Cat in Wolf's Clothing (9781101578889) (4 page)

Chapter 7

There was no answer at Basillio's home in Fort Lee, New Jersey, that night. I called at six, eight, ten, and midnight. No answer. No answering machine. Where was he? Where were his wife and two small children? Had they moved? Were they on vacation? He never went on vacation.

If they had moved, Basillio would have contacted me. Granted, we hadn't been in touch with each other since our last adventure together with the murderous Russian émigrés and their strange white cats. But Tony Basillio would have contacted me if they had moved.

We were very old friends. We had, in a sense, both been crushed to death by theatrical longings, and each had been ressurected in his or her own way.

Tony Basillio had left the theater with bitterness to open a successful chain of copier shops called Mother Courage—in honor of his beloved Brecht.

The only memory he held sacred was his critically acclaimed scenic design for a production of
St. Joan of the Stockyards,
which ran for sixty-six days in a church in the West Village in the mid-1970s.

Basillio drank and gambled and did all kinds of crazy things, but his mind and heart were pure gold. He saw things that others didn't see—and he had proved to be invaluable when it came to criminal investigation. He was plugged into the world. Oh . . . it was a wet, wiggy, dangerous socket—but he was plugged in.

Swede, he always called me, because I was from Minnesota. And all he needed was two drinks to begin lecturing me on my foibles as an actress . . . my incomplete knowledge of theatrical history . . . and on my avant-garde pretensions.

But where was he now?

The next morning I called all his Mother Courage copying shops. He wasn't there. They gave me vague answers. I kept leaving desperate messages that it was urgent for him to contact me. When I specifically asked his employees where the boss was, they double-talked.

Finally, at almost eleven in the morning, the phone rang and it was Basillio. Something was wrong. His voice was weary. He was, he said, in the Hilton, of all places, on Fifty-Fourth and Sixth Avenue. I asked him what he was doing there. He didn't answer. Come over, he said. Now. I did. I took a cab.

He looked like he had been in that hotel room for weeks. He was thin, very thin, and agitated. His always bad complexion, the only thing that marred his very handsome face, was even worse. The ashtrays were full. The bed was strewn with aluminum foil from the junk food he had brought in. And the brandy bottle on the dresser was empty.

“I left my wife,” he said. “I left my wife and two kids, and I'm not going back. They can have every penny I got. Do you understand that?”

I sat down suddenly on the bed beside him. He jumped off the bed and began to pace, running his hands constantly through his long, swept-back gray-black hair.

“Do you know why I left them, Swede? And do you know why I haven't even gone into one of my stores for the last two weeks?”

“Calm down, Tony, you're shouting,” I replied.

He glared at me. “Because the only thing that ever meant anything to me was the theater. Actors on stages. So I'm going back into it, and I don't care if I starve to death. And I don't care if I spend the rest of my life designing stage sets that are never used, much less looked at. Do you understand, Swede? I'm forty-four years old. I'm going to die with a vision. Do you understand me, Swede?”

“Calm down, Tony.”

He chopped one arm violently through the air. “Who the hell are you to tell me to calm down? You're a goddamn dilettante, Swede. A little off-off-off Broadway . . . a little cat sitting . . . a little crime solving.”

His face went suddenly very pale. “Oh, Swede, I'm sorry. I have a big mouth.” He sat back down on the bed beside me. We both started to cry. Then we embraced.

Then something snapped in both of us. He started to kiss me passionately, as if we were twenty years younger . . . and I responded.

Then we made love. There were no words. Few preliminaries. We just made love—wildly and desperately . . . two middle-aged out-of-work theater people in a desperate room.

***

It was late afternoon. Shadows were beginning to appear on the carpet of the hotel room. Neither of us had spoken. We both seemed to be in shock from what had happened.

Finally Tony said, “Well, Swede, since I first met you, all those years ago, I've been trying unsuccessfully to seduce you—now you show up and seduce me.”

“That's not what happened, Tony.”

“What did happen?”

