A Fistful of Collars

THIRTY-ONE

What am I sposta do with that?” said Nixon Panero, his cheek bulging with tobacco chew.

Back at Nixon’s Championship Autobody. Spike came right over and gave me a nip. I gave him a nip. We nipped each other to our hearts’ content, which came sooner for Spike-a warrior, but getting older now, his face whiter than ever-than it did for me. He went and lay down in the shade of a jacked-up limo.

“Huh?” Bernie said. He was trying to give Nixon the door Jiggs had ripped off the hinges, but Nixon had his hands in the pockets of his greasy overalls and showed no sign of taking them out anytime soon.

“Fix it, of course,” Bernie said. “Can’t have Chet riding around with no door.”

“Know something, Bernie?” Nixon said. “You’re hard on automobiles.” He spat a thin stream of tobacco juice into an empty can that should have been out of reach but somehow wasn’t. I could watch Nixon do that forever. “It’s psychological,” he went on. “I made a study of this.”

“Of what?” Bernie said, shifting the door to a more comfortable position and maybe sounding just the tiniest bit irritated.

“Guys like you. You’re basically jealous of your car. It’s, like, perfection, and you’re flawed. So it figures you’d want to take it down a peg or two, even things up.”

Bernie was flawed? How? I couldn’t come up with a single way, and knew right then that this idea of Nixon’s made no sense. But funny thing: maybe Bernie himself didn’t realize that. I could sort of tell from this look on his face, a still look that meant he was having deep thoughts. When Bernie went still like that, I often found myself going still, too. The stillness went on for sometime, and then Bernie did something pretty amazing: he gave himself a shake! Yes! Just like a member of the nation within. He gave himself a shake, snapping out of the deep thoughts, and said, “So based on my psychological profile, you’re refusing to fix my car?”

“Exactly the opposite,” said Nixon. “Based on your profile, I’m gonna do it. But not with that door.” He gave the door a glance, shook his head. “Beyond my powers, Bernie. Hope you got it out of your system.”

There’s an old couch outside the front of Nixon’s shop. That’s where Bernie and I waited while the door got fixed, and while we were waiting a black car with tinted windows pulled up right in front of us. The driver’s window slid down and the driver looked out at us. Cal Luxton: with his swept-back hair, long sideburns, cowboy hat.

“Well, well,” he said. “This is serendipitous.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie.

“Running into you like this. Best mechanic in the Valley, of course, and you’re the type who’s in the know.” Luxton gave Bernie a long, slow look, the probing kind that made me uncomfortable. “Problem is, you’re not passing on that knowledge in a timely manner.”

“No?” said Bernie. Bernie giving real short answers like “yeah” and “no” was a sign of him being careful. I got ready to be careful myself, starting by gnawing on my leg. And what was this? Some kind of thistle? I went to work on it.

“We’re not paying you enough?” Luxton said. “That the issue?”

Now Bernie gave him a long, slow look right back. I just loved Bernie when he did stuff like that, and also when he didn’t. As for what it was all about, you tell me.

“I’ll pay it back if you want,” Bernie said. “Every cent.”

Whoa! That was what his long slow look was about? Paying back? With our finances being what they were, meaning a mess? Tin futures. Hawaiian pants. They swirled round and round in my mind until I began feeling pukey. I actually considered puking, went with making my mind a blank instead, which took less time.

Luxton smiled. “No one’s suggesting that,” he said. “What I’m looking for is better communication.”

“About what?” Bernie said.

“You’re supposed to be keeping an eye on things,” Luxton said. “Today’s on the shooting schedule and now I find out all of a sudden they’re not shooting. How come I didn’t hear it from you?”

“They forgot to run it past me,” Bernie said.

“Any idea what’s going on?”

“With what?”

“This schedule change,” Luxton said, his voice sharpening. He gave Bernie another one of those eye probes. “What else would I be talking about?”

“Search me,” Bernie said. “But it’s hard to know why they do anything, Cal. They’re artistic types, different from us.”

“How about the bodyguard, Nolan Jiggs-is he the artistic type?”

“You never know,” Bernie said. “Everyone in Hollywood’s got a script in the drawer.”

