A Cat Tells Two Tales (11 page)

“You going to interview the horse with a tape recorder?” Basillio asked, chuckling.

I nodded absentmindedly, staring out the window of the late-model Pontiac. Actually, I didn’t know why I was driving out to see the horse. But I was going. For that was the way the thing was developing. One tiny, stupid step at a time. Ask Me No Questions was a real live thing that I could see and touch, not a painting on a wall or a photograph in a book. I was going to see a horse.

Basillio started asking me theater questions—about old friends and colleagues: Where was L? What about R?

I answered the best I could. The traffic was thinning. The motion of the car soothed me. Basillio was a good driver, fast and safe. Snatches of a poem I had studied in school came to me: “That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall.” Was it Browning?

A little more than an hour after we crossed the George Washington Bridge, we pulled up to the Norris stables. The place was a large complex with indoor and outdoor rings and dozens of young girls standing around with riding helmets and whips. There were jump courses on which classes were being held, and a steady stream of lathered horses being led from ring to stable.

“Well, it isn’t Belmont Park,” Basillio said.

We parked the car and entered the main office.

A tall, elderly man wearing a sheepskin vest greeted us. I proceeded with my fiction, slanting it a bit: I was writing a book on lady racehorses who had beaten the boys. I wanted to take a look at Ask Me No Questions, who had done just that many times.

The man smiled and said, “She’s going to beat the boys in the jumping ring also.”

Basillio whispered in my ear, “You keep changing your story about what kind of book you’re writing. Why don’t you stick to one story?”

I ignored his comment. The elderly man leafed through some index cards and then said, “She’s being schooled now on course number three. Why don’t you take a walk over?”

He led us to a window and pointed out the path to the course.

As we headed that way, I began to search the faces that passed us. Would Ginger be here? Was that why I had come?

When we reached the course, a large gray horse was being led over very small jumps at a very slow pace. Most she took easily, hesitating just a bit when she was forced to jump after coming out of a tight turn. The girl on her back encouraged her, crooned to her, patted her neck constantly. Then the rider pulled up, slid off, and started to lead Ask Me No Questions out of the ring.

“What a beautiful lady,” Basillio whispered in awe.

I could not respond. I, too, was mesmerized by the rippling, delicate, gathered beauty of the mare. But I felt something else: I was finally about to make contact in some way with the ashes of Harry Starobin.

My hands were trembling as I told my story to the rider, a chunky girl of about twenty, who then invited us both back to the barn, a bit proud that someone was going to put Ask Me No Questions in a book.

As we all walked back together, Ask Me No Questions playfully swung her head and hit Basillio on the chest.

“She’s paying me back for the time I bet against her,” he said.

As we reached the entrance of the large barn where she was stabled, Ask Me No Questions suddenly stopped, planted her feet, and would go no farther. The girl smacked her on the rear end. But Ask Me No Questions would not budge.

“Hell,” said the girl, “I forgot that she won’t go in until Marjorie comes out.”

“Who is Marjorie?” Basillio asked.

The girl laughed. “You’ll see. Oh, here she comes.”

As we waited there, sweat started beading on my face. It will be Ginger, I thought, here she comes!

“There’s Marjorie,” the girl said happily, and the horse moved forward.

Lumbering out in front of the barn, yawning, was a large, beautiful calico cat.

16

I showed the wine bottle to Bushy, as if I was a waiter and the cat was a patron. Bushy ignored it. I opened it quickly and poured myself a glass of good Bordeaux—a St. Emilion.

The wine was for my confusion. I sat down on the sofa, my legs drawn tightly together. The search had ended in a calico cat named Marjorie strolling out of the barn. Ginger had not been there. Of course she hadn’t. Why had I ever thought she would? Only a calico cat. And a different calico cat from the one in the Cup of Tea photo, which in turn had been a different calico cat from Veronica the barn cat, according to Jo. Just a calico cat. A horse’s mascot.

I went into the kitchen, opened the refrigerator, took out some St. André cheese, and spread it on a rice cake. Pancho was high on a cabinet, staring down at me. He loved cheese.

I walked back to the living room and ate the snack, staring out the window onto the street.

“Poor Ginger,” I muttered. I put the wineglass down on the sill, stiffening a bit. Why had that popped out? Lately I had found myself muttering out loud from time to time. But usually it was “poor Harry” or “poor Jo.” Why in God’s name would I suddenly be feeling sympathy for Ginger Mauch. Ginger was the enemy. Wasn’t she?

