Spotted Cats

by William G. Tapply

  ‘Oh,’ I said. ‘I get it. You think I—’

  He shook his head vigorously. ‘No, Mr Coyne. You misunderstand. My job is not to solve any crime. I do not think in those terms. My job is simply to verify that there has been a crime, and to verify that the security systems required in the insurance contract were intact and functional. If, for example, Mr Newton’s dogs had run away the previous week, or if the chain link fence surrounding his property had not been kept in good repair, then Mr Newton’s claim might be denied, even in the presence of a theft. Perhaps, as I have inferred that the police suspect, you or Miz Robbins participated in the theft. I don’t particularly care. It is completely immaterial to me whether it was you who arranged the theft or somebody else. No, I don’t think about those things. Having satisfied myself that Mr Newton’s dogs and fences were functional, the only thing that concerns me is whether those jaguars were in fact stolen. The police believe they were. Miz Robbins, whom I interviewed, believes they were. And you, sir. Do you believe they were?’

  ‘Hell, of course they were. I had an unpleasant encounter with the guys who did it.’

  He nodded and began to write on the form on his clipboard. ‘Well, sir,’ he said when he finally looked up at me, ‘I must say, this has been an easier investigation than most.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Certainly. Rarely do we have a witness. Typically burglaries occur when no one is home, or, less frequently, when the people are sleeping upstairs. I must make a judgement. Usually I must rely on police reports. Police reports, Mr Coyne, tend to be slipshod.’

  ‘You suspect fraud.’

  ‘I always suspect fraud. Actually, my job is to suspect fraud. But I rarely prove fraud. Your testimony makes it much easier for me to discount fraud in the present instance. The police reports make it clear that the security was breached. You had contact with the thieves. I shall recommend that Mr Newton be awarded his full claim.’ He slipped his clipboard into his briefcase and stood up. ‘And I thank you for your time, Mr Coyne.’

  I held up both hands. ‘Mr Hoskins, for heaven’s sake, take it easy. You’ve been here about five minutes. Can’t I get you some coffee?’

  ‘Time is—’

  ‘I know,’ I said. ‘Money. Tell me. What happens next?’

  ‘Next?’ He hesitated, then sat down again. ‘Well, next I shall prepare my report and send it to Lloyd’s. They will accept it. In due course, Mr Newton will receive a cheque.’ He peered at me dolefully from those sick eyes. ‘That is, Mr Newton or his rightful heirs.’

  ‘Of course,’ I said. ‘What about the crime?’

  He shrugged. ‘The police will attempt to solve it. Should Mr Newton, ah, expire, of course, they will try harder.’

  ‘Don’t you attempt to recover the jaguars?’

  ‘Me?’ He smiled. ‘Oh, by all means. Lloyd’s will pay a reward for their recovery. Recovering stolen property is not the same thing as solving the crime. I’d love to recover those jaguars, but I don’t give a hoot about catching the thieves. To be sure, it would be a feather in my cap—and money in my pocket—were I to recover those objects. I will submit reports to a variety of agencies, hoping the jaguars turn up and someone will be tempted by the reward money. However, I do not traipse around the world like those fictional insurance adjusters in pulp novels, chasing villains, exchanging gunfire, and generally sleuthing about. We don’t do that. We investigate, we submit our reports, and we are paid for our work. When stolen objects are recovered, and they rarely are, it’s the police who generally do it.’

  ‘There is a reward, though?’

  ‘It depends. In the case of these jaguars, almost certainly there will be.’

  ‘How much of a reward?’

  ‘Typically ten per cent of the value of the policy. In this case, Lloyd’s will pay Mr Newton seven hundred and fifty thousand dollars, so that’s, ah, seventy-five thousand for a reward.’

  ‘Um,’ I said. ‘Whole weeks go by sometimes when I don’t make that much money.’

  He tried another smile. He looked as if he had found half a worm in his apple. ‘Well, me too. Are you interested in the reward, Mr Coyne?’

  ‘Time,’ I said, ‘is money, Mr Hoskins.’

  Lily was gazing out the restaurant window at the boats moored in Scituate Harbour when the hostess led me to our table. She turned quickly when I cleared my throat.

  ‘Oh, Brady,’ she said. She tilted her cheek to me and I bent and kissed it quickly. I took the seat across from her.

