To Fetch a Thief

by Spencer Quinn

  I trotted on over, not fast; no need to scare anybody. And there she was! Nice and big, although not nearly my size, of course; mostly black and white, with some other colors, too; a longish snout and small, watchful eyes: I liked her! She gave me a look with those small, watchful eyes and then turned and trotted away. But not fast—we were in tune on that not-fast thing. I trotted after her, gave her a sniff. Ah, yes. After that, it got not so easy to keep events straight in my mind. But did she give me a sniff back? Pretty sure that happened. Did we circle around a bit? Probably. And there’s no doubt that I bumped up against her and she kind of pushed back a bit. Then we were in the shadow of the rusted-out car, a very private space. My eyes were on the moon, but I wasn’t really seeing it.

  All of a sudden a woman called out from the nearest ramshackle house: “Lola! Dónde estás? Lola?”

  Lola? A cool name, but the interruption was inconvenient. A flashlight went on, and the beam began sweeping the yard.

  “Lola! What the hell?” The beam passed over us, came back, and stayed, circling us in bright light. “Dios mío! Ven aquí!” Very inconvenient, because we were occupied. And then just like that—in the way the very best things can sneak up on you—we weren’t! Lola scooted away and took off toward the house, glancing back once. Those small, watchful eyes: I’d never seen anything quite like them. The next moment something got thrown at me, missing by a mile, whatever that was. “Mal perro-vete!” Meaning what? Not sure, but I caught the tone and ambled off. I felt tip-top, just about the highest tip-top I can feel. It was great to be south of the border down Mexico way.

  I headed back to the motel, taking my time. Funny, the way I’d been so tired before I’d lain down beside Bernie’s bed, and now, long before morning, I was full of pep and all set for another day, and not only that but working up a bit of an appetite. No trouble finding my way back in a new place, a simple matter of following my own scent, a scent—if I haven’t gone into this before and I should have on account of the importance of knowing your own scent in the nation within—made up of a faint, almost undetectable, smell of old leather, plus salt and pepper, mink coats, and just a soupçon of tomato; and to be honest, a healthy dash of something male and funky, especially tonight for some reason. And so, not really paying much attention to my surroundings, my mind on other things, such as the likelihood of coming upon a tidbit or two in this dark little village with everyone but me fast asleep, I was just dimly aware that I might not be the only one up and about. The faint sound of soft, quick footsteps; a shadow darting around a corner: hey! What was going on? I snapped out of it, hurried toward that same corner.

  Not a shadow, I saw, but a man, and a big one. He ran across the main street toward the motel, carrying something that picked up a few moonlit sparkles. At the same time, the big man’s scent drifted to me, a nasty, stale smell I remembered. Those bad guys I get close enough to sink my teeth into tend to have smells that stay with me. I charged across the street just as the big guy threw the shiny thing through a window in the motel: our window.

  From inside came a flash, bright as day, and then a huge boom that blew out all the window glass and a chunk of the wall. The big guy turned and I got a real good look at him—bandanna, sideburns, twisted nose: Jocko. He saw me and took off toward a pickup parked down the street. I wanted to go after him, wanted that real bad. Instead I leaped through the hole in the wall.

  The room was on fire—the bed, the walls, everything—with sheets of flame bursting up to the ceiling and tearing right through. And so much smoke, hurting my eyes, filling my nose in a horrible way. Where was Bernie? I couldn’t see him, couldn’t smell him, could only smell smoke. I barked and barked again.

  “Chet?”

  And there he was, almost lost in the smoke, crawling on the floor, but in the wrong direction, toward one of the burning walls. I ran over—the air so hot now, crackling all around—and pushed at Bernie, turning him around. He got a hand on me, staggered to his feet. Then came another boom and the whole outside wall vanished and burning stuff started pelting down on us like a fiery rain. We dove through the space where the wall had stood, rolled into the street, got up, and ran, me and Bernie together.

  KA-BOOM!

  We turned to watch. The motel went up in flames. They rose to the sky and from their very tips hurled red fragments of curtains and bedding and furniture even higher. Maybe it was kind of beautiful in a way.

