Dog On It Page 20

  “Good work, boy,” Bernie said. “The best. But whatever you’re planning with this bird? Forget it.”

  Whoa. What was that supposed to mean? Sure, the distance from me to the birdcage seemed to have shrunk quite a bit somehow; I was actually nearing striking range, if anything like that had been on my mind, instead of the furthest thing from it, which was the honest truth and nothing but.

  “Chet?”

  I sidled away from the counter, sat with my back to Cap’n Crunch. Cynthia returned, dabbing her face with a tissue. “My apologies,” she said.

  “Nothing to apologize about,” said Bernie. “I’m assuming Damon knows about this call.”

  “Oh yes. I told him right away.”

  “Did he come over to listen to it?”

  “No. But I gave him a description. We don’t have an especially good relationship, even for exes after all this time, but we trust each other in this one area.”

  “What area is that?” Bernie said.

  “Maddy and her welfare. She’s the best thing either of us has ever done. Non-parents might not understand that. Sorry, I don’t remember if you have kids.”

  Bernie had that hard look again.

  Did Cynthia seem a little scared? I’d seen Bernie do that to clients before. “That, uh, cut on your face seems to be bleeding a little,” she said.

  “Dull razor,” said Bernie, dabbing at the cut with his sleeve. Dull razor? True, Bernie did get shaving cuts, plenty of times, but a shaving cut on the forehead? I realized he was deliberately saying nothing about our adventures on that high mountain road out of Sierra Verde. How come? No idea. I eased myself the tiniest bit closer to Cap’n Crunch. The Cap’n shifted nervously on his perch. “I’d like to get the time line straight,” Bernie said.

  “What time line?”

  “One,” said Bernie, “exactly when this call came through. Two—when you called Damon. Three—when you called me. Four—when Damon told you about my supposed death.”

  Uh-oh. At times like this, when Bernie got going with one of those rapid-fire numbered lists of his, I couldn’t focus. Cynthia gave some kind of answer. Bernie came back at her with more questions, this time counting them off on his fingers. The words all mushed together, became background noise, not particularly unpleasant. I found myself inching over toward the Cap’n, possibly entering bumping-the-cage territory. Cynthia’s countertop was kind of high. If I could just get my nose above the—

  “Up yours,” Cap’n Crunch cried out in his wretched squawk, at the same time rising off his perch a bit, wings in the Dracula spread again. Up yours? I thought he could only say: Make it a double, light my fire, Madison rocks. Now he’d added “up yours”? Infuriating. I wanted to—

  “Chet?”

  I tried to look innocent, not so easy with one paw up on the counter. I lowered it in a subtle way. Bernie gave me a nice pat; at least that was what I thought, until I realized he had a good grip on my collar.

  “One last thing,” he said. “Where did Damon get this idea I’d been killed in an accident?”

  “He told me he’d heard it,” Cynthia said.

  “Where?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Do me a favor,” Bernie said. “Let him keep thinking it’s true.”

  “Too late,” Cynthia said. “I already told him. Did I do wrong?”

  “No,” Bernie said.

  “And why wouldn’t you want Damon to know? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain later,” Bernie said. “Got to go.”

  “I don’t understand,” Cynthia said.

  Me, neither, but it didn’t bother me: I was much more used to Bernie and his ways.

  * * *

  “What happened to you?” said Rick Torres.

  “Dull razor,” said Bernie.

  “Uh-huh,” said Rick.

  We were in the Donut Heaven lot, parked cop-style, driver door to driver door. Bernie bit into a chocolate-glazed doughnut; Rick and I were working on crullers with a nice dusting of powdered sugar.

  “You heard the tape?” Bernie said.

  “Yup.”

  “Pretty smart of Cynthia, thinking to record the call.”

  “Your point?” said Rick.

  “No point. Showed presence of mind, that’s all.”

  “Your point?”

  “No point.”

  “Hey, Chet,” Rick said, looking past Bernie. “Got an extra cruller here, big guy.”

  Yes, please. Regular meals didn’t seem to be happening lately, and I was famished.

