Paw and Order (5 page)

FIVE

B
ernie?” Suzie said into her phone. “Come on, pick up. Please.”

We were still in Eben's office but had moved a little farther away from Eben's body. His face was getting whiter and waxier, which somehow made his neatly trimmed beard more and more prominent, almost like the beard was alive on its own or something like that. I wished I hadn't had that thought. It went away.

“Bernie? Bernie? Wake up!”

Right about then I smelled one of those smells Bernie and I had worked on. Who wouldn't like working on smells? For one thing, it involves treats, often a Slim Jim. No other thing actually comes to me, but aren't Slim Jims enough? This particular smell, the one I was picking up at the moment, was metallic and gunpowdery. I followed it to the foot of Eben's desk chair, a roller chair pushed back from the desk a bit. A shell casing lay beside one of the little chair wheels. I sat beside it and barked, just this clipped and not very loud bark I use for smell work.

Suzie looked down at me, saw the shell casing, and put the phone away.

“You're really something, you know that?”

How nice of her! And even nicer was the Slim Jim, coming next. But it didn't! Instead, Suzie turned and went into the outer office. I followed, followed very closely, the leash now forgotten by Suzie and dragging on the floor. Suzie opened the top drawer of the reception desk. The Slim Jims were in there? Made total sense to me. She reached in and . . . took out a notebook? She flipped through it, found no Slim Jims that I could see. Things were taking a bad turn. Suzie placed a finger on one of the notebook pages and picked up the desk phone.

“The building manager, please,” she said.

• • •

Not long after that, we had a bunch of uniformed cops in the room. There was some back and forth, some huddling over Eben, and then Suzie showed them the shell casing. Meaning one of the cops had the Slim Jim responsibility? But no. They got started with crime scene taping, picture taking, gum chewing, all the usual cop things. The cop with the most gold on his uniform made a little motion to Suzie and led us out to the hallway.

“You who called it in?” he said.

“Yes,” said Suzie.

“Name?”

“Suzie Sanchez. And yours?”

The cop didn't seem to like that. His eyes, like little raisins—I'd tried a box of raisins once, found them too sticky for my taste—got even littler. “Lieutenant Soares.” He turned those raisin eyes on me. “This your dog?”

“A friend's, actually.”

“Looks like a K-9 type.”

I was! I was the K-9 type! Was Lieutenant Soares on Slim Jim duty? Maybe he wasn't so bad after all. He turned back to Suzie, seemed to be waiting for her to speak. When she did not, he said, “How about you take me through it?”

“Through what?” Suzie said.

“Your relationship to the deceased, for starters.”

“He's—he was an acquaintance.”

“And the purpose of your visit?”

“Eben was a consultant. I was consulting him.”

“What did he consult about?”

“International politico-economics.”

“Is that what you do?” Lieutenant Soares said. “International politico-economics?”

“In a sense,” Suzie said. “I'm a reporter for the
Washington Post
.”

“Ah,” said Lieutenant Soares. His eyes shifted one way, then the other. That's a sign of thoughts getting batted around in the human mind. Lieutenant Soares opened his mouth and looked on the point of saying something—I'd have bet anything it was about Slim Jims!—but at that moment the elevator opened down the hall and a man stepped out. He came toward us, a quick-walking dude in a dark suit. Lots of dark-suited dudes in this city; I thought about making what Bernie calls a mental note, but nothing came next and I dropped the whole shebang.

Hey! The quick-stepping dude turned out to be the intense-type of human who pushes a sort of energy wave in front of him, a wave I could feel in a hard-to-explain way. Hadn't run into one of those since Pepperpot McGint, a tiny booze-truck hijacker who'd put up the best fight of anyone I'd ever seen one-on-one with Bernie and now was breaking rocks in the hot sun, probably lots of them and real fast.

This new energy-pushing dude—he had a big bony nose, something I always like to see in a human—stopped in front of Lieutenant Soares. “You in charge?” he said, flashing some kind of ID.

Lieutenant Soares squinted at the ID in an unfriendly way and then said, “Yeah,” also in an unfriendly way.

