Cat on a Cold Tin Roof Read online

  But none of her yowls could depress me. I was too busy doing my math: fifteen hundred in the kick, four hundred for two days’ work (or maybe six hundred if getting the cat in the morning counted as a day), and a thousand-dollar bonus for finding her. That would take care of the transmission, pay a couple of months’ rent, and maybe even buy a small display ad in the yellow pages.

  I was feeling pretty good when I pulled into the Pepperidge driveway, climbed out of the car, grabbed the box by its handle, and walked up to the front door. There was only one cop car still there, and a uniformed cop opened the door before I could ring the buzzer.

  “Get the boss lady down here,” I said. “I’ve got her cat.”

  He ushered me into the kitchen, where I couldn’t drip on any wildly expensive carpeting, told me to wait there, and went off to get Mrs. Pepperidge. I put the crate on a granite counter and waited.

  She rushed into the kitchen half a minute later.

  “Here she is, Mrs. Pepperidge,” I said, opening the box and letting the cat step out to the counter. “Your adorable Fluffy.”

  She frowned and stepped forward.

  “Where is it?” she demanded harshly.

  “It’s right here,” I said, indicating the cat.

  She swiped her arm across the counter, knocking the cat, which uttered a surprised yowl, to the floor.

  “Where is it?” she said again.

  “Isn’t that your cat?” I asked, not totally disappointed since it meant I was still on salary.

  “Of course it’s my cat!”

  “Then—?” I began.

  “Where’s the goddamned collar?”

  “Ma’am, the cat wasn’t wearing any collar.”

  She glared at me for a long minute, then turned to the cop.

  “Officer, arrest this man.”

  “For what, ma’am?” asked the surprised cop.

  “Theft.”

  “But he returned your cat,” said the cop. “If that’s not her—”

  “Just arrest the son of a bitch!” she screamed.

  “But—”

  “I am not without influence in this town,” she bellowed. “If I have to go to your superiors, it’ll go as hard with you as with this thieving bastard here.”

  “Let me just check with headquarters, Mrs. Pepperidge, ma’am,” said the cop, pulling out his cell phone.

  And forty seconds later I was taken into custody, given my very own cell in the Cincinnati jail, and charged with a felony.

  4.

  Some sadist built the huge, glitzy, noisy Horseshoe Casino right across street from the jail, so just about every cell had a clear view of it. You could sit on your cot—I hesitate to call it a bed—and look out at all the high rollers, as well as the chronic losers, wandering in all day long, and if you were in for touting or picking pockets you practically went nuts seeing your rivals home in on all that easy money.

  I’d been cooling my heels there for maybe six hours, idly wondering which of my clothes Marlowe would eat first when his food dish remained empty, when a guard turned his key in the lock and Jim Simmons entered the cell.

  “Eli, what the hell is going on?” he asked. “I just heard about this.”

  “Beats the hell out of me,” I answered.

  “What the hell was so important about the cat’s collar?”

  I shrugged. “I have no idea,” I told him. “I never saw it.”

  “You didn’t steal it?”

  “I came right to the Pepperidge house from the shelter, or whatever the hell you call it. They’ve already searched me, and I’m sure they searched my car before we even reached the jail.”

  “All right,” he said. “I’m letting you out of here.”

  “The lady’s got friends in high places,” I warned him.

  “This isn’t goddamned New York or Chicago!” he growled. “Nobody tells me I can’t let an innocent man go free.”

  “I think she’d argue that I’m not an innocent man.”

  “She’s got a funeral to attend tomorrow. Just don’t turn up at it,” said Simmons. “Now get up and we’ll get you the hell out of here.”

  “When did you become a Samaritan?” I asked.

  “When I realized that if I hadn’t recommended you for the job you’d still be free.”

  “And broke,” I added. “So thanks for that much.”

  As we reached the ground floor he looked out. “It’ll be dark in ten minutes,” he said. “Let’s stop at the Twenty Yard Line for a beer, and then I’ll drive you to your car. No one will stop us or even see who it is in the dark—and if you had so much as a dirty photo of some blonde teenager in the car it would have been reported already.”

