Cat by Any Other Name (9781101597729) (13 page)

Chapter 23

As Freud used to say—or as people say he used to say—“There's a difference between knowing and
knowing.
”

I never really understood what those words mean until the moment I walked out of Claude Cervice's office. As I went down the stairs and onto the street, I knew. The shape was there—large, looming, almost defined. But I didn't really
know.

It was late afternoon when I returned to my apartment. To say I was excited would be an understatement. I was, to use the current parlance, wired.

Everything I did now was significant. Every move I made was pregnant with the next move. And all my past failures were irrelevant.

I called Detective Rothwax at his home a few minutes after nine that evening.

My invitation to him to meet me in a bar on Twenty-Third Street was greeted with a long silence.

Finally he responded, “I'm in my bathrobe.”

“It's hard to imagine you in a bathrobe,” I said. “But can't you just take it off and put on a pair of pants?”

“Are you going to make sexual advances?”

“No sex, Detective. Just a little alcohol. And conversation. I'll pay the cab fare.”

“You're calling Queens, Alice. That's a hefty cab fare.”

“Please. I have to talk to you in person.”

I could hear him computing the various discomfort factors.

“What bar?”

“It's called Live Bait. It's on the downtown side of Twenty-Third, just east of the Flatiron Building. You can't miss it.”

“First: You'd be surprised at the things I miss. And second: This had better be good.”

I entered Live Bait about ten thirty. It was a place that had a desperate need to seem funky. Heavy metal music screeched from the speakers overhead. There were strangely colored baseball caps nailed to the walls here and there. Completely incomprehensible slogans and photographs dangled from the ceiling fixtures. Beautiful but bizarre-looking young waitresses—all of them black, Hispanic, or Asian—floated by, dressed in any way they saw fit. I could tell I was not the typical Live Bait customer.

Detective Rothwax showed up at around eleven. He joined me at the bar. He was very grumpy.

“Thirty-five bucks for the cab,” he said when he sat down.

I gave him a twenty and three fives, rolled up. He stuck the money in his pocket and looked around disapprovingly.

“I thought you were too classy for this kind of joint.”

“My ex-husband,” I retorted, “used to say that I was too classy to live.”

“By the way, are you paying for my cab ride home? Or are you putting me up for the night?”

“Take the subway. You carry a gun.”

He allowed himself to laugh at that. We had both ordered Bloody Marys. Rothwax made a face as he sipped his. Then he pushed the drink away, saying, “Let's get to the point of this rendezvous, if there is one.”

I folded my hands on the bar. “I know
how,”
I said. “I know half of
why.
I don't know
who
yet. But I'm
so
close.”

“I hope you're not talking about the guy . . . Roman.” I nodded, signaling that I was indeed talking about Tim. “That is an ongoing homicide investigation. You're way out of your league here, lady. We're talking about a professional hit—an explosives expert.”

“I know what was involved, Detective.”

“And you're
‘so'
close to cracking the murder?”

“Murders. Plural. Barbara and Tim were killed by the same person. When I solve one murder, I'll solve the other. Here, look.” I took out a primitive map of the street where the herb garden was located. I had drawn it with magic marker on a paper bag. Across the street from the garden was an abandoned three-story building. I had labeled it with an R—for Rothwax.

He studied the map, crinkling the edges of it with his fingers. “What the hell is this?” he asked.

“A map. I'm going to need your help.”

“For what?”

“To catch the killer, of course! What do you think I mean?”

“Are you kidding with all this crap?”

I went right on. “Today is Tuesday. I'll have the murderer sometime between Thursday night and Friday morning.”

“Oh, you will, will you?”

“Yes. I will.”

“By the way: Who really killed JFK?”

I ignored the comment and pointed at the map.

“I'll be in the garden starting at about nine in the evening on Thursday. I want you to be across the street in that building I've marked on the map. I need you there. It's going to be dangerous, and I'm not overestimating myself on this. I'm frightened.”

He knocked the map farther away with a swipe of his arm.

“You can't ask me to do this nonsense.”

“But I am.” I gripped his wrist.

“Then give me something real.

“Like what?”

“A name. A motive. Who's going to be in that garden?”

“But I don't know for sure.”

“But you are sure someone will show?”

“Positive. The one who threw Barbara to her death and wired the bomb that killed Tim.”

