Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) by Warren Murphy

herself Charterman participate in these dangerous practices?
    Are there other criminal activities under way at the Salamanda headquarters, and if so, does the woman who now chooses to call herself Charterman know anything about them? Or is she just a dupe?
    It is impossible to answer these questions at this time. More surveillance work might, however, produce the answers.
    Sarge snapped the manila folder shut, after rereading, with a certain literary pride, his last couple of sentences. If that didn’t get Alcetta to say continue the investigation, he didn’t know what would.
    He locked the file in a drawer in his desk, and to celebrate its completion, he went downstairs to Bogie’s to drink and to await the arrival of Trace and Chico from Las Vegas.
    And that was when he decided he had to get a television set for his office.
    Bogie’s had no television, but playing softly over the stereo system was music from one of the soft mush-music stations that abounded in New York City. At the stroke of the hour, the news came on, and the first item reported that Swami Salamanda, the controversial sex guru who had been attracting thousands of followers nationwide, was poisoned today in his East Village headquarters.
    Police called the death an apparent homicide and said that Salamanda appeared to have been killed by an exotic poison that had been painted on some roses. Salamanda traditionally ate the rose petals as part of a welcoming ceremony for new members.
    The news report said that Salamanda’s movement had been preparing for a nationwide rally in New York City the following Sunday. From there, as many as a thousand were expected to drive in caravans to Western Pennsylvania, where Salamanda’s new national headquarters—the City of Love—had been completed and was ready for occupancy.
    Sarge cuffed down his beer and left, annoyed at himself for not having a television set so he could have heard that news bulletin earlier. How stupid would he look if he had called Alcetta and said he had completed the report on the man’s wife, and somehow forgot to mention that his wife’s guru had just been murdered.
    He got into his rusty old black Ford sedan and drove downtown toward the Salamanda headquarters. With luck, he would be done and back in time to meet Chico and Trace at his office.

11
     
    It was just the way Chico had feared it would be. The meal on the plane was shish-kebab, and after it was placed in front of Trace and he had examined it, he called the stewardess over.
    “This is a pretty poor excuse for shish-kebab,” he said.
    “It’s one of our most popular meals, sir,” she said. “Perhaps you should try it before you decide you don’t like it.” She was a statuesque blonde who had always been pretty and so had always been used to giving orders.
    “I’m sure it’ll taste all right,” Trace said, “but…”
    “Yes?”
    “It only has altinci shishes on the kebab. I think to be a real shish-kebab, it ought to have least yedinci shishes on the kebab.”
    The stewardess looked at the plastic dinner plate in front of Trace, then questioningly at Chico, who was busily eating.
    Chico gulped and swallowed. “Turkish,” she explained. “He’s counting in Turkish for you.”
    “That’s right,” Trace said. “Turkish is like my second skin, a language I’m so familiar with. What I said was that there are only six shishes on this kebab and there ought to be at least seven. That’s what it means, altinci and yedinci . When I first started flying, stewardesses knew a lot of languages. Almost every one of them knew Turkish.”
    “That’s ’cause when you started flying, one of the scheduled stops was the Tower of Babel,” Chico said.
    “I’m sorry, sir,” the stewardess said. “I don’t know Turkish.”
    “Want to learn?” Trace asked. “It’s easy. Just repeat after me. Birinci, ikinci, ucuncu, dorduncu, besinci . That’ll get you up to five. Basically that’s all you need in Turkey. Except