When the Cat's Away (4 page)

They say that death is just nature’s way of telling you to slow down a little bit. Whether or not that is true, it can certainly add a slightly bitter taste to your espresso.

I listened to the lesbian dance class starting up over my head and I listened to some of the darker thoughts dancing around inside my head. Somehow I did not think that Fred Katz was related to Winnie Katz. In fact, I doubted that he was related to anyone. I doubted that he existed.

The name was obviously a rather humorous alias. Or at least it might’ve been if Rocky hadn’t been missing. And if they hadn’t found a stiff in the Garden with his clapper torn out. Little things like that can kill a laugh pretty quickly.

I thought over the whole situation. Somebody’s cat was missing and somebody’s literary agent had gone to Jesus. Which was more important depended on how you looked at the world. In the case at hand, however, the cat and the agent were closely interrelated. Whoever’d heisted the cat had written the note, and whoever’d written the note had iced the agent. He’d probably done a few other things, too. Could’ve picked up sticks. Buckled his shoe. Well, whatever he’d done and whoever he was, he had to be declawed and neutered fairly rapidly or things could get ugly.

The first step, I decided, was to drop by the Sixth Precinct and lay the “cat got your tongue” note on Sergeant Cooperman. It promised to be an extremely tedious little visit, but if I didn’t go soon, I might be obstructing a lot more than my own slim likelihood of having a nice day.

I had not forgotten about Marilyn Park, Stanley Park, Hilton Head, and the hundreds of other cat fanciers down at the Garden. They’d be there all week. I hadn’t forgotten that an agent like Rick “Slick” Goldberg had probably made a lot of enemies over the years. If he was like most agents I knew, half his clients would’ve liked to have croaked him.

I remembered a little story my pal John Mankiewicz had told me about a writer in L.A. who came home to find his house burned to the ground. A neighbor came over and said, “Your agent came by. He raped your wife and daughter, killed your dog, and torched the whole house.” The writer was stunned. He stumbled through the ashes of his home and all he could say was “My agent came by?”

I’d put on my hat, coat, and hunting vest, stuffed the note in the vest pocket, left the cat in charge, and was almost out the door when the phones rang. This was good for two reasons: one, I’d forgotten my cigars; and two, it was one of those calls that can change your life. I went back to the desk, picked up a few cigars, and collared the blower on the left.

“Start talkin’,” I said.

“Kinky!”

“Yeah.”

This is Eugene at Jane Meara’s office. I’m her assistant.” Jane, I knew, was an editor now for a large publishing house.

“Yeah?”

“Jane would like you to come over here right away if you can.”

The cat had jumped up on the desk, and as I stroked her, a little shiver went jogging down my spine. “What seems to be the problem, Eugene?”

“Well, this may sound crazy—like something out of Agatha Christie—but Jane just got back from lunch and there’s—”

“Get to the meat of it,” I said irritably.

“There’s a butcher knife on her desk. It’s covered with blood.”

I stroked the cat one more time and tried to collect my thoughts. I fitted the last cigar into the little stitched pocket of the hunting vest.

“Sharp move,” I said.

10

I took the Otis box to the seventeenth floor of Jane’s building, bootlegging a lit cigar the whole way. Things didn’t get ugly till fourteen, when a woman with a hypersensitive beezer got on and sniffed me out. Nothing lasts forever.

I escaped into a small lobby and practically ran into the back of a tall, snakelike figure who’d been doing a fair impersonation of a man studying gourmet cookbooks in a glass showcase. The figure uncoiled and sprang toward me just as the elevator doors closed.

“What took you so long, Tex?” it hissed. It was Detective Sergeant Buddy Fox, Sixth Precinct.

“Waitin’ for my nails to dry,” I said. Fox was probably my second favorite American. My first was everybody else.

“I understand,” said Fox, “you been squirrelin’ some evidence in a homicide. Maybe you oughta fork over this purloined letter we been hearin’ so much about. Or would you like to hang on to it till Valentine’s Day?” There was a smile on Fox’s face but it seemed to lack a certain warmth.

I reached into my vest pocket and handed him the note that Ratso, Jane, and I had found in room 407 of the Roosevelt Hotel.

Dear Jane, I thought. Dear, sweet, innocent, little cat-loving Jane. Right then I could’ve killed Jane Meara with a pair of numb-nuts, or whatever they’re called. Any exotic North Korean martial-arts device would probably do. She’d gotten me into this mess by appealing to a sense of compassion I didn’t even know I had. Now, albeit unwittingly, she’d thrown me to the dogs, pigs, jackals, lions, wolves— whatever animal you’d choose if you could be any animal you wanted to be. As for myself, I felt like a swallow that had gone down the wrong way and stopped at a service station for directions to Capistrano. I needed either a road map or a Heimlich maneuver and I wasn’t sure which.

Fox escorted me down a maze of hallways to a small office. He motioned for me to go in, stuck his head in the doorway after me, winked, and said, “Wait here, Tex.”

I looked around the room. There was a sofa and a cluttered desk. On the wall were various book jackets. There was a little bulletin board with pictures of Jane Meara at a baseball game and several shots of a cat. I noticed rather grimly that the cat was wearing four little sweat socks. Rocky. I took down one of the snapshots of Rocky and slipped it into my pocket.

