Текст книги "Foodchain"

Автор книги: Jeff Jacobson

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Текущая страница: 19 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

Jack read two more names. “Scorpion” and “El Perversio.” Based on how fast the lioness had killed an experienced fighter, Frank chose one of the strongest dogs, Scorpion, and a dog near the bottom, El Perversio. Scorpion had both eyes, most of his muscle; El Pervesio had three legs. The entire process was repeated, all the way through until the cat killed both dogs. She was smart, and went after Scorpion first, holding El Perversio off with her left paw. That fight lasted fourteen seconds.

The lioness was panting, so Frank opened the chute and placed a five-gallon bucket half-filled with water on the floor and stepped back. The cat came forward sniffed, and lapped at the water. Frank studied her and decided to gamble. The cat had to die in the fourth round, yet Sturm wanted the hunters to believe that she could just keep killing dogs all night long, so Frank had to make it look realistic. He chose three of the healthiest and most vicious dogs. They weren’t the biggest, but he knew they would be some of the toughest. He rested his beer on the fence, holding it loosely with his right hand, fingers slowly working in code. His eyes remained on the cat. Six. Nineteen. Twenty-seven.

Jack, who was seemingly looking at Sturm the entire time, nodded. He pulled out the checks and read the names aloud. “Shadow of Death. Pansy. Tr—” But before he could finish, Pine tore up into the stands and knocked one guy on his ass. Pine must have caught the hunters making a bet between themselves.

While the first hunter struggled to push himself up from in between the bleacher seats, Pine alternated between jabbing the second hunter in the chest with his index finder and driving the first hunter on his back deeper into the narrow gap between the benches. When Pine finally let the guy up, the hunter was spitting blood.

Nobody had any objections to placing all bets through the house after that.

Jack repeated the first two names and read “Trigger” for the third round. Frank knew the cat would kill all three, she was that tough, but it would be a good fight. The dogs would undoubtedly get a few good licks in, maybe tearing her open a little in the process. With all the blood in the auction yard floor, Frank figured it would be tough for the hunters to get an accurate fix on the cat’s condition.

The dogs were released, and the lioness took on all three at the same time, one with her right paw, one with her left, and the dog in the middle with her teeth. Pansy, the dog under her left paw, got loose and circled around the back, snapping at her back legs. Pansy got hold of the lioness’s dew claw just above her back left foot, and nearly tore it completely off. The dog sank it’s teeth into the meat of the of the cat’s leg, just under the knee. The lioness whirled, Shadow of Death still hanging limply from her jaws, and broke Pansy’s neck with one swipe. Trigger was kicking in a slow circle, dragging his intestines through the dirt.

Girdler, who had been keeping track with his watch, hollered, “Two minutes, forty-three seconds!”

Frank immediately saw that she left a track of fresh blood every time she took a step with that back left paw. No one else could see it, the chain link fence was too constricting, and there was simply too much blood on the auction yard floor. But Frank knew it was over. This was fresh; there was an unmistakable sheen under the lights. But like cats everywhere, she hid any outward evidence of the wound and never altered her rolling, sinuous walk. This was an instinctive trait, hiding any weakness or sickness from possible predators. So no one suspected. No one knew. It would help.

* * * * *

“She’s wounded,” Frank said. Nobody listened. But that was okay. It was his job to make things realistic, so he took a chance that this bunch would be ready to brush off his warning. “I said, she’s wounded.”

Sturm watched him. “Heads up,” he hollered. “The vet says she’s wounded. I don’t see it. Any else see it?”

Frank didn’t point out the location. He wrote it down on a twenty, and wedged it into the edge of the cage. “When it’s over, you check and see what I put down. You’ll find the wound on her. You can see the blood already.”

