Showoff

  Luthor’s head whipped around. The growl was followed by a sharp snap of dinosaur-like jaws. Griffin jumped back as if he’d been shot from a cannon.

  “I don’t think Luthor’s too big on stacking,” Ben commented.

  “Yeah, well, he has to be,” The Man With The Plan said firmly. “It’s not like a beauty contest, where there’s a talent competition. If he can’t stack, he can’t be judged. And if he can’t be judged, he’s out.”

  The two watched Luthor critically. Even when the Doberman was calm, he was in perpetual motion, always shaking a paw, or smelling the blossoms on some bushes, or digging absently in the flower beds. He was very much distracted by Savannah’s house, constantly gazing into the windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of a family member. The disappointment at coming up empty was always shattering. And yet thirty seconds later, he’d be at it again, peering hopefully, only to be devastated once more.

  He ran after every car that passed the Drysdale home, trampling plants and blasting through hedges, earning dirty looks from the park attendant. The man had already been forced to find a towel for the soaked mother and her toddler thanks to this unruly dog. He had no desire to redo the landscaping.

  “Can a dog get ADD?” Ben mused. “My cousin has that, so my aunt cut down on his sugar intake.”

  “You think there’s much sugar in dog food?” Griffin wondered.

  Ben shrugged. “How should I know? I’ve never tasted it myself.”

  In those rare moments when Luthor slowed down or stopped, Griffin and Ben tried to compare him to the photographs in Puppy Today, Champion Tomorrow. According to the book, every type of dog had a “breed standard” that described the perfect animal for that breed. At a dog show, the contestants were judged on the basis of how closely they matched that ideal.

  “This book stinks,” Ben complained. “Where are the Doberman pictures? A fat lot of good it’ll do us to compare Luthor to a championship Shih Tzu the size of Ferret Face.”

  Griffin pointed to another photograph. “Or this Maltese — it’s so hairy you can’t even tell what’s supposed to be where. For all we can tell, it could have eight legs under there.”

  Ben frowned at the size chart. “I think Luthor’s a lot bigger than a normal Doberman. What if he gets disqualified for being too big?”

  “That’s discrimination,” Griffin said sternly. “He’s perfect — see, right here.”

  The page showed a photograph of a prizewinning Doberman who could have been Luthor’s miniature twin. If this was an example of the Doberman breed standard, then so was Luthor — just on a grander scale.

  They examined their pupil, who had calmed himself long enough to provide his snout as a landing pad for a large monarch butterfly.

  “You know,” Ben admitted, “I thought Savannah was crazy — and you, too, for believing her. But look at him — the straight back, the way he carries himself, how he plants his feet. He’s a show dog!”

  “Right,” said Griffin, pleased. “He just doesn’t know it yet. Too bad we can’t hire that butterfly on an hourly basis. Check it out — Luthor’s totally stacked.”

  He pulled out his cell phone camera to capture the moment. But the loon chose that very instant to emit another warbling cry.

  The butterfly bailed out just in time. The stacked Doberman dissolved like a jigsaw puzzle flung into the air, its component parts just a blur. Nannies and preschoolers dove out of his path as he made a beeline for the pond. A tidal wave swamped ducks and loon.

  When they finally got him out of the water again, the park attendant approached. “Look, you guys, that dog’s got to go. He’s too big and too wild. He’s scaring the kids and scaring the ducks. And if Godzilla was here, he’d probably be scared, too.”

  “But he was perfectly stacked!” Griffin objected.

  “I don’t care if he was folded, stapled, and stuffed in a manila envelope. Take him home.”

  “Don’t pay any attention to that guy, Luthor,” Griffin grumbled as they exited through the gate. “He wouldn’t know good stacking if it hit him in the head.”

  Luthor shook off some excess water and sneezed loudly.

  “Bless you,” supplied Ben.

  “Anyway, we don’t need this dumb park,” Griffin went on. “Better to find a place without so many distractions.”

  Luthor stopped suddenly, ears perked up. Down the street came a navy blue SUV. He monitored its approach and watched it pass, all aquiver. Then, with a roaring bark, he wrenched the leash out of Griffin’s hand and was off in hot pursuit.

