The Man Who Understood Cats

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

  The only hope was that the asshole was capable of making stupid mistakes when he was scared. It was a stupid mistake to try to blackmail and kill Dr. Caleb. The killer must have been afraid that if they kept digging, they’d find the whatever. So the thing was to keep digging. And warn Dr. Caleb he’d better butt out.

  And speaking of Caleb, he’d better find out about this Mexico thing. Wouldn’t do to find out later he was a smuggler or something. He picked up the phone and dialed. “Special Agent James Avery, please.” While he waited, he paged through his notebook.

  Eventually someone came on the line and Thinnes said, “Avery? Thinnes.” He let the name register, then asked, “You remember that favor you owe me?”

  The U.S. Customs office at O’Hare Airport is located off the waiting area for the international terminal. Avery’s was a typical upper-level government office, with a computer on the desk. James Avery, thirty-five, was a typical, upper-level public servant, GS-12. He was naturally tan and unnaturally blond, and he seemed very fit for a desk jockey. He was on the phone when Thinnes was shown in by his GS-6 secretary. Avery held out his hand for Thinnes to shake, then waved him to a chair. “Yeah. Sure,” he told his caller. “You do that. And keep me posted.” He hung up the phone. “So, what can I do for you today?” he asked Thinnes.

  “Tell me about smugglers.”

  “You got a couple weeks?”

  “You search everyone who comes through?”

  Avery shook his head. “We go with hunches a lot. And some people just beg us to nail ’em. Sometimes nervousness or excitement gives ’em away, sometimes little incongruities in their story.”

  “You keep tabs on frequent flyers?”

  “Sure. And people who pay cash for their tickets.”

  “What have you got on a Dr. James Caleb? That’s C-A-L-E-B.”

  Avery typed the name into his computer, and after a few seconds it beeped. He swung the monitor around so Thinnes could read the entry. “This the guy?” Thinnes nodded. Avery picked up the phone. “Miss Henderson, is Schifflin here? Yeah, thanks,” he said, and hung up. “Schifflin’s an inspector,” he told Thinnes. “He might remember this Caleb.”

  “You ever check on what people are taking out?”

  “Only currency and electronics.”

  “What about drugs?”

  “Just whether they’re bringing ’em in. What they take out is someone else’s problem.”

  There was a tap on the door, and Schifflin entered. He looked about eighty years old and walked with a shuffle, but he had very agile eyes. He studied Thinnes as they were introduced.

  “Do you remember a Dr. James Caleb?” Thinnes asked him.

  “Big fellow? Expensive suits? Goes to Mexico once a month?” Thinnes nodded, impressed. “What about him?”

  “You ever search him?”

  “Yep. First two times he came through. By the third time, we had him trained to turn his pockets out, so we don’t bother anymore. S’waste of time to search everyone.”

  “You ever ask what he takes out?”

  “Drug samples for some clinic he works at down there.”

  “Have you been checking recently to see if he’s bringing drugs in?”

  “Should we be?”

  Thirty-Seven

  Twenty-sixth and California. Cook County Criminal Court. Fourth floor. Caleb stood in the holding room outside the court of Judge Leticia Wilson and listened for his name. Now that he’d been arrested, it was harder to be optimistic about his chance of being cleared, even if Finley’s nemesis had slipped up. The frame-up was proof he was treading on someone’s heels. Or at least making that someone uncomfortable. Caleb should have felt elated, but he felt only exceptionally tired. The after-effect of a cocaine OD, he told himself, exacerbated by heat and humidity and record ozone levels. Something that would pass.

  A hand-lettered sign on the wall said:

  PROCESS TO BOND OUT.

  1) ASK SHERIFF FOR PAPERS

  2) Go TO DIVISION #5 AND PAY BOND

  3) RETURN BOND SLIP TO THE SHERIFF

  4) BE SEATED AND WAIT

  5) BOND ROOM HOURS 9:00 AM TO 3:00 AM.

  Through the open door to the courtroom, Caleb could hear the judge announce, “probable cause,” and set an I-bond of two thousand dollars and a court date in six weeks time.