  “Empty calories,” Bernie said, holding up his hand. The extra cruller stayed in the cruiser. He stirred his coffee with his finger. “The tape.”

  “Seemed kosher to me,” Rick said.

  Kosher: I knew that word; it had something to do with chicken, specifically, the best chicken I’d ever tasted, at the celebration dinner after the final stakeout in the Teitelbaum divorce. I waited to hear how chickens were coming into the case.

  “The girl just ran off to get her head straight?” Bernie said.

  “Happens all the time.”

  “With kids like her?”

  “Who knows what she’s really like?” said Rick. Hey, I did: She was great. “But first we get a photo of her walking alone out of some theater in Vegas,” Rick went on, “and now this call. Plus—no ransom demand, the biggest marker of all in my book. So, since I understand you’re off the case anyway, and pro bono work in the private-eye sector was unheard of till you came along, why not wait, see if she turns up in the next few days?”

  “What about you?” Bernie said. “Are you off the case?”

  “There is no case, Bernie. That’s what I’m trying to tell you.”

  Bernie’s voice sharpened. “Did you at least run a trace on that call?”

  “Don’t take your frustration out on me,” Rick said. Bernie was silent. “Yeah,” Rick went on, “we ran a trace, or tried to. But the call came from a pay phone, could have been anywhere.”

  “What does that show you?” Bernie said.

  “Shows me the girl used a pay phone.”

  “Where does anybody find a pay phone these days?” Bernie said.

  Rick pointed. A pay phone stood in the far corner of the Donut Heaven lot.

  “I meant,” said Bernie, “why go to the trouble of finding one if you’re coming home anyway?”

  “There you go again.”

  “Where?”

  “Reading too much into things.”

  “I don’t.”

  “You do, always have. Not everything adds up. There’s randomness, disorder, pieces that don’t fit.”

  “Only because we’re not smart enough to make them fit.”

  They went back and forth like that. I got sleepy.

  “How’s this for a piece?” Bernie was saying. “We found that blue Beemer.”

  Rick gazed at Bernie, then flipped open a notebook, leafed through. “The one with a supposed blond driver?”

  “He wasn’t in it,” Bernie said. “But the movie-theater projectionist was.”

  “From Vegas?”

  “Name’s Anatoly Bulganin.”

  “Where was this?”

  “Up in Sierra Verde.”

  “What’s his story?”

  “We never got that close.”

  Rick’s eyes went to the cut on Bernie’s forehead. “The plate?”

  “Nevada,” Bernie said. “C3P 2Z9.”

  “I’ll run it,” Rick said. “But don’t be surprised if it adds up to even less than we’ve got now.” He licked powdered sugar off his lips. I did the same.

  twenty-six

  Clues in plain sight,” Bernie said, more of a muttering, really. “Ain’t that always the way?” He’d been doing a lot of muttering on the drive from Donut Heaven to wherever we were going. I didn’t care—riding shotgun to any place was fine with me. All in all, I preferred the Porsche, but the nice thing about riding shotgun in the pickup was how high we were. Lookin
g down into all those cars added a lot to the fun; why, I didn’t know. I stuck my head out the window. The air was starting to heat up—summer on the way, according to Bernie—but we were the windows-open, AC-off type; the type, he sometimes said, that won the West.

  “Here’s a way of analyzing it,” Bernie said. Uh-oh. Analyzing—probably not my strength. “Let’s begin by asking one simple question. Of everybody we’ve met on this whole case, from the moment Cynthia Chambliss came driving up the street, who’s the least trustworthy?”

  Hey. Analyzing turned out to be a snap. The answer to the least trustworthy question was obviously Cap’n Crunch; one glimpse of his tiny wicked eyes and you knew that. But then where were we? Cap’n Crunch lived in a cage, and even supposing he managed to get out at night, say, and fly around, where could he possibly—

  “Only one answer,” Bernie said. “Damon Keefer.”

  Damon Keefer? Damon Keefer over Cap’n Crunch? Wasn’t so sure, myself. But then I remembered how Keefer smelled of cat, and also remembered that specific cat of his, Prince, with his snooty ways; and I got on board. Bernie was right, as usual. Down in a passing car, a woman behind the wheel was talking on a cell phone while a member of my tribe in the backseat had her head in a grocery bag, corkscrew tail wagging wildly. I kind of liked that corkscrew tail, was starting to wonder about—

  “And what do we do when we find a weak link?” Bernie said.

