Capo Gatto

Life in this world ain’t no easy ride. It never was. Cryin’ ain’t gonna change that, so just get used to it. Once in a while, guys with enough Tomcat in them to stand up on their feet and fight back can do something about it. Sometimes they can even win.

Well pal, I’m all Tomcat, from my head to the end of my tail, and there ain’t nobody I can’t look in the eye. None of ‘em, Cat, Dog or Human, is going to just roll over me. Not ever. I won’t be made a fool of by anybody that walks on two legs or four.

They call me “Capo Gatto.” That’s Italian for Boss Cat. Yeah. Every other Cat in this Organization does exactly what I tell ‘em to, with no backtalk. Or else they don’t do nothin’ at all, for very long. Someday a bigger, meaner Cat may come along and take my place, but it ain’t happened yet, so get used to my mug. I ain’t goin’ noplace.

I demand respect in this city, and I darn well get it too, from the humans on down. Even their dogs know enough to keep their distance from me, or else mind their own business.

As for the various rodents, I don’t want to hear about no rodents. They ain’t goin’ to be around too long anyhow, as soon as I get the time to care of ‘em. They all know my name, too. Yeah.

I work directly for the Don; Benito Leonetti himself. I don’t report through no human underboss, not even Carlo Rossi, his Consiglieri. I eat from his table and sleep on his bed. You can’t get no closer than that. Wherever Don Benito goes, I ain’t far away, and you can bet that I see you. The eyes of Cat are bright, and they don’t miss nothin’.

The two of us came over from Sicily in 1934, and I’ve been with him ever since. I’m his partner in everything he does. Benito takes good care of me, and I take care of him, too. There ain’t no button-man or mob torpedo gonna get close to him while I’m around, and you can take that to the bank. I’d sense anything like that comin,’ and tear the guy apart.

As soon as we got off the boat from Palermo, we started takin’ over. The puny little Outfit that was left in this city after Prohibition got repealed was nothin’ but a bunch of pushovers, when a real Boss declared himself.

The money from the illicit breweries and speakeasies might have disappeared, but Don Benito knew how to set up more and better sources of cash, rackets that were more profitable and harder to stop. That made all of ‘em sit up and take notice.

Anybody who objected to the new ways just wasn’t around anymore. Those are the rules of the game we play: the toughest, most ruthless player wins all the chips. The loser don’t get nothin’ but a plot in Greenvale Cemetery, and maybe flowers, sent to his widow.

Benito Leonetti is what we call a “Man of Respect.” He was born with it, that extra something that makes all the others look up to him, and turn to him when things get rough. That would’ve been true no matter where we set up our business. All the minor league wise-guys and old “Mustache-Petes” around here figured that out PDQ. After a couple of ugly incidents, they all fell into line without much fuss.

Before we came, everybody had been working “l’uno contro l’atro.” One against all the others. All of ‘em were pulling in different directions like a Chinese fire drill, with nobody gettin’ anyplace. In just a couple of years we straightened all of that out and built our organization up into somethin’ respectable, a real Syndicate. Everybody was all working together, with the Don sitting on the very top.

Nobody dared to shoot his mouth off, either. Most of them chumps made more dough in Don Leonetti’s Organization than they ever had on their own anyway, so things quieted back down real quick.

For my part, I had even less trouble with the assorted alley-cats, strays, and others of the Feline persuasion who hung around our house and the Syndicate’s headquarters. It ain’t smart to mess around with Mister Leonetti or his Capo Gatto. On the other hand, all of ‘em who went along with my way of doing things lived better than they ever had before. It ain’t hard to choose between tuna fish and scraps out of trash bins.

“Boss Cat”. That’s what my name means in English. Benito gave it to me back in Palermo, when I was just a skinny new-weaned kitten. “Capo Gatto.” It’s a good name, actually pretty close to what my own kind call me, so I took it up as my own. It says who I am in this world beneath the sun. The Chief. The guy at the top of the pile. The Capo.

