A Fistful of Collars (2 page)

“How’d the car thing go?” Suzie said.

“Found a beauty,” Bernie said.

We had? News to me, but I got most of my news from Bernie.

Suzie pressed a button and her screen went dark. “Bernie?” she said. “Got a moment?”

“More than a moment. How about we take you to lunch?”

Suzie bit her lip, another one of those human things I look for. In the nation within the nation, as Bernie sometimes calls me and my kind, we don’t bite our lips, except by accident, when a bit of lip gets caught on a tooth, say. Human lip biting sends a message, a message I’d never gotten from Suzie before.

“I’m slammed today, Bernie,” she said. “Let’s just go out for a little walk.”

“A walk? It’s ninety-seven out there and just getting started.”

“A short walk.”

Bernie’s smile faded and was gone. “Something on your mind?”

Suzie nodded, her eyes not meeting his. I got a sudden urge to chew on something; almost anything would do.

“We can talk here,” Bernie said.

Suzie glanced around. Still just us in the office, but she said, “Outside’s better.”

“Okeydoke,” said Bernie. Okeydoke is a way Bernie has of saying yes, but only when we’re on the job, so what was up with that?

We went outside. There was some confusion at the door, but I ended up going out first. We walked toward a line of skinny, dusty trees that separated this strip mall from the next one. An old picnic table, weathered and lopsided, stood in the shade.

With picnic tables, it usually works like this: humans sit on the benches, facing the table, and I settle down underneath, waiting to get lucky, picnic food usually being pretty messy. But none of that happened now. No food, for one thing. Bernie sort of leaned against the table at a funny angle; Suzie sat at the end of one of the benches, but facing out, legs crossed and then uncrossed; I circled around. What was this? None of us could get comfortable? I started panting a bit.

“Bernie?”

“Yeah?”

“I have some news.”

“You’re a newswoman.”

Suzie’s lips turned upward in maybe the quickest, smallest smile I’d ever seen. Then she nodded. “I’ve got a job offer.”

“That’s all?” said Bernie.

“What do you mean?”

“I thought maybe you’d met somebody.”

“Met somebody?”

“Or Dylan was back in the picture.”

“Dylan?” Suzie said. “Oh, Bernie.” She held out her hand. Bernie took it in his.

Dylan McKnight back in the picture? He was Suzie’s boyfriend long ago, a perp who’d done a stretch at Northern State Correctional, and was now where? LA? Hard to keep all the details straight, but the best one—that time I’d driven him up a tree—was still so clear in my mind!

“Let me guess,” said Bernie. “The
Trib
’s making you managing editor.”

She laughed, one of those tiny laughs that’s just a little jet of air from the nose. “That would never happen,” Suzie says. “It’s another reporting job, but somewhere else.”

“Not the
Clarion
?” Bernie said.

Suzie shook her head.

“Whew,” said Bernie. “Not sure how I’d handle that. They won’t stop until every square inch of the whole state’s totally developed.”

“It’s the
Post
, Bernie.”

Bernie has very expressive eyebrows, one of his best features, although they’re all so good, it’s hard to choose. Right now, his eyebrows were sort of trying to meet in the middle, a puzzled look you didn’t often see on Bernie’s face. “The
Post
?” he said.

“The
Washington Post
,” said Suzie.

Bernie let go of Suzie’s hand. “Oh,” he said.

Something was up—I could just tell. But what?

“I’m so torn,” Suzie said. “And the irony is it’s all due to that series I wrote about the Big Bear case.”

Whoa. Big Bear Wilderness Camp? The sheriff? Those deputies? That judge? The mama bear? All of them breaking rocks in the hot sun by now, or very soon. Except for that mama bear, of course. Let’s not get started on her.

“Don’t be torn,” Bernie said. “You deserve it.”

“There’s no deserving, Bernie. Not in this business.”

“I wouldn’t know about that,” Bernie said. “But—” He went silent.

“But what?” said Suzie.

Bernie took a deep breath. “Could you turn it down, walk away, and then never think about it again? The what-ifs, what-might-have-beens, all that?”

Suzie went quiet. Then she took a deep breath, too. “I love you,” she said.

Bernie’s lips moved, just the slightest, like he was about to say something, but he did not.

