A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix) (10 page)

BOOK: A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix)
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Chapter 16

“How do you get an outside line?” I asked.

We were in Tony’s hotel room, having taken a cab back from Lenny’s strange “mansion.” I was still a bit dazed by what I had seen. I had to call to Lucia now, had to find out more about Melissa Taniment. As an insider, Lucia would know all the intimate details about her—even the salacious ones, I hoped.

“Dial nine first,” Tony instructed.

He was seated in the easy chair in front of an old, feebly hissing radiator. One leg stretched out in front of him, he was gingerly rubbing it. Obviously the heavy amount of walking we’d been doing lately hadn’t furthered his recovery from the fall he’d taken trying to execute that ballet step.

Over the ringing at the other end of the line, I could hear Basillio say from behind me: “You know, Dame Nestleton, your basic problem is that, deep down, you really are an academic. You should be teaching somewhere—teaching the finer points of acting to a group of eager young know-nothings. The fact of the matter is that you’re a little too decorous for your own good. The fact of the matter is that you would never dance naked with me. Never in a hundred years. Even if it wasn’t being videoed.”

I found that amusing. “But Tony,” I said, “you’re not Dobrynin. Who knows what I might have done if
he
had asked me to dance?”

No response from Basillio. And none at the other end of the line. I hung up finally and called Frank Brodsky.

The attorney told me that Lucia was at home but taking no calls. She was falling apart, heavily sedated and under the care of her physician. The tension had just become too much for her.

I escaped from his questions about the investigation as soon as I could, saying I had a pressing appointment related to the case.

Then I phoned Melissa Taniment. I identified myself and said it was urgent that I see her again; might I drop by for just a few moments?

She informed me that she had no wish to see me this evening, or any other.

“Are you willing to put that response on videotape?” I asked.

I waited out the long, loaded silence emanating from the other end of the line, until she said stonily, “Come over now.” Then she hung up.

“Do you want company?” Tony asked.

“No, you stay here and rest. It won’t take long. I’ll bring back some soup for you,” I offered, getting into my coat.

“Sure. Tell him to make the soup straight-up. And with two olives in it.”

I left the hotel and walked directly to the glass tower. Melissa didn’t say a word as she opened the door. Obviously she had just emerged from the shower—there was a huge blue towel wrapped around her head and she was wearing a bathrobe of the same color.

Parking me once again in the kitchen was her way of telling me that I was déclassé, not worthy of a seat in the living room—like a repairman. I transferred a copy of
Harper’s Bazaar
from one of the kitchen chairs to the table and sat down.

Melissa went over to the counter, on which stood one of those elaborate juicers that seem capable of pulverizing anything into liquid nothing—even aluminum cans, if one wished to add them to the brew. Next to the contraption were oranges and carrots and what I took to be mangoes—all lined up for the eventual slaughter. She began by quartering the oranges, still ignoring me completely. I waited in silence. She moved on to the carrots. Neither of us spoke. Finally, she dropped the knife disgustedly onto the counter and sat down across from me at the table.

“You were in his apartment,” she said bitterly, fearfully.

“Yes. And I watched the tape.”

She sat rigidly in her chair. I could see that she was trying to collect herself. She looked down at her hands on the table top, willing them to be still.

“It isn’t true, is it, that you hadn’t seen Peter Dobrynin during the last three years of his life? You lied when you told me that.”

Her eyes blazed. “Of course I lied to you! I owe you nothing!”

I only smiled a little. “Please go on,” I said.

“Oh, for god’s sake, what do you want me to say? That I went there once a week? I did. Sometimes more than that. That I made love with him? Of course I did. There—does that satisfy you?”

“You did something else,” I said. “You danced.”

“Yes,” she admitted petulantly, “but only once . . . like that. He . . . made me.” She folded her arms suddenly across her chest, as if she were chilly. Then she leaned toward me, her face suddenly that of a child pleading with its mother.

“Please. Give me that tape. I will pay you anything you ask. Please!”

Her offer of a bribe made me uncomfortable. But she had good reason to attempt to bribe me. If I gave the tape to the police, they would be very interested. If I gave it to the papers, they would resurrect the case and splash her face—and possibly a lot more than that—all over page two. In any case, she would become a suspect in the murder. And, probably most threatening of all as far as Melissa was concerned, her social lion of a husband would know everything.

