D.B. Borton

Author

Cat Caliban Series

NINE LIVES

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The stairs I was standing on fell away beneath my feet, and I dropped. I grabbed for anything that could break my fall. My hands clutched at a baluster and found purchase. I was yanked to a stop and hung suspended, coughing, smoke swirling around me, the fire roaring and crackling in my ears. Under my jacket, tiny bodies shifted and tiny needles pricked my skin through my sweatshirt. A feathery tail emerged from above the zipper and tickled my chin. I couldn’t look up. Ash and debris rained down on my head and shoulders. Any second now, a live ember would get caught in the hood of my sweatshirt and we’d be swallowed up by the inferno. One of my passengers was trying to crawl inside my bra, and if tiny teeth found something they mistook for a milk fountain, we were goners.

A voice shouted at me from below. “Cat, you got to let go!” it said. “I got a couch under you to break your fall.”

I tried looking down. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust my partner, but I knew he was capable of stretching the truth if he thought it was for my own good.

But my eyes were bleary with tears and a cloud of smoke obscured everything. I coughed and clung.

Then the cloud parted and I could make out shapes — a piece of furniture, the dark figure of a man, and something small and four-footed, pacing. The mama cat, ears swiveling in my direction as if she could hear something under the roar of the fire.

Then she leapt for the enormous tapestry that hung on the wall in the stairwell, reaching from the second floor down to the first, and began climbing toward us. It was already smoldering. Now or never.

I kicked my feet out and launched myself at the wall, scrabbling at the heavy fabric. The impact sent shockwaves through my cargo and I felt them as a writhing mass just above my waistband. As I clutched at the tapestry, I felt it slowly give way. The panic-stricken mama cat, trapped between my chest and the wall, pressed against her babies but separated from them by layers of fabric, flailed and cut a scimitar slash down my cheek and neck. I coughed and clutched.

Then we slid down the wall and landed in a heap of fur and fabric. Strong arms lifted me to my feet and pulled me, my head still shrouded, trailing tapestry like a coronation train. I stumbled over something that might have been a doorsill and felt a change in the air and then the softer ground beneath my feet. Out here, there were shouts and mechanical sounds, and the rushing of water added to the cacophony of fire noises.

The fabric was pulled back and my head popped out. I felt the heat of the flames against one cheek and the cool night air against the other.

Moses tapped my shoulder, “I’m going for a paramedic.”

I nodded and sank to my knees, coughing. I fumbled for my zipper, unzipped, and released a shower of kittens. Then I collapsed fully and lay on my back, trying to fill my lungs with air. A blurry shape in my peripheral vision resembled a mama cat who was taking inventory and licking her brood with the angry intensity of a mother who’s almost lost them.

Then a new shape materialized, skinny, tailless, and human. It squatted next to me.

“You okay, M-m-miz Cat?” it said.

I nodded.

It continued to study me. “Wh-what that?” it said, and extended an arm.

I tried to speak and failed. I tried again. “Cat scratch,” I croaked.

“No,” it said, “n-not that. Wh-what that?”

I turned my head to follow the direction of the pointing finger, blinked to clear my vision, and looked into the blackened eye sockets of a skull.

EIGHT MILES HIGH

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The floor plunged. I hung suspended in space for a heartbeat, then dropped. The floor leapt, slammed my soles and jolted my spine. The shock threw me sideways and my shoulder struck metal. I thrust out a hand to steady myself, but I couldn’t find anything to hang on to. The air was thickening with smoke.

A hand closed over mine and guided it to a metal bar. Nearby, below me, someone had opened a door and warm air and smoke rushed in. A flash of light caught my eye. Across from me, my photographer, who was also my business partner, was lowering his camera, his mustache twitching with what I knew to be a smile of gratification. If I could have released my grip on the bar that held me upright, I would have lunged at him and shoved the goddamned camera down his throat. Leaning against his leg was a golden retriever hard pressed at this instant to live up to his name, which was Happy. The wind flattened the dog’s coat. He was wearing a harness and backpack, as well as an odd little helmet like a miner’s helmet, with a light like a flashlight surrounded by tiny lights that glittered in the smoky air. Surreal. Maybe I was having a nightmare.

My eyes stung and watered. In my ear, above the roar of the single remaining engine and the rushing air, a woman’s voice shouted, “Remember, count to ten and then pull.” A hand guided my free hand to a cord dangling from the harness that bound my heaving chest.

