A Fistful of Collars (3 page)

The downtown towers rose in the distance, their tops kind of merging with the copper-colored sky, a sight that always made
me uneasy, hard to say why. We got off the freeway, drove past the college—a Frisbee soared by, went right into the window of a passing bus! I love college kids!—and parked at a meter in front of city hall, which I recognized from the two huge stone birds, very nasty looking, on either side of the tall arched doorway. Don’t get me started on birds. Bernie dug in his pocket for change, found none, but did come up with a cigarette, or part of one. He straightened it out, lit up, and said, “My lucky day.”

“This must be Chet,” said Mayor Trimble. “What a handsome dog!” The mayor turned out to be a round little guy with more than one chin, very big ears, and a string tie. In short, what wasn’t to like? “Happen to be in possession of some nice rawhide chews,” he said. “Can he have one?”

Bernie sighed, for no reason that I could come up with.

What a mayor did, exactly, was anybody’s guess, but one thing for sure: we had the best mayor around. Soon I was lying on the floor at Mayor Trimble’s side, working on a rawhide chew, tough and tasty, just the way I liked. The mayor introduced everybody—“’Course you already know Cal Luxton, head of security, and this is Vera Cobb, chief of staff.” Then came handshaking, hello hellos, and nobody took a single sniff of nobody, all very human, and everyone sat down.

Mayor Trimble rocked back in his chair. “Pleasure to have this opportunity to renew our friendship, Bernie.”

“Is that what we had?” Bernie said.

“Any mistakes were mine,” the mayor said. “Real or imagined. I should have patched things up long ago. Everything goes by so goddamn fast. Agreed?”

“That everything goes by fast?” Bernie said. “I won’t argue.”

“Bernie’s known for his sense of humor,” said Luxton, sitting in
a shadowy corner of the room. Luxton was a thin dude with swept-back hair and the kind of long sideburns you sometimes see out here in the Valley, but not many other places, Bernie says. It’s a look, he also says, that goes with cowboy boots, which Luxton was wearing, and cowboy hats. Luxton had a big white one resting on his knee. A smell goes with hat wearing. I detected it now; not unpleasant.

“One of the most important senses going,” said the mayor. Then came a silence. The mayor looked around, maybe waiting for someone to chip in. No one did. He cleared his throat—I can do that, too, especially if a bone was caught in it—and checked a note on his desk. “Vera here tells me your great-great grandfather once owned all of Mesquite Canyon.”

Vera, sitting at the end of the same couch as Bernie—he was at the other end, but it wasn’t a big couch—said, “From where the airport is now all the way up to the Rio Seco railroad bridge.” She glanced at Bernie. Vera was blond, wore a dark suit, had her hair in a bun, always interesting to me. Human hair, big subject, maybe later.

Bernie glanced at Vera, eyes going to that bun almost immediately—Bernie and I are alike in lots of ways, don’t forget—and said, “Um.”

“Just think if your family had held on to that spread,” Luxton said.

“Kind of pointless,” Bernie said.

Which I didn’t quite get, because more than once, walking the canyon, Bernie has said almost that exact same thing to me:
What if we still owned all of this, Chet? Rio Seco would have water in it—that’s for damn sure
.

“No living in the past for you, huh, Bernie?” said the mayor. “We’re on the same page, us two.”

“Uh,” said Bernie, “I wouldn’t—”

The mayor smacked his hand on his desk, not hard. He had fat little hands, wore a nice big pinkie ring. One thing I’ve noticed about pinkie rings—they’re never pink. But Bernie says I can’t be trusted when it comes to colors, so don’t bet the ranch. “The future, Bernie. I’m all about the future of this beautiful city, and my guess is you are, too.”

“It won’t be so beautiful when the aquifer’s dry,” Bernie said.

The mayor smiled. He had one of those real big smiles you see sometimes, a smile too big for the face, if that makes any sense. “Truth to power,” he said. “Not afraid of that, are we, Vera? In fact, we encourage it. Fill Bernie in on the water commission.”

“I’m not sure we have time for that, mayor,” she said. “Shouldn’t we be getting on with the business at hand?”

The mayor’s smile faded, down to normal size and then nothing. “What would I do without you, Vera?”

Vera gazed at the mayor, her face showing nothing that I could see.

“Vera here’s a Stanford graduate,” the mayor said. “My opponent’s chief of staff went to North Valley CC. What does that tell you?”

