Paw and Order (3 page)

THREE

F
irst, we were hungry. Lucky for us, Suzie had a little kitchen at the back of her place, and soon we were chowing down: yogurt for Suzie, bacon and eggs for Bernie, bacon and kibble for me, and then a bit of bacon for Suzie, which she and I ended up sharing. So nice to see Suzie again! I'd missed her.

After that, we were sleepy, even though it was morning. No problem for me: whatever regular hours happened to be, we don't keep them in this business. Bernie and Suzie went upstairs to her bedroom and closed the door. I made a quick recon of the whole house—not much to it, bathroom and another small bedroom on the upstairs floor, kitchen, office, and living room down below. Then I lay by the front door and closed my eyes. Warm air, actually almost hot and much damper than the air we've got back home in the Valley, leaked in under the door, and with it came sounds from the street: a car going by, a truck, and a bicycle making just a faint airy
whirr-whirr-whirr
, very pleasant to my ears.

A door opened, not too far away, thumped softly closed. Then came footsteps. A woman, moving away, wearing sneakers: other than that, I had no info. She stopped. Silence. There's a silence when something's ended. This was the other kind, when you're still in the middle.

I heard the soft grunt of a woman bending down or leaning forward. After that, a real faint metallic scratch, just about at the outside range of what I can hear. That scratch was followed by another, slightly louder. After that: a pause, a soft thud, like from a real small door closing, and then the footsteps came my way again. A door opened and closed. Another bicycle went by with another nice
whirr-whirr-whirr
.

Everything got quiet. It was quiet upstairs, too. Quiet was the ideal sound for sleeping, but for some reason I felt restless. I got up and did a complete recon of Suzie's place again, and then another. I was just passing her bedroom door for way more than the second time, when it opened and she tiptoed outside, buttoning up her blouse. Human tiptoeing: always something I love to see, although why they do it is a complete mystery.

“Shh,” she said in a little whisper, making the sign Bernie and I had worked out for quiet, namely a finger across the lips. “Let him sleep, Chet—he's so tired.” She gently took my front paws, which seem to have risen up and planted themselves on her chest, and encouraged them back down to the floor. We headed downstairs, Suzie still on tiptoes. Funny how noisy human steps could be, even with only the toes touching down. Yes, you had to feel for humans in some ways, but wasn't it amazing how so many of them kept breezing along like they were aces?

Downstairs in her office, Suzie checked her watch, didn't seem to like whatever it was telling her, and began gathering up stuff real quick: phone, laptop, shoulder bag. I hung right beside her, even quicker, and for no particular reason except that it felt good. We bumped into each other a few times, and then Suzie laughed and said, “Want to ride with me, Chet? The big lunk'll be zonked till noon.”

What was this? Ride? I was already at the front door. The big lunk part I didn't get at all.

• • •

Hadn't been in Suzie's little yellow Beetle in way too long. Last time I'd seen it had been back in the Valley, that sad day with a U-Haul hooked on behind and Suzie on her way to her new gig—a no-brainer, Bernie said, although how did that match up with the look on his face as he'd watched her go? But now we were all back together! So everything was cool, except that all the other times I'd been in the Beetle, she'd had treats in the glove box, and now there were none. Not a scrap of food anywhere in the car, for that matter. I didn't even need to bother digging under the seats. Suzie was the tidy type of human. The untidy types could be bothersome at times—take Nestor “Messy” Ness, for example, now on parole because no one at Northern Correctional could bear to share a cell with him—but there was also something to be said in their favor.

We stopped at a light. “Here's a crazy thing,” Suzie said. “I really did like getting those flowers!” She laughed. “Does that mean I need to toughen up?” Suzie turned and gave me a close look. I gave her a close look right back. She smiled. “Forgot what it's like having you around.” Then came a nice pat, so nice I never wanted the light to change. What a weird thought, because then how would we ever . . . something or other. “We'll have to pick up some treats along the way, won't we?” You had to love Suzie. Did she need to toughen up? Not with me around, amigo.

