Cat in a White Tie and Tails

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  If the despicable Cliff Effinger was haunting her even from the grave—the watery Las Vegas grave, in fact—it had to stop here and now and in Vegas. She and Matt had stayed up half of last night in their posh suite shish-kebabing their brains for all they could remember about Effinger and how he might possibly have had something anyone would want, besides his cold dead slimy body in the deep, dark ground.

  “Time to get on the road,” Matt said now, standing up. “Are we ready?”

  Temple was reminded of The Magnificent Seven mounting up for an assault on the bandits terrifying the Mexican villagers.

  “Ready,” she said. “Maybe Krys would like to carry Louie. It’s good exercise for the biceps and pecs. And you have all us ladies to shepherd to the car.”

  But when Krys hefted the carrier, she stuttered backwards in surprise, having overcompensated. “Either your cat has lost a lot of weight, or it’s empty. What is he? The Cheshire cat, all teeth and no body?”

  Temple hastened over to shake the bag. Empty. “Hmm. The zipper’s open. Louie will do that,” she told the two hovering females. “He, uh, makes his druthers known.”

  “And he has a way with zippers?” Krys asked, skeptical.

  Matt answered for Temple. “He’s the Houdini of the cat world. Nothing can cage him if he doesn’t want to be confined.”

  “He’s loose in here?” Mira asked, looking around in alarm.

  A good question. The apartment was only on the sixth floor, but Temple wanted to check all the windows. Every one was locked. They surveyed each room, hunting high and low and finding no trace of hide or black hair nor dashing white whisker.

  “Will we ever find him?” Mira fretted.

  “Not until he wants to be found,” Temple said. “He can pull this vanishing act in my tiny two-bedroom condo in Las Vegas.”

  Privately, Temple was glad to have Louie confined to quarters by his own choice than pulling a stunt like this in a whole strange house, which was exactly where they were headed. Maybe this was a protest move on Louie’s part. Everything in Chicago would be strange or even risky to out-of-towners like Louie and her.

  “This trip has been a huge break in Louie’s routine.” Temple told the puzzled non-cat associates, “I’m sure he’s hiding away somewhere to soothe his frazzled nerves.”

  “So he’s high-stung?” Krys sounded disdainful.

  “Willful,” Temple answered. “Like all cats, he often knows better than we feeble humans do.” She exchanged a glance with Matt.

  They both knew that Louie was opting out of the highly charged family reunion coming up. Too bad they weren’t cats and easy to hide.

  Chapter 16

  Search and Unexpected Seizure

  Alone at last.

  My ears had been burning up a bonfire overhearing all the speculation about my druthers and whereabouts.

  I had done the Houdini trick of hiding in plain sight. Well, for one of my species.

  I had been lounging in a hammock … the canvas sling at the bottom of the kitchen laundry bag, inhaling the comforting, homelike scents of antiperspirant, cosmetics, and shampoo. After all, my current roommate enjoys being a girl.

  How wonderful to have all the social murmurs and palavers reduced to the hum of the refrigerator. Actually, refrigerators mimic major digestive upsets nowadays, have you noticed that? They do so many tricks with ice and water and defrosting and burping like Tupperware that one is tempted to throw Pepto-Bismol at their stainless steel faces. That would be like topping the Taj Mahal with strawberry sauce.

  Anyway, I am in official search and seizure mode, accompanied by a canny glaze of lying-in-wait.

  No one here had noticed that I noticed that Miss Matt Mama had kept the noxious threatening notes in a folder in her bottom dresser drawer, so as to keep Miss Krys’s nosy nose out of them.

  Drawers might be an obstacle for one of my limited digital dexterity, but my primal brain knows how they work, so off to work I go.

  First I flip onto my back. Then I drag my muscular torso beneath the drawer under siege by planting all sixteen of my built-in pitons in the feeble wallboard people use as mass-produced furniture these days.

  No way would I have been able to perform this feat on, say, Sam Spade’s desk. Those days produced men and file cabinets of steel and noggins and drawers of walnut, as in “hard walnut to crack.”

