stake was invaluable leverage in the strategic alliance). Was it only for the sake of some street cop’s sloppy procedure that the Sheik might buy French, after all?

Actually, as soon as State Department policy analysts read intelligence reports about the birthday party and grasped the canine variable in the Surimi equation, they acted fast. A senior foreign officer hastily gave up his children’s young labrador (code name Desmond) and shipped it to the Surimian consulate, a goodwill gesture that unfortunately backfired, for the consular employees didn’t know what to do with the dog (they were hesitant to send Desmond back, in the event that the princess would come to claim him). The puppy took up residence in the consul’s offices, a constant reminder and irritation to Mr Azid, chewing on his computer cables.

Roger Vsalik, with dark rings under his eyes and his baggy, wrinkled suit emanating a diapery stench, did not know any of these globally-charged particulars, but as a bleeding-ulcer liberal capable of sensing the whirl of outside forces, he warned,

“This is going to be a tough fight, Renfrow, I might as well level with you. There’s pressure from above, high above, to make an example of you.”

Their legal consultation always took place before lunch. Then Mr Nice Guy went to the prisoner’s cafeteria to eat chili and mashed potatoes, and glumly spread margarine on floppy white bread while thinking of the carefree hours in his own kitchen with Barbara, of a salad recipe he was in the process of inventing that would use only the edible blossoms of flowers. There were so many rich vegetarians out there who would subscribe to an on-line Nouveaux Comestibles. Folding a piece of bleached bread into his dry mouth, tears welled in his eyes.

“What’s the matter, Jerry?” said a gentle voice.

It was Carl Harvey, the grand theft auto specialist who shared his cell. He often came over to cheer him up, ask him how he felt and what was on his mind. His only friend in the place.

“Carl, I’m at the end of my rope …”

Mr Nice Guy told him everything, his legal woes and ache for Barbara (if only they could’ve had that romantic dinner before parting!), the ruin of his business and missed family obligations—he was expected at Cousin Mike’s farm at 10 o’clock that very morning, he’d made an appointment—as well as his worries about his mother undergoing circulatory tests on her feet at the hospital, where she had little to do except lie in bed and watch television, including, of course, sensational reports about him. “To put that poor woman through this,” he fretted, “when she’s already had enough troubles—”

“Tell me more about that Mr Azid fellow,” Carl Harvey interrupted, holding out a pack of spearmint gum. “Boy, he sure is interesting …”

Mr Nice Guy helped himself to a stick. “Gee, I don’t know what else to say.”

As he went over his story again, the image of his father’s pale, almost translucent face returned to him as it sometimes did in moments of distress, and he recalled his words. You do whatever you can. Yet that advice was harder to follow now since he couldn’t understand the situation. “Carl, help me figure this out. Please. What is it I’ve done?”