The Sound and the Furry (17 page)

Bernie got busy with the card, then paused and glanced at the sign nailed to one of
the stilts. “Iko’s gotta be his dog.” Bernie peered through the glass. “Don’t see
one.”

Because there was no dog on the scene, except for me, of course, which I’d known from
sniff one. But it wasn’t only that: any member of the nation within would’ve been
barking his head off by now.

“Hey,” Bernie said. “It’s not even locked.” He slid the door open, stuck his head
inside, and peered around some. Or maybe not. I was already inside Mack’s crib and
couldn’t be sure about what was happening behind me.

Mack’s downstairs was one big space with a living room part at the front and a kitchen
in back. Bare wooden floor and lots of empty beer cans around: it reminded me of a
mountain cabin we’d been in on a case involving a wilderness camp and a missing kid,
except that the walls of that cabin had been bare, and these walls seemed to have . . .?
Was it possible? The heads of animals sticking right through them? Open-eyed animals—a
deer, a bear, a mountain lion, and a big-horned sort of goatish creature I wasn’t
familiar with. Oh, yes, I’m familiar with mountain lions and
bears; don’t get me started. The point was these open-eyed beings didn’t give off
the scent of the living or the dead. If anything they smelled like Bernie’s suit—he
has just the one, and I don’t see the problem with the checked-pattern, no matter
what anyone says—when it comes back from the dry cleaner’s. That was a smell I didn’t
particularly like, but I’d never hated it until now.

I felt Bernie’s hand on the top of my head, just resting there for a moment, and then
gone. My mind cleared in the nicest way. We got to work.

Casing the joint is one of our best techniques at the Little Detective Agency. I sniffed
around under the furniture—snapping up a fried chicken ball before I’d hardly begun.
One of the many nice things about fried chicken balls is that they’re a kind of a
ball, and balls roll when they get dropped. I’ve had good luck with fried chicken
balls in my career—also pineapple chicken balls and sweet and sour chicken balls,
too important not to mention.

Meanwhile, Bernie was opening a set of drawers. He always starts with the bottom one
and works up. I’m not sure why, just know it’s the right way. I finished up with my
part, finding no guns, no ammo, no dope, no blood, none of the sort of stuff we looked
for, and went over to Bernie. He was going through a drawer—an old pair of sweatpants,
a bunch of papers, and—

“What’s this, big guy?”

He held up a metal thing, kind of like a piece of pipe but very thick and very short,
with a big sort of nut at one end. Bernie peered into the open end. “Looks like it’s
been heated up.” He sniffed at it. “But I don’t smell anything.” No? Even though his
nose was practically touching the thing? Bernie’s nose is small when it comes to noses
in general, but for a human it’s right up there. So what’s it for? He tried to work
the nutlike thing off the pipe part, but it was stuck. He peered at it again. “Heavy-duty
threads, but they’re
warped,” he said, way too hard to understand and by me in a flash. Bernie started
to put the pipe thing back in the drawer, then paused and tucked it into his belt
instead. I’d been hoping it would go back in the drawer. Its smell reminded me of
the birds in Dr. Ory’s office.

We went into the kitchen. Bernie opened the fridge. There was a tub of fried chicken
inside, plus a few cases of beer. Another fried chicken ball struck me as a very good
idea at that moment, but it didn’t happen. Casing a joint builds your appetite real
fast: I’d noticed that in the past and now noticed it again.

We climbed the stairs to the top floor, Bernie leading and then me, although I ended
up getting there first. Not much to see: a bedroom with an unmade bed and the bedside
fan still on, clothes on the floor, a closet, a big mirror on the wall—Hey! With Bernie
in it! And a real tough-looking member of the nation within. I got ready to . . .
Me? Had I been through this before?—and also there was—

I ran to the closet and barked.

Bernie smiled and came over.

“Found the shrimp, didn’t you, Chet?”

Shrimp? What was he talking about? Normally in this setup we take positions on either
side of the door, Bernie draws the .38 Special, and the door gets opened real quick
and real careful. None of that happened now. Why not? Something about shrimp? There
were no shrimp!

I barked again.

“Good boy,” Bernie said, and opened the door in a free and easy way, like it was our
own closet back home on Mesquite Road.

