Spotted Cats (17 page)

‘He dealt drugs.’

‘Yes. I eventually figured it out. And he got drunk and stoned and beat people up and stole things and got arrested. When they put him in prison the first time I came back East. And I got my job with Jeff. After a couple years I got a divorce. And that’s my story.’

I reached put to touch her shoulder. She pulled away from me. ‘Leave me alone,’ she said.

‘I want the rest of the story.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘You’ve seen him since then, haven’t you?’

‘What makes the difference?’

‘That motorcycle. It’s his.’

‘So what if it is?’

‘Jesus,’ I said. ‘I know you’re not stupid.’

‘You think Martin took the jaguars?’

‘It seems to fit.’

‘He couldn’t have.’

‘I know. He’s in prison. But he could have set it up.’

She smiled. ‘That shows what you know. OK, listen. Yes, Martin started showing up. When he got out of prison he tracked me down at Jeff’s. I told him we were done, I didn’t want to see him anymore. He accepted that. But he and Jeff hit it off. Martin thought Jeff Newton was about the most romantic figure he’d ever met. They were two of a kind. Martin, riding off to danger on his big Harley, Jeff tracking down wounded leopards in the African bush. Martin kept coming around. He and Jeff would sit out there on the patio for hours, telling stories. It had nothing to do with me.’

‘So he knew all about the jaguars.’

‘Sure. But Martin Lodi was a small-timer. Oh, he could be cruel and everything. But he was loyal as hell. Jeff was his friend. Martin was just a romantic poet. I guarantee he had nothing to do with stealing the cats.’

‘When did you see him last?’

‘It was over a year ago. I hardly spoke to him. He only stayed one day, and he and Jeff drank and bullshitted each other the whole time. That’s when he left his bike. Some woman came by and he left with her.’

‘He was arrested in Montana,’ I said.

‘So?’

‘His motorcycle was registered in Montana. Jeff got some collect phone calls from Montana a month or so ago.’

‘Yeah, well Martin’s in prison, so I guess it wasn’t him.’

‘No. They were all made from the Totem Café in West Yellowstone. And it occurs to me that maybe it wasn’t Jeff who took those calls, either.’

‘Look,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to take this shit from you.’ She whirled around and began to walk away.

She was crying. I matched her long strides. She went to her white Jeep Cherokee and began to rummage in her purse. I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘Lily,’ I said, ‘will you listen to me for a minute?’

She shrugged out of my grasp. She found her keys. She unlocked the Jeep, opened the door, and slid in. I held the door open. She tried to close it.

‘Let go,’ she said.

‘No. I’m not done.’

She yanked on the door handle. I gripped it firmly. She said, ‘Dammit, Coyne.’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything,’ I said.

‘Like hell you’re not.’

‘I’m just trying to figure it out.’

‘Sounds like you’ve already got it figured out.’

‘Just tell me you had nothing to do with it.’

‘You’ll think what you want anyhow.’

‘No. I’ll believe you.’

She looked up at me. Her eyes glittered with tears. ‘Fine. I had nothing to do with it. Satisfied?’

‘Yes. I am.’

‘Bullshit.’

I let go of the car door.

‘You guys,’ she said, slumping, her hands folded in her lap. ‘All the same. You always go away. Something happens and you go away. What’s wrong with me?’

I reached in to touch her cheek. She pulled her head back as if I was going to hit her.

‘Nothing, Lily. Nothing’s wrong with you. I’m sorry.’

She nodded, staring at her hands. She mumbled something I didn’t understand.

‘I didn’t hear you,’ I said.

She looked at me. ‘I said,’ she said, ‘you don’t know shit about women, do you?’

I couldn’t argue with that. I’d heard the same thing too many times. I stepped away from her car. She pulled the door shut. Then the engine started and she drove away.

I wandered back to my car. I drove home slowly. I played a Bach tape and tried to think. I concluded that I was more confused than ever. It wasn’t just women that I didn’t know much about.

It was nearly eleven when I got back to my apartment. I poured myself a slug of Jack Daniel’s and sat at the table by the sliders, sipping it. I had an almost physical urge to call up Gloria and tell her that our divorce more than a decade earlier had been a terrible mistake.

I fought off the urge. I always have succeeded in fighting off that urge. At least, so far.

