The Sound and the Furry (31 page)

Bernie poked the light around. We stood in a narrow corridor, the kind you get upstairs
in a shotgun house. There were two doors off the corridor, both closed. The first
was the bathroom with the toilet back-up problem. Bernie—gun in one hand and flashlight
in his mouth—turned the knob and pushed the door open with his shoulder. He glanced
quickly around at the wet mess, took the flashlight out of his mouth and whispered,
“This is where that stink is coming from.”

Or something like that. I was still stuck on the image of Bernie with the flashlight
in his mouth, one of the very best sights of my whole life. Was he going to start
carrying things in his mouth more often? I hoped so. At that moment something thudded
bump bump bump
against the wall behind me. One backward glance and I knew right away it was my tail.
I got it under control pronto: we were in quiet mode and I was a pro. Was it possible
that my tail was not a pro? What a scary thought! And now it was drooping? Up, tail,
and now! Up it went, nice and stiff, but for the first time I thought that I might
be wrong about this case and it was headed off the rails.

We came to the second door. Bernie, about to shift the flashlight to his mouth again—I’d
hardly had to hope at all—paused, and bent toward the knob. This was one of those
old-fashioned doors with a keyhole—and the key was in it. Bernie looked at me,
his eyes filled with some sort of meaning that didn’t come to me then and there. He
turned the key, took a step to the side, keeping me behind him, mostly, meaning away
from the door, then reached out with his hand and pushed the door open. This was when
gunfire sometimes happened—and there was someone in the room, no doubt about that,
someone I knew—but no gunfire happened. We moved in, the .38 Special pointing the
way.

“Drrm froom,” said someone inside.

Bernie aimed the beam in the direction of the sound. This room had nothing in it but
a big gas can in a corner and two chairs in the center, one of which was empty. Duct-taped
to the other chair hand and foot, with one of those horrible ball gags in his mouth,
sat Lord Boutette, his straggly goatee even stragglier than before, and again wearing
only his tighty whiteys, except now they weren’t so white. Lord’s eyes were open wide
and seemed to . . . to be begging for something, the way you might beg for a treat,
which was a no-no in the nation within, at least at the table.

“Didn’t expect you here,” Bernie said. “I’m disappointed.”

“Hrrum?” said Lord.

“Who tied you up?” Bernie said. “What’s the story?”

Lord got louder. “Mrraanf ! Frummrr!”

“You want me to take the gag off?” Bernie said.

Lord nodded his head, kind of violently. His neck made a cracking sound.

“I have no objection to doing that,” Bernie said, “on one condition.”

“Wrrr?”

“That when you open your mouth, nothing comes out but the truth.”

More nodding. “Rrrr. Rrrr.” Lord was actually sounding a
bit like Spike, buddy of mine who hangs out at Nixon Panero’s Autobody.

“The moment I hear a false note,” Bernie said, “the gag goes right back on. Plus we
leave you here for whatever’s coming your way.”

Head nodding turned quickly, with another neck crack, to head shaking. “Nnnnnrrh,
nnnnnrrh.” I found myself beginning to understand Lord just about better than any
human I’d ever met.

Bernie tucked the .38 Special back in his belt, avoided a little puddle at Lord’s
feet, and untied the ball gag. He held on to it, the ball dangling within my reach,
but that was one ball I didn’t want to play with.

Lord made stretching motions with his mouth. “Goddamn nightmare,” he said. “Cut me
loose, man. Get me out of here.”

“How did the nightmare start?” Bernie said.

“Very first time I got married,” Lord said. “Would you believe the bride started making
out with Duke at the reception? He was fourteen, for Christ sake. Can we finish up
with the memories somewheres else?”

“I meant this particular nightmare,” Bernie said, waving the flashlight.

“Like how I got here?”

“Exactly like that.”

“I’ll tell it much better if I can get some fresh air.”

“Then we’ll settle for the lesser version,” Bernie said.

“Huh?”

Bernie raised the ball gag up to Lord’s eye level.

“Can’t you at least untie me?”

“Maybe in a bit.”

“Whose side are you on?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out. I’ll need your story.”

Lord took a deep breath. “Do my best,” Lord said. “Step up to the plate, despite of
feelin’ like shit.”

“Played much baseball, Lord?”

“Never,” said Lord. “But I had the rules down cold, back in the day.”

“Yeah?”

