Блейз Клемент - The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

“So to pay him back for his kindness, you broke into his house?”

“I’ve already told you why I did that. I just wanted to be close to him again. He’s one of the few people in the world who’s truly good. I needed to have some of that goodness, even if it was just from hanging around his house.”

“Who was the woman who was killed?”

“The FBI agent? I don’t know her name.”

I tried not to look surprised, but it was hard. Mostly, I felt stupid. Now I understood why the murdered woman’s identity had been kept a secret, and why Paco was involved in the investigation.

“Who killed her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She shrugged. “Will you help me or not?”

“Who were the men who attacked me and searched my apartment?”

She looked surprised. “I didn’t know that happened. But now that I do, I can tell you they were business rivals of mine. They want that list you have.”

“Well, isn’t that just peachy.”

“Will you help me?”

“Tell me about the list.”

“My old Serbian friend passed them along to me before he went to prison. He wanted me to carry on his business until he got out. Since he was murdered in prison, the business is now wholly mine.”

“And the rivals? How do they know about the names?”

She looked uncomfortable. “They were my friend’s partners. They expected to take over the business while he was in prison.”

“Only you took it from them instead.”

“My friend wanted me to have it.”

“Is that why he was killed in prison?”

She smiled and shrugged. “It’s a cruel business, Dixie.”

Images flitted across my mind like a slide show: Briana in her designer clothes slouching down a runway, the counterfeit black Nikes left on Cupcake’s bed, the murdered woman’s bloodstained white shirt.

“Did you get the reward money for turning in your Serbian gangster friend?”

She looked surprised again, as if I were a frog she’d picked up that was turning into a prince.

“That was for money, it wasn’t personal. I saw the opportunity and I took it.”

Even Gumdrop and Licorice looked shocked.

She said, “I know what you’re thinking, but models only have a few good years, and most of us aren’t lucky enough to marry a Sarkozy or a Mick Jagger or a Billy Joel. We have to think of our future.”

“Explain to me exactly how your business works.”

She looked bored. “Counterfeit goods are manufactured in Asian countries, China mostly, and shipped out under fake papers showing them originating in Croatia or Montenegro or some other Balkan country. The American shipment is stored in a warehouse in New Jersey, then distributed to shops in big-money resort areas. The shop owners buy at a big discount and sell at a large markup.”

“How do you solicit those shop owners?”

She smiled. “That’s the tedious part. It took my friend years to build up his stable of upper-crust retail outlets. He did it himself, not like some who hire people to do it. He traveled to every store in person, and each place he went he had a different disguise, a different name. He was a master at disguise. He told people he was an agent for the manufacturer, and for one retailer he’d put on a wig and beard, then go bald and with fake teeth to call on the next. He was good with words, too. He’d get people talking, and when he left nobody could remember exactly what he looked like.”

For a second, I had a disastrous urge to laugh. A slick criminal had spent years building a list of secret markets where his counterfeit goods were sold. When he was arrested, he had double-crossed his partners by giving the list to a sexy model—the same sexy model who had turned him in to the police for the reward. The man had been killed in prison for his double-cross, and the sexy model had come to Florida to introduce herself to the retailers on the list, expecting to carry on the business and make billions. But because she had come to believe in a false memory she’d created of being Cupcake’s close friend when they were sixteen, she’d broken into his house. While she was inside, she’d lost the list. A transnational counterfeit business had been thrown into disarray because of a false memory and a woman’s carelessness.

I said, “You know, you could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you’d made a copy of that list.”

She looked ashamed. “I’m not used to the clerical end of business.”

I felt a stab of pity. With no family, Briana had been forced to create herself, and the self she’d created was truly amoral. With her blend of nuttiness and slyness, life was a game to her, a chance to become involved in intrigue and manipulation of other people. Her sense of self was so slippery that she broke into other people’s houses to see how normal people lived. She was obsessed with Cupcake for the same reason she’d been obsessed with her Serbian gangster friend: They both exuded power and self-confidence. Reba Chandler had been right about Briana’s addiction to drugs released by danger. Getting the list of contacts had been so scarily satisfying to her that she hadn’t given any thought to the practical, mundane, ordinary ways that people held on to important papers. Instead of making a copy of her precious list, she’d carried it around the same way Elvis carried his pilfered papers.

Cupcake had been right about Briana, too. The woman had a bag of unusually lustrous marbles, but she wasn’t playing with all of them.

I pulled my hand away from my gun. Briana was dishonest and cunning, but she wasn’t a physical danger.

I said, “Somebody told me that you did something outrageous at the Milan fashion show last year. What was that about?”

Her eyes rounded in surprise again. “One of the men trying to take over my business was in the audience. He made a gesture toward a reporter, a way of telling me he was going to expose me. He wouldn’t have, of course, because he would have been exposing himself at the same time, but the threat made me furious. I leaped off the runway and beat at him with my fists. It got me good publicity because I told the reporters he had made an obscene gesture that I found highly offensive. I was the injured innocent.” With a world-weary roll of her eyes, she said, “That’s the way it is in this business. The competition is cutthroat.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being caught?”

She shrugged. “My modeling career would be ruined, but I’m close to a time when I’ll have enough money to live without sucking up to prime ministers and wealthy playboys.”

She sounded as if she were talking about grabbing a bargain at Marshalls.

Suddenly defensive, she said, “I’m not the only famous person selling copies of top fashions and distributing them under fake labels. It’s a way to make millions, and the risk isn’t great. If someone is caught bringing in a container of fake sneakers, they lose their goods and get a mark on their customs records, but that’s all. It’s not like getting caught with three kilos of coke in a shipment of Gucci watches like my friend did. That was a stupid thing to do, because it gets you a four-year prison sentence. I’d never do that.”

I heaved a huge sigh and stood up. The cats circled around me eying the peacock feather that was now at my shoulder height.

“Briana, you have to leave now. These cats have to be fed, and then I have other pets to call on. Don’t follow me, and don’t come in another house after me.”

Confusion moved across her face like spiderwebs. “What about the list?”

“I run a business, Briana. Business people make copies of important papers. I’ve made several copies of your list. One of the copies is in my safety deposit box at the bank. If anything should happen to me, the list will go to every newspaper editor and law enforcement agency in Florida.”