A Fistful of Collars

by Spencer Quinn

  We climbed a mountain pass, up and over, and then we were out in the desert. Bernie’s hands relaxed on the wheel. I gazed at his hands, so beautiful, and even that one slightly twisted finger: beautiful, too. Soon we left the freeway and had a nice stretch of two-lane blacktop all to ourselves, pink hills rising on both sides, the kind of pink hills that shrink farther away the closer you get to them. Who could get tired of that?

  “Coronado came right through here,” Bernie said.

  Coronado? A perp of some kind, and not the first time Bernie had mentioned him—he always pointed out places where Coronado had been, but Coronado had moved on every time, one of those slippery customers who stayed a step or two in front of us. Message to Mr. Coronado: your day will come.

  We rounded a long curve—things heating up now, the heat actually visible, wavering like rising curtains in the air—slowed down and bumped off the pavement and onto a dirt track. It led us up a slope, not very steep, toward some big rocks. Hey! I’d been here before. We often revisit places at the Little Detective Agency, just one of our techniques.

  The track started looking more and more like the desert, and then you couldn’t tell the difference anymore. Bernie stopped the car by a lone creosote bush, its branches all yellow with flowers. I loved the smell of creosote bushes, a sharp smell that cleared my mind like nothing else. And today my mind was clear to begin with! I took a deep sniff or two, making my mind clearer than clear, the clearest ever. Chet the Jet!

  We started up toward the rocks, side by side, Bernie sweating almost right away in the heat—a lovely smell—and soon we were in the slot canyon or whatever it was, this narrow space with sheer rock rising on both sides. Bernie pulled himself onto the top of the flat rock at the end of the canyon—I was already up there, waiting for him, and glanced around. Nothing to see that hadn’t been there before, namely the drawing on the cliff face with—what had Bernie said?—the sun and a guy dancing under it?

  Bernie pointed at the guy in the drawing. “Upside down like that means they’re dead.” That was Bernie! Right there, thinking along with me. That made me feel great, so great I just about forgot that I had no clue what we were doing here, or where we were with the case, if it was a case.

  Bernie was gazing up at the walls of the slot canyon, steep on the two sides, a little less steep at the end with the drawing. He walked here and there. I walked here and there with him.

  “I expected—” he began, and at that moment I went still. “Something up, big guy?”

  Beyond a doubt. Here, in the corner where one of the side walls met the end wall: cat. A smell I don’t miss—take it to the bank. Not our bank, where we’ve been having problems with the manager, Ms. Oxley, but forget all that. The point is that a cat had been right here, not too long ago and not just any cat.

  Before I’d even realized that this corner actually formed a sort of—not a trail, really, more like simply a doable scramble to the top—I was halfway up.

  “Chet! What are you doing?”

  And maybe some more like that, but I wasn’t really listening, my attention focused on my back legs. When it comes to steep scrambles, all the push is from the back legs—maybe something you know already—with the front legs just marking the next set point and helping out with a bit of pull. It’s all in the timing, of course—Bernie often talks about timing—and here’s how I handle the timing: I don’t even think about it. Pound, pound, pound, and the next thing I knew I was cresting the top of the wall, a whole avalanche of rocks and pebbles clattering down behind me. I looked back, and there was Bernie, hands over his head and running for cover.

  Uh-oh. I started panting, not sure why. Certainly not from this quick little climb, over in a flash. Down below the cascading came to an end and Bernie moved back toward the base of the wall, unhurt. The panting stopped.

  “Chet? You all right?”

  All right? More than all right—I was feeling my very best. And at the same time, here I was at the tip-top of this ledge or cliff or whatever it was. I came very close to having an interesting thought.

  “What’s up there?”

  I turned and started on a little recon or recoy or whatever it was, something that we at the Little Detective Agency always did in new places. Yes, I was standing on top of a cliff, but on the back side it sloped down gradually, open ground on one side and some enormous boulders on the other. I trotted along that line of boulders, a no-brainer—my favorite way of doing things and one of the best human expressions going—on account of that was where the scent took me.

