The Man Who Understood Cats

by Michael Allen Dymmoch

“How do you tell the difference?” Thinnes asked.

  “Sometimes you can’t.”

  Caleb seemed to change the focus of his interest, as he spoke, to fix on something going on outside the car. Thinnes followed his gaze to two passers-by, a black man and the small black boy he was dragging along by the collar. The boy seemed to be in trouble, and the man’s urgings to hurry were none too gentle. As he watched them, Caleb became as alert as a hunting cat. Thinnes asked, “What is it?”

  “Unless I’m mistaken, that child’s being abused.”

  Crowne stared openmouthed.

  “Sure?” Thinnes asked Caleb.

  “Enough to stick my neck out and say so.”

  “We don’t have any probable,” Crowne said.

  Thinnes looked at Caleb. “Citizen’s complaint?”

  “In writing, if you like.”

  “Sounds like a probable to me,” Thinnes said. He put the car in gear and pulled alongside the man and boy. As Crowne and Caleb got out of the car, the man took off running. Crowne was after him without a second’s hesitation. Thinnes shoved the Mars light out the window and slapped it on the car roof as he yelled, “Doctor, stay with the kid!” He grabbed his radio transmitter and took off after Crowne in a frenzy of flashing blue light.

  With Crowne half a car length behind, the suspect tore around the building and through the parking lot, dodging parked cars and McD’s patrons. He charged across Ontario Street, disregarding the frantic pulse of homeward-bound suburbanites.

  Thinnes attempted to follow in the car. After several blocks of heart-jarring near misses, with more police vehicles joining the Keystone Kops parade every minute, Crowne chased the suspect into an alley. Thinnes screeched into the narrow passage two car-lengths behind them with lights, horn, and siren blaring. Past the dumpsters and garbage drums, just beyond Crowne and the suspect, the headlights flattened on a brick wall. Thinnes tramped on the brake; the car fishtailed with a banshee shriek. The suspect spotted the dead end and stopped. Whirling around, he dragged a gun from his belt and aimed it at Crowne.

  Thinnes slammed the accelerator and pointed the car at the gunman. The gunman shifted his aim toward Thinnes and fired wildly, missing even the car. Half a heartbeat from impact, Crowne jerked the suspect out of Thinnes’s path, as Thinnes tried to put the brake pedal through the floor. The car stopped, hard, against the alley’s dead-end brick wall. Crowne slammed the offender into the corner between the wall and the car’s fender, forcing him to face into the reflected headlight beam, smashing his head and hands against the red stone. The reddish reflection off the brick made them both look devilish. Thinnes took a deep breath and very carefully and deliberately turned off the motor. He got out of the car, breathing as hard as Crowne, shaking visibly, as Crowne relieved the suspect of his gun. Thinnes kept the man covered while Crowne frisked him and snapped the cuffs on. Crowne was just reciting Miranda as the reinforcements arrived.

  Twenty-Three

  The boy reminded Caleb of a feral kitten, curious but terrified. A small crowd surrounded them as they sat a few feet apart on the curb. It was obvious that the child couldn’t decide if he was more scared of the onlookers or of Caleb, who patiently tried to discover his name. “Is there some reason you can’t tell me your name?”

  The boy nodded.

  “What is it?”

  “Can’t talk to strangers.”

  “My name is Jack. Do you know any strangers named Jack?” The boy shook his head. “Then how about telling me your name?”

  He shook his head again.

  Caleb raised his eyebrows. “Could it be you don’t know your name? Maybe you’ve forgotten it?”

  This last was too much for the boy. “Did not! Name’s Joey Williams.”

  Caleb nodded as if he’d known it all the time. “I’ll bet you know your address, too,” he said, and Joey nodded.

  Cabrini-Green. The concrete and pink brick compound straddling Division Street between Sedgwick and Halsted. Chicago’s most infamous projects.

  Thinnes parked the unmarked car in front of the police roll call building, next to the beat officers’ private cars. Up close. Where the roof-top snipers had a poorer shot at it. A blue and white pulled up next to the unmarked car, but its occupants stayed inside as Thinnes, Crowne, Caleb, and Joey got out. The few people around stared hostilely.

