A Cat in the Wings:

by Lydia Adamson

  Tony was at his most dignified. He sat with a small notebook in his hands, making a real effort not to be distracted again by Brodsky’s prized collection of Hudson River School art.

  “You’re to be commended, Miss Nestleton. You’ve done very well very quickly,” Mr. Brodsky complimented me. “Lucia is lucky to have such a friend looking after her interests.”

  Brodsky’s careful, pear-shaped words annoyed me. And clearly there were some things he didn’t understand. He seemed to think that Lucia and I were the best of friends, an intimate, ongoing part of each other’s lives. Not true. Of course we’d known each other for years, and liked each other. But we hadn’t been close friends for a long time.

  And in truth, she had never been the kind of friend to me that Barbara Roman had been. When Barbara died and everyone said it was suicide, I had felt compelled to take the case out of my deep love for her. With Lucia and her current trouble, it was just a bizarre sequence of events that had brought me to this juncture: I had happened to be cat-sitting for a lady who wanted tickets to The Nutcracker. I’d contacted Lucia to get the tickets. Peter Dobrynin was murdered the very night I attended the performance. One thing had just followed another.

  The lawyer was also wrong about the commendable job I was doing on this case. Yes, revelations had been coming at an astonishing rate lately. But neither my intelligence nor my diligence had had much to do with their appearance. I was merely following in the footsteps of the departed Dobrynin/Lenny—and he had been such an unpredictable, charismatic, terrible, fascinating character that all I’d had to do was bend down and pick up the revelations like so many daisies.

  “Do you think you will be able to find this man Basil?” Brodsky asked.

  “I’m going to get some help,” I said.

  “From whom?”

  “A city detective I know named Rothwax. We used to work together.”

  “In the police department, you mean?”

  “Well, yes and no. I was employed briefly as a consultant for something called RETRO. It’s an independent computer unit within the police department. It deals, or tries to, with major unsolved crimes. This detective has been of help to me in the past.”

  “Good,” he pronounced. “That sounds like a fine idea. Keep me informed.”

  I wondered what on earth Basillio could be writing in that notebook.

  I met Detective Rothwax in a dim sum café south of Canal Street, about four blocks away from the RETRO office. He looked pretty much the same, albeit a couple of pounds lighter perhaps, a bit balder, a bit friendlier.

  “It’s nice to see you, Cat Woman. Been a while. I often think fondly of our stakeout at that kooky garden over there in the East Village.”

  “Surely you’re not holding that one against me, Detective? I gave you the arrest of your life—a fugitive bomb-throwing killer.”

  I looked down at the indecipherable menu on the table in front of me.

  “So you did, CW, so you did,” he replied. “Say, let me have that,” he said, taking the menu away from me. “Am I paying or are you?”

  “Oh, you’re paying, Detective.”

  “Then I’ll do the ordering.”

  As he talked to our waiter, I noticed there was a difference in Rothwax’s appearance. It was his clothes. They were much less shabby. Oh, he had always worn a shirt and tie and suit jacket, but before now they had tended to look like something he’d stolen from a dead bank teller.

  Now he wore a soft heather-gray suit with a spiffy patterned red tie, and his overcoat, which lay folded over an empty chair, was cut in the sharp-cornered Italian manner. Rothwax picked up on my scrutiny of his clothing. His eyes twinkled.

  “Checking out my new image, are you? Like it?”

  “Yes, Detective. Very much. Is there a promotion or something in the air? What does it mean?”

  “Nothing at all. A bad joke. I’ve been assigned to work some OC cases and I just felt like getting into the part. We theater people know all about that, don’t we?”

  I didn’t understand. “What is an OC case?”

  “Organized Crime. RETRO has expanded.”

  The first few dishes arrived—dumplings of all kinds in steamer baskets, on plates, in egg cups. I had no idea what the protocol was. Which should you eat first? Which was what? So I followed Rothwax’s lead and went methodically from one item to the next. It was all delicious. We chatted amiably as we ate. He became expansive, telling me the latest rumors about RETRO and its chief officer, Judy Mizener.

