Shut-eye? Curling up? Sleepiness was not the problem! Bernie going back in the hospital? There’s your problem.
There are two ways of stopping things that must be stopped: waiting for someone to do the stopping, or taking charge yourself. Taking charge is the Little Detective Agency way, as I bet you’ve already guessed.
And while you were guessing, I hopped out of the car, just as Bernie had wished, probably the hoppiest of any hop I’d ever hopped. I took off after him, caught up in a flash, and … now what?
He turned and saw me, smiled a big smile. “That’s more like it!”
Meaning he got the point or not? He kept on walking toward the entrance. He did not get the point. Was he distracted? He did have a lot to think about, poor guy. This was not our easiest case. Myron Siegel was paying us, although for what? I was unclear on that. But when someone is distracted, you have to get their attention. One good way is to run around them in circles that get tighter and tighter and faster and faster.
Bernie laughed. “Whoa, there, big guy! A little unsure of your own mind today?”
Not sure of my own mind? I’d never been surer. My mind and I were on the same page, closer than we’d ever been, like peas in a pod. No time to get started on peas, because Bernie kept going, like he wasn’t in the middle of a tighter and tighter and faster and faster circle. He took the last few steps to the door, reached for the handle. The very next second he was going to be back inside that hospital. What would you have done?
I, Chet, grabbed him by the pant leg.
Twenty-five
That was bad. I knew it right away, and if not right away, then the very next instant after right away. For one thing, Bernie was no perp. For another, I loved him.
And now? Now what we seemed to have was a situation outside the entrance to Valley Hospital with Bernie down on the ground and me sort of … standing on top of him? I had trouble believing that myself, but it was hard to deny.
He twisted around and looked up at me. His face—the most beautiful face on the planet—went through some changes. First came shock, an expression you often get on a perp face at moments just like this. But after that, when you usually see fear or anger or even rage, came puzzlement. And then, very slowly, a lovely smile spread across the lovely face. Whatever would have happened next remained a mystery, because people came running up: a couple of security guards and … and someone we knew, namely Dr. Eliza Bethea in her white coat, formerly Doc but now Eliza to us.
“Bernie? Are you all right?”
Bernie scrambled up, dusted himself off. “I’m fine,” he said.
“Did you faint?”
“Oh, no, nothing like that. Chet and I got tangled up, that’s all.”
The security guards backed away.
“Tangled up in what?” Eliza said. “There’s no leash.”
Bernie laughed. “Not a visible one,” he said. “There’s also the question of who’s at which end.”
Eliza’s eyes narrowed. “Sure you feel all right? How about coming into triage and we’ll take your vitals?”
Vitals? That sounded important. No way Valley Hospital or anybody else was making off with our vitals. They belonged to us, end of story. I planted myself in front of the door. Did some sort of backup start building on the other side? I’m good at ignoring things like that. Also aren’t we the law, me and Bernie? That had always been my take.
“I feel great,” Bernie said. “And … and I’m sorry our da—our lunch at Cleon’s ended so abruptly.”
“Work-related,” Eliza said. “I understand, believe me.”
“Doc?” said one of the security guards. “Mind, um…” The security guard made a little shooing motion with her hands.
“How about coffee in the cafeteria?” Eliza said.
Bernie glanced at me. Now we had buildups on both sides of the door. I was getting a bit edgy. Edginess is something that grows and grows until suddenly—
“Chet?” said Bernie. “Let’s go for a little stroll.” He took Eliza’s arm—she looked surprised, but did nothing to take her arm back, if that’s the expression—and moved away from the door, toward a bench.
A stroll? A stroll away from the hospital? What a great idea! I joined Bernie and Eliza, and pronto.
“Did you see the size of that dog?” said someone behind me.
“Keep it moving, folks,” the security guard said.
“What’s going on, Bernie?” Eliza said.
“The hospital seems to be verboten,” he said.
