The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez

by Simon Hawke

  "So, basically, what you're telling me is we've got nothing," Leventhal said.

  "Well, we know what kind of explosive was used, but there's no way to trace it. We'll be able to come up with a voice print, but there's no guarantee it'll stand up in court, and even if it does, it won't tie a suspect in with the murder without corroborating evidence. And we know a remote detonator was used, but all that tells us is that the killer was in the general vicinity when the bomb went off, probably in visual contact with the victim's vehicle. That's about it."

  Leventhal grimaced. "Well, it's not much, but at least it's something."

  "The victim's vehicle was garaged in a security building, right?" asked Eggleston.

  "Yeah," said Leventhal. "Why?"

  "Well, then that means the bomb was probably planted when the vehicle was parked outside, unattended, while the victim was at work. But what puzzles me is why didn't the killer detonate it as soon as she got in the car? Why take the risk of following her home and doing it there? What would be the point?"

  "To blow her up on her own doorstep," Leventhal replied. "And on the commissioner's doorstep, as well, to insure maximum media coverage. Our killer seemed especially anxious to make sure the media got the message."

  "You know, there's one other possibility we haven't yet considered," I said.

  They both looked at me.

  "What if the bomb was planted while the victim's car was still in the garage?" I said.

  "What?" said Leventhal.

  "Think about it," I said. "If the killer was able to get into the garage the night before, that would have given him all night to plant the bomb, in relative privacy, which would be a lot less risky than doing it while the car was parked outside, in broad daylight. Then the killer could have simply waited while she drove to work and went on the air, then detonated the device when she came back."

  "And it would look as if the bomb had been planted while she was on the air," said Leventhal, "when in fact, it had been planted earlier, while she was home and the car was in the underground garage. And the only reason the killer would have for doing that would be to conceal the fact that he had access to the building. Which means the killer might even be living there." He punched his fist into his palm. "Dammit, Cat, that's good! If the killer was one of the victim's fellow tenants in the building, it could also explain how he managed to get her private phone number. Maybe she actually knew her killer!"

  "It's possible," said Eggleston, with a thoughtful nod. "It's certainly a fascinating speculation."

  "Speculation, hell!" said Leventhal. "I think he's onto something! It's the first decent lead we've got. I want you to send a lab team over to that building and go through that garage with a fine-tooth comb. See if you can find anything that would indicate the bomb was planted there."

  "I'll get right on it," Eggleston said. He glanced at me and nodded. "That's good thinking, Gomez. You'd make a fine detective." He grinned. "If you ever want a reference, just let me know."

  "Thanks," I replied, giving him a sparkle with ole Betsy. "I'll keep it in mind."

  Our next stop was Leventhal's apartment, in a run-down section of Capitol Hill, just off the Colfax Strip. The house it was in certainly wasn't much to look at from outside. It was a big, old, private home that had been divided up into apartments. The house had seen better days. Hell, the entire neighborhood had seen better days, but I didn't think there was anyone around old enough to remember when.

  The ugly brick house needed tuck-pointing so badly, it was dropping bricks like a collie sheds fur. The brick porch was settling and looked about ready to crack in two. The lawn, or what there was of it, had been taken over by thistles and wild roses. Music, or what passed for music among kids these days, blared from speakers set into the windows of the upper stories. I don't know, maybe there was a melody in there somewhere, but to me, it sounded like robots trying to smash each other to pieces.

  "Looks like a party goin' on," said Leventhal, as we went up the overgrown front walk. A machete would have come in handy.

  "This is where you live?" I said, with disbelief.

  "Yeah," he replied, flicking his cigarette away into the street. "Me and about a dozen college kids. Not all together, you understand. I got my place, they got all the other apartments. I'm like an island of fascism in a sea of bullshit."

  He opened the door and an overpowering cloud of sandal-wood incense came wafting out. Something was burning, and it didn't smell like food.

  "Oh, shit, here come the marines," said the young person of indeterminate gender as we went down the corridor and toward a room at the back.

