Paw and Order (23 page)

TWENTY-EIGHT

T
he woman, name of Jeannine—if I got that right, conversation zipping back and forth at a rate that's not the best for me—locked the front door of the bar and led us upstairs and down a dark and dim old corridor that made me want to be outside. But indoor work is part of what we do at the Little Detective Agency, and I'm a total pro, so I forgot all about the great outdoors, or almost. But no one ever says “the great indoors.” I'll leave it at that.

We came to a door at the end of the corridor, a peeling-paint kind of door with one kicked-in panel repair that had no paint at all, a sight you see from time to time in this business.

“He hasn't been around in a few days,” said Jeannine, “maybe not since I saw that story in the paper, come to think of it.” She knocked on the door.

“Then why are you knocking?” Bernie said.

“Where I'm from, it's polite to knock.”

“Where is that?”

“Here,” said Jeannine. She shot him a glance. “All the poor people in DC are natives. All the rich hail from someplace else.” Jeannine took out a ring of keys, stuck one in the lock, opened the door.

“Looks like someone beat us to it,” Bernie said.

“I don't understand,” said Jeannine.

But I did. What we were looking at was a room turned upside down. We'd turned rooms upside down plenty in our time, me and Bernie—a time that was just getting started!—on account of it being a great way to nail the kind of perp who leaves evidence behind. I started sniffing around while Bernie explained things the way I've just done, more or less, quite possibly less.

“But how did they get in?” Jeannine said. “There's only two keys, mine and his.”

The room had one window, the kind with a barred metal grille on the outside. Bernie and I went over and looked out. Down below ran a narrow alley—amazingly rich in the department of piss smell—with a boarded-up building on the other side.

“A child couldn't squeeze through those bars,” Jeannine said.

Bernie nodded. Then he put his hands on the grille and with no effort at all lifted it out of the frame, tipped it sideways, and drew it back into the room.

Jeannine came closer. “Somebody climbed a ladder and unscrewed the grille?”

“But not a perfectionist, because they didn't screw it back in on the way out,” Bernie said.

He leaned the grille against the wall, turned to the room, and started going through all the scattered things—clothes, papers, books, pillows, plus the insides of stuff: mattress, couch, TV. What was this? We were turning upside down a room that had already been turned upside down? Wouldn't that mean in the end we'd have put everything back to . . . my mind teetered on the verge of some big thought, and then withdrew. I gave myself a quick shake and headed in the direction of the only interesting smell in the room, other than piss scent rising up like fog from outside. Meanwhile, Bernie was kneeling by a hole in the floor where the boards had been torn out.

“What are you looking for?” Jeannine said.

“Does the name Jean-Luc Carbonneau mean anything to you?”

“No. Why?”

“How about Lizette Carbonneau?”

“No. What are—”

“Did York ever have any female visitors?”

“Not that I saw,” Jeannine said. “But who—”

“Did York sign a lease?”

“No. He came here a couple of months ago, had a look around, and paid a year's rent.”

“Sounds about right.”

“In what way?”

“In terms of the picture of him we're building.”

“Who's we?”

“You and me,” Bernie said. “You've been a huge help so far.”

Whoa! And what about me? I stopped what I was doing, namely following one of the real important scents in our business, a trail that had led me into a corner of the room where a floor lamp, now on its side, the shade torn to pieces, was plugged into a wall outlet. Keeping your distance from wall outlets was the way to go—if you get too close a strange temptation to stick your tongue in them overcomes you, as you may or may not know—but at this moment I had to overcome the overcoming, if that makes any sense. Meanwhile, I'd put the brakes on the whole thing, on account of:
what about me?

“. . . don't want any trouble,” Jeannine was saying.

“All the trouble here has already happened,” Bernie said.

“How do you know?”

“No one comes back after something like this. They either found what they came for or figured it wasn't here in the first place.”

Jeannine nodded in that way humans have when they're not really buying it, and then her gaze fell on me.

“Why's he standing with his front paw up in the air like that?” she said. “And looking back our way?”

“Not sure,” Bernie said. “He does that sometimes.”