No shrimp. Just Vannah Boutette, no news there, and the fact that she wasn’t wearing
anything was probably not a shocker either. The only surprise was the gun in her hand,
and me being surprised by that could only mean it hadn’t been fired in a long, long
time, or never. She pointed the gun at Bernie.

O
h,” Vannah said. “It’s you.”

Bull’s-eye: it was us. I was glad to hear her say that: getting somebody mixed up
with somebody else can send things off the rails pretty fast when guns are around.
Vannah’s gun was kind of small, with a pretty pink grip, but I’d seen what even small
guns could do. The question was why didn’t she seem to be lowering it? Wasn’t Vannah
the client? I had a real clear memory of her handing over three grand in greenbacks,
the very best kind, in my opinion, three grand now in Bernie’s front pants pocket,
nice and safe. I could still pick up the faint scent of shrimp those bills were giving
off.

“Correct,” Bernie said. “So how about pointing that popgun in some other direction?”

Vannah smiled. Some humans, but not many, know how to smile in a dangerous way. Vannah
turned out to be one of them, although Bernie might have missed that. His gaze, which
normally in a situation like this would have been on her face, with a glance or two
down at the gun, seemed to be wandering a bit.

“How come men think they’re only the ones with balls?” she said.

Had I heard that right? How could I not have, what with my hearing being the way it
is and the fact that she was only a step or two away? This was the most confusing
moment of my life.

“Um,” Bernie said. Maybe he was confused, too. We’re a lot alike in some ways, me
and Bernie. “Maybe we could discuss that under more peaceable conditions.”

The gun stayed the way it was, pointed at Bernie’s chest. “Am I making you nervous?”
Vannah said.

“Not that so much,” Bernie said. “More like angry.”

Uh-oh. Bernie was angry? That meant one thing and one thing only: I was angry, too!
It came over me so suddenly, like a hot red flood, although maybe not the red part,
Bernie being of the opinion that I can’t be trusted when it comes to colors. The next
thing I knew that little popgun was clattering across the floor, Bernie had a tight
grip on my collar—the brown one, black only for dress-up—and Vannah was holding her
wrist and no longer smiling, dangerously or in any other way.

“What the hell? He bit me!”

Bernie peered at Vannah’s wrist. “More like an accidental tooth scrape, I’d say.”

“Why’d you go and let him do that?”

“Begs the question,” Bernie said.

“Huh?”

Which was always what we got when Bernie raised the begging-the-question thing.

“Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “Why were you hiding in the closet?”

“Because I heard you sneaking around downstairs, why else?” Vannah said.

When Bernie’s not buying something, he has this quick head
shake, a simple one-two. There it was. “How do you explain your reaction when you
saw it was us?”

Vannah shrugged. Bernie’s gaze dipped down, but for just an instant; he dipped it
back up pretty quick, as quick as I’d ever seen him in this kind of setup, the naked
woman setup happening surprisingly often in our business. He bent down, picked up
the gun, broke it open.

“It’s not even loaded,” he said.

“Must mean we’re friends,” Vannah said.

Bernie tossed her the gun. She caught it in one hand, real easy, then pointed it again
at Bernie. “Bang,” she said.

“Put it away, for Christ sake,” Bernie said.

“Where?” said Vannah.

“Get some clothes on,” Bernie said.

“Now I am making you nervous—don’t deny it.”

Bernie said nothing. Vannah came out of the closet, went over to the bed, put on jeans
and a T-shirt that were tangled up in the sheets.

“You’ve got something going with Mack?” Bernie said.

“What a disgusting suggestion,” Vannah said. “I’m totally faithful to Frenchie, except
when it comes to work, and Frenchie’s totally cool with that, especially in this putrid
economy.”

“There was an uptick in the latest jobs report,” Bernie said.

“I don’t believe any of that shit,” Vannah said, giving her hair a shake. “But what
you’re missing is that Mack is my brother.”

“Ah,” Bernie said.

“What does that mean?”

I was with Vannah on that. I waited to hear.

“Wish I’d known, that’s all,” Bernie said. “Ah” meant he wished he’d known something?
At last I knew! I got a very good feeling about the case.

“Why?”

“Context is everything in this business.” Wow! A new one on me. Maybe it was one of
Bernie’s jokes. I’d always thought the business was about grabbing perps by the pant
leg. “It might have helped me do a better job on our first go-around out here.”

