Brown's Requiem - James Ellroy [55]
“Fuck yourself, greaseball.”
“I forget you said that, man. This guy got two pups of mine. You bring them back, I give you twenty dollars.” He spat in the dirt at my feet, an invitation for me to try something. I didn’t. It was their country, their rules. I got in my car and drove away.
I headed for the Ensenada Toll Road, driving through Tijuana on my way. Just outside of T.J. I found a side road that dead-ended. I pulled off and got my shotgun out of the trunk, loaded it, and placed it beside me on the front seat, covered by a blanket.
The toll road southbound was wide open and beautiful, with the sea yawning wide and bright blue off to my right and the hillside shanty towns thinning out as I moved away from Tijuana. I was adrenalin-expectation high, but put all thoughts of the future out of my mind and concentrated on the moment: sunny, seaside uncharted territory, untainted by the grimness of my mission here.
I passed through the first toll booth and a few minutes later I spotted the “Alisistos ½ mile” sign, then the dry lakebed. I saw the dirt road immediately, so I slowed down and got ready to jump the concrete divider. I came to a complete halt and scraped over it with what seemed like a minimum of damage to my underbody.
The road led up into greenish-brown mesquite country, past several garbage dumps and a shanty town of adobe huts where several old women were tending a collection of chickens and pigs. Soon I caught sight of the fork. The road to the right led higher up into the hills; the left—the one I was to take—led downward, into what looked like a box canyon.
I turned off my engine and coasted in, keeping a foot on my brake. After one quarter mile by my speedometer, the road leveled out and turned one last time. I could see a beaten-up wooden shack in the distance, about three hundred yards away. I got out of the car and locked it, taking the shotgun with me. There was no one in sight.
As I drew closer, staying to the side of the road along a stretch of bushes, I could see that the shack was encompassed by a low fence of unevenly matched pickets driven into the ground at irregular intervals and linked together by heavy wire. About fifty yards behind the shack was a large wooded area. Nailed to the wall of the shack was a bus sign, depicting a greyhound in full stride.
When I drew up alongside the picket fence a putrid smell hit my nostrils. I saw a large swarm of flies buzzing about a foot above the ground and a half dozen rats scrambling beneath them. When I saw what they were interested in, my stomach turned. Two dead greyhound puppies lay in the sandy makeshift front yard, their stomachs open and spilling guts.
I pumped a shell into the chamber, stepped over the fence and approached the shack. I felt the hackles on my neck rise and my skin started to tingle. I could see that the flimsy wooden door was ajar, so I found a large rock and hurled it. The door flew inward, the wood splintering and giving off a ghostly echo. But no other sounds came at me and I could see no movement inside.
I approached cautiously, my shotgun held in front of me at body level. The same stench that pervaded the yard doubled as I walked through the doorway, so I knew there was something dead inside. It was Fat Dog. He was lying on the floor, nude, in a lake of dried blood. His throat had been slit and there were puncture wounds all over his torso and legs. A large rat was nibbling