I read the veterinarian’s emergency contact number by my headlights as I stopped in the clinic’s empty parking lot. I punched in the number and handed the phone to Doraleen.
“Dr. Willsey? It’s Doraleen Rice… Yes, ma’am. Race Car, a white Persian… Something terrible happened to Race Car. We’re parked at your clinic. Can you come down and help her? Someone cut off her ears and tail. Thanks. We’ll be waiting.”
She handed the phone back to me. “Ten minutes.” She wiped the tears from her eyes and twisted where she could reach Race Car in Tank’s lap. She stroked the cat’s back. “There’s a bench on the front porch. I’ll take Race Car and wait with her up there.”
“You’ll get blood on your dress, Momma Dora. I’ll hold her. I’m already bloody.”
Doraleen opened the passenger door and spoke over her shoulder to Tank. “She’ll feel safer in my lap. I don’t mind the blood.”
I followed both of them to the bench and waited until they sat. “When the vet gets here, I’d like to go back to your street and see if I can locate the place where… that is, the crime scene. Look for evidence.”
Doraleen patted Tank’s knee. “I’m safe with Tank. You go on. If it rains, it might wash away clues.”
###
I parked at the curb in front of Doraleen’s house. I pulled on rubber gloves and took a Maglite. Blood drops marked a faint trail on the concrete. The trail led down the sidewalk to Doraleen’s next door neighbor. Four more drops and a blood smear clustered on the pavement. I sniffed the air and followed a scent until I knelt on the sidewalk near a plumbago hedge. I sniffed again. Shining the Maglite under the hedge, I spied an empty tuna can. That’s how the bastard attracted Race Car. Any cat within smelling distance would come to him, even one who was nervous around strangers.
I played the beam back and forth under the hedge. A white scrap of fur lay in the mulch. I pulled an evidence bag from my pocket and picked up the white object. A cat’s ear. My stomach felt like a fist-sized rock. Oh, God, that poor cat. I bagged the ear and found the tail and the other ear nearby. Bagged them too. I wasn’t sure what I would do with them. When I found the bastard who did this, maybe I’d make him eat them.
I bagged the tuna can. Maybe I could pull a fingerprint off it.
As I set the evidence bags in the van, a light rain began to fall.
Chapter 5
Al Rice took another swig of Irish whiskey, swished it around in his mouth, and stared at the stripper dancing on the stage behind the bar at the Orange Peel Gentlemen’s Club. What was her name? Brandy. Yeah, it’s Brandy. Or maybe Amber. What the hell difference does it make? This might be his last drink in his entire life. He’d never see Jasmine again—even if her name was Jennifer now. Tomorrow would be two weeks since Moffett had smashed Al’s left hand to smithereens. Moffett had threatened to send Teddy to do even worse if he didn’t pay. Teddy, now he was one bad dude. Always playing with that creepy-looking knife. A warrior’s weapon, Teddy called it.
And Rice hadn’t paid. Two hundred thousand dollars, by God. Moffett might as well demand that Rice pay off the national debt. That was just as likely. What the hell… it was too late. It was always too late for Al. Too late for something. Too late for anything.
The surgeon who repaired his crushed hand had given him a prescription for forty Oxycodone pills for the pain. “Take one every six hours, if needed,” he’d said. That was supposed to last ten days. Fat chance. He’d taken eight pills the first day.
Then Cinnamon, another stripper at the Orange Peel, slipped him a note that she wanted to score some Oxycodone. After her shift, Rice met her in the parking lot and sold her the rest of the pills for money and a blow job. The BJ wasn’t even good. He was too high to enjoy it. At least the money was good. For the last few days, he’d drunk his way through the cash while he watched Jasmine and the other strippers. Who says you need Oxycodone for pain? Irish whiskey is almost as good. Rice’s biggest pain was that Jasmine or Jennifer or whatever-the-hell her name was—wouldn’t give him the time of day. And why the hell did she change her name? He had just gotten used to calling her Jasmine.
He took another drink and set the glass on the bar too hard. He waved at the bartender with his right hand. He raised his voice above the music. “Billy! I’ll have another.”
