Cat on a Cold Tin Roof (6 page)

“We should talk, Mr. Paxton,” he said.

“You've been watching me and following me since I got out of jail, and you've decided based on that that I'm a sterling conversationalist?” I said.

He grinned. “You're as good as they say you are, Mr. Paxton.”

“Thank them for me.”

“Maybe we can do some business and you can thank them yourself, Mr. Paxton.”

“Call me Eli. And who do I have the honor of speaking to?”

“Val Sorrentino,” he said, extending his hand. “From Chicago.”

“Not Cicero?” I said, taking his hand.

“Well, I go home at night.”

“Why have you sought me out, Val Sorrentino?” I asked.

“Because you're working for Velma Palanto,” he said.

“If she's who I think she is, she fired me and had me arrested yesterday morning.”

“Hah! I
knew
it!” Suddenly he grinned at me. “That's why we can do some business together—because you're
not
working for her.”

“I'm not working for Warren Buffett either,” I said. “How much is
that
worth?”

He threw back his head and laughed. “I
like
you, Eli!” he said. “We're gonna get along fine together.”

“Excuse me for asking,” I said, “but what do you think we're going to be doing while we're getting along fine together?”

He looked around to make sure no one was listening.

“I belong to a certain family that I suspect you're not unfamiliar with, since you spent some time on the Chicago Police Force a while back.”

“It's possible,” I replied.

“Anyway, this family employed a financial wizard named James Palanto. Big Jim, we called him.”

“I believe I've heard the name in the last couple of days,” I said.

“A few members of my family . . . ,” he began carefully.

“Distant cousins, no doubt,” I said.

He smiled. “Absolutely. No one I ever met personally, of course.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

“Anyway, these distant cousins have been unfairly charged with committing a series of . . . well, boyish pranks.”

Like murder, drug dealing, and extortion
, I thought, but I managed not to say anything.

“And while Big Jim Palanto set off on his own with the family's blessing quite a few years ago, word has reached them that these totally corrupt accusers . . .”

The Chicago cops
, I thought.

“. . . planned to subpoena him and get him to testify against them, who of course Palanto loved like brothers.”

I frowned. “If you came here to make sure he didn't testify, why are you wasting time talking to me? Why aren't you back in Chicago?”

“You cut me to the quick, Mr. Paxton,” he said.

“Eli,” I corrected him.

“I didn't off him,” he continued, forgetting to be circumspect. “I was here to sound him out, and he convinced me he wasn't going to implicate nobody for nothing.”

“So you didn't put him out of the misery of pretending to be law-abiding Malcolm Pepperidge?”

“Perish the thought,” replied Sorrentino. “I spoke to him a few days ago, and everything was copacetic.”

“Then why are you still in town?” I asked, puzzled.

He shot me his biggest grin of all. “Because I couldn't see no reason why you and I shouldn't make a quick ten million dollars.”

5.

For just a minute I thought I was going to choke on my coffee.

“Calm down, Mr. Paxton,” said Sorrentino with an amused smile. “You look like you're about to have a stroke.”

I got the coffee down and wiped my mouth off with my sleeve.

“You shouldn't tell jokes like that when there's food or drink on the table,” I said.

His smile vanished. “I'm not joking.”

“Ten million?” I said, and he nodded his head. “Okay, you're not joking—you're delusional.”

“You wanna hear me out, or you wanna make cute remarks?”

I stared at him. He didn't
look
like a raving lunatic. But talking eight digits to a guy who couldn't afford a new transmission for his twelve-year-old car wasn't the mark of a man who was on the level and playing with all his marbles.

“Well?” he said.

“I suppose it's just good manners to hear you out,” I replied. “Ten million, you say?”

He shrugged. “It's a ballpark figure. Could be as low as eight million, could be as high as twelve or thirteen.”

“Whose is it?”

“Right at the moment, probably nobody's,” answered Sorrentino.

