The Sound and the Furry (20 page)

“Stall?”

“The cops.”

Fleurette put her hands over her chest. “You’re calling the cops?”

“No way around it. I’m obligated to report unnatural deaths.”

“Unnatural?”

“He didn’t die of old age.”

Fleurette turned to the bed. “Poor Mack. I didn’t know he was in to mainlining.”

“No?” Bernie said. “He wasn’t exactly shy about discussing his addiction with me the
very first time we met.”

“I’m not talking about his addiction,” Fleurette said. “I’m talking about mainlining.
Mack hates—hated—needles. He was a snorter.”

Bernie’s voice went quiet. “How do you know?”

Fleurette looked away. “I, uh, heard.”

“Do you work for Cleotis?”

She said nothing.

“Look at me,” Bernie said.

Fleurette turned to him real slow, like it took all the strength she had. Her eyes
met Bernie’s for a moment, then moved down
slightly, to maybe his nose. Bernie has a very nice nose, not small for a human and
with a tiny sort of bend, hardly noticeable at all, that he says he’ll get fixed when
he’s sure he won’t be in anymore fistfights. Which I hope is never! He’s so good with
his fists, as lots of perps could tell you; a pleasure to watch, although just watching
at times like that isn’t my best thing.

“It’s not really what you’d call working for him,” she said. “I run an errand or two,
that’s all.”

“Running dope, you mean,” Bernie said.

“Judge me all you want,” said Fleurette. “I’ve got an autistic kid at home—two of
them if you count my husband.”

“You can explain that to the cops,” Bernie said, taking out his phone.

“Oh, no, please,” she said. Her face twisted up in a way I don’t like seeing even
in bad guys. Was Fleurette a bad guy? I didn’t think so. “Please let me go.”

“Why should I?” Bernie said, his voice real hard, so maybe I was wrong about Fleurette.

“They’ll put me in prison.” She started to cry, tears running down her face, one or
two dripping to the floor. “What will happen to my kid?”

“I’ll try to cut you a break,” Bernie said. “But you’ve got to tell me everything.”

“Everything about what?”

“Start with why you’re here.”

“Why I’m here?” Her mouth opened, closed, opened again, but no sound came out.

“Cleotis sent you is the answer,” Bernie said.

She stayed motionless for a moment or two. Then she nodded. Bernie: a great interviewer,
which I may have mentioned before, but why not again?

“What did he want you to do?” he said.

“Cleotis doesn’t like getting talked about behind his back.”

“You’ll have to weigh that little quirk of his against your kid’s future.”

“Oh, Christ,” Fleurette said, wiping her tears on the back of her arm. “How come everything
happens to me?”

“You’re doing better than Mack,” Bernie said. “For now.”

Fleurette backed away. “Are you threatening me?”

“The situation is threatening you,” Bernie said. “We’re your only chance to push back
a little.”

“Who’s we?” Fleurette said.

“Chet and I, of course.”

Fleurette looked at me. It so happened that I’d moved over to where a few of her tears
had fallen, and was at that very moment licking them off the bare floor. Hadn’t tasted
human tears since . . . since I couldn’t remember when! How do you like that? Fleurette’s
were warm and salty, with just the very slightest hint of pot smoke.

She blew out a long breath, seemed to get smaller.

“Cleotis told me to get right over here and move Mack somewhere else.”

“Why?”

“He didn’t say—I swear to you.”

“Where did he tell you to move him?”

“He said Mack would know. My job was to get him out of here and fast.”

“Cleotis was helping Mack hide out?”

“I think so.”

Bernie glanced around. “Who owns this place?”

“I don’t know.”

“What about the shrimp?”

Fleurette blinked. “Shrimp?”

“The shrimp that got stolen from Grannie Robideau.”

“I don’t know anything about that.”

“No?” Bernie said. “Someone the spitting image of you has been serving those stolen
shrimp by the trayful over at Rooster Red’s.”

“How—” she said, her face, kind of pale to begin with, paling some more. When human
faces get that way, fainting often comes next. I got ready—to do what I wasn’t exactly
sure. But how could it hurt to be ready?

No fainting happened. Fleurette took a deep breath—I could hear her sucking in air—and
said, “How do you know that?”

“Actually knowing would be giving me too much credit,” Bernie said. “More like a hunch
until you confirmed it.”

