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.
But back in the doorway-things happening fast now, and in more than one place, the way it goes down in our business sometimes-Jiggs, wearing faded jeans and nothing else, was noticing us big-time. His gaze went quickly to Bernie, me, the credit card, and back to Bernie. His face started to redden and his whole body, huge to begin with, seemed to expand, kind of like a balloon.
“What the hell is going on?” he said, fierce-but quiet at the same time, maybe… maybe because people were sleeping? Hey! Had I made a sort of… what would you call it? I wasn’t sure. Just when things were coming together: pop. Like soap bubbles. Once Charlie blew bubbles with his plastic bubble blower and I chased them around. It turned out not to be as much fun as lots of other games.
Meanwhile, Bernie was saying something about Thad Perry, like maybe we wanted to see him.
“You were breaking in the goddamn house?” Jiggs said.
“Didn’t want to wake anybody,” Bernie said. “Can you send Thad out here? We need to talk.”
Jiggs swelled up some more, really making Bernie look small. Meanwhile, Brando was tiptoeing off with what remained of the bird. I followed, and because of that maybe missed some of what was going down between Bernie and Jiggs. Did Jiggs ask Bernie what he wanted to talk to Thad about? Possibly. Did Bernie say something about that being none of Jiggs’s business? I’m not ruling that out. But at the moment I was following Brando through the garden. He stopped in the shade of a giant flower pot, got comfortable, and then, yes, began to eat the bird, although not the feathers. I myself had always wanted to catch a bird, but had never even thought of eating one, so this was kind of fascinating. I watched Brando. He watched me. Brando was a very tidy eater, a lot tidier than me, I admit it. And I was just on the point of admitting something else when I heard some thuds, hard and smacking, from the direction of the house.
I raced back through the garden, and there, by the glass door to the gym, stood Bernie. Oh, no! His mouth was bleeding! I ran right over to him. He patted his mouth with the back of his sleeve. I stood straight up with my paws on his shoulders: that blood had to be licked away and pronto.
“I’m all right, big guy,” Bernie said, giving me a quick pat on the shoulder, which might have been a bit of a push away, too, except I knew it wasn’t, “but we’ve got to move quick.” Which was when I finally noticed Jiggs lying on the ground, out cold. One of his teeth lay on the fancy red-stone walkway, sparkling in the morning sun. Those little details stay with you.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Bernie is a big strong guy and he can lift heavy stuff. Once he even lifted the back end of the Porsche clear off the ground! Not the Porsche we have now, with the martini glasses, or the one before that that got blown up, but the even earlier Porsche, the one that flew off the cliff. What a day that was! It wasn’t the same day that Bernie