Billy leaned across the bar. “Pay for the drinks you already drank, Al. You can’t run a tab forever.”
“How much I owe you?”
“$48.50.”
Rice belched. “$48.50. Sure thing, sure thing. I have it here… somewhere.” He patted his jacket pockets, then his pants. He stood up from the barstool. Stuffing his right hand into his left front pants pocket, he began to twist around, then tilted and took a staggering step to regain his balance.
A man two stools down peeled his eyes away from the stripper, regarded Rice from the corner of his eye, and carried his drink to an empty table.
Rice lurched into another man at the bar. “Whoa. Sorry, sorry.” He grabbed the bar. “Let’s see… Aha. Here we go.” He tried again, managed to pull a credit card from his pocket, and tossed it on the bar.
The other man frowned, dropped a few bills on the bar, and walked out.
“Al, you’re running off my customers.” Billy stuck the credit card in a terminal. He punched a few keys, studied the screen for a moment, and scoffed. He slid the card back across the bar. “Declined, Al.”
Rice drained the last of the Irish whiskey. Better enjoy it; it might be the last drink I’ll have. Ever. He reached in another pocket, found another credit card, and pushed it across the bar. “Try this one.”
The bartender stuck the card in the terminal. “Declined. You got any cash, Al? You owe me $48.50.”
“$48.50,” Rice repeated.
The previous night Rice had drunk himself into oblivion at that same bar. He had awoken this morning in his car with no memory of how he got there. Now he wouldn’t get enough alcohol to dull the pain of the real world again. How could he enjoy his last night on earth?
He lifted his left hand. “See this cast?” He had trouble saying “cast.” It sounded more like “cash.”
Billy shouted above the music. “No, but I’d like to see cash.”
“No, no, no. Not cash. I said, ‘See this cast.’” He waved the cast.
“Yeah, I seen it lots of times. What about it?”
Rice slid back onto the barstool. “It was a pres… a present.”
“Yeah, so what?”
“A present… from Monster Moffett.” Rice held the cast in front of his face and studied it with bloodshot eyes. “You know good ol’ Monster, don’t you, Billy?”
“I seen him around a few times.”
“He’s gonna kill me tomorrow, y’know. That’s why I’m here to enjoy the girls tonight.”
“Yeah, right, and I’m gonna be elected president.” The bartender shook a finger at Rice. “Listen, Al. Your troubles with Monster Moffett don’t mean shit to me. I got troubles of my own. You gonna pay your tab or what?”
“Sure, sure, sure…” Rice slid his hand into his shirt pocket and fished out a clump of crushed bills. He dropped them on the bar and tried to smooth them out with his right hand. “Oops.” He pinned a bill under his cast and pressed it out. “Too goddamn dark in here to see what kind this is, Billy. You got a light?”
“If you weren’t drunk, you could see.” Billy pulled a penlight from his shirt pocket. It was a twenty.
“How much I owe you?” asked Rice.
“$48.50.”
Forty… eight fitty,” Rice repeated. “I thought that was it.” He pushed the twenty across the bar. He pinned another bill under his cast. “Let’s see what this one is.”
Billy shined the penlight again.
It was another twenty, which Rice laid carefully on the first bill. He pulled another bill out.
A five, and Rice lined it up on the two twenties. “Here you go. Let’s call it even.” He tried to pick up the remaining bills.
“I need something to tip the dancers, Billy.”
The bartender grabbed Rice’s wrist. “You owe me $48.50, not $45. How much more you got there?” He pried the bills from Rice’s fist and counted them. “Four more bucks.” He grabbed the bills off the bar. “I’ll keep the extra fifty cents as a tip. Sheesh.”
Rice nodded. “Okay… Okay… So my tab’s paid. How about my other drink?”
“Go home, Al.” The bartender walked away.
“You gonna call me a cab?”
The bartender stopped at the far end of the bar. “And just what the hell are you gonna use to pay for a cab?”
Rice found that uproariously funny. “Just kidding, Billy. Just kidding. I don’t need a cab; I have my car. Don’t matter none. Got no home to go to. Oops, Momma wouldn’t like that. Lemme rephrase: It doesn’t matter, because I have no home to which I could go.” He guffawed. “No home to which I could go.”
