Heart of Barkness Page 9

  I waited for more, was very glad when no more came. These questions were hard enough already.

  Bernie took another drag. “There’s the bread crumbs approach and there’s the psychological approach.”

  A tough one. Bread crumbs didn’t do a whole lot for me, but I had the feeling that the psychological approach had nothing to do with food at all. Was there a steak-tips approach? I leaned toward the bread crumbs, but I wasn’t excited about it.

  “The psychological approach seems more interesting to me, Chet. Maybe it always has, but now more so.” He puffed at the cigarette. “In this case, it means understanding Lotty, her whole life. After that, her whereabouts should be obvious.”

  He thought for a long time, smoking the cigarette down to almost nothing, and finally said, “But the crime-solving tradition is all about bread crumbs.”

  The phone buzzed and Nixon’s voice came through the speakers.

  “Hey, Bernie. That Civic? With the steering wheel situation?”

  “Go on.”

  “It got picked up—thought you’d want to know.”

  “Picked up by who?”

  “The owner. Rita Krebs is her name. And one fine-lookin’—”

  “Was she alone?”

  “Yeah. Left twenty minutes ago.”

  “How did she get there?”

  “Huh?”

  “Did someone drive her?”

  “Musta. Or it coulda been a taxi. Then there’s the ride sharing companies, Uber and—”

  “So you didn’t see anyone else?”

  “Nope. She walked in alone.”

  “Did she mention Lotty Pilgrim?”

  “Nope.”

  “Or anybody?”

  “Did she mention anybody? Is that the question?”

  “Yes.”

  “Let me think.” Time passed. Bernie tapped his foot. “Jayne Mansfield. She mentioned Jayne Mansfield. Zoltan was putting the finishing touches on the Girlie World shuttle van and the young lady said, ‘Is that supposed to be Jayne Mansfield?’ I told her it was more of a generic thing. Then we had a brief discussion about Jayne Mansfield’s movies. Rita hadn’t seen any. I made the point that she was a better actress than most people think. After that she paid and drove off.”

  “Paid how?”

  “Cash.”

  “How much?”

  “Four hundred seventy-three dollars. That was after a ten percent discount. For being so young and knowing who Jayne Mansfield was. Makes no sense, I know.”

  “It does to me,” Bernie said.

  “That’s what I like about you.”

  They hung up. Bernie turned the key. “Let’s go with the psychological,” he said.

  I felt hungry right away.

  * * *

  We drove back toward Lotty’s ranch, but just as it appeared in the distance we hung a turn onto a smoothly paved road that took us past what looked like a military base and into what looked like the kind of town you find next to military bases.

  “Fort Kidder,” Bernie said. He shook his head and glanced at me. “Learned to fly helos here. I was no star, believe me.”

  What was this? Bernie could fly helos? I was just finding this out now? Of course I knew he’d been in the Army—that’s where his leg wound came from—and sometimes we ran into old Army buddies who hugged Bernie and thumped him on the back showing they loved him, although not as much as I do, meaning I generally squeeze myself in between pretty quick, but he could fly helos? Were we getting one? Soon, I hoped?

  “What’s all that panting? Thirsty?”

  Not in the least. And then extremely.

  We parked by what looked like a glass-fronted store in a strip mall. Bernie read the sign. “‘Frontier Gazette. News you can trust since 1901.’” He filled my portable waterbowl and I lapped it all up, then he refilled it and I lapped it all up again, and after that I gave myself a real good shake, some water droplets flying from my mouth and making tiny rainbows in the air. There’s all kinds of beauty in life. That was my thought as we entered what had to be the office of the Frontier Gazette, if I was following things right.

  I’d been in a newspaper office before, back when Suzie worked for the Valley Tribune and she and Bernie were just getting started. And now it was over? I didn’t understand. My tail drooped. I got it right back up there, and stat. We were on the job: I sent that message to my tail, and in no uncertain terms.

  Where was I?

