'You sure the kitten wasn't there today? Animals get scared when a stranger comes around. They hide.'
'The kitten wasn't there.'
'Could have walked out when the cops came. Doors open, kitten runs out, goodbye kitty.'
'I never heard of a cat taking its litter pan along.'
'Maybe some neighbor took it. Heard it meowing, like they do, and didn't want it to go hungry.'
'Some neighbor with a key?'
'Some people exchange keys with a neighbor. In case they get locked out. Or the neighbor could have got the key from the doorman.'
'That's probably what happened.'
'Must be.'
'I'll check with the neighbors tomorrow.'
He whistled softly. 'You chase down everything, don't you? Little thing like a kitten, you're at it like a dog at a bone.'
'That's the way it's done. Goyakod.'
'How's that?'
'Goyakod,' I said, and spelled it out. 'It stands for Get Off Your Ass and Knock On Doors.'
'Oh, I like that. Say it again?'
I said it again.
' 'Get off your ass and knock on doors.' I like that.'
Chapter 18
Saturday was a good day for knocking on doors. It usually is because more people are at home than during the week. This Saturday the weather didn't invite them out. A fine rain was falling out of a dark sky and there was a stiff wind blowing, whipping the rain around.
Wind sometimes behaves curiously in New York. The tall buildings seem to break it up and put a spin
on it, like English on a billiard ball, so that it takes odd bounces and blows in different directions on different blocks. That morning and afternoon it seemed to be always in my face. I would turn a corner and it would turn with me, always coming at me, always driving the spray of rain at me. There were moments when I found it invigorating, others when I hunched my shoulders and lowered my head and cursed the wind and the rain and myself for being out in them.
My first stop was Kim's building, where I nodded and walked past the doorman, key in hand. I hadn't seen him before and I doubt that I was any more familiar to him than he was to me, but he didn't challenge my right to be there. I rode upstairs and let myself into Kim's apartment.
Maybe I was making sure the cat was still missing. I had no other reason to go in. The apartment was as I had left it, as far as I could tell, and I couldn't find a kitten or a litter pan anywhere. While I thought of it I checked the kitchen. There were no cans or boxes of cat food in the cupboards, no bag of kitty litter, no nonspill bowl for a cat to eat out of. I couldn't detect any cat odor in the apartment, and I was beginning to wonder if my memory of the animal might have been a false one. Then, in the refrigerator, I found a half-full can of Puss 'n Boots topped with a plastic lid.
How about that, I thought. The great detective found a clue.
Not long after that the great detective found a cat. I walked up and down the hallway and knocked on doors. Not everyone was home, rainy Saturday or no, and the first three people who were had no idea that Kim had ever owned a cat, let alone any information on its present whereabouts.
The fourth door that opened to my knock belonged to an Alice Simkins, a small woman in her fifties whose conversation was guarded until I mentioned Kim's cat.
'Oh, Panther,' she said. 'You've come for Panther. You know, I was afraid someone would. Come in, won't you?'
She led me to an upholstered chair, brought me a cup of coffee, and apologized for the excess of furniture in the room. She was a widow, she told me, and had moved to this small apartment from a suburban house, and while she'd rid herself of a great many things she'd made the mistake of keeping too much furniture.
'It's like an obstacle course in here,' she said, 'and it's not as if I just moved in yesterday. I've been here
almost two years. But because there's no real urgency I seem to find it all too easy to put it off and put it off.'
She had heard about Kim's death from someone in the building.
The following morning she was at her desk at the office when she thought of Kim's cat. Who would feed it? Who would take care of it?
'I made myself wait until lunch hour,' she said, 'because I decided I just wasn't crazy enough to run out of the office lest a kitten go an extra hour without food. I fed the kitten and cleaned out the litter pan and freshened its water, and I checked on it that evening when I came home from the office, and it was evident that no one had been in to care for it.
I thought about the poor little thing that night, and the next morning when I went to feed it I decided it might as well live with me for the time being.' She smiled. 'It seems to have adjusted. Do you suppose it misses her?'
