A Fistful of Collars

SEVENTEEN

And I was going to let Thad go, no question about it, if not now then real soon, but before I could, I felt a sharp jab in my side, too sharp to ignore. I spun around and there in the dust, back way up and teeth bared, stood Brando, his golden eyes full of hate. He hissed at me-that horrible hiss cats have in their repertoire-in case I was missing the point about how he felt about me. Guess what. I felt the same for him, or maybe even more so. Hot rage boiled up in me-kind of a great feeling, I admit it-and I lunged at Brando, snarling my fiercest snarl, the one where spit sprays out of my mouth. And then Ow. That hurt. And so quick! Brando had swiped one of his claws right across my muzzle? That was what must have happened-too fast to see, but I figured it out from the way he was poised in front of me, one paw raised, still hissing. I licked my muzzle, tasted blood, my own, and decided to think things over. Sometimes I thought better if I had more space. That was the only reason I backed up a bit.

Meanwhile, Bernie was kneeling on the ground, turning Thad over on his back. Thad’s eyes were closed. Bernie stuck the gun in his belt and placed a finger on Thad’s neck.

“Thad? You all right?”

Thad’s eyes fluttered open, big, blue, empty.

“Thad? Say something.”

His eyes stopped being empty, got unfriendly instead. “Fuck off,” he said.

Bernie let him go. Thad wobbled, started to tip over, then stuck out his arm and caught himself.

“What are you staring at?” Thad said.

Bernie rose. “You’ve got coke all over your face,” he said.

Thad wiped his face on the back of his sleeve, leaving a white smear on the material. He gazed at it, the look in his eyes changing from unfriendly to more like he’d just felt a pain inside.

“What’s going on with you?” Bernie said. “What’s the story?”

“Nothing,” said Thad, eyes downcast. “Nada, zip, zilch.”

Bernie pointed to the markings Thad had made in the dirt. “What about that-‘April Sorry’?”

Thad’s gaze slowly shifted to the markings. Then, in a clumsy kind of way but not slow, he lunged forward, almost a fall, and rubbed out the markings with his hand, rubbing and rubbing wildly. After that, he turned to Bernie as though he’d just beaten him at something. Thad’s eyes were amazing: they told so much all by themselves.

“You think I won’t be able to remember ‘April Sorry’?” Bernie said. Thad didn’t reply. “Did something happen in April?”

Thad smiled, now lying facedown on the stony dirt. There was something horrible about that smile, hard to explain. “Yeah,” he said, “something happened in April.”

“What?” said Bernie.

“Spring came,” Thad said. “All the blossoms, shit like that.”

Bernie looked down at him. “I can help you.”

“That’s what everybody says,” Thad said. “Everybody wants to do me favors.”

“I didn’t say anything about favors,” Bernie said.

“Makes you unique.” Thad pushed himself up, back into a sitting position.

“Think you can get up?” Bernie extended his hand.

Thad ignored it. “When I want. When and if.” At that moment, Brando glided forward and curled up in Thad’s lap. Thad’s hand moved, kind of on its own, if that makes any sense, and settled on Brando’s furry back. Brando’s eyes closed.

“You came up to see the rock carving?” Bernie said.

“Any law against that?”

“And what else did you have in mind?”

“Nothing. Nada, zip, zilch.”

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“Sources.”

“Jiggs, by any chance?”

“Don’t pick on ol’ Jiggsy-he’s just doing his job.”

“Giving you a gun’s doing his job?” Bernie said. “I thought he was supposed to protect you.”

“Think what you want,” said Thad. He looked up at Bernie and maybe didn’t like the expression on Bernie’s face-although I sure did-because he said, “I’ve got this urge to paste you in the mouth.”

“How did that work out the last time?” Bernie said.

Thad tilted up his chin. “I’m not afraid of you.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

“Not afraid of anybody.”

“That’s hard to believe,” Bernie said. “What about Manny Chavez, for example? Were you afraid of him?”

Thad’s hand, which had been stroking Brando’s back, went still. Brando opened his eyes. “Name means nothing to me,” Thad said.

“How about Ramon? That ring a bell?”

Thad started stroking Brando again. “Sure,” he said. “Ramon Novarro, silent star of the silver screen, although not my role model.”