“Along the way”: had to be immediately, ASAP, stat, in a hurry, now, or even sooner. What else could it mean? But we didn't seem to be making any stops. We hit some traffic, made a few turns, and soon a big open area appeared on one side, with lots of grass and—and what even looked like a nice swimming pool, the longest I'd ever seen, with a very tall and narrow stone tower at one end! Swim and a snack? But that was life: just when you think it can't possibly get any better, it does. That thought was still in my mind as we drove past the stone tower and turned onto a side street, away from the water. What was going on? I studied Suzie's face for some clue, found none.

Lots of humans are completely unaware that you're staring at them. You can stare at them all day if you want, which I don't, except when it comes to Bernie, of course. Suzie wasn't the unaware type. Her eyes shifted my way.

“I swear sometimes, Chet, I can feel you thinking right along with me.”

Good news. Now we'd be clearing up this snack and swim problem. She took a deep breath, let it out slowly, making a tiny sound at the end. That was a sigh; we've got pretty much the same thing in the nation within. It means there's a problem. Slim Jims are a primo treat, but I'm not fussy: a simple biscuit would do. Problem solved!

“The truth is . . .” Suzie stopped, gave her head a little shake, started up again. “Bad to even say it out loud. But what if—at least for the moment—I'm in over my head?”

I raised my eyes, saw nothing over Suzie's head except for the roof of the Beetle. We were in the car in the usual way. No worries.

“Can't do this job without an ego,” Suzie went on. “At the same time, you can't let your ego get in the way.”

What a lovely voice Suzie had! I realized how much I'd missed it. As for what she's just said, I was no wiser than before, maybe less. And totally cool with it!

“Meaning,” she said, “I can't ignore the question of why someone like Lanny Sands would want to meet me. He's one of those insidermost insiders, the kind you can never get to . . .” Suzie pulled over, parked a few spaces away from a restaurant with sidewalk tables, all empty. She took out her notebook, flipped through the pages, her eyes going back and forth real fast. Meanwhile, a taxi was coming up the street on the other side. It stopped, and a man wearing a suit and a baseball cap got out. He went over to the restaurant, sat at one of the tables.

“Should have known he was the ball-cap-and-suit type.” Suzie snapped her notebook shut and started to get out. I started to get out with her—no point in making her go around and open my door from the outside: I like to make things easier for everybody.

Suzie held up her hand. “Sorry, Chet. You'll have to stay put.”

Stay put? Had I ever heard such a thing? Did I even understand what it meant? All I knew for sure was the doors were closed and the windows, while open enough to let in a steady flow of air, weren't open nearly enough for what I had in mind. I was just about to start charging back and forth across the front seat and maybe doing things to the Beetle that might not be right, when Suzie glanced back at me. “Won't be long—I promise.” Suzie has a wonderful voice, like music, if I haven't mentioned that already. Not music like “Death Don't Have No Mercy.” More like “If You Were Mine,” one of our favorites, mine and Bernie's, especially when Roy Eldridge comes in with his trumpet at the end. The feeling I get, all the way through my ears to the tip of my tail and back again, and I'm sure the same thing happens with Bernie, except for the tail. Too bad Bernie didn't have a tail. He said so himself on a day I won't forget: Bernie, high up in a tree in our yard, taking down a hanging branch with the chainsaw. He leaned way out and said, “A tail would come in handy right now, big guy.” The moment after that, Bernie, the ladder, and the chainsaw were all in separate motion. Bernie ended up landing on the roof of Leda's convertible—this was toward the end of their ­marriage—not a scratch on him, and the branch came down on its own with the arrival of the monsoons, so everything was cool. But the point was . . .

While I tried, although not my very hardest, to remember the point, I found I now had my nose stuck out the partly open window on the shotgun side. A waiter was bringing coffee to Suzie and the ball-cap-and-suit guy; and not just coffee, but some sort of baked goods—goods: what a perfect name!—that reminded me of crullers. The next thing I knew, I was finding to my amazement that the window was in fact open just wide enough, if I squeezed and squeezed and—ah!

