Dog On It Page 22

  “Russian connections, Chet,” Bernie said, tapping away at the keyboard.

  I lay on my stomach on the elephant rug, front paws stretched out, working on a chew strip, my mind drifting to thoughts of Max’s Memphis Ribs. Those two-for-one coupons—I hoped Bernie remembered.

  He got up, went to the whiteboard hanging on the wall. “Start with Anatoly Bulganin,” he said, writing on the board. “Then there’s the knife, made in Zlatoust.” He drew a picture of a knife, not very good. “Plus Ms. Larapova, suddenly, after our visit, no longer working in the office at Pinnacle Peak.” He drew a picture of a woman with a tennis racquet, also not very good. “What am I leaving out? Oh yeah—Cleon Maxwell, ID stolen by Russian gangsters.” More drawing: Was that supposed to be a pig? Please don’t forget those coupons, Bernie, that’s all I’m asking. “And now we’ve got a Russki moneylender, name of Gulagov.” Bernie made a funny-looking mark on the board—a mark I’d often seen and might have been the sign for money—and beside it added a kind of hook with a round dot at the bottom.

  He went back to the desk, starting tapping again. “Anatoly Bulganin, projectionist in Las Vegas, happened to snap the picture of Madison that seemed to show she was free and on her own, just another teenage runaway. Happened to snap the picture that seemed to show—see where I’m going with this, Chet?”

  What was the question? Seemed to show, blah blah blah. One thing about the so-called gift of so-called speech: Too often it just went on and on. Besides, I already knew damn well Maddy wasn’t a runaway, had known practically from the start. Bernie, get on the stick.

  Tap, tap, tap. “Why don’t we return to the question that came up with Albie Rose—who owns the Golden Palm Movie Palace?”

  Oh, sure, and how about where they get their popcorn while we’re at it? Not a big fan of popcorn myself: mostly air, except for those unpopped kernels that get stuck between my teeth, sometimes for days. Even now I could feel a little something caught back there. When was my next appointment with the groomer? She always brushed my teeth, one of my favorite things in the whole world. I got my chew strip way back in my mouth, maneuvered it around, trying to get rid of whatever was bugging me.

  Tap tap. “Here we go, Chet—looks like the Golden Palm Movie Palace is owned by the Rasputin Environmental Investments Group. Get it? Rasputin?”

  I did not.

  “Interesting choice.” He drew a wild-looking bearded man on the whiteboard. “Why not Chekhov or Tchaikovsky or any number of—”

  The phone rang and Bernie answered it. “Little Detective Agency,” he said. Then came a pause, and in a very different sort of voice, he said, “Charlie. Hey. Since when are you making phone calls?” He listened and laughed; he was sitting forward now, holding the phone in both hands. “Yeah,” he said, “that button’s the speed dial.” More listening, then: “There’s no actual slow-dial button . . . How come there’s no slow-dial button? Good question, Charlie. It’s like why there’s no giant ants—who needs ’em?” Didn’t have a clue what Bernie was talking about, but I heard Charlie’s little laugh on the other end. I myself was pretty good at making Charlie laugh—licking his face worked every time. The laughter of human children—there was never too much of that. “Now you know how,” Bernie was saying, “you can call anytime you . . . Charlie? You still—” Quietly, Bernie said, “Bye,” and hung up. He stared out the window. Bernie had a kind of stare where his eyes went blank. He was doing it now. What did he see at times like this? I didn’t know. After a while he swiveled his chair around and looked down at me. “We’ve got to find the girl, Chet,” he said. “Got to find her soon.”

  He went back to the computer and tapped away, sometimes getting up and adding something new on the whiteboard. I closed my eyes, sleep on the way. I’d had some lovely naps on the elephant rug, soft but also with a nubby texture that felt so nice. Sleep on the way, but for some reason it didn’t close in, not completely. Fine with me: A very pleasant fog settled over the elephant rug, nothing penetrating it but Bernie’s voice and that tap-tap, both soft and far away.

