Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

Nan appeared in the doorway of the chopper and called out, “The little scamp was curled up in the copilot chair!”

Or something like that. I couldn’t really concentrate on account of what she was holding in her arms. Of course, he saw me right away and gave me one of those superior looks. Yes, a cat. Not particularly little, by the way, in fact, kind of monstrous. And ugly, besides. If a deep golden coat except for snowy-white feet and a snowy-white nose wasn’t ugly then what was?

“Brando!” said Thad Perry. “Come to Poppa!”

Brando was the cat? And Thad Perry thought he himself was the… I couldn’t take it past that. Meanwhile, Brando stayed right where he was, in Nan’s arms. She came down the ladder.

“Brando!” said Thad Perry, raising his voice. His voice had a strange harshness, and the louder he talked the harsher it got. “Come to Poppa!”

“He’s a cat person?” Bernie said.

“Guess so,” said Luxton.

Cat person? I tried to make sense of that idea and failed completely.

“Nan, let him go, for Christ sake,” Thad Perry said.

“I’m not holding him, Thad,” Nan said. “He’s holding me. I think he’s scared of that big dog.”

“What big dog?” Thad Perry said. And then he was looking at me; so were they all.

Bernie moved my way. “This is Chet,” he said. “He works with me.”

Thad Perry turned to Bernie. “What do you do?”

“Right,” said Luxton. “I was just getting to that. Bernie here’s going to be the mayor’s special liaison for security during the shoot. Any problems, take them to him, and they’ll get fixed pronto.”

“I don’t understand any of this,” Thad Perry said. “Nan? Do you understand any of this?”

“I saw some emails about it,” Nan said, “but I wasn’t aware-”

“You saw some emails!” Thad Perry said. Hey! His voice could get really huge, booming right off the ridge. Except for all the added harshness, I kind of liked that. Also I liked how he’d scratched himself. But of course the whole cat-person thing now ruled him out. So was it time to hop in the car, get the hell on the road?

“You weren’t aware!” Thad Perry went on. “Am I all alone out here? In this godforsaken hole? Like Jesus on the mountaintop? Has everybody forgotten what’s riding on this?”

Nan gazed at the ground, said nothing.

“Baby?” said Felicity. “I think this man-Bernie is it? — is just here to help.”

Thad gave her a hard look. “Yeah? Why do you think that?”

Felicity rubbed his arm. “I get an aura.”

“Yeah?” said Thad. “You’re sure? It’s not one of those fake auras?”

Felicity shook her head.

“Remember what happened in wherever the hell that was,” Thad Perry said.

“St. Barts?” said Felicity. “Oh, no, this is different.”

“And everyone here wants nothing more than for this movie to be ginormous,” Nan said.

“Yeah?” Thad Perry said, quieting down. He turned to Bernie. “Okay,” he said. “You’re in. But the dog’s got to go.”

“It’s Moses on the mountaintop,” Bernie said. “And the dog stays in the picture.”

It got real quiet up on this ridge. I thought of a biker bar we’d been in once, me and Bernie, the moment before things cut loose. But this wasn’t a biker bar, and nobody looked dangerous, except that Jiggs guy, maybe a bit. Bernie can be very dangerous, of course, as dangerous as they come, but he doesn’t look it, at least most of the time.

And then Thad Perry started laughing. He had a big, loud laugh, actually kind of jolly. He wasn’t the kind of laugher who shook with it, not being at all fat, in fact pretty much ripped, now that I saw him up close, but the sound was just like one of those Santa Clauses in the movies. At that moment, I made a connection, which didn’t happen every day-just nailing it. Thad Perry was in the movies, too! So I knew everything was cool before he even said it.

Had I ever been in a house this big? Not close. It spread across the whole top of the ridge and also had levels going down the mountain, kind of like the decks of this cruise ship we saw on our San Diego trip. There was even a gym with a boxing ring. Thad Perry, dressed in shorts, stood near the ring, working the speed bag. I’d seen lots of dudes working the speed bag-comes with the territory-and Thad looked pretty good to me, his hands bap-bap-bapping real fast, the bag itself a blur. Bernie watched from a stool in the corner. Jiggs sat at a desk near the door, paging through a magazine.

“How’m I doing, Jiggsy?” Thad said.

“Better and better,” said Jiggs, although he didn’t take his eyes off the magazine.

Thad stepped away from the bag, turned to Bernie. “I’ve been training with Carlos Longoria,” he said. “Carlos thinks I could’ve gone pro if I’d started young enough.”

“Who’s Carlos Longoria?” Bernie said.

“Who’s Carlos Longoria?” Thad said. “You hear that, Jiggsy?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Where have you been, Bennie?” Thad said. “Mars? Carlos Longoria’s the middleweight champion of the goddamn world.”

Bennie? Mars? This was confusing.

“I don’t keep up with boxing anymore,” Bernie said. “And it’s Bernie.”

Thad went to work on the bag again. “Bennie, Bernie,” he said, and then lots of bap-bap-bap, faster and harder than before. “Don’t like boxing? Too violent for you?”

“Boxing’s okay,” Bernie said. “It’s prizefighting I don’t like.”

“Huh? I don’t get it.”

“Doesn’t matter-just my opinion.”

“Whoa,” said Thad, winding up and giving the bag a tremendous blow. He wheeled around and stared at Bernie. Thad had great big blue eyes, maybe slightly farther apart than usual. “I said I didn’t get it. I like to get things.”

Jiggs looked up.

“Yeah?” Bernie said.

“Yeah,” said Thad. “So help me get it.”

“Two guys trying to beat each other senseless in front of a paying crowd bothers me,” Bernie said. “I’ve got no problem with them doing it for fun.”

“Still don’t get it,” Thad said.

Bernie shrugged. “Like I said, doesn’t matter. Just one man’s take.”

Thad seemed to think that over. Sweat ran down his big, muscular chest. “What makes you an expert?” he said at last.

“Didn’t say I was.”

“Like, for example, have you ever actually boxed?”

“A little,” Bernie said.

Hey! That was a surprise. We’d been partners, me and Bernie, practically as long as I remember, and here I was, still finding out things about him. I’ll never get tired of Bernie.

“What does that mean?” Thad said.

“Just fooled with it when I was in high school,” Bernie said.

“Jiggs?” Thad said.

“Boss?” said Jiggs.

“Remember that line from The Last Warrior?”

“Which one?”

“For Christ sake-the best line in the goddamn picture, where I say ‘Make me believe it, bro.’”

“Oh, yeah,” said Jiggs. “Brilliant line-who was the writer?”

“Writer? No goddamn writer. Improv, Jiggsy. I improvised that line right on the set.”

“Brilliant line,” Jiggs said.

Thad nodded, took a few steps toward Bernie, and smiled-a little smile, but there was something real cool about it that made you want to keep looking. “Right now, Bernie, I’ve got a strong urge to say that line again, only this time in real life.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie.

“Yeah,” said Thad. “You say you boxed in high school. I say make me believe it, bro.”

Bernie gazed at Thad for a moment, then rose off the stool. They were close together now, so it was easy to see that Thad was taller and bigger, and way more ripped. Bernie wasn’t soft-oh, no, not at all-but you couldn’t call him ripped. And, kind of a strange thought for me, Thad looked younger, too, a thought I didn’t like and hoped would go away soon. That’s something I’ve been lucky with in my life.