"Presumption Of Death" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Shaughnessy Perri)

9

U NDER A SPREADING OAK TREE IN the parking lot across the street, in deep shade, a woman got out and crouched. But she was not alone. Out of the woods the cats came tumbling.

Cats! Not quiet kitties, but yowlers, crowders, squeakers, meowers, pushing at each other, expressing their wild joy in fifty different sharps and flats, which ecstatic yet contentious sounds were accompanied by the scrape of many small cans being set down and pushed around on asphalt.

The woman didn’t notice Paul and Nina, watching openmouthed. All they could see of her was straight gray hair and a baggy black sweatshirt.

The Cat Lady! Nina could hardly believe their luck. Pulling Paul behind a tree, she said, “How do we approach her? Make something up? I could be looking for my lost tabby and-”

“Relax,” Paul said. “Let’s just be honest. It’s more efficient.”

“Then how come I’m going to the party undercover tonight?”

“Because an arsonist will probably be there, who doesn’t want to be discovered. The Cat Lady, well, she’s a cat lady, a special breed. Stop it, Hitchcock! Let’s get that mutt in the Bronco before he rips your arm off.”

“Anything like the sound of a cat makes his heart go pit-a-pat,” Nina said, misquoting the great Robert Browning.

Paul opened the back and patted the floor. Hitchcock gave a last yearning look and then jumped neatly in. Nina saw him press his nose against the back window and heard him sob like a puppy when he realized they were going over there without him.

“You know, I’m starting to get attached to your mutt,” Paul said as they crossed the carless street. “Hmm. How come everything I say to you sounds obscene?”

“He’s not a mutt.”

“He is a mutt. Malamutes don’t bark much, and Hitchcock does. He’s got the hair of a black Lab, the slobber of a golden retriever, and the courage of a Chihuahua.”

“Stop maligning my dog. He loves me and he brings me my paper,” Nina said. “Which is more than I can say about most-”

The cats were taking notice of them. Several fled into the woods. More stayed right at the food cans. The woman stood up. She was tall and thin, like the Pied Piper, but she had forgotten her red-and-yellow scarf. The sweatshirt said IRON MAIDEN WORLD PIECE TOUR 1983 and featured some menacing grimacing from the band’s notorious rotting mascot, Eddie.

“Did you have to do that?” she demanded. “They were trying to eat.”

“Sorry. My name is van Wagoner. I’m investigating the arson fires in this area.” Paul opened his wallet and flashed what looked like a badge, and Nina thought, Uh huh, let’s just be honest. “This is Nina,” Paul went on offhandedly. Nina shrank into the obscurity of Just the Girlfriend.

Saying nothing, the Cat Lady folded her arms. She would have been nondescript, pale, no makeup, a plain, early-wizening face, specs, stringy hair with long straight bangs, but for the fact that she was almost as tall as Paul. She bent, though, as though all her life she had been trying to hide it.

“I’m sorry, your name was smudged in the report I was given about the car you witnessed driving from the second arson scene,” Paul said in an official tone.

She peered at him and said, “Ruth Frost.” Her voice was quite certain of itself.

“Of course.”

“You could have made an appointment, and not disturbed the little ones. Some of them won’t want to come back. You scared them.”

“Can’t they catch mice or crayfish around here?” Nina said.

“Not if they grew up in a nice warm house with cat food in the kitchen.”

“It’s nice of you,” Nina said.

“They’re starving. I have to do something.” They all watched the cats as they polished off the tins of cat food. These cats were thin, unkempt, and suspicious. Nina tried not to generalize as she looked back at Ruth Frost.

“It must get expensive,” Paul said.

“I would be happy to accept a contribution.” This lady was smarter than she looked. Paul raised his eyebrows, said “It’s a good cause,” got his wallet, and gave her a twenty. She tucked it in her pocket.

“May I have five minutes of your time?” he went on.

“We can sit right here at the boathouse.” They sat on a concrete step in the sunshine. Across the street to the east the Siesta Court sign hung disreputably from its pole, and Nina could just see the riprap. Rosie’s Bridge crossed the river just in front of them.

“Your address?” Paul said.

“I live with various friends around here. I sleep in my car sometimes.” Nina glanced at the Cutlass and thought she saw a mattress in the back seat.

“Do you have a phone number where I could reach you?”

“No. I’m usually here in the middle of the afternoon. If you need to talk to me again.” She kept her eye on the cats, who were beginning to melt into the surrounding trees. “Bye, dearies,” she said.

“Where are you from, Ms. Frost?”

“Ruthie. I’ve been here forever. When I was young we lived in Milwaukee.”

“You and your parents?”

