“You said you’d heard something?”
Bud nodded. “The chief was on the jangler to Kathattan. Sounds like they’re gonna send in reinforcements if nothing happens quickly.”
“The CAT Squad?”
“Could be.”
I shuddered. The CAT Squad was a tactical response team, the elites of crime fighting—highly trained, flak jacket–wearing moggies who tumbled across roofs like acrobats and always landed on their feet. But they were usually only called in to combat terrorists and political troublemakers. To have them take over now would be like some public admission that the case was too much for dogs. Too much for Crusher McNash.
“More likely it’s Humphrey MacFluff,” Bud went on. “He’s flying back from the Katskills right now.”
“MacFluff knows about the case now?”
“He ain’t happy. He should’ve been involved from the start. It’s real strange. The way the Siamese scored the gig in the first place. The way he took charge. The way he’s leading you up the garden path.” Bud shifted his toothpick. “You shouldn’t trust him, Crusher—he’s one strange cat. And he’s using up his nine lives real fast.”
I could barely see Bud’s face—the only light was a flickering lamp—but I could smell his hatred, even stronger than mine. And it didn’t make me feel right. Strangely, I felt almost defensive of Lap, like he was my sidepaw and Bud was the upwoofer. Maybe those command words really had messed with my brainpot.
“What’s that?”
There’d been a sound, halfway between a whistle and a hiss.
“I didn’t hear nothing, Crusher.”
But I sidled out of the tomb, hearing the noise again—someone tapping on glass. I looked up, scoped around the gloomy hall, and finally saw him—there, high above the sphinxes, high above the pharaoh statues, standing on an outside ledge, his paw scratching the windowpane: Lap himself, all white and bright against the night sky.
“Detective,” he hissed. “Up here.”
Immediately I wondered if he’d found something—I was real curious—but at the same time I didn’t want Bud thinking I was Lap’s lapdog, or anyone else’s. So I stayed still.
“Here,” Lap said again.
I trembled.
“Here, boy.”
And again came that terrible need to obey. And again I couldn’t fight it.
I took a guilty glance at Bud, who had a look in his peepers that would fry bacon, and tried to find a solid staircase.
WITH HIS BACK to the museum dome, Lap was standing on a ledge between the crouching lion and wolf statues, well protected from the slanting rain. He was staring out across the jagged sea of rooftops, chimneys, cooling units, and water tanks of the Kennels. Beyond was the shiny ribbon of the Old Yeller, Amity Bridge with its sweeping searchlights, and the Christmas-tree glitter of Kathattan.
I edged my way toward him, trying hard not to shiver—nothing in the Kennels is higher than three stories—and hoping like hell it was worth it.
“‘A dog may catch the worm that infesteth the cat,’” he muttered. “‘The worm may infesteth the dog, but doth the dog ever infesteth the cat?’”
“Say again?”
He glanced at me. “It’s Shakespaw, Detective—act 2, scene 3, The Great Dane. I was wondering how you felt down there.”
“Down where?”
“In the museum. With the eyes of ancient cats staring over you disdainfully. Did it make you feel humbled? Awed? Or just irritated?”
I wondered what this had to do anything. “Irritated,” I said.
“But why?”
“‘Coz I’m sick of kitties acting like kings.”
He smiled faintly. “So you recognize, at least, that the exhibition serves a larger purpose? That it’s part of a systematic and highly organized domination agenda?”
“Course.”
“And you choose not to fight it?”
“What’s there to fight?”
He looked at me strangely, and I wondered what his game was, talking to me like this—was Bud right? Was he off his pills?
“And over there, Detective.” He pointed to an illuminated Chump’s sign. “Did you know that Doofus Rufus was the brainchild of a Kathattan advertising executive who later became an adviser to President Brewster Goodboy? That the whole aim of the Doofus campaign is to manufacture around Chump’s an air of harmless naïveté? An absence of cynicism? So that the consumer equates innocence with trustworthiness?”