“Oh, my God,” said the ball-cap-and-suit guy, leaning way back in his chair, hands up for protection. Protection from what? Not me, I hoped. Then I noticed I'd somehow come to a stop with one paw, or maybe two, on his foot. I got that problem fixed, and pronto.

“Chet!” Suzie said, grabbing my collar and urging me toward her end of the table. “How did you—” She glanced over at the car. “Never mind. Sit. Be good.”

I sat. I was good.

“Your dog?” said the ball-cap-and-suit guy.

“Belongs, if that's the word, to a friend,” Suzie said.

“Eben St. John, by any chance?”

“No,” Suzie said. “But you know Eben, Mr. Sands?”

“Call me Lanny. Haven't had the pleasure of meeting him yet, but I know of him.”

“Plus you know I know him,” Suzie said.

Lanny Sands—if I was following this right—shrugged his shoulders. He didn't have much going on in the way of shoulders, but he turned out to be one of those big-headed types, an interesting combo. That was life: interesting things flowing by all the time. “Lucky coincidence,” he said, taking a bite from one of the cruller-like things.

Croissant? Was that it? With the two twisted-up ends? One of which fell off and practically bounced right up into my mouth? Still totally sitting, as anyone could plainly see, I inched his way.

“. . . carriage house of yours?” Lanny went on, talking with his mouth full, a very cool human thing in my opinion. “I had a friend who wanted it, but you got there first.”

“That's why you wanted to meet me?” Suzie said.

Lanny laughed, a few croissant crumbs getting spewed my way. They treated you right in this town.

“And exact my revenge,” Lanny said. He laughed some more. “The truth is I've been following your work—you're good.”

“Yeah?” Suzie said. “You wanted to praise me in person?”

“Any harm in that?”

“Not that I can see,” Suzie said.

Lanny looked down, started moving his silverware around. The knife clinked against his water glass with a sound that seemed strangely loud to me. “The story you did on the Neanderthal reenactors is probably my favorite,” he said.

“Thanks,” Suzie said. “But I'd actually like to get into more serious stuff.”

His head rose. “Such as?”

“Politics,” Suzie said. “Isn't that what this town is all about?”

“After real estate,” Lanny said, polishing off the rest of his croissant in one bite—kind of a big one there, dude—and washing it down with coffee. I'd tried coffee once—actually, a paper filter full of coffee grounds—and that was enough.

“And now that I've got you here,” Suzie said, taking out a device and laying it on the table.

Lanny shook his head. “We're off the record.”

“Can I quote you anonymously?”

“About what?”

“The election.”

“No,” Lanny said. “And the election is two years away.”

“Meaning imminent in your world,” Suzie said.

“My world?”

“The inside baseball world.”

“I'm not part of that,” Lanny said.

“Come on,” said Suzie. “You're the Sandman.”

“I hate that nickname.”

“Isn't it a compliment? Your arrival on the scene means lights out for the opposition.”

“That's the cartoon version of how things work here.”

“Then give me the grown-up take,” Suzie said. “How about these terrible poll numbers of the president's, for example? As his childhood friend, college roommate, former campaign manager, you must have some opinion.”

“Haven't seen the president since last Christmas,” Lanny said. “And I no longer follow the polls. I'm retired.”

“Aren't you a little young for that? What do you do with all your energy?”

“Travel. Play golf. Meet interesting people, like you. My advice is to stick to the feature stories. What's wrong with giving the people some lighthearted relief?”

“Nothing,” Suzie said. “What do you say specifically to these polls showing that if General Galloway is the opposition nominee, he'll win at least thirty-nine states, with two toss-ups?”

Lanny gazed at Suzie in a way that reminded me a bit of one of Bernie's gazes, the kind that goes deep inside. I got a good clear view of his face: a roundish sort of face with very light-colored eyes. It showed nothing in particular, but under the table—and I always check out what's going on under tables—one of his legs suddenly started up, going a mile a minute. Which isn't actually that fast—we'd done two miles a minute out in the desert, and more than once. We know how to live, me and Bernie. But that wasn't the point. The point was that Lanny's top and bottom halves weren't in sync. We watch for that kind of thing at the Little Detective Agency.