It was suddenly apparent to me that Ginger was probably just a frightened girl. She had been running from the murderers before they caught up with her.

The next morning, as I made coffee, I conjured up an image of a short, chunky red-haired young woman, physically strong, with a nervous way of speaking, dressed in work clothes. Where would Ginger run to?

Not to the racetrack. It was too well-regulated. Everyone knew everyone. People walked around with identification badges.

Not on Long Island. Too many people knew her.

She might be a thousand miles away, in some Midwest or Southern hamlet, but in that case I’d never find her. I had to proceed on the assumption that she had melted into the one place where her face was one of millions—the perfect camouflage. She was right here in Manhattan. In New York City she would be just another young woman seeking a job.

And where would an exercise rider with a lifelong passion for horses get work?

My hand holding the coffee cup began to shake ever so slightly. I knew where Ginger would be working. Of course. At the last remaining riding stable in Manhattan—at Claremont on West Eighty-ninth Street.

I had been there many times when I first came to New York. I used to take long walks on the bridle path in Central Park and follow the horses and riders home to the stable, marveling at how the experienced horses could gingerly pick their way through the traffic-choked, double-parked streets once they left the park.

I dressed quickly, without thinking, and only after I was fully dressed did I realize that I was wearing the clothes I usually wore only to acting classes—jeans and an old sweatshirt on which was printed
property of athletic department/university of virginia
. I never knew where or how I had obtained that sweater—it had just appeared.

My instinctive clothes selection was a good omen, I thought. One always attempted to diminish one’s natural beauty in acting classes, since it was looked upon as fakery. The ability to go deep inside a character was what was treasured. And wasn’t I doing that? Wasn’t I going inside of Ginger’s head?

I was catching a character, a role—I was intuiting another’s movement. I was a bloodhound . . . a choreographer . . . a nonsensical forty-one-year-old actress on the move. Chuckle. You know what they say: Bedouins sharpen their vision by painting the whites of their eyes blue.

I folded the only photograph of Ginger I had—the one with Cup of Tea and an unidentified calico cat—and placed it carefully in my bag. Then I left the apartment, cautioning the cats against any bizarre behavior, took the Third Avenue bus to Seventy-ninth Street, and walked west through the park.

The riding stable had not changed. On either side were the same crumbling brownstones. There was the same small, low-ceilinged ring with posts scattered throughout. The same treacherous ramp led from the ring to the stall area on the second floor. The office area was still as crowded as a subway car, even though it was late-morning on a weekday, with children, parents, instructors.

I finally cornered a man who seemed to have managerial responsibilities and gave him the current fiction: I was writing a book about the great racehorse Cup of Tea, and I had learned that one of his exercise riders was now working in his stable.

The man, who wore a whistle around his neck and riding boots in which white carpenter jeans were stuffed, folded his arms impatiently, as if I was a saleswoman about to launch into a long pitch. “That’s news to me,” he said in a heavy foreign accent which I could not identify.

“Her name is Ginger Mauch.”

“No Ginger Mauch works here.”

“Well, maybe she’s a groom.”

“No groom named Ginger Mauch works here. No instructor either.”

I pulled the picture out and shoved it under his face, signifying but not saying that she might be working under a different name. It was too gloomy in the ring to see the photo clearly. Angrily he took the photo and strode to the stable entrance, flooded by the morning sun. I followed.

He stared at the picture, then handed it back. “No,” he said, “I’ve never seen that woman here, and I’ve worked here for the last nine years.”

I walked out of the riding stable so bitterly disappointed that my lower lip started to quiver like a child’s. It never had really occurred to me that Ginger wouldn’t be there. I knew she would be there. The doors of perception had shut on my arrogance like a steel trap.

I walked to Broadway, found a coffee shop, and collapsed in a booth. I ordered a cup of tea and a piece of coconut custard pie.

Everything connected with the murder of Harry Starobin seemed to recede . . . to have taken place fifty years ago. I wanted to push it even further back . . . to get away . . . to go to the shore . . . to the mountains . . . anywhere. I wanted out of those tiny compulsions which were leading me from one cipher to another.

“Poor Alice,” I mocked myself, “too old to really enter a part.”

I ate the pie slowly and doggedly, determined to get some energy. I sipped the tea. When the coffee shop began to fill up with a lunchtime crowd, I left, contemplating for a moment a cab . . . then deciding it would be best to walk.

