A Fistful of Collars (14 page)

Sometimes, like one night sitting on a bunkhouse from a ridge high above, we’d catch a few tunes while we waited, Elmore James, maybe, or Jamey Johnson—“Can’t Cash My Checks”; Bernie loves that one!—but not on this kind of inside-the-city job. There was still plenty to hear—a trash barrel getting knocked over a couple of blocks away, a plane somewhere high above the dark pinkness, and in the background the constant hum of the Valley, which could also get broken down into all the parts of the hum, and I was just starting in on that when I heard a car coming from the opposite direction.

Was Bernie looking that way? No. But then the car appeared around the corner up ahead—those little low fog lights showing but no headlights—and he turned toward it real quick. The car—not big, not small, dark color, nothing much to make it stay in my mind, so it didn’t—stopped in front of the house. The fog
lights went out. Then nothing. The driver and the passenger—I could just make them out, dark forms behind the top curve of the dashboard—sat there. We did the same thing. No way they could see us in these shadows—Bernie didn’t make mistakes like that—but a weird feeling came over me anyway, the kind of weird feeling that makes me want to bark. The next thing I knew, Bernie’s hand was on my back, heavy and gentle at the same time, sort of resting but maybe not. The urge to bark faded and vanished, no idea why.

The door of the not big or small car opened and the driver and the passenger got out. Impossible to see clearly: all I picked up was their dark forms, gliding toward the house. Then the door opened and they slipped inside. Was there something familiar about those dudes? I came real close to recognizing both of them. The door closed.

I took a swing at figuring out what was familiar about them, and then another swing, and no more, my mind suddenly jumping tracks to a memory of a ball game Bernie bet a grand on that had ended with a swing and a miss on a ball that was a mile out of the strike zone, according to him, so it must have been. We’d paid a visit to Mr. Singh soon after.

We sat. Bernie spoke quietly, more like just a breath with a soft voice hidden in it. “Don’t see a plate on the front of that car.”

Neither did I, but I couldn’t be sure. Bernie opened the glove box, took out the flashlight, aimed it over our windshield at the other car, but didn’t turn it on. Instead he hesitated, not something you saw from Bernie very often. He even had a saying—Bernie’s great at making up sayings—he who hesitates is something or other. But a good thing this time, because right about then the door of the house opened and the two dudes came out. No lights inside the house or by the door: their faces
remained invisible. They walked to the car, the driver fishing in his pocket for keys; I heard them jingle. And then came another sound, a strange buzzing from somewhere above. A moment after that, just as they were getting into his car, the streetlight down at the end of the block flickered on, the light dim and sort of brownish. But enough to make out the face of the passenger, a thin face framed by long sideburns: Cal Luxton. He put on his cowboy hat and then I was sure.

And the driver? One of those redheaded types you didn’t see often, but that I was seeing again, and pretty soon: Oona’s partner, the uniform cop named Floyd, now in street clothes.

Bernie’s heart speeded up in his chest. I could hear it. And when I did, my own heart speeded up, too, funny thing. Floyd whipped the car around in a quick U-turn and went back the way they’d come. What about us? Weren’t we going to tail them? Tailing perps was one of our best things. Bernie!

We did nothing. Bernie sat motionless, the zigzag groove deep in his forehead. I started to get the picture. Tailing perps: what a crazy thought that had been. Cal Luxton was handing out the checks, making him one of the good guys. So therefore? I didn’t take it past that. Bernie took care of the so-therefores, me bringing other things to the table, in case I haven’t mentioned that already.

He fired up the engine. We made a U-turn of our own, slower than Floyd’s, and drove home. Bernie didn’t open his mouth the whole way.

Sometimes the night feels early and sometimes it feels late: your eyelids always tell you; at least, that’s how it works in the nation within. This particular night felt late as we pulled into the driveway at our place on Mesquite Road, so it was a bit of a surprise that lights were on in the house next door. Not old man Heydrich’s
place, where lights sometimes shone all night: mean dudes sleep less, according to Bernie, and I often heard Heydrich in the middle of the night, busy down in his workshop. “Wonder what he’s making,” Bernie would say. But forget about old man Heydrich. I meant the house on the other side, Iggy’s crib, which he shares with Mr. and Mrs. Parsons, a nice old couple who bought an electric fence but maybe made some sort of mistake, because now Iggy—my best pal, we’d played together since I couldn’t remember when—was never outside. Mr. and Mrs. Parsons went to bed early, sometimes even before full darkness—you always knew because there was no more toilet flushing until morning—but not tonight. Bernie was still getting out of the car—a little slow, maybe on account of his wound, which could act up when he was tired—when the Parsons’ door opened and Mr. Parsons stepped out.