Fleurette gave Bernie a hard look. “Why are men such jerks?”

“No time to get to the bottom of that now,” Bernie said. “Did Mack own Rooster Red’s?”

Fleurette went on giving Bernie the hard look for a bit, finally nodded. “His dad
built the place.”

“Is his dad still around?”

“Died a long time ago.”

“How?”

“They said his liver gave out.”

“What about his mother?”

“Same thing, except later,” Fleurette said. “Mack was pretty much alone in the world,
except for his friendship with Ralph.”

“And Vannah, of course.”

“Vannah?”

“Vannah Boutette—his sister.”

“Vannah’s not close to anybody,” Fleurette said. “Where’d you get that idea?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. Which was nice to hear, all this back-and-forth being
not so easy to follow. And now I had the green light to not even try! Bernie always
comes through. “Who stole the shrimp?”

“Lord Boutette? That’s what everybody says.”

“Was Ralph in on it?”

“Ralph? Sure doesn’t sound like him.”

“Did Mack do a lot of that—buying stolen goods?”

“Maybe a little.”

“How much did he pay for the shrimp?”

“I didn’t see them come in,” Fleurette said. “Actually I sort of did, but it was still
dark. I was working the early shift, so it was maybe five in the morning.”

“Sunday morning.”

“Right. Usually I open up, but Mack was already there. I could hear him talking in
the kitchen. The lights weren’t on so I just sort of waited out back.”

“Why?”

Fleurette shrugged. “The lights not being on, and all. It was just kind of . . . I
don’t want to say creepy.”

“Who was he talking to?”

“Some man. I didn’t recognize the voice.”

“So it wasn’t Lord Boutette?”

“No.”

“What were they talking about?”

“I couldn’t tell. The ventilating fan—the big one over the back door—was running.
It’s pretty noisy. Then after a minute or two, the other man came out. I don’t think
he saw me—I was in the shadows, kind of behind my car.”

“What did he look like?”

“Like I said, it was pretty dark.”

“Could it have been Ralph?”

“This guy was a lot taller.”

“What else?”

“Nothing, really.”

“What did he do?”

“Walked around to the front of the building. I heard a car start up and drive away,
but I didn’t see any headlight beams.”

“Describe his walk.”

“Huh?”

“Posture, gait, anything you noticed.”

“Like I said, it was—”

“Don’t tell me it was dark, Fleurette. Just try to remember.”

Fleurette closed her eyes, a very interesting human thing. Why do they do that? Did
something change inside them? Did something change inside me when I closed my eyes?
I thought about closing them but decided against it. We were on the job.

Her eyes opened. “I do remember one thing,” she said. “He walked like a cowboy.”

“Yeah?”

“Not the kind of walk that comes from riding horses. I’m talking about the kind that
comes from wearing cowboy boots, if that makes sense.”

“It does to me,” Bernie said, which had to mean we were cooking. When cases started
to make sense to Bernie it was just about time for me to grab the perp by the pant
leg. Fleurette was wearing shorts, but not the real short kind, nothing I couldn’t
handle.

“. . . and then?” Bernie was saying, meaning we weren’t quite at the pant leg moment.

“Mack came outside. It was starting to get a little lighter and I could see he was
counting money. I sort of pretended I’d just
driven up.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure why I did that. Just a feeling. We said
good morning, he drove off, and I went in. Later, when the oyster guy came, I opened
the big cooler. It was empty the night before and now it was full of shrimp.”

“Mack was counting money?” Bernie said.

“A fat wad, if you want the truth.”

“I do,” Bernie said, his eyes real watchful.

“I’ve told you the truth,” said Fleurette.

Bernie nodded, but just a little. “You’ve got our card,” he said. “Don’t be afraid
to use it.”

“I can go?”

“Drive safe.”

I kept an eye on those short pant legs until she was out the door.

J
ust like us in the nation within, humans come in different colors, and also just like
us the particular color ends up being not the most interesting thing about them, or
even close, in my opinion, although I’m not at my best with colors, so don’t pay attention
to any of this. The point is that the cops who swarmed into the room above the coffee
shop not long after Fleurette had gone were all different in color, going from very
light to very dark. The darkest cop wore the fanciest uniform, fancy uniforms being
a little detail you watch for in this business. They all took in the sights in the
same order: Mack lying on the bed, Bernie standing nearby, me sitting at his feet.
Then they all turned to the fancy-uniform cop, the way humans do when waiting to find
out what happens next. The fancy-uniform cop was peering at Bernie.