“I’ve been checking flights,” Suzie said. “They’re cheap if you book far enough in advance. Weekends would be way more doable than you’d think.”

“So,” said Bernie, his voice getting kind of thick in a strange way, like there was something in his throat, “it’s all good.”

What was this? I’d been gnawing away at one of the legs of the picnic table? And it didn’t even feel that great? Not bad, exactly, just more like . . . nothing. I stopped.

T
he bourbon’s in the cupboard over the kitchen sink. Cigarettes are harder to find because Bernie quit smoking and one of his tricks when he quits smoking is to stop buying cigarettes cold turkey and scrounge around for them instead. Bernie’s got tricks for just about everything—he’s always the smartest human in the room, might as well get that out of the way right now, if I haven’t already. As for cold turkey: a puzzler there’s no time to go into, not now and maybe not ever. Except does it mean cigarettes are in the fridge? I didn’t smell any, but sometimes I can’t detect every single little thing that’s in the fridge. As for cigarettes—one of those unmissable smells, lit or not—there was one under the end pillow on the living room couch, and another behind Bernie’s desk in the office, both places he’d already searched unsuccessfully, a little bourbon sloshing out of his glass each time he bent down.

We went out to the patio. We have a nice patio in back—this is at our place on Mesquite Road—with a stone fountain in the shape of a swan that Leda had installed before the divorce, but then wanted no part of when Bernie said she should take it with her. We had trouble understanding Leda, me and Bernie.

Bernie sat in his favorite patio chair, the one with the drink holder, and I sat beside him. The sun was going down, changing the colors of the canyon that runs behind Mesquite Road, a canyon inhabited by lots of creatures, including some fat javelinas. Until you’ve chased a javelina you haven’t lived, and I wouldn’t dream of living anywhere else, although once I did dream I was living in a Dumpster, sort of a nightmare until it turned out the Dumpster stood behind a fast-food place. Dreams: don’t ask me to explain them.

Bernie swirled his bourbon around, stared into it, took a sip. “Suppose I said let’s get married. What would happen then?”

I waited to hear.

Bernie drank some more. “Why shouldn’t she be ambitious?” He gazed at me, his face reddening in the evening light. “She’s got every right. So that leaves the option of picking up stakes and going with her. Which, you may have noticed, she didn’t mention.” Bernie drained his glass, went inside. I went with him, right on his heels. He took the bottle down from the shelf, refilled his glass. “Heading east,” he said. “How would that work? My ancestors headed west. Going back would be like—”

The phone rang before Bernie could finish, but not a problem since I’d lost the thread long before. Bernie picked up.

A man’s voice came over the speaker. “Bernie?”

“Yup.”

“Cal Luxton here.”

“Uh-huh.”

“From the mayor’s office.”

“I know.”

“How’re you doin’? It’s been a while.”

“No complaints,” Bernie said.

“Suppose I should congratulate you on that wilderness camp case.”

“Not necessary.”

“Heard you drove another one over a cliff.”

“You heard wrong.”

Silence on the other end. In that silence, Bernie knocked back a big slug.

“Got much goin’ on these days?” Luxton said.

“How do you mean?” said Bernie.

“Work-wise.”

“We’re pretty busy.”

We were? First I’d heard of it. Hadn’t done a stitch of work since the Big Bear Wilderness Camp Case, for which we’d been paid, yes, and plus there’d been the bonus of that gold nugget, now at Mr. Singh’s on account of some tax bill coming due, not something I’m clear on and neither was Bernie although he finally gave up on getting an explanation and just cut the check; which bounced, so he cut another one. In short, our finances were a mess. There hadn’t even been any divorce work, which we hated, me and Bernie, but took when nothing else—mostly meaning missing persons cases, our specialty—came along. The Teitelbaum divorce! Mrs. Teitelbaum at the wheel of that forklift, crushing Mr. Teitelbaum’s classic car collection! And what he did to her boyfriend right after that! Only it wasn’t her boyfriend! I gave myself a good shake. Meanwhile that Luxton dude was talking again.

“I’m sure you are,” he said. “But maybe you could squeeze in a little job for us.”

“Who’s us?” said Bernie.

“The mayor, who else? Did I wake you or something, Bernie?”

Bernie put down his drink. “Wide awake, Cal. So wide awake that I’m thinking, Why me?”

“Why not you?”

