The Black Marble (19 page)

The little schnauzer measured
inches at the withers and was disqualified. The handler's groom at the next station vowed to cut the anesthesiologist's heart out with a stripping knife. And without any anesthetic, the cocksucker.

Then Philo Skinner, with an odd stare that frightened Pattie Mae, turned to her, and said: “Do you know how far people will go to win a show? In Madison Square Garden they cut the eyebrows and whiskers off a Scottie.”

“They did! Oh, that's gross!” Pattie Mae grimaced.

“And they poisoned a collie. Poisoned him.”

“Oh, my God!” Pattie Mae cried. She couldn't even bear to hear about people who didn't
brush
their animals. She sat for hours with her own Manchester terrier searching for fleas and ticks like a mother chimpanzee.

“I'd never hurt a dog,” Philo Skinner announced. “Not for anything. Not ever. I'd rather kill a man than hurt a dog. Can you understand that?”

He was sweating again and starting to smell. The girl just looked at the staring, droopy, beagle eyes of her boss, and said, “Yes, Mr. Skinner.”

The time was drawing close. Madeline Whitfield's bitch was certain to take a terrier group first. But she'd never get a chance to win best in show because Philo Skinner had other plans.

Madeline Whitfield was ecstatic when Vickie won winners bitch. She was jumping around on the grandstand seats, banging friends and strangers on the arms and shoulders. Being congratulated, shaking hands, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Get the photographer!” Madeline cried. “Somebody get the photographer!”

Madeline Dills Whitfield was absolutely positive that this was her day. Victoria Regina of Pasadena was now a champion. She wasn't going to stop here, she was going to win best in show. Let them read
that
in the
Los Angeles Times
tomorrow with their all-bran cereal. Let them see who won Best in Winter Show, 1977! Madeline Whitfield couldn't quell the tears of joy. The more she was congratulated the more they flowed. Okay, Beverly Hills Kennel Club, are you ready to increase your membership to twenty-four? Not yet? Well, wait a few weeks. Wait until Victoria Regina of Pasadena wins Westminster! Wait until Madison Square Garden! Screw you, Junior League! She was never so happy in her entire life. All forty-three years had led her to this: her destiny. The pain, the sacrifice, had all been worth it. She was nearly a celebrity!

In thirty minutes she would be one of the most miserable, terrified women in Los Angeles. She would be infinitely more miserable than Fran Tarkenton, who was, at this very moment, caught by the television cameras, sitting on his helmet on the sidelines, wondering what the hell went wrong.

An exhibitor walked by the grooming station of Philo Skinner and said to a companion: “Our bitch is in season. She's not showing well.”

Philo Skinner, who had never seen the woman in his life, said, “Yeah, you look a little nervous yourself. Checked
your
drawers lately?”

He was like that. Scared. Bold. Wild. Up again. Is this the way criminals were supposed to feel? It was as though all the conventions, all the regulations of the American Kennel Club had lost their meaning. These were the rules he lived by and they didn't mean a thing. He felt like taking off his Brooks Brothers coat and paisley necktie and yelling, “Janitor! Janitor! Come to Philo Skinner!” He wanted to throw it all into the steaming vats of dog shit. This is what it must be like to blow a safe, to steal a diamond, to rob a stagecoach! He didn't know it, but he was being propelled by the same megalomaniacal force as an eleven-year-old bike bandit named Earl Scheib Lopez. He was a goddamn swashbuckler!

He went to the exercise pens and picked up Tutu, who licked his hands and face as he carried her to her crate. He put her inside and for the first time in his life he did something which would cause great discomfort to an animal. An animal he loved. An animal which was going to let him live the rest of his days like the gentleman he always aspired to be.

“Pattie Mae, go over to the concession stand and get me some coffee. Black.”

“Yes, Mr. Skinner,” she said, and was off.

He took the syringe from the inside of the herringbone jacket. To be extra safe he removed it from the leather case and squeezed out a few drops.

Philo was still feeling some effects of the bourbon and marijuana. He hugged the little schnauzer to his face and kissed her whiskers. Tutu was delirious with joy because Philo was letting her lick his face. She growled, and licked and nibbled and told Philo how much she loved him.

