Diana Dueyn - The Big Meow

He pulled in a long breath, let it out. There’ve been whispers on the street for a few weeks, the Silent Man said, that the police have been up to something. Some of the citizens around town — the ones whose businesses the police might, shall we say, be more than somewhat interested in — have been theorizing that some kind of big operation was under way. But no I think we can guess what that is.

“They’ve been concentrating on keeping the whole cluster of murders as quiet as they can,” Helen said. “That none of those killed have had close relatives to start making noisy inquiries and raise the profile of their deaths has made matters much simpler. But the police are still tremendously edgy.”

Can’t blame them, the Silent Man said. The war hasn’t been over that long. Everyone’s still getting used to “business as usual”. The last thing the cops want right now is something that would suggest they’ve been loosening up on the quality of local law enforcement now that the country’s gone off a war footing. Especially since now there are all these new boogeymen looking over the horizon: communists, fifth-columnists… Way too many scary things going on out in the big mean world for people to get into a panic about. The police would go out of their way to keep things quiet in a situation like this. Especially when they don’t understand what’s going on.

He sighed and stretched in his chair, then bent a curious eye on Helen. You sure did a full morning’s work, the Silent Man said. Just how’d you get all this stuff?

“By not being noticed,” Helen said, very demure.

The Silent Man gave her one of those small thin smiles. In that getup?

“I’ll grant you,” Helen said, “this wouldn’t be my preferred business attire.”

The Silent Man’s smile got a shade broader. I might have wondered if you were really a cop before, he said, but I’d say that doubt’s resolved. You’re as good as any cop I know at not giving a question a straight answer. He eyed Helen. ‘Not being noticed,’ huh. The way these guys do it? He nodded in Rhiow’s direction

Helen glanced at Rhiow, who put her whiskers forward, amused. “There are similarities to the way they and I operate,” Helen said. “But you don’t always have to vanish to get things done, or find things out. When I had to, I simply looked like I was supposed to be wherever I was. I do a good secretary imitation when I have to. And no one suspects a secretary who’s going through the files.”

Hide in plain sight… the Silent Man said. Always a sound method.

“All we have to do now,” Hwaith said, “is work out what connection this all has to our main line of inquiry. The earthquakes — ”

“Hwaith,” Rhiow said, “not that I’d argue that point with you at all. It’s vital. But we’ve got a whole lot of information to assimilate, all of a sudden…and for some of us it’s been quite a long day.” Rhoiw glanced around at the other People around the table. Like many toms, Urruah’s endurance wasn’t all it might be, and that blinking lazy look he was now starting to wear wasn’t the one he normally affected, but genuine sleepiness. Sheba was still gently snoring. Arhu and Siffha’h, though sitting upright, were now leaning against each other with half-closed eyes in what Urruah had some time ago christened “the bookends pose”, trying to appear as if they were merely in a state of lazy alertness: but Rhiow knew how likely this effect was to be ruined by one of them actually dropping off to sleep, which would immediately trigger the other into doing the same. “And our host, too, is off his normal schedule. Since he’s been kind enough to offer us a place to rest, maybe we should take advantage of that, and come back to the subject fresh this evening.”

Blackie, the Silent Man said, pushing his coffee cup away, I hate to admit it, but you said a mouthful. He pushed his chair back, glanced toward the outer room.

Then his eyes widened.

“Really? In there?” said a high female voice from the main room, carrying effortlessly over what remained of the low hum of conversation there from the latest of the lunch crowd. “I’ll go right back!”

In unison, Siffha’h’s and Arhu’s eyes flew open, and they sat up straight. Urruah’s eyes opened more slowly, but the whole look of him had suddenly gone strangely attentive. Hwaith, near him, sniffed the air once or twice…and his ears went back slightly, the expression of someone resisting the urge to a much less subtle reaction.

In though the door from the main room came a young, slim, slightly-built queen-ehhif. She was fair-haired, the hair tucked up in a peculiar looped style underneath yet another of those hats — this one a close-fitting, slantwise business in a startling peacock blue, with a bizarre confection of blue veiling and blue-dyed fluffy feathers trailing back from it. Her dress, too, was blue, with a bouffant skirt that rustled noisily every time she took a step, and was perhaps as wide again on each side as she was.

She came clicking along toward their table on delicate little high heels. Rhiow, watching her come, thought that she was probably very pretty as ehhif reckoned such things: but there was something about her face, and about the set of the vivid blue eyes, that gave her pause. I’m not always expert at figuring out their faces, she thought; Iau knows their expressions don’t work anything like ours. But Rhiow couldn’t get rid of an initial impression of a calculating mind behind the innocuously pretty look. “Why, Mr. Runyon,” the queen-ehhif said as she came to stand, or rather pose, by the table, looking them all over, “how unusual to see you here! And what an unusual gathering! Where are the PR people?”

The Silent Man simply looked up at her…and then at something else. Rhiow had noted and dismissed the big straw bag embroidered with bright-colored straw flowers that the queen-ehhif was carrying over her shoulder. But now in the bag something moved, and Rhiow’s ears went right forward as the scent that had been masked by all the food-and smoke-smells in here became much plainer, and a Person put her head up out of the bag.

