Cat Breaking Free (27 page)

Kit's notion that there was something in his room that Chichi wanted might be all wild imagination. Except that Chichi
had
searched Abuela's house.
Was
the object of her search the gun she hadn't found? Whatever, there was surely something definitely “off” about Chichi's behavior—fawning all over Clyde, her dislike and aggression toward Joe, her surveillance and partner status in Luis's crime plans. Her appearance running from the jewelry store with the black bag that later showed up in Luis's pocket, then her search of Abuela's house.

But then she had helped Clyde to free them all from the cage, and that puzzled Dulcie; except maybe Clyde had really forced her to do that. Edging deeper into the shadows beneath the little table, she curled down, waiting for Slayter, intent on getting into his room—and hoping Joe had made his sodden escape.

H
alf an hour after Dulcie settled among the shadows
to watch Roman Slayter's door, Joe found her there asleep on the hall carpet beneath the little table. Having waited for her in the garden as he cleaned himself up, after that fool woman threw water on him, he had at last gone looking for her. If she'd gotten into Slayter's room, she'd better be well hidden. From the garden wall, he'd seen Slayter up at a third-floor window, sitting as if at a table. Then when he'd tracked Dulcie through the lobby and up the stairs, there she was asleep in the hall. He nudged her.

She woke at once. “Where have you been? He's in there.”

“I know, I saw him from the garden, sitting by the window with the TV on. What's to watch, in the daytime? The soaps? He made two phone calls, and answered three; I could just hear the phone ringing, and saw him pick up. Could you hear anything? But you were asleep.”

“I…”

“I wish you'd stayed awake. I'd give a case of caviar to know what those calls were. So many pieces that don't add up.”

“They never add up until the last shoe drops, the last mouse runs out of the hole.”

Joe settled down beside her. They were softly whispering, patiently watching Slayter's door, when a door just beyond them flew open and a second maid came out, wheeling her squeaky cart. She passed by three closed doors with
DO NOT DISTURB
signs on them, and knocked at 307.

“Housekeeping.”

“Come in,” Slayter called. She used her passkey, then flipped down the little doorstop to hold the door open. The cats, scrunching down beside the cleaning cart, were ready to make a dash inside when they heard the elevator humming, heard it stop at the third floor. Heard its door slide open and soft footsteps coming their way along the carpet, and they smelled the sweet, flowery scent of Chichi Barbi's perfume. Hunching smaller, they stared at each other. Joe ducked his head down to hide his white nose and chest and paws.

Chichi hesitated beside the maid's cart; then everything happened at once: They heard Slayter inside talking with the maid, heard the closet door slide open, heard him coming. Swift as a cat herself, Chichi drew back into the recess of the door to the ice machine. She watched, unseen, as Slayter left his room and went on down the hall, carrying a newspaper. The minute he stepped into the elevator and the door closed, Chichi came out and stood listening.

The maid was in Slayter's bathroom, running the
water as she cleaned. Chichi slipped quickly in. Joe and Dulcie followed, strolling in behind her between the cart and the door. They stood watching as Chichi tossed the room. She checked beneath the mattress, which was on a solid platform, shook out the tangled bedding to glance underneath, then dropped it in a heap. Stepping to the open closet she did a thorough job on his suitcase that stood inside on a stand, and on the hanging clothes. Fast and efficient, she was heading across to the windows when the maid came out of the bathroom.

“Hi!” Chichi said brightly, not missing a beat. “Roman sent me back up to find his jacket, he's waiting in the lobby. The blue one, but it isn't here. Could it be in the bathroom?”

“There's no jacket in there,” the Latino maid said suspiciously, moving toward the phone. Quickly she picked it up, but before she could call security, Chichi was gone—and so were Joe and Dulcie. Chichi out the door, the cats behind the open draperies.

It was there they found the gun, in a hiding place so efficient that no maid would be apt to look. Maybe no one would discover it unless they were doing electrical repairs—or had their nose to the carpet.

Except a cop. Any cop would spot the loose carpet in the corner behind the draperies—but the cats were aware of more than that. They crouched in the corner excitedly sniffing the faint, distinctive scent, trying to close their ears against the violent roar of the maid's vacuum cleaner. They stared down at the loose carpet beneath their paws; Dulcie patted at it, her green eyes wide. Joe nosed at the crack where the carpet met the wall, where the rug did not lie snugly—where it had
been lifted, then secured back in place. He clawed it back to get his teeth in, and pulled with a ripping sound.

“Double-sided tape,” Dulcie whispered, and they pulled back the carpet to look at the floor beneath.

