Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

Jancey blew air like a horse snorting. “Don’t take it personally ! How else can we take it?”

“Mrs. Trillin, get your priorities straight. You aren’t in danger because the FBI has investigated you. You’re in danger because a criminal organization believes you have information or property they want.”

Again in unison, we all said, “ What information? What property?”

He looked from face to face as if he couldn’t believe he was in the company of such idiots. Personally, I was studying him with the same cautious scrutiny I’d give a strange dog whose tail wagged while his neck hairs bristled.

16

Steven took the Nikes with him when he left.

Cupcake and Jancey were confused and angry. I was confused and afraid.

We wasted several minutes asking one another what in the world international criminals could believe we had that they wanted. Then we wasted more minutes asking one another who the people could be. We knew they had to have something to do with selling fake merchandise. We knew the fake merchandise was most likely designer clothing or jewelry. And we knew that Briana had something to do with selling it.

I told them about the article Tom had found that linked Briana with a Serbian gangster who’d been sent to prison for shipping heroin in a crate of Gucci watches. They thought that was mildly interesting but couldn’t imagine what it had to do with them.

Then I gutted up and said what I’d been thinking ever since I saw those Nikes in the middle of the Trillins’ bed.

“Cupcake, when Briana told me that she robbed houses with you when you were kids, she said you mostly did it so you could buy a pair of Nikes.”

Jancey glared at him. “You do know her, don’t you?”

Cupcake stood up like a whale breaching. “I do not know a woman named Briana! I have never known a woman named Briana. The only kid I ever broke into a house with was a guy named Robbie Brasseaux. I never broke into any house with any girl.”

He was so obviously sincere that Jancey and I went silent and ashamed, like kids caught stealing money from a church collection plate.

Cupcake made a sudden involuntary movement, a tic so small that Jancey didn’t notice. I glanced at him as a spasm of pure despair floated down his face.

Under his breath, he whispered, “Sweet Jesus.”

At the same moment, Lucy trotted into the kitchen, and Jancey turned her head to watch Lucy hunker over her water bowl and lap water with her sticky little tongue. Lucy wiped her face with her paw as if it were a napkin and trotted out of the room.

Cupcake said, “I have to get some sleep.”

Watching him leave, Jancey said, “The only thing that makes sense is that Robbie Whoever told another kid about robbing houses with Cupcake, and the kid he told must have grown up and somehow met Briana and told her that he came from the same town as a famous athlete named Cupcake Trillin. Just gossiping, you know, making himself important by telling that Cupcake was a thief when he was a kid.”

It seemed like an improbable coincidence.

“But why would Briana break into your house and leave fake Nikes?”

“A sick joke, maybe.”

“Maybe, but it’s not very funny.”

When we’d said every useless thing we could think of twice, I left her and headed home. I knew I had to call Guidry before much more time passed, and the thought made me want to pull to the side of the street and cry. Besides, I was so tired my eyelids were sticky. All I wanted to do was have a nice warm shower and crawl into bed for a long nap.

Then, at the intersection leading to Oleander Acres, a surge of anger brought fresh memories of being laid out on my porch like a poleaxed heifer, helpless, frightened, and humiliated. I still didn’t know what my attackers had hoped to find in my apartment, but I knew it had something to do with Briana and fake Nikes.

Energized by indignation, I turned the Bronco into Oleander Acres.

This time, instead of stopping across the street from the house where the man driving Briana’s Jaguar had gone in, I pulled into the driveway. The man who answered the door was Asian, about forty, with a thin mustache and a wiry body balanced on the balls of his feet. We looked at each other for a moment, he with the inquiring eyes of somebody answering a door to a stranger, me trying to see any sign of recognition on his face.

I said, “My name is Dixie Hemingway. I’d like to talk to you about Briana Weiland.”

His face altered, a perceptible tightening of muscles that gave him a fierce look. “Are you police?”

“No.”

“Then I have nothing to say to you.”

He backed away to close the door, and I stuck my foot in the doorway. “Please. It’s very important.”

“Important to your newspaper, yes. To me, no.”

“I’m not a reporter. Last night somebody attacked me and ransacked my apartment. I think they were connected somehow to Briana. I have a right to know who they were and why they came to my apartment. I saw you driving Briana’s car, so I know you are close to her.”

Behind him, a woman’s querulous voice said, “What is it? Who are you talking to?”

He turned his head. “A lady asking about Briana.”

The woman spoke rapidly in a language I didn’t recognize, all vowels with varied inflections. I wondered why the neighbor had thought it was French.

I said, “Please, may I come inside?”

He stepped back. “Enter.”

The house was typical Floridian upper-scale rental—pale tile floors, neutral walls, furniture with pastel linen cushions on bamboo frames, glass-topped tables. The woman was not the typical tourist. She was too thin, too intense, too angry. Asian like the man, she had short spiky black hair and the creped skin of a heavy smoker. She glared at me with black eyes that glittered like a trapped raccoon’s.

In heavily accented English, she said, “Why do you let her in? Why?”

He said, “Please, Lena.”

“No! No please Lena ! I am done with it all. She has brought us to this. It is done!”

The man spoke sharply in their language, with a warning, cautionary note in his voice.

I said, “Were you one of the men who attacked me last night?”

All the belligerence seemed to drain from the woman.

She said, “Men attacked you?”

“Yes. They were waiting outside my front door. They hurt me badly, but they didn’t break any bones or leave any scars. They had to have experience in inflicting great pain without leaving evidence.”

The man said, “What language?”

“I don’t know.” I hesitated, then spoke what I was thinking. “It was not the language you two just spoke.”

The man sighed and gestured toward a sofa. “Please to sit.”

They took chairs, and for a moment we all assessed one another. I was searching for signs of duplicity or trickery, and I suppose they were doing the same.

The man said, “Those men who attacked you, they were experts at inflicting pain without breaking bones or leaving bruises, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Then it is possible that you were attacked by members of a Serbian security company. If so, there will be no record of their presence in this country, and you will never find them.”

I felt a buzzing in my head, as if bees were circling me. The man spoke as if it were a perfectly reasonable assumption that men with a Serbian security company would attack me on my porch, ransack my apartment, and then run away.

I said, “That’s ridiculous. I have no connection to Serbia.”

Lena laughed. “Ah, but you are a friend of Briana’s.”

The buzzing in my head grew louder, and I felt a hysterical urge to laugh with her. The entire conversation was insane.