I woke up sometime after the end of the deep-thought session and caught Bernie patting the pockets of a pair of jeans in the laundry pile, obviously searching for a forgotten smoke. “Oh, hi, Chet,” he said, tossing the pants aside in a casual way, like he’d actually been doing the laundry, “how about a walk?”
A walk? Never a bad choice, especially now—I could tell from Bernie’s eyes, nonsparkling, that the deep-thought session hadn’t led very far. Bernie did some of his best thinking on walks; my best thinking could come at any time—I was kind of unpredictable that way. In a moment we were out in sun and fresh air, on a nice long ramble up the canyon and back down Mesquite Road, passing Iggy’s house. Iggy’s house was smaller than ours and a little run-down, with tiles missing from the roof here and there and the trim faded colorless. At least it seemed colorless to me: Bernie always says I’m not good with colors, basing his opinion on who knows what. But back to Iggy’s house: One other thing about it was its age, older-looking than all the other houses on Mesquite Road. That made sense, because the couple who lived there with Iggy—Mr. and Mrs. Parsons—were old, too, had possibly even known Bernie’s grandfather back in ranchland days, or one of them had, the details foggy in my mind. The only up-to-date thing at Iggy’s was the electric fence. The electric-fence dude had come to our place, too, after Iggy’s was all set up, given Bernie a long spiel about lawsuits and liability, subjects that turned us off, me and Bernie. Bernie had interrupted him, taken Iggy’s new collar in his hand, and walked right over the invisible line on Iggy’s lawn, testing the shock on himself. Then Bernie turned to the electric-fence dude and shook his head. That was the end of that.
But Iggy’s rambling days were over. At first he’d come out on the front lawn as usual, and I’d drop over to play, but when I left Iggy always tried to follow me, a little slow to get the electric-fence concept, ending up with a bad surprise every time. Now he hardly came to play out front anymore, doing his business in the backyard, separated from ours by the Parsons’s garage.
I could see him as we went by at the end of our walk, watching out the window. Iggy’s watching-out-the-window technique needed improvement. Sometimes, like now, he got his nose too close to the glass and fogged it up. That frustrated Iggy, and he started in on his yip-yip-yipping. I barked back. Iggy yipped. The window fogged up some more. Then: surprise. The front door opened, and old Mr. Parsons looked out. He wore long pants and a shirt buttoned to the neck, but his feet were bare. Why did that grab my attention? Couldn’t tell you.
“Mr. Little?” he said.
We stopped. “Yes?” said Bernie.
“Spare a moment?” said Mr. Parsons; he had a high, thin voice.
“Sure.” Bernie walked over. I followed.
“Amazing how he does that,” said Mr. Parsons.
“Does what?”
“Stays right by you, even without a leash.”
“Chet’s not a fan of the leash,” Bernie said.
Mr. Parsons laughed, a wheezy laugh that ended in a kind of gasping fit. I didn’t know Mr. Parsons very well but was starting to like him—those bare feet were tough and wide, spread out all over the place, like he didn’t wear shoes much. “Neither’s ol’ Iggy,” he said, “but he don’t follow like that, no way, no how. Fact is, Mrs. Parsons hasn’t been feeling too well lately.”
“Sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you. Had a bit of a stroke, according to the doc. Which is why I haven’t been taking Iggy on his walks—can’t really be leaving Mrs. Parsons.”
“I could take him if you want.”
“Very kind,” said Mr. Parsons, “but I wouldn’t presume. Maybe Chet could come over once or twice, have a little play with Iggy out back.”
“Sounds good,” Bernie said. “How’s right now?”
From inside the house came a banging noise: Iggy, for sure, throwing himself against some door that was keeping him from joining us.
“Right now wouldn’t be the best,” said Mr. Parsons. “I’m going to give Mrs. Parsons her pills, kind of complicated with how many there are, keeping track and all.”
“Call when you’d like Chet to come over,” Bernie said.
