TEN
My eyes snapped open. I was lying with my back to the door, our front hall full of sunshine. I gave myself a good stretch, sticking my legs way way out, and felt a funny—not pain, really, more of a tug—yes, a funny tug in my shoulder, and everything came back to me, and if not everything, then at least some of it. Like that huge guy, and the baseball bat, and what else? Cheetos. I rose and went into the kitchen.
Food bowl: empty. I licked it anyway. Water bowl: full. I lapped some up. Not fresh, even a bit dusty on the surface, but I found I was real thirsty and drank and drank, splashing some of it here and there. While that was happening, the phone on the counter rang. A voice came through the answering machine: “Bernie Little? Marvin Winkleman here.” Marvin Winkleman? I recognized the voice but . . . and then it came to me: divorce work, ticket guy, comb-over. “That jerk, the one my wife is cheating with? I’ve changed my mind—I want you to check into him after all. Get back to me as soon as you can.” Click.
Then the house was quiet again, except for the faint sound of Bernie’s snores. Bernie’s snores are nice, kind of like ocean waves on a beach, a sound I’d heard once in my life, that time we went to San Diego. We surfed, me and Bernie! I’ll get to that another time. Right now I was on my way down the hall to take a look at him.
He lay on the bed, still dressed from last night, even down to his shoes, with one arm thrown back over his head. I moved to the bedside. His chest rose and fell. I could see dried blood on his head above one ear, not much. I climbed up on the bed and settled down. Bernie snored.
Sometime later the phone rang again, not Bernie’s cell phone, which lay on the bedside table, but the phone in the kitchen. Bernie grunted, reached out for the cell phone, eyes still closed, had some trouble with the buttons, finally said, “Hello? Hello?” Meanwhile, I could hear Winkleman’s voice again on the answering machine in the kitchen. A thought about humans and machines started to take shape in my mind.
“What, uh?” Bernie said. The phone slipped from his hand, fell on the floor. His eyes opened, but not quite at the same time, one a bit ahead of the other; that bothered me, can’t say why. He sat up, that zigzag groove suddenly appearing on his forehead, and said, “Who’s that?” at the same moment Winkleman stopped talking. He looked at me. “Hey, Chet.” He gave me a pat. “How are you doing?” I thumped my tail on the blanket. “Good boy.” He glanced around. “Broad daylight. That’s no good.” He rubbed his face, got up, went into the bathroom. “Still in my goddamn . . .”
Then came pill bottle sounds, tooth-brushing sounds, showering sounds. Wisps of steam leaked out from under the bathroom door. After a while, he started singing. I recognized the song: “He Stopped Loving Her Today.” We’d been listening to it in the car a lot lately, but I couldn’t say it was one of my favorites, like “It Hurts Me Too” with Elmore James’s slide guitar that did things deep inside my ears, hard to describe. I got up, went into the kitchen, sat down; near the food bowl, but that was just by accident.
Bernie came into the kitchen looking great, all back to normal. No dried blood, no zigzag groove. “Any chance someone’s hungry?” he said. Bernie was a good guesser. Who’d said that recently? I tried to remember, soon gave up. “Any of that salami left?” Bernie opened the fridge. Salami? You bet there was some left, and I knew right away, but it took him a while to find it. “Thought, I’d . . . ah, here we go.” Soon Bernie was slicing a nice fat salami. He put some slices in my bowl, mixed them in with kibble. Then he heated up coffee from yesterday or maybe the day before, sliced some more salami for himself, and sat at the table. I poked through my bowl, gobbling up all traces of salami before I even took one bit of kibble. We had a nice breakfast.
Bernie finished his coffee, sat back, rubbed his hands together. Always a good sign, meaning soon we’d be in action. “C’mon over here, big guy. Let’s see how you’re moving.” I walked over to Bernie, moving just fine. He took my head in his arms, gave me a big hug. “You’re something, you know that?” he said. Not sure what he was getting at, but nothing wrong with that hug. “I’ve got a strong suspicion you saved my bacon last night.”
Bacon? There’d been bacon last night? Cheetos, yes, but that was it. Had I somehow missed out on bacon?
“Hey,” said Bernie, “something the matter?” He felt my shoulder.
What a question! Of course something was the matter—did bacon happen every day? Nowhere close. Why was that, anyway? I tried to think of one good reason and couldn’t.
Bernie noticed the message light blinking, jabbed the button as he went by. “Bernie Little? Marvin Winkleman—” Bernie hit the button again. “Later, Marv.” He wrapped the baseball bat in plastic, grabbed the plastic bag with the bandanna inside, and we hopped in the Porsche. Iggy, watching from his window, jumped up and down as we drove away.
