The door of Donut Heaven opened and out walked the short shorts woman, with Bobby and Rick close by, and the Hawaiian shirt guy lagging behind. They moved over to where the yellow car had been parked, and then came lots of talk and gesturing, although not on the part of the Hawaiian shirt guy, who mostly gazed into the distance, and once glanced over at me. I caught another whiff of him, quite faint but still superb.
“ . . . move now is to bring in ATS,” Rick was saying.
“What’s that?” said the woman.
“Auto theft squad,” Rick told her.
“And they’ll get my car back?”
“Best auto theft squad west of the Mississippi,” Bobby said.
The expression on the Hawaiian shirt guy’s face changed and I wondered if I was about to hear that laugh of his again. No laugh came.
“What about Beauty?”
“They’ll make it a priority,” Bobby said.
“She’s a she,” the woman said.
“You can include that on the form,” said Bobby.
“I’ll call them right now,” Rick said. “I’ll need your name.”
“Cherry,” the woman said. “Cherry Monroe.”
Rick wrote in his notebook and headed my way, toward his cruiser, the Hawaiian shirt guy following. I shifted a little, watched them through Butch’s window.
“What’s new, Bernie?” Rick said, reaching into his car for the dashboard phone.
“The usual,” the Hawaiian shirt guy said. His name was Bernie? Not bad at all. Bernie.
“Meaning you’re looking for leads?” Rick said.
“Doesn’t have to be missing persons,” Bernie said. He looked down at the ground. “Truth is, Rick, I’ll take just about anything right now.”
“Divorce work?”
“Even that.”
Rick had raised the dashboard phone and looked about to speak into it. He lowered it instead, turned to face Bernie. “Can I say something without you biting my head off?”
Uh-oh. Bernie was a biter? I’d come across some human biters in my life—none of them really any good at it, not with those little teeth—but Bernie didn’t look like one to me.
“Not if you’re going to tell me I’m not cut out for private investigation,” Bernie said.
“Not saying that. Not exactly.”
“Then what?”
“The investigation part? The actual crime-solving? No one better than you. But there’s a business side.”
“I can add and subtract.”
“More to business than that.”
“Such as?”
“Start with PR.”
“Telling me I should hire a PR firm? No way I can afford that.”
“I meant PR in a more general sense—not alienating potential clients, that kind of thing.”
Bernie looked over to where Bobby and Cherry Monroe were talking. “You’re saying I alienated her?”
“She hinted at that inside,” Rick said. “‘ . . . Even if this gentleman doesn’t think it’s much of a car.’ You’ve forgotten that part?”
Bernie gave Rick a hard sort of look; it kind of surprised me, how hard it was. “I just wanted a crummy lead or two from you, Rick, not a goddamn makeover.”
Rick’s face hardened, too. “Sorry. I’ve got nothing.”
Bernie turned, jumped in his car, and sped away, burning rubber as he hit the highway. Rick made his call on the dashboard phone and drove off, waving to Bobby and Cherry Monroe on his way out. Not long after that, a couple black-and-whites pulled in. Bobby shook hands with Cherry Monroe, got in our car, and then we were gone, too. How come Bobby hadn’t picked up another cruller when he’d gone inside? No cruller at all for me today? Really? I started to give up on the idea of a cruller, although not completely. Giving up completely wouldn’t be me.
∗ ∗ ∗
“Out,” said Bobby, opening the back doors of the cruiser.
Butch and I hopped out, had a nice stretch, both of us getting our chins right down in the grass and our butts up high. Did that feel good or what? Butch got more lively right away. He gave me a bump. I gave him a bump back, a bit harder. He rebumped, harder still. I—
“So help me God!” Bobby said. “Can’t wait to see the last of you two. Get on over here.”
We trotted up to Bobby. We were back at the range. I loved the range: a big grassy field with a shooting hut, targets, and sometimes lots of gunfire. Back when there were more of us in the school, not just me and Butch, we’d come here to get used to gunfire, which I already was, on account of where I’d come from, and learn about gun smells, another thing I already knew, and also about explosives, which were new to me but turned out to be a snap when it came to sniffing them out.
