To Fetch a Thief Page 6

  “I want to hire you,” said Popo.

  “To do what?”

  “Find Uri, of course. Bring him back safe.”

  “That’s what the police are doing.”

  “Maybe.”

  Headlights appeared down the street. A car approached, then stopped, backed into a turn, and drove away. “Let’s go inside,” Bernie said.

  We sat in the kitchen, me by the water bowl, all topped up with fresh water, the way I like, Bernie in his usual chair at the end of the table, Popo at the other end where Leda used to sit. No one sat there now: when Suzie came over, she pulled one of the side chairs up close to Bernie.

  “What are your fees?” Popo said, reaching into his jacket the way men do when a checkbook is coming out.

  “We’ll get to that,” Bernie said, the checkbook staying out of sight. Oh, Bernie, get to the fees now. Our finances were a mess. “First, we’d like to hear a bit more about your dissatisfaction with the police investigation.” Did we, whatever that happened to mean? Why couldn’t we just take on the job, hop in the car, get started?

  “I didn’t say I was dissatisfied,” Popo said.

  “Then let them handle it,” Bernie said. “Sergeant Torres is highly competent.”

  “I don’t sense any urgency in his approach.”

  “That’s not his style.”

  Popo rubbed the side of his face. He had prominent cheekbones, was maybe goodlooking for a human male, not anything like Bernie, of course. “I can’t just sit on the sidelines. If you won’t help me, I’d appreciate a recommendation of someone who will.”

  I hated hearing that one.

  “What’s your interest in this?” Bernie said.

  Popo went still, except for his hands, which shook a little. “I thought that was obvious.”

  Bernie was silent for a moment. Take the case! “We’ll take the case,” he said. “The retainer’s five hundred dollars.”

  And out came the checkbook! “Thank you,” Popo said, starting to write. “I—”

  Bernie interrupted. “But I hope you’ve thought this through.”

  The writing stopped. Popo looked up. “What do you mean?”

  “Suppose Uri doesn’t want to be found?”

  “How could that be?”

  “Colonel Drummond believes he’s come under the influence of animal rights advocates.”

  “Impossible. Uri is and always has been the most humane of trainers, as I told you. He’s also a circus person through and through.”

  “Sounds like that might be a source of tension,” Bernie said.

  I knew tension, was feeling it now, would keep feeling it until that pen moved again.

  “Between whom?” said Popo.

  “Internal tension is what I’m talking about,” Bernie said. “Maybe it’s not so easy to be humane and a circus person at the same time.”

  Popo’s face tilted up in an aggressive kind of way. I got my paws underneath me, ready for anything. “Sounds like you’re an animal rights activist yourself,” he said.

  I knew lots of human jobs, like prison guard and homicide detective, but animal rights activist was a new one on me. Bernie didn’t say yes, didn’t say no. Instead he said, “Describe Uri’s ankus.”

  “Uri’s ankus?”

  “Bull hook, elephant goad—you must know the term.”

  “Uri doesn’t own an ankus,” Popo said. “He hasn’t used one in years.”

  “How did he control Peanut?” Bernie said.

  “Why are you using the past tense?”

  “Sorry.”

  “Do you think he’s dead?” There was a little quaver in Popo’s voice, a sound you sometimes hear before humans start crying.

  “No,” Bernie said.

  “Or have reason to think he’s dead?”

  “No,” said Bernie. “It was a verbal slip. How does Uri control Peanut?”

  “He talks to her.”

  “Saying what?”

  “Little things,” Popo said. “Like—foot up higher, there’s a good girl. Or give your good buddy a ride—that’s for when she uses her trunk to help Uri get up on her back. Plus there are hand signals for all the commands, and lots of treats.”

  Treats? I tried to piece together what they’d been talking about and couldn’t quite do it. Was Bernie planning to go to the treat cupboard over the sink? I waited.

  “What kind of treats?” Bernie said.

  “Bananas and pretzels are the favorites,” said Popo.

  Bananas didn’t do much for me, but I could always manage a pretzel. I waited.

  “You have to remember,” Popo said, “Uri’s been working with Peanut since she was a baby.”

  “How valuable is Peanut?”

  “In what way?”

  “How much would it cost to buy her?”

  “As a circus animal?” said Popo. “A lot, I suppose, but you’d have to buy Uri, too. Another trainer would have to start over, probably impossible with Peanut all grown up.”

  “Colonel Drummond said you can buy an elephant for ten grand.”

  “Colonel Drummond,” said Popo, sitting back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest, “is one of those people who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

  The price of everything and the value of nothing? I turned that over in my mind. It turned over a couple of times and then went away.

  “How long have you worked for him?” Bernie said.

  “Six years,” Popo said. “But I don’t work for him. I work for the circus.”

  “Which he owns?”

  “He inherited it.”

  “Was he in the military before that?”

  “The military?” Popo laughed. This wasn’t the usual human laugh, one of my favorite sounds, but something harsh and metallic. “Do Kentucky colonels count as military?”

  “You don’t seem to like him much.”

  “We have an acceptable working relationship.”

  “How’s his relationship with Uri?”

  “Businesslike.”

