Cat on a Cold Tin Roof (7 page)

“So you're just gonna leave it for
them
to find?”

“No, I'll search for it.”

He frowned. “Half isn't enough for you?”

“Calm down,” I said. “Ten percent is enough for me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I don't want any part of hot diamonds, either unloading them on the black market or keeping one step ahead of the Bolivians,” I said. “But they have to be insured. If I find them, I'll turn them over to the insurance company for the standard finder's fee. We'll see that word gets out, and they can go home or rob the insurance company.”

He glared at me. “
Half
a finder's fee,” he said. “Remember, I'm the one who told you about them.”

“You're going to be looking too?” I asked.

“You bet your ass I am,” he assured me. “Why do you think I haven't gone back to Chicago? After all, Big Jim's not in a position to rat on anybody.”

“So are we partners or competitors?” I asked.

He stared at me for a long time, then shrugged and extended his hand. “Partners.”

“Okay,” I said, taking his hand and shaking it. “If the Bolivians are still here, we know
they
haven't got them.”

“Ain't much to go on,” he said.

“Oh, we know a little more than that.”

He looked surprised. “We do?”

I nodded. “We know they're not in the Grandin Road area.”

“Why the hell not?”

“There are five animal shelters closer to the Pepperidge house than the one the cat turned up at. Believe me, I've been to all of them. Maybe whoever stole the cat and the collar didn't want it showing up a few blocks away, where someone might recognize a car or a driver, or at least be able to identify them—but no one drove twenty-five miles through that blizzard just to dump the cat where nobody knew it or them—and no pampered housecat walks twenty-five miles in two days in this weather.”

“They said you were good,” he replied approvingly. “Okay, we'll keep in touch three or four times a day. What's your cell number?”

“I don't have one.”

He looked hurt. “I thought we were partners.”

“We are,” I replied. “I just don't have a cell phone.”

He frowned. “I suppose a tablet that lets you answer any e-mails I send to you is out of the question?”

I nodded. “Afraid so.”

He sighed deeply. “Do you at least carry a gun?”

“Almost never.”

“I know you solved a murder down in Kentucky last year and exposed a major drug ring before that.” He stared curiously at me. “Just what century do you operate in?”

I shrugged. “I think I'd have been really effective working for Tom Jefferson.”

He half-nodded in agreement. “At least if you worked for old Tom you wouldn't have three Bolivian hit men with maybe twenty kills between them racing you for the collar and ready to blow you away if you find it first.” He pulled out a pen and wrote on a napkin. “This is
my
cell number. Check in two or three times a day.” I was about to answer when he held up his hand. “No more bullshit. Use a pay phone.”

“Right,” I said, vaguely wondering what pay phones cost these days. “Where will you go first?”

“I don't know . . . but it makes the most sense for
you
to find out about the Bolivians. After all, this is your town. You've got to have some snitches who can tell you what's going on.”

I was happy to hear him use the word “snitches.” It was comforting to know
something
I was familiar with hadn't vanished before the turn of the century. “I'll see what I can find out,” I told him.

“I'll check with my people and see which fences out of the Cincinnati area can handle that kind of hot material. Where should we meet for dinner?”

“What do you like?” I asked.

“Diamonds,” he said.

“What else?”

“If it's smaller than me, I'll eat it,” said Sorrentino.

It was comforting to know that I'd picked up a partner with the same taste.

6.

I figured the first thing I'd better do was contact Jim Simmons. I didn't want to do it in front of any other cops, so I phoned him at his office and told him to meet me at the usual place, and sure enough he showed up twenty minutes later at Red's Jungle, the bar we'd meet at before or after a game. The owner was a very nice gray-haired lady whose name wasn't Red, and the field hadn't been The Jungle since Boomer Esiason took the Bengals to the Super Bowl back in 1989, but it had the right atmosphere: if you were going to or coming from a baseball or football game, this was the place to be.

