FOUR
We left the trailer—Bernie, Rick Torres, Popo, and me. There was a moment of crowding around the door, a bit of getting tangled up, and I burst out first. That happens a lot when we’re leaving places, not sure why. Popo lost his balance and almost fell; glancing back—something I can do with hardly turning my head at all—I could see the reason: his feet were huge, those floppy polka-dot shoes going on forever.
We crossed a strip of ground—rich with powerful animal scents, all unknown to me—and walked up the stairs at the back of the next trailer. The door was open and I caught a familiar powdery smell—they’d been dusting for prints, and not long ago.
“Hold it,” Bernie said, raising his hand in the stop sign as we were about to step inside, “have you dusted for prints yet?” We’d worked together a lot, me and Bernie, so I shouldn’t have been surprised. He had a nose, even kind of big for a human, but what did it do?
“Yup,” said Rick. “Bupkis.”
Bupkis? I remembered no perps of that name.
“Where’d you learn a word like that?” Bernie said.
“Counterman at the Brooklyn Deli,” said Rick.
Bernie laughed. Whatever the joke was, I’d missed it, but I knew the Brooklyn Deli, a downtown joint I didn’t get to nearly enough.
We entered the trailer. I was trying hard not to think about pastrami. We were in a small space with a bed and a rocking chair on one side—I stayed away from rockers, on account of this one incident involving my tail—and a desk and a hot plate on the other; I stayed away from hot plates, too.
“No signs of forced entry or violence,” Rick said. “For a crime scene it’s about as tidy as they come.”
Bernie went to the bed. “Looks like he didn’t actually get under the covers.”
“Uri has trouble sleeping,” Popo said. “He often reads long into the night.”
Bernie picked up a book that lay on the rocker. “Twilight of the Mammoths,” he said. He opened it, turned a few pages. Bernie gets this still and quiet look on his face when he’s interested in something: he had it now.
“What’s up?” Rick said.
“Nothing,” said Bernie, closing the book. But he didn’t put it down.
Two pictures hung on the wall. In one, Peanut stood in a field, the man with the pencil mustache, now wearing jeans and a T-shirt, standing beside her—actually sort of leaning against her—and smoking a cigarette.
“Uri with Peanut,” Popo said.
Rick bent his head toward the picture. “He seems pretty relaxed around such a . . .” He went silent the way humans sometimes do when they’re waiting for a word. Never happened to me.
“Trust,” said Popo. “Uri’s method is all about establishing trust.”
In the second picture, Uri, again smiling and looking relaxed, stood next to another man, arms over each other’s shoulders.
“Who’s the other guy?” Rick said.
“Me,” said Popo.
The other guy was Popo? He didn’t look at all like Popo. He looked like a normal guy, with dark hair and glasses, wearing normal guy clothes. And—way different from Popo—he had happy eyes: happy eyes are one of those things we pick up right away in this business. I didn’t like this case, not one bit. Was it our case? I didn’t know. I had no memory of anyone cutting us a check—something I don’t forget—so maybe not.
Bernie went over to the bed, turned back the covers, gazed at the sheets.
“Already did all that,” Rick said.
“Just getting the feel,” Bernie said. He bent down, checked under the bed. I went over and sniffed around. Checking under beds was basic: we’d found stuff under beds before, me and Bernie, but not this time. Did Bernie get the feel? His face was blank.
We went outside.
“This way to the cages,” Rick said.
We followed him back behind the trailers. The cages stood in a row. They were like big boxes, with roofs and walls, the only barred part being the fronts. The smells hit me first, so strong, some a bit catlike, but to the nth degree, whatever that means. And then the sights: oh, boy. Creatures I’d seen on Animal Planet: tigers and lions and—
Actually, in the first cage, just two tigers, and in the next cage, only one lion, and in the last cage, nothing. The tigers and the lion had big rubber balls to play with, but they weren’t playing. They just lay on the floor and watched us with huge yellow eyes. The fur on my neck stood right up; their fur, now that I noticed it, looked kind of dull and ratty. Bernie opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but he didn’t speak; he got a hard look on his face. I wasn’t sure why, but I hated cages myself: bad guys had gotten me into them a couple times in the past. Maybe Bernie’s mind was on that.
