“Nice name,” Bernie said.
“Thing is, Doc’s passed on.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
“ ’Preciate that. Do you believe in the rainbow bridge?”
“I’d like to.”
The food truck guy thought that over. Were we talking about the bridge over the mighty Mississip? I believed in it totally, having already been on it several times.
“Thing is,” the food truck guy said, “Doc left behind somethin’ I want you to have.”
“What’s that?” Bernie said.
The food truck guy held up a collar. “I like the look of that dog of yours. And his appetite—reminds me of Doc big-time.”
“Very nice of you, but—”
“Doin’ it for myself,” said the food truck guy. “Would make me feel good, like Doc’s still out there, havin’ adventures.”
“All right,” Bernie said, his voice turning gentle. “Thanks.”
We went to the window. “Killed it myself,” the food truck guy said, handing Bernie the collar. “Out bow-huntin’—that’s my relaxation.”
Bernie examined the collar. “Alligator hide?” he said.
“Totally legal,” said the food truck guy. “Kick in the twenty-five bucks for my license every year.”
“It’s not that,” Bernie said. “I’m just wondering whether Chet might not . . .” He . . . he sniffed at the collar! Oh, Bernie. Then he held it in front of my nose, maybe thinking that would help me get a good sniff, too. How nice of him, but I’d already sniffed all there was to sniff on the collar, which included gator smell, but toned way down, and also the smell of a member of the nation within, plus some food truck smells, of course. In short: a great collar. Hadn’t I ended up doing sort of all right with Iko, coming pretty close to at least holding my own? I wouldn’t mind being reminded of that, although I had no plans for more swims in the bayou. You can put that right out of your minds, pronto.
“When his tail gets goin’ like that it means yes,” the food truck guy said. “Doc was the same way.”
“Cool collar,” Bernie said, as we drove away from the food truck. “Maybe the coolest there is.”
Plus it felt good around my neck. And then there was the fact that I’d just downed a first-class breakfast. Who wouldn’t have been feeling tip-top?
“What now, you may be wondering,” Bernie said. Which I hadn’t been in the least. What I’d been doing was watching the telephone poles zip by and that was about it. “All I can think of is driving to Houston and marching right into Cale Rugh’s office at Donnegan’s. Or maybe the office of the CEO—why the hell not?” Telephone poles zipped by, faster and faster. “I’ll tell you why the hell not. One, it’s too goddamn clumsy, even for me. Two, it means moving away from the locus of the case.” Locus of the case? I’d never been more lost in my life. The telephone poles started going by more slowly. I spotted bullet holes in more than two.
The phone buzzed. Bernie hit a button and a man’s voice came through the speakers.
“Bernie?”
“Yup.”
“Prof here. I showed those equations of yours to a very sharp friend of mine in the engineering department. They’re stress calculations.”
“Stress calculations?”
“Critical in all sorts of design and construction. In this case, he says we’re dealing with stress induced by pressure, specifically liquid pressure.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Why not? I’m talking in plain English. Do you see what’s happening here, Bernie? We’re on a forced march all the way back to the dark ages.”
“Try to make it plainer.”
“A pleasure. Our celebrity madness, mixed with the leveling desires of powerful opinion-setting segments of society, plus near total amnesia regarding the past and—”
“I meant this pressure business.”
“How can I make that any plainer?”
“Pretend I’m your dumbest student.”
“Don’t have one. The dumb ones stay away because of my reputation for actually handing out F’s if deserved.”
“Prof?”
“Yes?”
“We’re dealing with high stakes here.”
“You’re referencing in contrast the notoriously low stakes of everything academe?”
Bernie didn’t answer. Prof went on, his voice now a little softer. “Suppose you were designing a pressure gauge, for example.”
“A pressure gauge?” Bernie leaned forward, hands gripping the wheel so hard his knuckles turned bone-colored.
