Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

“Who says?”

Luxton laughed. “How come you’re such a hard-ass?” Bernie didn’t answer. “Nan Klein’s my source,” Luxton went on. “The assistant.”

“Do you know her?” Bernie said.

“Know her?”

“Like from before.”

“Met her the other day-you were there,” Luxton said. “Not sure I understand your question.”

“What about Jiggs?”

“What about him?”

“You just met him, too?”

“No.”

“So you knew him from before.”

“He flew in to check accommodations last month,” Luxton said. “I showed him around.”

Bernie didn’t say anything, just made a squiggle in the box in the box.

“What are you getting at, Bernie?”

“Nothing,” Bernie said.

“Is there something I should know?”

Bernie was silent again.

“Need to remind you who you’re working for?” Luxton said. “You’re my eyes and ears on this project.”

“A spy?” Bernie said.

“Wouldn’t put it that way,” said Luxton.

“And I wasn’t aware we were working for you personally, Cal. Thought it was the mayor’s office.”

“That’s how I meant to put it.”

Bernie made an arrow pointing from one box to another.

“You’ve got a question about Jiggs?” Luxton said.

“No,” said Bernie. “Do you?”

“What does that mean?”

“How about the mayor’s office-does it have a question?”

Luxton laughed, normally one of the best human sounds going, but not this time, hard to explain why. “Nothing like a sense of humor,” he said, “although it can open the door to misinterpretation.”

I checked the door. It stayed closed. No one came in. I heard no footsteps in the house, no cars in the street. Miss Interpretation? I knew a Miss Singh, daughter of Mr. Singh, our pawn shop buddy who sometimes kept Bernie’s grandfather’s watch-our most valuable possession-for us, but what would she be doing here? Didn’t they already have the watch?

When I turned back to Bernie, he was no longer on the phone. He just stood there, his gaze on some faraway place beyond our walls. Now and then I can feel Bernie’s thoughts-normally like soft breezes flitting by-but now they were dark and cold.

He turned my way. “What are you barking at?”

Me? I hadn’t even been thinking of barking.

Bernie gave me a little smile. “Wish I could lie down like that.” Huh? Like what? I was just lying with my chin flat on the rug, nicely stretched out but nothing unusual. Come on, Bernie! Try it right now! I know you can do it. But he didn’t. Instead he turned to the whiteboard and shook his head. “The whole thing’s starting to stink, big guy,” he said. What a stunner! First, although Bernie was always the smartest human in the room, he hardly ever smelled anything. Second, nothing stank: our place on Mesquite Road never did, except when Bernie forgot to take out the trash and another whole week went by. “One good thing,” he said. “It’s a legitimate reason to call Suzie.”

Losing me there, a little bit. Why would Bernie need a reason to call Suzie? Wasn’t she family? Not only that, but I missed her. Luckily for me at that moment I happened to notice a tiny tuft of rug sticking up out of the fabric. Tiny, but could I get a tooth sort of wedged up and under like so, and then try pulling with a hard, quick-yes, I could.

Bernie picked up the phone.

“Hello?” said Suzie. In the background I heard ice clinking in a glass and a man laughing; also maybe a cork popping, farther off. Bernie’s face changed in a way I didn’t like seeing.

“Uh,” he said, “it’s me. Bernie.”

Suzie laughed. What a great laugh she had! I missed that, too. “You dope. Think I wouldn’t recognize your voice? I was just about to call you.”

“Yeah?” said Bernie. “Sounds like you’re kinda busy.”

“Not at the moment,” Suzie said. “Just a sec-I’ll turn this off.” Then came a click and all that partying went silent.

“Oh,” said Bernie.

“Oh what?” Suzie said.

“Nothing,” Bernie said. He opened his mouth, closed it, looked around, possibly as though for help. “Chet’s here,” he said.

“Give him a pat for me,” Suzie said. “I miss him.”

Bernie took a step toward me. No need for that. I was already there.

“I think he understood you,” Bernie said, giving me a nice pat, although not like Suzie’s; a nice patter, Suzie, but she never did that lovely scratching thing at the end that winds up so perfectly.

“He understands everything,” Suzie said.

“Seems like it sometimes,” Bernie said.

“No seeming about it,” said Suzie.

“You think?”

Bernie looked right into my eyes, a sharp, close look like he was trying to see inside me. I opened my mouth wide, unfurled my tongue as far as I could then reeled it back in. What fun! I thought about doing it again. And then I did do it again. Just as much fun!

“… strange place,” Suzie was saying. “It’s the center of real power and yet feels totally unreal to me.”

“And what about back here?” Bernie said.

Suzie’s voice thickened a bit. “That feels very real.”

Bernie shuffled from one foot to another.

“Shuffling from one foot to another?” Suzie said.

Bernie laughed. So did Suzie. The conversation had to be going great.

“How’s Thad Perry?” Suzie said.

“Nixon says he’s a lousy actor, but I disagree.”

“Yeah?”

“He has something strange inside him.”

“Like what?”

“It lets him absorb things from other people and reproduce them or reform them so that while he’s still sort of himself, he’s also…” Bernie made a little throwing up his hands gesture. Humans on the phone did lots of gesturing, as though they were face-to-face; I liked that about them. “Hard to explain,” he went on. “I think there’s a word for it, maybe starts with P.”

“Protean?”

“Yeah,” said Bernie. His face softened and he looked about to say more, but did not.

“I don’t want his autograph, by the way,” Suzie said.

Bernie laughed again. Suzie was good at making him laugh, one of the best things about her. “You’re the only one,” Bernie said. He went still. I sensed stillness on the other end of the line, too, like they were both concentrating on what Bernie had just said. What was it again? When humans forgot things-Bernie’s mother being a great example-they liked to say that if it was important it would come back to them. Bernie’s mother, a piece of work: she called him Kiddo! But no time for that now. I was too busy waiting for whatever Bernie had just said to come back to me.

In the meantime, Bernie was now saying something like, “… remember you mentioning Thad Perry was from the Valley originally?”

“Or spent time there,” Suzie said. “Not sure which.”

“What was your source?”

“No source, really. It came up in conversation.”

“With who?”

“I’d have to think,” Suzie said. “Is it important?”

“Probably not,” Bernie said.

“Am I missing a story, Bernie?”

“There’s an irony.”

“Yeah,” said Suzie, all of a sudden much quieter. Something beeped on her end. “Have to take this,” she said.

After that, Bernie called somebody, maybe Rick, but I couldn’t be sure, on account of these dark clouds that came rolling into my mind-something that often happened when I lay chin-down on a soft rug-dark clouds that had this power of being able to make my eyes close.

It was night when we drove back into Vista City, the sky the normal dark-pink Valley night sky, the air smelling of grease; couldn’t have asked for more. We turned onto North Coursin Street, stopped in front of the house at the end of the block. It was dark, as were all the houses around, and none of the streetlights were working. Bernie shone the flashlight on the door, now crisscrossed with crime scene tape, and then back and forth across the yard, passing over the kid’s bike lying on its side and returning to it.