SEVEN
There’s silence, which I enjoy although it just about never happens, not completely. Then there’s human silence, which also can be enjoyable, but sometimes not. During those times of sometimes not, human silence feels like the ceiling’s coming slowly down on your head. That was the kind of silence we had in Suzie’s kitchen after Lieutenant Soares left.
“Let’s go for a walk,” Suzie said, her voice quieter than usual.
“Okay,” said Bernie, also on the quiet side.
Who was first to the door? You can bet the ranch.
• • •
There was a screened porch at the back of the big house and Lizette was sitting in it, a book on her lap. She raised a coffee cup as we went by.
“Lizette’s French Canadian,” Suzie said when we were on the street.
“I thought I heard an accent,” Bernie said. He glanced back. “How’d you find her?”
“Her?”
“Meaning the rental.”
“Through a friend,” Suzie said. “Do you like it?”
“Sure,” said Bernie. “This friend have a name?”
Suzie stopped dead. “Why are you doing this?”
“Eben St. John, right?”
“I’m not going to be interrogated,” Suzie said. “What’s wrong with you right now?”
Uh-oh. Angry at each other again? How was that possible with Bernie and Suzie? All of a sudden, I thought of Bernie and Leda. Oh, how I wished that hadn’t happened. I began to be unsure about this burg, wanted to be back home in the Valley. I thought of my best pal, Iggy, who lives next door. Bowling him over would be fun, or making off with his treats.
“That’s what I’m asking you,” he said.
“I don’t understand.”
“Don’t you?” Bernie said. “For starters, did he ever work up the nerve to spill his quote inner feelings unquote? And—” And then came something or other I missed on account of that strange bird was back, now humming faintly over the crown of a large tree across the street. It just hung in the air in a bothersome sort of way. I crouched and started barking, didn’t know what else to do.
“CHET!”
Normally when Bernie speaks my name like that, I dial it down, at least a little, but at the moment I was too upset—yes, I admit it—upset about this strange bird, and this burg, and whatever was going on with Bernie and Suzie. So I kept barking and finally Bernie followed my gaze up to the top of the tree across the street and . . . and said, “Must be a squirrel up there. Take it easy, Chet.”
Squirrel? What squirrel? This wasn’t about a squirrel. It was about that strange bird—a bird without eyes, by the way, in case I’ve left that out—that strange bird that . . . that was no longer visible, in fact had somehow vanished. I went silent.
Bernie turned back to Suzie. “Well?” he said.
“This isn’t like you,” Suzie said, meeting his gaze and maybe even doing it one better, if that makes any sense. I was almost overcome by the weirdest urge of my whole life, namely a strong and sudden desire to bowl them both over! At the very last second, I went with a yawn instead, a huge one, and felt a bit better.
“What isn’t?” Bernie said.
“This cold relentlessness,” Suzie said. “Or maybe it is like you, but just being aimed my way for the first time.”
“Cold relent—?”
Suzie raised her voice over Bernie’s. “Yes, Eben did work up his nerve, as you so charmingly put it about a dead man. Happy now?”
“And?” Bernie said.
“And what?”
Bernie’s voice rose, too. “And what did you tell him? Did you spill some feelings back his way?”
All the color left Suzie’s face, except for a small pink patch on each cheek. “Why the hell did you bother coming here?” she said, and then turned and ran back the way we’d come, down the driveway to the carriage house and out of sight.
Bernie watched her go. His face was redder than I’d ever seen it, like . . . like he’d absorbed all of Suzie’s color. Why did thoughts like that come to me sometimes? I really wished they wouldn’t.
Bernie looked down at me. “I suppose it’s all my fault.”
I looked up at him. This looking at each other thing went on for some time and then Bernie made a fist and pounded it into his open hand so loud it sounded like a gunshot. A bird burst out of the tree across the street, not my strange bird but an ordinary bird with eyes and wings that flapped.
“Come on, Chet, let’s go for a ride.” A ride? But no ride-type excitement in his voice at all? I almost didn’t get what he was talking about.
We went for a ride, Bernie kind of slouched behind the wheel, me sitting tall in the shotgun seat, a total pro even if we weren’t on any sort of job. But if we weren’t, why not? We had a dead body, no doubt about that, and dead bodies were part of our business plan at the Little Detective Agency, unless I was missing something.
We got on a big highway, fought some traffic, then took a ramp and found some two-lane blacktop, which was Bernie’s favorite when it came to roads. Soon we were in lovely country, green and rolling, and Bernie was sitting up straighter in his seat. He was quiet for a long time, but finally turned to me and said, “I disgraced myself, big guy.” Over my head, and totally. “So why do I still want to know what she felt about him? What does that say about me, beyond the fact that I don’t have two brain cells to rub together?” He’d lost me completely. “Not to mention,” he went on, “the degree of self-involvement on my part. That’s what jealousy is, no two ways about it. Plus the poor bastard’s dead, for Christ sake! I’m like some plutocrat on the Titanic, pissed off he can’t get room service.” Had Bernie ever been harder to understand than this? Not that I remembered. He was on the opposite of a roll. Opposite of a roll? Whoa! I was having my own problems. I lay down on my seat, curled up, watched the passing sky, clouds moving one way, us another. I felt a little pukey and closed my eyes. That was better. From time to time Bernie said things like, “And what about this murder, any hope of redemption that way?” And: “If we had the whiteboard I could start making boxes, Eben in the center, Soares over on the right, and Suzie where, exactly?” Plus: “No reason to include her at all, maybe better to erase the whole board.” As well as other stuff that helped me get to sleep and stay there.