I kept my eyes on the juicer while I pondered her predicament. Finally I said to her, “I don’t want your money. But I
will
hold the tape until the murderer of Peter Dobrynin has been caught.”

“She
has
been caught!” Melissa retorted angrily. “Lucia Maury killed Peter.”

“I don’t think so. In fact, at this point you’re a much more likely candidate than Lucia.”

“I was at a dinner party on Long Island the night Peter was killed. With five other couples. How could I have killed him?”

“I don’t know—at the moment. But there are ways.”

She exploded in fury. “I loved him! I always loved him, you ridiculous woman! Do you understand that? I would
never
hurt Peter in any way!” She was screaming the words out.

I waited a second for the storm to pass, then asked dispassionately, “Were you giving him money?”

“No. Never. He never asked.”

“Then where did he get his money?”

“I don’t know.”

“Were you aware that he was spending a fair amount of money feeding stray cats?”

“He may have mentioned it once or twice.”

“And did you consider that odd?”

“No. Why should I? He liked animals of all kinds. And besides, he was always doing impulsive things, things other people never understood.”

“Why did he start to call himself ‘Lenny’?”

“How should I know?”

“Are there any other compromising videotapes?”

“No. Not with me, there aren’t. I never wanted to do it in the first place. It was so childish. But Peter insisted. He was drunk. And maybe I was too. It was so embarrassing dancing that way—nude—in front of his friend.”

“Friend? Who was that?”

“The man who filmed us. He operated that damn video camera.”

“Can you give me his name?”

“I think it was Basil.”

I sat back and tried to make something of this new bit of information. None of Lenny’s street acquaintances had mentioned someone called “Basil.”

“Was he a homeless man?” I asked Melissa.

“I’m not sure. Probably. He came and went. All I knew about him was that he was an ex-convict. Peter seemed to like that, for some reason. It was almost as though he was amused by the fact that this man was a criminal.”

“What was he in prison for?”

“I have no idea. Peter never told me—and I didn’t want to know.”

“Can you describe him?”

Melissa sighed in exasperation. She stood up, adjusting the blue towel around her damp hair, and moved back to the counter. She hefted the knife again, but made no move to cut more ingredients for the juicer. I had a moment’s awful fear, thinking she might turn the knife on me.

But all she did was turn it over and over in her hand. “Listen to me,” she said tightly. “I don’t want my husband to find out. He
mustn’t
, do you hear? He is a very good and kind man, but he would never . . . I told him that things between Peter and me were over long ago. He wouldn’t understand.”

No, I bet he wouldn’t, I silently affirmed.

“Did you ever see anyone else in the apartment?” I asked next. “Anyone at all—men, women, anyone?”

She grimaced, her expression telling me that she was well aware of Dobrynin’s lunatic promiscuity. But also, curious about where the question might lead.

“Are you referring to anyone in particular?” she asked cagily.

“Well, perhaps Betty Ann Ellenville, or even Louis Beasley . . . or Lucia.”

“No. I never saw them. He had cut himself off from people like them. I told you—I only saw that Basil. Oh, and once or twice an older woman, another street person, I assume, who apparently ran errands once in a while. She looks a fright.”

“Is her name Fay?”

“I’m sure I don’t remember.”

“But Basil you saw fairly regularly?”

“That’s right.”

“Please tell me what he looks like.” The question I had asked earlier, which had not been answered.

“He’s a light-skinned black man. Tall. Very thin. He speaks with an accent—a Latin accent of some sort—maybe Cuban. And he has a pencil mustache.”

“Anything else?”

“Oh, God! Can this
please
be over soon?” Melissa threw herself back into her chair.

“In just another moment,” I said. “Are you sure there isn’t anything else about Basil?”

“He usually wears a blue raincoat,” she said through her teeth. “Without buttons. He keeps it closed with a belt from a pair of trousers.”

***

I left a few minutes later, but didn’t go straight back to the Pickwick Arms. I stopped off instead at the first place that caught my notice—luckily for me, a lovely little French café across the street. I needed a few minutes alone, not just to collect my thoughts but also to shake off the emotional aftereffects of Melissa’s incivility. The cappuccino was a good, strong restorative.

The sudden emergence of this “Basil” was unnerving. Maybe even more so than the discovery of Dobrynin’s living quarters, or the
Giselle
tape.