The bartender walked around the bar and grabbed Rice’s arm. “Gimme your keys.”
Rice stared at him.
The bartender searched Rice’s pockets until his found the keys. “I’ll keep these until tomorrow. Come back sober and I’ll give them to you.” He walked Rice toward the door. “Like the song says: You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here. Beat it, Al.”
Rice stumbled out the door and stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, swaying. He staggered to the wall and leaned on it. Oh, Christ, what would happen to him now? Tomorrow Moffett would send Teddy Ngombo after him. He couldn’t go home. He couldn’t face Momma like this. He’d been there a couple of days ago. He couldn’t bear to see that look on her face again. He should’ve showered at Momma’s. He couldn’t remember why he hadn’t. God knows, he needed a bath. He hadn’t bathed in days, ever since his landlord left his clothes in a plastic garbage bag in front of his apartment. He’d tried the door, but the goddamn landlord changed the lock. That was a week ago, but it seemed like forever. He didn’t remember what he did with the clothes.
He slid down the concrete block wall and plunked down on the sidewalk. He belched and then vomited. He leaned to one side and passed out.
Chapter 6
I returned to the veterinary clinic. I tapped on the glass door. The doctor unlocked the door from inside and let me in.
“You must be Chuck McCrary. I’m Dr. Willsey, Sharon Willsey.” She was a plump, middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair. She wore green scrubs and bright orange sneakers. She shook my hand.
“Nice to meet you, Doctor. I know Doraleen appreciates you coming down after hours.”
“She’s a sweet old lady with a sweet old cat. I’m glad I could help. Follow me.” She led me down the hall.
“How is the patient?” I asked.
“Race Car is recovering from the anesthetic. Doraleen and Tank are with her. I cleaned and cauterized the wounds and gave her an antibiotic to guard against infection. Race Car is old for a cat and this was a shock to her system. I’ll keep her a few days for observation. That’s all I can do. If there are no complications in the next two or three days, we’ll let nature take its course and hope she recovers. Here we are.” She opened a door to the treatment room.
Doraleen sat in an upholstered chair with Race Car asleep on a white cloth on her lap. The old woman stroked the cat’s side, avoiding the bandages on her ears and tail.
Tank stood next to her with his hand on her shoulder. “What did you find out, Chuck?”
“I’ll tell you later. Right now I need to talk to Doraleen.” I turned to Dr. Willsey. “Can we leave?”
“Yes.” She lifted the unconscious cat from Doraleen’s lap. “Ms. Rice, after the anesthetic wears off, Race Car will go back to sleep on her own and sleep the whole night. I’ll check her again first thing in the morning and call you with an update.”
###
I unlocked Doraleen’s front door and gave her keys back. “Tank, why don’t you see if that coffee is any good.” I opened the door and turned on the light. “Why don’t you change those bloody clothes, Doraleen? Tank and I’ll wait for you in the living room.”
We were drinking coffee when Doraleen joined us. She’d put on a colorful Chinese silk robe and fuzzy pink slippers. “I’ll pour another sherry.”
I waited until she sat beside Tank and took a sip of wine. “Doraleen, do you feel like answering a few questions?”
“Of course. What do you want to know?”
“Do you know where Al is?”
“I hadn’t seen Al in weeks until day before yesterday. He appeared at my door drunk. Said he’d been kicked out of his apartment and was living in his car. I made him spend the night, though he didn’t want to. I tried to get him to take a bath, but he was too drunk and too stubborn.” She turned to Tank. “You know how he gets when he’s been drinking—or worse.”
Tank nodded.
Doraleen sighed. “When he woke the next morning, he couldn’t wait to leave my home—his home too, if he would stay here and clean up his life. I insisted he eat breakfast.” She pulled a handkerchief from a pocket and twisted it in her hands. “That’s when he told me that Moffett threatened to harm me. I told Al that I had a little money. I offered to pay Moffett if Al came back home, sobered up, and got a real job. Al laughed. He said I could never get enough money to pay Moffett.” She leaned a little closer to Tank. “How much does he owe?”
“Two hundred thousand dollars.”
“Jesus, help us.”
