Cat on a Cold Tin Roof

by Mike Resnick

  I shook my head. “This isn’t a game of finders keepers, Velma,” I said. “If I keep them, you or the insurance company will charge me with theft, and I won’t be able to talk my way out of it.”

  “With that kind of money you’ll hire the kind of lawyers Jim hired and get off scot-free.”

  “Even Jim’s lawyer couldn’t prove I had a right to the diamonds,” I said. “I just want to find them before the other parties do, and turn them in for a reward.”

  “Fine,” she said. “Go. I’m sick of the sight of you.”

  “I thought you’d like to make my job easier,” I said.

  “Fuck you.”

  “Or at least faster,” I continued as Fluffy walked into the room and began rubbing herself against my left leg.

  “Oh?” she said, arching an eyebrow.

  “I know they’re valuable diamonds,” I began. “But they aren’t the only ones in the world, or even in the Grandin Road area. There’s a lot of money within a mile or a mile and a half of here, and probably a lot of diamonds as well.”

  “So?”

  “So if I find them, I need to know if they’re the ones that were on the collar,” I continued.

  She frowned. “How do you do that?”

  “Did he buy them after you’d left the mob and moved to Cincinnati?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then they weren’t hot,” I said. “And if he bought them legitimately, he probably insured them.”

  “So?”

  “So every valuable diamond has an identifying mark, something you need a jeweler’s loupe to see. The insurance will describe the marks, so if I come across what looks like the right batch I can make sure of it.”

  “So you want . . . ?”

  “The policy or a copy of it.”

  “I don’t know if he had one.”

  “Makes sense that he would,” I said. “Money was his business.”

  “But the cat never went out. Well, until . . .”

  “But she could have darted out,” I said. “Or some maid or handyman or anyone else who could spot that the diamonds were real could have taken it off her and left with it. You don’t just let ten million dollars go riding around on a cat’s neck without some protection—and the most logical protection is an insurance policy.”

  “Like I said, I don’t know if he insured it.”

  “Has he got an office, a desk, something?” I said. “I can check.”

  “Bullshit!” she snapped, getting to her feet. “You stay right where you are. I’ll check.”

  She got up, walked to the staircase, and began climbing up to the second floor, while I spent the next ten minutes petting Fluffy, which I had a feeling was the only thing in the house I was allowed to touch.

  She began purring like a buzz saw and didn’t climb onto the couch and try to push me off the softest part, which put her one up on Marlowe.

  Finally Velma came back down the stairs with a manila envelope in her hand.

  “You found it,” I said.

  “Of course I found it.”

  I got up, walked over, and reached for it.

  “Not so fast!” she snapped.

  I looked at her curiously but didn’t speak.

  “You can make a copy of it. I want the original returned.”

  “Fair enough,” I said.

  “If it’s not back in ninety minutes, I’m calling the police and telling them that you stole it.”

  “Have you always been a trusting soul, Velma, or has it just come with . . . ah . . . maturity?”

  “Get the fuck out of my sight!” she yelled.

  I walked to the door, and Fluffy decided she’d had enough of Velma too. I stooped down, gently pushed her back into the house, and closed the door before she could follow me out.

  I got in the car, drove to an office supply shop a couple of miles away, just past Hyde Park Square, made a copy of the policy, and was back at Velma’s place twenty minutes later. I rang the bell, and same as last time I waited a minute and then rang it again. Clearly she’d either fired the help or given them the week off to celebrate Big Jim Palanto’s unfortunate demise.

  The door cracked open.

  “Don’t come in,” she said. “Just hand me the policy.”

  I passed the envelope over to her.

  “I’ll be in touch,” I said.

  “Not until you get the fucking diamonds,” she said and slammed the door shut.

  I decided, driving home, that I envied Big Jim. Not the money, not the lifestyle, but the fact that he’d never have to see his Velma again.

  14.

