* * *
It turns out you can use an In box for a litter box. Fill it with machine-shredded legal briefs, add one kitten, and there you have it. A Martha Stewart Moment. I sat contented in the front seat of the bananamobile as my little tan furball scratched through the spaghetti of citations. It was an improvement over her using the car for a litter box, or Grun lawyers using their briefs for anything else.
Afterwards, the kitten batted a morsel of tuna fish around the front seat, ignoring my attempts to get her to eat it or drink the milk I’d brought her. I petted her as she played, and she looked up at me with that delicate triangle of a face. China blue eyes, spongy pink nose. She was cute even though she wasn’t a golden retriever, and she deserved a name.
“How about Sylvester the Cat?” I asked her.
She blinked. Wrong password.
“Gilligan? Little Buddy?”
She looked bored, then climbed onto my lap, curling into a clump.
“Samantha? Endora? Tabitha?” I didn’t even know if the kitten was a boy or girl. I picked her up and was finding out when I heard a sharp rap on the car window, next to my ear.
I turned, startled, and found myself eye-level with a nightstick. A gun in a black holster. Round chrome handcuffs hanging from a thick belt. I felt a bolt of fear and looked up, into the shiny badge of a Philadelphia policeman.
24
Out of the car, Miss,” the cop said.
My heart stopped. I had no choice. I flashed on the women’s prison. Then on my mother, lost. I held on to the cat and opened the car door.
“That’s her! That’s the one!” said an old woman behind him. She was strange-looking, with penciled-in eyebrows and lipstick crimson as Gloria Swanson’s. She had an oddly receding hairline, with platinum-white hair covered by a white hairnet. She pointed at me with a bony finger that ended in a scarlet-lacquered nail. “She’s the one, with the red hair!”
The cop waved her off with a large hand and focused on me with a grave expression. “I have a few questions for you, Miss.”
“Yes, Officer.” My heart began to pound. I scanned his ruddy face, but it wasn’t one I’d sued. Stay calm, I told myself. Think Linda Frost.
“This your car?”
“Yes.”
“I told you, she’s the one!” said the old lady, louder.
“You have a registration card for it?”
“It’s in my office upstairs.”
“Your driver’s license?”
“It’s upstairs, too. I can get it if you want.” If he let me go, I’d run for my life.
“That won’t be necessary. What’s your name?”
“Linda Frost.” I tucked the kitten under my arm, dug into my blazer pocket for my ID, and handed it to him as casually as possible. “I work in this building, for Grun & Chase. I’m a lawyer.”
The old lady clawed at the cop’s uniform. “She did it, Officer! Arrest her before she gets away!”
My gut tensed as the cop studied my Grun ID. “Your name’s Linda?”
“Yes.”
“Then who’s Jamie?”
“Jamie?”
“The license plate says Jamie 16, and you say it’s your car. If your name is Linda, then who’s Jamie?”
Oh-oh. “Uh, the cat?”
“You named the car after the cat?” he asked slowly.
“Sure. Yes. Why not?” Indeed.
“Arrest her! Arrest her!” squawked the old woman, shrill as a parrot.
The cop winced at the sound. “But it’s a young cat, a kitten. How’d you get the license plate so fast?”
“All my cats are named Jamie. Jamie 16 died, so I got this little kitten, Jamie 17. I transferred the license plate to my new car.”
He blinked in disbelief. “You have seventeen cats?”
“No, not at the same time. In a row. When one Jamie dies, I get another Jamie.”
“You’ve had seventeen cats in your lifetime? How old are you?” The cop looked honestly confused, and I didn’t blame him. God, I was a bad liar. Most lawyers are much better liars than me.
“No, Officer. See, I started with Jamie 15, because fifteen is my lucky number. Isn’t she cute? I love all my Jamies.” I held up the squirming cat like a trophy.
“Stop that!” screeched the old woman. “That’s not how you hold a kitten, for heaven’s sake!” Suddenly she lunged forward and plucked the cat from my arms.
“Yo!” I blurted out. “What do you think you’re doing?”
The woman stepped behind the cop, her spiky nails locked around the kitten like an iron maiden. “You kept her in the car all day! You didn’t take proper care of her. If I hadn’t called the police, she’d be dead!”
