“Has he ever talked about living in the Valley at one time? Or growing up here?”
Felicity frowned. Hey! All of a sudden I noticed that she was kind of beautiful. “I don’t understand. Thad was born and raised in Southern California. What are you getting at?”
“Nothing,” Bernie said. “How long has Jiggs been the bodyguard?”
“From way back, I think,” said Felicity. “They were friends when Thad was still waiting tables and surfing. That’s how he got discovered.”
“Waiting tables?”
“Surfing. He was surfing Little Dume when some producer saw him. You didn’t know that? It’s kind of a famous story. They re-created it for 60 Minutes.”
What was all that about? You tell me. And maybe Bernie didn’t get it, either, because now he was staring in the distance, his mouth slightly open like some question was on the way. None came. No problem. When he’s standing so still that way, all caught up in his mind, I could watch him forever.
“Brando’s missing, too,” Felicity said.
Bernie brought his gaze slowly down to her.
“I’ll pay you,” Felicity said. “Just say how much.”
“That won’t be necessary,” he said.
Meaning what? We were turning her down? We weren’t turning her down, just turning down the money? Oh, no: I hoped it wouldn’t be that.
SIXTEEN
But it was that. Working for no money, and not for the first time. Have I mentioned Bernie’s grandfather’s watch, our most valuable possession, now in hock at Mr. Singh’s? I was worried, and when I’m worried I like to gnaw things. For example: the rounded edge of the leather trim on the shotgun seat.
“Chet! How many times do I have to tell you?”
Uh-oh. Bernie sounded… not mad-he’d never get mad at me-more like not in his very best frame of mind. I sat up straight and tall, still and quiet, a total pro, on the job and eager for work. Keeping Bernie in the very best frame of mind was part of what I did.
“How about a chew strip instead?” Bernie said, opening the glove box.
Bernie: what can I tell you? The best.
We drove, and while we drove, listened to some of our favorites: “Going Back to Greenville,” “Lonesome 77- 203,” “If You Were Mine.”
“Like that trumpet?” Bernie said. “Roy Eldridge, at the top of his game.”
Like it? I loved it. The trumpet did things to me. We listened to “If You Were Mine” again. And again. And one more time. And were still listening to it when we climbed into the mountains beyond the Valley, passed a huge red rock-which was when I started to pay attention to where we were, so easy to get lost in music-and stopped at Boo Ferris’s gate. He came out of the gatehouse, polishing off a burger. I started in on some real crazy barking.
“Chet! Knock it off!”
I knocked it off, just in time to hear my barks echoing in the hills. Hey! Not bad, not bad at all. They even scared me a little.
“I don’t think Chet likes me,” Boo Ferris said.
“It’s not you,” said Bernie. “He’s in a strange mood today.”
“Have you fed him?” said Boo Ferris, suddenly showing signs of being a smart guy.
“Food is not the problem,” Bernie said.
Oh? What made him so sure? True, there’d been that hot dog, but not close to a whole hot dog, and hadn’t it been a long time since then? All at once I was ravenous.
“I noticed last time,” Bernie was saying, “that you didn’t ask what I was doing up here.”
“You were on the list,” said Boo Ferris. “That’s all I need to know.”
Bernie smiled. “Just like the army.”
“Except we’re not taking fire,” said Boo Ferris.
“You were in the service?” Bernie said.
“Briefly.”
Bernie nodded, like that made sense. “Fact is,” he said, “we’re on a job.”
“Figured that.”
“And I’m wondering when you came on duty.”
“Midnight,” said Boo Ferris.
“Long shift.”
“I’m covering for one of the guys.”
“Nice of you.”
“Don’t need much sleep,” Boo Ferris said. “And I can use the money.”
“Know Thad Perry?”
“Seen him come and go.”
“Did he go last night?”
Boo Ferris didn’t back off, exactly, but the way he was standing changed, so somehow he seemed farther away; farther away and not so friendly. “They’re big on discretion up here,” he said.
“Me, too, down where I am,” said Bernie. “So my preference would be to take all that Boo and Bo confusion to my grave.”
Boo Ferris stared at Bernie. “Why is it always me?” he said.
“Interesting question,” said Bernie. “But we’re in a bit of a hurry.”
“Christ,” said Boo Ferris. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
“Goes without saying.”
Boo Ferris glanced around. We were all alone. The sun shone, nice and warm but not too hot up here on the mountain. Boo Ferris took a deep breath. “He drove through. Four a.m. on the nose. Honked like a bastard until I came to the gate. I said, ‘There some problem?’ Just letting him know, hey, I’m a human being. ‘Goddamn right there is,’ he said, but not like he was pissed at me. So I kind of took a close look at him, and I coulda sworn he’d been crying.”
“Yeah?” Bernie said.
“Allergies, you’re thinking?” said Boo Ferris. “Possible, I guess. But he stank of booze, and he had a fat old spliff burning away in the ash tray. So I told him, like, maybe this might not be the right time for a ride. But he went anyway.”
“He didn’t say anything else?”
“Not really,” said Boo Ferris. “Just some weird shit about the time being right if everything was upside down.”
“Upside down?”
“He wasn’t making much sense. But what could I do? Arrest him?”
“Imagine,” Bernie said as we drove down the mountain, “if we had citizens arresting each other all the time, willy-nilly?”
Not sure what that was all about, but I liked the sound of willy-nilly. I was feeling tip-top. And so was Bernie-I could feel it. Perps, bad guys, gangbangers: heads up.
“Of course, I might be wrong,” Bernie said.
About what? Was it even worth a thought, what with Bernie never being wrong, plus don’t forget that thinking can be hard, compared to leaping high walls, for example, or finding your way home when you were all alone and deep in the desert, or… I kind of lost the thread.
Meanwhile, Bernie was saying something about upside-down. “… no more than a thin thread, and it’s not even clear that he was even listening.”
Whoa. Thread? Lost, or just too thin? Was he talking about me? I always listened to Bernie. Now, sitting tall in the shotgun seat, ears up, stiff, and open to the max, I listened my hardest. I heard a plane, the faintest hum,
