A Fistful of Collars (24 page)

“Lost me there,” said Jiggs. “Kind of weird—you losing me and threatening me at the same time.”

They stared at each other. I got ready for just about anything. Jiggs placed his hand on Bernie’s shoulder. Up until then, I’d always thought Bernie had real big shoulders.

“Now’s a good time for asking you what you asked me,” Jiggs said. “Whose side you’re on?”

Bernie shrugged his shoulder free. “I’m working for the mayor’s office. You know that already.”

“Doesn’t the mayor want this movie to be a success?” Jiggs said.

Bernie nodded.

“Then just do your job,” Jiggs said. “No more, no less. And it’ll all turn out peachy.” He rose. “Oh, almost forgot. Your son.”

“What about him?” Bernie said; his hands, which had been pretty relaxed, started curling into fists.

“They’re getting ready to shoot that scene,” Jiggs said. “Which is what I came to tell you, before we got off-topic.” He tapped his hand on the bar, then turned and walked out.

What side were we on? That was an easy one: we were on each other’s side, me and Bernie. We also had each other’s backs, which made it a little more complicated. As for peaches, Bernie’s mom had surprised him on her last visit by baking a peach pie. “What the hell do you mean I never baked when you were a kid?” she’d said, and then downed the rest of her G and T and gotten right to work, but there’d been an oven glitch leading to the end result being tossed in the trash—although with the lid left off, meaning I knew the taste of peaches, at least in the blackened state.

*   *   *

We—meaning me, Bernie, and Leda, plus a bunch of movie people—stood outside a kind of log cabin, except the roof and one wall were missing. Inside, the cameraman was mounted on a seat behind his camera, and Lars Karlsbaad was talking to Thad, who sat on a chair facing a bed. On the bed, wearing his Western outfit, lay Charlie, his cowboy hat on the pillow beside him. He looked dark-eyed and ashen, like he was real sick. I sniffed the air, smelled no sickness coming from Charlie’s direction. But sickness was in the room, no question, a thin, sour sort of invisible trickle that led straight to Lars. Hey! He had the same sickness as Mrs. Parsons. That surprised me, not sure why.

Lars stuck a cigar in his mouth. The clipboard woman hurried up with a lighter. “I don’t like the hat,” he said.

“Should I get props in here?” the clipboard woman said.

“The hat itself is fine,” said Lars. The clipboard woman looked confused. “It is the placement of the hat.”

“So . . . ?” said the clipboard woman.

“So? So get props, of course.”

Props turned out to be a little dude with a dangling earring in one ear and a stud in the other, one of those human looks that bothered me a bit.

“Lars?” he said, running in.

“The hat,” said Lars. “Place it on his chest.”

“Right side up?” said Props.

“Unless we want to throw money in it,” said Lars.

Silence. Lars frowned. Then, a little nervously, the clipboard woman began to laugh. The corners of Lars’s lips turned up slightly. The laughter spread. Soon all the movie people were laughing their heads off.

Lars held up his hand in the stop sign. The laughter died at once.

“Back to the salt mines,” Lars said.

Props took the cowboy hat off the pillow, placed it right-side up on Charlie’s chest, and went away. Lars gazed down at Charlie. Charlie gazed back at him.

“Give me more,” Lars called out to a guy up on a ladder. The guy did something with a light. Charlie looked sicker.

“Still more,” Lars said. “Stops are for pulling out.”

What was that? There and gone, way too quick, and besides, I was still somewhat stuck on salt mines. We’d been in abandoned mines more than once, me and Bernie—gold, silver, even emeralds once, although there was just the one emerald, planted by a perp, the details murky, but not the point. The point was why bother digging for salt? Salt shakers were on every restaurant table I’d ever seen. I mean, help yourself.

The guy on the ladder did more fiddling with the lights. Charlie looked sicker and sicker.

“What the hell’s going on?” Bernie said in a low voice to Leda.

“Shh,” said Leda. “They’re creating.”

“Voilà,” Lars said, a total puzzler. He rubbed his hands together, chubby, small hands. “We all understand the situation? Croomer has at last persuaded the sheriff to free the shaman and allow her to treat the boy with the special desert herbs.”

“Got it,” said Thad.

“She is now on her way,” Lars continued, “although we know she will never arrive due to . . .” He pressed a button on his belt. “Arn? Arn? Where the—”

“Lars?” Arn’s voice came over a speaker, also the sound of a toilet flushing.