  ‘Your waitress will be right with you,’ said the hostess.

  I nodded to her and she left. I looked at Lily. She was staring at me solemnly. She was wearing a peach-coloured blouse, which set off her dark hair and deep tan to good advantage. ‘How are you, Lily?’ I said.

  She smiled. ‘Better now.’

  ‘Am I that late?’

  ‘You’re on time. I was early. I was afraid you wouldn’t come.’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s been kinda hard, that’s all.’

  I reached across the table and touched her cheek. ‘Come on. Lighten up. What are you drinking?’

  She lifted her glass and looked at it. It was nearly empty. ‘Vodka tonic.’

  I glanced around and caught the eye of a waitress, who held up her forefinger to me. I grabbed my throat with both hands, rolled my eyes, and stuck my tongue out of the corner of my mouth. The waitress smiled. A moment later she came to our table. ‘Are we thirsty, sir?’ she said.

  ‘We need a drink. Bourbon old-fashioned. And another vodka tonic for the lady.’

  ‘Want to hear our specials for this evening?’

  ‘Anything blackened Cajun-style, forget it,’ I said.

  ‘Well, so much for the chicken and swordfish. We do have a bouillabaisse which is great. Also unblackened, non-Cajun swordfish broiled with parsley butter. The lobster tonight is your choice of either boiled or split and broiled with herb stuffing. Also fresh yellowfin tuna, broiled with a dill sauce.’

  ‘I’ll never remember it all,’ I said.

  ‘I already know what I want,’ said Lily.

  ‘I’m for the yellowfin,’ I said.

  ‘Boiled lobster,’ said Lily.

  I nodded. To the waitress I said, ‘We’re easy, huh?’

  ‘Pushovers, both of you.’

  We made our selection of potato—French fries for both of us—and salad dressings, and our waitress scurried away.

  ‘I’m not sure I trust seafood anymore,’ said Lily. ‘Between red tide and PCBs and medical trash washing up on the beaches. But I do love lobster.’

  ‘If we worried about what we ate, we’d starve to death,’ I said. I lit a cigarette. ‘So how’s Jeff doing?’

  She shrugged. ‘Still no change. He coughs now and then. They did an EEC I guess it doesn’t show much going on.’

  ‘So if he ever woke up…’

  She nodded.

  ‘Better if he doesn’t,’ I finished.

  She turned her face away from me and looked out at the boats.

  Our waitress brought our drinks. ‘I forgot to ask if you wanted appetizers,’ she said.

  ‘Lily?’ I said.

  She shook her head, still staring out the window.

  ‘I guess not,’ I told the waitress.

  ‘Do you want to wait for a while before I bring your salads?’

  ‘Bring ’em anytime. We’re hungry.’

  We sipped our drinks. I told Lily about my conversation with Patrick Hoskins. She nodded abstractly. I repeated to her what Dan LaBreque had told me about recovering the stolen jaguars. She did not seem interested. I told her that I had talked with Maria Conway in Phoenix. I did not tell her about the computer printouts Charlie had given me.

  Our salads arrived, and we ate them without talking. Then our main courses were served. The waitress tied a big bib around Lily’s neck. She attacked her lobster with vigour, wielding the shell cracker and pick with the adroitness of a surg
eon.

  Some people, when they lay siege on a whole lobster, will eat each bite as they extract it. Pick, dip, eat. A little work, and then an immediate little reward. That’s my approach. I have no patience for Lily’s style of lobster assault, which was to dig out all the meat first, then lay her instruments aside and eat all at once.

  You can tell a lot about a woman by how she eats lobster. I figured Lily and I were incompatible.

  She broke off the big front claws with her hands, wrenched the segments apart, split them with a cracker, and picked and prodded at the hunks of stringy white meat. Then she ripped off the tail, cracked it lengthwise, and pushed out the big cylinder of meat with her forefinger as if she was goosing it. She peeled the thin strip of meat off the top of it, revealing the black string of intestine. This she pried out and put on her plate. Next she ripped all the legs off the body and then cracked it between her hands. She began to dig into all the bodily crevices with her pick. She looked like a dentist. All the hunks of meat went into the big bowl of drawn butter that had come with the lobster, which soon was overflowing.

