“Samantha! That's against the law!”
“Really?”
“It must be!”
I shrugged. “Well, so is putting up flyers about your lost cat.”
“That's completely different! That's—”
“Grams, I'm fine, okay?”
“But oversized men were betting on you! Don't you understand that that's just wrong?”
I laughed and shook my head. “I've got forty bucks in my pocket, Grams. And if it weren't for that worthless mother of mine, I'd be able to buy myself a birthday present instead of post it as reward money.”
“But don't you see? That's how it starts! Win a little, bet a little more. Lose a little, bet a little more! Pretty soon you're in so deep you can't stop!”
“Grams! Get a grip! I wasn't betting. I took a bump, earned some cash, that's it! No big deal. And it's a handy thing to know how to do, all right?”
“Why? For the next time you're in a wrestling ring with he-men?”
“Grams, stop it!”
“But you like the way that easy money feels, don't you? I can see it! You would do it again, wouldn't you?”
“For forty bucks? You bet I would!”
“Samantha!”
Now, the whole time we're talking, I'm putting up flyers. And by the time I'm down to my last one, we're outside Tiny's Tattoo Parlor, and Grams is still badgering me about losing my soul to the evils of gambling. And I'm about to tell her, Stop already! when some guy comes out of Tiny's, saying, “Hey—none of that here.”
I spin on him and snap, “Why?”
“City ordinance.”
“So how am I supposed to find my cat, huh?”
“Your cat?” He takes the flyer and looks it over. Then he looks me over. And yeah, I'm checking him out, too. He's only about five foot two, but from his knuckles to his nose he's got everything from Jesus on the cross to Eat at Pappy's etched on him.
“Are you Tiny?”
“Uh-huh,” he says. “And you are…?”
“Sammy. This is my grams.”
He nods and checks out my high-tops, then says, “You don't seem like the fuzzy pink sweater type. Ever think about ditching that look and getting a tattoo?”
Before I have the chance to say it myself, Grams spits out, “No!”
He raises an eyebrow my way like he wants to hear it directly from me, so I tell him, “Nah.” Then I ask, “Why are you open so late on a Sunday, anyway? You giving half off on religious tattoos, or what?”
He laughs. “I'm not officially open, but if you're wanting a pretty cross or something, I'd give you a deal, yeah.”
Grams says, “She is not in the market for a tattoo! She just wants to find her cat!” She calms herself with a deep breath. “Would you consider posting the flyer inside the window? There's no ordinance against that, right?”
He nods and says, “I'll do that,” but there's something else on his mind, you can just tell.
“What?” I ask him.
He cocks his head to the right. “You might want to check next door.”
I follow his gaze. “At the Kojo Buffet?”
He nods slowly and says, “I've heard that the health department has closed them down for that before.”
“For what?” I ask him, but Grams' eyes get wide and she seems to know exactly what he means. “Are you saying…?” she starts, then shakes her head. “They don't really do that. That's just an urban legend… isn't it?”
I look at Grams, then Tiny. “Do what? What are you talking about?”
Tiny takes the flyer and backs into his shop, saying to Grams, “I'll let you explain it to her. And I will post this, but please let me know if you find him so I can take it down.”
Now, I'm glad he's willing to put my flyer in his window, and I don't want to make him mad or anything, but I can't help asking, “Uh, Tiny?”
“Yeah?” He grins at me. “Change your mind? I could do a real pretty one on your ankle, or your shoulder… wherever you want.”
“Uh, no. What I'm wondering is, why were there dead cats in your trash bin?”
I watch his face real carefully, but it barely even twitches. “In my trash can?”
“Uh-huh.”
But then he squints at me. “Hey, why were you going through my trash?”
“I was looking for dead cats.”
“But… you just told me you were looking for your cat.”
“I am, but the reason I'm so worried about him is because there's been a slew of dead cats around here.”
