The Sound and the Furry (33 page)

An unseen fist whizzed past my nose—although not so fast that I didn’t pick up a whiff
of aftershave—and thudded into human flesh. Then came a grunt from Bernie, followed
by more flesh thuds from all directions, the whole tornado spinning faster and faster
and faster and—

CRASH!
I heard shattering glass, and almost at the same instant, the splintering of wood.
Light entered the room at once, weak night light from outside, but enough to make
out the window—glass now broken, boarding-up boards now knocked out—and beyond it,
framed by the empty window and still spinning, although slowly, and hanging outside
in midair: Pyro.

But you can’t hang in midair, not for long, not humans, not us in the nation within.
From the look on Pyro’s face I got the feeling he was thinking that very same thing.
And the thought was just starting to scare him when he dropped out of sight. Nothing . . .
nothing . . .
thud
.

Bernie and I rushed to the window—Bernie jumping right over Lord, still in his chair
now lying sideways on the floor for some reason—and looked down.

Pyro lay in a bad position in the small paved-over yard behind the house. He crawled
for a tiny bit, and then he didn’t.

“Is he, ah, like . . .?” Lord said.

We stood in the paved-over yard behind Cleotis’s place, me, Bernie, Lord—now ungagged—all
looking down at Pyro, lying in the circle of the flashlight’s beam.

“What do you think?” Bernie said.

Bernie was angry at Lord? I wondered why, found no reason, but got ready to be angry
at Lord myself.

“What do I think?” Lord said. “I think you’re way scarier than you look.”

“Shut up.”

Lord swallowed whatever had been coming next, a lump of words I could actually see
bob up and then down in his scrawny neck. Meanwhile, Bernie was squatting close beside
Pyro, taking Pyro’s hand in his, turning it palm up.

“Dincha already check for a pulse?” Lord said, forgetting about the shutting-up thing
pretty fast. “Or maybe it’s gonna start up again? Saw that in a movie once.”

Bernie didn’t answer. He was peering at the big muscle at the base of Pyro’s thumb.

“Mighta been with Vin Diesel,” said Lord. “The one where he . . .” Lord moved in closer.
“Hey—dude wrote something on his hand? Used to do that myself back when I was a kid.”
He squatted down beside Bernie. “Looks like a phone number, huh?” he said. “Seven
one three—that’s Houston.”

“Seven one three,” Bernie said in this low voice he has for speaking to himself, including
me in it, too, of course, goes without mentioning. And then came a bunch more numbers.

“You can memorize phone numbers?” Lord said. “Just like that, I mean, no going over
and over and—”

“Shut up,” said Bernie.

“Can I squeeze in a question first?”

“What is it?”

“Headed back down to St. Roch by any chance? I could use a lift.”

Bernie gave him a long look.

“What?” said Lord. “What did I do?”

“What did he do?” said Henry, the big cop who was Bernie’s friend on the force in
these parts. Lots of people had joined us in the paved-over yard, most of them in
uniform.

“Got framed for a shrimp heist he knew nothing about,” Bernie said. “And then got
separated from his ankle monitor, also not his doing.”

Henry gazed down at Lord. “What’s up with you?” he said. “Bad karma?”

“For sure,” Bernie said. “But he is alive.”

Henry turned toward the body. “This the guy you were searching for?”

“No.”

“Just another dead man turning up in the course of your investigation?” Henry glanced
around. “Also interesting is the fact that the first one OD’d on heroin and until
recently a smack dealer name of Cleotis Moore was operating out of this house. Feels
like I should be putting some pieces together.”

“Maybe we can have a word,” Bernie said.

“I’d like that,” said Henry.

Meanwhile, Lord was kind of drifting away in a direction that might take him around
the house and out on the street. That didn’t feel right, although I didn’t know why,
confusing me a bit, and in my case confusion sometimes leads to growling. And what
was this? The remains of the ham and cheese sandwich slipping out from between my
jaws? How had it even gotten there? Plus a scrap of the brown paper bag was hanging
from my chin? I got rid of it pronto.
Get it together, big guy! We’re on the job!

“What the hell?” Bernie said, glancing around and spotting Lord. “Get back here!”

Lord paused, one foot in the air, for a strange moment somewhat
resembling a member of the nation within. “Thought I’d be moving on,” he said. “On
account of what you were saying to the lieutenant here about my innocence and all.”

“Wouldn’t be in your best interest,” Bernie said.

A long discussion got started on the subject of Lord’s best interest, impossible to
follow, but it ended with a cruiser coming up through an alley, Lord getting helped
into the backseat, and then he was off to central booking, a real unhappy look on
his face.

“I’ll spring him soon as I get to the bottom of all this,” Bernie said. “Right now
he’s in danger.”

“From who?” said Henry.

“The Quieros on your radar?”

“Central American drug gang? I heard they’ve expanded on up to Houston.”

Bernie pointed at Pyro with his chin.

“Telling me they’re here?”

“He is.”

Henry sighed. He glanced over at the house. “And Cleotis Moore?”

“They either paid him off, ran him off, or shot him.”

