Early last year I was given a promotion and a small raise at work. I had wanted to move out of K Town for months and could finally afford to. I found a partially furnished, converted garage in Burbank for $700 a month. I moved in on the evening of April second. That night, while stocking the cabinets, I found an envelope taped inside one of the doors. At first glance I mistook the letter inside for a nice gesture from a thoughtful person...

03/10/07

"Abandon all hope, ye who enter here."
- Dante Alighieri

Howdy Partner! Just kidding with the foreboding quote. Welcome to "Cato's Retreat," my nickname for the quaint cottage you now call home. I composed this missive to ease your assimilation by alerting you to the property's unique quirks. For starters: when shut, the front door fails to align properly with the floor beneath it. The resulting space serves as a highway for serpents and arachnids during the summer months. Fortunately, none of the snakes known to flourish in the area pose any harm to your wellbeing. The arachnids, on the other hand, are the worst the West Coast has to offer. Of particular concern are the Brown Recluse and the Black Widow. Their bites usually require medical attention and almost always cause scarring at the bite site. However, their potential for harm pales in comparison to the Maraiso, an aggressive carnivore with a breathtaking silver sheen, usually relegated to Southeast Asia. Maraisos first appeared in the area immediately after escaping from the Thunderdome I built for them to do battle in. Sometime last fall I staged a battle royal pitting all twelve of my Maraisos against one another. When the combatant I had prematurely crowned the victor became the first casualty I flew into an uncharacteristic rage. The last thing I remember was punching the Thunderdome. I awoke in the hospital four days later so swollen I could barely open my eyelids. In the likely event that you are bitten, dial 9-1-1 and brief the operator quickly as your faculties will wane with each passing second. Use what remains of your motor skills to find a comfortable surface for your inevitable collapse and take heart, with timely medical care a healthy, young human has a sixty percent chance of survival.

You should also know that five weeks ago Cato's Retreat hosted a pack of Pit Bulls bound for a fight in Bakersfield. Unfortunately, their Guatemalan handler did not do me the courtesy of adorning them with flea collars; Hence the itchy, pussy nodules that will spring up on your flesh in the next 24 hours. Housing the hounds was a means to repay a fraction of the gargantuan debt I owe Los Angeles's methamphetamine impresario. Which reminds me, on April sixth, two of his henchmen (a Negro with an eye patch and a Samoan with a bald, tattooed scalp) are scheduled to appear at your doorstep at quarter 'til midnight. Naturally, you will attempt to explain that I no longer reside here and that you have no knowledge of my whereabouts, but being men of absent character they will assume you are lying and inflict bodily harm upon you. Before this happens, heed the sage words my father spoke as he boarded a pontoon boat for what would prove his last deployment with the French Foreign Legion, "If you run from a bully, you'll be running for the rest of your life." You must execute both men immediately after opening the door. Attempting to negotiate or practice passive resistance will only result in more severe violence being visited upon you. To facilitate your undertaking I have provided a Smith & Wesson .44 caliber handgun identical to the one used by cinema's most memorable antihero, "Dirty Harry." To locate Molly, simply drag the mattress away from the wall. Using a flathead screwdriver or a switchblade, pry the corner tile upward to reveal the felt-lined locker underneath. Withdraw Molly and affix the silencer to her business end with a 180 degree clockwise rotation. When you hear a "click," you will know that the device is securely fastened. Do not become alarmed by the sudden rush of invincibility that will envelop you the moment your brain realizes that you posses the ability to kill with impunity.

Following the massacre, you will likely experience severe trepidation about babysitting the "smoking gun." Do not fret as Molly is unregistered and untraceable, her serial number having been defaced and her grip wrapped in oil muddling fibers. Simply return her to her domicile and forget she exists until I resurface to retrieve her in nine short weeks.

