It wasn’t until we were crossing the George Washington Bridge into Manhattan that Basillio said: “Swede, I really hope you know what you’re doing this time.”
“Are you frightened, Tony? It may well be the greatest performance of your life.”
“Not frightened so much, Swede, as feeling stupid.”
I patted his hand. “We all feel stupid sometimes, Tony,” I said. “It can’t be helped.”
Basillio had been very difficult to convince this time. My plans were simple and straightforward. First I was going to create a bogus photograph of a white cat with black markings that looked very like Clara. And I was going to use the Abyssinian, Jack Be Quick, to accomplish that. Basillio said it could be done easily with color transparencies and all kinds of xerographic magic.
Then Basillio was going to take the photograph to Bukai and offer him the cat for ten thousand dollars. Bukai would throw him out. But then I knew a whole lot of interesting things were going to happen.
“And I think one of the reasons why I feel so stupid is that you refuse to tell me what you are doing,” he complained.
I didn’t reply. Why hadn’t I confided in Basillio? I don’t know. I usually did. But this crime seemed to be so elaborate, to consist of so many strands, to require the uncovering of so many details, that I simply had stopped using Basillio as an intellectual companion midway through. I really didn’t know why. It dawned on me that his feelings must really be hurt—I had been ordering him around like he was a chauffeur . . . as if he worked for me. Maybe it had something to do with my meeting up once again with Joseph Grablewski. Yes, maybe that was it. I had heard that Grablewski had been discharged from the hospital. He was probably back in his Forty-fourth Street coffin once again, gazing down at his vodka.
When we finally pulled up in front of the copy shop, Jack Be Quick seemed to have developed a glaring affection for Basillio.
Once inside, Tony and an assistant got to work. I cannot really describe what happened. There were mounted Polaroid cameras . . . airbrushes . . . plastic overlays . . . strange whirrings and screechings . . . dripping pieces of material that seemed to come from a hospital laboratory.
But within two hours Basillio presented to me an 8 ½-by-11 photograph, or copy of a photograph, that was in dazzling color—a brilliant portrait of Jack Be Quick. Only Jack had changed colors.
He was now white with black spots on face and rump.
Magic. It was sheer magic. My hand began to tremble as I held it.
I had the delicious temptation to take a cab immediately to that pet store on Hudson Street where Clara and her two friends were incarcerated and then show it to Clara . . . ask her opinion . . . ask her whether we had done a good job.
“Is that what you wanted?”
“Exactly,” I replied.
“Well, they don’t call Mother Courage the best full-service shop in downtown Manhattan for nothing,” Basillio said. He winked at me. “Now what do we do?” he asked, staring at Jack Be Quick, who had leapt to the top of his desk and was staring longingly at his swivel chair.
“We proceed with the plan,” I said.
“I was afraid you were going to say that.”
It was just past two in the afternoon. Basillio and I stood across the street from Bukai’s town house, making sure to be out of sight of the windows, more toward the Fifth Avenue end of the street.
Basillio was obviously nervous. It had been a long time since he’d played a difficult part.
“Okay, Swede,” he said grimly, “let’s go over this again. Step by step.”
“Fine, Tony.”
“Who am I?”
“No names. You’re a guy who needs money. A lot of money fast. And you have what Bukai wants.”
“You mean I have a white cat with black spots in my shop.”
“Right.”
“And I’ll give it to him for ten thousand dollars.”
“Right.”
“And he has twenty-four hours to pay or forget it.”
“Right.”
“God, Swede, this is crazy. What kind of lunatic would pay ten thousand dollars for a white cat?”
“Just show him the photo, Tony. And tell the old man the cat is at Mother Courage. You’ll deliver if he pays.”
“Is he going to pay?”
“I don’t think so, Tony. I’m banking that he won’t.”
“Then what’s the point?”
“Are you ready, Tony?”
“Wait. What if I can’t get in?”
“I told you. A young woman will answer the door. Tell her you want to see Bukai. Tell her Bruce Chessler sent you. You’ll get in.”
“I don’t know why, Swede, but I find this very distasteful.”
“I appreciate it, Tony.”
He smiled. Then he drew his hand over his face as if he were changing masks, and what emerged was a snarling, ugly, yet strangely vulnerable thief . . . or gambler . . . or hustler.
“Look good?” he asked from the corner of his mouth.
“Right out of The Threepenny Opera,” I assured him. Without another word he strode across the street to the doorway. I turned and started to walk toward the museum. It was there we would meet as soon as he finished his mission—by the small bar at the entrance of the museum cafeteria.
I didn’t dawdle in the museum. I walked right to the appointed place and sat down on one of the divans and ordered a club soda with lime. The lunch crowd was gone but a group of German tourists were seated all around me.
Basillio arrived twenty-five minutes later. He knelt beside me as if he were imparting some kind of classified information.
“Okay, Swede. It was a piece of cake. I walked inside with the young woman. She pushed me into this room cluttered with books. Five minutes later this ancient Russian comes downstairs. I show him the photograph of Jack Be Quick turned white. I tell him I need ten thousand dollars fast. I’m in trouble, I tell him. The deal is simple, I tell him. Ten thousand right now in my hand. And I bring you the cat in a half hour. Then I figure I’m going too fast. So I modify the offer. Five thousand down and five thousand when I bring the cat.”
