A Fistful of Collars

by Spencer Quinn

  “First cousins.”

  When Bernie gets surprised—which you don’t often see—one of his eyebrows goes up in a pointed arch. That happened now.

  “Not widely known,” Jiggs said, “and I’d appreciate you keeping it that way.”

  Bernie took the gun from his belt, held it out for Jiggs. “You came close to losing him today, cuz,” he said.

  Jiggs’s throat bulged, like he was having trouble swallowing something big. Then his eyes filled with tears. Always strange when that happens with a real big guy. Jiggs took the gun, got in the SUV, and drove away. I caught a glimpse of Brando, arching his back in the side window.

  I barked an angry kind of bark. I wasn’t really angry at the way Brando arched his back, or even at Brando in general; it was more than that, hard to explain.

  “Go on and bark, Chet,” Bernie said. “I feel like barking myself.”

  Whoa! Was that really going to happen? We’d howled at the moon together, me and Bernie, but never barked. I kept up my barking for a long time, hoping he’d join in, but he did not.

  We were out of the desert, stuck in traffic on the freeway, Bernie talking about some dude named Malthus turning out to be right—so maybe not a perp, since perps were always wrong in the end—and me scanning surrounding cars for any other members of the nation within, when Carla called. Her voice came through the speakers.

  “Bernie? Do you know the old Flower Mart in Vista City?”

  “Isn’t it closed?”

  “Yeah, but has it been mentioned at all in this Thad Perry thing you’re looking into?”

  “No.”

  “Okay. Just checking. Most likely a dead end.”

  “Carla? I really don’t want you spending a lot of time on this.”

  “No problem, Bernie. I’m having fun.”

  Click.

  We drove for a while, maybe headed nowhere in particular, something we got in the mood for now and then.

  “Flowers are important, big guy,” Bernie said after a while. “Women like flowers. Also chocolate. And what’s the third thing?” He thought. So pleasant when Bernie was thinking. It couldn’t go on too long for me. “Jewelry!” he said at last. “That’s the third thing. But it’s tricky. Big mistake to give the wrong one at the wrong time, for example. Remember when I gave Leda those chocolate caramels for her birthday?”

  Yes, but I didn’t want to.

  “What the hell,” he said. “Why not swing by the old Flower Mart?”

  No reason I could think of.

  “Goddamn rubberneckers,” Bernie said.

  I didn’t know what rubberneckers were, just knew Bernie hated them. A long time seemed to pass before we left the freeway and crossed the bridge over the Vista City arroyo. I looked down—and so did Bernie; we often did the same thing at the same time, taking a pee, for example, no surprise, being partners and all—and saw two ragged guys arguing over a ripped trash bag with empty cans spilling out. Bernie reached over, gave me a pat. I squeezed across in his direction, just a bit, on account of there being some reason for not squeezing over too far when we were on the road.

  “Chet!”

  We swerved across the yellow line. Right, that was it. You learned something every day, humans said. And it was still light outside—plenty of time left for me to learn something else. Bring it on!

  We took the ramp at the end of the bridge, went by the rail yard and a couple of bars with dusty windows, and came to a boarded-up brick warehouse. Bernie pulled into the parking lot. We had it to ourselves. The wind was rising now, a hot wind off the desert. It blew a brown, dried-out bouquet of flowers tied with a faded ribbon across the pavement.

  “What if I sent Suzie some flowers?” Bernie said. “Or would chocolate be better? Jewelry?”

  I waited to hear.

  “And how come women like all those things more than men?” he said after a bit. “What’s up with that?”

  I forgot what I’d been waiting to hear before, began waiting for this new thing.

  “Although,” Bernie went on, “there’s no denying that some guys like flowers big time. Take Monet.”

  Tricky Mickey Monnay? A scammer with a fake laundry business, as I recalled, something to do with selling used clothing to China, very hard to understand, and now sporting an orange jumpsuit, probably used by some other perp, kind of an interesting . . . something or other, but flowers? I didn’t remember that part.

