The Burglar Who Traded Ted Williams - By Lawrence Block Page 0,21
door.”
“What kind will you get, Bern? The kind with a powerful spring, that sooner or later you screw up while you’re setting it and it takes off the tip of your finger? The kind that breaks the mouse’s neck, and you open up the store and there’s this dead mouse with its neck broken, and you’ve got to deal with that first thing in the morning?”
“Maybe one of those new glue traps. Like a Roach Motel, but for mice.”
“Mice check in, but they can’t check out.”
“That’s the idea.”
“Great idea. There’s the poor little mousie with its feet caught, whining piteously for hours, maybe trying to gnaw off its own feet in a pathetic attempt to escape, like a fox in a leg-hold trap in one of those animal-rights commercials.”
“Carolyn—”
“It could happen. Who are you to say it couldn’t happen? Anyway, you come in and open the store and there’s the mouse, still alive, and then what do you do? Stomp on it? Get a gun and shoot it? Fill the sink and drown it?”
“Suppose I just drop it in the garbage, trap and all.”
“Now that’s humane,” she said. “Poor thing’s half-suffocated in the dark for days, and then the garbage men toss the bag into the hopper and it gets ground up into mouseburger. That’s terrific, Bern. While you’re at it, why not drop the trap into the incinerator? Why not burn the poor creature alive?”
I remembered something. “You can release the mice from glue traps,” I said. “You pour a little baby oil on their feet and it acts as a solvent for the glue. The mouse just runs off, none the worse for wear.”
“None the worse for wear?”
“Well—”
“Bern,” she said. “Don’t you realize what you’d be doing? You’d be releasing a psychotic mouse. Either it would find its way back into the store or it would get into one of the neighboring buildings, and who’s to say what it would do? Even if you let it go miles from here, even if you took it clear out to Flushing, you’d be unleashing a deranged rodent upon the unsuspecting public. Bern, forget traps. Forget poison. You don’t need any of that.” She tapped the side of the cat carrier. “You’ve got a friend,” she said.
“You’re not talking friends. You’re talking cats.”
“What have you got against cats?”
“I haven’t got anything against cats. I haven’t got anything against elk, either, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep one in the store so I’ll have a place to hang my hat.”
“I thought you liked cats.”
“They’re okay.”
“You’re always sweet to Archie and Ubi. I figured you were fond of them.”
“I am fond of them,” I said. “I think they’re fine in their place, and their place happens to be your apartment. Carolyn, believe me, I don’t want a pet. I’m not the type. If I can’t even keep a steady girlfriend, how can I keep a pet?”
“Pets are easier,” she said with feeling. “Believe me. Anyway, this cat’s not a pet.”
“Then what is it?”
“An employee,” she said. “A working cat. A companion animal by day, a solitary night watchman when you’re gone. A loyal, faithful, hardworking servant.”
“Miaow,” the cat said.
We both glanced at the cat carrier, and Carolyn bent down to unfasten its clasps. “He’s cooped up in there,” she said.
“Don’t let him out.”
“Oh, come on,” she said, doing just that. “We’re not talking Pandora’s Box here, Bern. I’m just letting him get some air.”
“That’s what the air holes are for.”
“He needs to stretch his legs,” she said, and the cat emerged and did just that, extending his front legs and stretching, then doing the same for his rear legs. You know how cats do, like they’re warming up for a dance class.
“He,” I said. “It’s a male? Well, at least it won’t be having kittens all the time.”
“Absolutely not,” she said. “He’s guaranteed not to have kittens.”
“But won’t he run around peeing on things? Like books, for instance. Don’t male cats make a habit of that sort of thing?”
“He’s post-op, Bern.”
“Poor guy.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s missing. But he won’t have kittens, and he won’t father them, either, or go nuts yowling whenever there’s a female cat in heat somewhere between Thirty-fourth Street and the Battery. No, he’ll just do his job, guarding the store and keeping the mice down.”
“And using the books for a scratching post. What’s the point of getting rid of mice if the books all wind up with claw marks?”