  “Russians,” he said. And later: “Rasputin Environmental—what else do they own, I wonder.” Tap tap. “And Keefer stinks, no doubt about that.” I couldn’t have agreed more—he stank of that horrible cat, Prince; a bit of a surprise that Bernie had picked this up, scents being my department, although at times our duties overlapped—but I lacked the energy at the moment to thump my tail in support. “Patterns, patterns—first the sighting outside the Golden Palm, then the call. Both setups, of course, and not only that, but Maddy tried to clue us in—what a kid! So they’re feeling pressure. Got to be pressure from us, boy, meaning we must be getting close, our activities influencing theirs. Kind of like Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, Chet—the very act of doing the experiment influences the results, so we can never be sure of them—how’s that for irony?—even if . . . or was it Max Planck?” He muttered on for a bit. Sometimes, like now, I got anxious about Bernie knowing a little too much about everything. Maybe if he just stuck to basics, like our finances and those two-for-one coupons at Max’s Memphis Ribs, we’d be better off.

  Tap tap. “Gulagov. Did we get a first name? Here’s one—Dmitri. And Yevgeny . . . Anton . . . Ruslan . . . any chance one of them’s connected to Rasputin Environmental, which would hook him in to the Golden Palm setup and then—”

  The doorbell rang. Bernie got up to answer it. I rose, too, shaking off the fog in an instant—anything about the door was a security issue, my territory. We opened up, and surprise! It was Janie. Janie was my groomer, the best groomer in the whole Valley. She had a great business with a great business plan: “Janie’s Pet Grooming Service—We Pick Up and Deliver.” And there, right out front, was Janie’s truck, silver and sparkling in the sunshine.

  “All set,” said Janie. She was a strong woman with a broad face, big hands, and dirty fingernails. I loved Janie.

  “We had an appointment for today?” Bernie said.

  Janie whipped out some device with a tiny screen, held it so Bernie could see.

  “Guess I forgot,” Bernie said.

  “Rain check?” she said, which I didn’t get at all. No point checking—it never rained in the Valley.

  “No,” Bernie said. “Looks like he wants to go.”

  I got back down on all fours.

  “I’ll have him back in two hours,” Janie said. Amazing, you might say, how I’d just been thinking about a nice grooming session and now here we were, but it’s not: That kind of thing happens to me all the time. “Chet, easy there, big guy,” Janie said on the way to the truck. She was almost as tall as Bernie, and I had to jump pretty high to lick her face, but I could do it, no problem. She laughed, just like Charlie, a high little laugh, kind of strange in a woman her size. But it sounded great to me. Was this the life or what? I couldn’t wait for the toothbrush.

  Janie had a nice setup in a strip mall not far away. First came the tub room, which was mostly a big steel tub filled with sudsy water. Janie scrubbed and scrubbed. I pushed back against the brush; wish I could tell you how good it felt.

  “Where’ve you been, Chet?” Janie said. “Brought the whole desert in with you.”

  I thought of Mr. Gulagov’s ranch, and crawling through the horrible old mine; but only briefly—wouldn’t want to spoil a visit to Janie’s with stuff like that.

  We moved on to the shower, a smaller steel tub where all the suds got washed away. Janie jumped back just in time, hardly getting sprayed when I shook off—we knew each other pretty well. I hopped out of the small tub by myself, trotted into the drying room, rolled on my back.

  Janie laughed again. “Got it down to a T, don’t you, Chet?”

  Whatever that meant. Let’s just get going. I liked the drying part, first getting rubbed down with towels, but even more when the hair dryer came out and Janie ran it back and forth over me, at the same time drawing a big stiff comb through my coat, drawing it nice and slow, slow, slow. Ah, bliss. Did Janie do
that two-for-one-coupon thing?

  “Looks like you need a trim,” Janie said.

  Trim away.

  Janie got out the scissors and did some trimming. After that she did some clipping and buffing of my nails. And then, finally, the toothbrush. Janie always sang a song while she brushed my teeth.

  “Brush your teeth with Colgate

  Colgate dental cream

  It cleans your breath

  What a toothpaste

  While it cleans your teeth.”

  Loved that song, one of my very favorites. I raised my head and did some of that woo-woo-woo vocalizing I’d learned by the campfire. Janie laughed, her eyes shining, and gave me a pat. Some humans had a soft spot for us and some did not; Janie was the first kind. Pat pat, and then the laughter faded and her hand slowed somewhere in the middle of my back, felt around, moved off, returned, felt around some more. “Got a bit of a lump there, Chet?” she said.