Once you have completed your task, locate a pay phone and call the following number, 818-537-3824. If no one answers, let the answering machine greet you but DO NOT LEAVE A MESSAGE. Instead, try again at 10AM sharp the following morning. Repeat this ritual religiously until the voice on the machine is the voice that answers the telephone. Ranzulli is a sworn enemy of the criminal syndicate that employs the thugs whose lives you extinguished and the closest thing I have to a friend on this planet. He will be happy to remove their bodies and dispose of all evidence that you murdered two men in cold blood.

Now I must take my leave of you. Please forgive me if I have painted Cato's Retreat in an unflattering light. Aside from the nasty business discussed in the first five paragraphs of this letter I can assure you that your time here will be nothing short of serene; Crime is virtually non-existent and the blond next door is a nymphomaniac whose husband spends nine months a year on a naval destroyer. Enjoy your stay!

Sincerely,

Cato Breslin

CB

Enclosures: 0

PS - Commit this letter to memory (verbatim) ASAP. The moment you have done so dispose of it through incineration. Thanks!

I dropped the letter and marched to the bedroom. You know that feeling you get when you hear a strange noise while watching a scary movie alone? You know there's nothing's behind you, but your stomach is knotted and you turn around slower than you would if you really didn't think that anything was there? That's how I felt as I crept into the bedroom and moved the mattress aside. I zeroed in on the corner tile and immediately noticed that its faint pattern ran in a different direction than those around it. I could hear my heart pounding as I pried the tile up to reveal a cavern a tad smaller than a high school locker…

The next morning I paid my new landlord an unscheduled visit pretending to be calm and collected. I made small talk for a few minutes before delicately transitioning into queries about her last tenant. Whether intentionally or unintentionally I couldn't tell, but Beatrice said little about Cato other than describing him as, "a polite, quiet, young man who always paid his rent on time." Finally I handed her the letter without a word of preface. I waited patiently as she circled the kitchen looking for her reading glasses. She left the living room for several minutes only to return empty-handed. My patience on E, I took the letter from her and started reading it out loud, but the phone rang about two sentences in. From standing within earshot of the call I gathered that the grandchild of someone close to her was in the hospital with appendicitis. Beatrice hung up, grabbed her purse and was out the door without so much as a wave.

At that point I aggressively tried to convince myself that I was enthusiastically becoming the victim of an elaborate prank, but I just couldn't. Who would take the time to write a letter that long and lawyerly just for shits and giggles, especially when he wouldn't even be there to see the payoff? So I faxed the letter to my brother (who is a cop in Phoenix) and asked him to check it out. Four hours later he called me back sounding as serious as I'd ever heard him. Cato Breslin did not exist, at least not officially. He had no driver's license or DMV history. His previous address turned out to be a post office box. I made up my mind to move out ASAP. However, I worked a double shift that day, and by the time I got home it was well past a polite hour to knock on Beatrice's door and tell her.

The morning of my third day, I hit the road at dawn to make a court date for a traffic ticket. The courthouse is in Beverly Hills, so I took Laurel Canyon south. I'm not sure if that's the norm, because I never drive that road in that direction at that hour, but the traffic made the 405 look like the Daytona Speedway. Five minutes before my scheduled hearing I could still see Studio City in my mirrors. I said, "Screw it" and pulled a U turn. The whole way home I rehearsed what I would say to Beatrice. I planned to read her the letter and insist that she see the hole in my floor for herself. Then I would politely but firmly demand to be let out of my lease. (Though I never signed any legal documents, I had given her first and last month's rent plus a $350 security deposit). If she refused I would threaten her with small claims court.

When I opened my front door I immediately smelled smoke. I ran to the bedroom to find that a small fire had erupted from an electrical outlet on a wall. The flames had spread about one foot in all directions and were only a few inches from a loaded laundry basket. Knowing that I did not have a fire extinguisher in the house, I grabbed a gallon of milk from the refrigerator, tucked it between my arm and my ribs and improvised a fire extinguisher. Though none of my personal belongings were damaged, the wall was trashed, power to half the room was out, and the dense stench of burnt God-knows-what was nauseating. Despite successfully containing the fire I called the Fire Department and asked them to send someone. As soon as their inspector arrived I marched to the main house and pounded on the front door.

