Dog On It Page 23

  But we hadn’t. How did Rinty do it? I slid my front paws down from where they’d been clawing at the door until they bumped against the knob; it gleamed faintly from the streetlight down the block. I pawed at the knob, first with one paw, then the other. Nothing happened. Knobs were supposed to turn; I’d seen them turn so many times, but this one would not. I pawed and pawed, faster and faster, heard a growling sound that startled me for an instant before I realized it was me. After a while I dropped down on all fours, took a little rest, and was just about to rise up and try again when I heard a car on the street.

  It came closer and closer. I heard the squeak cars sometimes make when they stop. Then came a moment or two of engine noise—did I recognize that particular engine sound?—and after that, silence. But only for a moment; a car door opened and closed, and footsteps came up the walk. Did I recognize those footsteps? I thought so.

  Someone knocked on the door. “Bernie? Are you there?” It was Suzie.

  I barked.

  “Chet?”

  The knob turned. The door opened. There was Suzie, her face all worried. I bolted outside, right by her, round and round the front yard. A hot dry breeze was blowing up the canyon, carrying all kinds of city smells—grease, tar, car exhaust, especially car exhaust, lots and lots of that—masking what I needed, which was beets and Bernie. At last I picked up a trace of beet scent, followed it across the yard and past our trees to the road, where it died out.

  “Chet?” Suzie called. “Maybe you’d better come here.” I paused, glanced over at her. She’d turned on the front-door light. Her face looked pale, her eyes huge and dark. Come there? I forgot about that immediately, trotted in bigger and bigger circles around the place where the beet scent had petered out, finally finding it again. Now it led me back across the yard, not through the trees this time but around them and along the narrow paved alley by the house, old man Heydrich’s fence on the other side. A faint current of Bernie came mixing in. Have I mentioned Bernie’s smell? A very nice one, my second favorite, in fact—apples, bourbon, salt and pepper. Beets and Bernie: The mixed-together scent trail took me to the office window and ended right there.

  “Chet?” Suzie came up beside me. “What’s wrong?”

  I sniffed around, found a trace of the head-clearing smell from the markers Bernie used on the whiteboard, but then Suzie stepped in front of me and her scent—soap and lemons—obliterated it.

  “Come on, Chet,” she said. “Let’s go inside.”

  I didn’t want to go inside; I wanted to find Bernie, that was all. The next thing I knew, I was hurrying back to the road—where the scent died out as before—then doubling back to the office window.

  “Chet? What is it? What’s going on?” Suzie put her hands on the window frame, pushed. The window slid up. “Not locked,” she said. “Is that normal?”

  Of course not. Nothing was normal, not with Bernie gone. I gazed up at her.

  “How long were you alone in there?” she said.

  I started to pant, just a little.

  “Let’s get some water,” Suzie said. She stroked between my ears. We walked around to the front door and entered the house. Suzie snapped on more lights. I drank from the bowl in the front hall, all at once very thirsty, then caught up with Suzie as she went from room to room, looking around, checking the closets, even peering under the two beds, Charlie’s and Bernie’s. In the office, she found the phone and cradle on the floor, set it all back on the desk, and the horrible beeping stopped at last. After a pause, Suzie took out her cell phone and dialed some numbers. Almost right away a phone started ringing, not the big one on the desk, but close by. Suzie opened the top drawer and took out Bernie’s cell phone, easy to identify from the duct tape wrapped around it. Bernie’s cell phone rang and rang. Suzie pressed a button and listened for a few moments; I listened, too, heard Bernie’s voice, something about leaving a message. Was Bernie there? I didn’t understand. The duct-taped cell phone was here, meaning there was here. Machines were bad for humans, no doubt at all about that in my mind. I crawled under the desk. Suzie said, “If somehow you get this message, Bernie, please call. It’s Suzie. I’m at your place right now—the door was unlocked, and I think Chet’s been on his own here for some time. So if . . . Just call.”

  From under the desk, I could see Suzie raising the window and peering out—even sniffing the air, which humans sometimes did, although to no effect, in my experience. “Did something happen here, Chet? What did you see?”