  “Do you understand, Mr. Washington,” she asked the defendant, “that a condition of your bond is that you attend every court date? If you fail to appear in court, you can, under Illinois law, be tried and found guilty in your absence. And you could be sentenced in your absence.” Caleb couldn’t hear the defendant’s answer. Shortly Mr. Washington, who looked all of seventeen years old and was dressed in ragged jeans and untied athletic shoes, was escorted back to the holding room by a dark-uniformed sheriff’s deputy who was courteous but totally detached. Caleb heard the clerk call, “James Caleb. Detective Oster.” The deputy motioned for him to enter the courtroom.

  The room was high-ceilinged and walled with travertine marble and had tall windows and genuine dark wood and bronze ornamentation. The floor was green and white linoleum, though a worn carpet covered the half occupied by the Court itself. There was a photocopied sign taped on the bench to the judge’s left that said DO NOT APPROACH CLERK WHILE COURT IS IN SESSION. Above the message, the clerk sat in his brown uniform jacket and passed papers to the judge, who looked like somebody’s grandmother, tiny and gray-haired, peering down through her little half-frame reading glasses. When she looked up, Caleb noticed, her eyes were as hard as Justice’s, under the blindfold, and impartial as marble.

  Harrison, Caleb’s attorney, was waiting for him by a heavy wooden table in front of the judge. Another man in a blue business suit stood pawing through a tan metal tote-file on a similar table nearby. Caleb guessed he was the state’s attorney, and the seven men seated in the pewlike jury benches were police officers; two wore the regular blue Chicago Police Department uniform, with handcuffs and service revolvers on their belts and name badges and stars on their shirtfronts. The other five, including the detective who’d arrested him, wore slacks and shirts and IDs. And inconspicuous guns. Four of them had ties. Their suit jackets were thrown or neatly folded on the pews nearby. A white-shirted police sergeant sat near the clerk. He seemed to be part of the court, as did a dark-uniformed sheriff’s deputy. There were about two dozen people, primarily black people, sitting in the spectators’ pews.

  The room was hot. The air conditioning couldn’t cope with all the radiating bodies, each with its envelope of self-generated steam. A fan set up near the bench served only to rearrange the heat; cops and attorneys, prosecutors and defendants suffered equally. The police had removed their coats and loosened their ties, but the state’s attorney and Harrison and Caleb all wore theirs. Caleb wondered why they didn’t strip them off in rebellion. Were they too stupefied by the heat to ponder the absurdity of the convention? Even the judge looked slightly wilted in her robe.

  When Caleb got to the table, the clerk said, “Dr. Caleb is being charged with possession of a controlled substance.” It sounded like something you read about in the paper. It probably wasn’t serious enough to send him to prison forever and ever, but it was enough to get his license revoked.

  Detective Oster stepped up next to the state’s attorney. Except for the gun on his belt and his wary eyes, he looked like a shoe salesman. The judge asked, “Are you the arresting officer?” Oster nodded.

  The clerk said, “Raise your right hand. Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?”

  “I do.”

  The state’s attorney said, “Officer, would you please state your name, star number, and unit of assignment for the record?”

  Oster complied. Caleb listened while the state’s attorney led him through a recital of how he’d been called to Caleb’s apartment to investigate a suspicious substance found when police and paramedics responded to a 911 call. A subsequent search of the
apartment—with a duly issued warrant—had yielded an additional 1.29 grams of the substance, which the crime lab had since identified as cocaine. Harrison was allowed to ask Oster some questions, but the judge eventually said, “Finding of probable cause. Dr. Caleb, do you understand the charges against you?”

  Harrison said, “He does, Your Honor.”

  “Bond set at fifty thousand dollars. Counselor, you’ll advise your client of the seriousness of the charge and the consequences if he doesn’t show up in court?”

  “Yes, your Honor.”

  Caleb felt profound uninterest, as if someone else had just been charged. The proceeding was a formality; bail had already been arranged. Harrison was sure he’d get off, and Harrison got paid plenty to know these things. “You’re lucky,” he’d said. “They could have shipped you to Cermak, or sent uniform cops to put the cuffs on at your place of business, or trucked you down here in a squadrol.”

