A Fistful of Collars (25 page)

We sat there. A quiet night with just the wind and us. The air was always less dusty in the West Valley, the stars shining clearer
and the moon brighter. Some parts of the moon were brighter than others. That was the sort of thing—although what wasn’t?—that Bernie knew how to explain. Maybe he was going to right now. I listened my hardest; and heard a car coming.

I shifted in my seat and saw it: car, no lights, moving slow.

“Chet?” Bernie said. “What’s up?” Then he turned and saw the car, too. “It’s all right, big guy.”

The car parked beside us and Rick Torres got out. He handed Bernie a folder, stained and yellowed.

“I owe you,” Bernie said.

“You can say that again,” Rick said, but Bernie did not. “And you’ll have to read on the spot,” he went on. “I’m returning it tonight.”

Bernie nodded. “Does anyone know?” he said.

“Don’t need you to tell me how to conduct my business,” Rick said.

Rick was mad at Bernie? Everybody seemed to be mad at Bernie these days. I didn’t get it.

“Can Chet have a treat?” Rick said.

How could anyone be mad at Bernie, especially a great guy like Rick?

“He’s probably starving,” Bernie said.

Bernie: he nails it just about every time.

Rick gave me a nice big biscuit. “That was quick,” he said. “Room for another?” Yes, a great guy, and funny, too. Room for another: loved it. We went for a little walk, around the model home to the swimming pool at the back. You see lots of swimming pools in these empty developments, and the pools are always empty, too. Not this one! Not full of water to the very top, no, but there was plenty enough if anyone felt like a swim. And even though swimming
had been the farthest thing from my mind—and if not the very farthest, like say, going to the vet, then at least pretty far—all of a sudden I couldn’t think of anything else.

“Chet?” Rick said. “Might not be clean enough for—”

KER-SPLASH!

Ah, really nothing quite like swimming. It’s actually very much like running, only in water and you never get hot. I swam around the pool, my nose just above the surface. That was something I’d learned about swimming: much more relaxing if you didn’t hold your head up high. I lapped up a quick taste. Possibly not the best tasting water I’d ever experienced. No need to do it again, I told myself, and only did it once or twice more.

Rick sat on the diving board and watched me. “You sure know how to have fun,” he said.

Well, of course. Who didn’t? Nothing easier. I pulled a Uey and headed back toward the other end. I preferred bigger pools, but no complaints. Many, many tiny moons sparkled on the water. All those moons seemed to be making rippling sounds. What a night! Soft rippling sounds, and they didn’t drown out Rick’s sigh.

“He’s not going to like what he sees in that damn file,” Rick said.

File? I tried to remember. And, kind of a surprise, I succeeded. I scrambled out of the pool and gave myself a good shake, Rick backing quickly away. Nothing beats a shake when you’re soaking wet, the way all those droplets go spraying, especially from the tip of your tail. Swimming: it’s still fun even after you’ve stopped doing it. Rick and I walked around to the front of the model home.

Bernie was sitting on the hood of the Porsche, smoking a cigarette, the file on his lap.

“Thought you’d quit,” Rick said.

“After this pack,” said Bernie.

“Sounds like a plan,” Rick said. “You done?”

Bernie nodded, handed over the file. “Was this all there was?” he said.

“What do you mean?” said Rick.

“You didn’t read it?” Bernie said.

Rick shook his head. Head shaking, unless I’d been way off from the get-go, meant no, and head nodding meant yes. So somehow Rick had gotten it wrong.

O
ne thing about a nice swim: it was often followed by a nice nap. I lay curled up on the shotgun seat, the motion of the car beneath me kind of . . . dreamy. Yes, dreamy. Bernie might or might not have said something like, “How come you’re wet?” I didn’t know, and while paying attention to Bernie was always at the top of my list, I really didn’t care. How can you care when your eyelids are so heavy and getting heavier and heavier? And heavier. I dreamed about swimming!

And I was still swimming when the dreamy motion beneath me eased and then vanished. I opened my eyes. We were back in bad air, the moon and the stars now hidden by a dirty pink sky. I sat up. Vista City, or someplace like it: parked on a street lined with apartment buildings, not the tower kind they have downtown, but lower, old with stucco walls, the stucco cracked and crumbling here and there. Bernie was gazing at the most cracked and crumbling of all the buildings. I gazed at it with him.

