Called by a Panther

by Michael Z. Lewin

  She leaned forward and took one of my hands. “This way,” she said.

  Chapter Fifty Six

  THE INTERVIEW ROOM WAS windowless and airless, but soundproof. There were even acoustic tiles on the door.

  It was furnished with a coffee table and four vinyl-upholstered chairs. On the table there was a fan and Picture Woman turned it on after she closed the door.

  The short walk had cleared my head a little.

  But the effect of the woman on me was still intense. There was something physical about her I couldn't cope with. And that was all wrong. I ought to be in charge here. She had stolen the bomb and I had tracked her down. I should be on a lap of honor, taking the cheers and the flowers and the women.

  In fact I was struggling to find breath enough for words.

  We stood next to the coffee table.

  She held up Bobbie Lee's drawing. “That's a great dress, isn't it? I just love it.”

  I went for “Yes,” but didn't get it out quickly enough because she dropped the picture on the table and said, “How did you get from this to me? Was it the gloves?”

  She lowered herself into one of the chairs.

  Carefully, I sat down across from her. I stayed on the edge. I was trying to get my control back.

  But for the moment all I could think of was the warmth of her touch as she led me to the room.

  I said nothing.

  She held both her hands up so I could see the spots on them clearly. “It's a disease, called vitiligo,” she said. “I'm not really self-conscious, but it bothers other people. They think they're going to catch it. So when I go out and don't want to have to explain, I wear gloves.” She dropped her hands again. “Hey, aren't you ever going to say anything? Don't you at least have to read me my rights?”

  “I am not a cop,” I said.

  “You're not? You're really not?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, thank you. Lord!” She dropped to her knees and leaned on the table as if at prayer. “I figured I'd get along all right in jail, but, Lord, I am truly thankful not to have to prove it.”

  “I wouldn't celebrate just yet,” I said.

  She stopped celebrating.

  She studied me. She said, “Hey, I wonder if maybe I've been jumping to conclusions. So you have a picture of me in a dress. So what?”

  I waited for her to rise from her knees, but she didn't.

  I looked at her fingers, touching each other. I suddenly pictured them touching me, running over my skin. They were beautiful.

  I fought to remember what I was here for.

  I said, “You took a Scum Front bomb from the sixth-floor fire hose closet in the Merchants Bank Building.”

  “Oh wow!” she said.

  I nodded.

  Her eyes opened wider, as if to encompass me more fully.

  I said nothing. Moved nothing.

  “Oh wow,” she said again.

  Then she laughed.

  I didn't know why.

  She said, “I followed her just for the hell of it. I never for a minute believed she was Scum Front. I mean, you're all suppose to be crazy foreign men, right? But Cecil told Louanne about Mrs. Morgason and these over women buying suitcases of stuff from Claude Williams. Well, Claude sells guns, and after a while I got to thinking, 'What if. . .' What if? So I followed her a few times, just to find out if it was possible.”

  “And,” I said, “it was.”

  “When I actually found the bomb, I couldn't believe it!”

  She clapped her hands. “And then I thought, man, I could take that bomb and put it anywhere. Someplace it would mean something. And so I did! I took it! It was the most exciting thing ever happened to me.”

  She stopped.

  I waited.

  She said, “You have the loveliest eyes, you know that? All bright.”

  “What?”

  “I never had any power of my own before. And then all of a sudden I had a bomb. It's a hell of a turn-on.”

  I said, “How did you decide where to use it?”

  “By carrying it around,” she said easily. “Seeing where it felt comfortable.”

  “You carried a bomb around the city?”

  “It was fun, thinking how crazy people would go if they knew.” She rested her head on the table. “It's the way I work,” she said lazily. “I need to try things out before I know how they're going to feel. Only no place I took it to ever felt right.”

  “But you always planned to set it off?”

  She sat up. “Oh yeah. I know that's not how you see it, but I just can't get worked up about dirty water when there are homeless people sleeping on steam grates to keep warm. And I'm sorry, I just don't see the point leaving a bomb in a bank and not making any boom.”

  The words coming out of her mouth began to quell the uprising I had felt elsewhere.

  Then I thought of the perfect place.”

  “Oh?”

  “What is Indianapolis? What's the symbol of the city? The 500-mile race, right? So I thought, what's the rush? Wait till the night before the 500 and blow up part of the track. And that's what really felt right.”

  “So,” I said, “why did you change your mind?”

  She looked surprised. “I didn't.”

  “Come off it, lady. A building on Ohio Street got blown up last night and a guy got hurt.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I heard about that.” Then, “Hey, you don't think that was me, do you?”

  “Who else?”

  “Hey, I wouldn't hurt anybody. Not people.”

  “But . . .”

  She said, “My bomb's in my desk.”

  “What?”

  “Or rather, your bomb. That's what you're here for, isn't it? You're part of the Scum Front and you've come to get your bomb back. Right?”

  Chapter Fifty Seven

  I LEFT LAW IN ACTION carrying a bomb in a plastic L. S. Ayres shopping bag.

  I shook as I walked.

  I carried the bag to the passenger side of my car and I put it inside on the floor.

  I closed the door carefully.

