Paw and Order

by Spencer Quinn

  “You haven’t changed,” William said.

  “Neither have you,” said Bernie.

  William held up his machine hand and laughed.

  “So we’re both bullshitters,” Bernie said. “They couldn’t save it?”

  “Came close,” William said.

  “Why didn’t you let me know?”

  “I was stateside by then.” For a moment, William’s eyes got a faraway look. “Got into some other things. Besides, you were still back there, and, you know . . .”

  “Yeah,” said Bernie.

  They let go of each other’s hands.

  “Going good now?” Bernie said.

  “No complaints,” said William. “I run security for this place and some others up toward Logan Circle.” He turned to me. “And who’s this good-lookin’ hombre?”

  Just one of the many good things about Bernie: he had topnotch buddies all over the place, William clearly being at the very top of the notch.

  “This is Chet,” Bernie said.

  “He partial to treats of any kind?”

  “Partial’s putting it mildly.”

  William went to his desk, opened a drawer. “Thought I had a . . . guess not.” He rummaged around. “Think a Slim Jim would do? I snack on them myself, truth be told.”

  Wow! The kind of buddy who just got better and better. As for Slim Jims, they would always do. And somehow, without being aware of the actual journey, I was now sitting right beside William, possibly on one of his feet. A moment later—but what a long moment!—I was in a small Slim Jim world of my own.

  “. . . private investigation,” Bernie was saying. Then came something about Suzie and the Washington Post and—

  “She’s your girlfriend?” William said.

  “Why the surprise?”

  “Nothing. I read her article on those Neanderthal reenactors. Funny stuff.”

  “So? I can’t appreciate funny stuff?”

  “Sure you can,” William said. “And why so touchy?”

  “Sorry,” Bernie said, and he got started on a long explanation of what we were doing here, which I tried to follow in the hope of learning a thing or two but got undermined by my concentration, which was elsewhere.

  By the time I’d polished off my little snack, Bernie and William were over by the wall, studying one of the monitors. On the screen was a picture of the lobby. And hey! There was Suzie! Couldn’t wait to see her! We were going to zip on down there ASAP, right, even if it meant the escalator? Only we didn’t. Instead, we just stood still, watching Suzie. She started walking past the little pretend rooms, taking a look around, and then a man stepped up to her. A slicked-back-hair sort of man with a face made of slabs, a man we knew: Mr. York. They talked for a moment or two and then turned and headed out the front door of the lobby, side by side.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  That help, at all?” William said, turning from the monitor.

  “Yes and no,” Bernie said.

  Yes and no? I hate when that comes up, can never get my head around it. Is it okay, for example, to gnaw on a chair leg? Isn’t that yes or no? Either it’s cool to gnaw on the chair leg—“lookit ol’ Chet workin’ on that damn chair leg,”—or it’s uncool—”CHET!” But yes and no? How can you gnaw and not gnaw at the same time?

  Maybe William was having the same problem, because he’d started rubbing his forehead the way humans do when they need more help from up inside there—rubbing with his machine hand, by the way, a very interesting sight that made me forget all about what I was doing, which seemed to be . . . gnawing on one of the spindly legs of William’s little white desk? When had I even gone over there? I put a stop to that gnawing, but pronto.

  “That was Suzie?” William said.

  “Yup,” said Bernie.

  “And the guy?”

  “Goes by the name of York.” Bernie took out his phone, tapped it with his finger, listened. “She’s not picking up.”

  “I’ve got an exterior camera,” William said, “covers the main entrance and a small segment of the street.” He switched on another monitor, picked up a remote. I saw the entrance where we’d come in. People were going in and out much faster than normal. Then things slowed down and out came Suzie and Mr. York. They crossed the sidewalk and got into a small white car parked by the curb, Mr. York behind the wheel, Suzie in the shotgun seat. The car drove out of the picture. William fiddled with the remote and the car drove back into view and froze in the middle of the screen. He fiddled some more and closed in on the license plate. “Make that out?” he said.

  Bernie nodded. He was writing on the back of one of our business cards—I saw that bothersome flower on the front. Why not a gun, or cuffs, or an orange jumpsuit? Nothing against flowers. Their smell can practically knock you out sometimes, but not in a scary way, and we can be scary, me and Bernie, just another one of our techniques at the Little Detective Agency.

  “Want me to run that plate?” William said.

  “If you can,” said Bernie.

  “Would I be any good at my job if I couldn’t?”

  William got on the speakerphone with a woman named Belle or possibly Maybelle who told a story about a dude on his driving test and how he’d ended up crashing right through the wall of her office at the DMV, leading to a couple of nice days off, but now she was back and happy to help. Not long after that, she was saying something about a white Honda registered to a Jean-Luc Carbonneau of Fenwick Street. William asked about her boyfriend, and she said she’d thrown him out on his worthless ass, which got them both laughing, her and William, and then they said good-bye.

  “Much appreciated,” Bernie said.

  “No need for that between you and me,” said William. They shook hands again. “That Fenwick address is in Ivy City,” William said. “Not the best area.”

