The Sound and the Furry Read Online Free PDF Page A

no—anything but that. We’d had some bad experiences with fire, including one very
     scary night involving a firebomb and a crummy motel down Mexico way. I sniffed the
     air, detected no smoke or any hint of fire at all, so it had to be one of Bernie’s
     jokes. There was no one funnier than Bernie, in case that’s not yet clear.
    We went to the Dry Gulch Steakhouse and Saloon, one ofour favorite restaurants in the whole Valley, with a patio where me and my kind are
     welcome. Sergeant Rick Torres, our buddy from Valley PD Missing Persons was there,
     and Bernie started telling him about the new case.
    “Took it for three reasons,” Bernie said. I tried to concentrate, but my steak tips
     were ready: I could smell them on the other side of the swinging door that led to
     the kitchen.
    “Money, money, money?” said Rick.
    “Four, if you include the money,” Bernie said. “Reason number one,” he began, but
     then the waitress arrived with my steak tips on a paper plate. She set it on the floor,
     me sort of helping her, and I missed the rest of whatever Bernie had to say.

FOUR
    N ight had fallen by the time we left the Dry Gulch patio and walked out to the Porsche,
     although night never actually falls, in fact, it rises from the ground up. The sky
     darkens the very last. Here in the Valley it never goes completely black, just dialing
     down to dark pink, especially in the direction of the downtown towers. I was sort
     of thinking about all that, but not hard, when I noticed a shadowy dude standing near
     our ride.
    I didn’t bark or make a sound, just stiffened a bit. Bernie felt it even though we
     weren’t touching, and right away peered over at the Porsche. The dude came forward,
     a tall dude wearing a dark suit and a small-brim cowboy hat, walking the way dudes
     in cowboy boots walk, his hands empty and out where we could see them.
    “Bernie Little?” he said.
    “That’s right,” Bernie said, stopping an empty space or two from the Porsche. I stopped,
     too.
    “And this must be Chet,” the dude said. “Heard a lot about him.”
    Bernie said nothing. Silence is a tool. He’s told me that, and more than once. I love
     it every time he tells me, no matter what it means.
    Silence, silence, and then the dude filled it in. Filled it in with talk, which is
     what usually happens. Once or twice a special silence of Bernie’s has gotten filled
     in with gunfire, but this dude’s hands were still empty. “My name’s Rugh,” he said.
     “Cale Rugh. I’m with Donnegan’s, Houston office.”
    “Uh-huh,” said Bernie, Donnegan’s being a sort of competitor, but way bigger. We’d
     met some of their agents at the Great Western Private Eye Convention a while back.
     Bernie gave the keynote speech, and it couldn’t have gone better—the Mirabelli brothers
     and all those other guys at the back and down the sides plus a few in front must have
     been real tired to have zonked out the way they did—but I didn’t remember this dude.
    “Somewhere we could go for a quick talk?” Rugh said.
    “Here is good,” Bernie said.
    “It’s confidential.”
    “We’ll talk in low voices.”
    Rugh smiled, showing a lot of white teeth, not small for a human. His eyes showed
     nothing. “They warned me about you.”
    “Who’s they?”
    “Colleagues. They said you’re a difficult son of a bitch. But you know what I told
     them?”
    “That anyone who’s any good in this business is a difficult son of a bitch,” Bernie
     said.
    Rugh’s smile faded. A tall dude and even taller with the small-brim hat, but he seemed
     to shrink down toward Bernie’s size. Not that Bernie’s not tall—don’t think that for
     a moment.
    “I’m not going to do all your lines for you, Cale,” Bernie said. “What’s on your mind?”
    Rugh took a quick glance around. We had the parking lot to ourselves. “We’d like you
     to consult on a case for us. A month’s work, more or less. We’ll double your rate—not