Called by a Panther

by Michael Z. Lewin

  “I see,” I said. “You're softening.”

  Chapter Twelve

  AND THEN THE SUNDAY STAR was without its where-we-found-the-bomb story. “Is it over at last?” the Star asked. Maybe the media-led “vigilance” was beginning to have an effect.

  Or maybe there had just been a glitch in Scum Front dynamite deliveries.

  Tune in next week.

  Instead I read an extended progress report about a different kind of terrorism. The kind that has lots of money and knows all the right people and gets pats on the back in the editorial columns.

  The report was on the progress of the urban mall over Washington Street, with its “skyways” to protect urban shoppers from urban traffic and urban weather while they used their urban credit cards and traded urban gossip.

  There were problems. Frontline stores were hesitating. Though holes had been blasted, work was stalled. Oh dear. What a pity.

  Washington Street. The old U.S. 40. Washington, D.C., to Indy and points west. Now to be the basement for a giant-sized Hamster World?

  Or was I just sour because my career as a success hadn't turned me into an urban spendthrift yet?

  After lunch I applied myself to invoices, in preference to Lesson Twelve in Teach Yourself Bookkeeping. I drank orange juice. I mused on whether my new dynamic life was going to be punctuated by humiliations every Saturday night.

  Five-fifteen. My doorbell rang. It was my soulmate.

  “Poet,” I said at the door, “did I mention that I charge double rates on Sundays?”

  I made way for him to come in. He went straight for the Client's Chair and dropped onto it. He made a winded sound. “Sorry about interrupting your devotions, old man, but opportunity has knocked and needs to be answered.”

  I moved to my Go-for-It Detective desk. “Well, I've decided that I will do what I can to help you, within reason.”

  “That is a great relief to me.” He stared intently. “Thank you,” he said.

  “So what's happened?”

  “Tomorrow must be the deadly day. Tomorrow I do the deed.”

  “What's special about tomorrow?”

  “Both Charlotte's children have been home from college all weekend and they each brought friends.”

  “I don't understand.”

  “Suddenly Charlotte is distraught and upset. She may say she loves a high-activity, high-intensity life, but she seems to have lost control. And I can't fault her. There is no one on earth who could keep control of seven self-indulgent, narcissistic, hyperactive American college students on a manic party weekend. It is time to strike!”

  “Oh.”

  “Well, tomorrow morning it shall be. I'll console her over breakfast. I'll remind her what responsible people they will become, despite being boors at present. I will amuse her with quotes from Shaw and Wilde and Dorothy Parker. `She speaks eighteen languages and can't say “No” in any of them.' Do you know that one?”

  He paused, but it wasn't a real question. He said, “And then the telephone will ring and it will be for me. `Who can it be?' I shall ask when Loring brings the extension to the breakfast nook. I shall look worried for a moment. But I shall say, wittily, `Probably the Nobel Prize Committee, saying I'm to get Literature.' She will laugh, my Charlotte, and I will say, tentatively, `Hello?’ ”

  I watched him mime the phone call, rehearse his facial expression.

  “And, lo and behold, the caller will be Vanessa's mother! She will tell me that Vanessa—”

  “Who is Vanessa?”

  “My dear departed wife. So rudely and untimely murdered. Struck down in the prime cut of her maturity by a gang of yobbos on the prowl.”

  “A gang of what?”

  “Ruffians.”

  “Ah. Ruffians. Poet, just how are you going to arrange to be called transatlantically?”

  “Oh, that's all in hand, dear boy. I have a sister. She's a bit of a thespian. I dictated the text to her last night. She's going to ring in the morning, our time. I've told her when Charlotte and I will be at breakfast.”

  “You live at Charlotte's?”

  “No no. I have an apartment as part of my residency. But I will twist my ankle tonight and ask to stay over. Charlotte will agree, but be slightly suspicious. But I shall make not a single suggestion or comment with innuendo, the perfect gentleman. We shall be perfect pals.”

  “Well, I guess you've got it all worked out. So does that mean you don't need me after all?”

  But that was not what he meant.

  He went through the story he had worked out for Vanessa's fate. It was strong on scene-setting and emotion and the injustice of random violence. It also had a moral: anything good in life must be grasped because life is all too short.

  My “job,” when he finished, was to comment.

  “As if you had been hired to investigate events,” he said, tossing his hair. “What would you do? Where would the holes be?”

  “The problem. Poet, is that if anybody questions the facts at all, the result will be to find that the entire thing is a hole.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Suppose somebody asked me to check. The first thing I would do is telephone the police where the murder was supposed to have happened. And I would ask for the officer in charge of the Vanessa Quayle murder. And they would say `Take a hike' or whatever police say over there when someone asks about a murder they've never heard of. And that, Poet, would be that.”

  “Surely they wouldn't talk to you on the telephone.”

  “They would tell me that they had never heard of a murder victim named Vanessa Quayle.”

  He cogitated. He said, “I won't specify where it took place.”

  I shook my head. “If anybody suspects it's a phony, all it would need is the I.Q. of a jogger to crack it in a day.”

  He sniffed a couple of times. But then he said, “You're the expert. What do you recommend?”

