The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

by Blaize Clement

  Steven’s eyes cut to me, and this time they weren’t flat. “What thugs?”

  I said, “It happened last night. About nine o’clock. I stepped out my front door and somebody slammed me so hard I almost lost consciousness. Probably used a sap and an asp baton. I lay on the porch floor and drifted in and out of awareness while some men trashed my apartment. I don’t know what they were looking for. They left, and I got up and called Cupcake.”

  “Did you report it?”

  “I didn’t want to worry my brother. He was next door asleep, and he’s a little bit overprotective, so I didn’t want him to know. Besides, I didn’t have any evidence that it had happened. No bruises, no bumps. No broken bones. No scratches. My ribs weren’t even bruised.”

  “But the pain was so great that you fell down semiconscious.”

  I sank lower in my chair remembering it. “They were pros.”

  “When those men were in your apartment, did you hear any conversation?”

  “They spoke a foreign language I didn’t recognize.”

  “Did they take anything?”

  “I don’t think so. They threw things around, broke a teapot.”

  “For effect? Or in a real search?”

  “I don’t think they searched thoroughly. I don’t know if they left everything a mess to make it look like they had searched or if they were just incompetent.”

  “Yet you thought they were professionals when it came to knowing how to incapacitate you without leaving evidence.”

  “You think they weren’t really looking for anything? That they just wanted to hurt me?”

  “I don’t know what their intent was, Ms. Hemingway, but if you meet them again, please report it. Even if it causes your brother worry.”

  “Do you know who they could have been?”

  “I have no idea.”

  His eyes had gone flat and bleak again. I wondered if that was something he did on purpose to hide when he was lying.

  Steven sat up straighter. “I want you all to listen very carefully. I’m not at liberty to give you particulars, but certain transnational criminals seem to believe that you are a threat to their business.”

  With a nod toward Cupcake, he said, “Each of you has been thoroughly investigated. We have not found evidence linking you to any crime, but somebody believes you are, and you must be extremely careful until this investigation is resolved.”

  In one voice, Cupcake, Jancey, and I said, “You investigated us?”

  He met our angry glares with a shrug. “Don’t take it personally. Remember that FBI stands for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  Jancey blew air like a horse snorting. “Don’t take it personally! How else can we take it?”

  “Mrs. Trillin, get your priorities straight. You aren’t in danger because the FBI has investigated you. You’re in danger because a criminal organization believes you have information or property they want.”

  Again in unison, we all said, “What information? What property?”

  He looked from face to face as if he couldn’t believe he was in the company of such idiots. Personally, I was studying him with the same cautious scrutiny I’d give a strange dog whose tail wagged while his neck hairs bristled.

  16

  Steven took the Nikes with him when he left.

  Cupcake and Jancey were confused and angry. I was confused and afraid.

  We wasted several minutes asking one another what in the world international criminals could believe we had that they wanted. Then we wasted more minutes asking one another who the people could be. We knew they had to have something to do with selling fake merchandise. We knew the fake merchandise was most likely designer clothing or jewelry. And we knew that Briana had something to do with selling it.

  I told them about the article Tom had found that linked Briana with a Serbian gangster who’d been sent to prison for shipping heroin in a crate of Gucci watches. They thought that was mildly interesting but couldn’t imagine what it had to do with them.

  Then I gutted up and said what I’d been thinking ever since I saw those Nikes in the middle of the Trillins’ bed.

  “Cupcake, when Briana told me that she robbed houses with you when you were kids, she said you mostly did it so you could buy a pair of Nikes.”

  Jancey glared at him. “You do know her, don’t you?”

  Cupcake stood up like a whale breaching. “I do not know a woman named Briana! I have never known a woman named Briana. The only kid I ever broke into a house with was a guy named Robbie Brasseaux. I never broke into any house with any girl.”

  He was so obviously sincere that Jancey and I went silent and ashamed, like kids caught stealing money from a church collection plate.

  Cupcake made a sudden involuntary movement, a tic so small that Jancey didn’t notice. I glanced at him as a spasm of pure despair floated down his face.

  Under his breath, he whispered, “Sweet Jesus.”

  At the same moment, Lucy trotted into the kitchen, and Jancey turned her head to watch Lucy hunker over her water bowl and lap water with her sticky little tongue. Lucy wiped her face with her paw as if it were a napkin and trotted out of the room.

  Cupcake said, “I have to get some sleep.”

  Watching him leave, Jancey said, “The only thing that makes sense is that Robbie Whoever told another kid about robbing houses with Cupcake, and the kid he told must have grown up and somehow met Briana and told her that he came from the same town as a famous athlete named Cupcake Trillin. Just gossiping, you know, making himself important by telling that Cupcake was a thief when he was a kid.”

  It seemed like an improbable coincidence.

  “But why would Briana break into your house and leave fake Nikes?”

  “A sick joke, maybe.”

  “Maybe, but it’s not very funny.”

  When we’d said every useless thing we could think of twice, I left her and headed home. I knew I had to call Guidry before much more time passed, and the thought made me want to pull to the side of the street and cry. Besides, I was so tired my eyelids were sticky. All I wanted to do was have a nice warm shower and crawl into bed for a long nap.

