The Sound and the Furry (18 page)

“Do you think they’re together somewhere?” Vannah said.

Bernie didn’t answer right away. His thoughts, whatever they were, got darker. “It’s
one possibility,” he said, “especially if the Robideaus are right about Ralph.”

“I’m not following you,” Vannah said, which made two of us.

“They think he was in on the shrimp heist.”

“How stupid are they?”

“Why is that stupid?”

Vannah just shook her head.

“If you know what happened to the shrimp, Vannah, now’s the time to tell me.”

“Lord hijacked them, period.”

“Maybe,” Bernie said. “Where are they now?”

“The shrimp?”

“Yeah. What happened to them?”

Vannah raised her hands, palms up. She had nicely shaped hands, not big, but they
looked strong and soft at the same time, in fact reminded me of the hands of  Tulip
and Autumn from Livia Moon’s. I made up my mind about Vannah on the spot: she was
a keeper. Too bad about her wrist, but it really was just a scrape: there was hardly
any blood at all, except for a tiny pool on the floor. I licked it up and that was
that.

“Should we try to trace them?” she said.

“The shrimp?” Bernie said. “That would have been my next move.”

“But?”

“Ever heard of the Quieros?”

“Is that the taco joint?”

Bernie smiled at her, a very nice smile that reminded me of some of the smiles he
sent Suzie’s way. I missed her.

“What’s funny?” Vannah said.

“Nothing,” said Bernie. He took the strange pipelike thing out from under his belt
and showed it to her.

“What’s that?” she said.

“I was hoping you’d tell me.”

“Some kind of plumbing?”

“Could be.”

“What’s it got to do with anything?”

“Probably nothing.” Bernie tucked it back in his belt. Then he rubbed his hands together.
I loved when he did that: it meant we were gearing up. “All I need from you now is
the name of Mack’s drug contact.”

“You don’t want to get involved with those people,” Vannah said.

“I’m actually in the mood for it.”

Her eyebrows—like a lot of women, Vannah didn’t have much going on when it came to
eyebrows, certainly nothing to match Bernie’s, so lovely and thick, with a language
all their own—rose. “You’re a doper?”

“Lose the
R
,” Bernie said.

For some reason, Vannah thought that was pretty funny.

We rode up to the city, Bernie at the wheel and me in the shotgun seat, Vannah staying
behind in case Mack returned, or maybe for some reason having to do with the fried
chicken. I hadn’t been clear on that, but Bernie and I had both had some and she hadn’t,
so I couldn’t really blame her.

We took the bridge high over the river. “Mighty Mississip, big guy,” said Bernie,
and if he was talking about the river he was right about the mightiness, like an enormous
living thing on the move, actually kind of snakelike, a thought I’d tried not to have,
but there it was again. But a few moments later, my mind forgot whatever had disturbed
it, and was now nice and clear. Way to go, big guy! Chet the Jet!

We got off at a ramp and not long after that entered a crummy neighborhood. I knew
crummy neighborhoods from back in the Valley, and this one was as crummy as the crummiest.
That didn’t mean the people in them were crummy—we had some good buddies in Vista
City, for example, like Ronny and Vonny Von Runge, great old-timey musicians who sometimes
let Bernie sit in on ukulele, and probably would again, as soon as they got out of
Central State Correctional, their plan to dress up as toll takers on the new turnpike
we have in the Valley and get rich in a day having fallen apart for some reason I
couldn’t remember.

We drove down a rutted street lined with boarded-up houses and came to one that wasn’t.
Bernie pulled over, checked a scrap of paper Vannah had given him, then took the .38
Special out of the glove box and stuck it in his pocket. I loved the .38 Special,
hadn’t seen it in way too long. And Bernie was a crack shot, could hit spinning dimes
right out of the air. Maybe that would be happening real soon.

“All set?”

What a question! Bernie caught up to me at the front door, a very big and solid-looking
door for such a small boxy house.

“Nice and easy, big guy,” Bernie said. I sat beside him, which was what nice and easy
meant. He knocked on the door.

A little eyeball slot in the door opened right away and a dark
eyeball looked out. A deep, raspy voice came through a speaker. “Don’t know you.”

“Bernie Little,” Bernie said. “And this is Chet. We’re friends of Mack Larouche, down
in St. Roch.”

“Still don’t know you.”

“We can get past that just by you opening the door,” Bernie said.

“Tryna be funny?”

“We’re just trying to see Cleotis. Anything beyond that’s gravy.”

Gravy was a possibility? I smelled none but inched closer to the door anyway, something
I can do in a sitting position, no problem.

“Cleotis don’t talk to nobody he don’t know.”

“We have a mutual friend.”

“You said that already. And you look like a cop.”

“I’m not a cop.”

“You look like a cop.”

“How about I flash my non-cop badge?”

“Huh?”

Then another voice came through the speaker, but from farther away. “Let him in.”

Big heavy bolts got slid aside, one, two, more. The door swung open. A real big guy
stood before us, a sawed-off shotgun in one hand, pointed at the floor. He gave us
an unfriendly look, at the same time speaking over his shoulder.

“He’s got this real big mother of a dog.”

“So?” The second voice again, coming from through the partly open kitchen door at
the back. “Do your goddamn job. Pat him down.”

“Chet won’t like that,” Bernie called toward the kitchen.
Wouldn’t like what, exactly? I was still back at the mother thing, my mind refusing
to get around it. “And I’m not armed,” Bernie added.

“Pat him the fuck down.”

