A Fistful of Collars Read online

  “Now you’re thinking,” said Mr. Parsons.

  About what? They had me on that one. Next thing I knew we were all of us inside our place and walking through the kitchen—Bernie grabbing a box of chew strips on the way—and out onto the patio.

  “Nice house, Bernie,” Mr. Parsons said. “Just imagine when your family owned the whole parcel.”

  “I try not to,” Bernie said.

  “And a swan fountain,” said Mr. Parsons as he stumped out onto the patio, bump bump bump. “Pretty funny.”

  Then Bernie said something about who the joke ended up being on that I missed, mostly on account of those chew strips, beef flavored, from Rover and Company, the very best. Our buddy Simon Berg runs the company, and I once spent a lovely time in their test kitchen. Whoa! And Bernie had just mentioned a test. We were headed back to Rover and Company? Seemed strange at this hour, but something was up, something that included chew strips.

  Bernie moved toward the gate at the back of the patio. Hey! They’d just been discussing this gate and now here we were. On the other side lay the canyon. I could hear something moving around out there, not too far away, possibly a javelina, although I couldn’t be sure because of the breeze flowing in the wrong direction.

  Bernie pointed toward the top of the gate. “Okay, Chet. Up and over.”

  Up and over? He wanted me to jump the gate? Not a good idea, the reasons why being so complicated that I didn’t even try to untangle them. Instead I just sat down.

  Bernie shook the box of treats. “Come on, big guy. Don’t you want one of these?”

  I did, big-time. But I stayed where I was.

  Bernie turned to Mr. Parsons. “Maybe the low-percentage play isn’t so low after all.”

  “Maybe,” said Mr. Parsons, giving me a close look. When humans are having fun, their eyes brighten; Mr. Parsons eyes were doing it now. “Think it would make any difference if you took one out of the box, showed it to him?”

  “Nah,” said Bernie. “He knows what’s in there, believe me. The gate’s too high, simple as that.”

  “Try it anyway,” Mr. Parsons said.

  Bernie opened the box, took out a chew strip, gave it a little shake. “Up and over, big guy,” he said. One thing about the chew strips from Rover and Company: they had the best smell in the world. And another thing about them: if they got shaken like that, the smell got even stronger, especially if the breeze suddenly shifted a bit, now blowing—no, not hard—but right in your face. How to describe it? Like a wonderfully beefy breeze, hickory smoked? Something of the kind, and maybe given time I could have described it better, but it was too late. I was already in midair, soaring over the gate—clearing it by plenty, by the way; I checked—and headed for a nice soft landing in the canyon.

  The naked bulb over the gate went on. The gate swung open. Bernie and Mr. Parsons gazed out at me, caught in the circle of light. I gazed back at them.

  “Right after I took that picture,” Mr. Parsons said, “I heard a woman calling for him and the little critter took off.”

  “Catch the name?” said Bernie.

  “Shooter,” Mr. Parsons said.

  “Oh, boy,” Bernie said.

  Mr. Parsons leaned into the walker, letting it take more of his weight. His eyes weren’t quite so bright. “I kind of like it,” he said.

  Where were we going with this? I had no idea. Bottom line: I’d jumped the gate and that chew strip was now mine. So what was taking so long?

  FOURTEEN

  Next day we swung by Leda’s place. She and Malcolm, the boyfriend—but they were getting married as soon as Leda decided on where to go for the honeymoon (“never really had one the first time,” I’d once heard her say on the phone)—had a big house in High Chaparral Estates, the nicest development in the whole Valley, a fact she mentioned now and then. Malcolm was a brilliant software developer, whatever that was, making money hand over fist; she’d mentioned that, too. Did humans put hand over fist to keep the money from falling out? I’d never seen it, but what else could it mean?

  Leda and Malcolm had a big green lawn—the kind Bernie called an aquifer drainer—lined with flowering bushes. I lifted my leg against the bushiest of them, remembering at that moment that I’d missed out on marking our border with Mr. Parsons, so I made sure to do an extra-thorough job, and still hadn’t finished when the door opened and Leda looked out and saw me. Uh-oh. Trouble on the way, and making it worse was the fact I couldn’t stop just like that, not with my kind of flow, amigo. I’d tried more than once, believe me.

