The Unscratchables

by Cornelius Kane

  At Amity Bridge the traffic was snailcrawling. Searchlights were swinging through the mist, up into the crisscrossing girders, around the rail tracks, down into the murky river. At the first checkpoint there were six stiffbacked mastiffs in black-and-tan uniforms. They sniffed the impounding wagon, looked under it, shone flashlights inside at Riossiti—who hissed at them—and barked for our ID.

  “Police business,” said Lap.

  The mastiffs waved us through. We were lucky. To the side a couple of Chows were getting probed against a guardrail. We joined the cat lane and whisked past the backed-up line of dog tooters. But then, at the far end of the bridge, there was an even bigger checkpoint, this one staffed by uniformed cougars. More sniffs, stares, and ID checks.

  “Duration of visit?” one of the cougars snarled at Lap.

  “No more than ninety minutes.”

  “We’re tagging the vehicle,” the guard said, stamping something electronic on the roof.

  “One can never be too cautious,” Lap said drily.

  A boom gate rose and we rolled into Kathattan. And now my gutsack really started heaving, because now I was truly out of my territory.

  “Have you ever been to the island before?” Lap asked.

  “Why would I?”

  And why would any ordinary mutt, except to feel bad about himself? Five hundred years ago the whole place had been bought from the local ’wowers for a smelly blanket and a knotted rope. In the centuries since then the pussies had done everything to preserve the place as an exclusive cat enclave, where dogs did nothing but water the trees, deliver newspapers, and eat the trash off the streets. Two years ago they agreed to open up the gates for the San Bernardo marathon—it was good for the buzzscreen—but so many dog runners piled up on one another staring up at the skyscratchers, and so many cats crowded the upper floors getting as far away as possible, that the whole thing was a bulldog’s breakfast. As for me, I’d only seen the joint from a thwucker—a tourist flight—but even those had got snipped recently for security reasons.

  And yet here I was now, gliding up the tree-lined avenues. Glancing at the spotless sidewalks. The Egyptian obelisks. The statues of sphinxes. The lion-headed door knockers. The sparkling windows of jewelry stores and perfume vendors and carpet emporiums. The opera houses. The theaters as big as temples. The flower boxes. The cast-iron lacework. The cemeteries with house-sized mausoleums. And everywhere the gardens—clipped and shaved and pruned and combed and watered with hidden sprinklers. In the Kennels, we had overgrown parks, where dogs ranged over hills and rolled down slopes and wallowed in mud pits. In Kathattan, they had finicky little gardens with fountains and hedges and gazebos, where the kitties curled onto little benches and leafed through their feel-good guides while sipping herbal teas.

  It was about as much as a bullie could bear. Everything out there was virtually begging me to leap out the window and start ripping. Slinking, slithering, prancing felines drifting in and out of the fog like ghosts. Fat-cats in svelte pinstripe suits, waistcoats, and gloves, carrying camel-hide briefcases and rolled umbrellas and legal documents. Glamourpusses in furs and feathers and sparkling tomfoolery sashaying down the street with troutskin handbags and ribboned gift boxes. Upnosed grimalkins with drumtight faces and horn-rimmed glasses leading pet lizards on jeweled leashes. Not to mention the occasional turncoat pooch—stuffy Pekingese and King Charles spaniels, mainly—mincing down the sidewalks like they’d never rolled in their own stink, never eaten their own vomit, never cocked a leg on a mailbox. The stench alone was enough to make me giddy.

  I was so distracted that I only heard snatches of the madly rambling Riossiti:

  “…conspicuous consumption…artistic coprophagia…systematic domestication…the illusion of self-determination…the world as a theme park…infatuation with bodily functions…the worship of kittenish females and puppylike males…”

  “Put a lid on it,” I said.

  “Actually,” said Lap, “what he’s saying is very interesting.”

  “Oh yeah?” I remembered the Cattica warden warning us not to listen to him for more than a few minutes at a time. “Got an ear for dribble, have you?”

  Riossiti interrupted. “Do I really seem mad to you, Detective?”

  “Mad as a ferret.”

