“What?”

Chuck turned left at the end of the street, filled with more empty houses. An orange tree grew in the occasional yard. “How much money did you spend?”

“I dunno. Not much. Enough to get on the ride.”

Chuck giggled. “Enough to get on the ride. Classic. Fucking classic. Last time, I paid twenty bucks. Far as I know, that’s what everyone’s paying. So what did you pay? More or less?”

“What?”

“How much did you pay, man? I know she’ll blow your mind, but come on, spill. She give you any kind of discount?”

“Uh…we went on a ride. I didn’t pay her anything.”

Chuck’s face went slack. “Wait a minute. Wait. You’re telling me, you, you didn’t give her any money?”

“No.”

“Holy fucking Christ. She gave you one for free? Goddamn.”

“She didn’t give me anything for free. We went on a ride,” Frank said. “Then she, well, she kicked the shit out of Ernie and kicked Theo in the balls, and well, that was it.”

“Wait, hold on. She kicked Theo in the balls? That fucking bitch.”

“Well, he had it coming. See, he—“

“Wait, just fucking wait. You’re telling me she never, she didn’t…you didn’t get a blowjob?”

“A blow—what? No, no.” Frank shook his head hard. “No. Not at all. She…she gives blowjobs for money?” The muscles in the left side of his face twitched.

“Shit, where you been? Of course she gives head for cash. How the fuck you think she makes a living?” Chuck shook his head. “She’s sucked damn near everybody’s dick in town.”

* * * * *

Chuck pulled into a dark parking lot, a rippled sculpture of dry mud, all cracks and dips and curves, and killed the engine. They sat in the darkness for a moment. Frank got his first good look at the veterinary clinic. The building sat apart from the rest of the houses on the street, at the far end of an empty field full of star thistles and puncture vines. The clinic was roughly the same height as the rest of the ranch houses in town, but shaped like a large U, and swallowed by ivy. There was a small barn in the back. The grass looked well watered but hadn’t been mowed recently. A radio tower rose a good fifty feet, tucked into a corner of the building. It looked as if one good strong gust of wind would break it in half, send it toppling to the ground.

“If I was you, I wouldn’t mention Annie,” Chuck said and climbed out. “Jack and Pine…they don’t wanna hear about her.”

Frank followed him and crossed the yard, mindful of needles. He knew that vets worked on horses anywhere and dropped the syringes if the horse turned mean. He’d seen people forget this; they’d be walking and give a sudden, quick hop, clutching at their feet. Usually they just ended up with a needle in the bottom of their foot, but sometimes, the medicine inside would find its way into the blood stream. Sometimes, they’d end up with heavy-duty horse tranquilizer in their system, and spend the rest of the day sleeping comfortably, or worse, they’d yank the needle out of the wrinkled flesh where the big toe meets the rest of the foot and realized that the syringe contained some kind of steroid or stimulant. Some just rode it out until they crumbled after six hours into a fog of tequila, some curled up in the shower, shivering, puking, shit running out in thin streams. A couple of folks simply fell down, their heart clenching itself tight and refusing to let go.

The back door opened into an examining room. As near as Frank could tell, the room was prepped and ready for nearly anything. There was a stainless steel table in the center of the room, a refrigerator, a wide stainless steel sink off to the left next to a cabinet full of medicine, bandages, tools. To the left was the front desk and waiting room. Off to the right, the far end of the room led into another intersection.

Frank took a left at the intersection at the end of the room, and saw small cages, set up for cats at the top, dogs at the bottom. To the right was an operating room, sealed in sterile tile, with more cages, where they isolated puppies with Parvo. Tonight, though, they were filled with stoned monkeys.

Straight ahead was a thick wooden door. They went through, into a long corridor that ran the length of the wing. This middle part was essentially a large cage split into smaller sections. A heavy chain link fence, stretched from floor to ceiling, faced the employee parking lot in the center of the U. A thick canvas curtain could be raised or lowered, depending upon the sun and the weather.

The cats were in the cages that were backed up along the cinderblock wall to the left. There were twelve cages, originally for big dogs. The cats looked sleepy, sprawled out on the bare concrete, eyeballing Frank and Chuck through heavy-lidded eyes.

Two doors waited at the end. On the left, there was a regular wood door. To the right, the door was metal. Chuck turned left and opened the wood door, stepping into a storeroom filled with eighty-pound bags of cheap dog food on five pallets. An army cot, a folding chair, and a stained card table were tucked cozily in the far corner. “It ain’t much, but there’s a shower in the shitter up front…it’s clean at least. And Sturm had us stock the fridge with plenty of beer.” Chuck’s face looked apprehensive, as if his feelings would be hurt if Frank didn’t like the living arrangements.

“This’ll be just fine.”

“It’s okay? Really?”

“Yeah.”

“Sturm did mention there were some city boys who had a problem.” Chuck grabbed a leather gun case from the top of the stack of dog food. Inside was a dull black pump shotgun with a barrel so short and abrupt it looked like an amputated limb. “Winchester. Twelve gauge. You got eight shells in here, double-ought buckshot. Any fuckhead makes you nervous, you just point this in their general direction and squeeze the trigger. Guaranteed results, I’m telling you.”

* * * * *

Frank heard barking dogs, sharp, urgent. “There’s still animals here?”

Chuck said, “Yes and no. Nothing official, no clients. Nobody’s been around to see anybody. So folks just stopped coming. Either took their animal up to Canby or took care of ’em with a .22. You’re hearing the dogs in the pound, animals that got left when folks moved on. Mr. Sturm and the boys probably got ’em all fired up.”

Once through the metal door, the barking got ten times louder, the difference between hearing the fire department siren go off from miles away and being inside the station when it erupted; the sound seemed to have a physical quality that you could reach out and touch, like grabbing a handful of roofing nails and squeezing.

Although the pound was neither as grim or desperate as the zoo, it wasn’t a place that Frank wanted to stay long. Instead of single, individual, cages, the dogs had been thrown together in a single large cage. The shit on the floor was almost a liquid, nearly three inches deep.

Frank counted eighteen dogs, ranging in size from some unidentifiable brown mutt just a hair taller than a tree squirrel damn near drowning in shit to a German Shepard with nails over two inches long, fear and hate bright in his eyes. They were all barking at Sturm, who was crouched down at another back door, fingers splayed against the cage wires. Shit flew. “Look at that sneaky little pissant,” he shouted to Jack and Theo, point to a bristling ball of black and white fur. The dog alternately hid behind the barking Shepard, then would swim its way up through the pack, darting forward to snap at the air in front of Sturm’s fingers, before slipping backwards and hiding again behind the larger dogs.

Sturm stood up, waved at Frank, and readjusted his hat in the direction of the back door. Everyone followed and collected in a ragged circle in the gravel parking lot, everything silver, lit from the big stadium lights that flanked the vet clinic.

“Howdy, Frank,” Sturm said.

“Howdy.”

“How’re the facilities?”