“Will do,” said Mr. Parsons. “Nice to see Chet looking so well. Truth is, I was concerned after that other night.”
“What other night?” said Bernie.
Mr. Parsons squinted, the way humans do when trying to see something far away. “Can’t recall, exactly.” He shook his head. “I’m on some pills myself,” he said, “get them online, but they’re supposed to work the same as the real ones. Interfere with my memory, which wasn’t too good in the first place, not these days.” He licked his lips. “And seeing him here like this probably means I got the whole thing wrong.”
“What whole thing?”
“Happened real quick, in any case.”
“Mr. Parsons? What did?”
More crashing sounds from deep inside the house. Mr. Parsons seemed not to hear them. “Now it’s coming back to me, the particulars. Might even have been one of those nights you had a tent set up out back and a fire going. Always get a kick out of that—Mrs. Parsons can see down from the upstairs window, where we’ve got the rocker. Anyways, a little later—Mrs. Parsons might have been having some trouble getting comfortable that night—I was downstairs, happened to look out the kitchen window, thataways.” Mr. Parsons pointed down the street. “What I thought I saw—hard to say on account of darkness, and how quick it happened, like I said, so don’t hold me to it…” His voice trailed off and his eyes got blurry.
“I won’t hold you to it, Mr. Parsons. What did you think you saw?”
“Hard to believe, really,” said Mr. Parsons. “More like something in a dream. But a car was parked down there, outside that house on the other side of the street, the one with the for-sale sign, and two guys threw something in the trunk and drove off.”
“What kind of something?” Bernie said.
“That’s the dreamlike part,” said Mr. Parsons. “More properly, might call it nightmare.” He glanced down at me. I was thinking, You’re going great, old buddy. Spit it out. “What it looked like to me,” he went on, “was a dog. And not just any dog but this one here, namely Chet.” He reached out, gave me a pat. His fingers, all gnarled and swollen, felt cold. “On the other hand, here he is in the flesh, so I must’ve been seeing things.”
“I don’t think so,” Bernie said. His face had gone all hard. “What can you tell me about the two men?”
“Nothing,” said Mr. Parsons. He closed his eyes. “One might have been bigger than the other. The blond one.”
“One of the men was blond?” Bernie’s voice sharpened. The hair on my back rose a bit.
Mr. Parsons opened his eyes. “The bigger one. His hair stood out in the night.”
A woman called from inside, her voice weak. “Daniel? Daniel?”
“Sorry,” said Mr. Parsons. “Must go.” He closed the door. Iggy crashed into something one more time.
We crossed the street, over to the house with the for-sale sign.
“What happened here, boy?” Bernie said. “I get the feeling I’ve been pretty stupid.”
Bernie? Stupid? No way. Bernie was always the smartest one in the room, except for maybe when he’d had too much bourbon. There was a night, for example, when he’d been stringing the Christmas-tree lights, a story I may get to later.
We gazed at the house with the for-sale sign. The shades were drawn, and some rolled-up newspapers lay in the driveway. I went and picked one up, was starting to run around with it when a woman came out of the house. She wore a business suit, carried a big briefcase, and had some kind of phone plugged in to her ear.
“You’re early,” she said. “It doesn’t start till noon.”
“What doesn’t?” Bernie said.
“The walk-through. Aren’t you an agent?”
“A neighbor.”
“Oh? Which house is yours?”
Bernie pointed. The woman came forward. “Charming,” she said. “And you don’t need me to tell you what a great street you’re on, with the canyon so near. Values are holding up nicely. If you ever think of selling…” She handed Bernie her card.
He took it, at the same time saying, “Chet?”
I dropped the paper, what was left of it, tried to look small.
Bernie examined the card. “This is your listing?”
“You’re looking at the listing queen of the East Valley,” the woman said. Then she spoke her name, missed by me, on account of an annoying scrap of newspaper turning up under my tongue. The woman and Bernie shook hands; she was one of those two-handed handshakers, holding on to Bernie’s longer than necessary. Uh-oh. And the way she was standing changed, too: Had her chest been sticking out quite that far before? In certain situations, always with women, Bernie was helpless.
