The Sound and the Furry

by Spencer Quinn

  Bernie laughed. “Knew you were,” he said, giving me a nice pat. “Gotta hydrate like crazy down here.”

  Not sure what that was about, but doing things like crazy couldn’t be bad. Hydrate, was that it? Something to look forward to!

  Bernie leaned against the car in a real relaxed kind of way. “Suppose,” he said, sucking in more smoke, the cigarette end glowing bright, “things aren’t what they seem and it turns out we’ve got a red herring on our hands.”

  Red herring? That came up in some of our cases, usually the worst. Wasn’t this case going smoothly so far? I didn’t see any problems. And the truth was I had yet to catch sight of a single red herring in my whole career, or even smell one from a distance. I eyed Bernie’s hands, strong hands and beautifully shaped, in case that hasn’t come up already: a cigarette in one, nothing in the other, meaning no red herring on the scene.

  “A goddamn monster of a red herring,” Bernie said.

  Which would be a snap to spot, and can you imagine the smell? So where was it?

  “Maybe we’ve got to go back to square one.”

  That was bad. The last time we’d gone back to square one? The Portapotty case.

  Bernie went over to a trash can and dropped his cigarette butt inside.

  “Let’s roll,” he said.

  We hopped into the car, me actually hopping but Bernie getting in nice and smoothly, the way smoking Bernie did. I sat up straight and tall, on high alert, the only way to go if we were in for a rerun of the Portapotty case. As we drove away, an old man in a torn T-shirt stepped out of the shadows, took Bernie’s cigarette butt out of the trash, and started smoking what was left.

  We walked up to Cleotis’s crib. Was this square one? Bernie knocked on that big and heavy front door. We waited for the little eyeball slot to open up, which it did not. I listened for the sound of anyone moving around inside, heard none. Bernie knocked again, harder. He called through the door.

  “Cleotis, open up.”

  The door remained closed.

  “Got a follow-up question or two, won’t take more than a minute.”

  Silence from inside.

  “Easy questions, Cleotis, and then you can get right back to the grindstone.”

  I knew grindstones—Nixon Panero had one, for example, at his auto body shop—“Stay clear of them sparks,” Nixon said, which I’d already been doing, believe me—but I hadn’t spotted Cleotis’s on our first visit, would be on the lookout this time. I was all set. What was the holdup?

  Bernie has this real quiet voice he sometimes uses for talking to himself. I heard it now. “Maybe they’ve all gone off to yoga class.”

  That hadn’t even crossed my mind! I’d been to yoga once myself, and only very briefly, on an evening when we’d gone to pick up Suzie and her class hadn’t quite finished. Until that moment, yoga had been a complete mystery to me, and then to see that it was all about humans stretching just like me, head way down and butt way up: how exciting was that! A bit too exciting, as it turned out, my memory of the exact endgame kind of fuzzy—although endgames in general are sometimes the most fun of all. But the point was that if yoga was next on our schedule, I was good to go.

  Bernie raised his fist to knock one more time, knock good and hard—I could tell from the way his knuckles went yellowish—when a motorcycle came down the street. We turned to look, saw a huge bike rolling along real slow, the engine going THROB THROB THROB in a way that was low and booming at the same time. The rider glanced our way and pulled over, sticking out his foot to balance the bike. He wore a black helmet with a dark visor that covered his face clear down to his mouth. He jutted his chin in our direction and said something hard to hear, on account of that THROB THROB THROB. We went over to him.

  “What’s up?” Bernie said.

  The biker’s mouth opened. His upfront teeth, the two on top, were gold. You see that from time to time in this business. Once we spent practically a whole afternoon searching for a gold tooth that had fallen in a gutter after a little dustup between Bernie and a gangbanger. The gangbanger had been so grateful after we’d found it, although no handshaking went on what with him being cuffed by that time.

  “Yeah, whassup for sure,” said the biker. “Whassup wit’ you, señor?”

  Bernie gave him a look and so did I. A short but real muscular dude, almost as wide as he was tall: the kind Bernie says is built like a fire hydrant. That saying of his had led to a bit of confusion on my part in the past and right then I told myself I wasn’t going there today even if this was the most fire hydranty dude on earth.

