Paw and Order (6 page)

Soares picked up the notebook and slipped it back in his pocket. “Happened to memorize it,” he said. “Quote—Today I came so close to telling Suzie how I feel. Reticence will be the death of me. Unquote.”

Impossible to follow. All I knew was that Bernie's hands no longer rested on Suzie's chair, and he'd backed away a step or two.

“Anything to say to that, Ms. Sanchez?” Soares said, gazing right into her eyes.

She looked away. “It's news to me,” she said.

Soares rose and laid a card on the table. Finally! But it was just one and no betting ensued, meaning we lost nothing. “Don't be a stranger,” he said.

SEVEN

T
here's silence, which I enjoy although it just about never happens, not completely. Then there's human silence, which also can be enjoyable, but sometimes not. During those times of sometimes not, human silence feels like the ceiling's coming slowly down on your head. That was the kind of silence we had in Suzie's kitchen after Lieutenant Soares left.

“Let's go for a walk,” Suzie said, her voice quieter than usual.

“Okay,” said Bernie, also on the quiet side.

Who was first to the door? You can bet the ranch.

• • •

There was a screened porch at the back of the big house and Lizette was sitting in it, a book on her lap. She raised a coffee cup as we went by.

“Lizette's French Canadian,” Suzie said when we were on the street.

“I thought I heard an accent,” Bernie said. He glanced back. “How'd you find her?”

“Her?”

“Meaning the rental.”

“Through a friend,” Suzie said. “Do you like it?”

“Sure,” said Bernie. “This friend have a name?”

Suzie stopped dead. “Why are you doing this?”

“Eben St. John, right?”

“I'm not going to be interrogated,” Suzie said. “What's wrong with you right now?”

Uh-oh. Angry at each other again? How was that possible with Bernie and Suzie? All of a sudden, I thought of Bernie and Leda. Oh, how I wished that hadn't happened. I began to be unsure about this burg, wanted to be back home in the Valley. I thought of my best pal, Iggy, who lives next door. Bowling him over would be fun, or making off with his treats.

“That's what I'm asking you,” he said.

“I don't understand.”

“Don't you?” Bernie said. “For starters, did he ever work up the nerve to spill his quote inner feelings unquote? And—” And then came something or other I missed on account of that strange bird was back, now humming faintly over the crown of a large tree across the street. It just hung in the air in a bothersome sort of way. I crouched and started barking, didn't know what else to do.

“CHET!”

Normally when Bernie speaks my name like that, I dial it down, at least a little, but at the moment I was too upset—yes, I admit it—upset about this strange bird, and this burg, and whatever was going on with Bernie and Suzie. So I kept barking and finally Bernie followed my gaze up to the top of the tree across the street and . . . and said, “Must be a squirrel up there. Take it easy, Chet.”

Squirrel? What squirrel? This wasn't about a squirrel. It was about that strange bird—a bird without eyes, by the way, in case I've left that out—that strange bird that . . . that was no longer visible, in fact had somehow vanished. I went silent.

Bernie turned back to Suzie. “Well?” he said.

“This isn't like you,” Suzie said, meeting his gaze and maybe even doing it one better, if that makes any sense. I was almost overcome by the weirdest urge of my whole life, namely a strong and sudden desire to bowl them both over! At the very last ­second, I went with a yawn instead, a huge one, and felt a bit better.

“What isn't?” Bernie said.

“This cold relentlessness,” Suzie said. “Or maybe it is like you, but just being aimed my way for the first time.”

“Cold relent—?”

Suzie raised her voice over Bernie's. “Yes, Eben did work up his nerve, as you so charmingly put it about a dead man. Happy now?”

“And?” Bernie said.

“And what?”

Bernie's voice rose, too. “And what did you tell him? Did you spill some feelings back his way?”

All the color left Suzie's face, except for a small pink patch on each cheek. “Why the hell did you bother coming here?” she said, and then turned and ran back the way we'd come, down the driveway to the carriage house and out of sight.

Bernie watched her go. His face was redder than I'd ever seen it, like . . . like he'd absorbed all of Suzie's color. Why did thoughts like that come to me sometimes? I really wished they wouldn't.

Bernie looked down at me. “I suppose it's all my fault.”

I looked up at him. This looking at each other thing went on for some time and then Bernie made a fist and pounded it into his open hand so loud it sounded like a gunshot. A bird burst out of the tree across the street, not my strange bird but an ordinary bird with eyes and wings that flapped.

“Come on, Chet, let's go for a ride.” A ride? But no ride-type excitement in his voice at all? I almost didn't get what he was talking about.