I’m from the Clan of Cat, see? That’s a proud thing. We’re different form all the others. Dogs might be happy to follow Humans around and lick their hands, but we Cats demand and get respect. There’s a legend among us that in ancient times, Cats were worshiped as gods. We ain’t never forgot it, neither. That’s just how things are, so get used to it.

This city is a lot different from the one we came from, but one thing always stays the same: Cats are at the top of the heap. Humans, dogs, and everybody else are just looking up at us. They ain’t never gonna get where we are, and they know it.

As for the human setup, there are three Italian “Families” that control all the business in this burg: Don Leonetti’s is the most powerful. Then there’s the Carlotti Family, and the Falcone Coalition. The Falcones have been here since before the turn of the century, but the Carlottis came over about the same time as we did.

All of that boils down to one thing: Benito Leonetti runs everything that goes on here, from the waterfront to the river. That’s pretty much the whole town.

Those other families don’t really count, see? They might puff themselves up and rule over their little empires, but they pay a yearly cut to the Leonetti underboss for the privilege of doin’ business. They’re strictly second-rate. Them bums have to ask for permission from Don Benito before they can swat a fly.

For all intents and purposes, we are the city: Benito Leonetti and me. Some of the humans call our organization “the Mob,” and some say, “the Outfit.” Among ourselves, we call it “Our World.” It’s different from the world most people see, but always right here, hidden in plain sight, our own place beneath the sun. And we run it however we see fit. Nobody makes fools of us, not ever. Not Governors, Senators, G-Men, nobody.

It’s a pretty sweet setup, or at least it would be, except for one little problem that won’t go away. That problem is an Irish cop named Detective Lieutenant Sam McConnell, and his orange Cat sidekick, Marmalade. They’re with the Metro PD. Wherever we turn, they’re always right there in our faces, makin’ trouble.

We still ain’t settled with them two characters, but it’s comin’. Oh yeah. They’ve gotten in our way too many times. The both of ‘em are just too smart for their own good, and it’s gonna bite ‘em on the ass someday, too. Mister Leonetti and me have come way too far to let some Mick Policeman and his ring-tailed buddy stop us now.

There ain’t nobody big enough to do that, and if Marmalade and his partner think they can, let ‘em come and try it. A lot of guys already did, and it didn’t turn out so good for ‘em. It ain’t gonna be no different for those two. It’s just a matter of time.

Like I already said, we started out in Palermo, Sicily. Benito Leonetti was just a tough, snot-nosed kid who grew up roaming the alleys around the waterfront. His mother was a laundress who could barely feed herself, much less a growin’ kid. He didn’t have nothin, not even a father, on account of the local “Black Hand” had snuffed out his Papa for talkin’ outa turn.

There was more street kids in Palermo than you could ever count, and maybe one out of every hundred lived to see his twentieth birthday. Benito was definitely that one in a hundred. By the time he was old enough to “make his bones,” he’d decided he was as good as anybody and wasn’t going to take it no more. Not from nobody.

The only way to get any respect in this world is to fight for it, and if there was one thing Benito Leonetti could do, it was fight. He started out by puttin’ one local bullyboy in the hospital for peddling’ papers on the street corner Benito had taken for his own. Then he worked his way up from there.

After a couple of years, he let all the bookies in our area know they was workin’ for him now. He made it stick, too, by protecting them from the rest of the street toughs that roamed around lookin’ for trouble. We started livin’ a whole lot better then, on account of the cut Benito got off the top of their racket.

It took him fifteen years to claw his way to the top of the families and organizations in Palermo, but he made it before he was thirty years old. At the end of that time there was most of a hundred people workin’ for him and his underbosses, and everybody in that whole city called him “Mister Leonetti.”

Except for me. I called him my own personal human – my friend. That’s a lifetime bond for my kind, and we Cats don’t go back on our promises. Our honor means everything to us.

I first met Benito when he saw me scrounging for food in an alley, just barely old enough to be away from my mama. He took me in, that very day. He saved my life. Alley kittens and strays don’t live very long in Palermo; that’s just the way things are.

Maybe he saw something in me that reminded him of himself. I never knew for sure. But he took me home with him, and we ain’t never parted since.

