To Fetch a Thief

by Spencer Quinn

  Some guys came out of the warehouse, carrying paint cans and rollers. I knew rollers from back in the Leda days, when she decided to change the color of the kitchen to what it had been a few changes before, and Bernie got the idea of painting it himself to save money. The less said about that the better, but I learned one thing for sure: I hated having my coat shaved.

  The guys went to the side of the eighteen-wheeler, opened up the paint cans, and went to work. Pretty soon the red roses were gone, the whole side of the truck all white with no pictures. It was interesting to watch, so interesting I forgot about the cage around me and the muzzle on my face. Then I all of a sudden remembered. It made me so mad I rubbed and rubbed my head against the bars real hard, tried to rub that muzzle right off. But it wouldn’t budge. I stood with my muzzled face between the bars.

  The paint guys went away. The sun beat down, and we were back to the nothing moving thing, except for the umbrella-topped hydrant slowly descending toward the flatland. After a while the umbrella turned into a big sombrero, and the hydrant became a person, most likely a small one.

  The small person in the sombrero came a little further down the distant slope. Then the warehouse door opened and out walked not the paint guys, who I was kind of expecting, but two other men. One was Colonel Drummond; the other—a big, round-faced guy with a handlebar mustache—looked familiar but I couldn’t place him. Then I noticed his snakeskin boots and remembered: Tex Rosa, owner of Cuatro Rosas trucking, some kind of buddy of Jocko’s. I backed away from the bars, deeper into the cage.

  They walked toward me, side by side but not close, like maybe they weren’t buddy-buddy. Tex Rosa said something about trouble, and Colonel Drummond said, “You’re blaming me?”

  “Who else?” said Tex Rosa. “You started it.”

  They stopped in front of the cage. Human fear has a smell, a sweaty smell with some nasty sourness thrown in—and it was coming off Colonel Drummond in waves. Was he afraid of me, locked in a cage and muzzled? That didn’t make sense.

  They gazed at me. “Fine-looking animal,” said the colonel.

  Tex Rosa nodded. “I’m giving him to Jocko as a bonus,” he said. “That’s if there’re no more goddamn screw-ups.”

  “I’m sure everything’s going to end up just—”

  “Shut up,” Tex Rosa said. “And lose the cigar. It stinks.”

  The colonel dropped the cigar. Rosa ground it under the heel of his snakeskin boot.

  “Gonna need some scratch from you,” he said.

  “What for?”

  “Bernie Little.”

  “I don’t get it,” said Colonel Drummond.

  Neither did I. But they were talking about Bernie, so I listened my hardest.

  “Think Panza’s just gonna up and hand him over?” Rosa said. “That not how it works down here.”

  “You have to buy him?”

  “We,” Tex said. “Meaning you and me. You put up the money, I’ll do the deal.”

  “How much?”

  “He’s asking sixty grand.”

  “Christ.”

  “I’ll talk him down.”

  “How far down?”

  Rosa turned to the colonel. “There are no guarantees. How come you don’t know that by now?”

  Colonel Drummond looked down at the ground. I’d seen lots of duos like them in the nation within the nation. Tex Rosa was the winner and the colonel was the loser.

  “It’s just that I can’t lay my hands on that kind of money right now, not even close,” the colonel said.

  “Don’t want to hear it.”

  “And when you do . . . buy him, then what?”

  Rosa shrugged. “Have to take care of business.”

  The colonel blinked. “The way you took care of DeLeath?”

  “Nope,” Rosa said. “That was pretty much of an accident, Jocko getting carried away. Not that DeLeath didn’t deserve it—interfere with a character like Jocko, what happens happens. But the point is that taking care of Little will be more a matter of policy, all planned out, see my meaning. Unless you got some other idea.”

  Colonel Drummond shook his head. “Little knows way too much.”

  “Now you’re thinking.”

  “But our problem is receipts are in the toilet since . . . since the Peanut thing.”

  “Our problem?”

