The Black Marble (16 page)

Philo Skinner was beginning to wonder. Would it be worth it all down there in Puerto Vallarta? On white sand, under white sun, in white-on-white linen suits? With brown girls, white in the tooth?

With Philo's brown fingers and blackened lungs. He coughed up a frightening gob of phlegm and spit it in a handkerchief which made Pattie Mae want to vomit. Oh, gross! Mr. Skinner, you make me sick! And you think you can fuck me? I'd rather be gangbanged by a pack of Dobermans! Oh, barf!

Then the female voice over the public address system, a voice which was to become familiar and incessant the entire day: “Janitor, ring four. Janitor, ring six. Janitor …”

Bring your pooper-scoopers, boys. The dogs are covering the red carpet in a sea of shit. “Janitor, ring ten. Janitor …”

Then a crowd of milling bystanders started screaming, and two people were knocked to the floor. A bull mastiff had suddenly gone insane with lust and leaped over his exercise pen, flattening a tiny Norwich terrier bitch. Lunging for all he was worth, the mastiff's huge pink erection overshot the target by a good eight inches. Two groomers were trying to rescue the Norwich, who was doing her damnedest to lift up high enough so the mastiff could get a better angle. If the hot little Norwich could have stood on a box she would have.

“Get that mastiff!” a handler screamed.

“It's not
my
mastiff! It's
your
slutty Norwich!” a groomer cried.

“If that brute hurts my little bitch …!” an exhibitor warned.

A matronly dog owner was strolling through with a white toy poodle, minding her own business, when the lust-crazed bull mastiff reacted after the sexy little Norwich was dragged away. He leaped on the woman and began humping her leg for all he was worth while she screamed and threw the fluffy poodle in the air like a soccer ball.

“Get the mastiff!” voices cried.

“Catch the poodle!” other voices cried.

“Knee him in the chest!” a voice from the grandstand advised.

“It always works on my husband!” another promised.

And now the whole west end of the grandstand was having a great time watching the frenzied mob battling the sex-mad mastiff. The woman was down on her back now amid a crowd of handlers wrestling the slobbering brute.

“Don't knee him with
both
knees now, dearie,” a hot dog salesman giggled. “Or your next baby might look like J. Edgar Hoover.”

The exhausted mastiff finally surrendered to his handler, who carried him out of the arena. This 180-pound champion would live to battle another day, but for now his eyes rolled and tongue lolled and he was carried in the arms of his panting, sweaty handler. The unsheathed pink erection draped futilely over his stomach made Philo Skinner shake his head and sympathize.

“I know how you feel, pal,” Philo clucked.

“Is it always this exciting around here, Mr. Skinner?” Pattie Mae asked, blowing dry the Kerry, while Philo looked at his watch and lit another cigarette with the butt of the last.

“Taper the chest hair like I showed you. Damn it, Pattie Mae! You don't want a skirt on a goddamn Kerry blue!”

“Yes, Mr. Skinner.”

At 10:00 a.m. Philo Skinner realized he would have to have his mind sufficiently under control to show his first dog in just thirty minutes.

At 10:30, Pattie Mae, her eyes bright with excitement said, “Mr. Skinner, you wanna bait the Kerry with a toy or a ball or some liver?”

“Liver,” Philo said, snuffing a cigarette. “This Kerry always works best with liver. Wait a minute, I almost forgot. Check his teeth. That dumbass broad can't resist giving him chocolate cherries everytime she puts one in her own fat mouth.”

“Yes, Mr. Skinner,” Pattie Mae said, getting the tooth scaler, glancing at Philo from time to time, watching him wipe his sweaty hands on a handkerchief. Unbelievable! Like this was his first dog show!

Philo showed the Kerry like a sleepwalker. He'd always said he could do it in his sleep and he proved it.

“I guess you should always fold the excess lead, huh, Mr. Skinner?” Pattie Mae said as he adjusted his necktie, letting the Kerry smell the liver, preparing to queue up for the show ring.

“Huh?” The voices and sounds of the dog show were a roar in the ears of Philo Skinner. He wiped his forehead and hands again.

“I said, you always fold the excess show lead …”

“Yes yes yes. Fold the lead in your left hand, yes.”

“By the way, Mr. Skinner, I was wondering, where did the schnauzer come from? Is it a new one of ours?”

“What?”

“The schnauzer bitch.”

