|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jerry Mars was right about the jackals. They weren't made for the pit. He had guessed that even before they were taken out of the cages. Wild dogs rarely fought each other. They just made a lot of noise and gestures with no payoff. Carlos and Joe were too spooked by the crowd to do anything more than hunker down in their corners with their ears flat and whimper. A couple minutes of that, and the ref had them hauled back to their cages. Everybody booed and hissed, and the Fig promised he'd make it up to them by squaring off a couple of timber wolves. He couldn't get it through his skull that the pit bull was the finest fighting beast in creation. All those other animals were exotic wimps. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Jerry was also right about Muzzy. Two days after the convention he called with an address for Jack Perry, traced through associates working at the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles with a cross-check of contacts who worked the computers at the Department of Revenue. There were fifty-seven John Perrys driving cars in the commonwealth, but only one with Victor for a middle name. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Apparently the life of a retired assistant microbiologist was not bountiful. No fancy Beacon Hill pad or seaside spread on Cape Cod. Jack Perry hung his hat in a Winnebago in a beat up South Shore trailer camp about thirty miles below Boston. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
After three days of surveillance Jerry got a good look at the last guy in the photo. Though, at first, it was through a pair of binoculars. Jerry was struck by how Jack Perry had agedmore than the twenty years. It didn't look like the same guy. His hair was gray and thin and cropped close to his scalp. But it was what the years had done to his face. While most people fleshed out by their sixties, |
|
|
|
|
|