Thereby Hangs a Tail (18 page)

“. . . didn’t run him through the system?” Bernie was saying.

“Not according to this,” said Lieutenant Stine. “Any reason we should have?”

“He did time at Northern State, for Christ’s sake.”

“What charge?”

“Drugs.”

“Dealing?”

“Yeah.”

“Dealing what?”

“Pot.”

“Pot, huh? That still a crime in this jurisdiction?”

“What the hell?”

“Just a joke, Bernie. Look, this guy—what’s his name? McKnight?—didn’t arouse any suspicion, but I’ll send someone out again if you want.”

“Forget it,” Bernie said. “We’re almost there.” He clicked off.

I looked around. We were almost where? What was going on? All I knew was that Bernie and the lieutenant weren’t getting along. Weren’t they friends? I shifted around a bit, found a comfortable position. A very comfortable position, in fact, and I loved comfortable positions.

When I woke up, we were still in the desert but I could see the tops of the downtown towers. They seemed to be floating in the sky, with nothing holding them up. For a moment I thought I was still dreaming.

I’d been to Suzie’s place before. She lived in a garden apartment not far from Max’s Memphis Ribs, the best restaurant in the whole Valley, in my opinion, and not just because the owner, Cleon Maxwell, was a friend of ours and gave us two-for-one coupons, but mostly because of those ribs: the juicy meat and then when you’re done with that—the bone! Back to Suzie’s apartment. There were lots of garden apartments in the Valley, but Bernie didn’t like any of them, on account of those little lawns and plants always being the wrong kind, bad for the aquifer.

We got out of the car and walked to Suzie’s door. Bernie didn’t say anything about the aquifer, didn’t seem to even notice the lawn or the plants. Other times at Suzie’s door, Bernie would knock softly, with a look on his face that reminded me of Charlie. Not now. He banged on the door and his face was hard.

The door opened and there stood Dylan McKnight, pretty boy, barefoot and barechested. He looked like an actor from the kind of movie Bernie hated. His eyes went to Bernie, then to me, back to Bernie. Dylan McKnight actually had a nice smell; and mixed with it, I picked up the scent of a woman, not Suzie.

“Oh,” said Dylan McKnight, “it’s you.”

“Where is she?” said Bernie.

“Who?”

The next thing I knew we were inside the house and Bernie had Dylan against the wall.

“Suzie?” Dylan said, his voice getting squeaky. “You mean Suzie? I don’t know where she is. I already told the cops. She was gone when—”

Bernie lifted Dylan right off the floor. “We don’t have time for this,” he said.

“But I swear, I—”

“Honey?” A voice—a woman’s voice, not Suzie’s—came from down the hall. We all turned to look. A naked woman appeared. “Oops,” she said. A naked human was an interesting sight, but in my opinion they always look better with their clothes on, no offense. She backed up a step, tried to cover herself with her hands, but her hands were small and there was a lot to cover.

“My fiancée, Vanessa,” said Dylan.

Vanessa raised one of her hands for a quick finger wave. Bernie lowered Dylan to the ground, let go of him.

“Fiancée?” said Bernie.

“Means we’re getting married,” said Dylan. “I wanted Vanessa to meet Suzie.”

“She sounds so fabulous,” said Vanessa.

“How did you get in?” Bernie said.

His eyes were on Vanessa, but he must have been talking to Dylan because Dylan replied, “Still have a key. I told her I’d give it back so she wouldn’t have to worry about loose keys floating around.”

“She knew you were coming?”

“Oh, yeah, sure. She said we’d go out to dinner, like the two couples.”

“What two couples?”

“Me and Vanessa, you and Suzie.” Dylan gave Bernie a funny look. “She’s nuts about you, man. Don’t you know that?”

“This is Bernie?” Vanessa said. “Hi, Bernie.” Another quick finger wave. “And what a nice doggie.”

“Get dressed,” Dylan said.

Vanessa giggled, started backing away, trying to cover herself, at the same time shrugging her shoulders and raising her eyebrows, a human look that meant, Hey, what can I do? At that moment Bernie must have finally realized his mouth was open. It slowly closed.

Doggie? I closed my mouth, too.

SEVENTEEN

W
e went home. I loved home and hadn’t been there in way too long. While Bernie got the mail out of the box and flipped through it—lines appearing on his forehead, meaning lots of bills—I ran around the lawn sniffing for trespassers. And did we have them, in spades. Spades are a kind of shovel, which I know on account of this perp who once swung one at Bernie and was now wearing an orange jumpsuit at Central State, somewhere in all that being the connection between spades and trespassers, but why worry where exactly? Instead I followed the scents: squirrel, bird, the mailman, toad, and several of my guys, including— Iggy? Was it possible Iggy had been out? I hadn’t smelled Iggy in a long time, couldn’t be sure. I glanced over at Iggy’s place and at that very moment he ran up to the window and saw me. He started barking that yip-yip-yip, got his front paws up against the glass, lost his balance, and tumbled out of sight.

“C’mon, Chet.”

I followed Bernie inside. Ah. I stretched, a really good long stretch, butt up, head down, a little squeak coming out of my mouth for some reason, didn’t even sound like me, me with my deep growly bark, so I barked a few deep growly barks just to hear them and hadn’t quite finished when I noticed a rubber chew toy— one of my favorites, shaped like a doughnut—lying in a corner of the front hall. I’d forgotten all about it! I bounded over and got to work. Meanwhile, the message light was blinking. Bernie pressed the button.

