I’d done it! How do you like that? Without even hardly trying! What a life! Then came the easy-peasy part, and the next thing I knew, who was on the patio? Chet the Jet!
Anyone would have been tempted to prance around for a bit, but a strange smell in the air put a stop to that for me. Not strange, exactly, more like unexpected, plus it was a smell I didn’t like—namely, vinegar. Lots and lots of vinegar, as though a big vinegar party had been happening on our patio when we weren’t around. I sniffed here and there, and all but drowned by the vinegar, I could sort of pick up the scent of the partygoers, but it was all confused and jumbled. I paced back and forth, sniffed, paced some more. Then I trotted into the house and entered Bernie’s bedroom.
He was still lying on his back, but no longer with an arm over his face. Now he had his arms crossed over his chest … as though … as though he was being taken on a long journey. Without me? I was already disturbed enough. I barked my low rumbly bark. Bernie’s eyes opened. He started to smile. Then he gave me a closer look, and the expression on his face changed. He got up and, wearing just his boxers, followed me to the back door.
It was open, of course, just the way I’d left it. Bernie went to it, examined the bolt, checked the door on the other side.
“Hey!” he said. “You did it! Wow! Congratulations!” He rubbed the top of my head, ruffling up my fur in a way that felt great. Then he crouched down. “But practicing at night, big guy? What’s up with that? Huh?”
I didn’t quite follow.
“Seems a little driven, no? We don’t want that, not from you. Need your sleep, Chet. But … but just wow.” He rose. “Now how about we get some shut-eye?”
I barked my low rumbly bark.
“Chet?”
I went outside. Bernie followed. He sniffed the air. “What’s that?” He sniffed some more, then turned to me. “Smell anything?”
Well, yes and no. I smelled an ocean of vinegar, no problem, but everything else—the smells I wanted to smell—were all muddled up.
Bernie sniffed again. “Remember that time the wind knocked the salad bowl over? I think I can still smell the dressing. And that was last month!” He grinned at me. “I’m getting like you.”
Good grief. We are alike in many ways, but not when it comes to our noses and what they can do. What we had going on out here on the patio had nothing to do with salad. It had to do with … I didn’t know. But something was going on.
Bernie yawned. “Come on, Chet. Let’s knit up that raveled sleeve.”
Now he’d lost me completely. Bernie was wearing only his boxers, as I believe I’ve mentioned, meaning no sleeves. I was wearing my gator skin collar, also sleeveless. Plus the only knitter we knew was Mrs. Singh, and she’d never been here and certainly never spent the night. I barked again, this time more sharply.
“Chet? Something up?”
Yes, exactly. But what? I had no idea. And no idea how I was going to get an idea. When my nose is confused, I’m confused. I paced back and forth across the patio, faster and faster, and panting started up.
“Chet?”
Bernie reached for me as I went by and tried to gently slow me down. But I didn’t want to slow down. We ended up pacing side by side, with me in the lead, if that makes sense. Back and forth, up and down, back and forth. I stopped beside the fountain. Have I described it already? There’s a pool, and in the middle stands the stone swan. The water trickles from the swan’s mouth into the pool, making a lovely sound and cooling the patio, but we hardly ever turn it on anymore on account of evaporation, a puzzling issue that came up a while back on a case involving two hydrologists, one good and one bad, of which I remember nothing except getting paid by the three ex-wives of the good hydrologist, all of whom wore yoga pants and gold watches.
I stepped over the low tile wall and into the dry pool.
“Hot?” Bernie said. “Want to cool off, is that it?”
No. It had nothing to do with cooling off. The vinegar smell was strongest around the fountain, and in its confusion, that was where my nose wanted to be, instead of as far away as possible, which made more sense to the rest of me. That should tell you all you need to know about the power of my nose.
Meanwhile, Bernie went to the tap over in the corner of the patio and turned on the water. Well, not exactly. In fact, all he did was turn the tap. No water came trickling from the swan’s mouth, and I heard none running in the pipes under the patio floor.
“Hmm,” said Bernie. He fiddled with the tap, turning it off and on, off and on, getting nowhere. Then he stepped into the pool and stuck his hand into the mouth of the swan.