Humans—and I mean this in the nicest way—can be a little . . . slow sometimes. But at least I was now being included, which is how I like to roll. Just imagine if things were happening and you were stuck on the shelf. What a nightmare that would be!

I barked once or twice—no particular reason—and got back to work, which in this case meant going right up close to that wall socket and pointing it out to Bernie, meaning I went stiff, nose at the socket, tail way up.

“Chet? Found something, big guy?”

He came over, knelt beside me, peered at the socket, unplugged the lamp. “Got a screwdriver, Jeannine?”

Jeannine reached in her pocket, produced—hey!—a Swiss Army knife. We had one just like it at home, taken off a perp who'd tried to stab Bernie but had fumbled out the corkscrew attachment instead. We'd made him pay anyway—tempers rise in situations like that. Bernie unscrewed the socket cover and removed it. Now we had a nice little space, with a socket on one side—I kept my tongue off it, took hardly any effort at all—and a jar on the other, the sort of jar that might contain peanut butter—not a favorite of mine, way too sticky at the top of my mouth—although this jar was for something else, which was the whole reason I'd sniffed it out.

“Nice work, champ,” Bernie said.

A powerful breeze arose, even though we were indoors. In no time at all I realized my tail had started up, kind of . . . bringing the outdoors inside? Wow! Was my mind on fire, or what? Plus my tail had a mind of its own, and it was on fire, too, so . . . so that was as far as I could go on this one.

“What is it?” Jeannine said.

Bernie lifted the jar out of the little space in the wall and got to his feet. “Empty jar of hair gel,” he said. “Country Gentleman brand, sixteen-ounce size.” Bernie unscrewed the lid. Inside was a small envelope. Bernie slit it open with his fingernail, making a soft ripping sound I liked and don't hear often enough. He removed a little black silver-tipped gizmo of a kind I'd seen before on office desks.

“Flash drive?” Jeannine said.

“Have you got a computer?”

“Downstairs,” said Jeannine. “But how did your dog know it was there?”

Now they were both looking at me, and just at the moment when I was seeing how far out I could flop my tongue. I tried to get things back to normal and pronto, but unflopping a tongue like mine takes time.

“I'm not really sure,” Bernie said.

“Maybe flash drives give off a smell we're not aware of,” said Jeannine.

Where to even begin? With smells humans aren't aware of? We'd never come to the end, no offense. How about flash drive smells? Of course, flash drives have a smell, pretty much the same plastic smell that comes off so many human things, a smell you can hardly ever get away from. But just because the hair gel jar was out of hair gel didn't mean it was out of hair gel scent, which was what I'd picked up. And wasn't hair gel part of the case? Chet the Jet, just doing his job. It wasn't that complicated.

“What's he doing with his tongue?” Jeannine said.

“Not sure about that either,” said Bernie.

• • •

Jeannine opened her laptop on a table in the bar, stuck in the flash drive. Two pictures popped up on the screen. Hey! The people in the pictures looked kind of familiar. What a day I was having!

One of the pictures was an outdoors scene, a man and woman all dressed up and hugging each other on a snowy day, a strange building topped by two green party-hat sort of towers in the background.

Jeannine pointed to the man. “York?” she said.

“Ten or fifteen years ago, I'd estimate,” Bernie said.

“I could swear I've seen that place before.”

“Red Square,” said Bernie. “In Moscow.”

Jeannine pointed to the woman. “Is that a wedding dress under her coat?”

“Yup,” Bernie said. “Their wedding day.”

“York never mentioned a wife,” said Jeannine.

“Here she is more recently,” said Bernie, eyes shifting to the second picture.

Lizette? Yes, for sure, even though the picture was a bit blurry. But it was hard to miss her red hair, blown by a breeze. She was standing on a boat and not wearing much in the way of clothes. A silver-haired man stood at the wheel, his back to the camera.

“Looks like Chesapeake Bay,” Jeannine said. “I can't quite make out the name on the stern.”

“Horsin' Around,”
Bernie said.

“You've got great eyesight.”

“More hindsight, in this case.” He pocketed the flash drive.

