A Fistful of Collars

TWENTY-SIX

W e parked across the street from Red Devil’s around closing time. You could always tell closing time from the fact that no one was going in, plus no one coming out ever walked in a straight line. The Little Detective Agency does a lot of its best work at closing time.

When we’re sitting on a place at night, we like to avoid streetlights, not a problem on this block, since none of them were working. “Infrastructure of the whole damn country’s falling apart, big guy,” Bernie said. “Gonna end up living in caves.”

Wow! And I was hearing that for the very first time? But we could live in caves, no problem, me and Bernie. We’d been in caves, and also mines, plenty of times. Bernie loved exploring abandoned mines out in the desert, so when the infrastructure, whatever that was, finished falling apart maybe we’d be even happier. Hard to imagine, so I didn’t even try.

The door of Red Devil’s opened and out came a few women, none walking in straight lines. The ones in high heels took them off, which made them surprisingly short but didn’t help with the straight line problem. A taxi pulled over and they sort of fell in. After that a dude appeared, started heading one way, then changed his mind, and finally changed it again and went off in the original direction.

Lights started going out inside Red Devil’s and soon it was dark, except for the neon sign in the window. The door opened and Dina came out, wearing jeans and a halter top, and pushing a bike. She pulled down one of those metal screens, covering the whole front of Red Devil’s, and locked it in place. Then she got on the bike and pedaled away. The bike had a small flashing red light at the back, couldn’t have been easier to follow. We followed.

Had we ever tailed anyone on a bike before? Sure, and also people on skateboards, forklifts, golf carts, and once a roller coaster, maybe the worst day of my life. Bernie kept our own lights off, and we loafed along well back of Dina on her bike, real slow. The street was dark, the night was dark, and Bernie was in a dark mood: I could feel it. The only illumination was red and green, red from Dina’s flashing light and green from the dials on our dash. Bernie’s face was hard in that green light. Something was bothering him, but what? We weren’t in danger. In fact, weren’t we bringing it? Which was what we did at the Little Detective Agency, lots of fun even if we weren’t always paid.

We followed the flashing red light down the street, around a corner, and past some warehouses that were being fixed up for lofts, which I knew because Bernie had thought about investing in one, opting for the Hawaiian pants play instead at the last moment; actually after the last moment, leading to a nasty meeting with some developer dudes, but no harm done, Bernie said, because real estate tanked and we would have lost everything anyway. At least we still had the Hawaiian pants in our self-storage in South Pedroia. Once we went down there and Bernie tried a few on, looking very sharp, in my opinion.

The red light stopped flashing. We moved in closer, saw Dina getting off her bike and carrying it up some steps to the door of one of the loft buildings. Bernie pulled right up on the sidewalk and stopped the car. I just loved when he did things like that! Dina turned and saw us, her eyes wide and dirty pink like the sky. She whipped around to the door and started fumbling for keys, losing her grip on the bike at the same time.

“Chet!” Bernie said. “Go.”

Already on it, in fact halfway up the stairs. I vaulted over the bike, which was clattering down, and hit the landing right between Dina and the front door, twisting around to face her in one smooth motion. Chet the Jet! I knew “go,” baby. Dina took one look at me and booked, back down the stairs. Bernie was there, ready and waiting. Team! He grabbed her, not hard, by one arm. Dina struggled, got nowhere, then suddenly lashed out with the keys, maybe trying to swipe him across the face. But Bernie’s too quick for that kind of thing-we’re pros, after all, worth mentioning even with the possibility it’s come up before-and a moment later the keys lay in the gutter.

Dina kept trying to get free. “I’ll scream,” she said, although why not scream it instead of just saying it?

Funny thought, and maybe Bernie’s too, because he told her, “Go ahead.”

No screaming happened. Also Dina stopped struggling. A light went on in a window across the street.

“Would you prefer talking in private?” Bernie said.

“About what?”

“Your lies and evasions,” Bernie said.

Dina started to open her mouth, like maybe a scream was coming after all, but it didn’t.

Dina lived on the top floor of the building. No elevator-fine with me-so we climbed the stairs, Dina first with the bike, then me, then Bernie. He offered to carry the bike. Bernie could be a real gentleman: too often that got lost in the shuffle.

