To Fetch a Thief Page 9

  “His, uh, friend, the guy who plays the clown—”

  “Popo?”

  “Yeah, Popo. He had some samples, grocery lists, that kind of thing. Handwriting guy says it’s a match.” Rick’s phone rang. He spoke into it. “Torres. Uh-huh. Yup.” He clicked off. “Forensics—they got two clear prints on the original, thumb and index finger, both DeLeath’s.”

  Bernie was silent for a moment or two. Then he said, “What does Popo think?”

  “We’re gonna let a clown run the investigation?” Rick said. He started laughing, couldn’t stop. That happens to humans sometimes, always ends up making me anxious. Rick gasped for air, wiped away tears with the back of his sleeve.

  “Feel better now?” Bernie said.

  “Aw, come on, Bernie—where’s your sense of humor?”

  “Lost it last night.”

  “What happened last night?”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “The point is that if DeLeath has really taken off, then he took off on Popo, too.”

  “Yeah,” said Rick, “making him an unreliable interpreter of events.”

  “What’s his interpretation?”

  “Like you’d think.”

  “Meaning he doesn’t believe the letter?”

  “Correct. But he has no alternate theory.”

  “And you?”

  “We’re in a wait-and-see mode, Bernie. The case is open, but the department’s not going to devote a lot of resources to this, absent some new information.”

  “How about the colonel? Doesn’t he want his elephant back?”

  “He was headed out to the golf course—didn’t have much to say.”

  “Is Peanut insured?”

  “I can check,” Rick said. “Think it’s an insurance scam?”

  Bernie thought for a moment. “Not really,” he said. “Did you get any prints off that ankus?”

  “Yeah,” said Rick. “But not DeLeath’s.”

  “Whose?”

  “Nobody in the system.”

  Bernie gave the bat to Rick.

  “Cool,” Rick said. “Willie McCovey model. Five bucks if you can tell me his nickname.”

  “Stretch,” said Bernie. “See what Forensics can find on the bat—a match to prints from the ankus would be nice.”

  “Why?” Rick said, handing over some money, for what reason I didn’t know.

  “Even if the letter’s kosher,” Bernie said, “there’s no way DeLeath did it alone.”

  Kosher? I knew all about kosher, a kind of chicken, in fact the best chicken I’d ever tasted, at the celebration dinner after the final stakeout in the Teitelbaum divorce. The Teitelbaum divorce: a nightmare. Mrs. Teitelbaum riding a bulldozer straight through the wall of the garage where Mr. Teitelbaum kept his antique car collection—hard to forget a sight like that. My mind stayed with the memory a little too long, and if Bernie mentioned how chickens were coming into the case, I missed it, looking up only in time to see him handing over the plastic bag with the bandanna.

  “And how about running a couple names,” he was saying, “Darren Quigley—”

  “The guard?” Rick said. “Ran him first thing. Think I don’t know how to do my job?”

  “Hey, easy. You know I don’t think anything like that.”

  “Sorry,” Rick said. “These goddamn budget cuts—everybody’s on edge. As for Quigley, one DUI a few years back.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yup. What’s the other name?”

  “Jocko Cochrane.”

  Rick turned to his computer, tapped at the keyboard.

  “Could be Jack,” Bernie said, “or possibly John.”

  Rick gave Bernie a look. “Bernie?”

  “Sorry.”

  “I’m your defender—you realize that?”

  “Defender against what?” Bernie said.

  “Some people in the department aren’t fans of yours,” Rick said. “I hope that’s not news.”

  Someone wasn’t a fan of Bernie? I didn’t get it.

  “That was all a long time ago,” Bernie said.

  “You stuck it to the big guys, Bernie. Big guys have long memories.”

  Wow! I’d never known that. Bernie was bigger than Rick, so he had a longer memory. And that huge guy with the bandanna? His memory would be even longer. What about Cedric Booker, the Valley DA? He’d starred on the Valley College basketball team, might have gone pro, Bernie said, except he couldn’t play with his back to the basket, whatever that meant. The truth is, I’ve never had much interest in basketball, on account of the ball being impossible for me, but the point is . . . gone right now, but maybe it will come back.