We met Rick Torres at Donut Heaven, parking cop-style.
“Cruller?” said Rick.
Bernie shook his head. “Just ate. We—”
“How about Chet?”
“He just ate, too.”
Yes, but very late and really not all that much, considering that yesterday amounted to a few Cheetos and hardly anything else. And can I mention something, even though I love Cheetos? They’re mostly air. I’m a hundred-plus-pounder, can’t live on air.
“Also got a bacon croissant I can’t finish,” Rick said.
Bacon? Bacon coming up again, and so soon?
“Chet! Down!”
Oops. I slid back onto my seat.
“I get the impression he wants it,” Rick said.
Bernie sighed, a real good sign at a moment like that. “Oh, what the hell,” he said.
The next little while I was too busy to take in much of what they were talking about. That whole package, croissant with bacon inside? What can I tell you? I licked every last crumb and flake off my lips and then sat up straight and still, a pro, on the job.
“We’re nowhere, really,” Rick was saying, “and I’m not sure there’s anywhere much to go.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Bernie said. “Don’t we have a missing person and a missing elephant?”
“Yes and no,” said Rick. He handed Bernie a sheet of paper. “Came about an hour ago—this is a copy.”
Bernie read the letter out loud. “‘Dear Sergeant Torres, I can no longer be complicit in the exploitation of this magnificent creature. I have taken Peanut to a place where she will be safe for the rest of her life. You will never find us and I do not believe you have any cause to search. Peanut is the property of no one. Sincerely, Uri DeLeath.’” Bernie looked up. “Checked the handwriting?”
“His, uh, friend, the guy who plays the clown—”
“Popo?”
“Yeah, Popo. He had some samples, grocery lists, that kind of thing. Handwriting guy says it’s a match.” Rick’s phone rang. He spoke into it. “Torres. Uh-huh. Yup.” He clicked off. “Forensics—they got two clear prints on the original, thumb and index finger, both DeLeath’s.”
Bernie was silent for a moment or two. Then he said, “What does Popo think?”
“We’re gonna let a clown run the investigation?” Rick said. He started laughing, couldn’t stop. That happens to humans sometimes, always ends up making me anxious. Rick gasped for air, wiped away tears with the back of his sleeve.
“Feel better now?” Bernie said.
“Aw, come on, Bernie—where’s your sense of humor?”
“Lost it last night.”
“What happened last night?”
“Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “The point is that if DeLeath has really taken off, then he took off on Popo, too.”
“Yeah,” said Rick, “making him an unreliable interpreter of events.”
“What’s his interpretation?”
“Like you’d think.”
“Meaning he doesn’t believe the letter?”
“Correct. But he has no alternate theory.”
“And you?”
“We’re in a wait-and-see mode, Bernie. The case is open, but the department’s not going to devote a lot of resources to this, absent some new information.”
“How about the colonel? Doesn’t he want his elephant back?”
“He was headed out to the golf course—didn’t have much to say.”
“Is Peanut insured?”
“I can check,” Rick said. “Think it’s an insurance scam?”
Bernie thought for a moment. “Not really,” he said. “Did you get any prints off that ankus?”
“Yeah,” said Rick. “But not DeLeath’s.”
“Whose?”
“Nobody in the system.”
Bernie gave the bat to Rick.
“Cool,” Rick said. “Willie McCovey model. Five bucks if you can tell me his nickname.”
“Stretch,” said Bernie. “See what Forensics can find on the bat—a match to prints from the ankus would be nice.”
“Why?” Rick said, handing over some money, for what reason I didn’t know.
“Even if the letter’s kosher,” Bernie said, “there’s no way DeLeath did it alone.”
Kosher? I knew all about kosher, a kind of chicken, in fact the best chicken I’d ever tasted, at the celebration dinner after the final stakeout in the Teitelbaum divorce. The Teitelbaum divorce: a nightmare. Mrs. Teitelbaum riding a bulldozer straight through the wall of the garage where Mr. Teitelbaum kept his antique car collection—hard to forget a sight like that. My mind stayed with the memory a little too long, and if Bernie mentioned how chickens were coming into the case, I missed it, looking up only in time to see him handing over the plastic bag with the bandanna.
“And how about running a couple names,” he was saying, “Darren Quigley—”
“The guard?” Rick said. “Ran him first thing. Think I don’t know how to do my job?”
“Hey, easy. You know I don’t think anything like that.”
