Cat in a Red Hot Rage

by Carole Nelson Douglas

Chapter 26

  Mr. Midnight Sings the Blues

  Matt showed up for his usual midnight talk radio gig half an hour early, whistling.

  He felt this boundless energy nowadays.

  Love was a many-splendored thing and way more than an ex-priest like him was equipped to deal with. He understood that his euphoria and repressed upbringing would soon have to slug it out, but for now, now that he was reassured that all was right with their world in bed and out. It was all gravy with truffles.

  “Matt, my man!”

  Leticia greeted him during the two precious minutes she was off-mike. “You’re lookin’ fine, honey. Happy and oh-so-hot. Tell Auntie Ambrosia all about it.”

  She did resemble an aunt: Aunt Jemima crossed with Queen Latifah, both comfy and glamorous. Ambrosia was her on-air name and it fit what she dished out over the late-night airwaves. She did a heartfelt oldies and goodies show, full of the songs that made people forget old wounds and work their way through new ones. She coaxed the callers into expressing deep feelings as they recalled some person lost or found, emotions old or new, painful or joyful. Ambrosia cooed the introductions to the songs she picked, always exactly right whether they targeted angst or euphoria. Matt was the station’s midnight shrink. Ambrosia was its pre-midnight guardian angel.

  Now she grinned at him. “Matt, my bro, you are acting way too happy for the Evening Emperor of Angst. Don’t tell me Mr. Midnight is losing his melancholy, baby!”

  “Sorry.” Matt smiled and sat on the desk’s edge. “I just won the personal stakes lottery.”

  “O-o-o-oh?”

  There was nothing about an engagement for a man to flaunt but his happiness. “I asked. She accepted.”

  “Why shouldn’t she, honey, whoever she is?”

  “I don’t know, because she has free will?”

  “Aw, all that Cat-lick stuff. That isn’t exciting, man. That isn’t entertainment.”

  “I asked her to marry me.”

  “Now, that’s entertainment. And—?”

  Matt shrugged. “She accepted the ring.”

  “Now, that’s just entrepreneurial. The girl want the ring, or you?”

  “Me. I think.”

  “Whatcha doin’ thinkin’ at such a time? Hey. Wait. Gotta get back on the air. Here’s a song, just for you, Jude dude.”

  The Beatles’ “Hey, Jude” hit the airwaves with the press of Ambrosia’s long, false fingernail painted tangerine.

  Matt listened to the classic lyrics, finding them new and, now, personally significant. He was remembering to let her into his heart so he could start to make it better. He wasn’t afraid anymore. He knew he was made to go out and get her under his skin. And she was. And he didn’t have to carry the world on his shoulders alone anymore. Well, not entirely.

  “She had a good guy,” he couldn’t help saying as the song ended. “Before.”

  “But he wasn’t somebody like you, Mr. Midnight Heartthrob. You think you get all those lovesick females callin’ in ’cause you talk pretty? Station didn’t put out all those billboards of you lounging on that red suede sofa to bring in the blind, baby.”

  Matt still felt squirmy about that ad campaign.

  “Her former guy was somebody: rich, good-looking, dazzling performer, smart, and really a decent guy.”

  “So?”

  “So, I don’t feel free to give away his name.”

  “Now let me see, Matthew.”

  “Matthias.”

  “Whatever. Handsome. Humph. I get that you got that. Rich? I know what your new two-year contract was, honey boy, so don’t jive me there. A dazzling performer. And just what do you think we both do night after night on the airwaves? Smart? Yeah. A decent guy. You are a way more than decent, guy.”

  “And he was a lot more experienced than I am.”

  Letitia blinked her Oprah-size double set of false eyelashes at him.

  “You know what I mean,” Matt said. She did. He’d confided in her over the months like an emotion-blitzed call-in. “With women.”

  “Are you getting better, honey chile?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Hmmm. In that case that new fiancée of yours had better watch out. Ambrosia might be on her tail, or yours.”

  Matt knew that Ambrosia’s worldly bluster was another insulator, like the three hundred pounds her body wore, from the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse.

