Woof

by Spencer Quinn

  “I actually know someone in town who smokes cigars,” Nola was saying when I tuned back in.

  “Yeah?” said Birdie. “Who?”

  “Steve Straker.”

  “Stevie Straker smokes cigars? He’s what? Fifteen years old?”

  “Sixteen. Haven’t you seen him driving around in that red Jeep of his? With the gator skull for a hood ornament?”

  “Nope,” said Birdie. “Something to look forward to.”

  “But I didn’t mean Stevie,” Nola said. “I’m talking about his dad, Steve Senior.”

  “Old man Straker? He’s Grammy’s public enemy number one.”

  “Because he owns the other bait and fish place?”

  “That’s probably part of it,” Birdie said. “It goes way back.”

  Birdie and Nola looked at each other.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Nola said.

  “Depends,” said Birdie.

  Was it about snacks, or kibble, or food in general? I hoped so. Then we’d all be thinking the same thing.

  “I’m thinking maybe the sheriff should be told who smokes cigars in these parts,” Nola said.

  Birdie shook her head. “He won’t be interested.”

  “Then what?”

  “Not sure. Wanna come in?”

  “Okay,” Nola said. But before she could, a car pulled up in front of the house. A girl, somewhat older than Nola but looking a lot like her, leaned out of the driver’s-side window. “Mom wants you. ASAP.”

  “Why?”

  “How would I know?”

  “Hey, Solange,” Birdie said. “Wanna come meet my new dog?”

  Solange looked my way. “Some other time.”

  “What’s with her?” Birdie said in a low voice.

  “I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” Nola said. “See you.”

  They each raised a hand, smacked their palms together, but very lightly. That was called high-fiving in the human world. I remembered the street gangers back in the city doing lots of high-fiving, but much harder. The street gangers had hard hands and hard fists. That was maybe my strongest memory of the city.

  After Nola left we just stood there in the front yard, me and Birdie. She gazed into the distance. This was nice and comfortable. I shifted over a little closer, sat on her foot, which made things even nicer and more comfortable. She looked down at me.

  “Come on inside. I want to show you something.”

  A biscuit, perhaps? Or a rawhide chew? I’d had only one solitary rawhide chew in my whole life, a rawhide chew that perhaps actually hadn’t been meant for me, although the details of what had happened were long gone.

  I followed Birdie into the house—in truth, squeezing through the door in front of her. It’s nice being first through any doorway, as I’m sure you’ll agree. We went through the kitchen, down the hall, and into Mama’s room. A tall wooden bureau stood in one corner, lined with bookshelves and cabinets. Birdie opened one of the cabinet doors and I thought: That’s where they keep the rawhide chews!

  But what we had behind those cabinet doors had nothing to do with rawhide chews. There was only one little object in there, a small box. Birdie took it out and removed the top. Inside, on a bed of purple velvet, lay a gold medal. Birdie held the box so I could see better.

  “The medal of honor,” she said. “From the police department down in New Orleans. I’ve always been afraid to touch it.”

  Why was that? I had no idea: The medal didn’t look dangerous to me—not like a crushed beer can, for example, with those sharp edges.

  But Birdie didn’t touch the medal, simply gazed at it instead. Her eyes filled with tears just the way they had when she’d had that little spat with Grammy, about what, I didn’t remember. But like then, at the moment when the tears—trembling on the surface of her eyes—just had to come spilling out, Birdie gave her head that hard little angry shake, and her eyes dried up. She put the top back on and returned the box to the shelf. “Two boxes,” she said. “One little, one big.”

  I only saw the little one, would have to trust her on the other. As for rawhide chews, we were no further ahead. I stared at Birdie my hardest, thinking Rawhide chews, rawhide chews with all the power of my mind.

  “Here’s a thought, Bowser,” she said.

  Wow! Was it working? Could I really make Birdie think whatever I was thinking? Rawhide chews were just the beginning. Next would come burgers, steak tips, pork tender—

  “What would he have done about Black Jack?”