“So maybe he’s off in a cabin somewhere, banging away on his laptop,” Luxton said. “Because no one can find him.”

“Wouldn’t know anything about that,” Bernie said. “My job’s making sure Thad Perry keeps his nose clean, and last seen he was stone cold sober and looking forward to breakfast. Chet here had a nice time playing with Brando.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Thad’s cat. You met him. He and Chet are pals.”

Luxton made the kind of sideways gesture with his hand that humans have for whisking away flies. Where I come from we have tails for that, but I’m not saying one way’s better than the other. No time to think about that, or the fact that some humans miss out on what’s going on with other creatures, almost like they’re not there, because problems were coming at me in waves. I was pals with Brando? When had that happened? And what was this about breakfast? I remembered no breakfast. Breakfast is not something I forget. So therefore-whoa! I came very close to doing a so-therefore. But so-therefores were in Bernie’s territory. I backed off.

“What’s pissing me off,” Luxton was saying, “is this feeling I get that you’re not taking the job seriously.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “That’s really what’s pissing you off?”

Luxton’s face darkened like a shadow was passing over him, but there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. “What else would it be?”

Bernie looked right at him. “You tell me,” he said.

Luxton looked at Bernie right back. “Hope you know what you’re doing, buddy.”

“People keep saying that,” Bernie said.

Luxton drove off. Not long after that, Nixon had the Porsche all fixed.

“What do you think?” Nixon said.

“The new door is yellow?” said Bernie.

“Golden,” said Nixon. “I’d call it golden. See how it’s shiny?”

“The rest of the body is red.”

“Not the martini glasses.”

Bernie gazed at the car.

“I could paint the door to match, but you won’t have it today,” Nixon said.

“Need it today.”

“Now Chet has a golden door,” Nixon said. “Think of it that way.”

Bernie looked thoughtful.

“All depends on how you think about things,” Nixon said.

“You’re right, Nix,” Bernie said. “So tell me how I should be thinking about the fact that Cal Luxton just swung by.”

Nixon opened his mouth, closed it, shuffled his feet, the kinds of things guilty perps did. What was going on? Nixon had been a perp, of course, and we’d sent him away, for what I no longer remembered, but now weren’t we friends?

“Coincidence?” said Bernie. “Or not?”

Nixon gazed down at the ground.

We pulled into the empty parking lot of the old Flower Mart late in the afternoon. The wind blew hot and hard, full of grit. The sky, so red and dusty, made me uneasy. Bernie took the. 38 Special out of the glove box and tucked it in his belt. We got out of the car and walked around the boarded-up warehouse to the back. No one there. Bernie checked his watch.

“We’re a little early, big guy,” he said. “But early’s good when it comes to meetings like this.” Early: a tricky one. It had something to do with late, the exact relationship murky. But if Bernie said it was good, then that was all I needed. We paced around a bit, checked the rusty railroad tracks, the space where the Dumpster had been, and the nailed-shut back door which I knew from before wasn’t really nailed shut. We paced around some more, returned to the door. Bernie tried it. Nailed shut after all? It wouldn’t open.

He knocked. “Mr. Albert?” he called. “Mr. Albert?”

No answer. Sometimes I hear when someone’s around, sometimes I smell it, and sometimes I just get a feeling. Right now I got the feeling that no one was inside.

We waited. Time passed, how much I couldn’t tell you. Bernie checked his watch. The wind blew hotter and harder, and the sky turned redder and darker. We huddled in the doorway. Huge roiling clouds rose in the distance, much more solid-looking than regular clouds; the air got drier and drier, and dust blew into my eyes and ears. Bernie gave me a little pat. It was kind of nice, here in the back doorway of the old Flower Mart, just me and Bernie. I had no desire to be anywhere else.

“Why wouldn’t he show?” Bernie said. “Any reason why he’d want to screw Jiggs around? Probably a shitload.”

Uh-oh, not that. I thought of one of our very worst cases, not the details of the case, all gone now, but just the nighttime ending when the flatbed truck we were hiding on rolled over and all the portapotties came tumbling loose. I got ready for anything.

“Would help right about now if we had a solid theory of the case,” Bernie said.