I didn't answer. I didn't know. We had both sort of lost control. It could not be explained. Middle-aged romantics. I stared at the carpet where I had hastily flung my clothes.

“Why did you come here, Swede?”

“I need your help, Tony.”

“As you can see, I'm not much help to anyone now.” His hand reached out and traced the profile of my face. “I've always loved you, Swede.”

I didn't want to hear that. What had happened between us was passion or desperation or foolishness or dues from the past—but it was not love.

I reached down beside the bed and pulled out the small manila envelope in my bag, taken from Retro's files. Inside the envelope were small reproductions of the seventeen snapshot placards—photos and words—which hung in the Retro meeting room.

Casually, one by one, I laid them out on the quilt that covered us.

“What are you doing? Who are these people?”

“Dead, Tony. All of them dead. All of them died. All of them murdered by a madman who left a toy mouse for each victim's cat.”

Tony stared at me, incredulous. Then he picked one photo up . . . then another.

“I need your help very badly,” I pleaded.

And then I told him all that had transpired. He listened carefully. We had both become so chaste, lying naked in that hotel bed. So chaste.

When I had finished my story, I added, “I know you're in the middle of bad times now Tony, but—”

He interrupted almost savagely, “Tell me what you want me to do.”

“I have a list of all relatives and friends of the victims who were interviewed by the police. I want you to contact them and get them to tell you something they didn't tell the police. I have to know more from them, Tony . . . little things or big things. Do you understand?”

“What are you going to do?”

“Start at the beginning . . . or the end. Go back to the scene of the last murders—the Tyre brothers.”

He sat up quickly, looking for a cigarette. He could find none. He turned to me, and I saw fear as well as love on his face. “I don't know what happened to us, Swede, or why it happened, but I'm very glad. Do you know what I mean? It's like we had both started classes at the Dramatic Workshop again—and the future was open . . . with all kinds of possibilities. Remember beauty and truth and authenticity and all that nonsense, Swede? Do you know what I'm saying?”

I gathered all the small photos into a pile. Yes, I knew exactly what he was saying. And I knew he would help. As to what really happened between us—in bed—well, that was a mystery.

Chapter 8

“How long is this going to take?” Arcenaux asked nastily.

His tone took me out of a sort of tidal pool of reverie. I was wondering how close to the truth my theories were: the notion that the missing cats were the only real correlation other than the mouse toy, and my belief that the FBI agent's statistics were significant only in that they matched, in season and time, cat fertility and reproduction. Maybe the cats were not really missing . . . maybe they were with relatives. And maybe the agent's findings were just statistical flukes. An air of unreality hung over all of my theories. There were too many dead people.

And I was wondering about Tony Basillio. It had been a long time since I had acted with sexual abandon.

When I didn't answer because of my reveries, Arcenaux shouted, “How many times are you going to want to come back to this apartment? I told you we went over it with a fine-tooth comb.”

“This won't take long,” I replied.

The dead brothers' studio apartment was as dramatic on a cloudy morning as it had been on that sunny afternoon when I first saw it. I was in a space capsule . . . the glass sides of the capsule groaning in the high-swirling breezes.

I sat on a chair and stared around. The apartment emitted an almost overwhelming sense of emptiness.

“Are you sure nothing was taken from the apartment?” I asked.

“Nothing but the bodies. And the toy mouse.”

“Where are their books and magazines?”

“They obviously didn't read.”

“What about clothes?”

“In the hall closet, next to the bathrooms,” Arcenaux said impatiently.

I walked to the closets and opened them. One contained a few suits, shirts, coats, sweaters, shoes. The other contained carefully folded linens and towels. At the bottom of the linen closet were two folded blankets. The brothers obviously slept on the sofas, not even opening them, just covering them with a blanket.

I closed the closet door and walked slowly about the large studio apartment. I realized that if I was a spectator watching a play in which the apartment was a set, I would have an overwhelming sense of abandonment—as if no one really had lived there . . . or as if whoever lived there was about to move.