I swore to all the Saints, then and there, that Benito was my human being. Mine. Anybody that tried to hurt him was gonna have my claw marks all over his ugly face before he got the job done. You can make book on that, pal.

I was still a little tiny thing when Benito heard the pickings were better in the States and decided to immigrate. He turned his Palermo organization over to his chief underboss, packed up everything he wanted from his house, and bought a ticket to the USA. I went with him. Where he goes, I go too.

We didn’t travel third class on no glorified cattle boat bound for Ellis Island, neither. We crossed the Atlantic in style, in a first-class suite aboard the brand-new ocean liner SS Conte di Savoia. That was the biggest ship I ever saw, but it wasn’t big enough for my insides. I stayed seasick from one shore of the “big puddle” to the other.

A Cat oughta have four solid, dry places to put his paws, I always say. Ones that don’t try to move underneath him, see? Goin’ out on that much water ain’t natural for anybody, and that goes double for Cats.

As a matter of fact, the Don didn’t look so hot himself by the time we saw the statue of the Big Lady, standing tall with her light in the entrance to the harbor. But we wasn’t goin’ back to where we came from anytime soon, so I quit worrying about it. Just as soon as I had all of my claws sunk in good, solid dirt, that is.

The first thing we did was to grab a cab to the Biltmore Hotel. We didn’t open the door of our room there for three days, except to let in the maid and room service. By then my whiskers weren’t drooping quite so much.

Then we started settin’ ourselves up in our new home. We didn’t have to go through all the awful rigamarole the poor slobs coming in through Ellis Island did, but we still had to go to the main Courthouse so that Benito could register himself as a “Resident Alien.”

They made us stand in line there for hours, with all the ordinary people who didn’t matter one whisker in this world, and never would. That was a humiliation I found intolerable.

Benito took it quietly, but I was really steamin’ by the time we got to the head of the line. Didn’t these Government flunkies know who they was dealin’ with? Well, they would before a year was out, that I promised myself.

And that was when we first laid eyes on those two troublesome Cops, Sam McConnell and his ring-tailed orange Cat buddy, Marmalade. Yeah. It was one of those frozen moments in time that you never forget, even though you might want to.

They was standin’ off to one side, looking over the new immigrants off the first-class liners from Europe. One by one, like they was memorizing us, stickin’ us in little slots in their memories. Maybe they were. Both of ‘em had minds like cameras. If they ever saw you, they knew you from then on.

McConnell was a couple of inches shy of six feet, and maybe a little heavy for his height. He had a face that looked like he hadn’t smiled more than twice in his whole life. His eyes were dark brown agate and cold as a winter night, below the brim of his stained fedora, and they missed nothing that happened in his whole world.

Marmalade was still a small kitten riding in the pocket of his awful, smelly old overcoat, and I wasn’t much bigger at the time. We saw each other instantly – and knew each other. Yeah. My future nemesis and me, glaring at each other eye to eye, like we already knew everything that was gonna happen between us in the next few years.

Fate can be a strange thing, and I knew mine was somehow intertwined with that of this orange Cop Cat, for better or worse. We gave each other the slow blinks that are the way my kind say, “Ok, I see you, and respect you. I acknowledge your presence in my territory.” Both of us knew we’d see each other again, and not as friends.

Benito and Sam McConnell recognized each other too. That wily old Cop knew the Don instantly for who and what he was, and marked him down as somebody he would eventually have to come to terms with. Somebody who was now a part of his world, and who wasn’t goin’ away anytime soon. Somebody he would need to watch, as long as both of them were still alive.

And Benito Leonetti knew him, too. He made him for a Cop, then and there, and not just any Cop, but one of the ones who actually lived up to the badge. Somebody you might kill, but you’d never buy him off or intimidate him in any way.

The two of ‘em nodded to each other across the crowd, there in the Courthouse. Don Benito Leonetti, and Detective Lieutenant Sam McConnell. Two faces of the same coin. Two men whose elemental nature destined them to be utterly opposed for the rest of their lives.

