Scents and Sensibility (25 page)

One of the skinny-legged fighters glanced over and said, “Physics?” Or something like that—hard to tell with the big mouthpiece he had on. Pay attention, skinny-legged fighter: that was my thought as another haymaker slowly came his way and then BAM. Well, not BAM, but it did glance off the side of his padded head gear, just over the ear. He cried out and staggered into the ropes. The other skinny-legged guy danced around like he was champion of the world. Bernie's face suddenly opened up in a great big smile.

“LeSean?” he said, approaching the little lean guy on the stool.

The little lean guy looked up. Then his face cracked open just like Bernie's, smiling big. “Bernie?”

LeSean rose off the stool, or perhaps Bernie simply picked him right up. They hugged and slapped each other's backs for quite some time before I'd had enough and squeezed my way in between.

“Who's this good-looking dude?” LeSean said.

“Chet,” said Bernie.

“The jealous type, huh?”

“Doing his best to keep it under control.”

LeSean laughed, meaning Bernie had said something funny; about whom I had no idea. “Lookin' not bad yourself, Bernie.”

“You, too.”

“No ill effects?”

“Nah.”

“Leg okay? Didn't seem too good last time I saw you.”

“No complaints,” Bernie said. “How're you doing?”

“Same—no complaints.” He reached out, touched Bernie's arm very lightly. “Won't never forget what you did that day.”

“Long time ago,” Bernie said, waving away whatever that was all about with his hand. “You own this place?”

“These days I'm tryin' not to make mistakes like that,” LeSean said. “I manage an up-and-comin' welterweight from over in Negrito, ref Golden Gloves, work with a few fighters around town.”

Bernie gestured over his shoulder to the two fighters in the ring, now listening in from the other side of the ropes.

“Nah,” said LeSean. “Corporate types. There's a market, believe it or not, givin' lessons to corporate types. Matter of fact, want to step in for a quick demo of what stick and move is all about?”

“With one of them?” Bernie said.

LeSean laughed. “Corporate types like to sue. I meant with me.”

“Not a chance,” Bernie said. Meaning Bernie didn't want to box with LeSean? That made no sense. I'd seen what Bernie could do with his hands many times, often to much bigger dudes, which LeSean was not. “But maybe you can help me with something.”

“Take five,” LeSean said. The two fighters left the ring and headed for the watercooler, both on their cell phones before they arrived. “What's up?”

Bernie handed LeSean our card.

“Cool flower,” LeSean said. “Makin' any money?”

“Maybe this time,” said Bernie. “Know a woman named Dee Branch? She has some sort of relationship with this gym.”

“Rides a Harley?” said LeSean.

“Yeah.”

“Can't say I know her,” LeSean said. “Seen her in here a few times.”

“Doing what?”

“Kickboxing class on Wednesday nights. Some talent in that class—one or two of the girls you'd actually have to watch out for.”

“Including Dee?”

“Yeah,” said LeSean. “But there's other reasons to watch out for her.”

“Such as?”

“The company she keeps, namely these 'roided-out twins,” LeSean said. “Renzo and Albin Garza. Couldn't call them gang members, although we get some of that, too. More like professional thugs for hire.”

“Where do I find them?” Bernie said.

LeSean gave Bernie a look. “Thing is, with guys like that, don't let 'em get their mitts on you.”

“Stick and move,” Bernie said with a smile.

LeSean didn't smile back. “Don't forget.” He led us over to a desk, checked a screen, wrote something on a scrap of paper, and handed it to Bernie. “You're not the only one askin',” he said.

“No?”

“Had a detective from Valley PD in here day before yesterday. Big fair-haired guy, extra-pally with black folks, if you know what I mean.”

“I don't,” Bernie said.

“Like he'd been raised on the north side with me and mine,” LeSean said. “I prefer white folks who act white—like you, Bernie—which is how come he got nothin' outta me.”

•  •  •

“I act white?” said Bernie when we were back in the car.

