Cat Breaking Free

38

On the rooftops, Joe was awash in Tiger Rag and then Tailgate Ramble; if Dulcie were there, her paws would be twitching. He was edgy with worry about her. As he approached the leather shop, he spotted one of Harper's stakeouts, and drew back. But when he saw no action he moved on to the first jewelry store on Harper's list. Molena Point had as many jewelry stores as art galleries, both important elements in the village economy. Tourists loved going home with a painting or a bracelet or necklace to remind them of their bright vacation.

Lingering near the jewelry store was a pair of cops dressed as carefree tourists, mingling with the crowd. No one would notice their sidearms beneath those loose shirts. Most of the officers on loan from other towns had been paired with Harper's men, who knew the streets. He saw Officer Cameron, just up the street, dressed in ragged jeans and a long, loose sweater, her straight blond hair kinked into a curly mop. She limped only slightly from her gunshot wound. Beside her, Officer Crowley tried to ease Cameron's way through the crowd, his big bony hands and the thrust of his muscled shoulders slow and deliberate. His loose denim jacket might hide any sort of weapon, and very likely his camera. The two officers wandered among the crowd, brandishing big paper cups, half dancing to the jazz beat; they paused near two of the selected shops. Above them Joe Grey paced the roof.

He was edgy for the action to begin-and for Dulcie to catch up with him. He missed Kit, too, even though she would be sure to complicate matters. Lucinda was trying to keep her in, said she wanted Kit tucked up safe tonight. Who knew how long that would last? Though in truth, the little cat had seemed worn out, hardly objecting to Lucinda's bullying-grieving over the departure of her clowder. He was thinking hard of the kit, hoping she was all right, when something nudged his shoulder and a dark shape emerged from the shadows, her eyes wide.

"What are you doing, Joe? No one told me! Where's Dulcie? It's happening! Why didn't you tell me! It's coming down," she whispered boldly. "The st…"

Hushing her, Joe shouldered her away from the roof's edge. "Don't even say the word. Come on." He led her into a crevice between two peaks where they could talk. It took him some time to fill her in, twice that to appease her.

"But why didn't you tell me? I could help, I can…"

"That's just it. There's nothing more to do. You've already done more than your share. Without your information, Kit, this would never have happened. If it wasn't for you, the cops wouldn't have a clue! You're already a hero."

"But…"

"We thought you'd like to rest."

She looked at him as if he was crazy; she wasn't buying this. He licked her ear, explaining how worried they'd been about her, how glad that she was safe, that she'd escaped Stone Eye. It took a long time of coddling before she smiled again and made up, and followed him silently across the roofs. They were approaching another of the targeted jewelry stores when they spotted Officer Brennan wandering through the crowd, eating an ice-cream cone.

How different a man could look with a simple change of clothes. Instead of his dark uniform, Brennan wore a flowered shirt and a slouch hat. He looked thinner in the bright, loose shirt, but more florid. Half a block behind Brennan, rookie Jimmie McFarland wandered and gawked; he was dressed in a bright plaid sport coat and carrying a clarinet case, a big grin on his face. The two officers paused half a block apart, Brennan looking in the window of a golf shop, McFarland idly striking up a conversation with a pretty young tourist.

All over the village Harper's men were in place among the crush of civilians and with strict instructions not to fire their weapons, to use only a taser if such force was absolutely needed. That had to be stressful. And surely they'd got the word that three of their group had been spotted.

As the two cats crouched on the veranda of a penthouse above a leather shop, they saw tall, beanpole Officer Blake come around the corner, carrying a trombone case and a clarinet case. He'd have camera stuff in the trombone case; but Blake did play a mean clarinet. Joe watched three women in short skirts with amazement. Officer Davis was hardly recognizable out of her dark, severe uniform. In a miniskirt over those pale, stocky legs, Davis was not an appealing sight. All three women wore boots that could hide a weapon. He glanced at Kit. "What are you grinning about. You're not laughing at Davis."

She shook her head. "I wouldn't. It just seems so strange. Disguised cops, disguised crooks, and civilians mingling all together in the bars and restaurants. Like a story…"

"Luis won't think it's a story," Joe said darkly. They heard, in the distance, a Count Basie number echoing out from the Molena Point little theater where there was a Basie concert, his music copied by a new generation of jazzmen. It was perhaps six-thirty when, quietly among the crowds, the crooks began to move.

Slayter lay uncomfortably on a stretcher, staring up at Garza as the detective read him his rights. Captain Harper and Chichi Barbi stood near the door. From across the hall, Dulcie watched, drawing back behind the ice machine only as Garza finished and the two paramedics carried the stretcher out, accompanied by two armed officers. Harper and Chichi stepped out behind them and stood in the hall, talking. Behind them in the room, Garza was collecting evidence. Dulcie still hadn't figured it all out, except that Chichi didn't seem to be under suspicion for anything. That, while she was passing her snoop lists to Luis, Chichi had given copies to Harper.

