“It’s about Ralph Boutette,” Bernie said. Then came a pause, a space in time that went on too long to feel right. Sometimes after a few drinks, Bernie starts talking about the big bang. “See what it means, big guy? Space and time are the same thing—not just two sides of the same coin, but the coin itself.” No coin or money of any kind ever appeared after these talks; and also no big bang ever happened, which suited me just fine. Fourth of July? Not my cup of tea. Tea isn’t my cup of tea either, in case you haven’t figured that out already. Water’s my drink, pure and simple, and Thanksgiving’s my favorite holiday. Can’t beat it for leftovers—to bring up leftovers again, and how can that be bad?—just scattered around all over the place, and everyone collapsed in front of football on TV. Dark meat’s best, but I don’t complain about white. It’s fun listening to all the burping while I hunt around. Human burping is actually one of the best things they do, although I’m not sure they know that.
No burping was happening at the moment, too bad because I now wanted to hear some pretty bad. The sheriff and his deputy were watching Bernie, their eyes giving nothing away. Were they thinking about space and time? That was as far as I could take it.
“What about Ralph Boutette?” the sheriff said at last.
Right. Ralph Boutette. Just like that, I was back in the picture.
“We’re looking for him,” Bernie said. Totally true, and it couldn’t have been fresher in my mind.
“Why?” said the sheriff.
“Not sure I understand your question.” Bernie and I? Peas in a pod on this one. I’ve had pea experience, with pods and without. They aren’t high on my list, as maybe I mentioned already, not so much on account of the taste, which I don’t mind, but because of the way they get all mushy and stick to the roof of your mouth. Must have happened to you.
“No mystery,” the sheriff said. “Mr. Boutette is a local resident. We don’t know you, and looking out for our people is job one.”
“Nice to hear,” Bernie said. “But if a missing persons report has been filed on Ralph, it would be a matter of public record.”
“And you’re the public?” the sheriff said. Bernie didn’t answer. The sheriff turned to his deputy. “Got an MP on Ralph?”
“Not as of four p.m. today. Want me to check the log?”
“I do.”
Deputy Sheriff Robideau tapped at his keyboard. These brothers were very polite lawmen, spoke in quiet, nonthreatening voices, but they were kind of nervous at the moment, human nervousness being hard to hide from me. It has a real sharp scent, as you may or may not know, that cuts through other smells the way sour milk does, for example, or a pot on the stove after the water’s boiled away but the heat’s still on, something that goes down from time to time at our place on Mesquite Road.
Deputy Robideau looked up, shook his head. “Negative.”
Sheriff Robideau turned to Bernie. “You know something we don’t, Mr. Little?” Of course he did! A whole bunch of things! He was Bernie!
“Wouldn’t put it like that,” Bernie said. And that was Bernie, too, not rubbing it in. “But his family can’t seem to locate him and they’re worried.”
The deputy laughed.
“What’s funny?” Bernie said.
“Them being worried about him,” Deputy Robideau said.
“I’m not getting it,” Bernie said.
“Because they all know goddamn well—” the deputy began, but the sheriff cut him off.
“Scooter?” he said. “I’m pretty sure this gentleman didn’t come here for a whole lot of small-town gossip.”
Gossip: a new one on me, but from the look on his face, I knew that Bernie wouldn’t have minded hearing some, whatever it happened to be.
“You’re the boss, Chip,” said Scooter Robideau, his lips barely moving.
The sheriff—Chip was it? Chip and Scooter? Just like some members of the nation within I knew!—turned back to Bernie. “The Boutettes are worried about Ralph.”
“Correct.”
“And they’ve hired you.”
Bernie opened his mouth to answer, but Scooter piped up again. “Why’d they pick someone from so far away?”
The sheriff smiled, or it might have been that teeth-gritting thing. “Actually my second question, Scoot.” Scooter’s eyes went kind of blank. “Question one,” the sheriff went on, “is what explanation, if any, did the Boutettes give you regarding Ralph and his whereabouts?”