Dina turned out to be one of those shufflers. “Fuck you,” she said over her shoulder. She grunted her way up the stairs, bike over her shoulder.

Sometimes when people invite you into their place, they say, “Coffee? A drink, maybe?” and often, “And how about Chet? Can he have a little something?” But not this time. Dina had a small apartment with lots of plants, so many that it smelled like outdoors, kind of confusing. We found places to sit in all the greenery.

“I’m sure you know,” Bernie said, “that there’s no statute of limitations when it comes to murder.”

“What are you talking about?” Dina said. She had dark patches under her eyes, the way humans did when they get tired. In the nation within we just go to sleep, but I’m sure there’s no right or wrong way. “I never murdered anyone.”

“Maybe,” Bernie said. “But you’ve been evasive-at best-and that makes you suspect in my book. And a suspect plain and simple to the homicide squad-they tend to paint in broader strokes.”

Wow. I didn’t follow that at all. Bernie was cooking.

“I told you everything I knew about Carla,” Dina said.

“With the omission of one key fact,” Bernie said.

He paused and watched her face. So did I. She showed nothing that I could see. Women could be tough cookies, just as tough as men, although in my experience with cookies-let’s save this one for another time. Dina was a tough cookie; leave it at that.

“Carla’s not the only murder victim in this case,” Bernie went on, “not even the only murder victim who was also a friend of yours.”

One of Dina’s eyelids twitched, always a promising sign for us.

“There are three victims,” Bernie said. “You knew two for sure, and I’ve got a hunch you knew the third one as well.” Bernie: a great interviewer, and right now-at the top of his game-he was something to see.

Dina’s eyelid twitched some more.

“How about we start with the first one-your closest childhood pal?” Bernie said.

“I already told you,” Dina said. “Carla went off to the magnet school and-”

Bernie held up his hand in the stop sign. “I’m talking about April Spears,” Bernie said. “Wasn’t she your oldest pal?” He paused. “Her mother thinks so.”

Dina’s eyes shifted. That’s a human thing for when they’ve got to come up with something real fast. Bernie says that if they’ve shifted their eyes, they’re already too slow.

She looked at him. “Why do I always get the relentless type?”

“Maybe there’s something in you that discourages the others,” Bernie said.

Her face went white.

“But none of that matters right now,” Bernie said. “What matters is why you didn’t tell me about April.”

“You didn’t ask.”

“Not in so many words,” Bernie said. “But we were all around it. For example, you were vague about the Flower Mart, pretended it meant nothing to you. Care to revise that statement?”

Dina said nothing.

Bernie lowered his voice, just at the time when you might have thought he was going to raise it. “Your best friend was stabbed to death and tossed in the trash, Dina. Come on.”

Dina squeezed her eyes shut. The tiniest drop leaked from the corner of one of them. “When I heard that…” She shook her head. “It tore me apart. I’ve never been the same.”

Bernie’s face, already pretty hard, got harder. “Who killed her?”

“I don’t know.” Dina looked at Bernie’s face. “Oh, my God, you can’t think it was me. She was my best friend. We had pet names for each other, from when we could barely talk.”

“What were they?” Bernie said.

A smile crossed Dina’s face, very small and quickly gone, but she looked a little younger in that moment. “She called me Dee Dee. I called her Prilly.”

Bernie said nothing.

“Now you’re going to grill me on where I was when she was killed and can I prove it,” Dina said.

“Nope,” said Bernie. “Although I am interested in whether the police ever talked to you.”

“They didn’t.”

“Tell me about Manny Chavez,” Bernie said.

“I knew Manny,” Dina said. “He was her boyfriend for, like, six weeks. Boyfriends came and went back then. It wasn’t that serious-we were seventeen.”

“Were they having sex?” Bernie said.

“Who wasn’t?” said Dina. “She wasn’t in love with him, or anything like that.”

“Was it more serious for him?”

She shrugged. “Maybe not because of who she was, but what she was.”

“Meaning?”

“Blond and Anglo. A kind of status thing, especially for those gangbanger types.”

“Manny was in a gang?”

“He was more of a wannabe-had a Harley, which was what attracted April in the first place-but some of the others were the real thing.”

“What others?”

“Guys Manny hung with,” Dina said.

