Cat Pay The Devil

30

I t was midnight when the old man descended to the basement and, working silently, moved the piled boxes out of the closet, shoving them in among the rest of the detritus that crowded the concrete room. He guessed Lilly had gotten nervous about that safe, so visible and all. The fact that it was covered up told him there was something to be nervous about.

Kneeling over the locked metal box he tried to remove it from the closet, but it was sunk deep in the floor. Probably bolted, the bolts removable only from inside, once it was open. When he couldn’t budge it, he took from his pocket a small, rechargeable electric drill and a miniature periscope, a tiny light on a long, thin, flexible neck, an eyepiece at the end.

The sound of the drill wasn’t loud. But twice he stopped to listen to the house above him, just in case Lilly woke and started down. The big old house remained silent, and within minutes the drill had gone through the thick metal lid, leaving a quarter-inch hole into which he slid the periscope.

Slowly he turned the safe’s dial, watching through the periscope as the plates moved, slowly working out the combination until, after maybe twenty minutes, he was able to apply that information and lift the heavy lid.

Staring down into the metal box, Greeley was very still. His expression didn’t change. An observer could have read nothing on the face of the grizzled old man. He knelt there in his wrinkled clothes and old worn shoes, shaggy gray hair, three days’ growth of stubble, looking down blankly into the empty safe. Only slowly did his rage burn to the surface, like a flame that started deep inside a building, belatedly flickering and blooming until it blazed red and violent through the walls.

Rage. Disbelief. A deep and painful disappointment. He knelt there a long time, looking. At last he closed the safe again, spun the dial, and rose. He put back the boxes on top as they had been, shut the closet door, and turned resolutely to search the rest of the basement, but without much hope.

Knowing Cage, he limited his survey to places that would be relatively fireproof, because Cage had once lost a nice haul in a fire, in an old, tinder-dry apartment. He investigated a patched area of concrete where another safe might be sunk, but could find no way into it. Carefully he examined the concrete walls, the concrete floor beneath the stairs. He looked over the stacked boxes and old bits of furniture, but they were all tinder, not what Cage would choose. At last he turned away, discouraged, and left the basement, moving up the wooden stairs in his stockinged feet just as he had come down.

Back in his room, shutting the door silently behind him, he sat down on the bed, put his feet up on the spread, poured a good jolt of whiskey into the plastic glass he’d taken from the bathroom, and drank it down. You could bet that bitch parole officer had been here, just like Cage must’ve thought. Her and her partner, her and that hard-nosed Bennett-served him right coming in here and stealing, served him right he got shot.

He thought about them cats. That one cat that lived with the Getz woman. Had them cats spied on Cage, watched as he opened the safe and then told her? And she’d waltzed right in here, her and Bennett, and cleaned it out? With them cats, anything was possible.

It did not occur to Greeley that Wilma and Mandell Bennett had made that official search of the Jones house with the DEA agents some years before tabby Dulcie had come to live with her. In fact, before Dulcie was born. Sitting on the bed finishing the whiskey, the old man began to feel trapped, driven into a corner by an unfair and twisted fate. He’d been counting on that gold. Not so much because he needed it; he had already cashed out half his own share, before this trip, more than enough for all the cars and whiskey, and even women, he could handle in what remained of his lifetime; and he didn’t care about fancy houses and clothes, he cared only about his own pleasure. No, it wasn’t that he needed Cage’s half of the haul. He wanted it purely because he’d set his mind on it-because this theft had been the big one. The one spectacular prize before he retired, before he kicked back and enjoyed life. This job was big enough to have the entire Panamanian government panicked into closing its borders, if they’d knowed about it.

That was the beauty of this heist. The Guardia didn’t know, not a clue. A theft from thieves didn’t get a lot of police action. If those guys he and Cage’d stole from had run to the Guardia, they were the ones who’d be in the carcel.

And now, that bitch parole officer had cheated him out of every penny.

Sure as hell no one else had known about the stash. Cage wouldn’t of told anyone, he was too closemouthed. Greeley wondered if he’d told Eddie Sears, but Cage never had trusted him. Cage’s sister Violet, she didn’t count for nothing, skinny little thing afraid of her own shadow. Ditto Lilly Jones. Lilly didn’t have the imagination or the balls to think of stealing anything. The very idea of cracking a safe would give the old girl a sick headache.

No, it was that Getz woman. Fancy stone house and new car. Not hardly, on her federal retirement. Likely socked the rest of the loot away in some kind of securities or some little-old-lady annuity, safe and untouchable.

But right now he had to search the rest of the house. Cage could have hidden the stash somewhere else, and he’d be a friggin’ fool to miss it. Slipping out of the room to toss the main floor, he used a little penlight that wasn’t much. A nuisance searching in the dark. He went through the refrigerator-freezer, which might be impervious to fire but was the first place a burglar would look. He was turning out the living room, checking the electrical plugs for tampering, when he heard a noise at the front door. The lock clicked, the knob turned, and as the door opened Greeley drew back behind the couch, crouching down as sneaky and undignified as them damned spying cats.