  “You live in the neighborhood?” Bernie said.

  The biker turned his head, maybe glancing around; hard to tell, with that dark visor hiding his eyes. “This shithole?” he said.

  “Not your kind of thing?” Bernie said.

  “No, is not,” the biker said. He flashed that golden smile. “And you? You from the hood?”

  “Not this particular hood,” Bernie said. “Just visiting.”

  “Visiting Cleotis?”

  “You know him?”

  “Sure thing,” said the biker. “How about you?”

  “Wouldn’t be visiting otherwise.”

  “Yeah? You friends?”

  “More like acquaintances.”

  “Acquaintances? I do not know this word.”

  “Conocidos.”

  “Ah, conocidos,” the biker said. “Cleotis had many, many conocidos round here. They gonna miss him.”

  “Why is that?” Bernie said.

  “You are maybe not a close conocido, eh? Cleotis he moved away.”

  “I just saw him this morning.”

  The biker shrugged.

  “Why did he leave?” Bernie said.

  “Business, right? Go where is the business—the American dream, man.”

  “Heard of it,” Bernie said. “Is that what brings you here?”

  The biker laughed. “I am a dreamer, too.”

  “Don’t look like a dreamer,” Bernie said. “But it’s hard to tell with that visor over your face.”

  The laughter stopped.

  “I’m Bernie Little and this is Chet.”

  The visor turned my way. Was there room for me to jam a paw in between it and his face? All of a sudden I wanted to give that a try, bad of me, I know. “Big dog,” the biker said.

  “And friendly with everybody. Just about. What’s your name?”

  “My name?”

  “I just told you ours.”

  The biker was still for a moment. Then he nodded. “Pyro.”

  “Your name is Pyro?”

  “Si.”

  Bernie held out his hand. “Nice meeting you, Pyro.”

  Pyro just sat for a few moments, leaving Bernie’s hand hanging there. Then, real slow, he extended his own hand, wider than Bernie’s but not as long, and also not beautiful like Bernie’s. Pyro had one of the thickest wrists I’d ever seen on a man, although it was mostly hidden under the sleeve of his shirt.

  They gripped each other’s hands. Bernie shot a sharp glance at Pyro’s wrist, but there wasn’t much of it to see. One quick up-and-down pump and then Pyro was all done with the greeting part of our little encounter and tried to withdraw his hand. Bernie didn’t let him.

  “Hey, man, what the hell?” Pyro said, sounding a bit angry. Inside he was real angry: that gives off a smell I don’t miss, but no time to go into it now, because at the same time I was picking up another scent off him, namely the scent of that aftershave that comes in the square green bottle.

  “Just being friendly in the American way,” Bernie said. “What’s your best guess on where Cleotis went to pursue his dream?”

  Pyro’s mouth opened, closed, opened again. “Houston,” he said, his voice quieter than it had been but the anger inside him had flowed into it, if that made any sense, and set it throbbing, kind of like his bike but in a human way. “Everybody goes to Houston.”

  Bernie released his hand. Pyro wiped it on hi
s jeans, then gripped the handlebar.

  “More opportunity in Houston,” Bernie said. “What with the oil business and all.”

  Pyro turned to him, seemed to be giving Bernie a long look from under that visor. Then he hit the throttle and the THROB THROB THROB rose to a roar that shook the air—I felt it—and he zoomed off down the street, the front wheel rising right up over the broken pavement. We watched him go.

  “I had a bike once myself,” Bernie said.

  I was just finding that out now? But what great news! Was there anything to stop us from getting another one? Today?

  “Easy, big guy. Down.”

  “I didn’t handle that very well,” Bernie said as we crossed the bridge over the river. “But how do you get a guy to roll up his sleeve?”

