Until the Last Dog Dies

By John Laurence Robinson

Joe Box, a Southern-bred, rough-hewn Cincinnati private investigator, is in for some big changes. Joe's just become a Christian, and not a moment too soon, as he finds himself facing the challenge of a lifetime. Joe's trying to track down and catch a seemingly inhuman killer, and this time it's personal——the shooter's after guys he served with in Vietnam.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cameron Bane
• Release date: Oct 8, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386434764

Book preview

"A question settled by force and violence remains forever

unsettled and will rise again."

-Jefferson Davis

––––––––

"When the truth is shown to be lies, and all the joy within you dies,

don't you want somebody to love?"

Jefferson Airplane



Chapter 1

Write this down: any phone call taken after ten p.m. will be bad. I've never seen this rule fail in more than fifty-eight years, and it was proving itself again now. I'm not sure how long the ringing had been going on, but the insistent, intrusive clamor was dragging me inch by stubborn inch back from the sleep I’d so much needed. I’d only crawled into bed a scant hour before, having pulled a thirty-six-hour nonstop marathon working a child custody case, and I was wiped.

Still in a mental fog, I fumbled the receiver from its cradle. I rubbed a rough hand over gritty eyes as I mumbled my greeting. This had better be either a beautiful woman or someone who owes me money.

The voice was high. Tinny and nervous. Joe Box?

I slapped my jaws shut. It couldn't be. I sat up with a frown. Little Bit? Is that—?

Joe! The relief in the man's voice was pitiful. I wasn't sure if I had the right guy or not, no.

"This is Little Bit, right? From Louisiana?"

Saint Charles parish. Yeah, it's me, Joe. We gotta talk.

Perfect. This guy, of all people. I hadn't seen or heard from Leo-Bob Little Bit Frontenau since the Vietnam War. Which I suppose was for the best; the memories from that time weren't good. Little Bit had been a lousy soldier, certainly the worst I'd ever served with. The man was lazy, incompetent, complaining, scheming, woman-crazy... and with all that probably the closest thing I'd had to a friend there. What could he be wanting now?

I rotated my neck, listening to my vertebrae snap. Getting older stinks. But it beats the alternative. Do you know what time it is? What in the world do you want?

I'm in trouble, Joe. I heard him swallow. So are you.

I shook my head. Bad time for jokes, Lit—

It's not a joke! he broke in.

Whatever it is, it can wait. I'm in bed. Call me tomorrow.

It's only seven here in L.A., he said. I heard the clink of a bottleneck against a glass. There's nothing else in the world that makes that noise. I should know. It was a sound I’d been intimately familiar with, until three months ago.

Well, this isn't L.A., I shot back. It's Cincinnati, it's ten o'clock and I'm beat. Like I said, call me back in the morning. At my office. We'll talk then. And Little Bit? Sober up before you do. I went to set the phone down, but as I pulled it away from my ear I heard his voice again, sounding even more frantic.

Don't! Don't hang up! I ignored him, my hand still moving the thing back to the nightstand when he shouted, He's out, Joe.

Those words jerked me fully awake. I slowly pulled the receiver to my ear. Say that again.

You heard me right, he breathed. God help us, it's true. I don't know when, no, and I don't know how, but he's out.

I scowled. That's impossible.

Says you! He called me! The man was almost sobbing with fear. Just now! Not ten minutes ago! I heard him swallow.  And he sound' bad, Joe. Real bad.

Little Bit. My words were slow and deliberate. Listen to me. It's not him. It can't be. He was put in a prison for the criminally insane more than three decades ago. Remember? They practically welded the door shut on him. He's been in there ever since, cozy as mice. You should know that as well as anyone.

But—

He's there to be studied, I went on. Probed. Guys like him they don't let out. Ever. I began rubbing the bridge of my nose. Somebody's pulling your chain, partner.

Oh yeah? he snapped. Then listen to this. Here's the worst part. His voice dropped. He knows about the cards, Joe. And what we did wit’ them. His laugh was bitter. Now who's chain gettin' pulled, huh?

That stopped me. Are you sure?

