Adelina: in my mind I saw her with ants on her face and didn’t feel like the biscuit anymore.
“And the other woman?” said Colonel Bob.
“Suzie Sanchez. She’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune. We were in Clauson’s Wells on a tip from her.”
“Got pictures of the women?” said the colonel.
Bernie did. I caught a glimpse as he handed them over: Adelina holding Princess; and Suzie and Bernie in our backyard at home. Colonel Bob studied that one the longest. “You married?”
“Not anymore,” said Bernie.
“This the ex?”
“No.”
“Any kids?”
“One.”
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy.”
“Two girls here—twins. The mom got custody.”
“Uh-huh,” said Bernie. Silence. Bernie drained his glass and rose. “We better hit the road. I owe you guys.”
“Hell you do,” said Colonel Bob.
I rose, too.
“What a smart dog,” said the major. I liked the major; one of those humans with a feel for me and my guys.
“We’ll keep an eye out for these women,” said Colonel Bob. “And the pooch. But I wouldn’t mind a quick swing over to Clauson’s Wells, if you’ve got time. Shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes.”
Twenty minutes? I didn’t know what that was exactly; but not long, right? And I’d come so far, although the details of the journey were getting a little hazy in my mind. But far, that was the point. So how was this going to be possible?
I only started to get it when we were actually up in the chopper, Bernie and me kind of close together in the back, Colonel Bob at the controls up front. Were we zooming or what? The ground down below blew right by. Wow. So this was how the birds felt. The pukey part, too, I wondered? The truth was I preferred the Porsche, riding shotgun.
Bernie and Colonel Bob wore headsets, plus flying in a chopper turned out to be noisy, so I couldn’t pick up much when they talked, but soon we swooped down in a long curve that made me dig my paws into the floor, and Bernie said something like, “Didn’t see that before.”
And the Colonel asked some question about a pond.
“Yeah,” said Bernie.
“Let’s put ’er down,” said the colonel.
We landed and got out; so good to feel the ground under me. I looked around and saw where we were: on that grassy flatland above Clauson’s Wells. There was the pond where Princess and I had drunk, and beyond it, the cabin where—
“What got into him?” said Colonel Bob.
But Bernie understood. He was hurrying after me. I pelted toward the cabin door, rose up, came down with my paw on the thumb piece. This time the door didn’t open.
The colonel ran up. “He knows how to open doors?”
“Some,” said Bernie.
“Where did you find him?”
“A long story,” said Bernie. I wanted to hear it, but Bernie went silent. He put his thumb on the thumb thing and pressed down. Didn’t open of course. I could have told him that . . . except I couldn’t. I got a bit confused, and in that moment of confusion, Bernie raised his foot and kicked in the door. That splintering sound—I loved it! Kick it again, Bernie.
“Is this legal?” said Colonel Bob.
“Under ghost town law,” Bernie said. Colonel Bob laughed. He liked Bernie a lot: I could tell from that laugh. I could also tell that Colonel Bob didn’t mind a little rough stuff. Neither did we, me and Bernie. Bernie kicked the door again. It sagged off its hinges and swung open.
We went in, Bernie first, me almost squeezing in ahead of him. Everything looked the same as before—table, chairs, cot—except for one thing: the cot was empty. No Adelina. I went over to the cot, sniffed around, picked up the bad smell, but just barely.
I barked, a deep low bark that sometimes comes out all by itself.
“What’s going on?” said Colonel Bob.
“Don’t touch anything,” said Bernie, taking surgical gloves from his back pocket and snapping them on.
FIFTEEN
Bernie searched the cabin, went over it on his hands and knees. Something about Bernie—or any human—on hands and knees always got me going so I had to wait outside with Colonel Bob. We walked around the pond. The sun was hot on my back. I paused for a drink.
“Taste good?” said Colonel Bob.