  “Then I’ve done my job well. But in truth you have nothing to fear from me. My only madness was—and continues to be—my curiosity. If that makes me mad, then you may call me barking.”

  “I’ll call you whatever I want, gummy.”

  “Next corner,” said Lap.

  We passed a billboard showing President Goodboy wearing a leash and collar—not an image we’d seen in the Kennels—and finally I spotted the gilded awnings of La Plume du Poisson, wedged between a luxury hotel and an art gallery. I parked the impounding wagon in a vacant space in front of the joint. They were expecting us.

  THE WHOLE PLACE had been closed on police orders. All bookings had been canceled and some high-society kitties were being turned away at the door. We had an armed cop at each exit and a Malamute playing watchdog in the corner. We had three chains hooked to Riossiti’s collar—one attached to the floor, one to his velvet chair, one held tight in my paw. And under the table I had my Schnauzer cocked and loaded, ready to blow a hole through his catguts if he dared give me so much as a dirty look.

  But Riossiti was acting like it was all just a lazy evening with old pals. He shared a gag with the maître d’. He chatted with the headwaiter. He waved to the chef. And he made his order without even checking the menu.

  “I dare say we don’t have sufficient time for the entrée so I’ll go straight to the plat principal, if that’s acceptable.”

  “Certainly, monsieur,” chimed the waiter, a stuck-up Char-treux with curled whiskers.

  “The swordspine snook, how fresh is that?”

  “Netted last Friday in the Orinoco River, monsieur.”

  “Excellent. And what’s the parrot of the day?”

  “Ara chloropterus, monsieur—the red and green macaw, with a most exquisite undertaste of Brazil nuts and Jabillo nectar.”

  “May I see it?”

  “One second, monsieur.”

  The waiter selected one of the bamboo cages that ringed the room and returned to show us the terrified-looking flapper inside. Riossiti put his mug right up to the bars and made sucking sounds, so the parrot looked like its pumper might explode.

  “Yes, yes, very tasty,” he hissed, eyes sparkling. “I’ll take it braised and roasted very lightly—please make sure I can taste the blood.”

  “Naturally, monsieur.”

  “And please leave the beak and claws. I’ll have a side order of pommes parisiennes with sour cream. And Pont l’Évêque cheese. And, Jean-Charles”—he hailed the milk steward—“what’s the house goat milk?”

  Jean-Charles produced a bottle of Château Chevrette.

  “Vintage?” asked Riossiti.

  “Squeezed this morning.”

  “Excellent. I’ll take it skimmed and lightly dusted with cinnamon.”

  “Certainly, monsieur.”

  “That all?” I barked, losing patience.

  “Oh dear, please forgive me,” Riossiti said, “I’ve completely neglected my guests.” He offered me the menu. “Would you care to order now, Detective? I highly recommend the mousse au chocolat.”

  “Snip it, nutsack. We ain’t your guests and we ain’t here for munchies. So shut your clamhole and start mewing.”

  “What my partner said is correct, Quentin,” Lap said. “Your request was exceptional. Our indulgence to this point has been equally exceptional. We can only hope your revelations will be accordingly exceptional.”

  “Tell your partner he’ll need to make his own verdict on that,” smirked Riossiti. “But really, are secrets not best left to après-dîner conversations, when everyone is sated and comfortable?”

  “We’re comfortable now,” I snapped. “So get on with it.”

  “Do yo
u promise I’ll be able to complete my meal before departure?”

  “We promise,” said Lap.

  “Very well,” said Riossiti, waving away the waiters. “Curiosity is a cat’s most ravenous appetite, is it not? So why should I expect your partner to be any different?” He unfurled his napkin and nodded at Lap. “Please ask him where he’d like to begin.”

  “With the truth,” said Lap.

  “With the truth, the cat says.” Riossiti smiled his blunted choppers at me. “And yet there are so many different varieties of truth, are there not? As many varieties, one might say, as there are South American parrots in this room.”

  “The trigger of my Schnauzer is sweating right now,” I said.

  Riossiti ran his licker across his fangs. “Ah well, Detective, if that’s the way it has to be. ‘Let them obey that hold not the can opener,’ as they say.” He sighed. “You can start by asking your partner if he’s familiar with the word ‘neoteny.’”

