Cat People (10 page)

"I know," Oliver cut him off, "he puked on you."

Joe slouched out of the room.

Oliver turned to Bronte Judson. "I always said animals can act very human sometimes."

The door opened again and Alice Moore came in. She carried a sealed plastic bag.

"Hi." Alice sniffed at the air. "I see Joe has already been here."

"He just left. Where were you when the sonofabitch puked on him?"

"I was collecting a stool sample. I don't know what possessed the damn fool to play doctor."

"I don't think he'll do it again."

"Not likely."

Oliver pointed to the plastic bag. "What have you got there?"

"Something rather interesting." She held the bag up so the light from the window revealed its contents. "What would you say it looks like?"

Oliver and Judson moved closer to examine the bag. Oliver looked at the administrator and raised his eyebrows in a question.

Judson said, "It looks like a half-eaten slice of pizza."

Alice smiled at him brightly. "Right the first time, Mr. Judson."

"This is probably a silly question," Oliver said, "but why are you carrying it around with you in a plastic bag?"

"It came up out of the leopard."

Bronte Judson backed away hastily.

"No kidding?" Oliver took the bag from Alice and hefted it. "We have a pizza-eating black leopard. Most unusual species."

"Could somebody have fed it to him this morning?"

"No," Oliver said flatly. "Nobody but you, me, and Joe have been near the quarantine cage."

"Then where did he get it?"

"Probably scrounged it out of a garbage can while he was prowling through the city on his way to the massage parlor."

"Have you figured out what he was doing there?" Alice asked. "From the contents of his stomach, he sure wasn't hungry."

"Maybe he was horny," Oliver said with a leer.

"A most unusual cat," Alice said.

"Are any of the test results in?"

"So far they're all negative. No ascariasis, no distemper, no encephalitis. Except for his erratic behavior and his odd eating habits, this seems to be one healthy cat."

"I've asked Dr. Fritch to fly out from the Coast and take a look at him."

"That's wonderful," Alice said.

"Oh yes,
won
derful," Bronte Judson said, with a completely different emphasis.

"The chief administrator is not sold on our new cat," Oliver explained to Alice. "But I'll bet you learn to love him, Bronte."

"I sincerely doubt that." Judson started toward the door. "I'd better go start practicing if I'm going to convince the city fathers that we need a specialist from California to come out and hold your new cat's paw and find out what's making him neurotic."

"You can do it, Bronte," Oliver said as the administrator went out the door.

When they were alone Alice came over and stood close to Oliver. "It's almost closing time. Got any plans for this evening?"

"I'm going to be working late tonight," he said. "I want to go over all the leopard test results in detail and see if we've missed anything."

"Want me to stay and help?"

"Thanks, but there really isn't much for you to do."

"Will you call me if you finish up early?"

"I promise."

"All right, then. See you."

When Alice had gone Oliver picked up the plastic bag and held it to the light.

"Pizza," he said to the empty laboratory. "That's strange. Very strange."

The cage was some twelve feet square. There were heavy bars on three of the walls. The fourth was solid metal. A wooden shelf, six feet long by three feet deep, was fastened halfway up the back wall. The cage looked for all the world like a prison cell.

At the rear of the cage, half hidden in the shadows, sat the black leopard. For what seemed to her like an eternity, Irena and the cat had been regarding each other silently.

"You poor creature," Irena said at last. "Oh, I'm so sorry." The cat was in distress. It gave no outward signs, but somehow Irena knew. She
knew.

"Are you in pain?" she asked softly.

The cat did not move.

"No, it's a hurt deeper than that, isn't it," Irena continued. "You're a prisoner here. Locked up. They have taken your freedom. There is nothing worse than that. I understand."

The leopard cocked his head, watching her with unblinking yellow eyes.

"You are such a magnificent thing," Irena said. "What a shame it is to keep you locked up like this. I wonder where your home is. I mean your real home. I'll bet you miss it."

She took a tentative step toward the cage. The leopard stood up. Its muscles tensed under the shiny black coat. Irena stopped.