He paused and then stood up.
“What happened, Tony?”
He knelt again. “The old man just stares at me like he’s looking at some kind of ghost or lunatic. Then he tells me to get out. That’s all. He tells me to get out. I leave him the card in case he changes his mind. And I’m gone.”
I leaned back and closed my eyes. The game, as they say, had begun. And the first serve I had called correctly.
“Anything else for the moment?” Basillio asked sardonically.
“No,” I said, “but could you give me the key to the shop? I want to go over tonight and make sure Jack Be Quick is fed.”
“How long are you going to keep the beast in my shop?” he asked.
“Not long, Tony, not long.”
“Have to go,” he said, slapped me very gently on the cheek as a sign of comradeship, and was gone.
I had to move quickly now, I realized—quickly and carefully.
Harry Hanks was seated at a desk that seemed to have been stolen from an insurance company—it was large and modern and the top was painted orange, which did not at all blend in with the green-and-white motif of the police precinct.
He was reading the Daily News, spread out on top of the desk as if he were hunting for coupons.
I stood in front of the desk for a long time before he even noticed me, and when he did, he didn’t recognize me.
“May I sit down?” I asked, pointing to the empty chair next to the desk.
“What can I do for you, lady?”
I sat down and waited for him to fold up the paper and give me his undivided attention. He kept looking through the paper.
“Don’t you remember me?”
“Not really,” he said.
“We had a discussion in front of the Gramercy Park Hotel . . . about Bruce Chessler.”
He grinned. H
e remembered. “Right, the lady who lost her student.”
I didn’t appreciate the sarcasm, but I really didn’t have time to play games with him.
“Bruce Chessler was not murdered in a drug-related incident,” I said to him.
He sat up suddenly, his eyes wide, folding the paper with disgust and shoving it across the desk.
“Say what, lady?”
“I said that Bruce Chessler was not murdered because of a drug deal gone bad, as you told me.”
“Is that so?”
“Since the case has grown cold under your supervision,” I reminded him, “I should think you’d be very happy at what I’ve told you.”
“I am happy, lady. I am so happy that I can’t even move. Because if I move I’ll fall down on the floor and roll over and out the window and they’ll scrape me up still laughing, still happy.”
There was a long silence. I had realized he was going to be difficult—but not this difficult. I dug into my purse and came out with the New York Times article about me, which stated how I had been commended by the Nassau County Police Department for resolving the Starobin murder. He read the article and handed it back to me.
“What do you want me to say, lady?”
“Nothing. Just take what I’m telling you seriously.”
“What are you telling me?”
“That Bruce Chessler was not murdered because of drugs.”
“Okay, lady. If you say so.”
“And,” I added, “I am very close to being able to present the entire conspiracy to you.”
“What conspiracy?”
“It’s a long story. It’s a criminal conspiracy.” Should I tell him that Arkavy Reynolds and Bruce Chessler were murdered by the same gun? No! I decided against even bringing up Arkavy’s name. That would entail discussing Detective Felix . . . it would bring in other jurisdictions . . . other complexities. Cops are afraid of bureaucratic complexities. They are afraid their noses will be bitten off.
Hanks swept the Daily News off his desk onto the floor with an angry flourish. “And you have proof of this so-called conspiracy? Of course you have, lady. Right? And you know the names of his killers? Right, lady? That’s why you’re here busting my hump, because you know all these things that we dumb cops don’t know. Right?”
I waited until his anger abated. He was a difficult man to deal with. Very difficult.
“I am going to say something to you that is very strange.”
“Everything you told me or didn’t tell me so far, lady, has been strange.”
“There is a cat in a copy store only a few minutes from here.”
“Is that so?”
“And within the next few hours someone is going to try to steal that cat.”
“The excitement mounts.”
“And the person who tries to steal that cat is the person who murdered Bruce Chessler.”
“So you’re going to be hiding there with your video camera, is that it? And you’re going to sell the tape to Channel Seven news, and then you’re going to write a book about the great criminal conspiracy . . . or was it the cat conspiracy?”
“You really dislike me, don’t you, Detective?”
“You have it wrong, lady. I just don’t like listening to fantasies.”
I leaned over the desk and wrote the address on a small pad. He stared at what I had written.
“If you can spend the evening with me there, waiting, I will show you that they are not fantasies.”
“Right, lady. After I get off work today, you want me to hold your hand for God knows how many hours in a copy shop, keeping our eyes on some cat.”
“Yes, Detective Hanks. That is what I would like you to do.”
“Well, lady, I have a better idea.”
“What’s that?”
He tore a sheet of paper off the same pad I had written on, wrote something on it, and pushed it at me.
“Now,” he said, “I’m going to go home after work and take a shower and have a few drinks and then have some supper and then take a walk and maybe watch a ball game and then go to sleep. But if you’re in that store staring at that cat and some killers come at you, well, you just tell them to hold on because you have to make a call—to me. That’s my home number, lady.”