  I walked around the car to the driver's side. I steadied myself on the hood. I slid behind the wheel and put the key in the ignition.

  Then I tried to think what the hell I was doing.

  All I knew was that I was in no shape to do anything.

  I realized Bobbie Lee's drawing was still in the LIA office. But I did not go back to get it.

  The woman inside scared me. She did things solely because she felt like it. That was another planet in my mind, but in her presence my body risked becoming alien.

  I shook myself. There was a persistent tingle in my spine.

  It was dangerous even to look at the LIA window.

  I moved to start the car. But that triggered a flash of fear: would starting the car set the bomb off?

  I didn't see why it should.

  But reason did not hold its usual sway.

  I folded my arms across the steering wheel and rested my ailing head.

  I didn't want to be where I was, but the effort to go anywhere else was too great.

  My brain was in the middle of a neurological oil change. All the worn-out gunge had been drained, but nothing new had replaced it. Obviously I had to wait before I started to think again.

  So I rested.

  I laughed at myself, for using my car as a place of refuge. The symbol of twentieth-century America, the car.

  But everybody needs to escape sometimes, so what was the problem about that? Problems are my problem. Everything is a problem. Even the basic things. A place to live.

  How can it be so hard to lead a quiet life? One where what I do next is not always a burning issue. It must be possible to lead a life without danger. That was the thing about the last few days. Danger. Bombers and jailers and . . . dangerous women.

  Mom learning to shoot guns.

  The only dangers in a real person's life should be . . . should be drunk drivers and cancer and kids be
ing driven places by other kids and nuclear bombs and AIDS from blood transfusions. Who needs any of the rest of it?

  Maybe what I should do is quit this ridiculous private eye stuff. There must be some sort of job around for me. A job with a boss. A nice bossy boss to tell me what to do and when. A job that finishes at a specific time of day. A job with money. It doesn't matter how much. How little, more like. But at least that way I know where I am.

  I may lose a little on who I am, but what's so bad about that? Am I so goddamn pleased with who I am? Why haven't I ever seriously considered getting a job?

  Why don't I think about the things I never think about?

  What kind of lunatic am I? My private eyeing isn't going well, so what do I do? I turn my life upside down to try to do more of it! I “go for it.” Go for what? Quit, you jerk! Quit! Be normal. Think about normal things.

  How long has it been since you saw your daughter? Years! Waiting for her to sort life out? What's the point of that? Go see her. Get yourself on a plane. Your only begotten child, for Christ's sake. Be normal. See your child.

  And what about your own life? Your grown-up life. With your growed-up grown-up woman. Do you talk about marriage? No. It's a nonsubject. Well, maybe marriage should be a nonsubject. But what about living together?

  You get along. How the hell often does that happen in life? Of course she hadn't exactly cleared a closet for you. But you could ask. Why don't you? Why haven't you? Just because she'll probably say no? What kind of reason is that?

  Oh, Samson, you're one of these guys who lives with his nose against the window. Look at life, but don't touch. Look through the window, watch the dolly dance. Whish. Slide. Or how about tap? Tap, tap, shuffle, tap. Huh, funny. Next thing, you're going to take tap dancing lessons. Tap dancing, huh. Tap. Tap tap tap.

  “Hey. Hey. Mister?”

  What?

  Tap tap tap.

  “C’mon, fella. Hey!”

  I raised myself from the steering wheel.

  Tap tap tap tap. “Fella! Hey. You all right?”

  The window next to me was alive. Pressed up close and rapping on the glass with his knuckle was a policeman.

  I rubbed my face.

  “Hey fella. You all right? Roll the window down. C'mon!”

  I rolled the window down.

  “You all right?” He was middle-aged, a patrolman. “I saw you slumped over the wheel. I thought you was in trouble.”

  “No. I'm O.K.”

  “Usually guys catch forty winks in their cars, they lie down.”

  “I didn't have the energy to fall over,” I said.

  “Do you know you got a low tire back there?”

  “What?”

  “The tire.” He pointed. “It's way down, nearly flat. It needs to be fixed or changed.”

  “Oh, right,” I said. “I remember. I'll do that now.”

  “O.K.,” he said. And he left me.

  I started my car.

  Doing that reminded me of the bomb again.

  I looked at it on the floor beside me.

  I looked at the cop as he closed his door and moved his car forward a few feet, waiting for a gap in the traffic. He waved.

  A friendly guy. No doubt the kind of man I could drink with, share a few stories with.

  I could hardly wait for him to be gone.

  I waved back.

  Suppose the friendly cop had noticed the bag on the floor and had wanted to know what was in it. Suppose he insisted.

  It would have been all over.

  I would have been taken downtown. I would have been paraded for the press. Locked in the deepest cell ever conceived. I would have been questioned so intensely I'd beg for the interrogation to be eased back to the third degree. The only kind of lawyer they would let me see would be a blind deaf-mute who spoke nothing but Tzotzil.

  Spoke what?

  Exactly.

  I would have carried the can for the whole thing.

  The concept was ridiculous. I was too young to be jailed for life. I was too old to be jailed for life.

  I headed for home. To clean up and get my head together.