I didn’t need Frank and Joe Hardy to tell me I was in Jane Meara’s office. I looked carefully at the desk. I did not see a bloody butcher knife. Of course, it’s a little hard to see one if it’s sticking in your back.

Actually, I thought, it was nobody’s fault. Self-pity could be an important trait in a country singer, but in a detective, it was about as attractive as a busted valise. Maybe the whole, rather tedious situation was just one of the little tricks God plays on us from time to time. Like being born with freckles or coming back from Vietnam on a skateboard.

I was pondering this when a large, vaguely evil form darkened the doorway behind me. Without acknowledging my presence, Cooperman walked around the desk and sat in the chair. Fox slithered across the threshold and motioned me seductively toward the sofa. I walked over and sat down. Still not looking at me, Cooperman took a pack of Gauloises from his pocket, shook one out, and lit it with his Zippo lighter. I took out a cigar and lit it with a Bic. Nobody said anything. If silence was golden, we were closing in on the Klondike.

11

An hour and a half later I was ready to bring my brain over to the French cleaner’s and tell the head frog I wanted light starch. I’d given Cooperman everything I had on room 407 at the Roosevelt Hotel, which was not a hell of a lot. He’d wanted the key to the room and to know precisely how I’d wheedled the name Fred Katz from the desk at the Roosevelt Hotel. “I have my methods,” I’d said. He was not pleased.

Things went downhill from there.

Cooperman warned me off the case. He told me I could go and look for all the stray pussy I wanted but this was a homicide. Not a missing cat. Once I left this office, he said, he did not wish to see me for at least a couple years. Maybe three or four.

I got up to go and he said, “We’re not through with you yet.” I sat back down on the sofa and puffed on my second cigar. The cigar was well past the midway point already. I didn’t like to smoke a cigar too far past the midway point, but then I didn’t like a lot of things. Cooperman, for instance.

I asked Cooperman about the knife and he told me it was already at the lab. Knowing what he did
now
, he said pointedly, he had little doubt that it was the murder weapon.

It was at about this time that Cooperman had Jane Meara brought in, sat her down next to me on the sofa, and told her in very graphic terms for the first time exactly how the charming implement had been employed prior to its arrival upon her desk. She hadn’t even known about the stiff, much less the tongue, and she turned white as a Klansman on the Fourth of July.

Cooperman asked her another question but he got no answer. When you pay your nickel you’re supposed to get a nickel ride. All Cooperman got was an autistic stare.

Cooperman killed his fifth Gauloise in the ashtray. I began the pre-ignition procedures on my third cigar. It wasn’t really a contest, of course, but I liked to keep up my end of things. The conversation had begun to lag a bit.

At a signal from Cooperman, Fox went out into the hallway and brought in Jim Landis, the publisher Jane worked for, and Eugene, her assistant editor. Cooperman asked Landis where he’d been for the past few hours. Landis said he’d been at a nearby restaurant. Fox took the name of the place and said he’d check it out.

Eugene said he’d been at his desk all through the lunch hour and several authors and would-be authors had stopped by Jane’s office while she was out. He had their names on memo slips at his desk.

“Would you be so kind as to bring them to us now?” Cooperman asked in a sweet, sarcastic voice. Eugene went out with Fox. I smoked my cigar. Jane sniffled quietly next to me. Landis fidgeted. Cooperman glared at the empty doorway.

Eugene came back and handed the memos to Cooperman. Cooperman handed them to Fox. “That’s it?” he asked.

Eugene nodded. Then he seemed to remember something. “Oh, wait,” he said, “there were some people here right after you left, Jane. They said they were from the cat show and they wanted—”

“Cat show?” said Cooperman.

“Cat show,” said Eugene.

“Names?” asked Cooperman.

“I—I didn’t get their names,” said Eugene. He was starting to wither visibly.

“You didn’t get their names!” shouted Cooperman. “Well—they said they’d be back to see Jane. I didn’t think—is it important?”

“No,” said Cooperman, “it’s not important. We’re just here having a little fun at the office today. We’re playing visitor trivia.”

With a snarl, Cooperman gestured viciously toward Eugene and shouted, “Fox! Take this guy outa my sight and get descriptions.”

Cooperman picked up his cigarettes, waved Landis out with his hand, and told Jane Meara she could have her office back. Jane shuddered. Cooperman stood up. I stood up. Cooperman looked at me. His eyes were a curious admixture of pity, malice, and maybe something just a little more unsavory.

“Penny for your thoughts,” I said.

Cooperman gave out with a dry, gritty chuckle. Sounded like a guy trying to start his lawn mower in 1957. “I’ll be seeing you around, Tex,” he said.

12

Tuesday night. Ten o’clock. Ratso and I walked into the Carnegie Delicatessen, our home away from home away from home. It smelled great—like pastrami and perfume, salami and cigars. The Carnegie warmed your heart like a matzo ball in January and that, in fact, was what I had my dial set on when we walked into the place. Matzo ball soup with a matzo ball about the size of McGovern’s head. McGovern was my friend who wrote for the
Daily News
and sometimes, rather grudgingly, helped me gather crucial data on various and nefarious individuals. McGovern had the largest head in North America.