When the Cat's Away (6 page)

I figured I’d rush him with the ad copy while he was still laughing. “Okay,” I said, “it runs like this: ‘Fred Katz— all is forgiven. Return Rocky and no questions will be asked. Call Kinky—555-3717.”’

“You know,” said McGovern, “I’m a little disappointed in you. Just a
little
disappointed.” He laughed again.

“What’s the big deal?” I asked. “I’m busy this morning and I thought—”

“I’ve covered every beat there is,” said McGovern with some intensity. “I got the exclusive on the Richard Speck murders in Chicago. I spent six weeks covering Charles Manson. I got the most in-depth story ever on Lieutenant Calley. …”

“Rusty?”

“Yeah,” said McGovern, “good ol’ Rusty. I’ve spent over two decades covering major news stories. My whole career—my whole life—has been building, building up to this moment, when a country singer I know calls me to place a want ad for a lost cat. Kind of makes it all worthwhile.”

Dealing with McGovern had turned out to be at least as tedious as calling
Daily News
advertising and placing the ad myself, which I should have done in the first place. But you dance with who brung you.

“So you’ll do it,” I said. I waited.

“Sure, ol’ pal,” said McGovern a bit wistfully.

“Thanks, pal,” I said. “You’re a great American.”

“You could do me a little favor, too,” said McGovern.

“Sure,” I said, “what is it?”

“You can tell the Pulitzer committee they can go back to bed now,” he said.

15

That afternoon Ratso and I went to the Garden to weed out a killer. Ratso had taken a renewed interest, indeed a fascination, in the case from the moment he’d seen the stiff. Death is a hot ticket. For rubberneckers on an expressway viewing a tragic accident or for would-be Watsons, the specter of death is compelling. It requires the subtlety of a more Sherlockian mind to appreciate the finding of a lost cat.

That morning, before I’d left the loft, I’d spoken to Eugene in Jane Meara’s office, described the people I planned to interview at the Garden, and discovered, not to my total wonderment, that the cat show visitors to Jane’s office bore a strong similarity to Marilyn and Stanley Park and their spokesperson, Hilton Head. Of course, they could’ve been Marilyn and Stanley Park and Hilton Head impersonators, but somehow I rather doubted it.

I assigned Ratso to plague the three of them with his presence. I told him to insinuate himself into their lives and find out all there was to know. For myself, I had other ideas.

I figured I would start in the area of Rocky’s disappearance, talk to people and cats, absorb the ambience of the place. Where was Rocky? What made the Cheshire Cat smile? What made some people kill? I wanted to know more about cats in general. More about God and man. Less about William Buckley.

The Garden looked spectral as Ratso and I got out of the cab, almost evil. The afternoon was cold as blue eyes that didn’t love you anymore. It was starting to rain.

I grudgingly paid the driver, who was allergic to cigar smoke and probably a number of other things. Pretty smart to get a job driving a hack in New York City if you’re allergic to cigar smoke. Of course, as a child, the driver probably hadn’t wanted to be an allergy-prone cab driver. No child wants to be that. Just as no child wants to grow up to be a critic for
The New York Times
. Children want to be something good and meaningful in life. Like the fire chief of Spokane.

I lit a cigar and Ratso and I walked silently through the gray day like two mothmen drawn to the bright flames of death.

* * *

I walked around in the Garden for a while, focusing on the vague area where Rocky’d disappeared two days earlier. I combed the area thoroughly and didn’t come up with as much as an ear mite. Every time I saw a receptive face I’d take out the snapshot I’d liberated from Jane Meara’s office and ask the person, “Ever seen this cat?”

None of them recognized Rocky. However, once I identified the cat as Rocky, many of them commented on her abduction. No one seemed to think the cat could have wandered off. No one had seen anyone strange hanging around.

Of course, the cat owners themselves were such a strange-looking lot it would’ve been hard to notice anyone who had looked strange.

I was about ready to call in the dogs as it were, piss on the fire, and go find Ratso, when I saw her.

She was wearing a David Copperfield cap and between her hands she was stretching what appeared to be a large white rat. Beneath the cap her face looked beautiful and vaguely ethnic in a childlike, poignant, American kind of way, like a parade in New York for a country that, for all practical purposes, no longer existed.

She looked half of something pretty weird and I just hoped it wasn’t Turkish. Their only major export was knives that went around corners.

“Sexy weather we’re havin’,” I said. I’d gotten that one from a male cab driver one rainy evening at the Vancouver Airport.

“What do you want?” she asked.

“Well, I don’t want what’s between your hands,” I said.

She smiled a mischievous smile and turned a beautiful, cold shoulder on me. She carried the large white rat over to a table and placed him on it. Like a confused Pied Piper, I followed the rat.

I stopped a little distance away and looked at the two of them. The rat still looked like a rat, but the broad looked like a killer. What the hell, I thought, I was looking for a killer.

We carried on a rather strained cocktail conversation without the cocktails and I learned a number of things. Her name was Leila. She was half Palestinian. She was a judge at the cat show. She had not been holding a large white rat. She’d been holding a purebred hairless Sphynx. She’d heard of Rocky’s disappearance and she’d read about the murder in the newspaper, but she could offer no new information about either. The last thing I learned was that she did not wish to join me for a drink.

