Cat Fear No Evil (2 page)

Around him the moonlight struck pale the crowded, angled rooftops, and gleamed white below him across the sidewalks and across the faces of cottages and shops, slanting moonlight that threw stark tree shadows along the bleached walls. And the shop windows shone softly, their lights glowing across their bright wares like miniature movie sets. The village at three in the morning was so silent and still that it might lie frozen in some strange and uneasy enchantment. Prowling the roofs, Joe Grey himself was the only sign of life, his gray ears laid back, his yellow eyes narrowed to slits as he paced and worried.

But then, as he stalked from peak to peak among a forest of chimneys, he was suddenly no longer alone. He paused, sniffing.

Beneath his paws the shingles smelled of tomcat, of the worrisome intruder.

Flehming at the stink that was already far too familiar, Joe scanned the night, studying the dark shingled slopes and shadows, hoping he was wrong and knowing he wasn't. He moved on quickly, prowling block by block, searching, crossing high above the narrow streets along branches of ancient oaks as he scanned the streets below. Pausing beneath second-floor windows, he peered in where the tomcat might have stealthily entered.
This
tomcat could jimmy almost any lock, and his intentions were never charitable. Around Joe Grey nothing stirred, no faint sound, no hush of another cat brushing against a window
frame. And though the shadows were as dense as velvet, they didn't move—shadows that could hide the black tom the way the darkest pool hides a swimming snake.

T
he cold wind off the sea blew up Joe's tail and
flattened his ears and whiskers where he stood watching the shadows and convincing himself he'd been mistaken, that he hadn't scented the black tomcat. And suddenly a quick black shape slid into the gloom beside a penthouse. A big, muscled shadow vanishing into an ebony cleft of night. A beast taller and broader than any village tomcat. Joe remained crouched, his gaze glued to the inky tangle of rooftop vents and air ducts and converging overhangs. It was over a year since the evil black tomcat and his thieving human partner had first appeared in the village, and Joe had hoped he'd seen the last of them.

He waited a long time. Was about to turn away when the animal reappeared, slipping through a wash of starlight, his belly caressing the shingles. He was quite aware of Joe, his ears flat to his broad head, his long thick tail lashing with menace. On the ocean breeze the tomcat's stink was as predatory as any hunting leopard.
A subtle shifting of his weight, and Joe could see his yellow slitted eyes.

A year ago last month, the black tom had appeared in the village with his human partner, old whiskey-sodden Greeley Urzey, the pair having flown up from Panama to Molena Point so Greeley could visit his sister. The old man had taken Azrael's carrier right on board the PanAm 727, right into the cabin—an action tantamount, in Joe Grey's opinion, to carrying a loaded assault rifle across international borders.

But then, Greeley himself was no innocent. Ragged old Greeley Urzey, despite his resemblance to a penniless tramp, was highly skilled at his chosen craft. He could gently manipulate the dial of a safe, listen to the tumblers fall, smile that stubbled lopsided smile, and open the iron door right up. And his sleek black tomcat partner was equally skilled at his particular brand of break-and-enter. Wrenching open a second-floor window or skylight, slipping through and dropping down into a jewelry or liquor store, the black cat would fight open the front door's dead bolt. And
voilà,
Greeley was inside with his clever drills and lock picks.

Joe Grey smiled. After only a few of those midnight raids, he and Dulcie had nailed those two like ham-stringing a pair of wharf rats, and the thefts had stopped.

But Joe and Dulcie hadn't alerted the department. That one time, they hadn't called the cops. They didn't need news of an amazing talking black tomcat to hit the news media—to hit the fan big time. They had, instead, watched the thieving pair sneak quietly out of the village to return to their home in Central America,
had celebrated Azrael and Greeley's departure praying they would never return.

Now, crouched low, intent on the shadows, Joe watched those burning yellow eyes scan the rooftops and he was filled with questions. Had these two stolen Clyde's Packard? Were they behind these clever thefts? Such virtuosity, and the sophisticated contacts needed to fence the jewelry, to say nothing of the resources to dispose of such a large item as a Diebenkorn painting or the Packard, did not seem in character for those two. Greeley liked to steal cash and disappear, liked to drink up the profits, then steal again, that was Greeley Urzey's style.

As he watched, the black tom disappeared as quickly as he had slid into view. Studying the darkness, Joe could taste the beast's testosterone-heavy stink. He remained still, listening for the nearly inaudible pad of a paw, for the scuff of a careless claw or the shift of a piece of loose gravel.

