“What happened to the knife?” Bernie said.
Thad licked his lips. He looked very bad, dark purple patches under both eyes, his skin kind of pasty and waxy, like he’d gotten a lot older since the last time we’d seen him. But his eyes were clear now and he was wide awake. “Knife?” he said.
“The knife you used to kill April,” Bernie told him.
“No,” Thad said, shaking his head. “No, no, no.” He glanced around in that desperate way perps do when they’ve got a notion to book. “How did you get in? Where’s Jiggs?”
“Waiting for us to finish our conversation,” Bernie said.
“Jiggs knows you’re here?”
“No question.”
“But… but he’d never do that.”
“Maybe he’s decided it’s time to cut his own deal.”
“Deal?” Thad said. “He knows I’d give him anything.”
“Not a deal with you,” Bernie said. “I’m talking about the law.”
“The law?” Thad reached for the covers, pulled them back up, meaning… meaning it would be harder for him to book. At that moment, I knew one thing for sure: Thad was no perp.
“There’s no statute of limitations on murder,” Bernie said. “And from information we’ve developed it’s pretty clear that Jiggs was an accessory after the fact.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Thad said.
“Chet and I,” said Bernie. What was wrong with Thad? Wasn’t that obvious?
Thad’s gaze shifted to me, then back to Bernie. “Where’s Brando?”
Bernie shrugged.
Thad licked his lips again. They were all dry and cracked. He glanced at the bedside table. An empty water bottle lay on its side in a little puddle on the tabletop. “I need water,” he said. “Can’t think straight.”
“Try easing up on the drugs,” Bernie said.
And all at once, I was thirsty, too: funny how the mind works. I went over and licked up that puddle.
Meanwhile, it looked like Thad was starting to get angry. “A real feather in your cap, huh, bringing down a movie star?” he said.
“I couldn’t care less about that,” Bernie said.
Or something close, my mind getting stuck a bit back at the feather part. That feather on the gym floor, glossy black with the red markings, would probably look great in a cap, but Bernie never wore one. And just as I was thinking about the feather and how it got to end up in the gym, from out of nowhere came Brando, sort of flowing across the room, up onto the bed, and settling down in the crook of Thad’s arm. Brando settled some more. He could settle like nobody I’d ever seen. Thad gazed down at him, then back at Bernie, and now the anger was gone.
“I knew it would be someone like you,” he said.
TWENTY-NINE
What are you talking about?” Bernie said.
“Someone ruthless,” Thad said. “Who came to take me in. That’s what you’re doing, right? Arresting me? Aren’t you a cop or something?”
Bernie’s laughter is one of my great pleasures in life, but there’s one laugh he has that’s not so nice. Still pretty nice, since it’s Bernie, after all, and it’s not that I didn’t like hearing it. I just didn’t like hearing it quite as much, and I hardly ever did. But Bernie laughed that not-quite-as-nice laugh now, laughed it in Thad’s face.
“You think I’m ruthless?” he said. “Just wait.”
“For what?” Thad said.
“For what’s coming.”
Thad’s eyes shifted. “Maybe I should call my lawyer.”
“Who’s that?”
“I’ve got lots of lawyers,” Thad said. “Nan will know.” He glanced toward the door. “Where is she?”
Bernie shook his head. “You’re on your own right now.”
Thad pulled Brando in a little closer. Brando wasn’t in the mood. He rose, sort of drifted off the bed, and vanished in the shadows.
“What about Felicity?” Thad said.
“You’re dealing with me,” Bernie said. “Me and Chet.”
Thad looked at me. For no reason at all, I chose that moment to bare my teeth; actually, it was more like my teeth chose the moment to bare themselves. Has that ever happened to you? But even if it has, so what-no offense-human teeth being what they are?
Thad turned quickly away from me and back to Bernie. “What do you want?”
“Start with the facts about April’s murder,” Bernie said.
Thad took a huge breath, let it out in a way that was almost a sob. “I was just a kid.”
“So was she,” Bernie said.
And then Thad did sob, one big teary cry that he muffled by putting his hands over his face. “I don’t even know where to start,” he said, or something like that, not too clear what with his hands like that.
“Start with the car wash,” Bernie said.
Thad peeked at Bernie through his fingers. I’d seen Charlie do the exact same thing. Did that mean Thad was some sort of child? What a thought! It disappeared from my mind, and not a moment too soon.
“How do you know about the car wash?” Thad said.
Bernie just gazed down at him. Slowly Thad lowered his hands.
“The car wash,” he said. “It was in Vista City. Jiggsy worked there. He’s my cousin, although nobody knows it, so I’m asking you not to…” His voice trailed away.
“You came from LA to visit him?” Bernie said.
Thad nodded. “Just for a couple weeks. It was my first time away from home. I was sixteen, knew nothing about nothing, except for surfing. Then one day April drove into the car wash.”
“Alone?”
“With her friend.”
“Boyfriend?”
“No. Her friend Dina.”
“And then?”
“I sort of became the boyfriend. It all happened so fast. And so intense. I was a virgin up until that time, believe it or not.”
“And April? Was she a virgin, too?”
Thad shook his head. “She was only a year older, but way more experienced. And kind of wild. I loved that about her.” He gazed toward the window, hidden by the dark curtains. “In fact, I actually just loved her, period.”
“So why did you kill her?” Bernie said.
Thad sobbed again, this time more than once; his eyes teared up, but they didn’t overflow. Bernie watched with a real cold look on his face. I raised my tail, high and stiff.
“I don’t know,” Thad said, shaking his head from side to side. “I’ve tried and tried and tried and…” He kept shaking his head like that, faster and faster. Bernie reached out and slapped him across the face.
Thad stopped shaking his head, looked real angry. He glared up at Bernie and his hands balled into fists. But then they unballed and those big blue eyes-kind of like a movie all by themselves-went dead. “Just kill me. Kill me now.”
“I’ll take a rain check,” Bernie said.
Uh-oh. That was a bit of a baffler since it never rains in the Valley. So did a rain check mean never? I’d been over this ground before, always with the same result, meaning zip.
