A Fistful of Collars (31 page)

“I’m saving up for Lasik,” said Boo Ferris.

We drove through. Did Bernie make a quick call? Possibly to Rick? I was too caught up in staring at Jiggs’s neck—scratched up, but I’d seen way worse—to be sure. The shotgun seat was rightfully mine.

Before we got down to the valley floor, Bernie pulled off on a narrow track and parked at a lookout. Below us the city went on and on as far as I could see.

“What about Thad?” Jiggs said.

“What about him?” said Bernie.

“You’re separating us,” Jiggs said. “Meaning you’ve got something in mind.”

“Have you read the script?” Bernie said.

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” said Jiggs.

Bernie did not reply. A little later a black-and-white appeared on the track, drove up beside us, parked cop-style. Rick looked past Bernie at Jiggs with the door in his lap.

“Hope you know what you’re doing,” he said.

“Makes two of us,” said Bernie.

Which had to be one of Bernie’s jokes. Of course he knew what he was doing. I was totally sure that the case, whatever it was about, exactly, couldn’t have been going better.

“. . . some out-of-the-way precinct,” Bernie was saying. “San Marco, maybe.”

“Fighting traffic coming and going?” Rick said.

“Ocotillo Springs, then, for Christ sake. Book him on something minor—”

“Drunk and disorderly?”

“Whatever you like. Then just hold him, no calls in or out till you hear from me.”

“What about his rights?”

“He’s waiving them.”

Jiggs stared straight ahead.

Bernie uncuffed Jiggs from the door, and Rick sat him in the back of the black-and-white, behind the cage. I hopped up into the shotgun seat, made myself comfortable. Meanwhile, Bernie and Rick had moved over to the railing at the edge of the lookout.

“Did you know Stine worked with Cal Luxton in Vista City?” Bernie said.

“That’s not news,” Rick said. “They hated each other.”

“How come?”

Rick shrugged. “Happens with partners sometimes.”

It did? What a crazy idea!

“Luxton’s connected,” Rick went on. “No way Stine ever would have made lieutenant if Luxton had stayed on the force. And no way he ever makes captain, not as long as Luxton’s in the mayor’s office.”

“Does Stine know that?”

Rick nodded. “Eats him up inside.”

W
hat am I sposta do with that?” said Nixon Panero, his cheek bulging with tobacco chew.

Back at Nixon’s Championship Autobody. Spike came right over and gave me a nip. I gave him a nip. We nipped each other to our hearts’ content, which came sooner for Spike—a warrior, but getting older now, his face whiter than ever—than it did for me. He went and lay down in the shade of a jacked-up limo.

“Huh?” Bernie said. He was trying to give Nixon the door Jiggs had ripped off the hinges, but Nixon had his hands in the pockets of his greasy overalls and showed no sign of taking them out anytime soon.

“Fix it, of course,” Bernie said. “Can’t have Chet riding around with no door.”

“Know something, Bernie?” Nixon said. “You’re hard on automobiles.” He spat a thin stream of tobacco juice into an empty can that should have been out of reach but somehow wasn’t. I could watch Nixon do that forever. “It’s psychological,” he went on. “I made a study of this.”

“Of what?” Bernie said, shifting the door to a more comfortable position and maybe sounding just the tiniest bit irritated.

“Guys like you. You’re basically jealous of your car. It’s, like, perfection, and you’re flawed. So it figures you’d want to take it down a peg or two, even things up.”

Bernie was flawed? How? I couldn’t come up with a single way, and knew right then that this idea of Nixon’s made no sense. But funny thing: maybe Bernie himself didn’t realize that. I could sort of tell from this look on his face, a still look that meant he was having deep thoughts. When Bernie went still like that, I often found myself going still, too. The stillness went on for sometime, and then Bernie did something pretty amazing: he gave himself a shake! Yes! Just like a member of the nation within. He gave himself a shake, snapping out of the deep thoughts, and said, “So based on my psychological profile, you’re refusing to fix my car?”

“Exactly the opposite,” said Nixon. “Based on your profile, I’m gonna do it. But not with that door.” He gave the door a glance, shook his head. “Beyond my powers, Bernie. Hope you got it out of your system.”

