The Outlaw Stinky Joe (Baer Creighton Book 4) Read online

  boat The OUTLAW STINKY JOE

  Clayton Lindemuth

  Hardgrave Enterprises

  SAINT CHARLES, MISSOURI

  Copyright © 2019 by Clayton Lindemuth.

  Published by Hardgrave Enterprises and Clayton Lindemuth.

  Clayton Lindemuth asserts his moral rights as author of The OUTLAW STINKY JOE.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at [email protected]. Nah, just kidding. Send it to Clayton.

  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  The OUTLAW STINKY JOE/Clayton Lindemuth

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Grab Two Books for Your Grit Lit Library

  Also By Clayton Lindemuth

  About the Author

  For

  Faith,

  Layla,

  and

  Wallace

  The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

  ― 1 Corinthians 15:26

  Chapter 1

  Stinky Joe wandered a channel of pavement cut through rows of trailers at the Mountain View Mobile Home and RV Resort. Should he find a few scraps to nourish him, beyond the park waited a small hill. Farther still, a lair where he spent the last few nights, curled and shaking.

  He was three days hungry. His stomach had constricted to a ball, and his eyesight grew sharp. The long winter had passed but not without its toll. His coat stretched over his ribs. Below his eyes, the flesh was hollow, making their darkness sharp.

  Other dogs had more hair. Over the frozen months, Joe rarely encountered them. When he did, they showed interest. Some were aggressive, and while his strength was high, he made abrupt ends to their confusion. More recently his fortitude waned, and he’d been careful to avoid them. Easy because, as winter matured, the other dogs also weakened.

  Joe roamed at night, appraising terrain by scent and sound before arriving.

  Weakness dictated wariness. He would flee a well-fed housecat. But so far he’d only encountered one beast worthy of real fear.

  The perplexing animal. Most times ruthless. Sometimes kind.

  Like a conscious dream, he remembered curling in a man’s sleeping bag, the scent of cheese mingling with the man’s cabbage farts. The man laughed and grumbled.

  The thought passed.

  While he studied the hill ahead, a sound issued from a human living space, a trailer, to his front right. Joe darted behind a parked truck. Peered around the tire.

  A door opened. Shapes were motionless under the streetlight glow. An ample woman extended a shadow, finally bursting free to become a separate form.

  “Heeeere, doggie-dog.”

  The woman was not new to him. Each week she deposited a plastic bag in the snow that, disemboweled, revealed nourishing goodies. Breads. Bones. All manner of fermented and soured meats and treats.

  He’d discovered her by scent, many weeks before. There’d been flurries that night, with wind. Hunger called him to root out each odor and eat whatever promised sustenance.

  “Heeeere, doggie-dog. Mama’s got tasty treats for you. Little shithead. Yes, you little shithead. Heeeere, doggie-dog.”

  Joe lurked.

  She pitched left, right, and with each waddling step dragged a bag across the ground. His memory returned to the week before, the flesh and bones that burned hot though they were almost frozen. His mouth watered, and his hunger outweighed his fear.

  Joe skulked forward from behind the truck tire. His body tingled with dread; his stomach gnawed with desire. One foot ahead of the other.

  “There you are.”

  The woman’s tone was pleasant. She stopped walking. Released the bag from her hand and retreated.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, you miserable wretch. Yeah, come on. Mama’s got something yummy for you. Come get it, doggie-dog.”

  He waited.

  The woman was soon behind the corner of the trailer, again hidden. The door closed gently—not like last time.

  Her tone. Her manner. Her slow, careful walk. The quiet closing of the door. All sounded alarm.

  But his intestines pulled themselves in knots, and the odor from the bag summoned.

  Somewhere deep within his insentient existence bloomed a comprehension. Without food, he would soon no longer exist.

  Joe stepped forward against his fear.

  Chapter 2

  Shirley Lyle smiled at the dog—one of the fighting breeds, a mastiff or pit bull or something. Wide frame. Blocky head.

  “C’mere you little prick. Pricky pricky. C’mon. Mama’s got something real good for you. Over here ... Mmm?”

  Careful as she backed out of the trailer, Shirley pushed the door with her butt. In her hands, she balanced a steaming stainless steel bowl of beef broth, containing a surprise for the dog.

  The little starving beast had shredded her garbage three weeks running. She had to go outside in the snow and gather cardboard and plastic—the only thing the he didn’t eat. If she wanted refuse strewn across the lot, she could have done it herself. Clyde, trailer court slum-master, was ruthless about trash. So she put on her clothes, hat, coat and gloves. Tried to figure out how to get on all fours without the benefit of carpet friction.

  Shirley Lyle weighed in a hundred pounds north of a big girl.

