An unseen fist whizzed past my nose—although not so fast that I didn’t pick up a whiff of aftershave—and thudded into human flesh. Then came a grunt from Bernie, followed by more flesh thuds from all directions, the whole tornado spinning faster and faster and faster and—
CRASH! I heard shattering glass, and almost at the same instant, the splintering of wood. Light entered the room at once, weak night light from outside, but enough to make out the window—glass now broken, boarding-up boards now knocked out—and beyond it, framed by the empty window and still spinning, although slowly, and hanging outside in midair: Pyro.
But you can’t hang in midair, not for long, not humans, not us in the nation within. From the look on Pyro’s face I got the feeling he was thinking that very same thing. And the thought was just starting to scare him when he dropped out of sight. Nothing . . . nothing . . . thud.
Bernie and I rushed to the window—Bernie jumping right over Lord, still in his chair now lying sideways on the floor for some reason—and looked down.
Pyro lay in a bad position in the small paved-over yard behind the house. He crawled for a tiny bit, and then he didn’t.
“Is he, ah, like . . .?” Lord said.
We stood in the paved-over yard behind Cleotis’s place, me, Bernie, Lord—now ungagged—all looking down at Pyro, lying in the circle of the flashlight’s beam.
“What do you think?” Bernie said.
Bernie was angry at Lord? I wondered why, found no reason, but got ready to be angry at Lord myself.
“What do I think?” Lord said. “I think you’re way scarier than you look.”
“Shut up.”
Lord swallowed whatever had been coming next, a lump of words I could actually see bob up and then down in his scrawny neck. Meanwhile, Bernie was squatting close beside Pyro, taking Pyro’s hand in his, turning it palm up.
“Dincha already check for a pulse?” Lord said, forgetting about the shutting-up thing pretty fast. “Or maybe it’s gonna start up again? Saw that in a movie once.”
Bernie didn’t answer. He was peering at the big muscle at the base of Pyro’s thumb.
“Mighta been with Vin Diesel,” said Lord. “The one where he . . .” Lord moved in closer. “Hey—dude wrote something on his hand? Used to do that myself back when I was a kid.” He squatted down beside Bernie. “Looks like a phone number, huh?” he said. “Seven one three—that’s Houston.”
“Seven one three,” Bernie said in this low voice he has for speaking to himself, including me in it, too, of course, goes without mentioning. And then came a bunch more numbers.
“You can memorize phone numbers?” Lord said. “Just like that, I mean, no going over and over and—”
“Shut up,” said Bernie.
“Can I squeeze in a question first?”
“What is it?”
“Headed back down to St. Roch by any chance? I could use a lift.”
Bernie gave him a long look.
“What?” said Lord. “What did I do?”
“What did he do?” said Henry, the big cop who was Bernie’s friend on the force in these parts. Lots of people had joined us in the paved-over yard, most of them in uniform.
“Got framed for a shrimp heist he knew nothing about,” Bernie said. “And then got separated from his ankle monitor, also not his doing.”
Henry gazed down at Lord. “What’s up with you?” he said. “Bad karma?”
“For sure,” Bernie said. “But he is alive.”
Henry turned toward the body. “This the guy you were searching for?”
“No.”
“Just another dead man turning up in the course of your investigation?” Henry glanced around. “Also interesting is the fact that the first one OD’d on heroin and until recently a smack dealer name of Cleotis Moore was operating out of this house. Feels like I should be putting some pieces together.”
“Maybe we can have a word,” Bernie said.
“I’d like that,” said Henry.
Meanwhile, Lord was kind of drifting away in a direction that might take him around the house and out on the street. That didn’t feel right, although I didn’t know why, confusing me a bit, and in my case confusion sometimes leads to growling. And what was this? The remains of the ham and cheese sandwich slipping out from between my jaws? How had it even gotten there? Plus a scrap of the brown paper bag was hanging from my chin? I got rid of it pronto. Get it together, big guy! We’re on the job!
