“You’re asking me to pay for stolen property?” Bernie said.
Dewey glared at Bernie, like he actually didn’t like him.
“But I’ll make a deal,” Bernie went on. “If you give me that page nicely, I’ll forget about count one.”
Dewey reached into his pocket.
“And,” Bernie went on, “if you give me the name, I’ll forget count two.”
Dewey paused. “What name?”
“The woman who hires you. A hard-ass bitch—you met her surfing in Hawaii.”
“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Dewey said.
Bernie gazed down at him. “You’re afraid of her.”
“Me? Afraid of some woman?”
“No shame in that,” Bernie said. “Just means you’re a realist about life. Not all conflict comes down to physical confrontation.”
“Ha!” said Dewey. “Shows what you know—she’s a fuckin’ nightmare when it comes down to…”
“Go on,” Bernie said.
Dewey shook his head.
“Did she order you to slice the page out of Wendell Nero’s appointment book?” Bernie said.
“I don’t take orders from anybody,” Dewey said.
“Suit yourself. Did she hire you to do it?”
Dewey gazed up at Bernie. There was fear in his eyes, and plenty of it in his smell. “Mig didn’t know about this. Where are you gettin’ your information?”
“It’s out there,” Bernie said. “Can’t you feel the momentum? Time to save yourself, Dewey.”
Dewey peered into the night. I heard the whap whap whap, now faint again, almost dialed down to nothing.
“I don’t feel nothin’—except for my hand, what’s left of it.”
“For god’s sake, man,” Bernie said. “Focus.”
“On what?” said Dewey.
“The appointment book. Did she tell you to slice out the page with me on it?”
Dewey looked into the darkness again and nodded a small nod.
“But didn’t she also want you to give it to her when you were done?”
Dewey nodded again.
“What did you tell her?”
Dewey smiled a smile of the crafty kind, never a good human look. “I misunderstood and destroyed it.”
“How?”
“How I destroyed it? I didn’t—that’s the point.”
“I’m aware of that,” Bernie said. “But she must have asked how.”
Dewey shot Bernie a quick glance. “Know something? You’re like her.”
Bernie showed no reaction, but he reacted inside. I felt it. He was starting to be a lot less fond of Dewey. And maybe Dewey felt it, too, because he quickly added, “I told her I burned it. Burned it in my sink—always good to add a detail like that.”
“You played her like a violin,” Bernie said.
“Kinda,” said Dewey. “I thought it might be valuable someday—nine point five valuable.”
“No one’s perfect,” said Bernie.
“How about a grand?” Dewey said. “One lousy K. Call it expenses.”
“The negotiations are closed.” Bernie held out his hand. Dewey pulled a small envelope from his pocket and gave it to him. “But,” Bernie went on, “the name is worth a grand.”
“And you’ll let me go?”
Bernie nodded.
“How about two?” Dewey said.
“Nope.”
“One point five.”
“The name,” Bernie said.
“Money first.”
“Name first.” Bernie’s eyes got a sudden inward look, the way they did when some new idea popped up in that amazing brain of his. “Did she also order you to kidnap Chet?”
“Told you,” Dewey said. “I don’t take orders from anybody. I’m my own boss, maybe something you’re missing even though you’re the know-it-all type of—”
WHAP WHAP WHAP! WHAP WHAP WHAP!
Oh, no. From out of nowhere and so fast, the helo was right on us! Right on us although I still couldn’t see it. But I could hear it, all right. I heard that helo and nothing but, a roar that filled the whole sky, shook the fire tower and made me start jumping around and … and going crazy! Stop that whap whap whap! Stop it now! That was all I could think.
As for what I could see, we had Dewey, eyes and mouth opened wide, possibly screaming, even if I couldn’t hear the screams. We also had Bernie, moving real quick. Before I even knew it, he’d scooped me up and flung me over his shoulder—me, a hundred-plus pounder—crossed the platform and started down the stairs, coming pretty close to running, like he didn’t have a wounded leg after all. He even turned his head and shouted something to Dewey, maybe “Come on, Dewey!” But I couldn’t hear a word. No other sound could penetrate that whap whap whap.
