Cat on a Cold Tin Roof (11 page)

“So what's our next move, Mr. Detective?” he said when he was done eating.

“I've been thinking about it,” I said. I checked my watch. “Quarter after seven. I think I can start in a few minutes.”

“Doing what?”

“I'm going to take my dog for a walk.”

He stared at me. “Enough with the jokes.”

“I'm not joking.”

“Then what the hell
are
you doing, Eli?” he demanded.

“Laying the groundwork,” I said.

Suddenly his face lit up. “This has something to do with the Bolivian who spotted you!”

“Right,” I said.

“You want him to see you again, and that's why you're walking the dog. OK, I got that much. But then what? You're sure as hell not looking to get into a shootout with him. Hell, he might have both his stablemates with him.”

“I leave the shootouts to John Wayne and Clint Eastwood,” I said. “Once I know he's following me, I'm going to walk to my car, toss Marlowe in it—”

“Marlowe?” he interrupted me.

“My dog. Then I'm going to drive downtown.”

“And then what?”

“And then I'm going to report him to the cops, who are looking for him anyway.”

“He'll just drive off.”

I smiled at him. “I don't think so.”

“You know something I don't know,” he said.

“Hell, if push comes to shove, I probably know three or four things you don't know.”

“Just the same, I'd better ride shotgun.”

“I told you: I don't want a shootout,” I said. “Val, I know what I'm doing. If he didn't shoot me when he saw me walking Marlowe before, he's not going to shoot me now. He's just keeping an eye on me, and maybe trying to make sure I know he's willing to shoot me under the right circumstances . . . but those circumstances aren't tonight.”

“You're sure?” he asked.

“I'm sure.”

“So what do
I
do while you're pulling off whatever the hell it is you're pulling off?”

“Meet me at police headquarters.” I told him how to get there, then checked my watch again and did the math. “Meet me there in an hour.”

“At the police station?” he said, frowning.

I nodded. “Just walk in the door. I'll be waiting for you.”

The waiter came by with the check, and Sorrentino grabbed it before I could (not that I tried very hard).

“I make a lot more money busting heads than you do saving 'em,” he said. “I'm paying for any meals we eat together until we find the money or give up looking for it.”

I decided to not even pretend to protest.

“I hope you know what you're doing, Eli,” he said as the waiter made change. “Keep it, son,” he said, waving the fortyish waiter off. “How long do I wait if you're not there?”

“If I'm not there by eleven, go to bed and get some sleep, because it means our Bolivian friend wasn't as interested in me as we think.”

We got up and walked to the door.

“Take care of yourself,” he said, walking off to his car.

I went over to the Ford, started it up, and headed the four miles home. Marlowe wasn't thrilled to see me, and he was even less thrilled to be dragged out into the cold, especially since we were being visited with a freezing drizzle.

I walked him to his favorite urinal—Mrs. Garabaldi's petunias—but she must have been busy watching television, because for a change there was no cursing. I looked around, hoping to see a car tracking me, but there was no traffic on the street.

“Show up, damn it!” I muttered. “I'm freezing my ass off.”

So was Marlowe, who tried to pull me back to the apartment. He turned to growl his displeasure at me, got tangled in the leash, and as I squatted down to unwrap him I spotted it, parked about twenty yards away. Same BMW as before, and I could see now that it had a man—doubtless my Bolivian, or one of his partners, seated behind the wheel, just keeping a watchful eye on me.

Marlowe saw the front door to the apartment and began tugging for all he was worth.

“Hey, pal,” I said, pulling him toward the car. “Wanna go for a ride?”

He gave me a look that said,
Are you crazy?
and pulled back as hard as he could. Finally I just leaned over, picked him up, and tossed him onto the backseat, then walked around to the driver's side, opened the door, and got in. I could see that the BMW had started its motor—I couldn't hear it, and the lights weren't on yet, but I could see vapor coming out of its tailpipe. I started the car, gave it a moment to warm up, mostly so the BMW, which was facing the wrong direction, had time to turn around in an alley.

