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“That would be great,” I said.
“So I guess we can afford to consign this canvas to the flames.”
“We can afford to,” I said, “but do we have to? The guy from Christie’s could be wrong. It wouldn’t be the first time. And even if it is a fake Courbet, so what? It’s a real something, even if it’s only a real fake. I’ll tell you this, it’d look great in my apartment.”
“And I imagine it would make a good souvenir.”
“That too,” I said.
It was a full week, what with the appointments Marty arranged and the follow-up visits I had to make to various gentlemen who would buy choice material even if one couldn’t show clear title to it. Coins, jewelry, postage stamps, a Matisse litho, all passed through my hands. The weekend was busy, too, and when I opened up the following Monday I spent most of the morning on the telephone. I had a whole series of conversations with Wally Hemphill, and after the last of these I called time out and looked around for the cat. When I couldn’t find him I started crumpling a sheet of paper, and the sound drew him. He knew it was time for another training session.
I had the floor nicely littered with paper balls when Carolyn showed up. “Look at that!” I cried. “Did you see what he just did?”
“What he always does,” she said. “He killed a piece of crumpled-up paper. Bern, I went to the Russian deli. I got an Alexander Zinoviev for you and a Lavrenti Beria for myself, but I can’t remember which is which. What do you say we each have half of each?”
“That’ll be fine,” I said. “Look! I swear the training’s making a difference. His reflexes are getting sharper every day.”
“If you say so, Bern.”
“The son of a gun could play shortstop,” I said. “Did you see the way he went to his left on that one? Rabbit Maranville, eat your heart out.”
“Whatever you say, Bern.” She pulled up a chair. “Bern, we have to talk.”
“Eat first,” I said. “Then we’ll talk.”
“Bern, I’m serious. Ray stopped by this morning. I was vacuuming a bull mastiff and there was Ray, standing there with his dewlaps hanging out.”
“You should report him.”
“Bern, it’s a sign of how desperate he is. You know how Ray and I get along.”
“Like oil and water.”
“Like Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bern, but he came into the Poodle Factory because he’s concerned about you. And he’s convinced you could clear up this case for him if you put your mind to it.”
I chewed thoughtfully. “This must be the Lavrenti Beria,” I said. “With the raw garlic and the horseradish.”
“And I have to tell you I agree with him.”
“That’s good,” I said. “It’s even better that garlic agrees with me, because the Zinoviev seems to be laced with it, too. It’s probably just as well that I don’t have a date tonight.”
“He says the Nugents are back. He’s been to see them a couple of times. He’s really investigating in a big way. It’s not like him, Bern.”
“He must smell money.”
“I don’t know what he smells. Not Luke Santangelo, because they must have aired out the place by now. Bern—”
I tossed the Zinoviev wrapper and watched Raffles make his move. He was on it like a pike on a mi
“You should get him a catnip mouse, Bern. He’d play with it by the hour.”
“You don’t get it, do you? I don’t want to buy toys for him, Carolyn. He’s not a pet.”
“He’s on staff.”
“That’s right. The last thing I want to do is play with him. These are training sessions, they’re for his reflexes.”
“I keep forgetting. I look at the two of you and it looks for all the world like you’re having fun, so I forget that the relationship is essentially serious.”
“Work can be fun,” I said, “if you’re goal-oriented.”
“Like you and Raffles.”
“That’s right,” I said. “There’s something else you should know, besides the fact that Raffles is not a pet, and that’s that I’m no Kinsey Millhone.”
“You think I don’t know that, Bern? You’ve been a lot of things in your life, but you’ve never been a lesbian.”
“What I mean,” I said, “is that I’m not a detective. I don’t solve crimes.”
“You have in the past, Bern.”
“Once or twice.”
“More than that.”
“A few times,” I conceded. “But it just happened. One way or another I wound up in a jam and in the course of getting out of it I happened to stumble on the solution to a homicide. It was serendipity, that’s all. I was looking for one thing and I found something else.”
“And that’s what happened here, Bern. You were looking for something to steal and you found a dead body.”
“And I went home, remember?”
“But you went back.”
“Only to go home again. Thomas Wolfe was wrong, you can go home again, and I did. I’m out of it, Carolyn. They dropped the charges, did I tell you that? For me the case is over.” I flipped a paper ball, but Raffles was still busy killing the last one. “If you want somebody to solve it,” I said, “why don’t you try the cat?”
“The cat?”
“Raffles,” I said. “Maybe he’ll figure it out for you, like in those books by What’s-her-name.”
“Lillian Jackson Braun.”
“That’s the one. Everybody’s stymied, and then the genius cat breaks a T’ang vase or coughs up a hairball, and that provides the vital clue that nails another killer. I forget his name, this crime-solving cat.”
“It’s Ko-Ko. He’s Siamese.”
“Good for him. He’s been doing this forever, hasn’t he? Ko-Ko must be getting a little long in the fang by now. She ought to call the next one The Cat Who Lived Forever. I can’t believe some Siamese is that much sharper than old Raffles here. Go ahead, ask him who did it. Maybe he’ll knock a book off the shelves and answer all your questions.”
“You think you’re pretty fu
“Well…”
“Well, what the hell,” she said. “Raffles, what’s the solution to the mystery of the stiff in the tub?”
Raffles stopped what he was doing, which was the systematic demolition of one of the sandwich-wrapper mice. He backed away from it, extended his front paws, stretched, extended his back paws, stretched again, and then arched his back, looking like something that belonged on a Halloween card. Then he wagged the tail he didn’t have—I can’t think of another way to say it—and leaped straight up in the air, grabbing at something only he could see. He landed on all fours, in the ma
I said, “Well, I’ll be damned.”
“We all will, Bern, but what’s that got to do with the price of Meow Mix? What was all that about, anyway?”
“Call Ray Kirschma
“You’ve got to be kidding. How did you—what do you plan to—what did the cat do that—”
“You’re not making sentences,” I said, “Or sense. Tomorrow.”