  Not the best area? So what? We worked in bad areas all the time. Did William think we were soft? It had to be that flower, a real bad influence in our lives. What could I do about it? Chew up all our business cards? Hey! A plan! Back to tip-topdom, except for a paint chip or two caught under my tongue. I had them all coughed out by the time we were back in the Porsche.

  “You getting sick?”

  Me? I leaned across the front seat, rested some of my weight on Bernie, just so he’d know how good I felt.

  “Can’t breathe like this, big guy.”

  And we were off.

  • • •

  Bernie drove in silence. He’s one of those drivers who sit back in the seat, nice and comfortable, even when we’re chasing some perp who still doesn’t realize it’s game over. And so many of them don’t, even when they’re cuffed! Some try to make a deal, like the dude who offered us a weekend at his time share in New Jersey, wherever that may be. But what I was getting at is that if Bernie’s very worried about something, he sits more forward in the driver’s seat, not so nice and comfortable, which was how he was sitting now. What was he worried about? Couldn’t have been because we were heading into a bad part of town—we work out in Vista City, where they sometimes throw grenades off the rooftops—so it had to be the flower.

  He turned to me. “Sighing, Chet?” he said. “I’m worried about her, too.”

  Not the flower, then, but some female person? I went over the female persons I’d been in contact with recently—Isobel Galloway, Lizette, Suzie—and decided it had to be Suzie. I’d never want anything bad to happen to her, wanted nothing but good for her with all my heart. I sat far forward, my front paws on the dash, which usually makes the car go faster. But we were pretty much bumper to bumper and ended up going slower, if anything. My heart speeded up, maybe just so something would be going fast.

  Bernie gave me a pat. “Easy, now,” he said. “No jumping to conclusions—there’s lot of possibilities. Starting with Carbonneau, for example, not exactly a co
mmon name in these parts. Lizette Carbonneau and Jean-Luc Carbonneau, alias Mr. York. Gotta be related. Brother and sister? Husband and wife? So therefore?”

  I waited for the payoff on the so therefore, Bernie’s department. When I got tired of waiting, I went back to my last memory before that, the no-jumping thing. No real need for Bernie to give me a heads-up on that subject: I knew the downside of jumping from moving cars, having done it twice before, once chasing a perp and once getting away from one, and hadn’t the slightest desire to do it on this particular outing; okay, maybe now that Bernie had mentioned the idea, a slight desire.

  “Sticking your head a bit too far out there. Cool it.”

  Somebody had their head stuck too far outside? What were they thinking? And who could be that stu— And then in no time at all, I boiled that somebody down to me and took care of business. Meanwhile, we were rolling in a bad part of town, bumping over rusted train tracks, boarded-up houses on one side and grimy warehouses on the other. Bernie turned a corner, and we pulled up in front of a low brick building with dirty barred-over windows and a cracked and broken sidewalk out front.

  “It’s a bar?” Bernie said.

  No doubt about that: bar smells were in the air, big time. We got out of the car, and right away, a red-eyed dude appeared from down an alley and came toward us, although not in a direct line, the scent of his booze cloud reaching us first.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” said Bernie.

  “That your dog?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  The dude thought about that, also did a bit of weaving back and forth, as though the ground had gone wobbly under his feet. “I getcha,” he said. “Does he bite?”

  “Only for a reason.”

  “Uh-huh. I’m the same way myself. How about I watch your car while you’re inside?”

  “It’s a free country,” Bernie said. “I can’t stop you.”

  The dude thought that was funny, started to laugh, and then hawked a glob that didn’t bear too much looking at into the gutter. “Talkin’ here,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm—uh-oh, the kind with needle marks—“ ’bout the kind of watchin’ that’s more the protectin’ kind.”

  “Think that’s necessary?” Bernie said.

  “I don’t think.” The dude tapped his forehead. “I know.”

  Bernie reached into his pocket. Was he about to draw down on this dude with our new piece, the one I’d—how would you put it? Borrowed maybe?—yes, borrowed from Mr. Ferretti’s lady pal? Nope. Instead, out came Bernie’s wallet. The dude leaned toward it, like something was pulling him that way.

  “How much?” Bernie said.

  “Call it twenty,” said the dude.

  Bernie held out a bill. “Let’s call it five for now and five on delivery of service.”

  “An’ here I thought you were a nice guy,” the dude said.

  “Think again,” said Bernie, which had to be one of his jokes, Bernie being the nicest guy you’ll ever meet. He started to put the bill back in his wallet, but the dude grabbed it first.

  “We got a deal,” he said.

  “Done,” said Bernie. He glanced at the bar. “Know this place well?”

  “Coulda owned it by now, for all the money I spent inside.”

  “Ever run into a guy named Jean-Luc Carbonneau?”

  “Nope.”

  “About your size, thirty-five or forty, slicked-back hair.”

  “I don’t have no slicked-back hair. Look never appealed to me at all.”

  “With you on that,” Bernie said. “He might also go by the name of York.”

