Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 63, No. 11 & 12, November/December 2018

Vet’s Day by R. T. Lawton

Yarnell had just tucked into a plate of steaming crab legs at Oscar’s Seafood House, his favorite hole-in-the-wall restaurant just off 57th Street, when the chair on the opposite side of his table got pulled out. The chair’s right rear leg made a screeching sound — much like a wood saw rasping through sheet metal — as its jagged aluminum foot grated across the cement floor. Yarnell shivered slightly but kept eating and didn’t bother to look up.

“Oscar needs to get some new dining room furniture in here,” said Beaumont as he sat down. “There’s a metal slide missing on the bottom of one of these legs. Makes a hell of a noise.”

“Oscar needs a lot of new stuff in this place, but the food’s good. So what do you want?”

Beaumont pointed with a thick index finger. “You got butter dripping from your chin.”

“That tends to happen when you eat crab legs right. So I ask again, what do you want?”

“I got a problem.”

Yarnell dipped another crab leg into the small heated pot of drawn butter.

“Most of us do.”

“Yeah, but I need your help on a piece of work I gotta do.”

“Three weeks go by, you don’t call and now you show up asking a favor.”

Beaumont leaned forward with his elbows on the table.

“Hey, you’re the one got mad at me for setting off the alarm on the last thing we did together. And, in case you forgot, I still say that was an accident.”

“As I recall, you were the one who swore you had them wires rerouted so it wouldn’t go off. Just so happened I needed the payoff from that job to make my rent money for the month.”

“That place must’ve had a backup system I didn’t know about. Could’ve happened to anybody. But, I tell you what, I’ll make it up to you.”

“How you gonna do that?”

“You can pick our next job... after this one, of course. And, you’ll be in complete charge. I won’t tell you anything about how we’ll have do that one.”

Yarnell gave it some thought.

“You’re saying you won’t give me a hard time about how we do the next job?”

“That’s what I’m saying.”

“It’s all my way?”

“Right.”

“No armchair quarterbacking from you?”

“Fine.”

“At all?”

“You got it.”

Yarnell thought about the offer for a while longer.

“Okay, deal. So what’s this piece of work you gotta do that you need me for?”

“Veteran’s Day is coming up and I owe this guy a personal favor.”

“What kinda favor?”

Beaumont averted his eyes, gazing off to the side and out the front window. He pursed his lips as if having a private debate with himself.

“This guy, uh, sorta saved my life in Iraq.”

Yarnell immediately stopped chewing. His mouth fell open and the crab leg in his right hand froze partway there. Warm butter started running down the pale pink meat and onto his fingers.

“When were you in Iraq and I never heard nothing about it?”

“It was about twenty-five years ago. You and I weren’t full time partners yet, so I didn’t see any reason to bring it up.”

“Keep talking.”

“Remember Feeny’s old fencing operation across the river?”

“Yeah.”

“I had the misfortune to be delivering some fell-off-the-truck stuff to Feeny when the cops raided his place and took me downtown with everybody else. Judge Markowitz was sitting that day. Said the group I was hanging with didn’t bode well for my future.”

“You’re talking about Maximum Markowitz?”

“That’s the one. Told me that one way or the other, I was gonna get a change of scenery out of this. He then give me a choice of signing papers with an army recruiter happened to be in the back of the courtroom that day or going to trial followed by a trip upriver to state prison with him doing the sentencing.”

“Neither one sounds like a nice vacation, but ol’ Maximum Mark would’ve had you busting rocks with a sledge hammer if he could still do that.”

“My thoughts exactly, so I took a chance on the army. Found out later, the army recruiter who happened to be standing at the back of the room was the judge’s son-in-law and he was looking to make some bonus money if he filled his quota of new recruits for that month.”

“That don’t sound good,” said Yarnell.

“It wasn’t,” said Beaumont. “They had me on a green army bus that same afternoon, me with a window seat and a big recruit sitting between me and the aisle, blocking any escape I might’ve had in mind. Guy was big enough to play left guard for the Giants.”

“They might as well have locked you up in a paddy wagon.”

“No kidding. After a half-hour, the swaying motion of the bus on the road put me to sleep while I was still figuring on ways to get out of this situation.”

“So what’d you come up with?” asked Yarnell.

“The way it went,” replied Beaumont, “There wasn’t much I could do.”

“How’s that?”

“Next thing I know, before I could even put any plans into motion, I woke up at some training camp way out in the woods with several muscled-up sergeants in starched fatigues and Smokey the Bear hats screaming at us to get our asses off the bus. I tell you, that was one scary time in my life. Seems this was one of them places what was supposed to turn tame civilians into fighting mad soldiers.”