“Bernie?” he said. “Can’t be you.”

“Why not?” Bernie said.

“Son of a bitch,” said the fancy-uniform cop. Then he took Bernie in his arms and
swept him right off the floor, a total first in my experience. “Son of a bitch,” the
cop said again, actually waving Bernie around in the air a bit. The eyes of all the
cops got very big.

“Put me down, Henry,” Bernie said.

“Is that an order, Captain?” said this Henry dude.

“More like a suggestion,” Bernie said.

Henry set Bernie back down on his feet but didn’t quite let him go, instead started
pounding him on the back. Bernie did the same to him.

“Son of bitch,” Henry said. “I can’t believe this.”

“Everybody has to be somewhere,” Bernie said.

Henry glanced at the other cops. “Catch that, gentlemen? ‘Everybody has to be somewhere.’
Bernie Little here’s always the smartest guy in the room, and don’t you forget it.”
From that moment on, I knew Henry and I had a lot in common, were going to get along
great. I wasn’t too sure about the other cops, most of them now eyeing Bernie in a
pinched-face sort of way.

“Cram the cynicism, ladies and gentlemen,” Henry said. “Without Bernie Little there’d
be no more me, and I know how broken up y’all’d be if that happened.”

The cops sort of shuffled around, gazing this way and that. None of them looked broken
up to me.

“Saved my life, this pig-headed hard-ass,” Henry said. “Mine and a whole shitload
of others, that goddamn day.”

The cops started seeing Bernie afresh, although I couldn’t be sure, my mind at that
moment knocked off the tracks by the pig-headed thing. I’ve had an encounter with
a pig or two in my time—none pleasant, and one actually a bit painful, pigs turning
out to be surprisingly aggressive when cornered—but the point was, I’d seen pig heads
extremely up close, and they weren’t at all like Bernie’s: just for starters, Bernie
had nothing you could call a snout. Then there was shitload, also a problem. I could
never hear that word without thinking back to the Portapotty trailer-truck fiasco
at Spaghetti Junction, the place where all the Valley freeways
meet. Right in front of our eyes! And even closer, our windshield wipers nowhere near
up to the job! A horrible memory, and if a repeat was on the schedule, we were looking
at a bad day, not that any day could actually be called bad.

“Was this in Iraq, Lieutenant?” said one of the cops.

“Damn straight,” said Henry.

“What went down?” said the cop.

“Hell on earth,” Henry said, finally letting go of Bernie. “We were trapped in this
goddamn—”

Bernie made a little back-and-forth wave with his finger.

“Huh?” Henry said. “Don’t want me to talk about it?”

“Well, um,” said Bernie. “Everyone did their job and there’s nothing really to, uh . . .”
He gazed down at his sneakers, still kind of dirty from getting stuck in the mud on
Isle des Deux Amis.

“Haven’t changed a bit,” Henry said. He took Bernie’s chin in his hand, and for one
crazy instant, I thought he was going to kiss him. He gave Bernie’s head a little
shake instead. “How’s life?”

“I’m a private investigator out west these days,” Bernie said, rubbing his chin. “This
is Chet.”

“Looks like a champ,” said Henry, gazing down at me. “That tail wag’s off the charts.
I’d bet he’s taken out a lot of wineglasses.”

“You’d win,” Bernie said.

Everybody laughed, at what I didn’t know.

“What brings you to our godforsaken corner of the planet?” Henry said.

Bernie turned toward the bed, and then all the cops, like a flock of birds, did the
same.

“That was you, calling it in?” Henry said.

Bernie nodded.

“What’s the story?”

“We found him just the way you see.”

“Who is we?”

“Chet and I.”

Henry nodded, then went to the bed and pressed his finger on Mack’s neck, just as
Bernie had done. “OD,” he said. “Textbook.”

“Looks that way,” Bernie said.

There was a slight pause. “You know him?” Henry said.

“Name’s Mack Larouche,” Bernie said. “He was a seafood wholesaler and bar owner in
St. Roch.”

“And your interest in him?” Henry said.

“Maybe we could step into the hall,” Bernie said.