Stray Cat Blues

by Robert Bucchianeri

  But then she blinked her eyes a couple of times, shaking her head, her fingers ticking. A cloud seemed to pass over her face and animation returned. “Oh,” she mumbled. “Yes.”

  I waited.

  She closed her mouth, rubbed her lips together, swallowed. “I don’t know, Mr...I’m sorry I don’t remember—”

  “Plank. Max Plank.”

  “Right. Max. Yes. Nice name. No...I mean I don’t know about Frankie. I didn’t see her last night or this morning.”

  “Would you mind if I visited her apartment? I want to leave her a note. It’s important that I talk with her.”

  Maggie nodded, and I stepped by her, hoping that Leonard was out, too.

  Downstairs I found a disaster.

  The apartment had been torn apart.

  Maggie stood at the edge of the room, her hand over her mouth, her eyes wide open now.

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “My god! Who could have done this? Why...”

  I looked around. The floor was covered with paper and books, mostly children’s—I spotted a hardback copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone and cups and other debris. The sofa cushions were slashed open, spilling their white guts. Chairs were turned on their sides, a couple with broken legs. The small television set had been smashed, bits of glass strewn around it on the floor. A bunch of framed paintings were slashed and black and white photos with cracked covers strewn about. One bare wall had lots of empty holes or picture hangers bereft of their hangings. Small statues, replicas of the David and Madonnas and the like, were shattered. Some metal sculptures of what looked like flowers were bent out of shape. I assumed this was part of the art that Johnnie bought online and sold who knows where.

  I turned back to Maggie. “Have you been out of the house any time since yesterday?”

  “I...no...yes, I just ran down to S&S on the corner for pickles and...some Twinkies.” She grinned sheepishly. “I was only gone for...fifteen minutes.” Her shoulders slumped, her hands hung like dead tree limbs at her sides.

  “Is Leonard here?”

  “He’s sleeping upstairs in the back bedroom.”

  “Wake him up.”

  She bit her lip, looked up at me with hooded eyes.

  “Now.”

  She turned and hurried back up the stairs. I felt dirty somehow as if I was complicit in her submission. She was a woman too used to taking orders from men.

  Leonard stood in the middle of the room wearing the same stitched Pendleton, faded jeans, and black boots. He’d ditched the ponytail tie, his hair, grayer when full out, flowed loosely down past his shoulders.

  “This is bullshit,” he said.

  “Honey, I think we’d better wait till—”

  “Shhh,” he hissed, not looking at her.

  Her upper teeth folded over her lower lip, gnawing at the skin beneath. Her eyes bounced like a jackrabbit around the room. “Sweetheart, we have to think about poor Frankie and—”

  Leonard turned to her and snarled, “I told you to be quiet, woman.”

  Her face flushed. She closed her eyes, her lips trembling. I was afraid she was going to cry, but she looked too beaten down even for that.

  I could feel the bile at the back of my throat and the anger rising alongside it.

  “That little girl...” He stopped, his hands tightening into fists. “I feel for her, but I think she must know something more about all this than she says.” His eyes roamed the room, his expression one of utter disdain. “This is going to cost us more than the deposit. The TV alone, Jesus. That sofa cost me two hundred bucks.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?” I said, trying to keep my tone credulous.

  “Not a damn thing.”

  “Maggie says she’s been here save for a few minutes when she went to the store. How about you?”

  “What is this? You sound like the heat.” He looked at me closely, sizing me up. “Who are you really?”

  I stared back at him, trying to absorb his use of the word heat. I didn’t know if he’d watched one too many cop shows on TV, or if he was just lamely trying to project some hipster badass vibe.

  “Cut the crap, Leonard.”

  “What the fuck? This is my house, dammit!”

  I’d had enough.