“What the hell?” Bernie said, glancing around and spotting Lord. “Get back here!”
Lord paused, one foot in the air, for a strange moment somewhat resembling a member of the nation within. “Thought I’d be moving on,” he said. “On account of what you were saying to the lieutenant here about my innocence and all.”
“Wouldn’t be in your best interest,” Bernie said.
A long discussion got started on the subject of Lord’s best interest, impossible to follow, but it ended with a cruiser coming up through an alley, Lord getting helped into the backseat, and then he was off to central booking, a real unhappy look on his face.
“I’ll spring him soon as I get to the bottom of all this,” Bernie said. “Right now he’s in danger.”
“From who?” said Henry.
“The Quieros on your radar?”
“Central American drug gang? I heard they’ve expanded on up to Houston.”
Bernie pointed at Pyro with his chin.
“Telling me they’re here?”
“He is.”
Henry sighed. He glanced over at the house. “And Cleotis Moore?”
“They either paid him off, ran him off, or shot him.”
Henry looked down at his shoes, highly polished shoes, shining in the night. “Any chance these Quieros turned up here in my town on account of you?”
Bernie didn’t answer.
“Have a safe trip home, Bernie,” Henry said. They didn’t shake hands.
“Are we the common thread, big guy?” Bernie said. “That’s a disturbing thought.”
I took a swing at feeling disturbed, couldn’t quite manage it. Might have done better if I hadn’t been in the shotgun seat at the moment, and us rolling down a quiet street under clear skies, the night warm and soft: hard to feel disturbed at a time like that, beyond my capabilities.
“But maybe it gives us a chance to work backward,” Bernie added after a while.
Working backward! One of our very best techniques—don’t look my way for an explanation—and we hadn’t used it ages. This case was as good as solved, maybe even better. I tried to remember who was paying.
“. . . means they’re going after our sources,” Bernie was saying, “starting with Mack Larouche. That led them to Cleotis—kind of peripheral in their eyes, unless I’m slipping up on something. So either he’s not peripheral or they’re not that good. Am I missing some other alternative?”
Bernie missing something? The answer to that was always the same: impossible.
“Then there’s Lord, not peripheral.” He fell silent, but I could feel his thoughts, going deep and coming back up. “. . . and Pyro’s job? Burn down the house—just another crazy drug thing, optics-wise—with Lord and one other person in it. Who else but Ralph?” His hand tightened on the wheel. “Or is that wishful thinking? Don’t those glasses of his make him a goner already?”
A puzzler. Was there a kind of thinking that wasn’t wishful? I found myself . . . wishing the answer would come to me, and began to feel vaguely disturbed after all.
Bernie banged the wheel, disturbing me even more. “Shrimp? We ate the damn shrimp!” He glanced at me. “You think it’s funny.” Huh? I wasn’t thinking about anything at all, except for the taste of shrimp, and I wasn’t really thinking about it very hard. “Maybe it is funny,” he said, and laughed, a laugh that started out as more of a grunt but soon turned loud and lovely. I stopped feeling disturbed. Everything was . . . not peachy, exactly, on account of those huge pits peaches had insid
e them, always spoiling the experience; let’s just call it pretty good.
Bernie’s laughter faded. “Tired of getting pushed around, big guy?” he said. “I sure as hell am.” Uh-oh—we were getting pushed around? Time to put that to bed, and pronto. I waited to find out how. “Seven one three is Houston,” Bernie said. He took out his phone and began pecking at the buttons, then paused and put the phone away. “Need a payphone, Chet. Keep your eyes peeled.”
My eyes peeled? That sounded too horrible to think about. And payphones? A new one on me. I sat up straight and tall in the shotgun seat, on alert for I didn’t know what, a total pro, on the job.
