Magnus couldn’t believe his luck. What a fluke! He loved the dogs. He already knew them individually from sleeping in the barn, and as Gunderson got sicker and sicker, Magnus became the pack leader. He started calling himself Skip Hanson and changed the name of the kennel to Blue Hill Pit Bulls. He built new kennels and enlarged the exercise yard. He took the dogs hunting in the desert and swimming in Silver Lake. Obedience and attack training every day. The cattle prod for slackers. A little fear went a long way.
Magnus couldn’t describe how he felt when he watched the dogs in the yard, jawing and chasing each other, their coats gleaming in the desert sun. Or when he opened the gate and they surrounded him, jumping and barking, wanting his attention and no one else’s. Or when he went hunting with them in the desert, his army of pit bulls scouring the brush, Skip the squad leader barking out orders. Or when they were in the house floor-surfing and scarfing up Pop-Tart crusts and lying around on the cool pavers and sleeping with their noses under the bed and putting their paws on the windowsills and barking at the wind. The dogs didn’t fight. Skip wouldn’t allow it. Goliath stayed close to him, at his feet or next to him on the couch while he watched TV. None of the other dogs came near.
With Blue Hill up and running, Skip went back to San Bernardino and dug up the stash of Uncle Hugo’s guns he’d hidden in the desert. He did some target shooting to sharpen up. There was unfinished business to take care of.
Jimmy Bonifant, Skip’s former cellmate at Solano, was doing a booming business selling heroin and cocaine to Hollywood’s elite. He had a house in the Hills, drove a Maserati Quattroporte, and his girlfriend was second-runner-up Miss San Diego. Jimmy hadn’t given a thought to Skip until he saw a story on the news about Hugo Vestergard of Guns America and his bookkeeper, Debbie Bellweather, getting shot at close range with a handgun that shot unusual 10mm FBI rounds. On the same day, Jerry Studdard, the guard at Solano, was shot and killed as he was coming out of Bar None, a hangout for prison personnel. Police said the shooter was nearly a mile away and probably ex-military. Jimmy, who paid a Jamaican psychic two dollars a minute to tell him he wouldn’t be killed or busted in the foreseeable future, believed seeing those stories was no accident. The universe was sending him a message, and not coincidentally, one of Jimmy’s sales associates had made off with five hundred thousand dollars’ worth of black tar heroin and a longtime business rival was threatening Jimmy’s life. And Skip was right. [email protected] was easy to remember.
Over the next few years, Skip did jobs for Bonifant and his circle of criminal associates, making a decent but unspectacular living. Skip was almost happy but even with taking care of the dogs, he still had a lot of hours to kill. Out of curiosity, he went to a dog show and couldn’t believe how stupid it was. A judge, who looked like Skip’s parole officer, molested everybody’s dog, made them trot around in a circle and then picked a winner. How was a fucking mystery. Every dog there, including Skip’s, looked exactly the same, and if you won you got a ribbon that didn’t even have your name on it. Skip wanted to blow people’s minds, freak them out, get that oh shit reaction, only this time he wanted to do it with the dogs. Skip got the idea for a big dog watching the new Godzilla movie. The humongous lizard was stomping around, crushing buildings, collapsing bridges, and causing tidal waves, the people scurrying around like ants; screaming, hiding, praying, crying, and calling out for their loved ones.
One of Gunderson’s dogs was a seventy-five-pound female named Zelda. Gunderson kept it as a pet but to Skip, Zelda was his ticket-to-ride dog, his breakout dog, his dead-guy-that-looks-like-Gilligan dog. It took a lot of phone calls and emails but Skip found a match. An eighty-two-pound two-year-old stud at All American Pit Bulls in Flagstaff, Arizona. Skip bought the dog, mated it with Zelda, and a pup from that litter grew up to be bigger than either of its parents. He kept repeating the process, adding in new bloodlines and the Presa Canario, the dogs getting bigger and fiercer until Skip got his masterpiece, Goliath. One hundred and thirty-two pounds of muscle and bloodlust. Goliath killed the goats. He killed a wild donkey. He attacked a mail truck and chased it all the way to the landfill. He killed the Presa Canario in a minute and a half.
Skip entered Goliath in a show and caused an uproar, the other owners calling Goliath a freak of nature and Skip Dr. Frankenstein. Skip laughed in their faces and imagined turning Goliath loose and watching the people scurry around like ants; screaming, hiding, praying, crying, and calling out for their loved ones.
Skip kept shooting until all the targets were obliterated. His gun hand ached and his ears had shut down. He went into the barn to rest and be with the dogs. He called Kurt.
“What?” Kurt said. That was how he answered the phone.
“Q Fuck was here,” Skip said.
“Who?”
“IQ, the black guy.”
“Shit.”
“Basically, he needs to go, the smart-ass prick.”
“I’ll call you back.”
An hour later Kurt called back. “Do what you want about IQ but get the rapper. That’s what we paid you for.”
“Basically, the rapper’s still in his house,” Skip said.
“Basically, figure it out.”