The Cat Sitter’s Pajamas

20

I felt her before I saw her. A faint scent of perfume, perhaps, or just the rearrangement of the air’s molecules by a foreign body. Curiously, I wasn’t surprised. That white convertible I’d seen in traffic had really been following me, then, and a thief who knew how to disengage a specific area of a security system would surely have no trouble creating an electronic signal that would bypass a home’s security pad.

Briana wore an outfit similar to the one she’d worn when we met at the beach pavilion—sheer, wide-legged white linen pants and a matching loose tunic. Not the same outfit, of course, just similar. Briana probably never wore the same clothes twice. Her silky red hair was twisted into a knot on the top of her head. Her hands hung loosely at her sides. She had glittering green stones in her ears, and I knew they were real emeralds. Briana wouldn’t have been caught dead in fake emeralds.

I didn’t even stop waving the peacock feather. The cats gave Briana a questioning look and went back to leaping at their prey.

I said, “When did they release you?”

“This morning. I told you I didn’t kill that woman.”

“But you knew who did.”

She shrugged. “Justice will be done.”

“I’m surprised they didn’t hold you as a material witness.”

“Thanks to you, I have a good lawyer who arranged bail.”

“Why are you here?”

She sat down on the arm of a sofa.

“Dixie, I don’t think you know the danger you’re in. You’re holding something that two groups of people much stronger than you want, and if you have any ideas about selling to the highest bidder, forget it. You’re not dealing with sweet little pussycats, you’re dealing with professionals who will snap you in half and throw your body into the ocean if you oppose them.”

I lowered my right hand holding the feather and let my elbow rest on my knee. My gun was in the right pocket of my cargo shorts, and I wanted to be ready to grab it. The peacock feather was still suspended in the air but not moving. The cats watched it suspiciously.

I said, “What is it that you think I have?”

“I must have dropped it in Cupcake’s bedroom and you found it.” With an arch smirk, she added, “If you were the law-abiding citizen you claim to be, you would have turned that list of contacts over to the FBI.”

I thought, List of contacts?

I moved the peacock feather to my left hand and waggled it. The cats jumped at it. Briana watched the cats while I slid my right hand up my thigh to the flap of the pocket on my cargo shorts. I hooked my thumb in my pocket as if I were resting my hand.

I said, “Why should I give you the list, Briana?”

Her mouth made a little O of realization.

“You want to be my partner? My Florida agent? Is that it?”

“Maybe.”

Her lips curled. “I’ve worked my butt off to get where I am. I’ve been felt up by every obnoxious old fart in Europe. Plus, I can’t take a pee without some goddamn paparazzi catching me on film. You think you can just waltz in and share in the profits when all you’ve done is find a list of names?”

I swirled the peacock feather in the air with my left hand while my right hand slid all the way into my pocket and grasped the butt of my .38.

I said, “I know you had to work hard to be who you are. I really admire that.”

Oddly, I actually meant it.

She said, “You wouldn’t believe all the people in the fashion world that top models have to kiss up to. Not to mention rich men who think a model is just an expensive whore.”

I said, “Like the Serbian gangster who went to prison for adding heroin to a shipment of fake Gucci watches?”

Her eyes widened, and I was afraid I’d gone too far. Then she laughed. “I guess my life is more of an open book than I’d realized.”

In my pocket, I laid my trigger finger alongside the barrel of the gun.

She said, “You know, the partnership you’re proposing might be a good idea. You have the right contacts for my business. They’re all around you. Some of them are probably your clients. Since you already know what the business is, perhaps we should talk about how we might help each other.”

“You’d cut me in on your profits if I help you?”

“Right.”

“Doggone generous of you, considering that I’m the one with the list of names.”

Briana said, “The list is only one side of the equation. I hold the other side. One without the other is useless.”

I had pushed my luck as far as it would go. If I made one slip, Briana would figure out that I really didn’t have a list of names. I didn’t even know why the names were important, but I was pretty sure they had something to do with an illicit business involving fake designer merchandise.

I said, “I still don’t understand why you stalked Cupcake.”

Her eyes closed, and for a second she looked like an ancient carving. Gumdrop must have felt her sadness, because she jumped onto the sofa and nuzzled Briana’s arm with her nose. Briana opened her eyes, smiled, and began to stroke Gumdrop’s head.

She said, “Cupcake was the sweetest boy I ever knew. He didn’t have a mean bone in his big muscle-bound body. After I killed my uncle, somebody told the cops that I had a hideout in the swamps. I didn’t, and I’d never told anybody I did, but while I was losing myself in the French Quarter, search parties were slogging through every bayou and swamp in the county. I always suspected Cupcake was the one who told that swamp story.”

“So to pay him back for his kindness, you broke into his house?”

“I’ve already told you why I did that. I just wanted to be close to him again. He’s one of the few people in the world who’s truly good. I needed to have some of that goodness, even if it was just from hanging around his house.”

“Who was the woman who was killed?”

“The FBI agent? I don’t know her name.”

I tried not to look surprised, but it was hard. Mostly, I felt stupid. Now I understood why the murdered woman’s identity had been kept a secret, and why Paco was involved in the investigation.

“Who killed her?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t believe you.”

She shrugged. “Will you help me or not?”

“Who were the men who attacked me and searched my apartment?”

She looked surprised. “I didn’t know that happened. But now that I do, I can tell you they were business rivals of mine. They want that list you have.”

“Well, isn’t that just peachy.”

“Will you help me?”

“Tell me about the list.”

“My old Serbian friend passed them along to me before he went to prison. He wanted me to carry on his business until he got out. Since he was murdered in prison, the business is now wholly mine.”

“And the rivals? How do they know about the names?”

