To Fetch a Thief

by Spencer Quinn

  The silver-teethed dude grabbed a pitchfork and began heaving bananas through the open gate, in Peanut’s direction. I crept across the dirt floor, closer and closer to that sombrero. It lay at the silver-teethed dude’s feet, but his back was turned, what with how busy he was heaving all those bananas. I got right up to him, no problem, and was just lowering my head over the sombrero when the baboon cried out. Crying out hardly describes the sound, maybe the most horrible sound I’ve ever heard, kind of a shrieking and howling combo that raised the hair from the back of my neck all the way down to the tip of my tail.

  After that, things happened fast. First—and maybe this wasn’t even first, real hard to say: that’s how fast things were happening—the silver-teethed guy—which is what I’ve been calling him, on account of how uneasy I am about calling him Pobre’s papa—whipped around toward where that awful sound had come from, and of course when he whipped around he saw me, just about to snatch up the sombrero.

  His eyes opened wide, although not very wide, because of how narrow they were to begin with. He recognized me, no doubt about that, and the sight of me ticked him off big-time. That had happened before with perps too numerous to mention, Zutty Yepremian, for example, or Sing Jong Soo, and didn’t bother me at all. But when he jabbed the pitchfork right at my head—that bothered me. I darted away from those sharp, pointy ends, then came at him from the side, real quick, but he turned out to be real quick himself, getting the pitchfork between us and jabbing again. I dodged, tried to go underneath, take him out by the ankles, one of my best moves, but down came the pitchfork, blocking my path. And what was this? Holding the pitchfork in one hand, the silver-teethed dude reached into his pocket with the other and drew a gun.

  “Perro loco,” he said. He raised the gun. I saw down the barrel, a small round space, black and empty. Bernie’s voice spoke inside me at last: Run, big guy. But I couldn’t. Somehow that tiny black emptiness had me frozen in place. That thick, oversized trigger finger started to squeeze.

  And at that moment came a surprise. Somehow, without making any noise, or at least not any that I heard, Peanut was on her feet, and not only on her feet but—you couldn’t call it running, maybe, more like lumbering—yes, lumbering with surprising speed, up and at ’em but even more so than I could have dreamed, and heading right in the perp’s direction; dudes who point guns at me are perps, case closed.

  This little perp with the big hands, one on the pitchfork, one on the gun, heard Peanut coming at the last instant—hard to miss now, and come to think of it, the floor was shaking—and spun around. Now his eyes really did get big, big as any human eyes I’d seen. He dropped the pitchfork, tried to bang the gate closed. Ha! That gate bounced right off Peanut and came swinging back, so hard it knocked the perp to the ground and flew off its hinges. He rolled over, and—oh, no, he still had the gun. I dove for his arm, too late. Blam. He got off a round, and a little red hole appeared in Peanut’s shoulder. The perp was adjusting his aim for another shot, swinging the barrel so it pointed at Peanut’s head, when she came rumbling through the space where the gate had been, trampled right over him, and kept charging across the warehouse floor. Did she take out a crate or two on the way? I thought so, because suddenly overturned crates were all over the place, splinters flying, and what was this? Snakes! Masses of snakes of different sizes and colors, tangled up with one another, writhing and hissing in clusters all over the floor. Also the baboon’s cage was a twisted mess and the baboon was on the loose, hooting in that scary voice. And the perp? The perp was writhing around kind of like the snakes, and also hissing, but not the snake-type hissing, more the sort of hissing humans sometimes do when they’re in a lot of pain. He rolled into the space where Peanut had been, dragging the remains of the gate after him, trying to cage himself in but having a lot of trouble since one of his arms was hanging in a funny kind of way.

  Meanwhile, Peanut was on the move, that bullet she’d taken not slowing her down at all. She—you couldn’t call it running, exactly, or trotting, although it was pretty close to trotting, but in a gigantic way—made her way to the door that led to the loading dock, one of those metal roll-down doors. The door was closed, of course, so Peanut was about to come to a halt, pull up, stop this trotting or whatever it was, right? Only she didn’t. Peanut just kept going, right into that door. It crumpled and got ripped away, with a metallic tearing sound that thrilled me, I’ll admit it. What else was there to do but follow her? Stay in the warehouse with the snakes, some of whom seemed to be slithering my way? Not my cup of tea, as humans say, and speaking personally tea isn’t my cup of tea, water being my drink, and just then I saw a trough filled with water, standing near the loading dock. Why hadn’t I smelled it? I tried to smell it now and couldn’t: Peanut’s smell smothered all others.