“What do you mean?”

“Just that I'm slow,” Bernie said, meaning he was giving Jeannine a little demonstration of his sense of humor. He counted out some money, laid it on the table. “Enough to fix up his room?”

“More than enough,” Jeannine said. “But you don't have to do this.”

“I'm the new tenant,” Bernie said. “If anyone else wants to see the room, tell them to call me.”

“Do you think that will happen?” Jeannine said.

“No.”

• • •

We went outside. Our red-eyed pal was buffing the hood of the Porsche with a dirty rag.

“Got your shades?” he said. “You'll need 'em, shine I put on this.”

“Uh,” said Bernie, gazing in an unhappy way at that rag.

“Lots of riffraff been around, but I had your back.”

“Thanks,” Bernie said. “Here's the five bucks.”

“How about ten?”

“We had a deal.”

“Maybe, but it turned out harder than I thought.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Din't I mention the riffraff?”

“I don't see any riffraff.”

“Only because I put the fear of the lord in 'em.” Our boozy buddy reached down his pants, pulled out a surprisingly long knife.

“Put that away.”

The dude slid the thing back in his pants, maybe saying “ouch” as he did. All of a sudden he got angry, the way boozy buddies do. “Goddamn you, anyway. Child of privilege.”

Then came a shock, namely Bernie getting angry, too. He grabbed the dude by his shirtfront, lifted him right off the ground. “You don't know what the hell you're talking about.”

The dude's red eyes got very big, not a pleasant sight. “Okay, okay, put me down. Din't mean it, more like I was exaggeratin' for effect.”

Bernie put him down.

The dude brushed himself off, gave Bernie a careful sideways scan. “Wasn't just riffraff neither.”

“Huh?” said Bernie.

The dude looked down the block. “Major operator in a Mercedes come by, gave your ride the once-over, big-time. Mafia, trust me. I know all the made guys.”

“Please,” Bernie said.

“Think I'm talkin' through my hat?” said the dude, proving he didn't know Bernie at all. As if Bernie wouldn't notice the dude wasn't even wearing a hat? Bernie doesn't miss a thing like that, amigo. Meanwhile, the dude was pointing down the block again. “Speak of the devil.”

The devil comes up from time to time in our work, but I hadn't actually met him yet, so the big silver car rolling slowly our way had all my attention. Then, as it came close, the driver hit the pedal and zoomed right past us, a little action sequence I'd seen before, always when some perp recognizes who's out there—namely us—too late. Zoom, but not so zoomy that I didn't catch a glimpse of the man in the car, kind of a disappointment since it wasn't the devil after all. Instead, it was Suzie's suit-and-baseball-cap pal, the man rocking the interesting narrow-shoulder, big-head combo. The Sandman? Lanny Sands? Something like that.

We hopped in the car. What was this? Bernie actually hopping over the closed door? But that was Bernie. Just when you think he's done amazing you, he amazes you again.

“Where you goin'?” said the boozy dude. “What about my money?”

“Here's ten—you earned it,” Bernie said, thrusting a bill at him and stomping on the gas.

“What the hell?” the dude shouted after us.

I looked back. The dude was waving some reddish bit of paper. Bernie checked the mirror. “Christ,” he said. “Did I give him a fifty-pound note?”

A fifty-pound note? I wondered what that might be. Something not good: that was clear from the way the dude was ripping it to shreds and flinging those red shreds to the wind, a pretty sight. There's all kinds of beauty in life.

TWENTY-NINE

C
hâteau Frontenac's in Quebec City, not Montreal, Chet,” Bernie said, as we sped after the silver car, a Mercedes, if I was getting this right. “And would it be possible to live there and not know of the Expos, no matter how—what did she say? Unsporty?—no matter how unsporty your family was? See where we're going with this?”

Did I see where we were going? Absolutely! We were going after that silver Mercedes, meaning this was a car chase, one of our specialties, and it had been way too long since the last one, which had ended, I now remembered and wished I hadn't, with the Porsche we'd had then flying off a cliff, with both of us in it, at least for a moment or two.