• • •
The sun was going down by the time we turned onto Suzie’s street, which I recognized from all sorts of smells I won’t bother going into now, plus a hydrant I’d noticed near where we’d parked before, a hydrant I wanted to try out in the very near future.
And what do you know? Bernie parked right near it again! Like my thoughts were . . . were making things happen! I hopped out of the car, laid my mark high up on that hydrant, above all the other marks laid on it by fellow members of the nation within. Always best to be on top, in case that’s news to you. When that was done, I thought: Slim Jim. I thought Slim Jim as hard as I could, but no Slim Jim appeared.
We walked toward Suzie’s place, me and Bernie. The light of the setting sun made a kind of golden outline around Bernie. Did he look good or what? Plus he was walking just like Bernie at his best, strong and fast, with hardly a limp at all.
“Here’s what I’m going to do, big guy. Plead insanity. Never been jealous in my life, so what else could it be? Step one—full apology, no ifs, ands, or buts.” Wow! Hadn’t heard the no ifs, ands, or buts thing since the very end of the Chins Malone case, Bernie telling Chins he was going down no ifs, ands, or buts about it and Chins pushing on the detonator handle anyway, a wild look in his eyes. After that came wilder things, too wild to remember.
“Step two,” Bernie went on, “short and simple. I’m going to tell her I love her and want to marry her and spend the rest of our lives together. Finding the right words will be the problem.” He slowed down, came to a stop, gazed into the distance. “What would be the right way to put that? Some guys have got the silver tongue, Chet, would knock it out of the park. Eben, for example.” Bernie smacked his forehead. “Oh, my God—did I just say that?”
I had no idea what he was talking about. All I knew was that I’d never seen him smack his head before and never wanted to see it again. Normally, when someone smacks Bernie in the head, they’ve got to deal with me. That didn’t seem the way to go. But why not? And what about those guys with silver tongues? There were scary things in this life. I was trying to forget all about them as we came to Lizette’s house and headed down the driveway to the carriage house.
“Think it could be this, Chet? That I’ve never cared for another person—Charlie excepted, of course, but that’s different—the way I—”
Whatever that was about—way too complicated already—I never got to hear the end of it, because at that moment Lieutenant Soares stepped out from behind some bushes, a big cop on either side of him.
“Bernie Little?” Soares said.
“You know it’s me,” Bernie said.
“Just a formality,” said Soares. “Got a minute?”
“For what?”
“The Eben St. John murder case.”
“Go on.”
The sun dipped down beyond the bottom edge of everything, as I’d seen many times, and it got much darker, as it always did. I could barely make out Lizette, sitting motionless in her screened porch. Most of the remaining light seemed to have gotten caught in the eyes of Soares and the other cops. Not Bernie’s, for some reason, which had gone very dark.
“The murder weapon was a .22 automatic,” Soares said. “Or did you know that already?”
“I knew it was a .22.”
“How?”
“Ms. Sanchez told me.”
Soares nodded. “Did she describe the weapon at all?”
“In what sense?”
“Any sense, really,” Soares said. “But I was thinking visually.”
“You’re losing me.”
“My apologies. Specifically, the gun we found at the scene, the .22 automatic, which forensics now tells us is the murder weapon beyond any reasonable doubt, has an imitation pearl handle, pink in color.” There was a long pause. All the humans on the scene, the cops and Bernie, began to smell different. “Unlikely as it seems,” Soares went on, “you being a big macho guy and all, but do you happen to own a gun that fits the description?”
“No,” Bernie said. “I’m in possession of a gun that fits the description, but I don’t own it.”
“You’re saying it’s unlicensed?”
“I’m saying what I said.”
“And how did that come to be,” Soares said, “you in possession of a gun not your own?”
“Someone was using it to threaten the public safety,” Bernie said. “I relieved that person of the gun.”
“Where and when was this?”
“Recently and not in your jurisdiction.”
Soares gave Bernie a long look. Now his eyes, and the eyes of the other cops, had darkened like Bernie’s. “I’m not sensing a high level of cooperation,” he said.
“Why not?” Bernie said. “I don’t even have to talk to you.”
“Then you’re either just a nice guy, or I’ve aroused your curiosity.”
Bernie said nothing.
“Nothing wrong with curiosity, not in this business,” Soares said. “I’m curious, too. Take a guess about what?”
Bernie stayed silent.
“Forensics found two sets of prints on that pink handle,” Soares said. “One match turned up in the IAFIS database—a petty criminal named Bella Lou LaPierre from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Another set, mostly on top of Bella Lou’s, we couldn’t identify until we contacted the licensing unit of the Department of Public Safety in Arizona. They turned out to be yours.”
What was this? Something about Arizona again? Other than that, I had no clue, but whatever was going on was making everyone sweat even more. Maybe not visibly, but the air was getting tangier in a not unpleasant way.
“Care to explain?” Soares said.
“I can’t,” Bernie told him. “But the gun I have is locked in the glove box of my car.”
“Mind if we take a look-see?” said Soares.
We walked to the street, Soares leading, then me and Bernie side by side, followed by the two big cops. I didn’t like having them behind me, also didn’t like having Soares in front, and was trying to figure out what to do about that when we got to the car. Soares stood to the side and made the now-it’s-your-turn gesture with his hand.
Bernie stepped up, took out the keys, unlocked the passenger side door. Then he leaned in, stuck a key in the glove box, turned it. Nothing happened. He tried again. This time the glove box door popped open. One of the big cops came closer and shone a flashlight inside.
I saw Bernie’s shades in there; our own flashlight; the manual, all frayed and worn, and also useless, as Bernie had said many times; a bent cigarette; and—hey!—a partly chewed chewy. But no gun, if that was what this was all about.
“Bernie Little,” Soares said. “You’re under arrest for the murder of Eben St. John.”