“That’s fucking dog blood,” somebody in the crowd shouted. He stumbled down the bleacher steps to the cage. “I’ll fucking bet you that goddamn lion is gonna chew through the next four dogs faster you can say shit. That bitch is mean.” He jammed a cigarette into his mouth, held a light to it, and inhaled. But the act of taking a deep breath jarred something loose, and he coughed up a thick tether of phlegm that unfurled in one long wave, the back end still clinging tenaciously to the side of his tongue. The other end stuck to his bottom lip and chin like a dead jellyfish. Either the guy didn’t notice it or just pretended it didn’t happen, he took the cigarette back out of his mouth as if he’d forgotten what he was doing, got out a twenty, stuck it in the cage. “Fucking believe it. I’ll take that bet. She’ll kill them dogs deader n’ shit.” He stuck the cigarette back into his mouth and finally got it lit.

“Sir, you do understand that Frank is telling you flat out, that that lioness, that beautiful specimen down there, that she’s not going to make this round, and you still want to bet?” Sturm asked the guy, but he was saying it loud enough so the crowd could hear.

“You’re goddamn right,” the smoker yelled.

“I’m telling you, that cat is finished,” Frank said.

“Go fuck yourself, retard.” The smoker wiped his chin. A chorus of insults rained down over Frank as hunters rushed to leave cash at the cage.

Plenty of men wrote their names on twenties and stuck them in the crevices of the cage. Frank yelled back. “Bunch of piss-brain morons.”

“Look who’s talkin’,” someone else yelled back.

Frank knew he’d take some shit for his gamble, and getting insulted was necessary part of the plan. But this was more than he’d expected. The men saw it as the perfect opportunity to air all their jokes and names in an open place. They unloaded on him. It was unnecessary. He got pissed. “Look, I’m telling you. She’s not going to make it. The wound is connected a major tendon back there—that back leg goes, that’s it. It’s over.”

“Hey, he got enough to cover this?” the smoker asked Sturm. Nobody paid the slightest attention to Frank, except to have fun at his expense.

“It’s covered,” Sturm said. He checked his watch. “One minute ‘til the betting window closes.” When the minute was up, a green hedge of cash had sprouted along one side of the fence. Sturm nodded at Frank.

Frank went back to the mouth of the chute clenching and unclenching his fists. That just sealed it. That cat was not going to finish this round one way or another. He bent over the water bucket, lifting it with his right, and helping guide it towards the small flap with his left. Conscious of his audience, he concealed a short, squat syringe with a modified plunger in his curled left hand. Instead of a needle there was just a wide snout of plastic and a cap. The cap was connected by a short piece of thread to his little finger; the syringe was connected to a horse catheter that ran up his arm and across his shoulders, filled with enough morphine to keep Chuck busy for the next year or two. If Chuck had seen Frank surreptitiously squirting all that morphine into the bucket, he might have wept. He pushed the bucket through the small gate while sliding the syringe up into his sleeve at the same time.

The cat sniffed the bucket as before and began to drink. Frank held off starting the round until the cat had lapped up her fill. It would take a while for the morphine to seep into the bloodstream through the stomach lining, much longer than injecting it into veins, but at least, when the time came, when the dogs finally got her down and her throat and belly were exposed, it would be as painless as possible.

Chuck gave her another blast of pepper spray just to piss her off and Frank turned the dogs loose. They swarmed down the narrow chute, and backed the lioness up against the far side of the floor. Men screamed and shook their fists. One dog got too close, and the lioness swatted at it, but that left her side open, and two more dogs lunged for her back legs, jaws snapping and popping in quick succession, like a string of firecrackers.

The lioness held them off for a while, killing one dog, but Frank could start to see that her reflexes were slowing. Finally, the biggest dog, a pit built like an anvil and accustomed to killing anything that moved, clamped on the cat’s right front paw and rolled into her, knocking her flat. The other surviving two dogs went after her face and she fought them off, best as she could, as the giant pit bull scrambled up and tore at her inner thighs.

Fourteen minutes later, she stopped trying to move and Sturm stood up and declared it finished.

* * * * *

Afterwards, when the men were gone, Jack laughed and shook his head as he opened the cage and let Frank out. “Would you just look at the balls on this one!” Chuck and Pine dragged the lioness out the front door to Sturm’s pickup. Up in the stands, Sturm kept his attention on his folded hands.