“A guy can get hurt in them kind of situations.”

“Gets worse,” said Beaumont. “Wasn’t but a few months after training that they handed me transfer orders to an outfit on other side of the world. I was going there as an Eleven Bravo.”

“Eleven what?”

“Bravo. That’s a rifleman. You know, them guys on the ground doing the shooting and getting shot at.”

Yarnell lowered his crab leg.

“You never said nothing about being a war veteran.”

Beaumont made a gesture with his hands, both palms spread out and facing forward.

“Well, I was and I wasn’t.”

Yarnell finally laid the crab leg down on his plate.

“How do you...? Never mind.”

“It’s like this,” said Beaumont. “When I reported to the company first sergeant at our camp in Saudi Arabia prior to the invasion of ninety-one, the sarge looked me up and down and then said he had a proposition for me.”

“What kinda proposition?”

“Turned out he knew how and why I come to join the army, plus a lot of other things about my alleged unsavory past, all of which he alluded to in conversation. And, being the First Shirt in what was about to be a war zone, he mentioned he just so happened to have need of a special man for a special job.” Beaumont paused for a moment. “Did I ever tell you I about the time I was a bartender in my youth at an Irish mob joint? It might help explain part of this.”

“Nope, don’t think it ever come up in conversation.”

“It was an after-hours blind pig across the river, mostly hijacked liquor and untaxed cigarettes in a storefront with the windows painted black so nobody could see in. Place was populated by up-and-comers in the criminal life, that is until the Russians took it over for themselves when our boss wouldn’t pay off for protection.”

“Putin’s boys do get a little touchy when it’s their opinion other people owe them money.”

“Yeah, put me out of a job.”

Yarnell was trying to decide whether or not to re-dip his crab leg in hot butter while his brain running in a parallel tunnel opted to put the discussion back on track.

“Tough about the job,” he said, “but let’s get the story back to what happened in Iraq.”

“Sorry,” replied Beaumont. “Anyway, Arabia’s one of them Muslim countries what don’t believe in alcohol. But since soldiers are a thirsty lot, the First Shirt needed someone to run an off-the-books NCO club for corporals and up. The club was concealed inside a couple of Conex boxes out in the supply yard, a place where the troops could safely unwind after a hard day in the field and not come to the attention of any stiff-neck officers. That’s where I was supposed to come in with my bartending experience from back home.”

“Let me guess, he made you a tempting offer and you went for it.”

“Right. If I ran the club, I wouldn’t have to go out in the boondocks and get my hindquarters shot off. Also as incentive for my services, he would finagle the paperwork for an early discharge. This was to be an undated document which he would hold in his private files, the date to be filled in after he saw how well I worked out. This way, I find out much later, if the club got busted by the MP’s, he’d get the discharge backdated, giving himself deniability that the army itself was running a club serving illegal booze in a Muslim country.”

“Leaving you to take the fall as if he didn’t know what was going on.”

“You got it.”

“Sounds like he knew all the angles.”

“I thought so at the time. And he did keep me from losing any body parts I’d grown fond of. Plus he kept his word after my year was up, sending me home in one piece with an early out.”

Beaumont scooted Yarnell’s glass of beer over to his own side of the table and took a drink.

“However,” he continued after placing the glass down in front of himself, “last month, a long time after his own army retirement, it seems our local vice squad popped the sarge for running a fake computer chip distribution operation. Had to do with counterfeit chips from China.”

“I heard something about them things being on the street.”

“As for myself, I hadn’t seen or talked to this guy in twenty-some years, didn’t even know he was in our town, fake chips or not. Now it looks like he’s going away for a while.”

“So where’s your problem?”

“He called me to come down to the holding facility and have a chat with him. Said I owed him, so to speak, so I went. Turns out when Sarge got arrested, his pet dog was at the local veterinarian shop for his annual tune-up, plus any required shots the pooch was supposed to get. Problem is, if the dog don’t get paid up and out in the next two days, the vet’s gonna put him down to keep the kenneling bill from getting any higher.”

“That’s a little harsh,” said Yarnell.

Beaumont nodded.

“And, since the vet figured out Sarge is probably going away for a long while, he wants his money right quick.”

“Then go bond the dog out.”

“Can’t. This vet is very exclusive, probably runs the most expensive kennel in town. Me, I can’t afford to even pay the dog’s room and board much less his annual tune-up fee.”

“Get Sarge to give you the money. It’s his pet.”