WHAP WHAP WHAP. A whap whap whap that tilted and circled around us and then came a bright flash and Bernie leaped the rest of the way, me leaping, too, off his shoulders and into the night.
BOOM! A tremendous boom, and then a sound like splitting matchsticks, but huge, and the whole tower flew apart in many pieces. By then I was on the ground, with Bernie lying over me. Little fires were breaking out here and there, and the whap whap whap was fading fast. I followed the sound with my eyes and glimpsed a helo silhouette crossing the moon. And then it was gone, both the sound of it and the sight. The little fires made crackling sounds. Those seemed so tiny to me, and at the same time so clear.
Bernie went pat pat pat along my back. “You okay, big guy?”
Sure! Maybe not tip-top, what with a strange muffling in my ears, but I was good to go. We rose and hurried over to Dewey, a still shadow on the ground where the tower had stood. He lay on his back. We looked down at him. There was nothing we could do. His face was undamaged—in fact all of him looked undamaged, except for that tiny smear of blood on his hand that he’d been fussing about, but the—what would you call it? Inner Dewey? Something like that. The inner Dewey was gone. It can happen very fast.
We got busy stamping out the fires, Bernie doing the stamping and me trying not to get too close whenever Bernie said don’t get too close. Stamp stamp stamp “not too close,” “back off a bit,” “Chet!” We worked our way across the little plateau, stamping and not getting too close. The wind came up and sent some small burning thing across our path. Bernie went to stamp on it, stopped himself at the last second. It was the envelope Dewey had brought, maybe the whole point of tonight’s meeting. Bernie reached for, grabbed a corner, but too late. Flame shot up and the envelope turned to ashes in his hand. He shook them off. The wind caught them and blew an ash or two onto Bernie’s face. He rubbed them off, leaving a black smear on his forehead. That bothered me. I wondered about licking his forehead, making everything all better. Perhaps later.
“To top it off,” Bernie said, “we’re in Beasley’s jurisdiction.”
* * *
“Hell of a mess,” said Deputy Beasley.
Dawn was breaking all around us on the little plateau, a lovely sight that reminded me of one of Charlie’s finger paintings. Once we’d finger painted together, just me and him, me using my paws of course, Charlie helping to dip them in the paint pots, the whole thing his idea. A brilliant kid, but that was to be expected. I’d learned so much that day, including the facts that in finger painting it’s best to keep the paint on the paper and not let it wander off onto other things—for example, a white couch—and that not all people were fans of finger painting—for example, Leda.
We stood in a circle around Dewey. Beasley had a huge mug of coffee in his pudgy hand. He took a sip. The two officers with him took sips of their coffee. Bernie had run through our story, answered some questions, run through it again. Beasley had said “Hell of a mess” a few times. Were we getting anywhere? I didn’t know.
“Can’t even think why the goddamn thing was still standing in the first place,” Beasley said. “Wasn’t it s’posta come down years ago?” He turned to the officers. They glanced at each other. One shrugged
. The other one hesitated for a moment and then he shrugged, too. I was getting hungry.
Beasley turned back to Bernie. “Tell me the helicopter part again.”
Bernie told him the helicopter part. The sky got even wilder—like paint pots were getting spilled all over the place—but there were no helicopters, nothing flying at all except a lone black bird.
“No lights,” Beasley said.
“Nope,” said Bernie.
“No identifying features.”
“I didn’t really see it, except for a second, silhouetted against the moon. But I sure heard it.”
“Silhouetted,” said Beasley, saying the word real slow.
“Correct,” Bernie said.
“You guys check out aviation traffic, three-mile radius, last six hours,” Beasley said. “Herm—take civil. Nestor—military.”
The officers went to their squad cars, got on the phones.
Beasley took another sip of coffee. He toed a broken length of wood from the tower.