He heaved an exasperated sigh. “And why can't you get your friend Whatsisname to back you up?”

“He's back in Connecticut.”

“Send a cab for him.”

“Basillio isn't right for this. I want you.”

“You flatter me.”

“Look, Detective. You're a detective, a cop. Don't you want to catch this person? I can give him—or her—to you.”

“How do you know this character is going to show up between Thursday night and Friday morning?”

“The bait is too powerful to resist.”

“Bait! I see. Another one of your so-called traps.”

“That's right. Like the one in the park when we worked together at Retro. That worked well enough, didn't it?” I wasn't about to mention the fiasco of my letter trap.

“Just exactly what is this bait? Catnip?” He enjoyed his joke, never realizing how close to the truth he'd come.

If he went on this way, I knew I'd have to tell him about the Haitian herb doctor and what I'd learned from him. And that would send Rothwax through the roof.

“Detective, may I share with you something my grandmother told me a long time ago?”

“Ah, Christ, do you have to bring that poor old lady into this?”

“She once said to me that most men are cowards. Which is why they're so violent. And it's because they're so violent that they're no good with cows. And a man who can't be trusted with a cow can't be trusted with anything.”

He put his head into his hands. “What the hell is the point of that story?”

“My grandmother was wrong. I think you'd be worthless with a cow, but I trust you very much. And I want it to be you waiting across the street from that garden, looking out for me.”

“You're playing me like a poker hand,” he protested. “Like the audience at a cheap sideshow.”

I knew then that he was going to do it. And he knew that I knew.

“But this one is really going to cost you. The price is very steep.”

“How much?”

“Don't ever tell me another story about your batty grandmother—may she rest in peace.”

“Agreed.”

We ordered fresh drinks.

Chapter 24

It rained that Wednesday, which was good. Rain meant that the little herb gardeners and their life companions were likely to be at home.

I sat in front of the phone, pencil and large pad in hand. Before you can spring a trap, you have to lay a trap.

The idea was to write the script out on the yellow pad, so that my entire circle of suspects would each hear precisely the same story in precisely the same words from me.

I freely admit it: I'm no writer. The first two efforts at a script were pathetic. The third was serviceable. But the fourth draft hit just the right note, I thought:

The director of the famous Brooklyn Botanic Gardens is coming to our very own little herb garden this Friday morning at 9:00
A.M.
—along with a reporter and a photographer. The Brooklyn Botanic Gardens newsletter is going to feature us in one of its issues as being a wonderful community project. Everyone should show up early Friday morning to greet the director and his staff.

The script was completed. Now I needed an opening salutation. The only one I could think of was rather childish: “I have wonderful news!” I practiced saying that a few times into the dead phone, attempting to sound breathlessly excited as I did so. Then I came up with the more subtle, albeit disingenuous, “You'll never guess who's coming to the herb garden on Friday!”

I placed the calls to the three women. They all seemed excited and happy at the news, which seemed to come like a ray of light on a very dreary day.

Then I decided I should go and talk to someone else.

By persevering, I managed to find a taxi in the downpour. I took it to Seventy-Second and Second Avenue. Father Baer was not in his church; he was out ministering to the sick. An assistant—a sexton, I believe—was kind enough to usher me through to the parish house so that I might see Swampy.

He still looked well, if a bit thinner. I tried to gather him up in my arms, but he nimbly evaded me. Then he watched me warily from about ten feet away, his arched body pressed lightly against a table leg. I guess he was chastising me for that vulgar show of affection.

“Forgive me, Swampy,” I called to him. “Please forgive me.”

The sexton—or whatever his title was—stuck his head in the door just then. I smiled brightly at him, and he left again.

I had come to assure Swampy that everything was going to be all right. That I would soon be naming Barbara's killer. And Tim's. I wanted him to know I understood that no one could ever take Barbara's place in his affections, and surely no one could ever love him as she had, but if there was such a thing as justice in this world, he would be able to savor it.

“Understand, Swampy?” I kneeled down near him. “We're not going to let them get away with it, are we, boy?”

He blinked twice. And then stood there and allowed me to stroke him tenderly.

“It's taken a long time, you know. But now everything is falling into place. I just kept getting lost, Swampy. The road kept bending, but I wasn't bending with it.”

