“And?”

She poured another drink, a short one, and paused with the glass halfway to her lips. She said, “ Bern? It wasn’t you, was it?”

“Huh?”

“I mean I could see how it could be a joke that got out of hand, but if it was, tell me now, huh? If you tell me now there won’t be any hard feelings, but if you don’t tell me now all bets are off.”

“You think I took your cat.”

“No I don’t. I don’t think you’ve got that kind of an asshole sense of humor. But people do wacky things, and who else could unlock all those locks and lock ’em up again on the way out? So all I want you to do is say, ‘Yes, Carolyn, I took your cat,’ or ‘No, you little idiot, I didn’t take your cat,’ and then we can get on with it.”

“No, you little idiot, I didn’t take your cat.”

“Thank God. Except if you had I’d know the cat was safe.” She looked at the glass in her hand as if seeing it for the first time. “Did I just pour this?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Well, I must have known what I was doing,” she said, and drank it. “The phone call.”

“Right. Tell me about it.”

“I’m not sure if it was a man or a woman. It was either a man making his voice high or a woman making her voice husky, and I couldn’t tell you which. Whoever it was had an accent like Peter Lorre except really phony. ‘Ve haff ze poosycat.’ That kind of accent.”

“Is that what he said? ‘Ve haff ze poosycat’?”

“Or words to that effect. If I want to see him again, di dah di dah di dah di dah.”

“What are all the di dahs about?”

“You’re not gonna believe this, Bern.”

“He asked for money?”

“A quarter of a million dollars or I’ll never see my cat again.”

“A quarter of a-”

“Million dollars. Right.”

“Two hundred and fifty thousand.”

“Dollars. Right.”

“For-”

“A cat. Right.”