“I wish I could take you with me, honey,” Philo whispered.

Philo Skinner looked around. Most of the crowd was hovering around the ring. A few groomers were stationed at the grooming tables to watch over the animals not in the exercise pens. Nobody was paying the slightest attention to Philo Skinner.

“You and me, we could run on the beach in Mexico,” Philo whispered. “If there was
any
way, you know I'd take you. I know you don't like that fat old bitch you live with, but she'll treat you okay. Oh, Christ, I'm sorry, Tutu …”

And he jammed the needle into her shoulder.

Tutu yelped and looked at Philo in disbelief. The tranquilizer worked at once, just as they said in the dog books. The dog's eyes filled with pain, then bewilderment. She looked at Philo Skinner like a stranger. She actually growled in confusion at the man she adored. Then she began panting and her eyes drooped and looked glazed over.

“You'll be okay, sweetheart,” Philo whispered as he moved across the arena floor, bumping his way through the crowd, “You'll be okay in a little while, sweetheart. Philo's sorry.” He forced himself to walk.
Walk
toward the grooming station of dog handler, Chester Biggs.

Philo Skinner had his hand under the chin of the little schnauzer, holding her head upright. Stroking the semiconscious animal under the chin, keeping his eyes riveted on his objective, hoping that he had assessed correctly, and that Chester Biggs, who often discussed sports with Philo Skinner would be …

And he was! Chester Biggs was fifty feet away from his exercise pens, watching the degradation of the Minnesota Vikings. Gloating over the humiliation of the Minnesota team by the California team. But there was a dog groomer sitting by the exercise pens, reading a girlie magazine, watching over the eleven animals Chester Biggs was showing that day.

Chester, you should be getting your head together. Your schnauzer bitch could win best in show. If she was my bitch I wouldn't go to the crapper without her. You're a dumb fucking pile of dogmeat, Chester Biggs! You deserve to get ripped off, you dumb fucking pile of dog-meat! Dogs have been stolen before. Dogs were stolen at Madison Square Garden. But you aren't ever going to know about this one, Chester. Never!

The kennel boy, a sixteen-year-old, pimply strawberry blond with half an erection, was looking with disbelief at the enormous fluff of pubic hair on the girl in the skin magazine. He had never seen a real one. Are they
all
that hairy?

He never saw the sweaty, staring, gangling man with a listless schnauzer under his arm, skulking around the exercise pens and cages of Chester Biggs. He certainly never saw the man walk to the crate of Victoria Regina of Pasadena, and stand with his back to the kennel boy for no more than fifteen seconds. And he certainly never saw that Mr. Biggs' champion schnauzer now lay in her cage, eyes half closed and glazed, tongue lolling, panting heavily. The kennel boy couldn't take his eyes off the mound of fluff, tinted and back-combed like the topknot of a Bedlington terrier.

Philo Skinner, felon. From this moment on it was Puerto Vallarta or the slammer. He felt like he was on roller skates. He couldn't stop slipping and sliding and bumping into people as he made his way through the multitudes, toward his grooming station. He was trying to walk with grace and control, perhaps even stealth. Weren't crooks stealthy? Instead his always long, bent-kneed gait became a slinking lope. Philo Skinner was loping through the crowd, all elbows and knees. The schnauzer bitch in his arms was getting very upset and nervous.

“It's okay, baby, it's okay,” Philo whispered, stroking Vickie under the throat.

Then he thudded into a handler going the other way with a toy poodle on a lead.

“Watch it, for chrissake!” the perspiring handler said.

Philo thought his goose was cooked. The poodle handler knows the schnauzer! The fag handler letting go with a falsetto shriek! Throw the little bitch in the sissy's face and run for it! Get across the Tijuana border with the three hundred bucks in your checking account before the nigger and Jew with the grooming shears arrive for the circumcision! Jesus!

But the poodle handler didn't even recognize Philo, let alone the bitch. How could he? The goddamn schnauzers were nearly identical. Get hold of yourself. For chrissake, you're Philo Skinner, Terrier King!

