by Joe Gores
They went down Boardman past storefront bailbondsmen to a taqueria with a big sign above it, ABIERTO 24 HORAS. Inside the narrow crowded room a jukebox played Mexican music filled with sad horns. A brown chunky Aztec-looking waitress brought Tecates instead of menus to their table; they ordered the special with the carelessness of long familiarity. The room smelled of hot oil and frying tortilla chips and red pepper and salsa spices.
“But,” persisted Solomon, “if you could do it faster and cheaper with the computer than they could in the field, why—”
“I got my own P.I. license to cut out the middleman—it was just good business. But then I found out fieldwork is fun, too. The computer is still the core of my operation, but it can’t ask just the right question at just the right moment. Of course once I get an answer, I use my laptop to interface through the car phone with the data base in my big computer at home.”
The waitress returned with huge platters of enchiladas, tacos, burritos, refritos y arroz, salad to go with their second beers. Randy jabbed a forkful of beans in Eddie’s direction.
“So, Sherlock, what’s your move now on Grimes? More ‘fun’? Ring some doorbells? Go sit in your car across the street from the yacht basin with a magnifying glass and a deerstalker hat?”
“Right now, nothing—I’ve got other cases need work. Eventually, start massaging the data bases—somebody had him killed, there have to be tracks the computer can pick up.”
“You slip in that assumption about somebody having Grimes offed just so damn neat. But it was a gas leak got him.”
Eddie shook his head. “Professional hit.”
“You think the arson investigators screwed up?” demanded Randy scornfully. “The explosion was in the engine compartment, right where you’d expect it to be. Forensics, fire department, insurance company—everybody says accident except Eddie Dain.”
“Did they run a probabilities program on that particular make, model, and year of Chris-Craft to see how hull shape and engine-compartment size would affect a gas-leak explosion?”
“Why in hell should they, when everything points to—”
“I did—I developed the software program for it myself.” Eddie waved a bulging bean burrito around under Randy’s nose. “Flash point was seven-tenths of a meter from where it should have been for gas fumes, and a couple of intensity probability screenings I ran suggested C-4 plastique. Which means—”
Randy silenced him with an impatient paw.
“Wait a minute, Sherlock. If it was a hit, why pro? Why not gifted amateur?”
“Because all you professional law enforcement guys buy into it as an accident. I figure only a pro could fool everybody except the computer. After we get back from Point Reyes, Marie and I will work the data to find those footprints, then—”
“You ever think that if you’re right it might be dangerous? If somebody is out there, and you start getting close to him—”
“I’ll call a cop,” said Eddie.
And he laughed and took a big bite of burrito, and, cool dude that he was, squirted brick-colored pinto beans and red sauce all down the front of his crisp white cotton shirt.
2
When Eddie crossed the Golden Gate to their modest two-bedroom bungalow in Marin’s Tamalpais Valley, he found the household in an uproar. Or at least found three-year-old Albie (christened Albert, in honor of Einstein) in an uproar. Marie was her usual placid self.
“A kitten,” she explained.
Marie was Eddie’s age and tall; barefoot, only four inches shorter than his six-one and as limber as he, with the supple, beautiful body produced in certain women by intense devotion to yoga. Her taffy-colored hair was worn long and straight down her back in defiance of current fashions, her very clear hazel eyes were too large and wide-set under stern brows for absolute beauty—but she also had the soft rounded cheeks and rosebud mouth of a fairy-tale princess.
“Kitten?” Eddie looked around the narrow kitchen as he stripped off his burrito-stained shirt. Albie was hanging on his pantleg telling him about it also. “I don’t see any kitten.”
“It shall return,” she said with placid resignation.
“How do you know, if—”
“Albie knows.”
He believed her. Marie was a very sensual being, in touch with her body and the bodies of those she loved. In bed they made each other come so hard and so often that he sometimes thought there must be something to her reincarnation musings: it seemed that a love this rewarding spiritually and this intense physically just had to extend back through several lifetimes.
But now, Wisking the burrito stain before putting the shirt into the hamper, he said, “If the kitten does show up again, we just can’t keep it. You know that, don’t you, darling?”
