Spencer Quinn - A Fistful of Collars

Bernie rang the bell. I heard it sound deep inside the house, a big house, the size of many sheds. That worried me.

Footsteps approached on the other side of the door: a man, barefoot, powerful. Bolts slid, locks clicked, the door swung open, and there was Bernie’s pal Gronk, the insurance dude from downtown. Had he hooked us up with the mayor’s office in the first place, or something like that? Hard to keep all this straight; good thing that wasn’t my territory. Gronk’s hair was all over the place and he wore a polka-dot silk robe. Polka dots do nothing for me, but silk has a very nice feel, something that had led to a problem or two in the past. Not now, of course: we were on the job.

“Bernie?” Gronk said. His sleepy eyes were waking up fast; Bernie was like that, too, when he had to be. “What’s up?”

“Need to talk,” Bernie said.

Gronk paused for a moment, then nodded. “Come on in.”

We went in, and at that moment a woman called from upstairs.

“Stevie? Who is it?”

“Nobody,” Gronk called over his shoulder. “Go back to sleep.”

“But I heard you talking,” the woman said.

“It’s just an old friend.”

“Friend?”

“Buddy.”

“Oh.”

“Go to bed.”

“Okay, Stevie. Don’t be too long. You’ve got that breakfast meeting.”

Gronk cocked his head, listening for more. There was no more. “My wife,” he said. He lowered his voice. “The new one.” He led us down the hall and into a room that looked like a sports bar, except smaller, and not even that much smaller. “The old one was a much better sleeper.” Gronk gestured at the rows of bottles behind the bar. “Something to drink?” He sat on a stool.

Bernie shook his head. He leaned against the bar. When he gets tired his leg bothers him. Sit down, big guy, I thought, sit down and have that drink. But he didn’t.

“There’s a problem?” Gronk said.

“Lots of them,” Bernie said. His voice wasn’t pally. Weren’t they old pals? “The one that concerns you is that story about getting me hired by the mayor’s office.”

Gronk stared at Bernie for a bit, and then sighed. “You never change.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means you’ve always been and will always be a stubborn son of a bitch,” Gronk said. “A stubborn son of a bitch who doesn’t ever know what’s good for him.”

“Spill it,” Bernie said.

“You can’t just leave this simply as me getting a chance to do you a small favor and seizing the opportunity?”

“Not if it didn’t go down that way.”

“But what’s the goddamn difference?”

“Life and death,” Bernie said.

“I don’t get it,” said Gronk.

Whoa! You can smell the difference right away, poor Carla in the Dumpster, for example. But Gronk wasn’t in the business, so maybe I was expecting too much.

“I’ll explain when this is all over,” Bernie said. “Right now, there’s no time.”

“Christ,” said Gronk. “Anybody else, I’d…” He went silent before I found out what he’d do; with a big strong dude like Gronk, probably plenty. “All right,” he went on. “Attaching you to the mayor’s office wasn’t my idea.”

Bernie voice got quiet. “Whose was it?”

“A friend of yours,” Gronk said.

“Who?”

“A cop. He… he told me about your situation, all the debt, a play you made on the commodity market, which I had trouble believing, something else about the fashion business, the whole crazy thing adding up to the fact that you could use a high-paying gig in the worst way and I was in a position to make it happen.”

“The name,” Bernie said.

“He didn’t want you to know,” Gronk said. “So you wouldn’t feel obligated. He was being stand-up, Bernie-why isn’t that good enough?”

Bernie waited.

“I checked him out,” Gronk said. “For a Metro cop, he’s got a good reputation.”

Bernie kept waiting.

“Stine,” Gronk said at last. “Lieutenant Lou Stine.”

Dawn was breaking as we drove up High Line Road, at first just a milkiness in one part of the sky. Then it spread, pushing all the stars away and getting rid of the dark. After that there was a moment in the sky that reminded me of a time Charlie spilled all his paints, and then a small rounded sliver of sun poked up into view. I felt real good. Sunshine glowed beautifully on the tissue Boo Ferris was blowing his nose in.

“Goddamn dust,” he said approaching the car. He looked over at me. “Didn’t realize that.”

“What are you talking about?” Bernie said.

“His ears don’t match,” said Boo Ferris.

“I think it’s a plus,” Bernie said.

“Oh, right, sure, of course,” Boo Ferris said. “Like if they were both black or both white, then…”

“Exactly,” Bernie said. He made a little gesture toward the gate, meaning: open it, let’s roll.

Boo Ferris checked his clipboard. “Headed up to the old Comstock place?”

“Yeah.”

“Don’t see you on the list for today,” Boo Ferris said. “Want me to call up?”

Bernie shook his head.

“Don’t want no trouble,” said Boo Ferris.

“Who does?”

Boo Ferris smiled. He had some teeth missing toward the back. The sight made me want to bite something, no idea why. Life can be pretty crazy sometimes. “You do,” he said. “All the guys inside thought that.”

“Total bullshit,” Bernie said.

Boo Ferris laughed and raised the gate.

We drove to the top of the mountain and up the driveway of that huge house practically hanging over the cliff. “Not everything has to match,” Bernie said.

The chopper stood on the helipad, its blades sort of droopy, which made me think of Dina’s plants for some reason. This case? I didn’t understand it, not one little bit. As we walked toward the house, the whole sun rose into view, the bottom wobbling and then growing steady. You could count on the sun, the same way you could count on… Bernie.

“Hey, Chet, what’s with you?”

Uh-oh. Was that me, bumping into the backs of Bernie’s legs, and more than once? Maybe, but I really felt like doing it. We were in for a beautiful day.

I headed toward the front door, but Bernie made this soft click-click in his mouth, meaning “come,” so I did. We walked all the way around the house, real quiet. All the curtains were closed and the house was humming a low AC hum. We came to the gym. No curtains there. We looked in, saw nobody. Bernie went to the glass door, examined the lock, and took out his credit card. We’d had problems with that credit card before, maybe the worst one being a lunch at Le Desert Bistro where Bernie picked up the check and the waiter came back with the card and wagged his finger in what Bernie said was a French sort of way, French sort of ways turning out to make him mad, and things went downhill, which was too bad on account of that being the let’s-all-get-along lunch where we met Malcolm for the very first time. But not a problem today since the card always worked great when it came to B and E, which was what we were doing now.

One thing I’ve noticed about B and Es: it’s different every time. For example, at the critical moment where Bernie leans forward and starts carefully sliding in the credit card, did a bird ever fly by, real low, and drop a smear of that weird white bird poop square on his shoulder? Not that I remembered, amigo. Bernie made a sound like “Gah,” and backed away from the door, twisting his head so he could get a good look at his shoulder. Meanwhile, other stuff was happening. The bird circled around and landed on a flowering bush right behind us, the flowers bright red like the markings on the bird’s wings, an unimportant detail I now realize, that almost distracted me from noticing the door suddenly opening from the inside and Jiggs, stooping down, giving Brando a little push into the great outdoors, the great outdoors being one of the best human expressions going, a subject for later or possibly never. Brando had a stretch-a real nice one: how did he get his back like that? — and glanced around. If he saw me or Bernie, he gave no sign, but he spotted the bird for sure, and that stretch turned into a kind of slow glide, hard to describe and not slow at all, really, and then, despite how pudgy he was, Brando took to the air, a fat golden streak, and pounced on the bird, caught him like there was nothing to it-far from the case, as I well knew from experience.