The Ninth Life

by Clea Simon

  I am a cat, but I am not a brute.

  ‘Thanks, Blackie,’ she says. She is running her hand over my back and I do not have to fake my pleasure. I stretch as her warm hand soothes me, smoothing my fur and my tired spine. It is always a matter of small gestures, minor movements, adding up. Building. ‘Sometimes I think you know what I’m feeling,’ she says, her voice once again calm. I lean into the pet. I listen. ‘The old man always said cats could communicate. Maybe he was right. Maybe you can read me – you just don’t know how to tell me—’

  She stops. Her hand stops, right by the base of my tail. I look up, my reverie broken by the abrupt cessation of pleasure.

  ‘What if he wanted to tell me something but didn’t have the time?’ She looks at me as if I can answer. I blink. It encourages her. ‘He must have found something. He was the best, Blackie. He really was. He could look at a scrap of cloth and tell you about the person whose coat it came from. He could tell you how it got torn off and by whom, too. And, I mean, it took me long enough, but even I figured out that the theft wasn’t real – that it was a front for something.

  ‘Diamond Jim might have hired the old man to make the set-up look good, but I bet he got more than he planned. The old man found out what was going on – found out about this deal, about the scat coming in or whatever – only he didn’t get a chance to stop it. But he left word for me, Blackie. He left that message with Tick and he left me the blank pawn ticket, too, knowing that I’d figure out it meant that there was no product. No necklace to redeem. But I don’t know if he figured out what that meant for the job. For him. If he knew what was coming.’ She pauses and I wait for the return of the tears, of the trembling. She shakes them off. ‘He always left signs for me, Blackie. Tracks that I could follow – that he trained me to follow. He always left clues.’

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  This girl has potential. I have long thought that. But she does not understand the hunt. ‘Search for clues,’ she has said, and I envision an act both careful and quiet, like the long wait for a small head to emerge. Not this hurried march back to the office, back to a place her foes have discovered.

  She clearly has other thoughts about the process as she bustles about the old man’s office. ‘That must be what Bushwick’s men were looking for,’ she says as she pushes the desk away from the wall. It moves with a rumble and growl that’s a bit loud for my taste, and I retreat to the windowsill to watch as she runs her hands along its back. ‘Clues. I mean, I know about the marker. But a weight? Really?’

  She has flopped on her back to peer under the desk, and her next words are muffled. In part, I confess, because I am bathing. Such activity makes me nervous. But when she emerges she is shaking her head. Her hands are empty. Whatever she has hoped to find is not there.

  ‘I don’t get it, Blackie.’ She leans back on the desk and looks at me. If I could advise her, I would. Calm down. Be quiet. Let the prey reveal itself. Since I have failed thus far at transmitting any of my knowledge to her or her kind, I fold my front paws beneath me and sit in my most tranquil pose. At the very least, she is being quiet now, and I appreciate the cessation of noise.

  ‘The old man knew about the weight – about the marker.’ She’s talking to herself more than to me, but I blink again to urge her on. ‘That’s why he told Tick to tell me about Fat Peter, about the measure being off. About it being bigger than Fat Peter. Much bigger. He knew something else was going on, something besides that necklace. He had to.’

  She slumps down on the floor with a sigh. ‘Or maybe he was killed before he could find out more. Or before he could find a way to get a message to me.’

  We sit there in silence and I start to drift. I think of waters, rising, and open my eyes with a start.

  ‘Of course.’ Care is pulling herself to her feet. I do not know if my movement has wakened her or hers me. I stretch and watch as she once again pulls the papers from her bag. ‘Rivers. This contract. That’s why he let Diamond Jim fill it out, why he left it here for me. It’s all here. Everything. The old man would have known that was a fake business, a fake reference. He must have suspected something was wrong with the case. But why …’

  She stands there staring at the paper. I do not think she is reading it again. Her eyes are focused on the middle distance, and the light off the alley has begun to fade, the shadows of the building across the way already creeping through the room.