“I know.”
“If it’s a stray, it’ll be dirty and diseased—”
“I know.”
“Then we’ll just have to explain to Albie that—”
“I know.” Then she kissed him, a long kiss that made him want to get Albie to bed early. She stepped back and patted the front of his pants and made a silent whistle, and laughed, “Tell you what, big guy. You explain to Albie why he can’t have that kitten, and I’ll give you something nice later.”
“You cheat!” exclaimed Eddie with feeling.
But after supper, he and his son sat out on the redwood deck he’d built the year before, at the same time that he’d built an eight-foot-high wall between the driveway and the garage they’d converted to an office. The wall had a door that was locked, so Albie could play in the backyard while Marie worked at the computer and kept an eye on him through the office window.
The deck was low, ideal for sitting on the edge with your feet in the grass. Albie sat in rapt attention beside him, staring solemnly up into his face, swinging stubby legs as Eddie explained why they couldn’t keep the kitten.
“Even if he does come back, he probably belongs to someone who’ll want him to come home to them.”
“He’s black and white,” observed Albie.
“Or his mother was a cat gone wild. In that case he’ll be a feral cat himself and won’t want to live with us because—”
“His whiskers are white.” Albie held out demonstrative hands a foot apart. “Real long.”
“That’s long,” admitted Eddie. He shook his head in admiration. “But wild kittens have all sorts of diseases—”
“Mommy says he’s a puss-in-boots kitten. Black legs, white feet.” Then he added, in case Eddie was as dense about books as he was about kittens, “Like in the fairy tale.”
“Even a puss-in-boots sort of kitten would be…”
He trailed off because his son had jumped off the deck and was running on stubby bowed legs over to the wall. Thrust through the two-inch gap left under the fence for rainy-season runoff, a tiny delicate upside-down black arm with a white paw was making what looked like beckoning gestures.
“It’s him!” cried Albie. He squatted and patted at the paw with one hand. The tiny paw convulsed about his finger, held on without claws. The kitten started to mew. Piteously.
“Open the door, Daddy!” cried Eddie’s son. Piteously.
If he opened the door, Daddy knew, all was lost. If he didn’t open the door, Daddy knew, all was lost. So macho Daddy said forcefully, “But it has to stay in the kitchen until we can housebreak it. And it goes to the vet’s tomorrow and…”
Marie stood in the darkened kitchen, watching her husband cave in to her son about their new kitten and chuckling deep in her throat. So even though they had to make up a box with an old towel in it for the kitten to sleep on, and feed it, and of course hold it, when they did get to bed she gave Eddie something just as nice as she’d promised. More than nice and more than once, in fact, and then told him she loved him because he was a kitten freak in public while being a tiger in bed.
The kitten was little and skinny and black and white and full of fleas and scabs and rickety from lack of food, so for two weeks it wa
s touch-and-go. It could keep down milk but then immediately had diarrhea, every time. Dysentery, distemper, a massive flea allergy, eye infections… All plans were put on hold pending its survival or the sad eventuality of its death.
Ten days later the dysentery was gone. The distemper was cured. Its eyes cleared up. It strode instead of wobbled. It meowed! instead of mewed. Suddenly it was a delicate demented huge-eyed black and white furball tumbling around the house.
The day they knew it would survive, they named it Shenzie. Shenzie was a Swahili word Eddie had got from Randy Solomon, meaning crazy—but crazy in a goofy, nutty, oddball, wonderful sort of way that fit the kitten perfectly.
His survival ensured, Shenzie would watch by the hour when they played chess, sitting on the edge of the coffee table where the board was permanently set up, his skinny black tail, white-tipped, loosely curled down around a table leg.
“Think he’s trying to learn chess?” asked Eddie.
“He’s studying the way it works,” said Marie firmly. “He wants hands instead of paws. He wants to be an engineer.”
Shenzie was Albie’s cat, of course, but on nights when Eddie was out in the field on his backlogged cases, and Albie was asleep, he would lie below the screen on the computer box while Marie worked, and go to sleep—purring. If she was reading, he would climb up on her chest and go to sleep—purring.