  The Green wasn’t a place you went into unarmed, especially in street clothes. “Fools rush in,” as Crowne put it. They picked up two regular beat cops before they headed into the bowels. Ironically, Joey like Allen Finley, also lived on Cleveland.

  They kept an eye on the roof tops as they walked—nineteen stories isn’t far down as the stray bullet wanders. Even in the orange glow of the streetlights, the area looked like a war zone or a set from The Terminator. You didn’t need to see the gang slogans or the bullet craters in the walls. It brought back memories of the time before Thinnes had made detective, when he’d needed the OT. Eight hours of nerve-jangling fear that left you Jello-kneed with relief once you were out of sniper range. But if you were honest, you had to admit the duty was exciting. The constant flow of adrenaline gave you a rush that made any other work dull by comparison.

  Joey’s building was typical of Cabrini-Green. The front entry was claustrophobic, piled with garbage, walls decorated with graffiti and gang slogans, the muttering of idle minds. Half the mailboxes were broken open. The elevators were out. Naturally.

  Caleb wasn’t naive enough to be surprised. Chicago residents knew about Cabrini, learned early not to even drive too close. Tourists were warned in the guide books. And he’d read the article in the Tribune Magazine, so he had some idea of what the cops were feeling: fear. He felt it himself. He was in Nam again, indentured again to an occupying army. No matter their good intentions, they weren’t innocents. And they weren’t welcomed by the natives. An absurd parallel, he told himself. Intellectually. But emotionally close enough.

  He looked at Thinnes, Crowne, and the uniformed cops. They had the nervous intensity of soldiers on point. Nor did articles and folklore convey the stupefying reality of the place, or the bleak, gnawing anxiety it evoked, stress that eroded the mind and soul, then ate away at the body, nerves first, then heart and innards. Craziness was a defense here. Psychopathology was the norm—a hidden epidemic. Cabrini was a psychological black hole with a gravity that warped minds and distorted perceptions. If light couldn’t escape, what hope had human beings?

  They started to climb the stairs, stumbling over garbage and scattering night creatures, both the two and four-legged variety. The two beat cops were fit and didn’t seem to be bothered by the climb. Crowne was winded by the second floor, Thinnes by the third. Joey lagged behind, more out of fear—as far as Thinnes could tell—than from exhaustion.

  Caleb’s stamina surprised Thinnes. When Joey began to fall back, Caleb hoisted the child up and carried him piggyback.

  They had to watch their step on the fifth-floor landing, because someone had been using it for a shit house. Thinnes felt a wave of disgust that left him ready to puke. And there was shock, too, as he realized how disgust and rage seemed to be the only things he could feel any more. Stop it, Thinnes, he told himself. You’re making yourself crazy. Still, he was surprised that after so many years as a cop, people could still disappoint him. It was the sort of sappy idealism that made rookie cops so smarmy. Why did he expect humans to behave differently from other animals? The fucking stupidity that left the elevators out, garbage and shit in the halls, and walls filthy with graffiti probably wasn’t even intentional. An untrained dog is an untrained dog. The two-legged type that crapped in the stairwell was no different, no worse, than the four-legged kind that did it on the sidewalks.

  The door on the eighth floor was missing its knob. They pushed it open and came out into a hall that smelled like garbage. Caleb, who was scarcely winded, let Joey down, and the boy ran past the elevator—propped open with a chair—and stopped in front of an open apartment door. A small fan
in the doorway blew stale, hot air into the hall. Inside the apartment, three young black men were watching TV with a young woman. There was an empty pizza box on the table, along with pop and beer cans and an ashtray full of butts. The woman got off the couch and came to meet them.

  “Joey, what you doin’ up so late?”

  Joey stared at her with open-eyed amazement. “Momma’s daid.”

  “What kinda bullshit you talkin’?” She spotted Caleb and the detectives. “What you honkeys doin’ here?”

  This brought the other occupants of the apartment swarming into the hall. When they spotted the uniforms, they lapsed into sullen watchfulness. Like the inmates Thinnes had seen at Stateville when he’d gone to interview a murderer. Their hostility was as obvious as the stench in the hall. He flashed his star.

  Caleb attempted to make peace. “We took Joey away from—”

  “Joey, where’s Momma?” the woman demanded, ignoring Caleb.