  We got out of the car, walked into the shadow of the warehouse; this was recon, just one of our techniques at the Little Detective Agency. A faded wooden sign decorated with painted flowers lay on the ground. Bernie wiped away some of the grime on the sign with the sole of his shoe, exposing writing. “‘Vista City Flower Mart,’” he said.

  We headed toward the end of the warehouse—Bernie kicking at the dead bouquet, me snatching it up to start a game of keep-away—and around to the other side. Nothing there but cracked pavement with weeds growing through, rusted old railway tracks, a few broken pallets, and a small blue Dumpster.

  I dropped the bouquet.

  “Chet?”

  And hurried over to the Dumpster.

  “Chet?”

  Bernie came running up. “Please not,” he said, raising the lid.

  I got my paw on the rim, peered down. It was Carla. There was a thin red slit in her chest and her hair wasn’t glossy anymore. I turned away. So did Bernie. We looked at each other, not at Carla, not at the big dark pool of blood starting to dry on the Dumpster floor.

  EIGHTEEN

  Metro PD came, sirens wailing, the wails colliding and recolliding, very hard on my ears. Talk went back and forth, all about different kinds of knives. I didn’t feel like hearing that kind of talk—or any, really—so I walked around the warehouse to the car out front and hopped in, actually almost not getting high enough, having to scramble the rest of the way with my back legs. Kind of weird, like I wasn’t myself. Bernie joined me a little later. We sat.

  “Not sure who to trust, big guy,” Bernie said.

  Me! He could trust me, of course, take it to the bank, bet the ranch, in spades. That was the way I trusted him. We were partners, something I’m sure I’ve mentioned before, but it’s worth mentioning again. Bernie glanced over at me and smiled a quick little smile, there and gone. I didn’t know why, but it was nice to see.

  Rick Torres drove up in an unmarked car and parked cop style, driver’s-side door to driver’s-side door, the way we did at Donut Heaven, only this was different—hard to say why, but it wasn’t just about the complete lack of doughnuts, Danishes, or bear claws, to name a few of my favorites.

  “The victim was a friend of yours?” Rick said.

  Bernie nodded. “Carla worked with Suzie at the Tribune.”

  “Does Suzie know yet?”

  “I’m gearing up to make the call.”

  Rick had dark eyes. When he was looking at you, they seemed friendly. From the side, the way I was seeing them now, they seemed watchful.

  “Sorry for your loss,” he said.

  “Thanks,” said Bernie.

  “Bad time to talk, I know,” Rick said.

  “Go on.”

  “Maybe you can help me out a bit, Bernie. Get in front of things.”

  “What things?”

  “The fact that this is the second stabbing homicide you’ve reported in just about as many days, for starters.”

  “Can’t help that,” Bernie said.

  “Maybe not,” said Rick. “But questions are going to be asked.”

  “Like what?”

  “The obtuse thing won’t work on me, Bernie.”

  The obtuse thing? A complete mystery, but it had come up before, Leda often telling Bernie it didn’t work on her, either. Bernie got a hard look on his face, the same as though Leda had just said it. Was there something alike about Rick and Leda? A brand-new thought, but it showed no signs of taking me anywhere.

  “First off,” Rick was saying, “the downtown boys will want to kno
w if the two killings are connected.”

  “Not that I know of,” Bernie said.

  “Yet,” said Rick. “You left off the yet.”

  Bernie didn’t answer.

  “Was Carla working on the Manny Chavez murder?” Rick said.

  “She never said.”

  “What were you meeting about?”

  “She hadn’t told me.”

  “Why here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Did you have any reason to believe she was in danger?”

  “No.”

  “Then what prompted you to check the Dumpster?”

  Bernie glanced at me.

  Rick nodded. “Of course.” He gave me a smile. “Good work, Chet, as usual. Too bad you’re not in charge.”

  I wasn’t in charge? Something to think about, maybe later. Right now the ambulance and the cruisers came driving out from behind the warehouse, lights turning and flashing but sirens off. Sirens off meant they weren’t really in a hurry.

  Rick started his car. “Hope you know what you’re doing, Bernie,” he said. “But . . .” He shook his head and drove off.

  Bernie watched him go. In the very quiet voice he uses for talking to himself, he said, “I’m trying to protect you, you son of a bitch.”