Yeah, he groaned. Oh yeah. And nobody else knew about them, no. The Loot had told us we was the only unit using cards beside the berets.

I remembered. Our platoon had taken to using a variation of an old psychological warfare trick the Special Forces had started. But instead of placing an ace of spades on a dead Cong's face, like they did, the lieutenant had decided to use a Tarot card. Specifically, Death—old skinny bones himself. He wanted to strike some terror into the Cong, secure a little payback.

The brass frowned on such practices, but we did it anyway. Lieutenant Calhoun figured, correctly in my thinking, those constipated monkey-runners could afford such niceties; they were in the rear with the gear. We were the ones humping it through the bush.

Little Bit rushed nervously on. "We always put a death card on the face of a Cong we killed. And he knows about that, man."

Yeah, yeah, again assuming it's him. My voice was gruff. Get to it already.

He sent me one, Joe! A death card! He swallowed again, a huge sound over the phone. I got in from work late and there it was, stuck in my door. When I saw it I almost croaked right on my gallery. For some reason Cajuns like Little Bit call the porches on their houses galleries. I guess even in L.A. some things don't change.

He was shouting now. "I pulled the card off and stumbled inside, starin' at it, and not ten seconds after I did, he called me! It's the voodoo, Joe, the gris-gris! He's watchin' my house! He knows where I live! He—"

I broke in on his ravings. Calm down. Take a breath. Do you know how crazy you sound?

But it was like he hadn't heard. "He told me his dead Cong brothers have voices, and he said they're callin' to him from the earth. I'm tellin' you it's the gris-gris, man! They said it was time for him to pay the debt and he told me I was marked! I was goin' to be next!"

Next? Next for what?

I ain't sure, no, he moaned, but it can't be good.

I really wasn't in the mood for this tonight. Was not. I lay back on the bed, phone still against my ear. You know what, Little Bit? I'll tell you who's doing this. Ed Ralston. You remember him. You remember what a sick, twisted dude he was. And he was with the platoon quite a while, so he'd know all about those cards. This is just the kind of stunt Ralston'd pull, especially on you. He knew how superstitious you were. And still are, I guess. I yawned. See? Isn't that simple? Mystery solved.

Little Bit's voice went flat as he said the next. That'd solve it, except for one t'ing. Ralston's dead.

I narrowed my eyes. When?

A week ago. His speech was shaky. It was in the papers. Ran a bug up my back, that's for true. See, old Ralston only lived a couple of miles from me, and we got together a few times to have some drinks, but not much. I didn't like that man. He had mean eyes. But it don't matter, 'cause last Monday afternoon he croaked. His car went off the PCH, the Pacific Coast Highway. Right over a cliff, man. It blew up when it hit the beach. Almost took out a bum lookin' for cans.

Cars crash all the time, I said.

But the timin'—

Doesn't matter, I broke in. Ralston always was a jerk. You know he was. Especially when he'd had a few. I'd bet if you check with the cops they'd tell you he had a gutful of liquor in him when he went over.

Maybe. Little Bit didn't sound convinced. But—

You know, I'd love to keep talking to you, I said. But I'm not going to. I've given this about all the attention I feel like giving it tonight. Call me back in the morning. Or not. Your choice. Hang tight, soldier. I hung up the phone.

But sleep was a long time coming.

Again, the phone was ringing. Again, it was pulling me back from my rest like a crocodile dragging its prey into the swamp. I opened my bleary, sleep-encrusted eyes, glancing out my bedroom window at the slate-gray dawn, and then I rolled over towards my clock. Five-thirty in the God-blessed a.m. I was going to kill Little Bit.

I snatched the phone up. What now?

Is this Joe Box? The voice was a woman's. She was crying.

Yes, I said, squinting and calming my tone. Who's this?

M-Melanie Frontenau. The woman's voice caught on the last syllable. I don't know if you remember— Her voice snagged again. It's Little Bit, Mr. Box. He's dead.



Chapter 2

I hate going to the police station, any police station. Which makes it doubly bad for me, seeing as how I used to be a cop. But Jack Mulrooney—check that, make it Detective Jack Mulrooney, head man of the CPD vice-squad—had insisted I come down in person to ask him for the favor I needed. I suppose so he could look me in the eye when he said no.

