Paw and Order (2 page)

TWO

I
t's a big country, Chet,” Bernie said. “Last, best hope.”

I looked out from the shotgun seat. Yes, big country was zipping past, this part hilly and so green, compared to back home. As for hopes, I had none at the moment: everything was perfect just how it was. The sun went down and the land darkened from the bottom up until all I could see was a mountaintop off to one side, glowing deep orange.

“Lookout Mountain, big guy,” Bernie said. “Battle Above the Clouds, Grant versus Bragg. Littles fought on both sides. Military family, going way back. Kind of shapes your outlook on life, curse and a blessing. Suppose we'd been, I don't know, pharmacists, say, or shoemakers.”

I loved when Bernie went on like this! Shoemakers, was that it? I checked Bernie's feet. He was wearing flip-flops. I felt in the picture, but totally. Not long after that, we pulled into a truck stop, had a little snack—kibble for me, tacos for Bernie. Then came a wonderful warm wave of relaxation flowing right through my body, and when that happens, my eyelids get heavy. And after that, what can you do? Clouds came rolling in. I was safe and sound above them. From time to time Bernie's voice drifted in through the clouds, Bernie speaking the way he does when he's thinking out loud. “Should we call ahead?” he said. And then after a while, “. . . but surprises are nice—don't women like surprises?” I shifted around, got even more comfortable, hard to imagine how that was possible. Whatever this was, Bernie would work it out. He was the best out-loud thinker I knew. The worst was a perp name of Joe Don “Einstein” Wargle Jr., whose last out-loud thought that I heard was: “If I jump out this here window, you suckers'll never catch me.”

Meanwhile, Bernie had gone quiet. Somehow I got my eyes open long enough to check on him. And what do you know? He was in dreamland.

• • •

The next time I opened my eyes, the sky was just starting to lighten in a milky sort of way, too soon for telling whether it was clear or cloudy, and we were on the road. I looked across at Bernie. Sometimes I think you only see humans the way they really are from the side. Actually, I'd never thought that before and wished I hadn't now. I mean, what comes next? All I knew was I really liked Bernie's face from the side; and the front, of course, goes without mentioning. As for what I could see? First, Bernie was real tired, his face pale except for dark patches under his eyes. Second, the eyes themselves were intense, like Bernie was wired about something. I sat right up. When Bernie's wired, I'm wired.

He glanced over at me. “Sleeve of care all knitted back up, big guy?” he said, pretty much losing me from the get-go. I checked the sleeves of his shirt, saw nothing unusual. He was wearing the same Hawaiian shirt he'd had on the day before, the one with the drinking fish pattern—all these fish bellied up to a bar, smoking and drinking, not my favorite when it comes to Bernie's Hawaiian shirts. I looked out instead, saw we were on a freeway with lots of lanes, all those lanes clogged in both directions.

“Our government on the way to work,” Bernie said. “Kinda wish they wouldn't bother.”

Uh-oh. What could we do about that? There were so many of them. We climbed a long hill, and on the other side a big city appeared, maybe not as big as the Valley, but the river in this city had water in it and ours didn't. “Foggy Bottom,” Bernie said. “Where they keep the levers of power. Wouldn't mind seeing one of those levers someday, let alone getting my hands on it.”

Kind of a puzzler: what about that time we got stuck in a ditch and Bernie said, “I'll just use this branch to lever us out.” He had his hands on a lever that day, no doubt about it, and the fact that the branch had snapped in two and we ended up calling in the wrecker and giving him all our cash and the dude was still grumbling didn't change that. Also, there was no fog I could see now; the sky had turned nice and blue. I made a mental note to drag the very next fallen branch that came along over to Bernie. Then he'd say, “Levers of power, just what I've been looking for. Thanks, big guy!” The day was off to a good start. We crossed a bridge over the river, a white-domed building on the far side. “Jefferson Memorial,” Bernie said, and then surprised me by leaning out his window toward the white-domed building and calling, “Come back to life!”

We've had this type of long road trip before, a long road trip where Bernie gets a bit hard to follow after a while. Those road trips always ended well in my memory, just like everything with Bernie. My mind moved on to thoughts of breakfast. But no one ever comes back to life, practically the first thing you learn in a job like mine; although I can think of an exception, which maybe we'll get to later. But all the other times a new smell starts up right away and no matter what the EMTs do—and I've seen them try and try—there's no going back. Turned out I had a hope after all: I hoped Bernie wouldn't be too disappointed when whoever he wanted to come back to life did not.

