Cat on a Cold Tin Roof Read online

  Simmons stared at me. “You believe that?”

  “I do.”

  He took a deep breath, then pushed it out so that his lips vibrated. He sounded like a horse that just came back after a hard six furlongs. “You’re too good a cop—”

  “Detective,” I interrupted him.

  “You’re too good at either to believe it based just on what you told me. What else should I know?”

  “This is confidential, right?” I said.

  He nodded his head. “Right.”

  “Jim, the word I get is that he held back ten million dollars from the Bolivians. They’re in town to get it back.”

  “So they killed him?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t even know if they had a reason to.”

  Simmons frowned again. “Then he didn’t steal ten million?”

  “I’m assuming he did.”

  He looked totally confused. “Then they did have a reason to off him.”

  “They had a reason to be here,” I said. “They had a reason to want their millions back if Sorrentino is correct about how much Palanto siphoned off. But until they knew where he hid the money, they had every reason to keep him alive and absolutely no reason to kill him.”

  “Something’s missing here,” said Simmons. “Maybe they knew where the money was and then killed him and grabbed it—or grabbed it and killed him.”

  I shook my head. “Not a chance.”

  “Okay, why not?” he asked.

  “They’re still in town, and that means they don’t know where the money is.”

  Simmons stared at me for a long moment. “But you know,” he said at last.

  “I know where at least some of it is,” I said.

  “Well?” he demanded.

  “It’s why Velma—Mrs. Pepperidge—paid me a hundred times what the cat was worth to find it and had me arrested when I brought it back without its collar.”

  He looked disbelievingly at me. “What was the fucking thing made of?”

  “Leather. But it was studded with what looked like rhinestones, but which according to Sorrentino were actually diamonds—and that’s why I know that whoever killed him didn’t know what the collar was worth. Whether it was the Bolivians or someone else, why not just shoot the cat too, and remove the collar?”

  “So you think that’s why the Bolivians are still in town?” asked Simmons.

  “Can you think of any other reason?” I shot back.

  “And I assume Sorrentino is still around too?”

  I nodded. “We’ve formed a kind of partnership.”

  “Oh?”

  “If we find the collar, we turn it in for the reward.”

  “Is there one?” asked Simmons. “I haven’t heard anything about it.”

  “If it’s insured, we’ll collect from the insurance company. And whether it is or not, Velma will offer a hefty reward for it. Probably under a phony name so anyone who’s watching her to see if she can recover it doesn’t dope it out. I figure if she gets it, the first few thousand go to a facelift and a new name, the next few for plane fare, and good luck ever finding her again.”

  “So did she do it, maybe?”

  “Doesn’t seem likely, though of course you’ll check her bridge alibi. She had access to that cat day in and day out. Why the hell let it run off in a snowstorm with the collar still on?”

  “It sneaked out?” Simmons suggested, but even he didn’t look like he believed it.

  “All she had to do was take the collar off before she shot him, Jim,” I said. “Then let the cat go or stay, and who would know or care?”

  “Okay,” he said. “So Palanto was killed by Velma or three mysterious Bolivian shooters of which we have no record—there aren’t any international flights to Cincinnati from anywhere except France and Canada. Or maybe it was your pal Sorrentino.” He paused. “Or servants?” he suggested unenthusiastically.

  I shook my head. “If they knew about the collar, why not just take it and run? Why commit murder?”

  He nodded his agreement. “You got a point.” He smiled. “I just hate it when you got a point.” He checked his watch. “Any other possibilities?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “The guy who turned the cat in to the shelter without its collar.”

  He looked interested. “You know who it was?”

  I shook my head. “Not yet.”

  “Surely they have a record.”

  “He didn’t give his name.”

  Simmons grimaced. “So that’s it?”

  “So far,” I replied “I’ll keep you informed of anything I learn.”

