Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) (11 page)

Razoni held them up one at a time and read just the headlines:

SALAMANDA PLANS WORLD TOUR

AMERICA FINDS NEW GURU

THE NEW MESSAGE IS LOVE

SALAMANDA PLANS CITY OF LOVE IN PA.

SALAMANDA PLANS NATIONAL RALLY OF FOLLOWERS

“How come this guy’s so popular and I never heard of him?”

“Because you can’t find him in the sports pages,” Pat said.

“Very funny. I read the paper,” Razoni said.

“What’s today’s big story?” she asked.

“Something about war coming to the Mideast,” Razoni guessed.

“How did you know that?” she asked.

“I told you. I read the paper,” said Razoni, who did not even know where the Mideast was and who thought the problem of war there had been resolved years ago with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Jackson came back and Razoni asked, “What did he say?”

“He said that I was the next to stupidest person in the world. You can fill in the blank. But he said you weren’t in the case long enough to do any harm and we’re off it anyway because Abigail called home just a few minutes ago, so that’s that. Back to Salamanda.”

“This is getting to be a pain in the rectum,” Razoni said. “First this, then that, then this again.”

“Who’s Abigail?” Pat said.

“Some fag’s kid was missing, but Tough and me got her home, so that’s that.” He pushed the photocopies of the news stories along the bar to Jackson. “Here, read these.”

“Did you read them?” Jackson asked.

“Yes,” Razoni lied.

“No,” said Pat.

“I did read them. Speed reading,” Razoni said.

“To an Italian, that means moving his lips in a blur,” Jackson said.

“Will you read the goddamn clippings?” Razoni yelled. “Do I have to do everything around here?”

Jackson sipped his drink and read the clippings while Razoni drummed his fingers in annoyance over Jackson’s slowness. Finally, the black detective looked up.

“What do you think?” Razoni asked.

“Nothing here that we didn’t already know,” Jackson said.

“That’s just about how I figured it,” Razoni said, relieved that he didn’t have to read the stories.

“No sign yet of who the girl was who poisoned the Swami?” Pat asked.

“Nothing that we know of,” Jackson said.

“But you’ll be the first one we tell,” Razoni said. “It’s only a matter of time before we break this case. Now that we’re allowed to concentrate on it.”

And that was that, and later they drove Pat to her posh East Side apartment, and Razoni, surprisingly, declined her hospitality, swore her to secrecy about everything they had talked about, and drove with Jackson to the small frame house out in the suburbs where Jackson lived.

Sarge and Hilda were going to the ship. Chico had arisen early and cooked them breakfast, which Mrs. Tracy had refused to touch, clearly fearing it was poisoned. Sarge said, “More for me,” and dug in with both hands. Hilda said, “You never eat breakfast like that when I cook it.” Sarge said, “Perhaps there is a lesson to be drawn from that, Hilda.”

Trace woke up on the couch just as they were at the front door, ready to go out to the waiting limousine.

“So long,” he called out.

Sarge came back and stood over the sofa where Trace had slept under a flannel blanket so thin it looked as if it had been used to keep cannonballs warm on the
Mayflower
.

“You know our ship,” Sarge said. “If you have any trouble, call me.”

“What trouble? With a divorce case?”

“Well, if you get in a big new client, you call me.”

“Not likely we’ll get in a big new client,” Trace said. He didn’t really want to talk in the morning. Why was Sarge talking at him so much?

“Well, if anything comes up that’s really important, you let me know,” Sarge said.

“Like what?” Trace said.

“Never mind,” Chico said. “Sarge, if anything big comes up, we’ll call or wire you right away so you can come home. Maybe grab a plane if you have to.”

“Smart girl,” Sarge said.

“What are you two talking about?” Hilda called from the doorway. “Patrick, we’ve got to go. We’ll miss the ship.”

“It doesn’t sail for four hours,” Sarge said.

“If we don’t get there soon, we won’t get a good table for dinner,” she said.