No guns today. We had the range all to ourselves. Bobby led us over toward the fence at one side of the range, if him walking and me and Butch sprinting around him in circles counts as leading. The side fence was very high and made of solid planks tight together so you couldn’t see through, but I smelled interesting things on the other side, like paint and grease and gasoline.
Not far from the fence stood a big tall shape hidden by a tarp. “What we got here,” Bobby said, pulling off the tarp, “is a three-bar horse jump.” He started adjusting the bars and muttering something about how they were looking for distance as well as height. “Yea high for this one, a foot more in the middle, and we’ll top out at six feet.” Or something like that. For some reason I found myself yawning. Butch, right beside me, was panting. “Look at you guys,” Bobby said. “What the hell?”
He walked around the horse jump to the other side. “Chet,” he said. “Sit.”
I sat, head up and alert. It hit me that soon we were going to be leaping over this horse jump. That top bar wasn’t very high at all. What could be easier?
Bobby produced his clipboard. “Butch,” he said. He clapped his hands. “Up and over. Come.”
Butch stood very still. For a moment I thought he might be planning a quick little detour around the jump, but Butch was way too good for that. He sprang to life, took off at real good speed for a dude his size, and launched himself—up and over! Oops. Or maybe not. True, Butch was over, landing with just a little stumble, hardly noticeable at all, and sitting down for his biscuit, but one of his back paws had clipped that top bar and now it was vibrating and wavering, about to—No. The bar quivered back to stillness and stayed where it was.
“I’ll give you that one,” Bobby said, and made a mark on the clipboard. “You’re in.” He gave Butch his biscuit and Butch curled up and went to work on it.
“Okay, Chet, you’re up,” Bobby said. He clapped his hands. “Chet. Up and over. Come.”
Leap over this horse jump, was that it? A snap. I dug my front paws into the grass—best way for getting the kind of explosive start that makes the rest of it a piece of cake, as humans say, although why I’m not sure, cake being nothing special in my opinion—but at the very last moment before there’d be no stopping me, I caught a slight movement from the direction of the wooden fence. I paused, glanced over, and saw, peering through a small hole down where the fence met the ground, a cat. And not just any cat, but a plump, white cat with golden eyes and a pinkish nose: Beauty.
Beauty? Beauty, who I’d last seen getting driven off in the stolen yellow car? I took off in my best explosive style but not toward the jump. Instead I headed directly toward Beauty, barking my head off.
“Chet!” Bobby shouted at me. “What the hell are you doing?” And maybe more like that; I wasn’t really listening. I skidded to a stop right in front of that hole in the fence, shearing off a long clump of turf, and came face-to-face with Beauty. She gazed at me with those golden eyes, and then, so quick I barely saw the movement, one of her paws came flashing up and clawed me right across the nose. That made me so mad, I—
I did nothing, because at that moment, Bobby grabbed me by the collar and lifted my front end clear off the ground. As he dragged me away, I saw Beauty backing out of the
hole and disappearing from view on the other side of the fence.
Bobby gave me a hard look. “Had a feeling the whole time you’d screw up,” he said. “You flunk.”
I flunked? What did that mean, exactly? It didn’t sound good. I licked the blood off my muzzle.
∗ ∗ ∗
We drove away from the range. I had the back all to myself. Butch sat up front with Bobby. Bobby dropped Butch off at the Valley PD kennel where we lived but left me in the car. Hey! I wanted to get out, too. But that didn’t happen. Instead Bobby and I went on a long drive that took us across the bridge over the arroyo and back into Vista City, where I’d lived in the old days. We parked in front of a low cement-walled building. Bobby opened my door.
“Let’s go.”
We walked up to the building. Right away I knew there were lots of my kind inside, and pretty soon one of them realized I was outside and started barking. Others joined in. I loved being with my kind—and a whole big gang would be a rare treat—but for some reason I had no desire to enter this place.
Bobby tried the door. It didn’t open. He peered at a sign in the window and checked his watch. “Missed them by five goddamn minutes.” He banged on the door. The barking got louder. Bobby took out his phone.