  "Up yours," said Leventhal.

  "Anytime, officer, anytime."

  "Hey, look!" a pretty young skirt called out, "Danny got himself a pet kitty!"

  I hissed at her as we passed, and she backed away, eyes wide.

  "Figures," somebody said. "The street cop went and got himself an alley cat."

  "Friends of yours?" I called out, over the noise.

  "Ahh, sort of," Leventhal replied, as he inserted the key into the apartment door. "I'm kinda like the den mother around here."

  "Pretty rowdy bunch of cubs, if you ask me," I said.

  "Just youthful exuberance," Leventhal replied. "Hey, you assholes, turn it down! I got some work to do!"

  "Fuck you!" someone yelled out.

  "Individuation is an awkward stage, ain't it?" Leventhal said, as we entered the apartment.

  The first thing I noticed was the engine. It was sitting on a platform in the center of the room, all gleaming chrome and polished aluminum. Leventhal gave it a pat as he passed.

  "Hey, baby, daddy's home," he said.

  The floor was covered with a threadbare rug. There was a battered, old, amputated couch in the room, which was to say, it had no legs. It just sat flat on the floor. An equally battered pair of chairs was placed across from it, with the engine as a sort of centerpiece between them. Wooden packing crates doubled as end tables and bookshelves. On the walls were framed posters of some sort, apparently reproductions of pre-Collapse cultural icons. One depicted the faces of four young men against a black background and bore the legend, "The Doors." Another showed a metallic-skinned, silver figure on a matching board against a kaleidoscope of colors, with the legend, "Surfing with the Alien." Still another showed an intense, angular-faced, young man with long black hair in what looked like the robe of an adept, holding what appeared to be a roasted guitar. And one entire wall was completely obscured by a complicated-looking stereo console and stacks of huge speakers with the front covers removed, exposing formidable-looking woofers and tweeters.

  "You like?" said Leventhal, as he noticed me taking in the awesome array. "I put it together myself." He grimaced at the sound coming from outside. "They never learn," he said. "Okay, they want war? They got war."

  He picked up a remote-control unit and punched a button. The deafening sound of driving electric guitars and pounding drums came booming from the stacks of speakers with all the power of a freight train. I arched my back and my fur bristled. I'd never heard anything that mind-numbingly loud in all my life. The walls literally shook and bits of plaster rained down from the ceiling as a voice that sounded like a banshee's wail filled the room, the entire house, and probably the whole neighborhood, as well. In seconds, there was pounding on the ceiling, barely audible, and moments later, someone threw open the door and an arm reached in, waving a white flag.

  Leventhal turned the system off as the bearded young man waving the white flag stuck his head in. "All right, all right! We'll turn it down, already! Shit, you and your damned oldies!"

  Leventhal grinned. "AC/DC gets 'em every time," he said.

  "What?" I said.

  "I said, "AC/DC gets 'em every time," he said.

  "What?"

  He made a face at me and unzipped his leather jacket. He took it off and tossed it on the floor. My ears were still ringing. Leventhal flipped out a cigarette and lit up with a flouris
h of his antique Zippo. He inhaled deeply, blew out a long stream of smoke, and sighed with contentment.

  "Man, they just don't make music like that anymore," he said.

  "What a shame," I mumbled. "No wonder this damned house is falling apart. You're vibrating it to pieces."

  "Everyone's a critic," Leventhal replied sourly. "Let me tell you something, Cat-back then, they had something we just plain don't have nowadays."

  "Broken eardrums?" I said.

  "Funny," he replied wryly. He picked up the cassette tape Michaels had made for him and slipped it into the player. "Okay," he said. "Might as well kick back. This could take a while."

  He went to the refrigerator and took out a roll of salami. He held it up interrogatively and I nodded. As the intro music for Sean Prescott's "Late Shift" program started playing, Leventhal sliced us up a snack.

