The Sound and the Furry (5 page)

“You turned it down?”

“Yup.”

“The money?”

“Nope. Money was good.”

“Then what?”

“I’d already accepted another assignment.”

“Divor—”

“Don’t say it. Wouldn’t matter what it was—we can only do a case at a time.”

“And Cale Rugh couldn’t come up with a workaround for that?”

“Not for lack of effort.”

“I’ll bet,” Mitch said.

“You know him?” said Bernie.

“Met him once or twice. Those slow-talking Texans can be much smarter than they seem.”

“I’m aware of that,” Bernie said. “I was born in Texas myself.”

“But you’re not slow talking.”

“Neither was he.”

“Want me to touch base with him?”

“Nah,” Bernie said. “I was just making sure he was legit.”

“As legit as anyone in our business,” Mitch said.

“Now I’m scared,” Bernie said.

Mitch was still laughing when he hung up.

Bernie got out his old Army duffel bag, started throwing things into it. “Twenty-hour
drive, give or take,” he said. “Or we could fly and rent wheels on the other end.
Flying means a crate.”

He looked down at me. I looked up at him. Crate? That brought back memories, almost
totally faded away. But not quite, amigo.

“We’ll drive,” Bernie said. He zipped up the duffel. “Lie down, big guy. Get some
shut-eye. We leave at dawn.”

I lay down at the foot of Bernie’s bed and closed my eyes, followed his movements
by sound as sleep came fuzzing all around me. He picked up the duffel with a soft
grunt, carried it to the front hall, let himself out, walked onto the driveway, his
foot crunching on something crunchy, maybe a twig. Then came a squeak from the trunk
opening, the thud of the duffel getting tossed in, and—another footstep-on-a-twig
crunch? I’d kind of been expecting the thump of the trunk closing. There it was: a
thump. But not a trunk-closing-type thump. This was different, a thump I didn’t like
at all. The next thing I knew I was charging out the front door.

Oh, no! Bernie was on his knees behind the car, blood dripping
down his face. A man with a ski mask covering his own face stood over him, a tire
iron raised high. He didn’t see me coming until it was too late. Too late for him,
not for me. I caught his forearm between my jaws as he was swinging that horrible
tire iron down at Bernie’s head, caught it good and bit my hardest, my top teeth and
bottom teeth meeting up deep inside his arm. He screamed, tried to twist himself free,
and hey! Somehow got his other hand on the tire iron and whipped it sideways at my
head. Whack! A black hole sprang up out of nowhere in my mind and started growing.

Fight it off, big guy, fight it off.
That was Bernie’s voice talking inside me. It hardly ever happens, but when it does
I pay attention. I rose to my feet in the driveway—Bernie was rising, too, wiping
blood from his eyes—and saw the masked guy running down Mesquite Road, supporting
his bitten arm with his free hand. A motorcycle was parked next to my fire hydrant
down the block; not actually mine, I suppose, but no time for that now. I took off.

The man mounted the bike, glanced back, and saw me coming. The engine roared. I dug
in, my claws tearing into the pavement, still hot and soft from the day. My heart
pounded like some huge engine of its own, driving away all traces of that black hole
in my mind. The man’s hand—the only useful one now—squeezed the throttle and the bike
rose almost straight up in a wheelie, back tire screaming. I sprinted my very fastest,
came real close to catching up, and at the last possible moment leaped the very most
powerful leap of my whole life. I hit him on the shoulder, hit him hard. The bike
went spinning across the road and the man flew high into the air, his mouth—visible
through the mouth opening in the mask—a big round black hole of its own. He landed
on his head and lay still.

F
ritzie Bortz, a highway patroller pal of ours—a pal even though he’d written us up
once to make his quota, whatever that was, and then had done it again!—was the first
cop on the scene. He pulled up on his bike, had some trouble with the kickstand, almost
fell over. Fritzie was a pretty poor bike rider, had caused lots of accidents.

He dismounted, came over to us, his belly stretching his shirt and hanging over his
belt in a friendly sort of way. The biker lay motionless on the road, mask ripped
to shreds and face exposed. It was a face we didn’t know. I did know that the smell
of the living leaves very quickly and the biker’s was totally gone already.

