Dog Hero

Dog Hero

I threw my greyhound out the window of my Chrysler. Clyde hit the curb, rolled over as if performing in a circus then got up sprinting – my bomb tied around his collar. My rusty-colored dog bolted down the sidewalk packed with shops, his slick muscles expanding and contracting all through his body as his legs stretched and folded, stretched and folded.

Having avoided being seen, I got out of the car. I unbuttoned the top of my red shirt and straightened the collar while watching Clyde scurry mindlessly in little zigzags. No wonder he never won a dog race.

“Hope he knows what he’s doing,” I said.

Then the shrieks came. Always the shrieks.

A crowd of frolicking shoppers searching for dresses and shoes they don’t really need suddenly spotted the bomb around Clyde’s collar and they screamed and squealed and fled in a frenzy like the ‘on sale’ items were only five percent off. A pretty brunet with her hair all done in thick curls dropped her black leather handbag; she looked back at it on the ground with her eyes beading, aching to pick it up.

“Go for it, sweetie,” I said, “grab that bag,” and undone my third button – always time to attract a potential date.

She stood as if in a trance, locked in thought between the bag and being blown to pieces over the shop-front windows. Her lips trembled, vibrating with want. But she couldn’t do it and turned away. I smiled at her but she ignored me and my unbuttoned shirt and kept running with the mad crowd. That girl is nearly as bad as my ex, I thought, judging me no good cause I ain’t ever made a dime. Well, her loss, losing a soon to be rich man if this all works out – but if it goes south, well, I could be a soon to be dead man.

Bodies barged into me as they ran past in a mad gallop, bumping my shoulders, left, right, left, my hip, my leg. I had to stand sideways to minimalize the damage. Forget the bomb on the dog; the human stampede presented the real danger.

Then Clyde ran into the old pillar-fronted bank.

Better get ready for people to come scrambling outta –

Yep, out they came, hurtling down the steps of the bank, knocking each other flying. One balding man in a brown cardigan tumbled down the steps like a schoolgirl doing cartwheels. He didn’t land gracefully, though, he landed with a splat. I heard his head crack on the final step.

“He ain’t getting up from that,” I said, then braced myself, knowing my challenge: Go help my dog before he messes this operation and blows himself through the roof.

I stepped past the man who lied dead on the steps with a pool of blood fanning around his head. I quivered over the ghastly sight, then stepped to the door and pushed it open. The bank was empty. The hardwood polished timber floor ran straight between the white walls, the sunlight streaming through the high windows revealing scuffmarks of many shoes. Floor needs a good mopping, really.

Then the smell of Clyde drifted through the room, the scent of his fur. Genuine dog hair in need of a bath. His fault, I tried to wash him but he ran from the hose.

But although his smell couldn’t be missed, he was nowhere to be seen around the bank. He wasn’t at a teller’s office requesting a withdrawal – why would he? No one here – nor was he behind the little booth biting at the till trying to get out a few hundred dollar bills, but I didn’t want him doing that anyway – he was supposed to be right at the back behind the big black bars, standing with the bomb beside the big black safe.

He’s lost, I thought. He doesn’t know what he’s doing.

“Here, boy,” I called, and then whistled a crisp note that echoed through the grand old bank.

Still no sign of Clyde, so I crept into the room. Careful now as perhaps a security guard could have gotten frightened from my greyhound with the bomb and not fled with the rest, but hid under a desk, a 9mm shaking nervously in his hands that he could pull the trigger on the first man he sees. Not to mention the bomb attached to my dog’s collar had a timer – maybe three minutes remained.

My hard-souled shoes clacked over the floorboards sounding like a warden traipsing the lonely aisle of a prison – a sound that’d become painfully familiar if I got caught for this. I moved into the middle of the bank, out in the open.

Whimpering drifted from the back of the bank, the dog whimpering.

“You hurt, boy,” I said.

He is hurt, hurt and stupid. Should have left him at the races.

But even if he wasn’t hurt, he would be soon when the bomb blew. And me with him.

“Come on, Clyde,” I said, anxiety evident in my voice. Perhaps he wanted to play, always whimpered at the door when he wanted me to run around in the garden or throw sticks – those big droopy eyes mostly get there way, too. But not this time, not today. “We have little time, boy. Not throwing your ball.”