“What was that plot point?” Lars said.

“Where the saddlebag falls off and—”

“No, no, for Christ sake. With the shaman’s ride.”

“The renegades, you mean? The renegades suddenly—”

“Yes, yes, the renegades,” Lars said. “So we know the outcome, but you, Croomer, and you, boy, do not. And yet. And yet.” There was a silence. “We are ready?” Lars said.

“Yup,” said Thad.

And Charlie, head on the pillow, nodded a tiny nod.

After that came the quiet on the set part, the cameraman rolling in, Lars stepping back, and—action!

Thad pulled the chair a bit closer to the bed. He looked down at Charlie and smiled a small smile. A moment passed and Charlie smiled an even smaller one back at him.

“Help’s on the way, boy,” he said. “You hangin’ in there for me?”

Charlie nodded the tiny nod.

“When you’re back to feelin’ good,” Thad said, “we’ll track down that herd, cut you out the finest l’il pinto pony on God’s green earth.”

Very slowly, Charlie closed his eyes.

Thad leaned closer toward him, his own eyes changing in a powerful way, hard to describe. “Still hangin’ in?” he said, his voice now kind of thick and throaty.

Charlie’s lips moved, but no sound came out. They moved again, and so softly, Charlie said, “Pinto pony.”

“Good boy,” Thad said.

The camera moved in closer on Charlie, lying still, and Lars started to raise his hand, like he was about to make that chopping motion and say cut, when all of a sudden Charlie’s hands moved, wrapping themselves around the cowboy hat and holding it to his chest. Thad’s eyes misted over. And then Charlie opened his
own eyes. For an instant they seemed to see Thad, and then they didn’t. Charlie’s eyes went totally blank and lifeless—I knew that look from my job, had seen it too often—and . . . and stayed that way!

“Charlie!” Bernie shouted, and ran onto the set. Me right with him, of course. We’re a lot alike, as I may have mentioned before.

I
have never in my whole life been so utterly humiliated,” Leda said.

We were in the parking area at the movie set, out behind the trailers and close to the two-lane blacktop leading back to the city, the Porsche and Leda’s minivan parked nose to nose. Good thing they weren’t moving, since there’d be a crack-up right away. Hey! What a strange thought! I gave myself a good scratching under the ear and returned to feeling normal.

Bernie glanced at the minivan. Charlie sat in the front passenger seat, eating trail mix from a little plastic container and gazing out at nothing in particular. I have things I could mention on the subject of trail mix, but this isn’t the time or the place, as humans say. Maybe just the time part—actually not sure how place fits in.

“For Christ sake,” Bernie said. “Who cares what those pretentious morons think?”

“Those pretentious morons, as you put it, are some of the most important people in the country,” Leda said.

Bernie blew some air through his lips, making a sound like
peh
.

“You’ve always been so transparent,” Leda said. “This is jealousy, pure and simple.”

“Jealous?” said Bernie. “Of who?”

“Lars, of course.”

Bernie laughed, not his normal laugh, which is one of the best sounds on earth, but harsher and more through his nose, if that makes any sense. “Why would I be jealous of that, that . . .”

“Can’t find the perfect put-down?” Leda said. “How unusual. But as for the question, you’re jealous because Lars has discovered a talent in your son that you were unaware of and wouldn’t have a clue what to do with in any case.”

Over in the minivan, Charlie had stopped eating and was watching his parents. Without thinking much about it—or anything, really—I sidled toward Charlie’s door. He glanced down at me through the open window. No makeup on his face now: he looked just fine. My tail started up, all on its own.

“That’s total crap,” Bernie said.

“This is exactly why the Europeans think of us the way they do,” Leda said.

“The Europeans?”

A new one on me, too.

“You still can’t grasp what happened, can you?” Leda said. “Your son is an artist, and not just in the making.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Bernie said. “He’s a six-year-old kid, barely out of diapers.”

The minivan door opened. I climbed up into the car and sat on the floor in front of Charlie. First time in the minivan: it turned out to be nice and roomy. Also, some interesting food products lay under Charlie’s seat, out of sight, which meant a lot to humans when it came to finding things but little to me. The food products—remains of a tuna sandwich, a French fry or two,
some corn chips—could wait. Right now what I wanted to do was push up gently against Charlie, so I did. He put his hand on the back of my neck. Bernie’s voice rose. Leda’s sharpened. They seemed to blow round and round the minivan like a big dust devil. You see dust devils out in the desert from time to time. I thought about dust devils and other desert things I knew, especially some nice little yellow flowers, the name escaping me at that moment. Charlie kept his hand on the back of my neck.