The stroking he was tolerating, maybe even enjoying. But when I tried to kiss him on the nose, he drew the line. Still, he wasn't as unpleasant about it as he might have been.

“Okay. See you again, pal,” I said. “I promise. I'm going to bring you lots and lots of goodies.”

No more responses from him. He was now staring, the way cats do, at some far-off point in time, or at something I couldn't see. Then, with a flick of his tail, he was off in search of it.

I had to get home, too.

Chapter 25

I placed myself in the northeast corner of the garden, where we kept the tools. There was no place to sit, so I just stood, doing my impersonation of a rake. I could see the entire garden, the entrance gate, the street, and the derelict building across the way, from which Rothwax was watching me.

What a warm, lovely night it was! Salsa music floated from the windows on up to the cellophane moon. Even the trucks grinding up the avenues seemed muted.

Was I frightened? Not really. I had the funniest sense that I wasn't quite alone, that there, in the dark, Barbara was with me.

“
I feel I must confess something to you, Barbara. I went to bed with Tim after you—afterwards. Can you ever forgive me?
”

“
Oh, nonsense, sweet Alice. It would have happened sooner or later, no matter what. Don't worry about it, dear. He worked his way through half of my graduating class. Anyway, Tim's philandering was so old-fashioned that it bordered on chivalry. At the end of each of his affairs, he was just that much more wonderful to me. It seems the more he played around, the more I adored him.
”

“
Barbara, was Tim doing something illegal?
”

“
I don't really know, dear. He had his secrets.
And he did love having money. That was one of my few complaints about him.”

“What do you think of the garden, Barbara? Or should I use
‘
Barb,' the way Dr. Doyle does?”

“Isn't Rich a sweetheart? He and Father Ed are such lovely men. Pity Ed has to be celibate. They'd make such a divine couple. . . . Well, anyway, dear, to answer your question: The garden looks wonderful. But is the catnip selling?”

That was Barbara, all right.
Hard-nosed common sense wrapped in well-nigh pathological caring.

We talked a while longer—covering the spectrum, as we'd done hundreds of times before. Just as I was asking her if she thought I really was a loon, I became aware of a terrible cramping in my legs.

I looked across the street, thinking of Rothwax and how angry he must be now at having been pressed into this particular service.

It must have been about midnight—the clouds had hidden the moon, and the brooding buildings towered threateningly—when the sense of doubt crept up on me: What if the killer didn't give a damn that a horticultural expert from Brooklyn was coming to inspect the herb beds?

I extirpated the doubt quickly enough—by finding an abandoned planting tub to sit on, relieving the ache in my legs and feet. The night silence was broken only by the occasional shattering bottle or cry in Spanish or when a car with a very loud stereo idled near the gate. It was an oddly comforting cacophony, for it meant that everything was still normal.

I kept watch, staring into the dark, awake but dreaming at the same time—soft, ingenue dreams. I even thought I saw Gram coming toward me with a pail in her hand.

Yes, someone else was in the garden. But it wasn't my grandmother.

The intruder was walking calmly toward the peppermint bed.

I scrambled unsteadily to my feet. Suddenly fear had become real. It was on me, all around me.

“Wait!” I yelled.

The figure let out a startled grunt and froze in its tracks. Swinging my flashlight up, I snapped it on.

It was Pauly Graff.

He flung the pail at me. It missed and slammed against the fence behind me. He turned and made for the street.

Rothwax blocked his exit. He shouted at Pauly to stop, that he was a police officer.

Pauly swung his fist and hit Rothwax on the side of the face. The detective staggered, then lashed out with a foot and tripped Pauly, who fell heavily.

I watched in horror as they fought and grappled on the ground, until Pauly screamed his surrender to Rothwax. Rothwax straddled him and handcuffed him behind his back.

“Alice!” I heard Rothwax call out. He was breathing heavily, gasping like a drowning man. Even in the darkness I could see the beads of sweat lathering his face and neck. “Alice! You okay?”

I ran over in answer to the question.

Rothwax and I looked at each other over the body of the fallen intruder. He was breathing easier now. I looked down at Pauly's bloodied face. His eyes were wide open, crazy.

Rothwax looked at me intently. “Listen,” he said. “Listen carefully. There's a coffee house on Seventh Street, just east of Second Avenue. Go there and wait for me. I'm going to book this creep for assaulting an officer.”