“Are you gay, Thad? Is that what this is all about?”

“Guess again.”

Bernie shook his head and walked away. I walked with him.

“On your way to sell me out?” Thad called after him.

Bernie turned. “Sell you out?”

“Peddle me to the gossip rags,” Thad said.

“Why would I do that?”

“For the money, for Christ sake. Are you stupid?”

“Must be it,” Bernie said.

Huh? I was totally lost, Bernie always being the smartest human in the room. But for some reason, I wasn’t angry at Thad, actually felt bad on account of all these things going on inside him, not including the fact that he was about to puke anytime now; I could smell it coming.

Meanwhile, Bernie was saying something about Thad’s car. Thad pointed down the slope, off to one side.

“Who do you want to come get you?” Bernie said.

“Flights of angels,” said Thad.

And then he leaned sideways-holding Brando as far away as possible-and got the puking out of the way.

“The choices,” said Bernie, “are Felicity, Nan, or Jiggs.”

Thad sat up straight, panting a bit. For a moment there was no color on his face at all. Brando rose, walked over to the tree, and lay in the shade, his eyes on me.

“That’s a tough one,” Thad said, color returning to his face in an uneven, blotchy kind of way. “How about I drive myself back?”

“No,” Bernie said.

“No one says no to me,” Thad said. “Not like that, just no, period. There’s always a whole song and dance.”

“I don’t do that,” Bernie said.

Huh? Maybe true about dancing-although one time Suzie had gotten him out on the dance floor at the Dry Gulch Steakhouse and Saloon, an event that had proven too exciting for me, so I’d had to wait outside in the car-but Bernie was a great singer, sometimes accompanying himself on the ukulele. “Mr. Pitiful,” for example, was one of his very best.

“Felicity won’t like my aura right now,” Thad said. “And Nan might quit on me.”

“Why would she do that?” Bernie said.

“She has standards.”

Bernie nodded. “That leaves Jiggs.”

“He’ll be pissed at me.”

“Pissed enough to quit?”

“Nope,” said Thad. “Not Jiggsy.”

“How come he’s so loyal?” Bernie said.

“Ask him.”

Bernie called Jiggs. Not long after that, Thad got to his feet. We walked down the hill and came to Thad’s ride, a big SUV parked on a track at the far side of a dry wash. Thad climbed into the backseat and fell asleep. Brando sat in the front, licking his fur in a leisurely way that turned out to be bothersome, so I tried my hardest not to watch. Then less hard, and soon not at all. Nothing worked.

A little later, a Jeep appeared on the track and stopped a short distance from us. Jiggs got out and spoke to the driver. The Jeep turned around and drove away. Jiggs came walking up, one of those real big guys who swung a bit from side to side as he moved, like the ground was rocking under him. He glanced inside the SUV and said, “Sleeping like a baby.”

“A wasted, strung-out baby,” Bernie said.

Jiggs turned to him. “That’s when he gets his best sleeps.” He opened the front door, paused. “How’d you know where to find him?”

“A lucky guess,” Bernie said. “Here’s another guess-Thad didn’t like it when he found out where they were shooting this movie.”

“He’s an artist,” Jiggs said. “They’re temperamental.”

“There’s more to it than that.”

“Like what?”

“You tell me,” Bernie said. “Start with whose side you’re on.”

“Thought you were supposed to be smart,” said Jiggs. He lowered his voice, spoke in a new way, more like he and Bernie were friends, which I was pretty sure they weren’t, kind of confusing. “We’re family, for Christ sake.”

“Family?”

“First cousins.”

When Bernie gets surprised-which you don’t often see-one of his eyebrows goes up in a pointed arch. That happened now.

“Not widely known,” Jiggs said, “and I’d appreciate you keeping it that way.”

Bernie took the gun from his belt, held it out for Jiggs. “You came close to losing him today, cuz,” he said.

Jiggs’s throat bulged, like he was having trouble swallowing something big. Then his eyes filled with tears. Always strange when that happens with a real big guy. Jiggs took the gun, got in the SUV, and drove away. I caught a glimpse of Brando, arching his back in the side window.

I barked an angry kind of bark. I wasn’t really angry at the way Brando arched his back, or even at Brando in general; it was more than that, hard to explain.