  And Caleb agreed. He’d been lucky. County jail was one of those places you read about, then put out of your mind as quickly as possible. One of the great unmanageables, like illiteracy or unemployment. Depressing. He had been lucky. He hadn’t been raped. He hadn’t been strip-searched, or put in with cellmates like the young toughs in the next pen who made no bones about what they’d like to do with a fat-cat honkey. It was bad enough that they’d cuffed him when they got to the jail. Bad enough to be fingerprinted and photographed and stuck in a holding cell with a drunk. Enough to make you go straight. Even though Detective Oster had been almost deferential.

  He wondered about that. After all, as far as the police were concerned, he’d been caught red-handed. Red-handed? Red herring. Caleb hadn’t seen Thinnes, but why should he? As far as the police were concerned, this wasn’t a crime of violence. He wondered if Thinnes had spoken to Oster, if Thinnes believed him. Maybe they were just giving him more rope.

  Then the sheriff’s deputy said he could go, and Harrison said he’d meet him in the hall. As he walked out, Caleb looked over the faces of the spectators. How many were reporters? How many were seeking justice? How many the perversion of it?

  He spotted Thinnes near the door. The detective must’ve come in during the hearing. He’d seated himself in the jury pew nearest the holding room door. Thinnes took a key from his pocket and held it up, then tossed it to Caleb, who caught it. It was his apartment key. Thinnes said nothing and his face gave no clue to what he was thinking.

  Outside the courthouse the sun filtered through a chemical haze and lay in shimmering mirage pools far down California Avenue. As he and Harrison left the building, the heat hit Caleb like a sedative. Ozone and auto emissions irritated his eyelids like the Sandman’s sand. Nada, he thought, paraphrasing Hemingway, Nothing. Nada y nada y nada. Nothing was important.

  Harrison had found a parking space in front of the old ornate entrance of the courthouse, the one that for security reasons was no longer used. They walked toward the car in silence. The attorney unlocked the car, and Caleb, following his example, took his suit coat off and folded it neatly on the center of the seat back. Copycat, Caleb thought. Cats sleep twenty hours a day. Estivate. Curl up and sleep until fall. Let Thinnes take care of the murder, and Harrison the law.

  Harrison paused and leaned on the roof of the car before getting in, rapping on it with a knuckle to get Caleb’s attention. “This is just bail, Jack. You get so much as a parking ticket, and you’ll be back in before you can say help.”

  Caleb stifled a yawn. We hold these truths to be self evident…Back in. Back in. Back in. He nodded, feeling as uncoordinated as a drunk. Got to get some sleep. He got in the car. As Harrison pulled out into traffic, Caleb glanced back at the building and saw that far above the average viewer’s notice, flanking the statues on their Roman columns, was engraved VERITAS on the left, and on the right, JVSTICIA.

  Thirty-Eight

  Hey, Mister. Wake up! We’re here!”

  Caleb snapped awake. He looked up at the funeral home, yawning, and handed the cabbie a twenty. “Keep the change.”

  The man looked at the bill, then scrambled to get out and open the door. It took a long time for his “Thank you, sir” to penetrate. Caleb’s watch said 10:05, but it felt like 4:00 A.M. It was hot. Doubly hot outside the air-conditioned cab. Ninety degrees, at least.

  Inside, the funeral home was fittingly chill. Caleb could see the image of Allan’s face in his mind’s eye more clearly than any trace of Donald in the remains before him. The corpse looked like some waxworks replica of Donald, although they had managed to make him appear at peace.

  Caleb hadn’t let himself love Donald, so the fact of his death brought him only the impersonal pain of an accident of nature. Acts of God didn’t leave him with the feelings of—what? Dread? Anxiety? Depression?—that malice did. He couldn’t think of AIDS as maliciously intended, not even the government foot-dragging.

  “Ahem.” Coming in so quietly, the man startled Caleb. Professional quiet. “Sorry to disturb you, sir, but I’m afraid …It’s time…”

  Time to close the case on Donald. Literally. Caleb nodded and stepped back to let the man get on with it.

  They were short a pallbearer; one of Donald’s cousins was late or had decided against coming. The funeral director ahemmed and er’ed until Caleb volunteered. The others seemed relieved that they could finally get it over with.

