The Sound and the Furry (2 page)

“He’s not in for armed robbery?” Waldo said. “That’s what he tells everybody.”

“Armed robbery?” Bernie said. “Frenchie Boutette?”

Waldo turned to Frenchie, the shotgun barrel rising slightly, unsteady in the motionless
air. “Conning disabled vets? That’s despicable.”

Frenchie raised his hands, plump little hands that reminded me immediately of his
calves. I was suddenly very aware of my
teeth and not much else. “Hardly any of those stup—of those heroic vets—lost anything
worth thinking about. Bernie caught me practically right out of the gate.”

Bernie gave Frenchie a hard look. “And Chet,” he said.

“And Chet, of course. Goes without saying.”

“I like hearing it said just the same,” Bernie told him.

“Won’t let it happen again,” Frenchie said. “I’ve got nothing but respect for the
Little Detective Agency.” All at once, Frenchie went still, his eyes blanking in that
strange way that means a human’s gone deep in his own mind. They do a lot of that,
maybe too much. No offense. “Bernie?” he said.

“Yeah?”

“Can we, uh, talk for a moment or two?”

“Sure. We’re talking right now.”

Frenchie shot Waldo a sidelong glance and lowered his voice. “I mean in private.”

“Okay with you, Waldo?” Bernie said. “Frenchie wants to talk to me in private.”

“Sure,” Waldo said. “There’s the T-Bone Bar and Grill in Dry Springs, not more than
fifteen minutes’ drive from here. Why don’t you take Frenchie out for a beer, on me?”

Frenchie blinked. “Dressed like this? I’m not sure that’s—oh.” He turned to Bernie.
“He’s foolin’ with me, right?”

“You’re wrong, Bernie,” Waldo said. “He’s a moron.” Waldo waved the back of his hand
at Frenchie and walked away.

“If I’m such a moron,” Frenchie said, “how come I got fourteen hundred on my SATs?”

“You took the SATs?” Bernie said.

“Manner of speaking,” said Frenchie. “My kid brother Ralph took them for me, so it’s
basically me, DNA-wise. Ralph’s what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“You’re looking to get him busted for the SAT scam, cut some kind of deal for yourself?”
Bernie said.

“My own flesh and blood?” Frenchie said, putting his hand over his chest. “And even
if I could, you know, get past that, the law wouldn’t be interested in Ralph. He’s
a total straight arrow. The SAT caper was the only time in his whole life he even
came close to the line. Which is how come I’m worried about him now.”

“He’s crossed the line?”

“Hard to imagine,” Frenchie said. “But something’s wrong for sure. Ralph’s gone missing.”

W
e moved to the other side of the road, away from Deputy Waldo and the work crew. A
breeze rose in the distance. It stirred up a dust devil, a tumbleweed ball, and some
scraps of paper and blew them in our direction, all of that stuff sort of dancing
in a stopping-and-starting way. A few moments later, I felt the breeze in my face,
like a hot breath: this was one of those breezes that come off the desert in summer.
The air grew hotter and strangely heavy, pressing down like a weight. A scrap of paper
came to rest at the feet of one of the prisoners across the road. He poked at it with
his stick, but the breeze caught it again and carried it away. I considered chasing
after that scrap of paper, but why? Did Bernie want me to? Then I would, goes without
saying, but probably not just for fun, not in this heat. I turned to him.

“What do you mean,” he was saying to Frenchie, “by missing?”

“Missing?” said Frenchie, sounding surprised. “Like nowhere around.”

“But how would you know?” Bernie said.

“Huh?”

“Aren’t you the one who isn’t around?”

“You on something, Bernie? I’m right here in front of your face.”

“But somewhat out of circulation.”

“Oh, that,” said Frenchie. “Don’t mean I don’t hear nothin’. My mama calls me every
week. She hasn’t seen Ralph in days and neither have Duke or Lord.”

“And they are?”

“My brothers, of course. Other brothers, asides from Ralph.”

“You have brothers named Duke, Lord, and Ralph?”

“What I said.”

“And Frenchie is . . .”