  “Did you and Uri start here together?”

  Popo shook his head. “Uri owned a small circus that Drummond bought out about ten years ago.”

  “So Uri went from boss to employee?”

  “Employee of the most skilled and indispensable kind.”

  “How did he handle that?”

  “In his usual way—like an old-fashioned gentleman,” Popo said. “I’m not sure where you’re going with these questions.”

  “When someone disappears the first thing we check out is their enemies.”

  “Drummond is not an enemy.”

  “Who is?”

  “Uri has no enemies.”

  “How does he get along with his family?”

  “He has no family. Except for me. We’re each other’s family, if you can understand that.”

  Bernie is a great nodder, has different nods for different occasions. This one was just a tiny up-and-down movement, hardly anything at all. What did it mean? I wasn’t sure, but Popo seemed to relax a little, his arms uncrossing.

  “How about Peanut?” Bernie said. “Does she have any enemies?”

  “Is that a serious question?”

  “Not really,” Bernie said. “But if she does, look out.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Because an elephant never forgets.”

  Whoa right there. An elephant never forgets? Had I heard that before? Couldn’t quite recall. What was Bernie saying? Not that elephants are in some way better than—? My mind dug in its heels, wouldn’t go any further in that direction.

  “. . . hard to imagine a middle-aged man in a demanding job having no enemies,” Bernie was saying.

  Popo shrugged. I liked how he shrugged, in fact, liked watching all his movements. “Uri is special,” he said. His eyes got a little misty. He looked down and—yes!—went back to writing the check. “Which is why I’d like you to get started.”

  “We’ve started,”
Bernie said, taking the check and tucking it away without looking at it. “How’s the circus doing?”

  “The kids still love us,” Popo said.

  “I meant financially,” said Bernie.

  “You’d have to ask Drummond.” Popo rose. “Anything else?”

  “We’ll need the names of any animal rights people who’ve had contact with Uri.”

  “What makes you think any of them have?” Popo said.

  “Am I wrong?”

  Popo looked away. “Nadia Worth,” he said.

  “Who’s she?”

  “One of those fanatics who want to shut down animal shows completely. They follow us from town to town, picketing almost every night. Eventually Uri met with her and she backed off.”

  “How did he get her to do that?”

  “He showed her his methods.”

  “Where do we find her?”

  “She’s got a website—Free All Animals Now,” Popo said. “But you’re barking up the wrong tree.”

  Huh? I’d barked under plenty of trees, but never picked a wrong one. No way to miss that squirrel smell.

  “What’s the right tree?” Bernie said.

  “I don’t know.”

  This was interesting. I’d seen Bernie bark once or twice—the party after we finally cleared the Junior Mendez case, for example, maybe a story for another time—but never up trees. Was that about to happen? I was ready.

  “We’ll also need a good picture of Uri,” Bernie said. And then, “Easy, big guy.” Oops. I was up on my hind legs, front paws on the table. How had that happened?

  Popo reached into his jacket again, handed over a photo. Bernie got up and stuck it on the fridge: the smiling dude with the pencil mustache who we’d seen in the video, the one where he lay under Peanut’s raised foot. In this picture he wore his tall, sparkly hat and had his arms raised.

  “He always gets a standing ovation,” Popo said.

  Not long after that, we were on the job, Bernie at the wheel, me riding shotgun. We left the freeway, drove through a part of town I didn’t know, the streets dark and shiny, as though they were wet, but it hadn’t rained and none was on the way: I sniffed the air, cool and dry, coming in off the desert. Things were different at night, muzzle flashes much brighter, for example. I’d seen muzzle flashes lot of times, although not at the moment. Not every case we took had gunfire, just my favorites.

  “They’re getting married,” Bernie said, “and at the same time, the bastard is . . .” His voice trailed off. That happens with humans. Stuff never stops churning around in their heads and sometimes it leaks out. What was Bernie talking about? Bastard was some sort of bad guy, but exactly what sort I had no idea. I shifted in my seat, put my paw on Bernie’s leg.

  We turned down a street lined with brick buildings, some dark, some with lights showing here and there. “Warehouses from when the railroad first came through,” Bernie said, “beginning of the end of the old West.” We passed a café with a few people at outside tables, then stopped in front of a building with a man and a woman sitting on the front steps. “Now the artists are moving in, or maybe they’re already moving out and the hipsters are moving in.” No problem. We’d dealt with artists and hipsters before, none of whom ever seemed to be gunplay types.

  We got out of the car, approached the steps. The man and woman gazed down at us. They both had Mohawk haircuts. Was that hipster or artist? I couldn’t remember. Mohawk was a kind of Indian. We knew Indians, Sheriff Tom Flint down in Ocotillo County, for example, but his hair was more like Bernie’s, with a tendency to stick up all over the place.

  “Looking for someone?” said the man.

  “We are,” said Bernie.

  “We?” said the man.

  “Yeah,” said Bernie, “Chet and I.”

  “And Chet, I suppose is your quote unquote dog?” the man said.

  “Wouldn’t put it that way,” Bernie said.

  “No?” the man said. “How would you put it?”

