The Sound and the Furry (22 page)

“You shittin’ me, man?” Duke said. “We’s all about livin’ in the past.”

Humans say lots of things I don’t get. That one was the most ungettable I’d heard
so far. I didn’t waste any time on it, instead inched closer to Duke, walking right
beside him in my most companionable style. In my judgment, the grip he had on that
foil-wrapped package was kind of loose, even careless.

Duke knocked on the door of Lord’s little green and yellow house. No answer. He knocked
again.

“Your goddamn grub’s here—open up.”

The door stayed closed. I heard no sound from within, except for a running toilet,
which happens all the time with toilets, even ours, and is one sound Bernie can hear
real, real well. “There’s only one aquifer, big guy. When it’s gone, it’s gone.” He’d
bought a new toilet and installed it himself, the plumber only coming at
the very end, and the mopping up hadn’t even taken the whole afternoon. Plus the fun
we’d had! As for toilets in general: way too big a subject to go into now.

“Ain’t even his normal nap time.” Duke knocked again much harder. “Goddamn!” He made
an impatient gesture and the foil wrapped package slipped from his—but no. Somehow
he got a grip on it at the last instant. While all that was going on, Bernie reached
out and turned the doorknob. The door opened.

“What the hell is wrong with him?” Duke said. “Who leaves doors unlocked in this town?”

We went inside.

“Lord? Lord?” Duke called. He put his hands around his mouth in a shape like the opening
of a trumpet—love when humans do that!—and tried again.

No answer. Plenty of Lord scent around—not one of those everyday showerers, no doubt
about that—although not as fresh as I would have expected, plus . . . what was this?
Aftershave? Yes, the same square green bottle aftershave that Bernie used to like
before Suzie put a stop to it. I’d picked up this aftershave scent somewhere else,
and not too long ago. On Lord? Nope. I’m pretty good at remembering who smells like
what, hard to explain why, just one of the things I bring to the table at the Little
Detective Agency. But as for where I’d picked up this particular scent before, the
answer refused to come forward in my mind, instead flitted about at the very edge.
Does that ever happen to you? A very frustrating feeling. All of a sudden I wanted
to lift my leg—just a notion, of course—against this hat stand Lord had in his front
hall. You’d probably get some different sort of notion.

“Chet?” Bernie said. “What are you thinking?”

Whoa! I seemed to be right beside the hat stand and my leg was—not up all way, but
certainly rising. How had that happened? I
lowered my leg pronto, gave myself a good shake, clearing my mind of any bad notions—in
fact, clearing it of everything—and followed Bernie and Duke into the kitchen, tail
up, head up, a total pro.

They stopped in an abrupt sort of way, just inside the room. I squeezed in between
them.

“Tell me I’m seein’ things,” Duke said.

Why would he want Bernie to do that? Of course, he was seeing things—weren’t we all?
I myself was seeing the old-fashioned stove with the claw feet—no bacon under it today,
which I’d known from outside in the hall—the kitchen table where Bernie and the two
brothers had polished off a bottle of bourbon, and on the table a sort of ripped apart
black thing that might actually have been—

“Son of a bitch tore off the tether,” Duke said.

Bernie nodded.

“What happens now?” Duke said.

“Jail time,” Bernie said. “Soon as they run him down.”

“What was the one you said was worse than a moron?”

“Cretin,” Bernie said, “but they’re not scientific terms and probably no longer socially
acceptable.”

“Socially acceptable?” said Duke. “What’s that sposta mean?”

“I’m actually not sure,” Bernie said, moving to the table. He picked up a sheet of
paper lying under the remains of Lord’s ankle monitor, held it so Duke could see.

“He left a note?” Duke said.

“Is this his handwriting?”

“How the hell would I know?”

“You’re his brother.”

“So? Think he was a novelist or something? Never wrote a word in his life, far as
I know.”

“What about in school?”