“Coming, Hilda,” Sarge said with a sigh. He jammed his big hands into his pockets so hard that Chico felt sorry for any change he might have been carrying.

He patted Trace’s forehead and kissed Chico’s cheek, and then the two of them were gone.

Chico said, “That poor man.”

Trace said, “Poor man? What about me? Sleeping on a couch at my age when there’s a nubile little Eurasian upstairs, all liquored up on ginger ale and all hot to trot.” He reached for her wrist, but missed.

Chico said, “I’ll make breakfast.”

While Trace picked desultorily at the food on his plate, Chico wolfed down her second breakfast of the day. Between chews, she said, “Good news.”

“My mother’s decided to stay in Puerto Rico forever?” he said.

“No, not that good. I called our apartment and checked the phone messages.”

“No good ever comes of that,” Trace said.

“Maybe, maybe not. There was a message from Walter Marks. He has a case for you. Name of Dundee or something.”

“Why is Groucho calling for me ever good news?” Trace asked.

“Because it’s a case for the firm,” Chico said. “You do remember the firm, don’t you? You and me and Sarge?”

“Don’t get smart, woman. Of course I remember. I remember every dumb thing I’ve ever agreed to in my life.”

They parked Sarge’s car in the lot across from the office and Trace gave Chico the keys to go upstairs first. “I’ve got a couple of errands to do first,” he said.

When he came into the office a half-hour later, he was carrying a paper bag with two leaking coffee containers, and a small box containing a seven-inch black-and-white television set.

Chico cocked an eyebrow at the television set and Trace said, “Sarge said to buy one. He said no office should be without a television.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why,” Trace said. “Maybe he likes to watch the old folks on
Wheel of Fortune
call all the letters that have already been called. I don’t know why. Why does this office already look better?”

“That’s called clean,” Chico said, gesturing at him with a dustcloth. Trace was afraid to ask her where she had found a dustcloth in this office. “And those stupid centerfolds are gone,” she said.

“You’re taking all the character out of this place,” he said.

“When we’re cooking, Trace, we’ll have real women like that in here, not just their pictures from some magazine. We’ll be stars.”

“I’ve already got a real woman like that in here,” Trace said gallantly.

“How nice of you,” she said.

“Want to trick on the couch?” Trace asked.

“I’ll pass,” she said. “Call Walter Marks. Get us an insurance case and make us some money.”

Trace sat behind Sarge’s desk and sipped at one of the coffees. “Not so fast,” he said. “You just can’t go charging ahead when you’re dealing with Groucho. I’ve got to think this through.”

Chico glanced at her watch. “Think it through fast. You’ve got five minutes. Then get on the phone.”

“Hello, Sarah. I kept him out of trouble all night,” Razoni said. Sarah Jackson was as feminine and shapely as her husband was masculine and muscular. She carried herself like all women who know they are beautiful.

“Coffee’s on, Ed. Come on out.”

Razoni nodded, and when Sarah went back into the kitchen, he rolled off the living-room couch, picked up his clothes, and made his way to the bathroom.

In the kitchen, he sat down at the round butcher-block table across from Randolph, the Jacksons’ eight-year-old son, who tried to stare him down. Razoni commandeered the copy of the
Times
from Jackson’s chair and put it between his face and Randolph’s.

Jackson came into the kitchen straightening his tie. “’Morning, all. ’Morning, Ed.”

“Shhhh, I’m reading the paper,” said Razoni, who was glancing at the baseball scores.

“Did you say good morning to Mr. Razoni?” Jackson asked his son.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“He didn’t say good morning to me,” the boy said.

“That’s right, Tough, I didn’t,” said Razoni. “I was afraid to. He was looking at me real mean. Look at him. He’s still looking at me real mean.”

“Randolph, don’t stare at Mr. Razoni,” said Sarah Jackson.

