Something didn't smell right. It smelled too good, like oatmeal cookies, or vanilla air freshener. We were standing in the foyer of a large house, one of those ostentatious mansions that sprout like mushrooms in fields that were once filled with rows of artichoke plants or almond trees.
It
should have smelled like dogs. It
needn't reek of dog but there would always be a certain doggie fug in the house
of a breeder. Lydia and I were here on
a surprise inspection. If this place
was a puppy mill, as we suspected, it wouldn't smell like oatmeal cookies. It would smell like damp fur and a little
bit of shit and piss. There would be
the scent of animal stress, which smells the same no matter what the breed. Abused animals give off a distinctive odor
that is layered over with a psychic miasma of terror.
I
looked at Lydia, who is her own special breed of sensor. Lydia's face registered complete
horror. She was trying to keep herself
together, but her special senses also burden her with a special fragility. Lydia can empathize with other creatures
with visceral accuracy. The job was
hard on her. She kept working, in spite
of the pain.
I
showed my credentials to the oriental lady who stood squarely in front of us,
just inside the door. I had a police
Lieutenant's badge and an I.D. card that identified me as Lucas Holbein, Field
Agent for Viera County Animal Control And Safety. I was a County Sheriff.
Never mind how I got into working cases busting puppy mills and rescuing
starving horses.. This was my work, my
vocation. My fellow cops called me
"Doogie". I didn't care.
"Mrs.
Yu," I said to the tall woman who blocked our way into the house. "We're here on an informal visit. I do not have a warrant. I would appreciate your cooperation."
There
was a smugness to Mrs.Yu that told me this was no surprise. Someone had tipped her that we were
coming. If this was a puppy mill, it
had been cleaned up and the dogs had been silenced.
"Yes,
please come. You are welcome to
house." She almost pranced but
there was a tightness to her gait that shouted "I AM HIDING THINGS FROM
YOU!"
Another
glance towards Lydia. She had got her
composure back but her nostrils were twitching and her eyebrows almost met at
the bridge of her nose. She was very
upset. Already.
The
living room was dimly lit and the furniture was covered in clear plastic. There were plastic runners on the
floor. Paintings on the wall were the
kind purchased for ten bucks a shot at flea markets. Floral still lifes.
Horses in a field. A dilapidated
boat dock with picturesque little skiffs.
"I
would like to look around, Mrs. Yu. I
would like to see your basement, garage and back yard. I can return with a warrant if
necessary."
"All
you like, look. I only do not want you in my personal bedroom. That door, on left down hall." Her hand
described an arc of inclusiveness. Her
palm was facing downward, a gesture I had learned was an evasive
"tell". Palm up: not
hiding. Palm down: hiding. I heard a door open, then close. A man appeared. A big guy with very hard looking hands. A stream of Mandarin flowed from his mouth towards Mrs. Yu.
Lydia's ears twitched. Lydia spoke
Mandarin, Japanese and Russian. She
didn't advertise this fact.
The
man interposed himself between us and Mrs. Yu. I showed the man my card and
badge. He nodded. "I am Mister
Yu. My wife not very much
English," he said. The man projected sheer cold menace. "Is complaint
about dogs? You listen: not
noise!"
In
fact I could hear faint whimpering.
This sound of distress hung like smoke draping itself across the
textured ceiling. Otherwise, the place didn't sound like a breeder's
premises. When breeders treat their
dogs with respect there is always a cacophony of rambunctious animals. It was the quiet places that scared me. I had seen awful things in big quiet houses
out in the suburbs.
"I'd
like to see the back yard, please," I said. Mr. Yu went first, then Lydia
and I followed. Mrs.Yu fell in behind us.
All the doors were closed. The
house was sepulchral. We passed through
the kitchen and there was a tell tale assortment of utensils. I saw cauldrons, kettles and large ladles. A
floor-standing commercial mixer stood next to a double-sized refrigerator. This
house didn't look lived-in. It looked like a factory.
The
door to the garage led off from the kitchen. Just as Mr. Yu was about to turn
the knob, his cell phone rang. He
looked at the caller I.D., then said "Ni Hao!" Our procession paused. A string of Mandarin flowed from Mr.
Yu. He turned his back to us and took
four steps away, into the center of the kitchen. His voice went low, private.
Unfortunately for Mr. Yu, Lydia has ears like a bat. She looked off into space but I'll swear her
ears became pointed.
The
conversation lasted half a minute. Mr.