  So we walked to the Twenty Yard Line, sat at a polished bar that had oversized photos of Ken Anderson, Boomer Esiason, Carson Palmer, and Andy Dalton staring down at us, discussed the Super Bowl for a minute or two, but since we didn’t think the Bengals could get there and we didn’t want to get thrown out on our asses for saying so, we changed the subject and fell to predicting the likely Derby prospects for next spring.

  We finished our beers, Jim drove me to the Pepperidge house—and did the last half-block with his headlights off—I climbed out of the car and walked three feet to my own, spent a few minutes trying to wake up the gremlin in the ignition, and finally got it going and drove off before anyone from inside the house paid any attention.

  “Well, so it’s Kojak, home from another case,” said Mrs. Cominsky, who was standing in the foyer with folded arms.

  “Kojak was public, I’m private,” I told her. “Also, Kojak was imaginary. I’m real.”

  “So’s your dog.”

  I turned to her. “Oh?”

  “When I realized you’d been gone all day, I went upstairs to feed the poor ugly creature. I think he’s dying.”

  “He was fine when I left,” I said, frowning.

  “I fed him a can of Alpo, which is just about the best dog food on the market, and he was too weak to get off the couch and eat it.”

  I relaxed. “He could smell it from the couch.” She stared at me, and I smiled. “He doesn’t eat dog food.”

  It was her turn to frown. “What does he eat?”

  I shrugged. “Pizza. Hamburgers. Cheese Danishes. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Whatever I’m having.”

  “I don’t know why I put up with either of you!” she snapped and went back inside.

  I checked the mail—no bills for a change, but no Playboy or Hustler either, which meant the day was a wash. I went upstairs, opened the door, told Marlowe to stop snoring and get ready for a walk, attached the leash to his collar, and a moment later we were walking through the mud and slush. Sometimes Cincinnati gets a foot of snow, usually just an inch, but whichever it gets, it always warms up fast and melts everything just as fast. Marlowe and I figured that Mrs. Garabaldi’s petunias had missed him, so he went over to renew old acquaintances, and I got to hear her cursing at us in Italian, as usual.

  Then we began walking back to the apartment, and as we did so I became aware of the fact that one of us, either Marlowe or me, was being watched. There was a guy in a parked car—I couldn’t make out his features in the dark—and he was staring at us intently. I’d had enough hassles for one day, so I just kept on walking, with Marlowe absolutely determined not to walk at my side but pulling me forward until we finally made it home. I half-expected Mrs. Cominsky to be waiting with another lecture, but she was in her living room watching wealthy, well-connected detectives on TV, and Marlowe and I made it to the apartment unmolested.

  I opened the door, and Marlowe made a beeline for the couch just in case I had any foolish thoughts of sitting on it, so I wandered into the kitchen to see what there was to eat, since they’d forgotten to feed me lunch at the jail and I’d been too annoyed to ask. I opened the fridge, found a package of hot dogs, decided cooking just made them warmer, not better, pulled the pack out, walked back into the living room, turned on the TV, and sat d
own on the couch next to Marlowe.

  “Dinner,” I said, offering him a hot dog. He took it and decided I could stay on the couch without his lying on his side and digging his feet into me, and I flipped through about fifteen channels on the remote. There were a ton of news shows with all the usual—everyone hated us, the economy was in the tank, terrorists wanted to blow up New York or maybe Los Angeles, which at least meant I wouldn’t have to hear the network commentators sing their love songs about the Yankees and the Lakers, a couple of hurricanes were racing neck-and-neck to see which could destroy the Gulf Coast first. And finally they came to the only important news of the day: Carlos Dunlap’s ankle had responded to treatment, and he was a probable when the Bengals hosted the Steelers on Sunday.

