A Fistful of Collars Page 4

  “Didn’t think of that,” said Nixon. “But patrol guys know you, Bernie. Once a cop, always a cop.”

  “Where’d you get that idea?” Bernie said.

  “When I was in the pen,” said Nixon. “We talked a lot about cops, kind of the way dogs think about cats.”

  “Dogs think a lot about cats?” Bernie said.

  “Makes sense, don’t it?” said Nixon.

  Then suddenly they were both looking at me. The subject was cats? At the moment, I had no interest in that at all. What I wanted was to take this new baby for a spin, see what it could do, and pronto. I gave myself a good shake, the kind that starts at my head, travels all the way to the tip of my tail and ripples back up again.

  “Bet that feels good,” Nixon said.

  “He wouldn’t be doing it otherwise,” said Bernie.

  Well, of course not. Went without saying. But that hardly ever stops humans, no offense.

  “Come on inside,” Bernie said. “I’ll cut you a check.”

  “Twisted my arm,” said Nixon, which had happened once before, the night we took Nixon down, but why now? And in fact, no arm twisting took place. I pushed all of this out of my mind—whoosh, just like that, a nice feeling—and we moved toward the house.

  “Notice those two different shades of red?” Nixon said.

  “I did,” said Bernie.

  “Too subtle?”

  “No.”

  “Cheers,” said Bernie.

  “To the open road,” said Nixon.

  They clinked glasses. We were at the kitchen table, Bernie on the bench seat, back to the wall, which was how he liked to sit, Nixon in Leda’s old chair, and me over by the floor vent, catching the AC. Yes to the open road, and what was wrong with right now?

  “Goes down real nice,” said Nixon. “Bourbon?”

  “Yup.”

  “That your drink?”

  “Guess you could say so.”

  “Classy.”

  “This isn’t the classy kind.”

  Nixon took a sip, glanced at some pages on the table. “Don’t tell me you’re working on a screenplay?” he said.

  Bernie shook his head. “Don’t even know how to read the goddamn thing.” He picked up a page. “What’s INT?”

  “Interior,” Nixon said. “INT or EXT, lead item in every slug line in a script.”

  “Slug line?” said Bernie.

  Nixon leaned over, pointed to the top of the page Bernie was holding. “Right here, after Fade In. Fade in is how you start a movie. Then comes the first scene—interior, bedroom, night. After that, they put in what’s going on, like here—a man tosses in his sleep. Then see here? Cut to. That’s how they get to the next scene.”

  “That’s a whole scene?” Bernie said. “A guy tosses in his sleep?”

  “All depends on how it’s handled,” Nixon said. “Film’s a director’s medium—gotta keep that in mind. Take the cigarette lighting scene in Now, Voyager—what would that look like on the page? Zip. But on the screen . . . well, there are some things you never forget.”

  “Now, Voyager,” said Bernie. “That’s Bette Davis?”

  “Shit, yeah,” said Nixon. “And Paul Henreid—he did the cigarette thing.”

  “Forgot you were a fan.”

  “A fan of a particular period, Bernie. Ain’t been acting like hers outta Hollywood before or since.”

  Bernie poured more bourbon in both their glasses. “What do you think of Thad Perry?”

  “Zip.”

  “I’m talking about his acting ability.”

  “He don’t have no acting ability,” Nixon said. “Checked out any of his movies?”

  “No.”

  “He’s hype, Bernie, hype that walks and talks. Hype don’t get it done. Bette Davis had what gets it done.”

  “Which was?”

  “Hell of a question, Bernie,” Nixon said. “Hell of a question.”

  He closed his eyes real tight, the way humans do when they’re about to take a swing at some very hard thinking. I always feel sorry for them at moments like that.

  “Had much experience with mushrooms, Bernie?” he said.

  “Nope,” said Bernie.

  Whoa. Nope? Had he forgotten that huge and tasty mushroom we’d found in the woods on the Big Bear Case? And didn’t Bernie love to throw little white mushrooms on the barbecue when we grilled burgers? Which I hoped would be happening again real soon. I could just about smell them! In fact, with a little more effort, I actually . . . yes! I smelled burgers. I’d made myself smell burgers when there were none around—wow! What a life! Had something just been bothering me? Whatever it was: poof!

