Thereby Hangs a Tail (17 page)

“Tole him that already,” said the deputy.

“The on-the-lookout for vandals tale?” Bernie said.

“Wouldn’t put it that way,” said the sheriff.

“How would you put it?” Bernie said.

“We were pursuing a long-running investigation.”

“About vandalism?”

“Correct.”

“And you had a tip that night.”

“Correct again.”

“Who from?”

“Don’t know how things run in the big city,” the sheriff said, “but here in the sticks we protect our informants.”

“From the FBI?”

“Say again?”

“Simple question,” Bernie said. “Are you going to protect your informant from the FBI?”

“Christ Almighty,” said the deputy. “Why’s he keep bringing up the FBI?”

“It’s this case I’m working on,” Bernie said.

“Already told you,” the sheriff said. “We don’t know nothin’ about that.”

“Diddley,” said the deputy.

Diddley? Bo Diddley was back in the picture? I tried to sort the case out in my mind, got nowhere, had a nice big yawn. The deputy noticed and backed up a step or two.

“That’s not going to help you,” Bernie said. “This is one of those expanding cases, expanding fast, and you’ll get swept up in it whether you like it or not. We have the kidnapping of Adelina Borghese and her dog Prin—”

“We already—”

“—cess, and that has international implications, which is what’ll be bringing the FBI in. Now we’ve got this missing reporter Suzie Sanchez—”

“Didn’t see her neither,” the sheriff said. “Told you that, too.”

“It’s possible you didn’t see her,” Bernie said. “But not possible you didn’t see her car—it was parked right outside the saloon.” Bernie took out a photo: Suzie’s car and Suzie standing beside it.

The sheriff glanced at the photo, shook his head. The deputy shook his head, too. For some reason two humans doing that at the same time is a thing I like to watch; I lost track of what was going on and missed part of the next bit.

“. . . what we didn’t discuss before,” Bernie was saying, “namely that cabin on the ridge above the town. Who owns it?”

“Cabin?” said the sheriff.

“What cabin?” said the deputy.

Bernie smiled, no idea why; and it looked kind of strange, with that anger muscle still showing in his jaw. “Did I mention Suzie Sanchez’s job? She’s a reporter for the
Valley Tribune
. No one knows where she is right now, but she was working on the Bor-ghese kidnap story and the last call she made came from Clauson’s Wells. See what this means?” The sheriff and his deputy remained silent. “The spotlight’s going to be shining down on your little county,” Bernie said, “and soon.”

“What spotlight?” said the deputy. “We shoulda taken this guy and—”

The sheriff held up his hand. “It’s just his approach—maybe could use some improvement.”

“Who are we talking about?” said Bernie, still smiling.

“There you go,” the sheriff said. “Probably why we end up in these misunderstandings. But I’d never want anyone thinking this office isn’t behind any legitimate investigation.”

“He’s a fuckin’ PI,” said the deputy. “Nothing le—”

The sheriff raised his hand again, this time adding, “Les?”

The deputy cut himself off. “Now this cabin you mention is a total unknown to us, like it or not. But maybe it’s owned by the same guy who owns the ghost town.”

“Someone owns Clauson’s Wells?” Bernie said.

“Sure does,” said the sheriff. “There’s all these plans to make it a tourist attraction.”

“Name of the owner?” said Bernie.

“Have to look that up,” the sheriff said. “Some investor from Vegas.”

Bernie stopped smiling. “Sherman Ganz?” he said.

“Yeah,” said the sheriff, his eyebrows rising; a good sign for us, and one I always spotted. “If you know the answer, why ask?”

SIXTEEN

D
on’t know exactly what game they’re playing, that sheriff and his deputy,” Bernie said, back in the car, zooming out of Nowhereville, “but one thing’s for sure—they stink.”