  Then, at the intersection leading to Oleander Acres, a surge of anger brought fresh memories of being laid out on my porch like a poleaxed heifer, helpless, frightened, and humiliated. I still didn’t know what my attackers had hoped to find in my apartment, but I knew it had something to do with Briana and fake Nikes.

  Energized by indignation, I turned the Bronco into Oleander Acres.

  This time, instead of stopping across the street from the house where the man driving Briana’s Jaguar had gone in, I pulled into the driveway. The man who answered the door was Asian, about forty, with a thin mustache and a wiry body balanced on the balls of his feet. We looked at each other for a moment, he with the inquiring eyes of somebody answering a door to a stranger, me trying to see any sign of recognition on his face.

  I said, “My name is Dixie Hemingway. I’d like to talk to you about Briana Weiland.”

  His face altered, a perceptible tightening of muscles that gave him a fierce look. “Are you police?”

  “No.”

  “Then I have nothing to say to you.”

  He backed away to close the door, and I stuck my foot in the doorway. “Please. It’s very important.”

  “Important to your newspaper, yes. To me, no.”

  “I’m not a reporter. Last night somebody attacked me and ransacked my apartment. I think they were connected somehow to Briana. I have a right to know who they were and why they came to my apartment. I saw you driving Briana’s car, so I know you are close to her.”

  Behind him, a woman’s querulous voice said, “What is it? Who are you talking to?”

  He turned his head. “A lady asking about Briana.”

  The woman spoke rapidly in a language I didn’t recognize, all vowels with varied inflections. I wondered why the neighbor had thought it was French.

 
I said, “Please, may I come inside?”

  He stepped back. “Enter.”

  The house was typical Floridian upper-scale rental—pale tile floors, neutral walls, furniture with pastel linen cushions on bamboo frames, glass-topped tables. The woman was not the typical tourist. She was too thin, too intense, too angry. Asian like the man, she had short spiky black hair and the creped skin of a heavy smoker. She glared at me with black eyes that glittered like a trapped raccoon’s.

  In heavily accented English, she said, “Why do you let her in? Why?”

  He said, “Please, Lena.”

  “No! No please Lena! I am done with it all. She has brought us to this. It is done!”

  The man spoke sharply in their language, with a warning, cautionary note in his voice.

  I said, “Were you one of the men who attacked me last night?”

  All the belligerence seemed to drain from the woman.

  She said, “Men attacked you?”

  “Yes. They were waiting outside my front door. They hurt me badly, but they didn’t break any bones or leave any scars. They had to have experience in inflicting great pain without leaving evidence.”

  The man said, “What language?”

  “I don’t know.” I hesitated, then spoke what I was thinking. “It was not the language you two just spoke.”

  The man sighed and gestured toward a sofa. “Please to sit.”

  They took chairs, and for a moment we all assessed one another. I was searching for signs of duplicity or trickery, and I suppose they were doing the same.

  The man said, “Those men who attacked you, they were experts at inflicting pain without breaking bones or leaving bruises, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then it is possible that you were attacked by members of a Serbian security company. If so, there will be no record of their presence in this country, and you will never find them.”

  I felt a buzzing in my head, as if bees were circling me. The man spoke as if it were a perfectly reasonable assumption that men with a Serbian security company would attack me on my porch, ransack my apartment, and then run away.

  I said, “That’s ridiculous. I have no connection to Serbia.”

  Lena laughed. “Ah, but you are a friend of Briana’s.”

  The buzzing in my head grew louder, and I felt a hysterical urge to laugh with her. The entire conversation was insane.

  I said, “Can we start over? I’ll give you my name, and you tell me yours, and then we can have a rational conversation.”

  The man smiled, and I sensed that he pitied me.

  He said, “Very well. You have already given us your name of Dixie Hemingway. You may call me Peter, and my wife is Lena. We are employees of Briana’s. I drive for her, arrange for her travel, accompany her as a guard when she is in a crowded place. My wife is housekeeper and cook.”

  Lena said, “No more. I don’t do that anymore. I’m done with it all.”

  I said, “I take it that you don’t like Briana very much.”

  With a contemptuous glare, she said, “You are a fool, like all Americans.”

  Peter said, “Lena, you go too far!” To me, he said, “You must forgive my wife, please.”

  I leaned forward and spoke very slowly, as if I were speaking for an official record that would be buried in a time capsule.

  “I’m a pet sitter. I go to people’s houses and feed their dogs and cats. I have no involvement with Briana. I never heard of her until yesterday. I have nothing to do with Serbians or counterfeit shoes.”

  Peter and Lena exchanged a look.

  Peter said, “Why do you mention shoes?”

  “Briana left a pair of fake Nikes in the house she broke into.”

  Lena threw up her hands. “You see? She is a great fool! That is why I am done with her!”

  Peter said, “Lena!”