“When you start digging in something that doesn’t want to be dug . . .” he said.

Yes, yes: go on. Bernie did not. Naturally, I’ve dealt with close-packed dirt in the past, but when you kept working, even if all you did at first was make shallow scratches on the surface, eventually you always found yourself happily in a deepening pit, all legs in action. So: no problem, right?

“Such a goddamn long shot,” Bernie said. “And is this even where to start?”

I tried to think of some other place, found I could not. This crummy apartment building filled up my whole thought area.

“But,” he went on, “what choice do we have? There’s nothing in the file except the victim ID and the ME’s report. Goddamn file’s been gutted. By who, is the question.”

Bernie turned to me. Whoa. Like I’d done it, whatever it was? Bernie smiled. Whew. “Have a nice nap?” he said. “All set?”

I hopped out, hurried around to Bernie’s side of the car, waited while he got out. “If we could harness that tail of yours . . .” he began.

Harness me? There’d been an attempt once, in the time before Bernie and I got together. Never again. And of course Bernie himself would never even think of such a thing, so this had to be one of his jokes. Bernie was a great joker, in case I haven’t made that clear already. We walked side by side up to the front door of the apartment building.

Bernie tried the door: locked. He turned to a row of buzzers, ran his finger down the little labels beside them. “Spears, Spears, Spears, wouldn’t that be nice?” he said. “But nope.”

Spears? I knew spears from this period when work dried up completely—even divorce work, which we hated—and we’d watched a lot of movies about gladiators. Spears were nasty: was Bernie really hoping we were coming up against them? So be it. I was ready.

“How about we try the manager?” Bernie said. “T. Ortega.” He pressed a buzzer.

We waited. There’s a lot of waiting in this business, just one more reason why it’s nice to have a partner. And a partner like Bernie? That was like hitting the lottery. Once we almost did! What a drive that was, from our place to the lottery office downtown in no time flat. But Bernie had read the number wrong, an easy mistake to make, I’m sure.

Bernie pressed the buzzer again, held it down for a while. As soon as he backed off, a voice came through a speaker, angry but small.

“Who’s there? What do you want?”

“I’m looking for a family that used to live in this building.”

“What number?”

“Five,” Bernie said. “Where Mizell is now.”

No sound came from the speaker, except for a staticky crackle.

“The name was Spears,” Bernie said.

More crackle.

“Hello?” Bernie said.

“Go away.” The speaker went silent, crackle and all.

Bernie pressed the buzzer again, kept his finger there. After a while I heard a door close somewhere in the building, and soon approaching footsteps, the soft, slightly flapping kind slippers make. Then someone—a man actually, a man who’d been eating something garlicky, and who could have used a shower, not that I cared much about that kind of thing, although it was always interesting how humans liked to get rid of their natural scents—stopped at the other side of the door.

There was a little click which Bernie maybe didn’t hear because he kept his finger on the buzzer. Then the door got thrown open real fast and an unshaven guy in a wifebeater and saggy
sweatpants stood there, a gun in his hand and pointed at the floor, but also sort of at Bernie.

“What part of go away don’t you fuckin’ understand?” the guy said.

Here’s a strange thing: some humans have trouble even noticing members of the nation within. Also the light over the door was out, and the nearest streetlight stood pretty far down the block, so maybe things were a bit murky. The truth is I didn’t really think about any of that, just lunged forward, grabbed the guy’s wrist, and clamped down good and tight.

“Aieee,”
he screamed, or something like that, very unpleasant down deep in my ears. He dropped the gun at once. Not a tough guy, obvious from the get-go, but nobody waves guns at Bernie, not while I’m around.

“Aieee, aieee.”
He was struggling now, always fun. Did his blood have a garlicky taste? Had to be my imagination. “Call it off!” the guy screamed. “Call it off!”

“He’s not an it,” Bernie said, picking up the gun.

“Huh? What the hell? He’s killing me.”

Bernie nodded. “He—that’s better. Chet? Big guy? That should do it. Chet? All set on our end now. Good job. No sense overdoing it. Let’s not gild the lily.”

Gild the lily? I’d heard that one before, had no idea what it meant. Wasn’t the lily a flower? This wifebeater guy was no flower, and that garlicky tinge in his blood hadn’t gone away. I let him go.

“Good boy,” Bernie said. “How about sitting for a moment or two?”