We drove around for a while. “Used to be a payphone on every corner,” Bernie said. “How about we all ratchet back to nineteen fifty-nine and live there from now on?” What was this? Moving from the Valley? I wasn’t so sure about that, was still trying to get my mind around the concept when Bernie pulled over in front of a convenience store.
“You stay here,” he said, scooping up a bunch of coins from the cup holder and getting out. A few moments later, I hopped out myself, not certain I’d heard right and afraid of making a rookie mistake. Not afraid, exactly, the truth of the matter being I’m not afraid of anything. Then I thought of Iko.
I followed Bernie up to a sort of open metal box hanging on the wall of the convenience store. Hey! It had a phone inside! I’d seen these before! Chet the Jet, on top of his game!
Bernie shoved some coins into the slot, punched the buttons, put the receiver to his ear. Instead of sitting beside him, my usual spot, I kept a little distance between us; it seemed the way to go, hard to explain why. But I had no problem hearing what was happening on the other end. First came a single ring, and then a click, followed by a man saying, “Yeah?” I was pretty sure I recognized the voice. Bernie said nothing. The man said, “Hello? Hello?” and then came another click and the hum the phone makes when the call is over, and now I was totally sure.
Bernie hung up the phone in a slow, thoughtful way and turned. He noticed me, maybe where I was I supposed to be, maybe not, one of those gray-area type of things, and said, “You’ll never guess who that was.”
Guess? I didn’t have to guess. When someone tries to hurt me, the sound of his voice stays in my memory forever.
“Cale Rugh,” Bernie said.
Meaning we were on the same page. My tail started revving.
Bernie gave me a look. “Think you got away with something, huh, Chet?”
That friendly if puzzling little message—I could tell it was friendly from the way his face wanted to smile even if he wasn’t letting it—went right over my head, zip and gone, leaving nothing but a nice warm feeling. I was ready to take on anything. Perps and gangbangers: time’s up!
THIRTY-ONE
Step one,” said Bernie, as we crossed back over the mighty Mississip and headed down to bayou country, “let’s rerun Fleurette’s story.” Sounded like a good step to me: although I hadn’t the slightest difficulty remembering Fleurette, especially the taste of her tears, any story she might have told us had vanished.
“Specifically,” Bernie went on, “her description of the scene outside Rooster Red’s in the predawn hours when the stolen shrimp arrived. Too dark to really see the guy who brought the shrimp—all she said was that he was tall and quote walked like a cowboy. So where are we?” I waited to find out. This was kind of interesting. “Cale Rugh stole the shrimp, Chet, or at least masterminded it. After he left, Fleurette saw Mack come outside. By then it was getting lighter and she saw he was counting money. Not only did Rugh not charge Mack for the shrimp, or even just give them to him—he paid Mack to take them. See what this means?”
I saw right off the bat: Cale Rugh wasn’t good with money, kind of like . . . us. Uh-oh. I didn’t want to be like him in any way.
“Means the shrimp heist was definitely a smoke screen, start to finish. The question is why.”
We divide up the work at the Little Detective Agency, just part of our great business plan. Bernie handles the whys. I bring other things to the table.
There was a long silence. We drove through the night, so pleasant. We do a lot of driving through the night in our line of work. It always ends up the same: your eyelids get heavy and do what they have to do. Then there’s nothing but the feeling of Bernie’s thoughts flitting all around, and the lovely motion of the Porsche from underneath. Did I hear him say, “Wonder if Vannah got hold of that money, even used it to . . .?” Maybe, maybe not.
Eggs and bacon? I opened my eyes. We were parked in a roadside turnout in open country, sun just coming up, mist rising over a bayou that glinted through the greenery, the first rays of sunlight glowing through the mist like it was lit from inside. All of that quite nice, I suppose, but even nicer was the sight of a food truck—our food truck!—open for business and only steps away.
Bernie looked over at me. “How about some chow, big guy? Shaping up as a long day.”