No doubt about that, but it’s not putting Bernie down— something I would never do!—to say the sense of smell isn’t usually his strength. Bernie was full of surprises. And what was better than this? In the Porsche, on the job, two-lane blacktop stretching as far as I could see, big blue sky above. A little tasty nibble and everything would have been perfect. When had I last eaten? Couldn’t remember. My mind wandered a bit, mostly going over the smells of different foods I liked. Steak, for example, especially with A.1. sauce, burgers, especially bacon burgers, and just plain bacon, too, all by itself. In fact, the smell of just plain bacon sizzling over a flame was one of the most amazing things in life. You may not know this, your sense of smell perhaps more like Bernie’s, but there are two kinds of smells—smells you have to find and smells that find you. Bacon smell finds me, every time. Bernie likes his bacon crisp, but he always takes mine out of the pan first, because I prefer the juicy kind of bacon, with lots of those thick, white fatty parts, so delicious, and to tell the truth totally uncooked bacon wasn’t at all bad either, something I knew from this one time when somehow completely by accident I’d gotten hold of a whole family-size package of gourmet fresh-from-the-farm—

“Chet? You hungry? How does a picnic sound? I could go for a little picnic my—easy, boy.”

Bernie pulled off the road, bumped up to the top of a rise, and parked. I love picnics, and Bernie always makes sure we have a nice view. He popped the trunk, took out our gas burner and the cooler, soon had sausages cooking over the open flame. We gazed out on the desert and gobbled up those sausages—loved sausages, too, almost as good as bacon—glistening with lovely grease, just perfect; turned out we were both famished, me and Bernie. After that, Bernie started in on a shiny apple. Apples are something we usually share. He took a few bites then reared back and threw the core as far as he could, and that’s far. I was already on the move when he had his arm back, of course, and the apple core was still tumbling on the stony ground when I scooped it up and trotted back to Bernie, fetch with an apple being a little different from fetch with a ball, since there was nothing left to drop at his feet. So I just stood beside him, feeling good for no reason. He gave me a pat, the soft pat-pat-pat kind, a bit too quick, meaning his mind was somewhere else.

“I just don’t know, Chet,” he said, gazing down the two-lane blacktop. “What’s the logical next step? Vegas.” He pointed. “Thataway. But I don’t feel it.” He tapped his chest. Same here: in my own chest I felt nothing but the slow and steady boom-boom-boom that was always there.

Bernie packed up our picnic stuff. I heard an engine sound, far off, coming from thataway; a bike, not a car. Then I spotted a glare on the blacktop, at the distant line where the ground touched the sky. We hopped in the car. Bernie, turning the key, paused and said. “Hear something?” Oh, Bernie. He peered down the road. Hey. Suddenly the motorcycle was much closer, the dark shape of the rider bent low.

“Looks like fun, huh?” Bernie said. And almost before he’d even finished saying it, the bike flashed by. Bernie’s head whipped around in the direction it had gone. “Was that Nance?” I didn’t know, in fact hadn’t seen much, getting caught up in the roar of the engine and the smell of the exhaust. Bernie floored it and we fishtailed onto the road, headed in pursuit.

I love pursuit, especially in the Porsche. No one gets away from us, baby. Not quite true: there’d been that time in the high mountains, chasing after one of Gulagov’s men. He’d gotten away, all right, but not for long, and only because the Porsche had ended up shooting off the cliff. But that was the old Porsche, maybe not as old as this one, but not as good either, Bernie said so; something about compression ratios, I couldn’t remember what, just had enjoyed watching Bernie and our garage guy, Nixon Panero, working on the engine, black liquid splashing everywhere.

And now we were flying, closing the distance between us and the bike real fast, the wind blowing me back against the seat. The whistling of the wind in my ears, the howl of the engine, and . . . ? Was that me howling, too? Nothing like a good chase to get me going; I was conscious of that beat inside my chest, now speeding up, going boom-boom-BOOM, boom-boom-BOOM, practically shaking the whole car. Were we going to catch that biker or what? And when we did, well . . . I actually wasn’t sure about that part, since Nance was on our side, right? But I’d worry about that when the time came, as humans liked to say, or never, which was my approach. I glanced down at Bernie’s pedal foot: to the metal! And sideways the whole desert was just a blur, whizzing by so fast I couldn’t even—

What was that? A funny little lurch?

“Uh-oh,” said Bernie. “Did you feel a little—?” Then came a clunk, and another clunk, followed by a whole bunch of them, plus more lurching. The Porsche went all jerky, kind of stumbling to the side of the road like a human who’d had way too many.