  Not a thing, but something happened, all right, something bad, had to be bad if those beet-smelling people, Mr. Gulagov and his—

  The desk phone rang, right above my head. It rang and rang, vibrating the desktop, and then came a voice I knew: “Yo, Bernie, Nixon Panero here. Maybe got a replacement for your Porsche what got trashed. Gimme a call.” Click.

  Suzie said, “The Porsche got trashed?” I came out from under the desk. “Meaning what?” Suzie’s eyes were even bigger and darker now. “It’s no longer on the road? Bernie’s not out driving somewhere?” I circled for a bit, then stopped and barked in front of the empty space where the whiteboard had hung. Suzie gazed at me. I could feel her thinking, thinking hard. “I’m calling the cops,” she said.

  We waited in the kitchen. Suzie poured some kibble in my bowl, but I didn’t eat. Not long after, Rick Torres arrived, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and bowling shoes—I’d gone bowling once with Bernie but it hadn’t ended well—followed by a cop in uniform. “Hey, Chet,” Rick said, and gave me a pat. He was smiling, didn’t look worried at all. Suzie started talking to him, real fast and complicated, hard for me to catch on. She led the men through the house, going from room to room. I followed. We entered the office last.

  “How do you explain the window being unlocked?” Suzie said. “And the front door, too?”

  “The thing is,” Rick said, “Bernie can be unpredictable at times.” A quick smile crossed the uniformed man’s face.

  “I haven’t found that,” Suzie said. “Not at all. I think he’s extremely reliable.”

  “Couldn’t agree more,” Rick said. “In all the big things. But every now and then, since the divorce, that is, he kicks his heels up a bit.”

  “What do you mean?” Suzie said.

  “Like that night at the Red Onion, right, Rick?” said the uniformed cop. “Wasn’t he the one with that gal who played the ukulele? The gal with the ginormous—” Rick made a slight chopping motion with his hand, and the uniformed man went silent.

  “No matter what,” Suzie said, “he’d never leave Chet alone in the house for such a long time.”

  “I believe that’s happened once or twice, in fact,” Rick said. “Hasn’t it, big guy?” The answer was yes; but I forgave Bernie—things like that could happen. I stood motionless, giving nothing away.

  “Even if that’s true,” Suzie said, “which I highly doubt, why wouldn’t he take his cell phone?” She held it up.

  “That’s easy,” Rick said. “He hates his cell phone, hates technology in general.”

  “But isn’t he working on a case?” Suzie said. “Suppose an important call came through.”

  “What case?” said Rick.

  “That missing girl, Madison Chambliss.”

  Rick shook his head. “There is no case. The girl’s been seen having fun times in Vegas, also called her mom to say she’d be home soon.”

  “Does Bernie know that?”

  “He does. Whether he’s totally absorbed it yet is another question.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Bernie can be stubborn—one of the things that makes him so good at his job, and also such a pain at times.”

  Suzie gave Rick a quick glance, not friendly. “Maybe he’s working on other cases,” she said. “I think we should check his computer.”

  “For what?”

  “Any notes he might have made, something to lead us to him.”

  “Uh-uh,” said Rick.

  “Why not?”


  “Why not? Because he could be coming through the door any second, and I wouldn’t want to have to explain why I was snooping around in his files.”

  “It’s not snooping. We’re only trying to help. And where’s his laptop? Doesn’t he have a laptop, too?”

  “Probably took it,” Rick said. “And Bernie doesn’t need help. Not when it comes to taking care of himself. Don’t know how well you know him, but Bernie’s as tough as they come.”

  “Bernie?”

  “Guess you haven’t seen him in action,” Rick said. Suzie gazed at him, said nothing. “And he’s only been gone—What? A matter of hours? He’s probably strumming some ukulele as we speak.”

  “He doesn’t play the ukulele,” said Suzie.

  “Actually, he does,” said Rick. “He’s pretty good.”

  Better than that—he was great, although I hadn’t heard him play in a long time. Suzie and Rick were eyeing each other; the uniformed cop yawned, and I yawned, too, even though I wasn’t the least bit tired.

  “I’m staying with Chet,” Suzie said.

  “Up to you,” said Rick. “When he finally rolls around, tell him I ran that plate he asked about. Registered to some kind of environmental investment outfit, it turns out—the baddest of the bad.”

