Paw and Order (22 page)

TWENTY-SIX

N
ice job on the gun, big guy,” Bernie said as we zoomed off down the road, just the two of us back on our own, the way we like it. “Interesting that you and Ferretti seemed to know each other already.” He glanced over at me. “How and when did that happen?”

Not an easy question. I searched my memory. Nothing there at the moment! Meaning there was no choice but to look to the future, not a bad outcome, all in all.

“Must have been while they had me locked up downtown,” Bernie said, “but how—”

The phone buzzed.

“Bernie?” It was Suzie, but sounding not quite herself, her voice higher and thinner.

“Hey, Suzie. You all right?”

“No. I mean yes. Mostly yes. But something's come up and I think you should—”

“Suzie? Suzie? Are you still there?” We listened hard, me and Bernie, his hand tightening on the wheel, the knuckles getting yellow. I heard a click, and then nothing.

Bernie pressed a button. The
beep-beeping
of a phone call trying to get started came through the speakers.

“Suzie, pick up.”

But she did not.

Bernie turned to me. “ ‘Mostly yes.' What does that mean?”

I had no clue. Bernie stepped on the pedal.

“What was she covering? A flower show?” We roared up a hill, almost took off at the top. Way in the distance, I could see the city, a big white dome sprouting like a mushroom in the center. “Design show, that was it,” Bernie said as we blazed down the far side of the hill, even faster. “What's the name of that editor of hers? Sheila? Sherry? Charlotte?”

I didn't know. Plus all these questions were making me nervous, and so was Bernie's voice, which was nervous, too, no doubt about it. That hardly ever happened, but when it did, it spread to me every time. I started panting. Sometimes you can pant the nervousness right out of yourself. That didn't seem to be happening this time. So: stop with the panting, right? Except I couldn't.

“. . . Sheila, maybe,” Bernie was saying in that louder voice he uses for being on the phone even though everyone tells him to tone it down. “Or Charlotte. Don't know her last name. She's Suzie Sanchez's editor, and Suzie was trying to reach me and—”

“One moment, please.”

We topped another hill, the city closer now, the blue river running through it shining like a huge snake. Oh, what a terrible thought! Why now?

“Metro desk.”

“This is Bernie Little. I'm . . . I'm a friend—a good friend—of Suzie Sanchez.”

“Yes?”

“Can you tell me the location of the design show?”

“Design show?”

“The design show you asked her to cover.”

“I didn't ask her to cover the design show.”

“Maybe I've got the wrong person. Can I speak to her editor?”

“I'm her editor, and she's not covering the design show.”

“But someone's out sick,” Bernie said. “Didn't you text Suzie about taking over the assignment?”

The woman's voice got snappy. “No one's out sick, and we're not even doing the design show this year.”

“But I was right there! How the hell—”

Bernie took a deep breath. I'd seen him take this kind of deep breath before, always when he was trying to control himself. These control struggles were always the best time for feeling Bernie's strength, even better than when he was throwing down with some huge drooling tough guy. Explain that! Nothing wrong with drooling, of course, wish I'd left it out.

“Sorry for the misunderstanding,” Bernie said, quieter now. “Where is the design show?”

“Franklin Court,” said the woman, still snappy. “But she won't be there.”

• • •

We drove into the city, went downtown, and soon I was catching glimpses of that strange stone tower again. It popped up a lot, taller than just about everything else around; I turned my head this way and that to keep the tower in view.

Bernie glanced my way. “What's with you and the Washington Monument, Chet?”

I didn't know, wasn't even sure I understood the question.

“Kinda makes sense,” Bernie said. “He was a fan of the nation within. Had to be—those Virginia gentlemen were into foxhunting in a big way.”

Fox hunting? I knew foxes, of course, had run one or two off the property back home, sneaky little buggers and surprisingly shifty. We were going to hunt some of them down? That sounded wonderful! Only one problem, namely that foxes have a scent you—meaning me, no offense—can pick up a mile away, and way more if it turns out a mile isn't very far, and I was smelling absolutely none of it, like there wasn't a single fox in the whole town.

