Scents and Sensibility (20 page)

“Guess not,” Winners said. “Long as he don't have fleas. Van Morrison's dog had fleas. I itched like a bastard for a month.”

“No fleas on Chet,” Bernie said.

Totally true, not since I'd been on the drops. But here's a funny thing: all of a sudden I was itchy all over! How do you like that? I raised a paw, started in on the side of my neck.

Meanwhile, Winners was saying, “Charts okay?”

“Look fine to me.”

Winners glanced around. “Where's your ax?”

“Ax?” said Bernie.

Our ax was in the garage, hanging on a wall bracket. We never took it on the road. The case had taken a bad turn.

“The bass. We don't supply instruments.”

“I don't play the bass,” Bernie said.

“Huh?” said Winners. “What do you play?”

“Ukulele.”

“No goddamn ukulele part in this session. What the hell's going on?”

“Plus a bit of trumpet,” Bernie went on, “although I haven't touched it since high school marching band. Fact is I'm looking for someone.”

“You're not”—Winners flipped through a notebook—“Etley, bass player out of LA?”

Bernie shook his head.

“Then what the hell was all the chart bullshit?”

“I can read music.”

Read music? Not just listen like everybody else, but read it, too? Maybe the most amazing thing I'd ever heard. My Bernie.

From a speaker came the voice of the singer. “How about we go to the next number, come back to this one later?”

Winners pressed a button. “Your dime.” He swiveled toward Bernie. “Didn't catch your name.”

“Bernie Little.”

Winners, with his porkpie hat and his trimmed white beard, looked like a friendly older guy, but what stood out, and what I was just noticing now, were his eyes. They were the darkest I'd seen, even darker than Suzie's. They didn't sparkle like polished countertops, the way Suzie's did; instead they were flat and damp. Now they seemed to darken a little more, in fact, a lot.

“You're looking for someone here?” Winners said.

“More likely in the past,” Bernie said. “Were you around fifteen years ago?”

“Affirmative.”

“Do you remember Billy Parsons?”

“Billy Parsons,” Winners said. He licked his lips. What a very damp tongue for a human! “There was a Bubba Parsons, played drums. Couldn't lay off the goddamn high hat.”

“Billy wasn't a musician,” Bernie said.

“Then why'd he be hanging out here?”

“That's one of the things I'm interested in.”

“Why?”

“He's gone missing, for reasons that may go back fifteen years or more. I've been hired to find him.”

Did that mean we were getting paid? Somehow I'd missed that.

“Well, well. You're a private eye?”

“We say private investigators in the trade, but yeah.”

“A private eye who can read music.”

“We all have our pasts.”

That brought a big white smile from Winners, just the mouth kind. His eyes stayed out of it. “That we do. Sorry I can't help you.”

“What about Travis Baca?” Bernie said. “Ring a bell?”

“Nope.”

“What's your association with the studio?” Bernie said.

Winners laughed. “What kind of investigator are you? I'm the goddamn founder.”

A buzzer buzzed. Winners pressed a different button. A voice sounded. “Etley.”

“You're late,” Winners said.

“Yeah?” said Etley.

“Musicians,” Winners said, buzzing him in.

“One last thing,” Bernie said. “Any possibility there were drug dealers operating out of here back then?”

Winners turned those damp, dark eyes full on Bernie. “Zero chance,” he said. “Drugs have always been totally forbidden here. Won't have them on the premises.”

Premises meant what again? I didn't know. All I knew was that the place reeked of drugs, as I mentioned already. Even a hint of those sickening 'shrooms. Weren't 'shrooms so last year? And whoa! What was this? The scent, fairly fresh, of a member of the nation within, and not just any member of the nation within, but one who smelled a lot like me.

“Chet?” Bernie said. “What's up?”

“Probably hungry,” said Winners.

“He never barks for food.”

“Might have a treat here.” Winners reached under the control panel, found a box of bone-shaped biscuits, tossed me one. I wasn't hungry, never barked for food, in fact was barking about . . . something else, which would possibly come to me later. Meanwhile, I got busy with the bone-shaped biscuit, one of the tastiest I'd had in some time.

“See?” said Winners.

Bernie gave me a thoughtful look. I gave him one back. Then a tall thin dude came in from down the hall, a big, hard guitar-shaped case on his back. “Ric Etley,” he said, pot on his breath, but big-time.

“Here's the charts,” said Winners.

“Don't read music,” Etley said. “I'll pick it up real quick soon's I hear the tune.”

Over the speaker came the singer's voice. “Thought of a workaround on ‘Selfish Guy,' ” he said. “Kind of open ended, let the music do the talking.” He peered at the glass wall, like maybe the control room was too dark for him to see in, and strummed his guitar. “I made you smile / Last night in bed / So how come now, oh, baby, how come now?”

“Cool,” said Etley, unpacking his instrument.

L
et the music do the talking?” Bernie said, back on the street at Cactus Sound and on our way to the car. “Then what's the point of . . .”

And maybe he went on about whatever it was, but at that moment I'd picked up a scent—the same scent I'd sniffed inside the studio but somehow forgotten all about! Funny how the mind works. There's you and then there's your mind, side by side. A bit tricky, probably not worth thinking about, plus there was no time, because this scent I mentioned, so like mine, was the scent of my little buddy Shooter. Shooter: who rode shotgun with Ellie Newburg, and wasn't Ellie a big part of this case? Wow! Nothing was getting past me! Already I had no complaints in life and now things were getting better? I couldn't begin to figure that out.

Instead, I followed Shooter's scent. It led me to a narrow alley that ran alongside the Cactus Sound building and—

“Hey, Chet!”

—through what you might call a sea of pee smells, typical of alleys, and around to the back, ending at a pickup dusty with desert dust, desert dust so often carrying the smell of greasewood. And not only greasewood in this case, but also the scent of saguaros, hard to describe but slightly reminiscent of the smell of tequila, a drink that Bernie stays away from. So: we had desert, saguaro, and Shooter. I barked this low rumbly bark I have, sending a message.

“What?” said Bernie, coming up behind me. “What?” He eyed the pickup, then knelt and rubbed the dusty layer off a bumper sticker. “ ‘Cactus Man Festival—Wild in the Wilderness.' ” He gazed at the bumper sticker, which seemed to be all about a saguaro with a human face, sporting a porkpie hat. Meanwhile, I heard a faint clink from above, the sound made by metal rings sliding on a curtain rod, for example. I looked up at the back of the Cactus Sound building. From a window up there Winners was staring down at us. He wasn't wearing the porkpie hat—turned out to have closely trimmed hair, pure white like his beard—which was why I didn't recognize him at first. I barked, not loud, but sharp and urgent.

“Trying to tell me something, huh, Chet? Let me guess.” And in the act of thinking up his guess he—finally!—raised his eyes to that upstairs window. The curtain was now closed. “Pot, right?” Bernie said. “You smell pot all over this pickup, meaning that the verboten line is pure cock and bull.”

No! Well, yes. But no! And cock and bull? What was Bernie thinking? Those were barnyard smells, well known to me from cases we'd worked in ranch country, but totally absent here. Plus neither cocks nor bulls were favorites of mine—in fact, placed far down my list. I've had run-ins with both, enough said. Although never both at the same time, which would be a nightmare. But back to Bernie. This wasn't about pot. It was about—

“Good work, big guy.” He gave me a pat, quick but very nice. “Got an idea. Let's hit the road.”

I liked pats. I liked doing good work. I liked hitting the road. But this wasn't about pot. That wasn't what I was smelling by the dusty pickup. Well, I could if I wanted to: the whole Valley smelled of pot, from the meanest streets of Vista City to the fanciest mansions in High Chaparral Estates, but not every tool is a hammer, as Bernie says, or something like that. Also there was don't take a spoon to a fork fight. And others. I felt a big yawn coming on. No fighting that, as I'm sure you know. The big yawn took over, leaving me with nothing to do but sort of wait on the sidelines, and while I was waiting, my gaze happened to rise once more to the upstairs window, the curtain again open, revealing Winners in his porkpie hat, now with another man beside him. This other dude had one of those real big shaved heads with a very broad face, although the features—nose, chin, eyes—were kind of small. Not the ears, though, which were sizable and had gold hoops in the lobes. I got ready to bark my head off, but the yawn wouldn't let me. Winners pointed out Bernie—now checking out his phone—to the big-headed dude and closed the curtain. The yawn finally came to an end. I barked, a kind of bark I have when the horse is out of the barn. Better to have them in the barn than on the loose, no question.