Henry looked down at his shoes, highly polished shoes, shining in the night. “Any
chance these Quieros turned up here in my town on account of you?”

Bernie didn’t answer.

“Have a safe trip home, Bernie,” Henry said. They didn’t shake hands.

“Are we the common thread, big guy?” Bernie said. “That’s a disturbing thought.”

I took a swing at feeling disturbed, couldn’t quite manage it. Might have done better
if I hadn’t been in the shotgun seat at the
moment, and us rolling down a quiet street under clear skies, the night warm and soft:
hard to feel disturbed at a time like that, beyond my capabilities.

“But maybe it gives us a chance to work backward,” Bernie added after a while.

Working backward! One of our very best techniques—don’t look my way for an explanation—and
we hadn’t used it ages. This case was as good as solved, maybe even better. I tried
to remember who was paying.

“. . . means they’re going after our sources,” Bernie was saying, “starting with Mack
Larouche. That led them to Cleotis—kind of peripheral in their eyes, unless I’m slipping
up on something. So either he’s not peripheral or they’re not that good. Am I missing
some other alternative?”

Bernie missing something? The answer to that was always the same: impossible.

“Then there’s Lord, not peripheral.” He fell silent, but I could feel his thoughts,
going deep and coming back up. “. . . and Pyro’s job? Burn down the house—just another
crazy drug thing, optics-wise—with Lord and one other person in it. Who else but Ralph?”
His hand tightened on the wheel. “Or is that wishful thinking? Don’t those glasses
of his make him a goner already?”

A puzzler. Was there a kind of thinking that wasn’t wishful? I found myself . . .
wishing the answer would come to me, and began to feel vaguely disturbed after all.

Bernie banged the wheel, disturbing me even more. “Shrimp? We ate the damn shrimp!”
He glanced at me. “You think it’s funny.” Huh? I wasn’t thinking about anything at
all, except for the taste of shrimp, and I wasn’t really thinking about it very hard.
“Maybe it is funny,” he said, and laughed, a laugh that started out as more of a grunt
but soon turned loud and lovely. I stopped feeling
disturbed. Everything was . . . not peachy, exactly, on account of those huge pits
peaches had inside them, always spoiling the experience; let’s just call it pretty
good.

Bernie’s laughter faded. “Tired of getting pushed around, big guy?” he said. “I sure
as hell am.” Uh-oh—we were getting pushed around? Time to put that to bed, and pronto.
I waited to find out how. “Seven one three is Houston,” Bernie said. He took out his
phone and began pecking at the buttons, then paused and put the phone away. “Need
a payphone, Chet. Keep your eyes peeled.”

My eyes peeled? That sounded too horrible to think about. And payphones? A new one
on me. I sat up straight and tall in the shotgun seat, on alert for I didn’t know
what, a total pro, on the job.

We drove around for a while. “Used to be a payphone on every corner,” Bernie said.
“How about we all ratchet back to nineteen fifty-nine and live there from now on?”
What was this? Moving from the Valley? I wasn’t so sure about that, was still trying
to get my mind around the concept when Bernie pulled over in front of a convenience
store.

“You stay here,” he said, scooping up a bunch of coins from the cup holder and getting
out. A few moments later, I hopped out myself, not certain I’d heard right and afraid
of making a rookie mistake. Not afraid, exactly, the truth of the matter being I’m
not afraid of anything. Then I thought of Iko.

I followed Bernie up to a sort of open metal box hanging on the wall of the convenience
store. Hey! It had a phone inside! I’d seen these before! Chet the Jet, on top of
his game!

Bernie shoved some coins into the slot, punched the buttons, put the receiver to his
ear. Instead of sitting beside him, my usual spot, I kept a little distance between
us; it seemed the way to go, hard to explain why. But I had no problem hearing what
was happening
on the other end. First came a single ring, and then a click, followed by a man saying,
“Yeah?” I was pretty sure I recognized the voice. Bernie said nothing. The man said,
“Hello? Hello?” and then came another click and the hum the phone makes when the call
is over, and now I was totally sure.

Bernie hung up the phone in a slow, thoughtful way and turned. He noticed me, maybe
where I was I supposed to be, maybe not, one of those gray-area type of things, and
said, “You’ll never guess who that was.”

Guess? I didn’t have to guess. When someone tries to hurt me, the sound of his voice
stays in my memory forever.

“Cale Rugh,” Bernie said.

Meaning we were on the same page. My tail started revving.

Bernie gave me a look. “Think you got away with something, huh, Chet?”

That friendly if puzzling little message—I could tell it was friendly from the way
his face wanted to smile even if he wasn’t letting it—went right over my head, zip
and gone, leaving nothing but a nice warm feeling. I was ready to take on anything.
Perps and gangbangers: time’s up!

S
tep one,” said Bernie, as we crossed back over the mighty Mississip and headed down
to bayou country, “let’s rerun Fleurette’s story.” Sounded like a good step to me:
although I hadn’t the slightest difficulty remembering Fleurette, especially the taste
of her tears, any story she might have told us had vanished.