We didn’t see them for a while after that, but we heard of their exploits, toolin’ around town in their baby-blue ’32 Ford Coupe, makin’ a name for themselves.

Most of it was by solving robberies and homicides that none of their buddies could crack. McConnell began to be known as the best Detective on the force in them days, and the papers was full of his pictures, with Marmalade always beside him.

In ‘thirty-five, the two of ‘em dealt the Carlotti organization a swift kick where it hurt the most. They actually managed to jail their Don and his bookkeeper! Alfredo Carlotti had gotten just a little bit too careless in an indiscretion with a local skirt, and it came back to bite him. Oh, yeah.

Dames are a weakness, I say. For one thing they’re too expensive, and for another they cause trouble in all sorts of unexpected ways. A “Man of Respect” can’t afford attachments that might limit his actions in any way. They are a chink in his armor that makes him vulnerable

Alfredo didn’t stay in jail long of course, not with the stable of high-priced lawyers the Carlotti family keeps on retainer, but it hurt their prestige. People who ought to have been runnin’ scared of ‘em was laughing up their sleeves instead. That ain’t never good. No.

And I knew, just as sure as I knew light from dark, that Marmalade and his badge-carrying human friend would be comin’ after us too, just as soon as we made a single mistake. It was destino – fate, that’s all. It was only a matter of when.

Guys like McConnell and Don Benito are like fire and water, see? They can’t exist together. They have to try and put each other out of business. It ain’t on account of hating each other, but just because of who and what they are.

McConnell was all about “right” and “wrong,” and the fight between good and evil. My Don, on the other hand, knew there were no such things as right and wrong. There was only winning and losing, living and dying. He respected what guys like McConnell believed in, but he could never share it.

As each of our humans got bigger in his own way, a time was comin’ when the city would be too small to hold the two of ‘em. They both knew it and we Cats did too. When it came, things were gonna get very hot indeed.

And that made it inevitable that McConnell’s orange buddy Marmalade and me were goin’ to tangle too. You could bet anything you wanted, but it came down to only one thing. One of us wasn’t goin’ to walk away from that fight. Somebody was goin’ straight from that spot to Pet Lawn cemetery.

Or so I thought, and I know Marmalade thought so too. But when it did come down, our first personal eye-to-eye meeting wasn’t anything like either of us had figured on.

I want you to know somethin’ right now. Don Benito Leonetti never dealt no drugs. None at all. He saw how smack and soda and speed ate the hearts out of humans, and reefer only made ‘em crave for the harder stuff. Every one of ‘em ended up pouring his whole life into getting his next fix. Until one day there was no more life left to give, and their sad, shriveled up corpses got found in the gutter one mornin’.

“No,” Benito said adamantly. “I will make my living in this world by fooling them, by making them think they can win and then taking all their money, but the choice will always be theirs. I will not deal in the corruption of men’s souls.”

Nor would he touch money from prostitution. “It is no better than slavery,” he said. “A pimp is ‘infamita.’” He meant unclean, an untouchable, beneath contempt. The Carlottis did that kind of business, and Benito had no respect at all for them, or their Don.

Our income, of which we made plenty, was almost all from gambling. We controlled the numbers game, the horse rooms, and the card and dice parlors all over the city, and a hefty cut off the top of all of ‘em flowed straight into the Don’s coffers.

It was a good living, too. The rest of the mouse chasers in this town could eat their cat chow, but I dined on sardines and crab meat, set out for me by Benito’s own hand. Bet on it, pal.

And none of it came from anything that violated the Don’s personal code of conduct. It was a law he made for himself. A guy has got to have principles, or he ain’t nothin’. Don Benito had his, and I had mine.

Our archrivals, Marmalade and Sam McConnell, had their principles too. Different worlds have different rules, but in the end, not so very different, after all. Any one of us could easily have been his counterpart, and lived that other life, if the world we were born into had been just a little bit different.

And that’s what finally brought me and Marmalade face to face. Whisker brushing whisker, eyeball to eyeball. Those personal lines in the sand that neither of us would ever cross, the ones that defined who we were in this world.