“No dice. All of Sarge’s assets got seized by the IRS when he got busted, so there’s no help there.”

“In which case, what did you have in mind for us?”

Beaumont leaned forward and lowered his voice.

“I thought maybe tonight we’d go in and get him out.”

Yarnell thought about this for a moment.

“You mean like a jail break?”

“Exactly.”

“We are talking about the dog, right?”

“Well, yeah, I’m not breaking a prisoner out of a state holding facility. What kinda criminals do you think we are?”

“Just clarifying the situation.”

Beaumont sat back as if he was miffed.

Yarnell picked up his growing cold crab leg and re-dipped it in the hot butter.

“Okay, I’m in...” He took a bite and chewed. “...as long as I get to plan the next job without you telling me how to do it.”

“Fine,” said Beaumont.

“Dogs shouldn’t be locked up anyway,” Yarnell concluded. “That’s too much like prison.”

Standing in the dark alley, Yarnell used a pipe wrench to twist off the doorknob assembly on the rear door of the building. He then punched out the remaining innards and inserted a special tool through the hole to reach up and flip the deadbolt handle. The rear door swung open a few inches.

“You sure you got the right wires on the alarm this time?”

Beaumont gave his partner a look.

“You don’t hear any bells ringing, do you?”

“Could be one of them silent alarms.”

“You think I didn’t wire it right,” said Beaumont, “we could go back down the block, wait fifteen and see if a patrol car shows up.”

Yarnell glanced up and down the alley. He didn’t see any flashing red and blue lights reflecting off the brick walls and he sure didn’t hear any wailing sirens coming their way. He wavered for a minute.

“Forget about it. Let’s just get this done and get outa here.”

Beaumont opened the door further and the two men stepped inside. Yarnell put a wide piece of black duct tape over the outside of the hole where the doorknob used to be and closed the door behind them. Now, it was completely dark inside the back room.

Flicking on a miniature Maglite, Beaumont shined the beam around to get his bearings. It appeared to be a storeroom for veterinarian supplies, large sacks of dry dog food, cat food, small animal medicines and the like.

“Keep going,” whispered Yarnell. “It smells like there’s a bunch of animals up ahead.”

In the next room, Beaumont played his Maglite over the stacks of wire cages. Small dark forms moved restlessly inside the containers. Barks and a few meows filled the silence. A couple of empty food dishes rattled against the wire structures as the locked-up animals moved around in their confinement.

“How do we know which cage your sergeant’s dog is in?”

“They’re all numbered,” replied Beaumont in a low voice, “and I’ve got the cage number from the vet’s billing voucher. Sarge gave me a copy of the bill so we can find the little fellow.”

“So he’s a little guy then, right?” said Yarnell. “’Cuz the big ones make me think of police attack dogs and I get nervous around them.”

“No sweat,” said Beaumont. “He’s supposed to be a cross between a Chihuahua and a terrier. How big could he be?”

“Good, seeing as how I don’t do so well with animals to begin with.”

“No sweat,” replied Beaumont as he flashed his light over the cage fronts. “I brought a leash for the little guy. We’ll just slap it on him and be on our way.”

Yarnell took off his left glove to scratch the itch on his nose. “What number we looking for?”

“Thirty-seven. I think it’s just up ahead.”

They waded deeper into the darkness.

“Found it,” whispered Beaumont, “this one up here. They must put the little dogs in cages on top of the stack.” He fumbled with the latch on the wire door.

“Hurry up,” muttered Yarnell. “All these animals make me jumpy.”

Beaumont opened the cage door. “Just relax, would you.”

That’s when Yarnell heard the snuffling to his rear.

“Beaumont,” he whispered in a strained voice, “is there something behind me?”

“Hold on. I’m up to my shoulder trying to get this little feller out of his cage.”

Now Yarnell felt something cold and wet against the palm of his naked left hand.

“Uh, Beaumont...”

“Give it a minute, Yarnell. This little SOB bit me when I grabbed for his collar, but I think I got him.”

Yarnell heard the snuffling behind him again. He wanted to turn around and look, but was afraid of what he might find. It was only when he felt something prodding him in the vicinity of his rear pants pocket that his adrenaline finally kicked into overdrive. In one quick leap from a standing start, he found himself six feet up and lying face down on the top row of dog cages. He strained to see into the darkness as to what had snuffled him.

“Ow,” said Beaumont who still had his right arm buried deep into the top cage. He finally withdrew his gloved hand from the little dog’s container. A dark lump wriggled from the end of Beaumont’s arm as he stopped to look up at Yarnell.

“What the hell are you doing up there?”

