Too Old a Cat (Trace 6) by Warren Murphy Page A

Istanbul. You have to go up to seven or eight in Istanbul. Unless you’re buying a woman. Then it’s back to five. If you pay more than besinci for a woman, you’ve been taken.”
    “Thank you very much, sir,” the stewardess said, backing away nervously. “Let me know how you enjoy the meal.”
    “On a scale of birinci to onuncu , I’d make it a besinci ,” Trace said.
    “Will you stop?” Chico said.
    “All right,” Trace conceded. The stewardess left. Trace took a piece of meat from the shish-kebab, chewed it for a while, and said, “I overrated it. It’s only a dorduncu .”
    “Good. More for me,” Chico said, and switched her empty plate with his.
    “Listen,” he said. “I’m changing my whole life for you. Don’t you think you can change your eating habits for me?”
    “Sure. What do you want me to change?”
    “Eat less.”
    “Why? Is America running out of food?”
    “Any day now, if you keep going,” he said.
    Chico patted his arm reassuringly. “Don’t worry about a thing. When America goes empty, we’ll just move to Turkey. With your extensive knowledge of the language, I’m sure we’ll get along. And it is the perfect language for you, Trace, because you are a real turkey. Are you sure Sarge knows we’re coming?”
    “I told you, didn’t I?”
    “You did. That’s why I’m asking you again.”
    “Sarge knows we’re coming. He is delighted. He is doubly delighted that I may join his firm. He is triply—is triply a word? or is it triplily?—anyway, he’s delighted threefold that you may also join the firm. He says you provide the missing ingredient to our success as a detective agency.”
    “Brains?” she said.
    “No, money.”
    “Fat chance,” Chico said, “that you two ding-dongs will ever see a penny of mine. Did he really say that?”
    “No. He said you’d provide the female touch. Those little feminine wiles that disarm a suspect without ever letting him know that he’s a suspect, and then you finally have his head on your shoulder and he’s blubbering, telling you how he stove in Aunt Dilys’ head with an ax just to get his hands on her collection of stuffed mice.”
    “But I get to carry a gun, right? Can I shoot the fucker?”
    “Is he our client?” Trace asked.
    “Yes,” Chico said.
    “Did he pay his bill yet?”
    “Yes.”
    “Shoot the fucker,” Trace said.

12
     
    Razoni and Jackson learned, from Detective Gault and Gorman at the local precinct, that more than fifty persons had watched Swami Salamanda eat the poisoned rose and that the other eleven roses brought out to the stage were also poisoned. The young dark-haired girl who brought in the roses had vanished after Salamanda collapsed; no one knew her name or where she lived, and no one had yet come up with a line on her.
    Additionally, Razoni and Jackson learned that Detectives Gault and Gorman were not especially pleased about having two other detectives intruding on “their” murder investigation, even if those two other detectives did work right out of the commissioner’s office, because this was a page-one case and a chance for Detectives Gault and Gorman to get some publicity and perhaps get a leg up on the ladder toward promotion.
    In return, Detectives Gault and Gorman learned that Detective First Class Edward Razoni did not give a shit about their feelings, because how did he feel being dragged out of his house on a Sunday, and that if he were running the police they would both be promoted the day after the last of the new police cadets had made deputy chief inspector, and even this would be too soon because Detectives Gault and Gorman had made “the worst mistake detectives can make” and did they ever think of finding a new line of work?
    “Ed,” said Jackson later in the car, “what’s the ‘worst mistake detectives can make?’”
    Razoni shrugged. “I don’t know. I just made that up to make them feel rotten.”
    “Do you know that for the rest of their lives