Yu returned, smiling with feigned embarrassment. "Business call," he said. Lydia threw me a look.
She had heard something important.
The
large back yard was filled with stacks of black-wired cages. They were under green canvas canopies. They stood in an "L" shaped
arrangement with room between each stack for a human to gain access to the cage
doors. There were forty cages and about
half of them were occupied. They were
inhabited exclusively by toy poodles. I
counted four litters of pups. They were
snuggled up to their mothers' teats, some of them wiggling to get hold, some of
them sound asleep. The other cages held
single puppies of various shades.
Black, brown, white and a few pups that were a distinctive pearly taupe.
This
would have been a reasonably acceptable scene but for one odd characteristic:
almost all of the dogs were asleep.
They lay with their heads on their forepaws, or curled in a ball. Some showed eyes that were half open in a hynotized
daze. A few cropped tails wagged. A few
tongues stuck out. There was nothing of
canine vitality on display. Any breeder
of any stripe, anywhere, would have a yard full of barking excited dogs. Visitors!
Yay! That's what I would expect
from twenty dogs.
The two sets of pups were just a
few days old. They lay against their
bitches' bellies like they were dead. I
had to get up close, just to see signs of breath, of life.
Mr.and
Mrs. Yu were moving all around us, stiff like mannikins, bumping and
pushing. Mr. Yu gave me a pretty good
buffet, which he tried to pretend was an accident.
The grins on their faces were
qualified as "shit eating", excuse my language, but there's no other
way to describe the falsity of their expressions.
"What
have you done to them?" Lydia
spoke softly but she was nonetheless howling.
I knew that Lydia already knew things that were still obscure to me. Lydia's intuition often put her two or three
steps ahead of me.
"They
sleep!" protested Mrs. Yu.
"It just exercise. Tired
dogs. Very tired." She pointed at
the gear in the yard. There was the
usual assortment of mesh tunnels, ramps, hurdles. Toys were scattered everywhere.
The turf was almost barren of grass, with divots poking out and signs of digging and scuffling. The fence was perfect. It was a six foot high barrier of twelve
inch pine slats. Each slat terminated
in two points. At the base of the fence
was a concrete footing, eight inches or so.
Nothing was going to dig its way under this fence. None of the neighbors could see anything.
"I
would like to take a blood sample," I said, and produced a syringe and a
rubber tie from my coat pocket. This
brought what I expected from the Yu's: protest. "No blood! Leave
dogs to sleep!" Mrs. Yu did her stiff marionette dance in front of me
while her husband approached from my right side. He did the "accidental" buffet again, but I was ready
for him and I was so set in my stance that I didn't budge an inch. The man almost bounced off of me.
Lydia
had disappeared. She had a knack for
being somewhere and then not being somewhere.
She possessed a native quietude that made her innately stealthy. People
often overlooked her vanishing because they had barely noticed her in the first
place. I walked towards one of the
cages that housed a nursing female.
Mr.Yu put himself in my way.
Mrs. Yu laughed an empty sound.
I needed to keep them busy. I
put my hand on a cage latch and Mr. Yu clamped his hand around my wrist. His grip was like an iron band.
"You
stop!" he said. "No warrant. No search."
"Look,"
I said, keeping anger out of my voice.
I did not want confrontation. "I don't see anything that's a
flagrant violation. Your dogs look
healthy. I'm just curious about this lack of energy." In fact, the dogs did not look healthy. Their gums were pale. Their coats were dull.
Some were panting, others looked almost dead.
This was, to all appearances, a kennel of drugged canines. The two nursing mother dogs looked far too
old to be having litters. One of them
was going grey in the muzzle. The other
was emaciated. I had to keep my
feelinngs out of this situation. It
wouldn't help me handle the Yus. I
needed to give Lydia time to scope out the real kennel, the stuff behind closed
doors.
Lydia
had gone back through the kitchen and down the first available hallway. All the doors were locked. The bathroom door was not locked but a scan
of the medicine cabinet showed empty shelves.
Drawers contained some floss and a bottle of Ibuprofen.
Lydia tried a door that was narrow:
a utility closet. It was locked. Under her coat she wore a photographer's
field vest. From one of its pockets she
produced her little pick set and had the door open in a second. There was a tiny aquarium on a shelf. It was about the size of a shoe box. Tubes
ran from an IV bottle and led to the creature that was imprisoned in this tiny
container. Lydia's heart was already
pounding with fear. She had long ago
accepted the fact that she could not separate her own emotions from the emotions
that swirled around her world. It was a
kind of Hell and she was doing everything possible to live and serve while in
this Hell. It was also the reason for
keeping her personal life simple and reserved for other humans who were
emotionally stable.