Yarnell peered down over the edge.

“Shine your light where I was standing and tell me what you see.”

Beaumont swung his small light in the requested direction.

Two yellow eyes and a large set of sharp white teeth reflected in the light beam. A thin stream of saliva dripped quietly from blood-red gums and down onto the cement floor.

“Holy crap,” exclaimed Beaumont as he scrambled for finger and toe holds to scale the wire cages. The dark lump on the end of his arm continued to chomp on the fingers of his right-hand glove as he climbed. In the process of quick movement, one of Beaumont’s shoes became dislodged and fell to the floor. A long wet tongue licked the length of his big toe sticking out of a now enlarged hole in his sock. He shivered uncontrollably and rapidly withdrew his foot onto the top of the cage as he lurched upwards.

“What the hell is that?” screamed Beaumont “Looks like a wolf.”

“I think it’s a very large guard dog,” whispered Yarnell, staring down into the darkness to see if the beast was going to stay on the cement floor or was going to stand up on its hind legs and look them over.

“It licked my toe,” said Beaumont now lying beside Yarnell and also peering over the edge, “like it was tasting to see if it wanted more.”

“I think he likes you.”

“Why?”

“He just picked up your shoe. It’s in his mouth.”

“Whatever that thing is, he can have it. I can buy new shoes, but I can’t say the same about toes.”

The beast stood up, full length, eye level with Yarnell. Beaumont’s shoe in his mouth was right in front of Yarnell’s face.

“What’s he doing?” asked Yarnell.

“How am I supposed to know?” answered Beaumont. “Maybe he wants to make you a gift.”

Yarnell tentatively reached out and took hold of the shoe. The beast released it and dropped down to all fours with its head pointed toward the front of the building.

“Now what?” asked Yarnell.

“Just a minute,” whispered Beaumont. “This little monster on the end of my hand is trying to shorten a couple of my fingers. Let me do something with him first.”

“Stash him inside your coat,” said Yarnell. “He’s supposed to be small, remember?”

Using his left hand, Beaumont pulled the little dog off his fingers and stuffed him, right glove and all, inside his jacket. He then yanked up the zipper. A muffled growl came from inside the cloth.

“Let’s get back to the big, yellow-eyed beast,” said Yarnell in a low voice. “What do I do?”

“I think maybe he wants to play,” whispered Beaumont. “Try throwing the shoe.”

Yarnell gingerly tossed Beaumont’s shoe into the darkness. He could hear the slap of rubber sole when the footgear hit the cement.

With a scraping of toenails, the beast took off in the direction of the noise. In no time, he returned, stood on his hind legs again and presented the shoe.

Yarnell stared at Beaumont’s slobbered-up shoe.

“What do you think?”

“I got an idea,” whispered Beaumont. “Throw the damn thing as far as you can into the front of the store. When he takes off after it, we’ll make a run for the back door.”

“How fast can you run with only one shoe?”

“Throw it and see. Just don’t get between me and the exit.”

“Get ready then, ’cuz here goes nothing.”

Yarnell gingerly took the wet shoe out of the dog’s mouth and underhanded it down the passageway and into the front office. He was gathering himself to jump to the floor when he noticed Beaumont was already down and high-stepping it for the supply room in the back. By the time Yarnell made his way into the supply room, Beaumont had thrown open the back door and turned into the alley.

Yarnell rounded into the alley three strides behind his partner, grabbed the edge of the open door as he passed it and slammed the door shut behind him.

No longer having a latching mechanism where the doorknob used to be, the rear door bounced back open.

Yarnell heard toenails clicking on the cement behind him and heavy breathing much closer than he liked. He screamed a warning.

“Dog!”

Beaumont immediately swung himself up on top of the nearest trash dumpster and stood ramrod stiff with his back against the building’s brick wall.

Having gained a step on his partner, Yarnell followed suit and took safety alongside Beaumont on top of the same dumpster.

The large dog from the vet’s business stood up and rested his front paws on the edge of the container. His long, wet tongue hung out of the side of his mouth. No shoe was visible.

“You think he ate it?” asked Yarnell.

Beaumont moved as far away from the beast as he could.

“I don’t want to think about it.”

“Give me your other shoe,” said Yarnell.

“What?”

“It worked once, let’s try it again.”

Beaumont took a step sideways.

“No way. I’ve already got one sock dripping water from running down this wet alley. We’re supposed to be partners, share and share alike. So, use one of your own shoes.”

“You’re kidding, right? We both have to have a wet foot?”

“Trust me, I’m deadly serious.”