So that’s where the cop came from. “No, the cat was fine. It’s not hot down here. I left the window open a crack.”
“You don’t keep a baby like this in a car all day long!”
“It’s not a baby, it’s a cat.”
“It’s a kitten!”
“So what?” You could leave a golden retriever in a garage all day, no problem. Everything is okay with a golden. “It’s none of your business anyway.”
“It is too!”
“What are you, the pet police?” I was angry. Meddling bitch. “Now give me my cat.”
“No.” She stepped farther behind the cop, hugging the kitten. “It’s mine now! I’m keeping it!”
“You are not!” I made a move for the cat, but the cop pressed us apart.
“Ladies, please,” he said wearily. “Miss Frost, did you leave the cat in the car?”
“Yes, but—”
“That wasn’t a good idea. There was another woman who complained about the mewing, besides Mrs. Harrogate here. The security guard was looking for you, because of it.”
Terrific. KITTEN LEADS TO KILLER. FELINE FINDS FUGITIVE. “I’m sorry. I didn’t think I’d be so long upstairs. I went to pick up a file from my office and got held up on the phone.”
“That’s a lie!” screeched the old woman. “This poor baby was crying all afternoon! I got here at three o’clock to see my lawyer. The kitten was crying when I went in and she was still crying when I came out. You’re not fit to have this kitten!”
“I am too!”
“You are not! And it’s stupid to name all your cats the same thing!”
“Stop!” thundered the cop, holding up both hands. “Enough!”
We were scared into silence, me more than she, since I had a little more to lose. That death penalty thing and all.
“Now, let’s settle this,” the cop said. “Miss Frost, there are laws on the books against cruelty to animals. Ordinances. You did leave the cat in the car all afternoon. Maybe if you let Mrs. Harrogate keep the cat like she says, we can all go home.”
I felt a mixture of resentment and relief. I was almost off the hook. The cop was ready to leave. I would be safe again.
“She’d have a better home with me,” clucked the woman. “I’d take good care of her.”
The cop put his hands on his hips. “Come on, Miss Frost, I don’t have all night here. Why don’t you give Mrs. Harrogate the cat? She says she’ll take good care of it. You, being a lawyer, you must work long hours. What do you say?”
“Let me think,” I said, but I knew it made sense. I was on the run, I couldn’t keep a cat. What kind of outlaw has a pet? I looked at the kitten in the woman’s embrace. It wasn’t mine anyway.
“Well, Miss Frost?” The cop checked his watch, and I made the only decision I could.
“Gimme back my cat,” I said.
I stuck Jamie 17 under my blazer and smuggled her into the elevator. When the doors opened onto the lobby, I waved hello to the two night guards behind the desk. “Hey, Dave,” I called out. “How’s it goin’, Jimmy?”
“Hey back at you!” said Dave, grinning, and Jimmy waved back vaguely as I strode to the other elevator bank. I was inside before they could figure out how they knew me.
I got off on the Loser Floor a
nd dropped Jamie 17 at the conference room, where I made her a new litter box and poured some Diet Coke into a paperclip holder for her. Then I closed the door, straightened the Confidential sign, and left. I had some sleuthing to do.
I took the elevator to the Gold Coast and waited in the ritzy reception area as the doors swooshed closed behind me. It looked as empty as I’d expected, but I listened to make sure it was absolutely still. There was no sound in the hallway. Not a phone, not a fax, not even a ca-ching. All the heavy hitters were out at the restaurants, the orchestra, or a baseball game; anyplace you could conceivably take a General Counsel and bill his company for it. Not only would they expense the duck à l’orange, they’d charge for the time they took to eat it. Turn down that second cup of decaf, it’ll cost you $350.
I took a left and snuck down the corridor, grabbing a legal pad from one of the secretary’s desks, the better to look official if caught. I slunk past the patchwork quilts and pastel landscapes, glancing in the offices to make sure they were vacant. The offices were massive because Gold Coast egos demanded lots of square footage, and each office was decorated with whatever fetish appealed to its resident ego. I skulked past a flock of duck decoys and a half-dozen fake Fabergé eggs, then tiptoed by a flotilla of model sailboats and a secret stash of Glenfiddich until I got to Wile E. Coyote and Tweety Bird.