  TWENTY-TWO

  Lucky,” said Captain Panza, the chief of police. He sat straight behind his desk, a thin little guy with gold braid on his shirt and creases in his uniform pants, smelling strongly of the same kind of shaving lotion favored by Skins Barkley, now sporting an orange jumpsuit at Central State. Creases always got my attention: Bernie’s pants never had them. “You’re very, very lucky to be alive,” Captain Panza went on. He took a thick gold pen from his chest pocket and wrote something on a sheet of paper.

  “I’m aware of that,” Bernie said. He sat in a chair on the other side of Captain Panza’s desk; I stood beside him. Bernie wore sweats he kept in the car—all the rest of his stuff had burned in the fire. I wore my brown collar; the black one, back home, is for dress-up. “Got any leads yet?” Bernie said. “Clues about who did this?”

  “The term leads is familiar to me,” said Captain Panza. “Leads are being developed even as we speak.”

  “Such as?” Bernie said.

  “Perhaps in El Norte the police discuss ongoing investigations,” Captain Panza said. “Procedures are different here.”

  “I appreciate that,” Bernie said, “but—”

  “My office is grateful for your cooperation,” said Captain Panza. “Enjoy your visit to our beautiful country.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “You may go.”

  “That’s it?” Bernie said. “You’ve hardly asked any questions at all.”

  Captain Panza glanced at the sheet of paper. “You testified that you were asleep when the incident occurred, escaped with the help of your dog, and saw no one. Is there more?”

  “Yeah,” said Bernie. “Lots. Starting with the fact that someone tried to kill us and I’d like to know who.”

  Captain Panza’s gold pen moved across the page. “We have no indication that you were the target.”

  “Someone blows up my room and I’m not the target?”

  “As you may know, we have a violent element among us in this state. Dangerous, yes, but often careless, prone to mistakes.”

  “They were going after someone else?”

  Captain Panza nodded.

  “Who?” said Bernie.

  “That information must remain confidential.”

  “Did any of the other guests get hurt?”

  “There were no other guests.”

  “What about the woman who runs the place?”

  “Rosita?” said Captain Panza. “Lucky, like you. She was elsewhere at the time.”

  “That’s interesting,” Bernie said.

  “Is it?”

  Bernie and Captain Panza gazed at each other. They’d been having a polite conversation, but I got this uncomfortable feeling—it happens down the back of my neck—that they actually weren’t big fans of each other.

  “I’ve got an odd question for you,” Bernie said.

  “I’m listening,” said Captain Panza.

  “Ever heard of puff adders out in the desert?”

  “Puff adders?”

  “It’s a kind of poisonous snake.”

  “We have poisonous snakes, certainly,” Captain Panza said. “That’s no secret.”

  “The thing with puff adders,” Bernie said, “is that if they show up here in Sonora they’re lost. Puff adders come from Africa.”

  One of Captain Panza’s eyelids made a tiny fluttering motion. “You’re a naturalist?” he said. “That is what brought you to Mexico?”

  “I’m a private investigator,” Bernie said. “I thought you knew.”

  “Why would you think that?
”

  “Because you didn’t ask.”

  More eyelid fluttering. I was glad to see it, although I couldn’t have explained why. “Private investigators from El Norte have no status here,” Captain Panza said. “You must be on vacation.”

  “Yeah,” said Bernie. He rose. “We’re just starting to have fun.”

  Captain Panza smiled. Hey! He was missing a tooth. I couldn’t help feeling a little bad for him. “We want all our visitors to have fun,” he said. “But before you go, it’s my duty make sure that your dog has papers.”

  “They were checked at the border,” Bernie said.

  “I will have to see them.”

  “They’re in the car.”

  Captain Panza gestured toward the door. Bernie moved that way, and so did I. “The dog can remain,” Captain Panza said. “I like dogs.”

  Bernie gazed at Captain Panza, then nodded. “Stay, Chet,” he said, and went out the door. I stayed.

  Captain Panza stopped smiling. He stared at me. I stared at him. If he was a fan of me and my kind, his face kept it hidden very well. “I saw what you did last night,” he said. “Muy bien. We would make a good team, you and I.” He opened a desk drawer, took out a big bone-shaped biscuit, the size I like the best. Captain Panza held out the biscuit. “Ven aquí,” he said.