The floor dropped again. My arm was nearly jerked from its socket as I tightened my grip in panic. Everything tilted.

Firm hands at my waist were pushing me toward the open door. Smoke blinded me. I clung to the metal bar.

But it was a larger, firmer hand that shoved me out, a deeper voice vibrating in my ear, “Time to go, Cat!”

I plunged, and in the three-count before I yanked the cord, I had time for one thought: I need me a new partner.

SEVENTH DEADLY SIN

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My daughter considers me a bad influence. If you want to know why, you can tour my kitchen.

On the outside, my refrigerator displays the usual collection of family snapshots and kiddie crayon art, heavy on lopsided hearts over drunken letters that spell out, “I Luv You, Grammy!!” The magnets run to ads for security equipment dealers, bloody daggers, and signs that say, “This Refrigerator Is Bugged.” Posted on the front is a used body target from the firing range, with bullet holes in the lower left forearm and about three inches west of the right ear. Its purpose is inspirational. Dangling from the handle is a locked pair of handcuffs that I intend to remove as soon as I find the key.

Inside, the refrigerator is well-stocked with beer, Chinese take-out cartons, limes, and tonic. The limes are for medicinal purposes. They stave off the kind of colds that can develop into bronchitis and put a sixty-one-year-old senior citizen like me in the hospital, where she is bound to catch something worse and leave in the back of a hearse. I think there may be some milk back behind the cream cheese, but if so, it went sour sometime around New Year’s. In the freezer compartment are several bags of frozen peas marked “Do Not Eat.” These serve as ice packs to treat the sprains and other minor injuries that plague people my age who lead an active life.

The cookie jar on the counter holds a set of picklocks. But its primary purpose is to cover a small stain from a chemistry experiment that got out of hand.

The dishes in the sink are dusted with white powder. The fingerprints showing through the powder provide a record of everyone who has eaten or drunk in this kitchen in the past twelve hours — except the cats, of course. The cats have left their own traces in the small hard bits of food and kitty litter that crumble into grit underfoot.

There’s an empty gin bottle in the garbage can under the sink. Fortunately, I have more.

There’s a small palm tree on the kitchen table, with a hangman’s noose attached to one of its fronds — a product of my studies in knot-tying.  Hidden behind the palm is a small voice-activated tape recorder so sensitive that it can pick up a cat’s yawn at four feet. Also on the table are a surveillance supplies catalog and a forensic medicine textbook. When the grandkids come to visit, though, my reading matter gets stashed on top of the refrigerator.

You can see why this kitchen disturbs my daughter. It is not the kitchen of an apple-cheeked, sweater-knitting, cookie-baking, all-American grandmother. It’s the kitchen of a detective-in-training.

SIX FEET UNDER

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“Hi, um, I guess you’re not home, huh?”

The expulsion of breath scraped our ears like a tinfoil tambourine.

“Well, I guess you know this is Rocky. Ain’t likely you’d forget my voice after all these years.”

A pause followed. We could hear voices in the background and consistent bass in the pounding rhythms of rap music.

“I called you because I didn’t know what else to do, and because you always tried to help me out before when I was in trouble, even though I didn’t never take your advice.”

Pause, then quickly, “I know it was good advice, I just ain’t never taken it. But, thing is, I’m in trouble now, big trouble, like the kind of trouble that’ll get me killed ’f I don’t watch my ass.”

The voice faded a little, drowned out by loud laughter in the background.

“— Out, now, I’ve been out a week, and I’m clean, but in some heavy shit, like I said, and I don’t know what I should do. In the old days, you know I never let nothin’ bother me, but now I got kids to worry about.”

The rap music came closer and we heard a syncopated pounding.

“Can’t you see I’m usin’ this phone, mothafucker? My time ain’t up yet!” The voice shouted, making us jump. “Mo’fucker made me forget what I was sayin’,” the voice continued petulantly.

“So, they told me you was retired, but I found this number in the phone book and I hope it’s the right one. Only you ain’t home anyway, ’f it is, so I don’t know why I’m sayin’ all this, talkin’ to a machine.”

She paused again.

“Maybe I’ll try to call you again. I don’t know. You was always good to me. So anyway, maybe if something happens to me, and you hear about it, maybe you’ll talk to Arletta.”

There was a click and then a shrill tone, and then just the soft whir of the tape playing out on the answering machine.

