The Sound and the Furry (16 page)

“How about I buy you a drink?” Bernie said.

“I could use one.”

I’ve been in a lot of bars, comes with the territory, and seen bar-type things happen
you wouldn’t believe so I won’t bother running through them. Rooster Red’s in St.
Roch wasn’t the best or the worst. Hey! It wasn’t even the first Rooster Red’s I’d
been in! That was in Dry Wells, a desert town about a day’s ride from the Valley,
just the one visit and it had ended with—but I wasn’t going to mention things that
you wouldn’t believe, so forget it. I learned it’s not so easy to get a toilet seat
off from around the neck of one of those real-thick-necked bikers: let’s leave it
at that.

“What I actually wanted to talk to you about,” Bernie said, “was Napoleon.”

“Ralph’s dog?” said Dr. Ory, putting down her beer. Bernie was drinking beer, too.
Water for me, of course. We had a nice corner table in the back of the room, with
a fan blowing in our
faces and a view through a big window of rusted-out cars and a pile of old bricks.
There’s all kinds of beauty in life.

“I assumed you’d be his vet,” Bernie said.

“That’s right.”

“Tell me about him.”

Dr. Ory blinked. “Tell you about Napoleon?”

“Yeah.”

She shrugged. “He’s a typical four-year-old pug in good health except for some early-stage
arthritis in his right hip.”

“What’s he like?”

“You’re asking me about Napoleon’s . . . personality?”

“Yeah.”

She gave Bernie a look. “You’re an unusual sort of detective.”

“Do you know many?” Bernie said.

“Actually you’re the first.”

“We’re all like this.”

Dr. Ory laughed, then took a sip of beer. It left her with a beery mustache she didn’t
seem to notice. “The fact is, Napoleon’s very well named. He’s dictatorial, crabby,
likes everything just so. Ralph feeds him on ground filet mignon and nothing but.”

Ground filet mignon? At that moment I understood the case through and through. We
had to find Ralph and find him fast.

“I’m guessing they have a close relationship,” Bernie said.

Dr. Ory nodded. “Ralph’s one of those men who’s awkward around people, but animals
are a different story.” She paused. “Do you know the type?”

“Negative,” Bernie said. He drained his glass and raised it high for the waitress
to see. Sometimes Bernie gets thirsty in a real big hurry. I’m the same way.

Throat clearing is an interesting thing. In humans it means they’re about to start
something over; for us in the nation within
it means we’ve got something caught in there. Dr. Ory cleared her throat now and said,
“What do you think’s happened to Ralph?”

“Two narratives at the moment,” Bernie said. “Narrative one is all about his eccentricity—loner
off by himself, all that. Narrative two is—”

The waitress came with a fresh beer for Bernie. She had a long ponytail, not as long
as tails I’d seen on some actual ponies, but I always liked seeing any kind of tail
on a human. “Just letting you know we’ve got an all-you-can-eat fried shrimp special,
ten ninety-five including sides,” she said.

“Not for me,” Dr. Ory said.

“We’re not eating,” Bernie said, then checked the waitress’s nametag and added, “uh,
thanks, Fleurette.”

That was Bernie: so polite. Maybe there were some dudes around who weren’t comfortable
with other people, but no way was he one of them.

“Narrative two,” he went on when Fleurette went away, “is more complicated, involving
a shrimp heist and the Boutette-Robideau rivalry.”

“Shrimp heist?”

“You didn’t hear about it?”

“I’ve learned to tune out anything to do with their stupid feud.”

Bernie nodded like that made sense. “A ton of shrimp was allegedly stolen from Grannie
Robideau by Lord Boutette, who’s since been arrested for the crime. The Robideaus
think Ralph was involved and he’s on the run.”

“What a crazy story.”

“You don’t buy it?”

“Not saying that,” said Dr. Ory. “Anywhere else, involving any other participants,
I wouldn’t believe it for a second.”

“But?”

Dr. Ory sighed. “But here, with them, anything’s possible. Who ended up with the shrimp?”

“Good question,” Bernie said.

Or something like that, but I got distracted by a side door opening and the deputy
sheriff, Scooter Robideau, stepping inside. He looked our way and stepped right back
out.

“Chet!” Bernie said. “What’s all that noise about?”

Dr. Ory laughed. “He smells grub,” she said, just as the kitchen door swung open and
Fleurette came out with a huge tray of fried shrimp.

But that wasn’t it at all! Until it was. That shrimp smelled too good to resist, at
least to me. And then to Bernie and Dr. Ory as well! They changed their minds about
the shrimp! Chet the Jet catches a break!

W
e bought a nice big supply of chow and put it away in
Little Jazz
’s galley, which turned out to be the kitchen—Bernie doing most of the putting away
and me helping as best I could—and then sat on the deck and watched the sun go down.

“If we light this little coil,” he said, “the mosquitoes won’t bother us.”

He lit the little coil. The mosquitoes stopped bothering me even though they were
still bothering me. Meanwhile, the sun disappeared, and the tops of the trees went
black at the same time the sky behind them was on fire, and so was the bayou all around
us. After a while, the sky blackened and blurred in with the trees, the water holding
on to the daytime a little longer. Then all we had for light was the orange glow of
the coil. I watched mosquitoes dive down onto it and vanish with a sizzle.

“Maybe you’re wondering why I didn’t show Ralph’s glasses to the sheriff,” Bernie
said.