“Frank,” Jack explained patiently, “the whole point of throwing a fight is to make money off it, true. But if you’re throwing it, don’t to try and convince the gamblers to keep their money. Or, God forbid, they bet with you. You follow?”

Frank nodded, plucking bills off the cage. Every tenth one was kept in a different bundle.

Sturm laughed at Jack, then came down and for his ten percent. He said, “Well, well. This is all fine and I understand. First time you grew a pair and all that. Fine the first time. And as it happened, it worked like a charm. Them dumbshits went for it. You made some more money. Good.” Sturm tucked his cash away and glared at Frank. “But if you think you’ll ever, ever get away with that shit again, understand this. I will shoot you, no warning, nothing, I ever see you doing that. Anybody else around here starts questioning why you are somehow knowledgeable about the outcomes of fights, then you are putting our financial income in jeopardy, and I can’t have that. You’re on probation.”

“I didn’t th—“ Frank started.

“You didn’t think,” Sturm said. “I know already. Problem here is, the more I think about it, I don’t much appreciate your general attitude. I expected more from you, son. I would have thought you would have had all this figured out by now. You did once work at the racetrack, right? You were responsible for some things that left those horses dead. Or have you forgotten?” Sturm crossed his arms, waiting for an answer, demanding one.

“I remember,” Frank said.

“Then I would think that you would be coming up with all of this yourself. For a goddamn horse killer, you sure are a squeamish sonofabitch.” Sturm let the words hang in the suddenly quiet air. He spit. “Aw hell. That’s okay. Good for you. Hell, you told ’em. Told ’em not to bet.” He started to laugh. “’Ya’ll are a buncha’ dumb fucking cunts.’ Exact words.” The clowns started laughing as well, popping the tension like a knife in a balloon.

* * * * *

They followed Sturm out to the parking lot. It was now clear of any beer cans. Sturm did his best find any litter at all and trotted all over the place, but couldn’t spot one piece of trash. The place was otherwise empty; the hunters had gone back to their campsites.

Frank and the clowns clustered around Sturm’s pickup, staring into the bed at the body of the lioness. Underneath that was a bed of monkey corpses. The hunters had been pissed that the monkey with the earring had gotten away, so Sturm promised he’d drop all the monkeys at the taxidermist, who would then go through each one, looking for any evidence of pierced ears. Problem was, some of the heads were half gone.

Frank cracked a beer. “We’re gonna have problems with that bear. He won’t fight. Not like you want him too.”

“Nah. It’ll work the same,” Chuck said, leaning over so far that his chin and both wrists rested on the pickup, up near the passenger side of the cab. “We’ll just blast him with the pepper spray. That’ll get him goddamn set and prime.” He yawned. Jack stood next to him, but kept his eyes on the far off campfires, listening closely to the distant gunfire. Frank was alone at the tailgate. Pine and Sturm flanked the other side. The side of the pickup came up to Sturm’s adam’s apple. Theo’s shadow peered out from inside the cab, listening through the open back window. Chuck finished his yawn with a flourish. “Worked just dandy with the cat. Besides, Girdler said it would fight. ‘It’ll fight hard,’” he drawled, his imitation of Girdler dead on.

Frank shook his head. “Girdler is simply too fucking dumb to realize the bear is like that with everyone. He’s a big old puppy dog. The cats will kill that grizzly faster then the dogs tonight.”

“So we don’t feed it,” Sturm said.

“Girdler already did, when the old girl in there was killing seven dogs here tonight,” Frank said.

“That sonofabitch,” Sturm said. “We’re gonna have to watch him.” This was directed at Jack. “He’s liable to go apeshit he sees what’s gonna happen to his pet.”

“That’s the problem right there,” Jack said. “He still thinks its his.”

Sturm spit. “Fuck. Thought we had an understanding all worked out. Why didn’t you tell anybody that he was feeding it tonight?”

