The Iggy Chronicles, Volume 2 (3 page)

Just as I'd always suspected. But what was it? I waited for Livia to fill me in.

“I knew that,” Bernie said. “I just didn't realize . . .”

She patted his arm again, higher up this time. “Of course, we're not selling to you, Bernie,” she said. “Anything you want is on the house.”

“Uh, very hospitable of you,” Bernie said.

“Hospitable, hell. You saved my ass that night back in Texas.”

“A long time ago.”

“I don't forget.”

Bernie put down his drink. “Truth is, I'm interested in a customer of yours. I think he's here at the moment.”

Livia put her hand to her chest, strings of pearls looping over her fingers. “Not the mayor!”

“No.”

“Phew.”

“Actually someone in my line,” Bernie said. “Name of Maxie Bonn.”

“Auto?” said Livia. “He's in number three.”

“A good customer?”

“Only when he's flush, which is hardly ever. Do you want me to . . . interrupt?”

“I'll wait.”

Livia checked her watch. “He won't be long.”

• • •

We went upstairs, walked past a couple of doors. Bernie opened the next one, and there was Maxie, alone in a bedroom that was pretty much all bed, humming to himself and zipping up his pants. Zippers done up and undone seemed to be a feature of this case, not an entirely new development in our business.

Maxie stopped humming and whipped around to us. “Bernie Little? What the hell are you doing here?” He glanced past us, out into the hall. “You're, uh, next?”

Bernie closed the door. “Feeling flush, Auto?” he said.

“Huh?” said Maxie. “And I prefer Maxie, all the same to you.”

“Livia runs a class establishment, not cheap. So you must be doing well these days.”

“Up and down,” Maxie said.

Bernie nodded his enjoying-himself nod. What was enjoyable at the moment? I had no idea, but went into enjoyment mode anyway. Why not?

“Working on anything in particular?” Bernie said.

“This and that.”

“This and that ever take you down to Ocotillo Springs?”

“Ocotillo Springs?” Maxie said, putting on his jacket. “Haven't been there in years.”

“Then maybe we're in a time warp,” Bernie said.

“Not following you, Bern.”

Uh-oh. Bern? We didn't like that at the Little Detective Agency. Bernie took the camera from his pocket, moved toward Maxie. I went with him, actually a bit in front.

“What's going on?” Maxie said. “Is this damn dog of yours about to attack me?”

“His name's Chet,” Bernie said. “And why would he want to attack you? For leaving Barko in the car with the window barely cracked open?”

“Huh?”

I was with Maxie on that. I really didn't know why I wanted to attack him; it just seemed like a good idea, pure and simple. Isn't that enough?

“All we want is for you to take a look at this,” Bernie said, fiddling with the camera. He turned it so Maxie could see the screen.

Maxie's eyes shifted to the screen. Then they narrowed, and they were narrow to begin with—extra-unfortunate considering those sideburns, a bad combo for some reason.

“Where the hell were you?” Maxie said.

“That's not the question,” said Bernie. “The question is, what were you doing there?”

“Why is that any of your business?”

“Also not the question. Start with how much money changed hands in that parking lot.”

“Who said money changed hands?”

“You can see it in the photo, Maxie.”

Maxie batted the camera aside with the back of his hand. “Nice running into you, Bern, but I'm running late.” He took a step toward the door. Bernie put his hand on Maxie's chest and gave him a push—nowhere near a hard push, compared to what Bernie can do, but Maxie fell backward on the bed.

He—how to put it? Cowered, maybe? Close enough. Maxie cowered on the bed, a bed on which I now seemed to have my front paws. “Lay a hand on me and I'll call the cops,” Maxie said.

“So they can arrest you for blackmail?” Bernie said.

“Blackmail?”

“Isn't that what we're seeing in the photo? A payoff?”

Maxie licked his lips. He had one of those whitish tongues you sometimes see in a human, not my favorite. Whitish tongue, narrow eyes, long, bushy sideburns: it was adding up in a way that made me suddenly pukey. But I'm a pro, and pros get a grip. “I'm not sayin' nothin',” Maxie said.

“Have it your way,” Bernie said. “I'll go right to the source.”

“Source?”