A rumor went out on the streets one day and swept across the city. Somebody from our side had put a death-price on Sam McConnell’s head. I made some discreet inquiries, and at first it looked like the contract on his life had come from the Falcones.

I knew about it even before Don Benito did, of course. I’ve got my feline sources of information all over this town, in every house where any Cat lived with humans, and that’s just about all of ‘em. They bring me stuff no human would ever be able to find out.

Who watches what he says in the presence of his Cat? Nobody, that’s who. They ain’t got sense enough to realize we hear every word, much less that our loyalties might not be exactly what they think they are.

The hit order supposedly came from Don Marco Falcone himself, through one of his underbosses. That’s what the little calico Cat who shared his bed told her contact, and he brought it straight to me. Falcone’s underboss then allocated the cash for the contract and placed it with an imported button-man from Chicago.

You don’t use your own people for work like that, not if you’re smart. You get as many “cut-outs,” layers of command, as possible between the Family head and the finger that actually pulls the trigger, or the hand that tightens the garrote.

But there was something odd about it that kept nagging at me. It was all wrong, some way. Why would Falcone go after McConnell personally? Something was rotten here.

Things could get rough between our kind and the law enforcement types, but it was usually a fair fight, not like this at all. It was a case of each side knowing that the other is gonna do what they have to do, and fully expecting them to do it. Strictly business. There was no passion involved, unless it was a matter of personal affront. And there hadn’t been one between Marco Falcone and Sam McConnell.

Now if it had been the Carlottis, I could have seen some point to it. McConnell and his buddy Marmalade had actually put Don ‘Fredo in jail, and his bookkeeper with him, the two most important humans in the Carlotti organization! That’s about as personal an affront as you could ask for. But Alfredo’s hands were clean in this, or so it appeared.

Unless Carlotti was actually manipulating Falcone from the shadows, like a hidden spider in the center of its web! That had to be it. Yeah! Alfredo Carlotti was using Falcone people and their hired muscle connections as one more blind, one more way to shift suspicion from himself.

Don Benito’s people brought him the information a couple of hours after I got it, and he came to the same conclusion, just about as fast as I had. There were heated discussions behind closed doors all afternoon between Benito and his Consiglieri and the Underbosses.

One word was repeated over and over by the Don and his top people: Omerta. The formal Italian code of silence that forbade any collusion between the Families and established authority.

But singling out an important law officer for murder was over the line, just too drastic a move. It might lead to all-out war between the Police authorities and the Families who ran this city. It was a nasty way to do business. No good could come of it.

Benito was outraged that Carlotti would stoop to such an action, and so were his top lieutenants. The Don leaned heavily toward informing Detective McConnell that a death price had been set on him. So warned, it would then be his own affair, and our hands would be clean.

But that could not under any circumstances be done. It was out of the question. To do that would violate Omerta, the law of silence. Our people never ever gave information to theirs. However much mutual respect might be felt between individuals, that was just not done. It would be unthinkable.

Then Benito noticed me. I was relaxing on my favorite chair in the corner, where the afternoon sun shines through the Don’s office window. His gaze locked with mine, and his brow creased in thought. My human friend seemed to be trying to tell me something without actually saying anything, if you catch my drift. The other humans in the room, his Consigliere, the Underbosses and Capos, never noticed anything at all. Whatever Benito was trying to say was for me alone.

And suddenly I knew exactly what he wanted from me. Omerta held only among Humans – the Clan of Man. It had nothing to do with my kind, the Cats. We lived by our own set of rules and no other. It had been that way since the beginning of time.

If I could get to Marmalade and let him know that an assassination contract had been put out on Sam MacConnell, it would be up to him how he warned and defended his human buddy. That would restore the balance between our two sides.

It wouldn’t be easy, I knew. Even if I could penetrate his defenses and meet him face to face, Marmalade had no reason whatever to trust me, or to believe anything I said. He had pledged himself to a Cop, in the ancient way of the Clan of Cat, while my loyalties lay with the Families, and Don Benito specifically. There was literally nothin’ either of us would not do in the service of our chosen human companions, and we both knew it.

