Chet The Dog

Posts Tagged ‘.38 Special’

Line/No Line

We walked around the house, me and Bernie. He had the .38 Special tucked in his belt. Bernie’s a crack shot, if I haven’t mentioned that already. Once we went into the desert and he tossed nickels in the air and then shot them to bits. Was that fun or what? And we needed some fun, because that was the day Leda left. That meant Charlie left, too. Charlie’s Bernie’s kid, and we don’t see him enough. A great kid, and really smart. What doesn’t he know about elephants, for example? Which turned out to be important in To Fetch A Thief.

“Nothing’s exactly open,” Bernie said, “so what we’re doing is over the line, no doubt about it.” Line? What was he talking about? Bernie kicked in the back door. Smash! I love that sound. I looked inside the abandoned house, still didn’t see any line.

Poolside

Bernie closed the freezer door, a good thing because I didn’t want to look at Albie lying in that cold empty box anymore. We heard the distant moan again, and followed the sound. It led us out a door and into the enormous back yard. The close-clipped grass felt springy under my paws, like a putting green. I like putting greens a lot, but this wasn’t the time for anything like that, because of this guy sitting on the deck by Albie’s pool. There were a few booze bottles lying near him; he was rubbing his head with one hand; and the other hand held a gun.

Hey! For a moment, I almost recognized this dude; in fact, thought he was Colonel Bob. But he was way too young to be Colonel Bob.

Bernie took out the .38 Special. “Drop it, Ray,” he said.

Our thoughts are with Rio and family today.

Coming Opening Day, 2011:

Smithereens

“Nice and friendly, Albie leaving his door open like this,” Bernie said as we entered the house, a cool breeze of air-conditioning flowing in our faces. I’m not a big fan of air-conditioning. It makes me sneezy sometimes. But not now. Now I was more interested in this huge, quiet house of Albie’s. And was he really nice and friendly? Not that I remembered. Plus he smelled of old cheese, a smell I wasn’t picking up at the moment. So Albie wasn’t home. In fact, no one seemed to be home. Houses feel different when they’re empty, hard to explain why. So I won’t even try.

After a while we were in the kitchen. It kind of reminded me of the kitchen at Max’s Memphis Ribs – one of my very favorite places – except it was way bigger. I sniffed around for scraps, found none. That hardly ever happened in kitchens. Meanwhile Bernie was gazing at the table. There was nothing on it but a wine glass, lying on its side. Bernie took out the .38 Special. Always glad to see the .38 Special, of course, but why now? For a moment I thought Bernie was going to blow that wine glass to smithereens. Did that make sense? Kind of, at least to me.

Perp with a Name

And a tiny dust cloud popped up right beside me. “Chet! Get down!” Something in the sound of Bernie’s voice made me lie down right away. “No, boy, back under cover!” I was a little confused. Bernie rolled out past me, fired the .38 Special up at the rocky cliff side. Then came another cry of pain, and another rifle spinning down from above. We looked up, saw two men scrambling along a trail at the very top. One was bald; the other had short white hair that shone in the sun. He looked vaguely familiar, but the two men reached the top and vanished before a name came to me.

Bernie rose. “The white-haired guy,” he said. “Was that Freddie Dancer?” 

Uh-oh. I remembered Freddie Dancer.