Die Dog or Eat the Hatchet Read online

  “As I understand it,” Salisbury said, “a man is missing, presumed abducted by a skunk ape. If I know anything about skunk apes—and believe me, I know everything there is to know, more than any man could ever want to—then more than likely the victim is already dead. That said, it is breeding season for skunk apes, and it’s possible he is being kept alive to feed the litter, which means time is of the essence. Now I implore you to tell me what I need to know. For if you hinder me in my work, this man’s blood will be on your hands!”

  Salisbury slammed his fist on the bar for emphasis.

  Walt and me exchanged a look.

  “Uh, right … What exactly do you wanna know?” Walt asked him.

  Salisbury produced a rumpled copy of the Bugle and smoothed the newspaper across the slab. It was the edition with the front-page story about Ned’s abduction by the skunk ape, and the photo of Lester and Eliza; not the later story dragging Lester’s name through the mud, and all but accusing him of murdering Ned.

  “The two witnesses,” Salisbury said. “Lester Swash and Eliza Tuttle; I must speak with them as a matter of urgency.

  “You won’t find Lester here,” Walt said.

  Salisbury scanned the article. “But I understand Miss Tuttle is in your employ?”

  “She dances here,” Walt said, “if that’s what you mean.”

  “Then perhaps you might tell me where I can find her?”

  “Perhaps I might not?”

  Salisbury arched an eyebrow, bushy as a foxtail. “If it’s a question of money—?”

  “It’s a matter of Eliza being a sweet young gal,” Walt said, “and I don’t wanna see her in no more trouble.”

  I was proud of Walt for not taking the money, not to mention surprised.

  Salisbury narrowed his eyes at Walt, but trying to stare down Walt was like playing don’t-blink against a guy with no eyelids. Salisbury must have realized this, because he stood up abruptly and swept his slouch hat from the bar with a flourish. “Very well,” he said. “No doubt I can find the information I need elsewhere.” He clamped his hat on his head, tucked the newspaper under his arm, and began striding out. He paused at the door, looking back at us. “Make no mistake, gentlemen. I have come to Bigelow to bag me a skunk ape, and I will not leave town without one. On that, you have the word of Jameson T. Salisbury.”

  Then he tipped the brim of his hat and left. We watched as Salisbury made his way back to the Minnie Winnie. Walt shook his head and sighed. “Well,” he said, “what are you waiting for?” I said, “Huh?” “Go with him,” Walt said. “Make sure he doesn’t make trouble for Eliza.” “I’m a bouncer,” I protested, “not a damn babysitter—” “Would you just go before he leaves?” I wasn’t happy about it, and as I went outside after Salisbury, I let Walt

  know it by leaving a big grubby handprint on his new window.

  8

  I hailed down the Minnie Winnie before it pulled from the parking lot.

  “You want to speak to Lester and Eliza,” I said to Salisbury when he wound down his window, “I’ll take you out to the trailer park where they live.”

  He ushered me inside the cab, sweeping clutter off the passenger seat. I took a pew, my feet sinking ankle-deep in wheel well trash. As we pulled away, I glanced in the back of the camper and saw it was pack-ratted with animal traps and cages, rifles and bows and other weapons and accoutrements of what I guessed was the skunk ape hunting trade. Everything clattered about like pots and pans on a prospector’s mule wagon as the Minnie Winnie rumbled along.

  On the wall above the rumpled single bed were yellowed news cuttings of nationwide skunk ape sightings—most of them concentrated around the southern states—and maps with various spots marked with thumbtacks. I recognized the Bigelow Sticks on one of these maps. A single red thumbtack marked the spot where Ned had been abducted. Salisbury must not have known about all the other local skunk ape sightings over the years, and I was in no fit state to fill him in, because the stench inside the camper could no longer be ignored. “Mind if I roll the window down?” I gasped.

  Salisbury glanced at me and saw I was fighting the urge to puke.

  With a chuckle, he said, “It takes some getting used to.”

  “No shit,” I said. It just smelled like it.

  Eagerly unwinding my window, I thrust my head outside and gulped the clean air. I dragged my head back inside the cab, glanced in the back of the camper once more, and saw a tower of ice cream buckets, filled with Christ knows what. Flies were crawling over the bucket lids and dropping to the floor like they were drunk or stone dead. “What the hell is that?”