It did. We walked some more. “This PI gig pay at all?” the colonel said. “That car of his looks pretty beat up.” Huh? He was talking about our car, the Porsche? I glanced up at him, saw the faraway look in his eyes. Sometimes humans got that look when they were talking to themselves inside; I was pretty sure of that. And if no other humans were around, sometimes bits of that talk leaked out. Like now, when he stopped and said, “Saved my goddamn life.” He took out a pack of cigarettes and lit up. I loved the smell of cigarette smoke, but Bernie was trying to quit so I didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I’d want. Colonel Bob tossed the match into the pond. “Hell on earth,” the colonel said. The match sizzled. What a sound! The things it did to my ears! Do it again, Colonel Bob!
But he didn’t, just stood by the pond with that inward look, taking deep drags off the cigarette, and soon Bernie came out of the cabin, tucking away the surgical gloves.
“Find anything?” said Colonel Bob.
“Just the spotlessness,” Bernie said.
“Meaning?”
“Don’t know yet,” said Bernie. He glanced at me. “But something not good.”
Colonel Bob held out the cigarette pack like he knew Bernie would take one, and Bernie did. The colonel flipped him the matches. Bernie lit up. I got ready for another sizzle, but it didn’t happen. Instead Bernie blew out the match, shook it a bit, then put it in his pocket.
“Pack in, pack out?” said the colonel.
Bernie shrugged.
“It’s the way to go,” the colonel said. “Wish I had your discipline.” “Me?” said Bernie. “Discipline?” Was that a new word to Bernie? Sure was to me.
“Yeah,” said Colonel Bob. “You.”
Bernie was silent. They smoked by the side of the pond.
“How’s the leg?” said the colonel.
“Perfect,” said Bernie.
“No ill effects?”
“I was lucky.”
“Sure looked bad that night,” the colonel said. Bernie stayed silent again. “That stupid night,” said the colonel.
“Yeah,” Bernie said.
“Think about it much?”
“Nope,” said Bernie. And then: “Some.”
There was a long silence. The smoke from their cigarettes rose in the still air and slowly mingled. The colonel said, “Life is pretty good.”
“Yeah,” said Bernie.
Pretty good? Life was great! How could anyone miss that? It was right out there every day.
“We done here?” said the colonel.
“For now,” said Bernie.
“Want to fly us back?”
Huh? Bernie could fly the chopper? He looked at the colonel, a funny expression on his face, and started laughing. The colonel laughed, too. They laughed and laughed, doubled over, laughed till tears came.
“Hey, Chet, down boy. Easy.”
That laughing till tears came thing: always too much for me, but I tried my hardest to stay down.
Back in the Porsche, on the open road—in this case, empty two-lane blacktop—me in the shotgun seat: anything better than this? The truth was it could have been a little better if we’d had music, or if Bernie’s hands had been more relaxed on the wheel. He was thinking: I could feel it, like some actual wave pressing against me. These thought sessions usually turned out pretty well for us. I watched the passing scenery, feeling tip-top, my mind a complete blank.
We came over a ridge, stopped at an overlook, and got out. Loved pit stops. I marked a boulder, a twig, and a spot on the ground where I smelled some creature I hadn’t smelled before. That was always interesting. Ther
e were so many creatures I’d seen on the Discovery Channel but never smelled. Baboons, for example: wouldn’t mind getting a whiff of them. I glanced over at Bernie, saw he was watching me. “Got a feeling you know a lot more about this than I do, boy. What’s going on?”
I ran over to him, wagging my tail. What did I know? So much: me and Princess, that snake, the hippies and the bearded pickup guy, and what else? Adelina. Adelina and the ants. My tail went still. Bernie gave me a pat. “Let’s go have some fun with a couple of morons,” he said.
Sounded good to me.
Not long after that, we began to see traffic. Then came some roadside trailers, a gas station, a diner—I could always spot a diner from the shape, the smell arriving as we blew by—and we entered a town.
“Welcome to Nowhereville,” Bernie said.
Hadn’t heard of it, but I always liked going someplace new.