  By way of answering, Joey walked down the hall, looking to be sure the others were following. Everyone did, the beat cops watchfully trailing the group. Joey stopped in front of an apartment three doors down and waited, eyeing the doorknob, until Thinnes and Caleb came up behind him. Then he very fearfully tried turning the knob. The door was locked.

  Thinnes knocked. No one answered. He asked the woman, “Have you got a key?”

  She gave him a look but turned toward a man at the edge of the group and said, “Leroy, han’ me my bag.”

  Thinnes knocked again as Leroy went back to the first apartment. Still there was no answer. Leroy came back with the bag and tossed it to the woman. She fished out a key. No one spoke as she unlocked the door. Pushed it open. Felt inside for the light switch without going in.

  As the the door opened, Joey reached up and grabbed Caleb’s hand. The woman screamed.

  The beat cops started pushing past the spectators. With Crowne, Thinnes stepped through the doorway, past the woman as she moaned, “Oh, Momma!” Caleb stayed put, holding Joey’s hand. The residents crowded in for a look.

  The room had been tossed and scrambled. The remains of Joey’s mother lay on the floor in a pool of blood. She’d been beaten to death.

  Thinnes felt a familiar, flat, hopeless feeling. Joey’s sister buried her face in her hands and started sobbing, hugging herself, rocking herself. Crowne seemed shocked. Behind them, the residents were mesmerized. The beat cops stared indifferently. As he gripped Joey’s hand, Caleb seemed to be hyperventilating, and Thinnes thanked God the boy was screened from the view by the bodies of the adults.

  “Come away from here, Miss,” Thinnes told Joey’s sister. He gently pushed her away from the door, into the crowd that was forming as people poured out of their apartments to investigate the scream. Neighbors took hold of her, offering cold comfort. Thinnes closed the apartment door and told them to disperse. The cops began to herd them away. The woman started back to the first apartment, then turned back. She gave Caleb a bleak look, took Joey’s hand, and led him away.

  “I’ll call this in,” Thinnes told Crowne, “you start getting statements.” He looked at Caleb, who was sweating profusely, and whose pale face and rapid breathing betrayed his distress. He said, sharply, “Doctor, are you all right?” without troubling to hide his annoyance.

  Breathing deeply, Caleb nodded and turned away. He pushed through the crowd to the elevator, removed the chair from the door, and leaned on it while he got himself together. Crowne started to help the cops disperse the crowd as Thinnes radioed for reinforcements.

  Twenty-Four

  Some time later, Thinnes, Crowne, and Caleb pulled into the parking lot north of Area Six. Crowne got out. “You oughta save the rest of the paper for tomorrow,” he told Thinnes.

  “I’ll sleep in tomorrow.”

  “Yeah.” He gave them a perfunctory good-bye nod, closed the door, and went to his little red Fiero. Thinnes parked between two blue-and-whites. Crowne screeched out of the lot as Thinnes turned off the motor.

  “Joey’ll have to testify in court?” Caleb asked.

  The question depressed Thinnes. “Probably not. The asshole’ll plead guilty to a lesser charge and get a couple a years. He’ll be out beating his next girlfriend before Joey drops out of school.” He stared straight ahead. “How do you go home and make love to your wife after that?” He watched out of the corner of his eye as Caleb shook his head. “How do you tell your wife about something like that?”

  Caleb continued to listen without comment.

  “How do you even sleep?” He shrugged and looked at Caleb. “You can see why the bars around here are so full after hours.”

  The squad room was temporarily deserted when they entered. Thinnes went to get report forms, which he put next to his typewriter.

  “Now you’ll get to see the real police work.” He glanced at the coffee maker. “Want some coffee?”

  “Why not?”

  When Thinnes got to the coffee maker, he noticed Karsch’s door was slightly ajar. He walked over and pushed it open, and looked in without turning on the light. The room was empty. He pulled the door shut, and went back to plug in the coffee maker, which someone—Karsch probably—had left ready to go. Then he went back to his desk where Caleb was waiting and watching.

  “You were pretty good with the kid tonight,” he told Caleb. “I hate working with scared kids. I’m always afraid I’ll make ’em worse.”

  “It’s like making friends with a cat.” Caleb looked deliberately at Thinnes. “Have you ever belonged to a cat, John?”

