Strega - Andrew H. Vachss [45]
I sat there for a few minutes, patting her huge head and feeding her the rest of the steak and cheese. Pansy wasn't a food–freak like a lot of dogs. Most dogs will eat until they kill themselves if you let them. It's left over from being wild—wild things never know where their next meal is coming from, so they pack it in when they get the chance. When Pansy was a puppy, I got four fifty–pound sacks of the dry food she was raised on and lugged them up the stairs. I opened them all, dumped all the dog food in one corner of the office, and let her loose. She loved the stuff, but no matter how much she ate, there was always a big pile left. She ate until she passed out a couple of times, but once she got it that there would always be food for her, she lost interest. I always keep a washtub full of the dry food against the back wall of the office, near the door. And I have a piece of hose hooked up to the shower so her water dish refills itself every time the level drops. Now she eats only when she gets hungry, but she's still a maniac for treats, especially cheese.
The phone on my desk rang but I didn't move—it couldn't be for me. The Mole had hooked up an extension to the hippies' phones downstairs. I could make calls out when they weren't on the line, but that was all. I only had it ring to let me know if the line was in use, and to let clients think I was connected to the outside world. My clients never asked to use the phone—I don't validate parking either. The hippies didn't know I lived up here, and they couldn't care less anyway. All they cared about was their inner space, not who was sitting on top of their cave. It was my kind of relationship.
I glanced through the pile of mail left over from the last time I went to the drop and picked it up. It was the usual stuff, mostly responses to my series of ads promising information about opportunities for would–be mercenaries. When I get a legitimate response—one with the ten–dollar money order inside and a self–addressed stamped envelope—I send them whatever crap I happen to have lying around at the time. Usually it's a photocopied sheet of names and phone numbers in places like London or Lisbon. It's the real stuff, like "Go to the Bodega Diablo Bar between 2200 and 2300 hours, order a vodka tonic, and tell the bartender you want to speak to Luis." Sometimes I throw in a Rhodesian Army recruiting poster or a National Geographic map of what used to be Angola.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not in this just for the ten bucks—I keep a nice sucker list of anyone who replies to my ads. I've had a lot of careers, and as I get older I play it safer and safer. Stinging suckers and scamming freaks won't make me rich, but it won't make me dead either. And I'm much too old to go back to prison.
I used to sell other things, like handguns, but I stopped. I have to move between the cracks if I want to keep on being self–employed. Robbing citizens got me sent to prison, and the heroin hijacking almost put me down for the count. In the wild, when a wolf gets too old and slow to work with the pack, he has to go off on his own to die. If he's lucky, he gets captured and they put him in a cage to prolong his life. I already had that chance, and it wasn't for me. The way I figure it, I can always keep feeding myself if I work easier and easier game—prey without teeth. So what if the disturbos and petty crooks and outpatients don't ever add up to a retirement