If there’d been a rabbit hole nearby I would’ve stuck my bobble down it and never come up for air.
THE FIGHT WAS over in seconds.
First the ring announcer introduced the combatants: Zeus Katsopoulos, the Cat from the Acropolis, and Rocky “Slaughterhouse” Cerberus, the Hound from the Pound. The crowd went fizzypop.
The fighters retreated to their corners. They shed their coats. They mumbled with their trainers. They slotted in their mouth guards.
The ref took his position. The whole crowd hushed as one. Someone quietly slipped off Katsopoulos’s headphones.
The bell rang. The fight began.
And suddenly—without any warning at all—an amazing change came over Katsopoulos.
His fur rose up like needles. His tail shot up like a flagpole. His ears swiveled. His back arched. His pupils dilated. He swelled to twice his size—maybe three times.
Even Rocky didn’t know what to make of it. He came out making his usual dodge moves but seemed unsure if he should get any closer—Katsopoulos was pressed back into his corner and looked like he was about to explode. The crowd held its breath—not a pant, not a heartbeat, not even a whisper. I’m a bull terrier, and for a moment even I was scared.
Then Rocky inched forward, dukes up.
Katsopoulos got even bigger.
Rocky paused, looked for somewhere to land his first clonk.
Katsopoulos hissed a warning.
Rocky got even closer. A few whiskerlengths away.
And he risked one little jab.
That’s it. Just one little jab.
He didn’t even get a chance to yelp.
Katsopoulos rose up—there was “an impression of movement”—and suddenly Rocky was blown clean out of the ring. He flipped end over end like a toy bone. He landed twenty rows back, just in front of us, right in the middle of some business-suited Pomeranians. He was bleeding, drooling, and as limp as a tug-rope. The Pomeranians couldn’t even wake him. He was zonked.
Back in the ring the Katsopoulos team wasn’t waiting for any official announcement. They wrapped their boy in his tiger-striped robe—all of a sudden he’d shrunk in size again—and clamped his headphones back on and bundled him up the stairs to safety. But the crowd wasn’t moving a hair anyway—everyone was nailed in place, dumbslapped. From the loudsquawkers a sound was pulsing—I couldn’t quite make it out.
“This,” Lap said to me, “is what I’d call suspicious.”
“Maybe.” But I was frozen stiff.
“Come with me,” Lap said. And when I couldn’t budge: “Come.”
So I wrenched myself from my seat—it was real difficult for some reason—and followed the Siamese up the stairs. But he was so quick, so slithery, that I had trouble keeping pace. In the tunnels I caught a glimpse of Katsopoulos and his crew oozing around a corner. Lap moved even faster. But now a few spectators were spilling out of the pit, vendors were asking what was going on, and some latecomers were still rushing in. Lap was threading between them all like weaveposts. I saw Nipper Sweeney in the middle of the blur.
“Crusher—speak to you a moment?”
“Not now, Nip.”
I didn’t even get time to take in his reaction. I reached the click-swingers just in time to see Katsopoulos sliding into a stretch limo with his trainers. Lap was already there, flashing his badge.
“—we gotta skedaddle!” Linus King was saying.
“I’m afraid this is not a matter of choice,” Lap responded smoothly.
“I know the governor!”
“I’m sure you do.”
I arrived at the scene, panting. “What’s going on?”
“Detective McNash,” said Lap, “you’re just in time. Mr. King here was about to give me five minutes with his client.”
“Just five minutes?” I said.
“It’s the very least he can do. He doesn’t really wish to obstruct the law.”
King looked cornered, and not happy about it. “Okay—five minutes!” he spat. “Thaz all. Five minutes! Den we gotta skedaddle! We gotta scat!”
We slipped into the trailer-sized limo and the door slammed like a refrigerator. The double-glazed windows shot up. The engine was already throbbing.
Katsopoulos was lounging on a deer-hide seat as big as a sofa. He was still in his robe, gloves, and headphones. On a plate in front of him was something that smelled like possum meat. Beside him, tickling his cheek, was a spangled Bengal queen wearing hot pants and not much else.