“Meaning Ric Teitelbaum, Maxie. This is one of those times in your life when you've got to try to keep up.”

“You, uh, like, know Teitelbaum?”

“What do you think?” said Bernie. The what-do-you-think? technique! One of my very favorites, and I hadn't seen it in way too long! Who wouldn't love Bernie?

Maybe Maxie Bonn, from the look on his face. “I'm no blackmailer.”

“Come on, Maxie. What about that time with the cross-dressing blacksmith down at the Old Western Studios?”

“No charges got filed,” Maxie said. “And how do you even know about that?”

“I'll have to check the statute of limitations on blackmail in this state,” Bernie said. “Unless you've got it at your fingertips.”

I checked Maxie's fingertips. Kind of soft-looking compared to Bernie's. Relying on Maxie's fingertips had to be a dead end, unless I was missing something.

“Okay, okay,” Maxie said. “I wasn't blackmailing Teitelbaum.”

“Then why the payoff?”

Maxie opened his mouth, closed it, opened it again. “This has to be confidential.”

“A common preamble, Maxie. You must have heard it yourself. It means nothing.”

Maxie sighed a big sigh, pulled himself up into a sitting position. “Why is the world so fucked up?”

Bernie said nothing. He glanced over at me. Did a quick little smile cross his lovely face, there and gone? My tail started up, not in that wild way where it takes over, more of a gentle flicking back and forth. Bernie turned back to Maxie, watched him in a patient sort of way.

“The payoff was for dropping the case,” Maxie said.

“You were sitting on Teitelbaum?”

Maxie nodded.

“Who's the client?”

“Can't ask me that, Bern. I've got my professional pride.”

“Sherry One Point O?” Bernie said.

“Huh?”

“Meaning Mrs. Teitelbaum.”

Maxie was silent for a moment or two. Then he said, “If you know, why ask? And her name's not Sherry whatever. It's Annika.”

Bernie made a little clicking sound. That meant we were out of there. As we headed for the door, Maxie called after us, “Hey! I cooperated. That's gotta be worth something.”

“We'll slip Barko a treat,” Bernie said over his shoulder.

Whoa! What was this? A treat for Barko? Or had Bernie said Chet the Jet and somehow I heard Barko instead? I got a bit . . . agitated. Wouldn't you? Maybe you'd try to think of something else, but how could you when all that was going on in your head was treat, treat, treat?

And then out in the parking lot behind Livia's Friendly Coffee and More—treat, treat, treat—things went from bad to worse, an expression I finally understood when Bernie popped the trunk on the Porsche and took out my extra-large-size box of extra-large-size biscuits. He walked around to the street, went up to the shiny black sedan where Barko now had his nose poked through the narrow window opening and said, “Hey, Barko!”

Was this really happening? Or was I in a dream, the very worst dream of my life, even worse than the one where I leap over our back gate on Mesquite Road, on my way to that she-barker across the canyon, only to land in a deep pit writhing with snakes. And why did I have to remember that horrible snake pit dream now, at a time when I was already . . . agitated? Yes, agitated, I admit it. But not as agitated as I got the next moment when Bernie reached into the box, said, “Here you go, fella,” and stuck one of my extra-large biscuits—the biggest and tastiest in the box, I just knew it!—through the window. Barko grabbed it faster than any biscuit grab I'd ever seen, then whirled around and settled on the driver's side, out of range of any possible character who had a mind to snatch that biscuit away. I'd have done the same thing myself. That wasn't the point. The point was that Barko was chewing on my biscuit. They were all my biscuits! Sometimes you don't think. You just do. So I did.

“Chet! What the hell?”

Things have a way of suddenly speeding up in this life, or at least in mine. By speeding up I mean going faster than you yourself—meaning me, in this case—can actually go, if you see what I mean. No problem if you don't: I don't either, really.

“CHET!”