“A deliberate choice on my part,” Prof said, “since my friend tells me these are pretty much classic pressure gauge calculations, as least as they apply to problems involving liquid pressure. Suppose—to instance a common real-life situation, according to my friend—you wanted to measure pressure build-up at a well head. Obviously, you’re dealing with a multivariable calculus involving forces and material compositions, but you’ve also got to factor in certain dynamic—”
“Well head?” Bernie said, his voice rising.
“At an oil-drilling platform, for example.”
Bernie spun the Porsche in a screaming U-turn that just about brought my breakfast back up into the world. The telephone poles started zipping by the other way, so fast they almost blurred into one.
THIRTY-TWO
Were we flying or what? If I stuck my head above the windshield my ears snapped straight back, flat against my head. I stuck my head up and kept it there, squeezing my eyes almost shut against the wind.
Bernie glanced at me and shouted over all the noise, which actually just added to the noise: I would have heard him just as well, or even better, if he’d spoken at normal volume. I was so busy considering this interesting noise issue that I kind of missed what he said, perhaps something about Wes and cats.
It was still pretty early when we swung by Dr. Ory’s trailer. She was just going inside, a stack of files under her arm and a big bag of kibble—the kind in the blue bag, not bad at all—in one hand. Bernie hurried forward, got the door open for her. Dr. Ory had deep purple patches under her eyes, a sure sign of a real tired human.
“Anymore dead birds?” Bernie said.
“Eleven yesterday,” said Dr. Ory.
“What did Wes have to say about that?”
“Haven’t discussed it with him yet. He’s coming in this morning.”
“From where?”
Dr. Ory blinked. “From where?”
“Just so I can gauge when he might here,” Bernie said. “I’d like to sit in if you don’t mind.”
“Don’t mind at all. The truth is, I’m confused about what’s going on. Confused and frustrated.”
“How do you mean?”
“I hadn’t had a single bird brought in for months, and then up goes number nine and in they come.”
“Number nine being the new platform?”
“That’s right,” Dr. Ory said. “What’s frustrating is that Wes swears up and down they’re not leaking a drop out there. So where’s it coming from?”
“Maybe another platform?” Bernie said.
“I asked Mr. Patel from the government about that,” Dr. Ory said. “Apparently all the other platforms are much farther out, meaning birds would be turning up east of here on account of the current, maybe all the way to Mobile, and that’s not happening.”
“I’d like to talk to Patel.”
Dr. Ory shook her head. “He got called back to Washington. He didn’t seem too happy about it.” Bernie’s face hardened. Dr. Ory was watching. “What’s that look?” she said.
“No look,” Bernie said.
“No?” said Dr. Ory. “I think it means some fix is in and you don’t like it.”
“What kind of fix?”
“You’d know more about that than I would. I’m just a vet. But you’re a fighter, that’s plain to see. Wes is renting a cabin at the fishing club south of town. You can’t miss it.”
We drove out of to
wn, came to a sign showing a fish leaping over blue waves. Bernie turned into the next lane, a narrow unpaved road lined with white-painted stones. Ahead stood a big yellow building up on stilts. We followed the road along a canal with some boats tied up to the side, including a green one I knew well.
“There’s his boat,” Bernie said, slowing down. “Hey, what are you barking about? I see it. Chet! Easy, big guy. Calm down.” I calmed it down to a low growl, best I could do. Bernie glanced over at me. “What’s on your mind?”
What was on my mind? I hadn’t liked getting rolled into a net and tossed into the water: that was on my mind. Wouldn’t you be thinking the same?
Some little yellow cabins appeared, clustered in a grove of trees; all except for the last one, kind of off on its own. That last cabin had a green SUV parked out front. All the other cabins seemed empty. Bernie pulled up beside one of them, turned to me and made the quiet sign, finger over his lips. The low growling that had been accompanying us faded out.
We left the car, walked up to the SUV. Bernie took a quick glance inside—all about grabbing the keys if they were in the ignition, which they were not in this case, too bad because it was one of our coolest moves—and walked up to the front door of the cabin.