And what was this? From somewhere in their house,
yip yip yip
? Yes! Iggy! He came barreling down the hall, stubby tail—the stubbiest in creation, Bernie said—up and stiff, and crazily long tongue flapping high and low. At the last instant, Mr. Parsons felt him coming and yanked the door closed. After that there was just a muffled
yip yip yip
, followed by a single yip, amazingly high pitched; and then nothing.

Mr. Parsons came stumping toward us behind his walker. We met him at the border of our properties, a row of low cactuses that Mr. Parsons and Bernie had decided were better than the flowers that had grown there before, although I didn’t see how. Marking borders was one of my jobs, of course, but maybe not at exactly this moment.

“Hi, Bernie.”

“Hi, Dan. Everything all right?”

“Mrs. Parsons could be doing a little better.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

“But she’s cheerful,” said Mr. Parsons. “No complaints. And she was real pleased, the way you replaced her soap collection. Much obliged.”

“Don’t mention it,” Bernie said.

Soap collection? Itty-bitty brightly colored things in a toilet, the water rising and rising and rising? My one visit to Iggy’s house, sometime back? The plumber racing up in his truck? I came close to remembering some of that. But, as humans said, no cigar, and no cigar was just peachy with me—I’d toyed with a stub or two and cigars didn’t do it, although I have no problem with the smell. And funnily enough, peaches weren’t really peachy with me, either, so why did . . . ? Somewhere in there I lost the thread.

“. . . puppy I was telling you about?” Mr. Parsons was saying.

“The one you saw in the canyon?” Bernie said.

“Exactly,” said Mr. Parsons. “Spotted the little fella again this afternoon. Even managed to snap a picture of him on my cell phone—first time I got the damn thing to work.”

“Soon you’ll be uploading to the cloud,” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons gave Bernie a quick look, then nodded. “That’s true,” he said. “And except for how I’ll miss Mrs. Parsons, I’m ready. I’ve had a good life.”

“No, no, no,” Bernie said. “I meant—” And then came a long explanation of what he’d meant, which lost me right out of the gate, and maybe Mr. Parsons, too, to judge from the look on his face.

“It’s all right, Bernie,” he said, “I’m not offended. But do you want to see the picture?”

“Yes.”

Mr. Parsons took out his cell phone and started pressing buttons. “Cursed stupid hellish—”

“Mind if I try?” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons handed Bernie the phone. “This one?” Bernie said.

They gazed at the glowing thing, then both turned and transferred that gaze onto me. I wagged my tail, my fall-back response in all kinds of situations.

“Guilty as charged?” said Mr. Parsons.

“But I just don’t see how . . .” Bernie began.

“Doesn’t he get into the canyon?”

“Only with me.”

“What about when you’re not home and he’s out on the patio?” said Mr. Parsons.

“The gate’s always locked.”

“Isn’t he a great leaper?”

“Not that great,” Bernie said. “That gate’s seven feet high—I had it built special.”

Seven feet high? Lost me on that one. When it comes to numbers, I stop at two, which is plenty, in my opinion. Feet were another story: all kinds of feet in the world—I’d seen elephant feet in action! What a career I was having!—but in the end I wouldn’t change mine for any others. As for the gate, my impression was that I always cleared it by plenty. I reminded myself to take a look next time.

“So what do you think happened?” said Mr. Parsons.

“Maybe a litter mate of Chet’s is out there somewhere,” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons had thick, snowy-white eyebrows. I’d seen snow, by the way, once on a case, the details vague at the moment. But sometimes details can sharpen later, when you least expect it. Does that ever happen to you? Back to snow: Bernie made a snowball! We played fetch, sort of, which is when I started finding out what
snow was all about. Back to . . . to Mr. Parsons’s eyebrows. He raised one of them in this way humans have when they want to send a message to other humans, not friendly or unfriendly, hard to pin down, exactly.