  He’d just been celibate by choice, trying to hide unhappiness behind a vocation. She’d been molested.

  He lifted her hand and kissed it. “Any gal or guy’d be lucky to call you girlfriend.”

  “Well.” She beamed at his tribute. “That’s what I’m here for, baby, to soothe the troubled soul. When’s the wedding?”

  “We haven’t decided yet. We don’t know whether to go for a Vegas quickie or drag the relatives up north into it. Or both.”

  “Me, I’d want that white dress and long, long train, and everybody lookin’ on.”

  “I suppose most women would.”

  “Your girl?”

  “She’d say no, but probably. Besides, I might like to see her like that myself.”

  “Every woman wants to be someone’s angel for a few hours, honey. Hey! Enough jiving. You gotta go on in fifty seconds.”

  Letitia scooted out of the literally hot seat to let Matt take her place. He just had time to put on the foam-padded headset, pull his notebook and pen to center spot, and watch the director through the glass window, counting down.

  His intro echoed in his ears.

  “It’s the Midnight Hour with Las Vegas’s leading man of mellow advice, the divine Mr. D, Matt Devine.”

  Chapter 27

  The Scene of the Climb

  Getting into any nightclub is a snap for those blessed with the ebony coloring and effacing stature of Midnight Louise and myself.

  Getting into a nightclub that has reflective black Lucite floors and walls is almost too easy to be ethical.

  So the kit and I do the Neon Nightmare Slink and are soon among the merrymakers crowding the bar and the dance floor. If we can avoid some clumsy human foot doing the salsa stomp on our tippy toes or rear members, we will soon melt into these shiny black walls like licorice ghosts.

  Well, that comparison leaves something to be desired (mainly that we are not edible like licorice, unless there is a pit bull in the building). Anyway, we do our patented pussyfoot past all the carousing humans to a place that Miss Midnight Louise has earmarked as a “secret entrance.”

  “It is probably just a janitors’ closet,” I tell her.

  “A tad jealous that I have found my way around this maze when you have not?”

  “Nonsense, Louise. I always appreciate the efforts of underlings. Ouch! ”

  That girl spends hours honing her nails to saber-sharpness, not to mention a spit polish.

  In the meantime, she has leaped up to trigger a pressure-opening door, like you see on some TV cabinets. We tumble on through as it bounces shut behind us, leaving us in total darkness.

  Darkness is never total for the feline nation.

  My trusty, long, supersensitive vibrissae (you thought I was referring to something else?) fan out on either side of my noble nose, feeling the air currents, searching for boundaries. Only Santa has whiskers as famed, and mine are white as snow, just like his.

  “Forget the white-cane act,” Louise hisses at me. “I know the way.”

  As we mush along my eyes adapt to the almost nonexistent light.

  We now spot the whisker-thin vertical and horizontal presence of light leaking from door frames that are not quite tight.

  I even hear the distant murmur of human voices.

  Alas, I do not recognize the deep, dark timbre of Mr. Max’s baritone among them. But I do hear his name mentioned! Both of them.

  Louise and I pause outside the pale outline of a door, ears and noses twitching our vibrissae.

  We hear the name “Kinsella.” We hear the name “Phantom Mage
.” The people within do not appear to think that they are one and the same, at the moment, or in group discussion. We need to get into that room!

  But we are stuck on the outside looking in. Okay. That is not quite as accurately stated as the experienced shamus should put it. We are stuck on the secret inside of Neon Nightmare looking into the even-more-secret inner sanctum of Neon Nightmare. There is obviously no way that a couple of hip black cats are going to bust into a room filled with light and humans and not attract unwelcome attention.

  Sure, we will be underestimated, as usual, but we will also be worthy of note, as always.

  “I am dying,” Louise says, “to find out what they are saying.”

  Hey! That might be a way. People do not expect dead cats to eavesdrop.

  Uh, no. Ma Barker would not want Miss Midnight Louise to sacrifice herself just so I could get an earful. Ma Barker does not have many known maybe-grandkits.

  The narrow beam from one of those tiny, high-intensity toy flashlights comes roaming down the hallway. Louise and I flatten and play dead, or background.