He shakes his head and says, “Look. I don't know anything about any dead cats, and I don't really want to.” He wags the flyer as he heads for the door. “I'm willing to post this, but other than that, leave me out of it. And stay out of my trash!” He hesitates, then adds, “There's needles in there—I wouldn't want you to get stuck.”
When he's gone, I turn to Grams and say, “So, explain.”
“Explain what?”
“What he thinks, that you understand and I don't.”
“Oh.” She looks left. She looks right. Then she looks down and says, “Well, not all cultures view cats—or dogs—the same way we do.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning some places don't see them as pets.”
“So…? What do they see them as? Work animals?”
“Well, that…”
“And?”
The corner of her mouth twitches down. “Some cultures also see them as… food.”
“Food? You mean they eat cats?”
“And dogs.”
“But Dorito's my pet!”
She was looking at the Kojo Buffet. “I know. And I always thought that sort of talk was just nasty rumors, but maybe we should call the police and see if this place has been in trouble for that in the past.”
There was no way I was going to wait for the police while someone turned Dorito into Kung Pao Kitty! I wasn't waiting around for a search warrant, either. Or for the food inspector! And I sure wasn't going to go through the front door and ask.
No, this situation called for alley walking.
Evil stalking.
This was a back-door mission.
“Come on!” I said to Grams, then charged down the same driveway I'd charged up when ol' Butcher Boy had chased me earlier.
Grams followed, and she did it a lot faster than I would have guessed she could. “What's the plan?” she asked when she was beside me, peeking in the open back door of the Kojo Buffet.
“I want to check the Dumpster first,” I whispered. “Can you signal me if someone comes toward the back door?”
“I'll do this,” she said, and her mouth made an airy noise that sounded like a metal blade whipping through the air.
I looked at her. “That was cool! How'd you do that?”
She made the sound again, then crouched beside the door and nodded for me to get to work.
My grams, the closet ninja—who knew?
Anyway, I opened the Dumpster, and man, was it putrid! I didn't have gloves and sure didn't want to dig around, but I figured if they'd gotten ahold of Dorito, they couldn't have had him for very long. If they'd skinned him, his fur would be near the top.
The thought was plenty gross, but the smell was even grosser, if you can imagine that. I looked around quick as I could, then put the lid down and joined Grams.
“Nothing,” I whispered.
“The more I think about it,” Grams said, “the more I think we're overreacting. The cats you found were intact, weren't they?”
“Yeah, but—”
“So this is just a wild-goose chase.”
“But Grams, what if?”
“What if what?”
“What if they've got him and they're gonna skin him?”
“Oh stop. Don't even think that. What are the chances that they saw Dorito, caught Dorito, and plan to serve Dorito? It sounds like something from a war movie.”
We'd been watching the action in the kitchen area. There were two me
n working the griddles, going in and out of a big walk-in refrigerator. One of them was Butcher Boy.
“Far-fetched or not,” I whispered to Grams, “by tomorrow it'll be too late.”
Crouched like she was, she reminded me of Dorito ready to pounce a mouse. “So what are you thinking?” I asked her.
She took a deep breath. “I'm thinking that if it makes you feel better, I'll go around front and create a diversion so you can take a look inside.” She stood up, took off her ball cap, and placed it right outside the back door. “The signal is, you're inside if the hat's here—once you come out, pick up the hat and I'll know to meet you at Maynard's.”
“But… what are you going to do?”
“Have a heart attack? Faint? Break a hip?” She laughed softly “I'm old—the options for credible medical failure are wide open.”
She meant it to be funny, but I didn't laugh. “Grams,” I whispered, “be careful.”
She kissed my forehead. “I love Dorito, too, you know.”
I nodded, then watched as she disappeared around the corner.