  “And I’ll let you know if the collar turns up.” He finished his drink and stood up. “I hate to kiss and run, but I have to see what we have on any recent arrivals from—” he shook his head in wonderment

  “—Bolivia.” He began putting on his heavy winter overcoat. “And you got quite a few leads to follow up: Bolivians, widows, mob enforcers . . .”

  I smiled. “Not me, Jim. Murder is your business. I’m just looking for a cat collar. And since I suspect my partner isn’t as interested in turning it in for the reward as I am, my only problem is finding it before he does.”

  But of course I was wrong.

  7.

  I drove home, checking the rearview mirror every few seconds to see if I was being followed, but there were so damned many cars on the road it was impossible to tell. When I got to my street I went once around the block, just to make sure. Then I parked, entered the building, and climbed up the stairs to my apartment.

  Mrs. Cominsky was waiting for me.

  “Where the hell have you been?” she half-asked and half-demanded.

  “Out,” I said. “And if you ask what did I do, the answer is nothing. But it’s nice to know you care.”

  “I care about all my tenants,” she said. Then: “You had a visitor. Well, a caller, I suppose you’d say. Hard to be a visitor if no one is there to let you in.”

  I wanted to say, “Electric or phone?” but on the off-chance it wasn’t a bill collector I waited for her to tell me.

  “Spoke with a real accent,” she continued.

  “Bolivian?” I asked.

  “Bolivian?” she repeated. “Isn’t that the wristwatch?”

  “Did he say who he was?”

  “No, just that he had some business with you.”

  “Did he have a couple of friends with him, or maybe waiting in his car?”

  “How would I know which his car was?” she replied. “And he was alone.”

  “No message?”

  She shook her head.

  “Okay, thanks,” I said, starting to climb the stairs again.

  “I’m a landlady, not a message desk,” she said as I reached my door.

  I put the key in the lock, turned it, and entered. Marlowe was snoring on the couch. He opened one eye, stared blearily at me, and went back to sleep.

  “I wish just once you’d run up and greet me with tail a-wag when I walk into the place,” I said.

  I wish just once you’d remember your job is to feed me and let me sleep twenty-two hours a day, he seemed to reply.

  I thought maybe I’d open the mail, but I remembered that I hadn’t picked it up yet. Finally I decided Marlowe looked too damned smug and comfortable, so I put the leash on him and walked him down the street where he watered Mrs. Garabaldi’s petunias, and the fact that they were dead didn’t stop her from opening her window and treating the neighborhood to some Italian words they never heard in a spaghetti Western.

  I took Marlowe back home, opened a can of baked beans for him, and left the apartment while he was busy alternating between mouthfuls of food and growls at unseen rivals. I remembered to check the mailbox on the way out, found that I had only one letter—a reminder from my dentist that I hadn’t seen him in three years—and climbed into my car.

  I drove downtown, parked illegally since I knew I could count on Jim Simmons to fix any parking tickets, and walked to the edge
of the rundown Over-the-Rhine area a bit more than a mile away. I attracted a few stares and a couple of panhandlers and a forty-ish hooker, but nothing out of the ordinary for the vicinity. Then I reached Ziggy’s Cut-Rate Tailor Shop with his Lincoln parked out front and walked in.

  Ziggy, all five foot two inches of him, was sitting on a chair behind the counter, reading the Racing Form. The same half-dozen pairs of trousers that had been there for the last ten years were on hangers, attached to the wall behind him.

  “Hi, Eli,” he said, looking up from the Form.

  “You ought to change those pants, Ziggy,” I said. “No one wears cuffs anymore. Someone might get the idea that you’re a fence who just uses the tailor business as a front.”

  “Hah! That’s all you know!” he shot back. “Cuffs are making a comeback.”

  “Why?” I asked. “The only thing they were good for was stashing your cigarette butts until you could dump ’em outside, and no one smokes anymore.”

  “You do.”

  “Well, hardly anyone.”

  “We gonna trade pleasantries all day, or are you gonna tell me why you’re here? I’ll be happy to sell you a suit while we wait.”

