Милдред Гордон - Undercover Cat

D.C. asked no quarter, and had no intention of giving any. He was in the same position that a man would be with two elephants closing in. The fact that he was small had never occurred to him, nor that he was outweighed many times over. And while he was angry to the point of murder with Zeke, he was furious and hurt that Ingrid would give aid and comfort to the enemy.

“You ready?” Ingrid shouted, looking under the bed as Zeke’s eyes found the level of hers.

“I guess so.” If a dangerous killer had lain in wait there, Zeke would have known what to do. The FBI Academy in Quantico had coached him thoroughly about how to handle such situations. But he had no idea how to apprehend this unco-operative informant. He readily perceived that if he grabbed him, he might lose a hand.

Ingrid’s hair fell over her tilted, puckish face. “We’ll have to go for him at the same time, and fast, and back him toward the wall.”

“I’ll count to three.”

On three, they both lunged. D.C. was in a weakened con­dition, of course, since he had had no breakfast. But he still had sufficient strength to slash out with the speed of a Samoan knife thrower. Zeke stood his prone position with courage, and while he missed capturing D.C., possibly because of the blood running down his hand, he forced D.C. in Ingrid’s direction where she got a hammer lock on D.C.‘s hind leg. She pulled him out and took him into her arms, mumbling soothing words. But D.C. would have none of them. He glared unmercifully at her, utterly and forever disowning her. He gave her a swift kick with his hind leg, strong as a crossbow, a maneuver which propelled him halfway across the room. She frowned and asked, “Do you have to take his paw prints? I just don’t know – “

Then she saw the blood, and crossed the narrow hall to the bathroom. She returned with a wet towel and a tube of anti­septic paste, and doctored Zeke over his protests that it was nothing at all, which it was.

“I’ve got to get his prints,” Zeke said determinedly. Unlike the photograph, though, this involved actual physical contact, and the Bureau would insist on good sportsmanship– He dared not use knockout pills or chloroform.

D.C.‘s attitude changed inexplicably. He sat on Ingrid’s lit­tle gold chair, before the make-up table, and washed himself. He was following Paul Gallico’s perceptive observation: When in doubt, wash.

From a brief case Zeke brought forth an ink pad and sever­al blank fingerprint cards. Each had ten spaces. Through eyes swollen half shut he studied one of the cards, uncertain where to place D.C.‘s paw print. He decided that it should go in the space set aside for the thumb.

Ingrid’s glance hopped from the ink pad to her white bed­spread and white carpet, and she suggested they fingerprint D.C. in the bathroom. Zeke hesitated, suddenly conscious that Ingrid was very much a woman – lovely, sweet, uncompli­cated. He had no idea how they could become so calculating and devious by twenty-five.

She stood in the doorway, looking quizzically at him, with D.C. in her arms. He thought of the Bureau. Oh, what the blazes, he decided; he’d already broken enough regulations to get himself deported to Wake Island .

In the bathroom she dumped D.C. into the blue tub before D.C. could assimilate that he was in this room only for an evil purpose. What a lousy, dirty trick to put him into some­thing he couldn’t get his claws into.

“Here,” she said, “you hold his front paws and I’ll pin down his rear.”

They went into position like a couple of rehearsed wrestlers. Zeke sneezed, pressed a paw on the pad, sneezed again, and hesitated a split second. In putting the paw down on the card, should he roll the paw toward him or away from him? Now with humans, he rolled thumbs toward the subject, fingers away.

“Whats the matter?” she asked, standing right behind him and half leaning into the tub so that her weight would anchor twenty-five pounds of lurching, heaving, spitting, snarling flesh.

He pressed the paw down and withdrew it, and heaved a sigh. It was a good print, one of the best he had ever taken.

“Okay, I’ve got it,” he said, and, having said it, felt the teeth sinking in.

He let go of D.C. with an old Iroquois war cry, and D.C. promptly let go of him and scrambled out, leaving his prints on the tub, the vinyl, and the dining room carpet as he streaked for the outdoors, preferring the hell of the mockingbirds to the indignities he had been suffering.

“Have you had tetanus shots?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s all right then. Don’t worry about it.” She glanced at the paw-printed tub. “Will they come off?”

“I don’t know. You may not believe it, but I’ve never fin­gerprinted anyone in a bathtub before.”

As he opened the door to– leave, and was thanking her, and she was telling him any time, that she did this every day, and it was nothing, he looked at her gently until she averted her eyes. Golly, he was thinking, I’d like someday to have a daugh­ter like her.

The trouble was, you never knew how they would turn out. If only they were returnable merchandise

.

8

Zeke ran a thorough check on Greg Balter, which revealed that Balter had no criminal record, had a high credit rating, and held a reputation for integrity with his fellow attorneys and the judges in whose courts he pleaded his cases. He was liked immensely, from the fellows at the ninety-nine-cent car laundry where he regularly got his Thunderbird washed to the girls at Bob’s where he just as regularly showed up for hamburgers.

Zeke found that Greg shared a suite of offices with two other attorneys on the third floor of a Sherman Oaks office building, one of those modern structures seemingly supported by nothing more than steel and concrete stilts. Around such a building Zeke had a horror he might sneeze and start the building walking down the street.

Greg looked up curiously when the solidly built secretary with the size nine feet showed Zeke in. “So I’ve got big feet?” she said, noting Zeke’s glance.

Zeke stopped, dumfounded. Greg came to his rescue. “Ellen, please, I’ve told you not to brag.” As Ellen disap­peared with a chuckle, Greg offered a firm handshake and in­dicated a chair constructed along the same lines as the build­ing. Greg leaned back in his swivel then, and waited warily. The chances were that the FBI was calling about one of his cases.

Zeke wasted no time. “I thought you could help me in a case I’ve got out in your neighborhood. I’m sorry that I can’t tell you anything about it – “

“You don’t have to with me,” Greg broke in. He was ex­hausted and on edge. He had had a particularly trying after­noon. A client – an elderly, motherly looking soul – had con­fessed on the witness stand during cross-examination that she had lied about the facts in an auto accident. It was the first time he had been deceived by someone he represented.

Zeke continued, “I know this may sound ridiculous to you. It did to me when I first heard about it – but you have a neigh­bor across the street, Miss Randall, who has a cat that roams around a good deal, and we’re trying to trace the cat’s whereabouts for last night

“

He trailed off. Greg had come upright in the swivel, all cordiality gone, his lips pulled into a grim line.

Puzzled, Zeke said slowly, “It’s important that we know where he went since a woman’s life is in jeopardy

.”

Greg rose slowly, and Zeke noted with amazement the clenched fists. “What’d she tell you?” Greg asked, staring down at him.

“Who? Miss Randall? I don’t think I understand.”

“You wouldn’t be here if you did.” He began pacing, oc­casionally slamming a fist into a palm. “I don’t know what cock-and-bull story she made up to sic the FBI on me but it must’ve been a whale of a good one for you guys to swallow it.”