We went for a ride, Bernie kind of slouched behind the wheel, me sitting tall in the shotgun seat, a total pro even if we weren't on any sort of job. But if we weren't, why not? We had a dead body, no doubt about that, and dead bodies were part of our business plan at the Little Detective Agency, unless I was missing something.

We got on a big highway, fought some traffic, then took a ramp and found some two-lane blacktop, which was Bernie's favorite when it came to roads. Soon we were in lovely country, green and rolling, and Bernie was sitting up straighter in his seat. He was quiet for a long time, but finally turned to me and said, “I disgraced myself, big guy.” Over my head, and totally. “So why do I still want to know what she felt about him? What does that say about me, beyond the fact that I don't have two brain cells to rub together?” He'd lost me completely. “Not to mention,” he went on, “the degree of self-involvement on my part. That's what jealousy is, no two ways about it. Plus the poor bastard's dead, for Christ sake! I'm like some plutocrat on the
Titanic
, pissed off he can't get room service.” Had Bernie ever been harder to understand than this? Not that I remembered. He was on the opposite of a roll. Opposite of a roll? Whoa! I was having my own problems. I lay down on my seat, curled up, watched the passing sky, clouds moving one way, us another. I felt a little pukey and closed my eyes. That was better. From time to time Bernie said things like, “And what about this murder, any hope of redemption that way?” And: “If we had the whiteboard I could start making boxes, Eben in the center, Soares over on the right, and Suzie where, exactly?” Plus: “No reason to include her at all, maybe better to erase the whole board.” As well as other stuff that helped me get to sleep and stay there.

• • •

The sun was going down by the time we turned onto Suzie's street, which I recognized from all sorts of smells I won't bother going into now, plus a hydrant I'd noticed near where we'd parked before, a hydrant I wanted to try out in the very near future.

And what do you know? Bernie parked right near it again! Like my thoughts were . . . were making things happen! I hopped out of the car, laid my mark high up on that hydrant, above all the other marks laid on it by fellow members of the nation within. Always best to be on top, in case that's news to you. When that was done, I thought: Slim Jim. I thought Slim Jim as hard as I could, but no Slim Jim appeared.

We walked toward Suzie's place, me and Bernie. The light of the setting sun made a kind of golden outline around Bernie. Did he look good or what? Plus he was walking just like Bernie at his best, strong and fast, with hardly a limp at all.

“Here's what I'm going to do, big guy. Plead insanity. Never been jealous in my life, so what else could it be? Step one—full apology, no ifs, ands, or buts.” Wow! Hadn't heard the no ifs, ands, or buts thing since the very end of the Chins Malone case, Bernie telling Chins he was going down no ifs, ands, or buts about it and Chins pushing on the detonator handle anyway, a wild look in his eyes. After that came wilder things, too wild to remember.

“Step two,” Bernie went on, “short and simple. I'm going to tell her I love her and want to marry her and spend the rest of our lives together. Finding the right words will be the problem.” He slowed down, came to a stop, gazed into the distance. “What would be the right way to put that? Some guys have got the silver tongue, Chet, would knock it out of the park. Eben, for example.” Bernie smacked his forehead. “Oh, my God—did I just say that?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. All I knew was that I'd never seen him smack his head before and never wanted to see it again. Normally, when someone smacks Bernie in the head, they've got to deal with me. That didn't seem the way to go. But why not? And what about those guys with silver tongues? There were scary things in this life. I was trying to forget all about them as we came to Lizette's house and headed down the driveway to the carriage house.

“Think it could be this, Chet? That I've never cared for another person—Charlie excepted, of course, but that's different—the way I—”

Whatever that was about—way too complicated already—I never got to hear the end of it, because at that moment Lieutenant Soares stepped out from behind some bushes, a big cop on either side of him.

“Bernie Little?” Soares said.

“You know it's me,” Bernie said.

“Just a formality,” said Soares. “Got a minute?”

“For what?”

“The Eben St. John murder case.”

“Go on.”

The sun dipped down beyond the bottom edge of everything, as I'd seen many times, and it got much darker, as it always did. I could barely make out Lizette, sitting motionless in her screened porch. Most of the remaining light seemed to have gotten caught in the eyes of Soares and the other cops. Not Bernie's, for some reason, which had gone very dark.

“The murder weapon was a .22 automatic,” Soares said. “Or did you know that already?”

“I knew it was a .22.”

“How?”

“Ms. Sanchez told me.”

Soares nodded. “Did she describe the weapon at all?”

“In what sense?”