  “I want you to know, Cat Woman, that you’re still a legend at RETRO. I mean, every time somebody sees a mouse, we say, ‘Call Alice Nestleton.’” He enjoyed his little joke immensely.

  I had decided long ago to take in good humor whatever teasing of me he handed out. I often need him. I certainly trust him. And, oddly enough, I like him.

  Finally, stuffed from the meal, he looked at me slyly in that way he has—head down, eyes rolled up as if peering over the top of spectacles—and asked: “So what is this meeting all about?”

  “I need a little help.”

  “That’s my cue,” he said wearily, and whipped out his spiral-bound notebook, already turned to a blank page. I filled him in on the case. From his suit pocket he took out an old simulated-ivory fountain pen and uncapped it.

  “Name?” he asked, pen poised to write.

  “Basil.”

  “Is that the first name or the last name?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  He looked at me incredulously. “Okay. What was he in for?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Uh-huh . . . Federal or state?”

  I shook my head.

  “Did he do the time in New York?”

  “Well, I don’t—”

  “Aw, Cat Lady!” he moaned. “What do you know?”

  “That he was released from prison recently, maybe as recently as six or eight months ago. I know his street name is Basil. And I have a fairly detailed description of him. Also, I know the general area where he was last seen.”

  “Not enough for a computer search,” he said. “Can’t help you.”

  “Then what do you suggest I do?”

  “How important is it to find him?”

  “Very.”

  He stared at me as if trying to evaluate my need, my seriousness. Then he sighed and looked around. “I could’ve sworn this place had a pay phone.”

  There was one, just inside the entrance. I pointed to it.

  Rothwax pushed out of his chair. “Two quarters, please.”

  I burrowed into my coin purse and produced them.

  “Where is it that Basil hangs around now?”

  “Upper West Side.”

  He went away.

  He was back in five minutes. He tore a sheet from his notebook, folded it, and handed it to me. “The addresses of three halfway houses,” he explained. “If your friend got out on parole there’s a good chance he went to one of them. Even if he ain’t there now, he probably passed through. Do some legwork.”

  Rothwax said there was a special dessert he wanted me to try—a custard. That banal word hardly did justice to the delicate and singularly good hot concoction that I was soon eating. I loved it.

  We spent the rest of his lunch hour making fun of our respective careers. Rothwax adored actresses.

  ***

  The morning started out so successfully it took my breath away. But, as my grandmother used to say, “It is always the sweetest butter that goes rancid first.” Cynical old dairy farmer that she was.

  At ten-thirty in the morning, I stood waiting outside while Tony went into the first of the halfway houses that Detective Rothwax had identified for me. This one was two blocks from the river, on West Ninety-first Street, near Broadway. Tony found Basil almost immediately, seated in the television room. Soon afterward, the two of them were walking toward me.

  Melissa had given an excellent description of Basil, accurate in every detail, down to the shabby
blue raincoat. Up close, he was older than he first appeared—at least late middle-aged. And his face had that thinness and hunger and sharpness that one usually associates with addicts.

  Tony signaled me that he had already given Mr. Basil some money. I introduced myself and told him that I was seeking information about Lenny from those who had befriended him.

  “Everything about your articulation is dishonest,” Basil replied.

  His words, and the way he spoke them, induced a kind of bewilderment in both Basillio and me. Melissa had said he was possibly a Cuban and didn’t talk very much. Well, this strange character was no Cuban, as far as I could tell, had no Latin accent, and seemed to be almost theatrical in his presentation.

  “First of all,” Basil spoke again, “we both know that Lenny is dead, so you really can’t know anything about Lenny anymore. He doesn’t exist. That entity called ‘self’ has vanished . . . unless of course you believe the self survives bodily death. You are a beautiful woman. Tell me, do you believe it?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I hardly knew what to do at all. While I stood there, dumb, Tony made the suggestion that we all have a hot chocolate together. Why not?