  Whoa! Something about that missing fish? I hadn’t thought fish, didn’t particularly care for it. The taste was okay, but what about those hidden bones, a back-alley discovery I’d made more than once and hoped I’d never make again?

  “What do detectives do?” Birdie went on. “Follow clues, right? Until they can tie everything up in a neat package.” All at once her voice softened, got so quiet I almost missed what came next. “No loose ends, Birdie.”

  What was this about? I had no idea. More important, I wasn’t getting through to her. I barked the sort of bark that would let her know what was what.

  She smiled down at me. “Get a move on—is that it?”

  Birdie clipped on the leash and we headed outside. Rawhide chews were in my immediate future. I knew it as well as I knew my own name, which came to me before we’d even reached the end of the block: Bowser!

  NOT LONG AFTER THAT, WE WERE BACK on the wooden dock that bordered the bayou. The sun was lower in the sky now, glaring on the water, and the cigar butt smell was just about gone. A big boat sat in the space that had been empty before, tied to the cleat with a thick line encrusted with seaweed. Seaweed: What a smell! It cleared my head right up, and it hadn’t even needed clearing up.

  Birdie gave the boat a careful look, a black boat with red trim. It had a covered cabin up front and controls toward the back, with some seats bolted to the floor and a black-and-red awning for shade. A sort of tower rose high over the center of the boat, with a platform at the top, also shaded by an awning.

  “Never seen this one before,” Birdie said, walking toward the rear of the boat. I went with her—the leash, I should remind you, but I’d have gone with her anyway. How about this one, Grammy?

  “Right here’s the stern, Bowser,” Birdie said, “and that’s the name of the boat—Fun ’n Games, out of Biloxi. That’s the tuna tower up there, for spotting fish. Our open-water boat doesn’t have one, way too expensive, and Fun ’n Games is much bigger and more up-to-date, plus ours is down at the marina for repairs we can’t pay for, but we’ve got a better name—Bayou Girl.”

  Our open-water boat? I was a little lost. I took a few more seaweed breaths, felt almost too clearheaded, but still lost when it came to boats, and Bayou Girl, and whatever else Birdie had been talking about. Maybe I’d get it next time!

  We walked on. A bridge rose over the bayou, a car going one way and a truck the other, with a little settlement on the far side.

  “East St. Roch,” Birdie said. “The fancy part of town. See the big green building right on the water? That’s old man Straker’s place.”

  We paused at a spot that was straight across from old man Straker’s. A very pleasant spot, with a grove of palm trees and lots of shade. We sat down, Birdie with her back to a palm tree and me beside her.

  “Now we keep an eye on old man Straker,” she said.

  Fine with me, even though there was no one in sight except me and Birdie. She gazed at the big green building across the bayou. It had a deck out front, right over the water, and a sign in the shape of a fish on the roof. Gaux Family Fish and Bait—our place, if I was getting all this—also had a fish sign on the roof, but our fish wasn’t leaping like old man Straker’s, and it was much smaller. “Can you believe the name?” Birdie said. “ ‘Straker’s World Famous Fishing Emporium.’ Tells you all you need to know.”

  About what? A total puzzle that I spent zero time trying to solve. Meanwhile, the sun moved lower in the sky
the way it did toward the end of each and every day—yes—but still always a bit of a surprise. Bugs came out. Birdie swatted at them. “You hot, Bowser? Know how to swim?”

  Interesting question! I’d never actually swum in my life, but what if I could? Birdie reached for my collar, like she was about to unclip me, and then paused. Across the bayou, a man had come out of the big green building and onto the deck.

  “Old man Straker,” said Birdie, almost in a whisper.

  Too far away for a clear view of old man Straker’s face, but I could see he was a big, heavy dude with shoulder-length graying hair. He scanned the water, and for a moment might have been looking in our direction. Then his gaze passed on and he raised a hand to his mouth, and in his hand—

  “Nola was right!” Birdie said, still in a whisper. “He’s smoking a cigar.”