“I'll be taking over now.”

“Didn't catch your name.”

“But you just saw it.” They stared at each other. “Ferretti,” said the new guy. “Double R's, double T's, Victor D.” He pushed past us and entered Eben's office. Lieutenant Soares muttered something that didn't sound nice and followed. We did, too. By that time, Ferretti was already in the inner office.

“Whoa,” said one of the cops, holding up his hand in the stop sign.

“It's all right,” said Lieutenant Soares.

Ferretti ducked under a strip of crime tape in one easy motion and stood over Eben. He gazed down at him for a long time. Everyone else stopped what they were doing and gazed at Ferretti. He turned slowly away from Eben and then paused, his eyes on a potted plant in the far corner of the room.

“What have we here?” he said, ducking back under the yellow tape and walking over to the plant. Something lay half-buried in the blackish earth. Ferretti snapped on plastic gloves, reached into the pot, and pulled out a gun. He blew off the dirt in two puffs and held it up, a real small gun with a pink handle.

“Twenty-two?” said Lieutenant Soares.

Ferretti nodded.

One of the cops raised the shell casing. “Twenty-two,” she said.

• • •

When we got back to Suzie's place, the red-haired woman—Lizette the landlady, had I gotten that right?—was outside the main house, watering flowers with a hose. Spray me! That was my first and only thought.

“Hi, Suzie,” she said.

“Hi, Lizette.”

“Is something wrong?” Lizette said. “You look . . . not yourself.”

“Terribly wrong,” Suzie said. “A friend of mine's dead.”

Lizette's eyes opened wide, glittering and green. “I'm so sorry. Who . . . ah . . . ?”

“A consultant named Eben St. John,” Suzie said.

“The name's not familiar,” said Lizette.

“He was shot,” Suzie said. “Murdered.”

“Oh, my God,” Lizette said, putting one hand to her chest. The other steered the hose nozzle back and forth in a steady rhythm over the flowers. “Shot? Murdered? What happened? Do they know who did it?”

Suzie started in on a long explanation. I watched the flowing water from the hose. Spray me! It didn't have to be for long: a quick spritz would do.

But no. When I tuned in again, Lizette was saying, “. . . distance between him and the flowerpot?”

“Ten feet or so,” Suzie said.

“Ruling out suicide.”

“That's what the police thought.”

“Who was in charge?” Lizette said. “I—I happen to know some people on the force.”

“A lieutenant named Soares.”

Lizette shook her head.

“I hear you also know Lanny Sands,” Suzie said.

“The political guy?” Lizette said. “I know who he is, of course, but we've never met. Where did you hear that?”

“I must have got it mixed up,” Suzie said.

Lizette looked about to say something, but at that moment she noticed that I seemed to be in the flowerbed.

“I get the feeling he wants me to spray him,” she said.

“A safe bet,” Suzie said.

And the next thing I knew—yes! Spray, spray, and more spray! Nothing wrong with Lizette, in my opinion. They both watched me getting sprayed, the sight maybe relaxing them a little.

“Your imposing friend find you all right?” Lizette said.

“Imposing friend?”

“The rather big gentleman who belongs to this dog,” Lizette said, turning the nozzle and cutting off my water supply. “Bernie Little—your boyfriend from back home, if I understood right.”

“He did,” Suzie said.

What was this? A rather big gentleman who belonged to me? As I shook off the water—sending my own spray right back on Lizette and Suzie, fun on top of fun!—I went over all my belongings. There were my collars, black for dress-up and gator skin for every day, gator skin replacing my old brown one on a case that's way too complicated to go into now, but let's just say I never wanted to see a huge green dude name of Iko ever again in my life. Then I had my water bowl at home, plus my food bowl, and don't forget the portable water bowl for the car. The Porsche itself: a belonging? What else could it be? And shared with Bernie, the way I like to do things. Hey! That meant the house on Mesquite Road in the Valley was mine, too! Mine and Bernie's, of course, goes without mentioning by now. And I'd be happy to share my collars and bowls with him if he wanted. I'd actually seen him drink from the portable water bowl on several occasions, the latest being toward the end of the Police Athletic League picnic. Other than those, I had no possessions, so I'd gotten nowhere on this problem, whatever it was.