  Thinnes put a report form in the typewriter and rolled it up to the first line. “No. Why?”

  “You can’t make friends with a cat by charging up and patting it on the head. You have to hold back and let it see you won’t hurt it, let it prowl around in your territory and check out the amenities and the other residents. It’s a process that takes time.”

  “So why bother? With a cat, I mean.”

  “Because when you’ve made friends with a cat, you’ve accomplished something.”

  Twenty-Five

  Caleb entered his apartment and stopped, puzzled. The living room looked orderly and normal, except that there were no cats in sight.

  “Freud? Skinner?”

  He waited, but they didn’t appear. He turned on lights, the stereo. He began to be concerned. He started to search. He noticed a drawer in the coffee table ajar. He pulled it open, but couldn’t determine if the contents had been disturbed. The oil painting listed just perceptibly—he straightened it. The hall-closet door was open half an inch, though nothing was missing from the closet.

  He was aware of becoming hyper-alert, of breathing faster, of his accelerated heart rate. As the search progressed, he began to open doors rapidly, in case someone was hiding inside.

  Finally he’d searched every room but the bedroom. He entered cautiously. Nothing seemed amiss. He opened the closet door, fast, relaxing when he found no intruder. He got down to look under the bed. Freud glared out at him. Caleb let his breath out slowly. He stood up and started to undress.

  And then he was momentarily terrified as something leapt on him from the top closet shelf. His relief was immediate and profound as he realized he had found B. F. Skinner.

  Twenty-Six

  Somehow it seemed natural that Thinnes would end the day in Uptown, the section he thought of in his head as Little Saigon, where all the shop signs were in Vietnamese, all billboards were in Vietnamese, and all the people seemed to be Vietnamese. Déjà vu. It was the part of the city where he felt—as he had in Saigon—that every corner had its hidden watcher, every alleyway its ambush. He stopped the car in front of a porno shop and got out to look.

  Jack Daniels’s broken body lay in state in the alley mouth, unmourned, beneath a single overhead reflecting dully off the paving bricks. The light developed a pattern underfoot, patched where hollows were leveled with asphalt, glittering with glass shards. On either side, windowless walls of dirty brick rose into darkne
ss without interruption.

  The alley dead-ended at the El tracks; he could see blue fire race along the third rail, though the passing train made no sound. A bus lurched to the curb and dropped off passengers without the usual air-brake hiss or studs-on-drums screeching. He could feel his back-hairs rising—no city is ever so totally silent. Was someone walking on his grave?

  A blond-wigged young black woman, standing in a storefront doorway to his right, raised her eyebrows and puckered her lips, silently mocking and inviting him. The gaudy neon ADULT VIDEOS sign over her head gave her a ruddy look of good health, but Thinnes could see the yellow whites of her eyes, and the skin of her face seemed stretched too tight under her garish makeup. He showed her the photo of the missing woman, but she leered and shook her head. “Maybe we can work something out, Sugah.” She vanished as he wondered if he’d only imagined that she’d spoken.

  He heard a bottle drop in the alley, a window open, a car door slam, though nothing could be seen but the everpresent trash. He followed the sounds down the alley, attuned to scurryings and stirrings that weren’t actual sounds as much as inklings that things were moving just beyond the edge of sight.

  The alley seemed to go on forever. The woman lay at the far, dead end, under a single streetlight, that gave everything a bluish tint and made the edges seem sharper, until it had all gone beyond focused. She was surrounded by a little group of night creatures, crowding over her, peering down at her. In the distance they looked like so many enormous rats, gray and cringing. Thinnes felt more and more uneasy. As he got nearer, the rat people shrank to the size of dogs, then to house-cat size, and when he looked closer, he saw that they were rats, red-eyed and lousy. They stood their ground over the woman, over the corpse; the body had no face, only a shocking black emptiness in the strange half-light, where the rats had chewed her face away. He kicked at them, and they gnashed their teeth with sounds like the sharpening of knives. Their eyes glowed like red purgatory lights in a satanic church. He pulled his gun and fired, sending little spurts of flame streaking toward the gray bodies, which jerked and fell but kept swarming deathlessly just beyond the light. He saw—with a sort of helpless shock—that the corpse had Rhonda’s hair and Rhonda’s body. He felt a mild dismay and was surprised to feel so little.