The Cat Who Lived High

3

THE SIAMESE, who had been more or less uncommunicative for four hundred miles, became vociferous when told they were trapped between floors in the Casablanca elevator shaft. Qwilleran pressed the HELP button and could hear a bell like a fire alarm ringing in some remote precinct of the old building, but the longer he leaned on the red button and the longer the bell pealed, the louder Koko howled and Yum Yum yodeled.

"Quiet!" Qwilleran commanded, and gave the bell another prolonged ring, but in Siamese cat language "quiet" means "louder." "Shhhh!" he scolded.

Somewhere an elevator door was being forced open; somewhere a distant voice was shouting.

Qwilleran shouted back, "We're stuck between floors!" "Where y'at?" came the faint query.

"YOW!" Koko replied.

"Quiet, you dumbbell! I can't hear what he's saying... We're stuck between floors!" "What floor?" The voice sounded hollow, suggesting that hands were being cupped for a megaphone effect.

"YOW!" "I can't hear you!" Qwilleran shouted.

"What floor?" The voice was coming from overhead.

"YOW!" "Shut up!" "What you say down there?" "We're between floors! I don't know where!" Qwilleran bellowed at his loudest.

There was the sound of a heavy door closing, followed by a long period of silence and inactivity.

"You really blew it!" Qwilleran told Koko. "They were coming to our rescue, and you wouldn't keep your mouth shut. Now we may be here all night." He looked around the dismal cell with its soiled walls and torn floor tiles. One of the fluorescent tubes had burned out leaving half the car in shadow. "At least you've got your commode," he said to his disgruntled companions, "which is more than I can say." He rang the emergency bell again.

There was another wrenching sound in the shaft above, and a voice overhead - somewhat closer this time - yelled, "You gotta climb out!" "YOW!" Koko replied.

"How?" Qwilleran shouted.

"What?" "YOW!" Qwilleran gave the cat carrier a remonstrative shove with his foot, which only accelerated the howls. "How do I climb out?" "Push up the roof!" In the tan ceiling of the car there was a metal plate, black with fingerprints.

"Push it all the way!" carne the instructions from on high.

Qwilleran reached up, gave the metal plate a forceful push, and it flopped open with a clatter. Through the rectangular opening he could see a bare light bulb, dazzlingly bright in the black shaft, and a ladder slowly descending.

He wondered if he could squeeze through the hole in the roof; he wondered if the carrier would go through.

"I've got luggage down here!" he yelled. There was another long wait, and then a rope carne dangling through the trapdoor.

"Tie it on the handle!" called the rescuer. Qwilleran quickly knotted one end to the top handle of the cat carrier and watched it rise off the floor and ascend in jerks that annoyed the occupants. It disappeared into the hole above.

"Any thin' else?" Qwilleran looked speculatively at the turkey roaster. Its handles had long ago been sawed off to fit on the floor of the car. Furthermore, it contained slightly used kitty gravel.

"Nothing else!" he shouted, kicking the pan into a dark comer of the elevator. Then he started up the ladder.

Above him he could see a pale face and a red golf hat clapped on a head of sandy hair.

The custodian was waiting for him at the top. "Sorry 'bout this." On hands and knees Qwilleran crawled out of the black hole onto the mosaic tile floor of a hallway, a performance that interested the waiting cats enormously; they were always entranced by unusual behavior on his part.

"Where are we?" he asked.

"On Nine. Gotta walk up. We got both cars broke now - Old Red and Old Green. Serviceman don't come till tomorrow. Costs double on Sundays." Their rescuer was a thin, wiry man of middle age, all elbows and knees and bony shoulders, wearing khaki pants and a bush jacket, its large pockets bulging with a flashlight and other tools of his trade. Judging by his prison pallor, it was doubtful that he had ever bushwhacked beyond the weedy landscaping of the Casablanca. The man picked up the cat carrier and headed for the stairwell.