We sat there, the engine going pop-pop, pop-pop. The bike grew smaller and smaller and finally vanished. It got very quiet, except for the pop-pop. Bernie’s hand curled into a fist; he had big strong fists and plenty of perps, gangbangers, and bad guys had seen what they could do. He raised his fist as though to punch the steering wheel, something I’d seen guys—good and bad ones—do plenty of times; but then Bernie paused, his hand relaxing, and no punch came. That was one of the very best things about Bernie.

Out came the tools, and not long after that the manual, too. Nothing good ever happened when Bernie had his head deep in the engine. The wind fluttered the pages of the open manual, Bernie trying to still them with an oil-stained elbow, a tool in each hand. After a while, I couldn’t bear to watch, and took a little—what was Bernie’s word?—recon, that was it. I took a recon around the area, smelled the scent—froggy, toady, fishy—of a snake, but very faint. I followed the scent, lost it, circled around, and picked it up again, and there, in the shadow of a big rock, I found—what? I wasn’t sure; some kind of strange snake, very pale, with no eyes at all, just nasty holes where eyes should have been.

“Chet! What the hell’s going on?”

I realized I was barking my head off and stopped. But then I caught sight of that eyeless head again, and maybe more barking started up. “Chet? What is it?” Bernie’s voice changed, stopped being irritated, not that he ever got irritated with me. “Find something?” He came over, saw the snake, and laughed. Then—oh, no—before I could stop him, he reached down and picked it up. Snakes bite! Didn’t Bernie know about those fangs?

But this snake didn’t bite, just dangled in a limp sort of way from Bernie’s hand. “Only a skin, Chet,” he said. “Nothing to be afraid of—the snake got too big and shed it, that’s all.” For some reason I thought that was plenty to be afraid of and hurried back to the car. I even considered lying underneath it, but then I heard something dripping from the engine.

Sometime later, Bernie turned the key, listened hard, and said, “Voilà,” a brand-new word to me. Maybe it meant “pulling a U-ee,” because that was what we did, not following that bike, but headed in the other direction, thataway.

“Vegas,” Bernie said. He took a deep breath. “I can’t think straight when it comes to Vegas.” Bernie not think straight? Ridiculous. I shifted closer to him. Soon we had music—Billie Holiday, in one of her sad moods. I preferred her in her happy moods, with Roy Eldridge blowing that trumpet, so I was kind of glad when the cell phone rang and Bernie switched her off.

“What’s up?” Bernie said.

I could hear the voice on the other end: Lieutenant Stine. “Nothing good,” he said, and some more I didn’t catch and then Bernie touched a button and Lieutenant Stine’s voice came through our speakers. “. . . and Suzie Sanchez still hasn’t shown up at work and no one there’s heard from her. Sure these cases are related?”

“Not sure of anything right now,” Bernie said. “But she was working on the Borghese story and Clauson’s Wells is an hour or so from their ranch.”

“This is in Rio Loco County?”

“Right. Know anything about the sheriff ?”

“No,” said Lieutenant Stine. “Why?”

“Bad vibe.”

“That’s it? Bad vibe? We talked about holding back on this case, didn’t we, Bernie, and how that’s not going to happen?”

“Bad vibe is all we’ve got,” Bernie said. He’d left out the smell, but there was nothing I could do about that.

Long silence. “I’ll look into him,” said the lieutenant.

“And the deputy, Les somebody,” Bernie said. “Did you check Suzie’s apartment?”

“Telling me how to do my job? Course I sent somebody out.”

“And?”

Papers rustled in the background. “Guy there said he’d just arrived and hadn’t seen her.”

“Guy?” said Bernie. “What guy?”

“Friend from out of town, it says here.”

“What friend?”

More rustling. “McKnight,” said Lieutenant Stine. “Dylan McKnight.”

Bernie slammed on the brakes. I thought I was going to get thrown out of my seat, but the car spun around so fast, taking off the other way, that I ended up hardly moving at all. Bernie could drive, no doubt about that. The squeal of burning rubber, the smell that went with it: so exciting I was almost beside myself, whatever that meant. Some foggy idea about another one of me almost took shape at the edge of my mind, and while that was happening I missed a bit of the conversation.