J
ULY PASSED, HOT AND
muggy as usual. The first half of August was little better. In the middle of the month we got several days of sullen rain. When the front finally left, the promise of autumn slid in behind it. The swamp maples started to turn crimson, the nights were cool, and the days grew perceptibly shorter. Winter was just around the corner. The inevitability of winter always ruined New England autumns for me.

Charlie and I drove out to the Deerfield one Saturday to try the trout and found them uncooperative. Doc Adams and I trekked to the Farmington River in Connecticut on a Sunday. We each landed a couple of small ones and tried to convince each other that we’d had a good day.

I talked with Gloria a few times. Joey had lucked into a job at a resort in Ogunquit. He’d be there through Labour Day. She seemed to miss him. I figured they had either resolved their conflicts or at least achieved a temporary truce. I spoke with Joey once. He called me Pop. Neither of us mentioned his moving in with me.

The stock market dipped. Several clients panicked. I had to make a lot of house calls. On the weekends I even opened my briefcase.

Jeff Newton’s condition hadn’t changed. He remained at the Cape Cod Hospital in Hyannis. Machines did all his living for him.

I hadn’t spoken to Lily since our dinner date in Scituate.

The knife wounds on my neck and collarbone healed and that searing anger I had felt for the first week or so after the theft of Jeff’s jaguars, that thirst for revenge, cooled in me. I called Officer Maroney once in Orleans. He had nothing to report. Jeff’s insurance money arrived. I deposited it for him. I talked with Dan LaBreque a few times. Mostly, we discussed bluefish. He said he was keeping his ears open, but had heard no rumours about seven golden Mayan jaguars for sale.

It seemed like a dead issue. I had plenty of other things on my mind.

It was the last Tuesday in August, mid afternoon. I had swivelled around to gaze out at the cityscape, so clear in the pre-autumnal air that it seemed to glitter. The previous Saturday I had, inexplicably, turned down Dan’s invitation to go bluefishing. Bluefish weren’t what I needed. I didn’t know what it was, but it wasn’t bluefish.

The buzz of the intercom startled me. I rotated back to my desk, poked the proper button, and picked up the phone. ‘Hi, Julie,’ I said.

‘Hi, yourself. Daydreaming?’

‘Contemplating obscure points of law.’

‘Sure. You got a call.’

‘Say I’m not here. I don’t want to disturb my train of thought.’

‘Aquatic insects and whatnot.’

I sighed. ‘Who is it?’

‘A woman. Not a client.’

A woman who is not a client had to be a lover, past or present, or potential, in Julie’s mind. She does not approve of my having lovers of any description. She isn’t jealous, at least not on her own behalf. Julie is ecstatically married to her Edward, a young radiologist, and the mother of four-year-old Megan. Julie simply regards me as married, too. The fact that Gloria and I have been divorced for more than a decade has made no impression on Julie.

‘What’s this woman’s name?’ I said.

‘Conway.’

‘Maria Conway?’

She hesitated just an instant. ‘Yes.’

‘OK. Good. Put her on.’

‘I can tell her you’re busy, you’ll get back to her, if you want.’

‘I’m not busy, Julie. I’ll talk to her.’

I heard her sigh. ‘Fine. OK.’

There was a click in my ear. ‘Maria?’ I said.

‘Hi, Mr Coyne. I promised I’d call you if…’

‘The jaguars. You’ve found them?’

She laughed. ‘Not exactly. This may be nothing, and I really hesitated before calling you. I’m not sure it’s precisely ethical, to tell you the truth.’

She paused. She wanted me to reassure her.

‘I don’t want you to violate your ethics, Maria,’ I said. ‘But if you’ve got a line on those jaguars…’

‘I’m not sure I do. But I was talking with a patron of our museum the other day. It’s probably nothing at all, but…’

She paused. Finally I said, ‘Maria?’

‘I’m sorry.’ I heard her laugh quickly. ‘I guess I’m beating around the bush here because now that I’m trying to tell you, it sounds irrelevant and silly. OK. This actually happened back in the spring—maybe June, which, as I remember it, was before those jaguars were stolen. Anyway, according to Victor—’

‘Victor?’

‘Victor Masters. He’s a collector who lives in Tempe. Specializes in Latin American stuff. We exhibit his things now and then. He’s got some lovely pieces. Very valuable. He’s quite well known among people in this field. Anyhow, as I started to say, I happened to mention your phone call to Victor—actually, I didn’t mention you, just that I’d heard some pre-Columbian objects had been stolen—and he told me that he’d been approached a couple of months earlier by somebody who claimed to have some Mayan pieces, fourteenth century, that could be purchased.’