I waited by the back door for what seemed like forever. I couldn't see into the dining area, just the kitchen and the beginning of a hallway. The one guy looked like he was having a head sauna, flipping piles of steaming food over and over with a long spatula, and Butcher Boy was going crazy with a cleaver, cutting up meat on a long wooden counter. I'd never seen a knife move so fast in my life, and I couldn't help wondering what he was slicing and dicing. It was red meat—not chicken or fish. But it didn't look like beef, either.
What did cat meat look like?
Just as I was grossing out about that, I heard a crash, a scream, and after a second Butcher Boy and the other guy dropped what they were doing and funneled down the hallway.
I zipped inside and took a quick look around, then went into the walk-in refrigerator. All it seemed to have in it were vegetables—onions, peppers, heads of cabbage, that sort of thing. But straight ahead were thick plastic strips that ran floor to ceiling. So I pushed through those, and all of a sudden the temperature dropped way down and I found myself surrounded by sides of meat. I'm talking hanging hunks of butchered animals. Some were big, some were kinda small, and I sure couldn't tell what they were. They could have been cows or pigs or lambs.
Or dogs or cats or monkeys.
There wasn't any blood dripping, or whole carcasses with eyeballs bulging out or anything like that. But being surrounded by big sides of what used to be living animals was gross.
Creepy.
I made myself check around for a secret compartment where they might be storing to-be-butchered pets, but didn't see a thing. So I pushed back through the plastic strips, hurried past the vegetables, and opened up the walk-in door.
And lucky-thirteen me, I bumped right into Butcher Boy.
“Hey!” he croaked. I tried to bolt for the back door, but he grabbed me by the hair. “You!” he shouted, yanking me back. “You the one who messed in my garbage!”
“Ow!” I cried.
“What you doing here! What you want!”
I tried to pry his hand off my hair, but he clamped on harder.
“You thief?”
“No!”
“Then what you want?”
“My cat!” I cried.
“Cat?” he asked, then shook my hair. “You put cat in cooler? Who pay you?”
“Nobody!”
“Who pay you?” He shook my hair so hard it felt like he was pulling off my scalp. “Guy next door?”
So I kicked him in the shin with all my might.
“Waaaowww!” he wailed, and let go of my hair.
I took off running, but he chased after me, shouting. “I find cat again, I kill you!”
I snagged the ball cap and tore down the alley. But when I looked over my shoulder, Butcher Boy wasn't chasing me, he was just watching from the back door, shaking his fist in the air.
When I got to the street, I looked for Grams but didn't see her. And I didn't really know what to do. I didn't want her going back down the alley to see if the ball cap was gone. And I didn't think she'd go straight to Maynard's without knowing I'd gotten out okay. So I walked up the street back toward the restaurant, keeping in the shadows and hiding behind trees.
And I was just thinking that maybe I should go up and peek in the window when the Kojo door opened and Grams hobbled out. “I'll be fine, sir,” she said, “but you should be glad I'm not the suing kind. Honestly, you should get that carpeting fixed! I could have broken my hip!”
“Psssst, Grams!” I whispered as she got closer. “I'll meet you at Maynard's.”
She nodded once and kept on walking.
Is my grams cool, or what?
Anyway, when we met up at Maynard's, she asked, “Anything?” as I handed over her hat. So I told her about the body parts in the Kojo cooler, then said, “But I don't think any of them's Dorito.”
“Okay So I think we were just overreacting, don't you?”
“But wait! The guy who chased me said, ‘If I find cat again, I kill you!' And then he asked who was paying me. He wanted to know if it was the guy next door.”
“Who?” Grams asked. “That Tiny character?”
“He could have meant someone on the other side.” I thought for a minute. “But this isn't helping me get Dorito back!”
“Wouldn't it be something if Dorito was at the fire escape waiting for us to return?”
Suddenly I felt hopeful. “You think?”
“Could very well be.”
So we hurried across Broadway, and then across Main, and while we were walking, Grams said, “I think I've pieced together most of what happened with the cats and all, but why didn't you tell me this yesterday?”