I sighed in disgust as I headed down I-75. I also don't like going into town. With Cincinnati's riverfront revitalization in full cry, the city's pace had picked up, the April riots which had put our town front and center on the world stage for a while just a fading, and rotten, memory. So combine the usual big-city busy bustle with the pre-Thanksgiving, Christmas buying rush, and downtown Cincy was a place I tended to avoid like the plague. The only good thing about the trip was that I knew I’d get free parking at the underground garage beneath the Whittaker Building.

I get that benefit there for life, thanks to John Tower. His company, Tower Industries, takes up the entire thirtieth floor of the Whittaker, and I’d done a good turn for one of John's directors back this past summer. The gratis parking was a perk in return. Not to mention John’s been dogging me to take a position as his firm's corporate investigator. I'm still thinking it over.

I also thought about last night's phone call from Little Bit as I drove. And then the call this morning from his wife, Melanie. Was he really dead? If the grief I’d heard in her voice was real, he surely was.

I’d only met Melanie the one time, the day I got back to the World after my tour was done, but I remembered her well. Little Bit and I had been discharged the same day, in fact we were supposed to be on the same 727 bringing us back to LAX, but the army being the army, I was put on one plane and Little Bit on the flight nine hours behind mine. At Phil Dhoc airbase, the first leg of our trip home, the land lines were once again out, and the smirking sergeant in the commo hut had refused to let Little Bit use the radio to put through a call. Melanie now had no way of knowing that her husband was going to be late. He desperately turned to me, eyes huge, and asked me to help. I said sure.

Now my plane had landed and I’d disembarked straight into a mess. Somehow I was supposed to find Little Bit's wife in the airport snarl of garbled loudspeaker messages, blaring radios and TV's, anxious soldiers leaving, relieved soldiers arriving, tearful families for both, skycaps, ticket agents, cops, vendors, religious nuts, and utterly confused hippies staring around at it all.

I finally spotted Melanie in the mob, looking past me for a husband who wasn't there. Little Bit had given me her picture, but even if he hadn't she wouldn't have been hard to miss; he’d described her to us all enough times. And had I seen them together, they would have made, as they say, a cute couple.

Little Bit was what was known in Louisiana as a redbone, an uncertain mix of black and Native American, with some white thrown in. The result, at least in his case, was a smallish, copper-colored wiry man with red-tinted hair and turquoise eyes.

His wife Melanie, on the other hand, was an octaroon, a person only one-eighth black. Spying her, I saw she was nearly as small as he. And at first glance, Melanie for some reason struck me as a sad type, not so much one of life's victims as one of life's ignored ones. Her hair was thin and black, and hung straight down on either side of her olive-hued, flat-planed face, the part in that hair going down the center of her skull in a line so even it could have been cut in with a band saw. Her eyebrows were heavy but not unattractive, the eyes themselves liquid and dark brown and melancholy.

When she saw me waving at her across the way frowned and looked away. But then something must have clicked and she looked at me in the puzzled way you do when you see a face that should be familiar. At least I hoped that was true; Little Bit had told me that he had described me to Melanie in his letters.

He must have, because she smiled uncertainly at me and headed over at a trot, pushing her way through the press of bodies. That small smile did wonders for her.

Melanie? I asked her as she reached me.

Yeah. She cocked her head. Don't I know you or sumpin'?

I smiled. Maybe you do from Little Bit's letters. I'm Joe Box. I held my hand out, and she gripped it.

The woman’s palm was rough and I noticed the backs of both her hands were crisscrossed with small, white scars. I remembered now that Little Bit told me he’d met his wife at an oyster bar in the Quarter in New Orleans, where she shucked the shellfish with a knife at ten cents a throw. Tough work even for a man; the bill-like edges on those shells are as sharp as razors.

Woo, you a big one, Joe! Melanie's smile up at me was better now as we released hands. Little Bit said you was. Said you a tough fighter, and that's a fac'. She rose up on her toes, peering past me. So where is that man a' mine? Still on the plane with them flygirls? He surely like the wimmins, for true. She was cranking her head around when I told her.

