Metzger's Dog (24 page)

37
                  
It was four o’clock in the morning when Chinese Gordon climbed out of bed in the bungalow in the garden of the Biltmore Hotel. Margaret stirred in her sleep and then tugged the extra covers up over her bare shoulder. Chinese Gordon studied her as he pulled on his pants. The sight of her made his breath catch in his throat. She seemed so tiny and vulnerable, and yet there was something about the way her lips turned up slightly at the corners in a serene smile that made him want to touch her.

He had to go out now, though, before the hotel gardeners arrived, or it would be too late. He tiptoed to the door and pulled the key quietly from the lock. He opened the door and held it until the dog passed out into the garden.

Chinese Gordon and the huge black dog walked across the wet grass in the darkness, then down the stone steps to the cool, damp sand. Every few seconds there was a crash of surf and then a hissing as the wave subsided, boiling and bubbling, back into the ocean. Then there was a long lull, and he could hear the loud, excited panting of the great black dog beside him as they walked down the beach.

Chinese Gordon said, “You can run now, boy.”

The dog stood still, and he could feel its eyes looking up at him in the moonlight.

Chinese Gordon knelt on the sand beside the looming shape of the dog. “You’re not locked in a hotel anymore, you big vicious bastard. Enjoy yourself.” Chinese Gordon patted the dog’s back and stood up. He began to trot, and the dog trotted with him. They loped down onto the smooth, hard sand at the edge of the surf. Sometimes the water would wash up to Chinese Gordon’s ankles, and he would splash through it. It seemed to excite the dog, and he would run out into the surf and run back, circling Chinese Gordon easily. When they passed the first jutting point they were out of sight of the hotel. Before them a mile of empty beach stretched into the darkness. Chinese Gordon’s heart was pounding in his chest. He shouted to the dog, “Now run. Go get ’em.”

The great black dog galloped ahead of him down the beach, his long legs taking leaping strides, his paws kicking up little sprays of sand behind him. Chinese Gordon sat down and watched. In the moonlight he could see the dog diminish in the distance, a small black shape on the white sand streaking off in a meandering pattern as though he were trying to cover the whole beach, step on every spot.

Chinese Gordon lay on his back and looked up at the stars, letting his wind come back to him. In another hour the sun would come up. He rested, feeling his breathing deepen and the pulse in his temples slow. At last, above the sound of the ocean, he heard the thumping of the dog’s paws and the huffing of his breath as he approached.

Chinese Gordon sat up and looked into the dog’s broad face. “I guess it’s time we started back.” He raised himself to his feet and began to jog back up the beach. The dog seemed to hesitate until he called, “Come on, boy. Come on, Porterfield,” and then he heard the sound of the big animal’s heavy paws as it moved up beside him in the darkness.

THE EDGAR AWARD-WINNING FIRST NOVEL FROM THOMAS PERRY

“Thomas Perry makes a stunning
debut with
The Butcher’s Boy
,
a brilliantly plotted thriller.”

–
The Washington Post

Available now from
Random House
Trade Paperbacks

RANDOM HOUSE         
         TRADE PAPERBACKS

T
HOMAS
P
ERRY
graduated from Cornell University with honors in English in 1969 and received a Ph.D. in English from the University of Rochester in 1974. He has been a university administrator and teacher, a writer-producer of prime-time network television series, and a writer of fiction. He is the author of fourteen critically acclaimed novels, including the Edgar Award winner
The Butcher’s Boy
and its sequel,
Sleeping Dogs
, the five-volume Jane Whitefield series, the national bestsellers
Death Benefits
and
Pursuit
, and the
New York Times
bestseller
Nightlife
.

ALSO BY THOMAS PERRY

The Butcher’s Boy

Big Fish

Island

Sleeping Dogs

Vanishing Act

Dance for the Dead

Shadow Woman

The Face-Changers

Blood Money

Death Benefits

Pursuit

Dead Aim

Nightlife

Praise for
Metzger’s Dog

“Total pleasure and satisfaction.”

—The New Yorker

“Perry has tucked imagination and ingenuity sufficient for ten books into
Metzger’s Dog
.”

—The Washington Post Book World

“[A] loop on the roller coaster of contemporary thrillers…[Perry] once again pulls it off…. We come away from
Metzger’s Dog
having had a thoroughly enjoyable time.”

—The New York Times

“Perry treats his complex plot the way a clever juggler does his oranges: Everything seems to float effortlessly.”

—People

“Madly inventive.”

—Chicago Sun-Times

“A romp of a thriller.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

“A fine example of an offshoot of the hard-boiled novel that has more to do with style and cynical humor than it does with solving a particular crime…It is Perry’s talent to be able to bring his elegant, multitextured thriller to a close with a confrontation between [his two] foes that is as bloodless as it is satisfying.”

—Los Angeles

“Perry has a master’s touch in knowing how to combine breathtaking suspense and the most intricate plotting and counterplotting.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Brilliantly plotted…should please fans of Graham Greene, fans of Cheech and Chong, and most anyone in between!”

—Newsday

“In addition to his award-winning ability to write suspenseful fiction, Thomas Perry has a wonderful sense of humor, and you may walk away with a completely different view of the CIA…not to mention your pet cat.”

—K
EN
G
ODDARD
, author of
Prey
and
The Alchemist

2003 Random House Trade Paperback Edition

Copyright © 1983 by Thomas Perry
Introduction copyright © 2003 by Carl Hiaasen

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Random House Trade Paperbacks, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.

R
ANDOM
H
OUSE
T
RADE
P
APERBACKS
and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

This work was originally published in hardcover and in slightly different form by Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1983.
This edition is published by arrangement with the author.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Perry, Thomas.
Metzger’s dog: a novel / Thomas Perry.
p.                                    cm.
1. Soldiers of fortune—Fiction. 2. Los Angeles (Calif.)—Fiction. 3. Terrorism—Prevention—Fiction. 4. Government investigators—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3566.E718M4 2003
813’.54—dc21                                                                        2003046508

Random House website address:
www.atrandom.com

eISBN: 978-1-58836-295-7

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