Paw and Order (14 page)

“So?”

“We're not buying it.”

“Why not? Doc said I was lucky, coulda been a skull fracture.”

“I know you got hit,” Bernie said. “It's a question of where.”

“Where? You mean like occipital, cerebellum, like that?”

“I mean in the hall or someplace else,” Bernie said.

Nevins's gaze went toward the window again, got interrupted by me. “Fuckin' hell,” he said.

Bernie nodded in a sympathetic way.

“Soares put you on to this?” Nevins said.

“No.”

“But you're working for him.”

“With him,” Bernie said. “On the Eben St. John murder, not on personnel matters in his precinct.”

Nevins gave Bernie a long look.

“Throwing you a lifeline here, Nevins,” Bernie said. Nevins raised his hands, let them flap down to his sides. “Christ,” he said. “I couldn't have been gone for more than one minute, ninety seconds tops.”

“Tell us about it,” Bernie said.

EIGHTEEN

I
'm a human being,” Nevins said. “Sometimes you gotta take a piss, orders or no orders.”

Whoa! Taking a piss made you a human being? It just so happens I'm an expert in this area, having taken pisses Nevins could only dream of. He needed to do some rethinking, and pronto.

“You know the point where you just can't hang on?” Nevins said. “When you're gonna piss your pants the next second?”

Say one thing for Nevins: some rethinking on his part required, yes, but he had a way of holding my interest. His line of talk made you want to hear more, or at least that was how it worked on me. Pants are not a factor in my case, of course. I wear a black collar for dress-up, and used to have a brown one for every day, now replaced by one made of gator hide, which still gives off the faintest whiff of gator, reminding me always of the scariest night of my life, maybe something we can go into another time.

“Bottom line,” Bernie said. “You abandoned your post.”

“Kind of judgmental, how you put that,” said Nevins.

“Judgmental would be having you shot at dawn,” Bernie said.

Nevins got an angry look on his face, like he was about to do something crazy. He dabbed at his bloody nose instead.

Bernie's voice softened a bit. “So you went to the nearest men's room.”

Nevins nodded.

“Which, as I remember, is past the elevators on the left.”

Nevins nodded again.

“And then?”

“I went back. Couldn't a been more than ninety seconds. Twenty seconds there, twenty seconds back, plus fifty for pissing, max. The longest I've ever done was forty-seven.”

“You time your pisses?” Bernie said.

My ears were up as high as they could go. I'd never heard anything as fascinating, and never even expected to.

“Not now,” Nevins said. “This was back in the academy. We had a competition. One guy did a minute nineteen.”

“He should have his prostate checked,” Bernie said.

“Huh?” said Nevins.

“Never mind,” Bernie said. “You're back at your post.”

“Yeah,” said Nevins. “Everything how I left it, tape still up, door closed, and then I hear a sound from inside.”

“Not from behind you, as you told Soares,” Bernie said.

“Ain't that obvious by now?” said Nevins.

“Nailing it down's a big part of what we do,” Bernie said. “Next?”

“Next? What would you adone?”

“Called for backup.”

Nevins snorted. Pigs are the best snorters, in my experience, but it's always nice when a human takes a shot at it, and I was enjoying the moment when Nevins almost knocked me off my feet, not so easy to do, my balancing skills being off the charts, according to Bernie. “Pussy,” Nevins said.

“You calling me a pussy? Bernie said.

The room went quiet. Nevins gave Bernie a long look, then turned away. “Naw,” he said.

The right answer. Nothing catlike about Bernie. There's only one creature out there that he reminds me of. I think you know.

“So instead of following procedure, you opened the door.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And?”

“Stepped inside. And then it's like I said before—I felt this rush of air behind my head, and next thing, I was out like a light.”

“All of that now happening inside the office, not in the hall.”

“Makes no difference, 'cepting for the procedural part,” Nevins said. “Why get Soares all riled up for nothing?”

“Ever considered other careers?” Bernie said.

“You bet,” said Nevins. “I got this idea for an invention.”

“Yeah?”

“Swear you'll keep it to yourself?”

“I swear.”

“A no-hands razor,” Nevins said. “Shaves you while you're doing other things, guided by GPS.”

“Hmm,” said Bernie.

“Looking for investors,” Nevins said.