She
saw the creature's eyes, staring out from a ball of dark brown poodle
hair. Poodles don't have fur, as
such. They have distinctive curly hair
that retains its growing period indefinitely.
This little pup was nothing but a pair of eyes mounted on a round
tumbleweed of hair. There was an IV
drip descending from an upper shelf. It
ran through a hole in the container's lid and was attached to the puppy,
somewhere in that mass of hyperactive follicles. Lydia examined the label. It
was a used drip bag, crumpled and folded, then unfolded. The label had been scrubbed but Lydia could
read the letters "P-H-E", then there was a washed out place, and the
script continued, revealing the letters "B-A-R-B". It was a piece of information but it was
flawed as a clue. She had no idea what drug or drugs were being used on the
poor little guy. In spite of the chemical cocktail it was being fed, the dog's
eyes were alive with desperation. Lydia
heard a voice as distinctly as if it was being spoken into her ear.
"Get
me out of here!" the voice pleaded.
"I'm going crazy!"
She
didn't have to think about it. She
peeled the lid back and groped for the place where the IV needle was
attached. She knew the needle would be
as fine as a copper wire. She found it,
taped to the dog's right front leg. As
gently as possible, she removed the tape and pulled the needle out. It started to drip and she popped it against
the sheet rock wall until it bent closed.
Then she picked the puppy up. It
was so light! It was no heavier than a
baby finch. This meshed with the
phrases of Mandarin she had heard Mr. Yu speak into the telephone. "Tiny," he said it as if boasting. "Very very tiny. Fit in teacup!"
A
teacup poodle. The smallest poodle
breed. She knew that the oriental market
prized these tiny dogs and would pay four or five thousand dollars for a poodle
that weighed less than six pounds at maturity.
The dog in her hand may not have weighed a pound, if that. His nose was so foreshortened that the tip
of his tongue didn't fit all the way into his mouth. A little pink curl of knobbed flesh stuck out from between his
teeth.
Lydia put him inside her coat. She used a blade in her lock kit to cut out
an approximation of the dog made from her coat lining. She put that brown lining inside the glass
cage and laid the IV tube within its curls.
She replaced the lid and closed the door.
She
listened carefully. She heard the
whimpering, the near inaudible frequency of suffering. The dog inside her coat snugged himself to
her heart and remained quiet. She felt his little warmth against her sweater,
checked that he was able to breathe, and closed the closet door.
Lucas
was still distracting the Yus in the back yard. Lydia looked for the basement door. It was at the end of the hall.
She picked the lock, opened the door.
The lights were on and there were fans turning. As she descended a few
steps the contents of the basement came into view. Shelves were filled with identical glass cages. There were IV bags dripping into most of the
puppies who were confined. The whole
scheme revealed itself. Tiny dogs generate huge profits. Rich Chinese, Korean
and Japanese competed with one another to own the smallest dogs. The Yus
applied a ruthless logic. How do you
prevent a puppy from growing? Deprive
it of exercise, feed it drugs to keep it docile, confine it to a tiny
cage. At eight weeks you clean up the
dog, give it a haircut, take a photo and ship to the customer. All sales final. It's in the contract's small print. Many dogs die in transit.
Those that survive are probably crazy.
It was a scam.
She
used her cell phone to call Lucas. He
picked up, listening.
"I'm
in the basement. It's
unbelievable. Get a warrant. Pretend you're cool with them, or they'll be
gone by tomorrow. There must be fifty
puppies down here and...." she almost sobbed. "Just..just get a warrant.
We have to move on these people. Now!"
Lucas
kept his phone in his hand, palming it.
The situation had just escalated.
In the basement, Lydia got out her
digital camera and took two shots. One
was a wide angle that showed the scale of the place. The other zoomed in to its limit, making an image of two glass
cages that imprisoned two tiny hairy creatures that resembled nothing so much
as characters from a Star Wars film.
They were Ewoks. Minuscule,
somnolescent Ewoks trapped in shoe-box sized aquariums and fed through IV
tubes.
She sent these images to
Lucas. Then she returned upstairs,
moving towards the back yard, hoping she could re-insert herself into the
unfolding "inspection" as if she had been there all along.