We got separated, Melanie. He'll be on the next plane, but it won't get here for another nine hours.

"Nine hours?" She looked back at me, shaking her head, the sadness seeming to settle back in. Well, that's just fine. What'm I sp'osed to do for nine hours? We'll miss the Greyhound bus to Destrehan.

I smiled at her again. We'll wait together. I'm sure they'll be another bus tomorrow.

She sighed. I s'pose. I guess I ain't got a choice, then she cut her eyes my way. Donchew be tryin' nothin' while we're waitin'. Little Bit might like lookin' at the wimmins, but I'm his woman an' he knows it. He'd fight you for me, Joe. He would.

I wasn't about to tell her of her husband's visits to the Saigon cathouses, so I just said, I'm your big brother, Melanie. For nine hours anyway. Okay?

Okay, she nodded, and then said, But what about your bus? Ainchew gonna miss it?

Yeah, I said. It's no big deal. I've ridden the dog all over, and one thing I know: there's always a bus to Toad Lick.

Her eyes widened. "To where?"

I grinned. "The mighty village of Toad Lick, Kentucky. As they say in The Music Man, that's the town that knew me when."

Toad Lick! Melanie shouted. And I thought Loo'zeana had some funny towns! The idiot name of my birthplace must have finally broken through Melanie's funk. She threw back her head and laughed.

She had a point. So did I.



Chapter 3

But all that was over forty years gone. Now here I was facing another task of duty. Before I’d been sent to 'Nam I'd heard that combat bound others to you in a way nothing else could, that you’d find yourself doing hard things for men, men that in peacetime wouldn't even have appeared on the radar screen of your life. I found that to be true. Which by logical inference would have to include doing hard things for those men's widows.

Melanie had told me what had happened to Little Bit, how he’d been found. And in between her body-racking sobs she’d begged me, begged me, to find out who’d done this to him. But the entreaty wasn't needed. Little Bit and I, regardless of our differences, had fought a common enemy together. In my heritage, that counted as strong as blood. Duty and honor are inextricably bound to Dixie's sons.

And in spite of my all faults, I'm still a Southern man.

I’d parked my 1968 June bug-green street-legal Cougar, which I affectionately called the Goddess, in the slot with my name stenciled on it in the Whittaker Building’s underground garage. Now I was walking five blocks north, on Ezzard Charles Drive, toward District One headquarters. If the street sounds familiar, it's because it's named after one of Cincinnati's native sons from several decades past, a black man and a remarkably fierce fighter for his day.

I puffed slightly as I walked. I suppose I could have parked closer, but police station or not, I didn't put the Goddess in harm's way if I could help it. Sticky fingers and all that. Besides, at my age, the walk couldn't do me anything but good.

The day had grown as cold and overcast and gray as it had promised this morning. The winds were blustery here a week before Thanksgiving, making me wonder if we were going to have a white Christmas in another month. That would suit me fine, something I couldn't have imagined not long ago.

I’d lost Linda, my wife of just a year, on a Christmas Eve over thirty years past. With her death, my own will to live had nearly vanished. But things are improving, little by little. Angela Swain, a kind and sweet woman I met through my new church just a few months back, is helping me get things back on track.

Almost.

Finally I was there. Blowing out one last steamy breath, I walked inside the station lobby, where I knew the maintenance guys would have the furnace cranked to one tick under a killing heat. They did.

I shook my head as I emptied my pockets, giving the contents to the bored, fat old sergeant manning the security gate. The man was as much a fixture here as the grimy bricks out front. When I was a young cop back in the early seventies I’d worked out of District Three over in Price Hill on Warsaw Avenue, but the few times I’d been sent here to District One for one thing or another I’d found the lobby's temperature always the same eighty degrees, July or December, it didn't matter, and sitting behind the desk that same sergeant. I doubted he remembered me; I'd only been a cop for a year, and had quit the force two days after my wife's funeral.

I went through the gate and the tired old man gave my stuff back to me with a visitor’s pass and a noncommittal grunt, whether thanks, or move along, I couldn't tell. He never even looked at my face.