“Thought there’d be more animals in a three-ring circus,” Rick was saying.
“We’re a one-ring circus now,” Popo said. “Haven’t had three rings in years.”
“How come?” said Rick.
Popo shrugged.
We stopped outside the third cage. What a smell! It drove all the cat scent clean out of my nose.
“Peanut’s cage,” said Popo.
The smell of Peanut filled my head, unforgettable.
“The way it works,” said Rick, walking around to the other side, “you unlock that padlock and this whole wall slides back. But apparently it was closed when the first witness arrived.”
“And who was that?” Bernie said.
Rick gave some kind of answer, but I missed it, on account of how I’d picked up Peanut’s trail—what could be easier?—and was starting to follow it. The trail began by the side wall of the cage, right where Rick was standing, and led toward—
“Chet? C’mon back, big guy.”
But—I went back, stood beside Bernie.
“Here she comes now,” Rick said. A small woman in sweats appeared, walking fast. Human movement is a big subject—amazing they don’t fall down more often—but for now let’s just mention that some humans move better than others, and she was one of those. “Bernie,” said Rick, “this is Filomena Filipoff. Ms. Filipoff—Bernie Little, private investigator.”
She reached up, shook hands with Bernie. She had a ponytail, tied back in that real tight way you see sometimes, kind of stretching the skin around the eyes; doesn’t that hurt?
“Everyone calls me Fil,” said Filomena. They did? We already knew a Phil: Phil “Shoulders” Schraft, now breaking rocks in the hot sun. This Fil was very different.
“Uh,” said Bernie. “Er.” Some women did that to him. “I’m Bernie,” he said.
“Caught that,” said Fil.
“And, um, this is Chet.”
Fil turned to me. “What a handsome fellow,” she said.
I knew one thing right away. If this was a case and something bad had happened, this woman was not the perp. She held out her hand, a small hand but beautifully shaped. I gave it a quick lick, caught a faint taste of oranges; very nice.
“You were first on the scene?” Bernie said.
Fil nodded. “I went jogging—it was just getting light—and when I came by, Peanut was gone. I ran right to Uri’s trailer and he was gone, too. I called the colonel and I guess he called you guys.”
“Who’s the colonel?” Rick said.
“Colonel Drummond,” Fil said. “He owns the circus.”
“Is he around?” Rick said.
“He’s on his way,” Fil said.
“From?” said Bernie.
“The colonel’s got a place in the north Valley,” Fil said.
“He lives here?” said Bernie.
“None of us really lives anywhere,” Fil said. “We’re on the road forty-eight weeks a year.” She turned to the empty cage. “It’s a cliché, I know, but we’re like a family.”
Popo moved closer, put his arm around her. He wore white gloves, made of some material that looked soft; I couldn’t help wonder how gloves like that might feel, in my mouth, for example. While I was in the middle of wondering, Rick said something I missed, and then Popo and Fil were walking away, his arm still around her.
“Like a family—there are upsides and downsides to that,” Bernie said.
“Thinking the same thing,” said Rick.
Bernie reached out, tried the padlock. “Who has keys for this?”
“Still checking on that.”
Bernie gazed down at the ground. There were tire tracks all over the place, crisscrossing and mashed up, a big mess.
“Not going to get much out of that,” Rick said. He glanced over at me. “Wonder if Chet might pick up something.”
“I don’t know,” Bernie said. “He’s never worked with elephants, and if we’re operating on the theory that Peanut didn’t get out of here on foot, then—”
And more of that kind of talk, but I wasn’t listening. There’s a time for action—pretty much any time, in my opinion. I took a quick sniff at the base of the wall, picked up Peanut’s scent again no problem, and started following it. A piece of cake, as humans say. I’m not a big cake eater myself, although if cake just happens to be sitting there . . .
I pushed all thoughts of cake clear out of my mind—even Charlie’s last birthday party, lucky thing about that second cake arriving so fast—and trotted along the scent trail, a nice slow trot I can keep up all day.
“Hey, Chet, ease up, for God’s sake.”