“Smell something?”

Bernie was watching me again. I had my nose pointed up, and yes, I was smelling something, in fact, many somethings.

“Food, I'll bet.”

Sure, but that wasn't the point. The point was the absence of fox scent when I'd just been promised a foxhunt. What was up with that?

“Easy, big guy—we'll get you fed.”

Fed? But I wasn't the slightest bit—

• • •

We parked in an underground garage. What is it about those places that I don't like? Easier to name the things I do, which is only one, specifically the smell of human piss, almost always male. Kind of a mystery, since I'd never caught a human in action in an underground parking garage, but action went on, no doubt about that, and this garage was no exception. It put me in a very good mood, hard to explain why, or maybe I was in a very good mood already. We went up to the street and entered the lobby of a tall and fancy building, all human piss smell gone, except for the tiny trace you find when old people are on the premises. Did a lobby count as premises? I had no idea, but there were a few old people around, all of the well-dressed, slim, and sort-of-young-looking type—“if you don't look at their necks,” as Leda used to say.

This lobby was maybe the nicest I'd ever been in, full of sunshine, with polished stone all over the place. Along all the walls were—what would you call them? Sort of rooms, except they weren't real, since the real room was the lobby? Whoa! Way too complicated!

Lots of people were clustered around the unreal rooms—kitchen, living room, office, closet, TV room, others I didn't know the names of, all filled with shiny things, lots of them breakable if you happened to have a tail. I followed Bernie across the lobby, my tail up and as motionless as I could make it. He walked up to a woman with a clipboard.

“Can I help you?” she said, glancing at me with a nice smile. “Pet design's on the fourth floor, room four one six.”

“Pet design?” Bernie said.

“Doghouses, bedding, doggie door entrances, the latest in bowls, leashes, calming vests, collars, booties, you name it.”

Wow! I couldn't wait! Booties? What an idea!

“Actually,” Bernie said, “we're looking for Suzie Sanchez. She's a reporter for the
Post
who—”

A line or two appeared on the woman's forehead. “I'm not sure what's going on with that. They need to get their act together.”

“What do you mean?”

The woman's nice smile was gone. “First,” she said, “we were told they wouldn't be covering us this year. Then she shows up at the last moment, no warning. Fine, we can work with that. Next, five minutes later, out the door she goes, not a word of explanation. Although not before I'd blogged that the
Post
would be doing a story after all, damn it.”

Bernie took a real quick glance around the lobby. “Did you see her leave?”

“Are you saying I'm making this up?”

“Not at all,” Bernie said. “Was she alone?”

“She was with some guy.”

“Did she come in with him?”

The woman shrugged. “Maybe. I don't know.”

“What did he look like?”

“Some guy.” Her phone beeped. She checked it, tapped at the screen with the tips of her silvery fingernails. “I wasn't paying a lot of attention.” She looked up, the are-we-done-here? look on her face.

“One more thing,” Bernie said. “Who's handling security?”

“The building—it's included in our deal.”

“I'd like to talk to whoever's on duty at the moment.”

“Why? What's going on? I don't understand.”

Bernie's voice did that hardening thing where it actually gets quieter. “If this wasn't important, I wouldn't be bothering you.”

The woman gave him a new kind of look, like . . . like she was seeing Bernie now, and not just any dude, although how anyone could ever get Bernie confused with just any dude made no sense to me. She tapped at her screen, put the phone to her ear, and said, “Security?”

• • •

We rode—uh-oh—an escalator upstairs. Bernie didn't exactly hold me by the collar the whole way, more like he rested his hand on it in a pally sort of way. There are many great human inventions—the car, the tennis ball, the barbecue pit, just to name two or more—but the escalator is not one of them. Suppose you slipped at the top and got swept underneath, gone to who knows where. You must have thought of that or maybe had bad dreams about it and then had trouble getting back to sleep and ended up tired the next day. If you haven't, I hope that kind of thing doesn't start up now on account of me bringing it up. I'd feel bad about that.