  Some humans—never Bernie, of course—fell into whining when things weren’t going their way. You couldn’t tell whiners from how they looked. The colonel, for example: would I have picked him out as a whiner, with his long white car and yellow golf pants? No. But he started whining now. “Be reasonable, Tex. Peanut was the star attraction.”

  “Shoulda thought of that before.”

  “I did think that—always thought it. I just never imagined you’d go to such extremes.”

  “Extremes?” said Rosa. “Tell you a quick story about extremes. Back in the Depression my great-granddad was trucking booze across the border and he had this junior partner—kind of like you and me. Comes a day when junior partner gets the bright idea of cutting my great-granddad—they called him Tex, too, by the way—out of one little truckload. And guess what.”

  The colonel shrugged.

  “Mister Junior Partner was never seen again,” Rosa said. “And here you are, alive and well.” He clapped the colonel on the back the way humans do to each other sometimes when they’re being palsy, except harder. “Turns out I’m a big softy—lot of people miss that.”

  The colonel gave Rosa a quick sideways look. He was scared, no doubt about that, but he managed to lower his voice and stop whining. “I learned my lesson. And we’re not talking about a truckload of booze—it was just a goddamn parrot.”

  “One of three left in the whole world.” Rosa bent down, picked up a small stone. “Went to a lot of trouble to get that parrot—think I was going to let something like that slip by?”

  “Did I know that at the time?” the colonel said. “Plus I offered to pay you every penny I got for the stupid bird. Can’t we move on?”

  “Move on where?” said Rosa, tossing the stone up and down in his hand. “It’s not about money.”

  “It’s not?”

  Rosa shook his head. “It’s a moral issue,” he said. “A matter of principle.”

  “Tex,” said the colonel. “Money’s part of it. Don’t we need money to pay Panza so you can . . . do what you have to do?”

  “No denying that.”

  “Good. At least we’re agreed on that. Cash flow’s the real issue right now, but supposing we could bill the miraculous reappearance of Peanut, then in one fell—”

  “Not happening,” Rosa said. “Can’t do that to the memory of my great-granddad. But tell you what—I’ll lend you the money.”

  “You will?”

  “Whatever Panza’s number turns out to be.”

  “Why, thanks, Tex, I’ll pay you back as soon as—”

  “Don’t even think about it.”

  “Don’t think about paying you back?”

  “Nope,” Rosa said. “In return I’ll just—what’s the word? Assume?”

  “I don’t know. Depends what you’re—”

  “Yeah, that’s it,” said Rosa. “Assume. I’ll assume majority ownership of the circus.”

  The colonel licked his lips, thin lips, dry and chapped. “My circus?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “But it’s been in my family for generations.”

  “You can still be minority, no problem,” Rosa said. “And I’ll keep the name—Drummond Family Traveling Circus. Has a nice all-American sound.” Their eyes met. “Shake on it?” Rosa said.

  Handshaking is one of those human things I’m always on the watch for in my line of work. And just because my situation might not have been perfect at that moment didn’t mean I wasn’t on the job. We’d been in lots of scrapes, me and Bernie.

  The colonel looked away from Rosa, sticking out his hand at the same time. Rosa gave the colonel’s hand a hard
squeeze and held on until the colonel’s eyes were on him again.

  “Deal?” Rosa said.

  The colonel nodded. Rosa let go of his hand. Drummond walked away, back toward the warehouse, shoulders slumped.

  Rosa smiled at me through the bars. “See how it’s done?” he said. “And the kicker is Panza’s only asking ten.”

  I didn’t get what he was talking about, just knew I didn’t like him, not one little bit. All I wanted to do was grab him by the pant leg—the actual truth being I wanted to sink my teeth into his ankle, right through one of those snakeskin boots—and bring him down for good. I growled at him, just in case he was missing where he stood with me. That made him smile even more. Then without warning he winged that stone at me real hard, hit me right on the nose between the bars of the muzzle cage. That’s a sensitive spot, meaning it stung pretty good, but I didn’t make a sound.

  Rosa went off. The sun slid across the sky, away from me and sinking lower. The distant slopes got all shadowy, the small person in the sombrero nowhere in sight. I went back to trying to rub off the muzzle, and when that didn’t work, I had another search for any weak spots in the cage, finding none just like the last time. A little later I had another try, and I was getting ready for a repeat after that when activity started up at the warehouse.

