of candles lies a sooty spoon. Next to the spoon is a plastic packet from which spills a white powder. In his lap lies a hypodermic syringe emptied of its contents.
The right sleeve of his checkered shirt is rolled up past the crook of his elbow, where blood earlier trickled from a puncture. Evidently he had some difficulty finding the vein.
Crispin is not afraid in the presence of a dead man. He has recently witnessed much worse than this.
With a keen intention more human than canine, the dog goes to a backpack lying beyond the candles, takes one of its straps between his teeth, and drags it away from the corpse.
The boy supposes that the bag must contain dog treats. On his knees, searching the various compartments, however, he finds no evidence that the dead man ever provided for the animal.
A quick scan of the dust-covered floor and the few paw prints suggests that the dog has never been here before, that he was led here by scent, not by experience. Yet …
Among the greasy, mostly worthless possessions of the deceased, Crispin discovers two stuffsacks full of currency rolled into tight bundles and held together by rubber bands. There are wads of five-, ten-, and twenty-dollar bills.
The money is most likely stolen or otherwise dirty. But no one, not even the police, will be likely to discover from whom the dead man has swiped this fortune or by what illegal activity he might have earned it.
Taking money from the body of a homeless loner surely can’t be theft. The man has no need of it anymore.
Nevertheless, the boy hesitates.
After a while, he feels that he is being watched. He looks up, half expecting that the corpse’s gaze has shifted toward him.
Eyes bright with candlelight, the dog studies him, panting softly as if in expectation.
Crispin has nowhere to go. And if he thinks of somewhere to go, he currently has only four dollars to get there.
The dog seems not to have belonged to the dead man. Whatever his provenance, however, Crispin will need to feed him.
He returns the wads of cash to the stuffsacks and pulls tight the drawstring tops. The backpack is too big for him. He will take only the money.
At the threshold, Crispin glances back. Candlelight creates an illusion of life in dead eyes. With reflections of flame throbbing across the slack face, the drug addict seems to be a man of glass, a lamp aglow from within.
As they retrace their steps through the enormous warehouse, the dog halts to sniff one of the moldy playing cards lying on the floor. It is the six of diamonds.
When Crispin passed this way earlier, four sixes had lain at this spot, one in every suit.
He surveys the immense dark room, probing this way and that with the flashlight. No one appears. No voice threatens. He and the dog seem to be alone.
The LED beam, arcing across the littered floor, cannot locate the missing sixes.
Outside, in the alleyway, the western sky is crimson, but the twilight is overall purple. The very air seems violet.
In a pet shop on Monroe Avenue, he buys a collar and leash. From now on, the dog will wear the collar at all times, so that he will not appear to be a stray. Crispin will use the leash only on public streets, where there is a risk of attracting the attention of an animal-control officer.
He also buys a bag of carob biscuits, a metal-toothed grooming comb, and a collapsible water dish.
At a sporting-goods store, he ties the dog to a lamppost and leaves him long enough to go inside and buy a backpack of the size that kids need to carry books to and from school. He puts the stuffsacks of money and his pet-store purchases in the pack.
Their dinner is hot dogs from a street vendor. Coke for the boy, bottled water for the dog.
At a novelty store specializing in magic tricks and games of all kinds, Crispin window-shops for a minute or two. He decides to buy a deck of cards, though he’s not sure why.
As Crispin is tying the dog to a rack designed for securing bicycles against theft, the owner of the novelty store opens the door, causing a silvery ringing from an annunciating bell. He says, “Come, lad. Dogs are welcome here.”
The owner is elderly, with white hair and bushy white eyebrows. His eyes are green, and they sparkle like sequins. He wears six emerald rings on various fingers, all as green—but none as sparkly—as his eyes.
“What is your pooch’s name?” the old man asks.
“He doesn’t have one yet.”
“Never leave an animal unnamed for long,” the old man declares. “If it doesn’t have a name, it’s not protected.”
“Protected from what?”
“From any dark spirit that might decide to take up residence in it,” the old man replies. He smiles and winks, but something in his merry eyes suggests that he is not kidding. “We’re closing in fifteen minutes,” he adds. “Can I help you find something?”
A few minutes later, as Crispin pays for the deck of cards, a white-haired woman ascends from the basement and comes through an open door with a large but apparently not heavy box of merchandise. She has a smile as warm as that of the man, who is perhaps her husband.
When she sees the dog, she halts, cocks her head, and says, “Young fella, your furry friend here has an aura that a pious archbishop couldn’t match.”
Crispin has no idea what that means. But he thanks her shyly.
As the woman busies herself restocking a case of magic tricks, and as the many-ringed old man explains a three-dimensional puzzle to another customer, Crispin takes bold action that surprises him. With the dog, he goes to the open door and down the stairs to the basement, unnoticed by the proprietors of the shop.
Below lies a storeroom with rows of freestanding metal shelves crammed with merchandise. There is also a small lavatory with sink and toilet.
Boy and dog take shelter behind the last row of shelves. Here, they can’t be seen from the stairs.
Crispin doesn’t worry that the dog might bark and reveal their presence. He already knows that, in some mysterious way, he and this animal are in synch. He unclips the leash from the collar, coils it, and puts it aside.
After a while, the lights are switched off from the top of the stairs. The door closes up there. For a few minutes, footsteps echo overhead, but soon all is silent.
They wait in the dark until they can be certain the store is closed for the night. Eventually, they make their way back through the stockroom, along the metal shelves, to the foot of the stairs.
Crispin is blind, but perhaps the dog is not. The boy fumbles for the light switch at the bottom of the steps. The dog, standing on its hind feet, finds it first, and the overhead fixtures brighten.
On one shelf, Crispin discovers a stack of quilted blue moving blankets. With them, he makes a bed in a corner, on the floor.
While Crispin strips the
