Chapter 4 - The Brother from the South
Victor Cruz smelled like expensive tobacco, citrus aftershave, and something sour that belonged to late nights in air-conditioned hotel rooms.
He was thinner than Damian, sharper at the edges, with teeth that were too white and hair that had been slicked back with sweet-smelling oil that hung in the hallway long after he passed. He wore a camel-hair coat that he didn't take off, even inside the heated house, and his gloves were pale kidskin, soft as butter.
He came through the back kitchen at eleven o'clock, followed by two men who looked like they had been assembled from the same parts as the cars they drove: heavy shoulders, gray skin, ears thickened from scar tissue.
One of them—the one with the black ash cane—stopped in the doorway of the pantry.
Bruno was already on his feet.
There was no preliminary growl this time. The dog’s lips didn't curl. His head simply dropped four inches below his shoulders, his ribcage expanded, and the hair along his spine stood up until he looked like a hyena carved from wet coal.
"Still got the mutt, I see," Victor said.
He didn't look at Bruno. He looked at Damian, who was leaning against the center island with an espresso cup in his hand.
"He's still alive," Damian said.
"Surprises me. After what happened with the boy in Kenosha." Victor’s eyes flicked sideways. He saw me standing by the secondary sink, the damp tea towel twisted between my fingers. Then his gaze dropped to the corner of the nook, where Sophia was sitting on the floor behind the laminate table, her knees pulled to her chest.
"Who's the stray?" Victor asked.
"The help," Damian said.
"The help has a mouth," Victor said, taking two steps toward the table. "And ears. We’re talking about the south dock shipments, Damian. We don't do that in front of people who live in five-hundred-dollar flats."
"She stays," Damian said.
Victor laughed. It was a high, thin sound that had no meat in it. He took another step forward, his pale gloves swinging at his sides.
*Click.*
The dog’s left front paw moved six inches. The claws caught the linoleum with the sound of small knives.
The man with the cane—Garrity—shifted his weight instantly. His right hand disappeared under his coat.
"I wouldn't," Damian said.
He hadn't set his espresso cup down. His voice hadn't risen a single tone. But there was something in the air of the kitchen that had shifted, like the sudden drop in pressure before an August hail storm on the prairie.
"The dog's a liability, Damian," Victor said, his smile vanishing. "He’s an animal. He doesn't know the difference between an auditor and a federal marshal. You keep him around because of the old man. Because the old man had him when the car went into the river."
"I keep him because he doesn't lie," Damian said.
"He's going to get put down by the county. One of these days he’ll take a bite out of somebody who knows how to file an injunction, and then some twenty-two-year-old deputy with a shotgun is going to leave him in the ditch behind the stables."
Victor turned his eyes toward Sophia.
"And you," he said.
Sophia didn't blink. She had the stubborn, flat Mexican stare that her grandmother had carried across three borders—the look that said *I see you, but you are not large enough to matter.*
"You're in my way, little girl," Victor said.
He took half a step toward her. Not to touch her—just to see if she would flinch. To see if he could make the maid’s child scramble into the pantry like a rat.
Bruno didn't bark.
He launched.
It was not a warning snap. One hundred and thirty pounds of bone and muscle left the floor with a sound like a wet carpet being beaten against a fence. The dog didn't go for Victor’s throat—he went for the space between Victor’s knees and the child’s face, landing with all four paws skidding on the linoleum, his chest hitting Victor’s thighs with enough force to knock the younger Cruz brother backward into the island.
Victor’s heel caught the trim. He stumbled, his camel-hair coat flapping wide.
"Bruno," Damian said.
The dog froze.
He was six inches from Victor’s throat now. Victor had ended up on his backside against the drawers, his mouth open, his white teeth suddenly looking small and wet. Bruno’s nose was level with his collar. The dog’s breath was shaking the silk of Victor’s tie.
Garrity had his gun half-clear of the leather.
"Garrity," Damian said, his voice dropping into that low, terrible register that made the hair on the back of my neck rise. "If that piece clears your coat, you won't leave the township. You know that. I know that."
Garrity looked at Damian.
Then he looked at Bruno.
The gun slid back into the holster with a faint, oily *click*.
Sophia poked her head out from behind the dog’s flank.
"He doesn't like your shoes," she told Victor.
May you like
Victor Cruz sat on the kitchen floor for three full seconds, his face the color of skim milk. His expensive aftershave couldn't cover the smell that came off him then—the raw, sour tang of a man who had realized, with total and humiliating clarity, that sixty thousand dollars in tailored wool didn't make his bones any harder than the ones Bruno had buried in the north paddock.
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