I went back into Central Park and walked downtown. It was a glorious spring day. Everyone was out walking, jogging, bicycling. Even the homeless derelicts, huddled among the trees, seemed less desperate, less aggressive than usual.

When I reached the Tavern on the Green, I stopped and stared, discomfited, tense. Years ago I had eaten brunch there with my husband on a Sunday morning. The marriage was already in the last stages of dissolution and the brunch had become ugly. The dialogue between us was late-Gothic-bitter—and centered around that most absurd of things, cream for the coffee:

He: I want half-and-half for my coffee. They gave us plain milk.

Me: Ask the waiter.

He: You ask the waiter. He keeps smiling at you.

Me: Are you jealous?

He: He can have you. All I want is the half-and-half.

I wondered why I had always remembered that stupid exchange—word for word, nuance by nuance.

I exited Central Park at Columbus Circle and turned east onto Central Park South. There were the carriage horses lined up in their accustomed spot, waiting for tourists. Their drivers, bizarrely outfitted, sat high up on their boxes, calling out to people passing.

I kept well clear of them; I was sick of horses.

The Plaza came into view. It was where I had had the clams with Anthony Basillio. He had been a good friend.

Suddenly there was violent barking. A woman held a dalmatian on a leash and the dog was pulling at it violently and barking at a big white carriage horse parked by the curb, whose nose was hidden in a feed bag.

The woman holding the dog was yelling apologies to the driver. The driver just smiled and nodded her head. The horse seemed totally unconcerned.

I started to cross Central Park South to continue in a downtown direction. The light was with me.

I stopped suddenly and let the light change.

My heart was beginning to jump, to beat with a funny little flutter—quickly, lightly, but pronounced.

My hand grasped my shoulder bag tightly and then released it.

The city became silent. I was frozen in time and space.

The carriage driver behind the big white horse was Ginger Mauch.

17

The watch on the waiter’s thin wrist read two twenty. It seemed to be a very old watch. Maybe it had been his grandfather’s. Maybe he was an out-of-work actor and he had come to New York from Minnesota, from a dairy farm, and the watch was the only rural memento he had left. How could a watch be a rural memento? Stupid thoughts.

I had been sitting in the outdoor café on the corner of Sixth Avenue and Central Park South for more than an hour. I had kept my eyes glued on the carriage with the big white horse.

The carriage was moving slowly but inexorably westward, toward me. Each time a carriage was hired, the others moved up—like a taxi line in front of a hotel.

An untouched Bloody Mary was in front of me. The waiter was bothersome, continually asking me if I wanted anything else. Business was slow. It was just a bit too early in the spring for café sitting.

There could be no doubt that the carriage driver was Ginger Mauch. Her hair was short now and dyed brown. But it was her. I had seen her in the flesh three times before this: once when I arrived by taxi at the Starobins’ place on that terrible day; once when we were being questioned by the police; and once that same night, when I had stumbled on Ginger weeping behind the cottage.

No, this was not a mistake. This was real. This was Ginger.

In retrospect it was all so logical. Ginger had taken care of the old Starobin carriage horses. Of course she would seek work in Manhattan with carriage horses.

The longer I sat there, the more frightened I became. It wasn’t physical fear of Ginger; it was something else. Something to do with the fear that even finding Ginger would yield only another dead end . . . a wall . . . a blinking image of a calico cat.

Ginger’s carriage moved another space. I realized I would have to make my move soon. I placed a ten-dollar bill on the table in a manner which mutely showed that the waiter could keep the change from the drink—a very substantial gratuity. The sight of the ten-dollar bill calmed the waiter; he stopped hovering about me.

What happens if I wait too long and someone else hires the carriage? The thought panicked me.

I left the café swiftly, walked to the corner, and waited for the light to change.

Then I crossed the street to the carriage side and waited, turned away from the line of view. It suddenly occurred to me that since I was wearing my acting-class garb, Ginger would never even recognize me.

It was only by chance, instinctively, that I had selected that particular garb. In fact, everything had ended up without reason. I had found Ginger by chance, and only by chance. My reasoning, my “getting into the part,” had gotten me nowhere, it was a chance walk at a chance time in a chance place—and a dalmatian dog barking for no bloody reason.

The absurdity of it all gave me strength.

I whirled around, walked ten steps, and was about to climb up into the carriage.

I froze before the carriage steps. Ginger’s head was in repose.