The door was open and Sam’s office was empty. I took a quick look behind me, then slipped inside and closed the door. I needed Sam’s billing records, and if I couldn’t get them from the computer, I’d get them this way. If there was ever an unreasonable search and seizure, this was it, but I had to find out who killed Mark.
I set the legal pad down and walked past Sam’s desk to the sleek walnut credenza behind it. Plush versions of Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, and Elmer Fudd sat atop the credenza. Its polished surface reflected their fixed expressions.
“Don’t look, guys, I’m hunting wabbits.”
I opened the top drawer. Inside were case files in alphabetical order: Asbec Commercial Realty, Atlantic Partners, Inc., Aural Devices, Ltd. Most of them were bankruptcies, and only two estates matters. I looked under Biscardi, for Mark, but there was no file. Had Sam taken Mark’s file home? Is that where Sam kept his billing files?
I closed the drawer and opened the one underneath it. More of same. Bankruptcies, a few estates. One tax matter. No billing information and no Biscardi file.
Shit. I straightened up, thinking. Outside the windows, long ribbons of mercury vapor streetlights led down Market Street to the train station and the Schuylkill River beyond. I couldn’t think about rowing now. I had to ransack my best friend’s desk.
I turned around and went through the papers next to Daffy Duck on the glass desktop. There were message slips and correspondence, Daffy pens and carrot pencils, but no billing sheets. Damn. I turned and looked around the office.
There was one cabinet left, next to the black leather couch against the wall. It was walnut, too, a smaller version of the credenza. In front of it flopped a king-sized version of yet another cartoon character. I crossed the room, moved aside the toy, and dug into the top drawers. Correspondence files.
I closed it and opened the second drawer. Son of correspondence files.
I tried the third. Beyond correspondence files. This was in the nowhere fast category. I closed the drawer, sat cross-legged on the dense carpet, and thought a minute. Billable time records are a Grun attorney’s most personal papers. Maybe Sam didn’t keep them in hard copy at all, but had them shredded. Or maybe he had them at home. I tried to remember where Sam kept the files in his apartment, but I hadn’t been there in over a year, lately we’d met at restaurants.
My gaze fell on the giant plush toy and I returned it to its home in front of the cabinet. Its huge eyes scowled at me from under the brim of an oversized Stetson, and I righted its redder-than-red handlebar mustache. Its cloth mitts held six-guns. I never liked Yosemite Sam.
What?
Of course! Yosemite Sam! I’d forgotten him. I ran to the computer on Sam’s desk, called up the menu, and punched it in.
HERE IS THE BILLING INFORMATION YOU REQUESTED, said the computer.
“Dagnabbit!” I whispered, scrolling the first page, then the next and the one after that. Lists and lists of bills sent and payments received, lots of money flowing into Grun, all for Sam’s account. He was squeezing the last dollar out of those bankrupts, to the tune of $50,000 a month in billings. Yosemite Sam was doing just fine. In fact, he had to be one of the most productive pardners in the firm. So why did he take money from Mark, and in cash?
I still had no answer. I got out of the computer file and sat back, which was when I spotted something on Sam’s desk. I moved aside the papers and stared at the Steuben bowl. It was full of paperclips, Bugs Bunny thumbtacks, and rubber bands. But there was something else. Something I’d missed before. I dug in the bowl to the flash of color and fished it out. It wiggled between my thumb and forefinger like a pink worm.
A skinny pink balloon. The same kind and color I’d seen on Bill’s arm in the cabin. I felt my mouth go dry. What did it mean?
I gaped at the bowl. A patch of green rubber stuck out, and I fished that balloon out, too. Then a yellow balloon and another pink, a red, and a bright blue, until they were scattered across the desk like so much lethal confetti. I stood shocked in the quiet of my friend’s office. Trying to fathom how Sam could be connected to Bill’s death. It didn’t seem possible, but I was holding the link in my hand.
I thrust the pink balloon in my jacket pocket, replaced the others, then slipped out and broke for the Coast.
25
I grabbed a late-night shower in the firm’s locker room after my discovery. The pink balloon was uppermost in my mind, but I couldn’t complete the connection between Bill and Sam, if there was one. My brain was too tired. The hot water made it worse, enervating me.