“Did you scare him?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“Because he was expecting me for breakfast.”

“Do you usually eat in the nude?”

Vannah laughed. “I sleep in the nude, even for short naps—which was what I was doing
while I waited for Mack to show. How about you?”

“How about me what?”

“Sleep in the nude.”

“Um,” said Bernie, followed by “er,” and then “I don’t, uh, have a hard and fast rule
about it.”

“Hard and fast, huh?” said Vannah, which I didn’t get but for some reason that led
to a long silence, finally broken by Bernie.

“I don’t see how I could have scared Mack,” he said. “Doesn’t he know I’m working
for you?”

“Not easy to know what he knows and doesn’t know,” Vannah said. “Mack has his own
reality. There’s a lot of that in these parts, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I’d like to find out more about his reality,” Bernie said. “Where do I look?”

“I don’t know,” Vannah said. “The fact is . . .” She paused, then gave Bernie a look,
hard and direct. “Can I trust you?” she said.

“You’re the client,” Bernie said. “This won’t work if there’s no trust between us.”

“That’s a careful answer.”

“It’s the only one you’re getting.”

Vannah turned away, facing the wall with her back to us. Human fear has a sharp kind
of cheesy smell that just can’t be missed. It was coming off her in waves. I felt
not too good about her wrist.

“I need time to think this over,” she said.

“Take a month or two,” Bernie said.

She turned. “You really think—” Then she had a good look at Bernie’s face, and her
own face went red, or at least pink, which I’m pretty sure of, a pinkness that started
on her neck and rose up like a jar getting filled. “How come Frenchie didn’t tell
me you were a prick?”

“Maybe he likes me,” Bernie said.

“That wouldn’t mean anything,” Vannah said. “He’s got lousy judgment when it comes
to people.”

Bernie eyed her and said nothing, but his gaze seemed to be speaking, if that makes
any sense. I even thought I came close to hearing what it meant.

“A prick for sure,” Vannah said.

For some reason that word coming up again so soon made me think of a long-ago night
down Mexico way, a huge round moon, and a member of the nation within named Lola.
Funny how the mind works, but I didn’t worry about that, just enjoyed the memory.
It was one of my very favorites.

“. . . emotions and personalities are immaterial,” Bernie was saying when I tuned
back in. “You’ve got to make a decision.”

“I’m a woman—have you noticed?” Vannah said. “Emotions are at my core. Why do you
think I’m here?”

“Good question,” Bernie said. “I thought you were back in the Valley.”

“It’s a free country,” Vannah said. I was totally with her on
that—it was one of my strongest beliefs. “But the truth is I was worried about Mack.
It doesn’t take much to tip him back into that world.”

“The drug world?”

Vannah nodded. “He’s not answering his phone.”

Bernie went to the window and gazed out. “Does Ralph have a drug habit?”

“No way,” Vannah said. “He’s as straight as they come. Which is what makes their friendship
so improbable.”

Bernie turned quickly. “Whose friendship?”

“Mack and Ralph’s,” Vannah said. “Best friends, really—in Ralph’s case I’d say Mack’s
his only real friend in the world.”

“Are they gay?” Bernie said.

“I wouldn’t know,” Vannah said.

“I have more faith in you than that.”

She gave him a sharp glance. “Especially about matters of sex?”

“I didn’t say it.”

Vannah was still for a moment or two. I thought she was about to get real mad, but
instead she laughed. “I’ve made my decision: I’m trusting you. For now.”

“Great,” said Bernie. “Let’s kick things off with a true answer to the Mack and Ralph
question.”

The Mack and Ralph question? All of a sudden, I was a little lost. I licked my muzzle,
encountering a nice surprising leftover flake from the fried chicken, and felt back
on track, but totally.

“I really don’t know,” Vannah said. “This is still a very old-fashioned place in some
ways. But if I had to guess, I’d say Ralph was one of those asexual people you hear
about sometimes.”

“And Mack?”

“Mack is more complicated. He’s been married twice, for starters.”

“But?”

“Yeah,” Vannah said. “But.”

Then came a long silence. I could feel both of their minds at work. My own mind was
work-free at the moment, just sort of feeling their thoughts, which was more than
good enough for me.