Cat in an Orange Twist

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  Danny danced. He took Temple with him at arm’s length, in that insane, insane grade-school gym-class pace.

  Temple felt her tears twirling away. Evaporated, in some Terpsi-chorean spin-dry cycle.

  Danny finally stopped. Bent his head until their foreheads touched.

  “Hospital. Everything tried.” He repeated her key words. “He’s dead.”

  She nodded, feeling his head bob along with hers, like a puppet’s. What would she feel if she found out that was why Max hadn’t been contacting her? Too sad and confused and guilty to live.

  “Gone.”

  She nodded.

  Danny’s hands were absolutely dry. They slowly released hers.

  “Danny.”

  He said nothing, never moved.

  “You have to be ready.”

  “I’ll never be ready again.”

  “You have to be. I couldn’t tell a cause of death, but I’m thinking it was murder.” The word didn’t seem to register. “They’ll come asking you questions. The police.”

  He dropped her hands. The dance had ended.

  Danny shook his head. “They can’t ask anything more than I would. Than I do. Temple. You were the one with the guts to tell me. You’re going to have to be the one with the guts to help me. To help Simon.”

  Life with Mother

  The sun is high in the sky as we work our way through tangled weeds and cactus.

  Louise and I have returned to our thrilling days of yesterday, only that was like . . . yesterday two weeks ago, when Louise herself was in Code Red condition.

  Today we are in another maze of stickers and thorns and brambles but far from the site of Louise’s last stand. I realize that Ma Barker’s gang has located its R&R facility pretty cannily.

  Not even racoons would fancy clawing their way in here, much less dogs, who do not have much tolerance for pain, except for the pit bulls.

  All our coats are looking as if we were groomed by a wood chipper, but our leader is smart enough to weave a way through the maze so only a clumsy type will get snagged down to the skin.

  I finally spot the rusted hulk of an abandoned abductor cell that has been dragged away from the area of operations into this forsaken urban junkyard.

  It sits in the shadow of an upended La-Z-Boy recliner upholstered in turquoise Naugahyde dating to the late ’60s. Smart. The steel bars protect the occupant and the recliner acts as a day-long awning . . . although I would hate to try to snooze under a hundred pounds of sun-blistered Naugahyde, steel, and springs.

  Talk about a rat trap: this is a potential cat trap.

  Anyway, I glimpse a water-filled tuna can in a corner and a darker shadow in the opposite corner that resembles a black shag carpet roll from the same era as the recliner chair.

  This does not look good. The others gather around the cage, silent.

  “So there must be a way in,” says a voice behind me. Louise.

  In answer, Tiger, a big guy in dingy prison stripes, leaps up against the door and hits it just so. The off-kilter gate pops open.

  “If dogs were smart enough to do this,” Tiger notes, “she would not still be in here.”

  The rickety latch reminds me of a castle portcullis that is about to plunge right down and impale the next individual to pass through. I have watched enough PBS reruns on the construction of the medieval castle to know about moats and porcullises and boiling oil and such.

  But Midnight Louise—benighted street kit that she was, and is—trots right through the rickety door, tail held high.

  Well, can Midnight Louie let a girl outclass him in the courage department? Never!

  I am hot on her heels.

  So there you have it, I realize with a sinking feeling. The entire possible Midnight clan, with the exception of my dear old dad, Three O’Clock Louie, are bottled up in a rickety cage in an unofficial dumping ground, surrounded by feral cats who would just as soon jump us as dump us.

  Not a good move.

  But Louise pays no attention to the looming dangers. She just hunkers down next to what is left of Ma Barker and begins with the licking.

  Dames! They always confuse cleanliness with good health.

  I hate to tell the kit, but she is not going to raise anything from the dead with a few licks and a promise.

  I shoulder Nurse Sandpaper aside and touch my tongue to Ma Barker’s nose. Hot and dry, like the desert all around. Not a great sign.

  I lift first one front paw, then the other. Limp, but not broken.

  I nose around her sides, sniffing dried blood. The tail is lifeless to my prodding touch. The back legs I cannot get near.

  Miss Louise nudges into place behind me, purring.

  This is the one thing humans do not get about our kind: the purr.

  They think the purr is always a positive, happy thing. Like a human giggle or something. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is the opposite. A mother in labor will purr; it soothes the birth pains. An injured cat will purr, the same self-medication at work.

