Paw and Order (24 page)

THIRTY

I
n pounding-on-the-door situations, you have to be ready for just about anything. Shotgun blast right through it, for example? It happens. But not this time. No shotgun blast, no huge shaved-head dudes bursting out with cleavers raised high, no drunk shouting, “Nobody home” at the top of his lungs. Instead, we had silence. Bernie leaned forward and—what was this? Put his ear to the door? Like—like he was listening real hard for some sounds inside. I wondered what he was picking up. All I heard was a running toilet, no surprise, toilet running being a big human problem, found in just about every house I've ever been in. Once Bernie had gotten so fed up, he'd tried to install a new toilet on his own. What a day that had been! I've always been interested in toilets, by the way. Sometimes you can find the very freshest water in them—and sometimes not.

“Quiet as a tomb,” Bernie said, possibly missing that running toilet. He took out a credit card. Hadn't I come close to seeing Bernie's credit card move recently? I sort of remembered it in his hand, and then some door had opened and out had come a UPS dude, making it easy for us. I hoped that wasn't about to happen now, although I'm fond of UPS dudes in general, especially the ones who drive around with treats in their pockets. No need to stop or even slow down, UPS buddy—just toss it out the open door! And all at once, I really was hoping a UPS dude would step out of Lizette's house.

Bernie stuck the credit card in the crack at the side of the door and popped it right—but no. The door didn't pop right open. Whoa! This was a first, and not of the good kind. Bernie worked the card up and down, wriggled it around, took a breath, started over. Taking a breath and starting over was one of our best techniques at the Little Detective Agency, much more Bernie's thing than mine. How do you stop once you've started? A complete mystery to me. Meanwhile, Lizette's front door wasn't opening.

Bernie stepped back. “This is no ordinary door, big guy,” he said. He stepped back a little more and lowered his shoulder. That meant Bernie was about to smash the door to smithereens! You see smithereens in my job from time to time, one of my favorite sights. Was I up on my back legs, kind of jumping up and down with excitement? Uh-oh. Not professional: I got a grip, and pronto. Bernie lunged forward and then came a deep thud that seemed to shake the whole house, and Bernie—Bernie bounced straight back? “Ow,” he said. The door looked exactly the same as before, not a smithereen in evidence.

“Nothing ordinary about it,” Bernie said, rubbing his shoulder. “And why would anyone even the least bit ordinary have a fortified door like this?”

I had no answer, in fact, couldn't recall the question. All I knew was that the running toilet now sounded a bit louder.

“What are you barking about?”

Me? If I was barking, no sure thing, although I amped it right down just in case, it had to be on account of that running toilet and how thirsty it was making me.

“Someone's inside after all?”

Not exactly, but maybe close enough. We're a team, me and Bernie, and always will be.

We walked around the house to the screened-in porch. Bernie peered inside. “See that door that leads into the house? You can bet the ranch it'll be a clone of the front one.”

At the moment, we didn't have a ranch, although Bernie often said he'd like one someday. But how would we ever have a ranch if we lost it in a bet before it was even ours? This was confusing.

“. . . sake of argument, let's suppose,” Bernie was saying, “we just went ahead and did something that was bound to trigger the alarm system. Think the cops'll come barreling up?” With no warning at all, he threw a beautiful right cross at a section of the screen. We've watched a lot of boxing in our time—don't even get me started on the Thrilla in Manila—plus Bernie knew what he was doing with his fists, so it was no surprise that the screen ripped wide open. We went right through that opening, me—after a brief moment of confusion—first.

Bernie glanced around while I had a quick hard listen, picked up the running toilet as well as a new beeping, very quiet, somewhere in the walls. “And if tearing out the screen didn't trigger the alarm,” Bernie said, striding across the room to the door that led into the house, “how about this?” He took out the gun. The gun? Which one was this? So many to keep track of. First, before we'd even gotten started, there'd been our .38 Special, now at the bottom of the sea; after that, the pink-handled popgun, found in the flower pot by Mr. Ferretti; and the gun now in Bernie's hand, taken from Mr. Ferretti's woman pal by me, Chet the Jet. Wow! Had I remembered the whole thing? The case was as good as closed. How about right now we grab Suzie, hop in the car, and zoom on back to the Valley, music blasting all the way, starting with “The Road Goes On Forever and the Party Never Ends”? A great idea, one of my very best, but . . . but where was Suzie? That was when I realized we had a problem. My tail realized it, too, and went all droopy. I got it back up, nice and stiff. We were pros and on the job, after all, my tail and me.

