joke. Neither did I. What was so funny? Being in a movie was a kind of work, right? It was important to get paid for work, an area where we’d slipped up in the past at the Little Detective Agency, part of the reason-along with the Hawaiian pants, now filling our self-storage in South Pedroia, and the tin futures play, gone bad on account of an earthquake in Bolivia-that our finances were such a mess.
Leda was the first to stop laughing.
Then Lars. “Scale,” he said.
Then Bernie.
That night we packed the twisted-up bike back in the Porsche and drove over to Vista City. The streetlights on North Coursin Street were out again, and the crime scene house was dark, but lights shone in the house across the street, where Bernie had questioned the mother and her little girl. What had come of that? I looked forward to doing it again.
We parked and walked across the hard-packed dirt yard. The front door opened and out came a man carrying a vacuum cleaner. He stopped and said, “No dogs.” Or something like that: he had a huge wad of gum in his mouth.
“We don’t need to come in,” Bernie said. “I just want to find out where to return Nino’s bike.”
“Huh?” said the man. “You’re not the one who wanted to see the place?”
“Not following you,” Bernie said, which made two of us, but I didn’t worry. We’d catch up: we always did.
“It’s for rent,” the man said. “Very reasonable.”
“You’re the landlord?”
“Yup.”
“Where are the people who lived here?” Bernie said. “The woman and her daughter.”
“Cleared out,” said the landlord.
“Where to?”
“Back to Mexico, most likely. They’re all doin’ it these days-didn’t turn out to be the paradise they had in mind.”
Bernie nodded, a short little nod. Some of his nods meant nothing; this one meant he was starting not to like the landlord dude.
“How long have you owned the building?” he said.
“Awhile,” said the landlord.
“Know much about the place across the street?”
“Nope.”
“A man was killed there.”
“Heard somethin’ about it.”
“He had a son named Nino, lives with his mother. We’ve got Nino’s bike in the car. Any idea where we could find him?”
“Nope.”
“Ever run into anyone named Ramon around here?”
“Nope.”
“He might have a dog called Outlaw.”
The landlord stopped chewing his gum for a moment.
“Ring a bell?” Bernie said.
“Nope.” His jaws started up again.
“Would a C-note refresh your memory?”
“Nope. Anything else I can he’p you with?”
Suzie called when we were almost home.
“I remembered where I heard about Thad Perry and the Valley,” she said. “Carla told me.”
“Yeah?” said Bernie.
Carla? I knew Carla, a friend of Suzie’s at the Tribune, and one of those humans who was fond of me and my kind, even made sure to always carry a little something in her purse. I waited for Bernie to whip us around in a quick U-turn.
“… called her,” Suzie was saying. “She’s on assignment, back in the morning.”
“Thanks.”
“Bernie? You sound tired.”
“I’m not,” he said.
But once we were inside, he fell asleep with his clothes on. I lay down on the floor at the foot of the bed and listened to him breathe.
FIFTEEN
Lookin’ good,” Carla said. “So glossy.”
“Thanks,” said Bernie. Bernie always looked good, of course-and even better today on account of the deep sleep he’d had, breathing slow and even, the darkness under his eyes all gone and the zigzag in his forehead hardly showing at all-but glossy? I didn’t see it.
“And that tail,” Carla went on, “you could power the whole city off it.”
“He likes getting patted,” Bernie said.
They were talking about me?
“Sure you do, you beautiful boy,” said Carla.
Yes, me. How nice.
Carla gave me one more pat. She was glossy, too, at least her hair, and also had smooth skin the color of coffee the way Rick drank it-with lots of cream-skin that today was smelling of grapefruit soap. We’d met Carla downtown, in the little park across from city hall. The morning sun shone brightly on the white columns of the building, making all the details, like the chipped paint and the bird droppings, so clear. What a day this was going to be!
“Working on a story?” Bernie said.
“Zoning reform,” Carla said.
“Gonna happen?”
“Soon, no. In our lifetime, yes.” She checked her watch. “Starts in ten minutes, Bernie. What’s up?”
Bernie got going on one of those stories with lots of twists and turns, something about Suzie and Thad Perry and the Valley, not easy to follow. I preferred a very short story with no twists and turns-only my opinion-and besides, right under the next bench, on which a drooling old guy with a paper bag drink between his knees was zonked out… could it really be? Yes! A half-eaten hot dog with ketchup and relish, still in the bun. Humans: how often they threw food away! I just didn’t understand, and neither did those shiny black ants, some of them getting their tiny legs stuck in the ketchup. I made short work of the hot dog-don’t get me started on that strange name- ants and all. Ketchup and relish: a nice combination, and pretty unusual. Didn’t relish usually go with mustard? My head practically spun with fascinating thoughts about hot dogs and all the things you could put on them. I drifted back over to Bernie and Carla.
“… but I can’t remember whose uncle,” Carla was saying. “Probably one of my friends at the time-I’ll make a call or two after the hearing and get back to you.”
“Thanks, Carla.”
“Don’t mention it,” Carla said. She got up from the bench. “Heard from Suzie?”
“Yup.”
“The Trib ’s not the same without her.”
Bernie looked down at his shoes. He was wearing his best sneakers, not the pair with the paint spatters but the ones with mismatched laces, one black, one white, on account of the other white lace breaking and… a thought, possibly very important, fluttered through a shadowy part of my mind and disappeared. Wait! Something about black and white? It came oh so close to where I could grab it. But no.
