Unhappily, I am not the sole feline in her life; also count two alley bozos, Longfellow and Panache (sixteen and fifteen pounds respectively—no threat to my heavyweight title), and a pair of platinum Persian purebred dolls, Summer and Smoke, who are more than somewhat luscious, but have undergone this awful involuntary operation and pay me no mind at all. Their loss.
But there is only one top cat in Las Vegas and in this Douglas dame’s books. Remember that, and I will refrain from reminding you by initialing your epidermis.
Very Best Fishes,
Midnight Louie, Esq.
If you’d like information about getting Midnight Louie’s free Scratching Post-intelligencer newsletter by mail or email-attached color PDF, contact Carole Nelson Douglas at PO Box 331555, Fort Worth TX 76163-1555. Email [email protected], or visit www.carolenelsondouglas.com and wishlistpublishing.com.
Tailpiece
Carole Nelson Douglas Strikes Back
First of all, Louie’s description of our relationship should be called a “Tall Tailpiece.” He owes his current fame and good fortune solely to my literary efforts. In fact, Midnight Louie was on the auction block for a dollar bill when I found him in 1973 in the fine print of the classified ads.
This “big, black Tomcat” was obviously a handsome fellow, and just as obviously had been a discipline problem. His current custodians described “a con artist and eighteen pounds of cuddly pussycat, very versatile and equally at home on your new couch or in your neighbor’s old garbage can.” They admitted that he’d been reared on “purloined goldfish” and claimed that he “understood,” but didn’t speak, English.
All they asked was that Louie’s new keepers allow him roaming room and that he remain the ladies’ man he (also obviously) always was. Unsure where a roué like Louie would fit in the Family Life section where I wrote feature stories, I called his foster parents for an interview.
They were frank to a fault. At two a.m. one morning, Louie had attached himself to the wife near the Coke machine at a respectable Palo Alto motel where Louie was copping carp when he wasn’t playing gigolo with the female guests. The motel manager was about to change his place of residence from goldfish pond to city pound. So the infatuated wife air-freighted Louie (in a borrowed puppy transport he much despised) to St. Paul.
Once there, Louie accosted her lawyer husband; tried to molest their altered Siamese female, Pooh; engaged in a rumble with the resident Hoover vacuum; and decided that the litter box was the nearest route to China but no place to commit an act of personal hygiene.
Soon the couple noticed that domestic security had reduced Louie to a mere fifteen pounds, as well as their apartment to rubble. They advertised, at length. Readers were shortly clamoring to adopt the disreputable feline. Louie graduated to an obscure, bucolic existence after I wrote my feature story. My first mistake was letting Louie loose in his own words for most of the piece.
I began writing novels in my off hours within three years, but Midnight Louie didn’t sneak into my mind again until 1984, when I began writing fiction full time. I then persuaded him to relocate to the bright lights of Las Vegas to narrate a quartet of romances with an ongoing mystery that was solved in the last book, published as Crystal Days and Crystal Nights in 1990. Louie took to Vegas like a duck to bottom-dredging. He also took umbrage when the romance editor unilaterally lopped forty percent of his... er, pride and joy—print time—out of the books. Readers clamored for more, not less, just as Louie predicted.
Louie done wrong is not a civil or pretty sight. I had no peace until I agreed to let Louie get his claws into the real thing: Mystery with a capital “M” for murder. (Given his editorial truncation, it’s no coincidence that Louie’s first foray into crime fiction involves the icing of an editor at a booksellers’ convention.) Louie is fond of saying that there are eight million stories under the naked neon of Las Vegas. This has been one of them. He intends to tell them all, at length and in his own words, as long as his “mouthpiece” lasts.
Collaborating with Louie has been exhausting but fascinating, and, what the heck, some soft-hearted dame somewhere is destined to play patsy for the big lug. Oh, lordy, it’s catching....
P. S. If you enjoyed this novel, please consider putting a good review on Amazon.com, Goodreads and other online bookselling sites. :)
Carole and the late Midnight Louie Jr.