“What was the name of the gang?”

Dina shook her head. “I’m not sure it was that well organized, with a name and everything. There was one guy, a little older, maybe. I remember not liking the way he looked at me. I was crazy back then, but not foolish.”

“What was his name?”

“I don’t remember. Something Hispanic, maybe.”

“Like Ramon?” Bernie said.

“Might have been.”

“Last time we spoke, you said that name meant nothing to you.”

“So? A person can’t forget minor details with you?”

Bernie seemed to think about that for a moment. “Have you seen Ramon since?” he said.

“Since… since the summer April died? No.”

“What about Manny?”

“No.”

“Heard anything about him over the years?”

“No.”

“How about lately?”

“No.”

“So you didn’t know he was stabbed to death last week?”

Dina put a hand to her chest. “I did not.”

“Happened in a foreclosed house on North Coursin Street,” Bernie said. “Only a dozen blocks from here.”

She raised her hands, palms up.

“April’s mother told me her daughter dumped Manny,” Bernie said.

“How is she?”

“Not too good. But is it true?”

“Yes.”

“Why did she dump him?”

“I told you,” Dina said. “Back then six weeks-”

Bernie made a chopping motion. I liked seeing that, hoped it would happen again, and soon. “Her mother heard her on the phone, almost certainly with you,” Bernie said, “saying she was interested in someone else. I need that name.”

Dina said nothing.

“How much did you have to drink at the ball game?”

Dina looked surprised. I was, too. Ball game? Had there been talk of a ball game, kind of vague and “The night Carla had those box seats,” Bernie added.

Dina shrugged. “I probably had a few beers.”

“I’m guessing you’re one of those people who get more talkative after a pop or two.”

“Guess away.”

“And maybe you wanted to impress her-this successful reporter-with a tidbit of information she didn’t know.”

Silence. It went on and on. Not a complete silence for me, on account of a rat I heard creeping across the space above the ceiling.

At last Bernie said, “You’ve answered the question.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You should have said, What tidbit? The fact that you didn’t means you told Carla that Thad Perry was from the Valley or spent time here. The question is why you’re trying to hide it.”

Dina glared at him. Yes, a tough cookie.

“So far,” Bernie said, “it doesn’t look like you’re in any kind of trouble. But once a series of murders starts up, it’s hard to get it stopped. So the next one will be partly on you.”

“I hate your guts,” Dina said.

People told Bernie that from time to time. I knew they didn’t mean it.

“Comes with the job,” Bernie said.

“And what’s that?” said Dina. “What’s your goddamn job?”

“Retribution.”

Whatever that meant, it made her stop hating him at once: I could see it on her face. She looked at Bernie in a whole new way. Not liking him, it wasn’t that. More… respecting. We have that, too, in the nation within. Dina took a big breath and let it out real slow.

“This was long before he was famous, of course,” she said. “Thad Perry was a kid, just like us. He came here that summer to visit a cousin and met April at a car wash where the cousin worked. It all happened real fast, maybe two weeks from when they met till she died. He left town right away.”

“Did he kill her?” Bernie said.

“I don’t know,” Dina said. “He was gentler than most of the boys, and more polite. And much better looking. I saw them together just the one time, at the car wash. They were so beautiful together.”

“Did they argue?” Bernie said. “Fight with each other?”

“Not that I know of,” Dina said.

Bernie gazed at her. “How come you didn’t want to talk about this?”

Dina rose and went to the window, pushed the leaf of a big plant aside, looked out.

“What are you afraid of?” Bernie said.

“All the usual things,” Dina said.

“Including the cousin?”

Dina turned to him, her mouth opening.

“Was his name Jiggs?” Bernie said.

“If you know all this, why ask?” Dina said. “Nolan Jiggs, this king-size shithead. He blew town with Thad Perry, something I didn’t realize at the time. Then, years later, just before Thad’s first movie came out, he came back and found me.” Dina turned from the window, the plant leaf flopping back into place. “He paid me five grand to keep things to myself.”

“That was the carrot,” Bernie said.

“You’re not as dumb as you look,” Dina said. “The stick was a promise to kill me if I breathed a word to anyone.” She gazed at Bernie through the leaves. “Are you and your dog going to keep that from happening?”

Bet the ranch.