There’s an old couch outside the front of Nixon’s shop. That’s where Bernie and I waited while the door got fixed, and while we were waiting a black car with tinted windows pulled up right in front of us. The driver’s window slid down and the driver looked out at us. Cal Luxton: with his swept-back hair, long sideburns, cowboy hat.

“Well, well,” he said. “This is serendipitous.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie.

“Running into you like this. Best mechanic in the Valley, of course, and you’re the type who’s in the know.” Luxton gave Bernie a long, slow look, the probing kind that made me uncomfortable. “Problem is, you’re not passing on that knowledge in a timely manner.”

“No?” said Bernie. Bernie giving real short answers like “yeah” and “no” was a sign of him being careful. I got ready to be careful myself, starting by gnawing on my leg. And what was this? Some kind of thistle? I went to work on it.

“We’re not paying you enough?” Luxton said. “That the issue?”

Now Bernie gave him a long, slow look right back. I just loved Bernie when he did stuff like that, and also when he didn’t. As for what it was all about, you tell me.

“I’ll pay it back if you want,” Bernie said. “Every cent.”

Whoa! That was what his long slow look was about? Paying back? With our finances being what they were, meaning a mess? Tin futures. Hawaiian pants. They swirled round and round in my mind until I began feeling pukey. I actually considered puking, went with making my mind a blank instead, which took less time.

Luxton smiled. “No one’s suggesting that,” he said. “What I’m looking for is better communication.”

“About what?” Bernie said.

“You’re supposed to be keeping an eye on things,” Luxton said. “Today’s on the shooting schedule and now I find out all of a sudden they’re not shooting. How come I didn’t hear it from you?”

“They forgot to run it past me,” Bernie said.

“Any idea what’s going on?”

“With what?”

“This schedule change,” Luxton said, his voice sharpening. He gave Bernie another one of those eye probes. “What else would I be talking about?”

“Search me,” Bernie said. “But it’s hard to know why they do anything, Cal. They’re artistic types, different from us.”

“How about the bodyguard, Nolan Jiggs—is he the artistic type?”

“You never know,” Bernie said. “Everyone in Hollywood’s got a script in the drawer.”

“So maybe he’s off in a cabin somewhere, banging away on his laptop,” Luxton said. “Because no one can find him.”

“Wouldn’t know anything about that,” Bernie said. “My job’s making sure Thad Perry keeps his nose clean, and last seen he was stone cold sober and looking forward to breakfast. Chet here had a nice time playing with Brando.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Thad’s cat. You met him. He and Chet are pals.”

Luxton made the kind of sideways gesture with his hand that humans have for whisking away flies. Where I come from we have tails for that, but I’m not saying one way’s better than the other. No time to think about that, or the fact that some humans miss out on what’s going on with other creatures, almost like they’re not there, because problems were coming at me in waves. I was pals with Brando? When had that happened? And what was this about breakfast? I remembered no breakfast. Breakfast is not something I forget. So therefore—whoa! I came very close to doing a so-therefore. But so-therefores were in Bernie’s territory. I backed off.

“What’s pissing me off,” Luxton was saying, “is this feeling I get that you’re not taking the job seriously.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “That’s really what’s pissing you off?”

Luxton’s face darkened like a shadow was passing over him, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. “What else would it be?”

Bernie looked right at him. “You tell me,” he said.

Luxton looked at Bernie right back. “Hope you know what you’re doing, buddy.”

“People keep saying that,” Bernie said.

*   *   *

Luxton drove off. Not long after that, Nixon had the Porsche all fixed.

“What do you think?” Nixon said.

“The new door is yellow?” said Bernie.

“Golden,” said Nixon. “I’d call it golden. See how it’s shiny?”

“The rest of the body is red.”

“Not the martini glasses.”

Bernie gazed at the car.

“I could paint the door to match, but you won’t have it today,” Nixon said.

“Need it today.”

“Now Chet has a golden door,” Nixon said. “Think of it that way.”

Bernie looked thoughtful.

“All depends on how you think about things,” Nixon said.

“You’re right, Nix,” Bernie said. “So tell me how I should be thinking about the fact that Cal Luxton just swung by.”

Nixon opened his mouth, closed it, shuffled his feet, the kinds of things guilty perps did. What was going on? Nixon had been a perp, of course, and we’d sent him away, for what I no longer remembered, but now weren’t we friends?

“Coincidence?” said Bernie. “Or not?”