  Then came a big surprise. She turned to Bernie and said, “You’re a doll.”

  “Uh,” said Bernie.

  “Be just a minute,” she said, waving her hands in a strange kind of way. “Song Yi’s almost done.”

  “Huh?”

  “She comes to do my nails.”

  “Huh?”

  Leda backed inside and closed the door.

  Bernie looked at me. I looked at Bernie. “Don’t look at me like that,” he said. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  Wow! He knew I was thinking of crossing the lawn and marking the bushes on the other side? But that was Bernie: just when you thought he was done amazing you, he did it again. As for whatever he’d asked me not to do, it was like one of those feathery little clouds you see sometimes, high high up, and the next time you look: nothing but clear blue skies.

  “In fact,” he went on, “I was thinking the same thing.”

  An absolute stunner. Bernie and I were going to cross Leda’s lawn and mark those bushes together? Had anything like that ever happened? I actually did remember something of the kind, maybe in an alley behind a biker bar in Rio Vacio, but it was all too vague, and before it got clearer, the door opened and out came Leda and Charlie, followed by a dark-haired woman carrying a pink sort of tool kit. Not to worry: those bushes weren’t going anywhere. And then . . . and then I had the most amazing thought of my life: given time, we could fill up the aquifer, me and Bernie, side by side. And didn’t we have all the time in the world?

  “So nice to meet you,” Leda said, taking Thad Perry’s hand and not letting go. “I’m a big big fan, your biggest. Huge.”

  “Thanks,” said Thad, looking at something over her shoulder. “‘ppreciate it.”

  “And this is my son, Charlie. Say hello to Mr. Perry, Charlie.”

  Bernie’s eyes have a way of—how to put it? Narrowing? Hooding? I give up. But the point is, I think it happens when he’s starting not to like what’s going down, and at that moment Charlie’s eyes were doing it. He looked like a little Bernie. What a kid.

  “Uh,” said Charlie.

  “Hey,” said Thad Perry, glancing down at Charlie. Across the set—we were back on the movie set, this time not a bar in the Old West but a campfire under an enormous saguaro that some landscape dudes couldn’t get to stand straight—Lars Karlsbaad was glancing at Charlie, too. Then Nan, glasses perched up on top of her head, listening to something in her earphone—I could hear it, actually, a man saying “get him on his goddamn mark”—was whispering in Thad’s ear, and he tugged his hand free and moved away.

  Not long after that, we were sitting under an awning not far from the saguaro, me, Bernie, Charlie, Leda. “What’s the scene about, Bernie?” she said. “I’m so excited!”

  Bernie leafed through the script. “Is this where the shaman—”

  “Kina Molenta? She’s gorgeous!”

  “—starts changing the history of the west or some bull—”

  “Shh,” Leda said.

  Thad Perry came in, cowboy hat pushed back on his head. He sat down in front of the fire. Hey! His knees cracked, just like Bernie’s mom’s. Then a woman entered and sat near him. I didn’t get a good look at her, on account of a big distraction from the get-go, namely—was it possible?—this wolf head she had perched on her own head. From Leda came one of those quick little in-breaths humans sometimes do. Her eyes were wide; Bernie and Charlie were both in that narrow
and hooded mode.

  A huge camera came rolling up on a kind of train track, Lars Karlsbaad and the camera dude sitting behind it. Lars walked up to the campfire.

  “Kina, looking like a dream,” he said. “How were the Maldives?”

  The woman shrugged.

  “Excellent,” said Lars, puffing on his cigar, hands balled into fists behind his back. “Comfortable with this scene?”

  “Except for this fucking wolf head,” said Kina. “It itches like a bastard.”

  Lars turned to the woman with the clipboard, standing off to the side. “I thought you took care of that,” he said.

  “This is the replacement, Lars,” said the woman. “She tried it out and said it was—”

  Lars made a chopping gesture, kind of quick and nasty. The woman went silent. He turned to Kina. “Sorry, love, we’ll get it fixed by tomorrow—I give my word—but do you think you can soldier through today? It’s a very short scene.”