Reluctantly, Yarnell untied his left shoe and slipped it off his foot.

“Throw it way down there at the far end of the alley,” said Beaumont. “I don’t see any more trash dumpsters for us to jump up on if he retrieves your foot gear too fast.”

Shoe in hand, Yarnell stretched his right arm as far behind him as possible, quickly rotated his arm overhand and flung his shoe in the opposite direction of where they wanted to go.

The beast took off in a flurry of sturdy legs and large paws.

Yarnell and Beaumont immediately dropped down to the cold cement of the alley floor and commenced a loping, one-shoe run for safety.

They hadn’t taken more than a couple of steps when Yarnell heard an “ouch,” a “damn,” and a “come back here” in quick succession. He started to turn his head to inquire, but then saw a small blur streaking for the nearby mouth of the alley. Whatever it was seemed to be chewing on a glove.

“Sarge’s dog is getting away,” exclaimed Beaumont. “We gotta catch him before he gets too far.”

“How’d he get loose?” panted Yarnell.

“When I jumped off the dumpster that little guy bit me. After that, it seems the force of me landing on solid ground slid him out the bottom of my jacket, so he escaped.”

“I think I saw him go off to the right after he ran out of the alley,” said Yarnell.

The two burglars loped to the sidewalk, turned right and came to an immediate halt. They watched as the little dog kept on running. Two fingers of the glove dangled from its mouth, dragging along the sidewalk as it went.

“Uh, that’s a patrol car down at the corner waiting for the stop light to change,” said Yarnell.

“And, the cop on the passenger side is opening the door,” added Beaumont. “Looks like he’s trying to catch the mutt.”

“I think we’d better let this one go,” said Yarnell.

“No argument here,” replied Beaumont. “We already rescued him once, so we did our job.”

Both men quickly stepped back into the mouth of the alley and peeked around the brick wall.

Down the street, the patrolman scooped up the Chihuahua-terrier mix off the sidewalk and spoke to it in a soothing manner.

“Where’d you get the glove, little fellow?”

Looking back up the sidewalk, the cop paused and then got into the patrol car, still holding onto the dog. The stoplight turned green and the squad car drove away.

Yarnell and Beaumont watched the vehicle move on, until Yarnell felt a wet nose nuzzling his hand. He stifled a jump and slowly turned around.

“Beaumont, we got company.”

His partner gradually straightened up and eased his body around, moving very carefully with no sudden movements.

“Is it who I think it is?”

“Yep,” whispered Yarnell. “He found us again.”

“Does he still have your shoe?”

“Yep.”

“Then throw it again. Farther this time and we’ll get the hell out of here.”

Yarnell wound up and tried to put the shoe down the alley and nearly into the next block.

The yellow-eyed beast was gone in a flash.

Beaumont and Yarnell took off up the sidewalk in a fast lope, headed in the opposite direction of the patrol car. When they got to their van, Beaumont yanked open the passenger’s door, slid onto the seat, closed the door, clambered over the console and plopped down in the driver’s seat. He put the keys in the ignition and started the engine.

Yarnell quickly slid open the panel side door and jumped into the interior. He was in the process of leaning forward to close the side door when a large furry creature leaped over his back and into the vehicle. With his muscles already programmed to shut the door, Yarnell completed the process and immediately scrambled for the front passenger seat.

Oblivious to any extra cargo in the rear, Beaumont pulled away from the curb and barreled down the street. Two quick turns and he hit the on-ramp for the thruway. He floored the accelerator, sped up the incline and slid into a narrow space between a speeding semi and a furniture delivery truck amidst a flurry of honking horns.

Perched stiffly in the front passenger’s seat, Yarnell looked out of the corner of his vision to see the yellow-eyed beast taking a position behind the van’s center console. The dog sat straight up with a shoe in its mouth, its long white teeth bared and strings of saliva dripping off the wet footgear.

Yarnell was reluctant to bring up the matter, so he focused his eyes straight ahead through the windshield.

When Beaumont finally did look into his rearview mirror during the early hours of what was now Veteran’s Day, he was merely checking to see if they were being followed. The image reflected back to him in the glass inadvertently caused both of his hands to rotate the steering wheel far left. He suddenly found himself swerving across two lanes of heavy traffic. More horns blared.

One thought briefly crossed his mind. All those years ago in Iraq he’d never been involved in anything serious enough to become eligible for a Purple Heart. But the way things were going tonight, on this last mission he’d taken up for his old sergeant, he stood a good chance of getting a few dings in his helmet. Problem was he wasn’t wearing one. Maybe his karma was finally catching up with him.