It turns out that the "contractor" who converted Beatrice's garage was not a licensed professional. In fact, his only credential was being Beatrice's son. The inspector from the fire department deemed the space uninhabitable, but only after spelling out the trouble Beatrice would have been in if I had been injured or killed. I purposely demanded that she return my rent and security deposit in his presence. Believe it or not, she acted put-upon as she wrote the check. From there I drove straight to the nearby U-Haul, where I rented a truck and hired one of the Mexicans standing on the curb to help me load my stuff. Two and a half hours later I pulled out of Beatrice's driveway for the last time.

Name withheld

Epilogue

Four days after moving out I dialed Ranzulli's digits from a pay phone. An answering machine picked up on the fourth ring. A gravelly, unidentified voice growled, "Leave a message." I cheerfully announced myself (using a fake name) as a sales rep from Bally's Total Fitness calling to inform a Mister Ranzulli that Cato Breslin had referred him for a week's free membership. I'm not sure what exactly I hoped to accomplish with the ruse, I just needed to quell the curiosity that had consumed me since the day I left Beatrice's. About ten seconds into the call I realized how half-baked my plan was: I had no clue whether Ranzulli was a real name, much less a first or last name. I hadn't even bothered to check if there was a Bally's in Burbank before claiming to work there. I also hadn't thought to secure another number for him to return my call, and I sure as hell wasn't going to leave him mine. I stuttered, went mute and finally hung up. I tried the number again three days later only to find it disconnected.

I can honestly say that what I found in Cato's vault was the last thing I expected - total emptiness. However, knowing what I know now, the gun's absence does little to diminish Cato's credibility for me, here's why: When I spoke to Beatrice the morning of the Second I told her to expect me at 6PM. She agreed to leave my door open since she would not be home to hand me my key, but when I arrived I found the door locked. Frankly, I didn't think much of it; I just assumed that someone her age forgets a lot. I passed the time unloading my stuff and dragging it to my doorstep. When Beatrice returned to find me sitting on her front porch, she was adamant about having unlocked the door before she left. I politely argued otherwise. We went back and forth a few times until I insisted she try the door herself. She did. She gave me a curt, half-hearted apology and mumbled something about "losing [her] mind a little more each day" before shuffling off. As soon as I walked in, the dusty footprints leading to the bedroom snagged my attention. I followed them. They crisscrossed at the foot of the bed before fading out of sight. You didn't have to be CSI to realize that someone had walked straight to the bedroom and done something in the vicinity of Cato's gun locker shortly before my arrival. The prints could not have been Beatrice's as they were at least a man's size nine, and they could not have been relics as the house showed signs of a recent, thorough cleansing. I am convinced that the footprints were Cato's, which explains why the door was locked. I don't think it is illogical or even far-fetched to assume that Cato turned the latch involuntarily on his way out. However, since I was still a few hours from finding Cato's now infamous letter, the footprints did nothing more than arouse mild curiosity in me. I made a mental note to ask Beatrice about them the next time I saw her, but between working, sleeping and everything else that happened in the short time I spent at Cato's I never got around to it.

The few people who have heard my tale have all wondered why my brother did not Play a bigger role in it. Aside from living five hours away, "Al" pointed out that I no longer had "Cause to fear for [my] safety" once I'd fled Bea's; therefore he had no reason to further jeopardize his job by, "continuing an unauthorized and unlawful investigation," against Cato Breslin. Furthermore, Beatrice did refund my money in the end, leaving me with no legal issue to resolve.

As for the missing gun, I realize that it sounds like plot convenience in a Hardy Boys book, but that's what happened. Though there are dozens of possible explanations for its absence, I feel the most rational one is that in the weeks since Cato's departure someone or something had spotlighted the sheer idiocy of his leaving a stranger signed instructions on how to carry out a double murder, complete with a physical description of the intended targets.

As it stands, nine months have passed since this story unfolded. Each day that passes makes it less likely that I'll ever fill in its' blanks. Given my faith in the credence of Cato's letter I consider myself very lucky for that.

Anonymous