I set out just about an hour before sunset with one companion, a tough, lean grey Cat the humans called “Scruff.” McConnell’s place was across town from Don Benito’s headquarters, so we wouldn’t get there until well after dark.

What Scruff and I had to do could only be accomplished under the cloak of a moonless night. Even so, I had my doubts we could even approach the Cop’s lair without being detected by Marmalade’s Feline minions, much less get inside. Marmalade’s eyes were every bit as bright as my own, and his Cat senses just as sharp.

It was a working-class neighborhood, not nearly as luxurious as where I lived with my Don. Marmalade and Sam weren’t about luxury. No. They was all about the fight against what they saw as the forces of evil, and I was one of the “bad guys,” about to cross the line into their home territory. Yeah.

It was a quarter to nine when we finally lay crouching in the alley behind the modest clapboard house where my nemesis lived with his chosen human. We could clearly see the back yard between the pickets of the fence, and the door atop its wooden stoop. No night is ever truly dark to the eyes of Cat.

Scruff would have to remain here, standing lookout in the shadows, while I made my final approach alone. It had to be that way, if I were to have any chance at all of actually talkin’ to Marmalade. If both of us came near that door he’d know it, and would attack without warning, as ferociously as he was able. I would have done the same myself.

Nodding to my companion I squeezed between the pickets and glided slowly across the yard, keeping to the darkest shadows, as quietly as only one of my kind can. Silent and sure are the footfalls of Cat, and the night is our chosen time.

There was still no sign of my adversary, as I crept up the steps to the door. Marmalade was there, somewhere inside. I could sense him, and I knew he was alert to my presence as well. The Clan of Cat were given senses not possessed by humans, or any other living creature. We do not guess about our surroundings. We know.

There is a device sometimes installed by humans who are graced by the presence of a Cat in their homes. It is like a smaller entrance, cut into the lower part of a human door. I saw that Sam Mc Connell had provided just such an entry for his partner Marmalade. Just wide enough for the shoulders of an adult Cat, but too narrow for any dog large enough to do harm. It was unlatched.

It was the moment of decision. I had trespassed the territory of my Cat nemesis, but now I was about to enter his lair. Once I had passed through his door, Marmalade would be merciless, unless I could somehow get him to allow me time to talk. He was here, and not very far away. I sensed that his partner, the Policeman, was asleep somewhere upstairs.

Holding my breath, I softly entered, my whiskers just brushing the sides of the pet door. I began slowly to cross the laundry room into which it opened, paying attention to every padding footfall, more silently than I had ever crept before.

“Are ya’s sure ya want to do this, Capo?” came the silent speech by which my kind communicate with one another. “Here, on my own territory?”

I had not taken three steps and Marmalade was there, his flame-colored eyes glaring at me from a shadowed corner. We were finally face to face, and I had one instant of time in which to speak.

“I ain’t here to fight, Marmalade,” I said. “I ain’t here to do any harm to you or your human. None at all. But you need to hear me out.”

I took what might be my last breath. Now it was up to him. Either we would fight to the death, or if the Spirit Above was willing, he would hear my warning of what was about to happen.

“Ya’s got a lot of brass, I’ll say that for ya. You’d risk hide and hair coming in here, just to bring a message?”

“There ain’t nothin’ I won’t do for the Don,” I said. “He’s my human. Mine.”

Suddenly the air between us wasn’t quite as electric with menace as it had been a moment before. I still couldn’t see anything but Marmalade’s eyes, but I knew he wouldn’t attack, at least for the next few minutes.

“I can understand that” he said, stepping slowly out of the shadows so I could see him. He was a big, tough looking orange tabby, nearly as big as me. I was relieved that I wouldn’t have to fight him, at least not tonight.

“Okay, I’m listening,” he said “Speak your piece. Say what ya’s came to say.”

“Don Benito wants you to know there’s a death price on your human. There’s gonna be a professional hit. The contract looks like it came from the Falcones, but Alfredo Carlotti is really behind it. He wants revenge for bein’ thrown in jail over that dame last year. He wants it real bad. He wants you and your human dead, and he’ll pay any price to make it happen.”

