To Fetch a Thief Page 8

  We took an off-ramp, drove through some quiet streets—in the headlights I spotted a cat gliding up onto a trash can, hate the way they glide around like that—and the next thing I knew we were back on the ring road behind the fairgrounds. The gatehouse appeared—I saw the guard, feet up on the desk—but we didn’t stop, instead continued over a little rise with the fairgrounds fence on one side and a bare hillside on the other. Bernie slowed down, gazing at the base of the hillside. “Should be somewhere around . . . there we go.”

  We turned onto a rough track that slanted up across the hillside, rounded a big rock, and headed the other way. Almost at once, we saw a pickup, parked off to the side, the front facing us. Bernie stopped the car, cut the engine. We sat there, real quiet. I heard little metallic pings coming from our engine, plus the hum of traffic and other city sounds, but nothing from the pickup. Bernie was squinting in its direction. The way his eyes worked at night always surprised me. Long about now he would often make a remark about adjusting them.

  He spoke in a low voice. “Better let my eyes adjust.” Letting Bernie’s eyes adjust meant just sitting there. We just sat there for a while and then he said, “Okay. Quiet as a mouse.”

  Say what? I paused, then leaped silently out of the car. What made Bernie think mice were quiet? What made him want me to be like mice in any way? Meanwhile, he was getting out of the car, almost at once stepping on a twig that cracked like a gunshot in the night. At times like that we always froze, so we froze. The pickup sat still and silent. Does the taste of something you ate earlier sometimes come back up into your mouth? That happened to me as I waited for Bernie’s signal that frozen time was over, and the taste was Cheetos. I wanted more.

  Bernie made a little chopping motion and we got started, moving toward the pickup, not side by side but spread out a bit, a new thing we’d been working on recently. We came to the pickup. Bernie took out the pencil flash, shone it through the windows, then into the cargo bed.

  “Nobody home,” he said. He went behind the pickup, aimed the beam at the license plate, bent down. “An easy one to remember—jocko 1.” Bernie rose. He gazed up the hill. “Any reason not to call it a night?”

  Not that I could think of. We headed down the track toward the Porsche. I sniffed at a bush. A coyote had been this way, but not recently. I raised my leg, marked the bush, at the same time gazing up at the dark pink sky which a plane with flashing lights was slowly crossing. An interesting sight, and maybe it distracted me, because I almost missed the crunching sound of a hard shoe in the dirt. I turned—oh, no, maybe too late!—and a guy was coming out from behind the big rock, a huge guy sneaking up on Bernie real fast. I charged. Bernie must have heard me, because he turned, turned at the very moment when the huge guy was raising some kind of club, maybe a baseball bat. Bernie got his arm up just as the huge guy swung. Yes, a baseball bat, only partly deflected by Bernie’s arm. It cracked against the side of his head, a horrible sound. Bernie sank to the ground. The huge guy lifted the bat again, high in both hands, like he was about to chop wood. I sprang.

  And hit him hard, right square in the back. But what was this? He didn’t go down? Everyone went down when I hit them like that. But this guy didn’t fall. He only staggered, then whirled around and swung the bat at me. And he got me in the shoulder, got me pretty good. I lost my balance, rolled in the dirt. Meanwhile, the guy was turning toward Bernie, like he was going to club him again. I rose, leaped at him once more, maybe not my strongest leap, on account of the way one of my front legs had gone weak on me. But I hit him again, from the side this time, and managed to get my mouth on his arm. I bit, hard and with no hesitation. Most humans scream at a time like that, and this guy did, too, although maybe more the angry kind of scream than the pain one. Also, the arm I had hold of wasn’t the bat arm. The huge guy tried to twist away. I hung on, biting deep, tasting blood. He cocked the bat, one-handed. Our faces were close. I got a real good look at him. He wore a polka-dot bandanna, had sideburns, a big crooked nose, furious eyes. I gazed right into those furious eyes, and maybe because of that didn’t see the bat swinging down on me until too late.