“Maybe you'd better begin at the beginning,” I suggested, as the waitress arrived with my steak and eggs.

“Just coffee for me, Toots,” said Sorrentino. I was almost surprised that the glare she gave him didn't knock him over. “What do you know about Big Jim?”

“I never heard of him until two days ago,” I said. “Under
either
of his names.”

“He was a straight shooter,” said Sorrentino, “and a really good guy. A hell of a lot nicer than that bitch he married, that Velma, though she was quite a looker twenty years ago. Anyway, Big Jim was as honest as the day is long.”

“I thought he worked for the mob.”

“So let me qualify that. He was loyal to his employers, never stole or misplaced a nickel, and would have gone into stir before he ratted them out, though of course it never came to that.”

“Okay, he was one of Nature's noblemen,” I said.

“Absolutely,” said Sorrentino with something akin to passion. “You couldn't ask for a straighter shooter.”

“He shot people?”

“Figure of speech,” he added. “Anyway, the man was a financial genius. And then one day he just walked away from it. Turned over all the books and all the money to my bosses, said he'd had enough, that he didn't feel like a criminal but rather an accountant and financial advisor. He didn't think the cops or the feds would see it that way, and he wanted to get out while the getting was good.”

“And they let him go?”

“He'd tripled their money, and this was how they showed their gratitude.”

“That's better than some New York families I've heard about.”

“So he sold his place up in Lake Forest, changed his name legally, and he and Velma just vanished. My bosses spent a year tracking him down, just in case they ever needed him again, but they never made contact with him. In fact, he couldn't believe his eyes when I showed up.”

“So you showed up, he convinced you he wasn't turning state's evidence . . .”

“. . . and that was that,” concluded Sorrentino.

“But it
wasn't
,” I pointed out. “You're still here.”

“One moment,” he said as the waitress returned with a fresh pot of coffee and a cup. “You got a cheese Danish back there in the kitchen, honey?”

“This is Bob Evans,” she said harshly. “Read the menu.” She began walking away, then stopped and turned. “And my name is Matilda.”

“Figures,” said Sorrentino as she vanished into the kitchen. He took a sip of his coffee. “Damned good stuff,” he said approvingly. “What the hell have they got to go with it?”

I shoved the menu across to him. He read it quickly, then signaled a man who was cleaning a nearby table. “Hey, kid, bring me a sweet roll. Any kind you got, as long as it's got frosting on it.”

The man, who was in his midthirties, nodded and went off without a word.

“You were saying?” I began.

“About cheese Danish?” he replied. “Nothing goes better with a cup of coffee before noon.”

“About Big Jim Palanto.”

“Poor bastard.”

“And why you're still here?”

He nodded, then placed a forefinger to his lips as Matilda arrived with his sweet roll, glared at him, and walked off.

“Big Jim had a talent, and so did that bitch he married,” said Sorrentino. “His was making money, hers was spending it.”

“Sounds like my former marriage,” I said. “Except for the making money part.”

“Well, about eight or ten years ago he decided he needed a serious source of income, so he went back into the same business. Not for my employers, of course. They'd long since replaced him.”

I frowned. “I don't know quite where this is leading,” I said, “but Cincinnati doesn't
have
a mob.”

“Look south.”

“South is Kentucky,” I replied. “South that makes sense is Mexico.”

“
Farther
south.”

I just stared at him.

“Bolivia,” he said at last.

“Okay, Bolivia,” I said. “So what?”

“They saw what Colombia and Mexico were making from drugs, and they went into the business themselves. Now, Big Jim had nothing to do with the marketing, or any of the rough stuff that went along with it, but he made his expertise available to the Bolivians.”

“He invested their drug money,” I said.

“Right.”

“If he was as good as you say, they should be happy as clams,” I said. Not that I've ever seen a happy clam, or even a live one.

“Well, it appears that Big Jim decided he was getting up in years, and that he wanted to feather his nest a little faster than certain parties were happy about.”

