No Man's Dog by Jon A. Jackson Read Free Book Online Page A

Caspar said, fervently. “I can’t get used to all this open space. You’ve got a fabulous house, Joe, and your wife is gorgeous. You got it made, man.”
    Joe accepted these praises without a remark, merely smiling. He understood that it was heartfelt, and that the enthusiasm was due in part to the man’s long incarceration. But it was beautiful. Very quiet. Deer were visible picking their way along the banks of the stream, among some aspen. A hawk was circling in the sky. The mountains seemed to guard their privacy.
    They talked a bit about the expanse, the relative privacy—the only neighbors being the Oberaviches. It was a paradise, clearly, the ideal hole-in-the-wall.
    Joe asked how Caspar had found him. It was fairly simple. Caspar had continued to ask around, after being rebuffed by Smokey. “I could tell he knew you,” Caspar said, “he just wasn’t saying. Which is all right.” He shrugged, to indicate he understood the circumstance. “But I kept looking, and finally I found this real estate babe, Carmen or something. She gave me a lead. So I came out here.”
    Joe could see it. It made him a little anxious to realize that he was so locatable. He didn’t much like that. But he let it pass.
    â€œSo what brings you out this way?” he asked, finally.
    â€œI finished up my time at Deer Lodge,” Caspar said. “They transferred me, sixteen months ago. I had a little difficulty in Illinoise. I had to testify against some guys. The deal was, I got a few months knocked off and they moved me.” He shrugged. It wasn’t an issue for discussion, obviously.
    â€œAnyways,” he went on, “I always knew you was out this way. I’d heard from some guys who knew you. But when I went to the place they said, it was burned down, no one around.”
    That was another story, Joe’s story, also not worth discussing. Joe didn’t offer any explanation, except, “I moved up here about a year ago.”
    â€œI just wanted to come by and tell you thanks, for Charles,” Caspar said.
    â€œAh, yes. Charles.” That was Caspar’s kid brother, dead in a shoot-out with cops, in Detroit. Joe had been very close to Charles, more than with Caspar. They had both gone to work for the mob, back in Philadelphia, and before that had been pals on the street. Joe had claimed Charles’s body and sent it home. This was Caspar’s big deal: making a trek to thank Joe.
    â€œI know Ma really appreciated what you done,” Caspar said. “And paying for the funeral, too. I wanted to repay you for that. But I’m not exactly flush, you understand.”
    â€œOh, jeez, Caz, don’t even think about it. You would have done it, but you weren’t there.” Caspar had been in prison, of course. “Anyone would have done it,” Joe said.
    â€œSure,” Caspar said, “but it wasn’t . . . there wasn’t anyone there to do it, but you. They’d a buried him in the potter’s field. We’d a never known what happened.”
    â€œI just happened to be there, in Detroit, at the time,” Joe said. “I mean, I wasn’t into anything with Charles, you know. I wouldn’t have known about it, but I happened to be in town and I realized who the papers were talking about. That’s all. I can’t tell you much about what happened to him. It didn’t have anything to do with me, see?”
    â€œOh, I know that, I know that,” Caspar reassured him. “I didn’t mean anything. I guess he just . . . well, I guess he was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
    â€œSomething like that,” Joe said. “I don’t even remember what the situation was, you know? I just read about it, heard about it from some other guys. So I thought, well, this is an old pal, I thought I could take the time to see that he got home. How is your Ma?”
    â€œOh, she’s fine,