  The flashlight does not illuminate much, but it does reflect off the satin folds of a full-length black cloak lining.

  Eureka! It is an excellent thing that I have kept my coat licked to shiny perfection. Midnight Inc. Investigations sweeps through the now-open door swathed in cloak folds. We melt separately under the nearest chairs and take a deep breath.

  “Cosimo!” our savior is hailed. “We were just talking about our current conundrum.”

  “Conundrum” is a funny old-time word that means “puzzle.”

  If you are talking “conundrum” in this town, you are talking Mr. Max Kinsella, the most enigmatic magician and counterspy guy on the planet. If he still is on the planet, which is what Miss Midnight Louise and I have risked our mutual extremities to find out.

  “Where are the odds leaning today?” Cosimo asks, throwing his cloak over his chair back and smacking me in the kisser with several woolen folds sharp enough to eviscerate an eel.

  “I think our scintillating Max has offed the Phantom Mage and is lying low until the caper with the Czar’s Scepter is history.” The voice offering this opinion is darkly female, spoken by a real devil-dame from the heyday of Noir.

  I must admit that voice makes my most adaptable member sit up and take notice. Hubba Hubba Hussy! Louise’s foreclaws in my shoulder remind me to keep a low profile. Is not that always like a female?

  “Why would he kill the Phantom Mage?” another voice asks.

  “The guy ripped off his act. Kinsella acted like he was indifferent to that, but he was an alpha magician in this town not too long ago, and we alpha magicians do not forget, or forgive.”

  “It would have been a splendid parting gesture,” the woman says. She is a Cleopatra-style temptress lounging into a red leather chair like it used to be the skin of her favorite lover before he disappointed her.

  “Maybe you are right, Serena,” says an old dude in plain civvies, “but he also turned the tables on us, my friends, by undoing the criminal act we required him to perform as a membership ritual. I agree that he is a first-rank magician, but he also has a first-rank ego.”

  “And you do not?” Serena asks.

  “Touché. Still, I find the man too mercurial to be entirely trustworthy. No one knows where he has gone now, for instance. Or why he both did our bidding, rather spectacularly, and undid it. Or if he has indeed murdered this lesser magician-acrobat called the Phantom Mage, or if that demise was an accident. Max Kinsella strikes me as a man ever-ready to take credit for accidents.”

  “We thought at one time that he might be the Phantom Mage,” suggested an older, heavier woman than Serena, but one no less dramatic. “Perhaps he is missing because he is dead.”

  The first woman stirs on her chair like a cobra easing into a striking posture. “I doubt it, Czarina. He left me a note.”

  “A note? What did it say? Let us see it.”

  “I am sorry, Czarina.” Serena preens on her sofa like a purebred with a velvet catnip mouse. “It was rather personal.”

  “Personal?” The man called Cosimo sounds sharp. “We are all Synth members here, and that dominates such minor matters as concupiscence.”

  “Concupiscence,” Serena derides. “Leave that Latin beating-around-the-bush word to the bishops. Lust is not alien to our gathering. Max wrote that he finds it useful to drop out of sight—a rather cheeky turn of phrase after recent developments—for a while. But that . . . the rest is personal.”

  It is a gathering of magicians. The white note in her fingers wafts into the man’s hand next to her.

  “Hmm.” Cosimo reads the message with rolling diction. “In his self-imposed exile he will fondly recall your satin skin, the . . . the tattoo of a bat on your—?”

  “Enough, Cosimo.” Serena had risen and struck, snatching the paper from his hands. “You see that he is alive and definitely kicking.”

  “I did not know you had found the time to test our new recruit with your charms.”

  “It was a hasty but memorable encounter. I can assure you that he was interested. Of course, I didn’t allow him any real liberties. Not until we were certain of him.”

  “And now you think we should be.”

  “Certainly.” She settles back into her chair, circling the palms of her scarlet-nailed hands on the arms. “Unless he is really dead, which would be a shame now that I am authorized to screw him.”

  “He will return, Serena,” Czarina assures her. “He is not a fool and I doubt that Death has claimed him. And any normal heterosexual man would return to do obeisance at your thighs, Goddess of the Nile since days of old.”