What was this? Bernie white, in some way or other? Couldn't have been his skin, which was always nice and tan, in that reddish Bernie way. The truth is there's not much color variety when it comes to humans, not compared to how we roll in the nation within. Take me, for example: mostly black but with one white ear, which I know on account of how many people mention it in my presence. Ever seen a human colored like me? The point is humans go on and on about skin colors when it isn't even one of their strengths. And they have so many strengths: cars, tennis balls, bacon, and that's just without even thinking, which is how my mind works best.

Not far past the airport is El Monte, a part of town Bernie calls Subprimoville, for reasons of his own. Subprimoville is just about the biggest development in the whole Valley, detached and semi-detached and not detached at all houses built in what Bernie calls faux adobe style—or sometimes faux-a-dough, when it's only him and me in the conversation—going on and on to the edge of the desert. The catch is that lots of the houses are empty. I've heard Bernie explain what went down many times. It starts simple and gets gnarly. Let's leave it at that.

We stopped in front of a house at the end of a cul de sac, most of the streets in Subprimoville being cul de sacs. Two cars were parked in the driveway. Bernie checked the scrap of paper LeSean had given him, and we started across the dried-out lawn. Part way there, Bernie turned around, walked back to the car—me right beside him, of course—and took the .45 from the glove box.

“A touch slow, big guy,” he said. “No denying it.” He tucked the stopper in his pocket and we went up to the door. The house was quiet. Bernie slow? No way I was falling for that.

For no special reason, I was hoping that Bernie would shoot out the lock. He knocked instead. I smelled a smell a lot like the stain remover Bernie sprays on his clothes when there's a red wine spill, and mostly hidden way down deep a hint of something else. I wasn't sure about that something else, although the fur on the back of my neck started to rise, like . . . like my fur knew for sure and I didn't? Bernie raised his hand to knock again, but before he could, the door opened.

A smiling man looked out. He wore an apron over his clothes and had a mop in his hand. And . . . hey! I knew this man! Well, not exactly knew him, but hadn't I seen that big head before, a real big shaved head, the face broad but the features small, excepting the ears, ears with gold hoops in each lobe? So now it was just a question of where I knew him from. I got right to work on that. The problem is sights aren't as easy to remember in the nation within as smells. Had I caught just one previous paltry whiff of this man, we wouldn't be having this discussion.

“Hello?” he said.

Bernie nodded. I noticed that the bigheaded man was almost as tall as Bernie, and actually broader. “We're looking for Renzo and Albin Garza.”

The bigheaded man shook his head. “Must have the wrong address.”

Bernie took out the scrap of paper. “Three seventy-one Paradise Circle?”

“That's right. But there's no one here by—what were those names?”

“Renzo and Albin Garza. They're twins, weightlifting types, hard to miss.”

“Nope,” said the bigheaded guy. “Might have been tenants. Place has been empty for months. There's a showing next week so I'm getting things shipshape.”

“You work for a real estate agency?”

“A few of them. I'm in the cleaning business.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “Have you got a card? I've been looking for something in that line.”

“Wish I could accommodate you,” said the bigheaded man, reaching under his apron. “But I'm completely—”

Cleaning business? I had this vague idea he was in the music business, but what happened next put a dead stop to any thinking in that direction. In fact, what happened next put a stop to everything. In short, another customer joined our party. This other customer was a little figure. He came trotting into view from the shadowy back part of the house. Whoa! That trot was my trot! My trot down to a T, whatever that meant. Did that make me happy to see Shooter? Probably not, but he was on the scene and there was nothing I could do about it. He stepped around the bigheaded dude and bumped up against me. I caught a whiff of his scent, so like mine. What was that all about? No time to figure it out. Things began to speed up. I barely had time to bump him back.

The expression on Bernie's face changed, grew very hard. “Care to revise your story?” he said.

“Not following you, friend,” the bigheaded man said, his expression changing, too, and not for the better.

“No?” said Bernie. “This little fella is a direct link to a murder.”

The bigheaded man's eyes shifted, just a quick glance toward the back side of the open door. He didn't say anything.

“Ellie Newburg,” Bernie said. “That name mean anything to you?”

