A Cat Tells Two Tales (23 page)

Harry Hanks was seated at a desk that seemed to have been stolen from an insurance company—it was large and modern and the top was painted orange, which did not at all blend in with the green-and-white motif of the police precinct.

He was reading the
Daily News
, spread out on top of the desk as if he were hunting for coupons.

I stood in front of the desk for a long time before he even noticed me, and when he did, he didn’t recognize me.

“May I sit down?” I asked, pointing to the empty chair next to the desk.

“What can I do for you, lady?”

I sat down and waited for him to fold up the paper and give me his undivided attention. He kept looking through the paper.

“Don’t you remember me?”

“Not really,” he said.

“We had a discussion in front of the Gramercy Park Hotel . . . about Bruce Chessler.”

He grinned. He remembered. “Right, the lady who lost her student.”

I didn’t appreciate the sarcasm, but I really didn’t have time to play games with him.

“Bruce Chessler was not murdered in a drug-related incident,” I said to him.

He sat up suddenly, his eyes wide, folding the paper with disgust and shoving it across the desk.

“Say what, lady?”

“I said that Bruce Chessler was not murdered because of a drug deal gone bad, as you told me.”

“Is that so?”

“Since the case has grown cold under your supervision,” I reminded him, “I should think you’d be very happy at what I’ve told you.”

“I am happy, lady. I am so happy that I can’t even move. Because if I move I’ll fall down on the floor and roll over and out the window and they’ll scrape me up still laughing, still happy.”

There was a long silence. I had realized he was going to be difficult—but not this difficult. I dug into my purse and came out with the
New York Times
article about me, which stated how I had been commended by the Nassau County Police Department for resolving the Starobin murder. He read the article and handed it back to me.

“What do you want me to say, lady?”

“Nothing. Just take what I’m telling you seriously.”

“What are you telling me?”

“That Bruce Chessler was not murdered because of drugs.”

“Okay, lady. If you say so.”

“And,” I added, “I am very close to being able to present the entire conspiracy to you.”

“What conspiracy?”

“It’s a long story. It’s a criminal conspiracy.” Should I tell him that Arkavy Reynolds and Bruce Chessler were murdered by the same gun? No! I decided against even bringing up Arkavy’s name. That would entail discussing Detective Felix . . . it would bring in other jurisdictions . . . other complexities. Cops are afraid of bureaucratic complexities. They are afraid their noses will be bitten off.

Hanks swept the
Daily News
off his desk onto the floor with an angry flourish. “And you have proof of this so-called conspiracy? Of course you have, lady. Right? And you know the names of his killers? Right, lady? That’s why you’re here busting my hump, because you know all these things that we dumb cops don’t know. Right?”

I waited until his anger abated. He was a difficult man to deal with. Very difficult.

“I am going to say something to you that is very strange.”

“Everything you told me or didn’t tell me so far, lady, has been strange.”

“There is a cat in a copy store only a few minutes from here.”

“Is that so?”

“And within the next few hours someone is going to try to steal that cat.”

“The excitement mounts.”

“And the person who tries to steal that cat is the person who murdered Bruce Chessler.”

“So you’re going to be hiding there with your video camera, is that it? And you’re going to sell the tape to Channel Seven news, and then you’re going to write a book about the great criminal conspiracy . . . or was it the cat conspiracy?”

“You really dislike me, don’t you, Detective?”

“You have it wrong, lady. I just don’t like listening to fantasies.”

I leaned over the desk and wrote the address on a small pad. He stared at what I had written.

“If you can spend the evening with me there, waiting, I will show you that they are not fantasies.”

“Right, lady. After I get off work today, you want me to hold your hand for God knows how many hours in a copy shop, keeping our eyes on some cat.”

“Yes, Detective Hanks. That is what I would like you to do.”

“Well, lady, I have a better idea.”

“What’s that?”

He tore a sheet of paper off the same pad I had written on, wrote something on it, and pushed it at me.

“Now,” he said, “I’m going to go home after work and take a shower and have a few drinks and then have some supper and then take a walk and maybe watch a ball game and then go to sleep. But if you’re in that store staring at that cat and some killers come at you, well, you just tell them to hold on because you have to make a call—to me. That’s my home number, lady.”

