Dog On It (21 page)

“He’s K-9 trained,” Bernie said.

Partially K-9 trained, as I might have mentioned. Why had that cat come along right in the middle of the final test, open-country tracking? My certificate was all made out, but I never got it.

“How did I miss this?” Bernie said as we drove to Rosa Vista. “They’ve been watching us almost from the moment we took the
case.” He banged the side of his fist against the steering wheel. That kind of thing didn’t happen often. “I must be losing my mind, Chet.” I hoped that wasn’t true: Bernie’s mind was one of our biggest assets, on a par with my nose. I laid a paw on his knee. He drove fast, even weaving in and out of traffic a bit, not like him at all. But fun, all that speed and weaving, no doubt about it. I stopped worrying and got in a very good mood.

We took a ramp off the freeway, headed toward the sun on a wide straight road. “Coronado,” said Bernie. “Hate Coronado.” Why? It looked like so many streets in the Valley, wide and straight and going on forever. “Know what he did to the Indians?” Bernie added after a while, losing me completely.

He slowed down, started reading off the numbers. “Fourteen-one, fourteen-two, here we go.” We parked in front of a restaurant, and a good one. I didn’t have to look, just knew from the smell. Bernie read the sign: “‘Max’s Memphis Ribs.’” A rib joint? I’d heard of rib joints, had never actually been in one. My mouth started watering right away, but then I remembered that a lot of restaurants weren’t very welcoming when it came to my kind.

The front of the building was all glass. We walked to the door, hesitated. A man behind the counter inside saw us, pointed to me, then did a come-on-in fluttering of his fingers. One of my favorite human gestures, that finger flutter: almost made me wish for fingers of my own. Bernie opened the door, and we went in. Mercy. It smelled like heaven in Max’s Memphis Ribs. We walked up to the counter, and Bernie said, “Looking for Cleon Maxwell.”

“Found him,” said the man. This was Cleon Maxwell? Pretty confusing: He didn’t resemble Boris at all, was black, for one thing.

Bernie picked up the slack, not missing a beat; we were a
good team, me and Bernie, in case that’s not clear yet. He handed Cleon Maxwell our card. “Working on a case,” he said. “Any chance you’ve been a victim of identity theft?”

“Tell me about it. Russian gangsters, that’s what the cops said. But I slapped a fraud alert on my credit report before too much damage got done.”

“Good news,” said Bernie. “Did they catch anyone yet?”

Cleon Maxwell shook his head. “They weren’t too optimistic on that score.” A phone rang, and then another. “Anything else I can help you with?”

“No,” said Bernie. “Thanks for your time.”

“Don’t mention it,” said Cleon Maxwell. “Nice-looking dog you’ve got there. He like ribs, by any chance?”

“Actually,” said Bernie, “we both do.”

“Take a seat,” Cleon Maxwell said.

We sat in the car outside Max’s Memphis Ribs, unable to move, either of us. Bernie burped once or twice. “Never eaten so much in my whole life,” he said. “But was it good or what?”

Yes and yes! Plus we had two-for-one coupons, courtesy of Cleon Maxwell, possibly the greatest human being in the whole Valley, not counting Bernie, of course. Was there a better job than this? We just sat in the car and breathed, let the world spin. Bernie says the world spins, and if he wants to think that, fine, but I’ve never noticed it myself. People came and went at Max’s Memphis Ribs, looking happy, every single one. After a while, Bernie said, “Rental contract’s a dead end. Only one thing to do now, as far as I can see—we’ve got to go back to the night they grabbed you, pick up the trail.”

Picking up the trail: my kind of thing. Energy started flowing back into me right away.

“That means starting at that animal shelter in Sierra Verde.”

The animal shelter where Suzie found me? All of a sudden I didn’t feel so good. Bernie reached over, gave me a pat. I smelled some of Max’s Secret Sauce still on Bernie’s hand and licked it off, but deep inside I still felt bad.

