Metzger's Dog Read Free Page B

funds that could be traced to the taxpayers would end up in Donahue’s research accounts. It was the end of a long and mutually satisfactory association. Los Angeles would never be quite the same for John Knox Morrison. He wondered if the person who’d written the orders in Langley had an inkling of the fact that he was destroying the best portion of Morrison’s sexual history since Harvard in the spring of ’47. Those orders had passed Donahue, perhaps the most talented procurer in America, from Morrison, a man with spirit and taste and appreciation, to whom? Porterfield was a man who had eaten armadillo. That said it all. He wouldn’t even consider accepting one of Donahue’s graduate research assistants, because he wouldn’t want to take the trouble to explain the knife scar on his back. The legend was that Porterfield was very happily married to the woman he’d been with since the early fifties, but John Knox Morrison didn’t accept that. Porterfield clearly had no human feelings. He had the mind and tastes of a Soviet political commissar, the sort they sent into desert countries to train terrorists on a five-year tour of duty. Donahue’s young students would be wasted on him. It was a pity.

3                   
“Doctor Henry Metzger!” shouted Chinese Gordon. “You’re a psychotic moron!” Trembling with fury, he shook his overalls over the balcony.
    He spotted Doctor Henry Metzger sitting on the workbench along the wall of the shop where a patch of morning sunlight warmed the sheet metal surface. Chinese Gordon hurled the wet, reeking overalls at the cat. With the strength of his rage Chinese Gordon managed to propel the wad of denim halfway to the workbench. Doctor Henry Metzger raised his head to stare at Chinese Gordon for a moment, then turned his attention to licking his genitals.
    Chinese Gordon looked around him for something else to throw, but with the thought came the awareness that he’d strained his shoulder with the first throw. He leaned over the railing and yelled, “You’re purring, you son of a bitch!” Doctor Henry Metzger slowly stretched his body, then walked along the bench to the end, sprang to the windowsill, and stepped through the empty panel.
    Chinese Gordon turned and stomped into the kitchen to make himself some coffee. It was a hell of a bad start, he thought. The burglary had been bad enough, but this was ridiculous. He couldn’t believe Doctor Henry Metzger could be so mean spirited. Sure, there was such a thing as a difference of opinion on tactics, or even a disagreement. This was nothing less than revenge. As he waited for the water to boil, Chinese Gordon contemplated the meaning of Doctor Henry Metzger’s gesture. To a cat, a man’s overalls must seem like a cat’s fur, a neck-to-ankle cat suit. What depths of contempt must be expressed by pissing on a man’s fur?
    He decided not to brood about it. Today was too important to permit him to spend time distracted with personal problems. For months he’d been preparing for this, measuring and figuring, then grinding and drilling and shaping the steel, then oiling and polishing the parts, assembling and reassembling them, then cycling the whole machine by hand, sliding the flat cam forward and back to make the cylinder turn. Then he’d taken the whole thing apart and searched for the burrs or scratches that meant something was out of balance or fitted wrong. He’d done practically nothing else when he’d been alone for the best part of a year. Chinese Gordon was a master tool-and-die maker, a man who could make a thing like this in a matter of days, but he was making only one and it had to be right.
    Chinese Gordon took his coffee downstairs to the shop, opened his van, and took a look at what he’d made. It was done right and he knew it. It had been an act of will to keep himself from making it perfect. He was accustomed to precise measurements, to machining parts to such close tolerances