  I actually made it to my bed and spent the whole night fighting Marlowe for the pillow, which was annoying as all hell because I knew that if I’d fallen asleep for the night in front of the TV I’d have been fighting him for the softest cushion on the couch.

  I woke up when Bettie Page, who had miraculously morphed into Marlowe half a second earlier, sneezed in my ear, and since my watch, which I’d forgotten to remove as usual, said it was 9:30, I figured I might as well stay up. Marlowe figured so too and started prancing nervously while I climbed into those few clothes—my shirt, my tie, and one sock—that I hadn’t slept in and raced me to the door.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I said. “I know. You gotta go first.”

  So I clipped the leash onto his collar, tried to ignore my own bladder, and took him out for a walk. This time he didn’t even make it to Mrs. Garabaldi’s, which was fine with me, since it was drizzling again. As soon as he was done pretending to be a lawn sprinkler I turned around and headed for home.

  Mrs. Cominsky was waiting for me.

  “It’s working!” she announced excitedly.

  “The furnace?” I said. “I hadn’t noticed that it had stopped again.”

  “No!” she said. “Our ruse!”

  “Which ruse was that?” I asked, still half-asleep.

  She pointed to a huge box of mail. “Our ad! There was so much that the mailman left it in one of the post office’s white plastic boxes.”

  “Look, it wasn’t the best idea I ever had,” I said. “Counting today’s mail, and what’s doubtless coming tomorrow, we’ve got hundreds of people who swear they found the cat and turned it in, and would like their reward.”

  “Oh,” she said, frowning. “I hadn’t considered that.”

  And suddenly I saw a way to simplify my life for a few days.

  “Still,” I continued, “there’s always a chance that one of them has made a telltale blunder. As long as we’re partners in this little enterprise, why don’t you give them a first run-through and then pass on any that look truly suspicious?”

  “I’ll get on it right after I do the laundry!” she promised.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Great!” she said. “Gonna catch us a cat thief, we are!”

  “Let’s hope so,” I said, walking past her and climbing the stairs with Marlowe. When we got inside he explained to me that his food bowl was empty, so I opened the fridge, pulled out a couple of not-quite-stale jelly donuts, and tossed them in his bowl.

  Then, while he was growling at and terrorizing the donuts prior to eating them, I finally made it to the bathroom and pulled out the insurance policy to see if it made any more sense in the daylight than it had the night before. Oh, there was no question that Palanto—well, Pepperidge—had taken it out, and no doubt it was for ten diamonds. It was dated three years ago, and that made sense too, since he’d been retired when he’d moved to Cincinnati, probably started working for the Bolivian drug lords seven or eight years ago, and hadn’t started siphoning off money until three or four years back.

  But after that it got confusing. If Sorrentino’s information was correct, he should have been sitting on ten million dollars’ worth of diamonds . . . but the policy was for only one million.

  That didn’t make sense. If they were worth ten million and you were going on record as insuring them, why insure them for just 10 percent of their value? And if t
hey were only worth a million and you were worth, I don’t know, maybe thirty or forty million, why insure them at all?

  My only conclusion was that it was some tax dodge I didn’t understand, not having been a multi-millionaire in this particular lifetime, and I made up my mind to talk to an accountant about it later.

  The other thing that baffled me was the description of the diamonds. Not the actual description—so many centimeters, so many grams, so many carats—but the technical description, with terms and symbols that looked like some alien language. I don’t mean French or German; I mean Martian or Saturnian.

  I read the thing through a few more times, realized I had to meet Sorrentino for lunch before long, and headed out.

  I got to the Skyline Chili joint a couple of minutes ahead of him, ordered a coffee, and wished newspapers were still worth reading so I’d have something to do besides stare at the other diners. Finally Sorrentino showed up, walked over, and took a seat.

  “Anything?” he asked.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I got the insurance policy from Velma yesterday.”

  “She gave it to you?”

  “Unhappily, but eventually of her own free will,” I replied.