  Right, newspaper offices. Normally real busy, with folks making calls, taking calls, typing so fast their fingers blurred. But not here at the Frontier Gazette, where we had one lone man, on the youngish side, who was spreading peanut butter on a cracker. Charlie’s a fan of peanut butter so I’ve sampled it, getting peanut buttery clumps stuck to the roof of my mouth every time, the taste for peanut butter ending up as one of those human mysteries.

  “Hey, there,” the young man said. “Help you?” He popped the whole cracker in his mouth.

  “I’d like to speak to a reporter,” Bernie said, “preferably one who’s been here for a long time.”

  “There’s only me,” said the young man. Or something like that, what with the insides of his mouth practically glued together. “I’m the manager.”

  “Can you put me in touch with one of your veteran reporters?”

  “We don’t have veteran reporters,” the young man said, spreading peanut butter on another cracker. “Don’t have any reporters at all.”

  Weren’t managers supposed to be on the older side? Was this dude going to be trouble? All at once, for whatever reason, he noticed me.

  “Whoa! That’s one sizable pooch!”

  “He’s very gentle,” Bernie said. “Nine times out of ten. Back up a little, big guy.”

  Had I somehow gotten myself most of the way around the desk? Possibly. I made things right, nice and gentle, except for certain ungentle feelings in my teeth, totally controllable, no worries.

  Maybe the young man sensed that. He seemed to relax. “No reporters,” he went on, “being the cornerstone of our business plan.” He handed Bernie a card.

  Bernie read it. “Rob Tritle, PhD, Southwest Manager, Friendly Communications, Inc.”

  “Proud owner-operators of what used to be called community newspapers,” said the young man, most likely Rob Tritle, unless I was missing something. “Just acquired this particular property last week. We’re projecting twenty-three percent growth in year one.”

  “Growth of what?” Bernie said.

  Rob Tritle blinked. “That would be revenue.”

  “How will you generate that with no reporters?”

  Rob Tritle raised a finger, a smear of peanut butter on the end. Right away I had a strong desire to give that fingertip a quick nip. Very bad of me, but is it possible to keep your mind in line at all times? There was just something about him.

  “You familiar with AI?” Rob Tritle said.

  “I know what it means,” Bernie told him.

  Whatever AI was it had never come up in any conversation I’d ever heard. But Bernie somehow knew all about it? Was there no end to his brilliance?

  “Friendly Communications has developed AI software that handles the entire reporting side of the news gathering business. Or will once the boys in India iron out the last few bugs.”

  “How can AI gather news?” Bernie said.

  “That’s proprietary,” said Rob Tritle. “But put it this way—the news is out there. I like to think of it as dustballs under a bed. Our AI software just vacuums it up.”

  “And writes the stories?”

  “That’s the easy part—a few lines of simple programming and presto! The writing side turns out to be pretty much a no-brainer.” Rob Tritle’s phone went ping. He licked peanut butter off his fingertip and reached for it. “Anything else I can do for you?”

  “How about the name of one of your former reporters? An older one.”

  “You could try Myron Siegel. He’s older than dirt.”

 
* * *

  We had a quiet ride to Myron Siegel’s place, probably because there was so much to think about. Writing, for example, being a no-brainer. As I may have mentioned already, no-brainers were in my wheelhouse. Did that mean that writing was … possibly something I could … what a strange idea! I let it do what it wanted, namely slip away, and fast.

  Myron Siegel lived in one of those condo developments you see out here, the kind for oldsters. We found him by the pool, a leathery little guy in a bathing suit, sitting in the sun and busy with a pencil and an open book. He didn’t look at all dirty to me, Rob Tritle turning out to be like a lot of dudes we deal with, unreliable.

  “I’m Bernie Little and this is Chet,” Bernie said.

  Myron Siegel clapped the book shut. “You’re just in time,” he said. “I was about to commit hara-kiri by means of sudoku.”

  “Ran into a hard one?” Bernie said.

  “Hard? They’re all easy as pie. The problem is I’m going out of my mind with boredom. Be interesting. I’m begging you.”

  Begging, of course, was very bad, but maybe Myron Siegel didn’t know. I gave him the benefit of the doubt.