We were lucky this time, getting off with no problem—“Did good, big guy, I know it's not easy”—and walking down a hallway. Bernie knocked at the first door we came to; a man called, “Come in”; and we went in, me forgetting all about escalators, if I hadn't done so already.

Big buildings, sports stadiums, airports: they all have security offices somewhere inside, a fact you learn early in our business. No matter what the rest of the place is like, the security office tends to be on the shabby, stripped-down side, but not this one, which had nice furniture, a floor of polished stone just as in the lobby, a wall of flat-screen monitors, and a little white desk with spindly legs. The dude sitting behind it was kind of the opposite of the desk, if that makes any sense, huge and dark.

His eyes went to Bernie, then to me, and didn't look too happy about something or other. Then he took a closer look at Bernie and everything changed.

“Bernie?” He rose, even huger than I'd thought, with a body like an oil drum, only way bigger. His voice was kind of like an oil drum, too, deep and booming.

“William?” Bernie said.

They moved toward each other, met in the middle of the room, shook hands, Bernie's big strong hand practically disappearing inside this William dude's. William's other hand was the machine type, metal and plastic, which didn't bother me at all. Lots of guys I knew at the VA hospital back home—where we sometimes went for visits, me and Bernie—had hands like that, and some of them could do fun tricks with those machine hands, like shuffling a deck of cards—Bernie had bet fifty bucks against that one—or peeling a grape, which had cost us a C-note.

“You haven't changed,” William said.

“Neither have you,” said Bernie.

William held up his machine hand and laughed.

“So we're both bullshitters,” Bernie said. “They couldn't save it?”

“Came close,” William said.

“Why didn't you let me know?”

“I was stateside by then.” For a moment, William's eyes got a faraway look. “Got into some other things. Besides, you were still back there, and, you know . . .”

“Yeah,” said Bernie.

They let go of each other's hands.

“Going good now?” Bernie said.

“No complaints,” said William. “I run security for this place and some others up toward Logan Circle.” He turned to me. “And who's this good-lookin' hombre?”

Just one of the many good things about Bernie: he had topnotch buddies all over the place, William clearly being at the very top of the notch.

“This is Chet,” Bernie said.

“He partial to treats of any kind?”

“Partial's putting it mildly.”

William went to his desk, opened a drawer. “Thought I had a . . . guess not.” He rummaged around. “Think a Slim Jim would do? I snack on them myself, truth be told.”

Wow! The kind of buddy who just got better and better. As for Slim Jims, they would always do. And somehow, without being aware of the actual journey, I was now sitting right beside William, possibly on one of his feet. A moment later—but what a long moment!—I was in a small Slim Jim world of my own.

“. . . private investigation,” Bernie was saying. Then came something about Suzie and the
Washington Post
and—

“She's your girlfriend?” William said.

“Why the surprise?”

“Nothing. I read her article on those Neanderthal reenactors. Funny stuff.”

“So? I can't appreciate funny stuff?”

“Sure you can,” William said. “And why so touchy?”

“Sorry,” Bernie said, and he got started on a long explanation of what we were doing here, which I tried to follow in the hope of learning a thing or two but got undermined by my concentration, which was elsewhere.

By the time I'd polished off my little snack, Bernie and William were over by the wall, studying one of the monitors. On the screen was a picture of the lobby. And hey! There was Suzie! Couldn't wait to see her! We were going to zip on down there ASAP, right, even if it meant the escalator? Only we didn't. Instead, we just stood still, watching Suzie. She started walking past the little pretend rooms, taking a look around, and then a man stepped up to her. A slicked-back-hair sort of man with a face made of slabs, a man we knew: Mr. York. They talked for a moment or two and then turned and headed out the front door of the lobby, side by side.