I checked my watch. Just a few minutes from eight o'clock. Yeah, I'd be right on schedule. I turned left, the BMW followed me, I turned right a few blocks later, he did the same, and I gradually made my way downtown. When I was within a mile I turned on the radio to hear the latest sports news and to confirm that I'd made the right decision. There was a bit about an upcoming middleweight title fight, some shortstop was going public about being disrespected since he'd only been offered seventy million to sign for three years, and then came what I was waiting for: there was a huge rally for the Bengals at Paul Brown Stadium starting at eight-thirty, and traffic was stop and go, the rain was coming down a little harder, visibility could have been better, and even as I was listening and approaching the stadium I got caught in the stop-and-go traffic I was hearing about.

I stopped, fourth in line, at a red light at the corner of 6th and Vine. My passenger's door opened and Jim Simmons climbed in.

“Glad you got my message,” I said.

“I wish to hell you'd learn to use a cell phone,” he said bitterly. “I've been standing out here in this shit for half an hour waiting for you to show up. There must be ten thousand cars here. It's almost as bad as game day, and that wind!” He shuddered, then damned near jumped through the roof when Marlowe barked at him.

“What the hell is
that
?” he demanded.

“Marlowe.”

“Seriously, Eli.”

“Seriously. He's my dog. That's his name.”

“And you brought him along for protection?” he said sardonically.

“I brought him along because I was afraid if I went into the apartment to put him away they'd think I wasn't coming back out and maybe go home for the night.”

“Then he
is
following you?”

“The blue BMW right behind me,” I said.

“Okay, we're in business.” Simmons pulled out his cell phone. “Hello, Bill? It's working. We're at 6th and Vine. Fifth car at the light is a BMW, almost certainly rented, and the license plate is”—he read off the number. “Send a couple of traffic cops over to give him a ticket, have him get out of the car while they act as if they're about to inspect it, and the second he's out, cuff him.” He paused. “The car? All right, get a third man to drive it to the station. This guy may be a killer. Even with cuffs on him, I want at least two cops with him. Right.”

He put the cell phone away. “Okay, Eli,” he said. “Unless you've got an overwhelming urge to listen to the players taking turns predicting that they'll beat the Steelers on Sunday, turn north and let's get over to the station.”

We arrived about ten minutes later. The traffic had thinned as we got a mile north of the Ohio River, which ran by both stadiums. I parked in the police lot, and Jim and I entered just as they were leading the Bolivian to a holding cell.

He turned and saw me enter. I flashed him a smile, then pointed my finger at him and fired it.

If looks could kill, I'd have been dead two seconds later.

11.

Sorrentino had been waiting for me at the station, as we'd arranged, and Simmons told us both to go home and that he'd call me in the morning after the cops had learned what they could. Since it was a choice between that and sitting in the station's lobby all night, I took his advice and headed back to my car.

“Cops make me nervous,” complained Sorrentino, who was walking alongside me. “I take my hat off to you, Eli. You said they'd pull him in, and sonuvabitch, they did.”

I smiled. “They don't play football in Bolivia.”

“They play soccer, but they call it football,” he sort-of agreed.

“They don't have rallies that turn out half the city before they play the Steelers or the Ravens,” I said. “I knew if he followed me we'd be in a stop-and-go jam—well, a stop-and-almost-stop—and then, since Simmons knew I was on my way and the Bolivian was following me, it was nothing to call a couple of cops while we were all standing still.”

“Damn!” he exclaimed, and then grinned. “Maybe there's something to not shooting first.”

“If you're as bad a shot as I am, there's a lot to recommend it,” I answered.

He laughed at that. “You got a point.”

We reached my car. “Can I drop you somewhere?” I asked him.

“No,” he replied. “I'm parked about half a block up ahead.” He looked in a window and frowned. “You got something in the backseat?”

I knocked on the window, and Marlowe was up and barking furiously half a second later.

“Yeah,
that'll
make any car thief think twice.”

“Unless they growl back at him,” I said. “Then he'll hide under the mat.”