“Doraleen, did Al say where he was going when he left?” I asked.
“No. I asked him what he intended to do, where he wanted to go. He just walked out.” She looked down at her sherry. “Al is a sheep without a shepherd. He’s like the bumper cars at the old amusement parks when I was a little girl. External forces bump him around willy-nilly. He never takes control of his own life.”
“Tell me about when Monster Moffett contacted you yesterday,” I said.
She sipped her sherry first and wiped her eyes with her handkerchief. “Al told me he made a terrible mistake. He swore on my life that he would pay his debt to this… this… creature. Al meant it as a mere figure of speech to indicate his resolve to honor his debt. But this Monster man seized upon the statement and threatened to do me harm. When Al told me, I didn’t take it seriously.”
She smiled at Tank. “You know the lies Al tells when he’s in trouble. He’ll tell any tall tale he thinks will work. And whatever the trouble is, it’s somebody else’s fault. Al is never responsible for any of his messes.”
“Right,” Tank agreed.
“I thought Al had fabricated another fantasy. But yesterday afternoon, a few hours after Al left…” She grabbed my hand.
“What happened?”
“After I got home from school, the doorbell rang. When I answered, this awful man was standing on the porch, holding Race Car in his arms. He asked me if she belonged to me.” She wiped another tear. “When I said she did, he handed her to me and said…” Her voice broke. “He said, ‘Who will take care of the cat if anything happens to you?’ He said Al owed him money and Al swore on my life that he would pay.”
“What did the man look like?” I asked.
“A little shorter than you, medium build, dark-skinned black man, like a real African from Africa. Looked like tribal ritual scars on his forehead and around his eyes. Long hair in dreadlocks, like he might never have cut it in his life. Thin mustache, otherwise clean-shaven. Oh—he had another scar, not a ritual one, on his right cheek, like this.” She drew her hand down her cheek at an angle. “It was frightening.”
Tank said, “That’s not Moffett, is it?”
“No,” I answered. “Among other differences, Moffett is white.” I turned to Doraleen. “Might the scar have come from a knife fight?”
“I suppose so. It was puckered like it hadn’t been stitched professionally, if at all. The man’s appearance was quite fearsome.”
“You say he spoke to you. Did he have an accent?”
“He
spoke careful English, like it wasn’t his first language. He had an accent, but I couldn’t tell you where from. It wasn’t one I recognized like French or German. That’s why I thought Africa. Although there was a hint of British English.”
“Did this guy give you a name?”
She shook her head.
“What made you think he was Monster Moffett? What did he say?”
“He said Al owed the money to ‘us.’ I asked him who ‘us’ was, and he said ‘Monster Moffett.’” She waved the handkerchief. “I just assumed. He certainly looked like a monster.”
“Tell me what he said, as well as you remember.”
“He said Al had sworn on my life that he would pay and I was collateral on Al’s loan. ‘We take Al’s oath seriously.’ Those were his exact words. ‘We take Al’s oath seriously.’ He said Al better take it seriously, because they know where I live.” She sobbed for a time.
Tank and I waited helplessly while she recovered.
She wiped her eyes. “He said I’d better make sure Al pays the money or I would regret it for the rest of my very short life.” She twisted the handkerchief in her fingers. “Those were his exact words. ‘You’ll regret it for the rest of your very short life.’” She put her handkerchief to her face and cried again.
Tank put his arm around her and patted her shoulder.
I felt terrible for her, but I couldn’t comfort her as well as Tank. I wrote the man’s description on my notepad. I could identify the thug from a description that good. But so what? Doraleen couldn’t prove anyone had threatened her. I remembered my days on the job. The cops would listen to her complaint and tell her there was nothing they could do. Even if I found the guy, roughed him up, and told him to stay away from Doraleen, Moffett wouldn’t take that for an answer. Al didn’t deny that he owed Moffett the money. My hands were tied.
I texted the description to Kelly Contreras, a police detective I’d worked with over the years.
I drank cold coffee and waited for Doraleen to calm down.
This muddled situation reminded me of Iraq and Afghanistan, and I said the same to Tank.
Day of the Tiger (A Carlos McCrary Mystery Thriller Book 5) Page 3