  “York? That’s different.”

  “You know him?”

  “By sight. Who’s the Frenchie?”

  “That’s not important,” Bernie said. “Tell me about York.”

  Sometimes humans use their chins for pointing. It took me a long time to get that one. This boozy dude—an employee of the Little Detective Agency at the moment? I hoped not for long—was doing it now, pointing at the top story of the bar with his chin. “Rents a room on the second floor,” he said. “Not around much.”

  “What does he do?” Bernie said.

  “Do?”

  “Everybody does something.”

  “Like I drink, for example?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he does drugs. Drugs or drink—a choice, not an echo, you know what I mean. I tried both—drink’s better.”

  Bernie gave him a look. At first, I thought it was one of his hard looks; then I wasn’t so sure.

  • • •

  We went inside. No one there except for a short round woman standing on a stepladder in front of the bar. She had a lightbulb in her hand but couldn’t reach the socket in the ceiling, although she was trying her hardest, which you could tell from her grunts, pretty much the loudest I’d heard from a woman.

  “Help you with that?” Bernie said.

  The woman turned toward us, and—oops—she and the ladder both got a bit unsteady, the ladder tipping one way and she another, and don’t forget the lightbulb, also airborne. Bernie can move real fast when he has to—but of course he hardly ever has to, not with me around—and this was one of those times. He crossed that floor—a sticky kind of floor, which you find in a certain kind of bar—in two steps, and snatched that lightbulb right out of midair! He also caught the woman, almost, uh-oh—but no, he didn’t drop her, just lowered her safely down, and if not gently, then pretty close.

  A round woman, about chest-high on Bernie. She looked up at him. “That was kind of amazing,” she said.

  “Um,” said Bernie.

  “Not often I run into a man who can carry me bodily,” she said.

  “Me, uh, either,” Bernie said.

  The woman laughed. She had a jolly sort of laugh. Also jolly was the fact, fact beyond doubt, that she had a biscuit treat or two in the pocket of her jeans.

  “How about I . . .” Bernie said, standing the ladder back up, climbing the first step or two and screwing in the bulb. The woman watched his every move. I got myself a little closer to her. When were we going to start up with “This your dog?” and stuff like that?

  Bernie climbed down the ladder.

  “Your dog’s sniffing at my pocket,” the woman said.

  “Chet!”

  “That’s all right,” the woman said. “I have biscuits in there.”

  And after hardly any more chitchat at all, they were mine.

  “Got a dog yourself?” Bernie said.

  “Until recently. Their lifetimes don’t match up very well with ours.”

  Bernie nodded, like that made sense to him. As for me, I had no clue, but the biscuits were delish, just about the best I’d ever tasted.

  When I tuned in again, Bernie was saying, “. . . actually looking for a man named York. I believe he rents a room upstairs.”

  The woman didn’t look quite so jolly. “Rents it from me,” she said. “You a cop, by any chance?”

  “No,” Bernie said. “Why do you ask?”

  “No reason,” the woman said. She glanced my way. “Your dog looks like the K-9 type.”

  Again? Why did I have to hear that again? Yes, I am the K-9 type, and I was especially the K-9 type until I flunked out of K-9 school on the very last day with only the leaping test left, and leaping was then and is now my best thing. A cat was involved: that’s all I can tell you.

  “Any reason you might be expecting the cops?” Bernie said.

  “This is the kind of neighborhood where we’re always expecting cops,” the woman said. “Except when they’re needed.”

  “Has Mr. York done something that would interest them?” Bernie said.

  The woman looked away. “Not that I know of.”

  Ber
nie took out his phone, flicked his thumb on the screen, held it up for her to see. “Recognize this woman?”

  “No.”

  Bernie handed her our card.

  “You’re a detective?”

  “Working in cooperation with DC police. The woman on the screen has disappeared, last seen with Mr. York. Time is crucial in situations like this. Why have you been expecting the cops?”

  She looked at Bernie, then at me. “Not expecting, really,” she said. “I wouldn’t have been surprised, that’s all.”

  “Why?” said Bernie.

  “On account of this guy who was killed last week. I used to see him around here and then I look in the paper and somebody shot him.”

  “You’re talking about Eben St. John?”

  “Didn’t know the name,” the woman said. “But I recognized the face. He used to come visit Mr. York.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  * * *

  The woman, name of Jeannine—if I got that right, conversation zipping back and forth at a rate that’s not the best for me—locked the front door of the bar and led us upstairs and down a dark and dim old corridor that made me want to be outside. But indoor work is part of what we do at the Little Detective Agency, and I’m a total pro, so I forgot all about the great outdoors, or almost. But no one ever says “the great indoors.” I’ll leave it at that.

  We came to a door at the end of the corridor, a peeling-paint kind of door with one kicked-in panel repair that had no paint at all, a sight you see from time to time in this business.

  “He hasn’t been around in a few days,” said Jeannine, “maybe not since I saw that story in the paper, come to think of it.” She knocked on the door.