“Never heard of her.”
Bernie nodded, this nod of his that had nothing to do with agreement. “I’m getting a real funny feeling, Ruben, a funny feeling that she’s inside your house right now.”
To my surprise—and I’m pretty sure Bernie’s, too—Ruben turned out to be one of those huge guys who could also move. I barely saw what happened, and I doubt Bernie even caught a glimpse. Ruben’s fist, bigger than a softball—a kind of ball I had no use for at all—flashed up from under with a whoosh of air and caught Bernie right on the point of the chin. Bernie didn’t go down—it took a lot to put Bernie down—but he staggered back. At that point I saw red, despite Bernie’s belief that I’m incapable of seeing red. The next thing I knew, Ruben and I were in the house, rolling around on a sticky floor.
I got a real good grip on his pant leg. Ruben wore very wide pants—I had a whole mouthful. He grabbed something off the floor, a lamp, maybe, and started beating me on the head. “Gonna kill you,” he said, and called me a lot of bad names. I growled at him and held on. And then Bernie was there, down on the floor with us. He got his arm around Ruben’s thick neck, in one of those grips he knew, and Ruben went all floppy.
Bernie rose. “Okay, Chet, let him go. C’mon, boy, you did great, now let go. Chet?”
I let go, maybe not right away. Denim scraps hung from my mouth, snagged on my teeth.
Bernie picked them out. “Good man. You all right?”
Never better. I didn’t feel a thing. Bernie turned, went quickly through the house. I stood over Ruben. His eyes fluttered open. I barked in his face. He flinched. You’re not the first, buddy boy.
Bernie came back. “She’s not here,” he said. “But you’ve got some interesting weapons, Ruben.” Bernie had an AK in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other. “And all that dope—what do you think? Eight, nine pounds?”
Ruben sat up, rubbing his neck.
“It can stay our little secret,” Bernie said, pulling up a chair and sitting next to Ruben, the shotgun pointed casually at his head, “the weed, the guns, but I’ll need your cooperation about Madison.”
“Get your fuckin’ dog away from me.”
“Language,” said Bernie.
“Huh?”
“Can’t talk to Chet that way.”
Ruben blinked. “Get your dog fuckin’ away from me.”
“Good enough,” Bernie said. “We’re pretty reasonable, Chet and I.”
Ruben gave me a funny look. Like what? Like I wasn’t reasonable?
But I backed off, as Bernie wanted. And backing off, I noticed a half-eaten burger on the counter, a burger with the works. Didn’t touch the thing. Made no sense, but I just didn’t feel like it.
Bernie tapped Ruben’s shoulder with the shotgun, not hard. “Madison Chambliss,” he said. “Start talking.”
“Like, whaddaya wanna know, man?”
“Take it from the movie line at the North Canyon Mall.”
Ruben shrugged. “I was hanging out there, cruisin’ around, and she goes, ‘Hey, Ruben.’”
“So you knew her already.”
“Yeah.”
“From where?”
“Huh?”
“From school?” Bernie said. “Were you in any classes together?”
“Classes, man? Nah.”
“Was she a customer?”
Ruben looked at Bernie, then at me. I had this sudden urge to give his leg a nip.
“Yeah,” Ruben said. “A customer. She goes, ‘Hey, Ruben,’ and we talk a little, she’s in the market kind of thing. So we swung by here.”
“And?”
“I sold her a nickel bag.”
“And then you drove her home?”
“Yeah.”
“Where does she live?”
Ruben didn’t answer. I inched closer to his leg, staying in the sit position but dragging my butt along the floor.
“Or did you drop her at the mall?” Bernie said.
“Yeah, the mall.”
“Want to hear a prediction?” Bernie said. “Your future’s not too bright.”
“Huh?”
“Let’s move on. When was the last time you saw her?”
“Say what? That was the last time.”
“How about two days ago?”
“Two days ago?”
“Thursday,” Bernie said. “When Madison disappeared.”