A screen door, as it happened, meaning you didn’t need to have much going on in the hearing department to pick up Wes’s voice from inside.
“. . . but, with all respect, Mr. Sim, that’s not my job. I never expected that—” Silence. Then: “Yes, sir.” And the click of a phone call ending.
Bernie pushed the door open with the toe of his sneaker. Wes was standing in front of a curtained window, gazing out as though the curtain were open, his back to us.
“What’s not your job, Wes?” Bernie said.
Wes whirled around, mouth and eyes opening wide.
“What the hell—” he began, his soft brown eyes not quite so soft at that moment. “What are you doing here?”
“Thought we’d come see the cats,” Bernie said.
“Cats?”
“We’re cat lovers, Chet and I.”
Had I ever been more shocked in my life? For a dreadful stretch of time that felt like forever I got all tangled up in the idea that I didn’t understand anything about anything, not one single thing in the whole wide world. Then I noticed a glint in Bernie’s eyes—very faint but I knew all the signs to watch for in Bernie—that meant he was enjoying a little private joke, which he sometimes did at unexpected times, such as in a serious interview. Ah ha! This was a serious interview. No holds barred in a serious interview—that was basic—meaning sometimes you had to do some wacky things, like posing as cat lovers. Now we were cooking, me and Bernie.
“I don’t understand,” Wes was saying. “I don’t have cats.”
Which had been clear to me from the get-go on this case. Not only that, but a member of the nation within had been in this cabin and not long ago.
“No cats?” Bernie said.
“Uh,” said Wes, his eyes shifting and shifting again, like he was trying to remember something. “Not here, is what I meant to say. No cats here. I leave them at home when I’m on a remote assignment.”
“Where’s home?”
“Houston.”
“What are their names?”
“The cats?”
Bernie nodded.
Then came a very brief pause, hardly noticeable, but any pause at all at a moment like that caught my attention, why I couldn’t tell you in a million years, which is probably a lot, but don’t bet the ranch.
“Babe,” Wes said. “Babe and Ruth.”
Bernie smiled. “You a baseball fan?”
“Matter of fact, yes,” Wes said.
“And a pretty quick thinker.”
“Not sure what you mean by that,” Wes said. “And I’m sorry to disappoint you on the cats. But if you’ll excuse me, I’ve got a big day coming up.”
“Meeting with Dr. Ory?” Bernie said.
“That’s on the agenda.”
“She’s got more birds to show you.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“What do you think’s going on with all these birds?”
“I believe I’ve already explained,” said Wes.
“You’re talking about the natural seeps theory?”
“It’s more than a theory. Natural oil seeps are established fact in these parts.”
“No way any of the platform wells could be leaking?” Bernie said.
“Absolutely not,” said Wes. “We monitor them twenty-four seven.”
“What about the number nine rig?”
“Least of all.”
“Why is that?”
“Because number nine isn’t even operational yet.”
“What does that mean?”
“We’re not pumping.”
“Why not?”
“It’s a new installation,” Wes said. “Drilling was only completed last week and the structural test results didn’t come in until yesterday.”
“And how did you do?”
“Huh?”
“On the test,” Bernie said. “Gentleman’s C?”
“We don’t joke about things like that,” Wes said. “The tests were perfect. We don’t pump an ounce until they are.”
“When will pumping start?”
“Soon.”
“Today? Tomorrow?”
“That’s confidential information,” Wes said.
They gazed at each other. Bernie’s eyes were hard; Wes was back to the soft brown look.
“I assume pressure measurements are part of the testing,” Bernie said.
Wes flinched, just the tiniest bit, as though Bernie had finger-flicked him on the tip of the nose. “Wouldn’t know about that,” Wes said. “I’m not an engineer.” He took a long look at his watch. “And now I’ve really got to get moving.”