“You’d have to ask them,” Bernie said.
The sheriff kept smiling or gritting away. “Oh, I intend to.”
“You do?” said Scooter.
The sheriff’s smile faded. “But I don’t expect much help from that quarter.”
“Why is that?” Bernie said.
“Put it this way,” said the sheriff. “If you do find Ralph, failure to inform this office might be risky.”
“How’s that?”
“Not saying for sure. This is a friendly talk, after all—we’re known for our hospitality in these parts, Mr. Little. But keeping us out of the loop could place you right on the edge of negligent activity.”
“What kind of negligent activity?” Bernie said.
“The kind that might resemble aiding and abetting,” said the sheriff. “Depending on where you’re coming from.”
“Meaning you think Ralph was in on the shrimp heist,” Bernie said, almost before the sheriff finished talking.
The sheriff sat back. “You’re quick on the uptake.”
The sheriff was right about that. Normally I have good feelings for any admirer of Bernie, but they weren’t there at the moment.
“Not quick enough,” Bernie was saying, “to know for sure if I’m being threatened.”
“Threatened? My goodness.”
“Just on the chance that any negligent activity amounted to a crime in someone’s eyes,” Bernie said. “If you see where I’m coming from.”
“Who said anything about a crime?” the sheriff said.
“Fella’s got crime on the brain,” Scooter said.
That made the sheriff smile again. He was a very pleasant lawman, if a little on the nervous side. Nobody was perfect, as you hear all the time, excepting one person I could think of, no need to name him, I’m sure.
That unnamed person was smiling, too. We were all getting along great, except maybe for the nervousness part. Not that Bernie was nervous, not a bit, although he can get nervous, just about always around a certain kind of woman. I wasn’t nervous either. When was the last time? At the vet’s, most likely; can’t think of anything else that makes me nervous, and—uh-oh, all of a sudden I was thinking about the vet! Nothing but going to the vet could fit in my mind! I needed to gnaw on something real bad, this nearby wooden leg of Scooter’s desk, for example. I tried not to shift over in that direction, but I have the kind of body that knows how to shift on its own.
“An occupational hazard,” Bernie said.
The sheriff laughed. “Isn’t that the truth?”
“What is?” said Scooter.
The lines around the sheriff’s eyes deepened a little bit. That was all it took to make him look annoyed. “Crime on the brain,” he said. “What else?”
Scooter had the same sort of lines around his eyes, although not so prominent. Everything about Scooter was more prominent in Chip. Now he looked annoyed, too. What was going on? They were brothers. Just then I had a real strange memory, the farthest back memory of my whole life, a memory of lying in a whole big mess of puppies! The memory faded away, just when I was about to make . . . what would you call it? A connection?
Maybe it would come to me another time. You could always hope. And hey! I always did! I forgot all about gnawing the leg of Scooter’s chair, remembered, then forgot again, once and for all. Just like that, I was back to feeling tip-top.
“How about explaining why you suspect Ralph?” Bernie said. “Is there any actual evidence?”
The sheriff leaned forward, looked Bernie in the eye, tappe
d his fingertip on the desk, just the once but very firmly. “Don’t like that phrase, ‘actual evidence.’ Not the way you said it.”
Bernie made no reply.
“I suppose,” said the sheriff, sitting back a bit now, “the Boutettes told you they can’t get justice in this town.”
“Can they?” Bernie said.
The sheriff took a deep breath and let it out real slow through his nose. That made a sound I like a lot—wind through the trees only a lot smaller—but the point is that when humans do that, it means something’s going on in their mind, exactly what was a mystery.
“They’ve got it into their messed-up heads that we’re mortal enemies going back to the Civil War,” the sheriff said.
“A Zouave uniform dispute, I believe,” Bernie said.
“You’re kidding,” the sheriff said. “They went into that?”
“The Zouave thing I heard elsewhere.”
“Mind telling us where? Just out of curiosity.”
Bernie hesitated. Didn’t see that very often. I could feel him thinking. “Mack Larouche,” he said. “The shrimp dealer.”