“She disappeared?”
“Want a tip?” Bernie said. “Only smart people can pull off playing dumb.”
“Don’t get it, man.”
I was one short lunge away now. My lips curled back from my teeth all by themselves.
“Account for your whereabouts,” Bernie said, “starting from Thursday morning.”
“Thursday morning?” said Ruben. “I was still at County.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I was locked up, man. They got me for speeding Wednesday night, found some warrants. I didn’t make bail till a few hours ago.”
Bernie gave him a long look. Then he put the AK aside and took out his cell phone. “Damn, no service.”
“Wanna use mine?” Ruben said.
Bernie used Ruben’s. He dialed a number. “Gina? Bernie Little here. Trying to confirm processing times for a possible recent booking down at County, name of Ruben Ramirez.”
We waited. Ruben gazed at my teeth. The biting urge—I hardly ever get it, but when I do, oh boy—grew stronger.
“Thanks, Gina.” Bernie clicked off, handed Ruben his phone. “Your story checks out.”
“You gonna apologize?”
Bernie laughed. I loved Bernie’s laugh. There’s this crazy run I do in the yard, zooming back and forth, that always works.
“What’s funny?” Ruben said.
Bernie stopped laughing. He tapped Ruben’s shoulder with the shotgun, this time much harder. Ruben winced. “Paying attention?” Bernie said.
“I was at County, man. Why the hell—”
“Forget that part,” Bernie said. “How did Madison get home from your place?”
“Already told you,” Ruben said. “I drove her.” Or something like that. I didn’t really hear because at that moment my jaws were suddenly clamping around Ruben’s leg. Not hard, no blood drawn or anything dramatic, but the big baby let out a scream like he was being ripped in two. “All right, all right, I didn’t drive her. Call off your damn dog.”
“Language.”
“Oh God, come on, man.” Ruben wriggled around on the floor.
“Chet?”
I unclamped. It took everything I had.
“Maybe take a moment or two, Chet.”
Bernie was right. I walked around a bit, snapping up the burger in an absentminded way.
“If you didn’t drive her,” Bernie was saying, “how did she get home?”
“She walked out, that’s all I know.”
“Into a bad area? Why would she do that?”
“Couldn’t tell you.”
“Think,” Bernie said. “We really want to know, Chet and I.”
Ruben glanced at me, fear in his eyes, no doubt about it. I was licking burger juices off my lips. “Nothin’ happened,” he said. “I was feelin’ a little romantic. She wasn’t in the mood.”
“You don’t look like the romantic type.”
Ruben frowned in a thoughtful way, like maybe he was learning something about himself. “I didn’t touch her,” he said. “Or hardly. She just walked out.”
“In what direction?”
“Toward Almonte.”
“You watched?”
“I wasn’t really watching her,” Ruben said. “There was this strange car out front.”
“What was strange about it?”
Ruben raised and lowered his heavy shoulders. “Not from around here.” He looked toward the window; there was tape on one of the panes. “Maybe the dude offered her a ride.”
“What dude?”
“This blond dude in the car. He opened
the door as she went by, kind of held out his hand.”
“Held out his hand?”
“You know,” said Ruben. “To stop her. But she didn’t stop. Maybe even started running, now I think of it. Up to Almonte, kind of thing.”
“And the blond dude?”
“He got back in the car, drove off.”
“After her?”
“Don’t remember.”
“Think.”
Ruben squeezed his eyes shut. Time passed.
Bernie sighed. “What make was the car?”
“A Beamer,” said Ruben. “Which was how come I noticed in the first place.”
“Model?”
“Don’t know the models.”
“Color?”
“Blue.”
When Bernie was worried about something, his eyebrows got closer together, and his eyes seemed to be looking inward. That was happening now. On the way back to the car, I sprayed markings on the gate and maybe one or two other spots.