  Now, my motions as I shimmy under the drawer bottom might be adult-rated but we are all friends here. Once in position, I start driving my leg pitons into the wall-to-wall carpet, pushing with my mitts. The resulting push-pull action inches the drawer forward. In a thrice—well, after several full body rolls—I can wriggle out from under the dresser, snag a few shivs inside the drawer’s now-ajar gap and wrestle the insert out.

  Okay. It takes me about five times longer than some light-fingered career criminal to open a drawer, but they have the weight and opposable thumb advantage.

  Once in, working out the papers in question is kit’s play, nothing any curious puppy could not accomplish with three brain cells. Leaving them unchewed, priceless.

  I use my main four-finger shiv to spread the missives out like a hand of playing cards.

  I have been known to decipher printed matter, but human handwriting is a tougher problem. I recognize the messages are formed of that old crime story staple, individual letters in different type fonts cut out from that disappearing artifact of contemporary life, the daily newspaper.

  I may not be able to read the tortured text, but my eyes and nose tell me two suspicious facts: I do not pick up the odor of ink on pulpwood paper, a scent I have been known to shower with my ill will on the few occasions I have been incarcerated. Newsprint is a favorite litter box filler for the group homes that shelter many of my kind at a time.

  There is no such fulsome scent on these missives, only the faintest whisper of toner power, which means they were computer generated. Now, what kind of degenerate stalker is computer literate?

  I recognize key words from my long list of oldie movies viewed on cable TV when my Miss Temple is out gallivanting, or at home gallivanting in a manner that ejects me from my own bed.

  You will recognize such cherished turns of phrase as: “We know you know.” “We mean business.” “Or else.” “Comply or die.” And I read the same ugly words I saw in tiny print in a tiny news story on Miss Temple’s coffee table copy of the Las Vegas Review-Journal: Clifford Effinger. Along with the also corny phrase of “mysteriously found dead.”

  A fancy computer font combined with corny vintage clichés? Who do these bozos think they are intimidating? Obviously, they think they are scaring Miss Matt Mama and Mr. Matt, by means of the ghost of her crummy husband and his stupid-mean stepfather.

  At this moment of deep cogitation, which must be accompanied by a trancelike state often mistaken for a nap, I hear a door creak in the living room.

  Doors do not creak except in scary movies, folks.

  Has someone in the Sunday dinner party forgotten a crucial something … such as breath mints or Tums or gas pills? From what I have been hearing about the joys of Polish cooking and beer drinking I am sure that they would be the least required.

  So I scramble to push the threatening missives into a pile, prong them back into the drawer, and reverse my physical exertions of the past ten minutes in two, trying not to make any noise. I will not bore you with the details except to say I am fairly twisted into a knot when I leave the dresser closed and shimmy under the bed.

  Footsteps—large careless stepping-on-tail footsteps—clomp onto the bedroom carpeting.

  “I heard something in here,” a deep male voice says.

  “Yeah,” mocks another. “The wimpy curtain hitting the window glass in the draft of the ceiling fan. We saw them drive out of here in the rented sedan, all four, all dressed up like for a funeral. They ain’t coming back soon.”

  Spare me the crude contractions. This is not an episode of Jersey Shore.

  I gaze out on mu
d-edged work boots.

  “Good,” says Mr. Hearing Things. “I will leave a note under the old lady’s pillow. That ought to put a wasp in her—”

  No lady will be the object of crude language when Midnight Louie is around. I strike like a snake, a shiv finding the sweet spot between the ankle-boot top and the wrinkled jeans bottom as the creep bends to place his latest poison pen note under Miss Mira’s pillow.

  “Ow!” he yells, straightening up in a hurry.

  “What is the matter now?”

  “A wasp stung me.”

  “Get real.”

  “No. Look. My leg is all red in this spot. It is bleeding.”

  “I am not looking at your bleeding ankles. Maybe you got an allergy. Leave the note and I will do something nasty with a butcher knife and whatever is in the meat drawer in the kitchen on the way out.”

  “It is not just the two chicks now. They have visitors.”