•  •  •

“You want me to make a drug buy?” said Smoky Cabot.

“Basically,” said Bernie.

“What do you take me for?”

“A habitual smoker of illegal substances.”

“And proud of it,” said Smoky.

We were in the front room of Smoky's Tattoo Emporium, no customers around at the moment, which suited me just fine. Those needles going in and out, in and out? I don't like to watch. But I can't stop!

“But,” Smoky went on, “I don't make drug buys for cops.”

“I'm not a cop.”

“Private eyes aren't cops?”

“No.”

“I never knew that.” Smoky scratched his nose, pretty much the only untattooed part of him. Tattoos were some sort of decoration, unless I was missing something. For decoration, I myself rocked only a collar, black leather for formal occasions—I'd once been Exhibit A down at the courthouse, where the judge slipped me a biscuit from under his robe and sent a real bad dude up the river, even though it had no water in it—and my gator-skin collar for everyday. No time for the gator story now, the point being a collar was plenty of decoration for me. “If I say yes,” Smoky went on, “what do I get out of it?”

“You can keep the product,” Bernie said.

“How much?”

“Whatever a C-note will buy.”

“Count me in,” Smoky said. “Where and when?”

“Know Cactus Sound in South Pedroia?” said Bernie.

“Heard of it—the festival dude. I know the festival. Cactus Man—Wild in the Wilderness. Next week, actually. I've got a concession.”

“Lost me,” Bernie said.

Whoa! Bernie lost in a back-and-forth with—let's admit it—one of those dudes who's not completely here? That never happened. I didn't know what to do. Then I caught sight of the huge tiger head on Smoky's chest—he was only wearing shorts and boots—and I didn't know what to do even more, if that makes sense. A tiger that smelled like Smoky: I suddenly wanted to sort of bite it. Very bad, you don't need to tell me. I backed away, got a grip.

“At the festival,” Smoky said. “Set up my tent, run the needles off a generator, business is pretty much nonstop day and night.”

“It's a music festival?” Bernie said.

“Kinda,” said Smoky. “They got music but it's more like an event. People are starting to come from all over—LA, Las Vegas.”

“These are kids?”

“You'd be surprised.”

“In what way?”

“I mean kids, sure, plus bikers and hipsters, what you'd expect, but also corporate types, getting in touch with . . . you know, their inner whatever the hell it is. Corporate types from LA, I'm talking about.”

“I get the LA part,” Bernie said.

“You should check it out.”

“I might.”

“Chet would be a big hit.”

“Why is that?”

Smoky pointed at me with his chin. “Just look at him.”

Smoky: maybe not completely here, but that could be a good thing. Bernie handed over some cash. I hoped it wasn't much.

“What's the dude's name?” Smoky said.

“Winners.”

“How come you think he deals drugs?”

“I don't think that yet,” Bernie said. “It's what I'm trying to establish.”

“Gotcha.”

•  •  •

“How about we sniff around the World Wide Web?” Bernie said.

What was this? Hadn't we just gotten home? I was still at my water bowl, topping up that well inside me. But sniffing always sounded like a good move—although the “we” part was a little mysterious, sniffing not being Bernie's best thing—and sniffing around the whole world sounded even better. I trotted to the front door and stood there, eyes on the knob, waiting for Bernie. Why wait, when in fact I can turn most knobs myself? I thought about that. Meanwhile, Bernie didn't seem to be coming. I waited some more, standing completely still, eyes on that knob. Time passed. I thought about how to slide bolts open, something Bernie and I had been working on. You slide the bolt open with your paw and then get a steak tip: that's all there is to it. Give it a try sometime. When I'd thought all there was to think about bolts, I thought about nothing at all. Time slowed down in a very pleasant way. After a while I grew aware of keyboard sounds, Bernie tapping away. I gave myself a quick shake, always the right move after a period of standing completely still, trotted down the hall and looked into the office.