Cat Pictures Please and Other Stories

by Naomi Kritzer

  But now what do I do? The gall of sending her a bill marked overdue when they had already bilked her out of over sixteen hundred dollars made Iris shake her head. They say you can’t cheat an honest man, but it was my honesty that they were taking advantage of. They knew I’m the sort of person who takes care of bills as quickly as I can. They knew that from the very first bill I paid.

  Maybe my son-in-law can help. Amy had married a thoroughly reliable man. Iris’s son-in-law was able to straighten out all kinds of mix-ups. But the thought of explaining to him that she’d paid six fake bills without realizing it made her cheeks flush. No, it’s too embarrassing. I’ll just live a little more frugally for a while. Make up the money. And forget about it.

  It could make a person angry, though.

  For the first time in years, Iris found herself thinking about the violin man—Leo Franklin or Joe Truman or whatever his real name was. He’d probably be calling himself Will Clinton these days. It was a little absurd to think that the world needed more of any kind of con man, but . . . If it’s going to have con men, I think I like the sort of con men that take advantage of dishonesty rather than honesty.

  Back in her house, she was drinking a glass of iced tea when someone knocked at her door. For a moment, she imagined that it would be her long-ago visitor, back again for some reason, but when she opened the door it was a young man, not an old one. He started to say something about a truckload of meat that was going to spoil if he didn’t find people to buy it, and she shook her head and said, “I really don’t eat much meat anymore.”

  He looked into her face and then said, “My name is Leo Clinton. Leo like the boy who went down with the Titanic, Clinton like the President of the United States of America.”

  It’s him. She hesitated for a moment, but . . . Leo never did me any wrong. Why not ask him what he thinks. He might know if I have any chance of getting my money back. “Come on in, Leo,” she said. “I’ll get you some iced tea.”

  The TV was on when he came in, blaring to the empty room; she shut it off. “You’ll have to pardon me if I miss some of what you’re saying. I’m a bit deaf these days, though I do wear a hearing aid.” She poured two glasses of iced tea. Blossom came over to investigate the stranger, sniffed him a few times, then flopped back down by the door.

  “Many years of happiness, yes?” Leo said when she sat down. “Just like I told you.”

  “Fifty-three,” Iris said. “Fifty three years and six months.”

  “All of them happy?”

  Iris thought about the Alzheimer’s, the Parkinson’s, the broken hip and pneumonia, the last weeks when Ben was so frail and helpless. “I wouldn’t trade even one day of that time for anything,” she said, knowing that her voice had faltered a bit. Leo didn’t say anything, so she added, “He wrote poems for me—every birthday, every Valentine’s Day, every anniversary, until the Alzheimer’s made that too hard for him. My daughter typed up all his poems last year and had them bound into a book for us. My granddaughters read some of those poems at Ben’s funeral.”

  “I never met your husband,” Leo said. “But I know he must have been a fine man.”

  “He was so good to me,” Iris said. “He was the best husband in the world.”

  “I’m very sorry for your loss, ma’am.”

  “Thank you.”

  Outside, a truck rumbled past.

  “About those bills you were wondering about,” Leo said. “Those weren’t me.”

  “I know,” Iris said. “You said you only cheat the dishonest.” The unfairness of it welled up again for a moment and she sighed deeply and put her glass down. “Well, what’s done is done, I guess. I don’t suppose calling the police will make any difference.”

  “They’ll take your report, if that’s what matters to you. But if it were easy to catch con men then fewer people would be conned. Con men are a slippery bunch.”

  “You would know.”

  “They don’t come more slippery than me.” He gave her an amiable grin. Was he always so young? she wondered. He looked old when I saw him the first time. Well, maybe not old, but older than me.

  “You think there isn’t anything I can do.”

  “No, I’m saying that going to the police probably won’t get you your money back. I have another option, if you’re interested.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Cheat the cheater. I can help you figure out who got your money, and I can help you clean out his bank account. We’ll have to work together, though. Some cons work best with two. Are you with me?”