  “Am I allowed `Forget it?’ ”

  “No,” he said. He slipped his right hand under his shirt and flapped it. It represented his fluttering heart.

  “Your only chance is if nobody asks, `Is this story true?’ ”

  “Mmmm.”

  “So flood your audience with details. Have your sister get a printer to prepare a newspaper clipping. Arrange to get phone calls of condolence. Letters from lawyers about your wife's estate. Everything like that you can think of.”

  “I see.”

  “Are you going to the funeral?”

  “Absolutely not. The funeral's already taken place. Vanessa's mother will tell me that tomorrow and I will be upset because I would have flown back. Charlotte will console me.”

  “O.K., then arrange to get a telegram about funeral expenses. A fax from your wife's executor asking if Aunt Edna can have the crocheted bedspread she loved so much.”

  “I see,” he said.

  “Ask advice from people here. Shall I help her relatives? Keep the game on your territory. It's your only chance.”

  He nodded vigorously. “That's great, Albert. You've given me some good things to think about.”

  “All part of the service,” I said. I thought about adding a new entry to my “awesome” list. If I could find a way to describe it.

  My client rose. “I'm going to go home and make some plans.”

  And little as I had wanted him to disturb my Sunday, I had trouble settling again once he went. I still didn't like the idea of what he was doing. But I didn't much care for the idea of doing more bookkeeping either. Especially while the sun was still shining.

  Chapter Thirteen

  NIGHT SEEMED TO FALL with a thud. Right on the back of my neck. Being alive became uncomfortable. There was nothing I wanted to do. The last thing in the world I wanted to be was a Go-for-It Detective. Or any kind of detective. Or even a major-league pitcher: it was that bad.

  I hate it when I have gut feelings and can't sort them out.

  I want to wave a wand and stop time and be presented with a set of
life footnotes.

  But it never happens.

  Time limped on, and after twenty profoundly uneasy minutes I finally did a constructive thing: I wrote a list of the things I didn't want to do.

  Then I decided to write my daughter a letter.

  I got out a piece of paper. I filled my fountain pen.

  But I didn't start it. Instead I sat and doodled and wondered where she was. I didn't know, except that when she and her sculptor parted, she left France and was somewhere else in Europe. I could write to Switzerland where her mother had lived since . . . Since forever. Since marrying her fancy husband, having shed the original plain one.

  Daughters. What was she doing? I knew she had taken to hanging around with some highbrow musicians. Was she involved with a musical Frank? How could one explain to a woman in her early twenties what was wrong with a Frank? Apparently acceptable, by the standards of society. But not a person to trust something precious to.

  Like so many men, his bottom line read, “How was it for me?”

  Pointless, pointless, pointless ruminating.

  I hit myself in the head. Doing what a just God would do, if he or she existed. Saving him or her the effort if he or she didn't.

  What kind of value can you give to the opinion of someone who just nods and smiles when he gets called “soulmate” by a Quentin Crispian Quayle?

  I took a coffee cup and threw it at the door. Because it's the kind of thing that I never do.

  The cup broke, of course. I looked at the pieces on the floor. I began to count them. I played a game. How many could I see without getting up from my chair? But what constituted staying in my chair, my “Detective's Chair”?

  First I sat still with my elbows on the desk. Then I stretched as far as I could to right and left. Then I drew my feet up and stood on the seat.

  Then I sat down again and, carefully, tipped the chair over while doing my best to maintain fundamental contact.

  Once sprawled on the floor, I began to laugh and laugh and laugh and become wholer again.

  And then, to punish my return to non-wand-waving humanity, I heard heavy footsteps on the outside stairs.

  The doorbell rang.

  Chapter Fourteen

  OUTSIDE WAS NORMAN, the lodger thing.

  “I lost my key,” he said. “Can I come through?”

  Norman had never been at my door or in my office before. I said, “How did you lose your key?”

  He didn't answer me. He slipped past me and crushed pieces of coffee cup.

  But in my bedroom he stopped after opening the door which connected me to the rest of the house. He said, “I've been meaning to have a word about your mother.”

  Him? Talk to me about Mom?

  He said, “I think you're taking advantage of her, using this place like you do.”

  “I'm taking advantage? Compared to you, I—”

  But he was gone and pulled the door closed behind him.

  And then the doorbell rang again.

  I couldn't believe it.

  “God,” I said, addressing It directly. “I saved you some time and effort a few minutes ago. Is this gratitude? Whatever happened to Sunday as the day of rest, huh? You getting senile or something?”

  At my door was Kate King.

  Her cheap wig still covered most of her face.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Uh, well . . .” She glanced at a part of the porch I could not see. Then she said, “You didn't follow the instructions.”

  “Yes I did. I didn't open the package. My mother opened it for me. You should be more exact about your language in the future, if you're so goddamned fussy.”

  She stood frowning and uncertain.

  I knew she was somebody's daughter but I didn't care. “Sorry,” I said. “No refunds.”

  “Uh, can you give me a minute?”

  “I could give you a whole goddamned lifetime, lady.” I closed the door in her face.

  I walked back to my chair.

  I sat down.