  The whole affair was ridiculous. Half bent over, she fell against an ice bank. After the big storm in February, a snow plow had shoved a six foot bank next to her car. Now it had melted to a foot, but was solid ice. Years of work had given her sensitive breasts. Slipping, her first thought was terror as she anticipated them smashing against ice.

  At all costs, prevent damage to the mammage.

  She flai
led with her left arm, bruised her thigh and tweaked her shoulder.

  Shirley landed on her rear end, and because of her luxurious body composition, no bones shattered. Instead, she bruised her upper buttock and lower back—exactly where Clyde slapped her while collecting rent.

  There were plenty of other people who put out trash. Why had the dog singled her out for torment?

  “C’mere, sweetie. Mama Lyle’s gonna knock you out. C’mere, sugarbums. You’ll love this, I promise.”

  Shirley looked at the half rotted steps. The stoop would do. Partly bending at the knees, partly at the back, she lowered the metal bowl to the deck and backed into the trailer. Closed the screen. The door.

  And waited for the thud.

  Shirley Lyle hailed from Florida. Born with acres of fair skin, after a year at community college, she moved to Seattle. It wasn’t like she was leaving the family windfall behind. Her mother collected her dead father’s Social Security and half his pension.

  To pay rent and utilities, Shirley bussed tables, then waited them. For spending cash, she hooked on the side. She gave a discount to one of her steadies because she liked his cockney accent. He’d called her me own sweet brass babe. When she bore her only child, not knowing brass babe meant prostitute, she’d named her son Brass. She was twenty one.

  Over the next thirty hardscrabble years she raised him on love, rice, and beans. When her knees gave out she quit waitressing and got on Social Security Disability. Whoring had never been her ambition. She’d worked regular tax-paying jobs, but being both a flirt, and easy, she developed skills. She’d asked herself, why work for low wages using low skills, when she could exploit her other talents, and make better money?

  Her hooking income remained steady, even after the injury. There were plenty of ways to conclude a man’s arousal that didn’t stress the knees too much.

  She had regular clients but never a regular man. Brass grew up with an unclouded perspective on human sexuality. At puberty, he was ready to explore it. During his teens he considered himself bi. In his twenties, gay. Then he met a woman in San Francisco. He brought her home for Thanksgiving. When Mama Lyle stared, he explained, “She screwed me straight.”

  They could talk like that.

  Brass was her pride and joy. One day soon, he’d be a U.S. Congressman. When he was young, she had been unable to provide all the toys and nonsense he craved. But she’d provided precarious finances, giving root to his success. He wanted better, and had her to thank.

  Brass set his sights and started working. When he had something in mind he couldn’t live without, he’d have it in short order. He could focus. He didn’t so much overcome obstacles as fail to see them.

  As a teen he’d read in some magazine at the laundromat that public speaking was fundamental to success. The article outlined a process for gaining experience. Join a Toastmasters group, then volunteer to give speeches at Rotary clubs.

  “More power to you,” she’d said. “I was you, I couldn’t do it. They’d laugh because I’m fat.”

  “You’re fat, they’re stupid. So what?”

  Now, age fifty-five, she lived in a Flagstaff, Arizona mobile home park. Brass rented an apartment in Phoenix with his wife Claire and daughter Vanessa. He’d completed his master’s in Human Services, and like everything else in his life, as soon as he conquered one goal, he set another. The U.S. Congress.

  Shirley sat on the sofa. Brass’s 8x10 high school graduation picture hung on the wall behind the television. He’d know what to do with the dog.

  Shirley looked at the clock.

  Funny the dog hadn’t dropped to the deck yet. Shirley listened. Being mere skin and bones—perhaps it didn’t have the weight to make a thud.

  The situation should never have come to this. Flagstaff had a dog catcher. Animal control. She’d called, and the man promised to come out.

  He came out.

  But it was three in the afternoon, Monday. Not Tuesday night when she put out her garbage.

  “What good does that do? You didn’t want to work at night.”

  He looked at her. Up and down.

  Shirley swallowed. “I’m a taxpayer,” she said.

  He smiled, dimples cracking his face. Judging her.

  Brass would have beat the man silly.

  Actually, Brass was a charmer. His name sounded like trouble, but he was all smooth talk and magnetism. It wasn’t wrong for a mother to admire her son’s handsomeness.

  She eyed his photo. Wondered if she loved him so much because he was the only good thing to come out of her life.

  Still no thump outside?

  Shirley climbed up the side of the sofa. Careful to avoid walking on her heels and giving the dog warning, she returned to the door and twisted the knob. Eased it open.

  Peered.

  The stoop was empty.

  The silver mixing bowl, licked clean.

