I didn’t understand the question.
“C’mon, boy,” he said, his voice not loud but full of strength and power. How I loved that! “Into the house. Let’s go get ’em.”
No time to figure out who he meant. What an evening this was turning out to be! I happened to notice the .45—first actually catching a whiff of it, to be accurate. It lay on the hard-packed dirt of the backyard. I picked it up and offered it to Bernie. He gave me a very nice pat.
THIRTEEN
* * *
The heavy steel back door hung open. We waltzed right in, me slightly in front, found ourselves in a darkened kitchen, a fridge humming away against the far wall, baloney and cheddar cheese inside it. I made another one of those mental notes—hey! I was starting to get it!—and headed for a narrow and dimly lit hall. Somewhere in the front of the house, a door slammed. The next moment we were both running. We charged down the hall and into a front room lit by a lamp with a naked bulb. What else? Two open beer bottles, not empty; two pizza boxes, also not empty, neither pizza including pepperoni, which made no sense to me; a TV on the wall, the biggest thing in the room by far, football on the screen, sound off. In short, a homey little scene, missing only the people.
Vroom vroom. A motorcycle engine started up. Of course! Dee’s motorcycle in the front yard! I was fitting the pieces together like never before. Bernie threw open the door and we burst outside. And what a lot we had to take in, with not much time for doing it. For one thing, the gate was open. For another, the bike was already on the street, Dee up top. She was watching a little long-haired dude in jeans and a T-shirt—both arms pretty much totally inked up—who was . . . over by the Porsche? Kind of kneeling like he was . . . slashing the tires!
We raced toward the gate. Dee glanced in our direction and yelled, “Billy!” Then she spun the bike around and rumbled right up next to him.
“Billy!” Bernie shouted. “Stop! Think! Your parents!”
Billy turned toward Bernie, his mouth—a soft sort of mouth—opening, his look confused, the lines of the snakehead on his cheek hard and clear. “My parents? What about them?”
Dee shouted, too, almost louder than Bernie, and way higher. “Get on the goddamn bike!”
Billy took one last glance at Bernie, then hopped up behind Dee. The next moment I was in midair, but Dee spun the bike again, tires smoking, and I flew right over the top. Dee gunned the engine, the front wheel rising off the pavement. Bernie dove, grabbed hold of Billy’s wrist, and started getting dragged away from me. I caught the look in his eyes: he was never letting go, no matter what. But then Dee swerved, grazing a fire hydrant by the side of the road, and rubbing Bernie right off. He lost his grip on Billy and rolled into the gutter. The bike zoomed to the crossroads, made another one of Dee’s low-leaning turns, and vanished from sight. I ran over to Bernie.
He was already sitting up, looking not too bad, except for torn clothing and some scrapes here and there. Bernie is a tough man, and don’t you forget it. The worst scrapes were on his arm. I gave that arm a lick. He opened his fist: and there was his grandfather’s watch, our most valuable possession! Any more questions about Bernie? Just when you think he’s done amazing you, he amazes you again. We had the watch! Did that mean the case was closed? For a moment or two I thought so. Then I remembered that we hadn’t actually collared any perps. Plus one of the front tires on the Porsche did not look good. Meaning we were in a real bad part of South Pedroia with no ride. At that point I spotted the stopper, once more lying on the ground all on its lonesome. I went over and got it. This case was not closed. Maybe it wasn’t even going that well.
Bernie took the gun, rose, went over to the Porsche, checked out the tires. Two were just fine. The other two had deep slashes across the sidewalls. Bernie took out his phone.
“Nixon?” he said, the only Nixon I knew being Nixon Panero, our buddy and the best mechanic it the Valley. “Need a favor.”
Then I heard Nixon’s voice, tiny over the phone. “The paying kind?” he said. Bernie laughed, so maybe some joking had been going on. If so, I’d missed it.