Verboten? That was new. It sounded big and bad. That was Bernie, summing things up in his brilliant way. Meanwhile Eliza gave me a quick glance and then started laughing, that loud but very pleasant laugh of hers. Was the hospital big, bad, and also funny? I didn’t see the funny part, but maybe that was just me.
They sat on the bench. I sat on the ground at one end, namely the end between Bernie and the hospital entrance.
“You really do look good, Bernie,” Eliza said.
“Uh, you, too.”
“I meant in a medical sense,” said Eliza.
Bernie’s face reddened. Red always looks good on him, even if I can’t be trusted when it comes to red.
“I, uh, didn’t,” he said.
Eliza smiled and laid her hand on his. “I’m sorry I was abrupt the other day.”
“Oh, no. Not at all. I didn’t explain very well and…”
She patted his hand. “But now here you are. How did you know I’d be in? In fact, I’m off today, just dropped in to clear some charts.”
“Well, actually, this is work-related, too.”
Eliza withdrew her hand. “So you didn’t…?”
“It’s, uh, a bonus,” Bernie said.
What was going on? Some human conversations, especially between men and women, are impossible to understand. Then came a stroke of luck, namely a Cheeto right under the bench. I squirmed my way over to it. On closer examination, not a Cheeto, but a Cheez-It. The smells are rather similar although the tastes are different. I prefer the Cheez-It taste but the Cheeto is crunchier, so in the end—
By the time I’d gotten that far in my thoughts, the Cheez-It was gone and Bernie was saying, “… name of Frederick Wellington, retired about twenty years ago.”
“Before my time,” said Eliza. “But I’ll see what I can find out.” She turned to me. “How about you guys wait out here?”
Bernie seemed to find that very funny. I myself didn’t get it.
* * *
Eliza was gone for what seemed like a long time. Bernie was silent, kind of slouched and gazing up at the big blue sky. “It’s like Pluto,” he said after a while. “They couldn’t see it but they knew it had to be out there on account of an unknown force acting on Neptune. In this case we’re Neptune—that’s the meaning of those potshots at Hector’s grave. So now we try to get a fix on Pluto.”
Whoa! Way too much information. I remembered those potshots, but Pluto? Neptune? There was Neptune’s Seafood Shack, which I could smell all the way across the Rio Vista bridge, but was now closed on account of some sort of stolen trout scam. The only Pluto I knew was a cartoon member of the nation within, who of course couldn’t talk, although Goofy, another member of the nation within in the very same story, could. “How come, Dad?” Charlie had said. “It’s just a cartoon,” Bernie told him. Charlie got up and left the room. I went with him. We shared a snack or two in the kitchen until Bernie was done watching. But the point is I had no idea how Neptune and Pluto fit into our case. I sniffed the air for trout smells, came up with zip.
Eliza returned, accompanied by a woman in a white uniform and little white hat.
“Bernie,” she said, “meet Tina Wellington, a nurse in our pediatric unit and the widow of Dr. Frederick Wellington. Tina, this is Bernie Little. And Chet.”
Humans of different ages have different smells, maybe news to you. Tina Wellington smelled about the same age as Bernie’s mom, although she didn’t look at all like her. Bernie’s mo
m is big and strong with a voice that penetrates walls, no problem; Tina Wellington was very small, with one of those soft voices that makes human listeners lean in close.
“Nice to meet you,” she said, “but I don’t know what this is about.”
“Bernie?” Eliza said. “Tina’s on lunch break. Maybe you could take her to Carmelita’s.” She pointed across the road. “Try the pulled-pork tacos.”
Bernie smiled and gave Eliza the thumbs-up sign. You hardly ever saw the thumbs-up sign from Bernie. Something to think about.
* * *
But before any thoughts came, we were on the patio behind Carmelita’s and pulled pork was in the air. Tina ordered the vegetarian taco, of no interest to me. Bernie had the pulled pork. I sat close to Bernie, my go-to move, but even more so in this case.
“Chet looks hungry,” Tina said in her soft voice.