  "Welcome to the 'Late Shift,' " the announcer's voice said. "I'm Sean Prescott, and as usual, we'll be taking you into the wee hours of the morning with music, talk, and phone calls from our audience-that's you-so if you've got something to say about our topic tonight, the number is 555-8255, that's 555-TALK, and we'll be taking calls in just a little while. Our topic tonight is the nature of true faith. What it means, to us as individuals, and to our society, and to help us examine this provocative question, our guests in the studio tonight are the elders of Denver's Tabernacle of True Faith, the Reverend Bob Johnson, Brother Theodore Washburn, Brother Marcus White, and Sister Ruth Cottrell. Welcome to the 'Late Shift,' Reverend, why don't we start with you? You call your order the Tabernacle of True Faith. What, exactly, does that mean?"

  "Well, Sean," the Reverend Johnson replied smoothly, "as we are told in Revelations, 'And I heard a great voice out of Heaven saying, "Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself shall be with them, and be their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away." ' What that means, in other words, is that the only true path to salvation is through God, and through the scriptures, which are given by the inspiration of God for the instruction of the righteous."

  "I see," said Prescott. "So what you're saying, basically, is that the only true faith is that which can be found in a fundamental interpretation of the Bible?"

  "That's essentially correct, Sean. The Bible is the Word of God, passed on to us throughout the generations of Man, and it is through the Holy Bible that the nature of true faith is revealed to us."

  "Now I used the words, 'fundamental interpretation of the Bible,' " Prescott said. "Do you have any problem with being referred to as Christian Fundamentalists? Brother Theodore?"

  "We don't generally think of ourselves as Fundamentalists, Sean," Brother Theodore replied. "We simply think of ourselves as Christians. However, if you choose to call us Fundamentalists, I won't dispute your use of the term, in the sense that it helps to differentiate the True Christians from the apostates."

  "And by apostates, I take it you mean those Christians who do not conform to Fundamentalist principles and teachings?" Prescott asked.

  "That essentially correct, Sean," Reverend Johnson replied, "except that we don't really consider them Christians. At least, not True Christians. An apostate is someone who has rejected the principles and teachings of his faith, and we believe that most people who call themselves Christians these days have strayed from the true path and have abandoned the teachings of the faith."

  "So that when you refer to these so-called Apostate Christians," Prescott said, "you're referring to what most people these days would consider to be the mainstream of Christianity, the majority, as it were. Brother Marcus?"

  "Well, Sean," Brother Marcus replied, "I believe it was Voltaire who said that if a thousand people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing. Simply because we are, admittedly, in the minority, and the apostates and the heathens are in the majority, that doesn't make them right. Christians have been in the minority before, and they have been persecuted before, but the truth isn't something that can be dictated by the opinions of a majority."

  "Or a minority," Prescott interjected.

  "Or a minority," Brother Marcus agreed, "that's quite correct. The truth is simply the truth. It is what is, and whether it's perceived by a minority or by a majority has no bearing on it. God gave us free will, so that we could make a choice about our own salvation. The scriptures give us the wisdom to make intelligent and moral choices."

  "So if I understand you correctly," Prescott responded, "what you're saying is that all those people who don't agree with your beliefs, with your perception of the truth-which is to say, most people these days-that all those people are wrong? Sister Ruth?"

  "We prefer to think of them as having made the wrong choices," Sister Ruth replied. "And, in a lot of ways, it's not really their fault. The correct choice is very often not the easy choice, whereas succumbing to temptation has always been easy. Unfortunately, we have a society today that encourages people to succumb to temptations, to make the wrong choices, the easy choices. Take magic, for example. Magic is sinful, it's the work of the Devil, but magic is glamorized in our society today and made acceptable, because it's an easy choice to make, because it's tempting, because it appeals to the sensual, to the corrupt. When you're constantly surrounded by temptation, when you're encouraged daily to succumb by the media and big business, it's very difficult not to give in to that temptation, especially when you're told constantly that it's the right thing to do. The virtue of true faith has never been an easy virtue. The early Christians were thrown to the lions. They were crucified and burned to death for holding to their faith, yet they persevered, and through their perseverance, they were saved.