  First, the eighteen-wheeler backed up to a loading dock. Then a forklift appeared, and what was this? A cage rested on the forks, and in that cage stood a lion, the kind with the huge head of hair; not standing, really—he was actually pacing back and forth, kind of like me. The forklift drove into the eighteen-wheeler, emerged a few moments later without the cage. Then it disappeared inside the warehouse. When it came out again, another cage stood on the forks, this time with a black leopard inside, not pacing, but just lying down in a slumped kind of way.

  Back and forth rolled the forklift, loading caged-up creatures into the eighteen-wheeler: another big cat I recognized from Animal Planet, although the name escaped me; some monkeys; brightly colored birds; a huge lizard; a chimp with his hands on the bars and his mouth open wide the way humans do when they’re about to scream. Plus there were other crates I couldn’t see inside. After a while the forklift returned to the warehouse and didn’t come out again. The door to the eighteen-wheeler rolled down and the truck drove away. Not long after that, Colonel Drummond left in his white convertible, followed by a big SUV with Tex Rosa at the wheel.

  Then it got quiet. The sun went down beyond that distant slope, and the sky turned all sorts of colors, a beautiful sight, but I couldn’t concentrate on it on account of my thirst, and my tongue being so hard and dry and crusty. I decided to try rubbing off the muzzle again, and when that didn’t work I had another search for weak spots in the cage. But if there were weak spots, I couldn’t find them and maybe I got a bit frustrated because the next thing I knew I was up on my hind legs, hammering at the bars with my front paws. That was when the skinny kid stepped out of the evening shadows.

  She took off her sombrero and put her face between the bars. “Jet,” she said in a low voice. “Pobre Jet.”

  I liked kids in general, and had liked the look of this particular kid from the get-go.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Pobre Jet,” said the kid. She had beautiful eyes, big and dark. I moved toward the bars of the cage. She patted my head. “Pobre Jet,” she said. Jet was me, Chet the Jet. Was Pobre her name? Was she saying we were some sort of pals, me and her? Made sense to me.

  She touched the muzzle over my mouth, ran her fingers over all the straps and clamps and other stuff I could feel but not see. Her face got still and thoughtful, reminding me of Bernie’s face when he was deep in one of his thinking spells. Her thoughts drifted in the air. I didn’t know what those thoughts were, but they felt a lot like Bernie’s. Hey! This Pobre kid reminded me of Bernie! How weird was that? She was just a little kid and didn’t smell at all like Bernie. That combination of apples, bourbon, salt and pepper was his and his alone, while Pobre smelled more like honey and those little pink manzanita flowers that turn out to be kind of tasty. I realized I was hungry as well as thirsty. But that wasn’t important. The important thing was this strange likeness between Bernie and Pobre, even though they weren’t alike.

  Pobre glanced around. A quiet evening, the sky turning purple except for a fiery band shining above the distant slope, and nothing stirring, no one around but us. Pobre knelt and laid her sombrero on the ground and then rose—one of those humans who moved so nicely it was hard to take your eyes off them—and said, “Silencio, Jet, silencio.” Whatever Pobre meant had hardly finished zipping right by me when she reached behind my head, fiddled around for a moment or two, and then—and then that horrible muzzle was off me! She tossed it away, into the shadows and out of my life.

  I gave my head a quick shake—ah, felt so good—and then pressed my face against her, through the bars. She stroked between my ears with her soft little hand. Meanwhile, my tail was going a mile a minute, which means pretty fast. Pobre laughed, a low, gurgling laugh, very nice to hear, and then her face got serious again. “Por qué no?” she said. She stood on her tiptoes—always an interesting sight, considering how close to losing their balance humans were even when standing flat-footed—and reached as high as she could. Then came a squeak and a soft chunk and the cage door swung open. I stayed where I was, not sure why.

  “Ven, Jet,” she said.

  I walked out of the cage. Nothing happened, nothing bad, shots ringing out, for example. I was free and clear.

