∗ ∗ ∗
“Ever ridden in a Porsche?” Bernie said.
Porsche? The name was new to me. I’d have to keep it in mind. Also new was riding up front, something I’d been hankering to do my whole life. Now here I was, sitting tall in the shotgun seat, a dream come true. Bernie backed out of the driveway and turned onto the street. The sky was all fiery, the way it gets just after the sun goes down, and everything around—this street, the houses on it, Bernie’s face—was all fiery, too, and beautiful. I felt tip-top.
“Needs work,” Bernie said. “Been saving up for a paint job—I was thinking purple.”
Purple? Was that the color of wine? It sounded perfect.
“Truth is,” Bernie went on, “I’ve been saving for a year and I’ve got less than when I started, meaning negative numbers. What does that tell you?”
It told me nothing. Numbers aren’t my best thing. Two is my limit, but it’s a good number—the best, in my opinion.
We got on a freeway ramp, swung up on the freeway: hardly any traffic at all, unusual in the Valley. Bernie hit the pedal, and I forgot all about numbers and paint jobs and everything else. What was with the sound of this engine? A gorgeous howl rose all around us, sending thrills up and down me, tail to nose and back again. We shot forward, my ears whipping straight back in the wind, a feast of smells streaming by—grease, oil, sweat from all sorts of creatures, sewer stuff, tar, smoke, rot. This was living life to the max. I tilted my face up to the sky—turning a pinkish black now, which is what happens to the Valley sky at night—and surprised myself with a sort of woo-woo kind of bark I’d never done before. Bernie laughed and zipped past an eighteen-wheeler so fast it looked like it was going backward.
He glanced my way. “Hungry? When was the last time you ate?”
Good question. Way too long ago, that was the answer.
Bernie fished around under his seat. “Like Slim Jims, by any chance?”
Slim Jims: I’d never heard of them.
“Ah, here we go.” Bernie held a cylinder-shaped thing out to me. Just from the smell, I knew I’d hit the jackpot.
∗ ∗ ∗
We slowed down, left the freeway, drove past a bunch of strip malls that looked familiar. Hey! We were out near the range.
“Here’s the thing about police work, Chet,” Bernie said. “Mostly it’s just getting to the point where you can put two and two together.”
No problem so far: Two was my number.
“The weird thing is that even when you’re at that point, nothing left but the simple addition, some guys still can’t do it. Bobby, for example. Although Rick can, and since they’re brothers I wonder if that rules out a genetic . . .” His voice trailed off but I could almost hear it continuing inside him. That felt rather pleasant for some reason, but I made no attempt to find out what the reason was.
We drove past the range and turned down an unlit, unpaved lane I’d never noticed before. At the end of the lane stood a tall chain-link gate. Bernie switched off the headlights and pulled over to the side of the lane. He put his finger across his lips.
“Quiet as a mouse,” he said.
We got out of the car and approached the gate. Mice were quiet, in his opinion? What a notion! Still, there’d been that Slim Jim. Nobody was perfect.
A big metal lock hung on the gate, glinting pinkish in the night. Bernie took out an enormous key ring, squinted at the keys—humans don’t see well at night, don’t hear or smell well ever; you have to feel a bit sorry for them—tried one, then another. The one after that did the job. Bernie opened the gate just enough for us to slip through and closed it silently behind us.
We moved forward, side by side. Some humans walk in a way that makes the side-by-side formation a bit awkward, no offense. But not Bernie. We had a nice easy rhythm, me and Bernie.
We have lots of car junkyards in the Valley, and this was one of them. On one side was a sort of garage—dark now, but through the windows I could see shadowy lifts and equipment inside. On the other side were rows of cars, cars missing pieces, or just pieces. The whole yard was fenced in with chain-link except for the fence behind the last row of cars. That fence was made of sturdy wooden planks nailed close together so there was no seeing through, just like . . . I came very close to making—what would you call it? A connection?
The whole yard was dark except for at the very end, where a light was shining. We headed for that light, stepping around an oily pool and moving past a few toolsheds. Beyond the last toolshed, lit by a single naked bulb that hung on the wooden fence, a doorless car was up on blocks. A man in jeans and work boots, his back to us, was leaning in and struggling with the seat, maybe trying to pull it out. What else? The car was yellow; the seat was pink. Bernie walked right up and kicked the heel of one of those work boots, not hard.
The man whipped around, banged his head on the roof, and staggered out. I’d seen him before: the smaller—but still way bigger than Bernie—of the two thicknecked, longhaired dudes from the Donut Heaven parking lot. Now he had shock and fear in his eyes, meaning we were up and he was down, always the best setup.
“We,” said Bernie, “meaning you, have a little problem here. This particular Audi—yellow with pink interior, the only one in the Valley—happens to belong to a friend. So if you’ll just get it all nicely reassembled we’ll be taking it off your hands.”
The longhaired dude’s mouth opened and closed and opened again. That was a sign of human confusion, something I enjoy seeing from time to time, maybe bad of me. And for sure bad this time, because I was so caught up in my enjoyment that I almost didn’t hear a quiet little sound from behind, the sound an opening toolshed door might make.