“I didn’t know the bear had been sold,” Frank said.

“Fuck. I guess, technically, we never got around to telling him.” His attention turned back to Frank. “No, that’s not why I’m telling you this. That bear is going to kill a bunch of them big cats over the next few nights. All I want you to do is make sure that damn bear wins until I say so. Hell son, all I’m asking you to do is make it look halfway fair, but hell, as long at that bear wins until the third, the fourth night if it’ll hold out, then we’re all gonna make some very serious money. As long as nobody finds out the damn thing’s name is Bo-Bo.”

“Look, it wouldn’t matter if that bear hadn’t eaten for a month. He simply isn’t going to last. You put that thing up against hell, one of them pound dogs, and it’ll shit itself. It’ll be dead tomorrow night.”

“Well then. That’s why you’re here. You’re the expert.”

“We’ll go in there, spend all night going to work on that bad boy if you want,” Pine said, always ready to hurt something. “Make sure it’ll fight good and hard.”

“No. Not this time. I got a feeling Doctor Doolittle here’s got a point.” Sturm gave a hint of a smile at Frank. “That’s why you’re gonna make that thing fight tomorrow. I got confidence in you, son,” Sturm said as he climbed into his truck. “See you gentlemen tomorrow.”

Nobody said anything to Frank. They looked at the horizon, mumbled excuses, and left. Frank drove back slowly, nursing his bottle. He didn’t see the point in hiding the long black car anymore, and left it outside in the parking lot at the vet hospital.

He stood for a long time in front of the sink. He got down on his knees and pulled the baggie free. It came loose with the sensation of pulling a long, fresh scab off your knee. The noise was very loud in the vet hospital, echoing inside the small space under the sink. He put the bag in the butter drawer in the refrigerator, finished the bottle, and went to bed.

DAY THIRTY-TWO

Sturm thought the bear had to weigh at least a thousand pounds. Frank’s guess was closer to nine hundred. The Kodiak was still massive, like a VW bug covered in rolling muscles and sparse fur, but it looked to Frank like he might be getting a little thin. Maybe the lack of hibernation had caught up to his metabolism.

Frank, Sturm, Chuck, and Jack looked down at the bag of pills on the examining table. “I think four of ’em will put that bear right where we need it,” Frank said slowly. “Any more…I’d hate to give it a heart attack. Be a hell of way to end the fight.”

Frank had called Sturm first thing in the morning. Early. Just to let Sturm know that he was working. “I got these pills. Got ’em offa trucker. I took one and it knocked me sideways for at least twenty, twenty-two hours.

Sturm was silent for a moment. “How many are left?”

“Six of the speeders, and five of the unknown ones.” Frank had put ten pills aside earlier, hiding them back up under the sink, just in case.

“Okay. Okay. I’ll see you later. In the meantime, you make sure the rest of them lions are ready to go tonight.”

“Okay.”

“Oh, and son, you did the right thing telling me this.” He hung up.

Sturm came alone to the vet hospital an hour later. Chuck and Jack were already there, getting the trailer ready to haul the remaining cats over to the auction yard.

Sturm picked the baggie off the table and shook it, peering at the pills. “You think four’ll do the job.”

Frank shrugged. “It’s a guess. That’s all.”

“What’ll they do to him?”

Frank shrugged again. “Can’t say. They’re definitely a stimulant. I’m hoping they’ll make him stronger. Meaner. For a while, anyway.”

“How are you gonna dose him?” Jack asked.

“Hide the pills in his food.”

“What’s Girdler feed that damn thing?” Sturm asked..

“Whatever sheep parts we got left over at the end of the day. Walnuts. Almonds. Peaches. Oranges. Whatever he can find in the orchards. Fish, too.”

“Fish?”

Frank nodded. “Three, four a day.”

“Oh yeah,” Chuck said, going through the fridge. “He goes up to the lake. He drinks all night, you know, with us. So he goes up there at dawn, goes fishing. Catfish mostly. Sometimes trout. Crappie. Whatever. He keeps the fish on ice while he sleeps.”