He didn’t come running all obedient like, though, only the whimpering increased, whimpering and then strange scratching, like claws striking iron. The screeches travelled through the hollows of the bank.

He really has messed this!

I walked on, searching, listening to the snivels of my dog. I left the open floor behind and all its grandeur of the light streaming in and crept up behind the left rear pillar. I placed my hand to it and it wasn’t warm like the light, but cold. My thoughts turned cold with it: Perhaps a guard has Clyde and will send a bullet or two into me as soon as I edge around the corner.

Should have worn a damned bulletproof vest. But noooo, you had to dress in your favorite red shirt, top three buttons undone so any ladies could glace at your few manly chest hairs.

I shook my head at my own vanity, and my own desperation for a date, then snuck my big wave of hair around the corner, hopefully not to be messed up by a bullet or a baton. But there was no guard, just my dog with his head caught between the bars that barricade the safe. He stood almost completely still, just the occasional shuffle that made his skinny butt wiggle.

I shook my head. No idea, he’s got no idea. Should have trained a chimpanzee for this exercise, like Clint Eastwood in Every Which Way But Loose. Clint Eastwood, now he’s a man who can get a date.

“How could you be stuck,” I said to Clyde, my voice squeezed like my dog. “Your skinny ass should fit through these bars.”

“Eeermm,” he whimpered back.

“Grrm,” I groaned.

I went to him and immediately the problem blasted me in the face. Clyde’s head had fit through the bars, no worries, greyhounds are perfect for that, but he had the bomb on his collar caught between the bars, clicking it every time he shuffled, along with his claws scraping the bars.

I gripped the bomb, stroked his back. “No sudden leaps,” I told him. “Break this bomb and the two minutes we have could end in a millisecond.”

With maneuvering and tinkering of the bomb, I managed to slip the deadly device between the bars and my dog slid his way on through. He went to sniffing just like I trained him to, following the scent of the cinnamon I placed on the keys yesterday. “Follow the cinnamon, boy,” I said in my heartiest tone.

After a few nose-to-the-floor crisscrosses along the little strip he snorted and sniffed his way to the black drawer. He snapped his white teeth onto the handle, his teeth clinking on the chrome. Then he got to dragging the shelf out, Eeeeerrrrkkk it squeaked sounding in need of oil.

Clyde then dug his nose into the shelf like he was burying a bone, but instead of dropping something off, he retrieved – he plucked out the keys.

I glanced at the timer – one minute.

“Hurry, boy,” I said and reached through the bars for him.

He scooted to the bars and dropped the keys into my hands with a little added dog slobber. I jammed the keys in the lock and swung open the gate.

The safe stood before me in a Clint Eastwood western-like standoff. It was dull black and foreboding, but not impenetrable . . . well maybe it was but the crack in the wall beside it wasn’t. Better not be anyway, I thought, not after all this. I whipped the seal off the side of the bomb to reveal the sticky tape and stuck the shaft right between the safe and wall, and then grabbed Clyde by the collar. “We gotta hide.”

There was not time to scramble out the gate, so I dragged him furthest to the side we could go, crouching behind another big pillar. He stuck his head on my lap and looked up to me with big droopy eyes as if he knew the bomb was gonna rock this place.

“Block your ears, boy,” I told him, and he shoved his head into his paws the best he could – pretty clever for a dog.

Just as I planted the flat of my hands to my ears a building-rattling boom! exploded through the bank. A waft of debris and dust blew from the safe like a giant monster truck releasing the biggest ever exhaust backfire. It smelt like it to as fumes of debris and rubble and dust drifted around me in a thick haze, blanketing the scene. The explosion blew so hard it made a weird sound of a clank. What the hell was that? I thought. Does it matter? Not really. Get on with getting rich, the cops could hear that explosion.

I stood with Clyde and scuffed along through the layers of dust until we stood at the safe. My plan had worked.

The safe was fine, as I reckoned it would be, but the cracks beside it in the wall crumbled, and a hole as wide as a man sat blown apart from the side of the safe, just a little step over the bricks into the vault. I looked through the opening, black leather carry bags sat stacked in the far right corner and wads of paper stacked the shelves wrapped in bill straps. And not ordinary paper – the paper was green.