“I'll think about it,” said Bernie. Uh-oh: that was my only thought. “Right now,” Bernie went on, “I'd like to go back to the moment you took that step into Eben St. John's office.”

Nevins shrugged. “Sure.”

“Close your eyes.”

“What for?”

“To encourage visual recall.”

Nevins closed his eyes. He was one of those humans with not much in the way of eyelashes. I like eyelashes. Suzie's are just about the longest I've ever seen, and Bernie's are thicker than you'd believe. Suppose that one day the two of them, Bernie and Suzie, had a . . . I came close to having a not-my-kind-of thought.

“You step into Eben St. John's office,” Bernie said, his voice low and quiet. “What do you see?”

There was a long silence. For a moment, I wondered whether Nevins had fallen asleep, but sleeping people have a different smell, and I wasn't picking it up.

Nevins took a deep breath, let it out with a little hum that sounded musical to me. Was Nevins a perp? I was starting to hope he wasn't. “I see,” he said, “an office.”

“Go on,” said Bernie.

“I've got my hand on my gun.”

“Smart.”

“Thinking of taking it out of the holster.”

“On the ball, no doubt about it.”

“But you know what?”

“I give up.”

“The back office.”

“What about it?”

“The office inside the office, if you see what I mean.”

“Well put. You saw something in the back office?”

“Not for long.”

“Why was that?”

“Because next thing I got clubbed on the melon.” Nevins's eyes snapped open. “Are you following this at all, for Christ sake?”

“You spotted something just before the melon part.”

“What I'm trying to tell you. Someone was in that back office.”

“Who?”

“No one I knew.”

“Can you describe him?”

“It was a her.”

“An older woman? Well dressed, classy looking?”

“Nah. Classy maybe. Wouldn't call her old. Thirty-five, maybe.”

“And?”

“No and. Then came boom, on the back of my head. How come you can't—”

Bernie waved aside whatever was in the wings after that. His voice changed a bit, no louder but sort of throbbier, and harder to ignore, not that I'd ever ignore Bernie. “You must have seen something that gave you her age.”

“Like what?”

“Her face, for example. That's usually a good way of establishing age.”

“Didn't really get a look at her face,” Nevins said. “She was kind of turned away from me. Had a nice butt, now that I think of it.”

“She had a thirty-five-year-old butt?” Bernie said.

“Got a problem with that?” said Nevins. “Just so happens I have an eye for observation.”

“Then you can explain where the classy part comes from.”

“Easy,” Nevins said. “She had one of those French bobs.”

“Lost me,” Bernie said.

Which made two of us. Two's the best number, in case that hasn't come up yet, and it's especially the best when you're lost.

“At French bob?” Nevins said.

“Right there,” said Bernie.

“My ma owned a salon in Baltimore.”

“A haircutting salon?”

“Yeah. A salon.”

“French bob is a kind of haircut?”

Nevins raised his hands, made a little motion around his head. “Most expensive one on her list.”

“The woman in the inner office had a French bob?”

“How many times I gotta tell you?”

“What color was her hair?”

Nevins stared up at the ceiling. What was this? A pink blob of bubble gum stuck up there? Totally new in my experience. I got the feeling the case was taking a strange turn.

Nevins lowered his gaze. “Auburn, maybe?”

“That's a color?”

“Sure. Reddish brown, or sometimes brownish red. Hers was more like that, brownish red.”

“What's the difference?”

“Between reddish brown and brownish red? Mostly the way it takes the light, my ma said. Brownish red ending up brighter.”

Bernie went to the window, gazed out. “Your mom still in the business?”

“Retired to Florida,” Nevins said. “Husband number four.”

Bernie gazed out the window a little longer, then turned to Nevins. “Anything else you remember?”

Nevins shook his head.

Bernie came over, handed him our card, the one with the flower we weren't too happy about, designed by Suzie. “If you think of anything else, let me know.”

“What about Soares?” Nevins said.

Bernie looked down at him. “We don't work for Soares. Let's go, Chet.”

“Thanks, man,” Nevins said.

We headed for the door. Bernie opened it, paused, turned back. “How come the woman had her back turned?”

“Hell if I know,” Nevins said.

“If she was standing behind the desk, there wouldn't have been much room between her and the wall.”