But now he didn’t seem to notice. “How long has the house been empty?” he said.
“A couple months, except for some renters.”
“The renters are still here?”
“No, they cleared out last week, hardly stayed more than a few days, even though they paid for a full three months up front.”
“I don’t remember seeing them around,” Bernie said. “What did they look like?”
“I only met the one who signed the rental contract, a big guy, blond, might have been foreign—he had an accent. Swedish, maybe?”
“Did you get his name?”
“His name? It’ll be on the contract, but I don’t—”
“You’ll have a photocopy of his license?”
“Of course, but—”
Bernie handed her our card. “I’d like to see it.”
The woman eyed the card and then eyed Bernie. “What’s going on? You said you were a neighbor.”
“And that’s true,” Bernie said. “But we’re also working on a case, and this blond guy is involved.”
“I really don’t—”
“A missing-persons case,” Bernie said. “Her name is Madison Chambliss. She’s fifteen years old.”
The woman gave Bernie a long look, then started digging in her briefcase. She took out a sheaf of papers, stapled together, and gave them to Bernie. He leafed through.
“Cleon Maxwell, 14303 North Coronado, Rosa Vista,” Bernie said.
Cleon Maxwell? But the perp’s name was Boris. What sense did that make? Bernie angled a page so I could see the black-and-white photo of a driver’s license.
“You’re showing the picture to your dog?” the woman said, her eyes opening wide.
I didn’t like her tone, but neither could I put her in her place. Truth is, I’m not too good with photos, even in black and white. The man in the photo had blond hair and kind of looked like how I remembered Boris, but I couldn’t be sure. A different story, listing queen, if driver’s licenses came with smell samples instead of pictures, you’d better believe it.
“He’s K-9 trained,” Bernie said.
Partially K-9 trained, as I might have mentioned. Why had that cat come along right in the middle of the final test, open-country tracking? My certificate was all made out, but I never got it.
***
“How did I miss this?” Bernie said as we drove to Rosa Vista. “They’ve been watching us almost from the moment we took the case.” He banged the side of his fist against the steering wheel. That kind of thing didn’t happen often. “I must be losing my mind, Chet.” I hoped that wasn’t true: Bernie’s mind was one of our biggest assets, on a par with my nose. I laid a paw on his knee. He drove fast, even weaving in and out of traffic a bit, not like him at all. But fun, all that speed and weaving, no doubt about it. I stopped worrying and got in a very good mood.
We took a ramp off the freeway, headed toward the sun on a wide straight road. “Coronado,” said Bernie. “Hate Coronado.” Why? It looked like so many streets in the Valley, wide and straight and going on forever. “Know what he did to the Indians?” Bernie added after a while, losing me completely.
He slowed down, started reading off the numbers. “Fourteen-one, fourteen-two, here we go.” We parked in front of a restaurant, and a good one. I didn’t have to look, just knew from the smell. Bernie read the sign: “‘Max’s Memphis Ribs.’” A rib joint? I’d heard of rib joints, had never actually been in one. My mouth started watering right away, but then I remembered that a lot of restaurants weren’t very welcoming when it came to my kind.
The front of the building was all glass. We walked to the door, hesitated. A man behind the counter inside saw us, pointed to me, then did a come-on-in fluttering of his fingers. One of my favorite human gestures, that finger flutter: almost made me wish for fingers of my own. Bernie opened the door, and we went in. Mercy. It smelled like heaven in Max’s Memphis Ribs. We walked up to the counter, and Bernie said, “Looking for Cleon Maxwell.”
“Found him,” said the man. This was Cleon Maxwell? Pretty confusing: He didn’t resemble Boris at all, was black, for one thing.
Bernie picked up the slack, not missing a beat; we were a good team, me and Bernie, in case that’s not clear yet. He handed Cleon Maxwell our card. “Working on a case,” he said. “Any chance you’ve been a victim of identity theft?”