Dulcie had watched Garza drop Slayter's cell phone into an evidence bag, and then Slayter's gun. She had watched the two officers search the hole in the corner, removing the plywood, shining their flashlights down into it and feeling back underneath the wiring, then dusting the plywood and wiring for prints. As happened so many times, she could only pray there were no paw prints or cat hairs.

Dallas had already printed the room before Chichi entered, and had bagged Slayter's clothing and personal items. He had photographed the scratch wounds on Slayter's face and back, and that was stressful for Dulcie. What did he think? What did he wonder? Now, in the hall, he asked Chichi, "You said you know nothing about how he fell? And about how he got those scratches?"

Chichi shook her head. "I didn't see it, I was in the village with Luis. He was talking with Slayter, on his cell. Slayter was describing one of your men. He… then he screamed, then a bang as if he'd dropped the phone, and Luis couldn't rouse him. The line was dead, Luis dialed him back and got the message recording. That's when he sent me to see what happened. How did he fall?"

"You heard him." Harper shook his head. "Says he was pushed from behind, that he didn't see anything. That someone hit him hard between the shoulders and when he fell, they hit him again-some kind of weapon with sharp prongs." The captain frowned. "Crazy. Said it felt like he was raked with metal spikes, like an old-style golf shoe-he glimpsed something dark, the size of a golf shoe."

"Attacked with a golf shoe?" Chichi giggled.

Harper gave her a lopsided grin. "Weird kind of weapon. Why would someone… Well, maybe it was handy… You hit a guy with one of those old, metal-spiked golf shoes you could do that kind of damage."

"I'm glad it's over," she said, smiling up at him. "Or nearly so. If that turns out to be the gun that killed Frank, I'll be forever indebted to you, Captain."

"Thank you for your help, Chichi. We should know about the gun tomorrow, if the DA has Frank Cozzino's records in order."

"I hope he does. It's been a hard time." She started to turn away. "I'll call you in the morning then?"

Harper took her hand. "Call me, or Garza or Davis. We'll see what we get."

As Chichi headed down the hall and Harper returned to Slayter's room, behind the ice machine Dulcie sat putting the pieces together.

If Frank Cozzino ran with Luis's gang, but somewhere along the line he began feeding information to LAPD, then Luis might well want him dead. Slayter was part of the gang- Luis could have assigned Slayter to do the deed. Slayter had told Ryan he'd come up here to find out who killed Cozzino; but maybe Slayter had done it.

So who, Dulcie thought, killed Dufio? And why? She watched Dallas seal the door to 307 with evidence tape, watched the detective and captain head for the elevator. Then she fled up the stairs and through the heavy door, leaving it ajar, and away across the rooftops to find Joe. She longed to see Luis and his men arrested, see every last one of them jailed.

She spotted Joe and Kit on the roof of Molena Point Inn-you might know Kit would have slipped out and found him. The two cats, crouched at the edge of the shingles, peered over into the inn's secluded patio; when Dulcie pushed in between them, she saw that the crowds hadn't yet discovered the small hidden garden. Only one tourist couple was there, strolling hand in hand, smiling as if glad to have found some privacy: a plainly dressed, thirtyish man and woman with simple, neat haircuts, out-of-style starched shirts that branded them as being from a small midwestern town, and loving expressions.

The patio was enclosed on one side by the hotel, on the other three by rows of exclusive shops. There were no alleys between the shops. The couple seemed to have no interest in the fine china and silver and designer gowns, seemed aware only of each other. They sat down close together on a bench facing Emerson's Jewelry, their backs to the small pepper tree and lush flowers. The woman, fishing around in her large handbag, handed her partner a small, high-powered gas torch.

Moving quickly into a narrow walkway between the hotel and the jewelry store, he lit the torch and turned to face the wall where a locked, foot-square metal door closed off the electric meter. Burning quickly through the padlock, he opened the little door and turned off the power for that building.

With nothing to activate the security alarm, he stepped around into the patio again and used the torch to destroy the deadbolt lock on the jewelry store's glass door. Silently swinging the door open, he and his lady friend entered. Within two minutes they had breached seven jewelry cases, dropping the contents-diamonds, emeralds, heavy gold and pearl chokers- into her handbag and into his pockets. Leaving the shop, they closed the door quietly behind them.

Strolling away, they joined a crowd gathered around the Blue Gull Cafe, where they stood listening to a jazz trio that owed its style and funky beat to the legacy of Louis Armstrong. The trumpet player didn't sound as good as Satchmo. No one could. But he had a nice rift and a sure beat, and the crowd was rocking. The couple moved with the beat, then strolled on up the sidewalk, keeping time to Back 'O Town Blues.

Half a block behind them a pair of young men followed: muscular, skinny guys with sun-bleached hair, dressed in faded jeans and worn sweatshirts.