“There’s a surprise,” Scooter said.
“But it could have been anybody,” the sheriff said. “The whole parish is crazy.”
“Batshit crazy,” Scooter said, hanging me up right there. The night a bat flew into the house, back in the Leda days, and Bernie chasing after it with a broom, swatting and swatting the air! Had I ever been more excited in my life? Those screams of Leda’s: I can still hear them. Had the bat left any poop behind? Would I have missed something like that? Does the bear shit in the woods? That was too much. I lost the thread completely.
“. . . but,” the sheriff was saying some time later, “this so-called feud is a figment of their imagination. Or totally one-sided. We—meaning the Robideaus—are long past it. Even if we weren’t, I’m running an up-to-date, by-the-book operation here. There’s no room for any of that nonsense.”
“Good to hear,” Bernie said. “But I witnessed a little scene between the two grannies that didn’t look too friendly.”
“Excluding them, I should’ve added,” the sheriff said. “They’re beyond hope. But here’s how I know Ralph was in on the heist. One—Lord Boutette’s not smart enough to conceive, plan, or carry out anything like that. He can barely conceive, plan, and carry out taking a piss. Two—Ralph’s taken off.”
“But Ralph’s known for being on the straight and narrow,” Bernie said.
Or something of the sort. What was that piss thing again? Was anything in life easier? I’d have to rethink Lord from the ground up.
“True,” the sheriff was saying. “But he’s a Boutette first and always. Family is number one.”
“And what about you?” Bernie said. “Robideaus first and always?”
The sheriff made that single fingertap again. “The law is first and always,” he said. “At the moment, we only want to pull Ralph in for questioning. And in that spirit, Scooter’s going to start canvassing the town, and he’s also going to file an MP ASAP—”
“I am?” said Scooter.
“—with a five grand reward, the maximum our budget perm—”
“I thought it was—” Scooter began.
“Scooter?”
“Yup.”
“ASAP meaning now.”
Scooter rose, scraping his chair in a way that hurt my ears, opened a door at the back of the room, reached around the corner, grabbed a set of keys off a hook, and closed the door. Then he went out the front and headed for a cruiser. But I wasn’t really watching that. Instead, my attention was on that closed door at the back of the room. The door had only been open for a moment, but I’d glimpsed another room behind it, and in that room a dude was sitting at a desk, wearing headphones and glancing up in a startled way. A sort of familiar dude in a dark suit. Familiar from where?
I glanced at Bernie. He was listening to the sheriff, maybe had missed that back room scene.
“You’ll have our complete cooperation,” the sheriff said.
Bernie nodded.
“In exchange for yours.”
“Understood.”
A sort of familiar dude in a dark suit. Wearing headphones, which was why . . . why he’d taken off his small-brim cowboy hat, which had been hanging on the wall behind him! The dude from Donnegan’s who’d offered us a high-dollar gig, the details gone from my mind, if they’d ever been there: Cale Rugh.
Bernie and the sheriff looked my way.
“What’s he barking about?” the sheriff said.
“No idea,” Bernie said.
“Nice looking dog. Think he’d like a treat?”
“Safe bet.”
But this wasn’t about a treat! This was about Cale Rugh, sitting in the back room with headphones on, and that startled look on his face. Something was wrong. Bernie! Open that door! Check out the back room! I kept barking. The sheriff gave me a Milk-Bone, the very biggest size. I stopped barking.
“Wanted a treat, all right,” said the sheriff.
“Looks that way,” said Bernie.
Or something like that. The Milk-Bone had pretty much my whole attention. Did that make them right about me? What a thought! It broke into many, many pieces and zipped on out of my mind.
THIRTEEN
Notice how the Robideau brothers are kind of educated and smooth—even a bit unregional—and the Boutette brothers are not?” Bernie said as we drove back across the bridge. “How did that happen?”
No clue. I felt a Milk-Bone crumb on my muzzle—I’m pretty good at feeling things on my muzzle—and made short work of it.
