Ruff was a scruffy-looking man, a little overweight, wearing silver glasses. His hair fell almost to his shoulders, and he wore a short but poorly trimmed gray beard. When they came in, he looked up and said, “Hey, there. I understand Muddy’s been talking to you. You’re the cops, right?”
“Right,” Virgil said. “You’re a musician?”
Ruff’s eyebrows went up. He looked around the room for a few seconds and then said, “Jeez, I hope so, since I got thirty thousand dollars’ worth of guitars and fifty grand worth of other shit.”
Virgil said, “McKinley, uh, Muddy, uh, didn’t mention . . . You call him Muddy?”
“Sure. We named him after Muddy Waters. Muddy’s real name was McKinley Morganfield,” Ruff said. “Anyway, what can we do for you? You’re looking for those dogs?”
“Yeah, you know about them?”
“Just what Muddy told me. And we can hear them howling in the mornings. That’s about it.”
“But they’re gone now,” Johnson said.
“They were howling this morning. They usually start around seven o’clock or so, at least on the mornings when I’m up then.”
“Always about then,” McKinley said. “Lasts about ten or fifteen minutes, then they shut up again.”
“Where are they at?” Johnson asked.
“South side, I’d say down toward the far end. Pretty high up,” Ruff said.
McKinley said, “That’s about right.”
Ruff said, “I told Muddy to stay away from there. There’s a bad element out here, moved in over the past five or six years. Real white trash. I understand you busted some of them last night.”
“A meth lab—nothing to do with dogs,” Virgil said.
“Good riddance. But I saw Zorn down the road a while ago, so you didn’t get him.”
“You think he’s involved?”
“Of course he is,” Ruff said. “Although I wouldn’t be surprised if his old lady was the real brains behind the business. There’s a goddamned snake if you ever met one.”
Ruff had no proof of anything, just rumors and gossip picked up from the neighbors. “Lotsa these places down here were cabins, there’s sort of a communal landing down under the bridge. Then the economy went to hell, and a lot of them got sold off cheap, and the trash moved in.”
To pinpoint the dogs, Ruff suggested that they contact a neighbor called Ralph Huntington. “He’s a good ol’ boy, and he lives right down there. I wouldn’t go there in a car, though. That might cause him some trouble. Give him a call.”
He had Huntington’s phone number, and Virgil wrote it down. “What’s your name?”
“Julius. Ruff. R-U-F-F.”
Johnson asked, “You play in a band, or something?”
“I play in three or four of them, mostly over in La Crosse,” Ruff said. “Polka, country, big band jazz, and sometimes with the chamber orchestra up in St. Paul, when they need a competent guitar.” He looked closely at Johnson for a minute, then said, “The one you’d probably be familiar with is Dog Butt.”
Johnson brightened. “Really? You play with Dog Butt?”
“I am the man behind the sound,” Ruff said.
“I like that song ‘Goose Gone Truckin’,’” Johnson said.