We drove across the Valley, away from the sun. The Valley went on and on. “Look at this,” Bernie said at one point, waving his hand around. “All new since the last time I was here.” And a little later, “Coronado wasn’t the only one. They were all like that.” What was this? We were still riding on Coronado? It looked more like a freeway to me. Not long after that, “See what I see? Home Depot. That means a whole new town is on the way.” Soon after, he muttered something about Home Depot being the nucleus of some horrible atom. Bernie was losing me, but the breeze, almost hot for a long time, then cooling a bit as we climbed into the mountains, felt great. I could ride shotgun forever, keep going on and on, with some snacks along the way, of course, plus the odd pit stop. “Tell you one thing,” Bernie said as we pulled over to gas up, “this is why I’m for Indian casinos, no matter what. They finally get their revenge, and in spades, pardon the pun.” No problem—I could forgive Bernie for anything, including puns, whatever they might be. He had some trouble with the credit-card swiper and went inside to pay. Maybe he’d come out with a Slim Jim or two, or even—hey!—a box of bacon
bits. Bacon bits: so long since I’d had bacon bits that I’d almost forgotten they existed.

Bernie came out, and I didn’t spot Slim Jims or bacon bits, just a big bottle of water. That meant he still wasn’t hungry, what with our little session at Max’s Memphis Ribs—those coupons had to mean we were going back one day for sure; Bernie loved a bargain—and maybe I wasn’t hungry, either, but snacks often happened when we were gassing up. Snacks taste better when you’re hungry, but do they ever actually taste bad? I ask you.

Bernie poured water into my traveling bowl, held it out for me. I lapped some up—nice and frosty. Bernie tilted the bottle up to his mouth, gazed at the sky. “What if the monsoons don’t come this summer?” he said.

I didn’t know.

We drove up and up, angling back and forth in the mountains on a two-lane road, reaching wide-open country, traffic thinning out to mostly just us. I started smelling all kinds of wild smells and—What was that, moving fast up ahead by the side of the highway? A roadrunner? Yes! A real roadrunner. Would you get a load of that little bugger? Oh, how I’d always wanted to—

“Chet? Easy, now.”

We flashed by the roadrunner, but not so fast that I didn’t catch that tough-guy look in his beady eyes. He veered off, tore into the chaparral, and vanished. Real fast, but my money would be on me.

Not long after that, we climbed a pass at the top of the mountain and started down. The air was fresh, the sky clear, the land stretching on forever. “You can see all the way into New Mexico from here,” Bernie said. Mexico: The word gave me a sudden bad feeling, but I didn’t know why. Then, as we rolled into a dusty little town, I remembered how Mr. Gulagov had wanted to train
me to fight down there, down in Mexico. Was that the same as New Mexico? No idea, but I had a message for Mr. Gulagov: Bernie is with me now, fella. I gave myself a good shake.

“Sierra Verde,” Bernie said, slowing down. He glanced at me. “Anything look familiar?”

Nope. Oh, wait a minute. What about that bar back there with the neon martini glass in the window? Maybe—

“Doesn’t matter,” Bernie said. “We’ll start up here.” He turned a corner, climbed a side street lined by a few buildings, some boarded up, and parked in front of the last one. Bernie glanced at me from the corner of his eye. That last building, standing behind a tall gate at the end of stone path, a low building of no particular color, with a thin plume of white smoke rising behind it: I knew that building, oh yes; it looked way too familiar. I got down on the floor.

“Hey, boy, everything’s okay.”

I stayed where I was. A trembling began in my body, not a lot I could do about it.

“C’mon, Chet. Going to need your help.”

I climbed back up on the seat.

“Thattaboy. Hop out.”

Hopping out of the shotgun seat: I’d done it so many times, but now, maybe because of the trembling, I fell short, slipping back on the seat.

“It’s all right, fella.” Bernie’s face was real hard, that stony look that happened when he was angry. Angry at me? Couldn’t be, not with how gentle and soft his voice got when he said, “Take it easy. I’ll be right back.”

Nope. That was no good, either. I got my back legs under me and hopped out, barely making it. Bernie didn’t say anything, just gave me a nice scratch between my ears. We walked up the stone
path, side by side. Bernie opened the gate. I caught the scent of my guys, lots and lots of them—my nation, the nation inside a nation, as Bernie said—and it brought back everything about this bad place. I held my head up, and my tail, too, and kept going.

We entered the building, and there I was, back in the small reception room with the counter and lots more smells, including smoky ones I now understood. A man in a white coat stood behind the counter. Did I know him? Impossible to forget: the man who’d promised to have me out of that small building with the metal door and the brick chimney in no time. I hung back a bit.

“Hi, there,” said the man in the white coat. “Brought in a stray?”

“No,” said Bernie, his face as stony as I’d ever seen it. “Do you recognize him?”

“Who? The dog?”

“His name’s Chet. He was in here last week.”