  What was this? The truth was I’d been caught up in watching all that water on the move and hadn’t been paying the closest attention even though I always pay the closest attention to Bernie. How do you get a guy to roll up his sleeve? Was that the question? You could grab the end of the sleeve with your teeth and roll it back for him. Other than that, I had no suggestions. I wondered what guy Bernie might be talking about for a while and then went back to watching the river flow. I could have watched it forever, but my eyelids got heavy. That had happened to me many times although never quite like this. I felt like I was flowing along with the mighty Mississip, even part of it. Made no sense, I know.

  It was dark by the time we got to the rutted road that led to the dock where Little Jazz was tied up. The Porsche’s headlights were like drills drilling light into the darkness, something Bernie had said late one night out in the desert and which I’d never forgotten even though I didn’t understand it the least little bit. Not that I didn’t know what a drill was—we had one in the tool box back home; the last time it had come out the shock from Bernie drilling into some wire or other had knocked him flat, but he’d been up in no time with hardly any help from me and our power returned the very next day.

  Back to our headlights drilling into the darkness, trees and bushes lighting up and then vanishing, some of them trailing those mossy fringes. We came around the last turn and the dock appeared, with the houseboat next to it, and the bayou beyond. A cloud drifted across the sky, uncovering the moon, and suddenly there were tiny moons rippling all over the water. I was just starting to enjoy the sight when I felt Bernie tense up beside me. He stopped the car real quick, cut the lights, and leaned forward, peering at the houseboat. I did the same.

  Little Jazz looked like a piece of squarish darkness cut out of the rest of the night. Everything was still, except for all those rippling moons. Then a faint yellow glow flashed for a moment through one of little round windows at the front of the cabin. I thought: .38 Special.

  Bernie took the .38 Special out of the glove box and stuck it in his belt, and also the flashlight, which hadn’t occurred to me, not needing it personally. He put his finger across his lips, our signal for not making a sound. We got out of the car and moved silently toward the dock, me completely silent and Bernie just about.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The light reappeared in the little round window in the front—bow! I remembered!—of Little Jazz, a wavering sort of glow, like someone was moving around inside. We stepped onto the dock. It made a little creaking noise under Bernie’s foot, that actually didn’t sound that little to me, but there was no reaction on his face, so not a problem. And we had the .38—fact one as Bernie liked to say and I liked to hear. It was in his hand now, always nice to see, so much better than in the belt.

  Side by side, we walked onto the deck of the boat about halfway between the bow and whatever the back was called; it would come to me. The moonlight made seeing pretty easy, at least for me, but I was more concerned with smells at that moment, of which there were lots, of course, but two caught my attention right away. One—the strange toady, snaky, even lizardy smell, but with that odd poopy peppery add-on—seemed to be coming up from under the boat, kind of weird. The other was the smell of a man, a man I was pretty sure I’d smelled before. The door leading to the house part of the boat—living room, kitchen, bedroom, lined up like shotgun cribs I’d been in—hung open. Being first through doorways is one of my little things, but Bernie was right behind me.

  We could see right through the living room and into the kitchen where a man in a sleeveless T-shirt was kneeling with his back to us by the cabinet under the sink. He seemed to be rooting around in there with one hand, his other holding a flashlight. All I could really see of him was his butt and his heavy round upper arms. No biggie. I already knew who he was: Wes Derrick, the environmental guy with the soft voice and the soft brown gaze.

  Bernie raised the .38 Special. “Freeze,” he said, not loudly, just real clear. The fur on the back of my neck stood straight up, and I almost missed something, maybe something I should have been on to already, namely the smell of a second man, also known to me, but no time for that now, because he was close behind us—oh, no! not the old hiding-in-the-shadow-of-an-open-door trick!—which wasn’t good at all and—

  Cale Rugh burst out of the shadows and whacked Bernie across the back of his head. Bernie slumped to the floor like he’d fallen asleep all of a sudden. The next instant I was in midair, hitting Cale throat high—but no! Somehow he’d stepped aside—a real quick fighter unlike most humans except for Bernie and a few others I’d come across—his arm whipping through a beam of moonlight, a long-barreled gun in his hand. He hit me with it, not quite as square as he wanted: I was on the move, too, amigo. Just as I rounded on him, the flashlight beam swung over and lit his face, all twisted up.