“Hmm.”
He gave the swan’s head a couple of smacks, not hard. Swans are birds, in case you didn’t know. I thought, It’s okay to smack a little harder, Bernie. But he did not. Instead, he went over to the tap and tried again.
“Hmm.”
He went back to the fountain and felt around in the swan’s mouth once more. I’d only had one interaction with a swan in my career—working a case up at Geronimo Lake—and that was enough. I only mention that because our stone swan was about the same size as the Geronimo Lake swan who’d scared the—well, not scared, more like unsettled me, but hardly at all and only for a moment.
“I don’t under—” Bernie began and then pulled a short length of copper pipe right out of the mouth of the swan. He examined it from this angle and that and laid it aside. Then he got a good grip on the swan, one hand under its neck and the other under its tail, and tipped it carefully on its side.
Underneath where the swan had lain was a hole with a sawed-off copper pipe sticking up in the middle. Wedged around the pipe was a large sort of package in Bubble Wrap. I barked. My nose finally started working on my side.
We pulled the package out of the hole, Bernie doing most of the pulling and me encouraging him. Then we laid the package out flat, using the same sort of teamwork. There was a man in the Bubble Wrap, no longer alive, not even close. At first, I had a crazy thought: It’s Vanko! Bernie tugged at the Bubble Wrap. It went pop, pop, pop, and then the man’s face came into view, a face with a round red hole in the middle of the forehead. Not Vanko but Mickey Rottoni.
Bernie sat back on his haunches. I did the same. He glanced over at me. “Good boy,” he said.
But I wasn’t! I’d allowed my nose to get all screwed up on account of the vinegary smell! I should have known about this whole fountain situation the moment we came home! I’d failed!
“You’re a real, real good boy.”
Maybe he was right. Wasn’t Bernie always right? My tail started up. I was a good, good boy.
Bernie rose and rubbed his chin. He walked to the gate, checked the lock, another bolt, but bigger and heavier than the one at the back door. Bernie opened the gate and examined it from the other side.
“No damage, Chet. That means…”
Whatever it meant remained unsaid. A trail leads from the gate into the canyon. We started up, climbing the hill to the big flat rock on top. When we got there, Bernie peered down at our house and especially the patio. Had I ever seen our home like this, by moonlight? How beautiful it looked! My job was to protect it, now and forever.
“How did they do it?” Bernie said. “A couple of ATVs? And maybe a ladder, to scale the walls? Somebody cased the place, no doubt about that. Any idea who that could’ve been?”
Nope. I knew casing the place, of course. Bernie and I had cased lots of joints, but this particular casing wasn’t on us. I would have remembered, and besides … why … why would we case our own place? What a thought! So sharp! Like a knife through butter, as humans say. Wow! My mind was like a knife through butter tonight. We really were pretty good, me and Bernie.
“An easy one, huh?” he said. “And so’s what’s coming next.”
Oh? I waited to hear, but Bernie didn’t say. Instead, he said, “Gotta move fast, big guy. No way we can implicate anyone else, but I don’t see how…” He got a faraway look in his eyes. Fo
r a moment or two, they turned the color of the moon. A somewhat scary moment, but in that moment, I also knew we couldn’t be beaten.
Bernie took out his phone and made a call.
“Sylvia?” he said. “Bernie Little. Sorry to call so late.”
I heard Sylvia Rottoni’s voice on the other end. A harsh voice and not particularly friendly, but I was glad to hear it. Sylvia was the client, if I was remembering right. It was always nice to have a client.
“It must be important,” she said. “And I don’t sleep.”
Whoa! That sounded pretty bad. But wouldn’t it leave her more time for work? Not all clients actually ended up paying, which I knew from experience, but I felt good about Sylvia.
Twenty-seven
The old part of South Pedroia was quiet at night, no lights showing in the dusty windows of the brick warehouses along the narrow streets. We stopped in front of Rottoni Transport, the sign unlit but the picture of the truck with the big grin on its face clear in the moonlight. A wide steel door in the brick wall rolled up, and we drove into a big dark space. The door rolled down beside us. Bernie cut the engine.