We drove home. Bernie was quiet just about the whole way. Then, as we turned onto Mesquite Road, he said, “Hope to hell Charlie didn’t hear that diaper crack.”

Oh, Bernie.

He banged the steering wheel. “They put him in a goddamn death scene without even telling me. Leda knew, oh, yeah. Why was that okay with her?”

I started panting, although I wasn’t thirsty, hadn’t been running. In fact, a nice bit of running sounded like just the thing at the moment.

We pulled into the driveway. Bernie stopped the car, switched off the engine but didn’t get out. He sat there. I panted.

“Turns out it wasn’t even in the script, that part where he opened his eyes and seemed to . . .” He went quiet. I heard the phone ringing in the house, but maybe Bernie didn’t, because he kept sitting there. “How did he know to do that? Now she’s going to twist his whole childhood around. To what end? Turn him into a Thad Perry?”

What was he talking about? I had no idea. I had no ideas at all. I searched back for my last idea. What had it been? Something nice, something about . . . yes! Running!

The next thing I knew, I was running. And not just running,
but zooming, ears flattened straight back by my own wind. What a feeling, in the air most of the time, all paws off the ground, practically flying! There are many ways of zooming, but my favorite is the quick-cutting kind of zoom, darting this way and that, sometimes doubling right back on myself, claws digging deep in the ground, clods of earth flying high, and not just earth but grassy turf, too, which makes a sort of ripping sound, quite faint yet very satisfying in a way that’s hard to explain and no time anyway, no time to even think about the fact that we didn’t have a grass lawn, no way we could, not with the whole aquifer thing, and neither did the Parsons, in their case all about no longer being able to push the lawnmower, the only grass lawn being old man Heydrich’s on the other side. Zoom. Zip. Rip, rip, rip: had I ever made cuts this sharp and at this speed? Chet the—

“Chet! Chet! For God’s sake!”

Uh-oh. I hit the brakes and stopped on a dime—no dimes present, of course, although you couldn’t be sure, what with dimes being so small, unless I was getting that wrong, so complicated, human money—possibly taking out a flowery bush that stood on the boundary of our place and old man Heydrich’s, or perhaps slightly more on his side.

There’s a voice humans use for shouting and not shouting at the same time, a sort of muffled shout. Bernie used it now.

“Chet! Get over here.”

I gave myself a good shake, trotted over to Bernie. His cell phone rang. He answered, said something, clicked off, and then turned to me.

“Hop in.”

Back in the car? Why not? No reason, except that we hadn’t chowed down in what seemed like a long time. But then, from out of the blue, I got the idea we were headed to Max’s Memphis
Ribs, my favorite restaurant in the whole valley. Those ribs! And when you’d eaten every speck of meat, there was still the whole bone in your future! What a business plan, as I may have mentioned before, but it’s important! Had Bernie mentioned anything about Max’s Memphis Ribs? Perhaps not, maybe meaning there was no reason to believe Max’s was on the schedule. I believed.

I hopped in the car. We backed out of the driveway, pretty quick, and shot up Mesquite Road. In a hurry, all of a sudden? No problem. I love speed, in case that hasn’t come up yet. Old man Heydrich’s porch light went on. He stepped outside, a golf club in his hand, and was turning our way just as we rounded the curve and went roaring out of sight. Old man Heydrich was a golfer? You really did learn something every day, as humans often said.

We’ve worked a lot of cases, me and Bernie, but the Valley’s a big place, going on pretty much forever in all directions, so sometimes we ended up somewhere new. Like now for example, way out in the West Valley, past the last busted development then came another and another, a few with a light or two showing where someone was still there, most pretty dark. We followed a road, paved at first and then not, into the darkest development, a bunch of cul de sacs lined with half-built houses, empty lots, scraps blowing in the wind, and abandoned stuff, including the cement-mixing drum from a cement truck. Bernie turned into the driveway of the only complete house in the whole place, which would be the model home. We had empty model homes out the yingyang, Bernie once told Suzie, so what are we modeling? “Can I quote you?” she’d said. No idea what that meant, but they’d both laughed. I was missing Suzie already.