“How do you choose which one?” he asked.

I pointed. It was a black poodle. It wasn’t Rita, Vivian’s black poodle, but it was a black poodle, and I knew that Vivian would take care of it. I knew that she would regard it as some sort of divine compensatory gesture. Maybe the idea was silly, but I believed it. I believed that dog could have a home and someone to love it. This was no longer abstract, no longer theoretical.

“We’re taking this dog,” I said. “If you don’t like it, you can leave without me.”

Melford swore but didn’t say anything else. Desiree, however, nodded at me. “If Lem knows someone who’ll take the dog, we can’t leave it here to feast on Black Flag.”

“She’s a poodle,” Melford said. “She’ll bark.”

“I don’t believe this.” I could feel myself getting agitated. “Melford Kean, with ice water in his veins, is afraid to do the right thing?”

“It’s a matter of being practical. I don’t want to fight a battle that will lose the war.”

“It’s one dog,” Desiree said, her voice hard. “We’ll keep her quiet. And I’m with Lem. We’re taking the dog whether you help or not.”

Maybe it was that he didn’t think he could dissuade her, but I had the sense that it was because he liked the fact that she felt so adamant. “Boogers,” he said. “Let’s do it.”

He went over to the cage and began to open it very carefully. I suspected he knew enough to suspect that a dog that had been mistreated the way this one had might well turn on him, but she came out docilely and licked his hand. I figured that was a good sign.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s try to pull this off.”

But when we turned around, we saw the guard standing at the door.

Melford didn’t see it, but I did. Desiree reached into her back pocket and removed a switchblade. She didn’t open it, but she balanced it in her palm. She might believe that Melford was committed to nonviolence, but she clearly had not yet signed off on that part of the Animal Liberation Front manifesto. Maybe the two of them belonged together.

“Can I help you?” Melford asked. He had found a leash and was in the process of attaching it to Rita’s collar. He hardly even bothered to look at the guard.

“Who are you?” he asked. He was in his forties, overweight to the point that he had trouble walking. He stared at us with dark and heavily bagged eyes.

“I’m Dr. Rogers,” he said. “And these are my two students, Trudy and André.”

The guard stared at us. “What are you doing here?”

“I’m running a 504-J,” Melford said.

From the puzzled look on the guard’s face, it seemed pretty clear to me that Melford had just made up the 504-J.

“How come I didn’t get any word that anyone was going to be here?”

“Do you really think I would know the answer to that?” Melford asked.

“You have your ID card?”

“I’ll show it to you on my way out,” Melford said. “In the meantime, you can see I’m doing something. Are you new here? Because you’re supposed to know that you must never disturb the staff when they’re handling animals.”

The guard stopped to think for a minute. “I’ve been here all day. How come I didn’t see you come in?”

This question must have stumped Melford, because he paused.

“Right,” the guard said. “I’m calling Dr. Trainer, and if he doesn’t know what you’re doing here, I’m calling the cops. Now put the dog back in the cage and come with me.”

“No, wait,” Melford said. “Let me show you something first.” He handed the poodle’s leash to me and walked over to his black bag. I stood frozen with fear. Desiree had her knife out, and now Melford was going to take a gun and kill this guard, just for doing his job. This wasn’t some nefarious force of evil, like he claimed Karen and Bastard were. This was some poor working asshole.

I tensed, ready to dart forward, but when Melford took his hand out of the bag, he didn’t have a gun. He had a stack of money. They were twenties, and I couldn’t tell how many, but there was easily $500 there.

“I don’t know what they pay you to keep guard over this house of horrors,” Melford said, “but you have to know what goes on here is wrong. So I’ll make you a deal. You take this cash and let us walk out with this dog. It’s one dog. No one will miss her. No one will know we were here. Anyone asks, you say you have no idea. Simple as that.”

The guard looked at the money and then around the room. Sure, there was no sign anyone had been here. We hadn’t vandalized the place. Many of the cages were empty anyhow, so no one would notice one more empty one. He didn’t know about the missing videotapes, so it seemed like a good deal.

The guard snatched the money. “I’ll make my rounds again in half an hour,” he said. “If you’re still here, I’m calling the cops and I’ll deny you gave me anything.”

“Fair enough,” Melford said. He turned around to grin at Desiree, who already had the knife back in her pocket.

Most of the ride back went silently. We made a stop at a 7-Eleven and bought some doggie treats and water for the poodle, and she happily ate and drank in the backseat with me. She hardly made a noise. It was just one dog, I thought. One dog rescued from being forced to eat insecticide. We’d made some small difference.

I told Melford where Vivian lived, and we stopped outside her trailer; he tied the dog to the door, rang the doorbell, and we drove off. We were halfway down the street when her door opened and we heard her muffled shriek of joy. What we didn’t hear was the subsequent disappointment. It wasn’t her dog. Her dog was gone, maybe dead. But it was a dog, and I had to think it would be some comfort.

We were tired from what we had done and what we had seen, but I was lost in another thought. Why had Melford said he had no idea what Oldham Health Services was if he’d been keeping his eye on the place for who knew how long? And what was its connection to Bastard?

It was just shy of eleven when Melford dropped me off outside the Kwick Stop. It was only after I was out of the car and it had driven away that I recalled that Melford had said I was done with him, that our business was over. Did that mean I would never see him again? Was he hurt that I hadn’t said good-bye? And did I really care if I hurt the assassin’s feelings?

Not that it mattered. Maybe it was because of everything that had happened in the last day, but I didn’t believe I was done with Melford, and I found it even harder to believe I was done with the Gambler, Jim Doe, and the rest. When I was back home, away from Jacksonville and bookmen, I’d believe it.

I walked over to the pay phone just outside the Kwick Stop’s door. It was late to be making the call, but, surprisingly, Chris Denton picked up on the first ring.

“Yeah,” he told me. “I’ve got your guy.”

“And?”

“And not much. He’s a Miami businessman, deals in livestock, and also deals with some door-to-door encyclopedia outfit. He also runs a charity. That’s about it. No record, no arrests, no stories in the media other than the usual business crap.”

“That’s all you’ve got?” I asked.

“What do you want me to do- tell you he’s a mass murderer? He’s just an asshole, like everyone else. Like you.”

“I was hoping to get more for my money.”

“Too bad,” he said. And he hung up.

I stood there by the phone, letting disappointment wash over me. I don’t know what I had expected. Maybe some missing piece, something to help put it all in perspective. Maybe I wanted something that would have helped me feel safer.

And I didn’t buy it. If B. B. Gunn was the head of some kind of drug and hog operation, whatever that would look like, he must have had some dealings with the law. An arrest that never went anywhere, unfounded allegations that made their way into the newspaper, something like that. Why had Denton come up empty?