I hurled myself at the grate again, ran in a tight circle again, hurled myself at it once more. And again. And again. And again. And again. And each time I did, I saw a new sort of still photo of what was going on out there in the deep red light. Like Vanko elbowing Bernie in the neck. Like Bernie somehow throwing one of those kidney punches and rolling out from underneath Vanko. Like the two of them on their feet, circling each other. Like Bernie on the ground again, Vanko sitting on him and reaching for something he had under his shirt, behind his back. Like: a knife, a knife with a thick, heavy blade, maybe the ugliest I’d ever seen.
Splinter! Crash! Suddenly, the grate fell away. I hadn’t even been aware of any weakening, was aware of nothing but what was going down outside. Now I leaped through the opening and bounded, once, twice, and straight at Vanko. Somehow, despite the evening being so full of wild barking and howling, he heard me coming, twisted around, and jabbed at me with his ugly knife. I bent my body up and over the point of the blade like a horse taking a jump and … forget the part about the horse. Just leave it at me dodging the knife, or just about. I did feel the point graze my chest, but very lightly, not worth a thought.
What I needed to think about was Vanko, who was on the move. First, he cracked Bernie in the jaw with the butt of the knife handle. Then he jumped up and came right at me. In my whole career, no one—not the meanest, baddest perp—had ever charged me like that, even ones that had a knife. The gun-toters didn’t have to charge, of course, able to pick you off from a safe distance.
But never mind that. Vanko ran toward me, the knife blade the only bright thing in the gathering dimness. Bernie says there’s a right way and a wrong way for holding the knife in a fight. The wrong way is with the stabbing grip, blade pointed down. We don’t worry about those guys. The right way is with the sticking grip, blade pointed straight out. Those are the guys we worry about. Vanko turned out to be one of them.
Not only that, but Vanko was enjoying himself a little too much. We like a good dustup ourselves from time to time, me and Bernie, but do our tongues sort of stick out a bit in the midst of it, and do our eyes go suddenly soft and damp in a creepy way? I don’t think so.
Bottom line. I did not like Vanko. And he did not like me. Human hatred has a smell you want to stay away from, and right now, it was everywhere. He charged, point of the blade out front. And I charged him. Oh yes. I’m not the type who scares easily, if at all. I sprang. He stuck at me with the knife, aiming right for my heart. I tried to twist away in midair but—uh-oh, how quick he was! I realized something pretty bad: there was a chance I wasn’t going to be able to—
But here was Bernie, from out of nowhere and at the very last instant, or even later, in midair, diving at Vanko like some sort of man-shaped rocket. His shoulder hit Vanko in the lower part of the back, making a boom that I associated with car wrecks, and Vanko got knocked up high, right over me, knife and all. Yes, somehow he managed to keep hold of the knife, maybe not quite in proper sticking position, but close, as he bent backward from the force of Bernie’s blow and did a sort of complete backflip, although not quite, since he landed facedown. The part about how he kept his grip on the knife is important, because when he hit the ground, Vanko screamed a terrible, deep bellowing scream that went on and on. I remembered the worst TV show Bernie and I had ever watched, a show about bullfighting. I’d never heard of bullfighting, and Bernie changed the channel right away, but not before I saw too much. Now, outside Neddy’s trailer, I leaned forward and puked out everything that was in me.
Bernie, on his knees, moved over to me, put his hand on my back. “You okay?”
Perfectly fine. That was the cool thing about puking. You feel bad just before and when you’re doing it, but the moment it’s over, you bounce back to feeling your tip-top self. At least that’s how it works for me.
But what about Bernie? His face didn’t look so good. His nose was bleeding, and while it had always been a little crooked—beautifully crooked, by the way—it seemed crookeder now, perhaps not beautifully. I was considering making it all better with a quick lick when Bernie struggled to his feet and went over to Vanko. I followed.
