Cat in Wolf's Clothing (9781101578889) (5 page)

Chapter 9

The phone rang as I was undressing for bed. It was early for me, only about ten
P.M.
But it had been a long day. Bushy was already on my pillow, exhausted after a long day sleeping on the living-room rug.

It was my agent. She said that a Japanese film company was doing a program on Western theater people's response to Kabuki. Would I be interested? There would be some remuneration. I told her no. She said brightly: “Okay. I'll be in touch.” And that was that.

Eight minutes later Tony Basillio called. The sound of his voice on the other end of the line startled me. It was as if he was there to demand comments from me on what had happened on that hotel bed. What were we: lovers? No. I still couldn't sort out what had happened and what else should happen, if anything.

“I found someone, Swede, you have to meet. He wants to see you now.”

“Now?”

“His name is Karl Bonaventura.”

“Jill Bonaventura's husband?” I asked.

“No. Her brother.”

“Bring him over,” I urged, and hung up the phone. Jill Bonaventura was victim number three. Murdered nine years ago at age thirty-one. Strangled.

Twenty minutes later they were both in my living room. Tony still looked terrible. But at least his eyes were focused and he had shaved.

Karl Bonaventura was an enormous man, dressed in a very beat-up denim jumpsuit. He owned some kind of auto-repair service. The moment Tony introduced him to me, he grabbed my hand as if I was a healer.

Then he apologized for his enthusiasm. “I'm sorry. But you don't know how long I have been waiting for someone to take an interest in Jill's murder. Do you think those cops did anything? Those people like Arcenaux and the others? They did nothing. They know nothing. They forgot all about her.”

He started to cry suddenly, powerfully, his body racked with sobs. Tony made a silent gesture with his hands. I nodded. I have rarely experienced such explosive grief in a person . . . particularly since it was now more than nine years after the death of his sister.

“She was a beautiful young woman. No one knew how beautiful she really was. It wasn't fair for that to happen. It just wasn't fair.” He was now trying to talk between sobs. “One moment she was alive. And the next moment someone had strangled the life out of her body. I couldn't let it end there. I won't let it end—ever.”

Tony placed a consoling hand on Karl's shoulder and finally coaxed him down onto the sofa. I remembered the computer printouts of the interviews with Karl Bonaventura. The man had seemed as overcome with grief then as he was now—and nothing he told the police had proved of any value in the investigation.

“Mr. Bonaventura has been constantly in touch with the police over the past nine years,” Tony explained to me, “but they ignore him.”

“Do you know that the police now believe that the same individual who murdered your sister murdered sixteen other individuals?” I asked him.

He began to sob again and then caught himself. “I don't care about the others. For nine years I have been looking for my sister's killer. Every day that passes, I want to crawl in the grave with her. I have hired private investigators . . . I have called the FBI . . . I have done everything I could . . . and it's all nothing. But they won't stop me. I don't care how long it takes. I don't care if I have to crawl on my knees to the phone . . . I . . .” He bent over suddenly as if in great pain, then sat up and was silent, the tears streaming from his eyes.

I walked quickly into the kitchen and brought him back a small glass of cold orange juice. He took it from me—a big hand, rough from work—and held the glass against his lips without drinking. It was very painful to watch such abysmal grief, to be in the presence of a man who had simply refused to end the torment of his sister's death. It was sad and pathetic and painful, and somehow glorious.

I could see that Tony was becoming paler and paler in the face of the brother's sobbing words. And I still didn't know why he had brought the man to my apartment. Karl Bonaventura did not seem rational enough to make any contribution to the case. All he had was his horror.

Tony moved closer to me and placed his arm lightly on the back of my neck. I moved away quickly, suddenly afraid of further contact with him.

He shook his head as if to assure me that he wasn't really interested in a sexual encounter—he was trying to explain.

“Mr. Bonaventura has something,” he said, “that will be of interest to you.”

“What are you talking about, Tony?”

“He can take you to his sister's apartment.”

I didn't understand what Tony was talking about. I stared at Karl. The large man was nodding his head vigorously.

“Tony,” I said gently, “his sister died nine years ago.”

“He has maintained his sister's apartment.”

“What do you mean ‘maintained' it?”

“He has paid rent on the apartment for the last nine years. He considers it a kind of shrine. The apartment is exactly as it was on the night his sister was murdered. Nothing has been removed. Nothing has been changed.”

“Is that true, Mr. Bonaventura?” I asked.

He reached in his pocket and pulled out a color photo of his sister. He held it up for me to see. “She still lives there. In her apartment. One-Hundred and Eleventh Street and Broadway. She still lives there and I still visit her.”