TWENTY-SEVEN

T
hat help, at all?” William said, turning from the monitor.

“Yes and no,” Bernie said.

Yes and no? I hate when that comes up, can never get my head around it. Is it okay, for example, to gnaw on a chair leg? Isn't that yes
or
no? Either it's cool to gnaw on the chair leg—“lookit ol' Chet workin' on that damn chair leg,”—or it's uncool—”CHET!” But yes
and
no? How can you gnaw and not gnaw at the same time?

Maybe William was having the same problem, because he'd started rubbing his forehead the way humans do when they need more help from up inside there—rubbing with his machine hand, by the way, a very interesting sight that made me forget all about what I was doing, which seemed to be . . . gnawing on one of the spindly legs of William's little white desk? When had I even gone over there? I put a stop to that gnawing, but pronto.

“That was Suzie?” William said.

“Yup,” said Bernie.

“And the guy?”

“Goes by the name of York.” Bernie took out his phone, tapped it with his finger, listened. “She's not picking up.”

“I've got an exterior camera,” William said, “covers the main entrance and a small segment of the street.” He switched on another monitor, picked up a remote. I saw the entrance where we'd come in. People were going in and out much faster than normal. Then things slowed down and out came Suzie and Mr. York. They crossed the sidewalk and got into a small white car parked by the curb, Mr. York behind the wheel, Suzie in the shotgun seat. The car drove out of the picture. William fiddled with the remote and the car drove back into view and froze in the middle of the screen. He fiddled some more and closed in on the license plate. “Make that out?” he said.

Bernie nodded. He was writing on the back of one of our business cards—I saw that bothersome flower on the front. Why not a gun, or cuffs, or an orange jumpsuit? Nothing against flowers. Their smell can practically knock you out sometimes, but not in a scary way, and we can be scary, me and Bernie, just another one of our techniques at the Little Detective Agency.

“Want me to run that plate?” William said.

“If you can,” said Bernie.

“Would I be any good at my job if I couldn't?”

William got on the speakerphone with a woman named Belle or possibly Maybelle who told a story about a dude on his driving test and how he'd ended up crashing right through the wall of her office at the DMV, leading to a couple of nice days off, but now she was back and happy to help. Not long after that, she was saying something about a white Honda registered to a Jean-Luc Carbonneau of Fenwick Street. William asked about her boyfriend, and she said she'd thrown him out on his worthless ass, which got them both laughing, her and William, and then they said good-bye.

“Much appreciated,” Bernie said.

“No need for that between you and me,” said William. They shook hands again. “That Fenwick address is in Ivy City,” William said. “Not the best area.”

Not the best area? So what? We worked in bad areas all the time. Did William think we were soft? It had to be that flower, a real bad influence in our lives. What could I do about it? Chew up all our business cards? Hey! A plan! Back to tip-topdom, except for a paint chip or two caught under my tongue. I had them all coughed out by the time we were back in the Porsche.

“You getting sick?”

Me? I leaned across the front seat, rested some of my weight on Bernie, just so he'd know how good I felt.

“Can't breathe like this, big guy.”

And we were off.

• • •

Bernie drove in silence. He's one of those drivers who sit back in the seat, nice and comfortable, even when we're chasing some perp who still doesn't realize it's game over. And so many of them don't, even when they're cuffed! Some try to make a deal, like the dude who offered us a weekend at his time share in New Jersey, wherever that may be. But what I was getting at is that if Bernie's very worried about something, he sits more forward in the driver's seat, not so nice and comfortable, which was how he was sitting now. What was he worried about? Couldn't have been because we were heading into a bad part of town—we work out in Vista City, where they sometimes throw grenades off the rooftops—so it had to be the flower.

He turned to me. “Sighing, Chet?” he said. “I'm worried about her, too.”