  You see these big boulders—much taller than a man—out in our desert; Bernie has a whole explanation about how they got here, which I’ll try to remember the next time he brings it up. Once in a while a boulder or two will have a small sort of shelf cut into it, where you might find some creature resting in the shade, a lizard, say, or possibly a rattler or a diamondback—a lesson I’ve learned in the past and hoped never to learn again. So I wasn’t surprised to find a shelf in the face of one of those boulders, and a creature lying in the shadows. But not a lizard, rattler, or diamondback: it was Brando.

  Brando gazed down at me. I gazed up at him. He yawned, a real big yawn. His teeth? Huge for someone his size, and cat teeth were amazingly sharp, another one of those lessons I’ve learned and relearned. After a bit, he closed his mouth and turned his head away from me. That was infuriating. I barked, my short, sharp, annoyed kind of bark. No reaction from Brando. I barked again, shorter, sharper, more annoyed. His eyes closed.

  His eyes closed? He was planning on taking a nap while I was down here barking my head off? Could I jump up to that shelf? No way. Somehow climb the rock? Too steep, straight up and down. No other ideas occurred to me. I sat down and shut up.

  Brando’s eyes opened. He slowly rose, kind of unfolding himself into a long stretch—he turned out to be a not-bad stretcher, I had to give him that—and came to the edge of the shelf and stared at me. I stared back at him. Then, still with his eyes on me, Brando began to—how to put it?—walk down that sheer wall. And not in any hurry! About halfway down, he uncoiled and came gliding to earth—somehow at his own speed and not at the earth’s, if you get what I mean, and I actually don’t. He landed without making the slightest sound or sending the tiniest vibration through the ground. Now if he yawned again, I was going to—

  Brando didn’t yawn. Instead he walked right past me, within easy pawing distance and no longer looking my way, and headed for a boulder farther down the slope. I—don’t want to say followed, more like I walked behind him, just as though I happened to be going in the same direction. And the next moment, that was what I believed, pure and simple: Brando and I were on similar courses, total accident.

  Our similar courses led us around the farther-down-the-slope boulder. On the other side stood one of those gnarly palo verde trees, the yellow kind, and sitting with his back to the trunk was Thad Perry. He looked real bad: shirt torn, feet bare and bloody, eyes red and glassy, lots of powder caught in the sweat on his upper lip, like a white mustache. He had a gun in his hand, and was using it to make markings in the dirt.

  Thad looked up, saw Brando.

  “Go ’way, Brando,” he said, or something like that, his voice all messed up.

  Brando lay down, curled up in a ball. Thad raised his gaze a bit, saw me. He blinked a few times, and then his gaze seemed to find me again.

  “What the hell?” he said. He raised the gun, slowly and shakily, and pointed it at me.

  Then, from farther down, came running footsteps, heavy and not very fast. I looked that way and saw Bernie pounding hard up the slope, all sweaty and dusty.

  “Thad,” he shouted. “No!”

  Thad turned to him. The gun swung in Bernie’s direction. Bernie kept coming. The gun wobbled a bit in Thad’s hand and then he did something I’d never seen before or even imagined. He shifted that gun around and aimed it right at the side of his own head.

  We didn’t scare easily, me and Bernie, but w
e were scared now. I could see it on Bernie’s face, and as for me, I was terrified, terrified for the very first time in my life, my heart beating so hard in my chest I almost couldn’t stand it.

  “Don’t,” Bernie said, closer now. “Nothing’s that bad.”

  Thad, his eyes still on Bernie, said, “Fuck you. Fuck them all.”

  I was already moving, had possibly been moving from the moment Thad had drawn down on Bernie. I zoomed over a low cactus, got my legs under me, and launched myself. Thad saw me at the last instant, and then came a dust cloud, the crack of gunfire, and a shot ricocheting off a nearby rock. KA-ZING! I got a good hold on Thad’s wrist, tasted his blood. He yelled something I missed and the gun fell to the ground. Bernie ran up and grabbed it.