Until the gun was found in Lucia’s office, many people connected with the case had believed that Dobrynin was killed by another derelict. If the police hadn’t found what they were certain was the murder weapon, as well as its owner, they surely would have mounted a manhunt for Basil once they’d come to know of him.

I remembered what my old friend Detective Rothwax had once told me: “The reason you irritate so many professionals is that you seem to have no respect for the ‘statistical nut.’”

When I’d asked him what that term meant, he explained it in simple language. If there are two suspects in a murder investigation, he said, and only one of them has a past felony conviction, the odds are greater than a hundred-to-one that the ex-convict is the murderer. And it is upon the ex-convict that the police must focus.

It was a simple rule, crude really, but obviously tried-and-true in routine crime investigations. I smiled into the steam of my coffee. One thing was sure: if I wanted to find Basil quickly, I was going to need Rothwax’s help—statistics and all.

Chapter 17

Frank Brodsky had listened attentively to my report. He found Dobrynin’s cat-feeding activities “amusing.” The hidden apartment he thought “strange and intriguing.” The videotape featuring the dancer and Melissa Taniment he thought “regrettable, sad.” But Basil was “the most important breakthrough in the case”—the discovery of a real-life derelict with a prison record.

Tony was at his most dignified. He sat with a small notebook in his hands, making a real effort not to be distracted again by Brodsky’s prized collection of Hudson River School art.

“You’re to be commended, Miss Nestleton. You’ve done very well very quickly,” Mr. Brodsky complimented me. “Lucia is lucky to have such a friend looking after her interests.”

Brodsky’s careful, pear-shaped words annoyed me. And clearly there were some things he didn’t understand. He seemed to think that Lucia and I were the best of friends, an intimate, ongoing part of each other’s lives. Not true. Of course we’d known each other for years, and liked each other. But we hadn’t been close friends for a long time.

And in truth, she had never been the kind of friend to me that Barbara Roman had been. When Barbara died and everyone said it was suicide, I had felt compelled to take the case out of my deep love for her. With Lucia and her current trouble, it was just a bizarre sequence of events that had brought me to this juncture: I had happened to be cat-sitting for a lady who wanted tickets to
The Nutcracker.
I’d contacted Lucia to get the tickets. Peter Dobrynin was murdered the very night I attended the performance. One thing had just followed another.

The lawyer was also wrong about the commendable job I was doing on this case. Yes, revelations had been coming at an astonishing rate lately. But neither my intelligence nor my diligence had had much to do with their appearance. I was merely following in the footsteps of the departed Dobrynin/Lenny—and he had been such an unpredictable, charismatic, terrible, fascinating character that all I’d had to do was bend down and pick up the revelations like so many daisies.

“Do you think you will be able to find this man Basil?” Brodsky asked.

“I’m going to get some help,” I said.

“From whom?”

“A city detective I know named Rothwax. We used to work together.”

“In the police department, you mean?”

“Well, yes and no. I was employed briefly as a consultant for something called RETRO. It’s an independent computer unit within the police department. It deals, or tries to, with major unsolved crimes. This detective has been of help to me in the past.”

“Good,” he pronounced. “That sounds like a fine idea. Keep me informed.”

I wondered what on earth Basillio could be writing in that notebook.

I met Detective Rothwax in a dim sum café south of Canal Street, about four blocks away from the RETRO office. He looked pretty much the same, albeit a couple of pounds lighter perhaps, a bit balder, a bit friendlier.

“It’s nice to see you, Cat Woman. Been a while. I often think fondly of our stakeout at that kooky garden over there in the East Village.”

“Surely you’re not holding
that
one against me, Detective? I gave you the arrest of your life—a fugitive bomb-throwing killer.”

I looked down at the indecipherable menu on the table in front of me.

“So you did, CW, so you did,” he replied. “Say, let me have that,” he said, taking the menu away from me. “Am I paying or are you?”

“Oh, you’re paying, Detective.”

“Then I’ll do the ordering.”

As he talked to our waiter, I noticed there was a difference in Rothwax’s appearance. It was his clothes. They were much less shabby. Oh, he had always worn a shirt and tie and suit jacket, but before now they had tended to look like something he’d stolen from a dead bank teller.

Now he wore a soft heather-gray suit with a spiffy patterned red tie, and his overcoat, which lay folded over an empty chair, was cut in the sharp-cornered Italian manner. Rothwax picked up on my scrutiny of his clothing. His eyes twinkled.

“Checking out my new image, are you? Like it?”