  The next thing I knew I was lying on the ground and the huge guy was running toward the pickup, holding his arm, the bat left behind. I got up, kind of dizzy, and ran after him, not my normal running on account of what he’d done to my shoulder. He opened the door, climbed inside just as I got there. I dove for his leg, clamped down on—but no. Just as I was about to clamp down on his leg, he yanked the door against me, whacking the same shoulder he’d whacked before. I tumbled to the ground. The door slammed shut. The engine roared, the pickup swung around in a tight skidding turn, raising dark pink dust clouds, and shot away, back down the track. I took off after him, more of a trot and maybe limping a little, but I can trot all night if I have to. And that’s what I would have done, except when I came to where Bernie lay beside the track, I stopped.

  Bernie lay on his back, not moving. His eyes were closed. I smelled blood, saw some glistening on the side of his head, but not much. I stood beside him. After a while I barked, a high-sounding bark that just came out on its own. I did that a few more times, then poked my muzzle against Bernie’s chest. I could feel his heart beating. That was good; I’d felt human chests with no heartbeat on a case or two in the past. I licked Bernie’s face. Come on, Bernie. Wake up. Wake up, big guy. I stopped licking and panted for a bit. What was that? A groan, a very soft one. Come on, big guy. I gave his face another lick.

  Bernie groaned again, louder this time. And then his eyelids trembled open in a way that made me think of butterflies. His eyes scared me. They were like the eyes of humans with no heartbeat I’d seen, like poor Adelina di Borghese, for example. But then they changed in a way that’s hard to describe, as though a light had switched on, even though they didn’t get any lighter, and he was Bernie again.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice so soft I could hardly hear. “Chet.”

  Yeah, me, Chet, pure and simple.

  “You okay?” he said.

  Me? I was fine, if not tip-top, then pretty close. I gave his face another lick. He made another sound, maybe a groan, but with a bit of a laugh mixed in, and his face scrunched up, the way human faces scrunch up when you lick them.

  “Ow,” he said.

  Ow? Had I hurt him somehow? Oh, no. I backed away.

  “Not you, fella,” he said. “Sudden movement. Not a good idea at the . . .” He raised his head. Pain crossed his face; I could see it, like everything twisted up. But he kept going, raising himself onto his elbows. He looked around. “Son of a bitch got away.”

  I barked. I knew the son of a bitch and would never forget him.

  Bernie sat up. Pain started to cross his face again, but he stopped it somehow. He put his hand on my shoulder, bracing himself to rise. But it was the wrong shoulder, and I shrank back, couldn’t help it.

  “Chet? Something wrong?” He felt around my shoulder, very gentle, hardly touching at all. A new look appeared on his face, powerful and scary, like pain, but this was anger, something I hardly ever saw from Bernie. “His days are numbered,” Bernie said. “Don’t you worry.”

  Me? I wasn’t worried, not the least bit. I trusted Bernie.

  He rose, all by himself. Maybe that hurt, but he didn’t show it. His face seemed very white, except for deep shadows under his eyes. He swayed slightly, then hunched forward, hands on his knees, and puked.

  Oh, Bernie. I’d never seen him puke before. All at once I had to puke myself. For some reason, I didn’t want Bernie to see, so I went behind the big rock. Up came a pool of stuff that smelled of Cheetos. I was tempted to scarf it all up again, but I didn’t, not sure why. Instead I came out from behind the rock, and on my way back to Bernie spotted the baseball bat lying in the track. I went to it, hardly limping at all now, and barked.

  Bernie came over, walking real slow, kind of like old man Heydrich, our neighbor who shuffles around his lawn in bedroom slippers. I’m always on the lo
okout for bedroom slippers, maybe something we can get into another time—or did we already? Bernie reached down, his hand not quite steady, and picked up the bat. He shone the pencil flash on the barrel.

  “Louisville Slugger, Willie McCovey model—may actually be worth something,” Bernie said, which I didn’t get at all. He looked at me. “Hope the bastard didn’t use this on you.” Bernie stroked my head. “But I think he did.” I got that.

  We walked toward the Porsche, neither of us moving at our best. On the way, I spotted a scrap of cloth lying in the dirt. I went over and sniffed. Hey! The enormous dude’s polka-dot bandanna—his smell was all over it, not a nice smell like Bernie’s. This was nasty and stale; and mixed in was another scent I’d picked up recently. Where was that? Oh, yes—strong and unforgettable: the smell in Peanut’s cage. I picked up the bandanna.

  “What you got there?” Bernie said.