  Turning to me, she said, “You are soft and stupid! You know nothing of the real world! You grow up with food, clothing, everything! It makes you stupid. When I was a child I lived at the base of a mountain so tall it blotted out the moon. Soldiers came and killed my parents. I could hear them screaming and I could see the lights from the guns but I could not see the soldiers’ faces and they could not see me. When the day broke I wrapped my feet in rags and tied some bread into a scarf of my mother’s and started walking. I did not know where to go, I just walked. You ask about shoes. You, who have always walked in shoes, have always had unbruised feet. You have no idea what it means to bleeding feet to have shoes! And nobody, no government, no police can say it is wrong to give shoes to poor people to wear.”

  Peter said, “We know nothing about any shoes.”

  Lena said, “Ha!”

  “Does Briana have something to do with counterfeit shoes?”

  Before Lena could speak, Peter said, “The only thing I can tell you is that Briana is attracted to men of power, and she does not care how they use it.”

  “So Briana is involved with somebody who has something to do with counterfeit shoes?”

  “Shoes, watches, shirts, wedding gowns, sweaters, handbags, heroin, many things.”

  “A Serbian gangster who shipped heroin in a crate of counterfeit Gucci watches?”

  Lena’s dark eyes had begun to watch me the way a cat watches a lizard trapped between its paws, as if the prospect of my ultimate decapitation was highly interesting.

  Peter said, “You might say that.”

  Tom had said Briana’s Serbian gangster had been murdered in prison—but gangsters are called gangsters because they have gangs, and gangs have secondary leaders who assume control after the first leader dies.

  I said, “You’re saying that this unknown Serbian person’s spies saw me with Briana, so his security people put me out of commission while they went through my apartment looking for something.”

  Lena said, “Did they find it?”

  I said, “Find what? I don’t know what they were looking for! Do you?”

  Her shoulders drooped, and she shook her head.

  I had reached the limit of my ability to intuit or interpret or understand their clues. I had also reached the limit of my patience.

  I said, “Okay, let’s say you’re right about all that. But who was that woman who was killed in my friend’s house? And what was she doing there?”

  Lena’s lips pinched into a tight line. Peter’s face closed. His eyes became opaque. “We know nothing about that.”

  Several moments passed. Nobody spoke, not even Lena. I believed they knew a lot more than they were willing to tell me, but I wouldn’t get any more from them.

  I stood up. “Thank you for talking to me.”

  Peter said, “Do you know now what you must do?”

  It seemed an odd question, but English was not Peter’s first language, and I thought he had simply worded it awkwardly.

  I said, “It isn’t my job to solve a crime or apprehend a criminal, but I understand Briana a little better now, and I suppose I’m a little closer to understanding what happened to me last night.”

  He walked me to the door. As I left, Lena spoke quietly behind me.

  “May God protect you.”

  17

  I drove home in a daze. From the moment I’d stepped into the Trillins’ house and found Briana there, everything had been wrong side up, confused, and confusing. The only thing I knew for sure was that I didn’t know anything for sure. Nobody was who they appeared to be. Everybody was dragging around some old shucked-off identity like snakes pulling shed skins that wouldn’t let go. It seemed like life was falling into sync with technological fraud. I felt like a leaf caught in a rushing river, swirled by forces I hadn’t even known existed.

  When I was growing up, the landscape of my imagination was bounded on the south by exotic Miami, on the north by businesslike Tampa, and on the east by Orlando’s theme parks. All the other places on the globe came to me as televised footage of native villages flattened by storms or wars or floods. They were as disconne
cted from me as the craters on the moon.

  That was no longer true, not for me and not for anybody else in Florida. On any day, one could hear Bulgarian shoppers at Publix discussing the merits of the tomatoes, Laotians inquiring the age of the fish, or Czech or German or Italian or French or Peruvian shoppers disparaging American yogurt. I liked the idea that we attracted all those bright, world-traveled sophisticates. Unfortunately, we also attracted some of the world’s worst criminals.

  Now it looked as if some of them believed I was a personal threat.

  Michael’s car was gone from the carport, which meant he was either fishing or buying groceries. Michael buys vegetables and fruit the way women buy shoes. He figures you never can have too many.

  Before I got out of the Bronco, I took my .38 out of my pocket. I held it close to my side as I went up the stairs, pressing the remote to raise the shutters with my other hand. The air was hot and leaden. Branches on the trees hung heavily, as if they had absorbed so much moisture from the air they couldn’t hold their heads up. The sun had moved to one o’clock, glazing the edge of the porch with bright light that reflected on the French doors.

  Feeling as heavy as the trees, I held the gun ready until I was inside and the shutters had rolled to the floor. Ella wasn’t in my apartment, which told me that Michael would not be gone long. After all that had happened to make me feel especially vulnerable, I liked knowing that he would be home soon.

  I tossed my shoulder bag on the living room love seat, lay the gun on my bedside table, and took a shower. Water sluiced away the day’s accumulation of cat hair and dog dander, but it didn’t take away my bone weariness. Neither did a nap. I woke feeling lonely and uneasy. And because my mind is like a Scrabble game, in the next moment it was setting down old thoughts crossed by irrelevant thoughts butting up against tangential thoughts that somehow led to a sharp desire for Guidry like a slicing knife.