  Meanwhile, Rick was checking his computer. “No hits,” he said, “not for Cochrane—Jocko, Jack, or John. Who is he?”

  “Someone you’d expect to have hits,” said Bernie.

  “The smartest ones never do,” Rick said.

  “This guy’s not that smart,” Bernie said.

  “Maybe he has a brainy boss.”

  A look came into Bernie’s eyes, like he was watching something far, far away. Always interesting when that happens, but what it meant I couldn’t tell you.

  Rick drove away. We sat there in the Donut Heaven lot, Bernie sipping what was left of his coffee, me eyeing the traffic going by on the street, just in case any of my guys—the guys from what Bernie calls the nation within the nation—went riding by. Didn’t see any of my guys, but then a car I knew pulled into the lot. I’m not too good on cars, but this one—a yellow Beetle—was easy. It zipped up on my side and Suzie Sanchez got out. Suzie’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune. I’m pretty sure she likes Bernie and he likes her, but it hasn’t been smooth, partly on account of her old boyfriend Dylan McKnight, possibly a perp of some kind, and partly I don’t know why.

  “Hi, guys,” she said.

  “Uh, hey,” said Bernie. “Hi. Hello.”

  “And hi hello to you, too,” Suzie said. She has shiny black eyes like the countertops in our kitchen. “Someone’s been eating bacon.”

  How did she know that? It was gone, every last morsel.

  “How do you know that?” Bernie said.

  “From the smell—what do you think?” Suzie said.

  Suzie’s a gem. If I already mentioned that, I’m mentioning it again. She gave me a quick pat and moved around to Bernie’s side of the car.

  “Um,” said Bernie, looking up at her, “didn’t expect to see you here.”

  “But I expected to see you here,” Suzie said. “Hoped, actually.”

  “Yeah?” Bernie said. “Want a cruller?”

  “No,” Suzie said. “I want to interview you.”

  Uh-oh. Suzie had interviewed Bernie once before, which was how they’d met. It hadn’t gone well: she’d described Bernie as shambling. Can’t remember what that means now, but Bernie hadn’t liked it.

  “What about?” he said.

  “This story you’re sitting on,” Suzie said. “The missing elephant.”

  “There’s not much to tell.”

  “Liar,” said Suzie, flipping through a notebook. “Let’s start with the trainer, DeLeath—does that rhyme with death, by the way?”

  “Wreath,” Bernie said, losing me completely.

  “And he’s missing, too?”

  “I can’t really say. I’ve got a client.”

  “Who?”

  Bernie laughed, wincing slightly at the end.

  “Bernie? Are you all right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You look like you have a headache or something.”

  “I’m fine.”

  Suzie put her hand on Bernie’s forehead. A very nice expression appeared on his face. “No fever,” she said, taking her hand away. “Is the client Popo the clown?”

  “Why him?” Bernie said.

  “Because he and DeLeath are a couple.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Sometimes I actually do research, Bernie. They went to Massachusetts and got
married a few years ago. The AP wrote it up.”

  Bernie said nothing, just sat there, that faraway look in his eyes again.

  “What are you thinking?” Suzie said.

  “Not every couple splits up,” said Bernie.

  “True,” said Suzie. “And therefore?”

  “Chet and I have to get going.”

  “You’re not being very helpful.”

  “Should know more tonight. How about the Dry Gulch at seven?”

  Couldn’t be better.

  ELEVEN

  We met Popo under the big top, just me, Bernie, and Popo—the two of them seated on a bench, me in the aisle. The benches were all worn, with paint flaking off, and the tent itself had lots of little holes and tears in it, some not so little. High above, the Fearless Filipoffs, First Family of the Flying Trapeze, were practicing their tricks. I have a few tricks myself, catching Frisbees, for example, but they’re nothing like what the Fearless Filipoffs were doing. All those Filipoff tricks going on made whatever Bernie and Popo were talking about a little hard to follow.