ML III appears in the chapter windows
Excerpt from Cat in an Aqua Storm
Book 2 of the Midnight Louie Mysteries
1
The Life That Late He Led
Even the darkest day begins with a dawn.
This one starts with me lounging on the third-story patio of my pied-à-terre as the sun rises over Muddy Mountain. Clouds shift against the distant peaks like Sally Rand’s famous ostrich fans teasing the notorious, apparently naked foothills of her form.
Fading shades of pink and blue reveal the sun’s naked red eye opening to scorch the already-browned sands. Good old Sol has been up all night, just like the folks on the Las Vegas Strip, only he did his usual disappearing act while smiling on the other side of the world. Smart fellow.
It is early July, and soon the sands will be hotter than a sizzling lucky streak on a craps table. I allow my eastward-gazing mind to picture Lake Mead as a bright London-blue topaz in its dusty desert setting. Hundreds of carp glitter like sunken gold along the shoreline, carp a-pant for the daily influx of tidbit-bearing tourists. I have never seen this treasure hoard of panhandling goldfish in person, but I hear plenty about them. I share the tourists’ fondness for carp, although my tastes run more to feeding on than feeding to.
I expect a tranquil day. Miss Temple Barr, my doting roommate and a freelance public relations specialist, is between assignments. While I dream of vistas of wild game, my civilized heart awaits the grrrr of the can opener. This happy sound precedes the dollop of some rich aquatic concoction into the banana spilt dish that my little doll has deemed fitting for, and large enough to accommodate, my healthy appetite.
It is not a bad life I lead of late, during this age of Aquarius. Much is to be said for domestic bliss, especially by one who not four weeks ago languished on Death Row in the local animal pound. It is true that my presence there was by design: I went undercover as a common homeless dude, a transient as the sociologists put it, in order to solve a murder at a booksellers convention. Yet this environment in which I now bask—a ray of not-yet-searing sun, a dry desert breeze and Miss Temple Barr hovering with the can opener—appeals far more nowadays than the edge-treading loner’s life-style I have been wont to lead.
So I slip into the languid snooze my kind is famous for, a happy laid-back dude expecting no more at the moment than the attentions and comforts I have earned over the course of several of my lives.
My personal sun-spot has shifted into shade when I next come to, awakened by the click-click of two dainty high heels arriving at my side. Gastric juices begin doing a tap dance on my rib cage as I lazily cock open one green peeper. I do not wish my famous, devastating stare to bedazzle my little doll before she is completely awake.
But Miss Temple Barr is more awake than I think, or than she should be at this early hour.
“No breakfast for you, Louie,” she announces with puzzling cheerfulness.
My still-drowsing senses are then jolted by yet another out-of-custom shock. Something thumps down beside me. Before I can open my other eye to study the phenomenon, Miss Temple Barr's long-nailed hand (she has irresistible attractions for a fellow of my sort) scoops under my midsection.
"Come on, big boy. Whew, what a handful.”
While I enjoy the personal contact, and before I am fully awake, I am prodded into an ambience I know all too well: four bland-blond walls that reek of plastic.
A silver grille snaps shut on my blinking, disbelieving eyes. I have been herded into a portable cell. All I can see through my steel meshwork is Miss Temple Barr’s shapely ankles, today propped atop
a pair of deep purple pumps. (Some so-called experts claim that my breed is color-blind, but what do they know? Certainly their conclusions are not based on personal testimony.)
I know that I see pure red as the reality of my situation impresses itself upon me; mostly it is the grille that is impressed upon my body hair as I turn frantically in the cramped space. I also express my opinion in words not fit for the company of a lady, but then Miss Temple Barr’s entrapment scheme is less than ladylike.
“Hey, don’t growl, Louie. It will not be so bad.”
My portable cell is swooped aloft to the accompaniment of Miss Temple's anguished Ooof” Then I am swaying helplessly beside her as she trots into the condominium, pauses to grab her tote bag and car keys, and vamooses out the door. Some say that ocean voyages produce seasickness. I say that bouncing about like a captive clapper in a molded plastic swinging bell is worse.