He sounded like one of those spectacle-wearing idealists who wrote some of the radical texts I read after the war. I didn’t think they bred them anymore. “What of it?” I said.
“Do you eat canned meat, Detective?”
“I ain’t got time to catch my own.”
“And it doesn’t bother you that the food is ninety percent offal? That it’s processed by dog workers paid two biscuits an hour? That Chump’s is just one leg of a multinational conglomerate that owns a full quarter of Kathattan and nearly half of the Kennels, including quite possibly the building you live in?”
“So what?” He was treating me like a schoolhound.
“Can I show you something?”
He went nimbly along the ledge. I shuffled after him, not looking down.
“There,” he said, pointing across the river, “the tall building shaped like a ziggurat. Imperial Heights. That’s where I live. As many as nine hundred other cats also reside in its apartments. Most live alone. They dine well. They dress well. They earn exceptional money. They travel widely. They drive vehicles three times too large for them. They primp and preen themselves obsessively. But would you care to guess how many have ever met a dog? And by dog I don’t mean a top dog, a servant, or a maintenance worker. I mean a regular dog, a Yap. Because that’s what they call them in my building—Yaps.”
I shrugged. “About the same number of Yaps who’ve met a Mog.”
He smirked. “A solid answer, Detective. You know, I myself had never sustained a long conversation with a dog until I went to university. And it was this—my blatant ignorance—that impelled me to seek enlightenment. I studied canine history. Canine psychology. I acquainted myself intimately with canine societies. I hunted with the Malamutes in the wilds of Canada. I lived with Elkhounds in the forests of Norway. I herded goats with Kuvaszes in the Alps of Hungary. If it had not been against the law I might even have married a dog. But I did the next best thing. I wed a highly progressive Abyssinian. A legal adviser, a specialist in canine dialects. Cuddles was her name.”
“You’re married?” I said—I thought all cats were loners.
“I was married, Detective.” Lap was looking into the sheets of rain like he was staring into the past. “Two years ago Cuddles was doing some pro bono legal work in the Kennels. Late one night she was trying to hail a cab when she was ambushed by a pack of hoondogs. They chased her into a Laundromat and drowned her in a washing machine.”
“That’s too bad,” I said, meaning to sound honest, but it didn’t quite come out that way.
Lap glanced at me. “You’re wondering if I blame your species. Not at all. Such acts are reprehensible, even inexcusable, but sociologically not unexpected. The tragedy, indeed, only deepened my resolve to continue her work—to further bridge the chasm between dogs and cats. But it changed me in less constructive ways, too. For a start, you can surely appreciate how it made me feel about water.”
I looked out at the rain. “We can go inside, if you want.”
“It’s all right—one cannot overcome one’s fears without confronting them,” he said. “But what about you, Detective? Are you yourself comfortable up here?”
“I’ve been higher before.”
“Comfortable with me, I mean? Do you have confidence in my abilities?”
“I’ll let you know when I see your abilities.”
He smiled. “And now you’re wondering if the CAT Squad will be summoned, am I right?”
I grunted. “What I’m wondering is how a mutt gets a privat
e conversation around here.”
“Never mind,” Lap said. “I do believe the CAT Squad will be brought in at some stage. But only as a last resort.”
“I don’t get you.”
“They’re too good at their work. They’re capable of capturing a feral without killing him.”
“I still don’t get you.”
“I mean there are many ‘interested parties’ out there who don’t want to see the feral alive.”
“What parties?”
“That’s what I intend to find out. But you’ll recall that I said I was looking for a pattern? Well, tonight I believe I might have found one. Here.” He handed me the brochure for the Pharaohs Exhibition. “The corporate sponsors—please read them out.”
I squinted—even a seeing-eye dog would’ve struggled in the gloom—and did my best: “Chump’s, Inc…. RCN…Cleopatra Flea Treatments…Piñero and Valdez Limited of Venezuela…the Dog Whistle…Whine Magazine…Dogma Records…” I shrugged. “What about it?”
“Three of the major sponsors are branches of the Reynard Media Network.”