  “So. We back off because of ‘visitors’? We been hired—”

  I wince again. As grammar goes so arrives the coarseness of modern life.

  “—to terrify and that is what we do best. That dude is the woman’s son. I bet if we got a hold of him we could get her to come across.”

  “I would rather kidnap the little redheaded chick. Less trouble and more fun.”

  Their footsteps thud out the door and into the living room, then soon stomp onto the kitchen tiles like jackhammers.

  I rocket out after them, intending to do massively more epidermal damage with my own butcher knives. Well, X-acto knives on steroids.

  I run right into the open maw … of the leopard-print carrier, which a rude boot kicks shut on me before I can turn around in the canvas tunnel.

  “I told you I heard something in the bedroom,” says one. A boot kicks in at me. “Wasp. I was right. Kiss your kisser good-bye, puddytat.”

  Light returns to the tunnel as the boot draws back for a kick. I gather into a crouch. Luckily, Miss Temple has chosen a commodious carrier, I am planning to land atop the boot, sink in my staples, and ride it out of captivity. Of course, I may be flung spine-first into a wall, but I also plan to use the Mr. Max Kinsella survival strategy and go as limp as a kitten before I hit.

  I admit I am being a trifle optimistic about my survival chances here.

  “Hold it,” the other guy says, kicking my assailant’s boot aside. He bends to zip the lip of the carrier shut.

  “This plays right into our hands. Talk about smaller and less trouble. We have got our hostage. You know how regular people go all puddly about animals in jeopardy. Just let me write a note and stick it into the maple countertop with a butcher knife and we are outta here.”

  Mr. Kickapoo is not convinced. “Should there not be blood on the knife? There is on my ankle.”

  “Will you forget about your friggin’ ankle?”

  “Or we could hack off the tip of his tail.”

  “You want to put your hands into that wasps’ nest? You could contract blood poisoning. I am not going to drop you off at the ER. Too risky. You will end up in the same landfill I will leave the cat in. I will bury the little devil and you so deep, it will make the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance in Detroit look obvious.”

  Landfill. Great! I have found some very tasty snacks around landfills. Plus there are trash trucks coming and going constantly on which to hitch a ride back to town. One man’s doom is another cat’s opportunity.

  Am I glad to have distracted this two-man destruction crew into leaving my nearest and dearest alone.

  Chapter 17

  Subterranean Sunday Blues

  First the news shows reported that “troubles” in Ireland still showed signs of life—and death—thanks to surviving veterans of the years of civil strife.

  The lighted screen served almost as an LED crystal ball for Max, opening up the world of Garry’s own investigations and questions.

  Now it seemed the IRA links in Las Vegas were alive and well also.

  Max hunkered down again over Gandolph’s laptop at the kitchen table, a glass of Jameson at his right hand. Thanks to Lieutenant Molina’s thorough search of the cupboards recently, he now knew where the hard stuff was kept.

  He sat back. Molina. He was ideally placed regarding her. Rafi Nadir, her ex, was loyal to Garry and now to Max by proxy. The homicide officer wanted to keep Max busy solving the mysteries of his own life and times for some reason.

  Suited him. While burning personal issues distracted Molina and Rafi, he was in emotional limbo and better able to concentrate on why he’d been marked for death here and in Northern Ireland.

  Max took a slug of whiskey. It would be tricky, but he needed to get closer to Temple Barr. She was a walking memory bank of his past as well as all these pesky Las Vegas crimes that had haunted Garry and maybe caused his death on foreign soil, putting him into an unmarked grave, maybe.

  Max’s fist hit the table, sloshing whiskey too close to the computer and its precious information.

  Temple Barr. She was young, she was lovely, she was engaged. Only a jerk would deliberately get between her and her righteous fiancé, the honest ex-priest turned media hottie. And could he still pull that off, in his diminished condition?

  Max smiled ruefully. Probably only in his diminished condition. Temple was too soft-hearted for her own good. And gutsy. “Come home, Max.”