  Iris thought it over. It could be dangerous, she thought. I wish Ben could advise me—what would Ben do? Her responsible son-in-law would never countenance it, that was certain . . .

  She smiled. “All right,” she said. “I’ll give it a try.”

  *

  “The first step is to find out who our mark really is. His post office box is undoubtedly under a false name, but that’s okay, we’ll find out the real one.” The box address had been in Xenia, so they’d driven there to stake out the post office. “It only takes a day for mail to get from here to there. You paid promptly every other time, so he’ll no doubt be checking his box today.”

  On Leo’s instructions, Iris had sent, not a check, but a written request to pay in installments. “You don’t want to give the mark any more of your money, but you don’t want him to know you’re on to him, either. He’ll have to write back and tell you it’s fine, and then check back for your first payment in a couple of days, so if we somehow miss spotting him today, we’ll have another chance. He’s got box number 3536. Your job is to loiter in the lobby. I’ll wait out front in the car. When you see the mark, don’t talk to him, just make sure you follow him out so I see who he is, too. Then try to follow him to his car so that you can see the license plate number. Remember it, and then write it down as soon as you can. Not while he can see you.”

  Iris had worried that someone would ask her what she was doing standing around in the entryway to the post office, but no one did.

  The wait was boring. She had to watch box 3536 like a hawk, while not looking like she was watching it, since the man—the mark—might notice that. Leo had thought the mark would be there early, and sure enough, in the morning rush, Iris glimpsed him. He wasn’t opening the mail, just shoving it into the pocket of his coat; she turned and followed him.

  “Here, allow me.”

  “Thank you.” She realized the mark had just held the door for her. She paused to let him get ahead of her, and then fell into step behind him, trailing after him to keep an eye on him in the parking lot. And there was the car: a red sedan. Iris didn’t really know cars, but this one was shiny and very new-looking. Ripping off old ladies must pay well. License plate. License plate. She spotted it as he pulled away, and realized it was one of those plates with a word on it: MR LKY. Mr. Lucky.

  “Do we follow his car?” Iris asked.

  “No, that’s much too easy to spot. No, our next stop is the police station. You’re going to get us his name and address.”

  “I am?”

  “They’re not supposed to give that out, but you’re not a suspicious character. You’re a sweet older woman, and if you have a good story, you can get any information out of them that you ask for, I bet. Can you think up a good story?”

  “I’ll have to consider that,” Iris said, and leaned back and closed her eyes. “Let me know when we get there.”

  *

  “Excuse me, young lady. I was wondering if you could help me, please.”

  The receptionist looked up. She was about the age of Iris’s daughter—fifty—and clearly a little startled to be addressed as “young lady,” but she smiled kindly at Iris when she saw her white hair. “I’ll do what I can, ma’am. What’s the problem?”

  “I was wondering if you could give me the name and address of the person with this license plate.” Iris spread out the torn piece of notebook paper on which she’d written MR LKY.


  “We’re not supposed to just give those out. Did he sideswipe you or something?” The receptionist frowned.

  “Oh, no, nothing like that. Oh, I’m so embarrassed about this.” Iris sighed. “You see, I was in a parking lot and when I opened my car door I hit his car and made a dent. I knew I should leave a note for him with my name and address, but the pen in my purse didn’t work. So I went into the grocery store to borrow a pen and while I was in there, he must have come back, because when I came out his car was gone. I feel just terrible. It was such a nice car. Shiny new paint. He must just hate me. Or what if his wife was driving it, if he has a wife? He’ll probably blame her. If I just knew his address, I could send him a letter through the mail and offer to pay to fix it.”

  The receptionist was standing up, a kind smile on her face. “You wait right here, ma’am, I’ll see what I can do.”

  To Iris’s horror, the receptionist returned with a police officer. Was it illegal to ding someone’s car and walk away without leaving a note? Iris felt faint with horror, but he just said, “I hear you want to make things right with some man with a red car?” There was nothing for it, so Iris swallowed hard and told the story again.

