Милдред Гордон - Undercover Cat

Dan said slowly, “Maybe you got a point there.”

Sammy continued, “It’s not like there’d be any blood. Few minutes after she’s asleep I’ll lay her away, and we’ll have ten hours before they find her. You tell the landlady ahead of time we got a job in another town, so she won’t get all stirred up when she finds us gone. We can make five, six hundred miles

.”

“What if she screams?”

“I’ve never had one yet. These fingers, they move so fast. You should see ‘em. And strong. You wouldn’t believe it. They could strangle a horse. Comes from my ma making me take piano. She used to say, ‘I’ll give you good learnin’, start you right.’ But I never got anything out of her except these fingers. No, Dan, she won’t scream.”

They never knew how close she came to it at that second.

17

As D.C. disappeared around the Randall house, Zeke moved swiftly across the back yard. His foam rubber soles touched the thick sod softly and noiselessly. He smelled a strong burnt powder odor as he passed Mike’s “launching pad,” and then the heavy, cloying scent of a night-blooming jasmine.

Rounding the corner, he brought himself up short and scanned the long, narrow passageway between houses for sign of movement. The night was so black that he could barely discern the outline of shrubs. He was conscious of his own breathing, which was loud in the stillness. He noted he was opposite the Macdougall kitchen, and sensed a presence in­side. He dropped to a squatting position.

Up near the street a luminous tail swished back and forth from under a shrub as D.C. cased the layout ahead, his eyes mica bright. A fellow couldn’t be too careful in scouting enemy territory. In that no man’s land beyond, dogs roamed about, determined to maintain their fancied superiority, thinking themselves a superior race. He hated the breed. And tomcats lurked out there like so many punk hoodlums, eager to win a reputation for themselves fighting.

D.C. swished his tail again. That jerk who had followed him out of the house was stalking him. He thought he was being quiet, as if D.C. didn’t have a good hearing. D.C. knew what he was up to. The jerk thought he had a duck buried, and the minute D.C. dug it up the jerk would steal it. From the beginning D.C. had had him pegged as a no-good, two-faced sneak.

As D.C. started to cross the street, Zeke trailed him, al­ways keeping the same distance between them. Suddenly tires screeched as a car rounded a corner and bore down on D.C. at fifty miles an hour, its dual pipes roaring. Seized with panic, Zeke raced into the street, waving his arms and shouting. The headlights were two brilliant spots racing to­ward him with unbelievable speed.

D.C. neither hurried nor slowed his pace. He chose to ig­nore the car. There were times when a man must assert his rights to what was properly his, and he had as much right on the street as anyone.

Zeke leaped for his life as the car’s headlights encompassed him. The driver slammed on his brakes and the car shrieked to a stop, only feet from D.C., who neither turned nor ran but continued leisurely to the far sidewalk. If a man held his ground, they always stopped.

Zeke leaned against a tree, wheezing like an old race horse. The driver yelled at him, “You stupid bum. Whatcha trying to do, get yourself killed?”

He shouted other imprecations until the first shock wore off. From the far side D.C. looked up with interest. The night was starting off fairly well. He went under a parked car where he sat motionless, observing his eight-inch-high view of the world ahead and, more specifically, Greg Balter’s house and the driveway.

Zeke reduced his breathing to a point near normal, and said into the mike, “Informant under car. Repeat – informant under car.”

Two miles away a police officer in a cruise car leaned for­ward in his seat. He had no business tuning in the FBI radio band, but he and his partner were experiencing a dull night. He asked, “Did you hear that, Tracy ? An informant – under a car.”

Tracy nodded. “Those FBI boys sure get some weirdies.”

His partner agreed. “Probably dead drunk.”

On hearing footsteps, Zeke lighted a cigarette. A worker approached, returning home late, and looked Zeke over as if he might be the Boston strangler. Zeke crossed the street, angling to a point some distance from the car being used as a forward outpost by D.C. Zeke whispered into the mike, “All cars, hold where you are.”

A police dog appeared from out of nowhere, caught D.C.‘s scent, and started in his direction. Zeke hurried to intercept the dog, having visions of D.C. being too maimed to continue his nightly round. Zeke and the dog almost collided. Zeke booted the dog with his foot, and the dog, taken by surprise, backed away in amazement, and then remembered to growl. Zeke said, “Get out of here,” and raised his hand as if to strike him. The dog cowered in terror.

Out of the darkness came a middle-aged woman, that ro­bust, healthy type who takes long walks to keep in shape. Her stride quickened at the sight of the raised hand, which Zeke dropped instantly, but not in time. “You monster, you,” she screamed. “I ought to call the police.” She turned toward the dog, who was engaged in a strategic retreat. “Hey, Pete

Pete.”

Zeke slinked into the darkness, walking rapidly. At the same moment D.C. shot across Greg’s front yard and raced down the driveway, his collar bell tinkling. Zeke caught merely a flash of black under a street light. He hurried after him, and halfway down the driveway fell over a child’s bicycle. Even in falling he never took his eyes from the white tail whisking itself ahead of him, a luminous tail that seemed disembodied. He rose quickly, fearful he would lose the in­formant and be censured by the Bureau, maybe even draw a cut in salary. An agent could expect serious repercussions if he lost a surveillance in an important case.

The tail stopped under a shrub and once more began de­scribing pale arcs in the blackness. Zeke had an uneasy feel­ing that those quick eyes had spotted him. He stood as mo­tionless as a cigar store Indian and waited for the cat’s next move. While waiting, he picked pieces of embedded gravel from the palm of his hand, and wondered if Operations Center had heard him fall. The thought flashed in and out that children who parked their vehicles any old place should draw a police ticket the same as adults, and if the little violators couldn’t pay the fine, go to jail.

The tail steadied and a head emerged with the ears flattened down. The head drew the body after it, and everything – the head, the body, and tail – once more arranged themselves in proper juxtaposition. Slowly D.C. treaded pantherlike across Greg’s back yard. He came to a pause by a tuberous begonia and sniffed it. He scanned all of the shadows in the yard, and brought his inspection to rest finally on the back door, which had been flung open wildly on several occasions in the past by a party completely deranged.

All of this time Zeke remained stationary by the corner of the house, hidden in a shadow cast by a eucalyptus. The night continued quiet, and in the stillness be recognized both enemy and friend. Nothing could move without creating sound, including himself.

He watched engrossed as D.C. began an excavation job by the tuberous begonia. He began slowly, and then warmed up to his work with enthusiasm until his feet were kicking out the dirt with machine-like strokes.

Zeke said into the mike, “Informant under bush, digging in Balter back yard.”

In the police car two miles away Officer Tracy shook his head incredulously. “Digging? What goes on, Al?” “Must be digging up a body in a homicide.” “With a midget?”

Running half doubled up, Zeke slipped to the cover of a shrub across the way from D.C. He had barely gained the shrub when a shotgun blast roared through the night, so close by that the explosion deadened his hearing. As he fell flat to the ground, he saw the cat shoot ten feet straight into the air, as if riding a missile. Zeke swung in the direction of the shot as he struck the ground, and in the same instant his hand drew the thirty-eight Colt. His finger went homing to the trigger as his eyes darted around the yard searching for the party manning the shotgun. He was so keyed up that he jumped when a door slammed hard, as if the door were violently angry. At once he pegged it as the back one to the Balter house. He waited a long, dragged-out second, continu­ing to watch the door, fearful it might open a crack to per­mit the shotgun to take aim. Only once did his eyes leave it, and that time to sweep the yard for the cat, who was no­where in sight.