Mob rules (uc-1) by Cameron Haley

Author:Cameron Haley [Haley, Cameron]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_fantasy, sf_detective

I stopped by a grocery store and then drove to Santa Monica. As always, the pier was crowded with people out to watch the sunset. Tourists took pictures and bums panhandled. Both tossed bread crumbs to the seagulls and dodged the shit bombs that rained down in thanks.

Moon Dog, like all too many bums, was a Vietnam veteran. Like many of his brothers-in-arms, he'd come back from the war without his legs and whatever part of the human mind that makes people give a fuck. Unlike most of his fellow soldiers, he'd also come back with a chronic case of lycanthropy.

Moon Dog had been both a crippled hippie and a werewolf for at least forty years. It might seem that he was doubly cursed (or triply, depending on one's opinion of hippies), except that his lycanthropy gave him back the legs that a North Vietnamese antipersonnel mine had taken. When he changed, Moon Dog, like other lupines, went about on all fours.

It wasn't difficult to pick him out of the throng, even in the twilight. In hippie form, Moon Dog rode the streets and sidewalks of L.A. in an electric wheelchair. An eight-foot whip antenna sporting an orange safety flag ascended majestically from a metal bracket bolted to the frame. The back of the chair was devoted to the sticker collection that symbolized Moon Dog's unique take on not giving a fuck-peace symbol, marijuana leaf, Greenpeace, MIA/POW, Marine Corps, Friend of the San Diego Zoo, Bel-Air Homeowners' Association, Beware of Dog, Cthulhu Fish. The centerpiece was a red bumper sticker with large white print: If You're Close Enough To Read This, You're An Asshole.

I caught his eye and waved as I walked over to him. Moon Dog was on the job. He was holding a cardboard sign. The words Will Dance For Beer Money were written on it in black magic marker. I dropped the sack from the grocery store in his lap. Moon Dog looked in the bag. Inside were three porterhouse steaks, fresh off the cow.

"Angus?" he asked. Long, straight white hair was tied down with a red bandana, and bum-tanned cheeks peeked out from behind a scraggly beard.

"Yeah," I said. "How you doing, Moonie?" I refuse to call him Moon Dog to his face, on general principle.

"Grocery store?" asked Moon Dog.

"Yeah, real sorry, Moonie. You want it from the meat market or the pasture, you can get it yourself."

"Nah, it's all good, Domino. I dig the antibiotics and growth hormones. I think my legs are growing back in." He wiggled his stumps.

"That…really freaks me out, Moonie. Look, I need a favor."

"Sure, babe," he said. "What's up?"

"Follow me," I said, and led him over to the lot where I'd parked my car. I pointed to the front quarter-panel on the passenger side. "Take a whiff of that, Moonie."

Moon Dog wheeled up, leaned in and sniffed at the fender. "Smells like Turtle Wax, Domino."

I scowled. "What else?"

"That's about it." Moon Dog rubbed his nose and sniffed noisily. "This old nozzle ain't so good anymore.

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