  ‘He knew something was up, I’m sure of it. He took the case so he could find out what. He took their bait but he left the contract, like he left word about the weight. Just in case. He must have suspected a trap, but he couldn’t have known …’

  She wipes her eyes and reaches for the light. Now she is reading again, examining the contract as if she had never read it before. ‘Rivers Imports on Dock Street, of course.’ She looks up and there’s a light in her eye. A reflection of tears. Or a spark. ‘The old man was killed down by the river, Blackie. Not far from where I found you. And that deal Freddie told us about? The one Diamond Jim was so eager to buy into? That’s happening down by the docks too. We’re going down there and we’re going to find out what’s going on. I’m going to finish what the old man started, Blackie.’

  I jump down to stand by the girl, my tail erect, whiskers bristling and alert. We are going on the hunt.

  The girl is growing smarter. Rather than just rush out, she prepares herself. For starters, she goes through what remains in the old man’s closet. A long overcoat in a nubby tweed comes out first. She buries her face in it and I know even her inferior senses are picking up the fruity fragrance of pipe tobacco that lingers around the worn collar. She tries it on and I wonder at her planning. Although it is thick and doubtless warm, a benefit for a skinny creature such as she is, it falls to her ankles. Although I have seen her shiver, wrapping her arms around herself when she is not holding me, this coat is not a very practical garment for someone who might need mobility or stealth. But when she pairs it with a cap of the same fabric, I begin to understand. By donning her mentor’s clothing, she seeks not only to emulate but to evoke him. To create an illusion and possibly force her opponents to act in a way that will betray them – or betray their colleagues.

  To this she adds the cheese knife, poor thing that it is, and that board she has been carrying, the piece from the busted door. She opens the coat and slides it in a tear in the lining, a hole, I surmise, that has been used before for just such a purpose. She takes a few more items as well from within the desk, shoving them into her jeans and the deep pockets of the coat. Lastly, she reaches for her bag.

  I look up at her. I have been standing, watching her prep-aration, my tail beginning to lash as the excitement mounts. Now I meet her eyes, green on green. As green as any emeralds. I wait.

  ‘Blackie?’ She holds the bag open. Crouches down on the floor, and with a leap I am inside, the worn cloth shifting beneath my feet. I stick my head out to retain my bearings and to signify that she should not close the flap. I do not know what her plans are or how we will proceed. I do know that I will need to be able to move, to jump and to strike. This is more than a hunt: we are going to war.

  THIRTY-NINE

  It is an odd thing to be bounced along like a kitten in a hammock. I find my claws flexing for balance as the bag sways against the thick tweed. Care is moving fast, running as often as she walks and making the most of the twilight and her street savvy as she darts from shadow to shadow. Almost, I feel, she could be a cat with her swift, silent moves. Almost, I feel at one with her, as if I too had a death to avenge.

  She has made her plans before we set out. Consulted those papers from the desk and others that she had unfolded on its surface. Although I do not read – neither those letters that mean so much to her nor the so-called map she has found, with its shadings and lines like so many mouse trails – I am confident about where we are heading. We cats do not need such tools for orientation, not when our other senses are engaged. Besides, I know the waterfront. Its smells,
its features, its capacity for danger. I may not have the exact bearing that Care is heading for – as I have said, I do not deal with such trivia as addresses or signposts – but I am confident we are heading to the right place. That we are heading to where it all began.

  Perhaps it is that confidence that makes me feel I am drifting. That or the rocking motion of the bag as the girl enters the city’s less populated quarter and maintains a steady pace. At some level, I am aware that I will need to be alert – alert and strong – once we arrive at our destination. On another, I am marshaling my reserves. I have been run ragged recently, bruised and beaten. I am not, as I have noted, a kitten anymore. I am a mature feline, and as we cats will do, given the opportunity, I find myself drifting once again into that dream state of half waking where we spend so much of our time.