  Son of a bitch? Did that mean me? He was trying to protect me? I’d thought it was Rick. Couldn’t have been me—what did I need protecting from? Weren’t we the ones who dished it out, me and Bernie?

  He picked up the phone, punched a button, took a deep, deep breath. “Suzie?” he said. “I’ve got bad news.”

  “Bicicleta,” Bernie said.

  Back home, in the garage. The garage was where we kept the van we used for times when Bernie said the Porsche would be a bad idea, plus all kinds of other stuff, including Bernie’s beer can collection from the army, and Charlie’s bike, hanging on the wall, nice and shiny, with lovely streamers dangling from one of the grips; the other grip had had streamers, too, until recently. What had happened to them? I had hardly the slightest idea.

  Bernie picked up the bent and rusty kid’s bike that we’d found in Manny Chavez’s yard and leaned it against the wall.

  “Belongs to Nino, Manny’s kid, but no one claimed the body,” Bernie said, dusting off the seat, a little puff of dust rising like a wave and turning silver in the light from the window. “And the bike being in such bad shape, abandoned even in a neighborhood like that, makes me think Nino and Manny hadn’t been together in some time.” He found a rag and an oil can, started cleaning up the bike. Soon the tools came out and the bike was all in pieces. It got very quiet in the garage. I curled up on a tarp. Bernie worked on Nino’s bike until it was time to go to the airport and pick up Suzie.

  The terminal doors slid open, and out came Suzie, towing a little red suitcase. Oh, poor Suzie! Her face had no color at all, and her dark eyes, which usually sparkled like the countertops in our kitchen, looked huge and unseeing at the same time. Bernie jumped out of the car and held her. A state trooper moved toward them, ticket book in hand, saw how Suzie’s shoulders were shaking and backed away.

  “It’s my fault,” she cried, tears spilling down her face. “If I hadn’t—”

  Bernie’s hands, big and strong, squeezed Suzie’s arms so hard it had to hurt. She went silent.

  “That’s crazy talk,” he said, looking her in the eyes. “And even worse, it gives whoever did this some moral wiggle room. That’s sickening.”

  Suzie’s tears didn’t stop, but she got the sobbing part under control, nodded, and climbed in the car. After that, she seemed to pull herself together pretty quick, which was our MO at the Little Detective Agency—kind of a strange thought, since Suzie wasn’t part of the Little Detective Agency, which was just me and Bernie and always would be. So I forgot all that, whatever it was, and tried to make myself comfortable on the tiny shelf behind the two front seats, not easy for a hundred-plus-pounder. Did some gnawing at the back of Suzie’s seat go on? Hardly any at all, not worth mentioning.

  “I could stay at a hotel,” Suzie was saying.

  Bernie turned to her. “Is there something about Washington that makes everybody stupid?” he said. “You’re staying with me.”

  That night, we all went into the office and Bernie got busy at the whiteboard. The whiteboard always starts off completely blank, not a mark on it, which is how I like it best. First, Bernie drew two houses. I had no problem with that. “Two houses across from each other on North Coursin Street,” he said.

  “Bad neighborhood,” said Suzie.

  Exactly. I couldn’t have been following this any better.

  “Manny Chavez gets killed in this one,” Bernie said. “And over here is the mother and the girl who ID’d the bike, both of them now supposedly back in Mexico.” Squeak squeak: he made more marks with the felt pen. Those squeaks, plus the smell of the pen, both pretty interesting. I felt the thread slip-slipping away.

  “After Luxton’s visit?” Suzie was saying, or something like that.

  Bernie nodded.

  “I don’t understand this at all,” Suzie said.

  Bernie drew some arrows. “Floyd, the redhaired cop, is some kind of source for Luxton.”

  “I get that. But why does it have anything to do with Carla? What if there’s no connection?”

  Bernie added some boxes, a few inside other boxes. The whiteboard got blacker and blacker. Soon Bernie might have a pen mark on his face.

  “Jiggs gave that wad of money to Manny Chavez,” Bernie said at last. “That’s the connection.”