“We have a little history, the mayor and I, maybe from before your time.”

“Back before you got—back when you were still with the force? I know all about it. Water under the bridge, as far as the mayor’s concerned. And what with the election coming up, he wants to reach out, to be more inclusive.”

“Has he heard of the aquifer yet?” Bernie said.

The aquifer? Bernie talks about the aquifer a lot, but he hasn’t shown it to me yet. Something about water, of which we’ve got a lot in the Valley—check out our golf courses every morning and evening, sprinklers spraying rainbows out the yingyang—although, come to think of it, none under any of the bridges. Whew! I’d taken that one pretty far! Right up to the point where Bernie always says “so therefore.” Bernie handles the so therefores. I bring other things to the table. That’s how come the Little Detective Agency’s what it is.

“You can ask him tomorrow at ten,” Luxton said.

“Huh?”

“That’s the only time he can see you this week.”

“See me about what?”

“This job, Bernie. Are you listening?”

“What’s the job?”

“He’ll tell you in person.”

Bernie reached for his glass, downed some more. “I’m not interested.”

“No? What’s your normal fee?”

“Eight hundred a day. Plus expenses.”

“Yeah? You can make that stick in an economy like this?”

“Not always.”

“What I thought,” Luxton said. Another phone rang at his end, and he spoke a little faster, so maybe I didn’t hear right. “The
fee for this job is three grand a day, plus expenses, guaranteed, plus a bonus at the end if they like you.”

“Who’s they?”

“See you at ten.”
Click
.

Humans tend to go to sleep in their beds and stay there all night. It’s different with me and my kind. For example, I often start in Bernie’s bedroom, on the floor at the foot of the bed, and later move across the hall to Charlie’s old room, even though he’s hardly ever there, the bed stripped, and after that I like to lie with my back to the front door. The sounds and smells of the night leak in through the crack under the door. Security is part of my job.

On this particular night, my pal Iggy who lives next door got a little restless and did his yip-yip-yipping once or twice, and Mr. Parsons tried to shush him, and later a toilet flushed in their house. Our neighbor on the other side, old man Heydrich, went outside not long after that, and what was this?
Whisk-whisk, whisk-whisk
. He was sweeping the dirt from his part of the sidewalk onto ours? I barked, the low muffled kind of bark, not wanting to disturb Bernie. The
whisk-whisk
ing stopped, and old man Heydrich muttered something about curs, a new one on me. Then came the
pad-pad-pad
of his slippers, his door opening and closing, and quiet. I dropped down into dreamland. Did a car come down the street sometime later, moving slowly, pausing in front of our place, driving on? Maybe. Dreams can be so strong, and then you wake up and poof! It doesn’t work the other way. You always remember real life. Sort of. But forget all that.

Except if a car did go by, its engine was making a little ticking sound.
Tick-tick-tick
. That tick-tick-tick happened once with the
Porsche, not the blown-up Porsche but the one that actually did go off a cliff. Bernie’d taken out the tools. You never wanted to see that.

“Knits up the raveled sleeve of care?” Bernie said the next morning. “I wish.”

Uh-oh. We were in the van, headed downtown, possibly on something work-related, and now was when the linen shirt episode comes up? Linen: a complete unknown to me at the time, specifically on a visit I paid to the laundry basket not long after Suzie gave Bernie a long-sleeved linen shirt for his birthday. I prefer Bernie’s Hawaiian shirts, of which he’s got lots, including the one with palm trees and martini glasses that he was wearing at the moment, but that had nothing to do with what happened. It was just the strange feel of linen, and when it comes to feeling things, well, you always do better with your tongue, no news there. And what’s close to the tongue? Teeth. So there you go.

But still, I felt bad. I moved across the bench seat, a little closer to Bernie. The van made one of those quick swerves across the lane that sometimes happens, not sure why. It’s not the smoothest ride in the world, but no complaints.

“Hey, you’re crowding me, buddy,” Bernie said.

I was? How had that happened? I shifted away, but not before giving Bernie’s face a quick lick, just showing him that everything was cool between us. Bernie’s great-looking, even if he wasn’t at his best today, dark patches under his eyes, and possibly a patch or two where he’d missed with the razor blade, although he’d clearly made a good try; there was still a dab of shaving cream on the side of his neck.