“The schnauzer bitch?”

“
That
one!” the girl said impatiently, pointing to Tutu, lying unhappily in a crate, looking hopefully at the love of her life, Philo Skinner.

“Oh,
that
schnauzer. Yes, I have a new client. Talked me into … into showing the bitch today, but she's not ready, just not ready.”

“She's a gorgeous-looking bitch, Mr. Skinner. One of the best I ever seen. What's wrong? Can't she work properly? Gosh, her coat is perfect and …”

“Not ready, she's just not ready,” Philo blurted. Then he lit his last cigarette before going in the ring. Jesus, this kid! He had to have some kind of plausible story for her. He had overlooked the fact that he'd have someone with him today. It was all so strange, like a dream, this crime business. As though there'd be no one but himself and the schnauzer and the target!

“Pattie Mae,” Philo began thoughtfully, “sometimes you have to show fifteen dogs in a day. Sometimes overlapping occurs and you can't be in two rings at the same time. You could actually have to
miss
showing in one of the rings, and that client, that rich client could be sitting up there in the goddamn seats crying in her hankie and threatening to sue, or something. So today, since this is my last… since this is your
first
dog show I'm not showing many dogs so I brought along that schnauzer bitch as a favor to … it's time to go into the ring!”

“Yes, Mr. Skinner,” the girl said quietly, looking into Philo's dilated eyes. “Is there anything I can do?”

“Always remember, Pattie Mae, you communicate with your fingers through the lead. You've got to have great fingers!” He said it as though he were going away and never coming back. “You've got to have great fingers!”

Philo almost panicked for a moment. He couldn't find the huge yellow sign with the red ring number. It was right in front of his face. He almost tripped over a Kerry blue. There was a long file of Kerry blues, yet for a moment he couldn't find the ring! He had to stop and commit a breach of etiquette. He had to smoke one last cigarette just seconds before going in.

A handler he'd never seen before turned and said loftily: “My bitch sneezes from cigarette smoke. Put it out, if you please!”

Philo Skinner had never had a fistfight in his entire life. Philo Skinner was so racked with asthma and incipient emphysema that even Pattie Mae could have beaten him up. Yet he suddenly shocked himself by stepping nose to nose with the other tall handler and saying, “Listen, buddy, if your bitch doesn't like cigarette smoke, then switch to cigars and divorce the cunt!”

Then Philo bumped past the florid handler and was in the ring. Out of the way, you creep! You fag! The
best
go in the ring first. The greenhorns go in last. Out of the fucking way for Philo Skinner, Terrier King!

Then he just toughed it out on instinct. He could hardly hear the applause of the terrier crowd. He concentrated on the Kerry. He wasn't aggressive enough. Maybe if he would growl a little. Christ, the dog was getting old. He had a good steely blue color, though. Where the fuck was Pattie Mae? Keep your goddamn hands off Tutu, you dumb little fucking hippie. Oh, shit, he wasn't even letting the Kerry set its own pace as they walked counterclockwise around the ring. Oh, shit! He was making the dog move too fast. Another prayer in the dog cathedral. Philo looked up at the steel-beamed ceiling: Let me get through this day and I'll never place another bet! Except maybe on jai alai if they have it in Puerto Vallarta. Do they bet on bullfights?

Pattie Mae meanwhile was fascinated by the miniature schnauzer, and Tutu was dying to get out of the cage and into an exercise pen. She was growling, wagging, hopping around her cage so much she bumped her head.

“Oh, poor thing!” Pattie Mae cried, opening the cage door. “Poor thing. You hurt your little head.” And the girl scooped Tutu up into her arms and cuddled her against her face. “You're the prettiest schnauzer I ever seen!”

Then she put Tutu into an exercise pen and gave her a piece of liver which Tutu gobbled gratefully.

The milling throngs of people on the floor of the Sports Arena began flowing toward the food concessions as the morning wore on toward the lunch hour. Philo Skinner was in the ring doing the individual gaiting, “straight-down-and-back.” He gaited the dog on his right to correct a slight tendency toward sidewinding. Then he gave an almost imperceptible tug on the lead to bring the head in from the outward line of travel. Even in a state of terror and panic, Philo Skinner was still a dog man.

When the judge trooped the line behind the terrier, Philo, never one to overhandle, reached down and ran his hand over the hindquarter subtly, ever subtly, because this Kerry showed very fine from behind. He noticed that the female handler on the left was staring at the judge. Dumb bitch, he thought. Bad form. Never stare at the judge even if you do have tits like searchlights.