  “Soldier through?” said Kina.

  “Possibly a Europeanism,” said Lars. “Sorry. Merely a way of saying—”

  “Tough it out,” Thad said.

  Kina turned to Thad. They exchanged a look, not just unfriendly, more like they hated each other.

  “All set then?” Lars said. “In this scene, Lolotea first sees—but subtle, subtle—that Croomer may be unlike the other white men, not a monster. At first, you both stare into the fire, possibly remembering the horror of the day. Then you, Kina, slowly turn and gaze at his profile. Questions?”

  “His left profile?” said Kina.

  “Why, yes, with the way you’re sitting,” Lars said.

  Kina shrugged again. She was a great shrugger, sending messages I never wanted coming in my direction.

  “Something wrong with my left profile?” Thad said.

  “No, no,” said Lars. “What a thought—agreed, Kina?”

  She was silent. Behind his back, the knuckles of Lars’s fists were white as bone and getting whiter. A crazy idea popped into my mind; I won’t describe it. Lars turned to the woman with the clipboard. “For this shot we will clear the set.”

  “Right away, Lars.” The woman with the clipboard faced us. “All nonessential personnel please clear the set.”

  Nonessential meant what, again? Right around then I gave up on understanding the movie business. The best thing about it was the buffet table set up near the trailers. I had some experience with buffet tables, and this one was aces. No time to go into aces now—and this card sharp name of Doc Sloman, now breaking rocks in the hot sun—on account, for example, of the steak tips, which Charlie was slipping me under the table.

  “Set to go?” said Bernie.

  “Oh, no,” Leda said. “I’m having a blast. So’s Charlie.” She turned to him. “Right?”

  Charlie said something, impossible for me to understand with his mouth full like that.

  “That was so interesting,” Leda said.

  “Yeah?” said Bernie.

  “Like how they had to show the horror of the day on their faces. What do you think the horror was?”

  “This stupid massacre in the script,” Bernie said.

  “Why stupid?” said Leda, sipping her white wine. What was this? They were kind of getting along, having a human conversation with no bad feelings around the edges?

  “The weaponry’s all wrong, for one thing. And the Apaches would never—”

  Leda laid a hand on Bernie’s arm to shush him. Bernie didn’t like that, gave her an annoyed look. We were back to normal. Meanwhile, Lars was coming toward the buffet table, actually right in our direction, sweat dampening his shirt in the armpits. I always watched for that.

  Lars stopped in front of us. “Hello . . . Bennie, is it?”

  “Bernie,” said Bernie.

  “Nice to see you back on the set,” Lars said. “Always welcome. And this is?”

  “My, uh, ex-wife,” Bernie said. “Leda.”

  “What a coincidence!” Lars said. “I had a wife named Leda, too.”

  “Really?” said Leda.

  What was going on? Something about two Ledas? My mind shrank away from the thought. Always a surprisingly nice feeling when my mind did that: I had one of those minds that was on my side, if you know what I mean, which I actually don’t.

  “And this is your son?” said Lars, turning to Charlie.

  “Yes,” said Bernie and Leda at the exact same time.

  “Hello, Charlie,” Lars said.

  Charlie, working on a brownie, nodded his head a bit.

  “Charlie?” Leda said. “Can you—”

  “Like movies, Charlie?” Lars said.

  Charlie stopped chewing for a moment. “Some,” he said.

  Lars laughed, a surprisingly squeaky laugh that caught me by surprise and which I was in no hurry to hear again. “For example?” he said.

  “Fight Club,” Charlie said.

  “What?” said Leda.

  “Just the first few minutes,” Bernie said. “Inadvertently. The moment I—”

  “Do you think you might like being in a movie?” Lars said.

  He was looking right at Charlie, but for some reason Leda answered. “Me?” she said, her face starting to pinken.

  “You?” Lars said, and pink went red on Leda’s face. “I was referring to Charlie. We have one nonspeaking youngster role still uncast. Your son looks the part.”

  “No way,” Bernie said.

