Thereby Hangs a Tail (19 page)

Ring ring. The phone. I opened my eyes: in the office, Bernie at the desk, head down, his own eyes closed. They cracked open blearily as he reached for the phone and knocked it off the desk.

“Bernie?” A voice came from underneath, where the phone had fallen, an irritated voice I knew well: Leda. Bernie bent down, groped around. “Are you there?” she said. “Is this one of your juvenile—”

“Um,” said Bernie scrambling up from under the desk. “Uh, hi.”

“What’s going on? You sound weird.”

“Phone is maybe um . . . bad connection.”

“I can hear you fine.”

By this time, Bernie was in his chair at the desk, phone in place; he waited, back straight, alert.

“Were you asleep?” Leda said.

“At—” Bernie checked his watch. “—one thirty in the afternoon? Of course not.”

“Listen, something’s—”

“I’m listening.”

“Please don’t interrupt, Bernie. I barely have time to explain this.”

“Explain what?” said Bernie, leaning forward, phone tight to his ear.

“Bernie, please.”

“Please what?”

“Please stop interrupting.”

“I’m not interrupting.”

“You just did.”

“I did not.”

“Bernie, for the last time.”

Bernie’s mouth opened and closed.

“The point is,” Leda said, “Malcolm’s out of town on business and a major account is suddenly blowing up so I’ve got to stay till it’s sorted out, plus it’s the maid’s day off and—”

“You want me to pick Charlie up from school?”

“There you go ag—” Leda cut herself off. “Yes,” she said, lowering her voice a bit. “And keep him for the night if possible.”

A big smile lit up Bernie’s face.

Charlie went to a private school—meaning you have to pay money to go there even if you live two blocks from the best public school in the Valley, where you don’t have to pay a dime—a big, long thing I’d heard Bernie say more than once, in fact every time he cut the check. He saw us and came running across the school’s beautiful broad lawn, mowed like a putting green—for some reason, whenever I get on a putting green, and it hasn’t happened often, the urge to run around hits me, crazy running with lots of sharp back-and-forthing—and gave Bernie a big hug. Then a big hug for me, and soon after that I was taking him for a ride on my back. Hey! He’d grown a bit, but still nothing for me; I could have carried him all day.

“Is that your dog?” said a kid.

“His name’s Chet,” said Charlie. “I call him Chet the Jet ’cause he’s so fast.”

“Can I pat him?”

“Sure.”

Kids patted me. Were we having fun or what? It was a nice school, worth every penny.

Back home, Charlie was hungry, so we had a little snack: milk and cookies for Charlie, a biscuit for me, and then another, since I turned out to be hungry, too, and a beer and some pretzels for Bernie, me helping out by finishing off what was left in the pack.

After snack time, Bernie said, “Got any homework?”

“Nope,” said Charlie.

“Then how come your backpack’s so heavy?”

“It’s a mystery,” Charlie said.

Bernie laughed.

“That’s what you do, right?” Charlie said. “Solve mysteries?”

“Sometimes,” Bernie said.

“How many bad guys have you killed?”

Bernie was silent for a moment. “What makes you think I’ve killed any?”

“Mom says so.”

Bernie nodded, took a deep breath. “In this job, solving mysteries, we’ve sent some bad guys to jail, Chet and I, but I’ve never killed anybody.”

“But Mom—”

Bernie held up his hand and Charlie went quiet right away.

“In the war, that’s another story.”

“You killed bad guys in the war?”

“Yes.”

“How many?”

Bernie licked his lips. I’d seen plenty of humans do that, including just about every single one Bernie’d ever interviewed, but I’d never seen him do it himself till now. “I don’t know, exactly.”

“Two?”

“More than two.”

“Nine?”

“Less than nine.”

“Somewhere in between?”

“Yes.”

There was a silence. Then Charlie said, “That’s not too many, Dad.”

Bernie looked away, out the window. Charlie drained the last of his milk, leaving a white mustache behind. I loved those!

“What was the war about?” he said.

“I’m not sure,” Bernie said. “I don’t think anyone is.”

“But it happened anyway?”

“Some wars are like that—the real reasons come later,” Bernie said. “How about we go outside and play catch?”

“Teach me how to throw the curve ball,” said Charlie.

“You’re too young to throw the curve ball.”

“But I need an off-speed pitch.”

“I’ll teach you the cutter.”

“Like Rivera?”

“Just like Rivera.”

Or something like that: I couldn’t hear too well on account of I was already at the front door, waiting as patiently as I could.

EIGHTEEN

B
rush your teeth?” said Bernie the next morning.

“Yeah,” said Charlie.

B“Didn’t hear any spitting,” Bernie said. So what? Bernie didn’t hear a lot of things; but I hadn’t heard any spitting either. Hey! Charlie was tricky.

He laughed.

“Go brush your teeth,” said Bernie.

Charlie went into the bathroom. I followed Bernie into the office. He took down the Niagara Falls picture, opened the safe, and removed an envelope.

“What’s in there?” said Charlie from the doorway.

“That was quick,” Bernie said. “How many teeth did you do?”

“All of them, Dad. Wanna smell my breath?”

“No, thanks.”

Why not? Sounded like a great idea to me. I sidled over to Charlie.

“What’s in the envelope?” he said.

Bernie gazed down at Charlie for a moment, then handed him the envelope. Charlie opened the flap and took out two things: a magazine and the glossy photo of Princess with the bull’s-eye target drawn over her. That reminded me of the huge bull’s-eye target out in the desert and the plane that came screaming out of the sky and I missed a bit of what came next. When I tuned back in, Charlie had the magazine open and was placing the Princess photo against the narrow ripped margin inside.