  I hurried over to the trough, lapped up my fill—oh, water!—my eyes on all those snakes the whole time. Some of them were enormous! And the fangs! At that very moment a big green one sank its fangs into an even bigger black one and all the writhing sped up and all the hissing grew louder. This was a nightmare.

  I ran onto the loading dock. Still some light left and I could see Peanut clearly. She was on the ground, walking toward the perp’s old—what was the word?—jalopy. That was it. She walked over to the jalopy, lifted one of her huge round feet and stomped down, crushing the whole front end. Why? I had no idea, but I liked it, liked it a whole lot. Then Peanut raised her trunk high and blew a beautiful trumpeting sound up toward the darkening sky. I loved that trumpeting sound—as good as Roy Eldridge or better—and was hoping for more, when the baboon blew right by me with a whoosh of air, flew out into the night and disappeared from view, although not before I saw that he had the sombrero.

  I jumped down onto the ground and went over to Peanut. This was the Peanut case, meaning she was my responsibility. First, I had to get her attention. That probably meant waiting until she’d finished crushing the jalopy’s back end. It didn’t take long.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I tried barking, not too loud: I had the feeling that making lots of noise long about now wouldn’t be the best idea. But—what’s that expression Bernie uses, something about being on the same page? I had a faint memory, my very earliest, even before my puppy days in the crack house, a memory of a litter box and paper training. How did that explain the being-on-the-same-page expression? I got a bit confused. Then I remembered the main point. We weren’t on the same page, me and Peanut. How did I know? Because there she was lofting her trunk high—sending this enormous scent wave over me, by the way—and doing her trumpeting thing, again, just blasting to the skies.

  After that it was quiet, the strange sort of muffled quiet you hear after a plane has flown over you real low. By then there was just the tiniest bit of light left over the distant slope; everywhere else night had fallen. Peanut was this enormous shadowy figure beside me, like something jutting out of the earth. That was the feeling I got: like standing next to a mountain, a real smelly one. Not a nice feeling, so I barked. How feeble that sounded, reminding me of one of Iggy’s yips when he’s just about ready to give up jumping up and down in his window.

  I tried barking again, louder. Yes, that was better, much more like me. And one more, even louder. Back in action, no doubt about it, and now I had Peanut’s attention. She looked down, those big eyes gleaming like two fiery lights in the sky—at that moment I realized the warehouse was on fire—and turned her head in my direction. More of a swing than a turn, really, and all of a sudden her trunk came whipping at me with surprising speed. That trunk hit me hard—and it felt hard, too, more like a block of wood than some giant nose, which is what it was, right?—and the next thing I knew I was tumbling backward in the dirt.

  I came to a stop, got my breath back, and rose to my feet. By that time Peanut was on the move, headed away from the warehouse—which wasn’t really on fire in a total way, more like just showing some flames here and there—and toward the road. Was that a good idea? I didn’
t think so. The road was for humans and except for Pobre the humans around here weren’t friendly. I hurried after Peanut.

  She was walking, and not in a hurried way, but somehow covered a lot of ground anyway, so I had to trot to catch up, not my fastest, but not my slowest, either. I trotted out in front, turned to face her, and barked. I have lots of different barks. This one was short and snappy, and meant hit the brakes, sending that message loud and clear.

  But not to Peanut. She just kept walking, at the same time doing that head-turning thing, and here came that trunk again, lashing in my direction. Not this time, baby. I darted out of the way, then darted back, getting out in front of her again, and barking short and snappy. This was herding, something I just knew how to do, hard to explain. My job now was to get Peanut turned around, away from the road and headed the other way. This was a point Peanut didn’t seem to be getting, because she showed no sign of turning around, just kept coming in that lumbering walk that made the ground tremble under my paws and that was starting to irritate me, I admit it. Was it possible she didn’t know how to be herded? That was going to make my job harder, no doubt about it.