  He shielded his eyes. “Get that goddamn light off me for—”

  Too late for you, buddy boy. I leaped again and this time I got him good, leading with my teeth and finding his gun arm. Cale went down under me, the gun clattering across the floor and him screaming, “Wes! Wes! He’s gonna kill me.”

  Which hadn’t been my intention—messing him up for what he’d done to Bernie was all I’d had in mind—but killing him sounded like an even better id—No. No it did not. I was mad, yes, but I didn’t want to do that. Instead, I got my paws on his chest, lowered my face to his, just to show him who was who. Then he’d surrender, we’d cuff him, and—

  “Wes! The gun! Shoot him!”

  I heard Wes scrambling around behind us.

  “Don’t like to shoot a dog,” Wes said.

  “KILL HIM!”

  Wes grunted like maybe he was . . . picking something up. I started to twist around in his direction. He had the gun all right, but by the barrel, not the grip, meaning he wasn’t going to shoot, although he might have been planning to use it as a—

  The moonlight found his soft brown eyes. He brought the gun butt down on my head.

  I fell into a strange dreamy state where I wasn’t quite asleep and could hear pretty well although I couldn’t move, or maybe just didn’t feel like it. The most important thing I heard was Bernie breathing, nice and regular, not far from where I lay. Cale and Wes were close by, too. Soon we’d be jumping up and doing what had to be done, me and Bernie.

  “What now?” Wes was saying.

  “I should put a bullet in Little’s head,” said Cale. “Deserves it—he brought this all on himself.”

  “Not sure I’m getting that.”

  “By turning down big bucks when he didn’t even have a clue there was anything ulterior going down. Makes him one of those holier-than-thous. They’re the ones that cause all the collateral damage—Mack being a case in point.”

  “Mack the shrimp dealer?” Wes said. “Did something happen to him?”

  There was a pause. “Not that I know of.”

  And a longer pause. “Are you hiding things from me?”

  “Grow up, Wes.”

  Then came a long silence. My head started to throb a bit. I thought about getting up, maybe in a while.

  “What are we going to do?” Wes said.

  “That’s better
,” said Cale. “No I in team. Now’s when your boating expertise comes in.”

  “Wouldn’t call myself an expert.”

  “Know enough to cause an unfortunate fuel line accident?”

  “I guess so, but why?” Wes said. “No way he could ID us from what went on here. Why don’t we just tie him up or something?”

  “Or we could make him sit in the corner,” Cale said. “Christ almighty. You think we can let him keep roaming around?”

  “Guess not.”

  “Then we’re on the same page,” Cale said. “But it has to look like an accident, no matter how half-assed. Bernie here’s connected.”

  “To the mob?”

  Cale laughed, a squeaky sound like something was rusty inside. “To some people we wouldn’t want showing up—military guys, a DA or two, some cops.”

  “The Robideaus?”

  “Hell no. The Robideaus are who we’re counting on to do the half-assed investigation of the half-assed accident you’re going to get cracking on.”

  “What about searching the place?” Wes said. “The whole point of the exercise.”

  “Just do your job and no one’ll ever find it,” said Cale. “Even if the goddamn thing is here, which I’m not so sure about.”

  “You’re telling me that now?”

  “I’m starting to have doubts about you, Wes.”

  Wes moved away. Then came a quiet time where I might have actually fallen asleep. Anyway: a blank. A smell brought me back to life, specifically the smell of gasoline, real sharp in the nose, almost stinging.

  I opened my eyes, saw Bernie lying beside me, chest rising and falling in an easy rhythm. I could feel my own chest doing the same; we’re a lot alike, me and Bernie. A happy thought, and I lost myself in it until the gasoline smell brought me out of it. Shifting my head a bit, I looked back through the kitchen and living room parts of Little Jazz to the stern—stern! It came to me!

  Wes and Cale stood there in the light of the moon, Wes holding one end of a long tube that ran down through a hatch in the floorboards, and Cale reaching into his pocket. He took out a lighter. They were up to no good, what kind of no good I didn’t know and it really didn’t matter, what with me hating them so much, especially Cale.