“What’s dis?” Katsopoulos’s oldboy trainer—Gus Bowser, the Raging Bulldog—was chewing on a cigar as big as a shinbone.
“This won’t take more than a few moments,” Lap assured him. “I’m from the Feline Bureau of Investigation. My partner is from the San Bernardo Slaughter Unit. We have some questions for Mr. Katsopoulos here.”
“‘Bout what?”
“‘Bout time you put a zip on it, pal,” I snarled, but Lap raised a silencing paw.
“You must surely have heard by now of the unfortunate killings in recent days,” he said. “We simply need to establish Mr. Katsopoulos’s movements at correlating times.”
“Why?” Bowser spat a gob of cigar juice into a pot. “What’s Zeus got to do with anythin’?”
“Nothing at all, I’m sure. Which is why we seek to rule him out officially.” Lap turned to the slugger. “Mr. Katsopoulos, may I assume you’ve been training all week?”
But Katsopoulos didn’t answer, didn’t even seem to have heard. He was eyeing me the whole time, like he was scared I might take a chunk out of him.
“Mr. Katsopoulos?” Lap tried again.
“Zeus spent da whole week in da gym and da hotel,” Bowser chipped in. “I was wit’ him da whole time.”
“Can you verify this?”
“Don’t need to. A newshound from da Dog Whistle was wit’ us all week—read da rags.”
“Read the newspapers?”
“I reckon dat’s what I said.”
Lap glanced at the boxer. “May I ask this of Mr. Katsopoulos personally?”
“Why? I ain’t no liar.”
“I’d just like his own opinion. In fact, I insist upon it.”
Bowser looked uncomfortable. Outside a presspack was forming. Linus King was trying to hold them back, but the flash-and-clinks were popping madly. Zeus kept flinching, like he thought it was lightning.
“You heard him, pal,” I snapped.
“Orright, orright.” The trainer shifted his cigar. “But make it zippy—Zeus don’t like noises.”
He unclamped the headphones—Zeus looked wasp-stung—and Lap leaned over, asking no questions of the cat at all.
“Do you mind?” he said to Bowser, taking up the phones and putting them to his right ear. He listened, frowning, then he picked up the tape player, started pressing buttons, forwarding and rewinding, still asking no questions. He popped the cassette out and held it up.
“May I keep this?”
“Why?” asked Bowser. “Dis is crazy.”
“I can insist, if you like.”
“It’s just music.”
“Then you have no objection?”
“Orright, orright.”
“And one last thing, please forgive me,” said Lap. “I have a young nephew who’s something of a boxing aficionado. I’m sure he’d be overjoyed to receive an autograph of—”
“Zeus don’t do signatures,” Bowser said.
“Yes, but—”
“Zeus don’t write.”
“I see,” said Lap. “Then perhaps I can settle for a lock of his hair?”
“A lock—?”
“Never mind, there’s one right here.” Lap plucked a blue-gray bristle off the rug. “Much appreciated—my nephew will be overjoyed.”
The swinger suddenly opened. “Your five minutes is up,” snapped Linus King. “We gotta vamoose!”
I curled a lip. “We’ll leave when we wanna—”
But Lap put up a paw. “It’s perfectly all r
ight, Detective, we’ve finished now.”
We slipped out of the limo into the middle of the rabid presspack. The door slammed and Katsopoulos and company roared away down the street, pursued by the newshounds with their flash-and-clinks.
In the lingering cloud of exhaust Lap pulled out a little snaptooth bag and carefully slid the cat hair inside.
“What you should do,” I said, “is get a DNA analysis of that hair.”
“What a splendid idea,” said Lap.
IT STARTED DRIZZLING as we headed back to the cophouse. Lap had the cassette in the Rover’s tape box and kept running through it, stopping every now and then, listening for a few seconds, and moving on.
“Looking for something?” I said.
“I’d be happy if I could just identify this music.”
“What”—I sniggered—“you really don’t know what it is?”
Lap looked at me. “Are you saying that you do?”
“It’s Kat and the Kream.”
“A popular album?”
“Everything by Puss Galore is popular. Why?”
“Then can you identify these lyrics?” He rewinded. “Can you tell me what she’s singing here?”