  But I’d done hard jobs before, including hard herding jobs. My mind returned to the Teitelbaum divorce, not the excellent kosher chicken at the celebration dinner, but before that, when I’d actually had to herd Mr. Teitelbaum and a bunch of his angry supporters back into the steam bath. If I could do that, then was there any reason to doubt that—

  Whoosh! That trunk came swinging at me once more, and I suppose I hadn’t been paying close enough attention because I was airborne again, spinning through the air and thumping down. What the hell was going on? I’m a hundred-plus-pounder, if I haven’t mentioned that already, and if there’s any knocking down to be done, I do it. I jumped back up, then rose in front of Peanut and pawed at the air. From that angle I caught my first real good look at her tusks, glinting in the night. Were they a kind of teeth? I remembered Charlie saying something about that. Yes, teeth, but blown up to the nth degree, whatever that meant. I stopped barking, stopped pawing the air, just stood there up on my hind legs, a brand-new thing for me. While I waited for a new idea, a snake came slithering out of the shadows, right between me and Peanut. I’d forgotten the snakes—we had snakes out the yingyang, and soon, with the warehouse on fire, they’d be all over the place. I dropped down and growled at it. The snake coiled up and flicked its tongue at me. At that moment Peanut seemed to become aware of the snake—was it possible she was like Bernie, couldn’t see diddley at night? Bo Diddley’s a favorite of ours, by the way, but no time to go into that now—because she stopped in her tracks and screamed, a sound like her trumpeting but harsher. It hurt my ears. Plus I didn’t like the look of that snake. Nothing was going right. All at once I lost my temper. I circled the snake, went right up to Peanut, well within range of that trunk and those tusks, and started barking, real loud. And—surprise: Peanut took a step back. I took a step forward, in fact more than that, one of my steps not covering enough ground, and kept barking. Peanut backed up another step and I closed in, staying in her face and barking hot and angry barks. Way up there her ears—she had to hear amazingly with ears like that—started flapping. I felt the breeze, and was still feeling it when Peanut turned and began walking, and not just walking, but in the direction I wanted, away from the road. I trotted after her. This was herding, kind of like with Mr. Teitelbaum and his steam room buddies, but harder, for sure.

  Peanut and I took a route away from the road, away from the warehouse, now throwing up more flames, and onto a flat plain with no lights showing, not as far as I could see. The firelight flickered across Peanut’s huge hind end, and what was this? She had a tail all right—not easy to imagine life without one—but how small considering the size of the rest of her, a ropey thing with a tuft of hair at the end. And that was all the hair she had on her whole body. What was up with that?

  I watched her tail bounce around for a while, sometimes swinging back and forth as though she was in a good mood, although in truth her mood was a complete mystery to me. That thought bothered me, so I ran in front of her and did some zigzagging, just to let her know who was in charge. Did she get the message? I wasn’t sure but she kept going, and in the direction I wanted, meaning I was getting my way, and therefore wasn’t I in charge? Me, Chet the Jet! I raced around Peanut in a tight circle, ears flattened by the wind I was making, and maybe my attention wandered a bit because I almost didn’t see one of Peanut’s back feet—a foot bigger around than the Hungry Dude with Everything from Dude’s Pizza, our go-to pizza joint in the Valley—kicked out sideways at me without warning. I veered away, my very quickest veer, and that foot barely grazed me, but somehow that was enough to send me flying, the whole somersaulting thing again, ending with another hard thump on the ground.

  I bounced right up. Get knocked down and you bounce right up: that was one of our core beliefs, mine and Bernie’s, a big reason for the success of the Little Detective Agency. No time to go into the other reasons now, but I couldn’t help thinking: Bernie. Have I already mentioned that he had the best smell of any human I ever met? If so, why not mention it again? It’s important.