“All right, Ma,” the boy said. He looked at Razoni and, when he was sure his parents were not watching, stuck out his tongue. Razoni saw him and stuck out his own tongue. Just as he did, Jackson turned to his partner and saw him with his tongue protruding from his mouth.

“No wonder he doesn’t say hello to you. You stick your tongue out at him.”

Randolph Jackson smirked.

Under the table, Razoni kicked him in the ankle.

The boy’s yelp was interrupted by Sarah Jackson shoveling scrambled eggs from a huge skillet onto the four plates on the table. This was followed by quarter-inch-thick slices of scrapple, then by toast, then by homefries, until each plate was a heaping mound of food.

They ate themselves full. Randolph Jackson continued to stare at Razoni. Razoni gave Jackson the newpaper, and Jackson read the page-one story about Salamanda’s death, occasionally reading sentences aloud. Razoni seemed surprised that the paper would print such inconsequential drivel.

“Drivel it may be,” Jackson said, “but it’s our case.”

“That’s this minute,” Razoni said. He turned to Sarah. “Did he tell you about yesterday? First of all, a day off, we’ve got to go in. Then it’s who killed the Swami, then it’s forget the Swami and go find the fag’s daughter, then it’s forget the fag’s daughter and go look for the Swami’s killer again. I don’t know what they want from us.”

The telephone interrupted his soliloquy. Sarah Jackson answered it, then handed it without comment to her husband. He said, “Yes, sir,” then listened a lot. “Okay, Captain.”

“What’d he want?” Razoni said.

“Guess what?”

“What?”

“Abigail didn’t get home last night.”

“Who cares?” asked Razoni.

“He does. We’re back looking for her.”

Razoni groaned and Jackson got up to kiss his wife. Razoni stood and slowly waved his hand in front of Randolph Jackson’s eyes to see if the boy would blink. He didn’t. He jerked forward with his mouth and tried to bite Razoni’s fingers.

Razoni retreated to the door of the kitchen, where he nodded toward Jackson’s wife and son and said to his partner, “You sure it’s safe to leave her alone with him?” Jackson snorted and Razoni shrugged, then called out, “So long, Sarah. Don’t worry about anything. I’ll make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

“I can’t tell you how secure that makes me feel,” she said, sharing a wink with her husband before walking the two men to the front door.

When his terror at the way Jackson drove had subsided to a steady level of fright, Razoni said, “Where are we going anyway?”

“Better talk to that Karen Marichal. Abigail Longworth’s friend.”

“What happened to the little twit anyway?”

“She called last night and told her father she was all right and she’d be coming right home. That’s when we got pulled off the case. Then she didn’t show.”

“So now we forget the lizard again?” Razoni said.

“Looks that way,” Jackson said.

“I swear to God Captain Mannion’s getting as nuts as the rest of the fags who run this department,” Razoni said. “Take me home before we do anything else. I want to change my clothes.”

When he came back out of his apartment, Razoni was wearing a dark-blue suit, “To match my mood,” he explained.

Jackson peeled away from the curb. Five minutes later, he ran two turning-red lights, barely missed a bus as it pulled from the curb, and parked in front of a fire hydrant.

As he got out of the car, Razoni was told by a street sweeper, “You guys can’t park here.”

“Why not? You see any fires?”

“You’re going to get a ticket for interfering with firemen.”

“Good,” Razoni said. “They want the same pay as cops, let them work for it.”

Jackson led the way up the stairs to the front doors of a renovated brownstone. The light-tan doors were so heavily varnished that Razoni could see his reflection in them, and he carefully arranged his dark wavy hair. Then he straightened his tie. Then he looked down at his shoes.

“Are you finished?” asked Jackson.

“Yeah. But as soon as we leave here, we go back to my place so I can change my shoes. These are scuffed.”

Jackson pushed the bell button. It sounded out with the first line of the chorus of “With a Little Help from My Friends.”

No one answered.

“Ring it again, Tough. See what they do for an encore.”

