Scents and Sensibility (14 page)

“C'mon, boy,” he said, his voice not loud but full of strength and power. How I loved that! “Into the house. Let's go get 'em.”

No time to figure out who he meant. What an evening this was turning out to be! I happened to notice the .45—first actually catching a whiff of it, to be accurate. It lay on the hard-packed dirt of the backyard. I picked it up and offered it to Bernie. He gave me a very nice pat.

T
he heavy steel back door hung open. We waltzed right in, me slightly in front, found ourselves in a darkened kitchen, a fridge humming away against the far wall, baloney and cheddar cheese inside it. I made another one of those mental notes—hey! I was starting to get it!—and headed for a narrow and dimly lit hall. Somewhere in the front of the house, a door slammed. The next moment we were both running. We charged down the hall and into a front room lit by a lamp with a naked bulb. What else? Two open beer bottles, not empty; two pizza boxes, also not empty, neither pizza including pepperoni, which made no sense to me; a TV on the wall, the biggest thing in the room by far, football on the screen, sound off. In short, a homey little scene, missing only the people.

Vroom vroom
. A motorcycle engine started up. Of course! Dee's motorcycle in the front yard! I was fitting the pieces together like never before. Bernie threw open the door and we burst outside. And what a lot we had to take in, with not much time for doing it. For one thing, the gate was open. For another, the bike was already on the street, Dee up top. She was watching a little long-haired dude in jeans and a T-shirt—both arms pretty much totally inked up—who was . . . over by the Porsche? Kind of kneeling like he was . . . slashing the tires!

We raced toward the gate. Dee glanced in our direction and yelled, “Billy!” Then she spun the bike around and rumbled right up next to him.

“Billy!” Bernie shouted. “Stop! Think! Your parents!”

Billy turned toward Bernie, his mouth—a soft sort of mouth—opening, his look confused, the lines of the snakehead on his cheek hard and clear. “My parents? What about them?”

Dee shouted, too, almost louder than Bernie, and way higher. “Get on the goddamn bike!”

Billy took one last glance at Bernie, then hopped up behind Dee. The next moment I was in midair, but Dee spun the bike again, tires smoking, and I flew right over the top. Dee gunned the engine, the front wheel rising off the pavement. Bernie dove, grabbed hold of Billy's wrist, and started getting dragged away from me. I caught the look in his eyes: he was never letting go, no matter what. But then Dee swerved, grazing a fire hydrant by the side of the road, and rubbing Bernie right off. He lost his grip on Billy and rolled into the gutter. The bike zoomed to the crossroads, made another one of Dee's low-leaning turns, and vanished from sight. I ran over to Bernie.

He was already sitting up, looking not too bad, except for torn clothing and some scrapes here and there. Bernie is a tough man, and don't you forget it. The worst scrapes were on his arm. I gave that arm a lick. He opened his fist: and there was his grandfather's watch, our most valuable possession! Any more questions about Bernie? Just when you think he's done amazing you, he amazes you again. We had the watch! Did that mean the case was closed? For a moment or two I thought so. Then I remembered that we hadn't actually collared any perps. Plus one of the front tires on the Porsche did not look good. Meaning we were in a real bad part of South Pedroia with no ride. At that point I spotted the stopper, once more lying on the ground all on its lonesome. I went over and got it. This case was not closed. Maybe it wasn't even going that well.

Bernie took the gun, rose, went over to the Porsche, checked out the tires. Two were just fine. The other two had deep slashes across the sidewalls. Bernie took out his phone.

“Nixon?” he said, the only Nixon I knew being Nixon Panero, our buddy and the best mechanic it the Valley. “Need a favor.”

Then I heard Nixon's voice, tiny over the phone. “The paying kind?” he said. Bernie laughed, so maybe some joking had been going on. If so, I'd missed it.

We went back in the house, searched it from top to bottom, although since there was only one floor we just had to do the bottom. Sometimes you catch a break in this job. And of course it's always interesting to watch a pro like Bernie conducting a search, looking under pillows, overturning furniture, tapping walls. After a while, I got a little less interested, wandered into the kitchen, nosed up the lids of the pizza boxes, made extra sure they were pepperoniless. Do things right, as Bernie always says. Only one slice left in each box, and no pepperoni, just as I'd thought. I tried the chicken and mushrooms first and then the plain cheese and tomato. The truth is I'd had better, but no complaints. I was trying to lick off a long and sticky string of cheese that had gotten stuck to my muzzle, when I heard Bernie in the front room.