Putting those two things together like that? Just another example of Bernie’s brilliance. Pretty soon Bernie was leaning against the hood, munching on a bacon and egg sandwich and sipping from a paper cup of steaming coffee, me beside him, keeping busy with a fat sausage that made wonderful sausagey explosions in my mouth with every bite I took, plus my water bowl, of course, and from time to time, whenever I looked at Bernie in a certain way, a torn-off bacon scrap.
“I’m starting to think it’s true what they say about the food down here,” Bernie said. “You can’t get a bad—”
A black-and-white pulled in, parked not far from us. A trim, fit-looking cop stepped out, eyes and hair the color of ginger ale, although the hair was graying: Sheriff Robideau. He went up to the food truck window, ordered something, then turned to take in the scenery while he waited, and saw us.
“You still around?” he called over.
“And we will be till Ralph Boutette turns up,” Bernie called back. He took another bite of his sandwich, kind of eating it in the sheriff’s face, if that makes any sense. It does to me. Who wouldn’t love Bernie at a moment like that?
Sheriff Robideau turned back to the window. The food truck guy, the one with all the bead chains and the missing teeth, handed him a sandwich and a can of soda. The sheriff cracked the can open with a real loud crack that sounded almost like a gunshot in the still morning air. Then he tilted his head back and drained the can, that thing in his throat that men had and women didn’t seem to—some kind of apple, was that it? having an apple in your throat all the time sounded unpleasant, but maybe it’s just me—bobbed up and down. The sheriff crushed the empty can, tossed it on the ground, and came our way.
He looked at us. We looked at him.
“Your dog’s not wearing tags,” he said.
“He lost his collar,” Bernie said. “Lost maybe not being the right word. More like Iko tore it off him.”
“Iko the gator?” the sheriff said.
Bernie nodded. “How Chet got all the way down to open water is another question—that’s where the human part comes in.”
“Got anyone in mind?” the sheriff said.
There was a long pause before Bernie said, “No.”
“Whatever the cause, if you’re staying in the county you’ll have to get tags on him. It’s a safety issue.”
“I’ll make it a priority.” Bernie took another bite of the sandwich—a real big one—and said, “How’s the canvass coming along?” Or something like that—hard to tell, what with Bernie’s mouth so full.
The sheriff’s eyes narrowed in an annoyed sort of way. Maybe he didn’t like listening to mouthful talk, having something in common with Bernie’s mom in that respect. Has Bernie’s mom come up yet? She’s a piece of work. Hope we have time to go into that later.
“Canvass?” the sheriff said.
“Wasn’t your deputy canvassing the citizenry regarding news of Ralph?”
The sheriff nodded. “The citizenry had nothing to say.”
“Meaning n
o one knew anything, or they knew but were too afraid to say?”
“Strange question,” said the sheriff. “Especially coming from an outsider unfamiliar with our ways.”
“Consider it withdrawn,” Bernie said.
This seemed like a nice, polite conversation, no raised voices, no threats, no angry body language—and I don’t miss that one, body language being one of my specialties at the Little Detective Agency. At the same time, I got the feeling Bernie and Sheriff Robideau wanted to kill each other.
“Anything else I can help you with?” the sheriff said.
Another long pause from Bernie. “Wouldn’t want to trouble you.”
“You’re no trouble,” said the sheriff. He walked over to the black-and-white and drove away. Bernie picked up the soda can the sheriff had tossed away and dropped it in the trash barrel beside the food truck.
The food truck guy leaned out of his window and said, “Hey!”
Bernie turned to him. “Yeah?”
“Couldn’t help but overhear some of your palaver with the sheriff.”
“Uh-huh,” Bernie said.
“Had me a dog once myself.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Name of Doc, on account of he was so goddamn smart. Ten times smarter than yours truly.”
Which left me no wiser, the only Truly I knew being on the staff at Livia Moon’s house of ill repute back in Pottsdale, and she’d always seemed smart enough to me.
The Sound and the Furry Page 24