Vanko lay on his front, twisted sideways in a way that looked uncomfortable. His head was turned toward us, and the one eye we could see was open. Now he wasn’t screaming or making any sound at all, but that bullfight scream of his seemed to hang in the air, refusing to go away. A dark pool was spreading on the ground from under him, a pool that somehow caught the very last of the red sunset, although the sun was completely gone. I didn’t see the knife anywhere.
Vanko’s eye shifted, first to Bernie, then to me, and back to Bernie. His lips moved. Bernie leaned in closer to hear. I could hear just fine from where I was. And it really didn’t matter, because when Vanko spoke, his voice wasn’t particularly soft.
“I will see you very soon,” he said.
The light went out of his eye at once. What used to be him just lay there as he’d been lying, but everything had changed. Vanko was gone, and this … this was what got left behind.
Bernie sat down beside me, kind of heavily, with a thump. He rubbed his forehead. Uh-oh. That was very worrisome. Then he smiled a quick little smile and put his arm around me.
“What would I do without you?” he said.
The question made no sense. The whole situation was unimaginable. I gave his poor nose a quick lick. Did he wince the slightest bit? I did it again, even more gently if that was possible. What was this? He winced again? But no problem, because this time, he laughed—a brief sort of bark, quite pleasant on the ears—and said, “First, let’s get this fixed.”
I wasn’t sure what Bernie meant. When it came to fixing things—under the hood of the Porsche, for example—we’d had more bad luck than good. But he made no move toward the car. Instead, he took hold of his nose, said, “On three. One, two, YIKES.” That yikes came when he gave his nose a quick, violent twist, making a loud crack that reminded me of wishbones on Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving was my favorite holiday, and I hoped it still would be after this.
Bernie patted his nose. “Ah, that feels better. How does it look?”
Beautiful. The most beautiful nose in the world. We were doing pretty good, me and Bernie.
He rose to his feet, nice and easy, no struggle this time, went over to the body, and turned it over. The knife was stuck deep in Vanko’s chest, and at an angle that was unpleasant to see.
“Everyone’s being so clever,” he said. “How about we get clever, too?”
A genius idea, even if I didn’t quite get it. But that was Bernie every time.
* * *
Getting clever turned out to be complicated. First, we listened for anything we should be hearing, me listening and Bernie watching me. Then we went through Vanko’s pockets, Bernie going through the pockets and me watching him. All we found were a set of car keys. Bernie pressed a button on the fob, and headlights flashed on through the trees.
We walked over to the car, a black SUV. I sniffed around it. Bernie opened up and searched inside. “Nothing,” he said. “No papers, no registration, not even a gum wrapper.” He tossed the keys onto the driver’s seat and closed the door. We returned to the body. Bernie took a deep breath and said, “This won’t be easy.”
He was so right. Lifting up the body and carrying it to the Porsche? That didn’t look easy. Somehow arranging the body so the three of us would fit? That looked even harder. Getting me to agree to riding on the tiny shelf in back, supposedly the only way this was going to work? Hardest of all. And just when we were set to go, something lying on the ground in front of the trailer caught my eye. I hopped out and—
“Chet!”
—raced over, grabbed the thing, and brought it to Bernie: the purple-covered magazine, possibly called the high school yearbook.
“Chet.”
* * *
It felt like way past dinnertime. Were we headed for home? If so, we didn’t go there immediately. First, we came c
lose to getting a speeding ticket, one of those things we do in New Mexico. We were zooming on a long, straight desert road with big rocky outcrops here and there, not much traffic, and the moon rising in a starry sky. A perfect night, except for this passenger of ours making things a bit uncomfortable. But not the point, which was all about suddenly hearing these strange little squeaks going back and forth, the kind of squeaks you hear sometimes when bats are around—although not you, in fact—but not exactly that. More machinelike, if that makes any sense, and if it doesn’t, that’s the best I can do.
I’m not fond of bats. I’m not a fan of any birds at all, but here’s something that will shock you: bats aren’t birds! I know because once I heard Bernie tell Charlie, “No feathers. They’re mammals just like us.”