Not the flower, then, but some female person? I went over the female persons I'd been in contact with recently—Isobel Galloway, Lizette, Suzie—and decided it had to be Suzie. I'd never want anything bad to happen to her, wanted nothing but good for her with all my heart. I sat far forward, my front paws on the dash, which usually makes the car go faster. But we were pretty much bumper to bumper and ended up going slower, if anything. My heart speeded up, maybe just so something would be going fast.

Bernie gave me a pat. “Easy, now,” he said. “No jumping to conclusions—there's lot of possibilities. Starting with Carbonneau, for example, not exactly a common name in these parts. Lizette Carbonneau and Jean-Luc Carbonneau, alias Mr. York. Gotta be related. Brother and sister? Husband and wife? So therefore?”

I waited for the payoff on the so therefore, Bernie's department. When I got tired of waiting, I went back to my last memory before that, the no-jumping thing. No real need for Bernie to give me a heads-up on that subject: I knew the downside of jumping from moving cars, having done it twice before, once chasing a perp and once getting away from one, and hadn't the slightest desire to do it on this particular outing; okay, maybe now that Bernie had mentioned the idea, a slight desire.

“Sticking your head a bit too far out there. Cool it.”

Somebody had their head stuck too far outside? What were they thinking? And who could be that stu— And then in no time at all, I boiled that somebody down to me and took care of business. Meanwhile, we were rolling in a bad part of town, bumping over rusted train tracks, boarded-up houses on one side and grimy warehouses on the other. Bernie turned a corner, and we pulled up in front of a low brick building with dirty barred-over windows and a cracked and broken sidewalk out front.

“It's a bar?” Bernie said.

No doubt about that: bar smells were in the air, big time. We got out of the car, and right away, a red-eyed dude appeared from down an alley and came toward us, although not in a direct line, the scent of his booze cloud reaching us first.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” said Bernie.

“That your dog?”

“In a manner of speaking.”

The dude thought about that, also did a bit of weaving back and forth, as though the ground had gone wobbly under his feet. “I getcha,” he said. “Does he bite?”

“Only for a reason.”

“Uh-huh. I'm the same way myself. How about I watch your car while you're inside?”

“It's a free country,” Bernie said. “I can't stop you.”

The dude thought that was funny, started to laugh, and then hawked a glob that didn't bear too much looking at into the gutter. “Talkin' here,” he said, wiping his mouth on the back of his arm—uh-oh, the kind with needle marks—“ 'bout the kind of watchin' that's more the protectin' kind.”

“Think that's necessary?” Bernie said.

“I don't think.” The dude tapped his forehead. “I know.”

Bernie reached into his pocket. Was he about to draw down on this dude with our new piece, the one I'd—how would you put it? Borrowed maybe?—yes, borrowed from Mr. Ferretti's lady pal? Nope. Instead, out came Bernie's wallet. The dude leaned toward it, like something was pulling him that way.

“How much?” Bernie said.

“Call it twenty,” said the dude.

Bernie held out a bill. “Let's call it five for now and five on delivery of service.”

“An' here I thought you were a nice guy,” the dude said.

“Think again,” said Bernie, which had to be one of his jokes, Bernie being the nicest guy you'll ever meet. He started to put the bill back in his wallet, but the dude grabbed it first.

“We got a deal,” he said.

“Done,” said Bernie. He glanced at the bar. “Know this place well?”

“Coulda owned it by now, for all the money I spent inside.”

“Ever run into a guy named Jean-Luc Carbonneau?”

“Nope.”

“About your size, thirty-five or forty, slicked-back hair.”

“I don't have no slicked-back hair. Look never appealed to me at all.”

“With you on that,” Bernie said. “He might also go by the name of York.”

“York? That's different.”

“You know him?”

“By sight. Who's the Frenchie?”

“That's not important,” Bernie said. “Tell me about York.”