  “Anything interesting in it?”

  I nodded. “I thought you told me that the diamonds were worth ten million.”

  “Yeah,” replied Sorrentino.

  I frowned. “Then why did he only insure them for one million?”

  “That’s gotta be wrong.”

  “I just read the damned policy twenty minutes ago,” I said.

  “My first thought is that he did it to throw potential thieves off,” said Sorrentino. “But that’s crazy. If it’s one million or ten million, it’s still worth stealing. And who the hell was going to look at the insurance policy first? A good guess is that no one except Velma and his insurance agent ever saw it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I’m open to suggestions.”

  “The best suggestion I’ve got is that it’s a typo.”

  “Come on, Val,” I said. “Even if it is a typo, don’t you think Palanto or his agent would notice in three years’ time that all his payments were based on a one-million-dollar policy?”

  He shrugged and displayed his hands, palms up. “You got me.”

  He was about to say something else when the teenaged waitress came by. He glanced at the menu and frowned. “I love this stuff, but three-way, four-way, five-way, what the hell’s the difference?”

  “Try ’em all and decide which you prefer.”

  “Hopefully I ain’t gonna be in town that long,” he answered.

  “C’mon, mister,” said the waitress. “I got other customers, y’know.”

  “Okay,” said Sorrentino, jerking a thumb in my direction. “I’ll have what he’s having.”

  She turned to me and even stopped chewing her gum for a minute.

  “I’ll have a four-way,” I said.

  “Me, too,” Sorrentino chimed in as she was walking away from the table.

  We sat in silence for almost three minutes until she returned with the food.

  “Damn it, Eli, Palanto wasn’t lying!” he half-shouted, startling the other diners. “I’d bet everything I have on that.”

  “I believe you,” I said. “I just don’t know if I believe him.”

  “Everyone else does,” he said.

  I shook my head. “Who the hell is ‘everyone’? The Bolivians are here for the money he siphoned off, but to this minute they don’t know anything about the cat or its collar. If they’d killed him and they knew about it, they’d have removed the collar, and if the cat got by them and they thought it might jump, they’d have shot it. I mean, hell, if they’d already killed Palanto, how much more trouble could they be in for killing a cat?”

  He sighed heavily. “I know.”

  “And as for Velma, whether it was worth ten million or one million, there’s no way she’d be acting any differently. It’s loaded with diamonds, they’re probably legally her diamonds now unless we can prove he stole them, and from everything you’ve told me about her, and all that I’ve experienced myself, she’d have had them arrest me if the diamonds were only worth a thousand apiece.”

  He stared at me for a long moment. “You’re ruining my meal,” he said at last.

  “Finally, there’s you,” I said.

  “Me?”

  I nodded. “I think you’ve been straight with me, but even if you haven’t, would you have gone back to Chicago if the diamonds were only worth a million?”

  “You think I’ve been lying to you all along?” he said in hurt tones.

  “No, Val, I don’t,” I answered. “I’m just pointing out that even if the diamonds were only worth a million, or even half a million, no one would be behaving any differently.”

  He sighed. “All right, all right. Now let me finish this stuff in peace.” He dug into his four-way. “Whoever heard of chili with shredded cheese and spaghetti?”

  “You’re the one who wanted a Cincinnati chili joint,” I pointed out.

  He chewed his mouthful thoughtfully and swallowed. “I can’t imagine why this stuff hasn’t caught on.”

  “Ask yourself if any self-respecting Chicago restaurant owner would open a Cincinnati chili place.”

  He considered it for a moment. “You got a point,” he admitted. Then: “Okay, we’re friends again. What’s our next step?”

  “Well, I have to check in with the cops and see if the print on the glass was any use to them. And I have to figure out why Palanto lied to you. I mean, was he just trying to impress you, and if he was, wouldn’t a million-dollar collar be as impressive as a ten-million-dollar collar?”