Nevins nodded, went on nodding for what seemed like too long, the nodding slowing down at the end. “Come to think of it, she might have been hanging a painting on the wall.”

“Isn't there already a painting on that wall?” Bernie said. “A clipper ship at sea?”

“Couldn't tell you,” Nevins said.

• • •

Not long after that, we were back at the brassy-colored office building. It felt kind of late at night, but I wasn't tired, not a bit.

“Want to stay in the car?” Bernie said. “Looks like you're having trouble keeping your eyes open.”

What a suggestion! Weren't we on the job? I hopped right out, gave myself a real good shake, the kind that gets the inside of my head all unfuzzed. Late, but there were a few cars in the lot, and lights shone in some of the building windows. We went up to the doors—the revolving kind that you'll never get me into, and a normal one on either side. Bernie tried them, all locked. He took out his credit card, one of his best moves, not the paying part, where once or twice bartenders had taken out scissors and . . . I refused to remember. No, this was all about using credit cards to unlock doors, and Bernie was one of the best, the very best being Fingertips Gertler, the dude who'd taught Bernie and was now breaking rocks in the hot sun. No pockets in the orange jumpsuits at Northern State Correctional, so maybe Fingertips didn't even have a credit card anymore. I felt bad for him, although I could never forget the feeling of his surprisingly plump calf between my teeth, a memory that brought me back to tip-top right away, so there you go. It's nice to feel tip-top after you've been feeling bad, and the quicker the better, in my opinion.

Bernie moved toward the door, credit card extended, but at that moment, a UPS dude appeared in the lobby, coming our way. I know UPS dudes from their brown uniforms, uniforms that sometimes have a baggy side pants pocket full of biscuits. As in this particular case, which I knew before the UPS dude had even opened the door, biscuit smell easily penetrating glass, a fact you may not know. The door opened—Bernie's credit card no longer in sight—and the UPS dude walked out. I sidled over in front of him, just to make sure he hadn't missed seeing me.

“Nice-looking pooch,” he said.

“Thanks,” said Bernie, catching the door before it closed.

“Can he have a treat?”

I sat, and pronto.

“Hey,” the UPS dude said, “it's like he understands.”

“A lot like that,” Bernie said. “He'd buy stock in your company if he could.”

And soon after we were in the lobby, me making all-too-quick work of a biscuit that was on the smallish side, and Bernie smiling to himself. Uh-oh. Was he thinking about some sort of stock buy? We'd had problems with that in the past. A company that made a hat that turned into a pillow? Just one example.

We rode the elevator up to Eben's floor, walked to his office. No one around, no crime scene tape, no light shining under the door. Bernie took out his credit card and presto we were in. There's no one like Bernie.

He closed the door, switched on the lights. Nice and tidy inside, reminding me for some reason of a model home we'd been in once, something about shady developers. Bernie went right to the back office. The painting of the ship at sea—we'd gone through a pirate movie stage shortly after the divorce, so I was totally up to speed on ships at sea—hung on the wall behind the desk. A pretty big painting: Bernie grunted as he lifted it off the hook and leaned it against the desk.

“Chet?”

Oops. Was I getting a bit excited? But only because I knew where this was headed. What did you sometimes find behind pictures? Safes! We had the same setup back in our office on Mesquite Road. We were going to blow a safe! A first for us, although I'd seen it done. I was loving the thought of a new adventure and at the same time trying to keep all paws still and on the floor—which they did not want to do—when I noticed that there was no safe. What we had instead was a sort of cupboard door, only bigger. Bernie grasped the knob and pulled the door open, revealing a dark, empty space. Round about now would be when he'd take out the .38 Special, but we no longer had the .38 Special; we didn't even have that measly pink popgun. This was going to be a tough case. But not our toughest, which was the only missing persons case we hadn't solved, although we sort of had, only too late. A strange thought popped up into my head: we'd had the .38 Special that night, but it hadn't helped, not until later, when we'd taken care of justice on our own, me and Bernie. So therefore, maybe guns didn't always . . . Whoa! I'd come very close to a so therefore, Bernie's department. I bring other things to the table.

Bernie leaned into the opening, peered down, and then up.

“Chet!” he said, his voice low but kind of—urgent, maybe?—at the same time. “A little space, big guy.”

I did my best, but what I saw in that opening was just too interesting, namely a ladder leading up into blackness.