Jim was in a corner booth when I got there, and I walked over and sat down opposite him.

“I figured whatever you had to say, you didn't want to say it at the bar where anyone could overhear,” he said by way of greeting.

“Right,” I answered.

“So is this about the cat—or hopefully about the deceased?” he asked. “Or are you on a new case?”

“Same case,” I said. “Though I'm freelancing now. I have a feeling that Velma—Mrs. Pepperidge—doesn't want to hire me back.”

He grinned at that. “Okay, what is it that you want to share with me?”

I learned forward. “Jim, I figure someone in the department should know that there are three Bolivian hitters involved somehow, and they're in town.”

He looked at me in disbelief. “Bolivian?” he repeated, half-smiling. “Not Paraguayan or Ecuadorian?”

I waited for Red to come by and take our drinks order and then answered him. “It's complicated. But they
are
Bolivian, they
are
killers, they may have killed Pepperidge, and they're still in town.”

He pulled out a notebook and a pen. “Names?”

“I don't know.”

“Okay, descriptions?”

“I don't know.”

“How much have you had to drink, Eli?” he asked.

“Not a drop until Red gets back with my beer.”

He shook his head. “This isn't like you. You're holding back something, probably a bunch of somethings. I can't act on what little you've told me.”

“Okay,” I said. “What I told you is for public consumption. What I'm going to say next is for you alone. If you
have
to pass parts of it along to save a life, of course you have to. But otherwise it's for your ears only until I tell you otherwise.”

“Fair enough,” he said as Red brought my beer and Jim's bourbon to the table.

“Some weather we're having,” she said. “And the poor bastards are playing at home this weekend. You think they'll
ever
put a dome on the damned stadium?”

“Not a chance,” said Simmons. “Same reason they don't dome Soldier Field in Chicago or Lambeau Field in Green Bay. We're used to cold weather. Those warm-weather teams from Florida and California aren't, so this gives us an advantage. Remember the Ice Bowl? Anthony Muñoz and the guys came out in their short-sleeved jerseys, the San Diego Chargers took one look at them, and for all practical purposes the game was over before it started.”

“I'm way too young to remember that,” lied Red.

“Of course you are,” lied Simmons. “My mistake.”

She kissed him on his bald spot and want back to the bar.

“You're quite a ladies' man,” I said with a smile.

“Old ladies,” he answered. “The young ones see right through me.” He paused. “Okay, what have you learned that I can't tell to anyone else unless the Iranians—excuse me: the Bolivians—bomb the city.”

“You know anything more about Palanto than what you told me?”

“Just what we have in the files,” he answered. “Hell, you can probably find it on
Wikipedia
.”

“Whatever
that
is.”

He rolled his eyes and shook his head sadly. “I'll never understand why you don't ride a horse and carry a six-gun.” Then: “Yes, that's pretty much all I know about Palanto. Clearly you're about to tell me more.”

“He didn't exactly retire when he moved here and became Malcolm Pepperidge,” I said.

Simmons looked surprised. “He kept working for the mob in Chicago? Now,
that's
interesting.”

I shook my head. “He kept his word and never worked for them again. But either he missed the work or he missed the rewards, because he began doing the same thing for a Bolivian drug cartel.”

He stared long and hard at me. “Okay, I give up. Who told you?”

“Ever hear of Val Sorrentino?” I said.

“You're traveling in rough company, Eli. He's one of the mob's enforcers.” He frowned. “What the hell's
he
doing in town?” The frown vanished. “Of course! The mob sent him here to make sure Palanto couldn't testify!”

“Now that you've solved the murder, do you want to hear what I know or not?” I said.

“Shoot,” he said, and then added: “You should pardon the expression.”

“Sorrentino was sent here by his bosses to sound Palanto out, to see if he was going to testify. He told them a day or two before the murder that Palanto was safe and dependable, that they had nothing to worry about.”

Simmons stared at me. “You believe that?”

“I do.”

