Милдред Гордон - Undercover Cat

The zany story of Darn Cat Randall who causes mayhem and anarchy for the FBI and a couple of rascally crooks.

MildredandGordonGordon.THAT DARN CAT

INFORMANT X-14

was the key to the FBI’s last desperate hope of locating and apprehending two bank robbers before the fugitives could dispose of the teller they’d kidnapped as getaway insur­ance. But informant X-14 wasn’t talking. He was just 25 pounds of black, feline fur that sat there and purred.

HOW A CAT WHO WOULDN’T TALK TOOK THE FBI ON A HIGHLY UNORTHODOX CAPER.

“Please. Don’t refer to him as a ‘cat’ It does something to his ego. Now if I put him down in the reports as D. C. Randall, you know the Bureau. Some guy back there on a desk will tear into us, want to know what the idea is of using initials. And if I put him down as Darn Cat Randall, I hate to think of what will happen. They’ll figure I made it up, that I’m being funny. And what about using Randall? Who ever uses a last name with a cat? But you know the Bureau. Full names.”

Newton pulled the phone over. “I think we’d bet­ter talk with Washington .”

The zany story of Darn Cat Randall who causes mayhem and anarchy for the FBI and a couple of rascally crooks.

All of the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

For Mike Zimring

with our gratitude,

our affection.

Foreword

Because of the highly classified nature of the information presented herein, we sincerely hope that our readers will hold the facts set forth in the strictest confidence, including the true identity of Informant X-14. As for the FBI, we must state that that remarkable organization has not been asked to approve or authorize this account of what took place with X-14.

The Gordons

1

Patti Randall was slipping into a half world of drowsiness when the telephone aroused her. By the time she found the instrument on the floor, where her sixteen-year-old sister, Ingrid, had been using it earlier that evening, it gave one half-ring gasp and died.

Returning the phone to the night stand, she saw by the alarm that it was 12:30 a.m. She switched off the light and stretched to her full five feet seven. All evening she had been jangly note 1 hearing strange noises stirred up outside by a wind busy hustling leaves in the September night. At times she would find herself listening intently, trying to sort out the sounds and identify them. She blamed Mrs. Macdougall next door for her uneasiness. Mrs. Macdougall had taken it on herself to look after “those orphans” while the Randall parents were vacationing in Europe .

“If anything happens in the night,” she had told Patti, “just scream and I’ll hear you.” Patti could believe that. Drop a pin, and old Mrs. Macdougall would hear. She was better than a burglar alarm system. In the same breath Mrs. Mac­dougall had continued, “Terrible things are happening every night. Like that woman whose husband was away, and her and her old mother were murdered in cold blood at 2:23 a.m.”

And if Mrs. Macdougall said it was 2:23 a.m., that it was. She was a stickler when it came to crime facts.

Patti booted Mrs. Macdougall out of mind and tried con­centrating on the moon high over the orange tree, a skinny moon that had been on a diet, which reminded her uncom­fortably that she had gained two pounds the past month. She was pushing size ten as far as she dared and still continue to work as a model. Only today a glinty note 2-eyed old fool, sitting right alongside his wife at a lunch table in Bullock’s pent­house restaurant, had figured her hip measurements down to an inch as she pirouetted before them in a Thai silk sheath.

Perhaps she should wear a girdle, although that would indicate advancing age, and at twenty-three she wasn’t going to admit it

She shook off such an unhappy thought and was slipping into sleep when she heard the noise at the back door. She came bolt upright, then smiled inwardly and settled back down into the enormous pillow, knowing the noise indicated that D.C., their twenty-five-pound black cat, was entering the house through the little opening for milk bottles in the wall of the service porch. He would be grunting like a Japanese wrestler as he squirmed through. Talk about a girdle. He was the one who needed a girdle.

She stiffened again as footsteps came over, a man’s on the front walk, sharp and determined. And though she had anticipated it, the harsh buzz of the doorbell sent a thrust of fear through her. She searched frantically in the closet for a robe, and all the time the man kept his finger pressed on the buzzer until she could have screamed. She ended up grabbing a thin negligee which covered her but failed to conceal the long, slender legs beneath the blue baby doll pajamas.

Passing Mike’s room, she called softly, “Mike,” but her twelve-year-old brother wouldn’t hear, not that one, nor Ingrid. An assailant could empty a revolver into her without awakening those two.

Hurrying too fast, she struck the corner of the dining table. Now she’d have a big, black blotch there, and if she had to model swim suits she’d look as if she had been in a barroom brawl.

Turning on the porch light, she eased the door open three inches, which was all the safety chain would permit. Greg Balter stood there, the neighbor from across the street. He was a couple of years older than she, a brilliant attorney whom everyone said would go far. He was tall, and all male, and had that kind of innocent face loved by women from the Popsicle to the bifocal age. All except her. She considered him anything but innocent.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, anticipating trouble, which he invariably brought, usually over his dachshund, Blitzy, which was one of the two pets he adored. The other was a white Thunderbird.

“I tried calling you.” His tone was quasi-conciliatory. She motioned him in and waited. Long ago she had learned the subtle power of silence in an argument. It invariably got the other side off on the wrong foot.

He withdrew the smile. “Your cat

” he began again, reassembling his forces. Their gaze met and locked in hand-to-hand combat.

“What about him?” she demanded tightly.

“Up to now I’ve been pretty patient. He’s dug up my flowers, and left his fingerprints all over my car, and gotten into fights in my back yard – “

“You come over to discuss this at 1 a.m.?”

“And now he’s stolen a mallard duck from my service porch.”

“He did what?”

He continued, “I saw him leaving with it. He was half dragging it across the yard.” His glance slipped to her legs, then he snapped it back as if determined not to be swayed by anything female.

“Now, wait just a minute, Greg. After all – “

He interrupted. “I spent all day in a duck blind in a beating rain. I could’ve caught pneumonia – and I got one duck. Just one duck. And your cotton-pickin’ old cat comes snoop­ing around. I thought I heard something on the back porch, and sure enough, when I went out, the screen door banged shut, and the duck was gone.”

She was so furious she could scarcely talk. “And I suppose he reached up, unlatched the screen, opened the door, and walked in?”

“He opened the door and walked in all right. That cat could walk into Fort Knox . Don’t ask me how he does it.”

It was a moment before she could find words. “Well, that does it. That absolutely does do it. Of all the preposterous, unfair, monstrous accusations – “

She stopped in mid-air as D.C. padded in to learn who was calling. He walked very proudly, head high in the air, bearing the duck in his mouth.

For a second she was stunned, then she reached down in a quick, sweeping motion to seize the duck. But she was not swift enough. D.C. fastened a death hold on the bird. They wrestled, and then Patti gave a hard wrench and tore it out of his mouth, shredding the duck somewhat in the process. Holding it by one foot, she swung it over to Greg whose face was smeared with triumph.