  I took a step toward him, and he stumbled backward, startled. It was too late. I grabbed his right arm and wrenched it behind his back, ratcheting it up slowly. “Listen, Lennie, you’re starting to piss me off. We’re trying to help a little girl here. Somebody broke into your property and busted it up, and Frankie’s lucky she wasn’t here. Maybe you are, too. If you don’t have insurance, then tough luck on the damage. I don’t give a shit. Now answer my question.”

  He twisted from side to side, trying to escape my grasp, but I just kept moving his arm higher until he yelped in pain.

  “Mr...Max! Please, don’t hurt him. Please!” Maggie cried.

  “Shut up, girl,” Leonard barked again.

  I almost broke his arm then.

  “Jeez, fucker! Okay, I was out last night for a few hours.”

  “Where?”

  “What business is that of—Ouch! Alright. Okay. I had a couple of drinks at the Coal Mine and then played cards with my buddies.”

  “Anything else?

  “I was here, man. Other than last night from about eight to midnight, I was here.”

  “Have you been in the apartment anytime since I was here last?”

  “No. Dammit, that hurts!”

  “Maggie?”

  “Huh?”

  “Have you been in here in the last week?”

  “No...no...please,” she said pitifully.

  I let Leonard’s arm drop and stepped away.

  “Jesus, man, you didn’t have to do that.”

  “Yes, I did,” I said, and turned away. I noticed something near the couch, amidst the spilled contents: a small, square, colorful object. I picked it up with a sinking feeling in my chest. Frankie hadn’t had time to grab her Rubik’s cube. I guessed that she always took it with her, just like her skateboard. The fact that it was still there probably meant she’d had to leave in a hurry.

  Or that she hadn’t left of her own volition, but been taken away.

  I looked back at Leonard, who was rubbing his arm with a pained expression on his face. Maggie stepped closer to him and said, “Are you okay, Len?”

  He ignored her and stared at me like I was a crazy, dangerous man.

  Perhaps I was.

  I left the two of them there to sort out their difficulties. I didn’t have much hope that they could, but who am I to pass judgment?

  Ten

  Alexandra Stone sat at a corner table of Bertolucci’s, sipping amber liquid from a cocktail glass, looking perfectly at ease and comfortable in her own skin.

  She wore an unpretentious but lovely purple dress that couldn’t hide the lushness of her upper body. The tapering curves of her legs from knees to ankles were bare for all to admire.

  She smiled when she saw me, and I smiled back. It had been almost six weeks since I’d seen her, and I’d missed that smile more than I realized.

  She stood and hugged me, and I echoed the favor. Pulling back, she examined my face. “Max,” she said, in a voice that lit a fuse in my toes that ran up the length of my spine. She gave me a quick, firm kiss on the lips, and then sat back down.

  “You look...well like you. And here’s looking at you, kid,” I joked, but I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

  “I’ve missed you,” she murmured.

  We’d only talked once, briefly, while she was gone. I guess neither one of us much liked spending time on the phone.

  The waiter dropped by, and I ordered a gin martini and a plate of calamari.

  “I thought you’d finally given up on me.”

  She gave me a wry look. “Just busy. A story that’s led me from Bangkok to Dubai to San Francisco, to mention but three ports of call.”

  “What’s it all a
bout?”

  “It’s confusing.” She looked over my shoulder for a moment, gathering her thoughts. “I thought I was investigating a new currency trading scheme, but it’s led me to something else, I think. It’s still a little early, and I have lots more digging to do, although I have my doubts that I can ever link things up and find the direct connections.”

  “You know how investigative work works, Alex. If it’s anything like mine, you just chip away slowly and maybe, if you’re lucky, after a while some of the grit and gristle will wear off and you can get a peek at the truth.”

  “I know. But I’m a little queasy about this one. I’m almost afraid to dig down deeper. It involves the slave trade. Really yucky stuff.”

  Alexandra was an investigative reporter, and sometimes photographer, for The Independent, one of Great Britain’s best magazines. It was tough and anti-establishment and uncompromising in its principles and goals. Just like her.

  “I’ll tell you more later if you want. How about you? Have you been taking it easy and staying away from work and the world like you wanted to?”