“It fits,” he said.

“Sure looks like it,” said Bernie.

“Is it a clue?”

“I think so.”

“About what, Dad? Is that little dog in trouble?”

“Probably,” Bernie said.

“What are you gonna do?”

“Find her.”

“Can I come?”

Bernie smiled. “What about school?”

“I could do a report on it.”

“Nice try.”

We dropped Charlie off at school, then swung by Nixon Panero’s. Nixon Panero was one of our best sources, kind of strange because we’d put him away for a year or two. He had an auto body shop and garage at the end of a long line of car places in a bad part of town. My old buddy Spike was lying by a stack of tires. He saw us and came charging over—not really charging, now that Spike was getting on a little, his angry face turning white—and stood in front of the car, hair on end, barking and barking. Spike was still one scary-looking dude, part Rottweiler, part pit bull, part unknown. We got out and Bernie went into the office. Spike had no interest in Bernie. He came right for me, showing his teeth, gone all yellow and brown, and lunged for my neck, still surprisingly quick. But not quick enough, not quick like—this! And in a flash it was old Spike who got taken by the neck. His fur tasted horrible, like motor oil. I let him go. He retreated a step or two and growled. I growled back. He growled. I growled. He turned, walked over to the stack of tires and lay down, his eyes on me. I moved toward the bays where the mechanics worked, glancing back once. Yes, one of my best buddies, but Spike couldn’t be trusted.

The Porsche was already up on a lift and Bernie and Nixon were standing under it, peering up.

“Say that again?” Bernie said.

“Gonna cost you,” said Nixon.

“I caught that,” Bernie said. “I meant the part about what’s wrong.”

Nixon told Bernie what was wrong, but I missed most of it, partly because of all the strange words, mostly because Nixon was hard to understand anyway, on account of him always chewing on a big plug of dip.

“But I thought you’d checked all of this out while it was still on the lot,” Bernie said. “Before money changed hands, if you see what I mean.”

“Course I did,” Nixon said. He spat out a nasty glob. “But like I told you, can’t make no promises with these antiques. They’re tempermental—like them old-time Hollywood stars.”

“Didn’t know you were a movie buff.”

“The biggest,” Nixon said. “I got every movie Bette Davis ever made, bar fuckin’ none.” He tapped with his wrench at the underside of the car. “Want me to get started on this or not?”

Bernie was gazing at Nixon, mouth open. He closed it, opened it again, and said, “Yeah.”

I went over and sniffed at the nasty glob. Wow. My stomach lurched and I backed away. Believe it or not, I’d actually seen Spike lick up a glob just like this, maybe bigger. Had to admire the big guy, no doubt about it.

The sun was high in the sky when we drove out of there and hit the freeway. The car sounded lovely to my ears, strong and purring, almost like some powerful animal, except its smells were all machine.

“Bette Davis,” Bernie said after a while. A new name to me and I waited for more. But no more came. Much later, Vegas rising in the distance, Bernie said, “Suzie would sure get a kick out of . . .” He went silent again.

We tracked down Sherman Ganz at his tennis club. Been on plenty of golf courses—especially a while back when Bernie took up running on them in the evening to get in shape. Love golf courses, the water hazards especially. But this was my first time at a tennis club, although I’ve had a lot of experience with tennis balls, of course. All kinds of balls, really: tennis balls, baseballs, rubber balls, lacrosse balls—my favorite actually, the way those suckers bounce, and just wonderful for chewing, can’t begin to tell you the feelings that zing up and down my teeth—and even footballs, which you have to grab by the end. Soccer balls and basketballs are impossible unless—and it took me forever to figure this out—you gnaw a hole or two in them, and then they shrink down to a manageable size. The problem with that, as I found out one time when Bernie was playing in a Police Athletic League game and the ball suddenly came bouncing to where I happened to—but maybe we’ll get to that another time. At the moment, Bernie and I were walking down a lovely path, flowers growing all around—oh, the smells, I can’t even begin—to a tennis court, thwack thwack sounds rising toward us.

On one side of the net stood a tall blond guy with a bucket of balls at his feet; on the other side, an older guy, small, with a gray beard: Sherman Ganz. I always notice beards. A strange human thing: only some men have them, and women never. What was that about?

The tall blond guy took a ball from the bucket and hit it to Ganz. Ganz wore white shorts, had skinny legs like sticks. He swung his racquet and hit the ball back. The tall guy let it go by, took out another ball. “Brush up, Shermie, brush up. Spin on the ball, always spin on the ball.” He hit the ball over the net. Ganz swung, this time missing the ball completely. “Brush up but through, up but through, up but through,” said the tall guy, sending over another ball. Brush? I knew brushes, saw none around. Maybe tennis was tougher than it looked, but I didn’t worry about that because a ball came bouncing over in our direction—we were now beside the court—and I snatched it out of the air, and who wouldn’t have, the ball being right there practically saying, “Catch me.” And then—this part was a bit harder to understand—I was on the court, racing toward the net. Up and over: not much of a challenge, tennis nets turning out not to be very high, but still it felt so great, being airborne and all, that I kind of twisted around still up there, if you see what I mean, and landed facing back at the net, and the next thing I knew I was jumping over it again, from the other direction, and, yes! doing the spin move once more, and when I landed this time, somehow with two balls in my mouth now—how had that happened?—I—

“Chet!”

We sat on a patio overlooking the court, Sherman Ganz and Bernie facing each other across a table, me at Bernie’s feet, still and silent. The tall guy was feeding balls to a woman now, saying, “Racquet back, firm wrist, relax your hand, brush, brush.” A very tough game: balls were spraying all over the place. I ignored them completely.