I turned and walked quickly away, five steps, ten steps, then stopped. Not the carriage. Not the carriage now. It was wrong. It was childish. What was I going to do in the carriage? What was I going to say? Where were we going to ride?

It wasn’t a confrontation that was needed. It was information. Where was she living? Whom was she talking to?

I took ten more steps away from her. What if Ginger wasn’t a victim? What if she wasn’t running but was pursuing?

I walked toward the low wall that separated the sidewalk from the park. I turned. A couple had climbed into Ginger’s cab. They were pulling away. Fine. Ginger would be back to deposit her fares after the ride was over.

I leaned against the wall and waited. From where I stood I could dimly see the waiter in the street café I had vacated.

Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. She and her carriage would be back. Thirty minutes. Sixty minutes. The big white horse poked his nose out of the park, moving leisurely toward the line again. Ginger pulled the carriage up about ten yards from me and helped her fare down graciously.

Then she climbed up again and started to move. But this time she didn’t rejoin the line. She pulled out into the street and headed west on Central Park South.

She was going back to the stable. She was through for the day. I started to walk, easily keeping her in view, staying as far away from the curb as I could. Her pace was painfully slow, as if she was allowing the horse a leisurely stroll.

The horse and carriage turned south on Broadway and then west again on Fifty-fifth Street, then south on Eleventh, and then stopped in front of a long, low, decrepit stable in front of which were dozens of broken-down, horseless carriages. Ginger climbed down and led the horse and carriage inside. I could see her disengaging the horse from the carriage and leading him into a stall. I moved away from the stable and waited near the corner, in front of a busy taxi garage.

She was in there forty minutes. When she came out she walked briskly to a white stone house on Forty-ninth Street and Ninth Avenue.

I climbed the stairs into a cramped, filthy lobby. There were sixteen plastic buttons and under each one a nameplate. There was no Ginger Mauch. What name was she using? I didn’t know, but it had to be one of the newer plates. There were three of them: L & H Martinez; Jon Swan; M. Lukas. It had to be Lukas. Ginger Mauch was now M. Lukas. I walked out of the lobby and down the steps. Right next to the building was a small bodega. I walked inside, ordered a container of black coffee, and sipped it dourly, standing inside the store, by the front window.

What was I waiting for? I had postponed the confrontation in the carriage. And now I was doing the same thing: waiting . . . making excuses. Now was the time to confront her. Now was the time to ask her all those questions I had stored up in my head: about Harry; about those damn calico cats; about Veronica the barn cat; about Cup of Tea and Ask Me No Questions; about her life on the racetrack and her life with the Starobins; about whom she was running from or running to.

Why was I equivocating? What was I afraid of? Why couldn’t I confront her? What was the point of the whole investigation . . . what was the point of tracking her if I couldn’t finish it up?

The coffee was horrible—bitter, with a funny taste, as if someone had poured some kind of syrup into it. I dumped the container into a carton of trash. But I stayed where I was and stared out onto the street. Children in parochial-school outfits were talking in front of the bodega. I could hear them dimly, but their words made no sense. Then I realized they were speaking in Spanish. I started to laugh at myself. I walked out of the bodega, up the steps of the house, into the small lobby, and pressed my finger hard against the M. Lukas bell. There was no answer. Maybe the bells didn’t work. The landlord had obviously long since given up on the building. Realizing this, I pushed at the lobby door. It opened easily. The lock was still in the door but was totally corroded. I cursed myself for not trying the door the first time.

M. Lukas lived on the third floor. Up I went, slowly, trying to think of opening lines that would get me inside that apartment.

A burly man walking down the stairs greeted me warmly. A woman passed me and didn’t say a word. The ceilings above the stairs were filthy. Chips and pieces of paint seem to flutter down in a steady stream, jarred loose by footsteps on the stairs.

The first door I saw when I reached the third floor was 3E. Was this M. Lukas? The door was ajar. At the top of the landing I stared at the open door and felt an incredible sense of déjà vu. When Jo and I had traced Ginger to her apartment in Oyster Bay Village, we had found the same thing. The door ajar. Ginger gone. Was there a back door to the building? I wondered, cursing myself.

I stopped at the doorway. “Ginger, Ginger Mauch?” I called into the opening. The sound of my voice was strange to me, as if someone else was calling.

There was no answer.

I pushed the door open and stepped inside. “Ginger,” I called again, more softly.