“About time,” he said.

I trotted into the front room. He was looking out the window, one of those high windows, which meant I had to stand up on my back legs, front paws on the glass. We looked out the window side by side, me and Bernie, our heads at the same height, which was always nice.

A black-and-white came down the street. “No sense of urgency at all,” Bernie said. “Even kind of cynical, if you can say that about driving.” I had no idea, but if Bernie said it, then it had to be right. “I understand why Valley PD assumes the worst in a neighborhood like this, but we'll never change things without—what's this?”

The cruiser slowed down, pulled over next to the Porsche. A cop got out, the kind of cop you sometimes see who's rocking the belly hanging over gun belt look. He walked around the cruiser, fished his ticket pad out of his shirt pocket, and . . . started writing us up?

“What the hell?” Bernie said.

We hurried outside, not quietly, but the cop didn't appear to have heard us. He was chewing gum—cinnamon flavor.

“Hey!” Bernie called. “Hold it.”

The cop's head turned slightly toward us but he didn't stop writing.

“What are you doing?” Bernie said as we came up to him.

The cop chomped on his gum once or twice—a pretty big glob of it, to judge by how hard his jaws were working. “What's it look like?” He tore the ticket off the pad and stuck it under our wiper blade. “Parking in a delivery zone, fifty bucks. You got twenty-one days to pay, then it's a hunnert.”

“That's your priority?”

“Huh?”

Bernie motioned toward the yellow house. “What about your goddamn call?”

The cop cracked his gum, normally a sound I like a lot, but not now. “That's how your mama taught you to address an officer of the law?” he said.

Without actually moving, Bernie somehow closed the distance between him and the cop. I tried to do the same thing, but maybe cheated a little. The cop seemed to notice me for the first time. He backed up a step, hand on the butt of his gun.

“Leave my mother out of this,” Bernie said, in this certain quiet tone he has that makes the fur on my neck stand up, which it now did. I felt like . . . like grabbing somebody by the pant leg, this cop, for example. Was he a perp? I got a little confused. As for Bernie's mom, a real piece of work—she calls him Kiddo!—I agreed with him: we had enough complications at the moment. Was she coming again for Thanksgiving? Maybe it was far off.

Sometimes a physical fight can happen without any actual punches getting thrown. This was one of those times. “Suit yourself,” the cop said, turning his head and spitting out his gum. Bernie won.

“Let's back up a bit,” he said. “How come East Arroyo sent you by yourself?”

“East Arroyo?” said the cop.

“The precinct we happen to be standing in. Why just you?”

The cop shrugged. “It's a one-man patrol car.”

Bernie glanced at the house. “Must have been pretty noisy here for a bit, reason it got called in in the first place. Sending one lone car seems reckless.”

The cop squinted at Bernie. Sometimes humans squint when they've forgotten their glasses. Sometimes it's when they're facing the sun. Or when they're trying to understand something. Or just being a jerk. This cop's squint—never a good look on any human in my opinion—was one of those last two.

“Call?” he said. “Don't know about any call.”

“Then what are you doing here?” Bernie said.

“My job. I'm on patrol.”

“You just happened by?”

“I'm on patrol,” the cop said again. I got the feeling he liked saying it.

“Very conscientious,” Bernie said. “What's your name?”

“It's on the ticket,” the cop said. He got in the cruiser, moving kind of quickly like he was all of a sudden running late, and drove away.

Bernie slid the ticket out from under the wiper blade, held it up to the light. With no streetlights working, that meant the light of the dark-pink sky. “Totally illegible,” he said. “But guess what, big guy?” Uh-oh. I had to guess something? I guessed that we were planning to end the evening with steak tips at the Dry Gulch Steakhouse and Saloon. “I caught the number on his badge—eighteen sixty-three.” I liked my guess better. Bernie reached into the Porsche, grabbed a pen, and started writing on the palm of his hand. A lot of that going on lately: I took it as a good sign. Meanwhile, Bernie paused, his brow furrowing a bit. Those forehead lines should have made him seem older; in fact, he now looked more like Charlie. Life's full of surprises, big and little. “Or was it eighteen thirty-six?” he said. Sounded like more than two. I couldn't help him.