The trail led back toward the trailers, then made a sharp turn onto a paved road that ran inside the fence at the edge of the fairgrounds. There were lots of other smells on the paved road—including cotton candy—and lots of other smells can sometimes confuse you, but not this time: Peanut’s smell overpowered them all. I followed that smell right up to where the road came to a closed gate and stopped there. A man standing in a gatehouse peered out.
Bernie and Rick hurried up behind me, huffing and puffing; always fun when you can get humans huffing and puffing. Suppose you have something in your mouth, a magazine, say, and when some human makes a grab for it, you twist away, letting them come closer and closer every time: humans start huffing and puffing pretty quick in a game like that. But this was no time for games. We were on the job, and besides there were no magazines in sight.
The guard stepped out of the gatehouse. Hey! He had a toothpick sticking out of his mouth. Hadn’t seen that in way too long. Humans: you just had to like them.
Rick flashed his badge. “Torres, Missing Persons,” he said.
“Heard what happened,” the guard said, the toothpick bobbing up and down. “Don’t know nothin’.”
“In my experience,” Rick said, “nobody ever knows nothing.”
“Huh?” said the guard.
Bernie’s lips curled up a bit, like he was about to smile. I didn’t know why, just knew he and Rick were pals.
“This gatehouse manned at night?” Rick said.
“Twenty-four seven,” said the guard.
“Who was on last night?”
“Yours truly. Weekends we go midnight to noon.”
“You work for the circus?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Got some ID?” The guard handed over his ID. Rick gazed at it, then looked at the guard. “Darren P. Quigley?”
“Yup.”
“Mind losing the shades, Darren?”
Shades? Hadn’t even noticed them, what with that toothpick. Darren took off his shades, maybe in a way that was a little too slow; I felt Bernie stiffen beside me. Darren had small bloodshot eyes with dark circles under them. I liked him better with the shades on.
“So you came on at midnight?” Rick said.
“Yup.”
“And?”
“And what?”
“Darren,” Rick said. “An elephant is missing.”
“Tole you. Didn’t see nothin’, didn’t hear nothin’.”
“Were you here the whole time?”
“That’s the job.”
Rick’s voice rose. “Answer the question.”
“Yeah, I was here.”
“Awake?”
Darren nodded, the toothpick moving fast, like he was chewing on it hard.
“Let’s hear a verbal answer.”
“Yeah. Wide awake every goddamn minute. No one came in. No one went out.”
Silence.
“Can I get my ID back now?”
Rick turned to Bernie. “Any thoughts?”
“Darren,” Bernie said, “this is Chet.”
My tail started up.
“So?” said Darren.
And went still, just like that.
“Chet’s a great tracker,” Bernie said.
“The best,” said Rick.
That Rick! What a guy! My tail started right back up again, wagging hard.
“And,” Bernie went on, “he’s tracked the elephant from its cage over to here. The likely scenario is that the elephant was in some kind of trailer. Less likely would be the elephant being led on foot. Either way, a hard-to-miss sight for anyone who happened to be in the gatehouse.”
“Unless that someone was asleep,” Rick added.
“Or blind drunk,” Bernie said.
Darren gave Bernie a hard stare. “Tole you what I tole you.”
“But it doesn’t add up,” Bernie said.
“You believe a fuckin’ dog over me?”
“Language,” said Bernie.
“Huh?”
“His name’s Chet.”
“So?”
Now Bernie was giving Darren a hard stare back. Darren looked away, spat out his toothpick. We stood there, me, Bernie, and Rick, our eyes on Darren. No one spoke. Finally, Rick handed back the ID. “And here’s my card,” he said, his voice not friendly, “in case your story changes.”
“Nothin’s gonna change,” Darren said and headed toward the gatehouse.
I wandered over to that toothpick, lying in the dirt, and gave it a sniff. Hey! Darren had done some puking, and pretty recently. Impossible to miss: I’ve smelled lots of puke in my time—alleys behind bars are prime spots, and so are the parking lots out front, and even right inside the bars, fancy ones, too. I barked a bit and pawed at the toothpick, but no one was paying attention. They were watching a long, white convertible approaching the gate on the road outside.