How disturbing was that? Bats were like Charlie, Bernie, and me? The thought made me uncomfortable in my own skin, and I told myself to forget it, now and forever. Which I clearly hadn’t done. So maybe you’ll understand why, on that long stretch of desert road, I started barking.
Bernie lightened up on the gas. “Something bothering you, big guy?” He gave me a close look, slowing down more. We passed one of those rocky outcrops at what Bernie calls grandma speed—although once an actual grandma and part-time drug runner name of Grannie Helmholtz got clean away from us on the Old Sonoita Road driving a sedan with a flat tire, maybe two—and what was lurking on the other side of that outcrop? Yes, a cruiser, lights off but the cop’s face green in the dashboard glow. The cruiser stayed where it was.
“Chet? Did you somehow…”
I waited to hear what I’d somehow done, but Bernie never said.
* * *
Second, we stopped off at the empty space where EZ AZ Desert Tours and Mini Golf had been, not actually stopping but slowing down.
“Why do I keep thinking about golf?” Bernie said.
Because we were joining a golf club? You had to be rich for that. So we were going to be rich? Maybe soon? What good news! But first, didn’t we have to do something about this passenger, whose heavy leg was pressing into my side, making me uncomfortable in many ways?
No explanation came from Bernie. We sped up a little and followed the bumpy trail into the hills, just like we had on a night that felt long ago but probably wasn’t. It was a bright night just like this, but it seemed different. Was that because the mine at the end of the trail—where Mickey Rottoni had parked his green ATV, if I was remembering right—was now just a rubbly mess on the side of a hill?
We parked below the rubble. The remains of yellow crime scene tape blew here and there in the breeze. The moonlight made things a lot like daytime, except in black and white. Once, Bernie tried to explain to Charlie how black-and-white movies were better than color.
“Dad. Please.”
I missed Charlie, although this was probably not the kind of outing for him. We got out of the car and made our way into the rubble, me because Bernie was doing it and Bernie for reasons of his own. He picked up a big rock—in fact, huge—and stood still for a moment like … like a mighty statue! And also a thinking statue—I can feel his thoughts so easily on nights like this.
“How smart do we have to be, Chet?” he said. “Is there really such a thing as being too smart for your own good?”
Uh-oh. I hoped not. Did it mean being the smartest human in the room wasn’t good? If so, we were in trouble. I forgot this little bit at once.
Bernie dropped the huge rock to the side, picked up another. What luck! We were digging a hole. Bernie handled the big rocks, and I got busy with the dirt underneath. Soon, we had a nice-looking hole, not the deepest we’d ever dug, but we were just getting started.
Or maybe not. Bernie dropped one more rock, then straightened up. “That’s enough,” he said. “Doesn’t have to be perfect.”
No? I like perfection in the holes I dig, but if Bernie says no perfection, then that’s that. We went back to the car. Bernie hefted Vanko on his shoulders and carried him up the slope, possibly staggering just the slightest, although I might have been mistaken. Please change that to me being mistaken for sure.
Bernie did his best to lay Vanko gently in the hole. The moonlight glinted on the knife, still in his chest. We covered him up under dirt and rocks. Then we just stood there side by side. We were both not quite at our best. Bernie was dealing with big questions in his mind. I could feel them. I had a question of my own, a question that wouldn’t seem to go away: Why couldn’t we have dug the hole deeper? Even just a little bit, nothing like perfection? I pawed at the ground, specifically at a small bump that needed smoothing out. Could Bernie possibly be bothered by that? I glanced at him. He wasn’t even watching. I pawed some more, first with just one front paw but then gradually letting the other front paw pitch in when it got the notion. Anything worth doing is—
Hmm. What was this? The end of a sort of sticklike thing, a stick with a leather—what would you call it? Grip, maybe? That seemed right. A stick with a leather grip? Who wouldn’t want to chew on something like that? I got a nice firm hold of the stick and with a few quick head shakes twisted it out of the ground.