The apartment was a studio. And it had been ripped apart. Clothes and books and papers were flung all around. Things had been shattered. A tiny kitchen had been totally ransacked. The apartment stank of something I couldn’t identify.

Then I noticed that the bathroom door was closed.

I walked to it swiftly, my feet crunching objects on the floor. I pushed the door open with my foot.

And then I sank to my knees. Ginger Mauch was sitting in the rusted bathtub. The red roots in her brown-dyed hair were visible. Torrents of blood had flowed and dried on her naked body. The cut across her throat was a jagged white road.

I remained kneeling on the floor, half in and half out of the bathroom. I knew what I had to do. Stand up. Go to the phone. Call the police. But I was paralyzed.

I started to cry for Ginger. Not because she was dead, for death seemed to be irrelevant in that room. Because she had suffered. Because she had felt pain. Because some animal had slit her throat. I could see her as I had seen her that first time, in the cold gleaming morning, from a distance, brushing the aged horse on the Starobin farm.

I stopped sobbing. I crawled out of the bathroom and found myself surrounded by her trashed belongings. What had they been looking for?

A heap of books had been pulled off the bookcase and lay in a crazy pyramid. One of them caught my eye. I knew it. I was staring at a copy of the book I had found in the library, the one containing a photo of Ginger and Cup of Tea. The thought chilled me. My eyes swept in fear around the room. Not for her killer, but for the calico cat. There was none. Poor Ginger. The book was probably a precious memento.

I reached out and pulled it to me. As I did, a piece of old thick cardboard slid out. It was taped around the edges to thicken it, like boys used to tape their baseball tickets.

I found myself reading some kind of list or inventory on each side. The letters and numbers were indecipherable, written in red and black crayons and smudged.

But I knew one thing. I was staring at something written by Harry Starobin. His scrawl had been indelibly imprinted on my brain, after sorting through hundreds of his papers at Jo’s request.

Harry Starobin and Ginger Mauch had been part of some kind of conspiracy, and I had found the codebook.

I was awakened by strange sounds. I stared at the clock in my bedroom. It was one in the morning. I had slept almost seven hours. The police, I knew, would have responded to my call in minutes and Ginger was by now a statistic, her apartment contents cataloged, her walls and furniture swept for prints.

Those strange sounds that woke me were the cats. They wanted to be fed. I climbed slowly off the bed, the back of my neck and shoulders stiff.

After I fed them, I made myself a cup of coffee and then went into the living room, where the strange piece of taped cardboard lay on the long table.

I sat down and stared at it.

The front was a fourteen-line list:

78/TTQQCC

79/TTQCCC

80/T CC

81/TQCCC

82/TC

82/QQCC

83/TTTQCC

83/TQQC

84/TQQCC

85/TQC

85/TTQC

86/QCCC

87/QCCC

88/TTTTTCC

It was obvious that the numbers were years: 1978–1988. There was only one line for each year except for the years 1982, 1983, and 1985—where there were two entries each.

But what were those funny capital letters after each year—T or Q or C?

They must mean something. They must be important. Ginger had carried them with her during her travels.

Bushy sauntered into the living room and hopped up on the sofa, quite content with his meal.

Pancho flew by once, paused, stared at me, and continued his journeys.

I was chilly. I wrapped a blanket around my shoulders.

I stared at the markings on the cardboard again. It was obvious that Harry was tallying something that happened in each year. It was an inventory . . . a count . . . like someone saying an apple tree produced eighty barrels of apples in 1986. Or a farm produced thirty barrels of peaches, twenty of plums, ten of pears, in a given year.

But what had he been counting?

I leaned back and closed my eyes, thinking of Harry. What had defined him? Humor. Kindness. Boots. Animals. Cats. Horses.

But he didn’t grow any of those things. He didn’t produce.

Harry wasn’t a breeder of anything. His farm was totally nonfunctional.

Except . . . except . . . except for the Himalayans. No, he hadn’t bred them.

Except for the barn cats. Jo had said there were always litters of barn cats. Veronica had vanished with her litter.

I stared at the letters.

Why would Harry list in coded form litters of barn cats over the years? And what did the letters mean?

Of course! I flung my hand up to accentuate my own stupidity. T stood for tom—a male cat. Q stood for queen—a female cat. Old names that people didn’t use anymore.

My fingers were trembling ever so slightly.

According to my analysis, in 1978, the first year of the inventory, the barn-cat litter consisted of two male kittens, two female, and two Cs.