“The Unabomber went to Harvard,” Bernie said.

The mayor’s smile started going upside down. Vera laughed. Maybe not the nicest-sounding laugh I’d ever heard, kind of loud and harsh, but human laughter? One of the best things there is. The meeting was going great. I gnawed on my chew strip and soon my mind was wandering pleasantly. That’s part of the fun of chew strips, maybe news to you.

“. . . water commission some other time,” the mayor was saying, or something like that. “What do you know about our Millennial Cultural Initiative, Bernie?”

“Zip.”

“Vera? Bring him up to speed.”

Vera turned toward Bernie. Their gazes met, unmet, then met again. “Cutting to the chase,” Vera said, “the may—”

“Cutting to the chase,” the mayor said. “That’s a good one, considering what we’re about to discuss. So—what’s the expression I’m searching for, Vera? Foreign, maybe?”

“A propos,” said Vera. “The mayor believes that with proper planning and incentives, the Valley could be a mecca for movie production.”

“Isn’t half the nation’s porn already shot in South Pedroia?” Bernie said.

“Thirty-seven percent,” said Vera. “But the mayor is targeting mainstream Hollywood movies.”

“Like
Wild Horseman
,” said the mayor.

“Don’t know that one,” Bernie said.

“Because it’s not out yet,” the mayor said. “Not even in production. But the whole world’s going to know about it in a year or two. Guess who plays the horseman.”

“John Waters,” Bernie said.

Vera laughed her harsh laugh again. The mayor blinked. I watch for that. When Bernie gets them blinking, it’s usually a good sign.

“Tell him who’s starring,” the mayor said.

“Thad Perry,” said Vera.

The mayor chuckled. Suddenly all sorts of different laughs were in the air. Did it mean anything? I waited to find out. “Heard of him?” the mayor said.

Bernie nodded.

The mayor leaned forward, rubbing his hands together. “Now we’re getting somewhere,” he said. His pinkie ring caught a ray of brassy light coming through the window and glittered in a dull sort of way.

T
had Perry? Didn’t ring a bell. There was Mad Thad Thatcherton, who’d hijacked a beer truck that turned out to be full of empties and was now wearing an orange jumpsuit at Central State Correctional—Bernie made him recycle them all before we took him in—but other than that no Thads came to mind.

“Hottest action hero in Hollywood,” the mayor said, “and that’s
Variety
talking, Bernie, not me. Familiar with
Variety
?”

“No,” Bernie said.

“Don’t worry about it. Neither was I. We’re on a learning curve here, lots of hard work ahead of us. But think of the payoff!”

“What’s the payoff?” Bernie said.

The mayor gave Bernie a long look. Then, over his shoulder, he said, “You were right, Cal.”

“About what?” Luxton said.

“Didn’t you tell me I’d love how his mind worked?”

“Something like that.”

The mayor pointed a pudgy finger at Bernie. “I love how your mind works,” he said. “Loop him in, Vera.”

“I’m sorry?” said Vera.

“The payoff, for Christ sake. Tell him about the payoff.”

Humans can sometimes squeeze their mouths into very small puckered shapes, which Vera did now. “You already did,” she said.

“Huh?” said the mayor.

Vera turned to Bernie. “If the studio has a successful experience producing
Wild Horseman
here in the Valley, then—”

“The mecca thing?” Bernie said.

The mayor smacked his desk again. “Exactly! Hollywood West!”

Then came a long silence. Vera gazed down at the floor. Bernie’s mouth fell open a bit, not a good look on most humans, but just fine on him.

“Think of the revenue,” the mayor said. “And all those jobs—carpenters, electricians, drivers, cooks, waiters—what are the latte people, again?”

“Baristas,” Vera said.

“Baristas, et cetera, et cetera,” the mayor said. “Too many to list. But you catch my drift, Bernie?”

“Voters,” Bernie said.

The mayor laughed. He laughed and laughed, his face kind of jiggling. “I’m getting a real good feeling about this,” he said. “Welcome aboard, Bernie. I have complete confidence in you.”

“What am I doing?” Bernie said.

“Finger on the button,” the mayor said. “Just what we need around here. Walk him back, Vera.”

“Starting where?” said Vera.

“The money,” the mayor said. “Where else?”

“The budget for
Wild Horseman
is one hundred million dollars,” Vera said, “excluding advertising and promotion. The studio—Paragon—and the producers—Rapscallion Entertainment—need
to protect that investment. The success of the movie depends to a great extent on the performance of Thad Perry. He’s in every scene.”