I just stared at him for a moment. “He
stole
from South American drug lords?”

“I'm sure he didn't look at it that way,” answered Sorrentino. “As near as we can tell, he made them about fifty million dollars.” He paused. “Problem is, he only gave them maybe forty million of it.”

“So you think
they
killed him?”

“He was the salt of the earth, and he parted clean and fair with my employers,” said Sorrentino. “Who else would have done it?”

“Oh, come on,” I said. “How about anybody who knew he was loaded and thought they could pull off a robbery?”

“Nothing was missing,” answered Sorrentino. Then he gave me a huge grin. “Well,
almost
nothing.”

I stared at him, considered what I'd heard, then thought back to the little scene with the grieving widow in the Pepperidge house that resulted in my being jailed, and suddenly it became clear as crystal.

“Shit!” I said so loud that diners from two and three tables away turned to stare—and frown—at me.

He grinned again. “You got it.”

“The collar!” I exclaimed.

He nodded. “The collar.”

“What makes a collar worth ten million dollars?”

“Maybe only eight million,” he corrected me.

“Yeah, I know,” I replied. “And maybe twelve million. What makes it worth more than a buck and a half?”

“When I went to visit him—Velma was off shopping, which is her main occupation these days—he assured me he wasn't going to rat on his friends. We got to talking, he mentioned that he'd been doing some work for the Bolivians, and had given himself a raise in pay, and was trying to extricate himself from the unhappy situation. I told him that from what I'd heard, these South Americans had absolutely no respect for law and order, and that they might be after him even as we spoke. He told me that at least they'd never get their hands on the money, that he didn't have a safe, and that if Velma saw more than fifteen or twenty large in the checking account she immediately went out and spent it.”

“I hope you're not going to tell me he had CDs glued to the inside of the collar,” I said.

He chuckled. “No, I'm not going to tell you that.” He reached into a coat pocket. “Here,” he said, withdrawing a leather cat collar studded with what looked like ten or twelve gleaming diamonds. “What do you think of this?”

“Is
that
the collar?”

“Not quite,” he replied with a smile. He pressed it against a water glass and began rubbing it against the surface. Nothing happened.

“Rhinestones,” he explained. “Diamonds would have cut through it, or at least left some deep marks. I paid twenty bucks for it this morning. The collar we're talking about looks pretty much like this one. The only difference is that the stones were twenty-carat diamonds, and they'd have cut the glass.”

“He admitted it?”

Sorrentino grinned. “He said the Bolivians would never think to look at a housecat's collar, and then he laughed his head off.”

“Well,
someone
thought of it,” I said. “Mrs. Pepperidge had me arrested and jailed when I returned the cat without the collar.”

He uttered an amused laugh. “Hah! Big Jim didn't think she knew. That Velma can sniff out money from three states away, let alone half a room.”

“But
she
doesn't have the collar,” I pointed out. “That's what I was being paid to find, though I didn't know it at the time.” I paused for a moment, thinking it through. “So the Bolivians must have figured it out, grabbed the collar, and either tossed the cat off the balcony into the snow, or closed the sliding door and locked him outside, after which he jumped.”

Sorrentino shook his head. “Uh-uh.”

“Why not?”

“They're still in town, three of them—and they took a shot at me last night. Someone else has the collar.”

“Who?”

He shrugged. “Could be someone else knew about it. Could be someone saw it on the cat when it was locked outside and figured out what it was worth. Could be some kid fell in love with the cat, brought it inside, his mama said no, and he kept the collar as a keepsake. You're a detective; that's why I'm telling you this, and that's why we're gonna be partners.”

I stared at him for a long minute, then finally shook my head, “I don't think so,” I said.

“Why the hell not?”

“I don't want a bunch of Bolivian killers after me if we find it—and if we do find it, they'll know it the instant I catch up on my bills and you go back to Chicago.”