“. . . considered journalism myself at one time,” Lizette was saying. The light caught her green eyes in a way that seemed to green them even more. Lizette was one of those humans you wanted to stare at, hard to say why.

“Oh?”

Lizette smiled. She had very white teeth, small and even. “In a former life. Now I'm with a Web developer.”

Suzie nodded. “Where was this, if you don't mind my asking?”

“Excuse me?”

“This former life.”

“Ah,” said Lizette, “you've picked up the remains of my accent?”

“But I can't place it.”

“I'm from Quebec originally,” Lizette said.

“I went to winter carnival once in Montreal, back in college.” Suzie said. “I loved it.”

“Where did you stay?”

“A B-and-B,” Suzie said.

“Next time try the Château Frontenac—old Montreal at its best.”

“Thanks,” Suzie said.

One of those strange silences that seem to settle in from above now came over us. “So awful about—what was his name again?”

“Eben St. John.”

“So awful,” Lizette went on. She rubbed her forehead with her fingertips, leaving a dark smear of garden soil. “If there's anything I can do . . .”

I stepped out of the flowerbed, careful not to damage hardly anything at all.

• • •

“Will you just look at him?” Suzie said, her voice quiet.

For as long as she liked! We were in Suzie's room, just inside the door, watching Bernie sleep. He lay on his side, face toward us, eyes closed, eyelashes crusted over with a surprising amount of eye gunk. That was Bernie, of course, always doing things in a big way, just another reason for the success of the Little Detective Agency, except for the finances part, which may have come up already, but it comes up a lot in real life, too, if that makes any sense, so . . . so something or other. Meanwhile, Bernie's breathing—he's a wonderful breather, hard to explain how exactly—was slow and regular, mouth open just a bit, drool leaking from the downward corner. He looked great. Suzie went over to the bedside table, picked up Bernie's phone, checked the screen, sighed.

She put the phone down, but too close to the edge of the table and it fell to the floor, landing with a not loud but sort of hard
clack-clack
. Then came something very scary I'd seen once or twice and had hoped never to see again. Bernie went from being totally still to totally in motion, springing from the bed with a kind of—yes, growl—and grabbing Suzie by the wrist so fast I didn't really know what had happened until it was over. Suzie cried out. Bernie's eyes, which were all blurry, slowly cleared. He let go of Suzie's wrist, sat down on the edge of the bed with a heavy thump.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “I'm sorry.” He hung his head. I hated seeing that.

“What . . . what happened, Bernie?” Suzie said, rubbing her wrist. “Was it a bad dream?”

“I don't know.” Bernie took her wrist, gave it a kiss. I moved in a little closer. Don't think for a moment that I had a problem with Bernie kissing Suzie's wrist. It was just that . . . that . . .

“I haven't had an . . . episode in a long time,” Bernie was saying, “didn't think I'd ever . . .”

“Episode?” Suzie said.

Bernie shrugged his shoulders.

“Like a flashback?” Suzie said.

“I guess that's what they call it.”

“To the war?”

Bernie nodded. A long time ago, before we'd gotten together, Bernie'd been to the war and had some bad times. I knew from the wound on his leg, which I may have mentioned before. He limped a bit, but not often, only if we were working real steep country, or he'd had to run for a long time. And Bernie didn't have to run much, running being my department, amigo. He brings other things to the table.

“Want to talk about it?” Suzie said.

Bernie shook his head. He rose, rubbed his face hard with both hands, and then . . . then gave himself a sort of shake. Not my type of shake that goes from nose to tail and back again—impossible what with Bernie having no tail—but a pretty good shake, and in fact a great one for a human. But that was Bernie.

“You're all right?” Suzie said.

“Yeah.” And I could see it. Bernie was back to normal Bernie, just the way I love him. He glanced at me—his expression changing slightly—and back to Suzie. “What have I missed?”

SIX

E
ben?” Bernie said. “The Brit who was here this morning?”