Tensely waiting, he heard nothing. Only the hush of the breeze among the oak leaves. Moving across the roofs he followed Azrael's scent, tracking him in a circuitous route up steeply slanted peaks and around platoons of chimneys, drawn on over the rooftops for three blocks, four, in and out of narrow clefts and across twisted limbs high above the empty streets—tracked him until the trail suddenly and insolently turned back to Joe's own roof. To the bright new cedar shingles of the Cape Cod cottage that Joe shared with his human housemate.

There on the roof Azrael stood boldly facing him, stood barring the entrance to Joe's private tower that rose above the new shingles, his cat-sized penthouse,
his own private rooftop retreat. The tomcat blocked his entry with gleaming teeth and bared claws.

The tower, rising above the new master bedroom, was an architecturally pleasing hexagon four feet across and four feet high. Its six glass sides supported a peaked hexagonal roof. Within, Joe's aerie opened by a cat door to the master suite below. Joe's private tower was off limits to all village cats. It was marked by his own scent and defended when necessary, no prisoners taken. Only Joe's tabby lady, Dulcie, and their pal the tattercoat kit, were welcome here. Watching the black tom blocking his private property, Joe tensed to spring.

The second-floor master suite, which had doubled the size of Clyde's single-story cottage, included a large bedroom with wood-burning fireplace, a second fireplace in the spacious study, a bath, and dressing room. The contractor had included ample high shelves and beams where a cat could climb. The largest beam gave to a ceiling niche above Clyde's desk, from which opened Joe's door to the tower. Contractor Ryan Flannery had tackled the challenge of a cat-friendly structure with amused delight. Over a late dinner, she and Clyde had designed the glass-sided aerie, allowing ample space for deep cushions, a water bowl—and the door out onto the roof where the black cat had now insinuated himself, his acid-yellow eyes challenging Joe, his hissing smile as evil as the name he liked to call himself, the death angel.

Azrael's voice was as hoarse as scuffed gravel. “So, little kitty. Your Clyde…
Damen
, is it?…has added onto his house. Isn't he clever. And this little pimple sticking up here, what is this? A dovecote? Have you
been reduced to raising tame pigeons for your hunting, birds too fat to fly away?” Azrael's sulfur-yellow eyes were as belligerent as those of an underworld gang leader.

Considering the defiant beast, Joe felt much the same as a cop would observing some street scum whose dirty hands were smearing his patrol car.

The fact that Azrael had been born far more skilled and intelligent than ordinary cats had fostered in this animal not joy and goodness but a keen hunger for evil.

An ordinary cat was not expected to be moral, your everyday household kitty was not supposed to behave with the welfare of others in mind. Certainly many cats were blessed with sensibilities that led them to warn their families of burglars or fire or a leaking gas line. But for a speaking cat of Joe Grey and Azrael's talents, far more, it seemed to Joe, was expected—if you were dealt a winning hand, you were expected to sweeten the pot. That was Joe's opinion. If you were given the extra talents, you were committed by the power that made all life to give back in kind. Expected to make the lives around you brighter. To help take down the no-goods, not to join them.

Stepping boldly in through Joe's cat door and leaving a tuft of black fur on the metal rim, Azrael lifted his tail. Joe leaped, enraged, as the tom sprayed Joe's favorite cushions with a stink powerful enough to corrode a steel building. Joe hit him, knocking him away as the beast sprayed Joe's water bowl. They were clawing and raking, the force of Joe's attack soaking them both. Sinking his teeth into Azrael's neck, Joe forced him against a window, clawing and ripping at
him. Hanks of black and gray fur flew. Locked together, yowling and screaming, the tomcats thundered against the small windows threatening to break glass, a spinning ball of raking claws and torn and shredded cushions. Below, in the master bedroom, Clyde shouted.

 

Brought up from a deep sleep, Clyde yelled again and leaped out of bed. “What the hell? Joe, where are you?” He stared toward the ceiling of the study that seemed under siege by a small and violent earthquake. “
What
the hell's going on!” Racing into the study in his shorts, he climbed atop the desk and peered up through the cat door, where a ruckus like fighting bulls shook the ceiling.

Above him, in the little glass house, whirled a dervish of screams and spinning fur. “Joe! What the hell—” Reaching up inside the tower, he tried to separate the fighters. Grabbing the black tom, he tried to pull him off Joe.

“Get away from him!” Joe yelled. “He'll take your arm off.”

