Woof Read online

  “Correct.”

  “Snoozy mentioned that last night, over a beer or three at Li’l Mamou. The sheriff stopped by.”

  “At Li’l Mamou?”

  “Yup. Sat down with me and Snoozy, bought us a pitcher. Real friendly of him until it started to hit me what was on his mind. You’d never guess in a million years.”

  “He thought you stole Black Jack and Snoozy was in on it.”

  Lem did some more blinking. “Yeah, pretty much.” He tilted his head, gazed down at Birdie.

  “And?” she said.

  “And? And what do you think? I nearabout popped him in the mouth.”

  Birdie’s eyes got wide.

  “Wanna know why?”

  Birdie nodded vigorously.

  “ ’Cause I ain’t no thief. Sure there was that one incident long time ago, but who leaves the keys to a brand-new Corvette in the ignition? I’m not a saint. ’Course the sheriff knew all about that even though it was before his time, kept harping on it till I came so close to … never mind what I came close to. The point is, I’d never do the slightest thing to harm any of the Gaux. Know why?”

  Birdie shook her head.

  “On account of your pa.”

  “You—you knew my daddy?”

  “Your pappy was Robert Lee Gaux, got hisself … deceased down in New Orleans, line of duty?”

  “Yes.”

  Lem nodded. “Just want to make sure I’m putting the pieces together. Fact is I coached him back long ago in peewee football.”

  “You were a football coach?”

  “What’s the surprise?”

  “Nothing. Sorry.”

  “Maybe you don’t know I played for the Ragin’ Cajuns over in Lafayette.”

  “I didn’t.”

  “Snoozy never bring that up?”

  “No.”

  “Started as a walk-on but ended up on full ride. He never mentioned this, not once? Football was my life! And Snoozy knows it. What’s wrong with that boy?” Lem licked his lips, lips all cracked and dry. “This all’s before my knee got blowed out. A cheap shot, but did the zebras throw the flag? When does justice get done, tell me that? Except when you don’t want it.” He patted his pockets, found a thin silver flask in one of them, unscrewed the top, and was putting it to his lips when he caught Birdie watching him in this certain way she had. Lem screwed the top back on and stuck the flask in his pocket. “Ended up revertin’ back to the parish,” he went on. “Which was how come I got to coach your pa. He was this high, but the toughest player we had. Flat out for sixty minutes, a total bonebreaker. And then it was over, snap your fingers, just like that, and he went back to bein’ the sweetest kid on the team.”

  “My daddy was sweet?”

  “Deep down,” Lem said. “Want to hear a funny thing ’bout coaching?”

  “Sure.”

  “The coach can learn from the kid.”

  “I thought it was supposed to work the other way.”

  “I’m just telling you what I’m telling you,” Lem said, suddenly angry. He licked his cracked lips again, patted at his pockets, and was coming around to the flask pocket when Snoozy popped his head out the door and gave Lem the thumbs-up sign, a cool human thing and the reason they have thumbs, something I’d figured out early on. Snoozy ducked back inside. Lem got into the truck. He started it up and then turned to Birdie and spoke to her through the open window, still angry but quieter now. “Which is how come I don’t do nothin’ to harm none of the Gaux. Includes you and your scary old grandma.” He raised the flask to his lips.

  “I believe you,” Birdie said. “And now that you’re in the clear, what do you think happened to Black Jack?”

  Lem gestured with the flask. “Snoozy got caught napping, what else?”

  “Before or after you came in with the crawfish?”

  “Huh?”

  “Do you remember seeing Black Jack on the wall?”

  “How would I remember somethin’ like that?”

  Birdie gave him that look she had again, kind of narrow-eyed and cool. “By searching your memory as hard as you can.”

  “Tell you one thing,” Lem said. “You ain’t like your old man. ’Cept when he was on the field—you’re like that.”

  Something shaky went right through Birdie, taking her strength with it. I felt that happen, and then her hand was on my back, kind of clutching hard at my fur. Not hurting me, of course. Birdie could never hurt me. For a moment she gazed down at her shoes—those silver sneakers with the blue laces. The shakiness passed and some of her strength came back. She looked up. “Try closing your eyes,” she told Lem.