“Yes, Bernie,” Suzie said. “That's what I'm trying to tell you.” She gave him a sideways look, maybe enjoying the way his hair was all messed up. And his eyebrows, too! Have I mentioned Bernie's eyebrows? They have a language of their own. “How about more coffee?” Suzie said.

Bernie shook his head. A vein throbbed in one of his hands, something I hadn't seen in a while, the last time being the only missing kid case we'd ever worked where we didn't get the kid back. That vein had throbbed in Bernie's hand; he'd whipped us into a screaming U-turn; we'd roared through the night, pedal to the metal; and gotten there too late. I'll never forget when we opened that broom closet. We'd taken care of justice later that night ourselves, me and Bernie. I won't forget that either. Or the name of the kid: Gail.

Back to Suzie's kitchen. The vein throbbed. Bernie said, “You discovered the body?”

“Chet and I, yes.”

“Are you all right?” That had to be meant for Suzie: dead body discovery was part of my job.

“I think so,” Suzie said. “I'm kind of stunned, if you want the truth.”

“Um,” Bernie said. “Uh.” Then he reached across the table and patted Suzie's hand. Their fingers kind of wound around each other, almost like living things. Whoa. But, of course, they were living things. I'd meant more like . . . like dancers, say. Finger dancers? Back up, big guy. You're in way over your head.

“. . . a Lieutenant Soares from Metro Police,” Suzie was saying.

“What was he like?” Bernie said.

“Seemed competent, but he wasn't in charge for long. A plainclothes guy showed up pretty soon and took over.”

“A detective captain?”

“I don't know. I sensed the usual uniform slash nonuniform tension. Ferretti was his name, double R, double T, Victor D. He seemed even more competent, now that I think about it.”

“How so?”

“For one thing, he hadn't been there for more than a minute or two before he found what I'm assuming is the murder weapon.”

“Which was?”

“A gun.”

“What kind of gun?”

“A pistol or revolver—I can never hold the distinction in my mind for some reason.”

“A pistol has an ammo clip, whereas—”

“And please don't explain it again. A twenty-two, by the way, which matched the shell casing Chet found on the floor.”

Bernie gave me a nice smile. I moved closer to him in case a treat was in the cards. Something something part of success is just showing up, Bernie always says. Cards themselves I never wanted to see in the cards. We once had a very bad night with cards, me and Bernie, although more Bernie if you want the actual truth, the problem having to do with inside straights, a complete mystery to me, and I guess from how it turned out, a mystery to Bernie, too. He gave me a nice scratch between the ears, hitting that spot I can never quite reach. No one hits that spot like Bernie. I forgot whatever it was I'd been wanting.

“. . . point I'm making,” Suzie went on, “is that this Ferretti guy was pretty sharp.”

“And he's satisfied it's a murder?”

“I think so.”

“What was the distance between the gun and the body?”

Suzie's eyes shifted.

“What?” Bernie said. “What was that thought?”

“I spoke to Lizette—the landlady—on the way in. She asked the same question in almost those exact words.”

“Maybe she's a PI in disguise,” Bernie said. “And the answer?”

“Ten feet, maybe a little more. Ruling out suicide, right?”

“How about robbery?”

“It wasn't mentioned.”

“Did they check Eben's wallet?”

“Not before we left,” Suzie said.

Bernie gazed down at the table. “What, ah, were you doing there?”

“Interviewing Eben,” Suzie said. “I told you he was a source.”

“On what story?”

Suzie was silent. Bernie looked up at her. Their eyes met. The way they were staring at each other bothered me in a way I could never explain, so I checked what was happening outside the window. And wouldn't you know it? The very first thing I saw was a bird flying by, a real strange-looking bird, and birds are not my favorite creatures to begin with, not even close. What's with those angry little eyes? Would I be angry if I could soar around the big blue sky twenty-four seven, whatever that is? There's a no-brainer for you, and who doesn't prefer a no-brainer to . . . to . . . a brainer?