  “Luthor!” cried Griffin. “Come back!”

  The two boys watched in horror as Luthor flung himself at the car, clinging with all fours to the spare tire on the tailgate.

  “What’s he doing?” shrilled Ben. “Has he gone crazy?”

  It came to Griffin. “That’s the same kind of car as the Drysdales’! He thinks Savannah’s in there!”

  They began to run after the SUV.

  “Stop, mister!” Griffin shouted.

  “You’ve got our dog!” Ben added breathlessly.

  With the athletic grace of a movie action hero, Luthor scrambled up onto the roof of the moving vehicle and clawed forward, his paws clinging to the ski rack. He reached the front and hung his head down, peering in the windshield.

  It was a nasty shock for the driver of the SUV. One minute, he was navigating a quiet park-side street; the next, there was a huge, upside-down animal blocking his vision. The man did what any driver would do. He slammed on the brakes. The car screeched to a halt, flinging Luthor off the roof and over the park fence. He landed with a colossal splash dead center in the duck pond. There was a blizzard of feathers.

  The park attendant was furious. “I said get him out of here, and what do you do? The exact opposite!”

  “It was an accident,” Griffin offered.

  “How can a dog wind up in the middle of a duck pond by accident?”

  Griffin and Ben exchanged an agonized look. They had an explanation — a true one, even. But who would ever believe it?

  During take two of their departure from the park, Griffin had harsh words for their trainee. “Listen, Luthor, I know this has been a rough couple of days for you, but you’ve got to work harder. Don’t you understand that we’re doing all this for you?”

  The Doberman cast a mournful glance over his shoulder at the empty Drysdale home.

  “That’s exactly what I’m talking about!” Griffin snapped. “You’re never going to make it to the dog show if you can’t get Savannah out of your head. She’s not there, and you’re not going to see her anytime soon! She’s gone — G-O-N-E, gone!”

  Luthor let out a mournful mewl that hardened into an angry bark. He pulled back against the leash, teeth bared in a growl of open hostility.

  It was behavior that Griffin and Ben remembered all too well. It came from the days before Savannah adopted Luthor.

  The days when he was the toughest guard dog on Long Island.

  8

  “Excuse me, miss. You’ll have to speak up. We must have a bad connection. There’s a lot of noise on the line.”

  The noise was coming from the toilet, which Savannah was flushing every fifteen seconds. She was hunkered down with her father’s cell phone in the bathroom of the lake house, trying not to be overheard. Her parents must not find out that she was calling the Cedarville Dog Pound.

  “I’m calling to ask about Luthor, the Doberman who was dropped off last week. He’s large, black and tan, and he answers to ‘sweetie.’ And he has the purest, most beautiful heart —”

  The man cut her off. “He isn’t here.”

  “Are you sure?” Savannah’s voice rose an octave. Cleopatra reacted immediately to the tension, launching herself into the bathtub. The monkey hung from the showerhead, chattering nervously.

  “I’m positive. We have no Dobermans right now.”

  “Did — did somebody adopt him?” she managed.

  “I couldn’t tell you t
hat,” came the reply. “I volunteer on Fridays, so I’m not here that often. If you leave your number, I’ll have someone get back to you.”

  “No, thanks,” she said faintly, and broke the connection. How could they call back? Dad might answer, and then he’d know she’d been asking about Luthor.

  She turned to Cleopatra. “Maybe he got adopted by a good family with a big house and plenty of space to run …” Her voice broke, and she began to sob. In her heart of hearts, she understood that adoption was a far less likely explanation for Luthor’s absence from the Cedarville pound. She knew better than anybody what happened to dogs that no one wanted.

  Seeing all this, Cleopatra became so upset that she began to spin around the showerhead, squeezing the nozzle so hard that it unscrewed from the water pipe. Monkey and plumbing landed with a clank in the metal tub.

  Mrs. Drysdale came rushing into the bathroom. “What’s going on —” She took in the sight of the cell phone and her daughter’s tear-streaked face.

  “Oh, Savannah, you didn’t!”