“Tell me about it. Russian gangsters, that’s what the cops said. But I slapped a fraud alert on my credit report before too much damage got done.”
“Good news,” said Bernie. “Did they catch anyone yet?”
Cleon Maxwell shook his head. “They weren’t too optimistic on that score.” A phone rang, and then another. “Anything else I can help you with?”
“No,” said Bernie. “Thanks for your time.”
“Don’t mention it,” said Cleon Maxwell. “Nice-looking dog you’ve got there. He like ribs, by any chance?”
“Actually,” said Bernie, “we both do.”
“Take a seat,” Cleon Maxwell said.
***
We sat in the car outside Max’s Memphis Ribs, unable to move, either of us. Bernie burped once or twice. “Never eaten so much in my whole life,” he said. “But was it good or what?”
Yes and yes! Plus we had two-for-one coupons, courtesy of Cleon Maxwell, possibly the greatest human being in the whole Valley, not counting Bernie, of course. Was there a better job than this? We just sat in the car and breathed, let the world spin. Bernie says the world spins, and if he wants to think that, fine, but I’ve never noticed it myself. People came and went at Max’s Memphis Ribs, looking happy, every single one. After a while, Bernie said, “Rental contract’s a dead end. Only one thing to do now, as far as I can see—we’ve got to go back to the night they grabbed you, pick up the trail.”
Picking up the trail: my kind of thing. Energy started flowing back into me right away.
“That means starting at that animal shelter in Sierra Verde.”
The animal shelter where Suzie found me? All of a sudden I didn’t feel so good. Bernie reached over, gave me a pat. I smelled some of Max’s Secret Sauce still on Bernie’s hand and licked it off, but deep inside I still felt bad.
We drove across the Valley, away from the sun. The Valley went on and on. “Look at this,” Bernie said at one point, waving his hand around. “All new since the last time I was here.” And a little later, “Coronado wasn’t the only one. They were all like that.” What was this? We were still riding on Coronado? It looked more like a freeway to me. Not long after that, “See what I see? Home Depot. That means a whole new town is on the way.” Soon after, he muttered something about Home Depot being the nucleus of some horrible atom. Bernie was losing me, but the breeze, almost hot for a long time, then cooling a bit as we climbed into the mountains, felt great. I could ride shotgun forever, keep going on and on, with some snacks along the way, of course, plus the odd pit stop. “Tell you one thing,” Bernie said as we pulled over to gas up, “this is why I’m for Indian casinos, no matter what. They finally get their revenge, and in spades, pardon the pun.” No problem—I could forgive Bernie for anything, including puns, whatever they might be. He had some trouble with the credit-card swiper and went inside to pay. Maybe he’d come out with a Slim Jim or two, or even—hey!—a box of bacon bits. Bacon bits: so long since I’d had bacon bits that I’d almost forgotten they existed.
Bernie came out, and I didn’t spot Slim Jims or bacon bits, just a big bottle of water. That meant he still wasn’t hungry, what with our little session at Max’s Memphis Ribs—those coupons had to mean we were going back one day for sure; Bernie loved a bargain—and maybe I wasn’t hungry, either, but snacks often happened when we were gassing up. Snacks taste better when you’re hungry, but do they ever actually taste bad? I ask you.
Bernie poured water into my traveling bowl, held it out for me. I lapped some up—nice and frosty. Bernie tilted the bottle up to his mouth, gazed at the sky. “What if the monsoons don’t come this summer?” he said.
I didn’t know.
We drove up and up, angling back and forth in the mountains on a two-lane road, reaching wide-open country, traffic thinning out to mostly just us. I started smelling all kinds of wild smells and—What was that, moving fast up ahead by the side of the highway? A roadrunner? Yes! A real roadrunner. Would you get a load of that little bugger? Oh, how I’d always wanted to—
“Chet? Easy, now.”
