Newton pulled the phone over.“I think we’d better talk with Washington .”
At an uncluttered, polished desk in the Department of Justice building, the supervisor on the Bank Robbery desk took the call. He was a husky, big-boned, ex-quarterback who overwhelmed the swivel.
“Just a minute,” he said. “Must be a bad connection.”
He jiggled the phone, listened again, pressing the receiver vise-tight against his ear.“Did you say cat? C-a-t? A plain cat?”
He listened some more.“Yeah. D-a-r-n. Darn Cat. Now look here, Newton , somebody’s pulling your leg
. Who checked it out?
Uh-huh
I’ll get back to you in a few minutes.”
He walked briskly down a long, spotless corridor where an errant piece of paper would have been apprehended as quickly as a criminal, and turned into a door marked: DIRECTOR.
The decision came through from the top. Darn Cat henceforth would be listed in the card index and all reports as Informant X-14. Under the anonymous cloak of X-14, his identity would be held secret for all time, and no one, except those actually working the case, would know that he was of a species other than human.
6
Patti thought the day surely had gone into extra innings. She was that tired as she strolled into Lingerie modeling an Italian knit. She made a complete turn before two women in their thirties and, when one inquired about it, said,“It is smart, isn’t it? It has that something to it. And it’s only thirty-nine ninety-five in Young Misses on the upper level.”
Young misses? Whom did Bullock’s think it was fooling. No one shopping in Young Misses could produce a driver’s license to prove she belonged in that age group.
She turned in a hurry on hearing the crash, and couldn’t believe what she saw. Greg was on the floor wrestling with a mannequin that he had knocked off a display table, a mannequin wearing only a girdle. He was struggling to get a firm hold so he could replace it.
In a couple of steps she reached him, and rescued the mannequin.“The idea,” she said, “and in public.”
As he straightened his clothes, she snapped the girdle.“I don’t know why women have to wear more harness than a dray horse while men with their pot bellies… .”
She took him by the arm and steered him out of Lingerie. He recovered his legal dignity quickly.“Imagine running into you. I was trying to find Glassware.”
“You came through Glassware on your way to Lingerie.”
He smiled guiltily, and in that instant she was tempted to forget about last night, the horrible things he had said, the threat against D.C.‘s life. Her heart began pounding. To stay mad at him would be like trying to hold a grudge against Cary Grant.
Actually, she had to admit, she did not know Greg too well. Their few chance meetings had produced little more than a passing greeting, or a strong desire on her part to strangle him, especially when he complained about D.C. or permitted his dachshund to continue the slow murder of her apricot tree in the front yard.
Inky and Mike knew him far better. Inky, perhaps too well. He was an older man to fall in love with, the way the girls in novels did. Inky pretended that she almost passed out every time he picked her up in the Thunderbird. Once she had insisted on baking him a batch of cookies, and he had said he had never tasted better, when in truth they had all the flavor of sawdust.
As for the neighborhood women, they behaved ridiculously around him, although they did not approve of his way of life. The idea that a man would want a house complete to garbage disposal and flower gardens, but minus a wife, seemed subversive to all womanhood. And the fact that he could cook, and make up his bed every day, which was testified to by the wife with a window that looked directly into his bedroom, was a frontal assault on womankind. The consensus was, therefore, that he should either get an apartment or marry. “If he’ll wait a couple of years,” Inky had said, “I’ll make the house legitimate.”
Now he was saying,“I got a little excited last night. It was just that I worked so hard getting that duck. I almost got pneumonia. I stood all day in a blinding rain ? “
“I remember. You stated it so brilliantly last night.”
“I was tired, awfully tired. I’d lost a case I’d worked months on.” He ended lamely, “So you can see how it was with me.”
“Did you mean it when you said you’d take a pot shot at D.C. next time you caught him in your yard?”
“Golly, no. I wouldn’t hurt anything, you know that. Why, I even carry spiders out of the house ?on a newspaper.”
“They’re the worst kind. They usually get hanged.”
“Get hanged? What’re you talking about?”
“Haven’t you noticed? Every time somebody’s on trial for murder, he tells how he wouldn’t hurt a fly or a spider or something smaller than a matchbox, but oh brother, let him get his hands on a cranium
“
“Honestly, Patti.”
She was growing nervous. Customers were glancing their way with that rapt, bless‘em look.
“They’re figuring I’m not very far along if I can wear this,” Patti said.
“What?”
She indicated a sign, maternity, then added,“Look, Greg, I’m supposed to be working.”
“Sure, sure. How about dinner tonight? Maybe down on Olvera Street . I know a Mexican spot where you can get the best enchiladas.”
“From that same Killarney factory back in New Jersey that makes the Chinese fortune cookies?”
“I wouldn’t wonder.”
“I don’t know, Greg. I’ve got ? “
“I don’t blame you for being mad. You ought to get a good attorney and sue.”
“That’s an idea.” Her eyes crinkled up. “How about a conference with one at seven o’clock?”
7
As Zeke came up the path, Ingrid opened the door. In the next yard, Mrs. Macdougall, who was watering her roses, had her ears hung out over the myrtle hedge. The neighbors all agreed that her instinct for sensing a development was flawless.
Ingrid called,“Hello, Mrs. Macdougall. Beautiful day.” Mrs. Macdougall nodded. Her beady little eyes tracked Zeke like those of an old hound dog that waits to flush out a quarry. Her face had hardened with the years into one expression that she proudly and fiercely maintained.
Taking stock of the situation, Zeke said nothing, nor did Ingrid until she closed the door behind him.“Really, that old snoop,” Ingrid said, and then she quit to stare appraisingly at him. Here she had a living, breathing FBI agent on the hoof, a hero on a par with Ricky Nelson and Chubby Checkers.
“I’m Zeke Kelso.”
“I know. My sister called me. Isn’t she the most? Didn’t you like her an awful lot? I like sisters. Brothers are all right but you can’t talk to them, about serious things, I mean.” She was chattering, she knew, but when she was flustered she just did.
“Your sister said ? “
“She told me. He’s back in my bedroom. I didn’t know whether to wake him up or not before you got here. He didn’t get in until five this morning. He came in about one, sis said, but he got mad when she took the duck away from him, and went out and tied one on, I think.”
He nodded absently. By now he had photographed the living room in his mind. He walked to the only window and looked out past an apricot tree to a low, white, stucco house across the street. It was reached from the sidewalk by a curving flagstone walk that ran between tree roses. To the right of the house was a driveway that led to a garage at the rear of the lot.
Zeke turned back to her.“I’m sorry to get you out of school.”