“Give Bernie the script,” said the mayor.

“I’m not sure we can do that,” Vera said.

“Then just slip it to him on the side.”

Vera opened her briefcase, handed Bernie a thick sheaf of papers. Bernie set it down on the couch without a glance.

“Ever read a screenplay, Bernie?” the mayor said.

“No.”

“It’s easy. And way quicker than a book, although I didn’t get through the whole thing. Want the elevator pitch?”

“Why not?” said Bernie.

“Vera?” the mayor said.

“A man in a present-day big desert city—” Vera began.

“Like let’s all guess which one,” said the mayor.

“Wakes up in the night,” Vera continued, “and finds a beautiful white horse in his yard. He gets on and rides back to 1839, where he ends up a prisoner of the Apaches and, guided by a beautiful female shaman, decides to change the whole future of the West.”

Another long silence. Then the mayor said, “That shaman is hot. Check out page thirty-five, I think it was. At your convenience. But what Vera’s trying to say is that there’s no way we can let Thad Perry screw this up. Which is where you come in.”

“I don’t get it,” Bernie said. “You want me to teach him how to ride?”

Hey! Bernie could ride? Just when you think he’s done amazing you, he amazes you again. That’s Bernie. I thumped my tail on the mayor’s nice soft rug.

“Hell,” said the mayor, “never thought of that. What if he can’t ride?”

“They’ll have stuntmen for that,” Vera said. “Thad Perry’s problems are behavioral. We have to keep him out of trouble for the duration of the shoot.”

“You want us to babysit him?” Bernie said.

“We’ve got way more respect for you than that,” the mayor said. “And who’s us?”

“Chet and I,” Bernie said.

The mayor glanced down at me. “Where’d that chew go?”

Where did it go? Was that the question? I had no answer.

“Crazy,” said the mayor, “but from the way he looks at you, you’d almost think he knows what’s going on.”

“Crazy,” said Bernie.

“Where was I?” the mayor said.

“Too much respect,” said Vera.

“Right,” said the mayor. “And besides, he’s already got a babysitter in the form of that bejeezus bodyguard of his. Fine and dandy, but what we want you to do is keep watch on things from our lookout.”

“Keep watch on things?” Bernie said.

“Act as our eyes and—” Vera began.

“Vera?” said the mayor. “Did I ask for your help?”

Vera’s mouth got very small again. For no particular reason I tried to do the same with mine, got nowhere. Instead I opened it up nice and wide, stuck my tongue way out, actually touching the tip of the mayor’s tassel loafer, and then curled it back in. I tasted shoe polish, not bad at all, if on the tangy side for my taste.

“We want you to be our eyes and ears on this project,” the mayor said. “There’s some history of Thad Perry and illegal substances. That right, Cal?”

“Of every kind known to man,” said Luxton, from the shadows
in the corner, everything about him indistinct except for his eyes. They were the probing kind.

The mayor rubbed his hands together again. “So,” he said. “Any questions?”

“Why me?” said Bernie. “And who’s paying?”

“Why you?” said the mayor. “Because I’m a bridge builder.”

The mayor was getting more and more interesting. We’d worked a bridge building case, me and Bernie, all about pilfering rebar, whatever rebar was, never clear in my mind, but the point was that the bridge building dudes had big hard hands and the mayor’s were small and soft. Did he wear gloves on the job? That was as far as I could take it.

“So you picked me because of you?” Bernie said.

The mayor sat back and his face, soft like his hands, hardened a bit. “Cal?”

“Sir?”

“He’s a hard-ass.”

“Pointed that out in preliminaries.”

“Maybe not with enough emphasis.”

Luxton dusted off his cowboy hat and put it on. “He’s a goddamn hard-ass and pisses a lot of people off, big-time,” he said. “Is that better?”

“Much,” said the mayor. He looked at Bernie. “As for who’s paying, my campaign fund’s running a convenient little surplus at the moment.”

“Meaning we’re working for you,” Bernie said.

“Not me personally,” said the mayor. “My office. Which really means you’re working for the men and women of the Valley.”

Bernie gets a look in his eyes when he’s having fun. It’s just the tiniest gleam, there and gone, so you have to be on your toes.
But I’m pretty much on my toes all the time—it’s the way we’re built in the nation within, according to Bernie—so I didn’t miss it now.

“And the children?” Bernie said.