The whole meeting had gone as wrong as it could go, from the very beginning. I realized it was to a large extent my fault. I shouldn’t have expected Detective Harry Hanks to give me any help unless I gave him some very hard facts. I had dug up many of them, but it was too early to present them—to anyone. Perhaps Hanks would think them relevant. For me, they were pointers. No, it went much deeper than that. Hanks thought me a dilettante . . . it didn’t matter how many newspaper clippings I showed him about my crime-solving prowess. And I thought Hanks to be an arrogant fool.
I took the piece of paper, crumpled it, and dropped it into my purse like a piece of dirty candy given to me by a derelict whose feelings I didn’t want to hurt.
“You see,” I said, “as difficult as this may seem to you, Detective Hanks, we are both after the same thing.”
“Which is?”
“The person or persons who murdered Bruce Chessler.”
“Fine. Call me if you need help,” he said, and I saw he was making a strong effort to get rid of his sarcasm and skepticism . . . to be professional . . . to be noncommittal—while at the same time distancing himself from a woman he obviously found hard to deal with. He kept his body turned away from me as if he were desperate for me to leave but didn’t want to say so . . . didn’t dare to say so.
I stood up and started walking away.
“Wait,” I heard him say.
I didn’t turn back toward him; I just stopped.
“I forgot your name,” he said.
“Alice Nestleton,” I replied.
“Look, Miss Nestleton, you know I want that kid’s killer. Just as much as you do.”
“I suppose so.”
“So you give me something solid and I’ll move on it.”
“That’s what I’m about to do,” I replied.
21
I had moved Basillio’s swivel chair to the long hallway between the office and the shop. It was quiet and dark. A single light burned over one of the large copying machines and it spread diminishing rays throughout the hallway.
Jack Be Quick was nibbling some chicken I had bought him on the way over.
From time to time he stared slyly at me.
“They’re coming to get you, Jack,” I said. “Three old Russians are coming to rescue you because they think you’re white with black spots.”
Jack didn’t seem to mind at all.
I leaned forward and watched him. How beautiful his breed was; how suffused with a sense of wildness and mystery; yes, it was true—the Abyssinian reeked of Egyptian deserts.
Then I sat back. I was tired but determined. I didn’t know which of the three old men would be sneaking through the door. Maybe it would be all three. I didn’t care. It wasn’t revelation I was there for—it was confirmation. It would be the last piece in the puzzle and I could present it to the world. The world? I was thinking like an actress again, not a criminal investigator. It was humorous. The world didn’t care about Bruce Chessler. And the world didn’t really care about the strange, tortuous journey of those Russian émigrés, now sequestered in their hard-earned homes, thinking God knows what thoughts, being obsessed by geriatric memories.
Time went slowly. Very slowly. Again and again I walked to the two doors through which someone had to walk. The front door to the store and the side door, leading from the office to the alley.
Which door would it be? What did it matter? How would the break-in happen? What did it matter?
At midnight I pulled the swivel chair back into the office and pushed it behind the desk. I sat down and swiveled in the darkness.
Jack Be Quick leapt up on the desk. His green eyes gleamed. He circled the desk and made a very deep purring sound, from his belly. Was he still h
ungry? Did he want water? No, both were available to him.
“Speak to me, Jack,” I said to him.
He approached me warily.
“A penny for your thoughts, Jack.”
He stretched, his legs and large paws elongated downward; his back arched. Is there anything more beautiful than a handsome cat stretching in the shadows?
My thoughts went to Grablewski and then to Bruce Chessler. It was amazing how they always popped up together. And it was sad that my thoughts, when they focused on men, rarely dealt with past lovers . . . only with would-be lovers—men who were not . . . had never been . . . or could never be my lovers.
When I looked back up, Jack Be Quick had vanished from the desk. I could see his shadow against one of the walls.
I suddenly realized that I had nothing with me, no weapon in case of trouble. Nor did I have my bag or even a scarf. I had arrived at the Mother Courage Copying Shop like a Zen Buddhist monk, with only the clothes on my back. Why? I didn’t really know. It was strange. Maybe I required simplicity in the face of a dense and grim conspiracy. Or maybe, since it had required a great deal of mental and physical effort to arrive at where I was in relation to the conspiracy—in relation to understanding how all the strands were proceeding toward an unfolding center—I had to be almost naked in my resolve.
The most horrible sound I have ever heard in my life suddenly cascaded through the store.
I didn’t move. The sound seemed to splinter my bones . . . to make me shiver . . . to crush my will. I couldn’t move.
Again and again . . . louder and louder . . .
It didn’t stop. I closed my eyes. I scrunched down into the chair.
Glass. It sounded like glass shattering. Someone was smashing in the front window of the store.
I covered my ears. I got up. I pressed my hands tight against my ears until they hurt. I ran into the hallway and then toward the front of the store. I didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was happening.
I let my hands drop from my ears. The sound began again . . . splintering, screeching, moaning, lunacy.
A Cat Tells Two Tales Page 24