Sturm was pissed. “That freeloading sonofabitch. Taking fish outta’ my lake.” He spit. “You said, how many pills, four?”

Frank nodded.

“We’re gonna give him five pills,” he said.

“I’ll crush ’em up now.”

Sturm turned to Jack. “Go find this fuck. Find him and tell him I’d like a word. Sonofabitch thinks he’s going to take advantage of me, he’s got another thing coming.”

* * * * *

This time, the lot was full. The hunters must have called all of their friends; Frank counted over fifty pickups. Sturm opened the auction yard early, just to get the betting underway. Most everybody was inside when Girdler came walking down the highway in the twilight, face streaked with charcoal and holding a burning branch.

Sturm, Jack, and Frank were waiting outside the front doors. Sturm had instructed Frank to keep the back door locked. “Fuck the fire codes,” Sturm said. He wanted only one way in and out of the building.

Girdler got close. He waved the branch at the sky, sending a flock of sparks toward the first glimmers of stars, then tossed the branch onto the gravel. He strode up to front door and Sturm could see tracks of tears cutting through the smears of charcoal.

“It ends tonight,” Girdler said.

“Is that so? You haven’t been up in the hills chewing on peyote or some other hippy shit, have you?” Sturm asked.

“It ends tonight,” Girdler repeated.

“Heard you the first time,” Sturm said.

“So it’ll end. Tonight. Right here. Now.”

Sturm spit. He took his time, cleaning out the snuff. He pulled a new can from his jeans and thumped it with his thumb. “No. We got plans for that bear. He’s gonna fight for a few nights, at least. Gonna kill more than a few cats. Make us all some money.”

Girdler shook his head vigorously, long hair flying. “No. You can’t put him through that…that torture. He dies tonight.”

“I don’t know what kind of shit you got in your ears, but I’m gonna assume you didn’t hear me. That bear in there, that’s no longer your property. Your opinion don’t mean two shits around here.”

“Please, listen to me—”

“I ain’t listening to anything but the sound of the bell that starts the round. You want to, you come in and lay down that cash you just earned. You don’t, then you best hop in your goddamn RV and keep driving. Don’t you dare look in your rearview mirror ‘til you’re out of the state.”

Girdler blinked soot out of his eyes.

Sturm waited. “Your decision. I got business to tend to.” He marched into the auction yard. Jack gave Girdler a moment as well, then followed Sturm. Frank kept his eyes on the ground; he didn’t want to look at Girdler’s face.

Girdler fingered the two bricks of cash, one shoved his right pocket, the other in his left. He looked to the burning branch, but it had gone out, and nothing was left but a thin trickle of smoke. The roar of the crowd as Sturm came into view made the doors reverberate.

Girdler grabbed Frank’s wrist. “Will you help me? Please?”

Frank looked into Girdler’s eyes. “No,” he said, shrugging off the man’s hand and going inside.

* * * * *

The sound hit Frank first, like a physical blow. The arena was packed; everyone shouted and screamed and clapped. Men sprayed beer over themselves. They ate beef jerky. Popcorn. Smoked cigarettes. Cigars. Spit chewing tobacco on their boots. Almost to a man, they carried bottles of some kind of hard liquor, along with a bottle or can of beer. And everyone, everyone had their rifles.

Sturm got ’em quieted down enough to shout, “One thousand pounds of teeth and claws!” and the men roared again. They practically threw cash at Theo up in the office. Sturm shook his hat, “You men are privileged to see this, this offering to our God. The blood that spills is in his honor. He will drink the blood that soaks that earth.”

Nobody seemed to know exactly how to respond to that so a few bowed their head and a few clapped. Frank didn’t remember that particular passage from the bible from his father’s sermons, but his father would have liked it. Frank suspected the only place it existed was written across the tumor in Sturm’s head.

Sturm shouted, “Fifteen minutes ‘til the betting window closes!”