  I tried to remember that—and sort of did! From there, it was a real short step to getting the feeling that we were on a roll. What a nice feeling, exciting and relaxing at the same time! I gave it all my attention. Sometime later I grew aware of pen marks on Bernie’s face.

  We went to the funeral. I’d been to a funeral before, namely the funeral for the one kid we’d found too late. That broom closet: I wanted never to think about it, but how often it came sneaking into my mind, setting up camp in a back corner before I even knew what was happening! Forget all that, even if I can’t. The point is, I’d been to a funeral and knew the drill.

  For example, sitting quiet and still was important. I sat still and quiet between Bernie and Suzie in a middle row, the grass soft and thick like a putting green. In front, a woman in a sort of robe was giving a talk. I’d been to a talk before, the time Bernie spoke at the Great Western Private Eye convention, but this seemed different, although one thing they had in common was that no one laughed. In fact, everybody was sad. A whole bunch of humans all being sad at once is something that presses down on you, like the air has gotten real heavy. I stuck close to Bernie. Another thing the two funerals had in common was that Bernie wore a tie to both, the only times I’d ever seen him in a tie. It was his only one, plain black. Bernie was sad, too, but also angry. I could see it in this little muscle that bulged over his jaw once or twice.

  I watched the woman in the robe for a while and then shifted my gaze to the hole in the ground—a hole with very neat, squared-off edges, not the kind I’d dig. Beside the hole a long gold-trimmed white box, pretty much the same size as the hole, rested on a stand. It wasn’t one of our real bright Valley days; the sky kind of hazy, the way it can get when dust storms are on the way, but a ray of sunshine appeared and caught the gold trim. Carla was in that box, something I knew for a fact. All of this so far was like the other funeral, the one for the kid, except the box was bigger. Also, Bernie hadn’t been angry that time. We’d gotten rid of our anger the night before, when we’d caught the perp and done what we’d done. I lay down and curled up—aware of the voice of the woman in the robe, plus also some soft crying now and then—and kept my eyes on Bernie. Was he restless? Maybe; he did a lot of looking around.

  After, there was lots of talking in low voices, some hugging, a few handshakes. We met Carla’s mother and father, both big and strong, although they clung to each other like they were about to fa
ll down.

  “You’re the gentleman who found our daughter?” said Carla’s father. He had one of those very deep, rumbly voices that did nice things far inside my ears.

  “I am,” Bernie said. “May I ask how you knew that?”

  “The officer told us.” He turned to his wife. “What was the name of that nice officer?”

  “Stine,” said Carla’s mother. “Lieutenant Stine.” She looked at Bernie in the way humans do when they want someone to say something, but Bernie did not.

  “You’re a private detective, sir?” said Carla’s father.

  “I am,” Bernie said. “And also a friend of Suzie’s.”

  “Which was how you knew our . . . our daughter?” Carla’s father said.

  “Yes.”

  He squeezed his wife’s arm. “I just don’t understand,” he said. “How could anyone harm a hair on the head of a person like . . . like her? It’s impossible.” I could feel his voice through the ground under my paws. One other thing: there were worms in that hole. The smell is hard to miss.

  Out in the parking lot, Bernie was watching two women standing by a car, both of them wiping away tears.

  “Know them?” he said.

  Suzie didn’t answer. Her eyes had an inward look, way down there and not happy.

  Bernie touched her shoulder, and said, real gently, “Know those women, Suzie?”

  Suzie’s eyes cleared, like she was slowly waking up. She glanced at the women, shook her head. “Maybe friends of Carla’s, but the only ones we had in common were in the business.”

  Bernie was giving Suzie a careful look. He reached into the Porsche, handed her a bottle of water. “Wait here,” he said. “You, too, Chet. Sit.”

  I sat, no problem. Suzie leaned against the car, opened the water bottle, and tilted it up to her mouth. She took a sip, then all of a sudden was drinking and drinking, sucking the water from the bottle until it started crumpling in on itself.

  “How did he know I was so thirsty?” she said.

  Or something like that. I appeared to be no longer quite beside her, no longer sitting, to tell the truth, but on my way to Bernie; actually pretty much there, by his side, which is where it just so happens I feel my best.