“You mentioned a grenade,” he said.
“Fired from the helo,” said Bernie.
“Got any experience with grenades fired out of helos?”
“Some.”
Beasley squinted at Bernie over the rim of his mug. “Possess any grenades yourself?”
“What kind of question is that?” Bernie said.
“Just gathering information.” Beasley pointed down at Dewey. “Any chance our friend here had possession of grenades?”
“No idea,” Bernie said. “And I don’t see the relevance.”
The officers got out of their squad cars, came over.
“Civil,” said Herm. “Negative.”
“Military,” said Nestor. “Same.”
Beasley took off his hat, scratched his head. A few flakes of dandruff drifted off, got lit up by that paint pot sky. There’s all kinds of beauty in life.
“We got a problem,” he said.
“One way of putting it,” said Bernie.
“See,” Beasley went on, “we deal in facts, don’t we, boys?”
For a moment I thought Herm and Nestor were about to do their shrugging routine again, but they nodded instead.
“Facts,” Beasley said, “is like this guy Dewart—”
“Dewey,” said Bernie.
“—whatever, picks a place like this to sell you some alleged page from an alleged book, now burned to ashes, so not a fact, that part. Then we got facts of lots of noise and an explosion. What I’m thinking is you’re lucky to be alive.”
“True,” Bernie said.
“So you’re agreeing he set you up?”
“No,” Bernie said. “Or if he did, he didn’t realize he was being set up, too.”
“By who?” said Beasley.
“Whoever sent in the helo,” Bernie told him.
Beasley sighed. “We’re trying to stick to facts.”
“So?”
“So the helo is not a fact,” Beasley said. “Maybe someday it will be, and if that day comes, why then we’ll have to … what’s the word I’m looking for?”
“Reboot?” said Herm.
“Apologize?” said Nestor.
Beasley glared at Nestor. “Reboot,” he said. “If and when that day comes. But for now what we have”—he stuck his chin in Dewey’s direction—“is this five-and-dimer with a setup that went wrong. Blew up in his face, you might say.”
Herm laughed. Nestor did not.
“Summing up,” Beasley said, “the department thanks you for calling this in. We’ll take over from here.”
Bernie’s eyes caught all the dawn colors, became two eye-sized blazing skies. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m not blaming you,” Beasley said. “Goes with your job. Complications are good business. But it don’t go with my job. Florian Machado killed Wendell Nero. Case closed.”
This all had been hard to follow, right to now. But sometimes at the very end is when understanding comes. Cases are closed by me, grabbing the pant leg. Deputy Beasley had gone off the rails.
Twenty-six
The sky settled down as we topped the hills and headed into the Valley, but Bernie’s eyes did not. They kept blazing away until we hit the morning traffic jam near the airport and came to a stop. Then, when all the drivers around us were ramping up inside, Bernie started ramping down. He turned to me.
“You must be famished, big guy.”
Bernie, on target as usual. Was there a stronger word than famished? If not, then we needed one. Food! Now! Food! Now! F—
The phone buzzed.
“Hello,” said a man, an old man with a scratchy voice, an old man I knew. “Is this Bernie? Bernie Little?”
“Hi, Diego. This is Bernie.”
“Oh, good. You gave me your card. I’m calling the number.”
“What can we do for you?” Bernie said. “You sound upset.”
“I am upset,” said Diego.
“About what?”
“Can we talk in person?” Diego’s voice sank to a whisper. “I don’t trust the phone.”
“Where are you?” said Bernie in a normal voice.
“My office,” said Diego, still whispering.
“Can you drive?”
Diego’s voice rose back up, maybe now on the high side of normal. “Of course! Been driving since I was eight years old.”
“That’s not what I—” Bernie stopped himself, started over. “Come to our place. We’re on Mesquite Road.” Bernie gave him the house number.
“Mesquite Road on the west side of Settler’s Canyon?”
“Yes.”
“Family name of Little used to own that whole stretch.”
“A long time ago,” said Bernie.