• • •

We drove into one of those neighborhoods that was all about nice houses with space between them and no one around but landscapers. Bernie patted his pockets, reached under the seat, fumbled with some scraps of paper, squinted at a torn envelope. “Two forty-three? Is that what it says? Can't read my own damn . . .” He checked the passing houses, slowed down, pulled over in the shade of a big tree. A taxi came by the other way, the driver pulling over on his side of the street and parking in the shade of his own big tree. The driver—a slicked-back hair dude—took a long look at a blue minivan parked farther up our side of the street and then glanced over at us. His face, not happy at the moment, looked like it was made of a few hard slabs stuck together. He steered back onto the street and drove off, leaving a faint smell of hair gel behind, a bit like the scent of bubble gum. I'd tried bubble gum once. Not food and not a chewy: I didn't understand bubble gum at all.

We got out of the car, approached the nearest house, a brick house with a tall hedge in front and a gated driveway on one side, the gate hanging part open. A member of the nation within the nation—as Bernie calls me and my kind—had laid his mark on one of the gateposts, forcing me to do the same. Meanwhile, Bernie had gone on ahead. I tried to hurry things along, but that's not so easy to do. Bernie was already knocking at the front door when I caught up to him.

“Kind of a big house,” Bernie said. “Maybe we've got the wrong—”

The door opened and a woman—not Suzie—looked out. She was maybe about Suzie's age, had red hair and green eyes—although Bernie says I can't be trusted when it comes to colors, especially red, so don't bother remembering this part—and wore a dark business suit. I knew right away that she was the type of woman who had a certain effect on Bernie.

“Yes?” she said.

“Uh,” said Bernie. “We're, um, looking for Suzie Sanchez.”

“Is she expecting you?”

“Not really. It's kind of a surprise.”

The woman gazed at Bernie. With some humans, you can see into their eyes a bit, get a feel for what's going on behind them. This woman was some other type. “Are you a friend?” she said.

Bernie nodded. “I'm Bernie Little. This is Chet.”

My tail got ready to start up, but the woman didn't look at me. “The private detective?” she said. She looked past us. “That must be the famous Porsche.”

“Wouldn't know about famous,” Bernie said.

The red-haired woman smiled, more to herself that to us, if that makes any sense.

“Suzie mentioned you,” she said. “She's our tenant—you'll find her in the carriage house out back.” The door closed.

We followed the driveway along the side of the house, past a small green lawn which a squirrel had crossed, and not long ago—

“Chet!”

—and came to another brick house, much smaller than the first. Bernie gave it a careful look. “Urbane?” he said, stepping up to the door. “Would that be the word?” He was on his own. I waited for the answer. Bernie froze and said, “Oh, my God! Flowers!” “Flowers” was the answer, not “urbane”? That was as far as I could take it. Meanwhile, Bernie was glancing around wildly. He spotted some yellow flowers growing in a window box, sprang over and snatched them out, then returned to the door, the flowers in one hand and a surprising amount of that moist black potting soil on his shirt. Bernie's other hand was in knocking position when the door began to open from the inside. A lovely big smile spread across Bernie's face and then just hung there in the strangest way when a man stepped outside. The man wore a suit, had a neatly trimmed little beard but no mustache, a look that always bothered me, no telling why, and carried a briefcase made of fine, lovely-smelling leather that aroused a funny feeling in my teeth right away, a feeling that only gnawing can satisfy, as you may or may not know. He paused, rocking back slightly on his heels. We've seen that before. Bernie's a pretty big dude, and I'm not exactly a midget myself, a hundred-plus pounder, in fact, as I'd heard Bernie say more than once.

“Ah, um,” the man said, and then his gaze settled on the flowers. “A delivery for Ms. Sanchez?”

“Huh?” said Bernie.

