The Angel of Darkness - Caleb Carr [118]
Off of the top of the cage, Hickie lifted a dead rat by its tail. There were bite and claw marks all over the thing, and a big tear in its throat. “What’d I tell you?” Hickie shouted, overjoyed. “Got the bathtard clear through the wire, he did! There’th none to compare to old Mike, when it cometh to rat-killin’!” Overjoyed past words, Hickie threw the rat to the floor, opened the cage, and reached inside, bringing out the two-foot-long, grey-and-white ferret. The animal’s little black eyes locked on Hickie’s face with what seemed like recognition: he rolled onto his back in Hickie’s lap, and then shot up and around his master’s shoulders in one long, streaking movement, like he’d been poured out of a bottle. Hickie laughed out loud, and then the ferret jumped back into his lap, scratching behind his rounded ears and at his pointed nose with his short front paws. The animal looked my way, the little daggers of his sharp upper teeth showing over the fur of his lower jaw. “Tickle me, willya, Mike, my boy?” Hickie shouted, rubbing the ferret’s stomach with real affection and enthusiasm. “Then I’ll return the favor!” But the ferret only seemed to enjoy the rubbing, and after a few seconds he grew calm enough for Hickie to pick him up. “Come on, Thtevie, come on up and get to know Mike proper!” He looked into the ferret’s eyes. “Now, Mike, thith ith Thtevie Taggert, who you’ve theen before, though you’ve never been properly introduthed. Thtevie—Mike.” And before I knew it, he’d placed the animal against my chest, causing me to clutch him close. “What do you think, Mike?”
The ferret stared up at me for just a second, then suddenly flipped over and scurried up my arm, his sharp claws piercing my shirt and pricking lightly into my skin. It was a disturbing feeling, at first—not really painful, but strange; and in just a few seconds, the ferret’s quick movements around my neck and shoulders lightened up to the point where they did, in fact, tickle.
“What—what’s he doing, Hickie?” I asked, starting to laugh.
“Why, he’th gettin’ to know you, Thtevie. He’th a thtrict judge of character, ith Mike, and he’ll thoon dethide how he feelth about you!”
Mike ran down my other arm, jumped off onto one of the trunks for a second, then scurried back into my lap. Sniffing at my shirt with his ever-twitching nose, he stuck his head between two of my buttons—and then suddenly vanished inside. I took a deep breath of shock as I felt warm fur and cold claws against my bare skin. “Hickie!” I said, half amused and half afraid.
“Oh, thith ith rare, ith what thith ith,” Hickie said. “That’th hith mark of deepetht affeckthun. I’d thay you’ve found yourthelf a partner, Thtevie, old thon!” Hickie clapped his hands and then rubbed them on his legs, obviously pleased as could be that Mike should’ve taken such a quick liking to me. When the ferret reappeared from inside my shirt, I began to stroke his back with my hand and felt how quickly his heart was beating: like a little steam engine, so fast it seemed it’d explode. Then Mike turned onto his back, allowing me to rub his stomach the way Hickie’d done.
“Mike, Mike, Mike,” Hickie said, pretending to disapprove. “I’ll not have you playin’ cheap, now—remember your dignity, young man!” Laughing at himself, Hickie looked up at me. “You work around hortheth, do you, Thtevie?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “We have two, a mare and a gelding. Why, can you smell ’em?”
“No,” Hickie said, shaking his head. Then he nodded at Mike. “But he can. Loveth the thmell of hortheth, doth that one. And he’th thure taken to you. Well, then, Thtevie—what’th thith job you mentioned?”
I didn’t know just how much of the story to tell Hickie, but I had to let him have the basic details, as I’d need his instructions on how to train Mike for the specific task ahead. So I just mentioned that my employer and I were trying to track down somebody what we had reason to believe was being