Thud! He crashed into a handler named Rosie Lutz, who, luckily for Philo, wore her hair like a Sealyham terrier and couldn't see Philo let alone Vickie. But Philo Skinner panicked. He was skidding and sliding on the slippery floor. He couldn't get traction. Jesus Christ, he couldn't get moving! It was like a bad dream! Does anybody have a skate key? Then he realized he was slipping and sliding in an enormous pile of nerve-runny dog crap, and the offender, a 200-pound St. Bernard, was being chastised by a woman who said: “Bad bad, Cyril! You embarrass mummy.”

When he regained his footing, Philo Skinner threw caution to the winds. He stopped trying to be stealthy and just bolted through the crowd while Vickie growled fiercely. By the time he arrived at his grooming area, the little bitch had chewed a half-inch wound in the web of Philo Skinner's left hand without his even noticing it.

“Mr. Skinner, what's wrong!” Pattie Mae said, looking at Philo's white clammy face. “My gosh, the schnauzer's biting your hand!”

Philo looked down and saw Vickie, all spunk and grit, shaking Philo's bony hand around like her ancestors shook dead rats in the mountains of Bavaria. This might be a dog show, and maybe she was trained to let all sorts of strangers pinch and probe, knead and thump her withers and flanks and vagina and anus, and even go into her mouth, but she was an exceedingly intelligent and brave little dog, and sensed that this stranger was up to no good, smelling the fear on him. She wasn't about to let herself be mistreated by someone who smelled like this.

For the first time, Philo noticed her chesty growls. Then he saw the blood running down his wrist. Then and only then was Philo Skinner brought back to shattering reality.
Pain.

Philo screamed, throwing Vickie four feet in the air, up and down into the arms of Pattie Mae, who caught her like a Kenny Stabler pitchout.

Vickie was howling for all she was worth now, and Philo was sliding around on his still greasy soles, holding his wounded hand by the wrist and making a hell of a commotion which attracted the attention of no more than fifty or sixty people.

“That man got bitten!” a bystander hollered.

“Help that man, he's hurt!” a groomer shouted.

“Is there a doctor in the house?” someone cried.

“Where's the injured animal?” A smallish man in a seersucker suit elbowed through the curious crowd.

“Right here, Doctor!” someone said.

“Oh. That's a man. I'm a veterinarian.”

“Yow,” Philo Skinner said, wiping his filthy handkerchief around the wound while the veterinarian retreated.

He was hoping the cops would be kind enough to handcuff him in front like they used to do in all the old movies and not in the back like he'd seen real-life cops do on the streets of Hollywood. He was already preparing his defense: I don't know what got into me, Officer. I'd like to plead guilty and go to jail for oh, a year or so, because I owe fifteen thousand, and there's this heartless kike and a nigger with a knife.

He looked around. There were no cops. In fact, there weren't too many people at all. Most had gotten tired of it. It wasn't much of a dogbite after all. Just some skinny guy making a big deal out of a little blood on his hand. What a bore. People went back to watching the various rings where the action was. Or to catch the locker room interviews of the victorious Raiders from Oakland.

“You okay, Philo?” the handler asked.

“Yeah.”

“Better get a tetanus shot just to be sure.”

“Yeah, thanks,” said Philo skinner as the handler went back to business.

Pattie Mae's nose was wrinkling. She kept backing up and finally bumped into the metal grooming table.

Then Philo smelled it. His shoes were a mess.

Vickie was trembling and whimpering in Pattie Mae's arms. The girl was stroking her, saying, “It's all right, sweetheart. It's all right.”

Philo Skinner, criminal, suddenly wished he were a little dog and that a flower child would pick him up and cuddle him to her braless bosom telling him that everything would be all right. He figured Chester Biggs by now was leading a lynch mob across the arena floor. Philo was drenched in perspiration and stained by blood and dog shit His hand was throbbing like his head. The whiskey he'd guzzled was rising up in his throat, causing his huge adam's apple to jerk around as he swallowed it back. The little schnauzer was staring at him with fear and fury in her eyes. There was only one thing Philo Skinner could do: He lit the seventy-second cigarette of the day. He stood and smoked. No blindfold, please. Bury me deep where the dogs can't dig. I'm Philo Skinner, Terrier King.