“Me? The hit is on me too?”

“Yeah. Word on the street says the contract mentions you by name.”

“When is the kill supposed to take place?”

“In the next couple of days. My guess is the button-man will try it in the evening, or at night, when McConnell is tired and off his game.”

“Sam ain’t never off his game. Ya’s oughta know that by now.”

“I’m just passing along what I heard.”

“So, what’s in it for you, Capo? Why would the Don warn us? It seems to me he’d be ahead of the game with Sam and me gone.”

“Don Benito don’t do business like that. It ain’t seemly. We’ll beat you fair and square, Marmalade, and we’ll get rich doin’ it. But paid assassinations of Cops is strictly off limits to the way my Don thinks.”

There was at least a dozen heartbeats’ worth of dead silence between us, there in the heavy darkness. Then he stirred and blinked his eyes. “Okay, Capo. Go back and tell your human the message was delivered. And I owe ya’s one for this.”

“You bet you do. This kind of thing don’t come cheap. What’ll you do now?”

“I’ll take care of it, that’s what. The how and why are my own business. But ya’s got my marker. Someday I’ll be there for you, when you need it the most.”

I nodded then, and backed out the way I’d come in. In the alley, my companion Scruff materialized out of the night, his green eyes reflecting the glow of a distant streetlamp.

“Did ya’s see him?” he asked. “Did he hear ya’s out?”

“Yeah.” I said. “This job is done. The Don’s hands and mine are clean in this affair. Time to go home.”

It was daylight before we were back in the fashionable neighborhood where I lived with Benito Leonetti. Scruff left me here and headed around to the garden shed where he usually slept. We were both dead tired after our night-long trek.

The Don was alone when I came into his sunroom, sipping his first cup of coffee of the morning, amid his flowering plants. I hopped into my usual chair beside him, and he turned to me with a questioning gaze. I gave him the slow blink with which my kind communicate assurance, and he returned it with a faint smile. My job and his were done.

It was almost a week later when I heard what had taken place as a result. Marmalade had simply out-thought the human killer, planning out the man’s job as if it had been his own. Then he and a dozen of his Cat friends had laid a careful ambush and sprung it one evening as he and McConnell were coming home after work.

The button-man had stationed himself on the roof of an empty house across the street, waiting for his moment to cut the Police Detective down with his high-powered rifle, but he wasn’t hidden quite well enough. Marmalade’s Feline troops had spotted the guy just as McConnell’s ’32 Ford coupe pulled into his parking place. Twelve angry Cats had attacked the would-be murderer in force, all of them shrieking the high battle cry of our kind. Marmalade streaked to join them as soon as Sam opened the car door to see what the incredible noise was about.

Together, the Cop Cat and his friends had simply torn that hired killer to shreds. He fell from the roof screaming, with half of them still clinging on and clawing his face. His rifle clattered down beside him, a clear indication of what he’d intended.

I later heard that the killer had spent over a week in Mercy General hospital before being moved to the County Jail, with more than a hundred stitches in various tender parts of his anatomy. Probably too good a fate for scum like that, I thought privately.

I felt good about the whole thing – really good. Honor had been satisfied. The old codes that governed how conflicts could be fought and decided were still in place. My world was as it always had been.

There would still be a final showdown between me and my human, and Marmalade and his. That was still an inevitable part of our shared future, but I knew it would at least be a fair fight, not a paid assassination.

Honor is everything. Without it, no one can do any sort of business. There is a name in Italian for a human who is without honor. We call someone like that “un uomo senza ombra.” He is “a man with no shadow” – literally no man at all. Someone who owns no place upon the earth and under the sun. The equivalent for a member of the Clan of Cat is even worse, and I will not say it here.

If Alfredo Carlotti wanted to live that way it was his own lookout. Don Benito and I were better than that, and so were Marmalade and his human friend Sam. They and we would continue to live in our worlds, and in our own way. Someone would always win, and someone would always lose, but at least it would be in a fair fight.

END