“Yes, Detective. Very much. Is there a promotion or something in the air? What does it mean?”

“Nothing at all. A bad joke. I’ve been assigned to work some OC cases and I just felt like getting into the part. We theater people know all about that, don’t we?”

I didn’t understand. “What is an OC case?”

“Organized Crime. RETRO has expanded.”

The first few dishes arrived—dumplings of all kinds in steamer baskets, on plates, in egg cups. I had no idea what the protocol was. Which should you eat first? Which was what? So I followed Rothwax’s lead and went methodically from one item to the next. It was all delicious. We chatted amiably as we ate. He became expansive, telling me the latest rumors about RETRO and its chief officer, Judy Mizener.

“I want you to know, Cat Woman, that you’re still a legend at RETRO. I mean, every time somebody sees a mouse, we say, ‘Call Alice Nestleton.’” He enjoyed his little joke immensely.

I had decided long ago to take in good humor whatever teasing of me he handed out. I often need him. I certainly trust him. And, oddly enough, I like him.

Finally, stuffed from the meal, he looked at me slyly in that way he has—head down, eyes rolled up as if peering over the top of spectacles—and asked: “So what is this meeting all about?”

“I need a little help.”

“That’s my cue,” he said wearily, and whipped out his spiral-bound notebook, already turned to a blank page. I filled him in on the case. From his suit pocket he took out an old simulated-ivory fountain pen and uncapped it.

“Name?” he asked, pen poised to write.

“Basil.”

“Is that the first name or the last name?”

“I’m not sure.”

He looked at me incredulously. “Okay. What was he in for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Uh-huh . . . Federal or state?”

I shook my head.

“Did he do the time in New York?”

“Well, I don’t—”

“Aw, Cat Lady!” he moaned. “What
do
you know?”

“That he was released from prison recently, maybe as recently as six or eight months ago. I know his street name is Basil. And I have a fairly detailed description of him. Also, I know the general area where he was last seen.”

“Not enough for a computer search,” he said. “Can’t help you.”

“Then what do you suggest I do?”

“How important is it to find him?”

“Very.”

He stared at me as if trying to evaluate my need, my seriousness. Then he sighed and looked around. “I could’ve sworn this place had a pay phone.”

There was one, just inside the entrance. I pointed to it.

Rothwax pushed out of his chair. “Two quarters, please.”

I burrowed into my coin purse and produced them.

“Where is it that Basil hangs around now?”

“Upper West Side.”

He went away.

He was back in five minutes. He tore a sheet from his notebook, folded it, and handed it to me. “The addresses of three halfway houses,” he explained. “If your friend got out on parole there’s a good chance he went to one of them. Even if he ain’t there now, he probably passed through. Do some legwork.”

Rothwax said there was a special dessert he wanted me to try—a custard. That banal word hardly did justice to the delicate and singularly good hot concoction that I was soon eating. I loved it.

We spent the rest of his lunch hour making fun of our respective careers. Rothwax adored actresses.

***

The morning started out so successfully it took my breath away. But, as my grandmother used to say, “It is always the sweetest butter that goes rancid first.” Cynical old dairy farmer that she was.

At ten-thirty in the morning, I stood waiting outside while Tony went into the first of the halfway houses that Detective Rothwax had identified for me. This one was two blocks from the river, on West Ninety-first Street, near Broadway. Tony found Basil almost immediately, seated in the television room. Soon afterward, the two of them were walking toward me.

Melissa had given an excellent description of Basil, accurate in every detail, down to the shabby blue raincoat. Up close, he was older than he first appeared—at least late middle-aged. And his face had that thinness and hunger and sharpness that one usually associates with addicts.

Tony signaled me that he had already given Mr. Basil some money. I introduced myself and told him that I was seeking information about Lenny from those who had befriended him.

“Everything about your articulation is dishonest,” Basil replied.

His words, and the way he spoke them, induced a kind of bewilderment in both Basillio and me. Melissa had said he was possibly a Cuban and didn’t talk very much. Well, this strange character was no Cuban, as far as I could tell, had no Latin accent, and seemed to be almost theatrical in his presentation.

“First of all,” Basil spoke again, “we both know that Lenny is dead, so you really can’t know anything about Lenny anymore. He doesn’t exist. That entity called ‘self’ has vanished . . . unless of course you believe the self survives bodily death. You are a beautiful woman. Tell me, do you believe it?”