  No dog.

  “You little turd.”

  She stepped out.

  “Ah!”

  The dog lay motionless on the driveway next to the bag of trash.

  “Gotya.”

  She went back inside. From her bedroom she grabbed an unused leather belt and returned to the door.

  She thought.

  Anything else?

  No.

  She advanced to the porch and shivered. She’d only stay outside a couple minutes. And the trailer was hot. Shirley climbed down the steps. Shoved the dog with her foot.

  Still as the dead.

  She worked her way to her bruised knees and settled her weight on the side of her left thigh. Fed the belt through the metal loop and slipped the noose over the animal’s head. Cinched it.

  Keeping the other end of the sixty-inch leather strap in hand, she backed a few inches and began the process of climbing herself back erect.

  She dragged the dog. At the steps, she found if she lifted straight up, then forward, his head cleared each eight-inch obstacle. With its head on the porch and its body draped like a slinky, the dog slid aboard when she tugged.

  “You hurt my shoulder again, you die for sure.”

  Shirley dragged him inside the trailer. Back the hallway, past an unused bedroom on the opposite side of the home from her master suite. Another door down, the bathroom. She yanked him on the tile and navigated her body to the floor. Easy, with the toilet for support. She removed the leather strap from the animal’s neck.

  The dog’s slitted eyes showed whites.

  A moment later she was standing.

  “What the hell am I doing?”

  The dog must be crawling with fleas and ticks. Ebola. Who knew? It wore no collar, so it was likely wild from birth. It smelled horrible.

  She should have used rat poison in the beef broth instead of her prescription Temazepam. Then left him with the other trash. But now he was inside. She leaned against the door jamb and thought through the same details as last time, several days before.

  The idea came to her earlier in the shower: she needn’t kill the little wretch, only kidnap him.

  Dognap.

  No more picking up the garbage.

  Of course, Clyde hated dogs. Didn’t permit them in the mobile home resort. Especially not inside one of his trailers. He’d been clear. One time she was paying rent with the back door. Clyde looked out the window and saw a neighbor leading a dog into his trailer. Clyde raged. Couldn’t close his mouth long enough to finish. He had to stop and take a Viagra.

  So she’d bathe the beast, even though it was feral. To conceal the dog stink, she’d coat him in baby powder. He’d be happier, smelling perfumed and clean.

  But she couldn’t allow him in her home for days on end, unclean. The bath had to be first.

  Second.

  First, sedation. She’d given him enough Temazepam to render a rabid wolf comatose for half a day. She thought.

  Shirley stepped over the dog and, at the tub, set the plug. She twisted the hot and cold water faucets. Three quarters for the hot, one fo
r the cold. Fifteen years in the same single-wide, you know things.

  “All right, douchebag. Don’t wake up.”

  She stooped. Dug below his shoulders. Heaved.

  The dog was much lighter than she’d imagined he would be. She felt bones beneath his flesh. Hoisting him over the tub wall, she eased him to the inch-deep warm water.

  Shirley glanced around. No towel. What soap to use? Shampoo? And how to rinse him? She needed a cup.

  “Fuh-huh-crap!”

  She looked at the faucet, on full blast. The depth of the water. The dog’s nose, inches away.

  She’d only be a minute or two in the kitchen.

  Chapter 3

  Clyde Munsinger stood in the trailer court office. He turned off the light, ready to leave for the evening. Tonight he collected rent from Ulyana.

  He looked out the window to the road and, at the corner of his field of vision, beheld a shadowy form.

  With distance and darkness broken only by an occasional street lamp, Clyde couldn’t tell which direction the animal walked. He waited for the image to resolve.

  Ah.

  Away.

  Right after he’d bought the trailer resort, law enforcement cited him for firing his .357 within city limits.

  No pets.

  He’d advised the tatted up white boy before he signed the papers. No pets. No way. Not allowed. Human animals did enough damage to his property. But the skinny headbanger thought he could sneak in a shit-zoo and keep it hidden.

  Clyde discovered a cigarillo-sized turd next to a juniper, adjacent the man’s Toyota RAV4. He drew the obvious conclusion. The Toyota wasn’t the culprit.

  Clyde knocked on the door, and the dog erupted. The punk spouted nonsense about inheriting the dog from his dead mother. The rights of man. The US Constitution. The situation escalated. Gunfire into a cupboard. Shattered plastic ware.

  Tenant evicted. Misdemeanor fine.

  The gunshot underlined the message three times. No dogs at the Mountain View Mobile Home and RV Resort.

  Now, seeing a canine swagger up the middle the street of his resort, Clyde clenched and unclenched his jaw. Worked it side to side, his molars shifting with the pressure.