Casual Rex

Improvisation is the modus operandi when you work with Ernie Watson. "You doin' okay, kid?" he asks me, and all I can do is mumble back a reply shag piling pressing up and into my mouth, my nostrilsas I'm momentarily assaulted by the stench of six thousand pairs of shoes and one incontinent household pet. "Stay down I almost got the damn thing." As an insistent burglar alarm whines away in the background, Ernie fumbles with the system's plastic keypad, doing his best to shut the contraption up, or at least send it to a better place. Ten seconds have passed, and in twenty more we're as good as bait for the neighborhood security patrol. Fortunately, they don't carry weapons. At least I think they don't carry weapons. "The code," I say. "Put it in already." "I did " "You didn't. It's still beeping." "I did. And it's wrong. The code's wrong." A leap to my feet Bruno Maglis today, clearly the inappropriate attire when one is breaking and entering, but at eight a.m. this morning I expected a non-felonious workday and I'm beside my partner in a beat, punching in the code over his protestations. Ernie's a crack PI, but it doesn't change the fact that his eyesight's slowly dropping off the low end of the scale last time, he insisted to the ophthalmologist that the reading chart was mocking him, by God and most likely he's simply hitting the wrong numbers. There: 6-2-7-1-4-9-2. Just like it said in the Rolodex on the new hubby's desk. We found the code scrawled down as a phone number listed for a Mr. Alvin Alarming, and you can bet the farm it took the stellar mind of a T-Rex to come up with that brain-twister. I take my time and carefully depress the numbers on the keypad in their proper sequence. The beeping continues. Twenty seconds down. This ain't good. "Hey," I say, "the code's wrong." Ernie fixes me with a cold, familiar stare. I grin. "Damn," Ernie mutters, "he musta changed it." "Maybe she changed it " "No." Simple, monosyllabic. I don't argue. Fifteen seconds. My gaze slides toward the doorway we came through, then out to the driveway and the suburban streets beyond. No security patrol so far, but that doesn't preclude an imminent arrival. The time has come to beat a hasty retreat, exit stage left, mission aborted. I was getting hungry, anyhow. But before I can grab Ernie by the lapel of his blue bowling shirt and haul him out of the building and down to Pink's for a chili dog with extra onions, he's somehow managed to tear off the face of the keypad, exposing the simplistic guts of this seemingly complex security system. Wires spill out like loose spaghetti, electricity snapping through the open gaps, and Ernie shoots a queasy glance in my direction. "Get down, kid," he says. "And stay there." No argument here. Over a decade of snoop work with the guy, I've learned that when Ernie gets that pained, cramped look that I've-just-licked-a-human grimace it's time to listen up and listen hard. I drop to the floor. An array of stunted claws flash out from Ernie's suddenly exposed paw, latex human fingers flapping loosely off the wrist. A flick of the forearm, a sweep through the air, and those four sharp razors slice their way up and through the assortment of high-tech wizardry bolted to the wall. Sparks fly, showering Ernie in a wash of miniature fireworks, but he stands his ground and holds tough despite the burn marks spreading across the surface of his polysuit. The alarm, if anything, grows louder. Moving with some real urgency now, Ernie grasps a severed wire in each hand and twists the two exposed ends arouGarcia, Eric is the author of 'Casual Rex' with ISBN 9780679463078 and ISBN 0679463070.