  “What?”

  Lap interrupted. “He means the retention of juvenile characteristics into so-called maturity. Go on, Quentin.”

  “Your partner is very cultured, Detective. But then he knows my work well, and neoteny was one of my areas of specialty. Not the physical aspects as such—though they themselves are fascinating—but the psychological ones. It was the subject of one of my best, though sadly unpublished, works.”

  “And what’s this got to do with anything?” I said.

  “It has everything to do with the pursuit of your investigation, let me assure you. For it was through this book, suppressed as it was, that I was recruited to a secret government organization.”

  “The Office of Enforced Perspectives,” said Lap. “This is well known, Quentin.”

  “Your partner thinks he knows it all. But can he really appreciate how seductive it was for me, a doctor of psychiatry and sociology, to be consulted by some of the most influential figures in the nation? Political strategists, press barons, advertising executives, financial wolves, military tigers…figures with tendrils extending into media, entertainment, education, health, fashion, law and order, organized religion…anything with an influence on the Mighty Lamb?”

  “Please, Quentin—this was all covered in the first stage of your trial.”

  Riossiti smiled at me. “Your partner is becoming impatient. Or perhaps just insensitive. Perhaps he doesn’t want to hear the full story. Perhaps it discomforts him. The idea of a humble intellectual being corrupted by the company of big cats, foxes, and pooches. And all of them without exception living with contempt for dogs in their very marrow. Scornful of their intelligence, mocking of their pastimes and aspirations, disgusted by their uncultured taste, and yet inherently fearful of their numbers and potential for savagery.”

  I heard something sizzle in the kitchen and smelled something chickenlike. I swallowed my own slobber.

  “The organization that made me feel so special was dedicated to manipulating and controlling the canine consciousness. They achieved this—or imagined they did—through a highly sophisticated combination of browbeating, brainwashing, and beneficence. ‘Petting and bloodletting’ they called it. They worked to some extremely complex mathematical formulae. They read the population like climactic conditions. They forecast mood shifts like meteorologists. They harnessed the pack mentality by exaggerating and encouraging foreign threats. They channeled unwieldy aggression into sporting contests. They pacified and intoxicated with frivolous entertainments and vicarious celebrity existences. They sustained futile hopes with endless lotteries and gambling opportunities. They riddled the populace with phobias about physical imperfections. They encouraged short attention spans and constantly reinforced powerlessness. They kept the population puppylike, in short, in order to keep it obedient and emotionally dependent.”

  Lap tried to interject—“This is nothing new, Quentin”—but Riossiti cut him off:

  “Manufactured neoteny, they called it. Because neoteny’s natural selection—the morose don’t find partners and the cynical don’t breed—was deemed too unreliable. Because they wanted to leash and muzzle an entire lower demographic with swift and measurable results. And why? For some noble purpose? For the greater good of society? For progress and stability?” Riossiti gave a hairball-coughing cackle. “Of course not. It was all so they could sustain their own form of neoteny. Furs and feathers. Crème liqueurs and fishcakes. Whispering galleries and back-alley gossip. Epaulettes and plunging gowns. Territorial show business. International catfights. Teasing and tormenting. Basking in the sun. Stroking each other and stroking themselves.”

  “Do a bit of that yourself, do you, kitty?” I asked, but Riossiti wasn’t fazed.

  “I became tremendously disillusioned, naturally, but I remained curious—too curious. I asked too many questions. I went into too many forbidden rooms. I looked under too much furniture. Because I wanted to know exactly what they were doing with my research. And for my sins I was framed. There was no point fighting it. They had immeasurable power. The only way to keep myself alive was to play their little game. To accept my own insanity. But that—”

  “Quentin, you’ve claimed before that you’re innocent and—”

  But Riossiti whipped around—his chains jangled, his collar tinkled—and he stared Lap in the face.

  “And do you really believe I was lying?” he hissed.

  There was a furry second or two when the two of them glared at each other with tin-cutting glares, like two alley cats in a backyard dispute.

