Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

Uh-oh. I started panting, not sure why. Certainly not from this quick little climb, over in a flash. Down below the cascading came to an end and Bernie moved back toward the base of the wall, unhurt. The panting stopped.

“Chet? You all right?”

All right? More than all right-I was feeling my very best. And at the same time, here I was at the tip-top of this ledge or cliff or whatever it was. I came very close to having an interesting thought.

“What’s up there?”

I turned and started on a little recon or recoy or whatever it was, something that we at the Little Detective Agency always did in new places. Yes, I was standing on top of a cliff, but on the back side it sloped down gradually, open ground on one side and some enormous boulders on the other. I trotted along that line of boulders, a no-brainer-my favorite way of doing things and one of the best human expressions going-on account of that was where the scent took me.

You see these big boulders-much taller than a man-out in our desert; Bernie has a whole explanation about how they got here, which I’ll try to remember the next time he brings it up. Once in a while a boulder or two will have a small sort of shelf cut into it, where you might find some creature resting in the shade, a lizard, say, or possibly a rattler or a diamondback-a lesson I’ve learned in the past and hoped never to learn again. So I wasn’t surprised to find a shelf in the face of one of those boulders, and a creature lying in the shadows. But not a lizard, rattler, or diamondback: it was Brando.

Brando gazed down at me. I gazed up at him. He yawned, a real big yawn. His teeth? Huge for someone his size, and cat teeth were amazingly sharp, another one of those lessons I’ve learned and relearned. After a bit, he closed his mouth and turned his head away from me. That was infuriating. I barked, my short, sharp, annoyed kind of bark. No reaction from Brando. I barked again, shorter, sharper, more annoyed. His eyes closed.

His eyes closed? He was planning on taking a nap while I was down here barking my head off? Could I jump up to that shelf? No way. Somehow climb the rock? Too steep, straight up and down. No other ideas occurred to me. I sat down and shut up.

Brando’s eyes opened. He slowly rose, kind of unfolding himself into a long stretch-he turned out to be a not-bad stretcher, I had to give him that-and came to the edge of the shelf and stared at me. I stared back at him. Then, still with his eyes on me, Brando began to-how to put it? — walk down that sheer wall. And not in any hurry! About halfway down, he uncoiled and came gliding to earth-somehow at his own speed and not at the earth’s, if you get what I mean, and I actually don’t. He landed without making the slightest sound or sending the tiniest vibration through the ground. Now if he yawned again, I was going to Brando didn’t yawn. Instead he walked right past me, within easy pawing distance and no longer looking my way, and headed for a boulder farther down the slope. I-don’t want to say followed, more like I walked behind him, just as though I happened to be going in the same direction. And the next moment, that was what I believed, pure and simple: Brando and I were on similar courses, total accident.

Our similar courses led us around the farther-down-the-slope boulder. On the other side stood one of those gnarly palo verde trees, the yellow kind, and sitting with his back to the trunk was Thad Perry. He looked real bad: shirt torn, feet bare and bloody, eyes red and glassy, lots of powder caught in the sweat on his upper lip, like a white mustache. He had a gun in his hand, and was using it to make markings in the dirt.

Thad looked up, saw Brando.

“Go ’way, Brando,” he said, or something like that, his voice all messed up.

Brando lay down, curled up in a ball. Thad raised his gaze a bit, saw me. He blinked a few times, and then his gaze seemed to find me again.

“What the hell?” he said. He raised the gun, slowly and shakily, and pointed it at me.

Then, from farther down, came running footsteps, heavy and not very fast. I looked that way and saw Bernie pounding hard up the slope, all sweaty and dusty.

“Thad,” he shouted. “No!”

Thad turned to him. The gun swung in Bernie’s direction. Bernie kept coming. The gun wobbled a bit in Thad’s hand and then he did something I’d never seen before or even imagined. He shifted that gun around and aimed it right at the side of his own head.

We didn’t scare easily, me and Bernie, but we were scared now. I could see it on Bernie’s face, and as for me, I was terrified, terrified for the very first time in my life, my heart beating so hard in my chest I almost couldn’t stand it.

“Don’t,” Bernie said, closer now. “Nothing’s that bad.”

Thad, his eyes still on Bernie, said, “Fuck you. Fuck them all.”

I was already moving, had possibly been moving from the moment Thad had drawn down on Bernie. I zoomed over a low cactus, got my legs under me, and launched myself. Thad saw me at the last instant, and then came a dust cloud, the crack of gunfire, and a shot ricocheting off a nearby rock. KA-ZING! I got a good hold on Thad’s wrist, tasted his blood. He yelled something I missed and the gun fell to the ground. Bernie ran up and grabbed it.

“Let him go, big guy.”

And I was going to let Thad go, no question about it, if not now then real soon, but before I could, I felt a sharp jab in my side, too sharp to ignore. I spun around and there in the dust, back way up and teeth bared, stood Brando, his golden eyes full of hate. He hissed at me-that horrible hiss cats have in their repertoire-in case I was missing the point about how he felt about me. Guess what. I felt the same for him, or maybe even more so. Hot rage boiled up in me-kind of a great feeling, I admit it-and I lunged at Brando, snarling my fiercest snarl, the one where spit sprays out of my mouth. And then Ow. That hurt. And so quick! Brando had swiped one of his claws right across my muzzle? That was what must have happened-too fast to see, but I figured it out from the way he was poised in front of me, one paw raised, still hissing. I licked my muzzle, tasted blood, my own, and decided to think things over. Sometimes I thought better if I had more space. That was the only reason I backed up a bit.

Meanwhile, Bernie was kneeling on the ground, turning Thad over on his back. Thad’s eyes were closed. Bernie stuck the gun in his belt and placed a finger on Thad’s neck.

“Thad? You all right?”

Thad’s eyes fluttered open, big, blue, empty.

“Thad? Say something.”

His eyes stopped being empty, got unfriendly instead. “Fuck off,” he said.

Bernie let him go. Thad wobbled, started to tip over, then stuck out his arm and caught himself.

“What are you staring at?” Thad said.

Bernie rose. “You’ve got coke all over your face,” he said.

Thad wiped his face on the back of his sleeve, leaving a white smear on the material. He gazed at it, the look in his eyes changing from unfriendly to more like he’d just felt a pain inside.

“What’s going on with you?” Bernie said. “What’s the story?”

“Nothing,” said Thad, eyes downcast. “Nada, zip, zilch.”

Bernie pointed to the markings Thad had made in the dirt. “What about that-‘April Sorry’?”

Thad’s gaze slowly shifted to the markings. Then, in a clumsy kind of way but not slow, he lunged forward, almost a fall, and rubbed out the markings with his hand, rubbing and rubbing wildly. After that, he turned to Bernie as though he’d just beaten him at something. Thad’s eyes were amazing: they told so much all by themselves.

“You think I won’t be able to remember ‘April Sorry’?” Bernie said. Thad didn’t reply. “Did something happen in April?”