  Pobre gave me a pat. “Libre,” she said. “Libre.”

  I licked her face. It tasted salty. She turned away, laughing that lovely laugh again, and was still laughing when headlights appeared on the road.

  “Oh, no,” she said. Her eyes and mouth opened wide and I caught the smell of fear. “Papá.” And just like that she took off toward the distant hills. I took off after her of course, but she stopped, took my head in her hands, and said, “No, Jet, no.”

  Meaning what? I wasn’t supposed to go with her? The headlight beams came closer. Pobre ran off again into the shadows. I hesitated, waiting for some idea, trying to make up my mind. Then the headlights found me, blinding me with their brightness. I took off, too, but the other way, back into the shadows beyond the cage.

  The headlights came closer and closer, like two big yellow eyes; angry eyes, I thought, but what sense did that make? A rattly old car pulled up in front of the warehouse and a man got out. He left the car running, headlights on, and in the spillover of the headlight beams I got a good look at him: the little silver-teethed man with the huge hands. Didn’t like him, not one bit: I stayed where I was, motionless in the darkness.

  He moved toward a small door by the loading dock, started to open it, and paused. Then he began walking my way. I shrank back, around the far corner of the warehouse, just poking my head out to see.

  This guy—farmer, Pobre’s papa, and also a perp of some kind, no doubt about that—approached the cage. He stopped abruptly, yelled something I didn’t understand, swung the door back and forth, pounded his fist into his open hand and yelled again. Then he noticed the sombrero, lying in the dirt. I just knew that was bad. He picked up the sombrero and yelled more angry things, and was still yelling when his gaze fell on me.

  Or seemed to; in fact, I went unseen. No surprise: human eyes pretty much stop working at night; I’d learned that time and time again. He banged the cage door shut, walked back to the small warehouse door and went inside, carrying the sombrero.

  I came out from my hiding place. I wanted that sombrero. My problem was how to get it. No idea. I listened real hard, hoping to hear Bernie speaking inside me, telling me the plan. Silence. But in those moments when I was standing there, kind of confused, I again caught that knockout smell in the air, Peanut’s scent. I followed it, the easiest tracking I’d done in my whole career.

  The smell—growing stronger with every step I took—led me along the front of the warehouse to the door
the silver-teethed dude had entered. He’d left it open. I stopped in the doorway and peered inside. This was called recoy or recon or something like that, a very important part of our job according to Bernie, and if he said so, then that was that.

  What did I see? A real big dirt-floored space lit only by a few bare bulbs hanging here and there, a mostly empty space except for some crates, a small cage with a monkey inside—actually a mean-looking sort of monkey I knew from the Discovery Channel—baboon? was that the name?—and much more important, another cage, really the whole far end of the warehouse, walled off by floor-to-ceiling chain-link. There was a big gate in the chain-link, and the farmer dude had rolled a wheelbarrow full of bananas next to it and was busy with the lock. Beyond the chain-link, against the back wall: Peanut.

  Peanut! I was doing good, no doubt about it. This was the Peanut case and here was Peanut. Were there problems? Maybe, like for example the way Peanut wasn’t standing up, instead lying on her side, her trunk flopped in the dirt, her eye dull and unseeing. The sight made me feel bad, hard to say why. Meanwhile, the baboon’s eyes were real lively. They gave me a look that was too close to a human look for comfort. Then the baboon showed me his teeth. I’ve got a nice set of big sharp teeth myself, but this baboon’s teeth were something else.

  I turned back to Peanut. Even lying down she was huge, as tall sideways as the silver-teethed dude standing up. He opened the lock, laid Pobre’s sombrero on the floor, and swung the gate open. Peanut, I thought, up and at ’em! But Peanut just lay there, which wouldn’t have been my move in this situation, better believe it. The next thing I knew I was no longer in the doorway, but actually inside the warehouse, moving softly. For one thing, I wanted that sombrero. Pobre’s sombrero had to be important and whatever made it important would be clear to Bernie right away. My job was to get it to him, plain and simple. Just like that, I understood the whole case.