  “I got your name from Rob Tritle,” Bernie said.

  “Tell me he’s got a terminal diagnosis.”

  “Not to my knowledge,” Bernie said. “He says you were a reporter there for a long time.”

  “A totally true remark. The bastard mustn’t be in his right mind.”

  “Did you grow up here in Fort Kidder?”

  “Affirmative. My father had a small transport company, supplied the base before the war.”

  “I wondered if you knew—or ever wrote about—a certain woman who also grew up in these parts.”

  “Name?”

  “Lotty Pilgrim.”

  Myron Siegel gave Bernie a careful look. He had pale blue eyes, so pale there was hardly any blue at all. That could have been scary, but wasn’t in his case, although I had no idea why.

  “Bernard Little,” Myron Siegel said.

  “Yes, sir. That’s me.”

  “That’s a name not totally forgotten around here. I’m talking about Bernard Little, the Arizona Ranger from the turn of the last century—rode with Jeff Kidder himself.”

  “I believe he’s an ancestor,” Bernie said.

  Myron Siegel leaned forward a bit. Muscles moved under his tough old skin. Not big muscles like Bernie’s, or huge ones like Shermie’s, but muscles all the same. His pale eyes got bluer, and now they had a gleam.

  “When I started out, there were a few old-timers who’d known some of those Rangers. Bernard Little had quite a reputation as a marksman. How about you, Mr. Little? Handy with a gun?”

  “I had some training in the Army,” Bernie said. Now he would add the part about shooting dimes out of the air, or even put on a demonstration, if we were packing, which we actually weren’t. That’s not a smell I miss. In the end, Bernie didn’t even mention the dimes! All he said was, “And call me Bernie.”

  “And you can call me Myron. Tell me something, Bernie—you in law enforcement?”

  “No.”

  “Sell that one to me,” Myron said. He tapped his nose. “This is saying something different.”

  What a stunner! I knew what Myron was talking about, but exactly! My nose often did the same thing, and was right every single time. Yet Myron’s nose was a regular human nose, not even as big as Bernie’s. What was going on?

  “I’m a private detective,” Bernie said. He handed Myron our card.

  Myron glanced at it. “The flowers are a nice touch,” he said. “Who’s your client?”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “Not working for the police in some adjunct capacity?”

  Bernie’s posture changed a tiny bit—you had to really know him to spot it, and of course I do. “Has Sheriff Grimble been out here?”

  “Well, well. I said be interesting and goddamn it, you came through.” Myron rubbed his hands together. “You working with him?”

  “I told you I didn’t have a client,” Bernie said. “If he said otherwise, he’s a liar.”

  “That he is,” said Myron. “But your name didn’t come up.”

  “What did he want?”

  “Same as you—to pick my brain on Lotty Pilgrim. The problem he ran into—same one you’ve got right now—is that my brain is a picker, not a pickee.”

  I was completely lost. For the first time since we’d arrived, I found myself considering a quick dip in the pool.

  Bernie’s eyes hardened but his voice stayed the same, nice and even, close to friendly. I loved seeing that one! It often meant we were on our way.

  “Maybe this is the time for you to overcome that,” he said. “Unless you’re too old to change.”

  Myron sat back real quick, almost like Bernie had smacked him. That couldn’t happen: I’d never seen Bernie lay a finger on an old person, and he never took a swing at anybody unless they unloaded on him first. Unloaded isn’t the same as connecting, by the way. No one slips a punch like Bernie, just the tiniest head movement. When perps first see that is when they start to get the picture.

  But back to Myron, now glaring at Bernie. He tapped his forehead. “I’ve still got it—still got it all up here, you son of a bitch. You’re no better than that moron down at the office, replacing me with some goddamn robot.”

  Bernie smiled. “That’s the worst thing anyone’s ever said to me.”

  Whoa! I could think of way worse things that had been said to Bernie, even by some of our pals! And what about that time his mom—a real piece of work—flew in from Florida for a Thanksgiving visit and had one too many and said something I’m not going to repeat, even if I could remember it?