  I shook my head. “No, it’s business.”

  “Isn’t it always?” he said. “Okay, what are you after?”

  “I don’t think anyone’s had a chance yet to bring in what I’m looking for yet, but I want to warn you.”

  He frowned. “Warn me?”

  “Yeah. There are going to be some very big, very hot, very dangerous diamonds on the market pretty soon.”

  “How big?”

  “I haven’t seen them,” I said. “What if I told you they might retail for ten million?”

  His eyes widened. “Ten million?” he repeated. “Not ten thousand?”

  “Could be seven or eight million, could be eleven or twelve. Ten’s a ballpark figure.”

  “That’s some ballpark!” he said and uttered a low whistle. Then he frowned. “Are you sure? Because no one in Cincinnati is sitting on ten million worth of diamonds. If they were, I’d have heard about it.”

  “There are reasons why no one knows,” I said.

  “Okay,” he said. “For the moment I’ll pretend we’re talking ten million bucks. How many hundreds of diamonds are we looking for?”

  I pointed to his leather watchband. “They’d all fit on that,” I said.

  He frowned. “Do you know what you’re saying, Eli? You’re talking maybe ten diamonds the size of, I dunno, golf balls.”

  I shook my head. “They couldn’t be.”

  “I’m telling you . . .”

  I didn’t want to say that they’d be too obvious on the collar, or even that a cat was carrying them around. I already had one criminal helping me look for them; I didn’t need another.

  “How about something the size of dimes?” I asked.

  He thought about it, then shook his head. “They’d be nice diamonds, but they sure as hell wouldn’t be worth no ten million.”

  “Okay,” I replied, unwilling to tell him anything more about the cat or the collar.

  “That’s it?”

  “Not quite,” I said. “There’s one more thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” I replied. “If they come in—dimes or golf balls—call me immediately.”

  “Eli, I love you like a long-lost brother,” he said. “But I’m a businessman.”

  “Ziggy, you’re a living businessman, and I want you to stay that way. These things are hotter than you can imagine.”

  “Who’s after them?”

  “Besides the owner?” I said. “I won’t give you any names, but there are three shooters from South America and an enforcer from Chicago, just for starters.”

  His eyes widened. “You’re not putting me on?”

  I shook my head.

  “Who else?” he asked.

  “That’s one of the things I’m trying to find out.”

  “Four shooters?”

  “Three and one, right.”

  “If I get my hands on ’em, I’ll just have to keep them on ice for a few years. They’ll be my retirement gift to myself.”

  “Not a chance, Ziggy,” I said. “These guys are all pros. They’ll be here, the enforcer and the hitters, in the next day or two, as soon as they get the lay of the land or beat it out of some snitches. And if they don’t find what they’re looking for, ten million isn’t the kind of thing that you shrug off and forget. They’ll be back every couple of days, and one or the other will pay someone to keep an eye on you and the shop.” I paused and stared at him. “You don’t want to try and hide these stones from those men.”

  Ziggy was almost shaking when I got done.

  “I’ll take it under advisement,” he said. “And thanks, Eli. You’ve always been a straight shooter with me. If I get them or hear of them, I’ll be in touch so fast I’ll feel like I’m back riding stakes horses at Keeneland again.”

  “Ziggy, I love you like a brother, too,” I said. “But you never rode at Keeneland or anywhere else.”

  “Well, I should have,” said the little fence. “But I could never make weight.”

  “It’ll be our secret,” I said, heading to the door.

  “You going to the Goniff’s?” he said. “We’re rivals, but he’s gotta know about this too.”

  I nodded. “He’s next on my list.”

  Then I was out the door and walking back to my car. When I got there I found a parking ticket stuck under a wiper blade, tore it in half and deposited it in a nearby trash container like the good citizen I am, and headed a couple of miles west to Hegel the Goniff’s jewelry shop, which was advertising a ten-thousand-dollar pearl necklace in the window and was as reasonable a front for a fence as you could want. I told him the same thing I’d told Ziggy, and since he’d been roughed up a couple of times by parties who didn’t think possession was nine-tenths of the law, he agreed instantly to let me know if the diamonds showed up.