  Not that I knew of. Lump? What was that, anyway? Something Janie could comb out? I waited for her to get the comb again, but she did not. Lump. I thought of a perp named Lumpy Flanagan we’d once put away, but didn’t dwell on him for long—an ugly brute, with an overbite and no chin—and then forgot the whole thing.

  “Okay, Chet, we’re done.” Janie and I went out to the parking lot, climbed into her truck. I felt great. A female of my tribe passing by on a leash had to be tugged away. Who could blame her?

  We drove up Mesquite Road and parked in my driveway behind the van. Janie let me out the back—I didn’t get to ride shotgun in her truck, something about insurance. Insurance was one of those things I didn’t understand, just knew that humans worried about it a lot and that we didn’t have much, me and Bernie, on account of our finances. I glanced next door, and there was Iggy at his window. He saw me, too, and started barking, a screechy yip-yip-yip that didn’t stop. I let out a bark of my own, just saying hi. His barking got wilder; he jumped up and down, raced back and forth behind the window.

  “Your buddy’s sure trying to tell you something,” Janie said. She knocked at our door.

  No answer.

  She pressed the button that rang the bell. No answer, but the bell didn’t always work, something about a fuse. Replacing it was on the list. Bernie kept a list in the bottom drawer of his desk, added to it from time to time; the bourbon often came out after those listing sessions.

  Janie knocked again, harder. Iggy was still barking. Janie called, “Bernie?” She raised her voice and tried again, knocking on the door—pretty much pounding—with her big fist. “Bernie? Bernie?” She listened. I listened, too, heard nothing. Janie looked around. “Where’s the Porsche?” she said. And then, “He must’ve stepped out.” Her face squeezed in toward the middle a bit, one of those signs of human annoyance. She put her hand on the knob and turned it. Hey. The door opened. Bad security: but that was Bernie.

  Janie looked in. “Bernie? Bernie?”

  The house was silent. I went into the front hall, sniffed Bernie’s jogging shoes, lapped some water from one of my bowls, picked up my squeaky ball, squeaked it a couple times. It sounded fine.

  “Guess he left it unlocked for us,” Janie said. “Think it’s okay to leave you by yourself?”

  I squeaked the squeaky ball at her. Of course it was okay: I lived here.

  “I’ll write a quick note, then, get him to call me about your . . .” Her voice trailed off in the middle of whatever she was planning to say. That often happened when some human and I were alone together, always leaving me with the feeling that the talking kept on inside their heads, no silence ever. Between you and me, and no offense, but I really wouldn’t want to be human.

  Janie wrote on a Post-it note—Bernie used to paper the office with them before the whiteboard came along—and stuck it on the inside of the door. “Okay, Chet.” She gave me a nice pat, soft and gentle. “Take good care of yourself, now.” Janie closed the door and went away. I heard her truck start up, and then the sound of it faded away. Iggy was still barking.

  I trotted around the corner toward the kitchen. After grooming, I often got hungry, mealtime or not. I was wondering whether I’d left anything in my breakfast bowl—had that ever happened, even once?—when I caught the smell of strangers. And not just any strangers, but strangers who smelled partly of cooked beets. I let out a bark that echoed through the house, came back to me sounding so savage it scared me. I did it again, even louder. After that I ran from room to room, barking the whole time, feeling the hair standing rigid all down my back.

  Everything looked normal: kitchen, food bowl empty; dining room that never got used; living room with the big TV where we watched movies, me and Bernie; the big bedroom, very messy, as usual; Charlie’s room, neat as a pin, whatever that meant—I’d stuck myself with a pin once, seen nothing neat about it at all. But normal, that was the point, everything normal. Then I went into the office.

  Something was wrong; and not just the odor of the beet strangers, by far the strongest of anywhere in the house. What was it, what was wrong? I ran around in circles, sniffing and barking. It took me a long time, but then I saw: Where the whiteboard always hung on the wall was now empty space, the paint brighter than in the rest of the room. I sniffed some more, sniffed Bernie’s smell, of course, but almost overwhelmed by the smell of the beet strangers.

