Dog breeders of any particular breed are like a club. They share the same love for the Dalmatian, the malamute, or the pit bull, or whatever their chosen breed. They compete against each other at dog shows. They socialize, sell dogs back and forth, and read about each other in the blogs and trade magazines. There are rivalries, jealousies, controversies, and more gossip than you’d see on the E! channel. Ask any breeder about another breeder’s dogs and you’ll get a long list of conformation faults, health problems, and poor bloodlines. Everybody knows everybody else’s business.
Harry called his pit bull breeder friends and every one of them said he must be talking about a bully pit or some other kind of dog because there’s no such thing as a hundred-and-thirty-pound pit bull. Harry asked about big dogs. George Aguilar at American Pride Pit Bulls in Denver had an eighty-five-pound female but he gave it to his niece who rode it in the Cinco de Mayo parade like a horse. George said Derek Austin at All American Pit Bulls in Flagstaff had an oversize dog. Derek said yes, he used to have an eighty-two-pound stud he never bred because the judges didn’t like them that big but a guy drove all the way from California to buy the dog. The guy didn’t haggle and paid cash. When Derek asked him why he wanted a pit that wouldn’t show he grinned and said he liked big dogs. No, Derek didn’t remember the guy’s name. It was a cash deal and he didn’t record it. Why pay the tax man any more than you had to?
Mary Settler, a professional handler, said she arrived at a show in Redlands and people told her some crazy guy had entered a giant pit bull that was so aggressive it was disqualified before it got in the ring. Nobody knew the guy’s name. Bob Walters at Champion Pit Bulls in Victorville said he ran into a guy at the vet that had a new litter. Good-looking pups. The dam was a WindFlyer dog, the sire was from Minnesota. Dauntless something. One of the pups was huge. The guy said it was eight weeks old but it looked twice that. Said his name was Skip something.
Harry called John Cisco, president of the USA Presa Canario Club. John sent out a group email asking if any of the members had sold a dog to somebody named Skip. Ben Mason of Invincible Presa Canario in Temecula said a guy named Skip bought a one-hundred-and-twenty-eight-pound stud named War Monger. It was a beautiful dog but Ben said he was going to put it down because it went after anything that moved. Ben said he warned Skip about the dog but Skip said he trained dogs for the military and it wouldn’t be a problem. Skip’s last name was Hanson. He was from Blue Hill Pit Bulls in Fergus, a desert truck stop on Highway 58 between Barstow and Boron.
“Fergus is a block long and that’s one too many,” Ben said. “No reason to stop there unless you like shitty coffee.”
A dirt road began behind the Drop In Diner where a sign said MUNICIPAL WASTE MANAGEMENT LANDFILL 6 MILES. Blue Hill Pit Bulls was somewhere along the way. The road was bumpy, nothing but bleak scrubby desert in every direction. The Audi was already covered with dust, gravel clattering against the catalytic converter.
“Looking for a dog,” Dodson said, disgusted. “What if you find the dog? Then what? Call the police and say, see that dog in the video? It’s the same one we saw at Blue Hill. What’s that, Officer? How do we know? Well, they both big and black. That’s how y’all identify niggas, ain’t it? I don’t think my phone works out here.”
“What’s wrong with you?” Isaiah said. “Are you really that afraid of dogs?”
“I ever tell you about this? I was seven, eight years old, had a Kool-Aid stand in front of my Auntie May’s house. A nickel a glass and I tripled my money even after I paid for the sugar.”
“Yeah, okay—”
“So there I am selling my Kool-Aid and minding my business and I see Javier’s dog, Biscuit, one of the raggedy junkyard pits. You know, white with red around the mouth like he ate a cat for breakfast and that muthafucka’s coming right at me. Shit. I dropped the pitcher, ran into my auntie’s yard trying to get to the porch, but that muthafuckin’ dog had me ’fore I got to the steps. Bit the shit out of me too. Would have killed my ass if my uncle hadn’t come out and shot it with his deer rifle. Dog fucked me up. Lost so much blood I had to get a transfusion. Took a couple of hundred stitches to sew my ass up.” Isaiah remembered Dodson in the old apartment, at the stove cooking gumbo. All those scars on his arm and back. “I couldn’t stand to look at a goddamn dog for five or six years,” Dodson said, “not even a puppy. You see why I don’t want to be out here?”
The odometer read two miles when they got to a plywood sign nailed to a eucalyptus tree that said BLUE HILL PIT BULLS in dripping white letters.
“What blue hill?” Dodson said.
The one-story Spanish looked strange all by itself in the vast empty desert, like the owner thought other houses would be built around it. The screen door was missing, shriveled bushes under the windows. A shovel and a ceiling fan with wires coming out of it were lying on the dirt lawn. A bright blue F-150 sat under the carport.
Isaiah and Dodson got out of the car. “I don’t hear no dogs,” Dodson said, relieved. “Shit it’s hot.”
A young guy came out of the house talking on his cell. “Don’t worry, Bonnie, I got this. Sooner than you think.” The guy ended the call and smiled like he knew something. “What can I do for you?”