Shoot the Moon

Chapter Thirteen - Night Of The Long Knife

The next afternoon, Echo surprised me and called from a cab to tell me that she was two blocks away. She would see me in ten minutes.

Thank God, I was home when she called.

I had ten minutes to swab the kitchen floor and hide a pit bull.

The basement in any great old building is a spooky tomb-like place. It is the bowels of an organism of sorts, an organism made up of bricks and stone and steel but breathing through water pipes and steam vents, and mains evacuating waste into the city surrounding.

Our building is so large it has two basements, one called the sub-basement that was the original foundation of another building long since razed. It was discovered by a gang of workmen installing a new boiler when they fell through a rotten wooden trap which covered an old stone stairway.

The subbasement is like an ancient archeological dig and there are relics of another time still to be found down there. The first discovery was the dried and preserved body of a vagrant that, judging by a newspaper stuffed in his shoe, had lain there since 1903. The structural techniques of the last century created a maze of vaulted, arched catacombs that haven't been entered since the present building was erected in 1928. It is in one of these tomblike recesses that Ramon the head porter has his "office."

"Hey Mr. Murphy, how you doing?" He jumped up out of his seat. "Whoa! What's that?"

"A dog."

"Excuse me, but that is one scary looking son of a bitch."

"He's harmless. Somebody left him with me and I'm trying to find a place for him somewhere but... I don't want to upset Ms. Dalton. Can he stay down here for a day?"

"Aw, gee, Mr. Murphy, I don't know..."

I produced a fresh hundred dollar bill and further explanations were unnecessary. We tied the pit bull's rope to a pipe.

"Should I walk him?"

"You know, Ramon, he's harmless but I wouldn't handle him much. Try to get him to go on the paper."

Ramon grimaced. "Aw, gee, Mr. Murphy..."

I reeled off another hundred and Ramon cheered up. I was spitting out money these days like an ATM.

I handed him a plastic bag with one day's fix in it. "Give him one of these candies if he gets restless. He'll settle right down."

"Geez, Mr. Murphy, you shouldn't give a dog candy. Especially one that looks this sick. What's wrong with him?"

"Trust me this dog needs candy. Bad. It has medicine in it. You think he looks sick?"

Ramon's eyes bugged out for emphasis. "Yeah, he look baaaaad."

"I just thought that was old age and natural ugliness."

"No. There something wrong with this dog."

I didn't think Ramon needed to be burdened with any more information.

*****

I walked in to see Echo sitting on her imported Italian leather sofa with the Dalton Brothers. She was perched like the Empress of China ready to condemn a province to the headsman's ax. Supposedly, Echo had come back to town for a meeting of the Board of Trustees at the Metropolitan Museum. There was big doings at the end of the month, Gala benefit or something. I suspected that her phone encounter with the charming Charley Royce was the real reason. Trying to catch me in the act. Imagine that.

She frowned at my old suit. "Why are you wearing that?"

"No reason," I said, no worries. "Why didn't you tell me you were coming back? Wonderful surprise." Secretly my heart was slam dancing off my ribs. Like a guilty man. I sneaked a peak at my still healing face in a mirror: not too bad, I just have to keep moving until I can get us to dim lights.