“Sorry,” Rick said. “These goddamn budget cuts—everybody’s on edge. As for Quigley, one DUI a few years back.”
“That’s it?”
“Yup. What’s the other name?”
“Jocko Cochrane.”
Rick turned to his computer, tapped at the keyboard.
“Could be Jack,” Bernie said, “or possibly John.”
Rick gave Bernie a look. “Bernie?”
“Sorry.”
“I’m your defender—you realize that?”
“Defender against what?” Bernie said.
“Some people in the department aren’t fans of yours,” Rick said. “I hope that’s not news.”
Someone wasn’t a fan of Bernie? I didn’t get it.
“That was all a long time ago,” Bernie said.
“You stuck it to the big guys, Bernie. Big guys have long memories.”
Wow! I’d never known that. Bernie was bigger than Rick, so he had a longer memory. And that huge guy with the bandanna? His memory would be even longer. What about Cedric Booker, the Valley DA? He’d starred on the Valley College basketball team, might have gone pro, Bernie said, except he couldn’t play with his back to the basket, whatever that meant. The truth is, I’ve never had much interest in basketball, on account of the ball being impossible for me, but the point is . . . gone right now, but maybe it will come back.
Meanwhile, Rick was checking his computer. “No hits,” he said, “not for Cochrane—Jocko, Jack, or John. Who is he?”
“Someone you’d expect to have hits,” said Bernie.
“The smartest ones never do,” Rick said.
“This guy’s not that smart,” Bernie said.
“Maybe he has a brainy boss.”
A look came into Bernie’s eyes, like he was watching something far, far away. Always interesting when that happens, but what it meant I couldn’t tell you.
Rick drove away. We sat there in the Donut Heaven lot, Bernie sipping what was left of his coffee, me eyeing the traffic going by on the street, just in case any of my guys—the guys from what Bernie calls the nation within the nation—went riding by. Didn’t see any of my guys, but then a car I knew pulled into the lot. I’m not too good on cars, but this one—a yellow Beetle—was easy. It zipped up on my side and Suzie Sanchez got out. Suzie’s a reporter for the Valley Tribune. I’m pretty sure she likes Bernie and he likes her, but it hasn’t been smooth, partly on account of her old boyfriend Dylan McKnight, possibly a perp of some kind, and partly I don’t know why.
“Hi, guys,” she said.
“Uh, hey,” said Bernie. “Hi. Hello.”
“And hi hello to you, too,” Suzie said. She has shiny black eyes like the countertops in our kitchen. “Someone’s been eating bacon.”
How did she know that? It was gone, every last morsel.
“How do you know that?” Bernie said.
“From the smell—what do you think?” Suzie said.
Suzie’s a gem. If I already mentioned that, I’m mentioning it again. She gave me a quick pat and moved around to Bernie’s side of the car.
“Um,” said Bernie, looking up at her, “didn’t expect to see you here.”
“But I expected to see you here,” Suzie said. “Hoped, actually.”
“Yeah?” Bernie said. “Want a cruller?”
“No,” Suzie said. “I want to interview you.”
Uh-oh. Suzie had interviewed Bernie once before, which was how they’d met. It hadn’t gone well: she’d described Bernie as shambling. Can’t remember what that means now, but Bernie hadn’t liked it.
“What about?” he said.
“This story you’re sitting on,” Suzie said. “The missing elephant.”
“There’s not much to tell.”
“Liar,” said Suzie, flipping through a notebook. “Let’s start with the trainer, DeLeath—does that rhyme with death, by the way?”
“Wreath,” Bernie said, losing me completely.
“And he’s missing, too?”
“I can’t really say. I’ve got a client.”
“Who?”
Bernie laughed, wincing slightly at the end.
“Bernie? Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“You look like you have a headache or something.”
“I’m fine.”
Suzie put her hand on Bernie’s forehead. A very nice expression appeared on his face. “No fever,” she said, taking her hand away. “Is the client Popo the clown?”
“Why him?” Bernie said.
“Because he and DeLeath are a couple.”
“How do you know that?”
“Sometimes I actually do research, Bernie. They went to Massachusetts and got married a few years ago. The AP wrote it up.”
Bernie said nothing, just sat there, that faraway look in his eyes again.
“What are you thinking?” Suzie said.
“Not every couple splits up,” said Bernie.
“True,” said Suzie. “And therefore?”
“Chet and I have to get going.”
“You’re not being very helpful.”
“Should know more tonight. How about the Dry Gulch at seven?”
Couldn’t be better.