  The family—Donald’s mother, sister, and brothers—was waiting at the church, closed like sealed caskets to all but the most superficial expressions of sympathy. Having known Donald, Caleb felt he knew them and couldn’t feel much empathy, only a professional interest. Donald had been dead to them so long that this present burial was like a reinterment, socially discomforting more than cause for deep anguish. Caleb thought again of Allan, who lay unclaimed in the morgue, whose family wouldn’t be prepared, whose sister had no one left.

  He found it impossible to stay awake during the service. Sitting, standing, and kneeling like an automaton, he dozed, dreaming disquieting dreams forgotten before waking. Each catnap ended with a start and the fear that his inattention had been noticed.

  At the cemetery, the August heat pressed all feeling but discomfort from the mourners. Caleb fought the urge to stretch out on the grass. The service seemed like a charade or a rehearsal for the death of someone truly cherished.

  Someone like Chris.

  Caleb felt a wave of anxiety flooding through him. Death.

  Empty. Awful. Permanent.

  He’d gone to the morgue that night, talked his way in. He’d made himself look. And realize. And believe.

  The wake had been for Anita, who’d loved Chris too. And in a mundane, human way, for Margolis, who’d stared all night like a catatonic at the closed casket—Chris closed to him in death as in life.

  The day of the funeral had been cool and cloudless and brilliant—spring green and crystal blue—with an intensity that hurt the eyes. A day of superlatives. The private funeral, ironically—family only.

  Stop it! Caleb told himself. Just stop!

  Thirty-Nine

  A lanky, sandy-haired teen was staring into the fish tank when Caleb came out of his office with a client. The boy looked vaguely familiar. Irene waited until Caleb closed the outer door behind the man, then said, “Dr. Caleb, this young man has been waiting to see you. He didn’t have an appointment, but he says it’s urgent.”

  On this cue, the boy came toward him and shoved his hand out. “Dr. Caleb, I’m Rob Thinnes.”

  Caleb shook the hand. “How do you do?” The boy favored his father to a degree that made Caleb feel they’d met before. Déjà vu. Caleb indicated his office door. “Shall we talk in my office?”

  Rob seemed relieved. “Sure.”

  As they crossed the room, Caleb told Irene, “You can take off, Mrs. Sleighton. I’ll lock up.”

  Rob waited nervously by the door until Caleb followed him in and pointed to a chair. “Sit down, Rob.” He sat, and Caleb sat opposite. “What can I do for you?”
r />   “My dad’s seeing you, right?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I found your card on his dresser.”

  “One of my clients was murdered. Your father’s working on the case.”

  “Damn it! My dad needs help. I thought…I hoped…”

  “Why did you come to me?”

  “My folks had a big fight today, and Ma walked out. She made me go with…” Caleb continued to look interested and to wait. “I mean, she told me to come, and he didn’t tell me to stay…” Rob shrugged, then said, defensively, “What would you do?” He looked down at his hands, which promised great size one day.

  “Probably what you did. How did you think I could help?”

  “I don’t know. I thought…” Rob looked up, imploring. “If you were treating my dad…I just thought you ought to know.” He slouched back in his seat, unable to hide his disappointment.

  “Have you told your father how you feel?”

  “I tried, but adults never listen to kids, especially if it’s something they don’t want to hear. He just says, ‘Don’t worry about it.’”

  “And?”

  “He’s got a gun—and every once in a while some cop goes wacko and shoots himself or something,” he finished in a rush.

  “You think he’s suicidal?”

  “I don’t know. My mom said he’s afraid to go to the police shrink. I tried calling—the phone’s busy. I think he took it off the hook.”

  “Would you like me to drive over and see if he’s okay?”

  “Would you?”

  Forty

  Thinnes’s battered Chevy was in the drive. Caleb pulled the Jaguar in behind it and got out. He rang the doorbell. No one answered. No one answered his knock. He fished the key Rob had given him from his pocket and let himself in.

  The entryway struck him as typically middle class, midwestern, middle American. Caleb closed the door quietly and called out, “Detective Thinnes? John?” He glanced up the stairs and peered into the family room, then walked through the living-dining room to the kitchen. The house had a deserted air. Caleb felt the discomfort appropriate for a man invading a comparative stranger’s home under peculiar circumstances.