  Then I would take the bomb to Miller.

  Chapter Fifty Eight

  IN THE FIRST GAS STATION I came to I changed the leaky tire for the spare.

  On the way home I did not exceed the speed limit by so much as a mile an hour.

  I braked whenever I saw a yellow light.

  I invited buses to pull out in front of me.

  I stopped behind each stop sign, and then edged to the corner to look for cross-traffic.

  When I got to Virginia Avenue I did not park across from the office. Instead I turned around and left the car down the road, in front of Poppy's Grill. Poppy's is Mom's major competition. It's farther away from Fountain Square but it has cold beer to carry-out.

  I locked the . . . bag in the trunk.

  But I went to the luncheonette instead of up to my office. It was pushing one-thirty. What with one regurgitation or another, I was starving.

  Policemen are also better faced with high blood sugar levels. I walked in the door and found Quentin Quayle playing on the pinball machine.

  “Oh, Jesus H. Doughnut,” I said.

  From behind the counter, Norman said, “Mustard or relish with that?”

  Poet won a replay. I heard him say, “Oh, splendid.”

  I approached the counter. “Where's my mother?” I asked Norman.

  “She went to see her lawyer. I got a chicken steak left.”

  “What's she doing at the lawyer?”

  “Making her will.”

  “Oh, yeah?”

  “Everybody should make a will. It saves all kinds of trouble later on.”

  “You made yours?” I asked.

  Beside me a pear-shaped man in a sweat-stained Stetson said, “Hem.”

  Norman said to me, “While you read the menu I'll look after this paying customer.”

  Read the menu! I damn well painted it and hung it on the wall.

  Quayle won another replay.

  The Stetson pear ordered the steak.

  I considered a theatrical exit and going down the street to eat at Poppy's.

  But eating in a place like that could be risky. To my certain knowledge there are sometimes bombs in the trunks of cars parked outside Poppy's.

  I bent over the counter and chuckled to myself.

  I continued to be amused as I went behind the counter to pour myself a cup of coffee.

  I was laughing as I carried it toward the pinball machine. I spilled some into the saucer. I was in danger of working myself up to a genuine giggle fit.

  “Oh dear,” I said. “Oh dear.”

  I set my coffee on the table closest to Quayle's action and asked, “What the hell are you doing here, Poet?”

  “Wait,” Quayle told me. “I'm winning replays!”

  I went back to the counter. As I passed Norman I said, “BLT, no mayo, on rye and a bowl of chili.” He made no acknowledgment that he had heard me.

  I went to the doorway that leads into the house. There I flipped one of several electrical switches, waited a moment and flipped it back.

  I returned to the table with my cup on it and sat down.

  Quentin Quayle was cursing and hitting the machine.

  “Problem?” I asked.

  “I couldn't put a flipper wrong and then the damn thing suddenly went off.”

  “You must have tilted,” I said.

  “Rubbish!”

  “Did all the lights go off and then come back on again?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Tilt,” I said. “Gotta be. Come here a minute, Poet. Take a seat.”

  He came and sat.

  I moved my chair closer to his. I beckoned to him to listen up. I said in a loud whisper, “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  But as he often did, he answered his own interrogator. “I didn't see you drive up.” He looked out the window. “Where's your car?”

&
nbsp; “Poet, answer my question or you're a dead man.”

  He leaned back and raised his eyebrows and inhaled. “Well, Albert, old chum, I hate to do this to you, but I'm taking you off the case.”

  “What case?”

  “Surveillance of Charlotte. No hard feelings, I hope, but I want my money back.”

  “What money?”

  “I gave you a thousand dollars. There must be some left.” I considered. Probably there was. I said, “O.K. When I get a chance I'll draw up your bill and give you your change.”

  “I'd like it now.”

  “Well, you can't have it now.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because,” I said with British understatement, “I've got more important things to do than work on your account.”

  He pouted for a moment.

  “Besides,” I said, “Why all of a sudden don't you want Charlotte Vivien followed anymore? Is she marrying somebody else?”

  “She did see a man last night,” Quayle said in a lowered voice. “We followed her to this incredibly scruffy bar and she met someone there.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Ugly,” Quayle said. “And old.”

  I looked surprised.

  “I didn't see him myself, of course, but Bobbie Lee described the guy to me.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “And he was dirty too, this ugly old man.”

  “Hard to imagine what Mrs. Vivien's interest in someone like that could be.”

  “I could hardly believe it. She's always seemed so fastidious.”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “She's a wonderful woman,” Quayle said. “So you keep saying.”

  “Not Charlotte.”

  “What?”

  “Bobbie Lee,” he said. And he sighed.

  I just stared at him

  “She's so . . . so competent and sure. Of course she's not educated to a high standard. Your system here is so punitive to people without financial resources. But she's genuinely intelligent and earthily perceptive in a way that the culture vultures like Charlotte could never be.”

  I sipped from my coffee.

  “And it is incredible the way she's supported little Bill, Nora and Glenn.”

  “Who?”

  “The handicapped triplets. And now her dementing mother as well. Bobbie's life story is a distillation of the attractive face of feminism. She's so spunky and quick and strong.”