"Here, let me take that," Qwilleran offered. "It's heavy." "I seen heavier. Lady on Seven, she's got two I cats, must weigh twenty pounds apiece. You in 14-A?" "Yes. My name's Qwilleran. What's your name?" "Rupert." "I appreciate your coming to our rescue." After that brief exchange, the two men plodded silently up the four long flights to the fourteenth floor, which was really the thirteenth. At the top of the stairs they emerged into a small lobby with a marble floor and marble walls, a relic of the rooftop restaurant in the Casablanca's illustrious past. There were two elevator doors, closed and silent, and two apartment doors with painted numbers.

Qwilleran glanced at his key and opened 14-A. "I guess this is it." "Yep, this is it," said Rupert. "Doorbell's broke." He touched the pearl button to prove it.

"All the doorbells are broke." They walked into a spacious foyer handsomely furnished in the contemporary style, with door- ways and arches leading to other equally lavish areas. This was more than Qwilleran had expected. It explained why the rent was high. A bank of French doors overlooked a large room with a lofty ceiling and a conversation pit six feet deep. "Is that the sunken living room?" he asked. "It looks like a carpeted swimming pool." "That's what it was - a swimmin' pool," said the custodian. "Not very deep. Didn't do much divin' in them days, I reckon." An exceptionally long sofa doglegged around one end of the depression, and around the ceramic-tiled rim of the former pool there were indoor trees in tubs, some reaching almost to the skylight twenty feet overhead.

Qwilleran noticed a few plastic pails scattered about the room, and there were waterstains on the carpet. "Does the skylight leak?" he asked.

"When it rains," Rupert said with a worried nod. "Where'd you park?" "At the front door in a twenty-minute zone. I may have a ticket by now." "Nobody bothers you on Sunday. Gimme your keys and I'll haul up the rest of your gear." "I'll go with you," Qwilleran said, remembering the advice showered on him in Pickax. "I suppose we have to walk down thirteen flights and up again." "If we can find the freight, we'll ride up." "Then let's go." The custodian looked at the cat carrier standing in the middle of the foyer. "Ain'tcha gonna let 'em out?" "They can wait till we get back." Qwilleran always checked the premises for hazards and hidden exits before releasing the Siamese.

The two men began the tedious descent to the main floor, down marble stairs with ornamental iron banisters, each flight enclosed in a grim stairwell. "Good-looking staircases," Qwilleran commented. "Too bad they're enclosed." "Fire department made 'em do it." "What's that trapdoor?" In the wall of each stairwell, toward the top of the flight, there was a small square door labeled DANGER - KEEP OUT.

"That's to the crawl space. Water pipes, heat, electric, and all stuff like that," Rupert informed hint.

Halfway down they met the tiny Asian woman shepherding her two small children from one floor to another. She seemed unaware of their presence.

"Are there many children in the building?" Qwilleran asked.

"Mostly kids of the doctors that work at the hospital. From all different countries." At last they reached the main floor, and as they walked past the manager's desk, Mrs. Tuttle, who was knitting something behind the bulletproof window, sang out cheerfully, "Why didn't you two ride the elevator?" She motioned toward Old Red, which was standing there with its door hospitably open. Qwilleran squinted into the dim back comer of the car and quickly retrieved the turkey roaster, carrying it away triumphantly.

Farther down the hall Valdez, still in his yellow satin jacket, was beating his fists against the soft-drink dispenser, and Napoleon was sniffing a puddle near the phone booth, critically. There was no activity around the elaborate bronze door of the private elevator.

"Quiet on Sundays," Rupert commented. In front of the building the Purple Plum was still parked at the curb, neither stolen nor ticketed, and Qwilleran drove into the parking lot while Rupert went to the basement for a luggage cart.

The lot was an obstacle course dotted with potholes, and his #28 parking slot was occupied by a small green Japanese car.

"Park in #29," Rupert told him. "Nobody cares." "This lot is in terrible condition," Qwilleran complained. "When was it last paved? In 1901?" "No use fixin' it. They could tear the place down next week." Rupert wheeled the suitcases, typewriter, dictionary, books, and coffeemaker into the basement, Qwilleran following with the turkey roaster and the cats' water dish. They rode up in the freight elevator, a rough enclosure of splintery boards, but it worked!