A solid theory of the case: hadn’t heard that in way too long. Soon after the solid theory of the case came me grabbing the perp by the pant leg, which was how our cases closed just about every time, although not the portapotty case, which I’d rather skip for now.

The wind died down in a strange way, and as it did, the huge roiling clouds grew and grew and there seemed to be less air to breathe. I panted a bit, my tongue getting coated with dust.

“Is it basically about money?” Bernie said. “Maybe, but there’s a sicko element. Three killings, knife the weapon in every one. Knife because it’s handy at the moment, that’s one thing. Knife by choice is sicko. So therefore?”

Good news: we were back in so-therefore territory, Bernie at the controls. I waited, and waited some more, but Bernie went silent.

The sun, real low now, all of a sudden peeped through dust clouds, a deep, deep red like a light flashing on, and then quickly off. After that it got much darker and the wind started back up and in no time blew even stronger than before. All sorts of scraps began flying around, and I smelled the desert like I never had, huge and mighty.

We huddled closer together, Bernie kneeling down beside me. “Goddamn dust storm,” he said, raising his voice over the wind, which now had a voice of its own, like an angry creature working itself up to a howl. “No way he’ll be coming now. We’ll just have to wait this out.”

Fine with me. The dust storm moved in, rising and rising, towering over us. The sound rose, too, hurting my ears in the worst way, and I could barely see a thing, even though the sky wasn’t as dark as night. Besides, I see pretty well at night; the problem now was this strange thickness in the air, unlike the emptiness of night air, if that made any Whoa. What was that? A tiny sound barely cutting through the enormity of noise, kind of like a propeller going whap-whap-whap, or maybe actually more of a tick-tick-tick. That tick-tick-tick reminded me of something. I tried to think what.

“Christ,” Bernie said, and began rubbing his eyes, all teary like he was crying, an impossibility, of course. Now we were dealing not just with dust, but sand, too, desert sand somehow airborne, rasping like sandpaper against my muzzle and pock-pock-pocking the bricks of the warehouse, and on account of the pock-pock-pocking mixed into the roar of the storm-this strange dry storm, way drier than normal dry, hard to explain-I lost track of the tick-tick-tick. In short, we weren’t at our most alert, me and Bernie, and in that moment the tick-tick-tick ing suddenly came closer, and a dark car partly emerged from the reddish swirl of the dust storm and stopped in front of us.

Bernie, hand over his eyes to block that sand, didn’t see the car and probably hadn’t heard it, either, not a big surprise since I’d barely picked up on that tick-tick-tick myself. The driver’s window slid down and the driver peered out.

Not Cal Luxton, which was my first thought. This was the white-haired dude, not old, more like Bernie’s age: white hair kind of long, heavy black eyebrows, narrow little mouth; and those liquid black eyes. In the passenger seat beside him sat that gigantic member of the nation within, long teeth bared. I had the strangest thought: that was me and Bernie in a nightmare.

The liquid-eyed dude nodded to himself and said, “Thought it’d be you.”

He had a liquidy voice that somehow matched his eyes and kind of made me feel sick. Bernie turned his head in the direction of the liquid-eyed dude’s voice and squinted at him through puffy eyelids.

“Ramon?” he said.

“Hello and good-bye,” said Ramon.

He was leaving? I had just enough time to think: good news. And then Ramon had a knife in his hand. There are all sorts of knives-for butter, for steak, for carving the turkey on Thanksgiving. This particular kind of knife-all steel, thin and flat, with a round hole at the top of the grip-was a kind I’d seen before-and seen in action-on a visit to Otis DeWayne, our weapons expert. What Ramon had in his hand was a throwing knife, which he now drew back behind his ear with the same soft easy grip Otis had used before letting it go and popping a pink balloon hanging from a branch in his yard. Pop went the balloon, shriveling down to nothing, and the knife sank deep and quivering into the tree. Those liquidy dark eyes locked on Bernie. Shriveling down to nothing? No!

I got my paws under me and sprang, maybe not my best spring on account of the brick pavement in back of the warehouse being so slippery with dust. But no excuses, not in this business: that’s one of our rules, mine and Bernie’s. The point was I straight up didn’t get there in time, in fact sort of didn’t even get there at all. Ramon’s arm whipped forward and he flung that flat steel knife. It whistled in the air and I felt the blade cut right through the tip of one of my ears before I crashed against the side of the car. Then came a grunt of pain from Bernie. I picked myself up, wheeled around toward him.