“Ralph did all the assignments—thought we’d been over this.”
He grabbed the note and started reading. “ ‘Dear Duke, Thanks for bringing over the
supper—steak teriyaki, right?—but I’m up to here with this shit. I stole the damn
shrimp, I confess. Meaning with my record I’d be doing time. Well, I ain’t going to
do no more time and that’s that. I’m taking off for parts unknown and don’t come looking
for me. I’ll be back when the dust settles. Tell Mami I love her. Your bro, Lord Royal
Boutette.’ ”

“His middle name is Royal?” Bernie said.

“All of us got Royal for a middle name. ’Cepting Ralph, of course.”

“What’s his?”

“Can’t see what that’s got to do with anything.”

“Never know in this business.”

Duke gazed at Bernie for a moment or so. Did he see that brightness in Bernie’s eyes,
always a sign that he was enjoying himself? I sure did.

“Albert,” Duke said. “Ralph Albert Boutette.”

Bernie nodded. “What I’d like you to do now is read the note over—”

“ ‘Dear Duke, Thanks for—’ ”

“—silently, and try to figure out whether it sounds like Lord.”

“Sounds like him and silently at the same time?”

“Take a swing at it.”

Duke shrugged, raised the note. His eyes went back and forth, back and forth, and
his lips started moving although no sound came out. Charlie’s lips did the same thing
when he read: it looked way better on him.

“Hell, I don’t know,” Duke said. “Like what does Lord sound like, anyhow?”

“You’re his brother.”

“Why do you keep hammerin’ me on that? You sayin’ he sounds like me?”

“I’m saying you’ve known him your whole life,” Bernie said, “meaning you must have
a feel for how he expresses himself.”

“Lord? He can’t express himself for shit.”

“Do you see that absence in the note?”

“Absence?”

“Is he expressing himself in his usual shitty way?”

Duke took another look. “Even shittier.”

“How so?”

“How so? You think it’s a smart idea, cuttin’ off his goddamn ankle bracelet and takin’
off like this?”

“Good question,” Bernie said. “But not the one in front of us at the moment.”

“No? How come?”

“Another good question,” Bernie said. “You should be doing my job.”

Duke laughed. He turned out to be one of those human laughers who open their mouth
so wide you can see that strange pink thing hanging down at the back, a sight I don’t
like, no telling why. “Then I could pay myself ’steada you,” he said.

Bernie went still. When he spoke his voice was extra-calm. I always listen for that
extra-calm voice of his. What often happens next isn’t calm at all.

“Are you paying me, Duke?”

“Uh, how do you mean?”

“Vannah gave us a three-grand cash retainer,” Bernie said, “but if you—”

“Three grand? That thievin’—” Duke cut himself off, looked around in a confused sort
of way, and happened to notice he was still holding the foil-wrapped steak teriyaki.
He put them down on the tab—no, not the table. At the last second he maybe realized
that would involve shoving the remains of the ankle monitor aside, so
instead he laid the package on the nearest chair, which happened to be the chair right
beside me. I’m having a very good life.

“Vannah did a little skimming?” Bernie said.

Duke licked his lips. “Not followin’ you.”

“Where did that retainer come from?”

“Can’t say as I know.”

“If you had to guess.”

“I’m a real bad guesser,” Duke said. “If I guessed the sun would rise tomorrow it
wouldn’t.”

What was that? Something pretty scary. I tried to concentrate real hard, not so easy
when at the same time you’re kind of pawing a foil-wrapped package toward the edge
of a chair until it . . . until it slips off and falls to the floor, landing very
gently and making just the faintest crinkly metallic sound, almost certainly unhearable
by human ears. I nosed it over to a cozy space between the stove and the fridge and
hunkered down.

Then came more talk about the retainer, but they didn’t mention its shrimpy smell,
and after a while Bernie circled back to the note, which had to be the way to go.
Bernie’s a great interviewer, as lots of dudes breaking rocks in the hot sun could
tell you.

“Forgetting the meaning of the note for the time being,” he was saying, “and focusing
just on the style, is it typical of Lord?”

“What’s style?” Duke said.

Bernie took the note. “Here, for example, where he writes ‘Tell Mami I love her.’
Is that him?”

