Thereby Hangs a Tail Page 3

  Back to Bernie and Suzie. The point was that although Bernie hadn’t liked Suzie’s story, he’d ended up liking Suzie. Plus she liked him. Everything was going along swimmingly—I love swimming, by the way, understand that expression perfectly—until an old, or possibly not so old—boyfriend of Suzie’s showed up, name of Dylan McKnight. Don’t get me started, but I can tell you that he and I didn’t hit it off from the get-go, though I’ve liked just about every human I’d ever met, except for perps and gangbangers, and even some of—

  “. . . meet the plane,” Bernie was saying. I looked up, saw him moving toward the front door, Adelina beside him.

  “I’ll let my husband know,” Adelina was saying. “Sure you don’t want a retainer?”

  “Not necessary,” said Bernie. “This’ll be all over soon. We’ll bill you then.”

  Oh, Bernie.

  We had a late breakfast, bacon and eggs for Bernie, kibble for me. And some of Bernie’s bacon, to tell the truth. Bernie had gotten this idea, no telling from where, that too much bacon was bad for him. The idea of too much bacon made no sense to me and I was happy to help him out.

  After breakfast, Bernie went into the office and started tap-tapping at the computer. I sat by the tall, narrow window in the front hall, gazing out. Time passed and then I heard a truck coming. FedEx or UPS? An important difference, because the UPS guy always tossed a biscuit on the lawn as he blew by and the FedEx guy never did. The trucks sounded almost the same, except for a soft tick-tick-tick that meant FedEx, and a moment later I heard that damn ticking: no biscuit. Soon the FedEx truck drove past; I barely looked at it. But then, what was this, right on its tail? A motorcycle. Motorcycles were always interesting, and this one especially, since it stopped in front of our house.

  The driver wore a helmet and visor, the dark kind. He turned, raised the visor, looked at the house and saw me. He yanked the visor back down so fast I didn’t actually get a chance to see what he looked like beyond dark skin and a flash of blue, wasn’t even sure he was a he. One quick whiff of the driver would have been enough on that score, but all I could smell of the outside was tailpipe exhaust. Vroom vroom: the bike roared away. Iggy must have seen it, too. He went yip-yip-yip.

  I watched out the window some more, but nothing happened. How about a good stretch and a nice yawn? Perfect. And several more times, also perfect, before Bernie started moving around. I went to find him.

  Right away I saw he wanted a smoke. Not hard to put that together: I knew from how he was checking all the places forgotten cigarettes might be—the silverware drawer, under the La-Z-Boy in the TV room, in the laundry pile—but unlike some earlier attempts at giving up smoking, this time Bernie had been thorough and thrown them all out. I followed him around, although it was clear from the start there were no smokes hidden anywhere. Otherwise I’d have picked up the smell, except if they’d been in the safe, and even then, don’t bet the ranch.

  Bernie took a deep breath, let it out slowly. That was one of his techniques, for what I didn’t know. “How about a walk?” he said. And then: “Hey, Chet! Down, boy.”

  We went out the back door, Bernie first changing into his jogging shoes, which meant he was going to force himself to run. The smell of those jogging shoes: wow. And how strange to me the way humans wear different shoes for different activities; and the shoes women sometimes wear! I remember one really nasty pair of Leda’s: they’d actually scared me, which was how come I’d chewed them up. No way Leda would understand. The same footwear at all times works for me. I bet a lot of people would be happier with nice big paws like mine, thickly padded for those times silence is important, but with big sharp claws for when it’s all about traction.

  We went through the backyard, out the gate, and into the canyon. The canyon is one of the nicest things about living on Mesquite Road. It’s actually in the middle of the Valley, this whole city, or maybe bunch of cities, I’d never been clear on that, that goes on and on in all directions but was practically invisible from where we stood. Is that cool or what? I’ve lived in other places, namely the Academy kennel and before that a falling-down apartment with some drunks, not too nice, when I was just a pup, but this, with Bernie, was the best, the best that ever could be. Right now he was bobbing up and down on his toes a bit, throwing punches at the air. Soon he started running, sort of, up the gravelly trail that led to the hill with the big flat rock on top and then wound along a high ridge.