After taking the creaky elevator to the third floor, I got out and turned right, finally pausing at a well-used frosted glass door that read, simply, Vice Squad, Detective Jack Mulrooney, OIC. Officer in Charge to you. I knocked once and entered without being told.

Here we go.   

When I was a young Academy graduate, as fortune would have it I was put under the mentoring of a remarkable partner by the name of Sergeant Tim Mulrooney. To me, Sarge was the quintessential cop. He was of Irish descent, in his late forties at the time, still ramrod straight and blessed with ice-blue eyes that could twinkle with humor or grow flat in an instant with a seen-it-all world-weariness. Sarge told me he’d grown up fast as a young Marine Corps rifleman in the frozen hell of the Chosin Reservoir in Korea, but that was also where, facing the sixth Chinese assault in as many hours, he’d made a foxhole conversion to Jesus Christ. Usually those things don't hold; I had seen enough of that from my own time in combat. But in Sarge's case, the conversion had stuck.

He and his wife Helen practically adopted me, and then did the same with Linda, showing us both the unconditional love that so marked their lives. Now Sarge and Helen were long since retired, enjoying the good life at a small beachfront condo in Florida. The man I was here to see at the cop house was Sarge's son, and you couldn't have come up with a more different man than Sarge if you’d paid cash money.

Here's just one example of why I say that: this past summer, after the conclusion of the case that had so dramatically changed my life, Sarge and Helen had flown up for a visit. One evening while they were here, he suggested going out to dinner, the six of us, Sarge and Helen, Angela Swain and me, and the Mulrooneys’ son Jack and his wife Sharon, so I could finally meet them. It sounded good; after the awe I held regarding my old mentor, I was curious to see if his boy was cut out of the same cloth. Turned out the answer was, nope.

The dinner started innocently enough. Sarge had left the restaurant location up to me, and since I knew he and Helen were now certified sunbirds, I’d picked a small, modestly-priced seafood place over in Norwood. The Mulrooneys rode over with Angela and me in the Goddess, and as we pulled into the lot Sarge pointed out his son's car. I parked next to it and we all got out.

Jack's handshake was cool as he gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head at what I was wearing. Big deal. I also noticed him giving the Goddess the fish-eye. That also really didn't bother me; classic muscle cars aren't everybody's cup of tea. But it was only after I saw him spit a loogie that nearly hit the old girl's left rear tire that I finally got it. You need to understand that not everyone in Cincinnati likes transplanted Kentucky folks. Shocking, I know, but true. So there was no easy way to put it: Sarge's son was a bigot. I smiled at Jack without humor. Skin color aside, I bet old Ezzard Charles and I could have found some common ground in Jack Mulrooney.

The evening ran downhill after that. Jack didn't like the restaurant's looks; he didn't care for canned music; his salad was limp; his fish was undercooked; the lights were too bright; his dessert tasted old; etc., etc., etc. But that wasn't the worst. Mixed in with Jack's incessant carping was his bragging: I did this sting, I collared that guy, my crew was in the paper three times this month, the Chief thinks I hung the moon. Jack's poor longsuffering wife Sharon got in maybe three words the whole night, which I ended up cutting mercifully short, pleading an early start to the next day. And stupid me, I insisted on paying the tab for everyone. Take that, Jack Mulrooney, and the horse you rode in on. As I said, congenitally dumb.

It was while I was in the washroom after paying up that Sarge cornered me. The look in his eyes was the same as Sharon's.

Sorry about tonight, Joe, he muttered as he dried his hands. I just looked at him. I've known the man for many years. I've seen him happy, sad, introspective, worried, and red-dog mad with anger. But I’d never seen him embarrassed. Until now.

I cleared my throat as I checked my tie. It's all right.

No it isn't. Sarge pitched the paper towel into the bin and turned to face me. Jack has his problems. I know that. Not the least of which is his refusal to get right with the Lord.

Yeah. Plus Jack's a jerk. I gave my tie a final tug. I'm not so sure that him getting saved would fix that.

No, maybe not, Sarge allowed. It sure couldn't hurt, though. Thing is, I'd hoped he would be better tonight. I told him all about that last case, how proud I was of you, and how it had changed your life when you accepted the Lord for your own self. He