  I tucked my head back inside the cab. No idea about the answer to Bernie’s question, but that word “link” reminded me right away of the choke chain and Mr. Gulagov. He’d tried to change my name to Stalin! My name was Chet.

  Bernie glanced at me. “Exactly right,” he said, and only then did I realize I was growling. “When we find a weak link, we apply the pressure and keep it there till something gives. All set?”

  No need to ask.

  We tracked down Damon Keefer at his house, the huge house with walls around it and that strange fire-hydrant sculpture on the lawn. The sculpture wasn’t actually on the lawn at the moment; a lush green lawn—I didn’t have to look at Bernie to know he was frowning. Instead, the sculpture was up in the air, dangling from a hook on a crane mounted on a big truck. Exciting stuff, and I couldn’t wait to get out of the pickup to see if I could jump up and touch the thing, but we just sat there while Bernie watched. Soon the crane swung the sculpture onto the bed of the truck, and the truck drove off. The men at the controls were vague shapes behind the windows of their cabs. The machines almost could have been doing all the work by themselves. That gave me a bad feeling. I nipped at a tuft on my coat and felt better.

  Time for some action? Nope; we kept waiting, don’t ask me why. But if Bernie thought waiting was best, we waited. We had our MO, me and Bernie. After a while Damon Keefer came out of the house, barefoot and wearing a bathrobe. He walked around the empty spot where the sculpture had stood. I noticed white flecks in his goatee, a new development, matching those new lines on Cynthia’s face in a way I couldn’t explain. Were we getting out now? I glanced at Bernie: yes.

  I smelled booze on Keefer’s breath the moment my first paw touched down. Hard to believe, maybe, from all the way across the lawn, but my sense of smell is probably better than yours—or have I mentioned that already?

  Keefer looked up and saw us. “What the hell are you doing here?” he said. I remembered that way he had of saying unpleasant things in a low, quiet voice, and didn’t like it any better.

  “Where’d the sculpture go?” Bernie said.

  “What’s that got to do with you?” said Keefer.

  “I kind of liked it,” Bernie said. “But I’m no art expert.”

  “Are you an expert at anything?”

  “We’re going to find out,” Bernie said.

  Keefer’s chin rose, one of those signs of human aggression, kind of strange on account of how it exposed the chin to a good hard smack, and I’d seen what a good hard smack on the human chin could do, plenty of times. “We’re not finding out shit,” he said. “Didn’t I fire your ass? How come you don’t stay fired?”

  Bernie walked toward him. I was right alongside. The booze smell grew stronger, mixed with Prince’s; one of the worst combos I’d ever come across, like the opposite of perfume. “No hard feelings,” Bernie said. Keefer looked confused, opened his mouth to speak, but before any words came out, Bernie said, “How much did you get for the sculpture?”

  “What makes you think I sold it?” Keefer said.

  “My mistake,” Bernie said. “Didn’t know they had repo men in the art world.”

  I followed that, no problem: A buddy of mine named Bomber worked in the repo business, a pretty good gig, if not quite up there with mine.

  “You’ve got a fine sense of humor,” Keefer said; a bit puzzling, since he didn’t seem at all amused. He reached into the pocket of his robe, took out cigarettes, lit one up. I sensed a change in Bernie’s whole body: He wanted a cigarette bad. Keefer took a deep drag, and when he spoke again, his voice sounded more confident, like somehow the cigarette had lit a fire inside him. “I sold it,” he said, “not that it’s any of your business.”

  “How come?” said Bernie.

  “Began to bore me,” said Keefer. “Like you’re doing now.”

  “I’m boring you?” Bernie said. “That comes as a surprise.”

  Keefer took another drag, watched Bernie from behind a smoke cloud, didn’t speak.

  “Here I was,” said Bernie, “thinking you’d be glad to see me.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Cynthia says you thought I’d died in a wreck—and now here I am, like a miracle, yet you don’t seem pleased.”