I couldn't look at the photo. I turned away. But this strange man had provided us with an invaluable time capsule. It was a gift that we had no right to expect; a chance to go back, far back, to one of the first murders . . . to attempt to re-create the murder in its pristine state.

“I'll call you, Tony. We'll set it up with Mr. Bonaventura, if he doesn't mind taking us there.”

“He wants very much to take us there,” Tony said.

Tony then helped the big man up, and they walked to the door. I opened it for them.

“Can you wait outside in the hall for a minute?” Tony asked Bonaventura. He closed the door partway after the man exited.

“We have to think about what happened the other day, Swede,” he whispered to me.

Before I could respond, he kissed me quickly on the lips. He tasted of whiskey.

“I think we made a mistake, Tony,” I replied.

He tried to kiss me again, but I turned my face away. He whispered into my ear, “‘If this be error and upon me proved . . . I never writ nor no man ever loved.'”

“I thought you loathed Shakespeare, Tony.”

“That was in another life. I am brand-new. Everything is new again.”

He walked out the door. I shut it. Turning, I saw that Bushy was sitting in the hallway, regarding me quizzically. I realized that I hadn't even told Tony about the leaf valentines I had found pressed between plates in Jack Tyre's apartment. My negligence irritated me.

“What are you staring at?” I yelled at Bushy. I think he grinned.

Chapter 10

When I awoke the next morning, Pancho was lying on the end of my bed. His eyes were open, and he seemed to be staring at Bushy, who was stretched out, as usual, on the pillow next to me.

This was very strange. Pancho never slept on my bed . . . if he ever slept at all. Was he sick? Had he finally escaped from his imaginary pursuers? Was he about to attack Bushy? Or me?

I lay in bed and stared at my dear crazy cat. The other one, sober Bushy, was still snoozing against the pillow. As I looked at Pancho, I realized that he was my feline analogue for Tony Basillio. Pancho was Tony. Tony was Pancho. That was why it had happened. Like sometimes my heart overflowed for Pancho's plight—so it had overflowed for Tony Basillio in the hotel room. It was love, yes, but not the normal kind. I had slept with him, I realized, to protect him. Against what? Who knows? As many things as were chasing Pancho—so they were chasing Tony.

I moved my toes just a bit, and Pancho flew away, leaving only the slight indentation of his body on the quilt.

An hour later, having forgotten all about my strange analogy between Pancho and Tony, I entered my new cubicle at Retro. It was pathetic. A tiny Plexiglas square set down by the supply room.

It was, I realized, designed as punishment. Or rather, Judy Mizener had put me in it to show the other people in Retro that I could no longer be taken seriously, although I was still part of the team.

When I entered the computer room, Bert Turk was polite and distant; no more marriage proposals. He handed me the updated blue book. I went over the files on Jill Bonaventura's brother—nothing new. And then I carefully studied all the information and profiles on Jack Tyre. There was no mention of leaves of any kind. With Bert Turk's help, I then did a computer search for any mention of leaf bouquets in any one of the other murders. There was no mention at all—not a single reference. It was time to go to Tyre's workplace.

Twenty minutes later I took a cab up to the main Department of Parks administration building, which stands just inside the Fifth Avenue entrance of the Zoo. I found Frank Ardmore on the second floor of the building in a small office. He was not happy to see me.

“I don't understand. Are you a cop?”

“No. I'm just temporarily attached to a special unit that is investigating Jack Tyre's murder—and his brother's.”

“Well, I spoke to the cops for hours. I told them everything I knew. Which wasn't much. Look, the man worked right next door to me for a long time. We were friendly. We talked together all the time. But not after work. He went his way and I went mine.”

“Did you ever see these?” I asked.

Frank Ardmore stared down at the small leaf bouquet I held in my hand.

“What the hell is that?” he asked. He kept on adjusting his stubby tie. He had a whole raft of pencils and pens in his shirt pocket, which seemed about ready to fall out.

“Three leaves tied together with a twistum.” I opened the red twistum and laid the three leaves on my arm.

He shook his head in confusion.

“Did Jack Tyre collect leaves?”

“Are you kidding? I don't know what you mean. Collect leaves? Thousands of tons of leaves are collected in this park in the fall. Jack didn't work in that department. Did he like trees? How the hell should I know? Could he identify trees? Probably. Most people who work in parks with a lot of trees can identify them. Even I can do that.”

He leaned over and pointed. “That is a ginkgo leaf. That is an oak leaf. And that . . .” He paused. He picked up the third leaf. “And that looks like a leaf from a Chinese maple on the Seventy-Second Street footpath, which by the way, is one of the oldest living trees in the park.”