  I dropped it at his feet. “Nice work,” Bernie said. He took a plastic bag from his pocket, sealed the bandanna inside, held it in the beam of the pencil flash. “A blood smear?” he said. “Did you do some damage, Chet?”

  A light breeze sprang up behind me. In a matter of moments, I realized it was my tail. Yeah, I’d done some damage. We headed for the car, side by side, with a little spring returning to our step.

  Were we headed for home? That was what I thought until I saw the big wooden cowboy outside the Dry Gulch Steak House and Saloon going by. Loved the Dry Gulch—and loved the wooden cowboy with his lasso and his six-guns, you can see him for miles, whatever those are—but that wasn’t the point. The point was we always took the ramp right before the sign when we went home, and now we didn’t. Why not? There was hardly any traffic on the freeway, meaning it had to be real late, and Bernie looked tired, tired and green in the light from the dash. Plus there was a zigzag line in his forehead that I’d never seen before.

  “Lie down, boy,” he said. “Take a nap.”

  A nap sounded good, but I stayed where I was, sitting straight in the shotgun seat. This was the kind of job where sometimes you had to stay up late.

  When I woke up we were back on that street paved with cracks, Darren Quigley’s street. His house was dark, no blue TV light showing. We parked outside, walked to the door, Bernie making no effort to be quiet, me being quiet anyway. Not actually sure how I’d go about moving noisily, but no time for sorting that out at the moment. This time we didn’t knock on Darren’s door. Instead Bernie raised his leg and kicked the thing open. CRACK! SPLINTER! I loved when we did that, hadn’t done it in way too long. We went in fast, Bernie stabbing the light here and there. No sign of Darren in the front room. We hurried down the hall and searched the rest of the crummy crib. No Darren.

  Back in the front room, Bernie shone the light at the beer cans on the floor, the cigarette butts all over the place, dirty plates, scattered clothes. “No signs of violence,” Bernie said, “but how the hell would you know?” He aimed the flash at the big flat-screen TV. But what was this? There was nothing but a cable dangling from the wall. The TV was gone.

  “Do you have a headache, Chet? I have a headache.”

  Nope. I had a shoulder ache, but not bad, not bad at all. I moved closer to Bernie, pressed my head against his leg.

  TEN

  My eyes snapped open. I was lying with my back to the door, our front hall full of sunshine. I gave myself a good stretch, sticking my legs way way out, and felt a funny—not pain, really, more of a tug—yes, a funny tug in my shoulder, and everything came back to me, and if not everything, then at least some of it. Like that huge guy, and the baseball bat, and what else? Cheetos. I rose and went into the kitchen.

  Food bowl: empty. I licked it anyway. Water bowl: full. I lapped some up. Not fresh, even a bit dusty on the surface, but I found I was real thirsty and drank and drank, splashing some of it here and there. While that was happening, the phone on the counter rang. A voice came through the answering machine: “Bernie Little? Marvin Winkleman here.” Marvin Winkleman? I recognized the voice but . . . and then it came to me: divorce work, ticket guy, comb-over. “That jerk, the one my wife is cheating with? I’ve changed my mind—I want you to check into him after all. Get back to me as soon as you can.” Click.

  Then the house was quiet again, except for the faint sound of Bernie’s snores. Bernie’s snores are nice, kind of like ocean waves on a beach, a sound I’d heard once in my life, that time we went to San Diego. We surfed, me and Bernie! I’ll get to that another time. Right now I was on my way down the hall to take a look at him.

  He lay on the bed, still dressed from last night, even down to his shoes, with one arm thrown back over his head. I moved to the bedside. His chest rose and fell. I could see dried blood on his head above one ear, not much. I climbed up on the bed and settled down. Bernie snored.

  Sometime later the phone rang again, not Bernie’s cell phone, which lay on the bedside table, but the phone in the kitchen. Bernie grunted, reached out for the cell phone, eyes still closed, had some trouble with the buttons, finally said, “Hello? Hello?” Meanwhile, I could hear Winkleman’s voice again on the answering machine in the kitchen. A thought about humans and machines started to take shape in my mind.