“He never does that with me,” said Eddie darkly. “Except for Albie, you’re the only person in the world he trusts enough to sleep on.”
“We can take him to Point Reyes!” crowed Albie.
But this time Eddie was firm. “No we can’t,” he said sadly. “It might be a little too tough on him—he’s still pretty shaky. Or he might get lost in the woods so we couldn’t find him again. You wouldn’t want that, would you, Tiger?”
“Well, no, but…”
“Or get all wet in the ocean and maybe get pneumonia?”
“No, but…”
“Uncle Randy’s going to take care of him while we’re gone,” said Marie with comfortable finality. “That way, you’ll have him to come home to.”
“Okay,” said Albie in charming capitulation. He kissed Shenzie on the nose and put him into the cat carrying case, a plastic one with holes, through one of which Shenzie’s black and white paw immediately came out to begin groping about. That patented paw-grope was one of his best tricks to date.
While his wife still had been tossing her paycheck into the pot, Randy Solomon had scraped up the down on a tall skinny Victorian on Buchanan just above Fell. Even after his wife left him (cops’ divorce statistics are horrendous), he managed to hang on to it and even get it painted and fixed up outside and in.
Eddie climbed the exterior front stairs and rang the old-fashioned doorbell. He was carrying Shenzie in the plastic cat case. Randy opened the door and stepped back so Eddie could enter by him.
“The famous Shenzie, huh?” He’d been hearing a lot about the kitten on the handball courts during the past two weeks.
“Himself,” said Eddie, as he put the carry case on the couch and started to open it.
The living room was beautifully furnished in an African motif. An elongated ebony head four feet tall, carved by the Pare in Tanzania, dominated one corner; across from it was a ‘Kamba drum made of stretched zebra hide, the cords that kept it taut made from thin rolled strips of antelope hide. Graceful cranes carved from Masai cattle horns stood on top of the TV cable box; there were Kisii stools carved from rounds of tree trunk with tiny bright beads pounded into the soft wood in intricate patterns. On a clear wall was a long Kalenjin spear and a handmade knife in a red hide scabbard.
Eddie gazed around, impressed as he always was, while getting the carry case open. Delicate puss-in-boots Shenzie leaped out with a pissed-off meow! Randy shook the windows with his laughter and, quick as a synapse, scooped the tiny furball up in his arms to cradle it upside down against his chest.
“Shenzie, my man, we gonna cook you for supper!” But Shenzie, knowing a soft touch when he felt one, merely purred. Randy laughed again and stooped to set him right side up on the floor, asking Eddie, “Got time for a beer?”
“Marie and Albie are down in the car.”
Shenzie was twining himself back and forth around Solomon’s ankles. Randy laughed again.
“Guess me an’ old Shenz’ll get along just fine.”
“Thanks for taking him, Randy—I mean it. I’ve written out the direction to the place at Point Reyes if you think you can get away for a weekend—”
Solomon snorted as he crumpled up the directions. “Listen, the way people are killin’ each other off in this city, I ain’t gonna get any time off. An’ if I did, I’d spend it chasin’ gash rather than snipe or some damn thing at the seashore…”
He started walking Eddie to the door, then stopped, suddenly serious.
“Truth be told, Sherlock, I’m worried about this case of yours. You’ve sorta halfway convinced me that maybe somebody did make old Grimes’s boat blow up. If you’re right, we’re talking murder for hire here.”
“I sincerely hope so,” grinned Eddie.
“Ain’t funny, Hoss. If—”
“If I turn up a hitman where you guys and the underwriters and the fire department thought there was just an accident, I’ll be the hottest eye in town.”
“Or the deadest. You’d best remember what a hitman does for a living.”
“He won’t even know I’m there,” grinned Eddie.