‘This was in June?’ I said.

‘Late May, early June, something like that.’

‘These pieces…?’

‘They were supposed to be gold jaguars. Victor said he didn’t think too much of it at the time. Wealthy collectors get crank calls all the time.’

‘But it could be the cats.’

‘Right. So I thought I should call you.’

‘This Victor Masters. Do you mind if I call him?’

‘If I minded, Mr Coyne, I wouldn’t have told you this.’

‘Does he expect me to call?’

‘No. I didn’t decide to call you until I actually dialled your number. It still feels like a violation of his privacy. But he’s a good man, a gentleman, and I think he’ll understand.’

‘You don’t happen to have his number, do you?’

‘Sure I do. It’s right here on my desk.’

She read it off to me. I jotted it down on my yellow legal pad. I thanked Maria Conway, hung up the phone, and swivelled around to resume gazing out my office window. But now I didn’t really notice the city out there. Now I was picturing Jeff Newton’s dented and bloody skull, and his missing jaguars, and two dead Dobermans, and I once again remembered the feel of the knife blade against my skin.

I waited until nine that night to call Victor Masters. A woman answered the phone and I asked to speak to Mr Masters.

‘We were just sitting down to dinner,’ she said. It came out as an apology. ‘Is it important?’

‘I’m calling from Boston. But I—’

‘It must be important, then. Just a minute, please.’

A moment later a man’s voice, soft and cultivated and elderly, said, ‘Victor Masters. What can I do for you?’

‘I don’t want to disturb your dinner, sir,’ I said. ‘I forgot about the time difference. It’s nine o’clock here. We can talk later.’

‘No problem. My wife said it was long distance. What can I do for you?’

‘My name is Coyne, Mr Masters. Brady Coyne. I’m a lawyer here in Boston.’ I paused. ‘Look, it’s kind of complicated. Perhaps—’

‘Go ahead, Mr Coyne.’

‘I understand you collect art.’

He hesitated. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

‘Well, I—’

‘Mr Coyne.’

‘Sir?’

‘What exactly is your business?’

‘I’m a lawyer.’

‘I mean, will you state your business with me, please?’

I cleared my throat. ‘I started off badly. Maria Conway is a mutual acquaintance of ours, I believe.’

‘You know Maria?’

‘Not well. I haven’t see her for a long time. Several years ago she worked with a friend of mine in the Museum of Fine Arts here in Boston.’

‘Yes.’ said Masters thoughtfully. ‘I knew she once worked in Boston. She is extremely competent. Very knowledgeable. I consult with her frequently. You have dropped a good name, Mr Coyne.’

‘I spoke with her today,’ I said. ‘She mentioned you, said you were an art collector.’

‘Not just any art. I collect very old stuff. Central American Indian, mostly. Not to be immodest, but I have quite a valuable collection. Are you selling, Mr Coyne? Is that why you are calling?’

‘No, it’s nothing like that. Look. I understand a couple months ago a man approached you, offering to sell a set of Mayan jaguars.’

He hesitated. He struck me as a cautious man. ‘Maria told you that?’

‘Yes. She specifically called me to tell me.’

‘I told that man I wanted nothing to do with his jaguars.’

‘Did he tell you his name?’

‘No. And I didn’t ask. I wanted nothing to do with him.’ I detected a trace of understated anger in his tone. ‘I suspected he did not own those pieces legally.’

‘I’m not accusing you of anything, Mr Masters.’

‘Well, I hope not.’

‘No, the thing is, about a month after this man approached you, a set of Mayan jaguars was stolen from one of my clients here in Massachusetts.’

‘Well, sir, I do not have those pieces.’

‘That’s not—’

‘I’ve heard nothing from that man except for that one conversation,’ he said quickly. ‘I want nothing to do with stolen property. It tends to be a bad investment. Quite aside from the legalities. Not even to mention the ethics.’

‘I believe you,’ I said.

‘This theft you are talking about,’ he said. ‘It happened after that man called me?’

‘Yes. Mid July.’

‘As if he was trying to arrange the sale of the jaguars before he stole them, is what you’re thinking.’

‘Right.’

‘Assuming they’re the same pieces.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘It does seem possible. How many Mayan jaguars can there be, available for sale?’

‘None, as far as I know,’ he said. ‘And I would be likely to know.’

‘So—’