  Serena purrs like a Persian of my acquaintance in heat. Too bad I have never been around this Persian of my acquaintance when she was in heat.

  While I am being enthralled by all this sexy talk, I have let down my guard.

  My neck ruff is collared by four shivs.

  “This conversation has degenerated,” Miss Midnight Louise hisses in my ear. “We are outta here.”

  And, yes, before I can stutter a fond farewell to the magicians of the Synth who are so busy congratulating themselves, I am whisked out into the corridor by Louise, who has taken a dislike to sexy talk on many other occasions.

  This is a side effect of the process known as “fixing.”

  I do not know why it is called that.

  But I think that Miss Serena could use a bout of that herself.

  Chapter 28

  Debate to the Death

  Five thousand Red Hat Sisterhood members pouring into the Crystal Phoenix and the Goliath hosting hotels made the Black Hat Brotherhood vastly outmanned for the day’s debate. Luckily, only a few hundred Red Hat women showed up for it.

  Even so vastly outnumbered, the fifteen men entered the hotel like a posse surrounding a wrestling favorite. In fact, overnight the golden oldie boys had come up with American-flag-blue rhinestone hatbands and red-dyed pheasant feathers to stick in those glitzy new bands.

  Matt stood beside Temple at the back of the debate room, watching the Red State dudes in Blue and the Blue State dolls in Red file into the hotel’s small-event auditorium. The Red Hat Sisterhood outnumbered the Black Hat Brothers a zillion to one, but on the raised dais, at the neutral white-linen clothed tables featuring a small tabletop podium for Matt, it was four black-and-blues against four red-and-purples.

  “I can see why the TV stations sent so many videographers,” Matt murmured to Temple, blinking at the colorful and sparkling gathering. “Makes me happy radio is my medium. Saves me a lot of eye strain and headaches.”

  “TV loves people willing to make spectacles of themselves.”

  “Which is why you counseled me to wear an ivory shirt and blazer, no tie. Not even a blue and red one.”

  “You do get the association?”

  “It’s a neutral color scheme for a moderator,” he said, eyeing his bland facade.

  Temple rais
ed her eyebrows and said nothing.

  “Oh, I get it! Red, white, and blue, reading left to right. That is ‘spin’ with a capital S.”

  “Plus,” she said, adjusting the collar of his open-necked shirt, “you look so dreamy in off-white.”

  “The PR maven is making decisions based on how ‘dreamy’ the moderator looks?”

  “Absolutely. Perk of the job.”

  “I just hope I can keep these extreme debaters from each other’s throats. Maybe you really needed Jerry Springer.”

  “I do have some Fontana brothers muscle lurking in the wings.” Temple nodded to her own version of bodyguards standing at the extremes of the debating platform.

  “Good Lord, I’m dressed like a Fontana brother clone,” Matt realized.

  “Northern Italian, where the blonds come from, not southern. Those natives are brunet.”

  “You’re also going for a revival meeting look here too, aren’t you?”

  “My dear man, I’m trying to touch on numerous subtle cultural nuances.”

  “I never knew PR was so manipulative.”

  “Or that I was?”

  “If I weren’t so nervous about doing this moderator gig, I’d probably have a long answer for that one.”

  “You’ll be great. You improvise six nights a week live on your radio show. How could this be any worse?”

  Matt forbore to say anything more.

  “Oh,” Temple added. “There is one thing.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You look somewhat suspicious.”

  “It’s that ‘one thing’ element you mentioned.”

  Temple grimaced. “We have a prima donna on board.”

  Matt waited.

  “Savannah Ashleigh, fading D-movie actress, is a celebrity emcee for the Red Hat Sisterhood. She’s really hard to hold back. I had to allow her to introduce you.”

  “I don’t know her and she doesn’t know me. How can she introduce me?”

  “She’s show biz. I gave her a bio. How much damage can she do? It was that, or have a bloodbath offstage, like in Macbeth.”

  Matt sighed. “I thought one always called it ‘the Scottish play’ or it would be cursed by some new death.”