A light went on above us, just a single dangling bulb. We got out of the Porsche. A good thing—I was feeling mighty cramped. Trying not to use much force but having to in the end, Bernie wrestled the Bubble Wrapped–body of Mickey Rottoni out of the car, laid him on his back on the cement floor, got him all straightened out.
Sylvia Rottoni appeared out of the gloom. She wore her cat’s-eye glasses and a robe of the kind possibly called a kimono. Suzie had one, as I remembered, although not tattered like Sylvia’s. What else? The dolly. Sylvia was pushing a dolly, the long flat kind. She didn’t say anything, didn’t even look at us. Her eyes were on Mickey. She gazed down at him. Her face twisted like she was about to cry, but she got it untwisted fast, and there was no crying and not a single tear.
“Wish I didn’t have to loop you in, but there was no—” Bernie began.
“Shut up,” said Sylvia. She gave Bernie an angry look. “Gonna help me with this or just stand there wasting air?”
Wasting air? A new one on me. I knew wasting water, of course, from Bernie being so strongly against it. My guess he’d be pretty good about not wasting air as well, so we weren’t going to have a problem with Sylvia. All the same, when she and Bernie hoisted Mickey onto the dolly, something told me not to get involved in any way, not even to give them some quiet encouragement.
Sylvia wheeled the dolly to the back of this garage or whatever it was, hard to tell in the weak light of that single hanging bulb. A white freezer stood against the wall, the shape of a coffin, only bigger. I could feel the cold inside. Sylvia opened the lid. She and Bernie lifted Mickey off the dolly and laid him in the freezer. Sylvia closed the lid, locked it with a padlock, and stuck the key in one pocket of her kimono. From the other pocket, she took out a pack of cigarettes and shook out one for Bernie and one for herself. She struck a match with her thumbnail and lit them both. Hadn’t Bernie recently quit smoking? Or had he started up again? He took a drag, and I could tell he was making himself do it. By the time the next drag came along, he wasn’t.
“What do I owe you?” Sylvia said.
That sounded promising, but Bernie didn’t always take advantage of openings like that, and this was one of those times.
“Nothing yet,” he said.
“Why not?” said Sylvia, her voice very hard. “The family hired you to find the body, and…” She reached out and gave the freezer lid a gentle pat-pat.
I’m always loyal to Bernie, goes without mentioning, but just this once I was on someone else’s side.
“You hired us to find the body plus, quote, whoever killed him,” Bernie said.
Sylvia blew out a tiny cloud, her eyes narrowing against the smoke. “Maybe I don’t want to know anymore.”
“Why not?”
She took another drag. A column of ash fell to the floor. She ground it under the heel of her bedroom slipper. “Mickey was a thief and a sneak, but he wasn’t a killer.”
“Not sure where you’re going with this,” Bernie said.
“No? I thought it was pretty clear that Mickey tried pulling something sneaky on somebody. But this somebody or somebodies turned out to be way more than he bargained for. Like a boy against men.”
“So?” Bernie said.
“So I’m sensing influence in high places, including Valley PD. Maybe I don’t want these homicidal somebodies coming after me and my family. And maybe you don’t want them coming after you either.”
Bernie’s face went stony, a look I’d seen before, although not often. I thought Sylvia would look away, but she did not.
“This,” Bernie said, pointing to the freezer, “is about tactics, not fear. But I’ll think of some other place for Mickey.”
Now Sylvia did look away. “No,” she said, the word catching in her throat. She tried again. “No. Keep going. Get the bastards.”
* * *
Back home, Bernie got the fountain back up straight, then went inside and started tidying the whole house. These tidying—what would you call them? Frenzies, maybe? These tidying frenzies hardly ever happened, and never at night.
“Lie down, Chet. Go to sleep. There’s nothing for you to do right now.”
I lay down. My eyes stayed open. I got up. I followed Bernie around. The house got tidier and tidier. Finally, it was tidier than I’d ever seen it. Bernie took a shower. I pushed open the bathroom door and stuck my nose through the shower curtain once or twice. Bernie sang “I Was the One,” his favorite Elvis song. I did a bit of woo-wooing at the end.