  I am sinking. I am always sinking, even as I extend my claws into the worn denim. Even as I shift and readjust in the bag, more awake than not. I stick my head out, curious about our progress. The girl is making her way between high rises. Across a vacant lot now filled with rubble and past a crane, silent against the sky. The shadows fall across her, across us, longer now that the day is ending. I see them, even as my eyes close again, as I slide back into the recesses. Bars against the light, moving as we move. Moving closer.

  I squirm slightly and readjust, dreading what I know I will see next. Three faces, cold and blank. Three sets of eyes, impassive. Cruel. They stare as they have always stared, and I roll onto my side. My ribs are still sore and my hind leg twinges as I kick myself over. I need to stretch, to lie in the sun and sleep, but this half-drowse, neither restful nor productive, must make do. I flip, pushing myself off, and hear the girl grunt as my claws slip through the thin cloth and deep into the tweed. I cannot have punctured her, not with that thick coat, but the movement has thrown her and she shifts, resting her arm against the bag. Holding me, briefly, against her.

  Holding me against my will. I am in the warehouse again. Behind the stacked pallets, watching and waiting. Only, I am not the one watching – I have been watched. Been seen, and now I am surrounded. My arms are pinned to my side. I feel the heavy cloth press against me, restricting my movement as I would kick, as I would jump. Against my will, I am dragged from behind the sheltering stack and held as the leader – the tall man with the dead eyes – comes forward. I know those eyes. That face. I know what happens next.

  ‘Kill him,’ he says.

  ‘Whoa!’ The girl is standing over me, her hand in her mouth. I have clawed her. Torn through the bag to the hand holding me to her side and made her bleed, and now she sucks the sore, eyeing me with a wounded look.

  I jump from the bag onto the pavement. The perfume of opossum situates me but it is faint. We are nearer to the river now, that locating scent overrun with fish and rot. I long to investigate – to round the stone around us and seek out the wooden wharfs, the teeming waterside. The mix of aromas is intoxicating, rich with life even this early in the season. With death too, I realize.

  And I remember. This building, this street – they are not far from where the girl rescued me – from where the old man must have met his end. And that thought brings me back to myself, to my companion. Belatedly, I blink up at her. I did not mean to draw her blood. I would not hurt her for all the world.

  ‘Mew,’ I say, looking up at her shadowed eyes. It is a poor attempt at an apology, this sad, soft syllable. For once, I am ashamed of myself. Of being a beast, so easily manipulated by my own fancies, by my dreams. By my overladen senses, here where it all began.

  ‘It’s OK, Blackie.’ She removes her hand from her mouth and looks at it. I can see where the blood is welling up, slowly, in bright red beads. ‘You must have been having a nightmare.’

  She fishes a handkerchief from the depths of the pocket. A scrap of cloth that is somehow familiar to me, that I knew would be there, and wraps it around her hand, tying the makeshift bandage in place. ‘Anyway,’ she says – to herself, I believe. ‘We’re here. He was found somewhere around here.’

  We are sitting, I now realize, in the shadow of a stoop. A niche between a building and its grand entrance stairs. Stairs I have circumvented before, and with reason. For now, this space is safe. In the twilight, where we sit is shadowed. I am as good as invisible by virtue of my coat. The girl is more visible than usual in that oversized brown tweed, but the waterfront seems to have died down for the night. It is cold, the wind off the river damp and chill, and for a moment I wonder whether it is too late in the season for snow. No matter. I shiver and move closer to the girl, glad of that thick coat, as I am of my fur. This wind, which sneaks around the stairway to find us here, will drive others inside. They will be seeking the warmth of the bars, of the alley. Of their drugs.

  ‘They dumped him in that ditch, Blackie. Did you know that?’ She is talking to herself, for sure. To build her courage for what she will do next, and that is why my ears prick up, why I feel my guard hairs bristle at her tone. ‘Farther down than where you were – down by the tracks. Another hour and there wouldn’t have been much left to ID, but … I don’t know why they didn’t throw him in the river. I mean, I’m glad. Nobody would have ever found his body if they had.’