We flashed by the roadrunner, but not so fast that I didn’t catch that tough-guy look in his beady eyes. He veered off, tore into the chaparral, and vanished. Real fast, but my money would be on me.
Not long after that, we climbed a pass at the top of the mountain and started down. The air was fresh, the sky clear, the land stretching on forever. “You can see all the way into New Mexico from here,” Bernie said. Mexico: The word gave me a sudden bad feeling, but I didn’t know why. Then, as we rolled into a dusty little town, I remembered how Mr. Gulagov had wanted to train me to fight down there, down in Mexico. Was that the same as New Mexico? No idea, but I had a message for Mr. Gulagov: Bernie is with me now, fella. I gave myself a good shake.
“Sierra Verde,” Bernie said, slowing down. He glanced at me. “Anything look familiar?”
Nope. Oh, wait a minute. What about that bar back there with the neon martini glass in the window? Maybe—
“Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “We’ll start up here.” He turned a corner, climbed a side street lined by a few buildings, some boarded up, and parked in front of the last one. Bernie glanced at me from the corner of his eye. That last building, standing behind a tall gate at the end of stone path, a low building of no particular color, with a thin plume of white smoke rising behind it: I knew that building, oh yes; it looked way too familiar. I got down on the floor.
“Hey, boy, everything’s okay.”
I stayed where I was. A trembling began in my body, not a lot I could do about it.
“C’mon, Chet. Going to need your help.”
I climbed back up on the seat.
“Thattaboy. Hop out.”
Hopping out of the shotgun seat: I’d done it so many times, but now, maybe because of the trembling, I fell short, slipping back on the seat.
“It’s all right, fella.” Bernie’s face was real hard, that stony look that happened when he was angry. Angry at me? Couldn’t be, not with how gentle and soft his voice got when he said, “Take it easy. I’ll be right back.”
Nope. That was no good, either. I got my back legs under me and hopped out, barely making it. Bernie didn’t say anything, just gave me a nice scratch between my ears. We walked up the stone path, side by side. Bernie opened the gate. I caught the scent of my guys, lots and lots of them—my nation, the nation inside a nation, as Bernie said—and it brought back everything about this bad place. I held my head up, and my tail, too, and kept going.
We entered the building, and there I was, back in the small reception room with the counter and lots more smells, including smoky ones I now understood. A man in a white coat stood behind the counter. Did I know him? Impossible to forget: the man who’d promised to have me out of that small building with the metal door and the brick chimney in no time. I hung back a bit.
“Hi, there,” said the man in the white coat. “Brought in a stray?”
“No,” said Bernie, his face as stony as I’d ever seen it. “Do you recognize him?”
“Who? The dog?”
“His name’s Chet. He was in here last week.”
The man in the white coat shook his head. “We run a busy place, lots of customers in and out, twenty-four-seven.”
“This particular customer,” Bernie said, “was claimed by a friend of mine named Suzie Sanchez. She’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune. Jog your memory at all?”
The man’s mouth opened. Pink patches appeared on his face, although I might have been wrong about the exact color. I stopped hanging back, stepped up beside Bernie.
“Suzie would be hard to forget,” Bernie said. “Did she mention she’s preparing a series on shelters?”
“Uh, it’s coming back to me. This here’s your dog, was that it? And the reporter, she, uh, happened to…”
He ran out of words. Bernie said nothing, just stared at the man.
A silly smile appeared on the man’s face, up at one corner, down at the other. “Looks like things worked out in the end,” he said.
Bernie didn’t agree or disagree. “What I need from you,” he said, “is all the information you’ve got concerning how Chet came to be here.”
“’Fraid I wasn’t on when—”
“But I’m sure you keep records.”
“Oh yes, records, of course.” The man moved to a computer, hit some keys. “Here we go.” A printer made some machine sounds, very unpleasant to my ears. The man handed Bernie a sheet of paper. Paper was very important to human beings: They spent a lot of their time messing around with it. The appeal was lost on me.