Nixon gazed down at the ground.

We pulled into the empty parking lot of the old Flower Mart late in the afternoon. The wind blew hot and hard, full of grit. The sky, so red and dusty, made me uneasy. Bernie took the .38 Special out of the glove box and tucked it in his belt. We got out of the car and walked around the boarded-up warehouse to the back. No one there. Bernie checked his watch.

“We’re a little early, big guy,” he said. “But early’s good when it comes to meetings like this.” Early: a tricky one. It had something to do with late, the exact relationship murky. But if Bernie said it was good, then that was all I needed. We paced around a bit, checked the rusty railroad tracks, the space where the Dumpster had been, and the nailed-shut back door which I knew from before wasn’t really nailed shut. We paced around some more, returned to the door. Bernie tried it. Nailed shut after all? It wouldn’t open.

He knocked. “Mr. Albert?” he called. “Mr. Albert?”

No answer. Sometimes I hear when someone’s around, sometimes I smell it, and sometimes I just get a feeling. Right now I got the feeling that no one was inside.

We waited. Time passed, how much I couldn’t tell you. Bernie checked his watch. The wind blew hotter and harder, and the sky turned redder and darker. We huddled in the doorway. Huge roiling clouds rose in the distance, much more solid-looking than regular clouds; the air got drier and drier, and dust blew into my eyes and ears. Bernie gave me a little pat. It was kind of nice, here in the back doorway of the old Flower Mart, just me and Bernie. I had no desire to be anywhere else.

“Why wouldn’t he show?” Bernie said. “Any reason why he’d want to screw Jiggs around? Probably a shitload.”

Uh-oh, not that. I thought of one of our very worst cases, not the details of the case, all gone now, but just the nighttime ending when the flatbed truck we were hiding on rolled over and all the portapotties came tumbling loose. I got ready for anything.

“Would help right about now if we had a solid theory of the case,” Bernie said.

A solid theory of the case: hadn’t heard that in way too long. Soon after the solid theory of the case came me grabbing the
perp by the pant leg, which was how our cases closed just about every time, although not the portapotty case, which I’d rather skip for now.

The wind died down in a strange way, and as it did, the huge roiling clouds grew and grew and there seemed to be less air to breathe. I panted a bit, my tongue getting coated with dust.

“Is it basically about money?” Bernie said. “Maybe, but there’s a sicko element. Three killings, knife the weapon in every one. Knife because it’s handy at the moment, that’s one thing. Knife by choice is sicko. So therefore?”

Good news: we were back in so-therefore territory, Bernie at the controls. I waited, and waited some more, but Bernie went silent.

The sun, real low now, all of a sudden peeped through dust clouds, a deep, deep red like a light flashing on, and then quickly off. After that it got much darker and the wind started back up and in no time blew even stronger than before. All sorts of scraps began flying around, and I smelled the desert like I never had, huge and mighty.

We huddled closer together, Bernie kneeling down beside me. “Goddamn dust storm,” he said, raising his voice over the wind, which now had a voice of its own, like an angry creature working itself up to a howl. “No way he’ll be coming now. We’ll just have to wait this out.”

Fine with me. The dust storm moved in, rising and rising, towering over us. The sound rose, too, hurting my ears in the worst way, and I could barely see a thing, even though the sky wasn’t as dark as night. Besides, I see pretty well at night; the problem now was this strange thickness in the air, unlike the emptiness of night air, if that made any—

Whoa. What was that? A tiny sound barely cutting through
the enormity of noise, kind of like a propeller going
whap-whap-whap
, or maybe actually more of a
tick-tick-tick
. That
tick-tick-tick
reminded me of something. I tried to think what.

“Christ,” Bernie said, and began rubbing his eyes, all teary like he was crying, an impossibility, of course. Now we were dealing not just with dust, but sand, too, desert sand somehow airborne, rasping like sandpaper against my muzzle and
pock-pock-pocking
the bricks of the warehouse, and on account of the
pock-pock-pocking
mixed into the roar of the storm—this strange dry storm, way drier than normal dry, hard to explain—I lost track of the
tick-tick-tick
. In short, we weren’t at our most alert, me and Bernie, and in that moment the
tick-tick-tick
ing suddenly came closer, and a dark car partly emerged from the reddish swirl of the dust storm and stopped in front of us.