The cat's claws raked Clyde. Hot with anger, Clyde jerked the black tom down through the cat door. He wasn't sure whether he had hold of head or tail until teeth sank into his thumb. Swearing, he snatched the cat's neck between tightening fingers. He had him now, one hand gripping the cat's tail, the other hand clutching the beast's thick black neck. Holding the twisting, screaming tom away from his own tender hide, Clyde stood on the desk nearly naked, his arms oozing blood,
his black hair tousled from sleep, his bare feet scattering papers and bills like autumn leaves. In his hands, the flailing black monster clawed the air and swore like a stevedore. Clyde hadn't heard such creative invective since his rodeoing days; the beast swore in Spanish as well as English, the Spanish expletives sounding far nastier. Gripping the flailing cat was like holding a whirling radiator fan with knives embedded in the blades—a machine Clyde didn't know how to turn off. He was tempted to keep squeezing until the cat stopped yelling and hopefully stopped breathing. He knew what this cat was, and he didn't like him any better than Joe did. It would be so easy to collapse that vulnerable feline throat.

He couldn't do it. He couldn't kill even this lowlife who, if he were set free, would likely go for Clyde's own throat.

Maybe if Clyde had been convinced that the tomcat was totally evil, he would have done the deed. In Clyde's view, Azrael was an irritation, but he didn't see the cat yet as the pure, deep evil that demanded without question to be eradicated from the known world. That, Joe Grey would later inform him, was a serious flaw in Clyde's judgment.

Easing his grip on Azrael's throat but continuing to clutch tightly the nape of the cat's neck and his tail, holding the screaming, flailing animal away from him to avoid ending up in the emergency ward, Clyde stepped down off the desk.

Standing in the middle of the study, he wondered what to do with the beast. If he tossed the cat across the room, it would spin around and leap at him; he could clearly imagine Azrael tearing at his face and at other
tender parts. Above Clyde, Joe Grey crouched peering down through his cat door, his white nose and white paws red with blood, his cheek torn in a long, bleeding gash, his yellow eyes blazing with rage.

But now, as well, alight with deep amusement.

Ignoring Joe's silent laughter, Clyde found himself wanting to reach up for the gray tomcat, hold him close, and wash the blood from his face—a gesture impossible at the moment, and one that at any time would meet with indignant resistance.

Joe looked down at Clyde. Clyde looked up at Joe Grey. In Clyde's hands Azrael fought and flipped and twisted so violently that Clyde felt every jolt.

“Help me out, here, Joe. What do I do with the beast?”

Joe stifled a laugh. “The cat carrier? Or the bathtub filled with water? My suggestion would be to squeeze real hard and put an end to him.”

“I can't do it.”

Joe's yellow eyes burned with a look that was all wild beast, that said
kill
, that contained no hint of civility.

“It would be like lynching a killer without due process.”

“You think the California legal system would give
this
lowlife due process?”

Clyde shrugged, engendering a moment of miscalculation in which the black tom raked his hind claws down Clyde's shoulder, bringing new blood spurting, one claw dug deep. Joe stopped smiling and leaped from the tower like a swooping eagle, knocking the tomcat from Clyde's grip. The two cats hit the floor locked in screaming battle, then Joe flipped the tom twice, forcing him into the cold fireplace.

Crouched over Azrael among the ashes, Joe blocked his retreat with a degree of viciousness Clyde had never before seen in his feline pal. Azrael, driven by Joe's frenzied attack, backed against the firewall pressing hard into the bricks—as if wishing the wall would give way and let him through into the dark chimney.

Watching the two tomcats, Clyde stood clutching his arm and applying pressure to the wound. The cats communicated now only in silence, their body language primal. Clyde could read Joe's superiority of the moment as Joe goaded and stalked his quarry. The black tom showed only uncertainty in the twitch of his ears and the drop of his whiskers.

Joe moved from the fireplace just enough so Azrael could step out. His meaningful glance toward the glass doors at the south end of the study was more than clear. As Joe herded the flinching black tom toward the roof deck, Clyde stepped to open the door.

Silently Azrael padded past them onto the deck, as docile as any pet kitty. Silently Joe Grey stood in the doorway beside Clyde watching as Azrael crossed the wide deck over the roof of the carport, leaped into the oak tree, and fled down it to the sidewalk. As Azrael disappeared up the street, Joe Grey turned back inside, never looking to see which route the cat would take. Azrael had left the premises cowed and obedient, and that was all he cared about—for the moment. If, before the black tom was driven from the village, he presented more serious problems, Joe would deal with trouble as trouble arose.