Bernie looked down. “Chet? What you—?”
He reached out. I let him take the thing.
“A putter?” he said.
A putter for sure. I knew putters from mini golf. Bernie turned it in his hands, hefted it, felt it, studied it from this angle and that. There was some writing on it. Bernie read it out loud.
“Tiger Woods.”
Tiger Woods? Come again? I tried to make sense of that and got nowhere. But one thing for sure. This case had taken a dangerous turn. I knew tigers from Animal Planet and had seen what they could do.
Bernie! Get rid of that putter! Throw it away!
But he did not. Instead, he carried it to the car and took the Swiss Army knife from the tool kit. He made a slice in the leather grip and unwound it. Was he looking for something? Underneath the leather grip was only the metal shaft of the putter, glinting in the moonlight. The part you hit the ball with, maybe called the blade, was dull gold in color and didn’t glint as bright.
Bernie turned to me. “What did Lukie say? It was a special putter? Something like that.” He laid the putter and the unwound leather grip on the little shelf in back.
Twenty-six
Back home, we went straight to the kitchen and ate standing up, my usual stance for eating, although not Bernie’s. I had kibble. Bernie had slices of tomato and Slim Jims between crackers.
“Dessert?” said Bernie. He tossed me a Slim Jim slice or two. I had the crazy idea of pawing a bit of kibble his way. We’re a lot alike in some ways, don’t forget.
After that, we went right to bed, Bernie in his bedroom and me next to the front door, where the night air squeezes in through the crack and breaks over my nose in tiny waves. A busy day. I tried to go over it in my mind, but not too hard. Sleep was coming like … like a silent black train. What a strange thought! But I couldn’t wait to get on the train. My eyelids lowered themselves like … like blinds on a window. Hmm. Another strange thought. But nothing could keep from sleep tonight, not after so much action. Closer and closer came the silent black train. I got on board and—
But no. Instead, the train vanished. My eyes opened. I rose and started walking around the house, checking Bernie’s room first. A few rays of moonlight flowed through a gap in the curtains, and there he was on his back, one arm thrown over his face, softly breathing. My Bernie. No tiger was getting anywhere near him. That was a promise.
I checked the office, the living room, the kitchen, Charlie’s room. Charlie’s mattress was bare, except for a pillow with no pillowcase. A baseball lay on the pillow. I went over and sniffed at it, not sure why. I didn’t pick it up. I wasn’t sure about that either.
I paced up and down the hall. Except for me and Bernie, no one had been in the house. It wasn’t that. It was more like … I didn’t know what it was like. And I’d just been doing so well with likes! And now, when it coun
ted …
Whoa. It counted. Yes, I knew that. How, why, what—on all that, I had zip. But something was up.
I went to the back door, a door with a thumb-pusher knob I could press easy-peasy, meaning I had no problem opening the back door if it wasn’t locked. We’d worked on that so often I could do it with my eyes closed, as humans often say. Once I’d attended—very briefly—a birthday party for one of Charlie’s little buddies. The kids had played a game called Blind Man’s Bluff, which seemed to prove humans couldn’t do anything at all with their eyes closed. Except sleep. Hey! Was that a joke? I’d strayed out of my territory.
And none of that had anything to do with my current problem. The door was locked, locked with a sliding bolt. We’d worked on those, too, worked long and hard, with a Slim Jim after every session, successful or not—and not was the result every time. It sounded so simple. There were just two parts. First, you pawed that round end on the bolt, pawed it straight down. Then you kind of turned sideways a bit, got your paw on the round end, and gave it a push. Just like this, big guy. And Bernie had given the bolt a push with the palm of his hand. So simple! But not for me. Sometimes I got a bit beside myself and started messing up on the easy, pawing-the-bolt-down part. When that happened, we always took a Slim Jim break and dropped the whole thing until another day.
Why was it so hard? You just pawed the round end down like so, turned a little sideways, gave it a push, and then you were done.
Whoa! Click. Froomsh. Huh? Had I done it?
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