  “I’d like to clear up this question of the ankus,” Bernie was saying, or something like that. “You claimed that DeLeath never used one, but we’ve heard that all animal trainers do, no exceptions.”

  Popo sat hunched forward, forearms on his knees, head down. He wore jeans and a T-shirt; his forearms were skinny and bone-colored. “Who told you that?”

  “A source.”

  “A source?” said Popo. “I’m the client and that’s the best you can do?”

  “Nadia Worth,” Bernie said.

  “Didn’t I tell you she’s not to be trusted?”

  “You didn’t quite put it that way,” Bernie said.

  “What are you getting at?”

  But I missed whatever Bernie was getting at because at that moment one of the Fearless Filipoffs, a little dude with long hair and huge arms, oh, no!—let go of Fil Filipoff, who spun through the air and began falling a horrible long fall when suddenly another little dude with long hair and huge arms came swinging in from the side and caught her by one hand, and then they were swinging back, and what was this? Now he was somehow upside down and Fil was dangling from a rubbery-looking thing he had between his teeth, the other end between her teeth? I hardly had a chance to wonder what that rubbery-thing tasted like, when she was flying through the air again, twirling right into the grasp of the first little dude, and the next thing I knew, they were all standing together on a platform and Fil was saying to the little dude with the rubbery-looking thing, “If you don’t start brushing your teeth you’re out of the show.”

  “So what are you telling us?” Bernie was saying. “The handwriting matches and Forensics found two of his prints, but he didn’t write the letter?”

  “It’s just not Uri,” Popo said.

  “In what way?” said Bernie. “Whether he used a hook or not—”

  “He didn’t.”

  “—he was known as a humane trainer. Isn’t it possible he took one more step in that direction?”

  Popo didn’t answer. He raised his head, glanced up. Fil was spinning through the air again, hands crossed over her chest, ponytail sticking straight out, muscles bulging in her legs. One of the little dudes came swinging in, reached out and—missed her! Fil stayed still in midair for the longest time, like—like she really was a bird—and then she fell.

  “Chet! Easy.”

  Fell and fell and then landed in a net, which sprang her back up, kind of the same as a trampoline. I made the mistake of getting on a trampoline once. Never again: can’t beat solid ground, as far as I’m concerned. Fil bounced up and down a few times, and called up to the little dude who’d missed her, “Hung over again, you stupid jerk?”

  “Who’s that?” Bernie said.

  “Her brother Ollie,” said Popo.

  “He’s a boozer?”

  “Not for me to say,” said Popo.

  “Your circus seems to have some problems,” Bernie said.

  Popo turned to Bernie. “Are you going to keep looking for Uri? That’s all I want to know.”

  Bernie took out the letter. “‘You will never find us and I do not believe you have any cause to search.’ Sounds like he doesn’t want to be found.”

  Popo looked away, but not before I saw tears in his eyes.

  “Uh,” Bernie said. “Um.” He smoothed out the letter, looked at it again. “Are there any secrets in here?”

  “Secrets?”

  “Hidden messages,” Bernie said.

  “Like invisible ink?”

  “Forensics probably checked for that, but I’ll remind them. What I meant was any meanings that would reveal themselves only to someone who knew him really well.”

  “Like me.”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s nothing like that,” Popo said.

  Bernie handed him the letter. “Take another look.”

  Popo held the letter up. His eyes moved back and forth. He shook his head. “No hidden messages in your sense,” he said.

  “Then in what sense?”

  “The whole thing is one hidden message,” Popo said. “Uri would never do something like this.” Bernie’s mouth opened, but before he could say anything, Popo went on. “I know what you’re thinking—I’m just a pathetic aging reject who can’t face the truth.”

  What did that mean? Couldn’t tell you, but from the quick sideways movement of Bernie’s eyes—real quick, easy to miss, a look I’d seen often in discussions between Bernie and Leda—I was pretty sure that Popo had in fact known what Bernie was thinking.

  “Far from it,” Bernie said. “Not my thought at all. But now that you raise the, uh, relationship aspect, we should explore a few obvious avenues, a formality, more or less.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “Was Uri interested in someone else?”