Meanwhile, the bird flew past the window and out of sight. And then, whoa, it came back the other way, flying real slow and . . . what was this? Actually stopping outside the window? The bird hovered there for a moment or two. What were those tiny hovering birds we sometimes had near the patio flowerpots back home? Hummingbirds? I listened hard and sure enough picked up a faint hum from this bird outside the window. Humming, yes, but it didn't look much like the hummingbirds I knew, bigger for one thing, plus its wings, instead of a beating blur, weren't moving at all. As for angry bird eyes, this particular bird didn't seem to have any eyes at all! And also—but before I could get to the and alsos, the bird flew away again, wings perfectly still, and this time did not come back.

Back at the kitchen table, Bernie and Suzie were still looking at each other in that way I didn't like. Suzie said, “I wish I could tell you, Bernie.”

“Why can't you?” Bernie said.

“He never really told me anything,” Suzie said. “It was more like tantalizing.”

“Oh?”

“He said when the time was right he was going to have a scoop for me, a spooky kind of scoop as he put it.”

Spooky? Didn't I already know that? Whoa! Was I ahead of Bernie? What a thought!

“Spooky?” Bernie said. “What's that mean?”

“I don't really know,” Suzie said. “There were no specifics—I got the impression he was feeling me out.”

“Feeling you out,” Bernie said, in a way Suzie didn't like one little bit, easy to see in her eyes.

This was hard to follow. Even worse, they were angry at each other. The next thing I knew, I was barking, and barking pretty loud. It was all sorts of things, like them being angry at each other, and the strange bird, and . . . and—

“Chet!” Bernie said.

They were both looking at me. The anger faded from their eyes. “What's bothering him?” Suzie said.

“No idea,” Bernie said. He got up, went to the window, and glanced out. “Maybe he's thirsty.” Bernie filled my portable water bowl at the sink, set it down beside me. I wasn't thirsty at all, but what with Bernie being so nice, I lapped up a little sip, just to be nice back. The next thing I knew I was thirstier than I'd ever been in my life! I slurped my way right down to the bottom of the bowl absolutely nonstop—even getting sprayed a bit! And by my very own self! What a life!

There was a knock at Suzie's front door. And just when we were all getting along so well! Suzie went to answer it. Bernie mopped up the floor. I gave myself a quick, businesslike shake and was practically finished winding it down when Suzie returned, not alone: she had Lieutenant Soares with her. His little raisin eyes went to Bernie, then me, and back to Bernie. I actually smelled raisins.

“Didn't realize you had company,” Lieutenant Soares said. “You might want to—”

“I'd prefer Bernie's presence,” Suzie said. “Lieutenant Soares, my friend Bernie Little.”

“The one who belongs to the dog?” said Lieutenant Soares.

“His name's Chet,” Bernie said. They didn't shake hands.

Suzie sat down at the table. Lieutenant Soares took the chair Bernie had been using. Bernie leaned against the counter. I sat at his feet. A mouse made scratching sounds in the far wall. Nothing else was happening.

“I looked you up,” Lieutenant Soares said to Suzie, “read some of your work online. That story you wrote about those Neanderthal reenactors was pretty funny.”

“Thanks.”

“That was how it is, or you made some of it up?”

“I don't make anything up, Lieutenant.”

Soares nodded, a kind of nod with his head tilted to one side. Bernie, the best nodder there was, had one just like it. What did it mean? You tell me.

“Glad to hear that, and no insult intended,” Soares said. “Fill me in on Eben St. John.”

“What about him?” Suzie said.

“A telling anecdote would be nice,” Soares said.

“Telling anecdote?”

“The kind of thing that conveys the essence—the way you did with those Neanderthal guys and the bone marrow episode.”

I felt a change in Bernie. He didn't move, or go tense, or anything like that, but something inside him had switched on to the max. It was a change I'd felt in him before, the last time being just before we'd walked into an ambush at the old airplane graveyard out in the desert. All those bullets ricocheting off all those planes! I'd never heard such a racket, and I'm counting on it being a one-time-only event.

