TWENTY-THREE
Back in the square: ah! The air smelled so fresh after La Pulquería. I took a nice deep breath, felt tip-top.
“Let’s go to church, big guy,” Bernie said.
Church? I’ve been in churches a few times—a perp name of Whizzer DuPuis tried to hide from us under a pew at St. Dominic’s in South Pedroia—and never felt comfortable. Churches were big and hushed at the same time, a combo I didn’t like, but also—what were they all about? I know what a restaurant’s about, for example, or a grocery store, or Petco. But if Bernie says we’re going to church, then that’s that.
The church stood at one corner of the square, a white stone building, actually pretty small. The wooden door, old and cracked, squeaked when Bernie opened it. No one inside, but it wasn’t hushed: I heard a guitar, not far away. So far, not too bad for a church. There were no pews, just card-table-type chairs set up on the cool stone floor, with an aisle down the middle. We were walking down it when the music stopped abruptly and a side door opened.
Did I get a fright then or what? A woman—I knew it was a woman, but only from the scent—appeared in the doorway. She gave me the same feeling I’d gotten when Bernie and I went through a period of watching horror movies, a short period because they turned out to be too scary for both of us. I got right next to Bernie, even maybe a bit behind him; I’m not ashamed to admit it, or if I am I’ll get over it soon. The woman wore a strange kind of long black robe, and also had a black hood thing with weird side flaps sticking out, everything black except the insides of those flaps and the tight white covering that hid her neck and ears, came up practically to her chin.
“Hola, sister,” Bernie said.
Sister? Do you know that human expression—my heart skipped a beat? At that moment it happened to me for real: I felt a pause deep in my chest. I was shocked, more shocked than I could ever remember. Bernie had a sister and I was just finding out after all this time? He had a mother—a piece of work, can’t go into that now—but besides her and Charlie, no other family. Life was full of surprises, like when out of the blue someone says, “Let’s pick up some dog treats on the way,” but this wasn’t that kind of surprise.
“Buenas tardes, señor,” the scary woman said. “You’re American?”
Huh? Yeah, Bernie was American—me, too—but wasn’t that a pretty basic thing to know about your own brother?
“Yes,” Bernie said. “You speak English?”
“I do.”
“Good,” said Bernie. “My Spanish is a little rusty.”
I knew rust—could actually smell it sometimes, which had led to me digging up a knife that cracked a case, all the other details of which are gone—but I wasn’t getting even a whiff of it now, had no idea what Bernie was talking about.
The scary woman looked at me. “Your dog seems a bit shy.”
“Shy?” said Bernie. Me, shy? My thought, exactly. Then he glanced back, saw that I was now pretty much completely behind him. Bernie smiled. “Probably the first time he’s seen a nun, sister—at least in full habit.”
The woman smiled, a nice smile, with even white teeth and happy eyes. “He’s very handsome,” she said. And just like that, whether she was Bernie’s sister or not, this nun person wasn’t scary anymore. Life is full of surprises, in case I haven’t pointed that out in a while. I came out from behind Bernie, not that I’d really been behind him, more at his side, in truth, or even a bit in front.
“I’m Sister Mariana,” the nun said, coming forward.
“Bernie Little,” said Bernie. “And this is Chet.”
So they were meeting for the first time? And still, she was calling herself sister? I made up my mind never to think about this again.
“May I pat him?” Sister Mariana said.
“I’ve never seen him object,” said Bernie.
Sister Mariana gave me a pat, not an expert-type pat, but still nice. “I hope you’re not here for the blessing of the animals,” she said. “It was last week.”
“Chet might have enjoyed that,” Bernie said. “Or maybe not. But we’re looking for information about Jesús Malverde.”
The smile faded from Sister Mariana’s face, starting with her eyes, the way a human smile fades. She backed away. “This is a church,” she said.
“Isn’t Jesús Malverde a saint?”
“Most surely not,” said Sister Mariana. “The church is for peace.”
“If he isn’t a saint what is he?” Bernie said.
Sister Mariana glanced around. Sunlight shone through a stained-glass window—I knew what those were on account of we had one once, but Leda took it with her after the divorce—and made a splash of color on the floor. “Is your purpose good?” Sister Mariana said.
“I’m a private investigator,” Bernie said. “We’re looking for a guy named—”
She held up her hand, long, thin, pale. “No details,” she said. “Is the purpose good? That’s all I want to know.”
“Yes,” said Bernie. “Our purpose is good. The results sometimes end up mixed.” My tail started wagging, which it sometimes does on its own, not sure why.
Sister Mariana gazed at Bernie, her face kind of hard. Then she looked at me and softened a bit. “What I said is true: Jesús Malverde is not a real saint, not from the church. But he is the saint of the outlaws. They have shrines by the roadside, with fresh flowers when someone is killed.”
“Any of those shrines around here?”
“One,” said Sister Mariana.
Bernie left some money in the box by the door as we went out.