  The girl cried harder. “I couldn’t help it, Mom! And now he’s not there anymore! He’s gone!”

  “Oh, honey, we talked about this! We all agreed there was no point in asking about Luthor because there was no way we could ever take him back! Not with that lawsuit hanging over us!”

  “But it’s just so sad!” Savannah wailed, devastated.

  By the time Mr. Drysdale came to the bathroom to see what the ruckus was all about, he found his wife, his daughter, and the family monkey locked in a grief-stricken embrace, bawling their eyes out.

  When Mrs. Slovak appeared in the doorway, Griffin quickly shoved yet another dog-training book under the bed. Ben’s mom was notoriously nosy, especially when it came to The Man With The Plan.

  “Telephone,” she announced. But when Ben reached for the handset, she shook her head and gave the unit to Griffin. “Your father, calling from Austria.”

  “Hi, Dad. How’s Europe?” Griffin was a little surprised. The family had agreed to stay in touch by e-mail and Skype to save money. “Are a lot of countries going to start using SmartPicks now?”

  “It’s kind of a tough sell,” Mr. Bing admitted. “They like to pick fruit the old-fashioned way over here.” He sounded harried. Although Dad had three patents under his belt, it was hard making a living as an inventor. “There’s already a competing product to the Rollo-Bushel, and I guess voles aren’t such a big deal. There seems to be some interest in the Spritz-o-matic, though. If only I could get the bugs out of it!”

  “You will,” Griffin assured him with a gulp. Whatever “bugs” may have been plaguing his father’s latest creation, they were probably small potatoes compared with having the whole thing smashed to bits by Luthor.

  Mr. Bing went on. “I don’t like all this public relations stuff. I’m an idea guy, not a salesman. I should be back home in the garage finishing my invention, not shaking hands with agriculture ministers and heads of farmers’ collectives.”

  Griffin swallowed. “Maybe it’s for the best.” If Mr. Bing returned to his workshop just then, he’d find no Spritz-o-matic at all. The prototype had been removed to Melissa’s house in the distant hope that the electronics whiz could restore the shredded internal wiring. What Dad would find in his garage would be one serious mess and one seriously ill-tempered Doberman. As it sank in that Savannah was not coming back, the dog was becoming angrier and more aggressive. Any attempts to train him were met with snarly resistance. Griffin and Ben feared that, without Savannah’s soothing influence, he was reverting to his old guard dog self. Griffin had already given up on Puppy Today, Champion Tomorrow. Now he was working from Taming the Vicious Dog. Hidden in Ben’s sock drawer was another book from the Cedarville Public Library, In Case of Wild Animal Attack.

  Both boys hoped they wouldn’t need that one.

  “You’re right,” Mr. Bing agreed. “This is a business, after all. And speaking of money, say hello to your mother. She has a question for you.”

  “Hi, Griffin. Do you have anything to tell me?”

  Griffin was wary. “Everything’s fine. What could there be to tell?”

  “The credit card company called. Someone charged a hundred dollars at the Cedarville Dog Pound. What’s that about?”

  Uh-oh. “Luthor got into some trouble, Mom, and Savannah needed help. The Drysdales promise to pay you back.” Okay, that was technically a lie. But he’d already resolved that the first hundred dollars of Luthor’s dog show winnings would go to cover that bill.

  He caught a nervous look from Ben, and flashed his friend a thumbs-up he wasn’t really feeling. “Sorry, I guess I should have e-mailed you guys about that.”

  “As long as you’re being a polite guest to the Slovaks.” It was more like a question. “And you’re brushing your teeth.”

  “I’m doing even better than that, Mom.” That morning he had brushed Luthor’s teeth — wearing a hockey glove, of course.

  “I really miss you, sweetheart. It seems like this trip is lasting forever.”

  “Bye, Mom.” He hung up and drew a long breath. “There’s a dog show in Garden City this weekend,” he told Ben. “Technically, Luthor’s not a hundred percent ready. But it’s a great chance to get his feet wet and check out the kind of competition we’ll run into at Global.”

  “Technically?” Ben’s voice was thick with disbelief. “You can’t take him to a dog show. In the mood he’s in, he’ll start a fight. And believe me, everybody else’s dog is going to lose.”

