The Dogs of Mexico Read Online Free PDF Page A

Jekyll’s private stock. Duane Fowler, the overnight metamorphic. Duane Fowler, the tenacious obsessive. Duane Fowler, ever more competitive and considerably less respectful. At one point Robert entertained the possibility that Fowler may have been the subject of some clandestine Company experiment. In any case, he was effective. The word lose wasn’t in his vocabulary. The first one you chose for your winning team.  
    “I know what you came for,” Robert said.
    Fowler looked at him in surprise.  
    “You may as well know right up front. I’m not going.”
    “No?”  
    “Interesting they sent you.”  
    Fowler watched him. Taking measure.
    “Or did you volunteer, thinking I’d go peacefully?”
    “Oh, that ,” Fowler said, brightening with comprehension. “The house thing.”
    “Well, I’ve got news, friend. It ain’t a-gonna happen.”
    Fowler removed his feet from Robert’s desk and stood up. “Listen, I was sorry to hear about all that. Terrible thing with your son. And your wife bailing on you like that. I didn’t really know her very well but, anyway, pisser all around.”
    “That was a long time ago,” Robert said, his emotionless tone discouraging further discussion.
    “I mean it. You took one in the nuts.”
    As Fowler had made use of the only glass, Robert screwed the cap off the thermos and poured an inch of brandy into it.
    Fowler had idled to the far end of the room. He stood to one side and inched the plastic curtain back from the one window, looking out—a subconscious gesture Robert recognized—absentmindedly reconnoitering the premises. Fowler rubbed the slick curtain material between thumb and forefinger, frowning with distaste.  
    He let go the curtain and turned back to Robert. “The house thing. Right. Well, you can relax, m’boy. That’s not why I’m here.”
    Robert let that soak for a minute, careful not to show surprise or curiosity. From Fowler’s apparent ease, his relaxed conversational attitude, Robert was beginning to think he had actually forgotten the rejected leave. If so, it only further proved how little empathy Fowler was capable of, what a small insignificant thing it had been in his view.
    “Okay,” Fowler said. “Cut to the chase. Right? Bohnert, I’ve got a project for you”
    Robert watched him, waiting.
    “A job,” Fowler added.
    “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m no longer one of the boys.”
    “You haven’t been active, that’s true. But you know how it is—once a Company man, always a Company man.” Fowler smiled, a touch of self-satisfied superiority. “Our people don’t dump us, we dump them.”  
    “I see your old arrogance is still enjoying good health.”  
    Fowler sighed. His smile faded. He looked older than he had first appeared. Harder. More embittered. Robert wondered whether he himself had appeared as soulless in his active days. If so, it probably made it a lot easier on Trish when it came to leaving him.  
    “You shouldn’t have bailed,” Fowler said. “We needed good translators.”
    “Listen, you son of bitch,” Robert said, briefly losing it. “What do you want? What’re you doing here?”
    Fowler looked surprised, genuinely hurt. He lowered his gaze, helped himself to another drink, looked up again. “Don’t you think that was a little over the top? Blowing up your own house?”
    Despite a case of nerves curdling the brandy in his stomach, Robert couldn’t help but smile at the transparency of it—abruptly changing to an emotionally charged subject—an old, if simplistic, interrogation technique for throwing the perp off balance.  
    “You should know that crap won’t work on me.”
    “What crap? I’m trying my best to find some common ground here.”
    “Common ground? You and me?”
    “You think I didn’t know all you went through? You think I wasn’t concerned?”
    “I didn’t see you showing up to spring me out of the loony bin, friend.” Robert drained the last of the brandy into the