Meanwhile, Bernie had the gun pointed at the inner door, right near the knob. “Cover your ears,” he said, which had to be one of his jokes. How would I do that, exactly? I was still wondering when he pulled the trigger.
BLAM!
Cover my ears even if I could? No way! Not with gunplay sounds in the air. Plus we had the bonus sights of splintering wood, the whole knob and lots of metal parts flying here and there, and the door sagging open. There's all kinds of beauty in life, sorry if I'm mentioning that so soon after the last mention. But controlling when beauty shows up? Who can do that?

Back inside Lizette's house, and everything seemed different from the night of the party. Was it just because then was night and now was day? That's always a big deal to humans, not so much in the nation within. How about the fact that there'd been lots of noise and now we had silence, except for the running toilet, the faint beeping behind the walls no longer sounding. Maybe, but there was more to it than that. Call it a feeling. We sometimes get feelings in the nation within, feelings that come out of nowhere, but no time for that now.

“Where do people like to hide things, big guy?” Bernie said. What a question! I'd seen just about everything, including a perp who hid a diamond ring up his nose. We were just about to let him go when he turned out to be allergic to me and my kind—something I really don't like in a human—and had a sneezing fit, the diamond ring caught by Bernie in midair . . . “basements and bedrooms,” he was saying. “Let's start in the basement.”

• • •

Not a lot in the way of basements where I come from, so this was new to me, and I'm always up for new, except for doors not smashing to smithereens when Bernie bashes them. Were all basements like Lizette's, with washer and drier and water heater and some other machinery I didn't know over on one side and lots of boxes, furniture, suitcases on the other? I had no clue, just knew it was nice and cool down here, plus the running toilet sound was much louder, coming from behind a door behind a rack of dresses.

That was where Bernie started, with the dresses. He looked through them, checking the labels. “Kind of pricey, is my guess,” Bernie said. “What does she do, ostensibly? Something in IT?” He moved on to another rack, this one hung with men's suits. “These would be Jean-Luc's,” he said. “Also pricey. Left over from their married life? Or waiting here in case their married life resumes? Meanwhile, he's been living in that crap hole above the bar.” He turned to me. “See where I'm going with this?” I did not. “Actually,” he went on, “I'm not sure I do myself.” Had to love that Bernie! Not just because of how alike we were, but also on account of all the interesting things he said, like “crap hole,” for example.

He turned to the boxes and suitcases, started going through them. All sorts of stuff came out and was soon scattered around the basement—more clothes, books, sheets, blankets, CDs—but Bernie didn't seem interested in any of it. “Is this a we'll-know-it-when-we-see-it?” he said. “I hate those.”

Whatever they were, I hated them, too. I made my way toward the running toilet sound. By now that water had to be as fresh as it comes, and my mouth was drier than a dust storm, of which I'd seen plenty.

“Chet? What are you doing over there?” Bernie came closer. “Smell something?”

Well, of course I smelled the water, one of the best smells there is—although easy to forget, on account of it being in the air most of the time—but really it was the sound that had drawn me.

Bernie cocked his head, like he was trying to hear better. “Is that a toilet running?” He drew the gun, walked up to the door and threw it open, gun raised for trouble waiting on the other side.

But there was no trouble, just a small empty bathroom with a toilet and a sink and a bare towel rack. The toilet cover was down. Bernie raised it, gazed into the bowl, jiggled the handle, first step in toilet repair. The toilet kept running.

“Imagine how much water gets wasted this way,” he said. “A big system, yes, but finite. What's so hard to understand about that?”

All of it, in my opinion, and even more, if that makes any sense. I nosed around Bernie, dipped my head in the bowl and lapped up cool, clear water, just about the best I'd ever tasted. This burg—Foggy Bottom, if I was getting things right—had lots going for it. Lovely water, for starters, and after that . . . I'm sure something will come to me eventually.

Bernie reached over me, took the lid off the tank, something in the tank often being the problem, and I certainly hoped so this time, because the next step—removing the whole toilet—was where the trouble began.

Bernie peered into the tank. I got my head right next to his and did the same, and there we were, peering together, side by side, our heads touching, our minds practically . . . one! What a thought!

The only water in the tank was at the bottom, a tiny trickle running in from one side and draining out under a raised flap in the middle. “Float stuck, as per usual,” Bernie said. “What are we dealing with here, eighteenth-century technology? How many ball cocks are jammed just like this in the country right now? Hundreds of thousands? We're doomed.” He reached into the tank, grabbed the round metal thing—had to be the float—and raised it.

