The Sound and the Furry

by Spencer Quinn

  “Now,” Bernie said.

  Wes hit the throttle, his face green in the light of the console dials.

  Through the small round window I saw the group of lights drawing closer. They began to come together in a shape that reminded me of things Charlie built with his Erector set. This particular thing was a sort of big steel deck perched on beams that rose up out of the sea. There was a whole little camp on the deck with some buildings, a crane, and lots of battered and dirty-looking equipment. The smell of the sea changed a bit, became more oily. Hey! This had to be the oil platform everyone kept talking about! Chet the Jet, in the picture! Bernie made a motion with his hand and Wes throttled back. I sat up.

  The platform, much bigger than I’d thought, loomed high above us. Wes, going real slow now, took us on a long curve out past the platform and then back around and in from the far side, steering between two support beams and cutting the engine when we were right under the high steel deck.

  It was quiet under the platform, just a low machine hum coming from above, plus the sounds of the sea sucking at the support beams, which were actually like huge legs. I had a crazy thought—the sea wants to suck this whole thing down off its metal feet—which I forgot right away, and then Wes was watching Bernie. Bernie pointed his finger at Wes in the signal for go. Wes looked up in the direction we couldn’t see, and called, “All set.”

  A long pause, followed by a voice from above, Cale Rugh’s voice, in fact, which didn’t surprise me at all, now that I was in the picture. “Sending the lift.”

  Wes glanced at Bernie in surprise. Bernie gave him a hard look. “Huh?” Wes called. “Aren’t you coming down with . . . aren’t you coming down?”

  “Need your help up here first.”

  Wes looked at Bernie again. Bernie gave him a nod.

  “I’ll have to tie up,” Wes called up.

  “Then tie up, for Christ sake,” Cale told him. “You’re wasting time.”

  Wes moved to the stern, reached toward the nearest support beam with a boat hook, pulled the boat closer, tied up. Then he let out some line and the boat drifted back to where we’d been. Meanwhile, a creaking machine started up somewhere above, the sound getting louder. A freight elevator came into view. This particular freight elevator didn’t seem to have any walls. Its roof was attached to a thick cable that passed on through and connected with the steel floor. The freight elevator came to a stop right beside the boat and hovered there.

  When humans get close to panic, a wild look appears in their eyes. It was happening to Wes at that moment, but not to Bernie, whose eyes were calm. He made a little motion for Wes to come. Wes left the wheel, made his way under the little cabin roof. Bernie put his hand on Wes’s shoulder, kept it there until the panicky look left Wes’s eyes. Then he cuffed Wes to a handrail—but in the friendliest way, like they were buddies and Bernie was looking out for him—and mouthed something. Wes nodded and called up: “On my way.”

  Bernie and I moved to the front of the cabin, right to the very edge of the part covered by the roof. Bernie put one hand on my collar—which sometimes happened when he thought I might: actually I didn’t know what he thought—and peeked out. So did I. And what we saw was that the roof of the freight elevator blocked any view from above. We slipped over the side of the boat and got on the elevator. A little box with a button on it dangled from the elevator roof. Bernie pressed the button. The elevator jerked and started creaking up. Bernie took the .38 Special out of his waistband. I felt so alive!

  Up and up we went, real slow. We reached the platform and kept going through a hole made to fit the elevator. A man began to take shape from the bottom up. First came his feet in cowboy boots, shiny boots gleaming in the moonlight, then—

  But before any sort of thing could happen, the man bent down, so quick, and there at point blank range was Cale with a gun in his hand. “Love the brainy types,” he said. “They do all your work for you.” Bernie was still raising the .38 Special when Cale pulled the trigger. Crack of the shot, thud of the bullet—oh, no—hitting Bernie in his gun arm just above the elbow, blood seeping out right away, and the .38 Special fell to the floor, bouncing, bouncing, and over the side.