I just rolled my eyes and said, “‘Cause you were all wrapped up in Lady Lana, and how grateful I should be that she popped in to tell me she's been lying to me for years.”
Grams let out a heavy sigh and said, “Why does this all have to be so hard? And please don't go back to calling her Lady Lana. I thought we were past that. I thought you supported her wanting to make something of herself. She's doing her best to—”
“There you go again!” I said, spinning to face her. “You're sticking up for her! Why can't you admit she was wrong to lie to me!”
“Of course she was wrong! But give her credit for agreeing it was time to make things right. She came a long way to talk to you, you know.”
I started marching toward the Highrise. “Such a sacrifice.”
“Samantha, come on.”
I shook my head. “What were the two of you expecting? That I'd shrug and say, Oh hey, cool? Can't you understand that this makes everything else she's done come flooding back? She lies, she manipulates—”
“But she's trying to make things right, Samantha!”
I sighed. “Look, let's just drop it, okay? Thank you for being so nice about helping me find Dorito.” I gave her a little smile. “And by the way, you look really great in high-tops and jeans…”
“As you do in pink.”
We eyed each other a minute, then cracked up and headed home.
When we got to the fire escape, we discovered that Dorito was definitely not waiting for us. And after searching the area Grams finally said, “Let's take a break, okay? I think we could both use some dinner.” I shook my head. “I'm not hungry, Grams.” She sighed and said, “Well, you can stay out a while longer, but I'm going in.” So I moved into the shadows and watched as she went up the fire escape, stopping at every level to scan the area for Dorito. Then I slid down the wall and kept a sharp eye out for him, hoping he wanted to come home as much as I wanted him to. But after a while my mind started wandering, and I couldn't help thinking how being thirteen all over again was already the worst luck ever.
I also remembered what Hudson and Meg and Vera had said, and really, I did try to think about the good things. But when you're stuck outside alone in the cold on your second thirteenth birthday, hoping tha
t the cat you've told every single secret of your life to decides to maybe wander home, well, it's hard to focus on the positive.
And then, all of a sudden, out of the fog in my mind came Grams' voice. “Samantha?” It was floating above me … sort of a whisper. “Psssst. Samantha?”
I stood up and backed up so I could see the fifth-floor landing. “Over here!” I whispered.
She came pounding down the steps. “Great news!”
“What?”
It took forever for her to make it to the bottom. “Tony called!”
“Who?”
“Tornado Tony?”
“Oh.”
“He found Dorito!”
“You're kidding!”
“No! Described him to a T. Says he'll be out in front of Slammin' Dave's in five minutes!”
I looked across the Highrise lawn and spotted Tony's white van getting ready to turn onto Broadway from Wesler. “There he is now!”
But halfway across the lawn I had a terrible thought. I was already way ahead of Grams, but I stopped and waited for her. “He's not dead, is he?”
“Who?”
“Dorito!”
“Why would he be dead?”
Like little visual bites, finding Snowball, bagging Snowball, delivering Snowball played through my head. “Because… because …”
I couldn't stand it—I took off running. I tore across the grass, jaywalked Broadway, and practically ripped the passenger-door handle off Tony's van trying to get inside.
He came out the driver's side, Dorito in the crook of his arm. “This your boy?” he said with a grin.
“Dorito!” I tore around the front of the van and scooped him up. And after power-nuzzling him for a minute, I said to Tony, “Where did you find him?”
“I spotted him on Piños, just cruising.” He nodded. “Buff cat. He'd have done fine on his own.”
“Thank you! Oh, thank you thank you!”
I noticed that Grams was sort of stranded on the other side of the street, so I held up Dorito and signaled her to stay put. Then I shifted Dorito under one arm and dug in my jeans' pocket for the forty bucks.
He looked at it and said, “No way, Triple-T. Consider it my gift to you.” He got in his van, saying, “But if the old lady ever needs some cleanin' done, you make sure she calls me, okay?”