The Sound and the Furry (37 page)

“Chet! What are you barking at?”

I swung around to Bernie and barked some more. He had to see this.

“What? What?”

I turned back toward the water, Bernie following my gaze. The creature was gone.

“Easy, big guy. Need to be on the top of our game tonight.”

But—

Sometime after that, the moon now lower in the sky, some lights rose up ahead, a small
group of lights and not very bright. Bernie
slowed the boat, and as he did I picked up the distant
whap whap whap
of chopper blades. The
whap whap whap
grew louder, became
WHAP WHAP WHAP
, and then high above appeared two white lights with a flashing red one at the back,
which was all you saw of choppers at night. It made a big circle out past the small
group of lights, came back toward us, maybe dipping down a little, and then zoomed
off in the direction of land.

“Who’s that?” Bernie said.

Wes gazed at the sky. “Don’t know,” he said. “Maybe one of ours?”

Bernie throttled back a little more. We bobbed up and down in the water in a soothing
sort of way. I was considering a brief nap when Bernie left the wheel and walked up
to the cabin, crouched in front of Wes.

“You understand how this is going down?” he said.

“I take us in at the south end,” Wes said. “I don’t tie up. Cale brings Ralph down
in the lift. I act normal.”

“You’re leaving out an important detail,” Bernie said.

“If I screw up, you shoot me.”

Bernie nodded. He took out a key, removed Wes’s cuffs. Wes rose, rubbing his wrists,
and went to the wheel. Bernie made the little
click-click
sound meaning “come,” and the two of us moved under the cabin roof in the bow. A
roof is always nice, makes you feel safe. Bernie sat on a boat cushion. I curled up
beside him. From there I had a good view through a small round window.

“Now,” Bernie said.

Wes hit the throttle, his face green in the light of the console dials.

Through the small round window I saw the group of lights drawing closer. They began
to come together in a shape that reminded
me of things Charlie built with his Erector set. This particular thing was a sort
of big steel deck perched on beams that rose up out of the sea. There was a whole
little camp on the deck with some buildings, a crane, and lots of battered and dirty-looking
equipment. The smell of the sea changed a bit, became more oily. Hey! This had to
be the oil platform everyone kept talking about! Chet the Jet, in the picture! Bernie
made a motion with his hand and Wes throttled back. I sat up.

The platform, much bigger than I’d thought, loomed high above us. Wes, going real
slow now, took us on a long curve out past the platform and then back around and in
from the far side, steering between two support beams and cutting the engine when
we were right under the high steel deck.

It was quiet under the platform, just a low machine hum coming from above, plus the
sounds of the sea sucking at the support beams, which were actually like huge legs.
I had a crazy thought—the sea wants to suck this whole thing down off its metal feet—which
I forgot right away, and then Wes was watching Bernie. Bernie pointed his finger at
Wes in the signal for go. Wes looked up in the direction we couldn’t see, and called,
“All set.”

A long pause, followed by a voice from above, Cale Rugh’s voice, in fact, which didn’t
surprise me at all, now that I was in the picture. “Sending the lift.”

Wes glanced at Bernie in surprise. Bernie gave him a hard look. “Huh?” Wes called.
“Aren’t you coming down with . . . aren’t you coming down?”

“Need your help up here first.”

Wes looked at Bernie again. Bernie gave him a nod.

“I’ll have to tie up,” Wes called up.

“Then tie up, for Christ sake,” Cale told him. “You’re wasting time.”

Wes moved to the stern, reached toward the nearest support beam with a boat hook,
pulled the boat closer, tied up. Then he let out some line and the boat drifted back
to where we’d been. Meanwhile, a creaking machine started up somewhere above, the
sound getting louder. A freight elevator came into view. This particular freight elevator
didn’t seem to have any walls. Its roof was attached to a thick cable that passed
on through and connected with the steel floor. The freight elevator came to a stop
right beside the boat and hovered there.

When humans get close to panic, a wild look appears in their eyes. It was happening
to Wes at that moment, but not to Bernie, whose eyes were calm. He made a little motion
for Wes to come. Wes left the wheel, made his way under the little cabin roof. Bernie
put his hand on Wes’s shoulder, kept it there until the panicky look left Wes’s eyes.
Then he cuffed Wes to a handrail—but in the friendliest way, like they were buddies
and Bernie was looking out for him—and mouthed something. Wes nodded and called up:
“On my way.”

Bernie and I moved to the front of the cabin, right to the very edge of the part covered
by the roof. Bernie put one hand on my collar—which sometimes happened when he thought
I might: actually I didn’t know what he thought—and peeked out. So did I. And what
we saw was that the roof of the freight elevator blocked any view from above. We slipped
over the side of the boat and got on the elevator. A little box with a button on it
dangled from the elevator roof. Bernie pressed the button. The elevator jerked and
started creaking up. Bernie took the .38 Special out of his waistband. I felt so alive!