He got dressed—fresh jeans off the hanger, sneaks, plus the Hawaiian shirt with the ice cream cone volcanoes, an excellent choice. He filled my water bowl. Then he got started on brewing a pot of coffee. After that, he opened the fridge, but closed it without removing anything.
“We’ll have breakfast after the predawn raid,” he said.
Whatever the predawn raid was, I hoped it wouldn’t take long. All of a sudden, I was famished.
* * *
Somewhere across the canyon, a rooster crowed. And crowed and crowed some more. What is with them? I looked out the kitchen window. Still nighttime, but the moon was gone and the stars didn’t seem as bright. Bernie sat at the kitchen table, sipping coffee and reading a book. I heard a sound, faint and powerful at the same time, of big, fast things approaching, and started toward the front door. Bernie closed the book.
Out front, I heard cars braking, car doors opening and closing, lots of footsteps on our lawn. “Shh,” said Bernie, coming up behind me. “Not a sound.”
On the other side of the door, a man said, “On three. One, two—”
Bernie, in no particular hurry, reached out and opened the door. Two SWAT team dudes came stumbling in, one actually falling down completely, and their battering ram crashed on the floor and rolled to a stop.
“Oops,” Bernie said, coffee mug in hand. “Thought I heard a knock.”
Normally, I’d have been deeply involved in the action by now, but hadn’t Bernie said Shh? Plus I was in the mood to be a good, good boy.
Outside, we had some confusion going on. A bunch of uniformed Valley PD guys and gals, all unknown to me, were sort of shuffling around and gaping at the two SWAT teamers, now dusting themselves off and also looking confused. Then from the back, Captain Ellis stepped forward, holding some papers.
“This,” he said to Bernie, “is a warrant signed by Judge Fleckman to search your entire premises.”
“Fleckman?” said Bernie. “Isn’t he still in rehab?”
Ellis’s face, on the reddish side to begin with, reddened some more. “You have a right to read the warrant.” He shoved it at Bernie.
Bernie waved it away. “No need,” he said. “I know the quality of your work, Von.”
A muscle jumped in the side of Ellis’s face. “Then you raise no objection to the search?”
“Not in a legal sense,” B
ernie said.
Ellis glared at him. A faint milky light glowed in the lowest part of the sky, turning Ellis’s eyes the color of milk. “How’s that smart-ass mouth of yours gonna play in prison?”
“We’ll never know,” Bernie said. “I won’t be visiting you.”
From back in the crowd came a snicker. A snicker is one of the more unpleasant human sounds, but I kind of liked this one.
Ellis swung around to the PD folks. “Turn the fucking place upside down.”
Bernie gave me a quick look, a look that didn’t seem the least bit angry or upset. Valley PD were going to turn our place upside down and we were going to let them? Then it hit me: that was exactly what we wanted! Were we brilliant or what? Bernie stepped aside, and so did I. Chet the Jet, in the picture. You may be asking yourself why that was exactly what we wanted. I did not. May I mention that that’s the difference between you and me? I’m not going near the question of which approach is better. But I think you know the answer.
I’ve seen a number of PD searches in my career, including the turning-the-place-upside-down kind, but this one was different from the get-go. For one thing, the actual house didn’t get searched, at least not at first. Instead, everyone followed Ellis down the hall, out the back door, and onto the patio.
Bernie and I watched from the kitchen window. He sipped his coffee. I picked up a chewy I’d found on a recent walk—possibly on someone’s lawn or even doorstep, the very best kind of chewy—and held it in my mouth because … because I could.
Out on the patio, everyone went right to the fountain, and a few of the cops began raising the swan.
“Just knock the goddamn thing down,” Ellis told them.
But the cops glanced over at us and continued with what they’d been doing, lifting the swan off the base and setting it down on the patio, almost gently. Then everyone gathered around the hole where the swan had stood and peered inside. A tiny edge of the sun popped into view at that moment, spreading a clear lemony light. No one could have missed what there was to see in the hole—the sawed-off copper pipe and nothing else.
Tender Is the Bite Page 23