  I stayed where I was.

  He laughed. “Jocko fears you,” he said. “Imagine that!” Captain Panza put the biscuit away, closed the drawer. Jocko? This guy knew Jocko? What did that mean, if anything?

  The door opened and Bernie came back in. He crossed the room and laid the papers on Captain Panza’s desk. Captain Panza glanced at them real quick, if at all.

  “These papers are not in order,” he said.

  Bernie gave Captain Panza a look that showed nothing, at least to me.

  “You must leave Mexico at once,” Captain Panza. “Alternatively, you may stay, in which case the dog will be seized.”

  Bernie kept giving him that look. “Do you have a specific amount in mind?” he said.

  “Amount, señor?” said Captain Panza. “For your sake, I will pretend I did not hear that word.”

  Bernie was silent for a moment. Then he said, “We can pretend all kinds of things.”

  For some reason, Captain Panza didn’t like hearing that; it kind of stung him—I could see from this tiny flinch in his eyes.

  Bernie turned to me. “Let’s go,” he said.

  I followed him to the door. Captain Panza said, “Maintaining a safe speed, you will reach the border in”—he checked his watch, thick and gold, like the pen—“seventy-five minutes. Naturally I will receive a telephone report from the aduana the moment you pass through.”

  “Adiós,” Bernie said.

  “Hasta la vista,” said Captain Panza.

  “It stinks,” Bernie said, as we got in the car.

  It did? I sniffed the air, rich with smells, although I wouldn’t call any of them stinking.

  We drove for a while, back in the direction we’d come from, away from Dos Jorobas, that two-humped mountain. “Hasta la vista,” Bernie said. “Probably not a good idea if that actually happens, at least not down here.”

  That one zipped right past me. I watched the outside go by, hilly and rocky, with saguaros here and there, the kind of country we like. Normally Bernie would switch on the music and we’d do a little singing, but his hand didn’t move toward the knobs, just stayed on the wheel, maybe gripping it harder than usual. We passed a donkey pulling a cart with an old man riding on top—the donkey’s big eye seemed to watch me going by, sitting up tall in the shotgun seat, but I couldn’t tell, and anyway got distracted by the sight of tiny white worms crawling around on the donkey’s face. Only for a moment, though, and then we were zooming on down the road.

  “What’s a border, Chet?” Bernie said. I waited to hear. “Just a line on a map, drawn by politicians. Is that supposed to impress us?” I didn’t know. We came to a crossroads, the pavement continuing straight ahead, a dirt track leading off to the side. Bernie pulled over, shut off the engine.

  It was real quiet. Bernie twisted around in his seat, gazed at Dos Jorobas. In between the humps lay a little clump of white. “San Anselmo,” Bernie said. “That was our plan. Do we cut and run, let ourselves get pushed around?” Were we getting pushed around? By who? I didn’t know, but getting pushed around was out of the question. I barked. Bernie laughed and gave me a pat. Then he opened the glove box and took out the .38 Special and a box of ammo. “Don’t know about you,” Bernie said, loading the rounds—those rounds, glittering in the sun, a sight I always liked seeing!—into the cylinder. “But I’m in the mood for pushing back.”

  Me, too. That was exactly my mood, to a T, whatever that means. There were golf tees, of course, and once in a pro shop I’d gotten into a bit of a—but forget all that. How could this be about golf? Had golf come up in this case, even once? Hey! In fact, it had. I remembered Colonel Drummond on the practice tee—whoa, another T—and those yellow pants. So maybe this was about golf, after all. Fine with me. I was ready for anything, including golfers in yellow pants trying to push us around.

  Bernie tucked the .38 Special in his belt, started the car, steered off the paved road, and onto the dirt track. Almost at once, his hand relaxed on the wheel, let it go, wandered over to the knobs, and then: music! All our favorites, like “It Hurts Me Too,” with Elmore James and his slide guitar, “If You Were Mine,” with Billie Holiday and Roy Eldridge on trumpet—that trumpet always does things to me—and “Honky Tonk Blues” with Hank Williams. By then Bernie was singing at the top of his lungs, I was joining in with my woo-woo thing, and we’d made another turn, so now the two-humped mountain stood dead ahead, getting closer and closer.