Bernie’s eyes moved back and forth over the page. That was reading; it always looked a little weird, in my opinion. He looked up. “All it gives is the date and time of arrival. I want to know who brought him in.”
“Wasn’t it some biker?”
“The name,” said Bernie.
“Doreen was on the desk,” the man said. “She might know—one sec.” He went through the door at the back. “One sec” was probably a way of saying “stay put,” a hint Bernie seemed to miss, because he walked right around the counter and followed the man. I followed Bernie. The man didn’t seem to be aware of our presence.
We walked down a corridor I knew, with cells on both sides, chain-link fronts, and one of my guys in each. They all started barking. I didn’t recognize a single one from before, but I did recognize the woman up ahead, writing on a clipboard. The man in the white coat raised his voice over all the excitement. “Hey, Do, there some ass—” The woman looked over, saw us. The man in the white coat followed her gaze, went silent. Bernie ignored him, approached the woman, but I missed whatever he said, because at that moment I heard a yip-yip-yip that reminded me of Iggy. Oh no. I turned to the nearest cell: not Iggy but a puppy that looked like Iggy in his younger days. He stuck his nose through one of those tiny squares between the chain links. I ducked down, gave him a bump with my own. He wanted out of there so bad; his soft brown eyes told me that. Did he think I could help? Poor puppy.
“C’mon, Chet, we’re out of here,” said Bernie.
And moments later we were outside, me and Bernie, back in lovely mountain air. I hopped up onto my seat, clearing the top of the door by plenty, maybe the highest leap ever for me, a personal best. Bernie turned the key and stepped on it, didn’t speak till we were back on the main street. “Brrr,” he said, as though very cold, actually giving himself a shake, not unlike one of mine. “Okay, Chet, what have we got?”
I waited to hear.
“A big biker, no name. Can you believe they don’t even take the names? Plus, she says there’s a bar where the bikers sometimes hang out, supposed to be just about…” Bernie pulled over, parked in front of the bar with the neon martini glass. There were big motorcycles on both sides of us. “Don’t even breathe on those hogs,” Bernie said. “Not to mention any of your other tricks.” Wouldn’t dream of it: The bikers were my friends. And what a great name for motorcycles. I knew what hogs could do from my one visit, kind of unplanned, to a pig farm, wouldn’t be forgetting that lesson anytime soon.
We went through swinging saloon doors, like the kind in old westerns. At one time we’d watched a lot of old westerns, me and Bernie, but Bernie had kept saying, “See? That’s how it used to look.” Over and over, until the fun went out of it for him and the westerns finally sank down to the bottom of the DVD pile and stayed there.
We stopped inside the swinging doors and looked around: a few tables and a small stage on one side, a long bar on the other, a pool table at the back, and sawdust on the floor. Sawdust on the floor: what a great idea! Right from the get-go I had to fight the urge to roll around in it.
And bikers, yes; some at the bar, two more playing pool—and one of the pool players was the huge dude. I recognized him right away from his size and wild white beard, but also I could smell him from where I was. Some of the bikers glanced at us, then went back to their beer: They seemed to like those long-neck bottles.
“Can I have your attention for a moment?” Bernie said in a loud, clear voice. Now they all turned. “Do any of you recognize Chet, here?” I felt so many eyes on me; they gave me a funny feeling. I tried twisting my head around almost backward to make it go away.
No one answered Bernie’s question. What was going on? These were my bikers—I recognized others beside the huge guy, like the woman with the safety pin through her eyebrow and the short dude with upper arms that reminded me of a Christmas ham Leda had once served. I love Christmas, have I mentioned that already? Maybe I’ll get a chance later to explain why. But right now I couldn’t understand why my biker buddies—we’d sung together!—were acting so strange. I walked over to the pool table and stood before the huge guy, wagging my tail.
“Chet seems to know you, buddy,” Bernie said, coming up to my side.