“Rick? I’ve got a date tonight and I need a favor.”
∗ ∗ ∗
Bobby and I waited by the car. He leaned against it. I stood beside him. Once he glanced down at me and shook his head. The sun sank in the sky a bit and Bobby’s shadow moved over me, nice and cool, especially since we were getting to the hot part of the year. I shifted into the sun anyway.
Rick drove up, rolled down his window. “This one flunked the leaping test?”
“Yup.” Bobby opened the rear door of Rick’s cruiser. “Just feed him tonight, pretty much anything you’ve got handy. No need in the morning. I’ll swing by early and take him back here.”
“Got it.”
“Thanks, bro.” Bobby turned to me. “In.”
I jumped in Rick’s cruiser and got myself right over to the other side. Bobby closed the door. We rode off.
Rick drove in silence, out of Vista City, back across the arroyo and onto a freeway. He checked me in the rearview mirror.
“Weak link after all, huh?” he said. “How did Bobby put it? A bit of a puzzle? He knows his stuff.”
I lay down, closed my eyes. I’m the type who can fall asleep in no time flat, especially if there’s nothing doing out in the world. Funnily enough, sleep wouldn’t come.
“But I’ve got kind of an idea,” Rick said after a while. “Based on the old if you’re handed a lemon make lemonade thing.”
What was he talking about? Lemons? I had no interest in them at all. As for lemonade, I’d tasted it, not bad, but water was my drink. Plus right now I wasn’t the slightest bit hungry or thirsty, kind of strange for me. I curled up. Sleep came.
∗ ∗ ∗
Motion stopped. I sniffed the air. Pleasant air, with a strong scent of mesquite, one of my favorites. I opened my eyes and stood up. We were parked in the driveway of a nice little house that had a red tile roof and a yard with a few trees and some spiky desert-type plants. Rick got out of the car. He gazed at the house. “What’s the best approach? He’s so goddamn difficult.” Rick opened my door. “No point holding back—we’ll go in all guns blazing.”
We approached the front door. I’d been involved in all-guns-blazing-expeditions back in my crack-house days and knew that by now the guns should be out and ready, but Rick’s hands remained empty. And then instead of kicking in the door he simply knocked. I got ready for trouble and lots of it.
The door opened. Surprise! There was the Hawaiian shirt dude. Bernie: The name came to me at once. We were going to take him down? I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. Then I caught the first lovely whiff of him and was sure I couldn’t. His eyes—very interesting eyes, full of both shadows and light—went to Rick, me, and back to Rick.
“Rick?” he said. “Something up?”
“No,” Rick said. “I mean not really.” He gestured toward me. “Remember, um, Butch, here?”
“This is Chet,” Bernie said. “Butch is the lazy one.”
“Chet, right,” said Rick. “Anyway, maybe you could do me a little favor.”
“Like what?”
“Turns out that Chet washed out of the program.”
“He did?”
“Flunked the leaping test.”
Bernie gave me another look, maybe the strangest look I’ve ever gotten from a human: He seemed to see inside me. “That’s weird.”
“Bobby sort of predicted it, actually. Which is where the favor comes in. He tried to drop the dog off at the pound but they were closed. So Bobby needs someone to board him for the night, and I thought of you.”
“How come you didn’t think of you?”
“My original idea, of course, but Oksana’s allergic.”
“Who’s Oksana?”
“New girlfriend. Sort of. So I’d owe you.”
A silence fell. Human thoughts could sometimes press down on you. I felt that now, thoughts pressing down, Rick’s and Bernie’s. More just to get out from under them than anything else, I walked around Bernie and into the house.
Rick laughed.
“Wait a second,” Bernie said.
“Maybe he’ll help on the PR end.”
“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
Rick had some sort of answer for that, but I didn’t catch it. By that time I was in the kitchen.
∗ ∗ ∗
What a nice kitchen! Not big, but full of light. On the counter lay some fast-food containers—a very good sign, fast food being one of the best human inventions going—not quite empty and really not all that old, to judge from the odor. The table was mostly covered in papers, a big glass of bourbon—the scent impossible to miss—topping one stack.