We parked in front of a low brick building with a gold star on the door and went inside. A man in a brown uniform stood behind a counter, tall and lean, with a crooked nose; once Bernie had made this perp’s nose even more crooked than that. The uniformed man had a gold star on his chest, a cowboy hat on his head, and a bandage on his neck, maybe from a shaving cut. Bernie got shaving cuts all the time, but never so low down. The man saw us and stopped what he’d been doing, which was nothing.
“You again?” he said. Something familiar about him, but it wouldn’t quite come to me.
“Nice to see you, too, deputy,” Bernie said. “This here’s Chet.”
The man gazed down at me. I picked up his smell and began to remember. His hand went to that neck bandage and I remembered more. “So?” he said.
“Jog your memory at all?” said Bernie. “Seeing Chet?” He put his hand on my head, rested it there. That growling: was it me? I stopped.
“Nothin’ wrong with my memory,” the deputy said. “Too bad about that little misunderstanding over in Clauson’s Wells, but we didn’t see no dog, end of story.”
“That’s funny,” said Bernie. “He saw you.”
“Huh?” said the deputy.
“All you had to do was tell me,” Bernie said. “A simple thing.”
“Tell you what?”
“That you’d seen him, maybe followed him around a bit.”
“Followed him around?”
Another man came in through a door at the back, tall and lean like the deputy, but with a straight nose. I recognized his smell, too. He gave Bernie a look, not friendly, and said, “He’s back.”
“But he’s not making much sense, sheriff,” the deputy said.
“Happens sometimes when you get your bell rung,” said the sheriff. “An accident on our part, and we’re truly regretful, but how were we supposed to know you were a PI in good standing?”
It’s easy to tell when humans get angry: their faces flush, their voices rise, they start throwing punches. Bernie’s different. When he gets angry—and it doesn’t happen often—not much changes; sometimes all you see is this muscle in his jaw, getting hard and lumpy. I was seeing it now.
“An easy mistake to make,” Bernie said, his voice not rising, growing quieter, if anything. “But why compound it?”
“Compound?” said the deputy. All humans have eyes too close together, in my opinion, but some, like the deputy, are worse than others.
“I think we’re bein’ threatened,” the sheriff said. His eyes weren’t that close together, but they were so pale they didn’t seem to have any color, just two black spots in the middle of white. This was confusing. Wasn’t a sheriff some kind of lawman, a cop? Normally I liked cops.
“No threat,” said Bernie. “More of an opportunity.”
“How so?” the sheriff said.
“In fact,” said Bernie, “the kind of opportunity that doesn’t come along very often—a do-over, no questions asked.”
“Lost me,” said the sheriff.
Me, too, and some time ago, but that didn’t matter. Bernie was doing what he did best, being the smartest human in the room. I got the feeling I’d be grabbing these guys by the pant leg sometime soon, kind of crazy since they were lawmen.
“Your original story doesn’t fit certain facts I’ve established since,” Bernie said.
“Tough titty,” said the deputy. The sheriff watched Bernie closely and didn’t say anything. I got the feeling he was listening hard. Not me: this was way too complicated.
“What facts?” said the sheriff at last.
“Here’s just one. You both denied seeing Chet here down in Clauson’s Wells. But it’s clear that’s not the case.”
“How?” said the sheriff.
Bernie turned to the deputy. “What happened to your neck?” he said.
The deputy’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Boil,” he said. “Infected boil.”
“That’s not the way they’ve got it written on your chart,” Bernie said.
“Chart?”
“You know—medical records,” Bernie said. “At that nice clinic just down the street.”
“What the hell?” said the deputy. The sheriff made a gesture, maybe to hush him, but the deputy kept going. “They showed you my chart?”
“Would that be ethical?” Bernie said. “Just happened to be where I could see it, nobody’s fault. But the point is they’ve got you down for a dog bite. More of a scratch, really, since the skin wasn’t penetrated. Nothing about a boil, infected or otherwise.”
Silence. The feeling in the room changed in a way I liked.
“Have to get that corrected, won’t you, Les?” said the sheriff.
