Cat's-Paw, Inc.

by L. L. Thrasher

  I looked at the place on the floor was Allison wasn’t anymore. By lifting my head a bit, I could see the glowing LED clock on the VCR. I stared until the gray-blue blur came into focus then mumbled the numbers out loud through swollen lips, trying to make sense of them. Nine two five. 9:25. Was that possible? It meant I had been out for less than five minutes, that Allison was less than five minutes away from me.

  If the cops would just get here. Where the fuck were they? It had been over thirty minutes since I called Harkins. They should have been here, could have been here twice by now. Never, ever, a goddamn cop around when you need one.

  I thought about moving. My right eye seemed to be half closed and my nose and mouth kept filling with blood. The inside of my right cheek was ragged and I had spit out hard bits of something that I hoped was bridgework and not real teeth. My wrists were burning, scraped raw from my instinctive efforts to free my hands and protect myself. The right side of my body felt as if I’d been trampled by a whole herd of rampaging elephants. The left side wasn’t too bad, just a generalized bruised feeling from being slammed against the wall. My rib cage was a fiery ache. I’d had broken ribs before and knew how to tell if they were broken now. All I had to do was sit up. If I screamed, they were broken.

  I checked the clock. 9:27. Where the fuck were they? Maybe something big had gone down in town. No, it was Harkins’ perverted idea of a power play. You have the girl we’ve been busting our asses trying to find? Ho-hum, big deal. We’ll get out there when we’re damn good and ready. No hurry. If Allison Vanzetti was in Zachariah Smith’s safekeeping, she wasn’t going anywhere. I laughed harshly, snorting against the carpet, breathing dirt again. The third sneeze gave me the impetus to roll onto my side. I got my back against the wall and pushed myself up to a sitting position. Without screaming.

  I felt better sitting up, so much better that I thought about getting to my feet. Thinking about it was as far as I got. When the cops got here they could help me up and untie me and I could tell them… tell them what? It didn’t matter if they ever came now. Allison was gone and I didn’t know who took her. I didn’t see a car and any description of the man I could give them was useless. He wouldn’t be driving around in a ski mask and sunglasses with a handkerchief tied train-robber fashion across his face.

  I checked the clock. Still 9:27. I watched until the seven flicked into an eight. Time was dragging. Time was wasting. Time. Timing. He had good timing. He must have been waiting until dark to make his move. If Phil had just checked his answering machine. If Harkins had just sent someone out right away. If I had just called Harkins earlier. If I had just taken Allison to the police as soon as I got her back to Mackie. If I had just turned her in in Portland. If I had just, for once, not fucked up. But I had, royally, and Allison was paying for it.

  I looked at the telephone, five feet from me on a small oak chest. I could punch buttons with my hands tied behind me but getting the receiver to my ear might be a little tricky. Fuck it, I already called them. God damn Harkins anyway. Why didn’t they get here? 9:29. Any minute, they would be here any minute now.

  I leaned my head against the wall and closed my eyes, trying to visualize the gunman, instead seeing Allison walking slowly down my staircase, backlit by the light at the top, her hair a golden halo, her body… I pushed the thought away and concentrated on the man. Ski mask. Sunglasses. Handkerchief. Overkill. A ski mask is a good disguise, a favorite of bank robbers the world over. And baggy overalls. Jacket. Gloves. Boots. Christ, he must have been hot. Overkill. Why the overkill? Easy. He didn’t want to be identified.

  Kicking me half to death. That was overkill, too. Why? To put me out of action long enough for him to get away, of course. Still, there were easier ways to do it. Tie me up better. Tie me to something. Feed me some of the dream-bringers he had forced Allison to swallow. Be sure I was out for a good long time. Why kick the shit out of me? What good is a battered witness? Less reliable, uncertain about details, confused about time. Time. I looked at the VCR. 9:30. God, let there be a hell, just for Harkins. Time. Timing. He had good timing.

  I closed my eyes again. And saw Allison, floating down my staircase, hair a golden halo, body… A goodbye kiss. From A to Z. Beginning to end. “Don’t cry, you’ll plug up your nose.” My last words to Allison.

