to—
“Chet! For God’s sake! How many times do we have to go through this?”
Go through what? While I tried to remember whatever I was supposed to remember, the
rough customer stopped baring his enormous teeth and so did I. Why look for trouble?
And what was this? His ears didn’t match? And one of them had a tiny notch taken out
of it, the kind of notch a whizzing bullet might have . . . At that moment, I remembered
what I was supposed to remember. Then there was nothing to do but give myself a good
shake, which was what I did.
“Chet! You’re going to tip the goddamn boat!”
And then we’d have our swim? That sounded pretty good to—
“CHET!”
I went still.
Out in the middle of the lake rose a small island. Bernie glanced at the map. “This
is it,” he said. “Isle des Deux Amis. Kind of a long name for such a little spot.
Means island of two friends, maybe.”
Excellent name in my opinion. A few trees grew on Isle des Deux Amis and another one
had fallen into the water and lay there partly underneath. Bernie steered around it,
cut the motor, and we glided up to a low sandy bank and came to a stop with agentle bump. Bernie held out a rope end, waved it around a bit. A waving rope end
within snatching distance? Who could resist?
“Think you could hop out with it?” he said.
I didn’t even have to think, which is usually when I’m at my best. I’d leaped onto
the shore—more muddy than sandy, as it turned out—and trotted up to the nearest tree,
marking it at once, the rope end still in my mouth.
Bernie stepped out of the boat and—oops—sank down in the mud to his ankles. He pulled
his feet free with a couple of wet sucking plop sounds, not unpleasant, and then said
a few things I’m sure he didn’t really mean. He walked over, took the rope end, and
tied it around the trunk of the tree.
“My best sneakers, big guy.” They were? What about the other pair, the one without
the paint spatters? “This whole goddamn state’s drowning.”
That sounded like a problem, and maybe scary, too, but right then I was more interested
in the fact that another member of the nation within had already marked my tree, lower
down—much lower down, in fact, meaning a little guy—not very recently, certainly not
today or the day before. Other than that, all I learned about the little dude was
that like me he was a fan of Slim Jims. Suppose he had one? Snatching it away from
him would be a snap! Maybe not a nice thought. I tried to get rid of it, but it didn’t
want to leave.
“Time for a quick recon, Chet.”
I’d been just about to come up with that on my own—I knew it! Quick recons were what
we always did first thing in a new place, especially crime scenes. Uh-oh. Was this
a crime scene? I got ready for anything.
We moved on to ground that was a little higher and found a sort of path lined with
sawtooth grasses I’d never seen before and proved to myself how sharp they were right
away. “Nofootprints,” Bernie said. “If Ralph came here, you’d think there’d be footprints.
Although with all the rain . . .”
He went quiet, but the thoughts kept on going in his mind: I could feel them, like
birds flying in the night. One thing was for sure: no footprints. That didn’t mean
no humans had been here. In fact, there’d been two, around the same time as that little
member of the nation within. Two human smells, both male and alike in lots of ways,
but that was something you had to get past in this business. Funny thing about me:
it didn’t take a lot of effort. None at all, was the actual truth, if you must know.
For example, one of these dudes had a garlicky thing going on and the other had overdone
it with the same aftershave that Bernie used before Suzie made him stop, the one that
comes in the square green bottle.
“I’m worried we’re a bit like a fish out of water down here,” Bernie said.
Whoa. A fish
“Chet! For God’s sake! How many times do we have to go through this?”
Go through what? While I tried to remember whatever I was supposed to remember, the
rough customer stopped baring his enormous teeth and so did I. Why look for trouble?
And what was this? His ears didn’t match? And one of them had a tiny notch taken out
of it, the kind of notch a whizzing bullet might have . . . At that moment, I remembered
what I was supposed to remember. Then there was nothing to do but give myself a good
shake, which was what I did.
“Chet! You’re going to tip the goddamn boat!”
And then we’d have our swim? That sounded pretty good to—
“CHET!”
I went still.
Out in the middle of the lake rose a small island. Bernie glanced at the map. “This
is it,” he said. “Isle des Deux Amis. Kind of a long name for such a little spot.
Means island of two friends, maybe.”
Excellent name in my opinion. A few trees grew on Isle des Deux Amis and another one
had fallen into the water and lay there partly underneath. Bernie steered around it,
cut the motor, and we glided up to a low sandy bank and came to a stop with agentle bump. Bernie held out a rope end, waved it around a bit. A waving rope end
within snatching distance? Who could resist?
“Think you could hop out with it?” he said.
I didn’t even have to think, which is usually when I’m at my best. I’d leaped onto
the shore—more muddy than sandy, as it turned out—and trotted up to the nearest tree,
marking it at once, the rope end still in my mouth.
Bernie stepped out of the boat and—oops—sank down in the mud to his ankles. He pulled
his feet free with a couple of wet sucking plop sounds, not unpleasant, and then said
a few things I’m sure he didn’t really mean. He walked over, took the rope end, and
tied it around the trunk of the tree.
“My best sneakers, big guy.” They were? What about the other pair, the one without
the paint spatters? “This whole goddamn state’s drowning.”
That sounded like a problem, and maybe scary, too, but right then I was more interested
in the fact that another member of the nation within had already marked my tree, lower
down—much lower down, in fact, meaning a little guy—not very recently, certainly not
today or the day before. Other than that, all I learned about the little dude was
that like me he was a fan of Slim Jims. Suppose he had one? Snatching it away from
him would be a snap! Maybe not a nice thought. I tried to get rid of it, but it didn’t
want to leave.
“Time for a quick recon, Chet.”
I’d been just about to come up with that on my own—I knew it! Quick recons were what
we always did first thing in a new place, especially crime scenes. Uh-oh. Was this
a crime scene? I got ready for anything.
We moved on to ground that was a little higher and found a sort of path lined with
sawtooth grasses I’d never seen before and proved to myself how sharp they were right
away. “Nofootprints,” Bernie said. “If Ralph came here, you’d think there’d be footprints.
Although with all the rain . . .”
He went quiet, but the thoughts kept on going in his mind: I could feel them, like
birds flying in the night. One thing was for sure: no footprints. That didn’t mean
no humans had been here. In fact, there’d been two, around the same time as that little
member of the nation within. Two human smells, both male and alike in lots of ways,
but that was something you had to get past in this business. Funny thing about me:
it didn’t take a lot of effort. None at all, was the actual truth, if you must know.
For example, one of these dudes had a garlicky thing going on and the other had overdone
it with the same aftershave that Bernie used before Suzie made him stop, the one that
comes in the square green bottle.
“I’m worried we’re a bit like a fish out of water down here,” Bernie said.
Whoa. A fish
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