  “Let him go, big guy.”

  SEVENTEEN

  And I was going to let Thad go, no question about it, if not now then real soon, but before I could, I felt a sharp jab in my side, too sharp to ignore. I spun around and there in the dust, back way up and teeth bared, stood Brando, his golden eyes full of hate. He hissed at me—that horrible hiss cats have in their repertoire—in case I was missing the point about how he felt about me. Guess what. I felt the same for him, or maybe even more so. Hot rage boiled up in me—kind of a great feeling, I admit it—and I lunged at Brando, snarling my fiercest snarl, the one where spit sprays out of my mouth. And then—

  Ow. That hurt. And so quick! Brando had swiped one of his claws right across my muzzle? That was what must have happened—too fast to see, but I figured it out from the way he was poised in front of me, one paw raised, still hissing. I licked my muzzle, tasted blood, my own, and decided to think things over. Sometimes I thought better if I had more space. That was the only reason I backed up a bit.

  Meanwhile, Bernie was kneeling on the ground, turning Thad over on his back. Thad’s eyes were closed. Bernie stuck the gun in his belt and placed a finger on Thad’s neck.

  “Thad? You all right?”

  Thad’s eyes fluttered open, big, blue, empty.

  “Thad? Say something.”

  His eyes stopped being empty, got unfriendly instead. “Fuck off,” he said.

  Bernie let him go. Thad wobbled, started to tip over, then stuck out his arm and caught himself.

  “What are you staring at?” Thad said.

  Bernie rose. “You’ve got coke all over your face,” he said.

  Thad wiped his face on the back of his sleeve, leaving a white smear on the material. He gazed at it, the look in his eyes changing from unfriendly to more like he’d just felt a pain inside.

  “What’s going on with you?” Bernie said. “What’s the story?”

  “Nothing,” said Thad, eyes downcast. “Nada, zip, zilch.”

  Bernie pointed to the markings Thad had made in the dirt. “What about that—‘April Sorry’?”

  Thad’s gaze slowly shifted to the markings. Then, in a clumsy kind of way but not slow, he lunged forward, almost a fall, and rubbed out the markings with his hand, rubbing and rubbing wildly. After that, he turned to Bernie as though he’d just beaten him at something. Thad’s eyes were amazing: they told so much all by themselves.

  “You think I won’t be able to remember ‘April Sorry’?” Bernie said. Thad didn’t reply. “Did something happen in April?”

  Thad smiled, now lying facedown on the stony dirt. There was something horrible about that smile, hard to explain. “Yeah,” he said, “something happened in April.”

  “What?” said Bernie.

  “Spring came,” Thad said. “All the blossoms, shit like that.”

  Bernie looked down at him. “I can help you.”

  “That’s what everybody says,” Thad said. “Everybody wants to do me favors.”

  “I didn’t say anything about favors,” Bernie said.

  “Makes you unique.” Thad pushed himself up, back into a sitting position.

  “Think you can get up?” Bernie extended his hand.

  Thad ignored it. “When I want. When and if.” At that moment, Brando glided forward and curled up in Thad’s lap. Thad’s hand moved, kind of on its own, if that makes any sense, and settled on Brando’s furry back. Brando’s eyes closed.

  “You came up to see the rock carving?” Bernie said.

  “Any law against that?”

  “And what else did you have in mind?”

  “Nothing. Nada, zip, zilch.”

  “Where’d you get the gun?”

  “Sources.”

  “Jiggs, by any chance?”

  “Don’t pick on ol’ Jiggsy—he’s just doing his job.”

  “Giving you a gun’s doing his job?” Bernie said. “I thought he was supposed to protect you.”

  “Think what you want,” said Thad. He looked up at Bernie and maybe didn’t like the expression on Bernie’s face—although I sure did—because he said, “I’ve got this urge to paste you in the mouth.”

  “How did that work out the last time?” Bernie said.

  Thad tilted up his chin. “I’m not afraid of you.”

  “Didn’t say you were.”