  Words. He didn’t talk. That was overkill, too. Identifying someone by voice isn’t easy. I opened my eyes, feeling the sudden kick of adrenaline, feeling pain lessen as my body geared for fight or flight, feeling my mind clear and focus sharply. He didn’t talk.

  Identifying someone by voice isn’t easy.

  Unless you already know the voice.

  9:31. I pressed my back hard against the wall and pushed myself up it until I was standing.

  He wasn’t worried about Allison identifying him. He had to know she had seen him at the hotel. The overkill was for me. He didn’t want me to identify him. No, not identify. Recognize. I knew him. He was someone I knew, someone I would recognize. By sight and by voice.

  Who knew she was with me? Why didn’t I think of that before? Figure out how he knew where she was and I’d know who he was.

  Who knew?

  Sarge. Sarge knew. Sarge, cleverly disguised for twenty years as a double amputee, rising up on magically restored legs to kill Vanzetti and kidnap his daughter. I took a deep, ragged breath to stop some laughter I knew would be hysterical. All right, it didn’t have to be Sarge himself. He could be involved somehow and he told the killer, who came out here and took Allison away from me.

  It didn’t make any sense. Sarge hadn’t asked the right questions. He didn’t try to find out for sure if Allison was with me or where I was then or when I was coming home. All he was interested in was staying out of trouble for withholding information in a murder investigation.

  Okay, not Sarge. Who else knew? Carrie. And Tom. She would have told Tom. Tom was a doctor. Vanzetti dealt in black market pharmaceuticals. Made a nice connection. But Tom was Carrie’s husband. Tom was Melissa’s father. Tom was one of the few people I would willingly die for. Tom wasn’t a killer. Besides, I didn’t think he could hit like that.

  So who else knew? Nobody. Well, Phil would know if he ever bothered to check his messages. And Harkins. I told Harkins.

  No one else knew. So maybe I was all wrong. Maybe he wasn’t someone I knew. Maybe he was just overly cautious. Maybe he was cold. Maybe he had a bad case of acne. Maybe he had laryngitis. Maybe he found out where Allison was through some flukey set of circumstances I couldn’t even guess at. It didn’t matter. The bottom line was the same. Allison was gone and I didn’t know who took her.

  9:32. I rolled along the wall to face it and wiped blood from my face onto the wallpaper.

  I didn’t know who took her.

  Yes, I did—Carl Vanzetti’s killer.

  I didn’t know who killed Vanzetti.

  Nobody knew that.

  Allison knew.

  I stumbled away from the wall, my right knee buckling, white hot pain shooting through it. I hobbled to the kitchen, hitting walls and furniture and setting a lot of hanging planters in motion. The kitchen was dark. I stepped all over pills and silverware, fork tines jabbed my bare feet. I hit the light switch with the side of my arm. The sudden bright light made my eyes water and burn. I backed up to the knife drawer and pulled it open, grabbing the first handle I touched. I turned the long butcher knife awkwardly until it was against the rope and started sawing.

  Allison knew who killed her father because she saw him do it. And her father had told her the man’s name. What did she say? What the hell did she tell me?

  Not much.

  Allison, in a dreamy, faraway voice. “I know who he is.”

  “You mean you know his name?”

  “I know his name.” Dreamily, dreamily.

  “I asked Daddy who the man was and he told me. Maybe he thought it would reassure me.”

  Allison would be reassured.

  I would recognize him.


  The knife slipped upward, slicing into my back. My hands were slick with blood and sweat. I repositioned the blade and sawed faster.

  She was sure Vanzetti told her the right name.

  “Had you seen the man before?”

  “I never saw him before.”

  She knew his name but she hadn’t seen him before. That was the truth. Everything she told me was the truth. No, not everything. She lied when I asked her where the killer had his gun. I thought I had tripped her up, caught her off-guard, caught her unprepared with a pat lie to add to the lies she had already told me. But the rest of it was the truth. Why did she lie about the gun?

  I stabbed myself in the back again. And sawed faster. The rope loosened, fell away. I wiped my bloody hands across the front of my T-shirt.

  “When a person witnesses a murder the usual reaction is to scream or faint or run for help or pick up the phone and call the cops.”