I didn't answer him. He shook my arm. “Do you hear me, Alice? Go to the coffee house now! On Seventh Street. Wait for me there, okay?”

I nodded that I understood. He swung open the garden gate for me.

***

The all-night café was packed. Even at this late hour I had to wait a few minutes for a table. I slid into a seat at the tiny table in the window and ordered a double espresso along with a slab of chocolate cake with rum-spiced whipped cream. My blood seemed to be calling out for that excessive sugar Dr. Cervice had mentioned.

My body was clanging like a church bell.

A lot was clear, but a lot was still opaque.

I was getting old. All the people around me appeared to be children. The young people in the café were talking films and books and love and politics. They were smoking and laughing. And I was still cocooned in my trap.

An hour passed. Still no Rothwax. Poor Sylvia Graff. Poor Barbara. Poor broken Pauly.

Finally Rothwax walked into the café. He looked perturbed. He spotted me and walked quickly over to the table, knocking into several customers. He sat down across from me. The table was really too small.

“We booked him on the assault,” he said. “Then I ran a check on him. Jesus, Alice. Do you know who the hell that guy is?”

“I told you, his name's Pauly Graff.”

“Wrong. His real name is Ralph Austin Linneus. There're federal warrants outstanding on him for almost twenty years. He was a bomber. A radical. And I mean a dangerous young man. He was a member of one of those left-wing groups like the Weathermen. He's wanted for bombing three upstate air force bases between '69 and '71. He vanished shortly after the last one. No wonder he could rig the thing that blew Tim Roman away so easily. This character knows explosives.”

I started to relax. The jangling in my body had stopped. The last piece had fallen into place. The very last piece. That beautiful, simple piece that gave logic and form and truth and continuity to every other piece. The cornerstone had fallen into place.

“What are you grinning at?” Rothwax demanded, picking up my spoon and attacking what was left of my cake.

“I finally know.”

“Know what?”

“Everything. Every thing.”

“Then why don't you enlighten this poor, dumb, beat-up cop?”

“Get ready for a sad story, Detective. About good women who love bad men too much.”

“Soap opera stuff, huh?”

“Not quite. Barbara and Tim Roman had a very happy marriage, even though he was a philanderer. He slept with her friends and God knows who else. But one of those throwaway affairs transformed itself into something very serious. Tim and Sylvia Graff, the wife of the man you arrested, fell absurdly in love. It became so intense, in fact, and so pathologically childish on Sylvia's part, that she actually began to slip Tim illicit packets of catnip from the herb garden to wean their cat's affection away from Barbara to Tim—as if Swampy could be bought.

“To illustrate the intensity of Sylvia's often pathetic middle-aged passion, she wrapped the catnip in her husband's old handkerchief—the one bearing his real initials, RAL. In Sylvia's eyes Tim was the promise of new love, the resurrection of those early years with her husband. Sylvia was a newly wed again. Do you understand, Detective?”

“If
you
understand, Cat Lady,
I
understand.”

“I first thought the initials on the handkerchief stood for Renee Lupo. How silly I was. Renee is no sentimentalist.”

“Are we getting close to the point?” he asked impatiently, trying to catch the waitress's eye.

“The good part is coming. Relax. First let me tell you about Barbara Roman. She was a beautiful and compassionate woman. People confided in her. People told her things they wouldn't tell anyone else, not even their own family. Everyone confided in her. I did, and Sylvia Graff did. She had told Barbara about Pauly's terrorist past long before Sylvia's affair with Tim.

“Now, Barbara was a very complex person. But she did have a very uncomplicated weakness: She loved Tim to distraction, and she didn't want to lose him. That was compounded by the fact that she was, for her own reasons, taking instruction in Roman Catholicism. Divorce was unthinkable on many levels.

“So Barbara did what was probably the first mean thing in her life. After she found out that Tim was actually contemplating a divorce to show Sylvia that he was serious about her, Barbara threatened Sylvia. Barbara was going to tell the authorities about Pauly's fugitive status unless Sylvia broke off the affair.