“Just my nickname out here in the west on account of coming from Louisiana and all.”

“Your real name being?”

“Baron.”

“Baron Boutette.”

“Correct.”

“Are Duke and Lord like Ralph?”

“More like me.”

“Not straight arrows.”

“Not super straight, no,” Frenchie said. “But here’s something you need to understand
about the whole family, from my mama on down—we don’t go in for violence, hardly ever.
It’s a family tradition kind of thing. Our roots run deep.”

“You’re saying your mother’s a crook?” Bernie said.

“That’s harsh, Bernie. She’s hardly done any time at all and she bakes the best pies
you ever tasted.”

“What kind?”

“You name it, but I’m partial to her sweet potato pie.” Frenchie laughed. Human laughter
is normally one of the nicest sounds there is, but Frenchie’s laugh reminded me of
crows. What’s up
with birds? Ever look at their little eyes, so unfriendly? Soaring around the big
blue sky all the time: they should be in a better mood. “And not just because of the
time,” Frenchie was saying, “that she got a hacksaw to Lord inside of one.”

“She hid a hacksaw in a sweet potato pie?”

“Didn’t do much good—we’re not so hot with tools, none of us excepting for Ralph.
But Lord traded the saw to another inmate so at least he had smokes.”

“And the lucky inmate?”

“Shot while escaping. But we’re gettin’ off topic here. The whole family’s worried
sick about Ralph. You’re good at finding people. Can you find him?”

“No.”

“No? Just like that, no? You dint even wait to hear the details.”

“We do this for a living, Frenchie. We’re not cheap—eight hundred a day plus expenses,
against a two-thousand-dollar retainer. How are you going to come up with that?”

Frenchie took a quick glance across the road, where Deputy Waldo had a big bottle
of water tilted up to his mouth and the guys on the crew had all paused to watch him
drink. He lowered his voice. “Let me worry about the money.”

“That never works. I have to worry about the money.”

Hey! What about me? Didn’t I worry about the money, too? And even both of us worrying
about the money wasn’t enough because we still didn’t have any. Hawaiian pants were
part of the problem. The night Bernie had that idea! Hawaiian pants, just like Hawaiian
shirts, except they were pants! We were going to be rich! Bernie got so excited, he
started dancing in the kitchen. And then I joined in—not dancing exactly, more like
bounding around and then racing from room to room and back to the kitchen, skidding
to a stop, tiles popping up all over the place. Now all the pants are
filling up our self-storage in South Pedroia. Once we drove down there and had a look
at them. We stood in the open doorway, light flowing over the clothing racks, the
kind of indoor light you get sometimes that’s full of golden dust. We haven’t been
back.

Frenchie lowered his voice some more. “How about I get you three grand by tonight?”

Bernie got a look in his eyes like he was going to smile. His smile is one of the
best things going. I gave his face all my attention, but no smile came. “Sure, Frenchie,”
he said. “You do that.”

Our place is on Mesquite Road. We’ve got the canyon in back, open country all the
way to the airport in one direction and up to the Rio Arroyo Bridge in the other,
and long ago, Bernie says, when his great-grandfather owned this whole stretch of
the Valley it was all like that, nice and empty, but now houses lined both sides of
the canyon and were even starting to creep down the sides in some places. Bernie has
this dream—I know because once after he had a few drinks he told me about it—that
one day we’d wake up and it would be the old way again. I checked first thing every
morning for a long time after that, but now I often forget.

As we pulled into the driveway, Iggy started up inside the Parsonses’ house next door.
Yip yip yip. Yip yip yip
. That was Iggy, a yipper through and through. Iggy’s been my best pal for almost
longer than I can remember—and sometimes actually longer, if that makes any sense—but
he doesn’t come out to play anymore, partly on account of some sort of electric fence
problem and partly on account of the Parsonses being so old now, what with Mrs. Parsons
in the hospital and Mr. Parsons on a walker. I could see Iggy standing in the side
window, front paws against the glass and his weird stubby tail going crazy down below.
I barked at him, a low rumbly bark that couldn’t have been friendlier. That
seemed to get Iggy going, not my intention at all. His yipping rose higher and higher
in a way that hurt me deep in my ears. I barked louder, sending a message. It did
no good.