I felt ashamed that I knew. But I did my best:
“‘Thump me in the back, Jack/Slap me in the face, Jase/Kick me in the spleen, Dean/Knock me off my feet, Pete/Uh-huh, uh-huh/You da bomb, Tom.’”
“You da bomb, Tom?”
“Muttslang. She’s telling her pimp-cat he’s got it all.”
“While offering herself up for a beating in the process?”
“She’s supposed to be a dog. Puss Galore sings doggie-style, everyone knows that.”
“So the lyrics are essentially about dog domination?”
“What of it?”
“And dogs don’t mind?”
“It’s a good tune.”
“How fascinating,” Lap said, slipping the tape into his pocket.
I grunted. “What were you looking for, anyway?”
“I was hoping to identify something on the tape that might account for Katsopoulos’s transformation in the ring—his engorgement as soon as the headphones were removed. A few veiled instructions, perhaps.”
“Instructions?”
“‘Knock me off my feet, Pete’—things like that. And yet he was listening to the very same lyrics in the back of the limousine without effect. So perhaps there’s something else—something hidden.”
“Like what?”
“I’m not certain. Cats are traditionally harder to command than dogs.”
I drew up at a stop sign. “That a fact, puddy-tat?”
“Regrettably so. You might not have been aware of it—the messages were delivered fractionally beyond a dog’s conscious recognition—but when the fight ended, the stadium loudspeakers were pumping the command words ‘STAY’ and ‘SIT’ repeatedly. Without them there could well have been chaos.”
“That so?” I eased into Contentment Street, irritated. “We’re just all dumb dogs to you, I guess.”
“I make the observation not as a personal opinion but as a psychological fact. You must have noticed by now that the electoral campaign of Brewster Goodboy employs just such command words? ‘STAY the course.’ ‘WALK the distance.’”
I hadn’t noticed, but I was hardly going to admit it. “So what?”
“And you must have noticed that when I first arrived at the station I purposely incorporated key command words into my introduction? Fetch. Heel. Shake. Walk. It’s the very first lesson in canine-domination techniques. Establish authority. It doesn’t even matter if it’s obvious—beyond a certain age, resignation overrides resistance.”
I ran a red light, just to show him I didn’t obey everything. But as much as I didn’t like it, the sniffy way he was talking about dogs, I was amazed he was admitting it—cats usually buried their secrets like their doodah. “It’s all tied up with some sort of boxing scandal,” I said, “is that what you’re saying?”
He looked at me. “Would it be fair to assume that in the Kennels the sport has attracted some controversy recently? Betting syndicates? Packland bosses? Massive media investments?”
“Does the pope squat in the park?”
“Then what would you say to this scenario? An ‘interested party’ with a great deal at stake wants the fight canceled. Zeus Katsopoulos is catnapped by some hired goons and taken to the wharves to be executed. But before he can be disposed of he rises up in self-defense. In making his way back to his hotel he also kills a security guard. And then he’s spirited in and out of the stadium by an understandably protective entourage. What would you say to that, Detective?”
He sounded like he was really sounding me out. Like my opinion was actually important to him. But I only shrugged. “I don’t do theories anymore. What do you think?”
“I admit there are some fundamental flaws. I can’t see a logical pattern, for a start. Because ferals, unlike fully domesticated cats, kill only for sustenance—not amusement. So why would Katsopoulos kill the guard at the storage facility?”
“Maybe for self-defense.”
“I can’t see why. Besides, I smell something considerably more sinister here than a garden-variety boxing scandal.”
He sounded like he was baiting me—begging me to ask more questions—but I didn’t swallow. “That hair in your pocket will say a lot.”
“And the tape, hopefully. I’ll have it analyzed for hidden frequencies. As soon as we get the opportunity, of course.”
But when we got back to Duty Street we found a herd of squad tooters already pulling out of the station and racing into the rain, lights spinning and flaring. The chief, seeing them off, looked grim as a furnace wall.
“Another murder,” he said. “A top dog this time. Chopped up like a meatloaf.”
“Where?” Lap asked.
“The Museum of Reigning Cats and Dogs.”