  When she finished with the body, she picked up the legs and sucked the meat out of them, one by one, and only after she finished with the legs did she wipe her hands on her napkin and arm herself with a fork and a hunk of bread. She had demonstrated incredible restraint. It evaporated once she began to eat.

  She ate with vast enthusiasm. It was fun to watch her. Butter dribbled over her chin and little moans of pleasure came from the back of her throat. They were familiar sounds to me.

  Once she glanced at me. ‘What’re you staring at?’ she mumbled.

  I smiled. ‘You. I like to see a woman being pleasured.’

  ‘Eating lobster is the second best way.’

  After our waitress cleared away our debris and brought coffee, we watched darkness descend over the harbour and the lights on the boats wink on. Once Lily reached across the table and touched my hand. ‘What is it, Brady?’ she said.

  ‘What is what?’

  ‘You are distracted.’

  I shrugged.

  She cocked her head and looked at me for a moment. Then she withdrew her hand.

  I paid the bill. We left the restaurant and began to walk along the edge of the wharf. Lily found my hand and held it. Sitting across from her, I had forgotten how tall she was. Her strides were as long as mine.

  ‘I talked with my friend Charlie McDevitt,’ I said to her.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘I went to law school with him. He’s a prosecutor with the United States Justice Department.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘I asked him to see what he could find out about some people.’

  ‘Like who?’

  ‘Dr Sauerman, for one.’ I hesitated. ‘And you. And Martin Lodi.’

  Her hand flinched in mine. ‘I see,’ she said. She let go of my hand and began to walk away from me. I hurried to catch up with her.

  ‘I’ve got to ask you some questions, Lily.’

  She stopped and peered deeply into my eyes for a long moment. Then she flashed a quick ironic smile. ‘Fuck you,’ she said.

  ‘Lily, look. I’m sorry, but—’

  She turned and began to walk quickly towards the parking lot. When I caught up to her and reached for her arm, she yanked it away from me.

  ‘Lily, hang on for a minute, will you?’

  ‘That’s what this was all about, wasn’t it? You wanted to ask me some questions. You think…’

  ‘Partly, yes.’

  ‘Fuck you, Brady Coyne. Just go fuck yourself.’

  ‘Sure. I will. But first you’ve got to tell me some things.’

  She turned to face me. Her eyes were brittle. ‘Fine. OK. What do you want to know?’

  ‘Why you lied to me.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘About your husband.’

  ‘Why should I tell you about Martin?’

  ‘He’s a criminal, for Christ sake. Jeff’s lying in a hospital and his million-dollar cats are missing because of a crime. I can’t think of a better reason.’

  ‘Martin didn’t do it.’

  ‘I know. He’s in prison.’

  She narrowed her eyes. ‘You’ve really been busy, haven’t you?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes. So I want to know about Martin Lodi. And I want to know why you lied to me.’

  ‘Why I lied?’ She shook her head slowly. ‘Remember where we were, what we were doing when you asked me about him? We were lying in bed, and we’d been sleeping because we were tired from making love. So you ask me about another man from fifteen years ago. Jesus.’

  ‘You said you hadn’t been married to him.’

  She cocked her head, then nodded. ‘Right. And I wasn’t. Oh, we stood in front of a JP in Reno one night, all right. But we weren’t married. Not really. Look. You really want to know about Martin Lodi?’

  ‘Yes. I do.’

  ‘OK. I’ll tell you.’ She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. ‘He was a poet,’ she said. ‘A good one, as a matter of fact. Also an alcoholic and a biker and a man with the most violent temper I’ve ever known. Imagine Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac as Hell’s Angels. That was Martin. I was waitressing this little Mexican restaurant in Hartford and he came in. He wrote me a poem on the napkin. He was waiting for me on his bike when I came out about two in the morning. And that was it. I climbed on and we headed for Reno.’

  ‘Just like that.’

  ‘Just like that,’ she said. ‘Remember, I was a teenager in the sixties. I smoked dope and stopped wearing bras and shaving under my arms. I marched for peace and abortion and civil rights. I rebelled against my parents and quit college. I was a normal kid.’

  ‘Then what happened?’

  She was hugging herself, standing out there in the parking lot. ‘He was gone most of the time. We lived all over. Never really had a place. We crashed with his friends, and then he’d usually take off for a few weeks. I never really knew what he did. I suspected. I didn’t want to know.’

  ‘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 h
e 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.