“That's funny,” he said, pausing, hand still on the float. “Did I feel something shift in there? What's in a float except air?”

I had no idea. Bernie unscrewed the float, held it up, peered into the little hole. “Hmmm,” he said. Then he put the float on the floor and stamped on it, not hard. The metal flattened out, came apart. Bernie bent down, went through the pieces, picked up a baggie. Inside were two sort of books, thin and small, with reddish covers. Bernie took them out, leafed through them.

“Russian passports, big guy,” he said. “What would I do without you?”

I didn't understand the question.

Bernie turned the pages of the passports. “Mostly in Cyrillic, but there's some English here and there, maybe a
glasnost
development.”

Wow! Whatever was going down, this was Bernie at his smartest. The air in the little bathroom felt just the way it does before lightning flashes across the sky. I crouched down on the floor, no fan of lightning, myself.

“His real name is Alexei Urmanov, and she's Yekaterina Urmanova, meaning the marriage is genuine. Genuine Russian sleepers, Chet, plus . . .” He tapped the passports on his palm, glanced at me. “What are you doing down—”

I barked, real loud, real sharp. Bernie jumped back. “Whoa! You scared me.”

Oh, no! How was that even possible? But no time to think about it now because I'd heard knocking on the front door. I raced out of the bathroom, through the basement and up the stairs, Bernie following, to judge from the huffing and puffing at my heels.

THIRTY-ONE

I
got to the front door before Bernie, stood straight and stiff, all my muscles taut—a nice feeling when you're the physical type. Outside a woman called, “Lizette? You there?” I went back and forth on the question of whether to bark, and was still doing it, faster and faster, when Bernie caught up. He stuck the gun in his pocket, keeping his hand in there, and opened the door.

Yes, a woman, a very interesting woman who brought with her scents of the nation within, plus cats, gerbils, parakeets, horses, and also guinea pigs, which was no surprise, since she was carrying one of the little critters in a cage, a chubby dude with a white face and eyes that looked alert and stupid at the same time, if that makes any sense. There's one kind of human who smells like this woman and one only, namely the vet kind. Parked in the driveway was a typical vet sort of van, decorated with a panel picture showing one of my kind who appeared to be cuddling with a cat, which is a typical sort of vet van picture, hard to explain.

“Uh, hi,” the vet said, looking up at Bernie. “Is Lizette home?”

“Not at the moment,” Bernie said.

“That's funny,” the vet said. “I told her I'd be dropping by with Barnum.” She raised the cage.

“I can take him,” Bernie said, removing his hand, now gunless, from his pocket.

The vet hesitated, her mouth open and ready for speech but none coming out. Her gaze fell on me. And it was a sight she liked! I could see it in her eyes.

“Say hi to Chet,” Bernie said.

The vet smiled. “He's quite the looker.”

And so was she, despite those extra chins!

“Lizette did mention something, come to think of it,” Bernie said. “I'm an old friend.”

“Oh?”

“Of both of them, actually—Lizette and Jean-Luc.”

The vet stopped smiling. Her face darkened and her eyes narrowed, plus her neck went red.

“Is there a problem?” Bernie said.

“Tell him to keep his goddamn hands off her,” the vet said.

“I'm sorry?” Bernie said.

“Maybe I shouldn't be saying it, but somebody has to,” the vet said. “The bastard gave her a black eye last month.”

“She told you that?”

“I saw it,” the vet said, “the first time she brought Barnum in with his problem. She wouldn't admit it, of course—that's how these things work. I volunteer at a shelter for abused women.”

“All right,” Bernie said. “I'll tell him.”

“You will?”

He nodded.

“Thanks,” said the vet. “Men have to get involved.”

“Uh-huh.”

There was a pause, and then she handed over the cage. “Barnum's been fed for today,” she said. “Just make sure he's got water.”

“Okay,” said Bernie. Barnum looked up at Bernie, made some squeaky sounds. “What was his problem?”

“Running lice,” said the vet.

Bernie put the cage on the floor—quickly, but nothing you could call simply letting go.

“A stubborn case, which was why I kept him three days,” the vet said, “but I won't charge for the last one.” She headed for her van, got in. We watched her drive away.

“Not what I expected, big guy,” Bernie said.