  And I heard people talking, female voices. The tones were those of whispered dispute. I couldn't hear the words.

  Adrenaline began to clear my self-indulgent mind.

  I stood. I took a step toward the door.

  But I stopped and returned to my desk. I sat and opened the drawer I keep my cassette recorder in. I loaded it with a blank and plugged in the concealed microphone that Go-for-It Detectives sometimes find useful when there are no independent witnesses to conversations.

  There was no guarantee that the women outside my door were debating anything more than which park to leave the next newspaper brick in. But it was odd enough for me to be cautious.

  The voices stopped. My bell rang again. I went to the door.

  Kate King stood in front of three figures in long hooded jackets.

  Each of the three also wore an animal mask.

  “Oh, terrific,” I said. “A breakout from the zoo?”

  “Please!” Kate King said. “This is important. Let us in.”

  I shrugged. And stood back.

  The Animals came in three species. First was the Frog. She was about five feet tall and wore sneakers.

  She stepped on some cup shards. She stopped and, in a squeaky high voice, asked, “What's the stuff on the floor?”

  “We have a lot of trouble with barefoot burglars in this neighborhood.”

  Behind her came a Bear and behind the Bear a Gorilla. They all wore sneakers, and now I saw jeans at the bottom of the jackets. The Bear was maybe five four and the Gorilla five eight.

  They stepped carefully and the Gorilla closed the door behind them.

  For a moment everybody stood without speaking. I said, “So when do I find out what the hell is going on?”

  The others looked at the Frog. Maintaining her artificially high voice she said, “I have been elected spokesperson.

  “O.K., Spokesperson, sit your asylum escapees on the bench next to the door.”

  She nodded. The others sat.

  I pointed her to the Client's Chair and I went behind my desk.

  The Frog and I sat facing each other.

  The Frog took a breath and said, “We are the Scum Front.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  “I DON'T BELIEVE THIS IS happening to me,” I said. “Top of the all-time Indianapolis Most Wanted List, and they stroll into my office.”

  “We haven't come here to give ourselves up,” the Frog said.

  I looked across the room to the Bear and the Gorilla. At Kate King's mask of artificial hair. “No, I can see that.” I hadn't heard any speculation that the Scum Front was a gang of women. My mind was racing. They weren't here to plant a bomb in my mother's luncheonette.

  I looked at the Frog's hands. On four fingers there were white stripes near the knuckle. Whoever she was, she lived a tanned enough life to have ring lines in May.

  “So what the hell is this about?” I asked.

  “We have a problem,” the Frog said.

  I nodded. I said, “I take it Ms King has explained my position about knowledge of criminal acts.”

  “We don't think of ourselves as criminals,” the Frog said.

  “The definitions I have to respond to come from the police.”

  “Oh, we know that there's a chance that you'll run straight to the cops. But I believe you'll see you have a higher obligation than that to so-called society's law.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “We have a problem,” she said again. “We are too vulnerable to solve it ourselves. And maybe we shouldn't do anything about it at all.”

  She looked to her colleagues on the bench. They sat rigidly, watching us, listening.

  And I recognized that it must have been a traumatic process to decide to reveal themselves after remaining utterly anonymous for so many weeks.

  It meant their problem was important.

  The Frog said, “We settled on taking one person into our confidence. There is no time to spare, but if you decide not t
o help, that's all we'll do. Mr. Samson, you are—genuinely—the only person who can prevent a tragedy.”

  “I think you'd better tell me what's going on,” I said.

  “They call us terrorists,” the Frog said, “and in a way of course we are. But the only terror we seek to inspire is in those people whose lust for `possessions,' and `property,' and `material development' is destroying the real, living world that we and future generations must live in. If somebody doesn't stop them, they will destroy us all.”

  “Please don't give me a sales pitch. I have some sympathy with your goals, but I have no sympathy whatever with bombs, even if they don't explode.”

  “Not just bombs that don't explode,” she said. “Bombs that cannot explode. If we are terrorists, then at least we are socially responsible terrorists.”

  I said nothing.

  “Look at our record,” she said. “We've destroyed nothing, yet we have made a major impact on the media and therefore on public awareness. They know that there finally is a group in Indianapolis dedicated to protecting—”

  I held up my hand. “My tolerance for political lectures is extremely limited.”

  “Well, how would you change what's happening in this city, then?” she asked. “Education? The democratic process?”

  “I suppose.”

  “But the people with the power have those things tied up so tight—”

  “You don't have to convince me that society is heavily biased toward the haves at the expense of the have-nots.”

  “So the logical extension is clearly to formulate alternative—”

  “Stop,” I said.

  “But—”

  “Stop. My limit has been exceeded.”

  She stopped.

  We all took some breaths in silence.

  “I was trying to explain our thinking,” she said.

  “I'm thunk out,” I said. “You claim there is danger of a `tragedy.' Get on with it or get out.”

  “We left a `bomb' in the Merchants Bank Building on Friday.”

  But there'd been nothing in the paper. I said nothing.

  “We made a warning call in the early hours of Saturday morning. We call a cable television company—”

  “Cab-Co's Channel 43. I know.”