He looked at Marlowe and made a face. Marlowe looked right back at him and made a face; Marlowe's had more teeth in it.

“Okay,” he said. “We might as well be going. You'll contact me after you hear from your friend?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I'll go home, walk the dog once more, and go to bed so I won't sleep through Simmons's call in the morning.”

“I'll stop by a bar for a drink or two and think about you freezing your ass off walking Mike Hammer.”

“Marlowe,” I corrected him.

He shrugged. “Whatever.”

Then he was heading toward his car. I walked around to the driver's door, unlocked it, told Marlowe to get his front feet off the window, stop growling, and lie down, and began driving home.

I half-expected to find that one of the other Bolivians was tailing me, but there was no one within a block of me all the way home. Someone had taken my parking place, and I had to park almost a block from my front door, but it just meant that Marlowe got a little longer walk than usual.

When we got to the apartment I took his leash off, he raced to the couch, leaped on it, and dared me to move him. I went to the kitchen to see what I had in the fridge for a little snack before I went to bed. There was a half-gallon of three-week-old milk, half a pizza that had been sitting there for a week, and a couple of other things.

I didn't see anything that appealed to me—par for the course in my refrigerator—when I became aware of the fact that I was not alone.

Cold pizza?
said Marlowe.
What a good idea!

“Okay,” I said. “But if I share the pizza with you, you got to share the couch with me.”

He wasn't thrilled with the arrangement, but finally he agreed and we sat down together with the pizza between us. I picked up the remote to see what was on TCM. It was
The
Mask of Dimitrios
with Peter Lorre and Sydney Greenstreet, just the kind of charming and unarmed criminals I never seemed to run into in the real world. We finished the pizza just about the time Sydney shot Zachary Scott, and a couple of minutes later the end credits rolled, and shortly after that it was Robert Mitchum and Jane Greer in
The Big Steal
. I think I figured out the plot about ten minutes into it, but I fell asleep before I could be sure, and I slept through the next few movies until the phone woke me up.

I got to my feet, which really pissed Marlowe off since he'd been snoring on my lap, turned off the TV, and walked to the phone.

“Yeah?” I croaked.

“Eli? It's Jim.”

“What did you learn?” I asked.

“You're not gonna believe this, but he was traveling on a passport that says his name is Sam Smith. The other two are Joe Smith and Jim Smith, and they're college professors.” He laughed. “What do you think of that?”

“I think they're killers,” I replied. “Just incredibly stupid ones, or at least uncreative ones. What did you find out about them?”

“Not much. They're staying at a Motel 6 out in the suburbs, but when he didn't show up last night I'm sure they figured out we had him and moved to a new place.”

“Can you hold him for a while?”

“Not a problem,” he said. “Our friend Señor Smith was carrying not one, not two, but three guns, plus what we used to call a switchblade. There's no Bolivian consulate here, so I asked if he wanted us to inform the one in Chicago.” He laughed. “He shook his head so hard I thought his mustache might fly off. But the interesting thing is he didn't correct me.”

I frowned. “Correct you?”

“Eli, he's traveling on a Paraguayan passport. I'll lay plenty of five-to-one that he's never set foot in Paraguay in his life.”

“I wouldn't bet the farm on that, Jim,” I said. “He and his almost-brothers are probably sent all over South America to kill anyone their family's not happy with.”

“You're right, of course,” said Simmons. “I'll wire his prints to Bolivia and Paraguay and see who's got anything on him. I'm getting a little long in the tooth. I was going to say that you shoot the wrong guy in Uruguay or Paraguay and you find yourself in a war with a couple of hundred former Nazis . . . but I guess they're all dead of old age by now, aren't they?”

“Let's hope so,” I said. “Anything else about Mr. Smith?”

“Nope.”

“May I make a suggestion?”

“Sure,” said Simmons.

“Mention Big Jim Palanto to him and see what he does.”

“You got it,” he said. “I've been up all night. As soon as I get some sleep, I'll go back and try it out.”