Philo baited the dog subtly with the liver and the dog struck a noble pose. Goddamnit, he was going to get hold of himself and go out with a
win.

Yet Philo was hardly aware of the burst of applause when his Kerry was named winner's dog, thereby moving closer to his owner's dream of best of breed, for which Philo was promised a $200 bonus.

Two hundred bucks. Best of breed. Shove it, Philo Skinner won't be needing it.

When he got back to the exercise pens, Pattie Mae was leaping up and down on her clogs.

“Wonderful, Mr. Skinner! You were wonderful!”

“Yeah, sure,” he mumbled, hardly aware of her young tits jumping, of the look on her face which said: You don't even smell so bad no more, you old champion, you!

Then he saw the empty cage: “WHERE THE HELL IS THE SCHNAUZER BITCH?”

Pattie Mae almost fell on her ass as she whirled so fast in the seven-inch clogs.

“There, Mr. Skinner! I just put her in an exercise pen! She was getting squirrelly and I just … There, Mr. Skinner! She's right over there!”

And then Philo Skinner felt all his muscles go limp as he walked over to the wriggling, whining, leaping Tutu. He reached down and scratched her under the chin as the little dog licked and nibbled and whined for the embrace of her Philo.

“Tutu,” Philo sighed. “Tutu, sweetheart!”

Then he turned to Pattie Mae, who was by now totally bewildered. “Pattie Mae, take a paper bag. Go out in the van and bring me that bottle of bourbon that's in the drawer under the hot plate in the back. Right away! Go!”

“Yes, Mr. Skinner,” she said, and was off, in a clunking run across the arena. The man's a spaz! A total spaz!

“Tutu,” Philo whispered. “We'll make it somehow. Somehow!”

Philo Skinner had learned something that all neophyte criminals learn: that it's pretty damn tough to pull your first job (and even your thirty-first) without something to bolster your courage. When Pattie Mae returned, Philo took the paper bag to the men's room, sat on the john and passed another pitiful but painful bubble, polishing off half a pint of bourbon faster than he had ever consumed spirits in his life.

After that, Philo Skinner felt a hell of a lot better about the whole business. The first thing he did was sidle up to Pattie Mae and bite her on the neck from behind.

“Mr. Skinner!”

“Hi, you foxy little kennel groupie, you!”

“Mr. Skinner!”

“Go over on Figueroa and buy me another pint of Jim Beam.”

“I'm not old enough to buy liquor, Mr. Skinner. And you shouldn't be drinking … should you?”

“Not old enough … not old enough,” Philo sighed. “Do you have any idea how long it's been since I wasn't
old
enough for something? I'm not
old
enough for social security, and I'm not
old
enough to get into the racetrack at a senior citizen's price, and I'm not
old
enough to ignore the fact that you are not wearing a bra as usual and no panties I bet, and you and me might just go out to dinner tomorrow night and how would you like to go somewhere where the tab for the evening is a hundred bucks? Huh? A
hundred
bucks?”

“Uh, Mr. Skinner, do you think you'd like some coffee? Lemme go get you some coffee, okay?”

“Too young to buy whiskey! Imagine that!”

“How about some coffee?”

“How about some pot?” He was buoyant. Up, down, up, down. Crime was like an elevator. “All you lint-covered, big-titted, flat-bellied chicks with flowers in your goddamn hair smoke grass. Jesus Christ, Pattie Mae, turn me on a little! Gimme a joint. I'll go smoke it in the crapper.”

“I don't carry it with me, Mr. Skinner. Where would I carry it?” The girl was looking around nervously at the lone cop she'd seen roaming the arena.

“Not in a bra, that's for sure,” Philo leered. “Not in panties either. So go out in your car and bring me back a joint. No, make it
two
joints.”

“I don't know what's got into you, Mr. Skinner, but …”

“Go
do
it, Pattie Mae. Go out to your car, dig up under the dashboard or wherever the hell you little grasshoppers hide your stash and bring me back some pot! Hear me?”

“Okay, Mr. Skinner,” she said. This would be her last show with this grungy old hound dog, that's for sure. Tomorrow she'd start making the rounds of the other kennels. Terrier King, my ass! This old geezer's brain was
thrashed!