“Why the hell not? We love each other in this family.”

Bernie—my Bernie, down under the interviewing Bernie, if that makes any sense, and
if not, forget it—shot him a real quick glance, here and gone.

Duke leaned closer to Bernie, jabbed at the note. “But this right here—”

“ ‘Your bro, Lord Royal Boutette?’ ”

“Yeah. That ain’t him.”

Bernie—Bernie blinked? A total first. Was this case turning out to be a tough one?
It didn’t feel the slightest bit tough to me. I polished off the last of the steak
teriyaki, conveniently prepared in bite-size chunks, although I’m not fussy about
things like that.

“Are you telling me his middle name isn’t Royal after all?” Bernie said.

“No way, Jose,” Duke said. “I’m talkin’ about this bro shit. Boutettes don’t go in
for no bro shit.”

“Lord wouldn’t use the word
bro
?”

“What I just said. We don’t talk no jive talk.”

Bernie’s face got a little harder. What was wrong? Weren’t we getting places with
the note? My feeling, maybe crazy: All we had to do now was ID this Jose dude and
we could head for home.

And maybe Bernie was thinking the same thing, because he glanced around, found me
in my little spot, and said, “Okay, Chet, let’s—” Then came a pause, Bernie’s gaze
perhaps taking in the crumpled and torn remnants of the tin foil, although perhaps
not. He cleared his throat. “Ah, hit the road. Time to split, big guy.”

“Just a goddamn second,” Duke said. Uh-oh. But his eyes were on Bernie, not me. “What
does it mean, the style, all that?”

“Leave the note on the table,” Bernie said. “The cops’ll want to see it. And Duke?”

“Yeah?”

“Watch your back.”

“That a threat?” Duke said, jutting out his chin, a very goat-like look, and not just
because of the goatee, although I’m sure that helped.

“Not from me,” Bernie said.

C
ould it be,” Bernie said as we walked to the car, “all just one big—”

One big what? I wanted to know, but Bernie had come to a stop in front of a store
with cigar boxes in the window.

“How about we pop in here for a sec?”

We popped into the store and Bernie—oh, no—bought a pack of cigarettes. A whole pack:
something he hadn’t done since I couldn’t remember when, certainly not today or yesterday.
Back outside he broke the pack open and lit up.

“Ah,” he said, smoke drifting slowly from his nose, as he turned into smoking Bernie,
a more relaxed dude than regular Bernie. “What is it about smoking that makes you
think better?”

I had no clue, but then came maybe the most amazing thought of my life so far: If
smoking really made you think better, then he’d know the answer to the question! Wow!
I thought that? No way, Jose! Uh-oh: Jose? Again? Hadn’t that just come up? Did I
know any Joses? Did I even want to right now? No, what I wanted to do right now was
think that amazing thought I’d just had all over again. But . . . but it was gone!

“What’re you panting about?” Bernie said. “Thirsty, big guy?”

Thirsty? No! What I wanted was to . . . to . . .

We came to the car. Bernie dug under my seat for the water bowl—not my big kitchen
water bowl from back home, but the smaller fold-up one for road trips. He filled it
with a water bottle from the drink holder and set it on the sidewalk for me. I lapped
up every drop.

Bernie laughed. “Knew you were,” he said, giving me a nice pat. “Gotta hydrate like
crazy down here.”

Not sure what that was about, but doing things like crazy couldn’t be bad. Hydrate,
was that it? Something to look forward to!

Bernie leaned against the car in a real relaxed kind of way. “Suppose,” he said, sucking
in more smoke, the cigarette end glowing bright, “things aren’t what they seem and
it turns out we’ve got a red herring on our hands.”

Red herring? That came up in some of our cases, usually the worst. Wasn’t this case
going smoothly so far? I didn’t see any problems. And the truth was I had yet to catch
sight of a single red herring in my whole career, or even smell one from a distance.
I eyed Bernie’s hands, strong hands and beautifully shaped, in case that hasn’t come
up already: a cigarette in one, nothing in the other, meaning no red herring on the
scene.