  “Bait, Mr. Levine,” Salisbury said. “Everything a growing skunk ape needs.”

  He started giving me the recipe. Maybe he thought I’d like to cook up my own batch some day? My stomach churned as he listed the ingredients. “Coyote urine, skunk pheromones, swine excrement; ripe slaughterhouse offal; a few pieces of roadkill I scraped up on the drive to town—”

  I shoved my head out the window again, breathing deeply. “I think I get the idea,” I said, “if it smells nasty as shit, these skunk apes can’t get enough of it.”

  Salisbury nodded.

  “You been doing this long?” I asked him.

  “Skunk apeing?” Salisbury said. “All my life.”

  Maybe it was just the smell of the bait, but my head was spinning, like I’d been bagging glue. “I always thought it was make-believe,” I muttered in disbelief. “What about Bigfoot? Sasquatch? Whatever the term is?”

  Salisbury shook his head. “Couldn’t tell you,” he said. “I’m a specialist. A skunk aper. No more, no less. Insofar as ‘make-believe’ goes—the greatest trick the skunk ape ever pulled was convincing the world that he doesn’t exist.”

  I frowned. “I thought that was the devil?”

  “Same difference,” Salisbury said.

  And then he crunched the camper into higher gear, I stuck my head out the window like a dog on a road trip, and we rode the rest of the way to the trailer park in silence.

  * * *

  Whenever I was feeling blue about life, all I had to do was drive out to the Sunnyside Mobile Home Park, and remind myself how the other half lived. By the time I returned home to my flophouse in town, and showered the Sunnyside off me, I’d feel like Donald Trump luxuriating in his Trump Tower penthouse. My chipped and faded bathroom suite would seem like Italian marble trimmed with gold.

  The Minnie Winnie wended its way through a warzone of rusted trailers and burned-out vehicle chasses. Kids with faces like Depression-era Okies shadowed us through the park on BMX bikes. Chained dogs barked outside trailers from which TVs blared and couples squabbled drunkenly for the remote. We pulled up outside Lester’s trailer. Salisbury seemed reluctant to leave the sanctuary of the Minnie Winnie. I had to remind him this was his idea.

  Outside Lester’s trailer was a postage stamp of lawn corralled within the rotted ruins of a picket fence. The grass was brown and urine-scorched where Lester must have pissed off the stoop in preference to using the commode. Next to the door was a mildewed plaque that read IF THE TRAILER’S A-ROCKING, DON’T COME A-KNOCKING! The trailer wasn’t AROCKING, so I knocked.

  A scared voice said, “Who’s that?”

  “Lester,” I said through the door. “It’s me.”

  “Me, who?”

  “Reggie,” I said. “Reggie Levine.”

  “Reggie Levine from The Henhouse Reggie Levine?”

  “No, the other one.”

  A silhouette appeared at the window beside the door. I glimpsed Lester peeking out through the ragged net curtain before he scuttled back into the shadows. “Who’s that with you, Reggie? I don’t know him.”

  “Someone who says he can find Ned.”

  Lester barked bitter laughter. “Haven’t you heard, Reggie? Ned’s dead. Everyone’s saying I killed him!”

  “I know that’s not true, Lester. Now open the door.”

  Another voice inside: A girl
’s hushed tones, pleading with Lester.

  I said, “Open the door, Eliza.”

  The door cracked open and a big baby blue eye peeped out from under long lashes. The eye darted from me to Salisbury back to me again.

  “Who is he, Mr. Levine?” Eliza said.

  Salisbury snatched his slouch hat from his head and started bowing like an old English dandy. “Permit me to introduce myself, madam—”

  I cut him off before he got going.

  “Better leave this to me, chief. They’re spooked enough already.”

  I turned back to Eliza. “This, ah, colorful-looking gentleman …” How the hell to put it? “He’s someone with experience in these matters. Now can we come in?”

  “No, Lizzie!” I heard Lester cry. “It’s a trap! Don’t let ‘em in!”

  “Damn it, Lester. We’re here to help.”

  I lowered my voice and said to Eliza, “How long’s he been like this?”

  “Since the rumors started.”

  She opened the door and let us inside.

  “Careful, Mr. Levine,” Eliza said, as she closed the door behind us, “he’s got a gun.”

  I stopped in my tracks.