I wheeled around real quick and saw the other thicknecked, longhaired dude, the gigantic one, charging toward us, a big steel wrench raised high. Bernie started to turn, but too late. The massive dude swung the wrench down, right on the back of Bernie’s—
But not quite. Somehow, without the slightest thought, I was already in the air. I hit the massive dude square on his beefy arm, spinning him around. He lost his grip on the wrench, which zinged past Bernie’s ear and smacked down on the ground.
I smacked down on the ground myself and before I could get up, the massive dude was standing over me. He kicked me in the side real hard. Bernie didn’t like that. I could tell from his roar—so powerful it seemed to shake the air—and I’m not too clear on the details after that. For one thing, I was seeing red—the whole world, red, red, red. Did I wrestle around with the massive dude? Yes, but not for long. Did I grab him by the throat? No doubt about that. Did I taste human blood? Can’t deny it.
And meanwhile, up above me, the other dude was circling around Bernie real quick and crablike, throwing punches and landing every one—pop pop pop. Oh, no. Bernie wasn’t a fighter? What a disappointment! The dude must have realized that. He smiled—what nice teeth he had, big for a human—wound up and swung a from-the-heels roundhouse directly at Bernie’s head. That was when Bernie moved, so fast and smooth it was hard to see as he ducked under the dude’s fist, stepped in, and belted him bang on the point of his chin. There was a bonecracking thud and the dude’s eyes rolled right up. He keeled over and lay still. Some of those big beautiful teeth fluttered out.
At the same time, my guy was making whimpering noises I didn’t like. I shook my head a bit, sinking my teeth in deeper. Bernie knelt beside me. “Chet? That should do it.”
Or something of the sort. I was busy seeing red and tasting it, too.
“Chet? Big guy? Capital punishment’s a controversy in this state. I’d hate like hell for us to get dragged into it.” Which I heard clearly but didn’t get. Bernie reached over and patted my head. “Come on, Chet. We’re done here.” I went still. That pat: absolutely the best. Bernie was a great patter? He could also deck bad guys with one punch? We were cooking.
I let go of the huge dude. He felt his neck. “I’m bleeding, I’m bleeding.”
“Not fatally,
” Bernie said. “Get that car put back together. Your buddy’ll help when he’s had his rest.”
Bernie took out his phone and called in the PD. He was just finishing when Beauty came gliding in from the shadows in that irritating cattish way.
“Hey,” Bernie said. “Our brave little friend.” He bent down to pick her up. She hissed and scratched him right across the forearm. “Ow,” said Bernie, stepping back. I can’t say I was glad about the scratch, but at least there’d be no more silly ideas of getting all pally with Beauty.
∗ ∗ ∗
We met Rick at Donut Heaven early the next morning, parking cop-style, only now I wasn’t in the back of some cruiser but riding shotgun in the Porsche.
“Nice job last night,” Rick said, handing Bernie coffee and a cruller. “There were forty-two stolen cars on that lot and ATS will find lots more once they start digging through the records.”
“It was pretty much Chet,” Bernie said.
“Yeah?” Rick said. “Oh—and here’s this.”
“What is it?”
“A check from Cherry Monroe.”
“She didn’t hire me.”
“Nevertheless.”
Bernie examined the check. “It’s too much.”
Too much? What kind of business were we running?
“Don’t worry,” Rick said. “Her boyfriend’s rich.”
“What does he do?”
“Owns a company that manufactures Hawaiian shirts.”
“Yeah?” Bernie said. He got a strange look in his eye, hard to describe but maybe a little too bright.
“So,” Rick said. “Just about set?”
“For what?”
“The exchange.”
“Not following you, Rick.”
“The deal was you were taking him just for the night.”
For a moment I wondered who they were talking about, but the cruller smell made it impossible to concentrate.
“I don’t remember anything in writing,” Bernie said.
Rick laughed and drove away. What that was all about I leave to you.
Bernie turned to me. “Like crullers?” he said.
I did, very, very much. Bernie tore the cruller in two pieces, exactly the same size.
A Fistful of Collars
Everyone’s favorite detective team returns in a new adventure as canine narrator Chet and his human partner, P.I. Bernie Little, find that Hollywood has gone to the dogs.
Hoping to bring some Tinseltown money to the Valley, the mayor lures a movie studio to town to shoot its next production, a big-budget western in the classic tradition. The star is none other than ruggedly handsome—and notoriously badly behaved—Thad Perry. When the mayor decides that someone needs to keep an eye on Thad, Bernie and Chet are handpicked for the job. The money is good but something smells fishy, and what should have been a simple matter of babysitting soon gets more complicated—especially when they discover that Thad has a mysterious connection to the Valley that nobody wants to talk about. And the only people who might know what it is have a bad habit of turning up dead before they can talk.
Like the winning books before it, this fifth book in the series combines a top-notch mystery with genuine humor and a perceptive take on the relationship between human and dog that will stay with you long after the case is solved.
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Spencer Quinn
A Fistful of Collars
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About the Author
SPENCER QUINN lives on Cape Cod with his dog Audrey and a new puppy, Pearl. When not keeping them out of mischief, he is working on the next Chet and Bernie mystery novel. Keep up with him—and with Chet and Bernie—by visiting ChetTheDog.com.
Also by Spencer Quinn
The Dog Who Knew Too Much
To Fetch a Thief
Thereby Hangs a Tail
Dog on It
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Copyright © 2012 by Spencer Quinn
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First Atria Books/Atria Unbound ebook edition August 2012
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A Cat was Involved Page 3