“It is indeterminate whether Tim loved Sylvia for herself or for her money. But Sylvia was deeply in love with him. Yet she also loved and took care of Pauly. Now, it's one thing to fall passionately in love with another man and divorce your husband, another thing to subject that longtime partner to exposure and possible life imprisonment. Sylvia told Pauly about her affair with Tim—and about Barbara's ultimatum.

“They decided to kill Barbara. Their method was ingenious. Sylvia planted pennyroyal in the peppermint bed and substituted it for peppermint in the tea that was brewed the night of the party.”

Rothwax held one hand up as if he were a stoplight. “Wait a minute Slow down. This is
worse
than a soap. It's a Chinese puzzle. What the hell is ‘pennyroyal'?”

“A plant. It smells almost exactly like peppermint. But it's used traditionaly as an antidote for seasickness.”

“You're losing me here, Alice,” Rothwax said. He picked up an empty espresso glass to demonstrate to the waitress what he wanted.

“Pennyroyal, Detective Rothwax, like many herbs, sometimes has a paradoxical effect on the user. Similar in a way to the drug Valium. Some people who take Valium to calm down end up getting violent—particularly if they've mixed it with alcohol. Pennyroyal helps to balance most people, but for those with certain allergies the effect is just the opposite—it makes them dizzy. The allergies bring on the anomalous effects of pennyroyal, just as alcohol sometimes precipitates the anomalous effects of Valium.”

“And Barbara had these allergies?”

“Yes. I found that out quite accidentally from the vet Barbara used for her cat Swampy. It was he who found a new home for the cat after Tim was murdered.”

“This is starting to get interesting,” he said, stirring the espresso the waitress had placed in front of him.

“You see, everyone at the party was given pennyroyal. But only Barbara had that bad reaction to it. Dizzy and nauseated, she wandered unsteadily out onto the terrace. Along comes drunken, bumbling Pauly. A little push. She hurtles to her death.”

“Then that's why Graff—or Linneus—showed up at the garden tonight. Right? To get rid of the pennyroyal that was still growing?”

“Exactly. I told everyone that someone from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden was coming to inspect the garden tomorrow.” I looked across at his wristwatch. The wee hours of the morning were upon us. “I mean today. Obviously the visitor would have spotted the pennyroyal. Neither Sylvia nor Pauly wanted anyone to know about it, to know that it had been planted among the peppermint. Looking back now, I can see why Sylvia always wanted to take care of the peppermint bed herself. She didn't like to have anyone else butting in.”

“Beautiful, Alice, beautiful,” he exhaled.

“Like it? Are you impressed?”

“I'm knocked out.”

“Thank you. It's nice to get a compliment from a colleague. And you are my colleague—sort of.”

“Now tell me: Why kill Tim Roman?”

“Because he was clearly unraveling after Barbara's death. Neither Sylvia nor Pauly knew whether Barbara had told Tim about Pauly's past. If he did know, he could not be trusted to remain silent, because he was essentially out of control. So Pauly drew on his old expertise to kill him.”

Rothwax leaned back, seemingly lost in thought. He sipped his coffee absentmindedly.

“I don't want to depress you, Alice,” he said, “but while the bomb people will easily be able to make a case against Pauly, I can see no way for Homicide to prove he pushed Barbara off the terrace. No witnesses. No body to autopsy, to see if she indeed swigged pennyroyal. And even if there was a body, and an autopsy showed pennyroyal, it's not a poison. It's just a plant, an herb. Everyone at the party drank it.”

“I don't think anyone will have to prove anything, Detective.”

“Is that right?” he queried, the old sarcasm back.

“Yes. I think Pauly will confess once you tell him that Sylvia is a suspect in both murders. He'll try to save her.”

“What? And she walks?!”

“Maybe. She did brew the tea. She did start the chain of betrayal and death. She knew what was going to happen every step of the way.
But only Pauly murdered
.”

“Sometimes, Cat Lady,” Rothwax said with obvious respect and affection, “you have what they used to call in the Academy ‘the criminal mind.'”

I turned halfway around in my chair and spoke to the waitress, who had reappeared. “One more piece of chocolate cake, please. Hold the whipped cream. And a large glass of water.”

She nodded, looked furtively about, then whispered into my ear: “I saw you in a play at the Seventy-Fourth Street Theater about five years ago. You were just wonderful.”

“What the hell was all that about?” Rothwax asked after the young woman had departed.