Lucas
walked towards another cage, putting a few steps distance from the looming Mr.
Yu. He glanced down at his phone. One image, of a large basement filled with
confined tiny puppies. Another image,
showing the IV drip and the two puppies who lay in their cages as if stunned,
barely breathing. He put his phone back
in his pocket. He returned his
attention to the Yus, and saw Lydia emerge into the yard. There was no noise to her footsteps. She was, again, present. Mrs. Yu gave her a look of profound
mistrust.
"You
go somewhere? You go into my
house?"
Lydia
pointed vaguely towards her personal anatomy.
"I had an emergency. I
needed to use your bathroom. A female
emergency." She made a circle with
her hand, indicating her abdominal regions.
The eyes of Mr. and Mrs. Yu locked briefly, then broke.
Lucas
needed to assuage their fears. He
flipped a few pages on the clipboard that he carried in an inner pocket of his
rain coat. "Okay, look." He made some pen marks on the inspection
form's top page. "Your dogs seem a little lethargic but I can't site you
for a specific violation. How about
this? Let's set up an appointment
in..oh..about a week." He gave a
cautionary look to Lydia. She was
struggling to keep her emotions in check.
The priority was to keep the Yus from bolting, from pulling a couple of
trucks into the driveway, loading up the animals and gear and relocating in one
swift operation. They had
experience. The profits to be made were
enormous and the risk far less than dealing drugs. The Yus might be, probably were, part of an organization. There might be fifty or a hundred identical
puppy mills set up in California and beyond.
He
tore off the top sheet on his clip-board.
It was a yellow inspection form.
Lucas had written the basic information: the family name,
"Yu". Address, type of
facility, number of dogs. He had
refrained from checking off any of the boxes.
Under comments he had written "Dogs display lethargic
demeanor".
Lydia
was turned sideways to the rest of the group.
Lucas saw her glance down into her coat. It lasted a fraction of a second. A little bump moved under her breast. He didn't think it was seen by the Yus. It was time to get out of there.
"Thank
you very much, Mr. and Mrs. Yu," he said.
"I will give you a call some time this week and we can talk
further, okay?"
The
anxious couple seemed to relax. Their
shoulders descended, as if they had been holding their breath and had finally
let go. "They must think I'm
stupid," Lucas thought. "At
least I hope they think I'm stupid."
"Yes,
that fine," Mr. Yu used his bulk to move everyone towards a gate that
opened from the side of the yard and led to the circular driveway where Lucas
had parked his grey Ford Taurus. It was
a Sheriff's Department motor pool vehicle.
The symbol of Viera County surrounded the universal star of Law
Enforcement. Viera County was a place
of lakes and vineyards. The graphic showed a paradise of up-scale agriculture
and refined corridors of Redwood trees.
Lucas considered the County Coat Of Arms to be a ridiculous exercise in
vanity. A more appropriate assortment
of Viera County's reality would have been a collage of marijuana plants, heroin
syringes and half-built developments.
He
drove away from the Yu's house, rounding the corner and stopping under a copse
of oak trees alongside an older house surrounded by a low white picket
fence. It was one of the few original
dwellings that remained after the developers had bought up all the acreage
along Crest Hill Road. Now there were
bulldozers and back hoes, working on properties that were parceled into one
acre lots. Half-built homes were in
progress of becoming pretentious stucco and tile mansions identical to that in
which the Yus kept their breeding enterprise.
Lucas
slipped the radio microphone from its clip.
Lydia opened her coat and a tiny head popped out. "Oh jeez," Lucas blurted. A female voice on the radio responded:
"Not the Christ, Lucas, sorry,
just the same old Judy."
"Sorry
Judy, i just saw something that was...well, a surprise."
"I
hope the good kind," the dispatcher responded.
"Let's
call it a mixed blessing. Do we have
anyone available to do surveillance? Is
there someone with a pulse out in the field that can spend a few hours watching
a house?"
"In
Vikacks?" She referred to
acronym/nickname of Viera County Animal Control And Safety. "You kidding? Terrence is out in Santa Lucia where some horses ran all over the
Pronzini Brothers vines. And...
hell.." This was pronounced "hail" in Judy Fellows Compton
dialect. "Hail no, but I try 'em
all."
It
was the reality of VCACS budget. There
hadn't been any cuts because the agency had started at rock bottom after a
prolonged political struggle between so-called "animal loving
do-gooders" and conservative politicians