I re-bound the leaves. He was not a friendly man. Not at all.

I stared at him. There was something strange about his discomfort in my questions.

“Is there anything about Jack Tyre that you forgot to tell the police?”

“Like what?”

“You tell me.”

“Yeah. He didn't like Chinese food,” Frank Ardmore replied sarcastically.

“Thank you for your help,” I replied, equally sarcastically, and started to walk away.

“Wait a minute. If you want to find out about leaves, why don't you see Georgina Kulaks. She's in charge of tree maintenance around here.”

“Where do I find her?”

“I think they're working on that European beech near the bow bridge, on the south end of the lake.”

I walked out of the administration building and headed uptown and west through the park. At Bethesda Fountain I cut into one of the footpaths and headed toward the lake. It was a beautiful day. People were walking arm in arm. There were dogs and baby carriages and kite fliers.

As I walked down the grassy knoll to the bow bridge, I saw a small team of workers near a massive low-crowned tree. That must be the European beech. When I got closer, I realized they were all men. Then I caught sight of a woman standing about twenty yards away from the group, closer to the lake. She was holding a clipboard and staring out across the lake.

I walked up to her. She nodded in a friendly fashion.

“Are you Georgina Kulaks?” I asked.

She nodded and waited, smiling. She was a short, slight woman with brown hair pulled back. She was wearing regulation parks-department pants and a sweatshirt. Her face was lined.

“My name is Alice Nestleton. I'd like to ask you a few questions about Jack Tyre.”

Her eyes opened wide in horror. They stared down at my hand. I realized I was holding the bunch of leaves in plain view.

Her face seemed to crumble . . . to dissolve. She turned away from me quickly and knelt down. The sobs seemed to explode from her body.

It had all happened so quickly . . . I was so startled . . . I didn't know what to do.

Then I knelt beside her and tried to comfort her as best I could. It was obvious I had found Jack Tyre's lover, the woman who had sent him the strange valentines.

Slowly she began to regain control of herself. Her fingers held the clipboard so tightly the blood drained from her hands and wrists, which became chalk white.

“Please. You have to tell me what you know about Jack Tyre. The same madman who killed him murdered more than a dozen other people. Tell me what you know about him.”

She nodded vigorously. She started to breathe deeply in and out. She was coming around. I helped her up. She placed her arm in mine for support, and we slowly started to walk along the edge of the lake.

“It was just seeing those leaves again,” she said, “and thinking of that wonderful man. It was so terrible. We were lovers for three years. He broke if off about a year ago. I couldn't understand why. We were very happy together. And I sort of became childish and kept sending him those leaves. I never believed he would keep them. And he must have kept them . . . or how would you have found them.”

“He kept them. He treasured them,” I affirmed.

She stopped and stared out over the water.

“He was such a wonderful man. So strange and gentle and wise. Do you see those trees on the other side of the lake? That's the Ramble, one of the most isolated parts of the park. He used to go there on the weekends, with his cat on his shoulder, and wander around there. He told me he had found some of the old caves near the water, and his cat used to love to prowl around there.

“And on lunch hours he used to go to the Metropolitan Museum. To the Egyptian Wing. How he loved that place. People loved him. He was sort of an informal tour guide. He knew everything. I can't explain what a gentle man he was. I had never met anyone like him. Do you know where we made love all the time? In all kinds of weather? There, across the lake, in the Ramble. At first I thought he just didn't want me to come to his apartment. But no, it wasn't that. He wanted to make love in the park—that's all.”

The tears came again. She leaned her cheek against the clipboard. Then she continued.

“And then, suddenly, he told me he couldn't see me anymore, that he was going on some kind of trip. And he just broke it off. He wouldn't even say hello when we passed each other in the park. I didn't know what to do, so I started sending him those leaves . . . like a stupid little girl.”

“Did you speak to the police?”

“No. No one ever knew we were lovers. No one.”

“What kind of trip was he talking about?”

“I couldn't find out. It was all so strange and terrible. Look, I have to go now. I have to go.”

But she didn't go. She started to tap one hand against her clipboard. It made the strangest noise.

“Who are you?” she asked suddenly, as if ashamed of having revealed so much to a total stranger who had not really identified herself. Or worse, as if she had been fooled into one of those brief friendships that are totally delusional.

“I'm a consultant with a major-crimes unit of the New York Police Department. My responsibilities include investigating the murder of the Tyre brothers. I am, however, not interviewing you in any official capacity.”