“So?”
“So do you not think it curious that we have been repeatedly advised to ‘read the newspapers’? By Don Gato, by Pompey the Gross? Even by Gus Bowser?”
“We’re not going to catch a killer by reading what’s in the newsrags.”
“No,” said Lap, folding the brochure into his pocket. “But perhaps we can find where he’s hiding—or why—by reading what’s not.”
“You ain’t making sense.”
“‘Let Hercules do what he may, the dog will bark and the cat will have his day.’ That’s Shakespaw again, Detective. Shall we go?” He brushed past me on the way to the staircase. “It’s cruel, is it not, to leave a dog and a cat out in the cold?”
I thought about giving him a nip on the way through, but I bit my tongue instead.
I STILL DIDN’T get Lap. His patience, his prissy movements, his silky tongue, his failure to get angry or frustrated or even to explain himself properly. It was like we were hunting a bunny rabbit, not a mad killer. He was a pussy, sure, and therefore with an entirely different brainpot, but not even Humphrey MacFluff was as cool and curly as this.
“We need to consult with the press,” he decided.
“Nipper Sweeney’s probably outside right now—I saw him at Solidarity Stadium.”
“I was thinking of something higher than a simple newshound.”
“The Daily Growl? It’s just a couple of blocks away.”
“Higher still.”
“I don’t get you.”
And I still didn’t. We were pulling up to a jetty in a bend of the Old Yeller River. Through the wagging wipers I could just make out the Isle of Tartare, halfway between the Kennels and Kathattan. Many centuries ago they said cat witches were burned there. Then it’d been used as a prison for a while. More recently it had been the San Bernardo residence of Lassie, the first transsexual movie star. And now it was the city base of Phineas Reynard, the world-famous media magnate.
“What’s Reynard got to do with all this?”
“Phineas Reynard has a financial interest in both the United Boxing Federation and the Pharaohs Exhibition. And the reportage of the murders in his newspapers has been, to say the least, interesting. So what does the fox himself have to do with all this? That’s exactly what I’d like to find out.”
I gestured back at the Kennels. “There’s a murderer loose out there, case you forgot.”
“A loose feral is one matter. Why he’s killing is another. And why the Rottweilers were hired to kill him in the first place is yet another. In any case, when spearing a fish you aim not at the image of the fish—because that’s just a refraction in the water—but slightly askew, at the real fish. Any heron will tell you that.”
“Herons can talk now, can they?”
“The point, Detective, is that sometimes the best way to catch a quarry is to come at them from an angle.”
But I was a bull terrier—an attacker, not a stalker. I sniffed out my quarry and when I saw it I charged for it. The only thing standing between me and blood was a straight line. But now, with this Siamese trickster, I felt like I was back on the obstacle course, still earning my dog tags.
To get to Tartare we needed to take Reynard’s private barge, but there was a toffee-nosed dachshund at the guard post trying to act tough.
“Mr. Reynard requires advance appointments for all visitors to Tartare.”
“We’re officers of the law,” said Lap. “We require no appointments.”
“Mr. Reynard is a longtime supporter of our law enforcement agencies and a contributor to its related charities. But he still requires—”
“Listen, sausage.” I forced my way forward and thumped him with my chest. “Either you get on the jangler and tell him we’re on our way or I’ll dunk you in the water and hold you down like a biscuit.”
He shrank to the size of a party frankfurt. But within minutes we were on the barge, in the open cabin, plowing across the water. Soon Tartare was looming up in front of us, with rain-swept Kathattan behind it—the closest I’d ever got to the island, and the smell of furballs and fishmeat was so strong I nearly barfed.
At the docking point were a couple of uniformed Dobies. They led us wordlessly through the pine trees and down a gravel path to the elaborate door of Reynard Manor. The place was dressed up like a hunting lodge, with tethering posts, a water trough, and staghead statuary. I jabbed the door-dinger and there was a sound like a hunter’s bugle.
“I’ll do the talking,” said Lap.
“And I’ll do the biting.”