* * *
We drove home. There was a package on the front step. Bernie picked it up and we went in. He carried the package into the kitchen and started unwrapping it. I walked to the corner by the fridge and stood over my food bowl. You can stand over your food bowl in a way that no one notices. I chose the opposite kind of way. Bernie stopped what he was doing.
“How does kibble mixed with Slim Jim slices sound?” he said.
Yes!
“Or would you prefer—?” Bernie started laughing, possibly because I had shifted position slightly, was now standing on my hind legs, front paws on his shoulders. “I get it,” he said, and got that kibble poured out and the Slim Jims sliced up and pronto. Bernie could be something of a tease at times. The fun we have!
Bernie went back to the package, opening it and taking out a bottle of bourbon. “Heard of this one but never sprang for it.” He read the note. “‘Bourbon reminds me of Billie Holiday. This particular make reminds me of her at her very best, singing “If You Were Mine,” for example. We should catch some music one day—Gudrun.’”
Bernie glanced up. Billie Holiday singing “If You Were Mine” was our favorite, although the very best part came at the end, when Roy Eldridge started up on his trumpet, doing things to my ears I can’t possibly describe. But right now there was a look on Bernie’s face I’d never seen before. Confusion was part of it, and surprise, and other things I didn’t have a chance to understand, because all at once I was very sleepy. That can happen when you’re up all night, as you learn pretty quick in a job like mine.
* * *
A knock on the door. A knock on the door, and I hadn’t even heard anyone coming! Me, Chet, in charge of security! Asleep on the kitchen floor? I bounced right up. My tail drooped. I forced it back up and ran to the door, ready to do who knows what to whoever was there. Who knows what to whoever—I kind of liked that. Was there a way to add it to our card?
Bernie came down the hall, rubbing his eyes. He opened the door. This wasn’t anyone I’d even consider doing who knows what to, just Diego, an old man, anxious and upset, reminding me for some reason of a child, despite him being so wrinkled and bent.
Bernie led him by the hand. “Come in.”
Diego entered the house, t
ook a look around. Bernie was taking a look around, too, but at whatever was going on up and down the street, which happened to be nothing at all. Except … except old man Heydrich had his sprinklers on? In the middle of a hot hot day? Bernie glared at all that sparkle and shut the door.
“Nice place you got here,” Diego said.
“Nothing fancy,” said Bernie.
“That’s what I’m saying,” said Diego. “It’s connected.”
“Connected?”
“To the land it’s sitting on. A common thing at one time, not so common now.” Diego licked his lips. “I’m a bit thirsty, if you don’t mind.”
Thirsty and not too steady on his feet. We got Diego settled at the kitchen table, a glass of water in front of him. He sipped, closed his eyes, sipped again.
Diego opened his eyes, put down the glass. “You have good water here.”
“Regular city water,” said Bernie.
“I’m making allowance for that,” Diego said. “Did you know that in the old days we’d toss pennies and dimes into the water barrels?”
“Because the ions kept the water fresh?” said Bernie.
“Fresh and clear,” Diego said. “Although we didn’t know the reason at the time. We just did it because that was always the way.” His eyes got a bit watery. He took a deep breath and they dried up. Diego had a nice smell, reminding me of old saddles, minus the horse part. “Everything changes, no matter what you do. I wouldn’t wish death on myself, Bernie—that’s a sin—but if the changes just could have waited till I was gone I’d have been thankful.”
“Are you talking about specific changes?” Bernie said.
“Yes, sir. We’re selling out. Jimmy and I had a long talk last night. Did you know we bought the land in 1806?”
Bernie nodded.
“But the fact is there were Torrezes working it for two centuries before that, even more.” Diego took another sip of water.
“So it’s not an easy decision,” Bernie said.
“Yes and no,” said Diego. “That land is part of me, just like my arm or my leg. Yet a land without water is dead, like a body with no blood running inside.” He looked about to say more, but did not, gave his shoulders a little shrug instead.
Of Mutts and Men Page 21