The plywood floor had been cut into a six-inch square, as if removed and then replaced. The wall at the corner was lumpy, too, as if it had also been cut, then repaired and replastered. “Old building,” Dulcie said. “Older than the wing that goes along the end of the garden. Maybe when it was built, they had to make some changes here in the wiring?”

Together they clawed the plywood up. It fitted so snugly it was hard to remove without ripping out a claw. Beneath it, a black hole gaped, filled with wiring and with a plastic pipe running through. Concealed back beneath the old part of the floor, half hidden by wiring, lay a dark handgun, a plain blue semi-automatic with a dark grip. They could see that the clip was in. As their eyes adjusted, they could see the round silver S-and-W logo of Smith and Wesson on the grip. The cats looked at each other and smiled. Slayter had discovered an excellent hiding place—except for the nosiness of cats.

They had no way of knowing if the gun was loaded without removing the clip, and neither was about to try that. “I told you there was a gun,” Dulcie said. “That Chichi was searching for a gun. What do we do now?”

Before Joe could answer, the loud, brassy blast of a jazz trumpet drowned even the roar of the vacuum, bursting up from the courtyard.

“It's starting,” Dulcie said. “The first bands must be set up.”

“The streets will be wall-to-wall traffic, the sidewalks a forest of feet.”

“But it's only just past noon. Luis wouldn't hit those shops this time of day?” She stared down into the hole, at the gun. “What'll we do with it? Leave it here or…?”

“We're not handling that thing. You want to haul that over the roofs? Besides, we can't move evidence. You know that.”

“Was evidence what Chichi was looking for?”

“Whatever, the cops need to find it right here.” Slipping the plywood back into place, he pressed the carpet flat over it. Sudden silence beyond the drapery, then little rustles of fabric told them the maid was making the bed. They listened as she plumped the pillows and moved around as if straightening the folders on desk and table. At last they heard the welcome squeak of wheels as she moved the cart, the click as she snapped the doorstop up, then the door slammed closed. They heard her turn the handle, testing the lock, then blessed silence. They'd have the room to themselves until Slayter returned.

Slipping out from behind the drapery, Joe leaped to the nightstand, pressed the phone for an outside line, and punched in Harper's private number. Quickly he gave Harper the location and told him where the gun was hidden. He wished he understood Chichi's role in this. If she was working with Luis, and apparently with Slayter, then why was she snooping? The only answer that came to mind was far too simple, and didn't seem to fit Chichi. Sure didn't fit her past behavior, ripping Clyde off. Across the room, Dulcie reared up against the door, working at the knob.

She had turned it and was swinging on it, ready to kick it open, when the door flew violently open. Joe
thought she was crushed as Slayter hurried in; but she twisted and leaped out behind him, and was gone. Joe had time only to drop into the thin space between the bed platform and the wall, a crack that had been left to allow the bedside lamps to be plugged in, a space so narrow he had to wriggle to get in at all, and then could hardly breathe. He felt trapped there, and he sure was trapped in the room with Slayter. He hoped Dulcie wouldn't linger out in the hall or try to get him out. At least he wasn't crouched in the corner on top of the gun, in case Slayter went for it.

And Slayter did just that. Joe heard him pull the drapery back, heard the ripping sound as he pulled the carpet up, a screech as he lifted the plywood. To the accompaniment of the welcome noise, Joe slid on through to the far side of the bed nearest the door, and reared up to peer up over the bed.

He watched Slayter remove the clip and check it, replace it, and jack one into the chamber. Watched him slide the gun into a body holster beneath his jacket. As he turned, Joe dropped down again, backing deeper into the space between bed and wall.

This time when Slayter left the room the man moved so swiftly, barely cracking the door open, that Joe almost didn't make it. Scorching out behind Slayter's ankles without brushing against his leg, Joe followed on his heels. He meant to streak across the hall and in through the open door of the room that was marked
ICE MACHINE
—but Slayter headed that way, moving directly into the soft-drink room and through it, and through a door marked
MAINTENANCE
. He heard Slayter's hard shoes climbing the concrete stairs that would be used by maintenance to access all floors,
stairs that probably led to the roof, to the vents and heating equipment. Had Dulcie gone that way? He heard the heavy door at the top slam, a door that sounded too heavy for Dulcie to have opened.

Joe didn't like going up on the roof with Slayter, even if he could get the door open. But if Dulcie was there…

And, he had told Harper where the gun was hidden, but now it wasn't there. Slayter was wearing it, and if an officer approached him…

Had he seen a house phone on top the little table in the hall? But you couldn't call out on a house phone. Slipping back into the hall, he could see the cleaning cart down at the far end. Racing down, he paused by the open door, listening to water running and the TV tuned into a Spanish station. Before he could think better of it, he was inside the room and on the desk, punching in Harper's number. It crackled when Harper answered.