“Chet!” Bernie said. “What the hell? Get in the house.”

Me? This was on me? How come? I went inside, not realizing at first that my own tail
was down, practically dragging on the floor in the front hall. I got it up, pronto,
nice and high. Bernie always says never let them see you something or other, it might
come to me later, but the point is: tail up.

We had drinks in the kitchen, bourbon for Bernie, water for me. As he filled the bowl
at the sink, he clinked his glass against it and said, “Cheers.” He took the check
out of his front pants pocket, looked at it for a moment or two, and then—oh, no,
tucked it away in the chest pocket of his shirt, just when I thought we had everything
under control.

Bernie sat down at the computer. I went for a little roam around the house, ended
up in Charlie’s room. His mattress was bare. Charlie is Bernie’s kid, and we don’t
see him much, Charlie now living with Leda, Bernie’s ex-wife and her new husband,
Malcolm, up in High Chaparral Estates, probably the fanciest neighborhood in the Valley.
I hopped on the mattress and sniffed around, Charlie’s scent—a bit like Bernie’s,
but without the funky part—real easy to pick up. I had a notion to lie down even though
I wasn’t tired, but then I heard the clink of Bernie adding more ice cubes to his
drink, or possibly pouring another, and I went back to the kitchen.

Yes, a brand-new drink topped up pretty high. Bernie turned to me.

“Did a search for Ralph Boutette,” he said. “And guess what?”

I waited.

“No hits.”

Bernie sipped his bourbon. I went over to my water bowl, lapped up a sip or two of
my own.

“See what this means?”

I did not. And even if I had, I was much more interested in the sound of a car approaching
on our street. Was it slowing down as it neared the house? Yes. That made it even
more interesting. I glanced at Bernie to see if he found it interesting, too, but
he showed no sign he heard a thing. Human ears: a puzzler. Sometimes they’re so small—take
Suzie’s ears, for example, Suzie being Bernie’s girlfriend, but she’d taken a job
far away and now Bernie’s sleeps were restless—that it’s not fair to expect them to
do much hearing, although Bernie’s ears aren’t like that, not even close, so what’s
the story?

“With missing people,” he said, “you get hits. Police department hits, reward hits,
newspaper hits.”

He rose, dropped more ice cubes into his glass, and tossed me one, which I caught
in midair and crunched up in no time. Nothing like an ice cube to make your teeth
tingle. My insides, still hot from the day even though we had the A/C on—never blasting,
which was one of our things, at least Bernie’s—started cooling down nicely. I had
no complaints, in fact, felt tip-top.

“So therefore?” Bernie said.

I went still. The way we have the work divided up here at the Little Detective Agency,
Bernie handles the so therefores, and what comes next is always important. But in
the stillness I heard a car door close with a soft
thump
out on the street, and then came footsteps on our stone path, footsteps with a little
click-click
that meant high heels. I forgot about whatever I’d been waiting for and trotted to
the front door. Leda often wore high heels, Suzie almost never. Other than that, I
had no ideas.

Knock knock
. Leda’s was much quicker than this one, Suzie’s more solid. I barked.

“Chet?” Bernie called.

Knock knock.

“Someone at the door?”

Oh, Bernie. I barked again. What else could I do?

He came into the hall: flip-flops, shorts, T-shirt, drink in hand.

Knock knock.

Bernie heard it this time. He put down the drink, smoothed his hair, opened the door.

Bernie’s always the smartest human in the room, but the woman standing on the step
was the kind of woman who could make it a close call. Not because of her brain so
much, more on account of her shape, her little dress, the look in her eyes, the makeup
around them. And the smell, a dead giveaway—although there was nothing dead about
it—but maybe just to me. In a contest between the human sense of hearing and the human
sense of smell there are only losers, no offense. But the point is a certain kind
of woman has a bad influence on Bernie’s braininess.