  Leda turned to him, her complexion recovering real fast. Leda was strong inside, no doubt about that. “Bernie?” she said. “A moment?”

  She pulled him aside, her fingernails, now a deep and shining red, digging into his arm. They spoke in low voices—most of the talking done by Leda, something about being provincial, completely lost on me—and in the meantime Lars grabbed a whole slice of pie off the buffet table and gobbled it down.

  Bernie and Leda returned. “We’ve decided,” Leda said, “that it’s up to Charlie.”

  “Very sensible,” said Lars, crumbs falling from his lips. I licked them up, not so much because of liking pie, more because that’s what you do when a crumb opportunity arises.

  “Charlie, sweetheart,” said Leda, “would you like to be in a real movie?”

  “Do I get paid?” Charlie said.

  There was a moment of silence. Then they all started laughing, except for Charlie, who didn’t seem to get the joke. Neither did I. What was so funny? Being in a movie was a kind of work, right? It was important to get paid for work, an area where we’d slipped up in the past at the Little Detective Agency, part of the reason—along with the Hawaiian pants, now filling our self-storage in South Pedroia, and the tin futures play, gone bad on account of an earthquake in Bolivia—that our finances were such a mess.

  Leda was the first to stop laughing.

  Then Lars. “Scale,” he said.

  Then Bernie.

  That night we packed the twisted-up bike back in the Porsche and drove over to Vista City. The streetlights on North Coursin Street were out again, and the crime scene house was dark, but lights shone in the house across the street, where Bernie had questioned the mother and her little girl. What had come of that? I looked forward to doing it again.

  We parked and walked across the hard-packed dirt yard. The front door opened and out came a man carrying a vacuum cleaner. He stopped and said, “No dogs.” Or something like that: he had a huge wad of gum in his mouth.

  “We don’t need to come in,” Bernie said. “I just want to find out where to return Nino’s bike.”

  “Huh?” said the man. “You’re not the one who wanted to see the place?”

  “Not following you,” Bernie said, which made two of us, but I didn’t worry. We’d catch up: we always did.

  “It’s for rent,” the man said. “Very reasonable.”

  “You’re the landlord?”

  “Yup.”

  “Where are the people who lived here?” Bernie said. “The woman and her daughter.”

&nbs
p; “Cleared out,” said the landlord.

  “Where to?”

  “Back to Mexico, most likely. They’re all doin’ it these days—didn’t turn out to be the paradise they had in mind.”

  Bernie nodded, a short little nod. Some of his nods meant nothing; this one meant he was starting not to like the landlord dude.

  “How long have you owned the building?” he said.

  “Awhile,” said the landlord.

  “Know much about the place across the street?”

  “Nope.”

  “A man was killed there.”

  “Heard somethin’ about it.”

  “He had a son named Nino, lives with his mother. We’ve got Nino’s bike in the car. Any idea where we could find him?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ever run into anyone named Ramon around here?”

  “Nope.”

  “He might have a dog called Outlaw.”

  The landlord stopped chewing his gum for a moment.

  “Ring a bell?” Bernie said.

  “Nope.” His jaws started up again.

  “Would a C-note refresh your memory?”

  “Nope. Anything else I can he’p you with?”

  Suzie called when we were almost home.

  “I remembered where I heard about Thad Perry and the Valley,” she said. “Carla told me.”

  “Yeah?” said Bernie.

  Carla? I knew Carla, a friend of Suzie’s at the Tribune, and one of those humans who was fond of me and my kind, even made sure to always carry a little something in her purse. I waited for Bernie to whip us around in a quick U-turn.

  “. . . called her,” Suzie was saying. “She’s on assignment, back in the morning.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Bernie? You sound tired.”

  “I’m not,” he said.

  But once we were inside, he fell asleep with his clothes on. I lay down on the floor at the foot of the bed and listened to him breathe.

  FIFTEEN

  Lookin’ good,” Carla said. “So glossy.”

  “Thanks,” said Bernie. Bernie always looked good, of course—and even better today on account of the deep sleep he’d had, breathing slow and even, the darkness under his eyes all gone and the zigzag in his forehead hardly showing at all—but glossy? I didn’t see it.