“He retrieved the gun. Wearing it in a shoulder holster, left side. He's gone up on the roof.” He waited to be sure Harper wouldn't ask him to repeat, then hung up and was gone, out into the hall again, his nose filled with the stink of disinfectant—and he headed fast for the roof.

C
ars lined the curbs and filled the streets, creeping
slower than a cat would walk. Dulcie sat on the roof of the Gardenview Inn waiting for Joe and beginning to worry. She grew more certain each minute that she should go back, that Slayter had caught him. Below her in the street, drivers held up the single lines of traffic to let people out onto crowded sidewalks. The cacophony of a dozen jazz bands made her ears ache. Any sensible cat would be home, hiding under the bed among the dust mice.

Dulcie loved the beat of the old classic jazz—she'd just like it not all mixed together. She was so awash in Dixieland that she felt giddy. Where was Joe? At last, losing patience, she spun around and raced back across the hotel's tile roof to the little raised portion of the building that housed the stairwell—but before she could try to fight the door open, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs.

Fleeing away among the shadows of the chimneys,
she watched the door swing in, and Roman Slayter emerge. He left the door cracked, did not let the latch click. Moving to the edge of the roof, he stood considering the street below.

Had Slayter locked Joe in his room? But Joe could get out, he could turn the knob just as she had—if he hadn't hurt Joe. In a sudden panic, she crouched to leap for the door; she drew back when it began to swing open again, this time without sound.

Joe Grey emerged silently behind Slayter, glancing across the roof to Dulcie.

Slayter had a cell phone in his hand, and was looking away to the center of the village, across several blocks of rooftops. The cats could see, beyond an open lot where an ancient cottage had been torn down, that he had a clear view of the courthouse and PD. He could see the front of the station, and the back area beside the jail where the patrol units parked. They watched him punch in a preprogrammed call. He spoke softly.

“Looks like the expected number of patrols are cruising. Hardly moving, in the crush. Half a dozen uniforms on foot, mixing with the crowd. Four CHP units up along the highway. I think we're…Wait…”

Slayter was quiet as two men emerged from the back door of the station and quickly crossed the police parking lot. When they hit the side street they moved off in different directions. Slayter described them; dressed as civilians, they wore faded shirts, worn jeans, the kind of clothes favored by many locals, comfortable and innocuous.

“Not sure,” Slayter said, in answer to a question. As
the men moved into the center of the village where the music was loudest, Slayter relayed their positions. “You have someone on them?” Dulcie glanced across at Joe. Had Roman Slayter figured out Harper's carefully planned sting? If there
was
another snitch working, she'd hate to think it was someone in the department.

Or was Slayter simply covering all bases? Whatever the case, from this vantage he could see every officer who left the station, uniformed or wearing street clothes. He could track every cop Harper assigned, see where they went, which mark they observed, and pass it on to Luis. She looked frantically across at Joe; the tomcat looked furious, his eyes blazing with a challenge so predatory that Dulcie felt her fur stand up. They had to stop Slayter before he ruined the carefully laid sting, before cops were attacked, civilians caught in possible gunfire.

Crouching, every muscle at ready, she took her cue from Joe, praying they didn't kill themselves. A blaze of fire in Joe's yellow eyes, and a twitch of his ear, and she raced across the roof beside him…

“…brown leather jacket,” Slayter was saying, “tan Chinos, long blond hair and….”

Together they leaped, hitting Slayter's back with all the power they had and all claws digging.

The force of their assault sent him to his knees, scrambling at the edge of the roof, gurgling a scream. The phone went flying. Like a streak Joe snatched it and was gone again, the phone sticking out both sides of his mouth like a dog bone; he vanished behind a chimney.

Before Slayter could get to his knees, shaking his head and twisting unsteadily around to see what had hit him, Dulcie landed on his back and struck him in the face. He screamed, twisting away, pulling loose the frail metal gutter as he tried to steady himself. He lost his grip and went over, snatching at air. Dulcie raked him again and leaped free; with a twisting grab she snagged the edge of the roof with her claws. She was swinging helplessly, trying to pull herself up, when Joe grabbed the side of her neck in his teeth and jerked her back to the roof. They heard Slayter hit the balcony below with a dull thud. They ran, stopping only for Joe to snatch up the phone again.

Scorching away across the rooftop and among some heating equipment, they paused at last, panting; and Joe punched in Harper's number.

Dulcie watched the roof behind them, but there was no sign of Slayter trying to climb up. She was a bundle of nerves at how close she'd come to falling maybe the whole three stories; she'd counted on Slayter cushioning her fall, and she guessed Joe had thought that, too. Beside her, he had Harper on the line.