  A big puff of smoke rose above old man Straker’s head, got slowly torn apart by the breeze. Old man Straker half turned toward the open sliding door behind him. His lips moved and after a slight delay—what was that about?—the sound of his voice came drifting over the water. I picked out the words “pesky” and “take a gander” and that was about it.

  “Looks like he’s saying something to somebody, but I don’t hear a thing,” Birdie said.

  I gave her ears a careful look. Not especially tiny, and pretty, for sure, with little red earrings in the earlobes. Why didn’t they work? If ears didn’t hear, then what were they for? Just to look pretty and hang things on? You had to feel sorry for humans at times. Although not for Birdie. From now on she had me to help out with the hearing part of life. I wouldn’t let her down, not ever.

  Meanwhile, over on his deck, old man Straker took another puff. I was watching the rising smoke cloud again when another sound came my way: a car moving on the bridge. I turned and saw a red Jeep crossing from the other side. It came to the end, turned onto a road on our side, then disappeared behind some trees.

  Birdie was still watching old man Straker. He took one more puff, came forward to the edge of the deck, and tossed the cigar butt into the bayou. Except for one thing: It landed just short of the water, coming to rest in a patch of yellow flowers. Old man Straker went back inside the big green building, closing the slider behind him.

  “DNA,” Birdie said softly. “We need that cigar butt, Bowser.”

  Why was that? Didn’t we already have a perfectly good cigar butt? And why would you want one in the first place? I had a faint—and not too pleasant—memory of eating one at some point in my past. I was actually starting to feel a bit pukey in the here and now when Birdie took our cigar butt, wrapped in a plastic baggie, out of her pocket.

  “No way we can do a DNA match ourselves, if that’s what you’re thinking, but see what it says on the gold band?” Birdie pointed at the band with her finger, a finger way smaller around than the cigar butt. “El Rey de Cuba—that means the King of Cuba. Bet you—I don’t know, how about a rawhide chew?—that the cigar band over in those flowers says the exact same thing.”

  Whoa! Rawhide chews were back in play, and just when I’d completely forgotten about them? And now I wanted one more than ever! Funny how the mind works, which is probably something you already—

  What was this? Footsteps sounding in the palm tree grove beside us? I whipped around and saw a man—or maybe not a man, more like one of those teenagers, somewhere between kid and grown-up, which—hey!—was kind of like where I was! Wow! What an amazing understanding, and very important to hold on to. But it slipped away, probably a good thing, what with my job being security and a stranger now on the scene. Parked off to the side of the road behind him was the red Jeep with a strange and kind of scary skull on the hood, although there’s no scaring me. I let out a bark of the low rumbly kind, just between me and Birdie, putting her in the picture.

  “What’s up with you, Bowser?” It took a few more rumbly barks before she finally looked where I wanted her to look. The dude was coming toward us, moving through the shadows under the trees. Birdie rose to her feet. “Stevie?” she said.

  “The one and only,” said this new dude, emerging from the palm grove and stopping just out of lunging distance. I noticed that Birdie seemed to have forgotten about the leash, her end lying in the grass—meaning the new dude, Stevie, if I was getting this right—stood within lunging distance after all. What a nice surprise!

  Stevie had a round, kid-type face but his hair was gelled up straight—the smell of hair gel very familiar to me from my days with the street gangers back in the city. Stevie also smelled of sneaker stink, which in my experience seemed to be a boy thing and not a girl thing, for reasons unknown to me. He also smelled a bit fishy, but so did everybody and everything in this burg. “Birdie Gaux, right?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  “His eyesight’s amazing,” Stevie said, his voice low, the way human voices get when they’re talking to themselves.

  “Whose? What are you talking about?”

  “Uh, nothing,” Stevie said. “That your dog?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “What is he?”

  “A dog.”

  Stevie’s eyes got smaller, at the same time that his face seemed to swell up into something bigger. “You makin’ fun of me?” he said.

  There was a silence. Their gazes met and held for the longest time before Birdie looked away. She was sort of tiny compared to Stevie. “No,” she said.