Jackson hit the bell again. It played the same notes, but this time the door opened. A uniformed butler stood there, a huge man with a shaggy head of blond hair that reached to his shoulders.

“Yes?”

“We’d like to see Karen Marichal,” said Jackson.

“Whom may I say is calling?”

“Mr. Razoni and Mr. Jackson.”

“Wait here, please.” The butler closed the door on them.

“I guess everybody has a butler these days,” Razoni said.

“Everybody’s who’s too lazy to open his own door.”

“Maybe I’ll get one.”

“Just what you need in a one-room apartment,” Jackson said.

They waited until the door opened again and the butler invited them inside. They followed him toward a pair of French doors at the right side of the entrance hall. The butler pushed open the doors. The two detectives began to step inside, then stopped short.

The doors had opened on a long elegant room with tall and narrow stained-glass windows. Hanging from the twenty-foot ceiling was a cut-crystal chandelier that looked as if it belonged in a theater lobby. Suspended from the ceiling, next to the ornate light, were a pair of ropes. Tracing them down with their eyes, they found the ropes ended with a pair of gymnastic rings. A man wearing gymnast’s leotards was reaching up for the rings.

They turned back to the butler, but he had gone. They stepped into the room.

Along the far wall was a twelve-foot-long satin white couch. It was splattered with paint of many colors. Next to the couch was a woman standing in front of a painter’s canvas. The canvas was eight feet long and six feet high. She was slapping red paint onto the canvas with a housepainter’s brush. Large globs of it bounced off and dropped onto the couch.

“Let’s get out of here,” Razoni whispered.

“Where’s your guts?” Jackson said.

The man was swinging on the rings now, back and forth, picking up speed. Finally, he let loose, turned a somersault in the air, and landed with feet together in an Olympic dismount position. There was a little thudding of applause from the corner of the room to the detectives’ right. They looked in that direction and saw an old woman, wrinkled, wearing pink aviator glasses and a formal satin gown in powder blue, clapping. She clapped by slapping one hand down onto the oak table at which she sat. Her other hand held grimly onto a crystal goblet filled with red liquid, apparently from the gallon jug of Gallo burgundy that sat on the table in front of her.

The man from the trapeze stepped forward to the two detectives.

“Hi there, old buddies. How are you?”

“Fine,” said Jackson. The man grabbed Jackson’s right hand and pumped it. He advanced upon Razoni, who thrust his right hand into his jacket pocket.

Nothing daunted, the man gave Razoni a bright smile. He was perhaps in his early sixties, but only his lined face and bald head showed that age. His body had the long stringy muscles of a teenage gymnast.

“I’m Ferenc Marichal. That’s my wife, Charmaine,” he said. The woman at the mural-sized canvas did not turn around but waved the big red paint brush over her head in a sign of greeting.

“And that’s Mother,” said Marichal, pointing to the woman in the corner. She did not look at the detectives because she was busy shaking the gallon jug over her goblet. When only a few drops trickled out, she yelled, “Shit,” reached over her head for the bell rope, and began to yank it angrily.

“Well, Mother’s occupied,” Marichal said blandly.

The old woman kept yanking on the bell rope. Resounding throughout the house, Razoni could hear the
bong-bong-bong
of a heavy bell. If there were a hunchback in this house, he was leaving.

He heard a voice behind him.

“Beep, beep. Coming through.”

Razoni moved aside, and the uniformed butler skidded past him, almost on a run, carrying a full jug of wine. He brought it to the aged woman, filled her glass, put the rest of the jug on the table, and removed the empty bottle.

“About time,” the woman said.

“Yes’m,” the butler said.

“I think you’re getting too old for this work,” she said.

“Yes’m.”

“You’re fired, asshole,” she said.

“Yes’m.”

“Don’t worry,” Marichal whispered to the detectives. “She fires Igor several times a day. What can I do for you, now?”