“Hey, this is Janie.” Janie, the groomer; hadn’t been groomed in a while, could probably use it. “Got your message, guess we’re playing phone tag. It’s just about that Post-it note. How’s Chet doing? I’ll be out of reach till the eighteenth, hiking up in the Blood Mountains—please give me a call then.”

“Post-it note?” Bernie said. “What’s she talking about?”

I paused in mid-chew, came pretty close to remembering.

Beep. “Chuck Eckel here. You’re kind of hard to reach, buddy. If I don’t hear from you real soon we’re gonna have to close out your position.”

“What the hell?” Bernie stabbed at the number pad. “Hey,” he said. “Bernie Little.”

“Bernie, my man, where you been?” I recognized the voice of the Hawaiian shirt guy from the Dry Gulch bar, at the same time realizing it was one of those human voices I didn’t like, very friendly on the outside but nasty way deep down.

“Working,” Bernie said.

“Forgotten what you do,” said Chuck Eckel.

“I’m a private investigator.”

“A private dick, huh?”

Bernie hated that expression; his whole body tensed up. “Does all your information come from crappy novels?” he said.

“Say what?”

“Never mind,” Bernie said. “What’s up?”

“Whoa,” said Chuck Eckel. “Back up a sec. What was that crack about crappy novels? I don’t read any goddamn novels.”

“You win,” said Bernie.

Silence on the other end. When Eckel spoke again, the friendly covering of his voice was all gone. “Enough pleasantries,” he said. “You’ve got two hours to cover your position.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Your tin play, what else?”

“But I already covered my position—that three grand, remember?” “It’s deteriorated since then—all this shit in La Paz.”

“Lost me,” said Bernie.

“Don’t you read the papers—the miners are all on strike, they’re rioting in the streets.”

“But . . . but shouldn’t that raise the price?” Bernie said.

“Through the roof,” said Eckel. “But that wasn’t your play. You went short. I need a check for five grand—you’ve got two hours.” Click.

Bernie just stood there, like . . . like he didn’t know what to do. That was impossible. Plus Bernie wasn’t the tallest man I’d ever seen—that would be Cedric Booker, the Valley DA—but no way could you call him short. I went over and stood beside him. He glanced down at me, smiled a little smile.

“Feel like another visit to Mr. Singh?”

Sure. Always had time for Mr. Singh, but a visit now? Didn’t he already have the watch?

“It’ll have to be the ukulele,” Bernie said.

The ukulele? Oh, no.

“What a beautiful instrument,” said Mr. Singh. He turned it over in his hands. “Genuine Hawaiian koa, highly flamed, Sitka spruce top braces, bone nut. Do you play?”

“A bit.”

A bit? Bernie was a master!

“Would a brief selection be possible? Anything at all.”

Of course, it was possible. How about “Waltz Across Texas”? “Parachute Woman”? “Ghost Riders in the Sky”? And there was always “Surfin’ USA,” guaranteed to get them up and dancing. Suddenly I was in the mood to see Mr. Singh dance. I don’t exactly dance, myself, but when dancing starts up I’m no wall-flower either, kind of confusing, the wallflower part, because I’ve often seen flowers—even flowers growing by a wall—dancing in the breeze.

But no brief selection came. Bernie just shook his head and said, “Maybe another time.”

We left with some money, drove in silence to an office building, not one of the downtown towers, but a crummy old place across from a strip mall. A security guard with a toothpick sticking out of his mouth said, “No dogs.” I had to wait in the car. That happened sometimes and I was cool with it. While Bernie was gone I thought about how good it would be to jump up and snatch the toothpick right out of that security guard’s mouth and then just stand there, letting him think he could catch me.

“Tin futures, never again,” said Bernie as we drove away. “Even if you have to tie me down.” Tie Bernie down? Couldn’t and wouldn’t. As for tin futures, I had no clue. And neither, it looked like, did Bernie. That meant no one had a clue, so there was no point even thinking about it. I’m the type who can stop thinking about something in a flash, so I did.

Back home, we went into our own office and Bernie got busy on the whiteboard. I lay on the floor and listened to the marker going squeak squeak, also got involved with its smell, a real head-clearer.

“Over here,” Bernie said, drawing a box and writing something inside it, “we’ve got the Borgheses—the count and Adelina. Passaic? What the hell was that about? Info came from Suzie, and of course that’s part of the . . . Then”—squeak squeak—“we’ve got Aldo, the secretary, Italian name but his English is perfect. Nance, the trainer, supposed kneecapper of Babycakes. And don’t forget Princess.”

Forget Princess? Never. She’d attacked that big bearded guy!

“Hey, Chet, what got into you?”

That growling—was it me? I put a stop to it. Bernie turned back to the board. “Babycakes over here, with Sherman Ganz.” Squeak squeak. “Lives in Vegas but owns Clauson’s Wells, according to the Rio Loco sheriff, who gets his own box down here. And maybe a map would help. Rio Loco Ranch, county seat, weapons test center, Vegas, and what about . . .” The marker moved faster and faster, the whiteboard got blacker and blacker, Bernie’s voice started going fuzzy, the marker smell lost its head-clearing power. “. . . motorcycle . . . scope . . . cabin . . . Suzie . . .” A deep sigh: that was me.