I was with him on that. No way I'd expected Barnum. He made some more squeaky sounds, squeakier than before, his alert, stupid gaze glued to me, as though . . . as though I might be fixing to pounce on the cage, possibly upending it and pawing the door open and after that the way would be clear for anything I wanted to—

“What I'd expected was whoever's on the end of Lizette's security system,” he went on, losing me immediately. “Instead—”

A car—and not just any car, but a Porsche, and although maybe not as old as ours, it was still nice enough: you can't have everything, as humans often say, actually a bit of a puzzler to me—came down the street, slowed, and started turning into Lizette's driveway. At that moment, the driver saw us, meaning me, Bernie, and Barnum—in the doorway. What was this? She was having a bad reaction, mouth opening wide, like we weren't a pleasant sight? My first guess: it was somehow on account of Barnum. Then I noticed those strange glasses she was wearing—cat's-eye, not a look that appeals to me, but not the point. The point was I'd seen this woman—an older woman of a certain type—hey! Bernie's mom was that same certain type—with swept-back wings of white-and-black hair, a very nice color combo, in my opinion, and not just on account of it being mine, too, although mostly. But forget all that, forget the whole thing going back to the cat's-eye woman and the fact that I'd seen her before. I was trying to remember when and where, or at least one of them, when she swerved out of the driveway entrance and shot off, maybe even heavier on the pedal than Lanny Sands, but there was not even a hint of fishtailing in her case.

“C'mon, big guy,” Bernie said. “This is starting to make sense.”

What great news! We hopped into the car—me behind the wheel, kind of crazy, how had that even happened?—got everything sorted out, wheeled around and—

And a patrol car came roaring up the street. It braked to a shrieking stop, blocking the driveway. Lieutenant Soares jumped out of the passenger side door. Bernie turned the wheel hard, cut across the grass, passed Soares and his ride, and we were almost on the street when another cruiser blew in, blocking us again. Bernie pulled over. Cops swarmed toward us, guns drawn. Bernie didn't even look at them: his gaze was distant, up the street in the direction the cat's-eye woman had gone. He leaned forward, squinting at her car. “HNX four nine one?” he said. The cat's-eye woman rounded a corner and vanished from sight. “Or was that a seven?”

The cops surrounded us. Bernie touched the back of my neck.

“Easy, big guy.”

Soares stepped forward, his raisin eyes like two dark specks of rage. Whoa! What a horrible thought! I wanted to look away but couldn't.

“What the hell are you trying to pull?” Soares said.

“Who writes your dialogue?” Bernie said, losing me completely, but maybe not Soares. His arm came up like he was going to give Bernie a backhander across the face. I'd once seen a dude actually do that to Bernie; he'd regretted it the very next thing, and maybe Soares knew that, because he lowered his hand. He also lowered his voice, but the anger still came out, if that makes any sense, in the form of flying spit spray, always an interesting sight.

“Any idea who you abandoned on the road up in Ivy City?”

“I abandoned a dead body,” Bernie said. “And I called it in.”

“Like that's good enough?” Soares said. “Hand over that goddamn license.”

Bernie gave him a folded-up sheet of paper. Soares ripped it to shreds. Everyone was ripping things to shreds on us these days. Was there any way that could be a good sign?

“You don't need me to tell you he was speeding and didn't see the train until it was too late,” Bernie said.

“True,” Soares said. “I need you to tell me why he was speeding.”

“You haven't figured that out?” Bernie said.

“You were chasing him.”

Bernie nodded.

“Why?” Soares said.

“Because I suspected he had information regarding the murder of Eben St. John. The fact that he ran confirms it.”

Soares leaned in a little closer, lowered his voice some more. “Why would someone like him know anything about this case?”

“That's the question,” Bernie said.

Soares leaned in even more. From that distance, they could have almost . . . kissed each other, a thought that made no sense at all. Then Soares said, “You know your problem? You're too cute.” And for a crazy moment, the kissing idea did sort of make sense. But then no kiss happened, and also the truth was that although Bernie was pretty much the best-looking human on the planet, you really couldn't call him cute. “Get out of town,” Soares said. “Don't come back.”

He and the rest of the cops got into their cruisers and drove off. The kissing thing hadn't made sense after all, although I wasn't sure why. Given enough time, I might have figured it out, but there's never enough time, so I didn't even try.

• • •

Were we getting out of town? I wasn't sure about that either. For a while, we just sat there at the end of Lizette's driveway, me and Bernie alone with his thoughts, all of them dark and anxious. After a while, he got on the phone.

“William,” he said. “Bernie here. I'm going to push our friendship a bit.”

William's deep and booming oil-drum voice came through the speakers. “Don't see how that could be possible,” he said. “But try me.”

“I want to run another plate.”

“Nothing easier. Putting you on hold.”

