The Barker Street Regulars

to drown today’s Boston Globe.
    But I wasn’t. The man must have been so preoccupied with his task that he hadn’t paid attention to the sound of my car, and, of course, I hadn’t slammed the door. Startled, he flung the white thing onto the ground, gave it a brutal kick toward the water, cursed at me, and made a dash for the dark panel truck. As he backed out f of the turnout, he hollered, “Hey, bitch, it’s not even my fucking cat!”
    I wished afterward that I’d imprinted every detail about that truck on my memory. I had no excuse. I’d been reading Sherlock Holmes every day for weeks. Still, I didn’t notice whether the panel truck was black or dark blue, and I can almost never tell one make of car from another unless I’m close enough to read “Dodge” or “Chevrolet.” I did not get the plate number, didn’t even look at it, had no idea whether it was even a Massachusetts plate. But I got a good look at the; man. He was in his thirties, I thought, six feet or so, I thin, with brown hair that somehow looked expensively cut. The sides were short, and the hair on top hung in what I had some idea might be known as a shingle. It occurs to me that shingles is a disease. Anyway, his hair, I thought, might have been cut in an effort to disguise his most memorable feature, which was a prominent bulbous forehead. He had on the kind of fashionably loose-fitting suit that I see mainly on actors in movies set in California. The suit was dark green. On a freezing February day, he wore nothing over the suit, no coat, no parka. He must have thought it would take him only a second to drown what indeed proved to be a cat.
     

Chapter Six
     
    T HE WHITE OBJECT THAT lay on the ground at the river’s edge was a pillowcase fastened shut with rough twine. Before picking up the pillowcase, I explored it quickly with my gloved hands. The animal inside squirmed, fought, and yowled. I had to remind myself that it would be no kindness to release the creature and let it dash off to starve to death or be killed by a car. My fingers found what felt like, and subsequently proved to be, a smooth rock about the size of a football. I hoped the man had smashed his toes on it.
    I am still not sure how I transported the cat, the bag, and the rock to my car. My intention was to support the rock with one hand and the wiggling animal with the other. The poor thing might already be injured; the man had, after all, hurled the pillowcase to the ground and kicked it. If I simply picked up the pillowcase and carried it, the stone might do additional harm. I ended up, I think, half dragging the pillowcase to the tailgate of my Bronco.
    Rowdy’s crate, occupied by close to ninety pounds of perpetually hungry predator, was just in back of the front seats. Kimi’s empty crate was at the rear. I unlocked and opened the tailgate, then briefly left the pillowcase and its contents on the ground. Hurrying to the still-open driver’s side door, I fished around on the floor behind the seat, found an old dog blanket that I always carry, and hastily shrouded the back and sides of Rowdy’s crate. In the big covered cage, he looked like a gigantic, furry parakeet. “Within seconds,” I warned him over the caterwauling from the pillowcase, “I am going to put a cat in the back of this car, and I don’t want your opinion on the subject. Is that clear? Good boy.” So far, at least, he was doing nothing except looking interested.
    After trotting back to the rear of the car, I opened Kimi’s crate and did my best to support the little animal as I lifted the pillowcase. Once I had cat, bag, and stone inside the crate, I tried and failed to untie the twine and had to go dig my Swiss Army knife out of the glove compartment. By the time I returned to the rear of the car, Rowdy was shuffling around and thumping in his crate. The poor frantic cat was momentarily silent. With one hand, I held the pillowcase shut, and with the other, I used one of the knife’s four or five blades to cut the twine. Then, holding the crate door shut, I tucked the knife in my pocket. My eyes had moved from the crate. When I looked back at it... Well, sorry, but the cat was out of the bag.
    To prevent the rock from slamming into the cat as I drove, I had to reach back in the crate and retrieve the Pillowcase. The cat was now huffed up in a ball of enraged, hissing fur in a far comer of the crate. The poor thing wasn’t much to look at. From the head down, it wasn’t too