  Allison didn’t scream or faint or run for help. And she didn’t pick up the phone and call the cops. She stood in the dark behind a curtain and watched her father die. And then she walked away.

  I picked up the phone and called the cops. Phil Pauling answered, saying, “Local Good Guys, at your service.”

  What was he so cheerful about?

  Where the hell had he been all day?

  What did it matter where the killer had his gun? What difference did it make if he had it in his pocket or stuck in his waistband or in a…

  “… scream or faint or run for help or pick up the phone and call the cops.”

  But Allison didn’t.

  Phil was rattling on and on, something about obscene phone calls to the police.

  I hung up on him.

  I ran to the closet beneath the stairs, fear and urgency obliterating pain and caution. I got my gun out of the cabinet, jerked my holster on, grabbed a light blue windbreaker off a hanger and pulled it on. Keys. I grabbed the keys and ran to the garage and hit the switch. The big door started its upward glide. Before it reached the top, I was backing the Chevy out.

  The clock on the dash said 9:38.

  Fuck the cops.

  I knew who killed Vanzetti.

  I knew who kidnapped Allison.

  I even knew where to find him.

  Chapter Forty

  At the end of the driveway, I stubbed my left big toe on the brake pedal trying to find a clutch, then I hit the brake and brought the car to a squealing, fishtailing stop. I fumbled the shift into Park and stared hard across the street at the trees, which were floating, swirling, disintegrating. I looked in the rearview mirror and watched my house rise from its foundation, become transparent, disappear in a churning darkness.

  I crossed my wrists on the steering wheel and pressed my forehead against them, willing the vertigo to pass. From somewhere far away I heard Allison, with a voice like a winter wind, say, “He doesn’t know. I didn’t tell him anything.” She had saved my life, exchanging my freedom for hers, and I didn’t do anything but stand there like a fool, waiting for the cops to come to the rescue. “Shall we go?”

  I raised my head and looked in the mirror. My house was there, solid and stationary. It was dark upstairs. It was always dark upstairs except when no one was home. Light streamed from the open door and windows. It looked just like a goddamn pumpkin shell.

  I felt the dizziness returning and thought of Allison with an empty stomach full of pills and a dish towel stuffed in her mouth. Out loud, in case anyone was listening, I said, “Please don’t let her throw up.” I shoved the shift into Drive, turned onto Bunyard, and pressed the accelerator down.

  I was around the first curve when a dark sedan with a whip antenna sped past me in the westbound lane. The cops had arrived.

  I reached Franklin Street in under five minutes and hit the brake, slewing the car across the intersection. Something soft bounced across the seat and hit my leg. I glanced down and saw Mr. Smith’s glassy eyes gleaming at me. Carrie’s house was brightly lit. Her car was in the drive. Tom’s wasn’t. Beyond their place, Harkins’ house was dark. I drove on into town, staying close to the speed limit. I didn’t want any cops now.

  It was 9:49 when I pulled into the parking lot behind the police building. I looked over the cars quickly, not seeing what I wanted, then abandoned the Chevy in the middle of the parking lot, blocking cars into parking places.

  The pavement still held the sun’s warmth. Bits of gravel and debris pricked my bare feet. I walked down a flight of dark stairs at the rear of the building. I no longer had a key to the basement door of the police building but there was always someone hanging around the locker room. I pounded on the metal fire door with the side of my fist. The door was yanked open. Dan Fogel squinted out at me. His uniform shirt was unbuttoned and untucked and he had a hand on the butt of his gun. “Holy shit, what happened to you?” he asked and took his hand off his gun.

  “Nothing.” I brushed past him into the building. “Is Harkins here?”

  “Beats me. You’re supposed to use the front entrance.”

  “I didn’t want to bleed all over the carpet.”

  “Nice bear,” Fogel said. I looked down and realized I was carrying Mr. Smith.

  We walked a few steps down the hall. Fogel stopped at the locker room door. I said, “See you,” and kept going. Halfway down the corridor I looked behind me. The hall was empty.