“Shit,” I said quietly. I looked up at Moses. “Is that it? Did you play back the whole tape?”

“That’s it,” he said, frowning at it. “I guess her time was up.”

FIVE-ALARM FIRE

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Me and Kinky were parked behind a couple of five-ways down at Skyline Chili in Clifton. Five-ways were to Cincinnati what cheesesteaks were to Philadelphia: its distinctive culinary contribution to the world. Kinky was poking his fork down through the layers of cheese, onions, beans, chili, and spaghetti, scowling.

“Don’t think of it as being in the same food group as Texas chili, Kinky,” I told him. “It’s East European.”

Kinky glanced up, then around, as if searching for evidence that this joint was an enclave of ethnic haute cuisine. Tell me another one, his eyes said.

We were interrupted by a waiter in a white jacket, hurrying to our booth with a white telephone.

“Telephone for Mr. Friedman,” the waiter said.

Now this should have tipped me off that something was amiss. Skyline Chili — or “Skillini’s,” as the local wags pronounce it — does not run to telephones, white or otherwise, or jacketed waiters for that matter. It was one in a chili parlor chain which featured downscale dining, even in the heart of one of Cincinnati’s more upscale neighborhoods. Both the telephone and the white jacket were splashed with tomato sauce, but still.

Kinky told me that the cat was calling to say that his building was burning down.

“How can she tell?” I asked. It was a reasonable question; Kinky was always complaining about the heat in his New York City loft.

But all of a sudden, I could feel it. A wave of heat washed over me and left me soaking wet. Goddamn, I’d heard of reaching out and touching somebody, but this was ridiculous! I dropped my fork.

And woke up.

I was sitting up in bed, scanning the darkness in confusion.

Goddamn, it wasn’t Kinky’s place that was on fire — it was mine!

I fumbled for the light and switched it on.

Sadie and Sophie, who were sacked out on the foot of the bed, raised their heads and gazed at me in sleepy feline confusion. Not a whisker twitched. I sniffed the air.

Hell, it wasn’t my place that was on fire — it was me!

I threw off the wet sheets and raced to the bathroom, nearly tripping over Sidney, who had heard the commotion and come running to investigate. By the time I got the water on, the heat was receding. Behind it came a chill like a Canadian cold front. I stood in the shower, my dripping nightgown clinging to me tight as a corpse’s fist. I sneezed and felt a tiny explosion of wet heat between my thighs.

Sidney was watching me curiously. I think it was gradually dawning on him that I was not up for a game of Kitty Tease.

Menopause. I love it.

Mind you, I’d waited for it long enough. For some time now, I’d found it downright embarrassing to be caught carrying tampons around. I’d felt like a goddamn gynecological miracle. Even so, the Change, when it came, kind of crept up on me. I thought my PMS had been lasting longer than usual, but I didn’t really keep track. I mean, what was the point? If I turned up pregnant — well, let’s just say that since I seemed an unlikely candidate for participation in the Second Coming, we’d have to consider the Rosemary’s Baby scenario.

When I finally realized what was happening, my sixtieth birthday party paled by comparison to the celebrating I did. Until I found out that there were things you could carry around that were even more embarrassing than tampons.

Not that I thought anybody should be embarrassed, if I listened to my rational self. This was 1985, for crissakes, and we seniors were fast becoming everybody’s favorite voting bloc and marketing target. Hell, judging from our president’s domestic policy, senile dementia was all the rage. I’d even thought about writing President Reagan and proposing that he do his bit for gray pride and appear on an Attends commercial. Then I remembered that I wasn’t speaking to Ronnie, for all sorts of reasons I won’t go into.

So anyway, there I stood, dripping wet, wishing a genie would show up and grant me three wishes. I’d use up one getting my estrogen back. That gave me two left to wish menopause on my worst enemies, and Ronald Reagan was high on the list. Maybe, out of deference to my upstairs neighbor Moses, I’d zap Marvin Warner, owner of Home State Savings Bank and chief culprit in its failure, while I was at it. Moses still had a good chunk of his life savings frozen at Home State while the Feds tried to sort out the mess. The whole ordeal had considerably soured his disposition.

Meanwhile, speaking of soured dispositions and freezing, I was now cold, wet, cranky — and wide awake. I went back to the Kinky Friedman mystery I’d been reading before I went to bed.