  “ ’Cause all I was asking is, like, his breed, you know?” Stevie said. “Totally friendly question.”

  “Bowser’s not any one single breed.”

  “His name’s Bowser?”

  “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Good name for a mutt, I guess.”

  “Mutts are smarter.”

  “Who says?”

  “Look it up.”

  This conversation seemed to be about me all of a sudden, but I was understanding just about none of it. That was frustrating. Now I’m going to make a confession: Sometimes my teeth get this sudden urge to bite. Maybe yours do, too, although human teeth are small and kind of dull, whereas mine are big and sharp. But never mind that. The point was that down in the palm tree grove by the bayou at that particular moment, my teeth were getting the biting urge. Specifically, they wanted to sink themselves into one of Stevie’s chubby calves, an easy-peasy possibility on account of the fact that Stevie was wearing baggy shorts that stopped just below the knee. Oh, how I wanted to just sit back and let my teeth do what they wanted to do! But you had to be in control of your own teeth: That was basic. Once your teeth start controlling you, look out, world! Later, teeth, later. Be patient. The urge faded away, although it didn’t disappear completely.

  “Don’t tell me what to do,” Stevie said.

  “Okay,” said Birdie. “Stay uninformed.”

  Stevie pointed his finger at Birdie. “You Gaux are all the same.” His finger was thick, like a sausage. Bowser, I told myself: control!

  Birdie met Stevie’s gaze and this time didn’t look away.

  Stevie took another step closer. “You know what my dad says? ‘Stop the Gaux.’ Get it? Stop the Gaux.” He laughed, a loud and pushy laugh, not at all nice—a disappointment to me, since I’m a big fan of human laughter.

  “I’ve heard that joke a million times,” Birdie said. “What kind of cigars does he smoke?”

  “Huh?”

  “Your dad. What kind of cigars does he smoke?”

  Stevie glanced across the bayou at the big green building. “What’s it to you?”

  Birdie shrugged.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Stevie said.

  “It’s a free country.”

  “Yeah?” said Stevie. “Then how come there are so many rules?”

  “Like?” said Birdie.

  “Like? You mean you want me to name a rule?”

  “Why not, if there are so many?”

  Stevie’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Off the top of my head, um …”

&
nbsp; Sometimes you can feel human thoughts. Stevie’s were like super-heavy birds, barely airborne.

  “How about this one?” Birdie said. “Don’t steal.”

  “How about it?”

  “What if someone stole your Jeep?”

  Stevie shot a real quick glance over his shoulder, like the Jeep might be gone. The Jeep was still there, of course. Stevie’s hands squared up into fists. “I’d punch their lights out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Count on it.”

  “And what,” Birdie said, taking a little pause, “if you were a thief? Would you punch your own lights out?”

  Stevie’s face got swollen and red, not my favorite human look. “What are you talking about?” His hands were still in fist shape, the knuckles showing under the skin. I got my hind legs under me, always the right move, suppose some sudden movement proves necessary.

  “When was the last time you were in our shop?” Birdie said.

  “Why would I set foot in a dump like that?”

  “Maybe,” said Birdie, taking another one of those pauses, “you were interested in Black Jack.”

  Stevie went still. “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do.”

  “Calling me a liar?”

  Birdie didn’t answer.

  “You heard me,” Stevie said. “Calling me a liar?”

  Birdie still didn’t answer, but now she was staring him right in the face.

  “Bwaak, bwaak, bwaak,” Stevie said, sounding like … a chicken? I knew chickens, had chased more than one in my time, but what was up with Stevie?

  Birdie spoke at last. “What are you? Six years old?”

  Stevie’s lips curled in a way that did nothing for his appearance, and he was no beauty to begin with, as I hope I’ve made clear by now. Also, a new smell came wafting off him, almost lost in the hair gel and sneaker stink combo. Namely the smell that dudes give off just before they throw down.

  “How’d you like to go for a swim?” Stevie said.