  Finally I went back downtown and stopped by The Machine, a bar that was just down the street from Red’s Jungle and was named back when the Reds were the Big Red Machine. I looked around, didn’t see the man I was looking for, ordered a beer at the bar, and carried it over to a table. I’d nursed it for twenty minutes and most of a cigarette—my first of the day; well, first cigarette, not first beer—when the man I was waiting for walked in with a truly elegant redhead on his arm. He spotted me, parked the redhead at the bar, and walked over.

  “Hi, Reuben,” I said.

  “Ruby, goddammit!”

  “Hi, Ruby Goddammit,” I amended. “You’re moving up in the world. That’s a gorgeous young lady you arrived with.”

  “Been trying to get her to come out for a drink for weeks. She finally agrees, and you’re here. Make it quick.”

  “Three hitters arrived in town a couple of days ago. I need to know where they’re staying, what names they’re using, anything about them.”

  “Just three hitters, nothing else?” he said, frowning. “No connections to any of the families?”

  “The only family they’re connected to is in Bolivia.”

  He frowned again. “Bolivia?” he repeated.

  “Right.”

  “They speak any English?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How would I tell them from Mexicans?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I haven’t laid eyes on them.”

  “Then how the hell am I supposed—?”

  “Just keep your ear to the ground,” I said. “They’ll probably travel together, they’ll have money, and if they ask any questions, it’ll be about a recent murder, a millionaire named Pepperidge.”

  “And that’s everything you can give me?”

  I nodded. “Just pass the word.”

  “There’ll be the usual fee if I deliver?”

  “Double,” I said, figuring Sorrentino could cover it.

  “Okay,” he said. “Now, if you don�
��t mind, I’d like to get back to my love life.”

  “Go,” I said, finishing my beer.

  “Aren’t you going to wish me luck?”

  I looked at the redhead again, then back at pudgy, out-of-shape Reuben. “You’re going to need resuscitation more than luck.”

  He grinned. “Let’s hope so.”

  Then he rejoined the redhead at the bar, I crossed his name off my mental list and went off to grab a four-way and a couple of cheese coneys at the nearest Skyline, thinking of Ziggy’s Lincoln and Hegel’s necklace and wondering why I’d become a detective instead of a fence.

  8.

  I phoned Val Sorrentino (and you wouldn’t believe how difficult it is to find a pay phone in this day and age when everyone walks around with their own phones), and we agreed to meet at a nearby Steak ’n Shake. He was sitting at a booth when I got there, and the first thing I noticed was that he had a split lip and one eye was swollen shut.

  “That’s gonna be one hell of a shiner tomorrow,” I said, sitting down and indicating his eye.

  He shrugged. “It goes with the job.”

  “Maybe with your job,” I said. “Who did it—one of the Bolivians?”

  He smiled at that, then winced as his lip started bleeding. “They’re shooters, not boxers.”

  “Then who?”

  “I thought I spotted one of them, so I parked the car and started tailing him.”

  “He had protection?”

  Sorrentino shook his head. “No. Some kid jumped out of an alley as I was crossing it, stuck a knife against my neck, and demanded my money.”

  “I don’t see anything that looks like a knife did it,” I noted.

  He smiled again, then winced. “You’re looking at the wrong guy.” He paused long enough to wipe some blood from his lip. “I took the knife away from him and kind of carved my autograph on his jaw as a gentle reminder not to threaten strangers until you know something about them.”

  “Then what’s with the eye and the lip?”

  “He started screaming, and a couple of his friends jumped me before I could pull my gun.” He shrugged. “Besides, I don’t need the cops pinching me because of the gun and maybe asking their Chicago cousins about me.”

  “So what happened to his friends?” I asked.