Bernie nodded, turned toward the door. The interview was over? That didn’t seem right. Wasn’t Bernie going to finger-flick him on the tip of the nose? I’d gotten that lodged in my mind, wanted to see it in the worst way. But it didn’t happen. We walked out of the cabin, headed toward the Porsche.
And that would have been that, except on the way to the Porsche we passed a scrubby little bush, probably of no interest to you, but you would have missed the fact that it had been marked very recently by a member of the nation within, no offense. I got busy with some thorough sniffing, then laid a mark of my own on the bush—Bernie calls them Chet marks and seems to think that’s pretty funny, no telling why—higher up and . . . decisive, in a way that’s hard to describe. After that I sniffed all around the bush in a circle, easily picking up the trail of whoever I’d just overmarked—loved overmarking, one of my very favorite activities—which led around the cabin to a little shed at the back.
“Chet?” Bernie said, trailing after me. “What’s going on?”
I trotted toward the little shed, not much in mind, except I hadn’t had a fun play with a buddy in some time; and one other shadowy thing having to do with the Isle des Deux Amis and the day we’d found those glasses—whose glasses they were not coming to me, if the fact had ever been there at all. Not to worry.
Bernie caught up to me, walked by my side, not saying a thing. We came to the door of the shed, a windowless door padlocked shut. I made a low rumbly bark.
From inside the shed came an answering bark, also low and rumbly, almost—but not quite—as low and rumbly as my own. I got ready to meet a pretty big dude.
“What the hell would I do without you?” Bernie said.
I didn’t understand the question.
Bernie glanced around. The cabin was quiet, the curtains closed in all the back windows. Bernie grasped the lock, gave it a shake: nothing doing. He raised his leg and in one smooth motion—making it look easy, Bernie-style—kicked in the shed door. Loved those splintering sounds, could have listened to them all day. Did I have the best job in the world or what? All of a sudden I was in the mood for Bernie to smash th
e whole shed to smithereens! Oh, the fun we’d have! But something told me this wasn’t about smashing the shed. It was about . . .
This little dude who came stepping slowly and carefully—like his paws were too precious to touch the ground—out of the shed. A grumpy dude, which was easy to see from the way he eyed us, like we were annoying him just by being there. Hey! Who broke you out of the shed, little grumpy dude? Ever think of that? I like just about everybody, including most perps and gangbangers, but I was having a problem with this dude, whoever he happened to be.
Bernie squatted down in a crouch, held out his hand toward the new guy. “Let’s have a look at your tags, little fella, just to confirm the obvious.”
All that got Bernie was a hard stare and some strange sniffling and snuffling from a squashed-in nose that reminded me of Snaffles Ferolli, this washed-up boxer who worked as a bouncer at a club in South Pedroia that we no longer frequented, or even went to a single time after a certain incident, never mind frequently. But forget all that, the point being that the flat-faced grump made not the slightest move to help Bernie with the tags.
Bernie reached for them. What was this? The little bugger gave him a nip? And Bernie chuckled? I saw nothing funny, found myself crowding in. Someone had to take charge. The solution was obvious. We had to lock this guy back up in the shed and forget all about him. As if he was reading my mind, he rounded on me—if any move so slow and clumsy could be called rounding—and bared his teeth, which were already sort of bared on a full-time basis, surprisingly sharp-looking teeth, and a point of difference from Snaffles Ferolli, who had none. With all this going on, he forgot about Bernie, who caught hold of the tags, gave them a quick once-over, avoided another one of those nips, and said, “Nice to meet you, Napoleon. Been looking forward to this.”
Which made no sense to me. What was nice about it? And what I was looking forward to was locking him back in the shed and going on with the rest of my life, Napoleon-free.
Bernie reached out again and . . . oh, no: gave Napoleon a pat? All that did was make Napoleon growl. A pleasant development, and just in time to stop me from pushing in between. And then Napoleon made an up-from-under head twisting motion and I realized he wanted . . . more.
The Sound and the Furry Page 25