“Couldn’t be,” Bernie said. “He had a big bowl of kibble for breakfast.”
Breakfast? I could barely remember it. Nobody makes sense every time, not even Bernie. I gazed at the pulled-pork taco in his hand, sending a message.
“I haven’t had a dog in a long time,” Tina said.
“How come?”
“Fred—my husband—was allergic.”
“But he’s been dead for some time.”
“Sixteen years next month.”
“Tell me about him.”
Tina put down her taco. Her plate was near the table’s edge, in easy reach. Why hadn’t she ordered the pulled-pork? I was having a hard time understanding her.
“Can I ask why?” she said. “I think the world of Eliza—all the nurses do—and she speaks highly of you, but…”
“Did she mention I’m a private detective?”
“She said investigator.”
Bernie smiled. “We’re looking into an old case. Your deceased husband’s name came up.”
“In what way?”
“He signed a death certificate.”
“Is that a problem? Because he was only a GP?”
“Any doctor can sign a death certificate in this state. I’m just trying to flesh out the details on everyone involved, no matter how peripherally.”
Tina nodded, that slight sort of nod that goes with someone starting to budge. “When was this old case?”
“Almost fifty years ago.”
“Goodness,” said Tina. “I was just a little kid.”
“There’s still some of the kid on your face,” Bernie said.
Perhaps that was the kind of human speech called blurting. Tina shot Bernie a quick look, hard to describe. I just knew he now had her attention, and not in a bad way.
“What I meant,” Bernie added quickly, “was that your impressions of him might help anyway.”
Tina folded her hands on the table in a getting-down-to-business way. The Little Detective Agency is all about business, don’t forget. I had a bad moment when I couldn’t remember who, if anyone, was paying. And then it hit me: Myron Siegel! What great news! I waited for Bernie to say, “Champagne all around!” but he did not.
“To start with,” Tina said, “there was the age gap between me and Fred. Plus it was a second marriage for me, fourth for him. But it worked.”
“What attracted you to him?”
She gazed into her water glass. An ice cube made one of those cracking sounds ice cubes sometimes make, always a nice touch, although perhaps too quiet for the human ear. “It’s not easy to sum up.”
Bernie just sat there, looking like he had all day. This was called waiting patiently, one of our best techniques, especially Bernie’s.
“Maybe this sounds foolish,” Tina said at last. “But the heart of it was that he’d been through a lot of pain and come out the other side. It showed in his work—I’d never seen a doc who cared so much for his patients.” She took her eyes off the water glass, turned to Bernie. “Eliza’s a lot like that—in her case with so much technical brilliance added on.”
“What was the cause of all Fred’s pain?” Bernie said.
“A combination of things. The broken marriages, estrangement from his kids—they both took the side of the wives—nagging regrets.”
“Such as?”
“The regrets? Fred didn’t go into that very much. He was trying so hard to be positive. Which he kept up right to the end, through all the cancer. If there’s redemption on this earth then he found it.” Tina picked up her paper napkin, dabbed the corners of her eyes.
“Redemption from what?” Bernie sighed.
“Youthful mistakes,” said Tina. “I don’t know the details.”
“Before your time.”
“Exactly.”
“Before my time, too. And Chet’s.” Bernie smiled at her. He has a number of smiles, all of which you’d love to have coming your way, except for this one.
Tina sat back. “What are you saying?”
“I understand about redemption,” Bernie said. “But whatever the sin was, or the mistake, or whatever you want to call it—well, that often affects others, and stays with them, even passing down the generations. You can end up with people having no chance to understand their own lives.”
Tina shook her head, a very vigorous kind of headshake, like Charlie when he really didn’t want to eat his spinach. “You’re blowing this out of proportion. Fred didn’t kill anybody, or anything like that.”
“You’re sure?”
“What’s going on?” Tina said. “Eliza told me you’re a good person.”
“Very nice of her,” Bernie said. “Did your husband ever mention Tesabe?”