“I still have no idea what Cage was after,” Wilma said, settling back into the leather booth, sipping her whiskey and water, gazing into the fire that Moreno’s Bar and Grille kept blazing even in warm weather. The cozy restaurant was nearly empty at this hour. A rare steak was on the way, with fries and onion rings. “Was he dumb enough to hide stolen stocks or securities there in the house? There’s no theft like that in his record, but that doesn’t mean much. Who knows what Cage might have pulled off that was never connected to him.”

Clyde frowned. “Stocks or securities that could be traced? Whatever it was, it had to be pretty valuable to leave it there all those years while he was in prison.”

“Or,” Wilma said, speculating, “maybe something he thought would increase in value? I wonder if he has that much foresight.”

“Or,” Clyde said, shaking his head, “he meant to hide it until the law forgot about it?”

Wilma laughed. “Cage won’t be around that long. If it’s of interest to Treasury agents, they don’t forget.” She yawned, beginning to relax, feeling the aches and tension subside. The cozy retreat, and Clyde’s company and the promised steak, had made her feel almost normal again. That, and the fact that Dulcie and Joe Grey were tucked up on the leather bench beside her, Joe with his head on her lap, treating her to a rare show of affection. She was greatly touched that the tomcat had put aside his macho disdain of cuddling.

Clyde made a pattern of rings on the table with his glass. “What will happen to Violet? I guess she’s glad Eddie’s in jail. Or she should be.”

“I don’t know that she’s glad. I half-expect she’ll go back to him when he gets out, even years down the road.” The subject of Violet tired her. “I don’t have much patience for a woman who won’t help herself, and I don’t think she plans to do that.”

Clyde shook his head. “Maybe she’ll change.”

“If she has any sense, she’ll get out of Molena Point and go where Eddie won’t find her, go while she has the chance. I told her I’d help her.” She stroked Dulcie, then looked up at Clyde. “At least Mandell is mending.”

On their way down from the ruins, she had called the San Francisco hospital on Clyde’s cell phone and had been able to speak with Mandell. He was out of intensive care and wanted to get into physical rehab as soon as possible. He said that when he got his hands on Cage Jones, he planned to be in top form.

“I’ll be right beside you,” Wilma had told him. “Have you been able to figure out what Jones thinks we took?”

“Nothing my secretary could find in his early files. She went through everything. But those years he was in Central America, who knows what he did down there? Didn’t you and Cage go to school with some guy who later moved down to Panama? A diver for the Panama Canal?”

“Greeley Urzey. Greeley was older, but it was a small school. When Cage grew up, he and Greeley ran around together for a while. They were in Panama at the same time.”

Mandell had been silent for a few moments, then, “Something I read, some years back. I keep thinking about it, but can’t bring it clear. Be glad when I’m off this pain killer and I can get my mind straight.”

“About crimes down there, some unsolved crime?”

“Seems like something spectacular. How would I forget that?”

“Let me do some checking. I’ll run it by Max.”

Talking with Bennett, she’d had the speaker on. Both cats, when they talked about Greeley and Cage, had been glued to the phone. But when she’d said good night to Mandell and hung up, she had studied their two sleek little faces, Dulcie’s green eyes and Joe’s yellow eyes as innocent as the gazes of kittens, the two cats looking back at her blandly and saying nothing.

Mandell had described how Cage had shot him, how he’d gone into the office as he often did on weekend mornings to catch up on paperwork, worked from seven until midmorning, then had gone out for a good breakfast. When he stepped out of the courthouse elevator in the parking garage, checking around him as he always did, he felt the impact a second before he heard the shot. He took a second shot in the shoulder and heard a car speed away, glimpsed Cage’s face as the car swung up the ramp. He had tried to run after it, then to use his cell phone, then he must have blacked out, which embarrassed him; he could remember nothing more.

“Woke up in the ambulance,” Mandell had said, “thinking strange thoughts…about my Cherokee ancestors who I never knew. I could see them marching as prisoners across the continent into that dry hot land they hated. Woke up hot and parched, thinking I was marching…Strange,” he said, “what the human mind will do.”

Wilma thought of Mandell again after dinner, when Clyde dropped her and Dulcie off at home, thought that it would take Mandell time to recover, that he would be pretty laid up for a while, and no one to do things for him in his little bachelor apartment.

Clyde insisted on going through the house with her. The trashed rooms were heartbreaking, daunting. She tried to put that out of her thoughts; she’d clean up tomorrow. The first thing she did was go to her car, unlock the glove compartment, and retrieve her.38, which was locked there, just as she’d left it.

“It would be nice,” Clyde said, “if you’d sleep with that where you can reach it. And,” he said, “if you would consider putting a lock on the bedroom door, to narrow the odds of someone walking in on you. Dulcie can’t play watch cat all night.” He stroked Dulcie gently. “She stands guard all night, she’ll never get her beauty sleep.”

Wilma laughed and gave him a hug. “I’ll keep it close, and I’ll call a locksmith in the morning.” And within half an hour of Clyde’s leaving, she and Dulcie were tucked up in bed, a chair propped under the doorknob, which at least would make some noise if someone came in. She didn’t see how it would be needed, now that Cage was in the hospital, and Eddie in custody, but she’d promised Clyde. She did straighten up the bedroom. Then, stretched out in bed between smooth sheets, she relished the clean feeling from her shower, the feel of Dulcie snuggled warm beside her, extravagantly purring, and the thick stone walls of her own house secure around her.