“Go on and bark, Chet,” Bernie said. “I feel like barking myself.”

Whoa! Was that really going to happen? We’d howled at the moon together, me and Bernie, but never barked. I kept up my barking for a long time, hoping he’d join in, but he did not.

We were out of the desert, stuck in traffic on the freeway, Bernie talking about some dude named Malthus turning out to be right-so maybe not a perp, since perps were always wrong in the end-and me scanning surrounding cars for any other members of the nation within, when Carla called. Her voice came through the speakers.

“Bernie? Do you know the old Flower Mart in Vista City?”

“Isn’t it closed?”

“Yeah, but has it been mentioned at all in this Thad Perry thing you’re looking into?”

“No.”

“Okay. Just checking. Most likely a dead end.”

“Carla? I really don’t want you spending a lot of time on this.”

“No problem, Bernie. I’m having fun.”

Click.

We drove for a while, maybe headed nowhere in particular, something we got in the mood for now and then.

“Flowers are important, big guy,” Bernie said after a while. “Women like flowers. Also chocolate. And what’s the third thing?” He thought. So pleasant when Bernie was thinking. It couldn’t go on too long for me. “Jewelry!” he said at last. “That’s the third thing. But it’s tricky. Big mistake to give the wrong one at the wrong time, for example. Remember when I gave Leda those chocolate caramels for her birthday?”

Yes, but I didn’t want to.

“What the hell,” he said. “Why not swing by the old Flower Mart?”

No reason I could think of.

“Goddamn rubberneckers,” Bernie said.

I didn’t know what rubberneckers were, just knew Bernie hated them. A long time seemed to pass before we left the freeway and crossed the bridge over the Vista City arroyo. I looked down-and so did Bernie; we often did the same thing at the same time, taking a pee, for example, no surprise, being partners and all-and saw two ragged guys arguing over a ripped trash bag with empty cans spilling out. Bernie reached over, gave me a pat. I squeezed across in his direction, just a bit, on account of there being some reason for not squeezing over too far when we were on the road.

“Chet!”

We swerved across the yellow line. Right, that was it. You learned something every day, humans said. And it was still light outside-plenty of time left for me to learn something else. Bring it on!

We took the ramp at the end of the bridge, went by the rail yard and a couple of bars with dusty windows, and came to a boarded-up brick warehouse. Bernie pulled into the parking lot. We had it to ourselves. The wind was rising now, a hot wind off the desert. It blew a brown, dried-out bouquet of flowers tied with a faded ribbon across the pavement.

“What if I sent Suzie some flowers?” Bernie said. “Or would chocolate be better? Jewelry?”

I waited to hear.

“And how come women like all those things more than men?” he said after a bit. “What’s up with that?”

I forgot what I’d been waiting to hear before, began waiting for this new thing.

“Although,” Bernie went on, “there’s no denying that some guys like flowers big time. Take Monet.”

Tricky Mickey Monnay? A scammer with a fake laundry business, as I recalled, something to do with selling used clothing to China, very hard to understand, and now sporting an orange jumpsuit, probably used by some other perp, kind of an interesting… something or other, but flowers? I didn’t remember that part.

We got out of the car, walked into the shadow of the warehouse; this was recon, just one of our techniques at the Little Detective Agency. A faded wooden sign decorated with painted flowers lay on the ground. Bernie wiped away some of the grime on the sign with the sole of his shoe, exposing writing. “‘Vista City Flower Mart,’” he said.

We headed toward the end of the warehouse-Bernie kicking at the dead bouquet, me snatching it up to start a game of keep-away-and around to the other side. Nothing there but cracked pavement with weeds growing through, rusted old railway tracks, a few broken pallets, and a small blue Dumpster.

I dropped the bouquet.

“Chet?”

And hurried over to the Dumpster.

“Chet?”

Bernie came running up. “Please not,” he said, raising the lid.

I got my paw on the rim, peered down. It was Carla. There was a thin red slit in her chest and her hair wasn’t glossy anymore. I turned away. So did Bernie. We looked at each other, not at Carla, not at the big dark pool of blood starting to dry on the Dumpster floor.

Spencer Quinn

A Fistful of Collars