She looked uncomfortable. “They were my friend’s partners. They expected to take over the business while he was in prison.”

“Only you took it from them instead.”

“My friend wanted me to have it.”

“Is that why he was killed in prison?”

She smiled and shrugged. “It’s a cruel business, Dixie.”

Images flitted across my mind like a slide show: Briana in her designer clothes slouching down a runway, the counterfeit black Nikes left on Cupcake’s bed, the murdered woman’s bloodstained white shirt.

“Did you get the reward money for turning in your Serbian gangster friend?”

She looked surprised again, as if I were a frog she’d picked up that was turning into a prince.

“That was for money, it wasn’t personal. I saw the opportunity and I took it.”

Even Gumdrop and Licorice looked shocked.

She said, “I know what you’re thinking, but models only have a few good years, and most of us aren’t lucky enough to marry a Sarkozy or a Mick Jagger or a Billy Joel. We have to think of our future.”

“Explain to me exactly how your business works.”

She looked bored. “Counterfeit goods are manufactured in Asian countries, China mostly, and shipped out under fake papers showing them originating in Croatia or Montenegro or some other Balkan country. The American shipment is stored in a warehouse in New Jersey, then distributed to shops in big-money resort areas. The shop owners buy at a big discount and sell at a large markup.”

“How do you solicit those shop owners?”

She smiled. “That’s the tedious part. It took my friend years to build up his stable of upper-crust retail outlets. He did it himself, not like some who hire people to do it. He traveled to every store in person, and each place he went he had a different disguise, a different name. He was a master at disguise. He told people he was an agent for the manufacturer, and for one retailer he’d put on a wig and beard, then go bald and with fake teeth to call on the next. He was good with words, too. He’d get people talking, and when he left nobody could remember exactly what he looked like.”

For a second, I had a disastrous urge to laugh. A slick criminal had spent years building a list of secret markets where his counterfeit goods were sold. When he was arrested, he had double-crossed his partners by giving the list to a sexy model—the same sexy model who had turned him in to the police for the reward. The man had been killed in prison for his double-cross, and the sexy model had come to Florida to introduce herself to the retailers on the list, expecting to carry on the business and make billions. But because she had come to believe in a false memory she’d created of being Cupcake’s close friend when they were sixteen, she’d broken into his house. While she was inside, she’d lost the list. A transnational counterfeit business had been thrown into disarray because of a false memory and a woman’s carelessness.

I said, “You know, you could have saved yourself a lot of grief if you’d made a copy of that list.”

She looked ashamed. “I’m not used to the clerical end of business.”

I felt a stab of pity. With no family, Briana had been forced to create herself, and the self she’d created was truly amoral. With her blend of nuttiness and slyness, life was a game to her, a chance to become involved in intrigue and manipulation of other people. Her sense of self was so slippery that she broke into other people’s houses to see how normal people lived. She was obsessed with Cupcake for the same reason she’d been obsessed with her Serbian gangster friend: They both exuded power and self-confidence. Reba Chandler had been right about Briana’s addiction to drugs released by danger. Getting the list of contacts had been so scarily satisfying to her that she hadn’t given any thought to the practical, mundane, ordinary ways that people held on to important papers. Instead of making a copy of her precious list, she’d carried it around the same way Elvis carried his pilfered papers.

Cupcake had been right about Briana, too. The woman had a bag of unusually lustrous marbles, but she wasn’t playing with all of them.

I pulled my hand away from my gun. Briana was dishonest and cunning, but she wasn’t a physical danger.

I said, “Somebody told me that you did something outrageous at the Milan fashion show last year. What was that about?”

Her eyes rounded in surprise again. “One of the men trying to take over my business was in the audience. He made a gesture toward a reporter, a way of telling me he was going to expose me. He wouldn’t have, of course, because he would have been exposing himself at the same time, but the threat made me furious. I leaped off the runway and beat at him with my fists. It got me good publicity because I told the reporters he had made an obscene gesture that I found highly offensive. I was the injured innocent.” With a world-weary roll of her eyes, she said, “That’s the way it is in this business. The competition is cutthroat.”

“Aren’t you afraid of being caught?”

She shrugged. “My modeling career would be ruined, but I’m close to a time when I’ll have enough money to live without sucking up to prime ministers and wealthy playboys.”

She sounded as if she were talking about grabbing a bargain at Marshalls.

Suddenly defensive, she said, “I’m not the only famous person selling copies of top fashions and distributing them under fake labels. It’s a way to make millions, and the risk isn’t great. If someone is caught bringing in a container of fake sneakers, they lose their goods and get a mark on their customs records, but that’s all. It’s not like getting caught with three kilos of coke in a shipment of Gucci watches like my friend did. That was a stupid thing to do, because it gets you a four-year prison sentence. I’d never do that.”

I heaved a huge sigh and stood up. The cats circled around me eying the peacock feather that was now at my shoulder height.

“Briana, you have to leave now. These cats have to be fed, and then I have other pets to call on. Don’t follow me, and don’t come in another house after me.”

Confusion moved across her face like spiderwebs. “What about the list?”

“I run a business, Briana. Business people make copies of important papers. I’ve made several copies of your list. One of the copies is in my safety deposit box at the bank. If anything should happen to me, the list will go to every newspaper editor and law enforcement agency in Florida.”

She shook her head. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying to leave me the hell alone. Leave me alone, leave Cupcake alone, leave his wife alone. We are not a part of your world, and we don’t want to be. And if you’re in contact with your rivals, pass the word along to them. If they come after me again, that precious list of contacts will be spread all over the world.”

I left her sitting on the arm of the sofa and went to the kitchen, where I fed the cats and gave them fresh water. When I went back to the den, Briana was gone.