Sitting? I didn’t feel like it, not one little bit. What did I feel like? Action, baby, action and nothing but.

“Ch—et?” Bernie has this special way of saying Chet, not
loud, that somehow gets my attention every time. Or at least most of the time. Or sometimes. In short: this time I sat.

Bernie popped the magazine out of the gun, dropped the ammo in his pocket, then racked the slide—loved gun lingo myself, learned it back when Bernie was teaching Charlie, a lesson that led to an unforgettable scene with Leda which I no longer remembered—and dropped that last round into his pocket with the others. Then he slid the empty magazine back in place and handed the gun to the wifebeater guy.

“Here you go, Mr. . . . Ortega, is it?”

“I’m bleedin’ to death,” said Mr. Ortega.

Bernie stooped down, examined Mr. Ortega’s wrist. “Nah,” he said. “Just a scratch. And of course Chet’s had his shots, so you’ll be good as new in no time. Now if you’ll kindly be more forthcoming about the present whereabouts of the Spears family, we won’t take anymore of your time.”

“You a cop?” Mr. Ortega said.

Bernie showed Mr. Ortega our license.

“Private eye?”

Bernie nodded.

“What do you want with her?”

“Who are we discussing?” Bernie said.

“Who do you think?” Mr. Ortega. “Mrs.—” And then he put the brakes on, too late. That putting on the brakes too late thing was always good for us.

“Mrs. . . . ?” said Bernie.

Mr. Ortega shook his head. “You look like trouble for her.”

“I’m guessing she’s a good person,” Bernie said. “We don’t bring trouble to good people.”

“I’m a good person,” Mr. Ortega said, looking down at his wrist; the blood wasn’t even flowing anymore.

“The gun fooled me,” Bernie said.

Mr. Ortega thought about that. Some humans are faster thinkers than others—you can sort of tell from their faces. Mr. Ortega wasn’t one of them. “You gonna give me my ammo back?” he said at last.

“Sure,” said Bernie. “Just as soon as you tell us what we want to know.”

Mr. Ortega did some more thinking.

“I take it we’re talking about Mrs. Spears,” Bernie said.

“’Cept she got married and changed her name to—” Whoa! He put the brakes on again? This was going to take forever. Fine with me.

“Mizell, by any chance?” Bernie said.

“How’d you know that?” said Mr. Ortega.

Bernie reached into his pocket, took out the ammo, and said, “Cup your hands.” No time to go into this now, but I like when humans cup their hands; I once drank water from Bernie’s cupped hands when we were in a bad way, deep in the desert.

Bernie dropped the ammo
clink clink
into Mr. Ortega’s hands. “Grateful for your help,” Bernie said. “And I’ll be even more grateful if you don’t reload till after we’re out of here.”

“What are you gonna do?” Mr. Ortega said.

“Pay a visit to number five,” Bernie said, stepping through the doorway; I was already inside, on account of my little dustup with Mr. Ortega. “But you can head on back to your own apartment,” Bernie went on. “We’ll find our way.”

Mr. Ortega backed through the small entrance hall, then started down a corridor. He stopped and turned. “She’s had some hard times,” he said.

Bernie nodded.

*   *   *

We went down the same corridor, but the other way. The floor was linoleum, kind of sticky under my paws. We passed a few doors, TV voices leaking out from underneath them, plus some fast-food smells—fast food being a wonderful human invention—and also pot. Bernie says that practically the whole country is stoned out of its mind at all times, which is why we are where we are, but where we are is pretty good, right? So maybe it wasn’t a problem.

We stopped in front of a door. A horseshoe was nailed to the frame. You see that sometimes, a total puzzler. And what’s with horses wearing shoes in the first place? So it was kind of a double puzzler, way too much for me. Bernie knocked.

Someone moved on the other side of the door, a woman, actually, and she’d been drinking.

“Yes?” she said.

“Mrs. Mizell?” said Bernie. “My name’s Bernie Little. I’m a private investigator, and I need your help.”

“I haven’t done anything,” the woman said.

“I didn’t say you had,” Bernie said. “I’m looking into an old case.”

Her voice got a bit wavery. “Old case?”

“Which it would be better to discuss in private,” Bernie said.

She was silent.

“Maybe I’m making a mistake,” Bernie said. “But if your surname used to be Spears and you had a daughter named April, then I’m not.”