  She flexes her hand and I wonder what she is thinking. I do not believe I injured her that deeply. No, she is preparing, rehearsing some scenario in her mind, some scene that I cannot imagine.

  ‘That was three days before I found you, Blackie. It was almost like …’ She shakes her head, dismissing whatever thought has crossed it. ‘No, but he liked cats, Blackie. The old man always said we could learn a lot from cats.’

  I am listening. Alert and suddenly aware … Footsteps, soft and obscured by the wind. Someone is approaching the building. I stiffen, straining to make out anything that will give me – give us – an edge.

  ‘What is it?’ the girl whispers but has the sense to duck down, crouching in the lee of the steps. She is safe there, hidden, and I am freed to leap onto the stairs. From here I see two men approaching, collars turned up against the cold. One of those collars is fur. Not fox, I think, with a shiver. One hand reaches up to adjust it, to turn it further against the wind, against any who might be watching from the blank, black windows as they pass me and pass inside. Bushwick.

  ‘Was that? Never mind.’ The girl’s face peeks up beside me as the door slams shut. ‘I wish you could talk, Blackie. I swear you’d be a good partner. But I should do my own groundwork. That’s what the old man always said. “Do your groundwork. Know what you’re getting into, and who was there first.”’

  I do what I can, perusing the worn steps for any unusual scents. The men who passed have left little trace beyond their leather and tobacco. The river scent is strong here, obscuring all else at first sniff, and when I close my eyes to concentrate I find myself caught up in its complexity. Fish and flesh, fresh and less so, the spring melt releasing odors that have been caged all winter, that have been carried from far away. I catch the faint tang of the drug, of scat, though it is not, I think, from the men who have passed. I get, as well, another familiar scent – sweet and slightly putrid. The smell of death.

  Approaching footsteps, louder this time, make me jump back down to where the girl waits. I burrow into the folds of her coat and let her warm her hands on me, both of us silent as the newcomers approach. Folded into the warm tweed, I am enveloped as well in the now-familiar smells of tobacco and sweat. Friendly smells which contribute to the sleepiness that creeps over me. Only when the footsteps pass do I catch a whiff of something else. Cigar smoke. A harsh laugh as the men push inside the heavy door.

  ‘Diamond Jim,’ says the girl. ‘Time to move,’ she adds, to shore up her own courage, I suspect. She begins to sit up, despite her nervousness. Despite, I suspect, her reluctance to unseat me. And so, to relieve her of the latter, I jump up, once again, to the stairwell – and leap immediately down again.

  ‘What is it?’ She has the sense to cower, covering me with her own body
. I would squirm free. The coat, hanging over me, muffles both sounds and scent, only I do not want her to respond. Do not want her to move.

  Still, even within her coat, I can make out that two more men have arrived. The one in front is tall and lean. He walks quietly. I might not have heard his footsteps at all, his shoes good leather and his movement careful with grace. It is the other, two steps behind, who has given them away. Thick and heavy, he rolls with his bulk, and I sense he does not care who sees it. This is a man whose poundage is his asset, a muscle man in every sense. A guard.

  But it is not the guard who alarms me, though he is big. Powerful in the flesh. It is his companion – his boss – who sends a chill down my spine. Whose presence cuts through the wool of the girl’s coat and touches my every scar and bruise. He stands, still, by the door as the heavier man holds it open. Scans the street, turning without a word from the city proper down to the waterfront and back again.

  Peering out from the girl’s coat, I catch the movement, the glint of light on watchful eyes. He seems to sense that they are not alone, and I see him frown in concentration as he turns our way.

  The girl holds still. Holds her breath, even, her hands on my back and belly, as if afraid I will reveal our position. I freeze as well, conscious of his silent gaze, the way he looms above us, tall and lean, silhouetted in the dim light.