  “You might’ve told us that before we came inside.”

  “I prob’ly should’ve,” she agreed, “you’re right, Mr. Levine, my bad.”

  Lester was pacing the end of the trailer like a caged animal. A revolver shook in his fist, in his other hand he clutched a can of Keystone. He aimed the beer at Salisbury and me, realized what he was doing, and raised the gun instead.

  “No funny business,” he warned us. “I ain’t afraid to use this.”

  He looked like he hadn’t changed his clothes or slept in days; he definitely hadn’t bathed, I could smell him from the other end of the trailer. His eyes were bleary red, bugging from his skull. He slurped from his beer can; shit, maybe we’d get lucky, he’d take a sip from the revolver and blow his damn fool head off?

  I showed him my palms. “Take it easy with that thing, Lester.”

  He thrust the gun at Salisbury. Had to hand it to the skunk aper. He didn’t so much as flinch. Just stared steadily back at Lester.

  “Who’s he?” Lester demanded. “You bring a hitman to my crib, Reggie?”

  “Lester,” I said, “what the fuck are you talking about?”

  “I’ve had death threats.”

  He waved the gun at Eliza. “Show ‘em the letters, Lizzie.”

  “Lester—”

  “Show ‘em!”

  Eliza upended a tin cookie jar over the kitchen table. Hate mail spilled out in a jaggedly scrawled, profane rain. BURN IN HELL, MUDRER. JUDAS SHITBIRD. GOD WILL PUNISH YOU FOR WHAT YOU DONE TO BOOGALOO. My favorite read, simply: FUCKEN ASS.

  “They’re all saying I killed Ned …” Lester said, choking back tears. “He was my best friend. My only friend. And it ain’t even Ned those bastards care about. It’s Boogaloo fuckin’ Baboon!” He fired a shot at the cookie jar, deafening in the enclosed space of the trailer. With a flash of sparks, the jar leapt off the counter like a scatted cat. Even Lester looked a little surprised.

  “Christ almighty, Lester!” I said. “Would you put that gun down?”

  I noticed Salisbury was inching slowly towards Lester. He had his hands in the air, showing his palms to Lester, that he meant him no harm. I recalled the magic trick, maybe the miracle, which Salisbury had performed on Walt to shut him up.

  Lester swept the gun towards him. “Mister,” he said, “get back.” He thrust the barrel in Salisbury’s face and thumbed back the hammer. “Think I’m funning you? I said, get back!” But Salisbury kept inching forwards. The gun trembled in Lester’s hand. A river of sweat flooded down his face. His finger teased the trigger—

  Quick as a snake, Salisbury struck the gun from Lester’s hand. It clattered to the floor and Salisbury kicked it across the trailer. Lester let out a yelp as Salisbury snatched the front of his shirt, slammed him back against the wall and stared him dead in the eye. He whimpered as he saw his own haunted reflection peering back at him in the coal-black pits of Salisbury’s eyes. Lester tried to wriggle free, but the older man had a firm grip on him, and he could only moan as Salisbury stared into his eyes, his heart, his very soul.

  “He’s seen it,” Salisbury declared, “he’s seen the skunk ape.”

  Then he released his grip on Lester and Lester slid down the wall and crumpled to the floor, buried his face in his hands, and started sobbing.

  * * *

  A little later, we were crowded around the trailer’s kitchen table. Lester was working through yet another can of Keystone, not fully recovered from his glimpse into the Nietzschean abyss of Salisbury’s eyes. Eliza was playing hostess: Picking up around the trailer as best she could, even fixing Salisbury a plate of scrambled eggs. Salisbury wolfed down the eggs like he hadn’t eaten in months. Once he’d finished eating, he asked to see the original video of the skunk ape.

  Salisbury seemed startled by the unedited footage.

  As Eliza’s squeals and Ned’s grunts echoed through the trailer, he said: “The newspaper said you were filming a nature documentary?”

  Eliza pouted, as if he’d criticized her performance.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Lester said, “we was.”

  “No wonder the creature was riled,” Salisbury said, “you were rutting on its patch. You might as well have been ringing a dinner gong.”

  Salisbury watched the footage several times, prudishly fast-forwarding through the prelude to the skunk ape attack.

  “Well?” I said, when he finally shut off the camera.

  “Hard to say for sure,” Salisbury said. “The video is very poor.”