  We were alone in the kitchen, me and Suzie. “What does he do for coffee?” she said. On the road, Bernie picked up a paper cup of coffee at any convenience store, but things were less simple at home, with bags of beans in the freezer, a grinder that only worked if pressed on not too hard or too soft, and a coffeemaker that leaked if he put too much water in it. Suzie got the system all figured out after a while, and fresh coffee smell—one of my favorites, although I didn’t care for the taste at all—filled the air. She sat at the counter, sipping coffee, staring at nothing. All of a sudden she checked her watch, startling me a bit, then turned in my direction. “Why did I go to L.A.?” she said. “What’s wrong with me?”

  Nothing that I knew.

  She poured another cup. “Don’t you like your kibble?”

  Not particularly, was the true answer. Steak, if available, was always my first choice, and there were many others in front of kibble. But just to be nice, I went to my bowl and scarfed up a mouthful or two. I was still at it when Suzie put down her cup, hard enough so coffee slopped over the side. She mopped it up with her elbow and said, “I can’t stand this, doing nothing.” She rose, walked to the office, me at her heels, and flicked on the computer. Except it didn’t start up; the screen stayed black. Suzie bent down, checked the plug, tried the switch a few more times. “Is something wrong with the computer?” she said.

  How would I know? At that moment I caught a whiff—very faint, almost not there at all—of the head-clearing marker scent, the marker Bernie used on the whiteboard. I followed it, the thinnest ribbon of a trail, to the window. I barked.

  “You want out, Chet?”

  I did.

  Suzie let me out the front door. I ran around to the side of the house, back down the alley between our place and old man Heydrich’s. Almost right away I found the marker scent, followed it a few steps past the office window to the coiled-up garden hose, never used because of water issues. And there, behind the hose, in a pool of light from the office window, lay a jagged piece, not very big, of the whiteboard, Bernie’s drawing of the wild-looking bearded man in one corner and some writing below that. I picked up the piece of whiteboard and turned.

  “What’ve you got there, Chet?” Suzie said, standing nearby. I went to her, offered it up. She held it to the light. “‘Rasputin’?” she said, squinting at the writing. “‘Ghost Mine’? ‘S.V.’?” She turned the scrap over in her hands; nothing on the back. “Rasputin? Ghost Mine? S.V.?”

  Ghost Mine? I barked. And barked some more. From next door came old man Heydrich’s angry voice. “Do something about that dog, God damn it!” I growled. Did I need old man Heydrich right now?

  “C’mon, Chet,” Suzie said, her voice gentle.

  We went inside. Suzie sat at Bernie’s desk, gazing at the remains of the whiteboard. “S.V.,” she said. “S.V.” She tried the computer again, with no result. Then she took a Swiss army knife from her bag—we’d given Charlie one just like it for his birthday, although Leda hadn’t let him keep it—and took the back off the computer. She stared at the insides, empty-looking to my eyes. Was that all there was to a computer, empty insides? “Mother-board’s gone,” Suzie said. Way out of my territory, whatever that was. “And I can think of only one thing S.V. might stand for.” I waited. “That town where I found you, Chet—Sierra Verde.” I wagged my tail. Sierra Verde: We were back in my territory. “S.V.—what else could it stand for?”

  Asking the wrong party, sweetheart. Suzie reached for her car keys. I was already on my way to the door.

  thirty

  We drove through the night. I smelled biscuits, remembered that Suzie kept a whole box in her car, but didn’t want one. My stomach felt funny, all closed up. Suzie leaned forward, hands squeezing the wheel, her face tense in the lights of oncoming traffic.

  She said things like “I don’t believe in fate.” And “How could I ever let Dylan suck me back into . . .” I remembered Dylan: pretty boy, jailbird, loser. He couldn’t have sucked me into anything, not on his best day. The truth was that humans didn’t turn out to be the best judges of other humans. We, meaning me and my kind, were much better. Once in a while they tricked us; some humans got up to a lot of trickery, strangely like foxes, but usually we were on to that type from sniff one.