Frank stepped into the cage and watched as Girdler came in the front door and made his way up the steps to the office window.

Girdler slapped both bricks of cash on the ledge. Frank didn’t have to hear the conversation to know he was putting all of his money on the cats.

“Twelve minutes,” Sturm hollered. He went up to the office and stepped inside. Girdler followed him before Sturm could shut the door. Frank took a long look around, making sure none of the shit that the men had been throwing at the cage at slipped through the chicken wire, then walked up the chute.

He let himself out of the cage and into the back aisle and took a long look at the bear. Bo-Bo was fast asleep, flat on his back, legs splayed, leather footpads the color of milk chocolate in the light cast from a string of sparse bare bulbs. Frank gave Pine a hard look.

Pine shrugged. He was sitting on a rickety office chair with wheels that he’d carried down from the office earlier. “Watch,” he said, jabbing at the bear with one of the long cattle prods. Bo-Bo just lazily slapped it away. “I been shocking him for the past half hour, solid. Got it cranked up to the max. See? See? Shit. Too much fucking hard work.” Pine sank back into the chair and the bear’s breathing evened out and it wasn’t long before he started snoring. “Didn’t want to go any farther, you know? Didn’t want to get carried away, not before the fight.”

Frank said, “It’s time to get carried away.”

“Fuck yes!” Pine said, clapping his hands together like it was Christmas. He yanked a bowling ball from a storage locker across the aisle and lobbed it into the cage. The ball bounced, thunked into the side of the bear, and settled against the fence on the right. The bear jerked away from the blow and shook the sleep out of his head making a surprised, barking cough.

“Time to play, Mr. Bear,” Pine said.

Bo-Bo snorted and rocked back and forth, keeping a careful eye on the ball. Now that he had the bear’s attention, Pine reached into a small cooler next to his office chair and pulled out a ball of ground mutton the size of a softball. He held it up, making sure Bo-Bo was paying attention. Pine kicked the door open and tossed the ball into the cage. The meat had been laced with all five pills, ground down into a powder finer than talcum.

Bo-Bo ambled over and ate it without hesitation.

* * * * *

“Ten minutes!” Sturm’s voice echoed throughout the entire auction yard, amplified a thousand times over the loudspeakers. For a moment, everyone heard Girdler’s voice, high and thin, “This ain’t—” and there a brief, ear-splitting whine of feedback, then a solid click. The loudspeaker system went quiet.

The back door to the office upstairs banged open and Sturm stomped out. Girdler was right behind him. “You’ve got to listen to me,” Girdler begged. “Please. Please don’t do this.”

Halfway down the stairs, Sturm spun and grabbed Girdler’s beard and jerked the bigger man over the railing. Girdler went over sideways, legs kicking, arms flailing. He only managed to knock Sturm’s cowboy hat off before slipping over completely. A few feet down, he hit the storage locker, rolled off and landed heavily on his back in the aisle. Sensing a fight, the remaining dogs began barking.

Sturm followed his hat down the stairs. “Warned you once, hippy.” He dusted the hat off, put it back on. “You keep pushing, you’re just gonna get hurt worse.”

Girdler grabbed hold of one of the cages and pulled himself up. He laughed, but it sounded desperate. “I’ve been watching you, little man. Little bantam rooster, strutting around. You like to hit people when they ain’t ready. Then you step back and let your boys finish the job.”

“You saying I don’t fight my own battles?” Sturm asked.

“That’s exactly what I’m saying, you little turd. Come on. You got the balls, come on then.” Girdler pointed at Pine. “Tell this asswipe to step back and let’s see just how tough you really are.”

Frank knew it wasn’t that Girdler had questioned Sturm’s ability to fight that made Sturm slowly take his hat back off and hang it on a nail. No, it was because Girdler had called him “little.” “Pine, you keep out of this. Frank, you too. Dumbshit here thinks he’s a big shot, won’t listen to sense when he was warned fair and square, well then, guess he needs a lesson.” And without any more words, Sturm launched himself at Girdler.