  “Easy, tigers,” I said.

  But then the parrot arrived.

  “DING DONG DEET”—RIOSSITI smiled—“Pussy likes to eat.”

  All knives, forks, spoons, and toothpicks had been removed, so he was left to dig in with his stunted claws. He flipped some macaw flesh onto his paw, tossed it into his gobbler, and chewed like he’d never tasted anything so sweet. He made lip-smacking sounds. He shuddered with pleasure. But when it came to getting the beak down his gutchute he seemed to have some trouble.

  “Would you mind, Detective, loosening this collar a notch or two?”

  “I’ll loosen your ribs before I loosen that collar.”

  “I can do it myself if you’d prefer.”

  “Put a digit near that collar and I’ll blow you and your nine lives through the back wall.”

  Riossiti swallowed lumpily and took a sip of his Château Chevrette. “Detective, I was rather hoping you’d be sympathetic even if your partner stubbornly refuses to be. But then again I can hardly blame you for being suspicious. It’s true that one can quickly become what one pretends to be. By which I mean that I’ve now played the psychopath so long that I fear I’ve lost touch with my real identity. It’s not something that makes me proud. Was I mad when I was seduced by the Office of Enforced Perspectives? I think I was, in part. Was I mad when I tried to claim the insanity plea? Not at all—it was my only logical escape. But am I mad now? Of that, even I’m no longer sure.”

  “This is self-indulgence, Quentin,” Lap said. “Are you prepared to name names or not?”

  Riossiti smirked at me. “Your partner thinks I’ve shortchanged him. He believes I’m yet to live up to my part of the bargain. Alas, he might still be disappointed.”

  “Why disappointed?” Lap asked.

  “Because he might not appreciate my rather perilous position—that I’m still in no position to say anything directly.”

  “What does that mean, Quentin?”

  Riossiti stripped skin from the parrot wing. “Delicious,” he said. “If I’m not mistaken I can detect a residue of Venezuelan clay.”

  “I said what does that mean, Quentin?”

  “Answer the cat,” I said, flashing my choppers.

  Riossiti dabbed his maw with a napkin. “I mean that I’ve spent a good deal of my incarceration examining legal texts—those that I’m allowed to read, of course. And I know that whatever I say now can be attributed to me in court. And that, accordingly, it is not i
n my best interests to speak unequivocally, especially with an election imminent. So I find myself compelled to speak metaphors that can easily be dismissed as mad ramblings. Anything else and my life might end in a matter of days.”

  I leaned forward, shifting my gun. “It’ll end in seconds if you don’t make good with the meat.”

  Riossiti hissed at me—his licker vibrated like a snake’s—so that for a second I thought he really wanted to be blown away, that this whole meal was about killing himself.

  But then he cackled. “You seek information about murderous feral cats, Detective. About two cats, specifically, who have been programmed to kill dogs alone. You wonder how—and why, and where—it was done. Well, I simply ask you to compliment the chef on this outstanding meal.”

  “That ain’t an answer, fungus.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  Lap said, “You can still be punished, Quentin—privileges can be removed from you.”

  “Does your partner really believe I have any privileges worth preserving?” Riossiti sniggered. “Tell him to ask, when he compliments the chef, exactly how much the fish costs.”

  “What’s the price of fish got to do with anything?” I growled.

  “Tell him to ask specifically about the swordspine snook. And the red and green macaw. Ask the chef where the delicacies were obtained. And I don’t mean the country.”

  “No more games, Quentin.”

  “When spearing a fish,” Riossiti said, “the heron aims not at the image of the fish, but slightly askew, at the actual fish—is that not so? That’s what I used to tell my students anyway. So why does your partner not simply follow my advice? There’s no harm in trying.”

  Lap looked at Riossiti and then to me. “Can you handle him yourself, Detective, if he tries anything foolish?”

  “I’ll be all over him like flea-rash if he does.”

  “Then please give me a minute.”

  Lap nodded to the Malamute and went through the swingers into the kitchen. I saw him mewing with the chef as Riossiti returned to the meal, cleaning up everything—claws, ribcage, fish bones—like he might never eat again.