We went back in the house, searched it from top to bottom, although since there was only one floor we just had to do the bottom. Sometimes you catch a break in this job. And of course it’s always interesting to watch a pro like Bernie conducting a search, looking under pillows, overturning furniture, tapping walls. After a while, I got a little less interested, wandered into the kitchen, nosed up the lids of the pizza boxes, made extra sure they were pepperoniless. Do things right, as Bernie always says. Only one slice left in each box, and no pepperoni, just as I’d thought. I tried the chicken and mushrooms first and then the plain cheese and tomato. The truth is I’d had better, but no complaints. I was trying to lick off a long and sticky string of cheese that had gotten stuck to my muzzle, when I heard Bernie in the front room.
“About time,” he said.
I trotted into the front room. He was looking out the window, one of those high windows, which meant I had to stand up on my back legs, front paws on the glass. We looked out the window side by side, me and Bernie, our heads at the same height, which was always nice.
A black-and-white came down the street. “No sense of urgency at all,” Bernie said. “Even kind of cynical, if you can say that about driving.” I had no idea, but if Bernie said it, then it had to be right. “I understand why Valley PD assumes the worst in a neighborhood like this, but we’ll never change things without—what’s this?”
The cruiser slowed down, pulled over next to the Porsche. A cop got out, the kind of cop you sometimes see who’s rocking the belly hanging over gun belt look. He walked around the cruiser, fished his ticket pad out of his shirt pocket, and . . . started writing us up?
“What the hell?” Bernie said.
We hurried outside, not quietly, but the cop didn’t appear to have heard us. He was chewing gum—cinnamon flavor.
“Hey!” Bernie called. “Hold it.”
The cop’s head turned slightly toward us but he didn’t stop writing.
“What are you doing?” Bernie said as we came up to him.
The cop chomped on his gum once or twice—a pretty big glob of it, to judge by how hard his jaws were working. “What’s it look like?” He tore the ticket off the pad and stuck it under our wiper blade. “Parking in a delivery zone, fifty bucks. You got twenty-one days to pay, then it’s a hunnert.”
“That’s your priority?”
“Huh?”
Bernie motioned toward the yellow house. “What about your goddamn call?”
The cop cracked his gum, normally a sound I like a lot, but not now. “That’s how your mama taught you to address an officer of the law?” he said.
Without actually moving, Bernie somehow closed the distance between him and the cop. I tried to do the same thing, but maybe cheated a little. The cop seemed to notice me for the first time. He backed up a step, hand on the butt of his gun.
“Leave my mother out of this,” Bernie said, in this certain quiet tone he has that makes the fur on my neck stand up, which it now did. I felt like . . . like grabbing somebody by the pant leg, this cop, for example. Was he a perp? I got a little confused. As for Bernie’s mom, a real piece of work—she calls him Kiddo!—I agreed with him: we had enough complications at the moment. Was she coming again for Thanksgiving? Maybe it was far off.
Sometimes a physical fight can happen without any actual punches getting thrown. This was one of those times. “Suit yourself,” the cop said, turning his head and spitting out his gum. Bernie won.
“Let’s back up a bit,” he said. “How come East Arroyo sent you by yourself?”
“East Arroyo?” said the cop.
“The precinct we happen to be standing in. Why just you?”
The cop shrugged. “It’s a one-man patrol car.”
Bernie glanced at the house. “Must have been pretty noisy here for a bit, reason it got called in in the first place. Sending one lone car seems reckles
s.”
The cop squinted at Bernie. Sometimes humans squint when they’ve forgotten their glasses. Sometimes it’s when they’re facing the sun. Or when they’re trying to understand something. Or just being a jerk. This cop’s squint—never a good look on any human in my opinion—was one of those last two.
“Call?” he said. “Don’t know about any call.”
“Then what are you doing here?” Bernie said.
“My job. I’m on patrol.”
“You just happened by?”
“I’m on patrol,” the cop said again. I got the feeling he liked saying it.
“Very conscientious,” Bernie said. “What’s your name?”
“It’s on the ticket,” the cop said. He got in the cruiser, moving kind of quickly like he was all of a sudden running late, and drove away.