  Damn. He’d needed that from her then. Now he needed to know what Miss Temple knew; she’d probably tell him gladly if he asked. He had no time to waste. He was too obviously back in town and sure to draw the wrong sort of attention. If only he could crack Garry’s computer password. There must be more on it than the Ireland tourist information he was pulling up.

  He sipped and thought. Rafi remained his best bet now. That professor’s death on the UNLA campus was also the best trail to follow when Max wasn’t shadowing himself for Molina. The newspaper archives were skimpy. RESPECTED PROF FOUND DEAD. MAGIC WAS HIS MINOR.

  Max had located an old calendar entry on Garry’s computer about a magic-show poster exhibition at that same time. Garry, Garry, Garry. He’d kept Max alive. Max had to honor his memory and answer all the questions Gandolph the Great had been pursuing.

  Max brought up the UNLA site on Garry’s computer. Las Vegas aerial views were “weary, stale, flat,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet had described his life before it all blew up and went to hell.

  But not “unprofitable.”

  The landlocked campus was a compressed intellectual island in a sea of commercial “strip” developments and sprawling residential desert areas. Like moats of hot metal, traffic hemmed in the campus most of the year. It had no place to expand, yet needed to establish a strong physical presence.

  That was exactly how Max felt at the moment, hemmed in by his loss of memory and self, “tasked” as the bureaucrats put it, to change his world and help the people in it, including himself.

  An on-campus visit might be most enlightening.

  Chapter 18

  Trapped, Stacked, and Zapped

  I am not surprised. My nappers repair to a deserted building probably on the south side of Chicago cheek by jowl and growl with Bad, Bad Leroy Brown of song fame. They dump my carrier on a hard concrete floor dulled by forty years of dust, dirt, and random elimination.

  They leave me in the carrier, deprived of food, water, and facilities.

  They have no idea that I can unzip my prison with the flick of one fang. They have no idea that I am a self-directed “plant,” not the green growing sort, but a live listening device.

  “I still say we should have snatched the little redhead,” the one I will call Lefty says.

  “Nah,” says Shifty. “This is better. The little redhead will get real hysterical about the pussycat being grabbed. You saw her in the airport.”

  “If we’da got the cat in the airport, we’da have the goods by now. Whoever thought Cliffie Effinger had anything anyone with big-time cred would want?

  “You remember that little pie
ce of plumbing poison?”

  “From back in the street gang day, almost forty years ago at St. Matthias.”

  I hear packing crates being shoved around, beer can tops being popped, and, ugh, cheap cigars being lit.

  “Hand me some of that sausage. Ole Effinger sure landed in a soft spot. The wife do not look so bad even now.”

  “She was younger then.”

  “So were we then.”

  And I was not even here then, so get on with it, fellas. Although it is interesting to realize that Mr. Matt’s given name—which is Matthias, not Matthew—has a long Chi-Town history.

  “What are we doin’,” Lefty says, burping, “holding alley cats hostage?”

  “The Vegas contacts are under a lot of pressure on this. Money’s money. And I hear ole effing Effinger knew the key to where a lot of it is just lying there waiting to be claimed. Nothing on the Vegas end is coming up likely, not even that big underground safe that was found a few days ago. But a few months ago rotten little Cliffie made a trip back to Chicago just before the honchos nabbed him for a little waterboarding interrogation.”

  Lefty shudders. “I would have screamed like a girdle.”

  “‘Girl.’ Screamed like a girl.”

  “They do not scream as good as they used to.”

  “That is because they are ‘liberated.’ Anyway, Effie gave them nothin’ and then had the bad taste to croak. After-hours at a major Strip attraction, no less. The thinking in Vegas is he left the key to the stash up here with the ex-wife. Well, not ex-wife. Widow. Some folks still do not believe in divorce.”

  “Chicago is a very backward place, compared to Vegas.”

  “Right. The thinking in Vegas is Cliff’s priest stepson going there to look him up gave the rat religion and he went to Chicago to leave the wife he left a pot of gold. Or the secret to finding it.”

  “Who went to Chicago? Cliff or the priest stepson?”

  “It is the ex-priest stepson.”

  “The blond guy with the redhead?”

  “Right.”