  I’m the type who likes just about every human I’ve ever met, even some of the perps and gangbangers, but this dude was rubbing me the wrong way, an expression I’ve never understood since my coat’s been rubbed lots of times but no one’s ever found a wrong way of doing it.

  “I’d put it in a way you’d really like and then we’d be good buddies forever after,” Bernie said, “but there’s no time for all that.” He turned to the woman. “We’re looking for Nadia Worth.”

  The woman kept gazing down at Bernie, saying nothing. No expression on her face, but she was nervous; hard to keep that a secret from me.

  “Nadia doesn’t deal with animal exploiters,” the man said.

  “Good to know,” said Bernie, “unless she makes an exception when it comes to harming them.”

  “What are you talking about?” said the woman.

  “You’re Nadia?”

  The woman nodded.

  Bernie showed her our license. The dude leaned over so he could see it, too. “We’d like to talk to you in private,” Bernie said.

  “What about?”

  “It’s for your ears alone,” Bernie said. I checked out Nadia’s ears: flat to her head and kind of big for a human—which I always liked, hard to say why—with some studs in one and nothing in the other.

  The man rose. “If you imagine that breeding animals in such a way that they can’t help fawning all over us is somehow admirable, then you’re a menace as well as a fool,” he said.

  What was that all about? No idea, but for some reason I really wanted to bite the guy.

  “You’d prefer to socialize only with members of your own species?” Bernie said.

  “I’m not saying that,” the guy said. “The human race is the cancer of the earth.” He turned, hurried up the steps and through the door, slamming it shut.

  “Your friend’s not happy,” Bernie said.

  “He has a strong sense of justice,” said Nadia.

  “Me, too,” Bernie said. “Which is why we’re here. Do you know Uri DeLeath?”

  Her gaze shifted away from Bernie, landed on me. Lots of times the expression in people’s eyes changes when they see me, like maybe they’re thinking of giving me a pat. My tail started wagging, not hard, just a little. The expression in Nadia’s eyes didn’t change. She turned back to Bernie. “I wouldn’t say I know him,” she said. “Very slightly at the most.”

  “How do you know him?” Bernie said.

  “I chair our committee on circus outreach,” Nadia said.

  “And?”

  “And I met him a few times in the context of that work.”

  “Meaning when you were picketing the circus?”

  “I have every right.”

  “No argument there,” Bernie said. “What did you talk about?”

  “Our position,” Nadia said, “meaning the position of FAAN, on circus animals.”

  “DeLeath has the reputation of being a humane trainer.”

  “Irrelevant,” said Nadia. “The whole concept of animal training is an abomination.”

  “Seems to me there’s a difference between a trainer who uses an ankus and one like DeLeath who doesn’t.”

  “If he told you he doesn’t use a hook, he’s a liar—they all do.”

  “Did you try to persuade him to stop?”

  “I tried to persuade him to give up the whole so-called profession.”

  “How did that go?”

  Nadia snorted. I can do that, too, and so can horses, horses in general being a big subject, better for some other time, but the human snort is different, means something not good.

  “Did things get heated?” Bernie said.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” said Nadia. “Not like some conversations I’ve had with circus people.”

  “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Six months ago or so,” said Nadia. “They come to the fairgrounds twice a year.”

  “They’re here now.”

  “I’m aware of that. S
ome of us are actually headed out there tomorrow.”

  “I have a witness who says DeLeath showed you his methods and got you to stop picketing.”

  “Your witness is wrong.”

  “Planning on seeing DeLeath tomorrow?”

  “I’ll certainly try. We never stop applying the pressure. The stakes are too high.”

  “What kind of pressure are you talking about?”

  “Whatever it takes.” Nadia gazed down at Bernie, eyes hard.

  “Including violence?”

  “No comment.”

  “I’m not a reporter,” Bernie said. “I’m a private detective, investigating a crime, and ‘no comment’ doesn’t cut it.”

  “What crime?”

  “Any chance you’ve seen DeLeath more recently than six months ago, like last night, for example?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Or maybe not you,” Bernie said. “Maybe your unhappy friend, or others in your group.”

  “No,” said Nadia. “What are you getting at?”

  “Is it possible your powers of persuasion are stronger than you let on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Maybe you were able to persuade DeLeath to come over to your side.”

  “I wish.”

  Bernie glanced up at the building. “Or you could be in the act of persuading him now.”

  “You’re making no sense.”

  “I’d like to have a look inside your place.”

  “Out of the question.”

  “I can get Metro PD down here with a warrant if I have to.”

  “But why? What’s going on?”

  “Uri DeLeath is missing,” Bernie said.

  Nadia laughed, the second unpleasant laugh I’d heard today. What was going on? “You think I have something to do with that?” she said. “Search away.”

  “Peanut’s missing, too,” Bernie said.

  Nadia stopped laughing. One of those faraway looks came into her eyes. We always watch for that, me and Bernie.

  EIGHT

  We went into the building. Nadia had an apartment on the top floor, a small apartment with lots of plants, the smell of food cooking, but not any food I liked—had that ever happened before?—and—the most important thing—no Uri DeLeath.

  “Aren’t you going to peek under the bed?” Nadia said. “What about lifting the floorboards?”