  The road switchbacked up the nearest hump of the Dos Jorobas. I like switchbacks—you get to look down on where you just were, and then again and again. Sometimes that can make me pukey, but not today. Soon the road leveled out, widened, became paved, and a bit of traffic appeared. We drove into San Anselmo, through narrow cobbled streets, all bumpy, and then into a square with a fountain in the middle and white buildings all around, gleaming in the sun. We parked beside a rusty old flatbed with a load of flowers in back. The smells: lovely.

  We got out of the car, walked over to an outdoor café near the fountain. It made nice splashing sounds. I leaned in and lapped some up. Delicious. Coins glittered down at the bottom. A skinny barefoot kid passing by on the other side reached in and grabbed one of them. A waiter yelled at him and the kid ran away. The waiter came to our table.

  “Señor?” He had a cigarette sticking out the side of his mouth, a plume of smoke curling up into the still air. Bernie couldn’t take his eyes off it. His nostrils seemed to expand a bit, like his nose was making a play for some of that smoke. Poor Bernie.

  “Café,” he said,

  The waiter went off. We sat in the sunshine. The skinny kid returned and fished out another coin. The waiter came back, yelled at kid. The kid ran away. The waiter lowered his tray, a tray bearing a cup of coffee and a dish with some cigarettes on it.

  Bernie took the coffee, gave the waiter a quick glance. “Yeah,” said Bernie, “don’t mind if I do.” He plucked out a cigarette and handed over a greenback.

  “For one cigarette and one coffee is twenty pesos,” the waiter said. “You have nothing more small?”

  “Keep the change,” Bernie said.

  The waiter nodded, just once, a careful sort of nod. Bernie stuck the cigarette in his mouth. The waiter produced a lighter and held the flame under the tip of the cigarette. Bernie’s cheeks got hollow and the cigarette end glowed. I loved seeing all that; if I could smoke I would, no second thoughts, whatever those are, about it.

  Bernie blew out some smoke, reached into his pocket, laid the photo of Darren Quigley on the table. The waiter’s eyes shifted to it, then away.

  “Know him?” Bernie said.

  The waiter shook his head, just once, a careful sort
of head shake. Some kind of interview was going on. Bernie was a great interviewer. That was one of our strengths at the Little Detective Agency. I bring other things to the table. Maybe they’ll come up later.

  “But you’ve seen him,” Bernie said.

  The waiter didn’t reply. He stuck the lighter in his apron pocket, took a slow glance around.

  “Suppose our friend in the picture likes a drink or two but doesn’t have a lot of money to spend,” Bernie said. “Where would he go in San Anselmo?”

  The waiter tilted his chin toward a narrow street leading away from one of the corners of the square. “La Pulquería,” he said.

  “Gracias,” said Bernie.

  The waiter picked up his tray and left without another word. The skinny kid reappeared.

  I’ve been in dives before—that comes with the job—but never one as divey at La Pulquería. Dark and smoky with walls stained brown and a floor that stuck to my paws with every step, plus a smell of human urine that was off the charts, if off the charts means the most powerful I’ve ever come across, except for that one time on the freeway when a truck carrying a load of portable toilets wrecked right in front of us.

  There was one customer at the bar, slumped over it and motionless, his hand around a glass, drool coming from the corner of his mouth. We stood as far from him as possible. The bartender approached. She was hefty, wore a low-cut top and gold hoop earrings that touched her shoulders, looked kind of puffy and tired.

  “Pulque?” she said.

  “Cerveza, por favor,” said Bernie.

  She opened a bottle, took a glass off a shelf, and set them on the bar, said something in that Mexican way I didn’t understand. Bernie laid a greenback on the bar. The bartender seemed to perk up. She said something else. Bernie said something that made her laugh. Did it also make her lean forward, giving Bernie an even lower-cut view? Bernie tried and failed not to look; I’d seen that happen many times. He raised the bottle as though to fill the glass, then paused.