The whole meeting had gone as wrong as it could go, from the very beginning. I realized it was to a large extent my fault. I shouldn’t have expected Detective Harry Hanks to give me any help unless I gave him some very hard facts. I had dug up many of them, but it was too early to present them—to anyone. Perhaps Hanks would think them relevant. For me, they were pointers. No, it went much deeper than that. Hanks thought me a dilettante . . . it didn’t matter how many newspaper clippings I showed him about my crime-solving prowess. And I thought Hanks to be an arrogant fool.

I took the piece of paper, crumpled it, and dropped it into my purse like a piece of dirty candy given to me by a derelict whose feelings I didn’t want to hurt.

“You see,” I said, “as difficult as this may seem to you, Detective Hanks, we are both after the same thing.”

“Which is?”

“The person or persons who murdered Bruce Chessler.”

“Fine. Call me if you need help,” he said, and I saw he was making a strong effort to get rid of his sarcasm and skepticism . . . to be professional . . . to be noncommittal—while at the same time distancing himself from a woman he obviously found hard to deal with. He kept his body turned away from me as if he were desperate for me to leave but didn’t want to say so . . . didn’t dare to say so.

I stood up and started walking away.

“Wait,” I heard him say.

I didn’t turn back toward him; I just stopped.

“I forgot your name,” he said.

“Alice Nestleton,” I replied.

“Look, Miss Nestleton, you know I want that kid’s killer. Just as much as you do.”

“I suppose so.”

“So you give me something solid and I’ll move on it.”

“That’s what I’m about to do,” I replied.

21

I had moved Basillio’s swivel chair to the long hallway between the office and the shop. It was quiet and dark. A single light burned over one of the large copying machines and it spread diminishing rays throughout the hallway.

Jack Be Quick was nibbling some chicken I had bought him on the way over.

From time to time he stared slyly at me.

“They’re coming to get you, Jack,” I said. “Three old Russians are coming to rescue you because they think you’re white with black spots.”

Jack didn’t seem to mind at all.

I leaned forward and watched him. How beautiful his breed was; how suffused with a sense of wildness and mystery; yes, it was true—the Abyssinian reeked of Egyptian deserts.

Then I sat back. I was tired but determined. I didn’t know which of the three old men would be sneaking through the door. Maybe it would be all three. I didn’t care. It wasn’t revelation I was there for—it was confirmation. It would be the last piece in the puzzle and I could present it to the world. The world? I was thinking like an actress again, not a criminal investigator. It was humorous. The world didn’t care about Bruce Chessler. And the world didn’t really care about the strange, tortuous journey of those Russian émigrés, now sequestered in their hard-earned homes, thinking God knows what thoughts, being obsessed by geriatric memories.

Time went slowly. Very slowly. Again and again I walked to the two doors through which someone had to walk. The front door to the store and the side door, leading from the office to the alley.

Which door would it be? What did it matter? How would the break-in happen? What did it matter?

At midnight I pulled the swivel chair back into the office and pushed it behind the desk. I sat down and swiveled in the darkness.

Jack Be Quick leapt up on the desk. His green eyes gleamed. He circled the desk and made a very deep purring sound, from his belly. Was he still hungry? Did he want water? No, both were available to him.

“Speak to me, Jack,” I said to him.

He approached me warily.

“A penny for your thoughts, Jack.”

He stretched, his legs and large paws elongated downward; his back arched. Is there anything more beautiful than a handsome cat stretching in the shadows?

My thoughts went to Grablewski and then to Bruce Chessler. It was amazing how they always popped up together. And it was sad that my thoughts, when they focused on men, rarely dealt with past lovers . . . only with would-be lovers—men who were not . . . had never been . . . or could never be my lovers.

When I looked back up, Jack Be Quick had vanished from the desk. I could see his shadow against one of the walls.