  “C’mon now,” Lester protested, “it ain’t that bad.”

  Salisbury ignored him. “It’s hardly surprising the so-called ‘experts’ dismissed it as a hoax. For me to be one-hundred percent certain,” he said, “I’ll need to visit the attack site.” He looked at Lester and Eliza. “Will you take me there?”

  Lester lurched back from the table. “Are you outta your mind? Mister, I ain’t never going back in them Sticks again. Point of fact, just as soon as I rustle up enough money, I’m moving to the city, someplace where the biggest tree is a potted plant. ‘Take you there.’ Sheeeeeit.” He took a hearty slug of Keystone.

  “I’ll take you,” Eliza said, softly.

  Lester gaped at her. “The hell you will.”

  Eliza warned him, “You’re not the boss of me, Lester.” Lester was about to retort, but chose the safer course of action and took another pull of his beer instead.

  Salisbury gave a throaty chuckle. “I admire your sand, missy. But skunk apeing’s no place for a lady.”

  Eliza bared her teeth. “I ain’t no lady,” she said. “Tell him, Mr. Levine.”

  I said, “What she means is she’s tougher than she looks.”

  Eliza nodded fiercely. “Damn straight I am.”

  And she looked about ready to punch Lester’s lights out to prove it.

  “But Salisbury’s right,” I told her. “You don’t want to get mixed up in this any more than you already are.” She didn’t look convinced. “Hell, the only reason I’m here is ‘cause Walt asked me to keep an eye on you.”

  “Then you’ll be coming too,” Eliza said, “‘cause I’m going.”

  “Eliza—”

  “No, Mr. Levine. Talk to the hand, ‘cause no. It’s my career on the line here.”

  “But Walt said you could come back to work when your scratches healed.”

  “You think I plan on dancing at The Henhouse all my life?” She raised her chin proudly and fluffed the bottom of her hair. “It just so happens,” she said, “that a nice man from Austin, Texas saw Lester’s video on YouTube and he’s offered me a starring role in a movie.”

  “What kind of movie?” I asked, with that familiar sinking feeling.

  “A real movie. With a real fella. Not Ned in his stinky-ass baboon costum
e.”

  “Another stag movie, you mean?”

  “Another step up the ladder, Mr. Levine.”

  It was hard to argue it wasn’t an improvement on skunk ape porn.

  Lester looked like he’d been slapped.

  “You … you never told me ‘bout this, Lizzie. I thought I was your manager?”

  She dismissed him with a flap of her hand.

  “Well, it mightn’t ever happen now,” she said. “Everything’s all hanging in the balance. ‘Cause ever since people started saying Lester killed Ned, they been looking at me all fishy-eyed too. Now the nice man from Austin, Texas says he won’t sign me till after everything’s straightened out. And if that means I’ve gotta catch me a skunk ape, then by God damn it, that’s what I’m gonna do.”

  I held up my hands in surrender.

  Salisbury preened his beard, chewing things over. “I suppose I could use some extra hands,” he decided. “Judging by the footage, we’re looking at a seven-footer … That’s a whole lot of hominid.”

  Lester realized everyone was looking at him and lowered the beer can from his lips. “What?” Then he cottoned on and glared at Eliza. “Well, thank you very much, girl. I’m gonna look like some kinda pussy I don’t tag along too!” He angrily chugged the rest of his beer. “Alright … Fuck it, let’s go.”

  9.

  “Has the world gone batshit crazy?” Walt said, watching from behind the

  slab as I inventoried my camping gear on the barroom floor.

  “You told me to keep an eye on Eliza,” I said.

  “That was before I knew she planned on leaving me in the lurch to go make another stag movie.”

  “She’s hardly leaving you in the lurch. You’ve got plenty other girls.”

  “She broke her word to me, Reggie. She promised me she wasn’t going to make those movies anymore.”

  “The way I see it, she can do what she wants. You’re not her daddy, Walt.”

  He looked away.

  “Shit,” I said, “are you?”

  Walt gave a burdened sigh. “Can’t say for sure. But I got my suspicions. Let’s just say I once knew Eliza’s momma. You know … intimately. And more than once, come to think of it.” Walt drifted away. “Henrietta-Sue …” he murmured wistfully. “Goddamn, she could dance … Just like little Eliza.”