“Yes. They’re dead.”

“How do you get along?” Nina asked.

“Just fine. I’m not just a homeless person, you know. I am not a welfare case or some anonymous person to be pitied. I am a writer.”

“How interesting. What kind of-”

“I’m writing a book on political philosophy. How do you vote?”

“What?”

“Republican, Democrat, you know. How do you vote?”

“Um,” Nina said. She looked at Paul.

“How do you vote?” he asked Ruth Frost.

“I don’t. Voting is futile since both political parties are interchangeable. Here. These are my Twelve Points. The Monterey Herald published them in the Letters to the Editor last year.” She handed Paul a folded piece of paper from her pocket. “I am going to revolutionize American society when the Twelve Points are fully explained in my book,” she said. “But it’s hard to get an agent. Ayn Rand had the same problem at first.”

“I will study them,” Paul said.

“Somebody has to cut through it and tell the truth,” she said.

“Now, Ms. Frost-”

“Ruthie. I don’t like the patronymic.”

“I understand that you saw a building burn down two weeks ago here in the Village.”

“Yes. The Newbie Café. That’s what the locals called it. It used to be Village Auto Repair. The owner used to let me feed cats in the parking area behind the shop. But he lost his lease to a couple from San Jose and they opened a restaurant for rich people this spring. All on behalf of almighty Moloch. A useful business was replaced by fatty Atlantic salmon sandwiches. Which are farmed and live out their lives in unhealthy conditions. Only buy wild Alaskan salmon. That is my advice.”

She paused for a breath, then went on, “Sometimes twenty cats came. It was the middle of the night on a Thursday and I was asleep in the lot in my car. The new owners told me I couldn’t park there overnight anymore, as if they had some use for the lot in the middle of the night. What do you think of the notion of private property? Ayn Rand was brilliant, but what a rightist capitalist apologist she was. What do you think of Ayn Rand?”

“So you were awakened from your sleep?”

“My sleep in the car? Or the great sleep we all pass our lives in? What do you think of Buddhism?” She paused and smiled a little, obviously not expecting an answer. Her attitude was one of benevolent condescension, as though they were a few more benighted strays who had come from the forest to receive her help.

“Oh, you want to limit yourself to your small incident. Yes. I was awakened from my sleep. I smelled smoke and the fire exploded out the windows. Glass everywhere. I started my car and drove on Carmel Valley Road toward the fire station. A van passed me and took a hard left onto Esquiline. The windshield was covered with ash and they were running the wipers-”

“They?”

“As I reported, there were two of them. Two heads, but I couldn’t see them well, and the license plate was covered with smoky black stuff. It was an old van, beige, I think.” Paul wrote this down, his forehead a map of concentration. “I’m not much good about cars. I knew they had set the fire-”

“How did you know that?”

Ruthie rolled her eyes. “Because they threw an empty can of kerosene out the window as they turned the corner. I have reported this several times.”

“No kidding,” Paul said. “I didn’t know about that.”

“I suppose your bureaucracy doesn’t communicate with the other bureaucracies. So. They were ecoterrorists, I suppose. I am against this sort of ecoterrorism because living things perish. The issue is quite simple if you look straight at it.”

“Did you stop for the can?”

“No. I followed the bastards. I didn’t stop for anything. I was way behind them at first and I don’t think they saw me. I followed them down the hill and watched them turn left after Rosie’s Bridge. Onto Siesta Court, right across the street there. I was going after them but just then a sheriff’s car and two fire trucks came roaring down the hill and over the bridge and I had to wait. Then I turned. And I heard a door slam shut. And I saw the van or whatever it was start up and go careening around the far corner.”

“Which house was the van in front of?”

“I couldn’t tell. The other investigator asked me that. I know Danny Cervantes lives in one of those houses on that street, and I know he was killed in the latest fire, so it must have been his house. But I can’t say I saw which house at the time. Some people came out of their houses to see what the commotion was about. They stood in the middle of the street and blocked it.”

Paul chewed on the tip of his pen. “Did you know Danny Cervantes, Ruthie?” Nina said.

“He used to hang out at Kasey’s in the Village in the morning with the other laborers, looking for work. He never hassled me like some of the others.”

“Did you ever talk to him?”

“No. I can’t believe how many innocent animals have been killed in these fires. Massacres. They didn’t have a chance. Cats, squirrels, moles, snakes, bobcats, owls, wild turkeys-how many insects? The heavens shrieked.” She started gathering up the empty cans and putting them in a trash bag.

“Well. Thanks for talking with us,” Paul said.

“I hope you catch the other one. I hope he rots in hell. Hell being, of course, an absurd concept.”