Oh, Bernie. The knife had stuck him-not in the head or the chest, which I knew from my experience in this business were game changers-but in his leg, the bad leg with the war wound. Plenty bad enough, and worse was the fact that the knife had cut clear through and sunk into the door, pinning him to it. Bernie reached down, obscured by a sudden whirlwind of dust and sand-like it was taking Bernie away from me! — and gripped the handle of the knife, his movements slow and… yes, even uncertain, as though he was confused. In that horrible moment, I sensed movement inside the car, quickly turned, and saw Ramon drawing another knife from a sheath he wore behind his neck. And the. 38? Somehow it had fallen from Bernie’s belt, and now lay on the ground, out of his reach.

No time to think, but that’s often when I do my best work. I leaped straight up and through that window, clamping my mouth around Ramon’s wrist, good and hard. Our cases usually ended with me grabbing the perp by the pant leg, not the wrist, but this was a start. Or maybe not, because the next instant Ramon shouted, “Outlaw! Kill!”

And then that huge dude beside him with the long teeth and the angry eyes was all over me. So strong! So heavy! I thrashed around, tried to throw him off, couldn’t budge him.

“Kill! Kill ’im, Outlaw!”

Outlaw growled the most ferocious growl I’d ever heard and got me by the neck, although not right under at the very softest part, more to the side. My heart pounded like it wanted to get free and fly away, but somehow that gave me more strength. I twisted around, got a paw free, dug it right into Outlaw’s face. He barked a furious bark and then we were in the backseat, crashing around so hard the car rocked. Outlaw rolled right over me, went for my throat again. I kept rolling, slipped away, twisted around suddenly, and there I was, on top! Outlaw didn’t like that. He bit my shoulder, bit it real hard. That maddened me so much that what came next was a blur of fighting and blood and pain, all of this with the dust storm howling outside, and the next thing I actually knew was that I somehow had Outlaw by the throat. That didn’t make him let go of my shoulder. Those long teeth were still there, digging in deep, Outlaw growling this rough burry growl the whole time, a growl I felt in my body, through and through. More than anything else it was the growl I didn’t like: it sent a message that in some way Outlaw was enjoying all this. Didn’t he realize I had him by the throat, the softest part? My jaws started to squeeze and I tasted blood and a thrill went through me and I squeezed harder and And Outlaw stopped struggling, stilled himself, lay defenseless down on the floor in the back of the car, throat exposed. In short, he submitted. That was something we have in the nation within. My role now was to call a halt to the neck biting thing. Not an easy role at all: I barely pulled it off.

But as soon as I did, backing away from Outlaw-who didn’t move at all, his eyes, now dull, gazing at nothing-I realized that Ramon was no longer in the car. I vaulted into the front. The driver’s door was open. I shot outside.

The air was thick with dust, like a screen between me and everything. But I could see Bernie, sort of sitting against the door, all twisted around, still trying to pull the knife out and get himself free. Ramon was walking toward him, not in a hurried sort of way. He stood over Bernie. Bernie glanced up at him, his eyes swollen almost shut from the dust. Ramon’s own eyes were wide open, darker and more liquid than ever. He smiled and reached behind his neck.

Oh, no. He had another knife in that sheath? I charged. Or tried to. But my shoulder-the one Outlaw had been working on-let me down, and I crumpled to the ground.

Ramon drew the knife. He held it over Bernie’s head and said, “Adios.” But as he raised the knife higher so he could jam it down even harder into the top of Bernie’s skull, Bernie at last yanked the other knife out of the door and out of his leg. It took all the force Bernie had, and because of that the blade came slicing up real fast, almost slipping from his grip, and that blade cut deep into the inside of Ramon’s leg, high up.

Ramon staggered back. Blood jetted out of his leg in thick red pulses. He sank to the ground, pressed his hand against the wound. His hand was soaked red in a moment and then the thick pulses started up again, shooting right through his fingers.

“Lucky son of a bitch,” he said. “You killed me.”