“Any sense, really,” Soares said. “But I was thinking visually.”

“You're losing me.”

“My apologies. Specifically, the gun we found at the scene, the .22 automatic, which forensics now tells us is the murder weapon beyond any reasonable doubt, has an imitation pearl handle, pink in color.” There was a long pause. All the humans on the scene, the cops and Bernie, began to smell different. “Unlikely as it seems,” Soares went on, “you being a big macho guy and all, but do you happen to own a gun that fits the description?”

“No,” Bernie said. “I'm in possession of a gun that fits the description, but I don't own it.”

“You're saying it's unlicensed?”

“I'm saying what I said.”

“And how did that come to be,” Soares said, “you in possession of a gun not your own?”

“Someone was using it to threaten the public safety,” Bernie said. “I relieved that person of the gun.”

“Where and when was this?”

“Recently and not in your jurisdiction.”

Soares gave Bernie a long look. Now his eyes, and the eyes of the other cops, had darkened like Bernie's. “I'm not sensing a high level of cooperation,” he said.

“Why not?” Bernie said. “I don't even have to talk to you.”

“Then you're either just a nice guy, or I've aroused your curiosity.”

Bernie said nothing.

“Nothing wrong with curiosity, not in this business,” Soares said. “I'm curious, too. Take a guess about what?”

Bernie stayed silent.

“Forensics found two sets of prints on that pink handle,” Soares said. “One match turned up in the IAFIS database—a petty criminal named Bella Lou LaPierre from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Another set, mostly on top of Bella Lou's, we couldn't identify until we contacted the licensing unit of the Department of Public Safety in Arizona. They turned out to be yours.”

What was this? Something about Arizona again? Other than that, I had no clue, but whatever was going on was making everyone sweat even more. Maybe not visibly, but the air was getting tangier in a not unpleasant way.

“Care to explain?” Soares said.

“I can't,” Bernie told him. “But the gun I have is locked in the glove box of my car.”

“Mind if we take a look-see?” said Soares.

We walked to the street, Soares leading, then me and Bernie side by side, followed by the two big cops. I didn't like having them behind me, also didn't like having Soares in front, and was trying to figure out what to do about that when we got to the car. Soares stood to the side and made the now-it's-your-turn gesture with his hand.

Bernie stepped up, took out the keys, unlocked the passenger side door. Then he leaned in, stuck a key in the glove box, turned it. Nothing happened. He tried again. This time the glove box door popped open. One of the big cops came closer and shone a flashlight inside.

I saw Bernie's shades in there; our own flashlight; the manual, all frayed and worn, and also useless, as Bernie had said many times; a bent cigarette; and—hey!—a partly chewed chewy. But no gun, if that was what this was all about.

“Bernie Little,” Soares said. “You're under arrest for the murder of Eben St. John.”

EIGHT

W
hy are you doing this?” Bernie said.

“Why am I arresting the obvious suspect in a murder?” said Lieutenant Soares. “Is that the question?”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“Explain the gun.”

Bernie glanced back toward the street. “Someone stole it while I was inside sleeping,” Bernie said. “We should go take a look at the glove box again.”

“For what?”

“Signs of a forced opening—what else?”

“I'll make a note of it,” Soares said. “We're impounding the vehicle in any case.”

The bigger of the big cops took a set of cuffs off his belt.

“That's not necessary,” Bernie said.

The cop turned to Soares, the cuffs dangling from one of his huge fingers.

“We're playing this by the book,” Soares said.

Bernie laughed in his face. Oh, how I loved that!

The cops moved in closer. I was on my feet, right beside Bernie. Were they planning to cuff Bernie? How could that be ­anything but wrong? The fur on the back of my neck stood straight up.

“Hands behind your back,” Soares said. “Turn around.”

Bernie didn't move. A low growling started up.

“This can be hard or easy, your call,” Soares said.

Bernie gave him a long look. The growling grew louder. Bernie's gaze shifted in my direction. “All right,” he said. “But first I'll get Chet inside the house.”

The cops turned my way. I bared my teeth, not sure why. Untrue: I knew, all right. Then came a bark, very loud, very angry. The smaller big cop stepped back, at the same time reaching for his gun. Oh, yeah? I got ready to spring.

“Chet! Sit!”

Sit? What sense would that make? Definitely the wrong play at a time like this. What was getting into Bernie? First had to come me grabbing that gun arm and then we'd have Bernie doing what needed to be done, like maybe taking a swing at—

“CHET!”

I sat. Squad cars—one, two, more—drove up, turned into the driveway, lights flashing, sirens off.