  “Aw, let her have it,” the police officer said, and the receptionist handed over a folded note. “Don’t tell anyone we gave this to you, okay?”

  “I won’t. Thank you, I appreciate it so much,” Iris said, and fled, clutching her purse hard enough that she thought her knuckles were probably bone white.

  Back in the car, Leo laughed at the look on her face. “You got it! You did, I can tell. Let’s see what Mr. Lucky’s real name is. Or at least the name on his driver’s license, which is probably also the name on his bank account.” Iris unfolded the note and they looked at it. Jason Beckett. 1 North Pine Circle, Xenia. It had a phone number, too.

  “Now what?” Iris said.

  “Now we wait till the sun goes down the night before garbage day, and go dumpster-diving in Mr. Lucky’s trash.”

  *

  “This is why everyone should own a paper shredder.”

  Mr. Lucky lived in a gated community, as it turned out, but Iris was able to get them in by explaining to the security guard that she couldn’t remember the house number or the phone number, but that Leo was taking her to her granddaughter’s friend’s house for her great-granddaughter’s first birthday party. Great-granddaughter. Well, if one of my grandchildren ever gets around to having children of their own, maybe I’ll have one of those. She couldn’t remember the house number but she knew the street, it was Pine Circle, and her granddaughter had promised balloons out front, and maybe a banner . . . The guard waved her through. Once at Pine Circle, they found garbage cans sitting neatly out on the curb. Leo handled this part, popping the trunk open, then throwing the bags in and driving off before anyone saw them.

  “Good party?” the security guard asked, seeing them again.

  Iris shook her head, baffled. “I must have the address wrong . . .”

  “She says she has it written down at home,” Leo said. “We’re going to go check.” He squeezed her hand and the guard gave him an understanding nod.

  They drove all the way back to Springfield, dumped the bags of actual garbage out by Iris’s trash, and then hauled the sack of paper garbage inside to her dining room, where they could sort through it. To her chagrin, Iris found her own note, crumpled, mixed in with the rest of the paper. There were notes from others, as well—requests for itemized bills, pleas for more time to pay. “Quite the cottage industry,” Leo murmured. Iris looked for envelopes with the addresses of other victims, but didn’t find any.

  “Bingo,” Leo exclaimed, holding up a folded printout. It was a bank statement, complete with balances and account numbers. High balances: his checking account alone had $42,328.31 in it. Mr. Lucky’s was the only name on the account. “We still need his signature,” Leo said. They found it near the bottom of the pile: a faded carbon from a credit card charge.

  Iris looked at the crumpled notes from the other “creditors.” “Could we take this to the police?” she asked. “Would they do anything?”

  “We could take it to the police,” Leo said. “They’d probably be able to arrest him with this. Then the judge would let him out on bail, and off he’d go, and a week later he’d have a new name, and a new address, and a new post office box. He’d find a way to clean out his bank account on his way out of town. You’d never see your money again. Do you want to go to the police, or do you want to clean out Mr. Lucky?”

  One thousand six hundred and fourteen dollars. Iris thought about it. “Clean him out,” she said.

  “Great. Next we’re going to take advantage of the great institution of branch banking, where you can pick your geography and guarantee that the teller won’t know your name. I’m going to be Mr. Lucky, and you’re going to be my lovely bride, Petunia Smith.”

  “Aren’t we going to have to sign something?”

  “I’ll handle all the forgery.”

  Iris looked at him dubiously. “You’re younger than my son.”

  “I’ve been under a lot of stress lately, and I think that’s aging me prematurely. Trust me. By tomorrow, I don’t think anyone will raise an eyebrow when I say we’re getting married.”

  *

  The bank was heated much too warmly, Iris thought, sitting in the chair, clasping her purse. Leo’s hair had gone snow-white overnight, and his face appeared drastically aged. They’d shaken hands with the banker. Leo had introduced himself as Jason Beckett and explained that he wanted to add Petunia to his account and make it joint. “We’re getting married,” he said with a conspiratorial smile. “This is my lovely bride, Petunia.”