At last I am slung onto the sun-warmed front seat of her Geo Storm. I feel like last week’s refuse being heaved into the belly of the trash truck. Miss Temple Barr hops behind the wheel and starts the car. Moments later the air-conditioner grilles spurt a stream of hot air directly into my big green peepers.
I sigh, turn my posterior to the door of my cell, and settle onto my stomach, which has now joined me in making soft, intermittent growls of protest. The aqua Storm darts through the early-morning traffic like the winged insect known as a darning needle. It was a knitting needle that iced the book dude, I recall as I contemplate using that weapon on Miss Temple Barr. Is this the thanks I get for solving the ABA murder and getting her fat (what little there is of it; she is more than somewhat petite) out of the fire?
At last the car stops and Miss Temple Barr leaps out. I am extracted in my cage and taken into a low building that smells of disinfectant, indiscretions of a liquid nature and dogs. I cannot believe my nose! I have been returned to Death Row, although the betraying scents seem muted now.
“Oooh, he's a hefty one,” a feminine voice chirps as I am flung atop a counter, case and all. “A real heavyweight."
“Yup," Miss Temple Barr admits with little concern for my feelings and the truth. I am solid, it is true, but that is all muscle and bone.
"What is his name?”
“Midnight Louie.”
“Cute. Is he black all over?”
“I think so. I have not looked everywhere.”
"Then you do not know if he is fixed or not."
“Er... no.”
I have never heard my little doll sounding so uncertain, and a trifle guilty.
"Last name?” the chirpy chick prods.
“His... or mine?”
“Yours is his now.”
"Oh. Barr. But Midnight Louie Barr doesn't sound right.”
“It is just for the records. We had better weigh him,” Miss Chirpy suggests.
At last! The grille swings open and I am swung out in my little lady’s loving arms. Not for long. I am swiftly deposited like an errant hairball on a black rubber carpet.
"Eighteen—nineteen. Nineteen point eight." Miss Chirpy’s tone drips with syrupy admonition. “Time for an improvement in diet.”
This ambiguous statement suggests that some chow is headed my way, at least. I growl approval as Miss Temple Barr lifts me again with a graceless groan, and follows the white-coated female into a private chamber.
I have heard of such places, though I am not sure if this is the kind of joint that arranges forced assignations between two individuals of the opposite sex who have never before met. I have never been party to such shenanigans in the past, being perfectly capable of finding my own lady friends.
“I am sorry, Louie,” Miss Temple Barr croons while chucking me under the chin. I have never known it to fail that a person chucks me under the chin when playing Benedict Arnold, or is it Roseanne Arnold these days? And didn’t her last name use to be Barr?
I only have time to scan the ceiling for spiders, study a cabinet filled with bottles and boxes of a pharmaceutical nature and observe that I am sitting atop a slab with a monolithic base not unlike a sacrificial altar. (I have seen my share of old movies when the TV remote and I are the only active things in the living room.)
The hair on the back of my neck rises as the door opens, then closes just as quickly. I glimpse another white lab coat.
“Dr. Doolittle,” another strange female announces herself. I am feeling surrounded. I look up and would blanch, were that possible. I am staring up at an exceedingly thin, tall doll with a face that would do a hatchet man credit. I have never before seen such a personage, but it is clear that Midnight Louie has joined the vet set, not by his own inclinations.
“Is he purring or shaking?” this female Dr. Death inquires, laying a bony hand upon my shoulders. I do not think much of her diagnostic skills; any fool could see that the frigid air-conditioning is giving me an ague. This doctor doll reminds me of every villainous or supposedly expert human female known to man or tomcat.
"I doubt he has seen a vet before," Miss Temple hazards, rightly. "He is a stray I found. He used to be unofficial house cat at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel on the Strip.”
“Hmm.” Dr. Leona (after "Queen of Mean" hotelier Leona Helmsley) flicks back my eyelid so that all I see is her hairless hand before my eyes, then pulls my jaws open and leans forward to look at my teeth. "He is lucky that he was not picked up and sent for a three-day stay at the Hotel from Hell— the animal pound.”