  I turned back to TCM. At least they were done with Bette Davis and Joan Crawford. The problem was that Bettie Page had never made a film that lasted much more than ten or twelve minutes, so they were having a Veronica Lake festival. I turned it off, picked up an old paperback about a brilliant detective who never lost a fight and couldn’t have kept the gorgeous, oversexed women away with a gallon of mace. I fell asleep somewhere in chapter three and woke up to find that it was morning, Marlowe had eaten the rest of the hot dogs, and had wiped his mouth off on my now-incredibly-damp paperback.

  I considered showering, but I didn’t want to get out of my clothes only to climb right back in them five minutes later, so I settled for a quick shave and a cup of coffee, and then Marlowe and I visited Mrs. Garabaldi’s petunias again, but she was either asleep or out and there was no ear-shattering cursing, and I could tell Marlowe kind of missed it.

  Then I put him back in the house, got into the car, and drove off to the Wilkinson Animal Shelter.

  “Good morning, Officer Paxton,” said the lady behind the desk. “How may I help you today?”

  “It’s just plain Eli, ma’am,” I said.

  She gave me a knowing look that said, Ah! You’re working undercover. Okay, you can trust me to keep your secret.

  “All right, Eli. And my name is Susan. What can I do for you?”

  “The cat I picked up yesterday . . .” I began.

  “Yes?” said Susan. “I believe you said her name was Fluffy.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Wasn’t she the right cat?”

  “She was the right cat.”

  “Good!” Suddenly Susan frowned. “Then what are you doing back here?”

  “Just checking some details,” I said. “Did she have a collar when she was brought in?”

  “No,” she replied. “If she had, we’d have kept it on her. And if it had a license tag, we’d have known to phone the owner.”

  “I was afraid you were going to say that,” I said.

  “Can you describe it?”

  I shook my head. “I have no idea what it looks like. It wasn’t in any of the photos I had.”

  “Then why—?”

  “The owner wants it back.”

  Susan nodded knowingly. “A sentimental keepsake from a previous cat, no doubt.”

  I decided to reach for my only other possible lead. “Did the cat wander in on her own, or did someone bring her in?”

  “She was brought in by a gentleman,” was the answer.

  “Did he leave his name?”

  Susan shook her head. “No. He said he found her wandering on the street a few blocks away. His heart went out to her, and he picked her up and put her in his car. Evidently, he has a couple of large dogs, and he didn’t think the cat would be safe at home. I asked for his name and address, but he insisted he was just performing an act of Christian charity and didn’t want the owner calling to thank him.” She smiled. “I think his real reason was that he didn’t want us calling him for donations.”

  If the collar was enough reason to get me charged with theft and thrown into jail, I could think of a different reason he didn’t want to leave his name, but there was no sense discussing it with her. I couldn’t even tell her to keep an eye out for the collar, since I didn’t know what it looked like.

  “Well, thank you anyway, Susan,” I said. “Just trying to be thorough.”

  “I’m glad it was the right cat,” she replied. “And I’m sure you’re anxious to go back to apprehending killers and bank robbers and the like.”

  “It’s what I live for,” I assured her, and returned to my car.

  I got hungry on the way back—which made sense; all I’d had since yesterday morning was a pair of uncooked hot dogs, without even buns—so I stopped by a Bob Evans, sat down at a booth, and ordered a cup of coffee and a breakfast of steak and eggs without bothering to read the menu, since it was the same in all ten thousand Bob Evans restaurants, or however many there were in the Cincinnati area.

  The waitress—I haven’t gotten around to calling them “servers” yet—brought the coffee, and as I was adding a little cream, just to bring out the subtle nuances of the flavor, a short, burly, well-muscled man with a thick shock of coal-black hair and a matching black mustache sat down across from me.

  “We should talk, Mr. Paxton,” he said.

  “You’ve been watching me and following me since I got out of jail, and you’ve decided based on that that I’m a sterling conversationalist?” I said.

  He grinned. “You’re as good as they say you are, Mr. Paxton.”

  “Thank them for me.”

  “Maybe we can do some business and you can thank them yourself, Mr. Paxton.”