  When things are happening fast in this business, you have to be faster, which turns out to be one of my specialties. I sprang out of the elevator, right at Cale. He swung the gun in my direction. But Cale proved to be one of those many fast dudes who couldn’t ramp it up to my kind of faster. I hit him on the chest and we went down, rolling across the deck, and in midroll I caught a glimpse of another man close by, a roly-poly garlicky-smelling man with his arms tied behind his back and a black bag over his head. Maybe because of that sight, a bit disturbing, I got distracted, because all at once Cale had a tight grip on my collar—he was a real strong guy, no question about that—and was wrenching me around. I didn’t like that, and twisted backward, trying to bring my teeth into play. He wrenched. I twisted. We rolled some more, me on top, Cale on top, and then all at once we rolled right off the platform.

  We fell, a long long fall, Cale still gripping my collar. His eyes were full of scary things, too many to keep track of. All I knew was that I didn’t want to be so close to that kind of scariness. With one final twist I got free enough to sink my teeth into his arm. Cale started to cry out and then we hit the water, the ocean swallowing up his cry, and swallowing us up, too. Down and down we sank, down into darkness, where I didn’t want to be for a single moment on account of Iko, and I bit harder into Cale’s arm, tasting blood and oil. Cale let go. A faint ray of moonlight lit his face, mouth open, silver bubbles bubbling out. I shot up to the surface.

  And there was Bernie, treading water with one arm! He wrapped it around me and hugged me tight. I licked his face. We treaded water together, meaning I sort of herded him back toward the platform. A light shone down from the deck, found us. Then came a WHAP WHAP WHAP and a chopper flew out of the sky and hovered right above. Mr. Patel leaned out and gazed down at us. So much going on! What else? Oh, yeah: Cale Rugh didn’t come up. And one more thing. I forgot to add that I’d held my own with Iko. Sort of.

  Not long after that, we were back on the platform, me and Bernie. And not just me and Bernie, but kind of a crowd, including Mr. Patel, who’d landed in the chopper, and Ralph Boutette, the roly-poly man, the hood now off his head and his arms freed. Bernie was explaining things to Mr. Patel and Mr. Patel was explaining things to Bernie, all way too hard to follow. I stuck close to Ralph, on account of him being our meal ticket, if I understood the case right. And besides, I’d taken a liking to Ralph. His very first question had been about Napoleon.

  “Almost forgot,” Bernie said, turning to Ralph. “Brought you these.” He took Ralph’s glasses from his pocket, kind of awkward with his arm in a sling, and handed them over.

  “Blind without them,” Ralph said, putting them on. Next would come some sort of thanks, right? But no. Ralph marched immediately to the edge of the platform and peered down. “You see!” he said. “You see!”

  We joined him. Ralph pointed down. The rig was all lit up now and the look of the ocean reminded me of the day Bernie decided to save money by taking care of the Porsche’s oil changes by himself.

  “This isn’t just about the fact that their pressure metrics are bound to be screwed,” he said. “Look at that—seabed’s like a sponge cake.” He pointed his fat finger at Mr. Patel. “How can you let them go operational? Answer me that!”

  “We can’t,” said Mr. Patel. He went over to a group of men in hard hats.

  “We didn’t know anything about this,” said the only one wearing a tie.

  “All that’ll get sorted out later,” Mr. Patel said. He took out a sheet of paper and handed it to the tie-wearing guy. “Right now I’m shutting you down.”

  Around that time was when Bernie told Ralph about Mack.

  Ralph went still.

  “Can’t prove this,” Bernie said, “but at first he must have thought the whole shrimp business was j
ust more nonsense between the Boutettes and the Robideaus, with Rugh some sort of hired hand. That changed when I showed him your glasses.” There was a long pause. Then Bernie added, “Which got him killed.”

  “I don’t see it that way,” Ralph said. “And neither should you.” He moved off to a quiet spot by the crane, stood there by himself. I stood by Bernie. He gave me some nice pats, but he was looking kind of pale and I kept a close eye on him. Other than that, my mind was on sponge cake.