  After a while traffic thinned out, and Suzie’s face was mostly in darkness. We left the freeway, started up into the mountains, curves tightening and tightening. From time to time a car came the other way, and I saw the wetness in Suzie’s eyes. I put a paw on her knee. She gave me a pat. “Does he really play the ukulele?” she said. “I’d love to hear that.” An empty stretch of road went by. “I just hope . . .” She went silent. Was this hoping of hers about the ukulele or something else? Bernie really did play it, back in earlier days, knew all kinds of songs like “Up a Lazy River,” “When It’s Sleepy Time Down South,” “Jambalaya,” and my favorite, “Hey, Bo Diddley.” Bernie’s own favorite was “Rock the Casbah.” I usually took my bathroom break when that one rolled around.

  “I’m smart, that’s the ironic thing,” Suzie said. “Fourteen hundred on my SATs, graduated cum laude—so how can I be so stupid?” Couldn’t follow her on that one. “And I’m getting so sick of irony I want to puke.” Uh-oh. I shifted away from her, closer to the door.

  But no puking took place; maybe Suzie’s stomach settled down. That sometimes happened—I remembered an adventure with anchovies that could have turned out much worse than it did. The night went streaking by. Once I caught a golden flash of cat’s eyes, only much bigger. The hair on my back stiffened up. I knew what was out there.

  “Is it true—that he’s as tough as they come?” Suzie said. “I’ve known a few tough men—they never made me laugh. Or played the ukulele. On the other hand, there’s the whole West Point thing, his combat experience . . . Oh God.” She started chewing at one of her knuckles, a sign of extreme human worry; I had a few moves like that myself. “If only we could see around corners,” she said. I liked Suzie, even if she sometimes had trouble making sense. Seeing around corners, for example: Who needed it? Smelling around corners was a piece of cake, told me all I needed to know. And say a piece of cake was actually lying around the corner, well, then I could . . . I got a bit lost in my own head, and curled up on the seat for a while. Bernie was tough. I’d seen him do amazing things, like with the bikers. Nothing bad could happen to Bernie. My eyes closed.

  * * *

  I woke up on the main street in Sierra Verde. The bar with the neon martini glass went by, the glass lit up but only darkness behind it, and no hogs parked out front. From not too far away came a nervous, high-pitched bark, the kind my guys sometimes make in the middle of a bad sleep; and I thought of that place up the
next side street, with all the cages and the plume of white smoke. Suzie didn’t turn up the side street, kept going for a few blocks, reached the convenience store where we’d seen Anatoly Bulganin step out with a bag of groceries. No cars outside, but the lights were on and a man sat slumped behind the counter. Suzie pulled over, took out her cell phone.

  “Hi,” she said. “Lou? Busy night?” She listened; I heard a man’s voice on the other end. “If you get a chance,” Suzie went on, “I’d like you to run a search for ‘Rasputin’ with ‘Ghost Mine.’” More listening. “Like the crazy Russian monk,” she said. The man on the other end had a loud voice, but I couldn’t make out the words. “No,” Suzie said, “he died a long time ago, and that’s not the point—it has nothing to do with him or the czar. Just a name, Lou. R-A-S-P-U-T-I-N . . . yeah, like Putin, only with ‘Ras’ at the beginning . . . yeah, you’re right—Rastafari is a different kettle of fish.” She clicked off, turned to me. “My dream was getting a job at the Washington Post, like Woodward and Bernstein.” Suzie’s dream skimmed by, missed completely on my part. My own dreams were all about hunting in the canyon, chasing down perps, and sometimes dining on steaks smeared with A.1. sauce. I especially liked when Bernie grilled crosshatched patterns on the meat, couldn’t tell you why.

  Suzie slid down the windows. Desert air rolled in, cool and fresh, meaning morning was on the way. Suzie hugged herself and shivered, as though it were really cold. “I had a dog when I was a kid,” she said. “When my parents got divorced, he went to the pound.”

  I gazed at her in the light that spilled from the convenience store. A sad story, I knew that—and sure as hell wouldn’t want to end up in any pound myself—but still, I loved . . . well, just about everything, the whole deal.

  “You’re a good boy, Chet,” she said, opening her door. “I’m grabbing a cup of coffee.” She got out, went into the convenience store. My stomach still felt all closed up, but I knew they had Slim Jims in there. I could possibly manage a Slim Jim.