  Oh no. Bernie was gone.

  I raced through the house, barking and barking. All the doors were closed, and all the windows, too, with the AC finally on, now that the real heat was coming. I couldn’t get out! Bernie! I threw myself against the front door. I’d seen Bernie bash a door down once, but ours didn’t budge, didn’t even make a cracking sound. I tried again with all my strength. All that did was knock Janie’s Post-it note off the door. It fluttered sideways and disappeared behind the recycling bin.

  Bernie!

  twenty-nine

  Night. I was beside myself. I hurried through the house, checking and rechecking all the rooms over and over, stopping only when I heard something, or thought I heard something, and if I really did hear something it always turned out to be a car driving by, or a plane high overhead, or Iggy barking again. Worse, I hadn’t been able to hang on any longer, although I’d tried and tried, and ended up shaming myself by the toilet in the hall bathroom.

  Bernie. Where are you? Something bad had happened—I felt it through and through. The beet strangers had come, and now Bernie was gone, and the whiteboard, too. Bernie gone—gone and maybe in trouble—and I couldn’t get out, couldn’t go find him. Me, in charge of security. I found myself back at the front door, throwing myself at it again and again, with no results. Bernie had been talking about results not long ago, while we worked in the office. What had he said? I had no idea. I barked and barked, savage barking that filled the house, but did no good at all. Then—What was that? I went still, ears perking right up.

  But it was only Iggy: yip yip yip. I didn’t even bark back. What could poor old Iggy do? My only hope was—what? What was it? Then I knew: My hope was Bernie coming back, coming through the door. Maybe now? I watched the door, didn’t take my eyes off it, got ready to jump all over him. The door didn’t open. After a while a car came up the street, a loud car that sounded a bit like the Porsche. But we didn’t have the Porsche anymore, did we? I could still see it sailing off that mountain road and burning in the gully far below. This was confusing. Could that be Bernie outside, somehow driving up in the Porsche anyway? The loud car kept going, the engine noise fading, fading, gone. I rose up, started clawing at the door. I was clawing so hard I almost didn’t hear the phone ringing.

  I ran down the hall and into the office, stood in front of the desk, watched the phone ring. Ring, ring, and then a voice, a voice I knew and liked. “Bernie? It’s Suzie. If you’re there, please pick up. I’d really like to talk to you. Um. Uh. I’ve made a mistake, Bernie, and I just hope that, um . . . Well, please give me a call if you can. Bye.”

  I leaped up, knocked the phone off the desk. Th
e whole thing—cradle part, speaking part, wires—went tumbling onto the floor, landing behind the desk. And from down there, I heard Suzie.

  “Bernie? Are you there? Is that you?”

  I let out a bark.

  “Chet?”

  I barked and barked. Suzie! Suzie!

  “Chet? You all right?”

  I kept barking. After a moment or so, there was a click, and no more Suzie. I squeezed down under the desk, wriggled on my belly toward the glowing phone lights. Another woman spoke, not Suzie, her voice unfriendly, not a fan of my kind, I could tell right away. “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.” I barked at her. “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again.” I barked louder. She said it a few more times, all about dialing again, and I got angrier and angrier. Then the phone started beeping, quick and harsh, hurting my ears. I poked at the phone with my paw, but it kept beeping, on and on, unbearable.

  I left the office, started hurrying through the house again, a dark house with no lights on. I couldn’t get calm, not with that beet smell in the air, and the constant beeping. In the laundry room, I found an old leather sandal of Bernie’s and chewed it to bits. I barked some more, thought I heard something beside the beeping, went still. Was that a siren? Yes, a siren, far off. I waited for it to get louder, but it did not, got quieter instead, and then came silence, except the beeping, and Iggy once or twice. Soon he went silent, too. Iggy was my buddy. He wanted to help me, just couldn’t. Poor old Iggy. I rose up and clawed again at the front door. What else could I do? I clawed and clawed, getting nowhere. Then a vague memory came to me, a memory of a movie we’d watched, me and Bernie, maybe of Rin Tin Tin, where Rinty opens a doorknob all by himself. Had Bernie even said, “We should learn that sometime”?