  “That’s a fair day’s work.”

  “Oh, there’s more,” I said.

  “Yeah?”

  I nodded. “I got to figure out what the hell those descriptions on the policy meant.”

  “I don’t follow you,” said Sorrentino.

  “There have got to be more hot diamonds in town than just the ones stolen from the collar,” I explained. “If one of my fences comes up with some, or one of my snitches tells me where some are, I have to make sure they’re the right ones.”

  “Shit!” he said. “I never thought of that.”

  “And if the print wasn’t any good, or if it was good but they can’t deport the Smith brothers anyway . . .”

  “They sound like cough drops.”

  “Yeah, but I’ll bet they don’t shoot like cough drops.”

  “Okay,” he said. “Where do we meet for dinner?”

  I named a local steak house as he finished the last of his four-way and washed it down with a Pepsi.

  “See you then,” he said.

  “Right.”

  “And let me say that the last sixty seconds have been a real eye-opener.”

  “They have?” I asked, puzzled.

  He nodded. “I always knew there were good reasons never to become a cop or a private eye. You just reminded me of some of the better ones.”

  15.

  Mrs. Cominsky was waiting for me when I got home.

  “Hi, partner!” she said.

  “Hi, partner,” I responded somewhat less enthusiastically.

  “Ain’t you gonna ask?” she said.

  “Ask what?”

  “About the mail!”

  “Okay,” I said. “What about the mail?”

  “I’ve gone through about three hundred already.”

  “Anything worth reporting?” I asked, hoping to get the charade over with before some other tenant stumbled upon us talking “business” in the entryway.

  “More than two hundred out-and-out liars, maybe forty perverts, six religious fanatics, two insurance salesmen, a writer who wanted to buy you lunch and get the rights to the heartwarming story of your reunion with the cat, and the rest were mostly animals lovers who congratulated you on getting the cat back, and I think at least a dozen of them want you to breed your cat to their cat and spli
t the litter, though no one seemed to know what sex your cat is.”

  “And you still have more to go,” I noted with a smile.

  “They could come in three or four hundred a day for a week,” she replied. “But somebody is going to make a mistake, I’ll pounce on it, and we’ll have our man.”

  “Right,” I said, remembering a couple of bad paperbacks I’d read recently. “A good cop just keeps on plugging away—and that goes double for private eyes.”

  She was quiet for a moment. Then: “How much does a license cost?”

  “Car or cat?” I asked.

  She shook her head impatiently. “A private eye’s license. Once we crack this case, maybe I’ll apply for one. This is the most interesting thing I’ve done in years.”

  I resisted the urge to ask her what was the least interesting thing she’d done in years.

  “I like your attitude, partner,” I said. “Just keep at it. When you come to The Letter That Counts, let me know—or if I’m out, slip a message under the door.” And if you spill a little gravy on it, Marlowe will be your friend forever, once he recovers from digesting it.

  “Will do, partner!” she said enthusiastically. “I had no idea reading mail from liars and perverts could be so interesting.”

  “After a few years, it’ll feel like reading the classified ads in the paper,” I assured her.

  “The thrill wears off, huh?”

  “Well, maybe not for really special detectives,” I said.

  “That’s me!” she said. “I’d stay and chat, but . . .”

  “I know. Go open them, and good luck.”

  I finally climbed the stairs, unlocked the door, said hello to Marlowe (who growled hello to me and went back to sleep), walked over to the section of the couch he’d left me, sat down, and started reading the insurance policy again. It didn’t make a lot of sense this time either.

  I kept coming back to the insured value. Even if the company’s jewelry appraiser was dead wrong, why would Palanto have paid for the policy when he knew the diamonds were worth ten times as much?

  And if they weren’t worth ten times as much, where the hell was the other money that he’d scammed from the Bolivians? It wasn’t in his bank account, the cops had gotten permission to check his safety deposit box, and Velma had to know every hiding place he had in the house and garage.