“Don't know what you've been smoking,” the bigheaded dude said. “But this get-together is over.” He put one hand on the doorknob, at the same time reaching around with his foot to shove Shooter back inside. Were we going to let him do that? I didn't think so, plus Bernie hadn't touched a cigarette in at least a day or two, so the bigheaded guy didn't know what he was talking about. I waited for some hint from Bernie about what we were doing next, but at that moment Bernie got distracted by more movement back in the shadowy part of the house. The bigheaded man turned that way, too. And then, from out of the shadows staggered one of the twins, Albin or Renzo, impossible to say which. His face was covered in blood—it even dripped off the tips of his Fu Manchu mustache—and he had a gun in his hand. He raised it in a very shaky way. Blood went
drip drip
on the floor, making a sound like soft rain, just before the storm.

H
umans have an expression:
When the shit hits the fan.
I waited a long time to see that happen, and finally did on a case we worked, me and Bernie, involving a rivalry between two CEOs, one of a plumbing company, the other in the ventilation business. It was actually a bit of a disappointment, the fan clogging up immediately and stopping dead, no dramatics. All the same, Bernie still says you've got to be ready for when fans are about to get hit with something goopy, and I knew this was one of those moments. Was I ready? You bet. Ears up high, heart pounding, my whole body ready to spring. Just say where!

Albin or Renzo—no telling which, but in terrible shape no matter who—pointed his gun in a wobbly way at the bigheaded man. A red bubble popped out of his mouth and then came a few words, soft and hard to understand. “Head or heart, Vroman?” Or something close to that. Much clearer was the look in the twin's eye—only one open, the other swollen shut, in case I left that out. You see this particular look in the eyes of someone about to murder someone else.

There was nothing wobbly about the movements of Vroman, if I'd caught the name of the bigheaded man. In one real quick motion, a kind of quickness that came close to Bernie's although not equaling it, goes without mentioning, he whipped a gun of his own out from under the apron and—BANG—put a bullet right in Albin's or Renzo's open eye. Albin's or Renzo's smell, from living to dead, changed as he toppled over. He toppled over backward, important to put that in, because it meant he crashed into a door which then swung open, revealing a kitchen lit by an open fridge, and the other twin lying in a pool of blood.

I knew one thing: this was a real bad scene. And right away it started getting worse. Vroman swung around in Bernie's direction, that gun pointed at Bernie's chest. I sprang at him—better believe it—sprang with such force and power I . . . I could have sprung to the moon. What a crazy thought! Forget it. The important thing was that I thumped Vroman good and hard. The gun went off anyway, a window shattering nearby. All that was too much for Shooter. The little fella barked a yelping kind of bark, shot out the door and toward the street.

“Go get 'im, Chet!” Bernie called. He'd already leaped on top of Vroman, had one forearm nice and tight around his neck, which meant game over every time. I tore off after Shooter.

Shooter turned out to be pretty quick for someone so small, and also had a surprisingly shifty running style, with so much sideways darting that it was amazing he made any forward progress at all. But he did! In moments, he was on the road, and then off it, zooming across a dried-out lawn toward a house with piles of mail outside the door, ears straight back, tongue flopping wildly to the side. I charged after him, sent him a clear barking message meaning stop this instant, unmissable by anyone. Shooter seemed to miss it. He rounded this house—another faux-a-dough, which I glimpsed in passing—and zipped into the backyard.

There was a swimming pool in this backyard, not big compared to some of the swimming pools you see in the Valley, and filled with scummy water. In short, not particularly inviting. Shooter turned out not to be fussy about things like that. Glancing back at me, his eyes kind of crazy, he dove straight into the pool. Did he even know how to swim? Should I have established that before diving in myself, since if he was a swimmer, then trotting around to the edge at the far end and waiting for him to emerge would have been my best move? Wow! Sheer brilliance on my part! Too bad that all came to me while I was in midair. So close to being perfect. No point in beating yourself up, a scary thing I've seen only once—the night we took down an angel duster who in truth took himself down—and never wanted to see again.