Bernie turned to Soares, raised his hand in the stop sign. “I'm walking Chet to Ms. Sanchez's house, just to keep your trigger-happy pal here from making a career-ending mistake. Then you can do what you want.” He touched my back. “Come on, big guy.”

We walked right between the big cops, me and Bernie, kept going to Suzie's place. I heard the cops following behind us, but Bernie didn't look back so neither did I. Before we got to Suzie's door, it opened and Suzie hurried out, one foot still struggling to get itself into a sandal.

“Bernie?” What was this? Suzie didn't look happy to see him? She looked beyond us toward the cops and the flashing lights. “What's going on?”

“Take Chet inside,” Bernie said, his voice the normal Bernie voice, nice and calm. “Then call Cedric Booker and get him to recommend a DC lawyer.”

“For who? I don't understand.”

“For me,” Bernie said. “I'll explain later.”

Suzie backed toward the door.

“Chet,” Bernie said. “In.”

Everything was so strange. All that really got through to me was “in.” I went into the house. Suzie followed, then paused in the doorway.

“Close the door,” Bernie said. “Don't let him out.”

“But what's happening?” Suzie said.

“They're arresting me.”

“For what?”

Bernie didn't answer. Soares stepped up from behind and put a hand on Bernie's shoulder.

“Murder,” he said.

Suzie took a quick sharp breath. “Eben's murder?”

Soares smiled.

“Shut the goddamn door,” Bernie said.

Suzie closed the door. There was a moment of silence, and then I heard a familiar sound, the click of cuffs clamping down.

• • •

“Chet?” Suzie said, her eyes on me but sort of strangely unseeing. “Want water or something?”

Something? I wanted something, all right: Bernie!

Suzie went into the kitchen. I guess I followed. All I knew was that I'd been in the hall and now I was in the kitchen. My mind was on other things, namely: Bernie! Suzie filled my water bowl with nice cold water. I could smell how nice and cold the water was, but I didn't go near it.

Where was Bernie? I tried to remember what had happened to him and couldn't. I trotted—this was my real fast trot, pretty close to a run—out of the kitchen and into the living room, and then into and out of all the other rooms on the first floor, and after that I ran up the stairs—yes, running now—and tore in and out of all the rooms up there. Lots of Bernie smell around—I must have mentioned Bernie's smell, the best human smell I'd ever come across, apples, bourbon, salt and pepper, plus something funky deep down underneath—but no Bernie.

Next thing I knew I was downstairs in the kitchen again. Suzie was on the phone saying, “I don't know Cedric, but the point is—” Or something like that. By then I was running into and out of all the rooms on the first floor. Again? Or for the first time? I ran faster and faster, and coming down the stairs—again? or for the first time?—I almost bumped into Suzie, on her way up. I went still. She put her hand on my head, real gentle.

“Got to calm down a bit, Chet. Everything's going to be all right.”

I liked the feel of Suzie's hand but was having some trouble hearing her, on account of the voice in my head shouting,
Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!

Suzie's lips moved. She might have been saying something about a treat, possibly of the biscuit type. Suzie was the best; I'd never ever want to hurt Suzie. Then all at once, there on the stairs with Suzie, her gentle hand on my back, I remembered someone I did want to hurt: Lieutenant Soares. Oh, yes! And don't leave out the big cop with the cuffs, and the slightly smaller cop, the trigger-happy one. At that moment, I remembered everything!

I flung myself down the rest of the stairs in one leap, bounded to the front door. Closed and bolted. It had a round knob, and I was getting much better at those, but we'd only just started working on bolts, me and Bernie, and I couldn't bring back what Bernie had told me—couldn't bring it back now when I needed to the most! All I could remember was the lovely sound of his voice as he took one of my front paws in his hand and—and showed me something or other about bolts. So I ended up clawing at the bolt on Suzie's door for a while and then—

“Chet! It's okay, try to calm down.”

—ran through the kitchen to the little laundry room at the back of Suzie's house. Beyond the laundry room was the back door, not only unbolted but even slightly opened. I stuck my nose in, nudged the door open some more, and found a second door, a door of the screen type. It had one of those really easy press-down levers, but I didn't bother with that, simply burst through the screen and into the night.

“Chet! Chet!”

And once outside, I was on the move, big-time.
Zoom:
right around to the front of the house and up the driveway, where I pounced on Bernie's smell right away, all mixed together with cop smells—which always have lots of sameness about them, a promising subject for some other time—but there was no missing Bernie's smell, which always stood out in the nicest way.

“Chet! Chet!”