  “Once on ’shrooms,” Nixon was saying, “—this was down in Mexico, bad idea as it turned out, but that came later—I was sitting by this campfire and all of a sudden I rose up out of the flames.” Nixon opened his eyes. “Not me, but this vision, you see what I mean.”

  “Gotcha,” said Bernie.

  “Only I was in black-and-white,” Nixon said. “Shimmering. Is that a word?”

  “Think so.”

  “I was shimmering,” Nixon said. “There was me, this real person, and then me, this unreal person—but cool, you know?—at the same time.” Nixon shrugged and went silent.

  “That’s what Bette Davis had?” Bernie said. “Real and unreal at the same time?”

  “You left out cool,” said Nixon.

  They drank some more, in a no-hurry kind of way. Burgers, anybody? But there was no sign of burgers in the works, no sign of any kind of food at all in the near future, which is the only future that interests me.

  “Do me a favor,” Bernie said. “Read this script and tell me what you think of it.”

  “Who’s the writer?” said Nixon.

  “Says on it.”

  Nixon studied the top page. “Wild Horseman,” he said. “Screenplay by Arn Linsky. Never heard of him. What’s this all about?”

  “They’re shooting it here in the Valley,” Bernie said. “The mayor’s making a play for the movie business.”

  “Who’s the mayor, again?” said Nixon.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “What matters is that he hired me to keep an eye on Thad Perry.”

  “Good luck with that,” said Nixon.

  “How about we swing by Suzie’s and take her for a test drive?” Bernie said.

  Next thing I knew I was hopping into our new ride for the very first time. Up, up, and in there, a nice soft landing in the shotgun seat, a very comfortable shotgun seat covered in red leather, although red’s not supposed to be something I can spot, according to Bernie, so maybe it wasn’t. But the best shotgun seat I’d ever sat on: no doubt about it, even though a member of the nation within—namely Spike—had already done some sitting on it, too. But his smell would soon get overwhelmed by mine, the best smell in the world, if I haven’t mentioned that already—a heady mixture of salt, pepper, leather, with a soupçon—not of soup, that was a tricky one—but of a scent a lot like Leda’s mink coat; plus, to be honest, a topping of something male and funky.

  Bernie turned the key, tapped the pedal, cocked his head to one side. “Maybe a little too noisy?”

  No way!

  And then we were off, out of our neighborhood, up onto the freeway, into the passing lane. Vroom! I sank against the backrest.

  “This baby can fly!” Bernie said.

  Or something like that, his voice drowned out by a siren. Then a motorcycle came whizzing up beside us, blue lights flashing, and we pulled over. But no problem: it was Fritzie Bortz, an old pal. He got off the bike, not without some trouble—Fritzie was a terrible motorcycle driver with lots of crashes on his record—and came up to Bernie’s side.

  “Hey!” he said. “Bernie!”

  “Hi, Fritzie.”

  “And Chet—lookin’ good, Chet.”

  So nice to see Fritzie. My tail started wagging.

  “How’re things?” Fritzie said.

  “No complaints,” said
Bernie.

  “New wheels?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Cool. Love those martini glasses—wouldn’t have bothered pulling you over otherwise. I was actually on my way home—haven’t had a day off since last Tuesday.”

  “No one’s ever said you’re not a hard worker.”

  “Thanks, Bernie. I do what I can.” Then he took out his ticket book, flipped a page, reached behind his ear for a pen.

  “Fritzie? What are you doing?”

  “Writing you up,” Fritzie said. “Might even make my quota on this—I had you at one-oh-three.”

  Suzie lived in a garden apartment not far from Max’s Memphis Ribs, the best restaurant in the whole Valley, in my opinion, and not just because the owner, Cleon Maxwell, was a friend of ours and gave us two-for-one coupons, but mostly on account of those ribs: the juicy meat and then when you’re done with that—the bone! Was Max’s Memphis Ribs in our near future?

  “Chet! What the hell are you barking about?”

  Oops.