  “Sort of.” I wanted to tell her about the case and Frankie, but I didn’t want to do it right then and there. Her scent, a subtle hint of soap and sweet berries and Alex herself, wafted over me and I drank it in. I took her all in—her overwhelming womanliness and life force. She had a hint of a smile on her face, and there was more than a hint of tenderness for me in her eyes. I didn’t want to talk about schemes and slaves and children lost in the world.

  I wanted her naked and in my arms.

  “Max?”

  I was lying in my bed with the moonlight filtering jagged slivers of light across my body through a small port window. The bed sheets were tangled around me, the comforter tossed on the floor. Alex was in my nose, my head, my bruised-good lips.

  I realized I’d dozed off for a little while. When I looked up, I spotted her on the other side of the boat. She was at my open front door, staring out at the bay. She was naked, and looking at her I reacted, the ache in my groin returning again, despite our recent couplings.

  “Come back to bed. I need you.”

  She turned around and faced me. “C’mon, Max.”

  Her heavy breasts swayed slightly, and my already stimulated imagination took a flight of fancy, making things harder on me.

  “Here.” I moved on my side, making room for her. “Come snuggle.”

  She gave me a look.

  “I promise to be a good boy.”

  “You’re no fun,” she murmured sexily, and ambled to the bed with swinging hips that any church worth its salt would have declared sinful—and any state wanting civilized order, downright illegal.

  She cozied up to me, letting me wrap my arms back around her while she nestled her soft bottom up against the center of my body.

  Between our first and second bout of sexual intimacy, I’d told her all about Frankie and Johnnie, and Poe, and Maggie and Leonard, and the boys at the garage. She’d listened with her usual intensity and was about to ask a question when I silenced her with a long kiss, which led to another, and another, until the world and its troubles vanished for us.

  Now she came back to it. “The little girl, Frankie. She’s living all alone now?”

  “Yes. She’s in Maggie and Leonard’s downstairs apartment.”

  “Will they look out for her?”

  “Maggie maybe, but she’s got problems of her own, including Leonard.”

  “A twelve-year-old shouldn’t be living all by herself. Who’s going to—”

  “She’s a tough kid. She’s had to grow up quickly. I think she’s capable of taking care of herself for a little while.”

  “What about money? Food? The basics?”

  “She offered me money to find her sister. A few hundred bucks or so. I’m sure that’s enough to keep her stomach full for a while.”

  “You didn’t take any money from her, did you?”

  “Uh-uh.”

  “Good boy.” She emphasized this by moving her bottom up and down against me a couple of times. I was a good boy and I deserved it.

  “But I still think you’re going to have to contact somebody soon about her care if you don’t find her sister.”

  “I already mentioned that to her, but she was aghast at the thought.”

  I told her about how Johnnie had scared Frankie regarding the authorities splitting the two of them up permanently.

  “I understand. But she needs temporary help, at least. Social services should be notified soon. They can place her—”

  “I’m not a relative. I have no standing. It’s not my responsibility to—”

  “Then whose is it? It seems like, from what you’ve told me, that you know and care as much as anybody but her sister. You do have responsibility.”

  This was Alex all over. She was pretty clear and definite about morality and justice and all that jazz. They were all of a piece. If you could help someone in need or an innocent, you did. It was as simple as that.

  I sighed. “I’m going to go and find her tomorrow, and I’ll see how she’s doing. And I’m hoping for some lucid dreaming tonight, so when I open my eyes in the morning, I’ll see the case in a whole new clear light.”

  “Hmmm. Okay. Good.” She pressed back into me and mumbled, “So what do you think might spur your lucidity? Maybe...” She giggled like a schoolgirl and began moving her bottom.

  It had been a long time since I’d been offered better inspiration.

  Eleven

  It was 5 p.m. when I walked into a maze of beams and girders, forklifts and front loaders, beneath the Embarcadero Freeway on 3rd Street across from Pier 54.