  “What are you talkin’ about?”

  “I remember better with my eyes closed. Maybe you will, too.”

  Lem thought about that, then lowered the flask and closed his eyes. A butterfly went fluttering by, always a nice sight. “Hey,” said Lem after what seemed like a long time. “It works!” And then, with his eyes still closed, he said, “Right there on the wall—I can see it plain as day. One big mother of a fish.” He went silent, his eyes remaining closed. “Now I’m out in the parking lot,” he said. “And … and a nice shiny new black pickup’s just drivin’ in, the kind with those real dark-tinted windows, can’t see nothin’ inside.” Another silence. Black pickup? I came close to remembering something or other.

  “And then?” Birdie said.

  Lem’s eyelids fluttered open, kind of like butterflies, but not so beautiful, in fact as ugly as you’d want to see. He gazed at us like he was coming out of dreamland. “You say somethin’?”

  “Yeah,” said Birdie. “Go back to the black pickup.”

  “With the tinted windows?”

  “Right. Did anyone get out?”

  “Nope.”

  “It just sat there?”

  “At the other end of the lot.”

  “And then what?”

  “I split. Got myself a late lunch down at Li’l Mamou. Maybe caught the start of happy hour.” He checked his wrist, where people wear watches, although he himself was not. “Fact is, I’m gettin’ a bit hungry at the moment.”

  “Drive safe,” Birdie said.

  “Always do,” Lem said. “Got to when your license’s suspended—can’t risk bein’ pulled over. That’s a no-brainer.”

  He drove off.

  “This is a big mess, Bowser,” Birdie said as we headed for home, “and it’s getting bigger.” A mess maybe—there were some squashed soda cans on the road and empty fast-food containers here and there, plus a rusted-out car or two in the front yards we passed. But I’d seen way bigger messes. Once, for example, when a bus missed a turn and rammed a whole long line of porta-potties. “The sheriff doesn’t suspect old man Straker at all! That’s the worst part.” She smacked her forehead. Whoa! I never wanted to see that again. “And it’s all my fault. I gave old man Straker an alibi. How dumb is that? Plus I may even be the suspect myself! Like, what if the sheriff starts asking around about polka-dot flip-flops and who—”

  A kid on a bike rounded the next corner and pedaled toward us. A rumply-haired kid we knew: Rory. He stopped beside us, put one foot on the ground. I went right over to him. He gave me a pat.

  “Hey, Birdie,” he said. “Check out Bowser’s tail.”

  “He likes you.”

  “Sugarplum’s hardly moved since he left,” Rory said, giving me a nice scratch between the ears. Who wouldn’t like a kid who knew how to scratch?

  “So I hear,” Birdie said.

  “Yeah? From who?”

  “Your dad, actually.”

  “Oh,” said Rory. “He’s working the case, huh? That’s cop language, if you didn’t know.”

  Birdie, who stood up straight to begin with, stood a little straighter. “I don’t need you to tell me cop language. My dad was a cop, too.”

  “Hey, sorry.”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Birdie said. “Yeah, he’s working the case.”

  “I heard there was a break-in at Strak
er’s last night.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “I have a theory,” Rory said.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The case.”

  Birdie went still. “You have a theory of the case?”

  “Guess you could put it that way,” Rory said. “I think there’s an environmentalist on the loose.”

  “Huh?”

  “The kind who doesn’t like fishing.”

  “I didn’t know there was that kind.”

  “Sure.”

  “Is that your dad’s theory, too?”

  Rory took a real quick glance at Birdie’s feet, then looked away. “I don’t know if he has a theory. He doesn’t like to bring his work home.”

  “Is that one of the rules?”

  Rory thought about that for a moment, then laughed. “I guess it is. Don’t you have rules over at your—ARGH!”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Rory poked around carefully in his mouth. “Baby tooth. Just got loose. It’s all over sideways.” Or something like that. Rory was hard to understand with his hand in his mouth.

  “Just pull it out.”

  Rory still had his fingers in his mouth. He gave a little pull. “ARGH!” His fingers emerged, nothing in them. “Not as loose as I thought.”

  “Then leave it.”

  “Don’t wanna. It’s sideways, like I said. Gonna bother me.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Open up,” Birdie said.

  Rory backed his bike away. “Maybe I’ll just let it loosen on its own, get pushed out by the new one coming in.”

  “Don’t be a wimp.”

  “I’m not a wimp.”

  “Then open up.”

  Rory opened his mouth. Birdie peered inside. “Sure is sideways, all right. How’d you get it wedged like that?”

  “You think I know? It’s not like—ARGH!”

  “What?”

  “I just bit on it.”

  “Shut up. Open up.”

  “Shut and open at the same time?”

  “You’re not funny.”

  “I’m not?”

  “Open.”

  Rory opened his mouth. His hands clutched the handlebars of the bike real hard, like it was about to take off.

  Birdie stuck her fingers in his mouth. “Hold still.”

  “Guh,” said Rory.

  “Just a quick little twist and—”

  “ARGH!”

  “Voilà!”

  Birdie held up a tiny white thing with a trace of red at one end. That was a tooth? You had to feel for humans sometimes.

  “Hey,” Rory said.

  “Put it under your pillow.” She handed him the thing, almost too small to see.

  “Aren’t we too old for that?”

  “Then throw it away.”

  Rory slipped it in his pocket instead. “Voilà’s French, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You speak French?”

  “My grandma does. I just know a few words.”

  “Cool.”

  Their eyes met, then looked away from each other.

  “Hot today, huh?” Rory said.

  “It’s July,” said Birdie.

  “Yeah. Well, guess I better take off.”

  “Me too.”

  He turned the front wheel of the bike, started to push off. “Thanks.”

  “Welcome.”

  Rory pedaled away, then circled back, and as he came even with us, said, “I didn’t know nothing about any polka dots, one way or the other.” He popped a wheelie and sped off.

  We turned onto Gentilly Lane, kind of dusty today in the heat, all the potholes bone-dry. The house, low and white, came into view, and there was the big shady tree, looking kind of small in the distance. My big shady tree, was how I’d meant to put it. A lovely sight, all in all, and my water bowl would be waiting for me in the—whoa! What was this?

  “Bowser! Bowser!”

  Birdie calling my name? Probably. She might even have been shouting it, but the sound was very faint, almost inaudible. Sometimes life hits you with a major development and nothing else matters. And at this moment we had a major development going on in our front yard down at the end of Gentilly Lane. A big dude, white with red patches, had one of his hind legs raised like he owned the place, and he was laying his mark on the big shady tree, right on top of mine! I tore up the road at top speed or even more, my paws hardly touching down, the sound of my barks shaking the world. The scent of his marking drifted my way—yes, it was him, all right, the trespasser who’d been on my case. I ramped it up and amped it up, everything to the max. This was war, specifically war for control of my very own front yard. Nothing else mattered.

  “Bowser! Bowser!”

  The trespasser turned his big red-and-white head my way, didn’t seem scared at all. I’d soon be changing his mind on that score. I could just about taste it! In fact, I could. It tasted of blood.

  “BOWSER!”

  Was Birdie calling me? Possibly from another town.

  THE RED-AND-WHITE DUDE WHEELED around to face me as I charged onto the lawn at our place on Gentilly Lane. All his fur rose straight up and he made himself huger than he already was, which was plenty huge enough in my opinion. A bigger dude than me? Quite possibly. Certainly heavier, on account of the meager diet I’d been on at Adrienne’s. But none of that crossed my mind at the time. The red-and-white dude showed me his teeth—huge and sharp—and barked savagely at me. I did the same to him, or more so! The next thing I knew we thumped together with a loud and dusty boom that sent us rolling and tumbling right up against the side of the house, where he leveled me with a good one and I leveled him even better right back, and that led to more rolling and tumbling and trying to bite and trying to claw—those last two not so easy on account of how quick he was turning out to be. But I’m a pretty quick piece of work myself, so he wasn’t really getting me, either.

  This was actually kind of fun! We barked and growled and drooled, alive as alive could be. And then he got in a not-too-shabby nip on my shoulder, and I got in an even less shabby one—he had my full attention now, better believe it—and our eyes met, and he must have seen something in mine that changed the expression in his. The very next moment after that, he whirled around and took off!

  What a surprise, and the nicest kind! All I could think to do was take off after him. Go! Go, Bowser, go!

  “STOP, BOWSER, STOP! COME HERE!”

  What was that? Sounded a lot like Go, Bowser, go!

  I went. The red-and-white dude was surprisingly fast for such a big guy, as well as surprisingly shifty. He bounded through the breezeway separating Grammy’s side of the house from mine and Birdie’s, sprang through the carport and the little backyard and up and over the not-very-high chain-link fence at the end of the property. I followed without a thought, thoughts only getting in the way at a time like this, through the breezeway, across the strip of lawn, up and over the chain-link fence, no problemo. Fence jumping is something you learn early on when you’re running with bad guys down in the city. This was so much more pleasant. No bullets flying, for one thing.

  A narrow two-rutted alley with weeds growing down the middle ran along the other side of the chain-link fence. No sign of the red-and-white dude, but there was no missing his smell—quite a bit like mine, oddly enough, more so in some ways and less so in others, no time for an explanation now. I raced after that smell, reeling it in, as uncared-for backyards, empty lots, and the occasional pond overhung with buzzing insects flashed by on both sides. Up ahead the red-and-white dude came into view, raising a small dust cloud that turned gold in the sunshine. I bore down, drew closer and closer, my big Bowser heart going boom-boom, boom-boom like it was beating from under the ground.

  Did the red-and-white dude hear it? Maybe, because all at once and without breaking stride he twisted his head around and looked back. Surprise, red-and-white dude! A surprise he didn’t like one little bit—I could see it in his eyes
. He got his head pointed the right way and churned those big heavy legs of his with all he had, but he knew and I knew it wasn’t going to be enough. What a great feeling, knowing the future was all roses—not that roses do anything for me, personally—before it even happened!

  The red-and-white dude came to a cross street, full of potholes but paved, and bolted down it, maybe thinking a quick turn would lose me. Good luck, buddy boy! I bolted after him, right on his heels, so close that a quick heel nip wasn’t out of the question. But just when I was about to see for sure, a shiny black pickup with dark-tinted windows roared up from behind us. Shiny black pickup with tinted windows? Hadn’t Snoozy’s uncle Lem just been talking about that? I loved life with Birdie, but there sure was a lot to remember.

  The shiny black pickup pulled even, a door opened, a man inside shouted, “Get in here, Loco, you dumb dog!” And with one last quick and infuriating glance back at me, the red-and-white dude sprang in. The door slammed shut and the pickup zoomed off, the tires spraying bits of gravel and dirt in my face. There was only one thing to do: chase that pickup and chase it with all my might!

  Way up ahead already, the pickup whipped around a corner and out of sight. I bore down. Had I chased cars before? You bet, back in the bad old days. Had I ever actually caught one? I was wondering about that when I reached the corner. No sign of the black pickup in either direction, but following cars was a snap on account of the scent trail that flows out of the pipe at the back. So I followed. I could even smell a faint trace from inside the pickup of the red-and-white dude. Loco, if I was getting the facts right. Plus this was a dirt road and dust hung in the air for as far as I could see. I ran and ran in the direction of the hanging dust.

  After not too long I got the feeling I was no longer in town, but out in open country. Perhaps even in a forest, a strange kind of forest where the trees, tall and dark, grew out of still, brownish water. Patches of shade lay across the road here and there, but the air was heavy and hot and my tongue, flopping around outside my mouth, was getting thick and dry. Did I want to lap up some of that still, brownish water? Very much, but that’s not how we catch cars. We catch cars by running and running. I ran and ran. No pickup in sight, not even a dust cloud now, and the scent cars leave behind was growing faint. Therefore, I could either run or … I couldn’t think of anything else, so I ran.