“What does that mean?” she asked.

I shrugged. I didn't answer. I felt stupid. I don't know why I said that.

She was looking at me now . . . evaluating.

Perhaps in the same way she evaluated trees before her crew worked on them—with pruning shears, wires, pesticides.

I knew I should keep my mouth shut. I knew she was making some kind of decision.

“He had a secret life,” she said quietly.

Her statement confused me.

“In what sense secret?”

“In the sense that he kept it from me, that he hid it, that there was something else he was about . . . Do you know what I mean?”

“Drugs? Alcohol? Gambling? Do you mean something like that?”

“Oh, no, not that,” she said quickly.

I waited for her to speak again. She seemed to be struggling to articulate something.

“I felt,” she finally said in a very measured tone, “that we had become so close, Jack and I, that I was impinging on that secret . . . and that he had to dispense with me.”

“Did he ever say that?” I asked.

“Say what?”

“Did he use the word ‘dispense' with you?”

“No.”

“But you felt that.”

“What other thing could it be? Why would he suddenly just break it off?”

“Then you didn't believe what he said about a trip?”

“No.”

For the first time since we had been moving along the shore of the lake, I saw rowboats on the water. They came into view from under the bow bridge. There were four of them. Two had children wearing orange life preservers. It dawned on me that I had no idea whatsoever how deep the Central Park Lake was. Was it shallow or a hundred feet deep?

“I know,” Georgina Kulaks said, “that you're thinking I'm just a rejected lover . . .”

She paused and laughed bitterly, then continued: “And that this secret life of Jack's is all in my head, an attempt to excuse or explain the inexplicable in a favorable light—just why he broke off the affair. I know that's what you're thinking. But believe me, I'm not a fool. And I'm not a girl anymore.”

We stopped our slow walk and turned our backs to the lake. I could see her looking at the men who were pruning the European beech.

“Was his brother somehow connected to Jack's secret life?”

“I don't think so. For some reason, Jack always kept me away from his brother.”

“Why?”

“I don't know. It didn't matter anyway.”

“Do you think that this secret life you're talking about . . . this intuitive feeling you have that such a life existed . . . do you think that this was the cause of his murder?”

“I don't know.”

“Were you aware . . . or rather did you have this feeling that he had a secret life before the breakup? I mean, after all, he obviously tried to keep you out of his apartment and away from his brother.”

The anger flared in her eyes.

“Are you saying that he wanted to make love to me in the park, like homeless people, because he didn't want to take me to his apartment?”

She was very defensive now. Precarious. Irrational. I could see that clearly. I could see her fighting to keep her mental balance.

“I'm sorry I snapped at you,” she said. “Forget what I told you. Forget everything! It doesn't mean anything now—at all. He's dead. He's gone.”

She looked for a moment like she was going to collapse. She grasped the clipboard until her knuckles were white. She steadied herself.

“What I'm trying to tell you is that he was different.”

Her voice was cracking. But it was an angry voice.

“Don't you understand me?”

She started to point at me . . . her finger punching the air as if to accentuate her words.

“Jack Tyre was different.”

She started to sob. She caught herself. She gasped for enough breath to tell me more.

“He was a beautiful man!”

This time her voice came out so loud that I could see some of her men near the tree turn toward the sound. Her voice was becoming louder and louder and more excited.

“He gave me the three best years of my life, and I don't understand any of it now . . . any of it . . . except that he's dead, and I couldn't see him or talk to him or touch him before he died.”

She walked away from me quickly.

“Wait,” I called out to her as she started to walk away. I held out the leaf bouquet, now bedraggled. “Take it.”

She shook her head violently and kept walking. I turned back toward the lake. I realized that from now on I would have to input into the Retro database all that I found. Everything. Too much stuff was surfacing to keep in my head. Besides, like it or not, I was part of a team. An ensemble. The Retro Drama Workshop. I laughed to myself. No, The Judy Mizener Players.

My eyes wandered to the thick growth in the Ramble. I could visualize Jack Tyre, his cat draped around his shoulders, wandering there. But my vision of Tyre was fuzzy. His lover's description of him did not really tally with the profile in Retro. Georgina Kulaks had called him strange and kind and wise. It was almost as if she was describing a wonder worker or a healer or a holy man. I closed my eyes. It was easy to think of the Siamese being taken for his weekend play into the Ramble—purring and chatting as he let himself be transported. I could see the ears and the magnificently formed face. And the eyes—the bold fey eyes, large . . . too large for the exquisite body. Where was that lovely cat now? I knew then, for the first time, that the murders were about something else . . . about life and death . . . about grace.