Thereby Hangs a Tail (7 page)

“Hey, boy,” he said. He stopped rubbing his eyes, looked down at me. I looked up at him. Our eyes met. His face started going back together the right way. “How about a chew strip?” he said.

A chew strip? Had I done anything to earn a chew strip? My mind flashed back to that scene on the runway. I knew the answer to the chew strip question was no. I probably didn’t deserve another chew strip for a long, long while, like a day or two. At the same time, I felt this sudden breeze from behind me, surprisingly strong, and realized my tail was wagging.

Bernie laughed. “Hard to turn down a chew strip, huh, boy?”

Impossible, I guess.

We went into the kitchen. Bernie opened the cupboard over the sink, took out the chew strips and the bourbon. He handed me a chew strip and I started chewing. Hard to explain how good that made my teeth feel. And the taste! Out of this world, whatever that means. Meanwhile, Bernie poured himself a glass of bourbon, a small pour, I was happy to see, until he knocked it back in one go and refilled. He carried the glass with him into the office. I followed, trying to make the chew strip last, although it was almost gone.

Bernie took down the Niagara Falls photo and spun the dial on the safe. Was the rifle coming out again? No idea why we needed it at the moment, but the rifle coming out was always a good idea to my way of thinking. Bernie reached in. Not the rifle; instead he removed a small black box. I knew that black box: inside lay Bernie’s grandfather’s watch, our most valuable possession, except for the Porsche. I gobbled up the last bit of chew strip. We were on our way to see Mr. Singh.

“Bernie! Chet!” said Mr. Singh. “How is our beautiful timepiece today?”

Bernie handed over his grandfather’s watch. His grandfather once owned a big ranch where Mesquite Road and our whole neighborhood was now, but lost everything, possibly because of a drinking problem, although the drinking problem might have come from some other story Bernie had told me, a story about another relative. But not Bernie’s father. Bernie never talked about his father, who’d been dead for a long time. Bernie’s mother was still around. I’d met her once: a piece of work. She lived somewhere far away with a new husband, or an even newer one. She called Bernie Kiddo! What was up with that? But I still shouldn’t have done what I did, a story perhaps for another time.

Mr. Singh held the watch in both hands, admiring it. “Do you know that only a dozen of these were made?” he said. “How I would love to take this on
Antiques Roadshow
.” Mr. Singh had a strange way of talking, almost like music. I could listen to him all day. “Did you ever find out how it came into his possession?” he said.

“No,” said Bernie.

“Thereby hangs a tale, I’m sure,” said Mr. Singh.

A tail? Was Mr. Singh saying Bernie’s grandfather’s watch had a tail? Fun to listen to, Mr. Singh, but hard to understand. We left, a big wad of cash in Bernie’s pocket and a bite or two of curried goat kebab in my mouth. I like ethnic food. So does Bernie. There are picky eaters out there, but not us.

We dropped by the bank, one of those places where I can’t go in. No problem. I was cool about waiting in the car, most times. Bernie wasn’t gone for long. He came back muttering about tin futures and earthquakes in Bolivia. “There’s all this money flowing around, Chet, rivers and rivers of money. How to tap into it, that’s the problem.”

Rivers of money? The only rivers in the Valley didn’t even have water in them. I curled up on my seat and closed my eyes. What were we working on right now? I could only think of one measly case, a divorce in Sunshine City. We hated divorce work, me and Bernie. Maybe I was wrong about those rivers of money, maybe they were real. Wouldn’t that be nice? I could almost see myself diving in.

I woke up feeling tip-top. Where was I? In the car. There was a faint taste of curried goat in my mouth, not bad at all. Everything, or parts of everything, came back to me—the watch, Mr. Singh, nothing on deck but divorce work. I checked Bernie: hands on the wheel, face not happy. I sat up, shifted closer to him.

“Nice nap?” he said.

Very. I opened my mouth real wide, stretching my lips tight, clearing my head. We were on Mesquite Road, not far from home. And there was Iggy in his window. Always good to see Iggy. I heard his faint yip-yip-yip from behind the glass and barked back. He stood up on his back legs, front paws pressing against the window, and watched us go by. We turned into our driveway, and at almost the same time another car drove up, one of those Beetles. I’m no expert on cars—can always spot a Porsche, of course—but Beetles are easy, and this particular Beetle I knew very well. It was yellow, for one thing, and I’d ridden in it a bunch of times: Suzie Sanchez’s car. A great car. There was always a box of biscuits in the glove compartment.

We got out of the Porsche. Suzie was walking toward us. She smelled like soap and lemons, had shiny black eyes that reminded me of the countertops in our kitchen. I liked Suzie a whole lot. She and Bernie exchanged a glance, complicated and awkward. Complicated: that was the problem. In our nation, the nation within the nation, we keep these things simple. Take a recent evening, for example, when I’d heard some persistent she-barking from across the canyon and—

“Hi, Bernie,” she said. “Hey, Chet—looking good.” She reached in her bag. “Can he have a biscuit?”

“He just ate,” said Bernie. Huh? What was he talking about? Surely not the goat kebab, hardly more than a nibble, and quite some time ago, in my opinion. Suzie’s hand emerged from the bag, empty. Human tension is an interesting thing. You can smell it; well, maybe not you, but I can. The smell was out there now, and it got ratcheted up much stronger when Bernie said, “How’s Dylan?”

Yikes. Dylan McKnight was Suzie’s ex-boyfriend, but maybe not completely out of the picture, something about a trip the two of them had taken to LA. I didn’t know Dylan McKnight well, had only met him once, and we hadn’t hit it off—a real pretty boy, and also a former jailbird. The day we met he’d ended up in a tree, the exact details not too clear in my mind, except for the sirloin tips Bernie gave me later.