“Umped Little League games,” Lord said. “Till the bastards canned me.”

“You took payoffs from some of the dads?” Bernie said.

Lord gave Bernie a sideways look. “Who’s been talkin’?”

“Nobody.”

“You, like, guessed?”

“It’s not important,” Bernie said. “Back to how you got here.”

“There was only two dads,” Lord said. “But their goddamn kids were pitchers on—what’s
the word?”

“Opposite.”

“Yeah, opposite teams. See the problem?”

“The clock is ticking,” Bernie said.

A problem, right there. I heard no clock. Was it possible Bernie could hear something
I could not? Not a chance. So therefore? Good thing Bernie handled the so therefores,
meaning I didn’t have to go there, there being the idea of Bernie making a mistake.
Uh-oh: did I just go there anyway? Sometimes the mind had a mind of its own, and there
was nothing you could do.

“You want to know how I got here?” Lord said. “That it?”

“And fast,” Bernie said.

“Then the joke’s on you, pal. ’Cause I don’t have a clue where the hell I am.” Lord
started laughing. Laughter is usually the best human sound, but not Lord’s, which
was high-pitched and squeaky. “Don’t think your dog likes me,” he said.

“What makes you think that?”

“The look in his eyes,” Lord said. “Like he’s a stone killer.”

Stone killer? Me? I had no desire to hurt Lord the slightest bit; and then, all of
a sudden, I did! How about that?

“Chet just wants to hear your story,” Bernie said. “And I’d make it quick and to the
point. He has zero tolerance for pussy-footing.”

Nothing truer than that, amigo. Lord got the idea and started talking fast.

“All I knows is I was mindin’ my own business—that’s how I am, ask anybody—just sittin’
in front of the tube with a cold one and a joint watchin’ LSU football—what else’m
I gonna do, that son of a bitch shackle around my ankle—when all of a sudden I hear
footsteps somewheres at the back of the house. Thought it was Duke, you know? Who
else has a key? So I said, ‘Duke? That you?’ kind of thing. No answer. I took maybe
one more hit or two, thinkin’ it musta been my imagination. I got a real good imagination—I’m
kind of a writer, in fact.”

“Yeah?” Bernie said.

“Song lyrics,” Lord said. “One thing about Duke is he’s musical.”

“I’ve heard him play.”

“Then you know. Thing is, he comes up with these tunes, but he don’t have the words
for them, mind don’t work that way. Where I come in. We’ve been workin’ on an album
for a year or two or four, should be puttin’ some feelers out soon to the industry.
Workin’ title’s
Boomin’ You Baby in the Boom Boom Room
—that’s also the leadoff song.”

For a tiny moment, Bernie got a look in his eyes that made me think he was about to
laugh. No laughter happened. Instead, he said, “But it wasn’t Duke.”

“Huh?”

“Making noise at the back of your house.”

“Oh, that. No, not Duke, for goddamn sure. And it wasn’t my imagination neither. Problem
was, the way I was sittin’, had my back to the hall.”

“When you were watching football.”

“Like I said. LSU Tigers—I’m a big fan. Had a beer or two with Billy Cannon way back
when, swear to God.”

“But it wasn’t him either.”

“Huh? Hell, you’re pullin’ my leg.”

I checked out Lord’s scrawny legs. Bernie would have no problem pulling them right
off him, if they hadn’t been tied to the chair.

“. . . not Duke, not Billy Cannon,” Lord was saying. “But I can’t tell you who it
was. I called out—still thinkin’ it was Duke, understand—‘In here, Duke, watchin’
the game’—and I remember distinctly leaning forward to crack open another coldie,
but after that—blank.”

“Blank?”

“Next thing I knew I was in this goddamn room tied to this goddamn chair.” He glanced
at the boarded-up window. “Where am I, anyways?”

“We’ll get to that,” Bernie said. “What happened when you came to?”

“I had this terrible headache.”

Bernie walked around Lord, peered at the back of his head. “Doesn’t look too bad.
Won’t even need stitches.”

“Still got the headache,” Lord said. “As if anyone cares, always the way. So I wake
up, get smacked by the headache, then the door opens and in comes this masked dude.
I start in on makin’ what noise I can, lettin’ him know I want the gag out and pronto.
Sucker comes over, leans in and points his finger at me, points
it and points it closer and closer till it’s right in my eye. Which I tried to close
but too late. So his finger’s on my eyeball, not pressing, but right there touching,
see what I mean.”