  Popo was silent for a long time. He seemed to be watching the Fearless Filipoffs as one by one they climbed down a long ladder from their platform to the dirt floor. “You never know, do you?” he said at last.

  “Yeah,” Bernie said, “lots of times you do know. So if you’ve got a name, let’s have it.”

  Popo rose. He was shaking. “There is no name.”

  “But you suspect someone?”

  “No, and I don’t think you do, either.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because, although it turns out you’re not very likable, you’re not stupid, either. Therefore you’ve already asked yourself why, if Uri was only running off with someone new, would he go to all the trouble of taking Peanut, too?”

  Whoa. Bernie not likable? Where did that come from? And then, another surprise: Popo took out his checkbook. “Is fifteen hundred enough for now?” That had to mean we were still on the case, whatever it was. Things were happening fast.

  “More than enough,” Bernie said.

  Oh, Bernie.

  We left the big top, went past the ticket booth, and took a little walk around the fairgrounds, me and Bernie. Were we going anyplace special? I didn’t know, but I never turned down the chance for a walk. Soon we came to one of those places for throwing baseballs at milk bottles. We’d been to one before, me, Bernie, Suzie. The guy running it—tattoos all over his face, I never like that in a human—told us to get the hell out of there and never come back. By that time Bernie had won too many stuffed animals to carry, but why anyone would want even one was beyond me. Bernie showed no interest in this particular booth even though the woman at the counter with the baseballs in her hand said, “Try your luck, big guy?” Instead we kept going, stopped at a little outdoor bar at the end of the row of booths. The only customer was one of those little Filipoff dudes, sitting at a corner table with a mug of beer.

  “Once in a while,” Bernie said, “you’ve just got to roll the dice.”

  Oh, no, not the dice. The last time—in some late-night dive after the Police Athletic League fund-raiser—we’d had to pawn Bernie’s grandfather’s watch, o
ur most valuable possession, with Mr. Singh, our go-to move in financial emergencies.

  No dice appeared. We walked around the railing, entered the bar, and stopped in front of the little dude. Bernie looked down at him and smiled, a nice big friendly smile, and Bernie has the best smile going. “Ollie Filipoff?” he said.

  The little dude glanced up. “Sorry, bud,” he said. “Off duty.”

  “Off duty?” Bernie said.

  “No autographs.”

  Bernie pulled up a chair and sat down. “Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. I sat beside him. Under the table I saw that Ollie Filipoff was wearing flip-flops. His feet had an interesting smell—leather, sweat, toe-jam. I was all set to like him.

  “Huh?” said Ollie. “I’m kinda—”

  The waitress arrived. “Same as my friend here,” Bernie said, “and why not another one for him while you’re at it? Plus a bowl of water for Chet.”

  “He’s adorable,” the waitress said. One thing about this job—you meet great people. “We’ve got an order of short ribs a customer just left, hardly touched,” she went on. “Is he allowed to—?” Some of the greatest people on earth. Short ribs were new to me, but even if they weren’t as long as the kind I was used to, no complaints.

  Bernie gave Ollie another smile. “Saw your practice session,” he said. “Fantastic.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ollie said.

  “It’s all one family?”

  “Yup.”

  “That must be fun.”

  “Why?”

  “One big happy family.”

  Ollie snorted. I was always on the lookout for that. It’s not about clearing their nose because nothing ever comes out, and often meant we were about to get somewhere.

  “Your part looks difficult,” Bernie said.

  “Catcher? Goddamn difficult.” Ollie took a long swig of beer. “And that’s putting it . . . you know.”

  “Mildly?”

  “Yeah, mildly.”

  The waitress came with two more mugs of beer and a paper plate, and on that paper plate: ribs, and they didn’t look short to me, not one bit. She put the plate on the floor and patted my back; she was a good patter, but I was in a rush. I wagged my tail one quick back-and-forth and lowered my head to give the short ribs a try. What can I tell you? If you’ve had short ribs, you know.