The huge biker—not many men made Bernie look small, but this one did—stared down at us and said, “You smell like a cop to me. I’m not buddies with cops.”
Hey! Did cops have a smell of their own? If so, I’d never picked it up. Was it possible this huge biker had a better sense of smell than I did? He rose in my estimation, and he was already up pretty high, what with that ride on his bike and all.
“I’m a private detective,” Bernie said. “Not a cop.”
“Private detective means cop to me,” the huge biker said. “We don’t like cops.”
“Goes without saying,” Bernie said. “You’re bikers.”
Uh-oh. Was that side of Bernie coming out? Why now?
The huge biker’s hand tightened its grip on his pool cue. Now he was falling in my estimation, falling fast. “You the smart-ass type?” he said.
“Sure sounds like a fuckin’ smart-ass to me,” said the ham-arm biker, coming over from the bar. He had a chain dangling in his hand, big and heavy.
Bernie turned to him. “What I say and what you hear may not match up.”
“Huh?” said the ham-arm biker.
“But there’s no point going into that. I think you guys found Chet out in the desert, for which I’m very grateful. All I want to know is how and where it happened and then we’ll be out of here and the fun can resume.”
There was a silence. Then the ham-arm biker spoke in one of those mimicking voices, maybe the worst kind of human voice of all. “‘The fun can resume,’” he said. And then in his normal voice, also pretty unpleasant: “I think he’s a fag besides bein’ a smart-ass.”
“Well,” said Bernie, “at least you’re having thoughts. Now try to think back to when you first saw Chet.”
“At least I’m what?” said the ham-arm biker, his whole face swelling up, kind of resembling his arms. “You son of a bitch.” And he swung the chain at Bernie.
One thing about Bernie: He can really move. And another thing, maybe not too nice, is that some part of him, not often, doesn’t mind getting in situations like this, maybe even wants to, separating Bernie from just about every other human I’ve ever met. Whatever the reason, the chain never landed on Bernie. Instead, it ended up in his own hands and somehow got wrapped around the ham-arm biker’s thick neck, and then the ham-arm biker was sprawled at the base of the bar, his eyes rolling up, a sight that got me excited. I nipped at the first leg I saw. There was a grunt from up above, and the huge biker charged at Bernie, swinging the pool cue at Bernie’s head. I remembered Bernie saying that swinging was not the way to fight with a pool cue—you had to poke with it—and knew this would be over soon. Bernie stepped inside, did that edge-of-the-hand-to-the-throat slashing thing to the huge biker, who dropped like a tree we’d once taken down.
All the bikers were roaring now and closing in, but Bernie didn’t seem to be in a hurry. He knelt on the huge biker’s back, grabbed him by the throat, and said, “Everybody calm down if you want him to live.”
The bar went silent.
“Okay, big guy,” Bernie said. “Let’s have it.”
In a gasping voice, the huge biker said, “He just come out of nowhere, into our camp, the fuckin’ dog, and—”
“His name’s Chet.”
“Huh?”
“Say ‘Chet’ instead of ‘the fuckin’ dog.’”
“Chet,” said huge biker.
I felt a breeze behind me, realized I was wagging my tail. Was this a good time for that? I tried to make it stop.
“Go on,” said Bernie.
“That’s it,” said the huge biker. “The fu—Chet come into our camp out of—”
“Where was this?”
“Out on the Apache Wash, hard by the New Mexico line.”
“Draw me a map.”
“Huh?”
Bernie pointed at the floor. The biker reached out with his enormous hand, drew a map in the sawdust. Bernie gazed at the map, then released his hold on the biker and rose.
“Let’s go, boy.”
We started toward the swinging doors. None of the bikers said a thing. As he passed the bar, Bernie reached into his pocket and tossed some bills on it. “Next round’s on us, ladies, gentlemen,” he said. Oh, Bernie: Our finances were a mess; how come he couldn’t remember that? But at that moment I didn’t care. Was Bernie the best or what? I took a roll in the sawdust on my way out.