I didn’t know how to answer. I hardly knew what to do at all. While I stood there, dumb, Tony made the suggestion that we all have a hot chocolate together. Why not?

The coffee shop was overly warm. Basillio and I peeled off layers of sweaters and scarves. Basil seemed completely at ease. He looked around happily, his gaze finally settling on me. And an unsettling gaze it was. He began another strange monologue: “Besides—or shall we say, in addition to—your original statement was false, because Lenny was no friend to me.”

“Oh, really?” Tony interjected. “I heard you were his
only
friend.”

“He was, God rest his kindly soul, my employer.”

It was during this last bit of declamation that I thought perhaps—just perhaps—I had heard a bit of an accent in his voice. But certainly not Cuban. More like Cockney.

Our drinks arrived. Each hot chocolate had a mound of artificial whipped cream floating on its surface.

I had finally found my own voice. “Could you please,” I asked Basil, “explain what you mean about his being your employer?”

“Could you please,” he replied, doing an eerily good imitation of my own voice, “distribute another gift?”

Tony extracted another bill and handed it over. Basil slipped it into his pants pocket.

“Why is there need to explain?” he asked loftily.

“Union against labor. Master against slave. Beauty against beast. White contra black. What need to explain, your ladyship? Lenny employed me on his staff. Or rather, I
was
his staff.”

“In what capacity were you employed?” I asked.

“Collector,” he said promptly.

“Collector? Of what?”

“Cash, your ladyship. Money. Scratch. Capital. Coin. Modes of exchange.”

I could see that Tony was about to repeat that last nonsensical phrase, “modes of exchange,” but my hand on his arm stayed him.

“Please tell me about it,” I urged Basil. I indicated to Tony that he should get out another ten-dollar bill. “In detail.”

“My master required me to write a message on the wall of a building.”

“Any building?”

“No, bitch. Only one building. At 1407 Broadway.”

“And why did you write this message? Who was it for?”

“I’d write the message. Twenty-four hours hence—or sometimes forty-eight hours—a big black car would circle the building looking for me. Long-haired white lady would stick her hand out the window with an envelope. I relieved her of it, and brought same to my employer quick as jackrabbit.”

“Who was this lady?”

“She never graced me with her face.”

“How do you know there was money in the envelope?”

“The same way I know that a bear will relieve himself in the great outdoors.”

Tony handed over a bill all on his own initiative then. It’s true, I too had begun to appreciate Basil’s antics.

“Let me ask you now,” I said. “What was this message you wrote? And was it always the same one?”

“Always. I put ‘Anna Pavlova Smith.’”

My God! The name clanged in my head like the bell on a runaway trolley.

Anna Pavlova Smith?

It was the graffiti painted on the side of the hearse during Peter Dobrynin’s funeral.

Suddenly, Basil wasn’t so amusing.

“Were you the one who did that?” I asked Basil resentfully.

He turned to Tony then. “What thing has Miss Thing just requested?”

“Did you paint that name on a hearse—at Lenny’s funeral?” I demanded.

“Not I. I’ve copped to painting a building. Over and over. Always on the downtown side. But a hearse? No. My credentials are impecunious.”

I was silent for a moment, as I tried to decide whether I believed him. “Why always on that one building?” I finally asked.

“Ask my employer.”

I glowered at Basil. In a very short time, I had gone from fearing him to appreciating him to loathing him. Worse than any of that, I believed him. It was all so mad, but I did believe what he’d told us.

Basil struck me as being entirely capable of murder. But Dobrynin had apparently taken care of his collector. Why kill the “employer?” To take over the extortion scheme himself? I didn’t think Basil had that particular kind of ambition. I had to find out who the extortion victim was, and what Lenny had had on that person. And as for that name, Anna Pavlova Smith, what did it mean, and why was it popping up again now, like a bad show tune?

I pushed the gummy hot chocolate away untouched.

“You are a beautiful woman,” I heard Basil say. “Have you ever worked under the name of Guinevere?”

I met his wily stare but did not reply.

“Perhaps you used to work the Knights of the Round-table?” he inquired, as he rose and took his leave.

Was he indeed wily? Or was he crazy?

Through the glass at the front of the restaurant I saw him belt his raincoat and walk into the wind.

It didn’t seem odd that Dobrynin had befriended him.

BOOK: A Cat in the Wings: (InterMix)
11.58Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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