Nothing like that was in our near future. No cliffs around, for one thing, and Lanny Sands was not much of a wheelman—easy to tell by the way he took the turn at the end of the block, fishtailing across to the wrong side of the street. A good wheelman—and Bernie's the best there is, goes without mentioning—doesn't let the car take over—Bernie says that every time he gives Charlie a driving lesson, always so much fun, me in the shotgun seat, Charlie in Bernie's lap, his little hands on the wheel, Bernie's own hands in his pockets—even makes you feel you're going slower than you really are. Then you happen to glance to the side, and everything's a blur! That'll get the fur standing up on the back of your neck, no matter who you are.

We came to the end of the block, took the turn with a kind of snapping motion that shot us down this new street even faster than we'd come in, all this with Bernie sitting back, just a couple of fingers on the wheel. Meanwhile up ahead, Lanny Sands checked his mirror, swerved one way, then another, straightened out, and flew down a long slope crossed by railroad tracks at the bottom, faster and faster. Faster and faster, but we homed in anyway, nice and gentle, practically right on his bumper. Bump him, Bernie! Lanny Sands checked his mirror again, didn't look happy to see us so up close and personal. Bernie didn't bump him, even though we've had a lot of success with bumping dudes in the past, instead made the pat-pat slow-down motion with his hand.

“Don't want him to get hurt,” he said. He glanced at the road ahead. “Hope no damn tra—”

I never got to hear Bernie's hope; too bad, because his hopes turn into my hopes, and I like having a hope or two in mind. I was just picking between bacon bits and steak tips when a
ding-ding-ding
started up at the railroad crossing, the red light flashed—but don't take my word for it on the red part, Bernie's belief being that I'm not at my sharpest when it comes to red—and the black-and-white barrier swung slowly down. And Lanny Sands? He was glued to the rearview mirror again! Or still!

“For Christ sake!” Bernie said, as a train rumbled into view, a towering sort of train, or maybe it just looked towering because we were so close. He started honking the horn, waving his arms around, pointing at the train, now pounding into the crossing. At last, when it was almost too late, Lanny Sands faced front, saw what was happening, and hit the brakes with everything he had—easy to tell when a guy hits the brakes with everything he has by how he rises right up out his seat, head ramming the roof—and the next thing I saw was the Mercedes doing doughnuts as it spun right into the crossing. But no, not quite right in: at the last moment, just when something really bad was about to happen between car and train, the Mercedes struck the post that held up the barrier, knocking the whole contraption to the ground, and came spinning back toward where we'd come to a complete stop, near but not too near the track, rocking very slightly. But spinning right at us—that was the point—and almost on us! Bernie reached over and grabbed me and—was it possible?—threw me right out of the car, to the side and out of danger. I was still in midair when the Mercedes hit the curb in front of us, changed direction, slammed into a phone pole, and came to a dead stop, the hood popping up and steam boiling high. The train roared on through and things got quiet.

We ran over to the Mercedes, me and Bernie, side by side. The driver's-side door opened with a horrible shrieking sound—the kind that rips through my ears and all the way down my spine, buzzing inside me—and fell right off. Lanny Sands came squeezing out from between the airbags, and stood up in a wobbly sort of way.

“Easy, there, Lanny,” Bernie said. “Are you all right?”

A bit wobbly, baseball cap knocked sideways, like he was some kind of gangbanger, and a tiny trickle of blood at the corner of his mouth, but Sands looked all right to me. Nice neat suit, tie knotted and straight, clean shirt that was basically blue except of the white collar and white cuffs, shoes shined and gleaming.

He glared at Bernie. “You're the worst kind of asshole,” he said.

“The kind who thinks he's smarter than he is?” said Bernie.

“That, too,” said Sands. He dabbed at the corner of his mouth, gazed at his hand, wiped it off on a curve of the airbag that was sticking out of the car. “I meant your whole cowboy approach, so yesteryear.”

Bernie a cowboy? What a crazy idea! His opinion of horses had to be the same as mine—prima donnas, every one—and he'd only been on a horse once in his life, the reason those lovely eyebrows of his didn't match, one with a scar through the middle, quite tiny and hardly noticeable.