  If the pagan beliefs of the ancient Romans were, indeed, the true faith, then why were they so afraid of the early Christians? Why go to such lengths in an attempt to stamp out Christianity? And if Christianity were not the true faith, then where did those early Christians gain the strength and purpose to die for their beliefs?"

  "Well," said Prescott, "I could just as easily say that if Christians got so much strength from their beliefs, then what about all those people killed during the time of the Inquisition in Europe, executed for adherence to pagan beliefs, or often simply because they had been accused of things like heresy and witchcraft, with so-called confessions extracted under torture?"

  "I see you've done your homework," Reverend Johnson replied, and you could practically hear the condescending smile in his voice as he added, "however, if you read your history more carefully, you'll see that the Inquisition of the thirteenth century, which resulted primarily from the Albigensian Crusade, and which also resulted in persecutions that echoed throughout the later centuries, was primarily a secular phenomenon, rather than a truly spiritual one. In other words, Sean, it was a question of political power, not of spiritual truth. The Roman Catholic Church was obsessed with many purely secular concerns, a situation that unfortunately persists to this day."

  "I'm not sure I understand what you're saying," Prescott replied. "It sounds to me as if you're condemning the Church-the Roman Catholic Church, that is-and accusing it of being primarily a political rather than a spiritual entity."

  "Well, isn't it?" Reverend Johnson responded. "Throughout its history, the Church in Rome has been heavily involved in politics. You have the Crusades, the Inquisition, the behind-the-scenes political maneuverings throughout the centuries, right up to this very day. Frankly, I can't imagine any rationally thinking person believing for one moment that Jesus Christ would have approved of such activities."

  "So you're saying the Roman Catholic Church is and has been acting contrary to the teachings of Christ?" asked Prescott.

  "That would seem obvious," Reverend Johnson replied.

  "Okay, and with that, we'll take a short musical break while we go to the phones," said Prescot
t.

  It wasn't hard to predict where the program would go from there. Leventhal fast-forwarded past the musical interlude and, when the talk picked up again, Prescott went to the phones and a veritable torrent of hostility against his guests. Things got pretty ugly in fairly short order. I didn't really see any point to it. Humans have been arguing over their conflicting religious beliefs practically since time began, and all too often those arguments had escalated into violence, yet I don't recall ever hearing about anything being settled.

  Animals don't have any religion and, if you ask me, we're not missing much. We don't have any need of churches or temples and we don't waste a lot of time arguing over dogma. We don't question our existence, we merely accept it. The way I see it, life's tough enough without worrying about what comes after. But then, according to some people, I'm not supposed to have a soul, so I guess there's no point to sweating the afterlife.

  The trouble is, if what you do in this life determines what happens in the next one, then it's probably prudent to make sure you go through life doing the right thing. That can be tricky. Especially when nobody can seem to agree on what the right thing is. And it's apparently not enough to know you're doing the right thing, you gotta make sure that everyone else is doing the right thing, too. And if their thing doesn't happen to be your thing, then I guess you've got a problem. Don't ask me to figure it out, it's not my thing.

  Leventhal just sat there, listening to the tape with his eyes closed, and if it wasn't for the fact that he was smoking, I would've thought he'd fallen asleep. Frankly, I didn't see where listening to this nonsense was going to get us anywhere. If doing programs like this got Sean Prescott his good ratings, then I didn't think much of his audience. It was depressing to think of all those people with nothing better to do at night than call up some radio program to vent their anger and frustration.

  Maybe Prescott was performing a public service by giving people an outlet for their rage, but on the other hand, he was also giving them a forum and thereby spreading it around. Maybe calling up the show and screaming wouldn't be enough for some of them. Maybe listening to it all would fire them up and make them want to go out and kick somebody's teeth in. Or maybe shoot someone. Or maybe plant a bomb...