The Iron Will of Shoeshine Cats (17 page)

“Can you? What did you have in mind?”

“Intimidation, reckless endangerment, interfering with a criminal investigation.” She paused. “How about murder?”

“Murder?!” I must have leaped into the air, because I felt von Zeppelin pulling me down. “What the fuck are you talking about, lady?”

She shrugged. “Complicity in murder then. How do we know Mr. Newhouse here is not somehow involved in the death of Shushan Cats?” She seemed satisfied.

“How do we know, darling Dolores, that Mr. Shushan Cats is dead?” von Zeppelin said calmly.

“I need a commitment your client won’t travel.”

“I need a commitment there is an Easter Bunny,” von Zeppelin said. “But no one in his right mind will give me one.” The lips went to their vee again. “So we are both moderately disappointed, no?” With that he tugged at my elbow and stood, pulling me up with him while at the same time, because he had risen off the couch, my body was going in the other direction. For a fat man he was strong. Or maybe merely convincing. “Okay, now, Dolores—please ask your question.”

“How did you know?” she said, curiously unperturbed. For both this was a game of chess. It was clearly not personal.

“Please, Dolores. You insult my intelligence.”

She turned to me. “Russell...”

“Russell?” von Zeppelin said. “Such intimacy.”

“Mr. Newhouse,” Grady said, grimacing and returning her glasses to her nose—chess might be impersonal, but it could also be unpleasant. “Do you know who killed Shushan Cats?”

“I—”

“Be quiet, Mr. Newhouse,” the lawyer said. “Dolores, speaking for my client, I wholeheartedly assure you, in confidence and in no uncertain terms, that when Mr. Newhouse wishes to communicate further on this subject you will be amongst the first persons with whom he will do so.”

Though I had seen many limousines, and once had an interesting conversation with a limo driver—a Jamaican; I spotted him reading William Carlos Williams leaning against a long gray Cadillac; turns out he had been a teacher in Kingston—I had never before been inside one. It was easy to understand why Fritz von Zeppelin—“You must call me Fritzi”—required this kind of ride. Aside from the pleasure of having transportation waiting at all times, his posterior amplitude required most of the back seat. New York taxis simply could not accommodate this whale. Directly in front of where he sat was a miniature Louis-the-something desk, and on the walls to either side deep gray suede pockets for files. I sat facing him precisely like a worried client in a law office, except this one was traveling uptown.

“I need to get home,” I said.

“Oh, yes,” Fritzi said. “
Marveloso
. Russ—may I call you Russ?”

“After getting me out of the lair of the evil witch Dolores, you can call me anything. Though you might remember I didn’t call you. Who did?”

“Mr. Ocero, Mr. Cats’ factotum, informed me of your predicament. As you know, I am Mr. Cats’ attorney. Or was.”

“It’s sure then?”

“Forty to one against, dear boy. If Dolores Grady uses terms like
sleeping with the fishes
, this is a longshot against which I would not wager. Typically denizens of the office of the district attorney know more than they let on. I wouldn’t doubt there exists a complete photographic record of Mr. Cats entering the unfortunate vehicle.”

“But none of him exiting.”

“That would be... difficult,” Fritz said. “I think though we can proceed on the assumption that two things are about to occur. The first is that you will have to come to terms with your organization—”

“My what?”

Fritz peered at me over his half-glasses. “Come, come,” he said, as though I had declined to row for Cambridge. “I am after all your legal counsel. You needn’t be coy with me, lad. Aside from having a long history with Mr. Cats, an individual whose charm was exceeded only by his integrity, there is also the matter of attorney-client privilege. You may be candid.”

“Come, come yourself. I don’t have any legal counsel, nor do I need one. I appreciate Justo’s helping me by bringing you in. I don’t know what you cost—I probably can’t even guess—but I’ll figure out how to pay you. Over time. Otherwise, aside from services rendered, let’s stop the clock right here.”

“Your clock, so-called, is stopped, if that is what you wish,” Fritz said with some amusement. “Regarding services rendered, as you put it, that is taken care of.”

I didn’t exactly get it, but—given that we were traveling in the wrong direction, however luxuriously—preferred just to get out. “There’s a subway on the corner. I have a train to catch.”

Fritz pulled a small phone off the wall and whispered into it. The limo pulled hard to the right and stopped. But when I moved to open the door it was locked.