“I do.”

“So I stopped makin’ noise. He took off the gag, fed me half a sandwich and a drink
of water, and when he was done with that he gagged me up again and left.”

“Did he say anything?”

“Not that time. But he’s been back. Same dude, same mask, same thing with the sandwich
and the water, but for the once when he brought that other chair and the gas can.”
Lord jerked his head toward the gas can in the corner. “That was the only time he
spoke.”

“What did he say, word for word, if you can,” Bernie said.

“Word for word?” Lord squeezed his eyes shut real tight. “ ‘Bigmouth’—that’s what
he called me, Bigmouth—‘you’ll have company soon but not for long.’ That’s as close
as I can come.” Lord opened his eyes. “Didn’t know what to make of that. Sounded kind
of like a bad fortune cookie.”

Bernie smiled.

“What’s funny?” said Lord.

“Nothing,” Bernie told him. “What did this guy look like.”

“He had a mask on! Aren’t you listenin’?”

“Did he have a mask on his body, too?”

“Mask on his . . . I get it. Like his build, that kind of thing?” Bernie nodded. “He
was short, but real muscular.”

“Fireplug type?”

“Exactly.”

“Anything you can tell me about his speech?”

“Already gave it to you word for word.”

“Did he have an accent, for example?”

“Hell, yeah. You didn’t catch it when I did the word for word?”

“Sorry.”

“Hispanic,” Lord said. “There, that’s my whole goddamn story. Now get me out of this
hellhole.”

“No rush,” Bernie said. He got the gag back in Lord’s mouth and tied it tight. Lord’s
reaction wasn’t of the pleasant kind, so let’s skip it.

W
e’ve been ambushed more often than I want to think about, me and Bernie, but here’s
the fun part: sometimes we get to do a bit of ambushing ourselves! And this was turning
out to be one of those times. First, we covered up our traces, at least in human terms,
which meant Bernie had to re-board-up the back window, which he did, sort of, from
the inside. “Just a precaution,” he said. “Ten to one he comes in by the front door.”
Who was he talking about? I was considering taking a stab at that when I noticed the
drumstick still lying, mostly submerged, in a pool of water. I’d already taken a pass
on it, but why? Not a single good reason came to me. Soggy, but so what? I made a
quick decision, always the best kind.

Second, we hid out. Hiding out isn’t as easy as you might think, at least for me.
In between cases, we’ve done a lot of work on my hiding-out skills. Hiding out means
sitting still and quiet until it’s time to spring into action. Sounds easy, maybe,
but I’ve had some problems with it in the past. The day, for example, when I’d ended
up ambushing the flower delivery lady? “Room for improvement there, big guy,” Bernie
had said while he was
writing the check. Working on hiding-out skills meant sitting quietly until Bernie
gave this special little nod. Then came a treat, a rawhide chew, maybe, or a Slim
Jim, or even a burger, if we happened to have swung by Burger Heaven. Just between
you and me, I actually got the hang of the hiding-out thing sometime back, but I’ve
done what I could to keep the lessons going. Forget I mentioned that.

Only two rooms upstairs, so we had to hide out in the bathroom with the toilet back-up
issue. Bernie mopped up what he could using some old towels from under the sink. Then
he sat on the edge of the tub. Even though sitting was the right procedure, I stood
instead, sitting on those soaking towels seeming not too attractive. My paws have
a way of taking care of themselves but cleaning up my fur takes work.

Nighttime with the only window boarded up made for a black as black bathroom, and
not much in the way of air. It was kind of nice, just me and Bernie together, not
kicking back, exactly, but enjoying a quiet moment. Was Bernie enjoying it, too? I
wasn’t sure on account of these faint gasping sounds he let out from time to time,
but then I felt his hand giving me a little pat on the back and I knew. A little later
I happened to find a thickish shred of fried chicken under my tongue. Did I have it
pretty good or what?

Time passed, no telling how much. I listened to what was available, such as Bernie
breathing, a faint gurgling in the pipes, distant sirens. Then came the amped-down
throb throb
of an approaching motorcycle out front. Were motorcycles in the case? I had a feeling
they might be. My ears went up and I almost took a step—might actually have taken
a small one—toward the closed bathroom door. I sensed Bernie, already still, going
stiller.