"Nice," Dulcie said. "They look like surfers."

"Let's make sure," Joe said, moving on quickly until he could look back and get a glimpse of the officers' faces; turning back, he grinned at Dulcie and narrowed his eyes with satisfaction. He'd seen the two men earlier, entering the station with Dallas Garza. Confident that in a few minutes, and when their quarry had moved away from the crowds, the officers would quietly make their arrests, the cats trotted on across the roofs where they could see the Oak Tree Cafe. Crouched between the two older cats, Kit was unusually quiet. Dulcie glanced at her several times. Was she mad because they hadn't told her the sting would be tonight? Or was she missing her feral friends? Was she wondering if she should have stayed with them, wild and free with no one to keep secrets from her and to boss her?

The Oak Tree, crowded with jazz buffs, vibrated with a throaty sax and bass and piano where a small stage had been set up inside. Next to the cafe was a small independent bookstore, then a shop featuring handmade children's clothes, then Karen Jenkins' Jewelry. All three were closed. From the rooftop the cats watched an elderly, gray-haired couple pause to look in the jewelry store window. They watched the portly man quickly diffuse the store's burglar alarm with a small electronic device the size of a pack of cigarettes.

"What is that?" Dulcie said.

"I don't know, but I mean to find out," Joe said irritably. He didn't like not knowing about such a useful invention.

"But they're elderly," Dulcie said. "They look like someone's grandparents."

"Maybe they are someone's grandparents." Joe gave her a wide-eyed look. "Does that make them law-abiding and honest?"

Dulcie preferred to think of criminals as young and rough, crude humans without any hint of gentleness. "And where are the cops? I thought they were all to have tails, I thought… Have they missed this one?"

Joe studied the crowd until he spotted a frail-looking young woman, slim as a model in her flowered skirt, boots, and suede jacket. "There. Eleanor Sand." Sand was Harper's newest rookie. Her companion was a clean-cut young man in jeans, with short hair and brown turtleneck sweater, on loan from up the coast. Standing in front of the cafe, glued to the music, they seemed unaware of the elderly burglars just three doors down. Fascinated, the cats watched Gramps and Granny within the dark store move directly to the inside meter box, where they threw the breaker, perhaps so that other alarms, within the store, wouldn't be triggered.

"These old stores!" Joe said. "These old simple alarm systems."

"You think the owners deliberately made it simple tonight? Deactivated some more sophisticated warning device? The whole idea is to let the perps get in and out again."

The tomcat smiled. "Maybe." He watched the old couple, working together, jimmy and empty nine glass showcases. "Those two might be grandparents, but they're skilled at their trade."

Leaving the store, the gray-haired couple wandered away into the crowd apparently confident they hadn't been noticed. A half block behind them, Eleanor Sand and her companion wandered aimlessly in the same direction. All around the village, similar break-ins were occurring in small, unnoticed corners, and similar teams of officers followed their progress, then made their arrests in other isolated retreats. The cats missed the action at Marineau's Jewelry.

So did the Greenlaws, though Lucinda and Pedric were sitting on their terrace enjoying the tangled melange of music and watching the crowds below. Neither noticed a darkly dressed Latino man slip down the alley next to Marineau's, open the shop's metal-sheathed side door with a key, and slip inside. No smallest light shone. Nothing could be seen through the boarded-up windows. The Greenlaws did not see him leave, five minutes later, the pockets of his trench coat bulging with items taken from the safe for which he also had keys. Neither Lucinda nor Pedric was aware that, while the jazz group down the street at Bailey's Fish House played the gutteral, funky music of the old Preservation Hall group, Marineau's was being cleaned out a second time, with keys whose patterns had been taken the first time around. And meanwhile, four blocks away, the cats were intent on redheaded Tommie McCord and his Latino partner, as they strolled away from the last jewelry store on the list, walking along laughing and swilling cans of beer.

Neither man realized that Officers Brennan, who had already made one arrest, and Julie Wade, dressed as a frowzy pair of tourists, followed half a block behind, pawing each other and peering into shop windows, Brennan's big belly and firearm covered by his loose shirt printed with palm trees. Wade was on loan from Santa Cruz PD. She wore a long, smock-like blouse and long, full skirt; very likely the officers' garments concealed not only regulation automatics but radios, cell phones, handcuffs, and belly chains.

As Tommie McCord and his friend turned away into a dark residential street, leaving the scene, and headed up toward the crowded hillside cottages, the cats followed them over the rooftops. The cats watched as they were arrested. No shot was fired. Tommie tried to run, and got pepper spray in his face, which made him double up, choking. His friend got a dose of the taser that put him on the sidewalk, for trying to take down Officer Wade. Cuffed and helped into a squad car, they would be, as Kit said, "Locked in a cage themselves. Let's see how they like that." This kit was not big on forgiveness.