“I trust it won’t come to that.”
The timbered door creaked open and a mallet-headed Scottish Terrier stared down at us over his muzzle.
“We’re here to see Phineas Reynard,” said Lap.
“As we’ve been notified,” sniffed the butler, stepping aside.
We entered a paneled vestibule four times the size of my apartment. There were mounted trophies all over the walls: rabbit heads, weasel heads, piglet heads. There were paintings of squirrel hunts in heavy frames smoky with age. The ceiling was ribbed like a palate. The carpet was grass green and plush as a meadow.
“Cozy little burrow,” I muttered.
The butler coughed. “Mr. Reynard will join you imminently,” he said, and headed off, sniffer in the air, to fetch his master.
I cast an eye over the framed photographs on the walls: Reynard as a cub reporter in his breakthrough interview with Fido Castro; Reynard with dogfood emperor Ronald Chump; Reynard with General Snowy Wolfenson, the lupine Secretary of Vigorous Defense; Reynard at the inauguration ceremony of Brewster Goodboy; Reynard on the links with Tiger Woods.
I knew there’d been a popular biography, The Quick Brown Fox, covering Reynard’s rise to the big time. I’d never read it but I knew the rundown. How he grew up in a quiet little hole a hundred sprints north of Edinburrow. How he’d stolen geese and poached eggs. How there was an ancient clan of foxhounds living on a nearby farm—the fourth estate from the river—who made life hell for young Phineas. How they chased him for sport. Flooded his family’s burrow. Ripped apart his brothers and sisters. And how they left the little fox with one gutburning ambition—that one day he was going to own the fourth estate.
“Wet outside?”
I turned. It was Reynard’s vixen—his fifth, I think—all coiffed and dolled up and wearing a chiffon number that plunged halfway down her furry brisket.
“The rain has not yet eased, ma’am,” Lap said, with a mincey little bow.
“I like it when it’s wet,” she breathed. “Makes you want to snuggle up inside.”
“It can do that, ma’am.”
The vixen swayed across the hall, eyeing us up and down like we were for sale in a pet store. “Are you from the war cabinet?”
“Not us, ma’am,” said Lap.
“From the campaign office?”
“Not us.”
“From that South American place?”
“South American—?”
But I butted in. “We’re from the law,” I said. “I’m from the Dog Force. He’s from the FBI.”
I could tell Lap wasn’t happy with me. But the vixen, pausing at the bottom of the stairs, gave a crafty little smile.
“Has Phineas parked his helicopter illegally again?”
“Nothing like that, ma’am,” Lap said.
“I hope one of his rabbit warrens hasn’t collapsed?”
“Not that I’m aware of, ma’am.”
“Then it’s nothing to do with me, is it? I like to keep my tail clean.”
“I’m sure you do, ma’am.”
As if to prove it she swiveled around to show her shiny red tail, as bushy as a feather duster. “Until we meet again,” she hummed. “Perhaps some dark night…at some dark hour…in some dark forest glade?”
Lap bowed again. “It would be our pleasure, ma’am.”
And with one last pointy smile—she was staring straight at me—she sashayed slowly up the stairs, steamy as a husky’s turd.
“Wouldn’t mind getting that on a chain,” I muttered when she was out of sight.
“I very much doubt you’ll get the opportunity.”
I was about to reply but Lap held up a silencing paw. I followed his gaze and saw a glinty-eyed figure standing at a side door.
“Greetings,” the figure said, with a lamb-snatching little smile.
It was Phineas Reynard.
HE WAS A stylish old fox, rusty red with a few streaks of gray, sharp-nosed, finely whiskered, pointy-toothed, with a firm white-tipped tail that some said was fake. He was kitted out in a ruffled cravat, leather foxgloves, and a silken dressing grown the color of sheep’s-liver. Putting aside a champagne glass brimming with sparkling springwater, he lured us into a little room filled with cluck-cluck clocks—I knew they were a passion of his—and started winding them with a bent little tool.
The Unscratchables Page 9