  We drove down Suzie’s street. There are lots of garden apartments in the Valley, but Bernie doesn’t like any of them, those little lawns and plants always being the wrong kind, bad for the aquifer. Suzie’s yellow Beetle was parked out front and . . . what was this? Hooked to a small trailer? Bernie’s face changed. For a moment it looked sad, not something you often see from Bernie. Then he sat up straight and took a breath. That was Bernie making himself do what had to be done. His face went back to normal. We pulled up behind the trailer and hopped out, me hopping, and Bernie stepping out after a bit of a struggle with the door handle.

  At that moment, Suzie came out of her house holding a lamp. She saw us and her face went through some changes, kind of like Bernie’s but different in a sort of female way, hard to describe. She lowered the lamp.

  “Hi,” she said.

  “Hi,” said Bernie. “Didn’t think you were leaving till tomorrow.”

  Had I known that? Did tomorrow count as near future? I wasn’t sure.

  “Yeah,” Suzie said. “I’m just trying to get . . .” She made a little gesture with the lamp and it slipped from her hand and fell on the stone path, the shade—the multicolored glass kind, like they have in the lobby at Rancho Grande, Bernie’s favorite hotel in the Valley, and mine, too, no surprise—shattering into tiny pieces. They caught the light in a beautiful way and then Suzie was crying.

  Bernie took her in his arms.

  “I can’t do this,” she said.

  Bernie patted her back. I kind of nudged at both of them, helping out in my own way. “Sure you can,” he said. “You’ve got the goods.”

  “It’s not that.” Suzie drew back, wiping her face on her sleeve. “It’s you,” she said. “Us.”

  “Um,” said Bernie. “I . . . uh, everything’ll turn out.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “For us.”

  “How can you know that?”

  Bernie shrugged. “I just do.”

  They gazed at each other. Suzie’s eyes were dampening up again.

  “Got a new ride,” Bernie said.

  Suzie turned toward it. Eyes dampening, yes, but now a smile was trying to break out at the same time, one of those real complicated human looks.

  “How about an inaugural spin?” Bernie said.

  Normally, meaning pretty much always, the shotgun seat is mine, but on this particular occasion I hopped right up on that tiny shelflike thing in back. How come? No clue. Sometimes I just do things. One of Bernie’s rules is not to overthink. I’m totally with him on that. Perps fell into that overthinking trap all time. Take Fishhead Hobbs, for example, and that jewel heist he’d tried to pull at the Ritz. “Fishy,” Bernie said to him. “Don’t overthink.” But Fishhead had swallowed the emeralds anyway, so we’d had to spend the whole afternoon waiting in the hospital before collecting our reward from Mort Gluck, house dick at the Ritz.

  Did an inaugural spin mean one that ended up at Max’s Memphis Ribs, and pretty damn quick? Must have, because just about the next thing I knew, there we were at our favorite table, the one in front of the painting of the pink pig. I’ve only had one experience with an actual pig, and don’t want to go into it at the moment, or ever.

  Cleon Maxwell’s the owner. We’d helped him out on a case once, the details escaping me, and he was also a friend of me and my kind—whether or not that’s the case is something I’ve known from the get-go with every human I’ve ever met.

  “We didn’t order this,” Bernie said when a bottle of champagne arrived.

  Cleon appeared at the round window in the swinging door that led to the kitchen, smiled, and waved at us, then disappeared. Things were always humming at Max’s. I lay under the table and worked on a rib, then another, and possibly one more. Up above, Bernie and Suzie were doing the same thing, plus drinking champagne. Water’s my drink.

  “Who’s going to win the election?” Bernie said.

  “Until a few weeks ago, probably the reformers,” Suzie said. “Now it’s too close to call—the mayor’s smart.”

  “He is?”

  “More like shrewd,” Suzie said. “The smart one’s his chief of staff. Wherever it’s coming from, he’s made some good moves lately.”

  “Like the Hollywood thing?” Bernie said.

  “You know about that?”

  “I’m a player.” And then Bernie explained all about this new job we were on, or if we weren’t already on it, soon would be. One or two details seemed familiar.

  “Thad Perry?” Suzie said. “Isn’t he from here originally?”

  “Didn’t know that,” Bernie said.