My tail lashes while I weigh the benefits of sinking a fang into the vet’s disgusting, white nose so temptingly within reach. Miss Temple Bar would no doubt find such behavior, however much an act of self-defense, embarrassing, so I restrain myself. I permit myself a low, warning wail, however.
"Eight, maybe nine years old, I would say.” Dr. Imelda (after shoe-maven Marcos) narrows her eyes. "Nice heels," she adds approvingly, glancing at my erstwhile friend's feet. She presses my palm until my digits spread. “Nails could use clipping. You ever do that?"
"Only my own,” Miss Temple answers.
“Well." The vet sticks a cold hand under my nether parts and pulls me to a standing position. I have never been so humiliated in my life. “He will need all his shots, of course. and we could neuter him at the same time. Do you let him outside?”
“Actually, Louie lets himself out."
“Oh?”
"I leave a small bathroom window open. If I do not, he has been known to unlatch the French door to the patio.”
“Quite a talented scamp,” Dr. Natasha says with a feeble laugh that I do not like. “And he will have to go on the latest scientific formula diet, of course. The out-of-shape senior variety."
I twist angrily out of her grasp and berate her with a few choice words, which she ignores as if they were Urdu.
Miss Temple Barr forlornly strokes my head. “I do not want to overwhelm Louie,” she says with the wisdom and sensitivity I have come to expect from her superior sort of person. “Just the shots and the food today.”
“But if he wanders, you cannot want him impregnating all the female cats.”
"No, but maybe he has slowed down.”
Fat, excuse the expression, chance.
“I really advise you to fix him," Dr. Ruth suggests with a cheerful leer. “If he goes out, he might need his claws, but he certainly does not need his procreative powers with four out of five kittens born doomed to die within a year.”
"No...” Miss Temple is waffling.
I huddle, preparing to hurdle atop the cabinet. When the two shout for help in retrieving me, I will bound down atop the rescuer's head, and out the door before you can say "sold downriver.”
“At his age he could get pretty badly beaten up in a fight with another tom,” Dr. Death adds.
Name one! Or even a Dick or Harry who could cream my corn!
Miss Temple regards me in sad perplexity, even her perky red curls drooping.
“I have never seen him injured,” she puts in. “Maybe he is too big to get hurt.”
“Now that you have brought him indoors, he could spray the furniture. Males are messy, you know.”
Here I cannot restrain a snarl. I do not deny that I am a gentleman of the road, but my indoor manners are impeccable. Even outdoors I am a model of civic responsibility, and go out of my way to make my deposits beside, rather than on top of, the flora.
“Spraying...? He has not done that yet,” Miss Temple murmurs in my defense, but her tone is troublingly indecisive.
Clearly, some unmistakable action is required, and I take it. I yowl plaintively and rake my front fingernails across the gray Formica.
This protest shakes my little doll out of her funk. “Just the shots, please,” she says. “I will see about getting some special food on the way out.”
My triumphal self-congratulations prove premature when this Dr. Dolittle doll instructs Miss Temple Barr to “hold him.”
While I squirm, a series of indignities are performed on my posterior with a hypodermic that, while I cannot see it, seems about the size of the previously mentioned knitting needle.
“Does he bite?” this latter-day Madame DeFarge inquires a trifle tardily, removing her needle to pick up another.
Not the hand that feeds him, I think as I restrain my fury. Although, if Miss Temple Barr is planning on switching her current brand to the aforementioned scientific sludge for seniors, I may reconsider that resolve.
2
Electraglide in Black
Temple pulled the aqua Storm into the shade of a spreading oleander bush and paused, her hands clinging to the steering wheel. The Circle Ritz’s condominium and apartment building’s white marble facade looked cool and calm in the blazing July heat.
She eyed the flat Timex watch that almost covered her wrist. Punctuality was essential to Temple’s work. She had no time for fancy, deceptive little watch faces that she couldn’t read accurately at a glance. Good. Only twelve-twenty.
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