“That’s the most cash I’ve ever seen, boy,” I told Clyde, patting his head. “Gonna buy you a juicy steak for this.”

Clyde whimpered again. What now? I glanced down and he was looking behind. I turned and saw what his droopy eyes were staring at. The mysterious clank that sounded during the blast now clearly evident. The explosion had blown the gate shut, slammed it so hard that the keys had popped out and would now lie about twenty feet away on the floor buried in a small mountain of debris and dust.

Could Clyde smell through crumbled brick? “Hope that snout of yours distinguishes dust from cinnamon, Clyde.” I pointed forward. “Go sniff out the keys.”

But ol’ Clyde gazed up at me with defeated eyes and shook his head; he could never do that. Didn’t know what he was doing at the best of times.

So close to the money. In fact, I could stroll in and grab as much as those leather bags could carry, but there was no way back through the gate.

I laddered against the wall right beside the hole. I let my legs stop holding me and crumpled down in a heap beside my dog.

My one loyal friend. Never left me like my ex.

I rubbed his head. “We’re screwed.”

He looked up at me with his big, sad eyes, understanding my pain, empathetic to my misery. Then he drifted forward like he was creeping to an apple pie he shouldn’t touch. He crept away from my hand and then gathered pace. It was obvious what he was gonna do. But he can’t, I thought, he can’t abandon me.

I dived after him but he was too fast and his skinny muscular body that could never catch a metal rabbit around a track stretched and folded stretched and folded. I reached for his tail, but he scooted through the bars to freedom and I clunked my head into the iron barricade.

When I sat upright there was no time to rub the aching lump on my forehead because outside the sirens were wailing eeee ooorr eeee ooorr eeee ooorr like a donkey on a megaphone.

Damn cops.

Heavy-souled work boots clattered up the steps, and a shadow of what appeared like a hundred men and women appeared at the door. Then the blue uniforms burst into the room like eager shopper on a sale day. There wasn’t a hundred officers, but there must have been eight or nine, and that was enough to lock anyone away.

They trooped into the center of the bank in a triangular roman phalanx, protecting all sides. But instead of holding spears they held hands to their mouths, coughing, spluttering from the dust that had drifted into the middle of the room, swirling in the light that drifted from the windows. But despite needing a hand to cleanse their air, they all held a gun. An attractive blonde lady a standard 9mm, others more lethal. A greying officer with eyes as hard as the black safe behind me had a taut grip on a shotgun, ready to sock the butt of it to his shoulder and blaze away.

Prison life is gonna be swell.

After realizing the area was secure, every officer in the room turned their heads from searching the nooks and crannies to gazing straight at me. Despite the drift of dust floating around it was easy to make out the dumbstruck looks in their eyes, faces blank as unprinted bills.

Clyde, abandoning me more by the passing seconds, crept toward them, trying to save his own skin . . . fur. Smelly fur, at that! First he approached the good-looking blonde third from the front. He stooped before her with those big, sad eyes, and from all the way back here, and despite my ears humming a distant ring from the bomb, I could hear him whimpering.

Big traitor.

He licked her hand.

It would have felt welt and rough to the woman’s skin, but felt like a dagger to my heart. Oh, this is too much; I’m not watching this.

Then, one by one, every officer in the building turned their gaze from me, and their heads tilted toward the floor like bowling pins slowly wobbling to a fall, until they all stared at Clyde.

The woman officer’s face that was a stern as the pillars adorning the façade of the bank, slowly formed a smile. Then the hard-eyed officer with the shotgun grew a grin nearly bigger than the barrel of his gun. He shifted his gaze to me and opened his mouth wide revealing his own set of white teeth, pointed at me, and shouted, “That man saved the dog!” His voice was rough and loud, a little like the explosion. All the officers burst into applause, the claps and cheers filling the room more than the dust ever could. The good-lookin’ woman then threw a smile at me – even browsed at a few of my chest hairs, then shouted, “He’s a hero!”

Maybe the money is history, but that date might be on, after all.

Clyde, standing by her side, glanced back at me with the slyest grin.

He knew what he was doing.