Tina’s face lost all its color. “What do you know about Tesabe?”
“Not much. But I need the facts. It’s the only way to help all the people who didn’t get to be part of Fred’s redemption.”
“Eliza’s wrong,” Tina said. Her forehead bunched up in wrinkles. “You’re mean.”
Tina was way off base, but she seemed very upset so I cut her some slack. As for why she was upset, who knew? Did it have anything to do with her veggie taco? That was my only guess.
“Why do you say that?” Bernie said.
“Because you’re attacking a good man who’s not here to defend himself.”
“Then you defend him.”
There’s a kind of rough-and-tumble that some folks just aren’t cut out for, and I don’t mean only in the human world—you see those types in the nation within from time to time. They just roll over on their backs! What’s the fun in that? Tina did not roll over on her back, but she did start shaking.
Bernie took her water glass, held it out for her. She gripped it, but unsteadily, and water spilled out. Plus an ice cube—an ice cube that fell to the patio floor and was scarfed up by me. Meanwhile Bernie sort of wrapped his hand around hers and guided the glass toward her lips. She drank. In a few moments the shaking ramped down to nothing, and Tina lowered the glass by herself.
“He never called it Tesabe,” Tina said. “It was always goddamn Tesabe. That’s where his life went bad.”
“How?” said Bernie.
“He … he never told me.”
“Why not?”
“Maybe because he felt ashamed,” Tina said. She looked down and her voice got even softer. “If you’re familiar with the concept.”
Bernie went still. I could feel him thinking very hard. He said nothing.
“Never felt ashamed?” said Tina. “Aren’t you lucky?”
Bernie took a deep breath, and in the course of it happened to glance down and see me, now busy with a second ice cube I hadn’t spotted right away. “I have been lucky,” he said. He turned to Tina. “And maybe so have you.”
“What do you mean?”
“Is it possible Fred kept the details to himself in order to protect you?”
Her heartbeat sped up. Pitterpat, pitterpat—a nice little heart now working very hard. “What is this? You know my life?”
“What was he protecting you from, Tina?”
She shook her
head.
“Are you still in danger?”
“How could that be possible? After all these years?”
“It depends on what happened down in Tesabe. That’s what I need to know.”
Then came a surprise. Tina pounded her fist on the table. Maybe not pounded, her fist being so small and her arm so skinny. “But I wasn’t there,” she said. “And I really don’t know anything—not if you’re looking for solid facts.”
“Fred was dealing drugs,” Bernie said. “Is that a solid fact?”
Tina didn’t move, except for her hands, now below the tabletop, tearing strips off her napkin. She took a deep breath. “He wasn’t dealing. Fred was a victim of drugs as much as anybody.”
“So he was dealing just a little bit? To support his own habit?”
“I don’t like the way you put things.”
“But the answer is…?”
“Yes,” Tina said. “But you’re a bully.”
Whoa! How wrong could a person be! But if she really thought Bernie was a bully would her next move be popping him on the nose, which Bernie himself said was the way to deal with bullies? I edged closer to her. She showed no signs of gearing up to throw a punch, no sign of action of any kind, but I remained on high alert.
“Did Fred sell drugs in Tesabe?”
“He might…” She balled up the remains of her napkin, laid it on the table.
“Yes. Yes he did.”
“To whom?”
“I don’t know any names. You can badger me all you want.”
Badgers were suddenly in the picture? What a nasty surprise! I’d had an unfortunate encounter with a badger out in the canyon back of our place, and learned never to go near them. Not long after that, I’d learned it even better. Maybe this case wasn’t going as smoothly as I’d thought.
“Did he ever mention any of these names—Hector de Vargas? Flaco de Vargas? Rosita Flores?”
“None of them.”
“What about Lotty Pilgrim?”
“The singer?”
“Yes.”
“She was on the news,” Tina said. “Something about killing her manager? Is that what all this is about?”
Heart of Barkness Page 21