I stared out one line of windows. There was another, more chilling explanation of the apartment's bareness: the occupants knew they were going to die—they had made peace with the grasping world of objects by relinquishing them.

“Doesn't it strike you as odd that the apartment is so empty?” I asked Arcenaux.

“Some people like junk and some people don't,” he replied.

I kept circumnavigating the apartment. There was no bric-a-brac at all. No ashtrays. No framed photos. No vases. No seashells. No candles or candlesticks. No things.

“Did you find out any more about the Siamese cat of theirs?”

My question embarrassed Arcenaux. “No! Not a damn thing. I mean, the doorman of this building was the one who told us a relative had taken the cat. But now he says he don't remember telling us that. And we can't find the damn relative or the damn cat.”

Yes, I had expected that. I stared at the Van Gogh print on the wall . . . the one I had straightened on my first visit to the apartment.

“Which of the brothers owned the cat before they moved in together?”

“Jack.”

I nodded. My concentration should be on him . . . on Jack. But both brothers remained ciphers without objects . . . without books . . . without ties to the world of things.

“Look, I'm going out for some coffee. How long will you be?” Arcenaux asked.

“Half hour,” I replied.

He slammed the door shut behind him, angrily. I had become, I realized, a very severe thorn in Retro's side in a very swift time. But they should all cheer up—I was now only a part-time consultant.

I wandered into the walk-through kitchen. There were no cat-food bags or cans. That was strange. The refrigerator and the shelves were almost empty. A few pots and pans in the sink rack. Nothing at all on the range top.

I opened the drawers. A few sets of utensils. A can opener. I opened the cabinet over the sink, Paper plates. Paper cups. Paper towels.

Then I walked to the edge of the kitchen space and opened the broom closet. No mops. No brooms. No cleaning fluids.

In fact the broom closet was empty except for a few hanging dust rags, and on the bottom was a careful pile of dinner plates.

They were very old chipped plates, with large faded tulip designs.

I smiled sadly. At last, the first sign of the brothers' normalcy . . . of sentimentality.

Had these plates belonged to their mother? They were certainly old enough.

I bent down and plucked the first one—carefully—off the pile.

Then I stepped back startled!

Between the plate I had lifted and the second plate in the pile was a leaf.

I picked it up. No, it wasn't a single leaf. There were three leaves, one on top of each other, fastened at the stems with a large red twistum.

It was very strange. I mean, I knew of the old romantic thing of pressing leaves between the covers of a book. But between plates? I picked up the second plate. There was another bunch of leaves. And another! Between each plate were similar pressed leaves.

Bizarre! Did Jack Tyre collect leaves? But he was a white-collar worker in the Department of Parks. He worked in an office in the old armory. Even if he collected leaves, why would he bind them and press them?

I put the plates back, took one of the leaf bunches, and went back to my chair. I sat down and turned it in my hand. It was like all the others. On top, a ginkgo leaf. Then an oak leaf. And finally, what probably was a maple leaf. And all fastened with that bold red twistum.

I sat and twirled the leaves in my hand. I held them up to the morning light. They were beautiful! They made a beautiful bouquet. The red twistum was like a valentine.

I grinned, realizing finally what I was looking at. A valentine. A love letter. Someone had sent the leaves to Jack Tyre. They were indeed love letters and that was why he had pressed them between his mother's old plates.

But so what? What did it mean? Neither the murderer nor the police had found them, or, if they had, had paid any attention to the leaves. What did a strange, somewhat imaginative bouquet of leaves have to do with a toy mouse, a missing Siamese cat, and all those other murders?

I heard the door open. “You ready? You finished?” Arcenaux barked out.

I slipped the leaf bouquet into my bag. It was better to follow up on these leaves, however absurd they were, than spend hours at Retro facing the unit's scorn for me . . . for their resident cat woman. Besides, I might find something. So might Basillio. And the only thing the computer was going to find was what that strange little man Bert Turk told it to find.

“I'm ready,” I said, and we left the apartment.