The man in the white coat shook his head. “We run a busy place, lots of customers in and out, twenty-four-seven.”

“This particular customer,” Bernie said, “was claimed by a friend of mine named Suzie Sanchez. She’s a reporter for the
Valley Tribune
. Jog your memory at all?”

The man’s mouth opened. Pink patches appeared on his face, although I might have been wrong about the exact color. I stopped hanging back, stepped up beside Bernie.

“Suzie would be hard to forget,” Bernie said. “Did she mention she’s preparing a series on shelters?”

“Uh, it’s coming back to me. This here’s your dog, was that it? And the reporter, she, uh, happened to . . .”

He ran out of words. Bernie said nothing, just stared at the man.

A silly smile appeared on the man’s face, up at one corner, down at the other. “Looks like things worked out in the end,” he said.

Bernie didn’t agree or disagree. “What I need from you,” he said, “is all the information you’ve got concerning how Chet came to be here.”

“’Fraid I wasn’t on when—”

“But I’m sure you keep records.”

“Oh yes, records, of course.” The man moved to a computer, hit some keys. “Here we go.” A printer made some machine sounds, very unpleasant to my ears. The man handed Bernie a sheet of paper. Paper was very important to human beings: They spent a lot of their time messing around with it. The appeal was lost on me.

Bernie’s eyes moved back and forth over the page. That was reading; it always looked a little weird, in my opinion. He looked up. “All it gives is the date and time of arrival. I want to know who brought him in.”

“Wasn’t it some biker?”

“The name,” said Bernie.

“Doreen was on the desk,” the man said. “She might know—one sec.” He went through the door at the back. “One sec” was probably a way of saying “stay put,” a hint Bernie seemed to miss, because he walked right around the counter and followed the man. I followed Bernie. The man didn’t seem to be aware of our presence.

We walked down a corridor I knew, with cells on both sides, chain-link fronts, and one of my guys in each. They all started barking. I didn’t recognize a single one from before, but I did recognize the woman up ahead, writing on a clipboard. The man in the white coat raised his voice over all the excitement. “Hey, Do,
there some ass—” The woman looked over, saw us. The man in the white coat followed her gaze, went silent. Bernie ignored him, approached the woman, but I missed whatever he said, because at that moment I heard a yip-yip-yip that reminded me of Iggy. Oh no. I turned to the nearest cell: not Iggy but a puppy that looked like Iggy in his younger days. He stuck his nose through one of those tiny squares between the chain links. I ducked down, gave him a bump with my own. He wanted out of there so bad; his soft brown eyes told me that. Did he think I could help? Poor puppy.

“C’mon, Chet, we’re out of here,” said Bernie.

And moments later we were outside, me and Bernie, back in lovely mountain air. I hopped up onto my seat, clearing the top of the door by plenty, maybe the highest leap ever for me, a personal best. Bernie turned the key and stepped on it, didn’t speak till we were back on the main street. “Brrr,” he said, as though very cold, actually giving himself a shake, not unlike one of mine. “Okay, Chet, what have we got?”

I waited to hear.

“A big biker, no name. Can you believe they don’t even take the names? Plus, she says there’s a bar where the bikers sometimes hang out, supposed to be just about . . .” Bernie pulled over, parked in front of the bar with the neon martini glass. There were big motorcycles on both sides of us. “Don’t even breathe on those hogs,” Bernie said. “Not to mention any of your other tricks.” Wouldn’t dream of it: The bikers were my friends. And what a great name for motorcycles. I knew what hogs could do from my one visit, kind of unplanned, to a pig farm, wouldn’t be forgetting that lesson anytime soon.

We went through swinging saloon doors, like the kind in old westerns. At one time we’d watched a lot of old westerns, me and Bernie, but Bernie had kept saying, “See? That’s how it used to
look.” Over and over, until the fun went out of it for him and the westerns finally sank down to the bottom of the DVD pile and stayed there.

We stopped inside the swinging doors and looked around: a few tables and a small stage on one side, a long bar on the other, a pool table at the back, and sawdust on the floor. Sawdust on the floor: what a great idea! Right from the get-go I had to fight the urge to roll around in it.

And bikers, yes; some at the bar, two more playing pool—and one of the pool players was the huge dude. I recognized him right away from his size and wild white beard, but also I could smell him from where I was. Some of the bikers glanced at us, then went back to their beer: They seemed to like those long-neck bottles.