Joe didn’t like going up on the roof with Slayter, even if he could get the door open. But if Dulcie was there�
And, he had told Harper where the gun was hidden, but now it wasn’t there. Slayter was wearing it, and if an officer approached him�
Had he seen a house phone on top the little table in the hall? But you couldn’t call out on a house phone. Slipping back into the hall, he could see the cleaning cart down at the far end. Racing down, he paused by the open door, listening to water running and the TV tuned into a Spanish station. Before he could think better of it, he was inside the room and on the desk, punching in Harper’s number. It crackled when Harper answered.
“He retrieved the gun. Wearing it in a shoulder holster, left side. He’s gone up on the roof.” He waited to be sure Harper wouldn’t ask him to repeat, then hung up and was gone, out into the hall again, his nose filled with the stink of disinfectant-and he headed fast for the roof.
37 [��������: pic_38.jpg]
Cars lined the curbs and filled the streets, creeping slower than a cat would walk. Dulcie sat on the roof of the Gardenview Inn waiting for Joe and beginning to worry. She grew more certain each minute that she should go back, that Slayter had caught him. Below her in the street, drivers held up the single lines of traffic to let people out onto crowded sidewalks. The cacophony of a dozen jazz bands made her ears ache. Any sensible cat would be home, hiding under the bed among the dust mice.
Dulcie loved the beat of the old classic jazz-she’d just like it not all mixed together. She was so awash in Dixieland that she felt giddy. Where was Joe? At last, losing patience, she spun around and raced back across the hotel’s tile roof to the little raised portion of the building that housed the stairwell-but before she could try to fight the door open, she heard footsteps coming up the stairs.
Fleeing away among the shadows of the chimneys, she watched the door swing in, and Roman Slayter emerge. He left the door cracked, did not let the latch click. Moving to the edge of the roof, he stood considering the street below.
Had Slayter locked Joe in his room? But Joe could get out, he could turn the knob just as she had-if he hadn’t hurt Joe. In a sudden panic, she crouched to leap for the door; she drew back when it began to swing open again, this time without sound.
Joe Grey emerged silently behind Slayter, glancing across the roof to Dulcie.
Slayter had a cell phone in his hand, and was looking away to the center of the village, across several blocks of rooftops. The cats could see, beyond an open lot where an ancient cottage had been torn down, that he had a clear view of the courthouse and PD. He could see the front of the station, and the back area beside the jail where the patrol units parked. They watched him punch in a preprogrammed call. He spoke softly.
“Looks like the expected number of patrols are cruising. Hardly moving, in the crush. Half a dozen uniforms on foot, mixing with the crowd. Four CHP units up along the highway. I think we’re� Wait�”
Slayter was quiet as two men emerged from the back door of the station and quickly crossed the police parking lot. When they hit the side street they moved off in different directions. Slayter described them; dressed as civilians, they wore faded shirts, worn jeans, the kind of clothes favored by many locals, comfortable and innocuous.
“Not sure,” Slayter said, in answer to a question. As the men moved into the center of the village where the music was loudest, Slayter relayed their positions. “You have someone on them?” Dulcie glanced across at Joe. Had Roman Slayter figured out Harper’s carefully planned sting? If therewasanother snitch working, she’d hate to think it was someone in the department.
Or was Slayter simply covering all bases? Whatever the case, from this vantage he could see every officer who left the station, uniformed or wearing street clothes. He could track every cop Harper assigned, see where they went, which mark they observed, and pass it on to Luis. She looked frantically across at Joe; the tomcat looked furious, his eyes blazing with a challenge so predatory that Dulcie felt her fur stand up. They had to stop Slayter before he ruined the carefully laid sting, before cops were attacked, civilians caught in possible gunfire.
Crouching, every muscle at ready, she took her cue from Joe, praying they didn’t kill themselves. A blaze of fire in Joe’s yellow eyes, and a twitch of his ear, and she raced across the roof beside him�
“� brown leather jacket,” Slayter was saying, “tan Chinos, long blond hair and�”
Together they leaped, hitting Slayter’s back with all the power they had and all claws digging.
The force of their assault sent him to his knees, scrambling at the edge of the roof, gurgling a scream. The phone went flying. Like a streak Joe snatched it and was gone again, the phone sticking out both sides of his mouth like a dog bone; he vanished behind a chimney.
Before Slayter could get to his knees, shaking his head and twisting unsteadily around to see what had hit him, Dulcie landed on his back and struck him in the face. He screamed, twisting away, pulling loose the frail metal gutter as he tried to steady himself. He lost his grip and went over, snatching at air. Dulcie raked him again and leaped free; with a twisting grab she snagged the edge of the roof with her claws. She was swinging helplessly, trying to pull herself up, when Joe grabbed the side of her neck in his teeth and jerked her back to the roof. They heard Slayter hit the balcony below with a dull thud. They ran, stopping only for Joe to snatch up the phone again.
Scorching away across the rooftop and among some heating equipment, they paused at last, panting; and Joe punched in Harper’s number.
Dulcie watched the roof behind them, but there was no sign of Slayter trying to climb up. She was a bundle of nerves at how close she’d come to falling maybe the whole three stories; she’d counted on Slayter cushioning her fall, and she guessed Joe had thought that, too. Beside her, he had Harper on the line.
He told the chief what they’d seen. “Slayter made three of your men.” Joe described the three. “Gave directions to where the first two were headed. And then, I don’t know exactly what happened, but he fell. It was pretty confused, I guess he might be hurt, though he only fell to the second-floor balcony.”
“Where the hell are you?” Harper’s voice was ragged. “If you saw him fall, youknowwhat happened.”
Harper didn’t ask who this was; he knew the snitch’s voice. “How did he fall?”
“His cell phone’s lying on the roof where he fell.” Joe hit end call and flipped the phone closed. Quickly carrying it back where he’d snatched it, he laid it in the gutter. Cautiously peering over, he smiled.
He returned to Dulcie, still smiling. “He’s down there curled up and groaning, holding himself like he hurts bad.” He glanced back with longing at the abandoned phone. He’d always wanted his own cell phone; but sensibly he turned away. “Let’s get out of here.” They headed away fast, before the cops arrived. Maybe the department could trace the numbers Slayter had called; most likely it was Luis’s cell number.
“What will happen,” Dulcie said, “when the cops see those scratches on his back and face? What will they think? What will Harper and the detectives think?”
“What can they think? Come on, Dulcie, it’s getting late.” The sun, in its low southerly journey, reflected a last path of flame over the western sea. It would be gone in a minute, and the winter sky would darken fast. And as evening fell, so would Luis’s marks fall.