Who was that? Suzie, perhaps? And did I also hear her running footsteps? Possibly not. As for human running: good luck with that. Once we had a client name of Shockwave Jones—second best sprinter in the whole country at that time but now breaking rocks in the hot sun—who'd bet Bernie double or nothing on our fee that he could beat me in a race. The fun we'd had with that! The look on Shockwave's face when I turned back and circled right around him and then flashed on by again! I was halfway through my Slim Jim when Shockwave crossed the finish line. Had he sold off some of his 'roid supply to pay the bill, perhaps to a DEA undercover, which led him to his present whereabouts? I had some hazy memory of that, but our race was sharp in my mind as—

“Chet! Chet!”

—I reached the spot where the cop smells and Bernie's smell got mixed up with car exhaust smells, meaning . . . meaning I had a car to follow. What could be easier? Cars leave a scent trail that no one could miss. I pelted off down the street at speeds Shockwave Jones would never know, following a typical car scent with one difference: this one had just a hint of doughnut added, something you found just about every time with cop cruisers.

Down the block, across the first cross street in a single bound, or maybe two, paws hardly touching down on the pavement, still warm from the heat of the day: I was on the move! Do I love being on the move? Yes, but this wasn't quite like that, on account of the voice in my head:
Bernie! Bernie!
So I still loved it, but I was out of my mind at the same time, if that makes any sense, although I'm pretty sure it doesn't. But what can I do?

All I know is what I did then, namely fly down that block—

“Mom! There's a huge dog on the loose!”

—and one or two more, across another street, a street with lots of headlights on the move, and sudden blasts of honking, and then . . . and then I lost the scent. When you lose the scent, you double back real quick, which was what I did—

HONK! HONK!

“Someone call animal control!”

—and found the scent again—I was smelling only for doughnuts now, so much car smell around it was impossible to tell one from another—practically right away, on the far side of this crossroads. Yes, they'd made a turn onto this street, maybe kind of busy. I flew down the sidewalk, or maybe along the side of the road, the sidewalk having come to an end sometime back, my mind on doughnut scent and nothing else. Except for:
Bernie!

Honking and running; shouting and running; squealing brakes and running. Running and running and running: that was me, a runner, pure and simple. And what was this, not far up this street? A blue light? Yes! Blue lights meant cop stations, of which I'd seen plenty during my career. Next thing I knew I was right under that blue light, barking at the closed door, the air almost pure doughnut.

The door opened and a cop looked out. “What the hell?” he said.

A man spoke behind me. “It's all right, officer. I'll take care of this.”

I turned and saw a man in a green uniform getting out of a van. A normal sort of guy, smaller than most, but he was holding a long pole with a big loop on the end. I knew that kind of pole from several scary episodes in my past. Dogsnatcher was the name of the pole, making the little guy in the green uniform a dogcatcher, someone whose whole life was about rounding up those of us in the nation within and putting us where no one would ever want to go. The little guy moved toward me in a casual sort of way with a casual sort of smile on his face—but also with surprising speed—and whipped that loop right over my head and around my neck and—

But no. When it was almost too late, what with me at my slowest, my mind on other things, I bolted sideways and the loop glanced off me. And in that sideways bolt, I picked up the very faintest smell of Bernie. I followed it at top speed down a paved alley that ran beside the cop station and ended at a parking lot around the back. More Bernie smell here, no doubt about it. The trail led to the rear door of the station, closed just like the front one. Bernie was on the other side of that door! I rose up, clawed at the handle, but it was one of those pulls, impossible for me. I clawed and clawed, and barked my head off, and—

And totally forgot about the dogcatcher, a real big mistake on my part.
Whoosh.
That nasty loop slipped over my head and tightened around my neck. I turned and twisted and growled and fought, getting nowhere. At the other end of the pole, the little man in the green uniform didn't seem to be putting any effort into this at all. The total effort was coming from me. That made me mad, and in my madness I struggled harder and harder, and then harder than that, until my breath was gone out of me and the loop was too tight for getting any breath back in. The eyes of the little man showed nothing, except maybe a hint of enjoyment. He flipped me over onto the ground. Flipped me? How was that possible? But it happened.

The loop loosened slightly and I sucked in some air. I was still doing that, still lying on my side—but with rough and bloody plans taking shape in my mind—when a man with a big strong nose climbed out of a car parked all by itself at the very back of the lot. He wore a dark suit and walked in an intense sort of way, pushing an energy wave in front of him. I knew this man: Mr. Ferretti, double R's double T's, Victor D.

He came over to where we were, me and the dogcatcher, and said, “What have we here?”