“Aw, hell, you’re impossible.” Randy laughed and stuck out a big paw for Eddie to shake. “Just don’t make any moves while you’re at Point Reyes, okay? Wait until—”
“We’re not even taking the laptop. Total downtime. But when we get back—watch out!” He started out, then turned back again. Shenzie was atop the TV, sniffing one of the horn birds with brow-furrowed suspicion. “Anyway, Randy, hitmen aren’t supermen—just guys with strange ideas about a fun time.”
Randy stood in the open doorway at the head of the stairs with a worried look on his face, watching Eddie bound back down to his car with the bike rack and two mountain bikes on the roof. He waved at Marie through the window, she waved back. He could see little Albie in his car seat in the rear.
He sighed and went back into the house. Shenzie was waiting to ambush his ankle. “Hey, crazy cat!” he exclaimed. “You’re bitin’ the foot gonna kick you you keep it up!”
Shenzie didn’t care. Eyes bugged out and wild, flopped on his thin black side, he sought to disembowel the side of Randy’s size 13 leather shoe with pumping back feet while holding onto the highly shined and therefore slippery toe with his front feet.
By definition Shenzie was, after all, nuts.
But Randy loved it. He laughed so hard he almost fell on the floor. He dug the little mulatto dude. Mulatto—black and white. Get it?
Maybe he’d get himself a cat like this Shenzie one of these days. They sure were a lot more fun than he’d expected. Since his wife had left he hadn’t been having a whole lot of fun. Just working, fucking when he could, with maybe a little moonlighting thrown in on the weekends for some extra cash.
3
Life in the rustic cabin at Point Reyes quickly fell into wondrous routine. Wake up spooned together for warmth in the old-fashioned double bed, whisper lazily until curious hands and mouths found familiar pleasure points, then the rising arc of passion until they fell back panting to the sounds of Albie stirring on his little bed in the next room.
No phones to answer. No computers to work. No friends to visit. No television to watch. Just books to read. Incredible salt marshes to tramp through. Sometimes at dusk as the fog rolled in, a driftwood fire on the beach in the lee of a washed-up log, trying to identify night noises out of the darkness.
“I think it’s a… big bird!” Albie might exclaim.
“Tree frog,” Marie, raised on a ranch in the California coastal zone, would say with great authority. She would hold finger and thumb half an inch apart. �
��About that long.”
“But it makes a bigger sound than that!”
Once they heard a dog bark, but Marie said it was a fox— a gray, you didn’t find reds down by the ocean. Next morning, Eddie, up before dawn, saw the animal’s tracks: dainty little pawprints hardly larger than those Shenzie might make. Fox.
Other nights, Albie asleep and the wind sighing in the trees behind the house, they would yawn over the chessboard until finally falling into bed themselves. Only to feel fatigue drop magically away for velvet moments in the dark of the night, soft cries of completion that never woke their son.
Perfect vacation days, with Marie’s birthday the most perfect of all. It dawned clear and warm and bright, without a wisp of fog, and Eddie bare-legged in front of the open fridge calling out items for the grocery list.
“I think we should have steak tonight in honor of the occasion. And baked potatoes—”
“No oven.”
“Okay, write down aluminum foil for the potatoes so we can stick ‘em in the coals. And corn on the cob if that little grocery store is up to it—”
“And whatever crucifer they have fresh there.”
Eddie turned to his son, who was waiting for the piggyback bicycle ride to the store. “Eat-your broccoli, dear,” he said.
“I say it’s spinach and I say to hell with it,” said Marie like the little boy in the old New Yorker cartoon. They laughed, and Albie crowed; though he didn’t understand it, he loved that one for some reason, almost as much as he disliked crucifers.
Eddie shouldered him and his outsized crash helmet, almost as big as he was, for the four-mile wobbly ride to the little corner store. And told Albie that he had only one year left.
“Year for what?” the boy asked the top of Eddie’s head.
“Before you compose your first symphony. That’s what Mozart did when he was four.”
Albie thought about it. Not knowing what a symphony was, he finally said, “I’ll wait.”
When Eddie got back, Albie still on his shoulders and the food in saddlebags over the rear wheel, they all went exploring through the salt marsh to the beach. The narrow trail led down into a big area of pickleweed, a lanky plant whose woody segments held water the way ice plants do.