I caught up with Ratso right in front of a veterinarian giving a slide show on diarrhea. Ratso was having a rather animated discussion with Hilton Head. I walked up just in time to hear Head say “I hope you’re satisfied!” and to see him prance away.

“There goes a very unhappy young man,” I said.

“Yes,” said Ratso, “and he’s gonna miss the rest of the slide show.”

“So are we,” I said.

* * *

I would like to be able to say that I felt a slight prickling effect on the back of my neck as Ratso and I started to leave the Garden. It would’ve been nice if I’d noticed the hairs on the backs of my hands standing up like little San-dinista soldiers. Unfortunately, all I noticed was that I’d spent several hours asking people about some cat many of them had never heard of and daydreaming about a sensitive relationship with a Palestinian harem girl. I didn’t know if I’d be seeing Leila again or under what circumstances that event was to occur. I only knew that if I succeeded in tearing away the veil from her heart, the two of us might have a decent chance of erasing six thousand years of bad karma.

“Well, what’d you get, Rats?” I asked as we walked down the hallway from the Felt Forum to the Garden proper.

“Hilton Head is a born-again Christian.”

“Mildly unpleasant.”

“Yeah, and it’s kind of funny, too.”

“Why is that?”

“’Cause he doesn’t look like a born-again Christian.” I stopped briefly to light a cigar. “What about Marilyn Park?” I asked.

“She’s a vegetarian.”

“Good detective work,” I said as I blew on the end of the cigar. “Were you able to learn what her favorite color is?” 

“No,” said Ratso, “but I did find out something rather strange about Stanley Park. His wife and Head say that the three of them went by Jane Meara’s office yesterday.”

“So?”

“Park says it’s the first he’s heard of it. Claims he was here supervising the judging all afternoon.”

“Interesting discrepancy.”

“Yeah,” said Ratso. “So who was the third man? Maybe our old friend Fred Katz?” The only times I’d ever seen Ratso that animated were when somebody else was paying for his lunch.

“Well, you might have something there,” I said. “Or …”

“Or—what?”

“Or … nothing.”

“Terrific, Sherlock. I’ve just discovered what could be a vital clue. What’ve you turned up?”

We walked out the front doors of the Garden and down the walkway toward Seventh Avenue. I thought about it for a moment. Then I told Ratso about Leila.

“I don’t see how your wanting to jump the bones of a female camel jockey is relevant to the case,” he said.

I shrugged. “She and I could be the last hope for peace in the Middle East,” I said. Ratso was not impressed and responded with a fairly ethnic hand gesture.

We were nearing the end of the walkway when a figure stepped out from behind a portico. It was wearing a garish mask not dissimilar to the ones worn in the Broadway show
Cats.
There was something rather frightening in its manner—like catching a Jekyll entering the on-ramp to Mr. Hyde. There was also something rather frightening in its right hand.

It was a gun and it was pointed at my heart.

16

Everybody dies an early death sooner or later. I’d always hoped mine could’ve been a little later. Dying’s not what it’s cracked up to be. But in all fairness, very few things are. Body surfing, for one.

The figure adjusted the mask and I adjusted to the notion that I might’ve gotten linen for the last time. The Jamaican cigar I was holding like a lifeline in my right hand might be the last Jamaican cigar I’d ever smoke. I’d probably never go to Jamaica now. I’d probably never even go to Big Wong.

Funny the things you think about when your life hangs like a stray gray thread on Ratso’s Hadassah Thrift Shop coat. Maybe it continues to cling there and you continue to live. Or maybe some well-meaning, neurotic broad puts down her plastic cup of white wine at a SoHo gallery opening and says, “Just a minute, Ratso, honey, you’ve got a thread hanging on your coat.” She picks off the thread and you die. The landlord finds a new tenant and raises the rent. The cat goes to the city pound. The girl in the peach-colored dress calls, hears your voice still on the machine, leaves a message, and wonders why you never got back to her. Serves her right for waiting so damn long to call.

Answering machines tend to take on a life of their own. I remember the time the pope called Mother Teresa and told her she was needed in Los Angeles. Mother Teresa thought it was an unusual assignment, but the pope told her there were many poor people in the
barrios
there who needed her help. So, about three months later, the pope called Mother Teresa in L.A. She wasn’t home but he got her answering machine. The message said, “Hi. This is Terri. I’m away from the phone right now …”

It’s amazing how much time you have when you’re out of time. Strangled images struggled through Kentucky Fried synapses under my cowboy hat. What used to be. What might have been. A dark and beautiful girl in a little blue car—the prettiest girl in the world with a flower in her hair …

And there was Leila. Brown eyes sharing sweet and sour secrets of Semitism. Fragile Arabian ankles I would never be familiar with. I hated to pass the Middle East peace baton back to the Henry Kissingers of the world. Let them try to sleep- counting tiny little Cambodians. Soon I would probably be a tiny little Cambodian, too. Any moment now … Leila again … Brown eyes … as my friend Chinga Chavin says … that look like handcuffs … And the espresso machine I leave to Ratso …

Suddenly the cat behind the mask gave forth with a sharp, chilling sound—half feline, half fiendish—somewhere between a cynical, human meow and the noise a cat would make if it could laugh.

Then it pulled the trigger.

17