"I'm not going to hurt you. I would never do anything to hurt you. You know that, don't you?"

The cat blinked its eyes.

"You do trust me, don't you? Has someone here been mistreating you?"

Moving in graceful slow motion, the leopard approached the bars at the front of the cage where Irena stood.

"It's all right," she crooned. "You can come closer to me. I'm your friend."

The big cat reached the bars, his eyes never leaving Irena's face. A red rasp of a tongue slid out and ran over the shiny black leather of his nose.

"Yes, you are a lovely thing," Irena told the cat in a soothing voice. "I wonder if you know how beautiful you are."

She sat down on the spongy grass a few feet away from the cage. She opened her sketchbook and placed it on her lap. From the tote bag she took a freshly sharpened soft-lead pencil.

"I'm going to draw your picture," she said. "Would you like that? You and I will just sit here and talk, and I'll draw your picture."

The leopard rotated his sleek head and growled from deep in his throat. There was no threat in the growl. It was more like a greeting.

Irena smiled in answer. "You're glad I've come, aren't you? I can tell. I can almost tell what you're thinking. Almost."

The leopard sat, straight and proud, as though he were posing for her. Irena poised the pencil over her sketchbook and began to draw.

As she filled page after page with studies of the leopard she lost all sense of time and place. She was completely unaware of the gradual darkening of the sky and the exodus of the people from the main zoo. Here in this sheltered nook nothing existed, except the big cat and herself.

Up in the administration building Oliver Yates sat hunched over his cluttered desk. The sky grew dark outside the window, but he paid no attention. Over and over he read the reports prepared by the city veterinarians who had examined the black leopard. Nothing in the reports indicated that there was anything physically wrong with the cat. And yet, something definitely
was
wrong.

For one thing, there was the sheer size of the creature. A mature young male, it weighed in at 240 pounds, almost 100 pounds more than the average for the species. The cat's measurements—height, girth, length, paw print—all far exceeded the norm. Oliver could find no explanation for any of this in the medical reports. All he could do was hope that Dr. Fritch could shed some light on the situation when he arrived from the Coast.

Even more puzzling than the size of the cat was the mystery of where it came from. Naturally the two black leopards housed across the city at the big Audubon Park Zoo had been checked out at once, and had been found snug and secure in the cages where they belonged. A query to all circuses that might conceivably have been in the area also came up negative.

The idea that some private citizen in New Orleans had been keeping a black leopard in his back yard was preposterous. Yet there seemed to be no other explanation. Every known cat within a five-hundred-mile radius of the city had been accounted for.

The whole affair became more puzzling, the deeper Oliver dug into it. Even assuming that someone in the city were foolish enough to keep an illegal carnivorous wild animal as a pet, and further assuming that he was now too frightened to come forward and claim it, how the devil could a 240-pound black leopard make his way along Bourbon Street, one of the busiest streets in the world, and stroll up a flight of stairs to a massage parlor without being seen by even one person? It was a question that Sergeant Brant and the whole New Orleans Police Department had not been able to answer, and it sure as hell baffled Oliver Yates.

The young curator pushed his chair back from the desk and pinched his eyes together. He had not slept much since the big cat came into his life. Hadn't even relaxed much. Maybe, he thought, he should have let Alice stay tonight, as she had offered. She would have been pleasant company. And now they could leave together, go to his place for a tension-easing drink or two, and go to bed.

Oliver was genuinely fond of Alice. He admired her as a professional in the same line of work. And her physical attributes did not escape him either. He enjoyed their dates together and their lovemaking. But he was not in love with her.

Lately he had begun to worry that Alice's feelings for him were going beyond the limits of good fun. It could make for an uncomfortable working situation. No, he decided, it was best that he sent her on home tonight. In fact, he resolved to start gradually cooling the whole relationship.

His musings along this line were interrupted by a roar from the direction of the quarantine cage. It was not a cry of pain or distress, but somehow carried a feeling of joy.