He took a deep breath, then pushed it out so that his lips vibrated. He sounded like a horse that just came back after a hard six furlongs. “You're too good a cop—”

“Detective,” I interrupted him.

“You're too good at either to believe it based just on what you told me. What else should I know?”

“This is confidential, right?” I said.

He nodded his head. “Right.”

“Jim, the word I get is that he held back ten million dollars from the Bolivians. They're in town to get it back.”

“So
they
killed him?”

I shrugged. “I don't know. I don't even know if they had a reason to.”

Simmons frowned again. “Then he
didn't
steal ten million?”

“I'm assuming he did.”

He looked totally confused. “Then they
did
have a reason to off him.”

“They had a reason to be here,” I said. “They had a reason to want their millions back if Sorrentino is correct about how much Palanto siphoned off. But until they knew where he hid the money, they had every reason to keep him alive and absolutely no reason to kill him.”

“Something's missing here,” said Simmons. “Maybe they knew where the money was and then killed him and grabbed it—or grabbed it and killed him.”

I shook my head. “Not a chance.”

“Okay, why not?” he asked.

“They're still in town, and that means they
don't
know where the money is.”

Simmons stared at me for a long moment. “But
you
know,” he said at last.

“I know where at least some of it is,” I said.

“Well?” he demanded.

“It's why Velma—Mrs. Pepperidge—paid me a hundred times what the cat was worth to find it and had me arrested when I brought it back without its collar.”

He looked disbelievingly at me. “What was the fucking thing made of?”

“Leather. But it was studded with what looked like rhinestones, but which according to Sorrentino were actually diamonds—and that's why I know that whoever killed him didn't know what the collar was worth. Whether it was the Bolivians or someone else, why not just shoot the cat too, and remove the collar?”

“So you think that's why the Bolivians are still in town?” asked Simmons.

“Can you think of any other reason?” I shot back.

“And I assume Sorrentino is still around too?”

I nodded. “We've formed a kind of partnership.”

“Oh?”

“If we find the collar, we turn it in for the reward.”

“
Is
there one?” asked Simmons. “I haven't heard anything about it.”

“If it's insured, we'll collect from the insurance company. And whether it is or not, Velma will offer a hefty reward for it. Probably under a phony name so anyone who's watching her to see if she can recover it doesn't dope it out. I figure if she gets it, the first few thousand go to a facelift and a new name, the next few for plane fare, and good luck ever finding her again.”

“So did
she
do it, maybe?”

“Doesn't seem likely, though of course you'll check her bridge alibi. She had access to that cat day in and day out. Why the hell let it run off in a snowstorm with the collar still on?”

“It sneaked out?” Simmons suggested, but even he didn't look like he believed it.

“All she had to do was take the collar off before she shot him, Jim,” I said. “Then let the cat go or stay, and who would know or care?”

“Okay,” he said. “So Palanto was killed by Velma or three mysterious Bolivian shooters of which we have no record—there aren't any international flights to Cincinnati from anywhere except France and Canada. Or maybe it was your pal Sorrentino.” He paused. “Or servants?” he suggested unenthusiastically.

I shook my head. “If they knew about the collar, why not just take it and run? Why commit murder?”

He nodded his agreement. “You got a point.” He smiled. “I just hate it when you got a point.” He checked his watch. “Any other possibilities?”

“Yeah,” I said. “The guy who turned the cat in to the shelter without its collar.”

He looked interested. “You know who it was?”

I shook my head. “Not yet.”

“Surely they have a record.”

“He didn't give his name.”

Simmons grimaced. “So that's it?”

“So far,” I replied “I'll keep you informed of anything I learn.”

“And I'll let you know if the collar turns up.” He finished his drink and stood up. “I hate to kiss and run, but I have to see what we have on any recent arrivals from—” he shook his head in wonderment
“—Bolivia.” He began putting on his heavy winter overcoat. “And you got quite a few leads to follow up: Bolivians, widows, mob enforcers . . .”