  Human running: not a thing of beauty, and all that effort to produce so little speed, kind of puzzling. To rev Bernie up a bit, I charged around him in circles, first one way, then the other, then this crazy thing I do of both ways at once, or pretty close.

  “Chet.” Bernie huffed and puffed. “You’re making me dizzy.”

  He plodded on. I picked up a faint scent that reminded me slightly of bacon, but this had nothing to do with breakfast. Jav-elina! Anything better than hunting javelinas? Hard to imagine. I sniffed around a cactus, the round kind with the sharp needles—I knew about those needles, oh yeah, wasn’t going to make that mistake again—and caught the javelina scent, much stronger. I left the trail, went into my trot, nose to the ground, rounded a tall red rock, and bingo, as Bernie would say: there he was, a big fat javelina, munching on a dead little something. He smelled me— javelinas are no slouches in that department, I admit—and looked up and snarled, a muffled snarl on account of the dead little something in his mouth. Did he think I was competition, that I’d actually eat the critter—maybe not completely dead, in fact: was its tail twitching a bit? I snarled back, more out of disgust than anything. The javelina dropped the critter—which scrambled right up in the dust and darted down a nearby hole in the ground—and bared his tusks. I showed him my teeth. He didn’t like that sight, not one bit—I could tell by the way his hairy feet started shuffling backward, as though they didn’t know what the tusks were doing at the other end. I rocked back, got ready to charge.

  “Chet! Chet!”

  I turned, gazed back at the trail, surprisingly distant and way above me, and there was Bernie, leaning out over the edge.

  “C’mon, Chet. C’mon back.”

  I looked at Bernie, then back at the javelina, still standing with his tusks and his surly attitude. Be right there, Bernie, as soon as I take care of this—

  “CHET! RIGHT NOW!”

  I glanced up at Bernie again, tried not to see him. But there he was. What did right now mean, exactly? I took it to mean fairly soon, not a long time away but not—

  “NOW MEANS NOW!”

  Bernie had a very loud voice when he wanted. The ground seemed to shake all around me. Bernie couldn’t make that happen, of course; it just felt that way. I turned back to the javelina once more. He was gone. Easy to follow his trail, a snap to run him down, but—

  “CHET!” The ground shook; I was almost sure. I headed up to Bernie but moving my slowest, tail just about dragging on the ground. He sounded mad, no doubt about it. But when I popped up over the ridge, Bernie gave me a hug. “Too nice a day to spend at the vet’s,” he said. “Remember the last time?” I did not. Bernie gave me a biscuit anyway, not the gourmet kind from Rover and Company, just the cheap kind from the market; but I loved them, too. I gobbled it up, rose onto my back legs, and gave Bernie a big kiss. He laughed and said, “Let’s get some exercise.” And then he got going up the path again in that shambling—yes, I’m afraid it fit—way of his. Bernie might have been limping a bit, too. That happened sometimes, especially when he was tired, and came from his wound, a long-ago wound in a desert war, not our desert but some distant one. I walked at his side, taking in the smells.

  We went around the bend, passed the flat rock and headed onto the ridge, Bernie huffing and puffing, me strolling along, occasionally sticking my tongue way way out for no reason. High above, a big black bird circled in the sky, the haze all gone, another sign that the big heat was over. I didn’t like big black birds, or any other kind of bird, for that matter.

  “Chet?
What are you growling about?”

  Me?

  “You’re tired? Want to stop?”

  Me?

  “Isn’t there a bench up ahead?”

  We went up a short rise, came to a lookout with a wooden bench. Bernie flopped down on it, said, “Ah.” I stood beside him. From here, if you gazed in one direction, you could sometimes make out the downtown towers, but neither of us gazed in that direction. Bernie was studying the sky and I was studying Bernie. “What a day,” he said. The big black bird was gone. Bernie took a bottle of water and a small bowl from his fanny pack. We drank, Bernie from the bottle, me from the bowl. I’d tried drinking right from a bottle a few times—much harder than it looks.