Me? No. And even with him now bringing it up, I still didn’t feel like wondering about
it. Was that bad of me? The truth was, I felt like listening to those mosquitoes sizzle
away, a brand-new
kind of fun for me, and brand-new kinds of fun were the best, although the old familiar
kinds of fun were pretty good, too. Even just as good, so forget all this.

“Comes from being outsiders here,” Bernie said. “Can we trust the sheriff? Even a
little? And the Boutettes—haven’t they got a right to know about the glasses? But
do we let down our hair for them? En masse or just one? And if just one, which? Mami?
Duke? Lord? We’re in a madhouse.”

Uh-oh. That didn’t sound good. Weren’t we on a houseboat? I felt it rise and fall
very slightly, creaking in a very pleasant way against the dock. And what was this
about our hair? I’d been shaved once, something about the heat. Never again, Boutettes
or no Boutettes.

All of a sudden, my eyelids got heavy. I started to have a thought about madhouses
and houseboats maybe being the same thing.

“But here’s a starting point,” Bernie said first thing the next morning, a cup of
coffee in his hand, steam rising into the still air. “I didn’t show Ralph’s glasses
to the sheriff or to the Boutettes, but I did show them to Mack. Does that mean that
deep down in my unconscious mind he’s the one I actually trust?”

Bernie’s unconscious mind? That was new. And it had a deep down part, meaning we were
probably dealing with something pretty big. So where was he keeping it?

“What are you sniffing at, big guy? I need a shower?” And then Bernie did something
amazing: he raised his arms, one after the other, and sniffed his pits! That Bernie!

“I don’t smell anything,” he said.

Of course not, but at least he’d tried. You had to love Bernie.

“How about we get started,” Bernie said, “and grab something to eat along the way?”

After that, there was a bit of commotion, and then Bernie
said, “Okay, okay.” He poured kibble in my bowl, had himself a nice muffin, and hardly
a moment or two later we were on the move in the pirogue, Bernie driving, me standing
tall in the bow, no time lost. Breakfast is the most important meal of the day: you
hear humans say that all the time.

Back in the boat and slicing through the water, waves starting right up out of nothing
on both sides of the bow. What a sight! What a feeling! I forgot my problems pretty
quick, not hard since I had none at the moment. Hey! Were we making those waves ourselves?
I wondered about that all the way to the fork in the bayou. We went the same way as
before and were soon on the lake. Bernie slowed down as we came to Isle des Deux Amis
and steered us completely around it.

We gazed at the island. A big black bird on a branch of the tallest tree gazed back
at us.

“Know what we’d do if we were playing by the book, big guy?” he said. Shoot the black
bird right out of the tree? That was my only idea. “Let the sheriff in on Ralph’s
glasses and get him out here with a work crew and a backhoe.”

Bernie powered down to nothing and we came to a stop, rocking gently in the water.
His eyes got a distant look. He rubbed his chin, something that hardly ever happened
with Bernie. It meant he was doing his hardest thinking. I could feel it, as though
he was trying to lift a huge weight, like that time at the gym when he’d bet a couple
of muscleheads that—but let’s not go there.

“At least I’ve come up with a solid reason for not playing this one by the book,”
he said after a while. He gave me a smile. “It’s on account of you, Chet.”

On account of me? What had I done? That little fuss about breakfast? All at once,
I felt a bit pukey. My tail got ready to sag, not possible since I was sitting on
it, although it tried anyway.

“Remember when we searched the place?” he said, gesturing at Isle des Deux Amis. “You’d
have found a body if there was one. So that’s that.” He hit the throttle and we took
off across the lake. I stood up, giving my tail a chance to raise itself high, which
it did at once. We were a team, me and Bernie, had dug up a body or two in our career,
me doing most of the actual digging. Not to take anything away from Bernie when it
comes to digging—he’s not at all bad for a human. But can humans get their legs involved
in digging the way we do in the nation within? You know the answer. Not the point.
The point is, I know what I’m doing in the sniffing-out-bodies department, one of
my best things. Once I even smelled one in a freezer. Was the perp surprised or what?

“Have to do better than that,” Bernie had told him after he’d checked the freezer.

“But when will I get the chance?” the perp had said as Bernie snapped the cuffs on
him. “I’m a cinch to get life without parole.”

That had made Bernie laugh. “See, Chet,” he’d said, “there’s some good in everybody.”
Which I’d already known, but it was nice to hear.

“Meaning you’ll let me go?” the perp had asked.

Making Bernie laugh even harder. The fun we had in this business! A bright yellow
butterfly fluttered by the pirogue. I snapped at it for absolutely no reason, snapped
and missed, which was always the way with butterflies.

And very soon after that, we were tying up at Mack’s dock, Bernie tying the actual
knot, but I’d jumped onto the dock with the free end of the rope in my mouth, just
trying to help.

“Good boy—you remembered.”

Remembered what? My mind was blank on that one. We walked around the deck, checked
things out.

“Pickup’s not around,” Bernie said. “Meaning he’s probably not here.” Bernie took
out his credit card. “Just as well.” He moved
toward the glass slider at the back of Mack’s house. Bernie was real good at slipping
locks with that credit card, but for some reason the sight of the card brought to
mind that horrible night when the maître d’ at the Ritz had cut our credit card in
half, not because we were breaking into rooms—no way, not that night—but because he
said it was no good. No good—that maître d’ had never even seen us before, didn’t
have a clue as to how nifty Bernie was with that card. And after that how come Bernie
hadn’t popped him in the mouth? It’s always fun to see dudes with a combover get popped
in the mouth, on account of how what they’ve got left for hair goes flying straight
up and just like that they’re bald. Our night at the Ritz was a complete mystery to
me.