  “Call me Eli. And who do I have the honor of speaking to?”

  “Val Sorrentino,” he said, extending his hand. “From Chicago.”

  “Not Cicero?” I said, taking his hand.

  “Well, I go home at night.”

  “Why have you sought me out, Val Sorrentino?” I asked.

  “Because you’re working for Velma Palanto,” he said.

  “If she’s who I think she is, she fired me and had me arrested yesterday morning.”

  “Hah! I knew it!” Suddenly he grinned at me. “That’s why we can do some business together—because you’re not working for her.”

  “I’m not working for Warren Buffett either,” I said. “How much is that worth?”

  He threw back his head and laughed. “I like you, Eli!” he said. “We’re gonna get along fine together.”

  “Excuse me for asking,” I said, “but what do you think we’re going to be doing while we’re getting along fine together?”

  He looked around to make sure no one was listening.

  “I belong to a certain family that I suspect you’re not unfamiliar with, since you spent some time on the Chicago Police Force a while back.”

  “It’s possible,” I replied.

  “Anyway, this family employed a financial wizard named James Palanto. Big Jim, we called him.”

  “I believe I’ve heard the name in the last couple of days,” I said.

  “A few members of my family . . . ,” he began carefully.

  “Distant cousins, no doubt,” I said.

  He smiled. “Absolutely. No one I ever met personally, of course.”

  “Of course,” I agreed.

  “Anyway, these distant cousins have been unfairly charged with committing a series of . . . well, boyish pranks.”

  Like murder, drug dealing, and extortion, I thought, but I managed not to say anything.

  “And while Big Jim Palanto set off on his own with the family’s blessing quite a few years ago, word has reached them that these totally corrupt accusers . . .”

  The Chicago cops, I thought.

  “. . . planned to subpoena him and get him to testify against them, who of course Palanto loved like brothers.”

  I frowned. “If you came here to make sure he didn’t testify, why are you wasting time talking to me? Why aren’t you back in Chicago?”

  “You cut me to the quick, Mr. Paxton,” he said.

  “Eli,” I corrected him.

  “I didn’t off him,” he continued, forgetting to b
e circumspect. “I was here to sound him out, and he convinced me he wasn’t going to implicate nobody for nothing.”

  “So you didn’t put him out of the misery of pretending to be law-abiding Malcolm Pepperidge?”

  “Perish the thought,” replied Sorrentino. “I spoke to him a few days ago, and everything was copacetic.”

  “Then why are you still in town?” I asked, puzzled.

  He shot me his biggest grin of all. “Because I couldn’t see no reason why you and I shouldn’t make a quick ten million dollars.”

  5.

  For just a minute I thought I was going to choke on my coffee.

  “Calm down, Mr. Paxton,” said Sorrentino with an amused smile. “You look like you’re about to have a stroke.”

  I got the coffee down and wiped my mouth off with my sleeve.

  “You shouldn’t tell jokes like that when there’s food or drink on the table,” I said.

  His smile vanished. “I’m not joking.”

  “Ten million?” I said, and he nodded his head. “Okay, you’re not joking—you’re delusional.”

  “You wanna hear me out, or you wanna make cute remarks?”

  I stared at him. He didn’t look like a raving lunatic. But talking eight digits to a guy who couldn’t afford a new transmission for his twelve-year-old car wasn’t the mark of a man who was on the level and playing with all his marbles.

  “Well?” he said.

  “I suppose it’s just good manners to hear you out,” I replied. “Ten million, you say?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a ballpark figure. Could be as low as eight million, could be as high as twelve or thirteen.”

  “Whose is it?”

  “Right at the moment, probably nobody’s,” answered Sorrentino.

  “Maybe you’d better begin at the beginning,” I suggested, as the waitress arrived with my steak and eggs.

  “Just coffee for me, Toots,” said Sorrentino. I was almost surprised that the glare she gave him didn’t knock him over. “What do you know about Big Jim?”

  “I never heard of him until two days ago,” I said. “Under either of his names.”