  “Don’t want to jinx it,” Bernie said, “but things might be working out on the money side. That five grand I put into those tin futures last night?” I remembered the checkbook coming out, but five grand? “Guess what—it’s up to six already. Overnight! Plus all this easy money from Adelina. I feel guilty taking it. The Manhattan DA’s probably right—there’s no threat here.” Bernie turned his face to the sun, closed his eyes. He looked much younger all of a sudden, and I could see the resemblance to Charlie. “Life is good, Chet. Why is it so hard to keep that front and center?” Poor Bernie. I didn’t know what the hell he was talking about, just pressed my head against his leg. He reached down and scratched between my ears. I closed my eyes, too, and did nothing much but feel the sun and the air, so soft and—

  Crack! Zing!

  What was that? A loud explosive sound rang across the canyon and I saw the strangest sight—my bowl spinning in the air, water drops sparkling in the sun. The next thing I knew, Bernie had dived off the bench and grabbed me. We rolled together in the dust, bumped on something hard—at that moment I heard another crack-zing—and ended up behind a boulder. At the same time came one more crack-zing, this one followed right away by a ping, and a chunk of boulder right above my head got turned into a tiny powder cloud.

  Then it got real quiet, Bernie and I huddled behind the boulder. Time passed. The big black bird, or another one, returned to the sky, circled around. Bernie rose to his knees, pulled himself up, very slowly, took a peek over the boulder. I took a peek, too.

  “Chet! Down!”

  But I wanted to see. Across the canyon, not far from where a group of houses crept down the hillside, I caught a glimpse of a far-off bicycle, or maybe a motorcycle; and then it was gone. The big black bird swooped down over us—close enough so I could hear the beating of its wings—and flew away.

  FOUR

  Back home, Bernie took the rifle out of the safe. I tried not to jump up and down. Loved the rifle, hadn’t seen it in ages. We went out, got in the Porsche, Bernie sliding the rifle behind the seats. “Had a drill instructor once,” Bernie said. “Know what he told me?” No clue. First mention of a drill instructor, as far as I could remember; didn’t even know what one was. We had a drill in the tool kit, of course, but had anyone ever come over to show Bernie how to use it? Might be a good idea. “He said, ‘Don’t bring a spoon to a knife fight.’” Hmmm. I thought about that the whole ride, once or twice got the feeling I was real close to figuring it out.

  We drove toward the sun, through a few neighborhoods a lot like our own, then past a baseball field with a kids’ game going on. I didn’t understand baseball, but it always looked like fun, and the ball itself I loved. Who’d have guessed what the insides were like? At that very moment a kid swung his bat and the ball went soaring into the sky. We weren’t going very fast. Would it be totally impossible to—

  “Che—et?” Bernie had this way of sometimes saying my name real slow. The ball hit the grass and bounced toward the outfield fence in lovely long hops that made me want to—“Che—et?” We drove on.

  And soon turned down a side street lined with faded little houses and the occasional low, dusty tree. All at once, I felt thirsty. The street dead-ended at a wooden fence. Bernie parked. We hopped out. There wasn’t a soul in sight, a common human expression that actually just means not another human in sight. Bernie reached back in the car for the rifle. We walked around the fence.

  On the other side lay the canyon, spreading into the distance. We followed a path that led in long switchbacks down the slope. I smelled exhaust right away, and not long after that, Bernie knelt in the dirt. “Motorcycle,” he said. “Been and gone.” He rose and we kept going. The path took us down to the canyon floor, then rose again, cutting up the side of a reddish hill. At the top stood a spiky round bush. “More tire tracks,” Bernie said. I could see them myself; also picked up a smell I knew from cases we’d worked, me and Bernie, and before that from my days in K-9 school: pot. I trotted around a bit, sniffing here and there. Meanwhile, Bernie was gazing off in the distance, away from the sun. He grunted. Bernie has all these different grunts. This one meant he’d just understood something, something he didn’t like. He raised the rifle, put one eye to the sight, closed the other. I went still, waited for the bang. But there was no bang. Instead Bernie went on looking through the sight, then said, “Yup, the bench, clear as day.”