Up and up we went, real slow. We reached the platform and kept going through a hole
made to fit the elevator. A man began to take shape from the bottom up. First came
his feet in cowboy boots, shiny boots gleaming in the moonlight, then—

But before any sort of thing could happen, the man bent down, so quick, and there
at point blank range was Cale with a gun in his hand. “Love the brainy types,” he
said. “They do all your work for you.” Bernie was still raising the .38 Special when
Cale pulled the trigger. Crack of the shot, thud of the bullet—oh, no—hitting Bernie
in his gun arm just above the elbow, blood seeping out right away, and the .38 Special
fell to the floor, bouncing, bouncing, and over the side.

When things are happening fast in this business, you have to be faster, which turns
out to be one of my specialties. I sprang out of the elevator, right at Cale. He swung
the gun in my direction. But Cale proved to be one of those many fast dudes who couldn’t
ramp it up to my kind of faster. I hit him on the chest and we went down, rolling
across the deck, and in midroll I caught a glimpse of another man close by, a roly-poly
garlicky-smelling man with his arms tied behind his back and a black bag over his
head. Maybe because of that sight, a bit disturbing, I got distracted, because all
at once Cale had a tight grip on my collar—he was a real strong guy, no question about
that—and was wrenching me around. I didn’t like that, and twisted backward, trying
to bring my teeth into play. He wrenched. I twisted. We rolled some more, me on top,
Cale on top, and then all at once we rolled right off the platform.

We fell, a long long fall, Cale still gripping my collar. His eyes were full of scary
things, too many to keep track of. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be so close
to that kind of scariness. With one final twist I got free enough to sink my teeth
into his arm. Cale started to cry out and then we hit the water, the ocean swallowing
up his cry, and swallowing us up, too. Down and down we sank, down into darkness,
where I didn’t want to be for a single moment on account of Iko, and I bit harder
into Cale’s arm, tasting
blood and oil. Cale let go. A faint ray of moonlight lit his face, mouth open, silver
bubbles bubbling out. I shot up to the surface.

And there was Bernie, treading water with one arm! He wrapped it around me and hugged
me tight. I licked his face. We treaded water together, meaning I sort of herded him
back toward the platform. A light shone down from the deck, found us. Then came a
WHAP WHAP WHAP
and a chopper flew out of the sky and hovered right above. Mr. Patel leaned out and
gazed down at us. So much going on! What else? Oh, yeah: Cale Rugh didn’t come up.
And one more thing. I forgot to add that I’d held my own with Iko. Sort of.

Not long after that, we were back on the platform, me and Bernie. And not just me
and Bernie, but kind of a crowd, including Mr. Patel, who’d landed in the chopper,
and Ralph Boutette, the roly-poly man, the hood now off his head and his arms freed.
Bernie was explaining things to Mr. Patel and Mr. Patel was explaining things to Bernie,
all way too hard to follow. I stuck close to Ralph, on account of him being our meal
ticket, if I understood the case right. And besides, I’d taken a liking to Ralph.
His very first question had been about Napoleon.

“Almost forgot,” Bernie said, turning to Ralph. “Brought you these.” He took Ralph’s
glasses from his pocket, kind of awkward with his arm in a sling, and handed them
over.

“Blind without them,” Ralph said, putting them on. Next would come some sort of thanks,
right? But no. Ralph marched immediately to the edge of the platform and peered down.
“You see!” he said. “You see!”

We joined him. Ralph pointed down. The rig was all lit up now and the look of the
ocean reminded me of the day Bernie decided to save money by taking care of the Porsche’s
oil changes by himself.

“This isn’t just about the fact that their pressure metrics are bound to be screwed,”
he said. “Look at that—seabed’s like a sponge cake.” He pointed his fat finger at
Mr. Patel. “How can you let them go operational? Answer me that!”

“We can’t,” said Mr. Patel. He went over to a group of men in hard hats.

“We didn’t know anything about this,” said the only one wearing a tie.

“All that’ll get sorted out later,” Mr. Patel said. He took out a sheet of paper and
handed it to the tie-wearing guy. “Right now I’m shutting you down.”

Around that time was when Bernie told Ralph about Mack.

Ralph went still.

“Can’t prove this,” Bernie said, “but at first he must have thought the whole shrimp
business was just more nonsense between the Boutettes and the Robideaus, with Rugh
some sort of hired hand. That changed when I showed him your glasses.” There was a
long pause. Then Bernie added, “Which got him killed.”

“I don’t see it that way,” Ralph said. “And neither should you.” He moved off to a
quiet spot by the crane, stood there by himself. I stood by Bernie. He gave me some
nice pats, but he was looking kind of pale and I kept a close eye on him. Other than
that, my mind was on sponge cake.