“At what time?”
“Eight-thirty.”
“Eight-thirty,” echoed Lap, and I could see the disappointment on his mug.
One hour ago—the same time as the fight began.
Part of me had to slap down a sense of satisfaction.
BY THE TIME we arrived it was raining rats and mice. The museum, a huge Corgian building full of pillars and gargoyles, was on the east side of Barkley Park about three sprints west of the last murder scene. I’d never liked the joint. I’d taken the pups once—it was free—but I always got the impression that they gave too much space to cat rulers over dogs: that Catterine the Great and Moggie Thatcher got twice the space of Napoleon Boneaparte and Josef Snarlin. Not long ago they’d put up a panorama of wall paintings unearthed by archaeologists in the Katacombs—pictures supposedly proving that cats settled in the area long before St. Bernard arrived to convert the ’wowers—and some shaggy-haired mutts from the PPU had picketed in protest. But I knew the place was still popular with school groups and tourists, even the occasional kitty who wandered across the river to purr approvingly at the displays.
The body of the latest victim, diced like a cheese platter, lay on a side street halfway between the parking lot and the entrance swingers. The first cops on the scene had put up a tarp to shield it from the rain. The SI boys were there, already having a sniff. Bud Borzoi was directing things from under an umbrella so small it could’ve been sitting in a piña colada.
“A purebred, Crusher.” He spoke to me as if Lap didn’t exist. “A curly-coated retriever, name of Corky Farr-Fetch.”
“From Kathattan?” I asked—most double-barreled surnames came from the island.
“Uh-huh. A marketing manager at Chump’s Incorporated.”
“What was he doing here?”
“There’s some new exhibit opening tonight—the Glory of the Pharaohs or sumthin’. Chump’s is one of the sponsors.”
I looked back at the parking lot. In front of some fancy foreign tooters a few knitted-jacket pooches, poodles and Pekingese mainly, were huddled under fa
t umbrellas getting grilled by an officer. I looked back at the body—the head was at least ten leashlengths from the torso, like someone had gone bowling with it.
“No statement from the victim, I’m tipping?”
Bud giggled. “Wouldn’t’ve seen a thing, Crusher. Whack! The bobble’s off like a cork.”
“Did anyone witness the attack?” Lap interrupted. He was standing nearby, under the museum eaves, trying not to get wet.
“The curator saw something.” Bud spoke like I’d asked the question.
“And this was at precisely eight-thirty P.M.?”
“At eight twenty-five—five minutes to closing time.”
“Did he see the killer?”
“Just a gray blur.”
“Where’d he go, the killer?”
“Jumped back on the roof and ran away.”
“The roof?” Lap said. “Did you say the roof?”
And now Bud turned. “Ask the curator, pal, if you don’t believe me.”
Lap simply nodded, looking so pathetic—with his wet hair and his dripping whiskers and his dog juice all washed off—that I almost felt sorry for him.
“Then please excuse me,” he said. “I’ll need to have a little prowl.”
We watched him slither off, glistening with rain, like a common stray streaking across a backyard on a stormy night.
Bud shook his head. “Where d’you think they dug him up, Crusher?”
“Beats me. We’ve been chasing our tails all day.”
“You found nothing? Nothing at all?”
“Not even a punch-drunk flea.”
Bud sniggered. “You wanna take over again?”
“In a hamster’s heartbeat.”
But Bud’s tail suddenly stiffened. “Not sure you’d get the chance. There’s some curly things going on back at the cophouse.”
“You heard something?”
“Maybe. The chief was—”
“Wait a tick.” I couldn’t see Lap anymore—it was like he’d vanished into the rain—and I didn’t much like the idea he might overhear us again. So I found a side door and slipped into the darkness of the museum.
We ducked down a few empty passageways past a reception room crowded with mouthwatering treats. The Great Hall was full of Egyptian knickknacks: statues of the cat pharaohs, wall paintings showing cats whipping dogs, rows and rows of cat mummies. I dragged Bud into a little mock-up tomb full of wicker baskets and toy mice—the burial chamber of King Tutenkitten.
The Unscratchables Page 8