  “Did you meet the chief of staff?”

  “Vera something?”

  “Yes,” said Suzie. She seemed to be about to say something else but did not, just giving Bernie a quick sideways glance instead.

  Soon after that came a struggle between Bernie and Cleon, Cleon saying dinner was on him and Bernie refusing. They arm wrestled over it—Cleon’s got these popping forearms, way bigger than Bernie’s—and Bernie won, as usual. But it took a long time and I missed the very end—arm wrestling gets me too excited and I ended up waiting with Suzie in the parking lot.

  We spent the night at Suzie’s place. A nice crib, but I never sleep my best at Suzie’s. One thing about apartments: you’re not alone. There were people up above, a woman and a man. The man said, “What did you do with my pills?” and the woman said, “I didn’t touch them.” Clear as a bell—although I’ve seen humans miss ringing bells, too—but Bernie and Suzie didn’t seem to hear. And on the other side of Suzie’s wall there was a cat. He knew I knew, by the way, and also knew I knew he knew I knew, which is the maddening way it goes with cats, so no surprise that I had a restless night.

  And was just settling down by the front door—Bernie and Suzie slept in her bedroom, door closed, fine with me this particular night, kind of a surprise—when I heard a car go by. Did it make a little ticking sound? Tick-tick-tick? I thought so. I rose and went to the window. Yes, a tick-ticking car, driving real slow, a dark car with darkened windows, all closed except one at the back. And poking out of that back window? The head of an enormous member of the nation within, an open-mouth dude with the angriest eyes and the longest teeth I’d ever seen; a real bad combo. The car sped up and vanished in the night.

  FIVE

  You know what was on my mind the whole time?” Bernie said. We were on the street outside Suzie’s place and the Beetle, towing the trailer, had just turned the corner and disappeared from view. Its sound shrank and shrank, and then the entire Valley went quiet, which hardly ever happened.

  I waited to hear what was on Bernie’s mind. At that moment a car towing a trailer a lot like Suzie’s drove up. A woman got out, glanced at us, then walked to Suzie’s door and fished some keys from her purse. She tried one or two, opened the door, and went inside.

  “I was thinking of popping the question,” Bernie said.

  A new one on me. P
opping? I knew popcorn—not my favorite, on account of how it can stick between your teeth—and that was it.

  “There’s a tide which taken at the flow,” Bernie said, not losing me at all, on account of the trip we’d taken to San Diego a while back—we’d surfed, me and Bernie!—so I knew tides were some trick of the ocean. Were we headed there again? Like now? A fine idea, but that was Bernie.

  “On the other hand,” he went on, something he hardly ever says, because of this belief of his that if humans had more or less than two hands they’d think differently, or something like that, “a wedding means a happy ending only in the movies. In real life, real life goes on.”

  Okay. Now I was lost, and completely. San Diego: yes? no? I didn’t have a clue.

  “Come here, big guy.”

  I moved closer to Bernie. He gave me a nice pat. His gaze was still on the empty intersection down the street. I let that slip from my mind and just concentrated on the pat. You can feel things in the hand of humans, things that are happening deep inside them. I felt what was happening inside Bernie.

  We pulled into Vin’s Discount Liquors, which was in the West Valley, next to a strip club. Strippers: they crop up in our line of work, each and every one a fan of me and my kind. From time to time you run across a person who actually seems to prefer us, from the nation within, to their own, in the nation without, if that makes any sense. Probably not, but the strippers I’d met were all like that.

  “You goddamn son of a bitch,” said Vin as we walked inside. “Not you, Chet, but the asshole you’re dragging along.”

  He came around from behind the cash register and rolled toward us in his wheelchair real fast, long hair lifting off his shoulders in the breeze. Vin was another old army pal of Bernie’s, he had a massive upper body and below that a lower body easily covered by a small blanket. They shook hands, Bernie’s hand, which normally looked so big, lost in Vin’s.

  “What’s doin’?” Vin said, reaching into his pocket and tossing a biscuit my way. I was ready, caught it in midair.

  “Not much,” Bernie said. “You?”

  “No complaints,” said Vin. “Lookin’ for something special, or your usual cheapo rotgut?”