“Are families the key?” Bernie continued, or maybe we were on to something else. “Not just in this case, but in everything?” Everything: wow. Not so easy to think of everything at once, but that was Bernie. “How about mine for starters?” he went on.
Bernie’s family? This was interesting. Starting with for starters, there was his mom, a piece of work who sometimes comes to visit—take last Thanksgiving—bringing her own gin and calling Bernie kiddo. “Never feed a dog at the table,” she says. “He’ll get into bad habits.” But at the table she sneaks tasty morsels to me behind her back, so maybe I didn’t get what she meant; plus the bad habits thing is a new one on me. Then there’s Charlie, of course, and also Leda, back in the pre-divorce days. Who else? I waited to hear.
Bernie turned off the bridge, drove by the dock on the Boutette side of the bayou, his eyes on something far away. “My great-grandfather, Ephraim Little, graduated from Princeton. My grandfather went there for two weeks and then hopped a steamer out of Newark. My dad didn’t even get through high school. Then the downward escalator stops, sort of, and I end up at West Point—but a total fluke and only because of my high school baseball coach. What does that all add up to?”
No clue there either, and if escalators were involved, I wanted no part of any of this. I’d been on an escalator once. Never again. I’m the type who likes to get up and down stairs on my own. Meanwhile, huge dark clouds were taking over the sky, making the houses and the trailers and the bayou and the trees all look small. I kept my eyes on those clouds.
“And what about Charlie?” Bernie said. “Where’s he headed?”
Charlie? He was a great kid and I loved him. Other than that, I had zilch.
Bernie pulled up in front of a trailer raised up on blocks. The sign in front was shaped like a member of the nation within. This was a vet’s clinic: the smells can’t be missed.
“Chet?” Bernie looked down at me. “What are you doing on the floor?”
I was on the floor? Maybe so, but why the vet? Did a bullet once take a little notch out of one of my ears? I knew something about that, but if so it was long ago. I was feeling tip-top, hadn’t been shot at in ages.
Bernie laughed. Something was funny? “C’mon, big guy. This has nothing to do with you. Are we working a case here or what?”
We were working a case at the vet? I remembered nothing ab
out that, but if Bernie said so then . . . then I didn’t have to remember. Hey! With Bernie around, maybe I didn’t have to bother remembering anything at all! My mind could be free just to . . . just to . . .
At that moment the phone buzzed.
“Hey,” said Bernie.
Captain Stine’s voice came over the speakers, harsh and hoarse, like he partied every night, although in fact, according to Bernie, he never partied, not even back in his college days.
“How’re you doing?” he said.
“Fine,” Bernie said.
“Still in one piece?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“No particular reason,” Stine said. “Spent much time in the Lone Star state?”
“Not recently,” Bernie said. “I was based at Fort Hood way back when.”
“Make any enemies while you were there?”
“Spill it.”
“I was enjoying working up to this at my own pace,” Stine said.
“Have your fun elsewhere,” Bernie said.
Stine laughed. He had the kind of laugh that sounded like it needed oil, if that made any sense, which it didn’t, but too late now. “And here I thought we were buddies,” Stine said.
Bernie said nothing, one of his best techniques, if that hasn’t come up already.
Stine stopped laughing. “We got an ID on the Quieros dude who tried to take you out. Angel Melendez, Guatemalan national with no visa or green card, living in Houston, second ward.”
“Never heard of him.”
“And the Quieros?”
“We’ve been through that already.”
“Maybe you offended one of them without knowing it,” Stine said. “They’re very touchy, what with all that machismo shit they have to carry around twenty-four seven.”
What a horrible job those guys had, whoever they were. I couldn’t help feeling bad for them.
“Nothing like that happened,” Bernie said.
“Nothing like you offending someone happened?” said Stine. “Did I hear that right? Must be a bad connection.”
“What do you want to do?” Bernie said. “Score easy points off me or solve the case?”
“Right back at ya,” said Stine.
The Sound and the Furry Page 10