Oliver raised his head to listen. The cat roared again.

Oliver swiveled his chair to face the window. "What's going on with you, big fella?" It was a good excuse to leave the desk work and go down to have a look.

He left the building and made his way down the slope toward the little grove of trees. Beyond them the leopard's cage was in deep shadow. Oliver fancied he could hear sounds coming from the vicinity of the quarantine cage, but he could not be sure. The night creatures of the zoo were talking to one another.

He pushed his way through the brush at the bottom of the slope and into the trees, muttering at himself for not bringing a flashlight. He made slow progress, as tree branches smacked him in the face and roots seemed to reach out and clutch at his ankles.

When at last he came out at the far side of the clump of trees he stopped. The clouds that had hung over the city all day parted, and the scene was bathed in chilly moonlight.

Oliver's heart jumped. A shout caught in his throat at what he saw. The moon was bright enough now that there could be no doubt. Someone was standing at the leopard's cage. Standing right up against the bars. And although he could not be sure at this distance, it looked for all the world as though the night visitor was reaching right into the cage.

He choked back the impulse to cry out a warning. Moving as swiftly and silently as he could, Oliver crossed the grassy patch between the trees and the cage. If he made any noise that startled the person or the leopard now, tragedy could be the result.

There had been instances of teenagers mindlessly mauling the animals—shooting the deer with a .22 rifle, slitting the throats of harmless mountain goats. Many times Oliver had thought if he could get his hands on one of those cretinous children he would happily cripple him.

However, as he drew closer to the quarantine cage he saw that this was no attack on his animal. The black leopard, like an overgrown kitty cat, was rubbing his head against the bars, clearly enjoying the attention he was getting. And he could now see that the figure on the outside of the bars was, surprisingly, a woman.

Stealthily, Oliver moved up behind her. He could hear her talking to the cat.

"That feels good, does it? I thought it would. I have always liked to have the back of my neck rubbed. Poor darling, to be so cruelly held captive here. If I could open the door for you and let you run free, I would. Do you know that? Yea, you do know, don't you? We have a feeling for each other, you and I. A special feeling. A closeness that many people never have."

For a moment Oliver had the giddy feeling that he was interrupting a pair of lovere. He shook it off and crept up quietly behind the girl. Under his breath he prayed that no twig would snap beneath his foot and turn the bizarre tableau into a bloody nightmare. The leopard, he could see, had hie head down as the girl dug her fingers into the short, thick fur behind his ears. Sensuously she massaged the corded neck muscles.

When he was as close as he dared go, Oliver leaped at the girl. He caught her around the waist and fell backward, pulling her down on top of him. He hit the ground hard, and for several seconds just lay there on his back, maintaining his hold on the girl. He felt the wild beating of her heart. He also felt the slim supple waist and the soft undercurve of the girl's breasts. Embarrassingly, he began to get an erection.

The girl pulled in a lungful of air, and Oliver was afraid she was going to scream.

"Please be calm," he said, making his own voice as casual as possible. "I'm the curator here. My name is Oliver Yates. I'm not going to hurt you."

For a moment the only sound was their breathing. The leopard growled and hit the bars a clanging blow with one paw.

"Do you have to hold me so tightly?" the girl asked.

"Sorry."

Oliver eased his grip on the girl. Then, when he felt she was not going to bolt, he released her. They both stood up, brushing bits of grass and dirt from their clothing. For a man who had just saved a girl's life, Oliver felt strangely embarrassed.

"Just what did you think you were doing here?" he asked.

"I was sketching the leopard."

"Sketching, you say?"

"That's right." The girl looked around on the grass until she spied a spiral-bound book. She picked it up and held it for Oliver to see while she flipped the pages. He could not see clearly what was on the pages in the moonlight, but it seemed to be drawings of the leopard, as the girl had said. There were head studies, upper body, and full length. Oliver started to examine the drawings critically, then realized the absurdity of the situation.

"Sketching, hell," he said angrily. "You had your hand inside the cage."