“What’s with your forehead?” Fritzie said.

Bernie had his T-shirt in his hand, was pressing it against the cut on his forehead.
“Nothing,” he said. “How come you’re here?”

“How come?” Fritzie said. “I’m a cop, Bernie.”

“Pretty far from your beat,” Bernie said.

“My beat is the whole Valley, freeway-wise,” Fritzie said. “I roam the land. But the
fact is I was on a break just over at Donut
Heaven when the call came in.” He glanced down at the biker. “Dead?”

“Yup,” Bernie said.

“What happened?” said Fritzie.

Bernie started explaining things. My name came up once or twice in what sounded like
a very nice way, but my mind kept having thoughts about Donut Heaven, my favorite
place for crullers, and don’t get me started on the bear claws. Lucky Fritzie!

Fritzie gave the biker a closer look. “Think he’s over seventeen?”

“Way over,” Bernie said.

“Then I can’t write him up on a twenty-eight dash nine sixty-four.”

“What’s that?”

“Helmet law violation.”

“He’s dead.”

“I’d have to check on the finer points,” Fritzie said.

An ambulance drove up, and then a couple of cruisers and an unmarked car. Some uniformed
cops came over, plus Captain Stine wearing a dark suit. Captain Stine was a very watchful
dude with deep dark eyes and a sharp kind of nose. He used to be Lieutenant Stine
and had gotten to be Captain Stine on account of us, but in ways I couldn’t remember
exactly or even not exactly. The point is, we’d always been careful around him and
still were.

“What’s with your forehead?” Stine said.

“Nothing,” said Bernie.

Stine gazed down at the biker. “Dead, huh?”

Bernie nodded.

“Take me through it.”

Bernie took him through it. Meanwhile, the back doors of the ambulance opened up and
out came Doc Devine, an EMT
buddy of ours. Doc Devine had been an actual doctor back when we’d first known him,
not pals at all at that time, and then had done a spell up at Northern Correctional
by reason of us busting him—and now we were pals. What a world!

“Hey, Chet,” he said, giving me a pat. “Lookin’ good, big guy.” I bumped up against
him in my palliest way. Doc was a little dude, which I’d forgotten to take into account,
but he didn’t fall all the way flat down, so no harm done.

Meanwhile, Bernie and Captain Stine were squatting on either side of the biker. Stine
snapped on surgical gloves, checked all the biker’s pockets, finding nothing, and
then rolled back one of the biker’s sleeves. He raised the limp arm, shone a flashlight
on the inside of his wrist, revealing a small tattoo.

“See this?” he said.

“A Q?” Bernie said.

“Stands for Quieros. Mean anything to you?”

“Besides the fact that
quiero
means ‘I want’?” Bernie said. “Nope.”

“Haven’t heard of the Quieros?”

“Thought I made that clear.”

Stine glared at Bernie over the biker’s body. “Why are you like this?”

“Like what?” Bernie said.

“Like the way you are,” Stine said. “A son of a bitch.”

Bernie smiled. There was blood on his teeth, but not much. “Some combination of heredity
and environment,” he said.

Stine smiled, too. Had I ever seen him smile before? It was a small smile, and quickly
gone, but his eyes joined in, which is always the best.

“Quieros sort of means I Wants,” said Stine. “I think it’s supposed to be funny.”

“I don’t get it,” Bernie said. I was totally with him on that. We’re a lot alike in
some ways, me and Bernie; don’t forget that.

“They’re a gang,” Stine said. “Kind of new, originally from Central America somewhere.”

“And the name is the mission statement?” Bernie said.

“You got it,” Stine said. “They have wants. Sure you haven’t heard of them?”

“Why do you keep asking?”

“Because this guy just tried to take you out.” Stine let go of the biker’s arm. It
fell heavily to the pavement, bounced up the tiniest bit, then lay still. “I always
wonder about motive in situations like this. Maybe your mind works different.”

Uh-oh. Was Stine saying something bad about Bernie’s mind? Right there was why you
always had to keep an eye on him. Didn’t he know that Bernie was always the smartest
human in the room? How could anyone miss that?