  The bench?

  Bernie lowered the rifle. “Funny, huh?” he said. Whatever the joke was, I didn’t get it, and Bernie didn’t look amused either. “Time and space,” he said. “We’re in the exact same space as the shooter, just not at the same time, that’s all. But—” He turned, came over, gave me a pat. “But aren’t they curved, time and space? Isn’t that what Einstein tells us? Therefore, the lines are blurred, and by extension, the shooter is still here, at least partly.”

  Did this make sense to me, any at all? Well, does it to you? Honestly, now. I opened my mouth real wide, stretched out my jaw, cleared my head, making it feel all nice and empty; and at that moment caught the pot smell again, stronger than before. I turned, followed the scent. It led me partway around the spiky bush and then under. I ducked down, felt a spiky jab or two and then: the butt end of a joint, on the ground in plain view.

  I barked.

  “On the other hand,” Bernie said, “what about quantum mechanics?”

  I barked again.

  “And suppose string theory—” Bernie began.

  I barked once more, sharply this time.

  “Chet? Got something?”

  Bernie came forward, crouched down, bent a spiky branch out of the way. “Ow,” he said. “Christ.” But then: “Hey. Good man.” He took a surgical glove from his pocket, put it on, picked up the joint. “Still warm,” he said. His face darkened. “Possible fire threat, in fact. I—” He cut himself off, peered under the bush. “What’s this?” He reached in deeper, pulled something out, held it glittering on the palm of his hand: a shell cartridge.

  “Thirty-ought-six,” said Bernie. He laid the butt of the joint beside it. I knew what those were, baby: clues, two of them. “See?” Bernie said. “Einstein was right. He’s still partly here.”

  Whoa. Meaning the shooter was some guy named Einstein? We headed back toward the car. How could Bernie have figured that out already? No way was Einstein the only pothead shooter in the Valley—we had them out the yingyang.

  “Imagine the kind of detective he’d have been,” said Bernie. “Einstein, I’m talking about.” That just confused me more. We had competition—there was Len Watters in Pedroia, for example, and the Mirabelli Brothers in Sunshine City, but Einstein, PI, was new to me. Hey, bring the dude on—we weren’t afraid of competition, me and Bernie. Except for finances, we were doing great.

  Back in the office, Bernie sat at the computer and started tapping away. From time to time he muttered a few words, like “smokes pot,” or “handy with a thirty-ought-six,” or “ax to grind.” I lay down on the rug. Ax to grind? I knew axes, remembered a real fun camping trip where Bernie showed Charlie how to take down a tree. Talk about excitement! Tim-ber! And a lucky thing no one was in the tent at the time. But where did axes fit in now? Joint, cartridge: that was it, right? Still, I trusted Bernie.

  My eyelids got
heavy. That happens once or twice a day, maybe more, a delicious feeling, hard to describe, that means a nap is on the way. Napping is a lot like sleeping. There’s a difference, but what? Let’s just say I’m a big fan of both, and leave it at that.

  Tap tap tap. Pretty soon I was caught up in a dream that was all about camping. Right from the get-go I was chasing a squirrel, and then in that funny way dreams have, the squirrel turned into the fat javelina from the canyon. I chased that, too, and lots of other things, some of them animals I’d only seen on the Discovery Channel, like iguanas and water buffaloes. How weird was that? Funny how the mind—

  “Chet? Up and at ’em, big guy.”

  Up and at ’em? Took me a moment or two to understand, what with iguanas and water buffaloes still on the loose, but then I was on my feet, giving myself a good shake, the coat-rippling kind that starts at the front and ends with my tail going thrum thrum.