We tried the convenience store on Almonte. No one there remembered Madison. I started worrying, too, about what I didn’t know.
eight
Here’s a scenario,” Bernie said, starting to lose me right off the top. “It makes sense, but I kind of wish it didn’t,” he went on, finishing the job. We were driving up our street, Mesquite Road. I spotted Iggy, watching from the window at the front of his house. He spotted me, too, and barked, a bark I couldn’t hear. Iggy ran back and forth behind the glass. I stood taller in the shotgun seat and turned toward him, ears cocked. Then he was out of sight.
“Suppose,” Bernie was saying, “that someone tried to snatch her twice. Madison might not even have realized what was going on the first time outside Ruben’s, maybe wrote it off to routine hassling from some creep. But even if it scared her—and I don’t think it did—didn’t Tim Fletcher say she hadn’t seemed upset?”
Bernie paused, glanced over at me. Tim Fletcher? Who was he again?
“The point is, scared or not, she wasn’t about to tell her mother, because that would have led to the unraveling of the Dr. Zhivago cover story. See where this leads?”
I didn’t. How come Ruben Ramirez wasn’t the perp? He looked and smelled like so many perps we’d taken down.
“It leads,” Bernie said, “to the conclusion that this wasn’t spur-of-the moment but a premeditated snatch. Whoever it was failed the first time, coming out of Ruben’s, and got her the second, how and where to be determined. And if that’s true, we’re looking for a blond guy in a BMW. A blue BMW, according to Ruben—maybe not the most reliable witness.” He paused. Car identification, colors: neither of them my strengths, although I knew blue, the color of the sky and also Charlie’s eyes. Bernie turned in to the driveway. “And wasn’t the car in the mall that—”
He cut himself off. All this talk of cars, and now here was another one in the driveway, big and black, unfamiliar to me.
Bernie parked on the street. A man got out of the big black car, came toward us. We got out, too. The man was about Bernie’s height but not as broad; he had a goatee, which always caught my attention, and I was staring at it when his smell reached me, the very worst smell in the whole world: cat. The man in our driveway smelled of cat. It was all over him.
“I’m looking for Bernie Little,” the man said. Some people—Suzie Sanchez, for example, or Charlie, of course—had friendly voices. This man did not.
“Present,” said Bernie.
A frown crossed the man’s face. “My name’s Damon Keefer,” he said. “I understand my ex-wife, without consulting me, hired you to look for my daughter, Madison.”
“She hired us, yes,” said Bernie.
“And?” said Damon Keefer.
“And what?” Bernie said.
Questions, questions. I had a question of my own. Was there a cat, or maybe more than one, in that black car? Not likely: Cats, unlike my guys, weren’t big on riding around in cars, another one of those bewildering things about them. What beat riding around in cars? Maybe a few things—I thought of that distant she-bark not too long ago—but not many. Was it possible cats had no idea how to have fun? I didn’t know. All I knew was that the chances of a cat being in that black car were slim but not none. And a cat in that black car meant a cat on our property. A cat on our property? I heard a powerful rumbling sound, had the vague impression it was coming from my own throat. The next thing I knew, I was on the move.
“And what?” Damon Keefer was saying. “I’d like a report on your investigation so far, that’s what. I’m assuming you haven’t found her or else you’d—Hey! what the hell’s that dog doing?”
What was I doing? My job, amigo. And at that moment my job meant checking out this black car—parked in our driveway, by the way, while we were stuck out on the street—for the presence of cats. How do you do that without standing up on your back legs and planting your front paws on the door to get your face right up close to the window? That’s basic.
“He’s scratching the goddamn paint.”
“Chet!”
Good news: no cats. I pushed off, at the same time hearing a sound I wouldn’t call scratching, more like chalk on a blackboard. That sound always did things to me, starting at the back of my neck. I shivered. My lips smacked around loosely. I felt pretty good, so good I charged around the yard a bit, bursting out of one tight turn after another, clods of lawn flying all over the place.
“Chet, for God’s sake!”