  “That’s everybody else’s problem,” Griffin returned stubbornly.

  “Not if he gets sued again,” Ben argued. “He already owes seven million bucks for what he did to Electra. Can you imagine the tab for trashing a whole show?”

  “Or,” Griffin said pointedly, “he’ll see all those other dogs stacking and gaiting and winning ribbons and he’ll rise to the occasion. Cut him some slack. This was always part of the plan — a warm-up show before the big one. We’re right on schedule.”

  “You’re dreaming,” Ben muttered.

  “I’m not,” Griffin replied seriously. “I know this isn’t working out the way we’d hoped. But sometimes you just have to hold your nose and put your trust in the plan.”

  Ben stared at him. In the course of their friendship, Ben had put his trust in many plans, some of them disasters, all of them crazy.

  He could not bring himself to put his trust in Luthor.

  9

  Mr. Slovak yawned wide enough to swallow the steering wheel of his car. “You couldn’t pay me to jump into a cold pool at seven o’clock in the morning.”

  “The meet doesn’t start till nine. The bus is picking us up early so we’ve got time to register.” Ben hoped his father wouldn’t notice the flush in his cheeks at the half-lie. They would be registering this morning — but not for any swim meet.

  “I don’t see the bus,” his father remarked. “Are you boys sure you’ve got the right Saturday?”

  “We must be the first ones here,” Griffin offered brightly. Also technically true.

  Mr. Slovak handed Ben an envelope. “Here’s your doctor’s letter about Ferret Face. They’re probably not used to poolside pets.”

  When Ben’s father drove off, the boys ducked into the bushes and changed out of their bathing suits and into the outfits they’d packed in their duffels — black shirts, black pants, and black sneakers.

  “We look like undertakers,” Ben complained. “Who wears black in summer?”

  “Dog handlers do,” Griffin replied readily. “It’s in the training book. You’re supposed to be invisible. That way, all the judges’ attention is focused on the dog.”

  “In that case,” Ben told him, “we should be wearing pink neon with chaser lights. The less those judges examine Luthor, the better.”

  They headed through the side streets to the Bing house. Griffin entered the code and both tensed for action, ready to jump out of harm’s way if Luthor made his usu
al bull run at them. But the door rattled open to reveal the Doberman curled up on the tarp, sound asleep. He seemed to be in the midst of a good dream. A breathy, contented whine came from his massive jaws that was something close to purring.

  “Think he’s dreaming about Savannah?” Ben whispered.

  Griffin was amazed. “I’ve never seen him like this. He’s almost human — you know, in a dog sort of way.”

  “Maybe we should let him sleep,” Ben suggested.

  “Are you nuts?” Gingerly, he reached down and patted the large head. “Wake up, Luthor. It’s show day!”

  The move nearly cost him several fingers. In a single fluid motion, Luthor rolled out of a snore into a bark, a leap, and a bone-crushing bite. Ben clamped his arms around Griffin’s midsection and wrestled him out of harm’s way a split second before the powerful jaws snapped shut. The two boys staggered back and toppled in a heap in a carton of spent spray-paint cans. Ferret Face appeared at Ben’s collar, squeaking with outrage.

  They scrambled up, ready to defend themselves, but Luthor held his ground. A strangely contented sound, not quite a growl, came from his throat.

  Ben was horrified. “He’s laughing at us!”

  Griffin unzipped the duffel and took out the leash, which was buried amid packages of cookies and doggie treats. At this point, that had become their sole bargaining chip with Luthor — food.

  They took advantage of the Doberman’s good mood to slip on the collar and march him down to Ninth Street, past the empty shop where he had once served as a watchdog. He still growled in its direction.

  A few stores past there was an auto parts supplier with a truck wash in the back. It was time for Operation Spick-and-Span. Griffin usually had total confidence in his plans, but he was a little leery about this one.

  “Here goes nothing,” he said to Ben.

  With a nervous sigh, Ben stepped into the stall, set two handfuls of treats on the tarmac, and backed out. Griffin let go of the leash, and the Doberman went straight for the food.