  Myron laughed. This conversation was getting hard to follow. “Do you have any idea where the world is heading?”

  “Tell me,” said Bernie.

  “Slavery,” Myron said. “Straight to slavery for ninety-nine point nine nine nine of the human race. Slavery of the unknowing, blissful kind—like sheep on Prozac.”

  “Then how about we do some good when we still can, you and I?” Bernie said.

  Myron gave Bernie a look. It reminded me of the time—the one and only time—that I’d been in an art gallery. This was with Bernie and Suzie, and she’d gazed at a—what was the word? Sculpture, that was it. She’d gazed at a sculpture of a cat, a cat which had turned out to be made of glass—an important detail then, but surely not now, after all this time—in the same way Myron was gazing at Bernie.

  “You’re relentless,” he said, “down underneath it all.”

  “Only when time’s a factor,” said Bernie.

  Myron nodded to himself. I could feel his thoughts. They were big and fast, not unlike Bernie’s. “Did Lotty finally kill that bloodsucking boyfriend?” he said. “Or is that just more of Grimble’s bullshit?”

  Twelve

  “Why ‘bloodsucking’?” Bernie said.

  I was with him on that. It sounded horrible.

  “Before we get to your goddamn questions,” said Myron, “explain your interest in this.”

  Bernie started in on a long story, going all the way back to Nixon’s Championship Autobody, the tip jar, Rita and Jordan, how Lotty called in the car repair, and lots of other stuff I’d smelled with my own nose, heard with my own ears—and seen with my own eyes, although that part’s not necessary, more like an add-on for me. The story was so clear, the way Bernie told it. I not only understood what had gone down, but even came close to knowing what was coming next! I could feel it! But just before that happened, the whole thing broke into little pieces, and all those pieces got away from me.

  “Not a bad story,” Myron said. “But what are you doing? You’re a private detective with no client. What kind of business plan is that?”

  Yikes! Our business plan: I’d had questions about that myself, and more than once. Hawaiian pants! Tin futures! Bad dreams about both of them sometimes bothered my sleep—hard to believe in
the case of tin futures, since I didn’t even know what they looked like. Hawaiian pants were a different story, on account of our self-storage in South Pedroia being packed to the ceiling with them. Everyone loved Hawaiian shirts, so why not Hawaiian pants? It made no sense. Uh-oh. Did that mean our whole business plan made no sense? For a moment or two I actually felt myself drifting over to Myron’s side. Not that I moved at all, out there by the condo pool. This drifting was going on in my mind. But whoa! Drifting away from Bernie? Never! Not on any subject! Case closed! I opened my mouth nice and wide, showed Myron my teeth, just a hint of what was in store for him if he tried that kind of trick again. He didn’t seem to notice. There are humans out there who aren’t really aware of the nation within, even when we’re right in front of their noses. It had taken me a long time to realize that. Myron turned out to be one of them.

  “If I told you I was hoping Lotty would be the client, can we get past this?” Bernie said.

  “Any truth in that?” Myron said.

  “Yes.”

  “Did you ask her?”

  “She turned us down.”

  “But you’re still hoping.”

  “Lotty needs help,” Bernie said.

  “From a lawyer, not a detective,” said Myron. “And soon. Where’s someone like her going to hide?”

  “Any ideas on that subject?”

  “Grimble asked that exact same thing.”

  “And what did you tell him?”

  Before Myron could answer, a sliding door opened in one of the condos and a woman—not nearly as young as Suzie or Eliza but also not nearly as old as Myron—looked out. This woman, who wore a towel around her head and another one around her body, or part of it, was the kind of woman who had an effect on Bernie. His mouth didn’t fall open; he didn’t stare at her with a dumb expression on his face—impossible, since dumb expressions never appeared there; he didn’t say the kinds of things you sometimes hear on the street, like, “Hey, baby,” or “Yo, junk in the trunk.” But I could feel the effect all the same.

  The woman leaned out the door, having a bit of trouble with the lower towel, and said, “Yoo-hoo, bunny, anything you need?”