Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘Hawaiian pants’

Clubbing (4)

“I’m not afraid of no damn dogs,” the bouncer said.

“Smart,” said Bernie.

“And I’m not afraid of a loser like you, neither,” the bouncer said.

Loser? Bernie? That made no sense to me. I was sitting – just inside the doorway to Club Utopia – because Bernie had said sit. There’s a way of sitting where you’re actually moving a bit at the same time. That was the kind of sitting I was doing at the moment, closing in on that bouncer. But before I could actually get started on whatever I would have gotten started on, the bouncer grabbed Bernie by the collar, banged open the door with his shoulder and hustled Bernie outside. And Bernie didn’t do a thing about it! I raced outside just before the door swung shut behind me, and what was this? The bouncer was lying in the parking lot, sort of moaning and writhing, and Bernie was standing over him, checking the top button on his shirt, which had come unfastened. This was one of Bernie’s nicest Hawaiian shirts, the one with the trumpets. Have I ever mentioned the Hawaiian pants? Maybe I’ll get into that tomorrow.

Paperback edition of Thereby Hangs A Tail coming Sept. 7.

A Close Call

Search Albie’s house from top to bottom: that was what Bernie said, but for some reason we went the other way, starting in the basement. I’d never been in any basement at all like Albie’s: it was more like the floor of a casino, with slot machines, roulette wheels – on my last trip to a casino, this was on the Nuggets Bolliterri case, I hadn’t known there were rules about not putting your front paws on the roulette wheel while it was spinning, so if I ever get to go to a casino again, I guarantee that won’t happen, if guarantee means being pretty sure – card tables, dice, plus a long bar. We went behind the bar, through a door and into a kitchen. Bernie started opening things – cupboards, fridges, drawers.

“Smell anything, big guy?”

Sure I did! Lots of cooking had gone on here, plus there was a mouse on the loose.

Bernie approached a freezer. We used to have one on Mesquite Road, but Leda took it when she left. “I’m getting a funny intuition,” Bernie said. Uh-oh. I wasn’t sure what an intuition was, but when Bernie got them bad things sometimes happened after, such as Hawaiian pants, and – hey! – tin futures! I almost forgot about tin futures! They’d come very close to leaving my mind forever. Whew! That was a close call.

Bernie stepped forward and raised the top of the freezer.

Making Progress

Bernie took out some money. It had recently passed through the hands of a woman – I smelled perfume on the bills. Actually the same kind of perfume that Tulip wears. Tulip works for Livia Moon in the back part of her coffee place in Pottsdale. Livia Moon gave Bernie a real big kiss the last time we were there. It all goes back a long time to when Bernie was at Fort Hood, wherever that may be, and Livia was running a little nearby operation “to cheer up the boys,” she said. Is all that in To Fetch A Thief? Some? Any? Meanwhile the perfume scent was overpowering that other scent, very faint anyway, but important in this line of work. For any newcomers out there maybe this is the time to mention that we’re partners, me and Bernie, in the Little Detective Agency. Got any missing people in your life? That’s our specialty. Get in touch. We could use the money, on account of the way our finances are a mess. First came Hawaiian pants. Then tin futures. Tin futures turned out to be kind of complicated. Something happened in Bolivia, or maybe not Bolivia. Name some other place like that.

Meanwhile, Bernie and Foster were talking. The sound was kind of pleasant. Of course I always like hearing Bernie talk: he has a beautiful voice.