“Then help me out,” Bernie said. “Show me the modern way.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Start with Suzie Sanchez.”

“What about her?”

“Where is she?”

“No idea,” said Sands. “Is she missing?”

“You didn't know?”

“Why would I? All I know is that I told her to be patient. Evidently she ignored my advice.”

“Patient about what?”

“Not going to get into that,” Sands said. “I promised her the story when it was time. Can't do any more than that.”

“A story about General Galloway?” Bernie said. “Or sleepers? Or both?”

Sands said nothing.

Bernie reached out and straightened his cap, Sands leaning away but too slow.

“Did you actually play baseball for Harvard?” Bernie said.

“I covered sports for the
Crimson
,” Sands said. “Not that it makes any difference.”

“No?” said Bernie, moving slightly closer to Sands. I did the same, got the sweet moving-in feeling that often came before grabbing the perp by the pant leg, which was how our cases usually ended. Sands backed up, but not far, what with his car, still steaming, right behind him. “How come you were sitting on that place, York's or Carbonneau's or whatever his real name is?”

“Sitting on?” said Sands.

Whoa! He didn't know “sitting on,” one of our best techniques at the Little Detective Agency? Bernie explained what it was. I didn't really listen, more interested in that trickle of blood at the corner of Sands's mouth, which seemed to have started up again. His blood had a strangely powerful smell, way too strong for that tiny amount, if that made any sense, and it didn't, not at the time.

“I happened to be passing by,” Sands said.

“I'll throw you a bone,” said Bernie. Now we were getting somewhere! I crouched, ready to spring in any direction. But no bone appeared. Instead, Bernie went on, “If you've been keeping an eye on him, you can stop. He's gone and he's never coming back.”

Sands shook his head. “The moron. He fell for the dream.”

“What dream?” Bernie said.

“The American dream, what else?” Sands said. “There's never been a plan that couldn't be screwed up by human emotions.”

“Such as?

“Jealousy, in this case.”

“York got jealous?”

Sands opened his mouth to answer but at that moment got distracted by something on the front of his shirt. What was this? A tiny piece of metal, like the end of a narrow pipe? He gave it a gentle tug, and out it came. Not so tiny. And then: blood. It gushed out like from a hose on full blast.

Sands sank to his knees and toppled over onto the reddening street. Bernie knelt beside him, pressed his hands on Sands's chest. Blood poured right through his fingers, a terrible sight, on and on. Sands gave Bernie a look like he was going to ask for something. Then his eyes stopped seeing, the blood stopped flowing, and he lost the smell of the living.

Bernie found a coat in the trunk of the Mercedes, covered the Sandman from the top of his head to about his knees. I sniffed at the blood on Bernie's hands. It bothered me. He wiped them off on the coat, then took out his phone and called Lieutenant Soares. We didn't stick around.

• • •

“Suzie? Suzie?”

No answer.

We were back at Suzie's place, going from room to room, opening every closet, finding zip. I could smell Bernie's sweat, not the nice, fresh kind that goes with hiking, but the sharper kind that goes with being nervous. Some humans are nervous all of time, all humans are nervous some of the time, and no human, not even Bernie, although he's close, are nervous none of the time. I pressed against him every chance I got, just letting him know . . . something or other; I couldn't think what.

He looked down at me.

“We're lost, big guy.”

That had to be a mistake. I'd been lost once or twice before in my life, but always when I was alone. How could I be lost now? I was with Bernie. And he was with me.

Bernie went to the sink in Suzie's kitchen, splashed water on his face. I went to my water bowl in the corner and lapped some up. Water helps you feel better, as I hope everyone knows.

Bernie looked at me, his face wet and glistening. He can look frightening at times, if you don't know him. “Come on, Chet,” he said. “Let's get aggressive.”

I loved the sound of that! It was a kind of love I felt most strongly in my teeth, impossible to explain why. We marched over to Lizette's house and pounded on the door, Bernie doing the actual pounding, me pounding in my mind.