“We don’t want to bother you,” Razoni said. “We’ll be glad to come back during visiting hours.”

“Nonsense,” said Marichal. “We’re always at home to visitors.
Mi casa es su casa
.”

“We’ve come to see Karen,” said Jackson.

“Karen?” Marichal said. He looked puzzled. “Oh, yes. Karen. My daughter,” he said brightly.

“Yes. We understand she’s a friend of Abigail Longworth.”

“That’s right. Close. Close. Very close.” He stopped and waited. After a few seconds, he said, “Now it’s your turn.”

“My turn?” asked Jackson.

“Yes. Your turn to talk. I said close, close, very close. Then you were supposed to say something. That’s how conversations go, first one, then the other.”

“Oh, I see. May we see Karen?”

“I don’t know. How are your eyes? Hah! A joke. Mother, did you hear that? He said, may he see Karen and I said, how are your eyes? Charmaine, did you hear that?”

“Oh, go scratch your ass, Ferenc,” said Mother Marichal from the corner. Across the room, Charmaine Marichal waved her paint brush over her head. A large glop of red paint fell in the middle of her hair. She didn’t seem to notice.

“Very funny,” Jackson told Marichal.

“Look, we want to see Karen,” said Razoni.

“You can. If you’ve got good eyes,” Marichal said. He seemed about to say something more, but instead went over to a column that stood in the middle of the floor. Atop the four-foot-high column was a mound of clay that was slowly being sculpted into some sort of head. With his thumb, Marichal smoothed out a spot over the left eyebrow. He cocked his head and looked at the mound of clay, then picked it up from the pedestal and threw the head against the far wall. The soft moist clay hit with a splat, stuck against the deep wood paneling for a second, then trickled down toward the floor.

Marichal turned back to Razoni and Jackson. “I’ll take you to see Karen. But don’t be surprised if she doesn’t want to talk. She’s been depressed since her guru died.”

“Her guru?” asked Jackson.

“Yes. Poisoned. Very guru-some.” He giggled.

Razoni felt something brush the back of his legs. He turned, just in time to see a spider monkey hopping up onto his shoulder. It put its face next to Razoni’s ear.

Jackson laughed.

Razoni screamed. “Get this son of a bitch off me. I ain’t no banana.”

“Come here, Percy,” called Mother Marichal from the corner of the room. “That gentleman isn’t your friend. He isn’t even a gentleman. He’s just a plain ordinary dork.”

The monkey jumped down from Razoni’s shoulder and skittered across the floor, hopping into a chair across the table from the woman. When she pushed her wineglass forward, it stuck its face close to the wine and began lapping it with its tongue.

Razoni rolled his eyes. Jackson kept laughing. Ferenc Marichal, suddenly all business, brushed by them and led the way to the stairs. At the top of the stairs was a red door with a yellow-and-orange sunburst painted on it. Marichal knocked, then opened the door a crack.

“There are gentlemen here to have a word with you, Karen,” Marichal said. He stepped aside to let the two detectives into the room, then closed the door behind them and left.

The room was illuminated only by a small votive candle in a glass saucer on an end table at the far side of the room. Over the candle hung the poster of Salamanda with the legend: THE SWAMI LIVES. On the end table near the candle were two framed photographs, but in the darkness their subjects were not visible. Next to the candle was also a bowl of fruit, looking like an offering to the darkness.

Razoni reached for the light switch on the wall beside the door. He flipped it but the room remained dark.

“Pleathe,” came a voice. “I am thenthitive to the light.”

The voice was a soft lisping breath of a woman’s voice. The two detectives turned toward its source and saw the girl, sitting in lotus position, atop the couch in the corner of the room farthest from the candle. Her head and entire body were draped and veiled in some kind of dark gauze. Not even her eyes were visible through the gauze.

“Karen?” said Jackson.

“Yeth.”

“I’m Detective Jackson and this is Detective Razoni. You’re a friend of Abigail Longworth’s?”