The biker’s eyes were open. Bernie gazed down into them. The biker’s eyes gazed back
in a way that bothered me. Wasn’t Bernie or Stine going to reach out and gently close
the lids? Proper procedure at a time like this, in my opinion; I’d seen it done lots
of times. But not now. “Haven’t got a clue,” Bernie said. “Car thief surprised in
the act?”

“Seems unlikely,” Stine said. “What with this Harley Softail on the scene”—he nodded
his chin at the wrecked bike now lying in the gutter—“and no one to drive it away.”

“Mistaken identity?” Bernie said.

“Can’t rule it out completely,” Stine said. “But just about, in the case of someone
like you.”

“Someone like me?”

“How about I revise that to someone in your profession? Can’t
help making enemies, no matter what a sweetheart you might be inside.”

At least Stine hadn’t missed that: Bernie was a sweetheart inside. But did we have
enemies? I myself liked most of the perps and gangbangers we’d come across. And they
liked us. Take Whispering Hex Voidman, for example, who on his very first day out
on parole made a point of dropping in with some antler snacks just for me. Those antler
snacks: a dream come true. And dreams coming true happens a lot in my life! I often
dream about antler snacks, for example. Maybe you do, too. All of that probably fits
together in a way that might come to me later. Too bad old Hex had boosted the antlers
from Petco and ended up back behind bars by dinnertime, but that wasn’t the point.
The point was, I couldn’t think of any enemies.

“What might be useful,” Stine was saying, “is if you came up with an enemies list
and we put our heads together over it.”

“We could also turn the A/C way up and sit around the fire,” Bernie said. I started
panting, not sure why.

“Huh?” Stine said.

“That’s another thing Nixon liked to do.”

Stine rose. I listened for the knee crack that often happens when humans rise like
that, and there it was. Little pleasures are all around. “Don’t start,” Stine said.

On what? The only Nixon I knew was our mechanic, Nixon Panero, and there was no fireplace
in his shop.

Stine walked to one of the cruisers, leaned against it in a tired sort of way, took
out his phone. Doc Devine came over.

“What’s with your forehead?” he said.

“Nothing,” said Bernie.

“Let’s have a look-see,” Doc said.

Bernie dabbed the wound with his T-shirt one more time, let
Doc have a look-see. I had a look-see, too. Poor Bernie. He had a deep gash on his
forehead, still seeping blood.

Doc peered at the gash. “Gonna need stitches.”

Stitches? I’d had stitches on my head once, back at a time Bernie and I had had a
dustup with some no-good Russian dudes. Stitches on the head meant wearing one of
those horrible cones around your neck for days and days. Bernie wasn’t going to like
that.

“Okay,” Bernie said. “Let’s do it.”

“I can’t do it,” Doc said. “You have to go to the ER.”

“You forgot how to stitch?” Bernie said.

“You know it’s not that,” Doc said.

“Then let’s get it done.”

Doc glanced around, lowered his voice. “It’s illegal.”

Bernie called over to Captain Stine. “Doc here’s going to stitch me up.”

“Doc?” said Captain Stine.

“Yes, sir?”

“When you’re done I’ve got a couple skin tags you can snip off.”

“No problem,” said Doc. “Depending where they’re situated.”

Bernie and Doc went over to the ambulance. Bernie sat on the back bumper. Doc dabbed
something on his forehead, threaded a needle. “This might smart a bit.”

And Bernie, as I must have made clear already, was pretty damn smart himself, so this
was going to go smoothly. In went the needle. Bernie’s face showed nothing. I laid
down on the road, curled up a bit, not sure why.

“All set,” Doc said. “And a nice piece of handiwork, if I say so myself. You’re going
to look even more beautiful than before.”

“That’s a scary thought.”

Uh-oh. Bernie was scared? Because of the neck cone? I didn’t blame him. I waited for
the cone to appear, but it never did. Fritzie
mounted his bike, got it started after a few tries, and drove off. A wrecker rumbled
up, loaded what was left of the Harley and took it away. The uniform cops snapped
lots of pictures, picked bits of this and that off the street and dropped them in
evidence bags, and then they left, too. Doc and the other EMT rolled the body onto
a stretcher and slid it in the ambulance. Captain Stine got in the unmarked car, paused
before closing the door.