Sometimes humans use their chins for pointing. It took me a long time to get that one. This boozy dude—an employee of the Little Detective Agency at the moment? I hoped not for long—was doing it now, pointing at the top story of the bar with his chin. “Rents a room on the second floor,” he said. “Not around much.”

“What does he do?” Bernie said.

“Do?”

“Everybody does something.”

“Like I drink, for example?”

“Yeah.”

“I don't know. Maybe he does drugs. Drugs or drink—a choice, not an echo, you know what I mean. I tried both—drink's better.”

Bernie gave him a look. At first, I thought it was one of his hard looks; then I wasn't so sure.

• • •

We went inside. No one there except for a short round woman standing on a stepladder in front of the bar. She had a lightbulb in her hand but couldn't reach the socket in the ceiling, although she was trying her hardest, which you could tell from her grunts, pretty much the loudest I'd heard from a woman.

“Help you with that?” Bernie said.

The woman turned toward us, and—oops—she and the ladder both got a bit unsteady, the ladder tipping one way and she another, and don't forget the lightbulb, also airborne. Bernie can move real fast when he has to—but of course he hardly ever has to, not with me around—and this was one of those times. He crossed that floor—a sticky kind of floor, which you find in a certain kind of bar—in two steps, and snatched that lightbulb right out of midair! He also caught the woman, almost, uh-oh—but no, he didn't drop her, just lowered her safely down, and if not gently, then pretty close.

A round woman, about chest-high on Bernie. She looked up at him. “That was kind of amazing,” she said.

“Um,” said Bernie.

“Not often I run into a man who can carry me bodily,” she said.

“Me, uh, either,” Bernie said.

The woman laughed. She had a jolly sort of laugh. Also jolly was the fact, fact beyond doubt, that she had a biscuit treat or two in the pocket of her jeans.

“How about I . . .” Bernie said, standing the ladder back up, climbing the first step or two and screwing in the bulb. The woman watched his every move. I got myself a little closer to her. When were we going to start up with “This your dog?” and stuff like that?

Bernie climbed down the ladder.

“Your dog's sniffing at my pocket,” the woman said.

“Chet!”

“That's all right,” the woman said. “I have biscuits in there.”

And after hardly any more chitchat at all, they were mine.

“Got a dog yourself?” Bernie said.

“Until recently. Their lifetimes don't match up very well with ours.”

Bernie nodded, like that made sense to him. As for me, I had no clue, but the biscuits were delish, just about the best I'd ever tasted.

When I tuned in again, Bernie was saying, “. . . actually looking for a man named York. I believe he rents a room upstairs.”

The woman didn't look quite so jolly. “Rents it from me,” she said. “You a cop, by any chance?”

“No,” Bernie said. “Why do you ask?”

“No reason,” the woman said. She glanced my way. “Your dog looks like the K-9 type.”

Again? Why did I have to hear that again? Yes, I am the K-9 type, and I was especially the K-9 type until I flunked out of K-9 school on the very last day with only the leaping test left, and leaping was then and is now my best thing. A cat was involved: that's all I can tell you.

“Any reason you might be expecting the cops?” Bernie said.

“This is the kind of neighborhood where we're always expecting cops,” the woman said. “Except when they're needed.”

“Has Mr. York done something that would interest them?” Bernie said.

The woman looked away. “Not that I know of.”

Bernie took out his phone, flicked his thumb on the screen, held it up for her to see. “Recognize this woman?”

“No.”

Bernie handed her our card.

“You're a detective?”

“Working in cooperation with DC police. The woman on the screen has disappeared, last seen with Mr. York. Time is crucial in situations like this. Why have you been expecting the cops?”

She looked at Bernie, then at me. “Not expecting, really,” she said. “I wouldn't have been surprised, that's all.”

“Why?” said Bernie.

“On account of this guy who was killed last week. I used to see him around here and then I look in the paper and somebody shot him.”

“You're talking about Eben St. John?”

“Didn't know the name,” the woman said. “But I recognized the face. He used to come visit Mr. York.”