I suddenly realized that I had nothing with me, no weapon in case of trouble. Nor did I have my bag or even a scarf. I had arrived at the Mother Courage Copying Shop like a Zen Buddhist monk, with only the clothes on my back. Why? I didn’t really know. It was strange. Maybe I required simplicity in the face of a dense and grim conspiracy. Or maybe, since it had required a great deal of mental and physical effort to arrive at where I was in relation to the conspiracy—in relation to understanding how all the strands were proceeding toward an unfolding center—I had to be almost naked in my resolve.

The most horrible sound I have ever heard in my life suddenly cascaded through the store.

I didn’t move. The sound seemed to splinter my bones . . . to make me shiver . . . to crush my will. I couldn’t move.

Again and again . . . louder and louder . . .

It didn’t stop. I closed my eyes. I scrunched down into the chair.

Glass. It sounded like glass shattering. Someone was smashing in the front window of the store.

I covered my ears. I got up. I pressed my hands tight against my ears until they hurt. I ran into the hallway and then toward the front of the store. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was happening.

I let my hands drop from my ears. The sound began again . . . splintering, screeching, moaning, lunacy.

I could see something now.

Someone was smashing in the front window.

I started to scream.

The figure was inside now, through the window.

I looked around, desperate, searching for something to stop the intruder.

And then there was absolute silence. It was so quiet that I could hear the pads of Jack Be Quick’s feet.

The intruder heard them also—the intruder was there for the white cat that did not exist.

Where was the light? I thought desperately. There must be a switch on the wall. Where
was
the light? I ran my hand along the wall like a crazed blind person. My hand touched something. I pushed up. The whole store was flooded with light.

In front of me, holding a steel pipe, stood a small thin black woman with a closely shaved head.

My God, it was the poet! It was the young woman from the bar! It was Elizabeth.

She stared at me. Exhausted. Frightened. Panting.

She dropped the iron bar that had splintered the window. It clattered to the floor. There were streaks of blood on her wrists.

“Why are you here?” she asked in a hoarse whisper, terrified.

“To make sure you don’t get the white cat,” I said.

I ran back and gathered Jack Be Quick in my arms and approached her, thrusting the large nonwhite Abyssinian close to her face.

“You see, there is no white cat here, none at all. We were just waiting for you.”

Her eyes roamed over the walls and the windows and the machines, as if she were searching for a way out.

“Who sent you?” I asked.

She seemed to draw inside of herself.

“Was it Bukai . . . or Chederov . . . or Mallinova?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know those names.”

“Then who?”

“I don’t know his name.”

“He paid you?”

“No. He didn’t pay. He paid for what happened in the bar. He paid me to point out Bruce. And then he threatened me. He said if I broke in here and got the white cat, he’d forget everything. If not, he’d tell the police that I was an accessory to murder.”

“Why did you point him out?”

“I didn’t know he would be murdered. I had no idea. I just wanted some extra money. Some spending money. You know—for books and things. Don’t you believe me? I had no idea.”

Her legs gave way. She sprawled on the floor. I remembered our conversation in the bar, about that Indian philosopher—Patanjali.

“How much did he pay you to point him out?”

“Five hundred dollars.”

“And what else did he get for the money?”

“Nothing, I swear. Just that I would hold the booth in the bar so that Bruce would be there; so that he would not see the bar was too crowded and go elsewhere. That was all I had to do. Talk with Bruce in a booth until he came in.”

“Who is he?”

“I told you, I don’t know his name.”

She started to weep. She kept raising her hands as if to explain, and then lowering them.

“Did you have a phone number?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“Give it to me.”

She shook her head. She was clearly frightened.

“Give it to me,” I said, closing in on her.

She stared at me as if evaluating what kind of threat I represented, as if determining how far I was prepared to go. She understood she was in very deep hot water . . . either with the police or with the man who had hired her in the beginning.

Then she removed a crumpled paper from her pocket.

A phone number was penciled on one side.

I dialed the number. A recorded message came on. The voice said: “You have reached Sedaka and Sons, Diamond Merchants. If you are using a pushbutton phone, please press one for our accounting department . . . press two to schedule an appointment . . . press three if your call is personal. Thank you.” The phone fell gently out of my hand and back on the receiver.

I smiled grimly. Everything was going just fine. Jack Be Quick walked regally over to the squatting, frightened poet and rubbed his back against her knee. She seemed to shrink further into herself.