  The coffee shop was overly warm. Basillio and I peeled off layers of sweaters and scarves. Basil seemed completely at ease. He looked around happily, his gaze finally settling on me. And an unsettling gaze it was. He began another strange monologue: “Besides—or shall we say, in addition to—your original statement was false, because Lenny was no friend to me.”

  “Oh, really?” Tony interjected. “I heard you were his only friend.”

  “He was, God rest his kindly soul, my employer.”

  It was during this last bit of declamation that I thought perhaps—just perhaps—I had heard a bit of an accent in his voice. But certainly not Cuban. More like Cockney.

  Our drinks arrived. Each hot chocolate had a mound of artificial whipped cream floating on its surface.

  I had finally found my own voice. “Could you please,” I asked Basil, “explain what you mean about his being your employer?”

  “Could you please,” he replied, doing an eerily good imitation of my own voice, “distribute another gift?”

  Tony extracted another bill and handed it over. Basil slipped it into his pants pocket.

  “Why is there need to explain?” he asked loftily.

  “Union against labor. Master against slave. Beauty against beast. White contra black. What need to explain, your ladyship? Lenny employed me on his staff. Or rather, I was his staff.”

  “In what capacity were you employed?” I asked.

  “Collector,” he said promptly.

  “Collector? Of what?”

  “Cash, your ladyship. Money. Scratch. Capital. Coin. Modes of exchange.”

  I could see that Tony was about to repeat that last nonsensical phrase, “modes of exchange,” but my hand on his arm stayed him.

  “Please tell me about it,” I urged Basil. I indicated to Tony that he should get out another ten-dollar bill. “In detail.”

  “My master required me to write a message on the wall of a building.”

  “Any building?”

  “No, bitch. Only one building. At 1407 Broadway.”

  “And why did you write this message? Who was it for?”

  “I’d write the message. Twenty-four hours hence—or sometimes forty-eight hours—a big black car would circle the building looking for me. Long-haired white lady would stick her hand out the window with an envelope. I relieved her of it, and brought same to my employer quick as jackrabbit.”

  “Who was this lady?”

  “She never graced me with her face.”

  “How do you know there was money in the envelope?”

  “The same way I know that a bear will relieve himself in the great outdoors.”

  Tony handed over a bill all on his own initiative then. It’s true, I too had begun to appreciate Basil’s antics.

  “Let me ask you now,” I said. “What was this message you wrote? And was it always the same one?”

  “Always. I put ‘Anna Pavlova Smith.’”

  My God! The name clanged in my head like the bell on a runaway trolley.

  Anna Pavlova Smith?

  It was the graffiti painted on the side of the hearse during Peter Dobrynin’s funeral.

  Suddenly, Basil wasn’t so amusing.

  “Were you the one who did that?” I asked Basil resentfully.

  He turned to Tony then. “What thing has Miss Thing just requested?”

  “Did you paint that name on a hearse—at Lenny’s funeral?” I demanded.

  “Not I. I’ve copped to painting a building. Over and over. Always on the downtown side. But a hearse? No. My credentials are impecunious.”

  I was silent for a moment, as I tried to decide whether I believed him. “Why always on that one building?” I finally asked.

  “Ask my employer.”

  I glowered at Basil. In a very short time, I had gone from fearing him to appreciating him to loathing him. Worse than any of that, I believed him. It was all so mad, but I did believe what he’d told us.

  Basil struck me as being entirely capable of murder. But Dobrynin had apparently taken care of his collector. Why kill the “employer?” To take over the extortion scheme himself? I didn’t think Basil had that particular kind of ambition. I had to find out who the extortion victim was, and what Lenny had had on that person. And as for that name, Anna Pavlova Smith, what did it mean, and why was it popping up again now, like a bad show tune?

  I pushed the gummy hot chocolate away untouched.

