She grinned. “Cool, huh? Now we can buy a car.”
“Do you give some to the poor?”
“You’ll see.”
I thought of the coin I’d found in the kitchen of the long-abandoned restaurant. It was worth forty thousand. Chump change.
She returned the rolls of currency to the bag and closed it. “Carry this for me?”
“You’re leaving the other two?”
“The creeps will return soon. We’re running out of time.”
Alarmed, I said, “Why didn’t you say so?”
“I just did.”
She hurried up the stairs, and I followed close behind, out of the stench that lay like a heavy fog below. When we stepped into the ground-floor hallway, the German shepherd attack dog growled and bared teeth that a vampire would have envied.
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Muscles tensed, tail held low, head raised and thrust forward, ears laid back, eyes flaring yellow in the flashlight beam, the shepherd was not in the same business as Lassie. If Timmy fell down a well, this guy wouldn’t give a damn, and if rescuers showed up to retrieve the boy, they had better be wearing Kevlar butt protectors.
When the shepherd growled louder, Bridget said to him, “Who got up on the wrong side of the dog bed today, hmmm? We don’t have time for your silliness, Mr. Tough Guy.”
She reached out a hand, and the dog snapped at it, its teeth an inch from taking off a few fingertips, but she did not pull back.
“Smell my hand, pooch. Come on. Get over yourself and smell who I am. If I don’t smell friendlier than the idiots who trained you, then you can do your werewolf impression and go for my throat. Come on, smell, smell.”
The dog took two steps backward and cocked its head.
“He doesn’t like it here,” Bridget said.
The shepherd worked the air with the many muscles in his nose. Depending on the breed, a canine’s sense of smell is between ten thousand times and a hundred thousand times greater than ours. A dog receives far more data through its nose than a human being receives through all five senses combined.
“He’s left alone too much,” Bridget said, “and he’s bored, even depressed sometimes.”
At the orphanage, we’d had a golden retriever named Rafael. We used to hide a frankfurter in some remote corner of the second floor of that large building, start Rafael at the ground floor, and say, “Find the weenie.” He would always locate the prize in less than three minutes, with a pack of kids chasing after him. His best time ever was one minute and twelve seconds.
Bridget dropped to one knee and made a come-to-me gesture, which elicited another, even more fierce growl from the dog. “Oh, booga-booga-booga right back at you, such a big scary fella.”
I told myself that when the German shepherd tore her up, I would stand by her through the long hospitalization and numerous surgeries, would always be at her bedside to reassure her that she would be put back together as good as new, and would never once reveal by word or expression how much she resembled the phantom of the opera.
“He never gets any play or cuddles,” she said. “He’s lonely. I’m not sure, but I think they call him Hitler.”
When she spoke the name, the dog’s ears pricked up, and he stopped growling.
“That is so wrong,” she told Hitler. “You shouldn’t have to live with such a horrible name. These are very stupid, mean people.”
“And they’re coming back soon,” I reminded her. “Stupid, mean, and violent.”
“Yes, but we have a job to do here.”
“What job?”
“Rehabilitating Hitler.” She reached out to the dog with both hands, making it easier for him to bite off all her fingers rather than just five of them. “I’m going to call you Winston, after the magnificent Mr. Churchill, quite the opposite of nasty old Adolf.” She repeated the come-to-me gesture with both hands this time. “Do you like your new name, Winston?”
The dog relaxed, lying on the floor, head up, focused on her but with a different attitude. He issued a soft, mewling sound that seemed to signify submission.
She moved closer to him, still offering her hands.
Winston licked her fingers. His tail swished back and forth, dusting the hardwood floor.
Remembering what Sparky had told me, I said, “You’ve had this ability since childhood?”
Scratching under the dog’s chin and then behind his ears, she said, “At first I wasn’t as confident about it as I became, as I am now. Better turn off the basement light and close the door.”