“I don't have an anecdote like that,” Suzie said. “All I can tell you is that Eben was well educated—he had a BA from Oxford and a PhD in economics from Georgetown—spoke several languages, and was an expert on Russia and Eastern Europe.”

“What do you know about World Wide Solutions?”

“That was his consulting company.”

“Who was behind it?” Soares said.

“Behind it in what way?” said Suzie.

“Funding,” Soares said. “Ownership.”

“I was under the impression that Eben owned it himself.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you saying that's false?”

“Just gathering information,” Soares said.

“I should be doing that myself,” Suzie said. “Are there any suspects?”

“Too soon to say.” Soares's glance went to Bernie, then back to Suzie. “How would you characterize your relationship with Mr. St. John?”

“We were acquaintances,” Suzie said, “as I think I mentioned before.”

“You did,” Soares said. “My apologies. Mind telling me the purpose of your visit? We've got his appointment list and you weren't on it for today.”

“I was following up on some earlier conversations.”

“About . . . ?”

“About a possible story.”

“And the subject matter of the story?”

“Do you really expect an answer?” Suzie said. “That's not how journalism works.”

“This is a murder investigation, Ms. Sanchez.”

I knew Bernie was going to say something even before he opened his mouth, not because I was actually following all this blather, no offense, but because I felt it coming. We're partners, which should be pretty clear by now. “So?” he said.

Soares turned slowly to Bernie. “Bernie, was it?” he said. “Are you familiar with murder investigations, Bernie?”

“Familiar enough to know you're out of line,” Bernie said.

Soares smiled, the first smile I'd seen out of him. He was one of those smilers who could do it without showing teeth. “Which side of murder investigations are you most familiar with?” he said.

Bernie smiled right back. His smile showed teeth: big beautiful white teeth that might even have been half-decent for biting, although I was still waiting for Bernie to bite anybody. What a day that's going to be! “Been on both sides,” Bernie said.

“Telling me you're a cop?” Soares said.

“I'm a private investigator.”

Soares's lips turned down at the corners. Humans never look their best that way, in my opinion.

“But he was a cop,” Suzie said.

Hey! I'd heard about that, wanted to hear more. But no more came. Soares didn't seem interested in Bernie's cop days, maybe hadn't been listening to Suzie at all. His eyes were fixed on Bernie. “Where you based out of?” he said.

“Arizona.”

Hey! I'd heard about that, too, and quite recently. I had an amazing thought, not me at all: Was the Valley somehow in Arizona? Or the other way around? The thought went away, and none too soon.

Soares held out his hand. “License?”

Bernie came closer, gave him our license. Soares squinted at it for what seemed like a long time. “You're not authorized to work DC.”

“Correct.”

“Just noting the fact.”

Soares handed it back. For a moment, they were both holding onto it, it being our license. That stuck in my mind, no telling why. Bernie didn't return to his spot by the counter, instead stood behind Suzie, his hands on the back of her chair.

“Ms. Sanchez,” Soares said, “I'm going to lay my cards on the table.”

I changed position to get a better view and watched closely, but no cards appeared, a good thing considering our luck with cards, a subject I may have already gone into and promise to leave alone from now on. Instead, Soares took a small leather-bound notebook from his pocket—a very nice-smelling leather that reminded me right away of that one quick lick I'd gotten of Eben's briefcase—and paged through it.

“Did you know Mr. St. John kept a diary?” Soares said.

“Of course not,” Suzie said. “I told you—we weren't close.”

“Yet,” Soares said.

“Yet?” said Suzie. “What is that supposed to mean?”

Soares reached across the table and handed her the leather-bound notebook. “Care to read the entry dated the sixteenth of last month, top of the left-hand page? Maybe aloud as a courtesy to your friend Bernie here.”

Suzie gazed at the notebook. Her eyes lost that dark countertop shine. Bernie, still standing behind her, could have looked down easily and read for himself, but he did not, instead kept his own eyes on Soares. Suzie closed the notebook and laid it on the table. “I know nothing about this,” she said.

Which made two of us. It suddenly struck me that I knew less and less all the time because there was more and more to . . . but the thought didn't quite come. I'm a lucky dude in just about every way.