I was with him on that: the bearded dude had a strange way of talking. Much easier to understand was his smell, which was all about nervousness, and getting more so. Nothing easier to pick up in the whole wide world of smells than human ­nervousness—excepting bacon, of course, goes without mentioning, and possibly steak on the barbie, and there's no leaving out burgers, plus those Thai ribs down at Mr. Cho's Tex Mex Chinese Takeout and Delivery aren't too shabby, and . . . where were we again? All I knew for sure was that my position on the front step seemed to have changed a bit, moving me closer to the briefcase. At the same time, the bearded dude was calling over his shoulder. “Suzie? A delivery for you.”

“Coming.” That was Suzie, no doubt about it, from somewhere back in the house—meaning we'd found her, so everything had to be going smoothly.

The bearded dude raised his voice again. “Bye, love.” Then he stepped around us—me getting in a lick of his briefcase, an all-too-quick lick, but the leather was by far the best I'd ever tasted—walked down the street, got into the blue minivan, and drove away. Bernie wasn't smiling now, but his mouth was still open. All of a sudden, he looked like Charlie! Charlie's Bernie's kid back home in the Valley, where we all once lived together as one big happy family—me, Bernie, Charlie, and Leda, Leda being Bernie's wife at the time, but now married to Malcolm, who's real big in software, whatever that may be, and we don't see Charlie much, except for some holidays and weekends. But no time for any of that, and I shouldn't have even gotten started. The point is, I could now see Charlie in every feature of Bernie's face. Okay, not the nose. Bernie's waiting to get that slightly bent part—hardly noticeable, in my opinion—fixed after he's sure that his fistfighting days are over, which I hope is never, on account of how much I'd miss seeing that sweet uppercut.

Right in there somewhere, Suzie appeared. Her eyes—beautiful dark eyes that shone like the countertops in our kitchen after they'd been polished, which had been a while—widened in the way that shows a human is surprised. Cats are just the opposite, but let's leave them out of the story if we can.

“Bernie?” she said. “What are you doing here? I thought you were headed home.”

“Uh, home, right,” said Bernie. “Surprise type of thing.” He thrust the flowers in her direction, then seemed to think better of it, and drew them quickly back, the heads of some of the flowers snapping off and wafting down to the floor, a black-and-white tile floor that I knew would feel nice and cool on my paws once we got inside. Wasn't that the plan? I got a sudden feeling that things weren't going well and started panting just the littlest bit. Bernie noticed all the scattered petals. “Maybe not my brightest idea,” he said.

“No, no,” said Suzie. “This is wonderful! I just wish you'd called, that's all. I would have been more . . . organized.”

Bernie glanced back toward the street. “Is that what we're calling it?” he said.

“Bernie? Whoa. Is something wrong?”

“How would I know? I'm just the delivery boy.”

Suzie's face changed and so did her eyes; she started to become a harder kind of Suzie. I preferred the other one. “You're not making much sense,” she said.

“No, love?” said Bernie.

“Love?”

“That's what your guest calls you.”

“My guest?” Suzie's eyes shifted. “You're talking about Eben? He's from London, Bernie.”

“So?”

“So he calls everyone ‘love,' ” Suzie said. “Like Ringo Starr.”

Ringo Starr? Had to be some sort of perp. And not even the first Ringo perp we'd run into. Who could forget Ringo Gog­arnian, who liked to dress as a mailman and empty out people's mailboxes and was now dressed in an orange jumpsuit? Message to Ringo Starr: heads up, buddy boy. Bernie and Suzie had gotten a bit confusing there for a moment, but now we were humming.

“Meaning you and he aren't . . . ?” Bernie said.

“Aren't what?”

“You know.”

“For God's sake—he's a source.”

“A source of what?”

“Information,” Suzie said. “I'm a journalist, remember? Journalists have sources.”

“Oh,” Bernie said.

“That's it?” said Suzie, her voice closer to its normal self, which actually reminded me of music. “Just oh?”

Bernie thought for a moment. Then he held out what was left of the flowers.

“How nice,” Suzie said. “You're giving me my own flowers.”

Of course it was nice—Bernie always came up big in the end. As for me, I was already in the house, feeling the tiles under my paws, pleasantly cool just as I'd expected. I also seemed to be . . . how to put it? Munching? Close enough. I seemed to be munching on some of those petals that had fallen on the floor. They tasted a bit like grass, drier perhaps, but with a faint hint of lemon that was really quite pleasant. What was the name of this city again? Foggy something? I was liking it just fine.