"How come this one works?" Qwilleran asked. "It's never broke," the custodian said. "Tenants don't get to use it, that's why. They're the ones wreck the elevators. Wait'll you see how they wreck the washers and dryers! There's a coin laundry in the basement." "What do we do about rubbish?" "Put it out in the hall at night. Boy picks up startin' at six in the mornin'. Any problem, just ring the desk.

Housephone's on the kitchen wall in 14-A." Qwilleran tipped him liberally. Although frugal by nature, he had developed a generous streak since inheriting money. Now he bolted the door, cat-proofed the rooms, and released the Siamese. "We're here!" he said. They emerged cautiously, swiveling their fine brown heads, pointing their ears, curving their whiskers, and sensing the long broad foyer.

Koko walked resolutely to the far wall where French doors led to the terrace; he checked for pigeons and seemed disappointed that none appeared. Meanwhile Yum Yum was putting forth an experimental paw to touch the art rugs scattered about the parquet floor.

Art was everywhere: paintings on the walls, sculpture on pedestals, crystal and ceramic objects in lighted niches.

The canvases were not to Qwilleran's liking: splotches of color and geometric studies that seemed meaningless to him; a still life of an auto mechanic's workbench; a bloody scene depicting a butcher block with work in progress; a realistic portrayal of people eating spaghetti.

Then he noticed an envelope with his name, propped against a bowl of fruit on a console table. Nestled among the winesap apples, tangerines, and Bosc pears, like a Cracker Jack prize, was a can of lobster. "You guys are in luck," he said to the Siamese. "But after your shenanigans in the elevator, I don't know whether you deserve it." The accompanying note was from Amberina: "Welcome to the Casablanca! Mary wants me to take you to dinner at Roberto's tonight. Call my apartment when you get in. SOCK had your phone connected." Qwilleran lost no time in phoning. "I accept with pleasure. I have a lot of questions to ask. Where's Roberto's?" "In Junktown, a couple of blocks away. We can walk." "Is that advisable after dark?" "I never walk alone, but... sure, it'll be okay. Could you meet me inside the front door at seven o'clock? I won't ask you to come to my apartment. It's a mess." He opened the can of lobster for the Siamese, arranging it on a Royal Copenhagen plate. All the appointments in the apartment were top-notch: Waterford crystal, Swedish sterling, German stainless, and so on. After unpacking his suit- cases he wandered about the rooms, eating an apple and marveling at the expensive art books on the library table, the waterbed in the master bedroom, the gold faucets in the bathroom. He looked askance at the painting of the bloody butcher block; it was not something he would care to see early in the morning on an empty stomach, yet it occupied a prominent spot on the end wall of the foyer.

When the Siamese had finished their meal and groomed their paws, whiskers, ears, and tails, he introduced them to the sunken living room. In no time at all they discovered they could race around the rim of the former pool, chase each other up and down the carpeted stairs leading to the conversation pit, climb the trees, and scamper the length of the sofa- back. For his own satisfaction he paced off the length of the dogleg sofa and found it to be an incredible twenty feet.

Though few in number, the furnishings were large-scale: an enormous onyx cocktail table stacked with art magazines; an eight-foot bar; an impressive stereo system with satellite speakers the size of coffins.

The most dramatic feature was the gallery of paintings that covered the upper walls. They were large still lifes, all studies of mushrooms - whole or halved or sliced, tumbled about in various poses. The jarring effect, to Qwilleran's eye, was not the size of the mushrooms - some two feet diameter - but the fact that each arrangement was pictured with a pointed knife that looked murderously sharp. He had to admit that the knife lifted the still lifes out of the ordinary.

Somehow it suggested a human presence. But he could not imagine why the owner of the apartment had hung so many mushrooms, unless... he had painted them himself. Who was this talented ten- ant? The signature on the work was a cryptic logo: two Rs back-to-back. Why did he specialize in mushrooms? Why did he leave? Where had he gone? When would he return? And why was he willing to sublet this lavishly furnished apartment to a stranger?

There were no windows in the room-only the skylight, and it admitted a sick light on this late afternoon in November. Apart from the potted trees and the green and yellow plastic pails strategically placed in case of rain, the interior was monochromatically neutral. Walls, upholstered sofa, and commercial-weave carpet were all in a pale gray- beige like the mushrooms.