He told the chief what they'd seen. “Slayter made three of your men.” Joe described the three. “Gave directions to where the first two were headed. And then, I don't know exactly what happened, but he fell. It was pretty confused, I guess he might be hurt, though he only fell to the second-floor balcony.”

“Where the hell are you?” Harper's voice was ragged. “If you saw him fall, you
know
what happened.”

Harper didn't ask who this was; he knew the snitch's voice. “
How
did he fall?”

“His cell phone's lying on the roof where he fell.”
Joe hit end call and flipped the phone closed. Quickly carrying it back where he'd snatched it, he laid it in the gutter. Cautiously peering over, he smiled.

He returned to Dulcie, still smiling. “He's down there curled up and groaning, holding himself like he hurts bad.” He glanced back with longing at the abandoned phone. He'd always wanted his own cell phone; but sensibly he turned away. “Let's get out of here.” They headed away fast, before the cops arrived. Maybe the department could trace the numbers Slayter had called; most likely it was Luis's cell number.

“What will happen,” Dulcie said, “when the cops see those scratches on his back and face? What will they think? What will Harper and the detectives think?”

“What can they think? Come on, Dulcie, it's getting late.” The sun, in its low southerly journey, reflected a last path of flame over the western sea. It would be gone in a minute, and the winter sky would darken fast. And as evening fell, so would Luis's marks fall.

And so will Luis's men, Joe thought, smiling. If our luck holds. But behind him, Dulcie hadn't moved. He turned to look at her. “Come on!”

She stood staring down at the street, her tail lashing. “Chichi! It's Chichi. She's headed for the Gardenview, fast. She…” The tabby's eyes widened. “She knows something happened to Slayter!” She looked up at Joe, wide-eyed. “Was it Chichi he was talking to? Or was she with Luis when Slayter cut out, did Luis send
her
to find out what happened?”

Paws in the gutter, Joe watched Chichi, torn between following her and hurrying on toward the blasting music and crowded streets where the action would be coming down.

“Go on,” Dulcie said. “You know those officers better than I do, you can spot them easier. I'll follow Chichi.”

“Too dangerous. You…”

“I'm not a kitten, I'll stay out of the way. Go on.” And before he could argue she spun away, heading back for the Gardenview—but when she passed the place where Slayter fell, and looked over, he was gone.

She watched Chichi hurrying in through the front door, and heard the distant whirring of the elevator. Before Chichi could reach the third floor, Dulcie slipped into the rooftop stairwell and flew down—she hadn't reached the bottom when she heard from below a soft banging as someone knocked on a door. Again, harder, a fist pounding. Dulcie paused in the small utility room. Insistent banging, just outside. And Dallas Garza's voice.

“Police. Open up. We need to talk with you, Slayter.”

With a shaking paw she pulled the door open a crack. Three uniformed cops stood in the hall with Garza, to either side of Slayter's door. With them was a pale, lean man in a suit, maybe the hotel manager. There was no sign of Chichi. She must have fled the minute she saw the law enter the building. Maybe she doubled back to tell Luis?

Would Luis call off the operation? Oh, that would be too bad, after all Harper's planning, after bringing men in from other districts. If Luis and his men left town and no arrests were made…

Dallas pounded again and shouted. When there was only silence, the hotel man handed him a passkey. Standing against the wall, Dallas unlocked the door and kicked it open.

Crouched between the ice dispenser and a soft drink
machine, Dulcie watched the detective and one uniform enter, leaving the other two standing guard. From down the hall, she heard the elevator descend. Someone else would be coming….

The elevator did not return. But suddenly Chichi came hurrying around the corner from the stairs—maybe she rang for it, then ran up, too impatient to wait. She paused at the open door, watching Dallas and the uniforms.

Frightened that she might be armed, Dulcie was about to shout a warning and then run, when she heard Captain Harper's voice coming up the stairs behind Chichi. Dulcie caught her breath, shocked, as the two came along the hall together, talking softly like a couple of old friends.

They entered Slayter's room, pushing the door nearly closed. Now, with the beat of jazz filling the street outside, she could barely hear them. Dallas was saying “…found him lying on the bed, curled up on his side like that, moaning like a stuck pig. He may have broken ribs. The shoulder looks dislocated.”

Dulcie crept nearer, peering through the crack into Slayter's room. “Those scratches on his face and back,” Dallas said. “Exactly like Hernando.” The detective looked at Chichi. But when he said, “You have any idea what could have made them?” Dulcie lost her nerve and fled again, back up the stairs to the roof.