Bernie slid the ticket out from under the wiper blade, held it up to the light. With no streetlights working, that meant the light of the dark-pink sky. “Totally illegible,” he said. “But guess what, big guy?” Uh-oh. I had to guess something? I guessed that we were planning to end the evening with steak tips at the Dry Gulch Steakhouse and Saloon. “I caught the number on his badge—eighteen sixty-three.” I liked my guess better. Bernie reached into the Porsche, grabbed a pen, and started writing on the palm of his hand. A lot of that going on lately: I took it as a good sign. Meanwhile, Bernie paused, his brow furrowing a bit. Those forehead lines should have made him seem older; in fact, he now looked more like Charlie. Life’s full of surprises, big and little. “Or was it eighteen thirty-six?” he said. Sounded like more than two. I couldn’t help him.
Then we were just standing there on the street, Bernie gazing at the yellow house, me gazing at Bernie. “Couldn’t even remember the goddamn number,” he said in this voice he has just for talking to himself. “Everybody loses it eventually. I just didn’t think . . .” He rubbed his forehead.
Whatever this was, I didn’t like it.
Bernie looked at me in surprise. “What are you growling about?”
Growling? I stiffened my ears for hard listening. Yes, growling for sure. And it had to be me, no other members of the nation within nearby.
“Annoyed they got away, huh?” Bernie said.
No! That wasn’t it! Although, thinking it over, I was annoyed they’d gotten away. So maybe that was it after all. I growled again. Bernie gave me a pat.
“Don’t worry. We’re not done yet. We got the watch back, didn’t we?”
My tail started up. A successful evening so far? I couldn’t think of any reason why not. Then Nixon came driving down the street at the wheel of a big wrecker with flashing lights all over the place and painted dancing girls on the fenders. Would I trade places with anyone on this earth? You tell me.
• • •
We drove to the East Arroyo precinct HQ, not far away. Hadn’t been there in some time. I’ve got buddies at most of the precinct houses, but one of my favorites is Munchy Ford, and wouldn’t you know it? There was ol’ Munchy on desk duty when we walked in.
“Hey, Chet!” he said. “And Bernie. How ya doin’?”
“No complaints,” Bernie said. “You?”
“Gotta lose fifty pounds,” Munchy said. “Doc won’t replace my hip until I do. Talk about blaming the victim, huh?”
“Uh . . .”
“But what can you do? Bastard’s got me by the balls.”
Oh, no. Had I ever heard anything so horrible? At the same time, I saw no one crouched under Munchy’s desk, and he didn’t seem to be in pain. Some things are hard to understand.
“Which is how come I didn’t finish my supper,” Munchy went on, opening a drawer. “Self-discipline. But it’s been talkin’ to me nonstop. Think Chet would be up for half a roast beef sandwich?”
“He just had pizza,” Bernie said. How did he know? But no time to figure it out, because I was already over by Munchy’s drawer. If half a roast beef sandwich could talk, I wanted to see it up close.
The half sandwich remained silent, reminding me of some of the very toughest perps we’d come across. Munchy held it out for me. I didn’t take it. Speak, sandwich!
“Don’t want it, Chet?” Munchy moved like he was going to put the sandwich back in the drawer. I snapped out of whatever I’d snapped into and grabbed it out of Munchy’s hand. He laughed. “What was that all about?”
“Couldn’t tell you,” Bernie said. He gave me a careful look. I gave him a careful look back, chewing a juicy bite of roast beef at the same time.
“Tell you one thing about Chet,” Munchy said. “He’s the take-no-prisoners type.”
Bernie nodded. As I may have mentioned, Bernie has many nods, meaning all kinds of things. This particular nod had to mean no, because Bernie knew I was very much the taking-lots-of-prisoners type, having rounded up too many to count in my career, even for a good counter like him.
“Any calls come in for ninety-seven Velez Street tonight?” Bernie said.
“That anywhere near Orlando’s?” said Munchy.
“Four or five blocks east.”
“His lamb chops are off the charts,” Munchy said. He glanced at his computer screen. “Nope. No calls. Been a quiet night, so far. Couple of nightclub stabbings, assault with intent, suspected arson at the chemical plant—nothing to write home about.”
“Name Dee Branch mean anything to you?”
“Nope.”
“Ever come across identical twins, six four, two thirty or so, shaved heads, Fu Manchu mustaches?”