  “Congratulations,” the teller said warmly. “Petunia, you said?”

  “I’m just so thankful my parents didn’t name me Heliotrope,” Iris said faintly.

  “Well, we’ll just need you to fill out some forms . . .” Out came the forms. Iris filled out the form as Petunia Smith, using a made-up address and Social Security number. Surely they have Mr. Lucky’s number on file; how is Leo planning to get that?

  “Ugh,” Leo said as he was filling out his form, and put down his pen. “I’m having a senior moment here, I think. I can’t remember my social.”

  The banker glanced at her computer screen. “I can give it to you if you can show me some photo ID,” she said.

  “No, that’s okay, it’s coming back to me now,” he said with a broad smile, and filled out the rest of the form. Iris was perplexed for a moment, then remembered that he seemed to be able to read thoughts. I wonder if he’s reading my mind right now? He glanced up with a raised brow for her, and then signed Mr. Lucky’s signature with a flourish.

  “I’ll need to see some picture ID,” the banker said when they were done. “It’s just routine, you understand . . .”

  Leo shook his head slowly, his eyes a little wide. “Neither of us drive,” he said.

  “Surely you have the state IDs for non-drivers . . .”

  “I’m not in the habit of carrying it,” Iris said.

  “It’s been a long time since I was carded,” Leo said.

  “Can’t you just put it through anyway?” Iris said. “You know, we were really hoping to run off and get married today.” She leaned forward and in a whisper added, “Our children don’t approve. We wanted to get this all taken care of before they could find out.”

  “Well, I . . .” The banker glanced at both of them. “Oh, all right. I’ll just put down that you showed me State ID cards. You do have them, don’t you? Okay.”

  Petunia’s name added to the account, they left the bank and drove to a different branch, where Iris filled out another form to transfer nearly the entire balance of Mr. Lucky’s account into yet another account. This time she went in by herself, but Leo gave her the account numbers and told her what to move where.

  Finally, Leo dropped her off at home. “I’ll be back tomorrow morning,” he said. “We need to give the b
anks time to get the money actually moved over—right now it’s just moved over on paper—and then we can withdraw the entire amount. We’ll use cash, because that’s untraceable. Can you be ready at around ten?”

  “I surely can,” she said.

  The interior of her house was cool and a little dim; she fed Blossom and then turned on the TV. Thinking over the last couple of days, she alternated between nervous giggles and a rising sense of fear. All that money. Over forty-two thousand dollars. Will they send me to jail, if they catch us? Will they let me tell the jury that he stole my money first?

  She could scarcely sleep that night. My guilty conscience, she thought. I’ve been greedy. He only took sixteen hundred dollars from me. I stole . . . She had to turn on the light to work out the exact sum. Over twenty-six times what he stole from me. Well, if this works, maybe I’ll try to figure out who else he stole from, and give the money to them. She had no idea how she’d track down the other victims, but the thought comforted her enough to sleep.

  She was ready for Leo by nine-thirty, and sat on her front porch, watching one of her neighbors setting out Halloween decorations: a plastic ghost, a witch crashing her broomstick into a tree, a giant grinning pumpkin that was inflated by a fan. The mail arrived, and the mailman gave her a wave. She looked at her watch: it was ten-thirty, and there was no sign of Leo. She picked up her mail to take it in the house, and saw an envelope with a hand-addressed label. It wasn’t the handwriting of anyone in her family. She sat back down and opened it up.

  My dear, dear Iris, the letter said. Please accept my apologies for my failure to arrive this morning on schedule. I think I did warn you once that con men sometimes get conned by their partners, and that I only cheat the dishonest. And stealing a man’s money is truly not an honest thing to do, even if he did steal from you first.

  A small sheaf of bills slipped out of the envelope and onto her lap, followed by a dime and three pennies. I’m sure by now that you’ve started thinking about it, and don’t really want most of that money, anyway. I have, however, enclosed one thousand six-hundred and fourteen dollars and thirteen cents. It is in unmarked bills and will get you in no trouble with your own bank.