Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

A museum attendant runs up to study the car that has stopped ... oh, maybe six inches from the sleek little vintage convertible's side.

"I cannot believe this happened. The emergency brakes are set on all these cars every day we open, but this one has its emergency braked pulled up and out. It was useless!"

"How much strength would it take to disengage the emergency brake?" my mistress's curious voice pipes up from somewhere very near.

"Not much. A two-year-old could do it."

I plant my mitts on the open windowsill and glare back into the once-adjacent vehicle our slo-mo rush to oblivion has left behind. Maurice is in a mirroring position to mine, except that he is grinning whisker to whisker. I am beginning to bet that a well-trained eight- or nine-year-old could do it too, and did.

"I got the footage," the cameraman is yelling. "Louie going over the seat into the front compartment, Clete yowling and hitting his head."

"Yeah, Clete," the director asks. "Why did you scream like that?"

"I do not know." Clete rises from his dazed seat on the running board. He inches up his right pant leg. "Felt like a dozen scorpions stinging me, and I stomped down on it so hard I hit the brake. Sure couldn't see it."

"Well, look at that," the director says.

They look, even Miss Savannah Ashleigh, who has minced over to eavesdrop on everything.

"Cat scratches," the director says in an awed tone. "The cat scratched you so you'd stop the car."

"I do not think so," the dazed Clete says. "I think the cat was just trying to hide under my legs."

"It does not matter," the director replies, stepping back to view the car and me in it. "We will shoot some new stuff to intercut with what the cameraman got now. Louie finding the brake and doing his scratching-to-save routine. We will put some catnip on your leg, that ought to do the trick. Then Louie leaping into the backseat again-- we have got that--and perhaps getting cozy with Yvette. Or she could push the A La Cat bowl to him this time. I love it."

"What about Maurice?" the trainer asks in a grating tone.

"Huh? Oh, him. I guess we could close with a shot of the Louie-mobile taking off and shooting a cloud of dust into the back of his car, all over his inferior brand of cat food."

"Great work, Louie." The director reaches into the backseat to pull me out.

He even scratches my ears, but I do not admonish him for this liberty. I like the way he thinks. I also watch the animal trainer quietly collect the disgraced Maurice.

Missed again, buddy. Too bad the cat is not out of the bag--and the commercial--entirely.

Chapter 21

An Inspector Calls

Matt felt as serene as the blue rectangle of cool water in the pool three stories below. He had just been beside it in the warm November sunshine, doing his tai-chi routine and then a more conventional Western meditation on the blue mats.

His panicked feelings about the ConTact caller had receded like a high tide. His head and emotions were clear; he felt exonerated, forgiven. Having just gotten up an hour before, he was hacking together a cold breakfast: cereal, milk and half a cantaloupe, when the doorbell rang.

Who could that be? he wondered, discounting Temple. She was off turning Midnight Louie into a TV star, and landlady Electra had lots of weddings scheduled for her attached wedding chapel, the Lovers' Knot.

So he opened the door, cantaloupe cleaver still in hand. Lieutenant C. R. Molina stood there, looking like an enlisted woman in navy blue.

"C--" he began to greet her.

She held up a hand he was surprised to see was not white -gloved.

"None of that Carmen stuff, Devine. I'm here on official business."

Her officer act was second to no one else's. Crisp, authoritarian, humorless, she could have been an archbishop. He gave way as she entered, glancing sardonically at the large kitchen knife.

"Just, ah, butchering the breakfast cantaloupe. You care to see?"

"No. Put your food away. This will take only a few minutes. I hope."

He reluctantly left her in the barren living room, looking at his things--or the lack of them--

in her see-all, know-all way. In the kitchen he threw his partially assembled breakfast in the refrigerator. The cereal would get soggy, but that was hardly a major loss.

He glanced down at his white gi and bare feet. Hardly formal enough attire for an official police visit, which is no doubt why they love to make them unannounced. Control is the name of their game, and they are used to getting, and keeping, the upper hand.

He hurried out again, wondering how many conclusions her penetrating eyes had drawn from his few possessions.

"Coffee?" he asked.

"No. For me it's lunchtime, which I usually don't have time for, except at my desk." She was studying every piece of furniture frankly, the phone on its wobbly secondhand table, the single and ugly floor lamp, the odd book, the sparse wall ornaments.

"Looks like a class photo," she commented when pausing before a huge horizontal black-and-white picture.

"Eighth-grade graduation photo. St. Stanislaus."

"And you are ... let me see if I can pick you out of the lineup. Hmm, there. Second row, far left. Cute as a little blond bug."

"I don't know about the cuteness, but I am on the left, I remember."

"You hang up a photo and don't know where you are in it?"

"I didn't have much to hang up, and I haven't much looked at what I did hang up. Too busy."

She turned from the wall. "I'm impressed," she admitted. "So uncluttered, even ascetic. I would have thought ex-priests would go in for material possessions after years of not having very many."

"Rectories are usually crammed with parishioner hand-me-downs, dark heavy old pieces, rather depressing. And I haven't had time to furnish this place. Temple wants to take me to the resale places, but--"

"But you'd see more of the same you saw in the rectories. Can I sit?"

"Of course. I forgot to make it plain. Have only the one sofa, though."

"This one will seat three or four. It ought to do for us, don't you think?"

"I can stand."

"I'd rather you didn't."

Matt shrugged and followed her over to the plaid sofa, wincing upon remembering that only one cushion was unsprung. If he could maneuver her onto the good one-- But Molina was not one to be maneuvered, even for her own comfort. She sat on the second-from-left cushion (sprung), forcing him to select the end one (also sprung).

"I'm investigating a death," she began.

"Not a murder?"

"Not... yet. Have you ever heard of a man named Darren Cooke?"

"Not until very recently."

"How?"

"Temple mentioned him in connection with a cat commercial her Midnight Louie is in.

Apparently he's some sort of entertainer."

" Was some sort of entertainer."

"Sorry. I know he is dead, but I knew so little of him when he was alive, that it hasn't really hit home. His death, that is."

"Maybe this will hit home."

Molina drew a business card from her side jacket pocket and threw it down on the empty seat cushion between them. This was the unsprung cushion. The card lay on the tautly plumped cushion as if on a presentation pillow. It was a ConTact card.

"I-I recognize the card, but what has that to do with Darren Cooke?"

"It was found in his possession. If you'll turn it over, you'll see the name 'Brother John'

written on the back. In Cooke's handwriting, I might add. Was he a phone pal of yours?"

"I don't know. All my callers are anonymous."

"You must get some clues to their backgrounds, though: ethnic, regional, education level, and so on."

"Yes. Most don't call more than once."

"But some do."

"A rare few."

"--who would therefore stick in your memory?"