  Where was I? Bouncing back up. Peanut was turning out to be hard work. Was I afraid of hard work? No. Hard work cracks cases: that’s something Bernie says and I believe it. What Peanut had forgotten, or maybe not understood in the first place, was—what again? I stood on the desert floor, somewhere down in Mexico, watching Peanut as she kept walking. Does that ever happen to you, needing to remember something that wouldn’t quite—

  And then, out of the blue, I had it: Peanut was forgetting that I was the one doing the herding and she was the one being herded. I ran around in front of her, turned again, and was about to try barking one more time, and time after time after that if I had to, when all at once the night, which had been very dark, turned brighter.

  Peanut halted. That ear-flapping thing started up. She raised her head toward the sky. I looked up, too. The moon had risen over some faraway hills. I’d never seen it so big and fat and yellow. We gazed at the moon, me and Peanut. So beautiful; I mean the moon, not Peanut. Her having no hair except for that tuft at the end of her tail—how could that be beautiful? But the moon, big and fat and yellow: that was another story. After a while, I became aware of a very pleasant woo-woo, woo-woo, kind of sound. Hey! That was me! I was sitting back on my haunches, singing to the moon, or at least making nice noises.

  Peanut looked down at me. Her trunk was on the move. Not again. But this was different. Peanut’s trunk curled up and then unrolled in a slow and gentle sort of way, and then the tip of it touched me, actually right between the ears where I like to be scratched. I just sat there, feeling no threat at all, despite the dustups we’d already had. Peanut didn’t actually scratch between my ears—the trunk being just a way over-the-top kind of nose, and how can you scratch with a nose?—but she did rub my head. Here’s something funny about the tip of Peanut’s trunk: it felt a lot like a human fingers.

  She withdrew her trunk. I rose, wagging my tail. She squatted back a bit and peed, a downpour, enormous and shocking. I lifted my leg and peed, too, trying to lay my mark on top of hers. All I can tell you is that I did my best. When the peeing was over—hers went on long after mine, on and on like the monsoons—she gave me a little swat with her trunk, not hard. I barked at her, not loud, just a low rumble to let her know it was time to hit the road, me herding, she getting herded. We hit the road, side by side, headed in the direction of the moon.

  A cool night with a soft breeze in our faces: funny how the moon, just as big as the sun right now and almost as yellow, brought no heat. The sun was just another . . . what? Something or other; Bernie’d gone into this maybe a million times, whatever that was. While I was trying to remember—but mostly thinking about Bernie’s interest in the sky, and then just plain about Bernie—I began to notice a few things. Like for example how the moon was on the rise now, shrinking and los
ing its yellowness, and how the distant hills it rose above appeared a bit familiar.

  We walked on—Peanut walking, me at a slow trot that’s just as easy for me as walking—the ground trembling slightly with every step she took. I was getting used to that—even starting to think I liked it—when I noticed something about those hills. There seemed to be a giant human form on top. Not possible, of course. Meaning . . . hey! It had to be a saguaro, and then I remembered about the biggest saguaro I’d ever seen, and knew one thing for sure: home was on the other side. I changed course slightly, aiming right for that tall black form. Peanut changed course with me.

  We walked all night, nice and easy, no problems of any kind. The stars began to fade—the moon being long gone—and over to one side the sky turned milky and then colors spilled all over the place. The hills seemed closer now, but still far away. Around us spread the plain, flat, rocky, and treeless, except for a single big and shady palo verde standing in a dry wash that cut across our path. We had one a lot like it off our patio on Mesquite Road. Leda wanted to chop it down because of the pods it dropped, but the divorce happened first. But forget all that. The important thing was a smell I was just starting to maybe pick up, perhaps a—

  Peanut took off. How did something that big get up to speed so fast? I shot after her. By the time I reached the dry wash she was already in it. Not quite a dry wash: a small pool of water gleamed under the rising sun. Peanut came to the edge of the pool, stopped, dipped her trunk into the water, curled it to her mouth, and drank. She kept that up for quite a while, then plodded into the pool and sat down, very little of her disappearing beneath the surface. Her eyes closed. Then she just sat there.

  I felt a bit thirsty myself, not the horrible, crusty-tongued thirst I’d had in the cage, just the normal kind you get after a long walk. I went to the water’s edge and lapped some up. Dusty-tasting water, but not bad, not bad at all. I lapped up some more.