“Patience, young man,” Fritzi said. “Patience.”

I settled back in my seat, more soft gray suede. So long as we weren’t moving further uptown and away from Brooklyn I could be patient, though not forever: I
was
getting hungry. “I’m about to receive a lecture, is that it?”

“Heavens no,” Fritz said. “It’s just that it appears we may be working to cross-purposes here. Let me summarize and then I should like you to pick those elements of what I have had to say that seem to you mistaken.”

“Shoot.”

“Mr. Cats is probably no longer with us. That is to say, the likelihood that he is amongst the living is not great. On that assumption we can say of the late Mr. Cats that he was a prominent businessman in the City of New York whose ventures, which we need not enumerate, are at the moment leaderless. Wait, please, until I conclude. Being leaderless, these business ventures are likely to become the target of what may best be termed a hostile takeover by competing interests of a Neapolitan temperament.”

“The
gavones
.”

“Indeed.” Fritz said with some satisfaction, stretching the word into three syllables—
in-dee-eed
. Just hearing this made me agreeable—it was the mark of a natural-born litigator. I had no doubt Fritzi was great in a courtroom. A good trial lawyer has the ability to get a jury to participate, to make of the stranger an intimate and of the doubtful a distinct possibility. “Now, your oh-so-becoming modesty notwithstanding, it appears that you are indeed Mr. Cats’ heir apparent, a condition whose—”

“I am nobody’s heir apparent,” I said. “First Dolores and now you. Fritzi, I am a fucking college student who owes so many term papers I simply do not have time to oversee a major criminal enterprise. Is that absurd enough? Hey, I’d love to star in this movie, but you’ve got the wrong actor. Wherever all you people got this cockamamie idea, please shove it back up there past the hemorrhoids, okay?”

“Mr. Cats left a testament.”

“A testament?”

“A will.”

“A will?”

“
In-dee-eed
. An iron will, bullet-proof.” He smiled. “I drew it up myself.”

I thought: Let’s take this bullshit one turd at a time. “When?”

“Friday last.”

“I was with him all day. You were nowhere near him.”

“From twelve to one-thirty, dear boy, you weren’t.”

He was right. Just at noon I had gone out to get the papers—Shushan liked the
New York Post
, then the only liberal newspaper in town, and the one with the best sports section—and with them some milk chocolate from a European sweetshop on Madison at Fifty-Third, and a box of cigars from Nat Sherman’s in the garment center. Because I was feeling a bit cooped up in the suite at the Westbury, I walked it both ways. It was one of those odd November days that might have passed for spring, office workers carrying their suit jackets on their arms and secretaries eating their sandwiches leaning on parked cars or tipping their faces skyward to catch the errant rays of a dimming sun. “No accident, I suppose.”

“You suppo-ose correctly,” Fritzi said. “Should you wish to examine the document, I’ll have one messengered to the Westbury. You’ll find it in order.”

“Maybe, but you won’t find me at the Westbury. I’m going home to a nice hot shower in my fungal bathroom in my crummy apartment on down-market Eastern Parkway. However up-market, the Westbury is not where I reside, counselor.”

“I understand your reluctance to return to Mr. Cats’ home, given the tragic circumstances—but have you considered security?”

“Security.”

“Baldly stated, the Westbury is, however discretely, the twentieth-century equivalent of a castle-keep surrounded by walls six-foot thick, themselves surrounded by a moat filled with alligators.”

“Looked like a plain old hotel to me.”

“No one gets in, son, who shouldn’t.”

“Cohen and Kennedy got in.”

“Who?”

“The dicks.”

“Oh, them. Were they announced?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think they would have been allowed up if Mr. Cats deemed them inopportune visitors?” He paused. “You needn’t answer. There are always two desk clerks on duty, former NYPD. A switch at the front desk disables the elevators. Another locks the doors to the fire stairs. And the desk clerks are, however discretely, armed.”

“They looked like common, garden-variety desk clerks to me.”

“And well they should. I might add that Mr. Cats’ door is steel, nicely clad in mahogany, and thus impervious to all but the heaviest artillery. When you return to the suite you will no doubt be shown a number of similarly unique features.”

“I didn’t see anything but a three-room hotel suite.”

“I’m sure you will be enlightened. Now, considering that a person of Mr. Cats’ experience and considerable abilities had taken such precautions, do you think it wise to return to your hovel in Brooklyn where you may find yourself defenseless in the event of an unscheduled visit from certain persons?”