  Marsh had left a message on my cell phone while I was dancing with Leonard and Maggie.

  I caught sight of him wearing a white hard hat and a slick blue suit with a cranberry-colored tie, talking to an older man with a set of blueprints rippling in his hands.

  Marsh looked up and nodded, and I moved to a corner of the site and sat on the edge of a slab of concrete riddled with rebar. Above me, a half-dozen-men gamboled on high beams like gymnasts, wielding hammers and power drills. The pounding and high-pitched whining filled the cold, crisp sawdust-filled air. Out over the piers, the bay loomed, black and unforgiving. The sun was trying to break through the gloomy cloud cover.

  I worried over Frankie, wondering where she was. Whether in hiding or just out on her skateboard somewhere practicing new moves, oblivious to the trouble at home. The Rubik’s cube stashed in my motorcycle’s saddlebag argued for the former conclusion. I ran back over my conversations with Maggie and Leonard, and the only thing I concluded was that Maggie was with the wrong man, although I knew her nature was part and parcel of the problem. I wondered whether Leonard was used to dominating her, treating her with such dismissiveness, or whether his attitude, his shutting her up, hid more. Was he afraid she was going to say something that might lead me to question his involvement with Frankie and Johnnie and their problems?

  “You look nonplussed, Plank.”

  I looked up. Marsh was standing with his arms folded over his chest, staring out at the ocean.

  “What is this?” I waved my hand around the site.

  “A yoga center with an Indian vegetarian restaurant that happens to have offices above it.”

  I don’t know what you’d call Marsh. An entrepreneur of a sort. Although most people who worked for him did so on a freelance basis, he employed around twenty people at two offices—-one in North Beach off Columbus Avenue, and the other in Tiburon, with a stunning view of the Bay Area’s phantasmagoria. He sometimes developed real estate. Other times he funded small companies that caught his fancy—most recently a new niche coffee shop in Ghirardelli Square called FIX that charged six bucks for a cup. I’d ventured my opinion that this was ridiculous, but most mornings, there was a line of eager caffeine addicts running from FIX’s elegant granite counters and elaborate gothic espresso and cappuccino machines out to the brick promenade in fr
ont.

  Marsh spent a lot his time with martial arts masters and Yogis, deepening his knowledge in those disciplines while working to develop new forms and approaches. He also occasionally did consulting work with secretive government agencies and, I was pretty sure, occasionally participated in clandestine missions that no one ever heard of or likely ever would.

  “The yoga here is going to be a combination of Vinyasa and Iyengar, with a touch of Kripalu and a dash of my own seasoning. I’m going to teach a class now and then.”

  I nodded. Marsh could twist his body into impossible asanas that hurt to watch.

  “Why so serious?” he said, sounding like Heath Ledger from his startling turn as the Joker in The Dark Knight.

  I smiled. “I’ve been consorting with the wrong types.”

  “A hazard in your line of work.”

  “Too true.”

  “Anything I should know?”

  I filled him in on the break-in at Frankie’s apartment and my latest chat with her charming landlords.

  “Mr. Chapin?” someone shouted from above.

  We both looked up to find two workers, one holding a black-handled hammer and the other balancing a level, staring down at us. Both men were in their twenties, heavily muscled, and projecting a friendly but pronounced macho swagger.

  “Yes. Coleman. Castro. What’s up?” Marsh called just about everybody by their last name and knew the surnames of everyone who worked for him in any capacity.

  “We were just wondering. We made a little wager, boss. Chris was reading an article about you in The Bay Guardian that says you made most of your money on Wall Street, investing in stocks and bonds and shit. Speculating.” He spouted that word with a barely suppressed edge of disdain. “I say no way, you started real businesses. You had ideas, hired people, did things. That’s how you made it. Isn’t that right, boss?”

  Marsh had an easy camaraderie with his workers that allowed them to take liberties that they wouldn’t have dared with your average vastly wealthy tycoon.