White fur, fluffy: ears set apparently permanently in a bad-tempered sideways slant: green eyes, watery: a nose that ran. It was surprising to see a Person of so broad-faced a breed somehow managing to look so narrow, pinched and unpleasant. Maybe it’s that poor squashed nose, Rhiow thought. How does she breathe through something like that?

The Silent Man, meanwhile, was eyeing the queen-ehhif in much the same way he had when one of the waiters had turned up at their table with the wrong meal. He reached for his pad and pen, though not with any great speed. Meanwhile, the bag-Person was looking over the other assembled People with a peculiar heavy-lidded mixture of disdain and envy that left Rhiow surprisingly unwilling to greet her.

But Urruah’s unshakeable sense of his own superlative quality as an uber-tom would hardly let him stay silent in the face of a new queen, no matter how tired he was. “Hunt’s luck to you, madam,” he said to the Person in the purse, letting an appreciative purr get into the greeting.

Those green eyes dwelt on him for a long, appraising moment before the mouth opened. What came out first, though, was a huge yawn: and after that, when they’d all had a better view than they needed of the gullet behind the yawn and the jaws had closed with a snap, and the green eyes looked at Urruah once more and then at the rest of them, a word came out.

“Peasants,” the bag-Person said, closed her eyes, and sank out of sight.

Rhiow flicked one ear back and forth in a “Why am I not surprised?” gesture. Urruah sank back onto the banquette, wounded but keeping that purr going by way of concealment. Hwaith looked mortified, and turned his face away. Arhu and Siffha’h exchanged a glance. I could tear her a new one, Arhu said to Rhiow. Come on, Rhi. It’s too late now to spoil anybody’s appetite…

Just you be still for the time being until we understand what’s going on around here!

“But what a surprise to find you here having a tea party with the kitties!” said the queen-ehhif. Her voice was of the light tinkly sort, which sorted oddly with the hostility that seemed to be peering out from behind the words. “And with a friend! It’s lovely to see the rumors aren’t true that you’re completely heartbroken. Or beyond a little more cradle-robbing.”

The Silent Man stopped dead in his writing for a moment, staring very hard at the pad. Then he finished what he was writing, ripped the page off with a touch more force than was strictly necessary, and held the page up.

SCRAM. DOING BUSINESS HERE.

“But Giorgio sent me back here on purpose to visit you and your lovely pussies!” the she-ehhif said, looking, not at any of the People, but at Helen. “Maybe I can see why.”

Helen looked up demurely from under that hat, all dark-eyed inscrutability, and said nothing.

“Why don’t you introduce us?” the she-ehhif said.

The Silent Man looked away and pointedly had another drink of his coffee.

The she-ehhif looked at Helen, put out a white-gloved hand. “Anya Harte,” she said, with the air of someone who expected the other party to know the name as a matter of course.

“Miss Harte,” Helen said, and reached up to shake the hand held out to her. “Helen Walks Softly.”

“Why, how wonderfully…ethnic!” Miss Harte said, turning away from Helen to smirk at the Silent Man. “You know, you’re just going to be confirming what everyone’s heard about your exotic tastes in the ladies.” She somehow managed to make “exotic” sound like a bad word. “But then it’s to be expected, I suppose, as what you’re used to by now. Your wife’s a Spanish countess, after all, no matter what some people say! And where is Mrs. Runyon, by the way? It’s been so long since we’ve seen her around.”

The Silent Man just looked at Miss Harte. Finally he reached for the pen again, aware that in the shadows of the door into the main room, people were standing, trying not to look as if they were watching. He scribbled for a moment, tore a page off the pad and held it up.

OUT OF TOWN

“I’m sure she is,” Miss Harte said. “Well, while the cat’s away! – so to speak.” She smiled what even Rhiow could have told was a poisonous smile for an ehhif, if her whiskers hadn’t already been practically vibrating with the sense of happy spite that emanated from the woman.

Miss Harte turned on Helen a look that was as simultaneously dismissive and envious as the expression of the Person in her bag. “Are you in the business?”

“The only one that matters,” Helen said, still smiling.

Miss Harte sucked in a long, happily scandalized breath. “Oh, my!” she said. “And you’re so open about it! But I’m sure you’ll do very well at it, with your dark good looks.”

“Thank you,” Helen said, that absolutely imperturbable smile shifting not a fraction. “But better an honest darkness than night masquerading as the innocent day.”

At that Miss Harte blinked, but only for a second. “And you recite your lines so nicely, too! You should really come out and meet some of the really important movie people, so that you can get out of the bit-part rat race! A whole lot of the people from the big studios are going to be up at the party at Dagenham’s tonight. It’s an open party, Mr. Runyon would have no trouble getting you in, there are lots of people who’d love to see someone like you there – ”

Rhiow sat there in wonder listening to that little tinkly voice, which seemed able to imply something cruel or cutting with practically every word. It made her think of the sound that broken bottles made when dumped into the Manhattan garbage trucks early in the morning: little razor-sharp shards, raining down, every one of them capable of slicing you deep if you would only pick it up the wrong way… “Oh, do come along to Dagenham’s tonight, Mr. Runyon! They’d be ever so surprised to see you.” Some further nasty implication lay behind the words: Rhiow was uncertain whether she wanted to know just what. “And just for a laugh, you should bring all your little friends!” The People were included in the glance, but the word seemed mostly for Helen.