  “You are a beautiful woman,” I heard Basil say. “Have you ever worked under the name of Guinevere?”

  I met his wily stare but did not reply.

  “Perhaps you used to work the Knights of the Round-table?” he inquired, as he rose and took his leave.

  Was he indeed wily? Or was he crazy?

  Through the glass at the front of the restaurant I saw him belt his raincoat and walk into the wind.

  It didn’t seem odd that Dobrynin had befriended him.

  Chapter 18

  “You really think Basil did it?”

  Tony went on to answer his own question. “The guy seems more tragic than dangerous. More victim than assassin.” Suddenly he sat up straight and snapped his fingers. “You know, actually he looks like a man who’d be happy designing sets for prison plays.”

  I was seated cross-legged on my living room rug, close to Bushy. We were playing one of our games—S & G, for “stare and glance.” There really was no purpose to the game. No one won or lost. It was just a playful way to pass the time. We would stare at each other. Then turn away. Then just glance at each other. Turn away. The idea was for one to catch the other giving a look out of sequence. A mindless game. But I know that Bushy knows I’m playing a game with him, and that’s good enough for me.

  Tony had started to pace. I took my shoes off and noticed that the bottoms of my jeans had become frayed. And in the role of Raggedy Ann, ladies and gentlemen, may we introduce Miss Alice Nestleton, the forty-one-year-old vagabond-manqué. Tonight’s episode: “Ragamuffin on the Run.”

  “What are you smiling at, Swede?” Tony had been observing me while I was spinning out that fantasy.

  “Nothing.”

  “Well, get your mind back on the case,” he said teasingly. “I’ve been thinking about that stupid message Basil had to write on the building. What does it mean? And why always on that building? You think maybe the woman in the car lived in the neighborhood?”

  “I don’t know. But at least we know how Dobrynin supported himself in the style he was accustomed to. He was blackmailing someone.”

  Tony objected. “You can’t make that assumption. In fact, it seems more like some kind of drug deal was going down—or maybe payment for stolen merchandise. The graffiti could have been a signal that he had the goods, and the mysterious lady could have been paying off.”

 
; “Ah, but when and where was the merchandise—or drugs, or whatever—delivered? Why wouldn’t Lenny have had Basil deliver that? Basil said he was a collector. He never said he delivered anything.”

  “Well, I guess,” he agreed.

  Tired of S & G, Bushy ambled away. I lay down flat on my stomach.

  “You want to hear a very odd coincidence, Tony?”

  “They’re my favorite kind.”

  “I’m pretty sure that 1407 Broadway is at Fortieth Street.”

  He considered it for a minute. “Yeah, it is. I know because when I used to gamble some, before I became a born-again set designer, I went there once or twice when I won a big bet at OTB. The main administrative offices of New York City OTB are in that building.”

  “That’s nice to know,” I said sardonically. It wasn’t very likely that I would ever have to visit the off-track betting offices. “But the coincidence is that I believe 1407 Broadway was built on the site where the old Met Opera House once stood, before Lincoln Center was built.”

  “Yeah . . . so?”

  “Well, of course the old Met is said to have been one of the great stages of the world, and virtually every major foreign ballet company that visited the States would appear there.”

  “Right. But Dobrynin wasn’t old enough ever to have danced there.”

  “I realize that. But his mind was so strange, he may have chosen that building simply for its nostalgic value.”

  Tony halted his pacing near the window. He turned around and made an expansive gesture with his hand, as if he were putting the final flourish on a painting. Then he began to laugh. “Imagine the numbskull, big-budget musical somebody’s bound to do a few years from now. They’ll call it Lenny—no, that title’s already taken—they’ll call it Dobie! And they’ll hire me to do the sets.

  “I can see it now. Think on this, Swede. The curtain opens on a darkened stage. A single spot illuminates the wooden backdrop. There’s canvas, miles of light yellow canvas, stage left. And on it is painted an enormous erect phallus emerging out of a bed of toe shoes.”

  Tony whooped with laughter.