  I backtracked a few feet and went into a dark room, closing the door before I turned on the light. The overhead fluorescent bulbs flickered then steadied, buzzing loudly. The room was used for storage and for Police Association meetings. Folding chairs leaned in untidy rows against the left wall. The right wall was lined with metal shelves crammed with cardboard boxes and sloppy piles of police forms. In front of the shelves, a battered card table held some pads of yellow lined paper and two overflowing ashtrays. PA posters and notices were tacked randomly on the walls and the floor was littered with wadded paper and chewed pencils from a recent meeting. High in the wall opposite the door, a narrow horizontal window was cranked open a couple inches. It didn’t help much. The room smelled dankly of stale ashes and old sweat.

  An old black desk phone sat on the floor beneath the window, its long cord snaking across the room and disappearing behind the shelves. I squatted beside the phone, propping Mr. Smith up against the wall, and dialed three numbers. Phil Pauling answered.

  I said, “Don’t say anything.” The line was silent except for the amplified sound of my breathing. “I’m in the basement, in the PA room. Don’t say anything to anybody. Just get down here.”

  “Okeydokey, artichokey,” Phil said. Cheerfully. I turned the light out and opened the door, standing back from it so I was out of the light spilling in from the hall.

  There was a low drone of voices and a sudden burst of dirty-joke laughter from the locker room, then I heard Phil whistling his way down the stairs. He walked into the room, saying, “What’s with the cloak-and-dagger bit, Bucky?” as he hit the light switch. His eyes widened during the flickering. “Jesus goddamn. Was I you, I wouldn’t go looking in any mirrors any time soon. You look like you jumped without a chute.”

  “Where’s Harkins?” I closed the door and leaned against it.

  “Upstairs, chewing off his fingernails. He took it real hard when Malcolm called from your place and said you and the Vanzetti child were gone on arrival and your house looked like the aftermath of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.”

  “Call—“

  “Shook me up a just a little bit, too. I was about to take a ride out there myself, see if maybe I could find your blood-soaked body lying in a ditch somewhere.”

  “Phil—”

  “I sure was dreading having to tell Carrie that her baby brother by four minutes was—”

  “Phil, goddamn it, shut up. When did he get here?”

  “Who? Harkins? Hell, I don’t know. I don’t keep tabs on the bastard. He came in after I got here, ten minutes ago maybe. Said you had Allison Vanzetti. He’d already
called from home and sent Malcolm out to your place. You want to sit down? You look a little shaky.”

  “I’m okay. I want you to—”

  “Did you really have little Miss Vanzetti or was that one of those attention-getting devices?”

  “I had her.”

  “Yeah? And you lost her? She beat the shit out of you and you were too much of a gentleman to fight back?”

  I shook my head, more to clear it than to answer him. I wiped blood from my face onto my T-shirt and slid my hand inside my jacket.

  “So how did you lose her? And just how did you happen to have her in the first place… and what the fuck are you pointing that gun at me for?”

  “Take your holster off slowly and put it on the table.”

  “What?”

  “Do it.”

  “Why?”

  “Jesus Christ, because I’m holding a gun on you and telling you to.”

  Phil looked amused. “Am I supposed to believe you’re going to shoot me if I don’t? Well, I don’t believe it and neither do you, even if you are suffering from some obvious brain damage.”

  “Take it off.”

  We had a brief staring contest. I won. Phil’s gaze dropped to my hand. Even cops are scared of guns. Especially ones in shaking hands.

  “Shit,” Phil said. “All right, but you better have a goddamn good reason for this.” He took his shoulder rig off, not particularly slowly, and put in on the card table. “Happy” he asked.

  I motioned him away from the table, picked the holster up and shoved it behind a box on a shelf. Blood from my nose was tickling my upper lip. I rubbed at it with the back of my left hand, then wiped my hand on the seat of my cut-offs. “Call Harkins. Tell him to come down here. Don’t tell him anything else.”

  Phil gave me a long, speculative look. “I got a better idea, Zachariah. How’s about you and me kinda mosey over to Mackie General. Maybe get you a nice little CAT scan or something.”

  “Call him.”

  “You don’t want Harkins down here. That man can get a hard-on just thinking about running your PI license through a paper shredder.”