We waited. Bernie stopped thinking, leaving just the two of us, me and him. What a peaceful moment! Would I have minded if it had gone on forever? Actually, yes. Wouldn't we get hungry eventually? There was no food in the car. I went back to enjoying the peaceful moment, but it was gone.

William came back on. “That's a diplomatic plate, Bernie. Registered to one Ludmilla Lysenko, employed at the Russian-American Investment Advisory Council. That's on A Street. Here's the number.”

“Thanks,” Bernie said, writing it on the palm of his hand. “And I'm happy to pay your contact at the DMV whatever you think is right.”

“Not necessary,” said William. “But I'll pass on your thanks when I see her.”

“You see her?”

“Possibly tonight.”

“Ah.”

• • •

“Russian-American Investment Advisory Council,” Bernie said, parking in front of a nice-looking brick row house on a shady block of nice-looking brick row houses. “Could it sound more innocuous?”

I had no idea. I did hear plenty of sounds, but they were the normal street sounds you pick up in a big city, none of them coming specifically from the Russian-American Investment Advisory Council row house. We got out of the car, went up to the front door. Bernie pressed the buzzer. I heard it buzz inside the house, but no one came. Bernie tried the knob. The door was unlocked, kind of a surprise. We went inside.

It turned out to be kind of homey. First came a softly lit hall with a thick rug, lovely-smelling flowers in a vase, pictures on the walls, most of them showing dressed-up people shaking hands. Then on one side, the space opened up into an office where a young gum-chewing woman sat at a desk, eyes on a screen, hands on a keyboard, ear buds in her ears, music leaking out in a tiny sort of way.

“Hello?” Bernie said, as we approached her desk. She tapped away at the keyboard, eyes still on the screen, and popped her gum, a sound I happen to like very much. Pop it again, young lady! But she did not. Bernie rapped his knuckles on the desk.

The young woman looked up gasping and putting a hand over her chest, the way humans do when you startle them. I'd once seen a dude swallow his gum in exactly this kind of situation, but the young woman, maybe a better gum chewer, had it under control. She whipped out the ear buds.

“Oh, my God,” she said, taking us in, Bernie first, then me. “You scared me.”

“We buzzed,” Bernie said.

“Sorry,” the young woman said. She took a tissue from a box on the desk, brought it to her mouth, sort of tongued the gum into it, and tossed the balled-up tissue into a wastebasket. It took all my self-control not to go nosing over there. “Can I help you?” she said.

“Your English is very good,” Bernie said.

“Thanks,” she said. “I went to college here in America.”

“Which one?”

“Go Buckeyes.”

Bernie laughed. “What's your name? I'm Bernie and this is Chet.”

“What a beautiful dog! My name's Sonia.”

Sonia? A very nice name, and she was clearly a very sharp young lady. Our friendship was off to a great start.

“Ludmilla Lysenko's English is good, too, but not like yours,” Bernie said. “Where did she go to school?”

Or maybe we weren't off to quite the start I'd thought. Sonia sat back in her chair, not so friendly anymore, also looking somewhat older. “I'm not sure I understand your question.”

“Not a problem,” Bernie said. “I'll ask her myself. Is she in?”

“I—I'd have to check.”

“Please do. Here's our card.”

Bernie handed it to her. Sonia spent what seemed like a long time reading it, then said, “If she's in, can I tell her what this is in reference to?”

“Sure,” said Bernie. He took out the two red passports we'd found in the float of Lizette's basement toilet and opened them so Sonia could see. “It's in reference to the Urmanovs.”

Sonia opened her mouth, closed it, tried again. “Maybe I should take those with me, just in case she's in her office?”

Bernie shook his head.

Sonia rose, left the room, went in the hall. I heard her climbing stairs, and then came the sound of low voices from the floor above. Bernie went around the desk, started going through the drawers. I took a step or two over to the wastebasket, took out the balled-up tissue with the gum inside, nudged it around for a bit, felt better about everything.

Sonia returned, saw what Bernie was doing. “Excuse me?” she said.

Bernie closed the drawer, in no hurry at all. He gave her his empty gaze, the scariest of all Bernie's gazes. Sonia tried to meet it and failed, like so many others, no shame there. Bernie moved toward her. She backed away.

“Ms. Lysenko is not in. Is it money you want?”

“No,” Bernie said. How true that was! For the very first time I really understood why our finances were such a mess. And always would be! Whoa! “But I'll trade the passports for Suzie Sanchez.”

Sonia picked up the desk phone, spoke words I didn't understand at all, except for “Suzie Sanchez.” She hung up, turned to Bernie. “We know no one of that name.”