He checked his watch. It was time to dress for dinner. At that moment he heard a door slam in the elevator lobby; the occupant of 14-B was either corning in or going out. He soon discovered which.

When 14-A had been carved out of the former restaurant, space was no object, and the master bathroom was large enough to accommodate a whirlpool bath for two, a tanning couch, and an exercise bike. The stall shower was large enough for three. At the turn of a knob, water pelted Qwilleran's body from three sides, gentle as rain or sharp as needles.

He was luxuriating in this experience when the water abruptly turned ice cold. He yelped and bounded from the enclosure.

Dripping and cursing and half-draped in a towel, he found the house telephone in the kitchen. Mrs. Tuttle's businesslike voice answered.

"This is Qwilleran in 14-A," he said in a politely shocked tone. "I was taking a shower and the water suddenly ran cold, ice cold!" "That happens," she said. "It's an old building, you know. Evidently your neighbor started to take a shower at the same time." "You mean I have to coordinate my bathing schedule with 14-B?" "I don't think you need to worry about it too much," she said soothingly.

That's right, he thought. The building may be tom down next week. "Who is the tenant in 14-B?" Mrs. Tuttle said something that sounded like Keestra Hedrog, and when he asked her to repeat the name, it still sounded like Keestra Hedrog. He huffed into his moustache and hung up.

After toweling and donning his old plaid bathrobe in the Mackintosh tartan (his mother had been a Mackintosh), he was in the process of eating another apple when he heard incredible sounds from the adjoining apartment - like a hundred-piece orchestra tuning up discordantly for Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture. The cats' ears swiveled nervously, the left and right ears twisting in opposite directions. He realized that they were hearing a composition for the synthesizer, a kind of music he had not yet learned to appreciate. He also realized that the walls between 14-A and 14-B were regrettably thin - one of the Casablanca's Depression economies. By the time he had finished dressing, however, the recording ended, a door slammed again, and his neighbor apparently went out for the evening.

He checked out the cats as he always did before leaving and found Yum Yum in the bedroom, sniffing the waterbed, but Koko was not in evidence. He called his name and received no response. For one sickening moment he wondered if the cat had discovered a secret exit. Hurrying from room to room he called and searched and worried. It was not until he went down into the conversation pit that he found the missing Koko.

The eight-foot bar in the pit was situated rather conspicuously in the middle of the floor, and Koko was sniffing this piece of furniture, oblivious of everything else. Qwilleran himself had not touched alcohol for several years, and when he served spirits to his guests, Koko showed no interest whatever unless he happened upon a stray anchovy olive. So why was he so intent upon investigating this leather-upholstered, teak-topped liquor dispensary? Koko always had a sound reason for his actions, although it was not always obvious.

Qwilleran opened the drawers and cabinets of the bar and found decanters, glassware, jiggers, corkscrews, muddlers, napkins, and so forth. That was all.

"Sorry, Koko," he said. "No anchovies. No mice. No dead bodies." The cat ignored him. He was sniffing the base of the bar, running his twitching nose along the line where the furniture met the carpet, as if some small object had found its way underneath. Qwilleran touched his moustache questioningly, his curiosity aroused. It was a heavy bar, but by putting his shoulder against one end of it he could slide it across the tightly woven carpet. As it began to move, Koko became agitated, prancing back and forth in encouragement.

"If this turns out to be an anchovy-stuffed olive," Qwilleran said, "you're going to be in the doghouse!" He shoved again. The ponderous bar moved a few inches at a time.

Then Koko yowled. A thin dark line had appeared on the pale carpet. It widened as Qwilleran lunged with his shoulder - wider and wider until a large dark stain was revealed.

"Blood!" Qwilleran said.

"Yow!" said Koko. He arched his back, elongated his legs, hooked his tail, and pranced in a circle. Qwilleran had seen the dance before - Koko's death dance. Then from the cat's innards came a new sound: less than a growl yet deeper than a purr. It sounded like "Rrrrrrrrrr!"