And then you've just got to go faster than you can go. What choice is there? So that's what I did out on the street in front of Livia's Friendly Coffee and More. Somehow I had that whole box of biscuits in my mouth. Have I mentioned that already? More like an edge of the box, to be more accurate—no way a mouth, even a big one like mine, could take in a whole extra-large-size box of extra-large-size biscuits. My plan was to . . . was to . . . Never mind plans! Full speed ahead! I zoomed my very fastest, claws ripping into the pavement, the air full of biscuits streaming by. What a life! Had I ever . . . Biscuits streaming by? I came to a shuddering stiff-legged stop, looked back, and saw a trail of biscuits leading all the way down several blocks to Livia's Friendly Coffee and More.

Not long after, I was in the car. The top was up, kind of strange since the monsoons were long gone and the sky was clear. Also the windows were up, not fully closed, of course, and Bernie had left much more than a mere crack, so fresh air flowed pleasantly in, but still: what was going on? I had a nice big yawn, eyed the activity outside, which was all about Bernie—plus Autumn and Tulip in their little black dresses and stiletto heels—picking up a whole bunch of what seemed to be biscuits that had somehow scattered themselves around. My eyelids got heavy.

• • •

Back at Senor Breakfast at what I now thought of as our table, me, Bernie, and Sherry the client. Bernie didn't say anything, just spread the new blowups on the table.

Sherry gazed at them. She picked one up. She put it down. She picked it up again. “These are real?”

“Afraid so,” Bernie said.

“What's her name?”

“I can find out if you want.”

“I don't care,” Sherry said. “But what can he possibly see in someone like her?”

“Because she's so young?” Bernie said. There's a little wince that sometimes crosses Bernie's face—the best face in the world if you like a certain kind of rough-looking face, and I do—when he . . . how does he put it? Wishes he had that one back? Something of the sort. I saw that wince now.

“Who said anything about young?” Sherry said, her voice rising sharply. “Can't you see what a piece of trash she is?” She shoved the photo at Bernie.

“Well, um, eye of the beholder and . . .”

“Trashiness is in the eye of the beholder? Is that what you're saying?”

“Maybe not,” Bernie said. “Sorry this didn't have a happier . . .”

“Not your fault, for God's sake,” Sherry snapped at him. “In fact—” She reined in her voice a bit. “In fact, you did your job, just as Stine said you would. What do I owe you?”

“You paid six hundred. It took a day. So we're done.”

“What about expenses?”

Bernie shook his head. Bernie! The fill-up? Lunch? But he didn't go there.

“I thought I'd want to kill him,” Sherry said. “But I don't.”

“Good,” said Bernie. “He's not worth it.”

“How the hell would you know?” Her voice rose again. “I suppose you think I was just after his money?”

“Oh, no, certainly not,” Bernie said. “Never crossed my—”

“I've got news for you—that was only part of it. Ric's the most vital man I ever met.”

“Vital?”

“Alive, Bernie. He built an empire.”

“What empire?”

“Worldwide Recycling Solutions. I already told you. They're in thirty-nine countries.”

“He's all about recycling,” Bernie said.

“Huh?”

Bernie rose. “You can keep the photos.”

“Don't want to kill him,” Sherry said, “but how much for you to shove them down his throat?”

“Ten billion,” Bernie said.

Wow! This was it, the big score at last! But it didn't happen. We walked out of there with the photos, and that was it.

• • •

“Not a bad day's work, Chet,” Bernie said. Back at home that evening, enjoying an after-dinner drink, water for me and a nice big bourbon for Bernie. “If a little confusing at times. I'm getting a strong feeling that I've never understood the first thing about men and women.” He took a sip, actually more like a pretty big hit. “And even more than that—starting from zero, I'm now going backward. Take me and Leda, for example. Sure, she had her problems, but did I—”

There was a knock at the door. And I hadn't heard anyone approaching the house? When security was my job? I ran to the door, barking my head off.

“Chet, easy, big guy,” Bernie said, coming up behind me. He opened the door.

A woman stood outside. Some people just look and smell rich, especially women when it comes to the smell part. This woman was that type, dressed in dark slacks, with a creamy shirt that matched the color of her hair. Had we seen her before? Maybe wearing a baseball cap? I thought so.

“Bernie Little?” she said.

“That's me,” said Bernie. “And this is Chet.”

She gave me a quick look, but long enough for me to see something in her eyes I liked. Her gaze went back to Bernie. “My name's Annika Teitelbaum. I'm interested in your services.”