How much had I slept in the past few days? I gave up trying to count as I toweled off and dressed, then lay down on the single bed in the room’s so-called rest area. I set my runner’s watch for 5:00 A.M., but despite my fatigue I was barely dozing when the beep sounded. I was seeing pink balloons in a nightmare birthday party.
I let myself into the firm’s kitchen for muddy coffee and an early morning bagel. Sam’s connection to Bill’s death nagged at me, though I had a more mundane problem. I had nothing to wear. I’d worn the yellow linen suit two days in a row and it was starting to look like an accordion, and smell worse. By Monday, even the losers would begin to wonder.
So at nine o’clock, coffee and half-eaten bagel before me, I was back in my conference room, on the phone to a personal shopper at a local department store, masquerading as busy lawyer Linda Frost. I ordered clothes and shoes to be delivered ASAP to Grun & Chase and even gave the shopper my proxy to pick what she called some “happening” suits.
After I hung up, I typed a memo to Accounting, instructing that a check be drafted payable to the store, the amount to be billed to RMC v. Consolidated Computers for “assorted business gifts.” The clothes would be paid for as soon as they arrived, and I’d be happening. Then I grabbed Jamie 17 and left.
I was safe on the Loser Floor, since no losers worked on Saturdays, but once I left the floor it would be duck season. I stuffed Jamie 17 in my purse, scooted under the security gate that came down on the weekends, and punched the button for the elevator. I hopped in as soon as it opened, feeling nervous and exposed, even inside.
I could be recognized by the security guards downstairs or maybe a new guy on the weekend crew. I could be spotted by someone on the street who’d seen my picture in the paper. And what about the cops? Would any be in the vicinity, in the parking garage?
I was running a risk, but I had to. I fumbled in my purse for my sunglasses and slipped them on.
Nowhere to go but down.
I slunk low in the driver’s seat of the bananamobile, waiting across the street from the city hospital. Gargoyles grimaced from
its granite facade, but I gathered they didn’t recognize me in my sunglasses. My mother’s appointment wasn’t for an hour or so, but I wanted to make sure she wasn’t being surveilled.
“Right, Jamie 17?”
The kitten only purred in response, fast asleep in my lap. A miracle, considering she’d lapped up half a can of Diet Coke. Poor thing should have been flying on caffeine by now, or her tiny stalagmite-teeth should have dropped out. It was sad, I was turning out to be a bad mother. I stroked her and waited for my own.
They pulled up exactly on time in a Yellow cab. Hattie got out first; a bright spot of orange hair, then turquoise pants with a white scoop-neck shirt. She held out a palm, and my mother moved slowly into the light of day.
She looked up at the sky when she emerged, her mouth agape with wonder and confusion. She was so frail, a wraith in a house-dress and sneakers. Hattie gathered her up in strong arms and practically lifted her up the gray steps into the hospital’s entrance, where they disappeared from view.
I sat in a sort of shock. Hattie had been right. My mother had been dying right before my eyes, but I hadn’t seen it. I fought the urge to follow them and forced myself to watch for the cops. I waited and waited. No squad cars, no unmarked Crown Vic.
Still I waited, stalled in a memory. It’s Thanksgiving dinner at my uncle’s, at a time when the family is still in touch. All of us are seated around the steaming turkey and lasagna, all except my mother. She’s marching in the living room in a tight circle, banging a Kleenex box on her thigh, a madwoman in protest. It’s getting late, it’s getting late, she says over and over, but they all ignore it. All of them around the table, happily passing the Chianti and the broccoli rabe, a bustling Italian holiday over the heaping plates.
Except one of us is dancing with the Kleenex.
And the people around the table, they keep chattering and passing the food as if nothing is happening. Her voice grows louder, it’s getting late, it’s getting late, it’sgettinglate, but they just talk louder, shouting over the clamor she makes. Meantime, I’m gagging on this wonderful meal, so I put down my fork and go to her, bundle her in her wool muffler and coat, and call us a cab. I want her out of there. I’m not old enough to drive, but I’m old enough to know that these people, the ones pretending everything is fine, are even crazier than she is. They have a choice my mother doesn’t, and they choose insanity.