“Certain persons.”

Fritzi seemed to grow physically, to become palpably larger in the back seat, his torso not only broadening but deepening, so that his entire being projected itself toward me like the zoomed-in image on a movie screen. “Dear boy, do please listen carefully. In the past week your home has been invaded by three irritated brothers, on at least one occasion by their sister, by two representatives of our esteemed national police force and certainly would have been by our two friendly detectives—the delightful Kennedy and Cohen, do I have that right?—had they wished to, rather than their picking you up on the street.”

“Why do I feel like an open book?” I asked.

“Because you are a bookish sort, I should say, and that is the metaphor that would naturally come to mind, isn’t it? Now tell me this. If any of these persons wished to return, could they not?”

“The sister gave me back her key.”

“Marveloso, Russ. And how many keys are there? And who has them? And, frankly, who needs a key? You’ve got windows—”

“With bars.”

“Yes, I’m sure you do. And a door with one of those pathetic steel braces. Do you really think either would withstand the efforts of the FBI or certain others to enter if they had it in mind to do so?”

“And why would they have it in mind?”

Fritzi let go a massive shrug that sent a mild tremor through the vehicle, like a soft wave in calm waters that makes a swimmer turn to the horizon to see what larger surprises may be in store. “Because, my lad, your very existence is pissing a great many people off. Note how quickly the brothers Callinan contacted the district attorney’s office when it became clear Shushan Cats was no longer a threat—they seem to feel aggrieved that you visited a certain church. Then there are the federal authorities. And certain persons of an Italianate persuasion. Dear boy, you have become a rather important piece in the jigsaw puzzle that is the underside of this glorious city. Did I mention the will?”

“You did, Fritzi. But a will is a one-way document, isn’t it? If you died and left me this limousine, I wouldn’t have to accept it, would I? In the same way, assuming there is such a will, I am not bound by it.” I looked at him. God, he was big. “But as Shushan’s lawyer
you
are bound to hand out property to those beneficiaries who are interested in receiving it. That’s what an executor does, isn’t it?”

“It is,” the big man said, “But I am not.”

“You are not what?” This had become tiring. My stomach was indicating it wanted something other than pizza, and not too much later. I could get a hot dog and sauerkraut in Times Square, and a beer. The drinking age in New York was then still eighteen. I couldn’t vote of course, but I could drink. Today an eighteen-year-old can vote, but can’t drink.

“I am not the executor of Shushan Cats’ will.”

“Who is—his sister?”

“She is a significant beneficiary.”

“Oh, no,” I said.

“Indee-eed,” Fritzi said, sighing heavily. “The executor is one Russell Newhouse.”

“Not me.”

“Please, Russell. It hardly matters whether you honor the role or not, whether you accept the limousine as it were. The fact is, certain persons in this city would as likely accept your inheriting the mantle of Shushan Cats as they would vote Republican or eat white bread with mayonnaise. Like it or not, these people are your competitors. They may also be termed your enemies.”

“Yeah, well, I don’t want the limousine. Now, if you don’t mind unlocking it—”

For answer Fritzi whispered again into the tiny phone. A front door opened and slammed shut.

“This is not serious, Fritzi,” I said. “This is a joke.”

“Indee-eed,” he said. “But one you had best consider taking seriously. Like it or not, willy-nilly you have been chosen for a role you probably do not want—”

“No fucking probably.”

“And which you almost certainly feel is not precisely your line of work.”

The street-side door opened and the chauffeur—I couldn’t see his face, only the bottom two thirds of a dark-gray uniform and one gray twill sleeve—handed the attorney a copy of the
Daily Mirror
. I looked at my watch. It was just eleven. Fritzi scanned the front page. Then he handed it to me.

“You look rather good in print,” he said. “Myself, I always come out somewhat strenuously obese.”

There I was, entering the federal building only an hour or so earlier, my hands cuffed behind me, and accompanied on either side by Kennedy and Cohen. A circular inset showed the smiling face of Fritz von Zeppelin, probably a file-photo. I hadn’t seen the photographer, but probably I had missed a lot of details, having just been helped out of a police car, cuffed, and not expecting a news photographer might be tucked behind one of the massive limestone pillars that framed the entrance. From the angle that’s where he would have been. I read the headline aloud: