Cat and Mouse (3 page)

Then Mrs. Casey went up to her room to watch a Bogart rerun and Jan went in the den to watch a PBS program on the Aztec civilization. I went out into the gloom and sat in a deck chair on the front lawn, waiting for Corey to show.

I could hear the twin tail pipes of his Camaro rumbling long before the car came into sight around the bend of the hill.

He had brought his lunch box with him, complete with a vacuum bottle in the lid. Night watches were what paid most of the rent in his new one-room office downtown.

In the living room, the area of my previous seminar, I told him what I had told Jan and Mrs. Casey.

“A live one for a change,” he said. “I hope the bastard shows up on my watch.”

“Corey,” I admonished him, “you must remember that we are not the law.”

“We’re a damned sight closer to it than he is. Stop fretting, Brock. I’m a big boy now.”

He showed me his revolver, what the local police were carrying since they had switched from Colt, a .38-caliber Smith & Wesson.

He had brought a box of ammo along and they would fit my ancient Colt. He gave me a dozen from the box. I took them to the bedroom and stored them on the highest shelf in the closet, deep in the corner, next to my gun. Guns make me almost as nervous as gun owners do. My policeman father had been killed by a hoodlum’s gun when I was twelve years old.

Our living room is in the front of the house. That is where Corey would sit and watch through the huge picture window. I turned the lawn lights on.

Mrs. Casey came down during a commercial to ask him if he would like a snack. He told her he had brought it. She went back to Bogart.

The mist drifted in before Jan and I went to bed, shrouding the lawn lights, obscuring the view of the road.

We didn’t stay up for the eleven-o’clock news; we had our own troubles now.

I
T WAS A RESTLESS
NIGHT. I dreamed of my father again. Jan slept on; my mate has a less violent history. In the morning, at breakfast, she said she had decided not to go to work today.

“I can drive you down,” Corey offered. “You’re safe with me.

She shook her head. “It’s not that. Fiesta starts tomorrow and all the tourists are already in town.”

“There might be some customers among them,” I pointed out.

“For Kay Décor?” She made a face. “Hardly! Practically all of the better shops are closing for the weekend.”

Better
is Jan’s euphemism for
expensive.

Corey left, after his second helping of pancakes, and Jan went out to the pool. I sat in the living room, reading a Muller-Pronzini mystery, but facing the window so I could keep an eye on the road.

The cars went by. The only old ones were classics, a 1930 Duesenberg, a 1965 Mustang, an ancient Stutz Bearcat. The new ones were mostly Porsches and Cads and Continentals—and a county patrol car. The patrol car cruised slowly past twice.

McClune phoned around ten-thirty to tell me they had come up with zilch; no definable fingerprints and the stationery was available at any cheap chain store.

“Probably some smogtown weirdo,” he said. “Do you have a record of your cases down there?”

“Yes. And I’ve gone over them three times.”

“Well,” McClune said, “we’re patrolling that area more than usual. There was another burglary yesterday. Maybe we scared him away.”

“I hope not. I want that bastard!”

“Easy, Brock!”

“Sorry. I criticized Corey for saying almost the same thing last night. We are not the law.”

“Exactly. Though I must admit you’ve helped the law here since you moved up.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. I’ll keep in touch.”

The law in San Vadesto, both county and city, had been more tolerant of me than it had been in Los Angeles. The cynical thought came to me that I was now richer than I had been in Los Angeles. The sensible thought came to me that I should not look a gift horse in the mouth.

“You’re mumbling again,” a voice said.

It was Jan, wearing a terry-cloth robe over her bikini.

“Again?”

She nodded. “You woke me up twice last night. Why don’t you go out to the pool and get some exercise? I’ll sit here.”

I put on my trunks and went out to swim a leisurely ten laps. Though now solvent and snug in suburbia, I was still the punk who had been on probation for one full year in his Long Beach youth, a hot-rodder, son of a cop father and an angelic mother, Stanford graduate, my jersey in the Hall of Fame at Canton. And now I was being held house-bound by a creepy cat killer…Who wouldn’t mumble?

I worked on the weights for half an hour, took a shower, and it was time for lunch.

Mrs. Casey ate with us. “How long is this going to last?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

Jan said, “If it keeps up too long I’ll go stir crazy.”

I nodded. “That’s why I suggested the Biltmore.”

I finished the Muller-Pronzini book after lunch and went out to turn on the lawn sprinklers. Across the street, Bill and Sally Crider were talking to a man I recognized as a local realtor.

The Criders went into the house; the realtor came over to ask, “How’s it going, Brock?”

“Fair enough. Are the Criders putting their house up for sale?”

He nodded. “This area’s turning into a battle zone. How about you?”

“It might be hard to sell,” I explained, “if I told the buyers my reason for moving. And that would be the only decent thing to do, wouldn’t it?”

He smiled. “Same old acid tongue! A man has to eat, Brock.”

“Even cannibals,” I admitted.

“Even cannibals,” he agreed. “Have a nice day, Brock.”

He smiled again, nodded a good-bye, walked to his BMW parked across the street, and went away.

Constant smilers give me the chills. Those millionaire television preachers who appeal to the right-wing red-necks infesting our country, quote their personal interpretations of the Bible, rationalize their bigotries—and never stop smiling. The bland face of evil…

One thing you can say about big bald mean guys who kill cats, they don’t try to look holy.

The patrol car cruised by again before I went into the house. Jan was talking on the phone to Audrey Kay, her boss. Mrs. Casey had come to the kitchen to stack the lunch dishes in the washer. Her next daytime drama was not due for half an hour.

I took a bottle of Einlicher out of the fridge and settled down in the living room to read the latest Travis McGee. I was halfway through it when Corey arrived.

“My folks aren’t home,” he explained, “and I thought you wouldn’t mind a fourth at dinner.”

“I’m sure Mrs. Casey won’t. Which reminds me, we never discussed your current rates.”

He looked embarrassed, the first time I had ever seen that look on his face. “Gee, Brock, I don’t know—”

“You can’t afford any freebies,” I told him sternly. “You’re a professional now.”

He shrugged. “My aunt gave me six and a half dollars an hour in L.A.”

“That’s for family. I’ll make it seven.”

He shook his head. “You’re family, too. I’ll settle for six.”

Corey is not one of those modern restless young men who leave home for their own bachelor apartment as soon as they start to shave. He has economic sense; he knows that he can get better cooking, free laundry, and more comfortable quarters at a much more reasonable price with his doting parents.

He had gone to school at the local UCSV and lived at home even then. As a matter of fact, he had shared his room (but not his meals) with a classmate and generously split with his parents the rent his friend paid him.

After dinner, Corey went up to watch another Bogart picture with Mrs. Casey. Jan and I sat in the living room, the lawn lights on, me with McGee, she with the current
New York Review of Books.

Around nine-thirty, a car stopped in front. I turned off the lights in the living room; the headlights on the car went out.

The front door light at the Criders’ went on, the door opened, and Bill was outlined in the glow from behind him. Both the Crider cars were on the driveway; it was probably the reason the stranger’s car had parked in front of our house.

“Who is it?” Jan asked.

A man and a woman came into view on the Criders’ walk-way. “It could be a real estate salesman and his customer. The Criders have their house up for sale.”

“At this time of night?”

“I guess they’re in a hurry to move.”

I turned on the lights again and went back to McGee. Jan went into the den and turned on the tube, an opiate for the masses that had not been foreseen by kooky Karl.

I joined her in there when Corey came down to take up his watch.

She sighed. “I never felt this nervous in Los Angeles.”

“That was a different time and place then and we were younger. This won’t last forever.”

I drank a glass of warm milk before going to bed; my ulcer was acting up again. Patience has never been one of my virtues. Like the renowned Arnold Palmer, I hate to
wait!

My night was less troubled than the previous night’s and dreamless. Jan slept soundly, thanks to the sedative she had taken.

At breakfast, Corey said, “That guy might be out of town by now. It could have been his dumb idea of a joke.”

“I doubt it. Let’s give it a couple more days.”

“And then move to Paris,” Jan said.

Mrs. Casey had joined us for breakfast this morning. She shook her head. “I’m not running from something the likes of
him!
I still have my late husband’s hunting knife. I keep it on the table right next to the bed.”

My kind of woman, Mrs. Casey. She asks for no quarter and grants none.

The wind had shifted; the day was sunny. My friends at the golf course would be looking for me, the pigeon who kept them solvent. I phoned one of the pirates and told him I would not be able to join them today.

He expressed deep regret, though I am sure it was more monetary than sentimental. Gambling golfers can afford camaraderie but not compassion.

No golf, no poker, no freedom, held in house bondage by a puke who could be in Cucamonga by now, a man in the shadows who didn’t have enough guts to come out into the open, a man playing cat-and-mouse—and I was the 228-pound mouse. Though I had apologized to McClune and admonished Corey,
I wanted that bastard!

I went back to my files. A man could have turned bald since last we met, a man could get his face scarred. I went through the hoodlum files, sorting out the heavyweights, the ones I could remember. Bush leaguers, most of them, burglary, assault, theft. This was before I had started to get the carriage trade. The ones I remembered didn’t shape up as likely suspects for the game the shadow man was playing.

I went to the kitchen for another glass of milk before lunch. Mrs. Casey had brought in the mail. There were only four pieces of junk mail today. There was one piece of first-class mail; two checks, each for seventy dollars, one made out to Jan, one to me, compliments of Larry Rubin.

Jan’s smile was rueful. “Maybe it’s a lucky omen.”

“Maybe. I’ll eat in the living room. Nothing heavy, though. My stomach is acting up.”

“So is mine. Patience, Brock.” She kissed me. “We mustn’t panic. That only makes us more vulnerable.”

Chicken soup, cheese and crackers, that was my lunch. Then Jan came in to tell me she would keep watch in the living room. “You need the exercise more than I do,” she explained. “And maybe it will help to calm you.”

I shook my head. “I’ll go out and nap in the shade. I’m really bushed. I suppose it’s frustration.”

“And rage,” she added. “How about a sedative?”

“No. Not yet.”

“My macho man,” she said. “I almost hope, for his sake, the police find that cat killer before you do.”

I dozed on a chaise longue in the shade but sleep wouldn’t come. I sat in the shallow end of the sun warmed pool, the water up to my chin. This was better. Some of the tension eased in my shoulder muscles, my stomach returned to near normal.

Both the county and the city police had been alerted; something had to break in a town this size. But then I remembered it was Fiesta week. The town would be jammed with tourists. The city police would have more problems than usual with traffic control, invading sharpies, and drunks. They would need all the help they could get from the sheriff’s department. The restaurants, the motels and hotels, the liquor stores would be coining it; the police would be overworked.

This was a vacation town for the tourists, a supposed sanctuary for the retired citizens who lived here. The Criders hadn’t found it to be enough of a sanctuary to make them comfortable. Even high-school burglars had panicked them.

Day after day in this fair country the underprivileged in our big cities face violence and hunger, insult and injury, ghetto fires and racial wars. While the suburbanites fret about taxes, our vicious crabgrass invasion, and a declining water supply for our swimming pools. Maybe it was our turn to suffer.

Over our drinks before dinner Jan said, “You feel better now, don’t you?”

“Saner, maybe. More angry than scared.”

“You were scared for Mrs. Casey and me, weren’t you? I’ve never seen you scared before.”

“I have been.”

“But this time it was for us, wasn’t it?”

“I guess. Should we have another drink?”

“I’ll make them.”

I went out after dinner and circled the house, checking the shrubs that fronted the windows, looking for footprints in the loose soil in which they were planted. There were four sides to the house; an intruder could approach from any of the neighboring yards.

Then Jan and I sat in the living room, she with the local evening paper, I trying to balance my checkbook. Arithmetic had never been my strong suit and my present state of mind was not rational enough to make it any easier. It had become more complicated to figure since my Uncle Homer died. Before my inheritance the bank had been kind enough to keep me informed about my daily balance every time I was overdrawn.

I had it balanced within a few dollars by nine o’clock. That was close enough for me. I put some golden oldies on the record player, Dixieland jazz, turned the volume low so as not to bother Jan, and stared out at the full moon.