“Nope,” said Munchy. “And I hope it stays that way.”
Bernie checked the palm of his hand. “Who’s eighteen sixty-three?”
“Here at the precinct? We got no one with that number.”
“Might be eighteen thirty-six.”
Munchy shook his head. “No one under two triple zero in this building. Not since the reshuffle.”
“Can you find him anyway?”
“Sure,” said Munchy, turning to his keyboard. “Is this kosher?”
“Don’t see why not,” Bernie said, which was great news, kosher chicken being the best of all possible chickens. True, I hadn’t quite polished off the roast beef sandwich, but isn’t it nice to have something to look forward to?
“Here we go,” Munchy said, tapping the screen with his soft, plump finger. “Officer up at Indian Hills.”
“Name?”
“Mickles.”
“Mickles?” Bernie said, leaning closer to the screen.
“First name Garwood, eight years on the force. Some relation to Brick Mickles, detective captain up there, as I recall. Nephew, maybe?” He turned to Bernie. “You know Brick?” Then something changed in Munchy’s eyes, like they kind of went private, and he looked away.
FOURTEEN
* * *
Any ideas?” Bernie said as we drove away from the East Arroyo precinct house.
Ideas? Since when were ideas my department? I brought other things to the table, such as grabbing perps by the pant leg. Did I expect Bernie to do the pant leg grabbing? No. But if he wanted ideas, then I’d get cracking on that, and pronto. I got cracking. No ideas came. I tried harder, tried so hard I felt this pressure in my head, right at the top part, quite unpleasant. I put a stop to that, tried to think of some other way to come up with ideas. Even that—trying to think of how to come up with ideas—brought the unpleasant pressure.
“What are you doing?” Bernie said, glancing over.
Me? Not a thing.
“Showing a lot of upper front gum line there, big guy. And your nose is all wrinkled up.”
Oh, no! How embarrassing! A real good shake was the only way to get out of this, not so easy in the shotgun seat, but I gave it my best shot. We swerved across the yellow line and over to the wrong side of the road, not sure why. Bernie was normally the best wheelman in the Valley.
“Christ Almighty!” he jerked the wheel, got us back where we belonged. He gave me a look—couldn’t call it annoyed; no way Bernie coul
d ever be annoyed with me—so it had to be something else, like maybe he was tired. Bernie needs his sleep.
“Let’s go home,” he said. “Sleep on it.”
Whoa! I was right about Bernie being tired, of course, but this particular sleep was going to be a first, and maybe even not that safe, on account of the roof of our house being the slanting kind. Why couldn’t we just sleep inside, like normal? I came very close to giving myself another shake, thought better of it, curled up on the seat.
We went home, walked through the house and out onto the patio. And there was Iggy, just where we’d left him, although you couldn’t say things were right, exactly.
“Oh, Iggy!”
At which point I had an idea after all, zooming in from out of the blue. No effort on my part, no unpleasant head pressure, just a big and simple idea: I wanted Iggy back at his place, and fast. My best pal, yes, but living together? A bad idea: I never would have guessed how bad. Now I knew.
Some time later, we all lay down for the night—Bernie in his bed; me lying in the hall by the front door, the sounds and smells of the night leaking in through the crack underneath; and Iggy right beside me, for some reason. Whenever I tried to roll away, he rolled away with me. The difference was he slept more deeply than any member of the nation within I’d ever known, while I was up practically the whole night. At least we weren’t on the roof. All in all, no complaints.
• • •
“Well, well,” Bernie said first thing next morning, Iggy bounding toward him across the hall, “who’s looking chipper?”
And next he was giving Iggy a nice pat. As I got my paws under me and slowly rose—also trying not to yawn, which never works—I thought of wood chippers, no telling why. Iggy and I go way back, if I haven’t mentioned that already.
I was on my way to Bernie and Iggy, all set to make some space between them, enough for me and no one else, when there was a knock at the door. A knock at the door and I hadn’t heard anyone coming? What with security being part of my job? I whirled around and barked at the door, yes, savagely, like I was going to take it apart, and then take apart whoever was out there, and then—
Scents and Sensibility Page 11