“You heard the man,” said the big guy. “Get over by the wall.”

“It’s really not nece—” Bernie began, but then the big guy planted his big free hand
in the middle of the Bernie’s chest and shoved him against the wall, so hard Bernie’s
feet left the floor. Bernie hated that kind of thing. It brought out a side of him
I hardly ever saw, but I saw it now, saw it in the way he bounced off the wall, spun
around, and chopped the big guy in the throat with the side of his hand, saw it in
his wild eyes.

The big guy went down fast, clutching his neck, doing some moaning and writhing, and
also sort of looking surprised, way too late. Bernie swept up the sawed-off, pointed
it at the kitchen door. A dude in a bandanna charged through it, drawing a gun from
his belt.

“Drop it,” Bernie said.

The dude wasn’t nearly as big as the other guy, had a face that reminded me of Prof
at Valley College back home, our go-to buddy when it comes to tracking money that
perps don’t want tracked. Prof was a smart man and had smart eyes. This dude was sort
of like that, but younger, thinner, and maybe a little darker. He dropped the gun.

“Cleotis?” Bernie said.

The dude nodded.

Bernie lowered the shotgun. His eyes went back to normal. “What’s with you drug dealers?”
he said. “Why does there always have to be this drama?”

“We’re all prisoners of one culture or another,” Cleotis said.

I
stood right beside the big dude, still lying on the floor, although he’d amped down
the noise a bit. Actually, it was more like I was standing over him instead of beside,
specifically at the head end.

“Sweet Jesus,” he said, “goddamn animal’s gonna bite my face off.”

Or something like that. The big dude wasn’t so easy to understand now, his voice having
come all over raspy.

“His name is Chet,” Bernie said. “Not goddamn animal.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?” the big dude said.

“So an apology would be nice,” Bernie said.

“You want him to apologize to the dog?” said Cleotis.

“A general apology will do.”

“Will it make him stop with the goddamn snarling?”

“Give it a try.”

Someone was snarling? News to me, but now that the idea was out there, I thought I
did detect a little snarling, perhaps from some distance away.

“Herman?” Cleotis said.

“Yeah?” said the raspy dude.

“What’s the holdup? Apologize.”

“Fuckin’ hell. I’m sorry as shit.”

“Apology accepted,” Bernie said.

“Didn’t stop the snarling,” Cleotis said.

Cleotis was right about that. I could hear it now for sure, loud and clear.

“Ch—et?” Bernie said, in this special way he has of saying my name.

The snarling stopped. It got nice and quiet in Cleotis’s crib, even peaceful. When
things turn peaceful, you pick up little details you might have been missing. For
example, I noticed that my mouth was open kind of wide, and it was even possible that
I was drooling on Herman’s head. Not a lot, but most humans have a thing about being
drooled on. I like it when humans like me. It’s as simple as that. I got my mouth
closed nice and tight and backed off a step or two. We were guests, don’t forget.
I took a nice deep breath, smelled pot, coke, and smack, not usually found all in
one place. The learning never stops in this business.

This was a shotgun house. I was very familiar with the type, totally comfortable.
We sat in the kitchen, Cleotis and Bernie—with the sawed-off across his knees—at the
table, me at the window where I could keep my eye on a real big black bird perched
on a clothesline. As for Herman, he’d gone upstairs for a little lie-down.

Cleotis examined our card, looking at the front, the back, the front again.

“Are you the kind of PI who sells folks out to the cops?” he said.

“Sell?” Bernie said. “Never. I give sometimes, but hardly ever
and certainly not here. I’ve been hired to find a missing person, and as soon as we
find him we’re gone.”

“Talking about Mack the shrimp guy from down in St. Roch?” Cleotis said.

“Not originally, but now he’s missing, too.”

“Sounds complicated,” Cleotis said. He shook a cigarette out of a pack lying on the
table and lit up. “Smoke?” he said.

Bernie gazed at the cigarette pack. Oh, no. I’d seen that gaze before. And he was
trying so hard to quit, once and for all. That was what he always said:
Once and for all.
What did it mean? I wasn’t sure. Now he said, “One can’t hurt.” I knew the meaning
of that: he’d soon be lighting up—like now, with Cleotis holding a lit match across
the table in a friendly sort of way, although his eyes, so smart, got a quick here-and-gone
look that didn’t seem friendly at all—inhaling nice and deep, blowing out a slow stream
of smoke, and saying “Ah.”

“Care to sample anything else while you’re here?” Cleotis said.

“Huh?” said Bernie, giving him a close look. “What makes you ask that?”

Cleotis’s eyes got vague and cloudy. He shrugged.

Bernie was still for a moment. Then he reached over to the ashtray and mashed the
cigarette out. He and Cleotis stared at each other. Cleotis’s eyes got a little vaguer.

“The man we were looking for originally is Ralph Boutette, also from St. Roch,” he
said.

“Never heard of him.”

“According to our information, he and Mack Larouche are best friends.”

“I wouldn’t know.”

“But you know Mack.”

“I do.”

“In what context?”

Cleotis smiled. He had very nice teeth, maybe the biggest and whitest I’d ever seen
on a human. “In what context, man? In the context of I deal smack and he’s a customer.”

“When was the last time you saw him?”

“Three weeks ago this coming Friday at nine p.m. He was here for about ten minutes,
spent five hundred and fifty bucks.”

“You’re very precise,” Bernie said.

“This is a business,” Cleotis said. “I keep records.”

“In your head?”

“It’s that kind of business.”

Bernie gave him a look. “Someone like you—”