  “What, uh?” Bernie said. The phone slipped from his hand, fell on the floor. His eyes opened, but not quite at the same time, one a bit ahead of the other; that bothered me, can’t say why. He sat up, that zigzag groove suddenly appearing on his forehead, and said, “Who’s that?” at the same moment Winkleman stopped talking. He looked at me. “Hey, Chet.” He gave me a pat. “How are you doing?” I thumped my tail on the blanket. “Good boy.” He glanced around. “Broad daylight. That’s no good.” He rubbed his face, got up, went into the bathroom. “Still in my goddamn . . .”

  Then came pill bottle sounds, tooth-brushing sounds, showering sounds. Wisps of steam leaked out from under the bathroom door. After a while, he started singing. I recognized the song: “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” We’d been listening to it in the car a lot lately, but I couldn’t say it was one of my favorites, like “It Hurts Me Too” with Elmore James’s slide guitar that did things deep inside my ears, hard to describe. I got up, went into the kitchen, sat down; near the food bowl, but that was just by accident.

  Bernie came into the kitchen looking great, all back to normal. No dried blood, no zigzag groove. “Any chance someone’s hungry?” he said. Bernie was a good guesser. Who’d said that recently? I tried to remember, soon gave up. “Any of that salami left?” Bernie opened the fridge. Salami? You bet there was some left, and I knew right away, but it took him a while to find it. “Thought, I’d . . . ah, here we go.” Soon Bernie was slicing a nice fat salami. He put some slices in my bowl, mixed them in with kibble. Then he heated up coffee from yesterday or maybe the day before, sliced some more salami for himself, and sat at the table. I poked through my bowl, gobbling up all traces of salami before I even took one bit of kibble. We had a nice breakfast.

  Bernie finished his coffee, sat back, rubbed his hands together. Always a good sign, meaning soon we’d be in action. “C’mon over here, big guy. Let’s see how you’re moving.” I walked over to Bernie, moving just fine. He took my head in his arms, gave me a big hug. “You’re something, you know that?” he said. Not sure what he was getting at, but nothing wrong with that hug. “I’ve got a strong suspicion you saved my bacon last night.”

  Bacon? There’d been bacon last night? Cheetos, yes, but that was it. Had I somehow missed out on bacon?

  “Hey,” said Bernie, “something the matter?” He felt my shoulder.

  What a question! Of course something was the matter—did bacon happen every day? Nowhere close. Why was that, anyway? I tried to think of one good reason and couldn’t.

  Bernie noticed the message light blinking, jabbed the button as he went by. “Bernie Little? Marvin Winkleman—” Bernie hit the button again. “Later, Marv.” He wrapped the baseball bat in plastic, grabbed the plastic bag with the bandanna inside, and we hop
ped in the Porsche. Iggy, watching from his window, jumped up and down as we drove away.

  We met Rick Torres at Donut Heaven, parking cop-style.

  “Cruller?” said Rick.

  Bernie shook his head. “Just ate. We—”

  “How about Chet?”

  “He just ate, too.”

  Yes, but very late and really not all that much, considering that yesterday amounted to a few Cheetos and hardly anything else. And can I mention something, even though I love Cheetos? They’re mostly air. I’m a hundred-plus-pounder, can’t live on air.

  “Also got a bacon croissant I can’t finish,” Rick said.

  Bacon? Bacon coming up again, and so soon?

  “Chet! Down!”

  Oops. I slid back onto my seat.

  “I get the impression he wants it,” Rick said.

  Bernie sighed, a real good sign at a moment like that. “Oh, what the hell,” he said.

  The next little while I was too busy to take in much of what they were talking about. That whole package, croissant with bacon inside? What can I tell you? I licked every last crumb and flake off my lips and then sat up straight and still, a pro, on the job.

  “We’re nowhere, really,” Rick was saying, “and I’m not sure there’s anywhere much to go.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Bernie said. “Don’t we have a missing person and a missing elephant?”

  “Yes and no,” said Rick. He handed Bernie a sheet of paper. “Came about an hour ago—this is a copy.”

  Bernie read the letter out loud. “‘Dear Sergeant Torres, I can no longer be complicit in the exploitation of this magnificent creature. I have taken Peanut to a place where she will be safe for the rest of her life. You will never find us and I do not believe you have any cause to search. Peanut is the property of no one. Sincerely, Uri DeLeath.’” Bernie looked up. “Checked the handwriting?”