  A miracle, yes! We’d pulled off a miracle out on that cliff, me and Bernie. This line of work—you can’t beat it. But I could tell from the expression on Keefer’s face that Bernie was right: Keefer wasn’t happy to see us, miracle or no miracle.

  “I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I never liked your tone, right from the start. And now that it’s clear from Maddy’s call that she’s coming home anytime now, no harm done, I can’t think of a single reason I have to talk to you for one more second.” He tossed his cigarette butt onto the dead grass where the sculpture had stood and stalked off toward the house.

  We caught up with him in a step or two, Bernie on one side, me on the other. “Walking off in a huff won’t work,” Bernie said. “Too much at stake for that.”

  Keefer stopped and turned on him. “Get off my property or I’ll call the cops,” he said. “Does that work?”

  Bernie nodded. “Works for me,” he said. “Call the cops.”

  Keefer’s face, even his whole body, seemed to swell up. I thought he might take a swing at Bernie. Yes, do it, do it! But maybe because his robe started to open and he had to tug it back in place, nothing happened, not of the violent kind. My mind flashed back to the bikers and all that ruckus and lovely sawdust. This was the life for me.

  Now Keefer, face and body, was deflating, like a basketball I’d once gotten hold of after it came bouncing out of a school yard. “What is it you want from me? Money? Is this a shakedown?”

  “What would I be shaking you down about?”

  “Search me,” Keefer said. “You guys have a reputation.”

  “What guys do you mean?”

  “Private detectives. Word gets around.”

  “Let us in on it—what’s the word?”

  “Blackmail,” Keefer said.

  “Blackmail?”

  “You start working for a client, worm yourselves into their lives, find the dirt.”

  “What’s the dirt on you, Damon? Save us some time.”

  Keefer’s eyes shifted to Bernie, then away.

  “How deep in debt are you?” Bernie said. “How far gone?”

  “You’re way off,” said Keefer. “I have normal business debts, balanced by revenues, as per the master plan.”

  “What master plan?”

  “For Pinnacle Peak Homes at Pum
a Wells, of course,” said Keefer. “A top-ten development of the year, according to Valley magazine—in case you’re interested in actual facts.”

  At that moment cat smell came rolling down on me, enough to make me dizzy. I looked up and saw Prince on a balcony over the front door. And what was he toying with? A dead bird? Or maybe not quite dead yet? Disgusting, that kind of behavior, completely unimaginable to me; plus, I’d never caught a bird in my whole life. Why was that?

  “What about your other investments?” Bernie said.

  “What other investments?” said Keefer.

  “In the movie business, maybe.”

  “Lost me.”

  “You don’t have an ownership stake in any movie theaters?” Bernie said. “Up in Vegas, for example?”

  Keefer seemed to deflate a little more. “You make no sense.”

  “I’ve even got a specific theater in mind,” Bernie said. “The Golden Palm Movie Palace.”

  Keefer’s face had gone all bony, reminding me of an investigation we’d once done in an old folks’ home, something about a rigged canasta game, the details never clear in my mind. “What are you saying?” he said.

  “I’m just asking the question: Are you an owner of the Golden Palm Movie Palace?”

  “A ridiculous question, and the answer is no. I’d never even heard of the place till the police called.”

  “Any idea who does own it?”

  Keefer sagged slightly, as though hit by a strong gust. “How would I know something like that?”

  “Just asking,” Bernie said. “I’m trying to get your daughter back.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Keefer said. All of a sudden he was inflating again, his face flushing. I didn’t understand him at all. “Are you stupid? You’re off the goddamn case. There is no goddamn case—she went away to get her head straight and now she’s coming home. You listened to the call, didn’t you? Can’t you understand simple English? We don’t need your services. You got your money, way more than you deserved. Now vanish.” Keefer, all flushed and inflated, still didn’t raise his voice, keeping it low and nasty, which was even worse somehow. Bernie stupid? That was a new one. Below the hem of his robe, Keefer turned out to be one of those dudes with skinny calves, not much to sink your teeth into, but I got ready anyway.