“Everything to your satisfaction?”
I turned and there was Bernie watching me from the kitchen doorway. What was the question? I’d missed it.
“Just don’t get too comfortable,” Bernie said.
That one blew right by me. Was there even such a thing? I wagged my tail, one of my go-to moves.
Bernie watched me for a moment or two, those shadows-and-light eyes of his maybe growing a bit less shadowy. He walked over to the table and took a big drink of bourbon, pretty close to a gulp. Then he shot me a quick sideways look.
“What are you staring at?”
Him, of course. How could he miss that?
He gestured with his chin. “Those are bills I can’t pay, each and every goddamn one.”
I started panting. He raised the bourbon glass to his lips, then paused.
“Thirsty?” he said.
I hadn’t been, but all of a sudden I was. Bernie went to a cupboard, fished around, and took out a bowl, not the metal kind I was used to but a really nice white one decorated with—could it be? A rabbit? I’d chased rabbits in the arroyo, back in my puppy days, but never caught one.
Bernie filled the bowl with water at the sink and set it at my feet. “Wedgwood,” he said. “So no complaints on how you’re getting treated.”
Complaints? Of course not—he was treating me great. I started lapping up the water. Water tastes different in different parts of the Valley. This was the best so far: fresh, cool, with a faint hint of clean rocks.
“Belonged to my ex-wife,” Bernie was saying. “Amazing she left it behind. Not like her at all.”
Something about a wife? I didn’t quite grasp it. My attention was elsewhere, specifically on this rabbit at the bottom of the bowl, his image growing clearer as the water level went down. I’d never caught a rabbit, as I might have mentioned, and how they hop away so quickly is very bothersome. Plus this particular rabbit at the bottom of the bowl seemed to be wearing a human-type jacket, and somehow that was bothersome, too. Both bothersomes came together and the next thing I knew I was sort of giving the bowl a nudge, s
omewhat like the nudges Butch and I’d exchanged earlier in the day, but not as hard. I certainly didn’t mean it to be as hard; still, there was no denying that the bowl was airborne. It flipped over once or twice, landed on the floor, and shattered into many, many pieces.
Uh-oh. I looked at Bernie. He gazed at all those pieces. My tail drooped. I’d been bad, messed up, done wrong. And on top of it I’d also washed out of K-9 school. I wanted to go lie down under something in a dark place. Bernie slowly turned toward me, the hardness in his face harder than ever, although still not mean. His mouth started to open. I got ready for shouting and screaming. But no shouting or screaming happened. Instead Bernie laughed. He laughed and laughed, shaking with laughter, tears rolling from his eyes.
“How come—ha ha, ha ha—I didn’t think of that? Ha ha, ha ha.” He got a broom, swept up the rabbit bowl pieces, dumped them in a trash bag, and knotted the top. By that time the laughter had pretty much faded, but then he glanced at me and it erupted again. He dropped the bag on the floor and jumped up and down on it, even doing a sort of dance. That was too much for me, and I started jumping around myself. And that got him going even more, which got me going even more. He ran right at me, pretending or maybe not pretending that he was going to grab me. I wheeled around and ran right at him. But of course I didn’t want to hurt Bernie, especially now that he was turning out to be such a fun-loving guy, so at the very last instant I simply leaped right over him, clearing his head by plenty, since I didn’t want any sort of accidental clawing to happen.
Bernie stopped laughing, went still. “Whoa,” he said.
∗ ∗ ∗
Bernie got on the phone.
“Bobby? I’ve got Chet here and—No, no—it’s fine, Oksana’s allergic and—Really? That doesn’t sound like Rick’s kind of thing at all. But I’m calling about the leaping test. How high is that bar?” Bernie listened, reaching for a pencil. His hand froze in midair. “He didn’t jump at all? I don’t under—” He listened some more. “Are you talking about the east fence, with that auto body place on the other side?” More listening. “A cat?” Bernie turned to me, his eyes widening.
A Cat was Involved Page 2