“Right away,” the deputy said.
“No rush,” Bernie said. “I made a copy of the original.”
The sheriff held out his hand. “Mind if we take a look?”
“Not a hard copy,” Bernie said. “Sorry—should have mentioned that. I scanned the relevant page and emailed it to my office.” He took out his cell phone. “Amazing what these things can do.”
More silence. The deputy’s hand moved down to the butt of his gun. “Sounds like a possible felony to me,” the sheriff said.
“Let’s call in the FBI,” Bernie said. “If they’re not involved already.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” said the sheriff.
“Nothin’,” said the deputy. “Why are we even listenin’? He’s just a bullshitter.”
“Les?” said the sheriff. “Shut up.”
I was with the sheriff on that. I’d seen bulls, and what they could leave behind, amazing, but I didn’t get the connection to Bernie.
“And because of possible FBI involvement, you’ve got to be prepared for all the facts of your stakeout at the saloon in Clau-son’s Wells coming out.”
“What facts?” said the sheriff.
“That’s the question,” Bernie said. “Let’s start with what you were doing there in the first place.”
“Tole him that already,” said the deputy.
“The on-the-lookout for vandals tale?” Bernie said.
“Wouldn’t put it that way,” said the sheriff.
“How would you put it?” Bernie said.
“We were pursuing a long-running investigation.”
“About vandalism?”
“Correct.”
“And you had a tip that night.”
“Correct again.”
“Who from?”
“Don’t know how things run in the big city,” the sheriff said, “but here in the sticks we protect our informants.”
“From the FBI?”
“Say again?”
“Simple question,” Bernie said. “Are you going to protect your informant from the FBI?”
“Christ Almighty,” said the deputy. “Why’s he keep bringing up the FBI?”
“It’s this case I’m working on,” Bernie said.
“Already told you,” the sheriff said. “We don’t know nothin’ about that.”
“Diddley,” said the deputy.
Diddley? Bo D
iddley was back in the picture? I tried to sort the case out in my mind, got nowhere, had a nice big yawn. The deputy noticed and backed up a step or two.
“That’s not going to help you,” Bernie said. “This is one of those expanding cases, expanding fast, and you’ll get swept up in it whether you like it or not. We have the kidnapping of Adelina Borghese and her dog Prin—”
“We already—”
“—cess, and that has international implications, which is what’ll be bringing the FBI in. Now we’ve got this missing reporter Suzie Sanchez—”
“Didn’t see her neither,” the sheriff said. “Told you that, too.”
“It’s possible you didn’t see her,” Bernie said. “But not possible you didn’t see her car—it was parked right outside the saloon.” Bernie took out a photo: Suzie’s car and Suzie standing beside it.
The sheriff glanced at the photo, shook his head. The deputy shook his head, too. For some reason two humans doing that at the same time is a thing I like to watch; I lost track of what was going on and missed part of the next bit.
“. . . what we didn’t discuss before,” Bernie was saying, “namely that cabin on the ridge above the town. Who owns it?”
“Cabin?” said the sheriff.
“What cabin?” said the deputy.
Bernie smiled, no idea why; and it looked kind of strange, with that anger muscle still showing in his jaw. “Did I mention Suzie Sanchez’s job? She’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune. No one knows where she is right now, but she was working on the Bor-ghese kidnap story and the last call she made came from Clauson’s Wells. See what this means?” The sheriff and his deputy remained silent. “The spotlight’s going to be shining down on your little county,” Bernie said, “and soon.”
“What spotlight?” said the deputy. “We shoulda taken this guy and—”
The sheriff held up his hand. “It’s just his approach—maybe could use some improvement.”
“Who are we talking about?” said Bernie, still smiling.
“There you go,” the sheriff said. “Probably why we end up in these misunderstandings. But I’d never want anyone thinking this office isn’t behind any legitimate investigation.”
“He’s a fuckin’ PI,” said the deputy. “Nothing le—”
Thereby Hangs a Tail Page 12