His abnormally large fists popped through the air like a pair of sledgehammers. Girdler had just enough time to get his forearms up and in the way; all he could really do was focus on blocking Sturm’s punches.

Sturm slipped one past and his left fist caught Girdler in the throat.

Girdler made an urking sound and fell back against the bear cage.

Sturm immediately slammed his left fist into Girdler’s solar plexus.

Vomit spewed out of Girdler like a water balloon full of green bile and meatloaf landing on a thorn bush. Several gobs spattered across Sturm’s skull. This just made him more pissed off and he hit Girdler hard enough in the chest that Frank heard something crack.

Girdler lurched off to Sturm’s right and stumbled over the office chair. Both of them went down. “Treehugger,” Sturm hissed and stomped on Girdler’s hand.

Girdler screamed, but Sturm kicked him in the face a couple of times, breaking the scream off like a violin string snapping in mid-note. Girdler tried to roll over, gagging blood. Several of his front teeth had broken off and were imbedded in his bottom lip.

Bo-Bo ignored all of this and settled back onto the pallet, yawning and pawing at himself, scratching at his belly.

Sweat and vomit glistened on Sturm’s skin under the naked bulbs. But he wasn’t even breathing hard. “Some folks, you tell ’em something, they listen. But other folks, you talk ‘til your blue in the face, telling ’em what’s what, and they still just don’t get it.”

Girdler crawled toward the bear cage.

Sturm pointed to the office chair and told Pine, “Set that up right here. I want this dumbshit to have a front row seat. Frank, there’s some duct tape in that locker over there.”

Pine and Sturm grabbed Girdler’s shoulders and threw him onto the chair. Sturm took the roll from Frank and slapped the end across Girdler’s chest and wrapped it around his back, again and again, taping him to the chair. Pine duct taped Girdler’s feet to the chair base, so they could roll him around easily.

The sound of the tape ripping away from itself reminded Frank of tearing the baggie out from under the sink. He checked the clock. The pills should be working by now. But Bo-Bo was still lolling on his back and looked like he might doze off any minute. Frank patted his chest, feeling for the sixth and final blue pill in his shirt pocket. If the bear didn’t start to show signs soon, Frank would have to somehow slip him the last pill, but he sincerely hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

Girdler whimpered something, but it was hard to tell what he was trying to say through a mouthful of broken teeth.

Sturm patted Girdler’s shoulder affectionately. “That’s right. Glad you see things my way now.” The fight didn’t seem to have taken anything out of Sturm; it just fired him up even more. He checked his watch. “Holy shit. Time’s up.” He gestured towards the cage. “He gonna be ready?”

Frank shrugged.

“We’re counting on you, son. That bear dies out there tonight, it’s on your head.”

* * * * *

Sturm’s voice came booming out of the loudspeakers. “Two minute warning, gentlemen! Get your bets in now!”

Pine was bored and idly spun Girdler in circles as he appraised the bear. “I dunno, Frank. I don’t think your pills did shit.”

Frank shook his head. “You think we can get Sturm to stall for a while?”

Pine just laughed.

Sturm’s voice came over the loudspeakers again. “Window is now closed! The fight is ON!” He thundered back down the stairs. “Them cats ready?”

Frank glanced over at the three cages and the pacing cats. “Yeah.”

Sturm stopped in front of the bear cage, stuck his hands in his pockets, and rocked back and forth for a few moments. “You think that bear’s ready?”

“No.”

“Me neither. But it’s showtime. You better figure something out.” Sturm started down the chute. “Soon as I shut that gate out there, you let this big boy out. Then you got thirty seconds and I want all three of them cats coming down this chute. Got it?” He locked eyes with Frank.

“Yeah.”

Sturm headed down the chute. Frank knew that he had no time, no time at all. He pulled the last pill and found a hammer in the locker. He put the baggie on the cement and rolled the head of the hammer over the pill, grinding it down until it was as fine and smooth as flour.