  They took the slug out of Bernie at the nice little hospital in St. Roch. After Bernie got bandaged up, Mr. Sim, VP, Consumer Affairs of Green Oil, paid us a visit. He was a distinguished-looking dude with silvery hair, smooth skin, and a nice suit.

  “Can’t thank you enough,” he said.

  “Huh?” said Bernie.

  “Talk about going rogue,” said Mr. Sim. “Enlisting the help of some Central American drug gang—can you imagine? Naturally, Donnegan’s denies all knowledge—as if that’ll stop us from suing the pants off them.”

  “Uh-huh,” said Bernie.

  “But none of that concerns you,” Mr. Sim, reaching into his pocket. “Here, as a token of our appreciation, is a check for fifty thousand dollars.”

  Fifty grand! Had I ever even heard of so much money? I actually didn’t know.

  Bernie shook his head. “No thanks.”

  Mr. Sim rocked back. “I’m sorry?”

  “We’ve already got a client.”

  Mr. Sim tilted his head in a way that actually reminded me of Bernie. “Kind of easy, isn’t it?” he said. “Maybe even lazy, from an intellectual point of view.”

  “What are you referring to?”

  “Hating the oil business.”

  “I don’t hate the oil business,” Bernie said. “I hate what you did to Ralph Boutette.”

  We had a client? That turned out to be the Boutettes, a fact that kept slipping my mind. They threw a big party for us at Rooster Red’s with the whole town coming, the exception being the Robideaus, who had all left suddenly on a long vacation, and Lord Boutette, who turned out to have some outstanding warrants up in the city. Bernie laughed a lot, especially when he realized our three shrimpy grand, all gone, had come from Cale Rugh originally, by way of Mack and then Vannah, or something like that, not so easy to track, and laughed even harder when he learned for sure there’d been more originally, before Vannah did a little skimming. We got to sample Mami’s sweet potato pie, and the Boutettes took up a collection for us. We walked out of there with eight hundred dollars and seventy cents, not too shabby, unless I was missing something. Did I mention Mami’s sweet potato pie?

  On the way home, Bernie finally reached Suzie on the phone.

  “It’s crazy to let silly misunderstandings come between us,” he told her.

  “How about serious misunderstandings?” Suzie said.

  Bernie laughed. “Them, too.”

  Then they were both laughing. What was funny? Don’t ask me. But the sound of Bernie’s laughter couldn’t be beat, and Suzie had made it happen, so therefore . . .

  Almost forgot: Bernie handles the so therefores. I bring other things to the table.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Many thanks to my wife, Diana, and my sons Seth and Ben for first getting me interested in Louisiana. And I’m deeply grateful for Atria’s enthusiastic support of the Chet and Bernie series—special mention to Ariele Fredman.

  SPENCER QUINN is the author of five previous Chet and Bernie mystery novels: Dog on It, Thereby Hangs a Tail, To Fetch a Thief, The Dog Who Knew Too Much, and A Fistful of Collars. He lives on Cape Cod with his dogs Audrey and Pearl. When not keeping them out of mischief, he is hard at work on the next Chet and Bernie mystery. Keep up with him—and with Chet and Bernie—by visiting ChetTheDog.com.

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  Also by Spencer Quinn

  Dog on It

  Thereby Hangs a Tail

  To Fetch a Thief

  The Dog Who Knew Too Much

  A Fistful of Collars

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  This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Spencer Quinn

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address Atria Books Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020.

  First Atria Books hardcover edition September 2013

  Jacket design by Anna Dorfman

  Front cover photograph of Swamp © Ian Shive/Aurora/Getty Images

  Back cover photo © Chad Latta/Flickr/Getty Images

  Author photograph by Randi Baird

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Quinn, Spencer.

  The sound and the furry : a Chet and Bernie mystery / by Spencer Quinn.—1st Atria Books hardcover ed.

  p. cm.

  1. Dogs—Fiction. 2. Private investigators—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3617.U584F57 2012

  813’.6—dc23

  2012005329

  ISBN 978-1-4767-0322-0

  ISBN 978-1-4767-0326-8 (ebook)