“So long.” Nina and Paul walked back across the street. Nina’s jaunty mood had evaporated.

They got back into the car. Hitchcock stuck his head between the seats.

Once they were back on Carmel Valley Road, she said, “I keep thinking that if she’d been born rich, she’d be considered an eccentric grande dame. She’d be a philanthropist and receive humanitarian awards at fancy receptions. But-”

“She gave up on humanity and cast her fate to the cats,” Paul said. “I always liked oddballs.”

“I think she’ll make a credible witness anyway.”

“Then it’s someone on that block. But consider this. She’s a big woman. She makes her own rules. She could have set the fires.”

“But she loves all the animals!”

“Who knows how her mind actually works?” Paul reached into his pocket with one hand and gave Nina the folded paper. “Here’s a clue. Let’s hear the Twelve Points she gave me.”

Expelling a sigh, Nina said, “Okay. It’s handwritten. Up at the top there’s no information. It just says POINTS in caps.

“‘ONE. Obscenely wealthy people should have their wealth taken.’

“‘TWO. We’re all so hypnotized you can’t tell what the reality out there is, if any.’

“‘THREE. Men like to be passive in bed.’ ” Paul gave an incredulous half-laugh.

“Don’t get all defensive, now,” Nina said.

“She’s off her rocker.”

“‘FOUR. Women resent being violated and make sure men get punished for it.’ ”

“That does explain a lot about modern society,” Paul said.

“Listen. ‘FIVE. Cold sensationalists is what we are. At least the feudal system allowed people comforting illusions to compensate for their misery, like religion and romantic ideals.’

“‘SIX. We are miserable because we are creatures in conflict between our bodily instincts and our half-evolved minds. The truth is, we don’t think very well.’

“‘SEVEN. Abortion is terrible. It only exists because our society does not support motherhood.’ ”

“I knew it would come down to abortion,” Paul said.

“She’s right,” Nina said.

“You’re not serious.”

“Hey, abortion is terrible. That doesn’t mean we don’t need it. Let me continue. ‘EIGHT. There is a class system in America. Two classes: the exploited and the exploitees.’ ”

“Hmm. Sometimes it certainly feels that way.”

“‘NINE. They pay us as little as they can and make sure to take any extra by turning us into insatiable consumers of unnecessary things.’

“This is a long one, Paul. She goes on, ‘The income-tax deduction for homeowners benefits banks and lenders, not homeowners. The purpose is to encourage enormous loans, not ownership. Who owns their property outright? We are carefully distracted from noticing that we are actually paupers.’”

“I’m starting to like this lady philosopher. Keep going.”

“‘TEN. The stock market panics when the unemployment rate goes down. The system relies on workers’ misery.’

“‘ELEVEN. Divorce is encouraged because it leads to small households, which benefits consumerism. The ideal is for each person to buy a house, furnish it, duplicate everything. Extended families are discouraged because they share resources.’

“‘TWELVE. New products are mostly old products we already have. Unnecessary refinements are added so we’ll throw away the old and bring in the new.’ There’s one more. It says, in caps again, ‘CONCLUSION:’-” Nina stopped.

“Well, what’s the conclusion? I’m dying to hear it,” Paul said, eyes on the road as he took a sharp curve.

“That’s it. She stops right there. Actually, she wrote something, but it’s crossed out.”

“Can you make it out?”

“No, she put x’s through it and then squiggles.”

“I’m going to have to ask her,” Paul said. “I can’t stand the suspense.”

“Are you making fun of her?”

“She could use a good editor.”

“She’s half pathetic and half brilliant,” Nina said. “A seeker. I notice she doesn’t mention love anywhere.”

“She’s a political philosopher. Like Tina Turner. ‘What’s love got to do with it-’ ”

Paul changed lanes. He looked dashing in his sunglasses. Nina leaned over and kissed his cheek. She said in his ear, “What did you think of her theory that men like to be passive in bed?”

“I would debate that with her anytime, anyplace,” Paul said. “Anyway. She’s a crackpot.”

“Can I keep the Twelve Points? Someday they might be worth something, like Ayn Rand’s manuscripts.”

“Be my guest.” They came to the turning lane for the Mid-Valley Safeway. Paul went on, “An overwhelming urge has come over me. To insatiably consume some unnecessary things.”

“What things?”

“Paper towels. Rug cleaner. Some blueberries for my breakfast and some steak for my dinner, since you will be partying and I have to eat alone.”

“Go for it,” Nina said. “I’ll stay in the car with Hitchcock.” While she waited, she read over the Twelve Points again. “What do you think, Hitchcock?”

But Hitchcock, uninterested in these all-too-human epiphanies, was asleep.