  “Not afraid of anybody.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Bernie said. “What about Manny Chavez, for example? Were you afraid of him?”

  Thad’s hand, which had been stroking Brando’s back, went still. Brando opened his eyes. “Name means nothing to me,” Thad said.

  “How about Ramon? That ring a bell?”

  Thad started stroking Brando again. “Sure,” he said. “Ramon Novarro, silent star of the silver screen, although not my role model.”

  “Are you gay, Thad? Is that what this is all about?”

  “Guess again.”

  Bernie shook his head and walked away. I walked with him.

  “On your way to sell me out?” Thad called after him.

  Bernie turned. “Sell you out?”

  “Peddle me to the gossip rags,” Thad said.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “For the money, for Christ sake. Are you stupid?”

  “Must be it,” Bernie said.

  Huh? I was totally lost, Bernie always being the smartest human in the room. But for some reason, I wasn’t angry at Thad, actually felt bad on account of all these things going on inside him, not including the fact that he was about to puke anytime now; I could smell it coming.

  Meanwhile, Bernie was saying something about Thad’s car. Thad pointed down the slope, off to one side.

  “Who do you want to come get you?” Bernie said.

  “Flights of angels,” said Thad.

  And then he leaned sideways—holding Brando as far away as possible—and got the puking out of the way.

  “The choices,” said Bernie, “are Felicity, Nan, or Jiggs.”

  Thad sat up straight, panting a bit. For a moment there was no color on his face at all. Brando rose, walked over to the tree, and lay in the shade, his eyes on me.

  “That’s a tough one,” Thad said, color returning to his face in an uneven, blotchy kind of way. “How about I drive myself back?”

  “No,” Bernie said.

  “No one says no to me,” Thad said. “Not like that, just no, period. There’s always a whole song and dance.”

  “I don’t do that,” Bernie said.

  Huh? Maybe true about dancing—although one time Suzie had gotten him out on the dance floor at the Dry Gulch Steakhouse and Saloon, an event that had proven too exciting for me, so I’d had to wait outside in the car—but Bernie was a great singer, sometimes accompanying himself on the ukulele. “Mr. Pitiful,” for example, was one of his very best.

  “Felicity won’t like my aura right now,” Thad said. “And Nan might quit on me.”

  “Why would she do that?” Bernie said.

  “She has standards.”

  Bernie nodded. “That leaves Jiggs.”

  “He’ll be pissed at me.”

  “Pissed enough to quit?”

  “Nope,” said Thad. “Not Jiggsy.”

  �
�How come he’s so loyal?” Bernie said.

  “Ask him.”

  Bernie called Jiggs. Not long after that, Thad got to his feet. We walked down the hill and came to Thad’s ride, a big SUV parked on a track at the far side of a dry wash. Thad climbed into the backseat and fell asleep. Brando sat in the front, licking his fur in a leisurely way that turned out to be bothersome, so I tried my hardest not to watch. Then less hard, and soon not at all. Nothing worked.

  A little later, a Jeep appeared on the track and stopped a short distance from us. Jiggs got out and spoke to the driver. The Jeep turned around and drove away. Jiggs came walking up, one of those real big guys who swung a bit from side to side as he moved, like the ground was rocking under him. He glanced inside the SUV and said, “Sleeping like a baby.”

  “A wasted, strung-out baby,” Bernie said.

  Jiggs turned to him. “That’s when he gets his best sleeps.” He opened the front door, paused. “How’d you know where to find him?”

  “A lucky guess,” Bernie said. “Here’s another guess—Thad didn’t like it when he found out where they were shooting this movie.”

  “He’s an artist,” Jiggs said. “They’re temperamental.”

  “There’s more to it than that.”

  “Like what?”

  “You tell me,” Bernie said. “Start with whose side you’re on.”

  “Thought you were supposed to be smart,” said Jiggs. He lowered his voice, spoke in a new way, more like he and Bernie were friends, which I was pretty sure they weren’t, kind of confusing. “We’re family, for Christ sake.”

  “Family?”