Our purpose was good. What did that mean? I tried to figure that out on the drive but didn’t get anywhere, even though it turned out to be a long drive—out of San Anselmo, up the side of the second hump, steeper and more rugged than the first, the road much worse, just a narrow, rocky track with sheer drop-offs on one side and cliffs on the other, nobody around, like it was only me and Bernie in the world. Once we had to stop and roll a boulder out of the way. Bernie did the actual rolling. I tried not to get too excited.
“Watch it there, Chet. I don’t want the goddamn thing to—”
But it did—no way I had anything to do with that happening—making the one extra roll like when a golf ball pauses at the rim of the cup, which reminded me of a little adventure that maybe had been my fault and . . . where was I? Right. The one extra roll that took the boulder right to the edge and then—boombity boombity boom. Way way down it fell, bouncing and tumbling and finally ending up as only a puff of distant dust, hardly visible. We gazed down at that puff of dust, both of us leaning over the drop-off, watching the wind carry it away.
“The past is so strong here,” Bernie said. “Like the whole mountain’s full of ghosts.”
Ghosts? Uh-oh. That was very bad. What is it about Halloween that brings out the worst in humans? I had a quick look around, saw no ghosts, nobody of any kind; just me and Bernie, up on this cliff edge. He gave me a pat.
We hopped back into the car—me actually hopping, Bernie using the door, but I knew he was capable of hopping into the car because I’d seen him do it, sort of, on a day Suzie happened to be around—and headed up the switchbacks. They took us across the face of the second hump, higher and higher, the desert floor shimmering way down below. Hey! Was this how the birds saw things? Maybe, but if so why did they always have that mean look in their eyes? And the air, so clean and pure: maybe they didn’t appreciate that, either. But I sure did. And so did Bernie. I put my paw on his knee. The car made a sudden swerve toward the drop-off.
“Chet—what’s with you?” Bernie jerked the wheel, got us back on track.
Nothing. Nothing was with me. I sat up tall, a pro and on the job.
We worked our way around the mountain, came to the other side. In the distance lay a great plain, spreading on and on, with towns here and there and thin black highways connecting them, sunlight flaring on shiny things. We followed the track around a huge outcrop and into a narrow canyon with steep slopes rising on both sides, coming closer and closer and finally coming together.
“Box canyon,” Bernie said.
I’d been in box canyons twice before that I could remember. Once was on a camping trip and Bernie had played his ukulele by the fire. The other time there was lots of gunfire.
Or maybe it was the same time.
We followed the track to the end of the box canyon. A village lay there, reddish like the countryside, with a few small trees growing nearby and nothing stirring. As we got closer I saw that the village was mostly rubble, houses with no roofs, crumbling walls. The tallest ruin, a kind of guard tower, maybe, stood near the trees, at a point where the track narrowed to a footpath that climbed the steep slope beyond the village.
Bernie stopped the car by a pile of rocks and we got out. The pile had been flattened on the side facing the road, and in the carved-out part was a painting of the dark-haired unsmiling dude with the thick mustache. “Jesús Malverde,” Bernie said. Someone had laid flowers on the ground in front of him, maybe a while back, since they were all brown and stiff; there were also a few empty shotgun cartridges lying in the dirt. Bernie kicked at them with his toe, then turned toward the trees. They stood close by, but down a little slope, in a kind of hollow, and among them were some wooden crosses.
We walked down into the hollow. “Might have been a pond here at one time,” Bernie said. No water to be seen now, but I could smell it. We took a look at the crosses. “No names on any of them,” Bernie said. “Meaning . . . ?”
I didn’t know. We came to the last cross, just two twigs nailed together. This cross had an empty bottle lying on the ground beside it. Bernie picked it up. “Four Roses,” he said. “I wonder—” he began, but by then I was barking.
Bernie hurried up to the car, came back with the folding shovel, pulled the cross out of the ground and started digging. I dug, too, somewhat faster than Bernie. I can dig all day if I have to, especially with this kind of dirt, dirt that had been dug already. In this case we didn’t have to dig all day, or even very long at all, before a face appeared, eyes open, and dirt in those open eyes. But the face itself was undamaged and I remembered it no problem.
“Christ,” Bernie said. “A dumb guy, but he still ended up knowing too much. Why couldn’t he get lucky, just once?”
We dug carefully around Darren Quigley. He had a hole in his chest, the big kind that comes from a close-up shotgun, and maggots were quivering inside it. Bernie stuck the shovel in the ground and bent down to pull Darren out of the grave. At that moment, a sound came from back up the slope, the sound of a hard heel snapping a dried-out twig. We turned.
Uniformed men stood at the top of the slope, handguns and rifles pointed at us; more men were appearing from behind the guard tower wall. I knew one of them: Captain Panza. He wasn’t smiling—in fact, his face was hard and mean—but I got the feeling he was enjoying himself.
Bernie reached for his cell phone.
CRACK. A gunshot—and the cell phone, all in bits, flew from Bernie’s hand.
“Hands to the sky if you want to live,” Captain Panza said. A breeze had sprung up, bringing with it the smell of his shaving lotion, the kind Skins Barkley liked, but too late for that as well. Bernie raised his hands. “You are under arrest for murder,” said Captain Panza.