Suzie’s voice, usually warm and friendly, changed fast to something much colder. “I wouldn’t know,” she said.

“No?” said Bernie. “Is he still in LA?”

“I don’t believe so.”

“He’s back in the Valley?”

Suzie took a deep breath. “Bernie?” she said.

Bernie got this stubborn look on his face. “Yeah?”

“Do we have to talk about him?”

“I don’t know,” said Bernie. “What do you want to talk about?”

“Actually,” said Suzie, “I’m working on a story and your name came up.”

Bernie stopped looking so stubborn. “What story?”

“About this woman.” Suzie flipped open a notebook. “Adelina Borghese.”

“What about her?”

“Seems she was abducted.”

“Abducted?” Bernie flinched, almost as though someone had hit him. I’d never seen him do that before. “We just saw her this morning.”

Suzie went back to the notebook. “Happened shortly after noon,” she said. “Apparently she owns some sort of prize dog.”

“Princess,” Bernie said.

Suzie turned a page and nodded. “Yes, Princess,” she said. “The dog is missing, too.”

SEVEN

A
ll this stuff was going by too fast. Princess was missing? And abduction: was that what we called a snatch in our trade, a kidnapping? I got too hot, started panting.

“Where are you getting your information?” Bernie said.

“A tip,” Suzie answered.

“Who from?”

Suzie’s face hardened and thickened a bit, reminding me very strongly of Bernie in one of his stubborn moods. “I don’t reveal my sources.”

Bernie’s voice rose. That didn’t happen unless he was really upset, and not even usually then. “I don’t want to know your goddamn sources,” he said. “I want to know if your information is accurate.”

Most people backed down right away when Bernie got mad. The truth is Bernie could be—I don’t want to say dangerous, not about Bernie, because he’s the best—so let’s say he could be real tough, but only on perps, and Suzie was no perp. Big surprise: she didn’t back down at all. In fact, her chin came up in an aggressive sort of way. “My information is accurate.”

They glared at each other. I didn’t like the way things were going, not one little bit. I barked. They both looked at me. I was about to bark some more when the phone in the house started ringing. Bernie hurried inside.

I trotted after him. An angry voice was coming through the answering machine. “What the hell’s going on?” I recognized the voice: Lieutenant Stine. “I thought you were working for these people. Snatched in broad daylight? Pick up, for Christ sake.”

Bernie went to the phone. I could tell just from the way he moved, like he was walking through deep water, that he didn’t want to pick up. Then, as I’d seen more than once before, his back got real straight, like somehow he was making himself stronger inside, and he reached for the phone. Bernie—and possibly this is a small difference between us—could force himself to do things he didn’t want to do. But if you don’t mind my asking, why bother?

“Yeah?” he said.

Lieutenant Stine’s voice came over the answering machine. “What the hell happened?”

“You tell me,” Bernie said.

“Some guys blocked her limo on the old Rio Loco Road, pistol-whipped the driver, snatched the Borghese woman. And the goddamn dog. But my question is why weren’t you there?”

“She didn’t hire us,” Bernie said.

“Huh?” said the lieutenant. “She told me she had. It’s not adding up, Bernie—you’re not trying to put one—” Bernie pressed a button and Lieutenant Stine’s voice shrank to a tinny version of itself coming through the earpiece of the phone.

Bernie said, “I’m not trying anything. She fired us so fast it was almost like never getting hired in the first place.” Lieutenant Stine said something I couldn’t make out, and Bernie replied, “Couldn’t tell you why. That’s her right. But where are you on this? Was the trainer in the limo, too? What—”

I heard a loud click on the other end. Bernie put the phone down, glanced at me, then at Suzie. She was busy writing in her notebook.

“Suzie?” he said, very quietly. “What are you writing?”

Suzie looked up. The pen kept moving even without her watching what she was doing. Sometimes humans amaze me. “I’m writing—question for Bernie: why fired?”

Bernie gave her a cold look. Hey! What was going on between them? And the getting fired part: that was all on me, not Bernie. I barked. Suzie closed her notebook, came toward me, stroked my head. “Good boy,” she said. The truth was I’d been bad, not good, but I guess the point wasn’t getting across to Suzie. What could I do? And besides, the stroking felt so nice. I just emptied my mind and enjoyed every second.

“We had a personality conflict,” Bernie said.

Suzie stopped stroking me. “You and Ms. Borghese?” she said.

“Correct.”

“What were the circumstances?”

“I’m not going into that,” Bernie said. “And all this is off the record.”

“All what?”

“What I’m telling you.”

“You haven’t told me anything, Bernie. Maybe you don’t realize how big this is. The Great Western Dog Show’s the mayor’s baby. He’s beside himself right now. And you’re part of the story whether you like it or not.”

“Do I hear a threat?” Bernie said.

A threat? I’d missed that completely. And Suzie was our friend, right? She’d never threaten us. Maybe Bernie was tired. All at once, I was a bit tired, too. I lay down under the hall table. A roof over your head is always nice. I realized that the house had a roof, of course, so in fact I had two roofs over my head, even better. And what about the ceiling? Under the roof, right, but still a kind of roof, too? I got a bit confused.

“No threat,” said Suzie. “Just a heads up, that’s all. The mayor’s pissed off at the chief, and the chief ’s pissed off at Stine, and they’re all going to be looking for a fall guy, so maybe if you got out in front, made some comment that put things in a better light—”

“Meaning blame someone else?” Bernie said.

“Not necessarily,” said Suzie. “Just an explanation of why you were off the case.”