Then we were just standing there on the street, Bernie gazing at the yellow house, me gazing at Bernie. “Couldn't even remember the goddamn number,” he said in this voice he has just for talking to himself. “Everybody loses it eventually. I just didn't think . . .” He rubbed his forehead.

Whatever this was, I didn't like it.

Bernie looked at me in surprise. “What are you growling about?”

Growling? I stiffened my ears for hard listening. Yes, growling for sure. And it had to be me, no other members of the nation within nearby.

“Annoyed they got away, huh?” Bernie said.

No! That wasn't it! Although, thinking it over, I was annoyed they'd gotten away. So maybe that was it after all. I growled again. Bernie gave me a pat.

“Don't worry. We're not done yet. We got the watch back, didn't we?”

My tail started up. A successful evening so far? I couldn't think of any reason why not. Then Nixon came driving down the street at the wheel of a big wrecker with flashing lights all over the place and painted dancing girls on the fenders. Would I trade places with anyone on this earth? You tell me.

•  •  •

We drove to the East Arroyo precinct HQ, not far away. Hadn't been there in some time. I've got buddies at most of the precinct houses, but one of my favorites is Munchy Ford, and wouldn't you know it? There was ol' Munchy on desk duty when we walked in.

“Hey, Chet!” he said. “And Bernie. How ya doin'?”

“No complaints,” Bernie said. “You?”

“Gotta lose fifty pounds,” Munchy said. “Doc won't replace my hip until I do. Talk about blaming the victim, huh?”

“Uh . . .”

“But what can you do? Bastard's got me by the balls.”

Oh, no. Had I ever heard anything so horrible? At the same time, I saw no one crouched under Munchy's desk, and he didn't seem to be in pain. Some things are hard to understand.

“Which is how come I didn't finish my supper,” Munchy went on, opening a drawer. “Self-discipline. But it's been talkin' to me nonstop. Think Chet would be up for half a roast beef sandwich?”

“He just had pizza,” Bernie said. How did he know? But no time to figure it out, because I was already over by Munchy's drawer. If half a roast beef sandwich could talk, I wanted to see it up close.

The half sandwich remained silent, reminding me of some of the very toughest perps we'd come across. Munchy held it out for me. I didn't take it. Speak, sandwich!

“Don't want it, Chet?” Munchy moved like he was going to put the sandwich back in the drawer. I snapped out of whatever I'd snapped into and grabbed it out of Munchy's hand. He laughed. “What was that all about?”

“Couldn't tell you,” Bernie said. He gave me a careful look. I gave him a careful look back, chewing a juicy bite of roast beef at the same time.

“Tell you one thing about Chet,” Munchy said. “He's the take-no-prisoners type.”

Bernie nodded. As I may have mentioned, Bernie has many nods, meaning all kinds of things. This particular nod had to mean no, because Bernie knew I was very much the taking-lots-of-prisoners type, having rounded up too many to count in my career, even for a good counter like him.

“Any calls come in for ninety-seven Velez Street tonight?” Bernie said.

“That anywhere near Orlando's?” said Munchy.

“Four or five blocks east.”

“His lamb chops are off the charts,” Munchy said. He glanced at his computer screen. “Nope. No calls. Been a quiet night, so far. Couple of nightclub stabbings, assault with intent, suspected arson at the chemical plant—nothing to write home about.”

“Name Dee Branch mean anything to you?”

“Nope.”

“Ever come across identical twins, six four, two thirty or so, shaved heads, Fu Manchu mustaches?”

“Nope,” said Munchy. “And I hope it stays that way.”

Bernie checked the palm of his hand. “Who's eighteen sixty-three?”

“Here at the precinct? We got no one with that number.”

“Might be eighteen thirty-six.”

Munchy shook his head. “No one under two triple zero in this building. Not since the reshuffle.”

“Can you find him anyway?”