“Is that how you operate in your work?” Mr. Parsons said. “Chasing after the low-percentage possibility first?”

Bernie laughed. “Sure as hell hope not,” he said. “Maybe the next step is to give this big guy a test.”

“Now you’re thinking,” said Mr. Parsons.

About what? They had me on that one. Next thing I knew we were all of us inside our place and walking through the kitchen—Bernie grabbing a box of chew strips on the way—and out onto the patio.

“Nice house, Bernie,” Mr. Parsons said. “Just imagine when your family owned the whole parcel.”

“I try not to,” Bernie said.

“And a swan fountain,” said Mr. Parsons as he stumped out onto the patio,
bump bump bump
. “Pretty funny.”

Then Bernie said something about who the joke ended up being on that I missed, mostly on account of those chew strips, beef flavored, from Rover and Company, the very best. Our buddy Simon Berg runs the company, and I once spent a lovely time in their test kitchen. Whoa! And Bernie had just mentioned a test. We were headed back to Rover and Company? Seemed strange at this hour, but something was up, something that included chew strips.

Bernie moved toward the gate at the back of the patio. Hey! They’d just been discussing this gate and now here we were. On the other side lay the canyon. I could hear something moving around out there, not too far away, possibly a javelina, although I couldn’t be sure because of the breeze flowing in the wrong direction.

Bernie pointed toward the top of the gate. “Okay, Chet. Up and over.”

Up and over? He wanted me to jump the gate? Not a good idea, the reasons why being so complicated that I didn’t even try to untangle them. Instead I just sat down.

Bernie shook the box of treats. “Come on, big guy. Don’t you want one of these?”

I did, big-time. But I stayed where I was.

Bernie turned to Mr. Parsons. “Maybe the low-percentage play isn’t so low after all.”

“Maybe,” said Mr. Parsons, giving me a close look. When humans are having fun, their eyes brighten; Mr. Parsons eyes were doing it now. “Think it would make any difference if you took one out of the box, showed it to him?”

“Nah,” said Bernie. “He knows what’s in there, believe me. The gate’s too high, simple as that.”

“Try it anyway,” Mr. Parsons said.

Bernie opened the box, took out a chew strip, gave it a little shake. “Up and over, big guy,” he said. One thing about the chew strips from Rover and Company: they had the best smell in the world. And another thing about them: if they got shaken like that, the smell got even stronger, especially if the breeze suddenly shifted a bit, now blowing—no, not hard—but right in your face. How to describe it? Like a wonderfully beefy breeze, hickory smoked? Something of the kind, and maybe given time I could have described it better, but it was too late. I was already in midair, soaring over the gate—clearing it by plenty, by the way; I checked—and headed for a nice soft landing in the canyon.

The naked bulb over the gate went on. The gate swung open. Bernie and Mr. Parsons gazed out at me, caught in the circle of light. I gazed back at them.

“Right after I took that picture,” Mr. Parsons said, “I heard a woman calling for him and the little critter took off.”

“Catch the name?” said Bernie.

“Shooter,” Mr. Parsons said.

“Oh, boy,” Bernie said.

Mr. Parsons leaned into the walker, letting it take more of his weight. His eyes weren’t quite so bright. “I kind of like it,” he said.

Where were we going with this? I had no idea. Bottom line: I’d jumped the gate and that chew strip was now mine. So what was taking so long?

N
ext day we swung by Leda’s place. She and Malcolm, the boyfriend—but they were getting married as soon as Leda decided on where to go for the honeymoon (“never really had one the first time,” I’d once heard her say on the phone)—had a big house in High Chaparral Estates, the nicest development in the whole Valley, a fact she mentioned now and then. Malcolm was a brilliant software developer, whatever that was, making money hand over fist; she’d mentioned that, too. Did humans put hand over fist to keep the money from falling out? I’d never seen it, but what else could it mean?

Leda and Malcolm had a big green lawn—the kind Bernie called an aquifer drainer—lined with flowering bushes. I lifted my leg against the bushiest of them, remembering at that moment that I’d missed out on marking our border with Mr. Parsons, so I made sure to do an extra-thorough job, and still hadn’t finished when the door opened and Leda looked out and saw me. Uh-oh. Trouble on the way, and making it worse was the fact I couldn’t stop just like that, not with my kind of flow, amigo. I’d tried more than once, believe me.