I skidded to a stiff-legged dead stop, one of the things I do best, and not easy—try it sometime. A twig happened to be in reach. I flopped down, front and back legs all stretched out, and started chewing on the twig. Ah, eucalyptus, probably blown over from old man Heydrich’s tree. Very tasty.
Bernie and Keefer were standing by the black car, gazing at the door. “Send me a bill,” Bernie said.
I chewed the stick. I could smell my own breath. It smelled nice.
“What would be the point of that?” Keefer said. “You’d just pad your own bill—I know how these things work.”
Bernie gave him a look I’d hardly ever seen from him before. “I don’t pad my bills,” he said.
Keefer met his look, but not for long. “Suit yourself,” he said. “I’ll hear your report and be on my way.”
“Ever dealt with a private investigator before?” Bernie said.
“No, thank God,” said Keefer.
“Then you’re probably not aware that I don’t report to you. I report only to the client, except for certain information I’m compelled by law to pass on to the police.”
“The client? What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m on a retainer from Cynthia. That makes her the client.”
Keefer’s face swelled up: another blood-flow thing, but not a blush. This swelling up was a sign of human rage. In my world, rage and noise went together, but when Keefer spoke, his voice didn’t get louder; in fact, he lowered the volume. Humans—not all, but some—have a way of putting you off balance.
“What that tells me,” Keefer said, “is that you’re a touch slow in the detection department. Any half-decent detective would have figured out that every cent Cynthia has comes right from me.”
Bernie? A touch slow? I stopped chewing the stick, got my back legs up under me, ready.
Bernie stayed calm. “That doesn’t change anything. But I know this is a tough time for you, and if Cynthia gives her permission, I’ll fill you in.”
“I don’t need her permission for—”
“Maybe the three of us could meet at your place.”
“My place? Why my place?”
“Does Madison have a room there?”
“Yes, but—”
“I’d like to see it.”
“Why?”
“Standard procedure,” Bernie said. “I’m trying to get your daughter back.”
“She probably took off for Vegas.”
“Vegas?”
“She’s impulsive, just like her m
other.”
“Does Madison have a gambling problem?”
“I didn’t mean Vegas per se,” said Keefer.
“Has she ever run away before?”
“How would I know? Think I’m in the loop?”
“According to Cynthia, there’s no history of running away.”
“What do you expect her to say?”
“Meaning?” Bernie said.
“She’s a terrible mother—isn’t that obvious?”
“Did you try for custodial rights?”
“No,” Keefer said. “A young girl needs her mother. At least that’s what I thought at the time. But now—” He raised his hands, palms up. Humans did that when they didn’t know what else to do. I knew the feeling. When I reached that point, I took a nap if I was indoors; outdoors, I marked territory, always a good fallback.
Bernie was gazing at Keefer in one of his thoughtful ways, his head tilted to the side. That meant he was changing his mind about something, making new plans. “Tell you what,” he said, “why don’t I call Cynthia now? We can meet right here.”
* * *
We met in the office, Cynthia and Keefer in the client chairs, Bernie at the desk, me under it. From there, I could see Cynthia and Keefer from their waists down. He wore dark pants and dark shoes with tassels; she had sandals and bare legs. Their feet were pointing away from each other. My eyes felt heavy right away.
“First of all,” Bernie said, “I want to start with a very important question.” Feet started twitching, first a sandaled foot, then one with tassels. “Has either of you received a ransom demand?”
“Ransom demand?” They both said the words at the exact same time; something about their voices together sounded unpleasant.
“If you have, the caller almost certainly warned you against telling anyone.” Bernie said. “I promise you that not telling us would be a bad mistake.”
“Who is ‘us’?” Keefer said.
Bernie tapped his foot lightly on my tail. “The agency, of course. But you haven’t answered the question.”
“There’s been nothing like that,” said Cynthia. “What are you saying?”
“Are you telling us this is definitely a kidnapping?” said Keefer.
Cynthia’s hands squeezed tight together. “Oh my God,” she said.
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