  Meditation-medication, a New Age upstart like Louise might call it. She is into Oriental food and who knows what other mystical Asian hanky-panky. Maybe even feng shui.

  All I can say is whatever Miss Louise is up to, it is catching. I find myself purring despite myself. Pretty soon I will be intoning Om and raking strange runic patterns into my litter box. Actually, I use my home facilities so little it might as well be an Oriental rock garden.

  So anyway, I hum along despite myself.

  Before you know it, little Gimpy’s wimpy tenor has joined in. And Snow Off-white’s raspy alto. And Tiger’s and Tom’s double-basso.

  I, of course, am the basest basso of them all.

  So we all sound like a choir of kazoos, except more melodious, and even the cage grill seems to be thrumming.

  I fear imminent avalanche from the overhanging turquoise recliner.

  What an ignominious end! MASHed to death. Mashed by not even real leather.

  And then, in the darkness that surrounds us, black as the pit from hidey-hole to hidey-hole . . . I see light.

  One eye has opened in the inky ruin of Ma Barker’s face.

  It is green and slitty and looking pretty pissed.

  As we hold our conjoined breaths we hear a faint purring. Can it be from her?

  No.

  Oh, it is from her, all right, but it is not purring.

  The sound escalates into an audible growl.

  “What is that bee-buzzing, mind-numbing racket?” she mutters. “It is interrupting my beauty sleep.” Then the eye narrows even farther, aiming at me.

  “Is that you, Grasshopper?”

  “Er, yes ’um.” I hope to hell that Midnight Louise is too busy playing registered nurse to register this abominable nickname.

  Louise’s head lifts from her licking duty. Her eyes narrow.

  I quickly change the subject. “Do you want anything?” I ask dutifully. “Do you want me to fetch Three O’Clock from Temple Bar on Lake Mead?”

  “That old sea-dog of a sorry excuse for a tomcat? I do not think so,” Ma Barker growls. Even louder. “Why would I want to see that no-good?” She rises up on her front paws, like a black, sandblasted Sphinx.

  Apparently me and dear old dad are excellent stimulants to the circulatory system.

  I back off, ears flattened.

  “Besides,” she adds in even stronger tones of disgust. “My hair is a mess.”

  And that is when I know that Ma Barker will live to fight another day, and probably another racoon.

  We are all hunkered down near the MASH unit.

  Ma Barker is sleeping peacefully, her attentive maybe-grand-daughter beside her.

  I understand that her gang is much enjoying the subsequent respite.

  “She is a tough old crow,” Tiger notes.

  “Hey! That is my mother you are comparing to a bird,” I say.

  “It was a compliment, okay?”

  Our hackle hairs settle down.

&n
bsp; “Okay.” I rise, shake out my buzz cut, and look in every gathered eye. “I need to know what you guys were doing in the lot across from Maylords and what you heard and saw that night.”

  “Ma had us scouting a new territory,” Gimpy puts in.

  “The whole gang?”

  “The whole gang. What is it to you?” Tiger growls.

  “What it is to me is that the whole gang was witness to a bushwhacking. Who had the nerve to blast away at Maylords when it was full of people and press? You guys cannot pull triggers. It had to be someone human.”

  “Barely,” Snow Off-white mews under her breath.

  “You saw them?”

  She nods.

  “More than one then?”

  “More than human,” she answers, bitterly. “They had us outgunned. Leather from neck to toe, so we couldn’t rip a gut. Hiding behind glossy helmets.”

  “Revving their machines,” Gimpy puts in. “We did not have a chance.”

  “Hmmm,” I mews thoughtfully. “Miss Midnight Louise managed to bring down an easy rider all by her lonesome only a couple of weeks ago.”

  “She is a domesticated twit,” Miss Snow Off-white sniffs.

  “She is a domesticated terror, believe you me.” I look around at the unhappy gang members. Their leader is down and they do not like having to answer to outlanders.

  “So who were these motorized nightmares?” I ask. “Usually biker gangs broadcast their affiliations in a hundred little ways. Any insignia on these dudes’ jackets or helmets?”

  The gang exchanges looks.

  “’Little Drummer Boy,’ ” Tom spits out.

  “Audrey Jr.”

  “Killer Tomato.”

  “Psycho Punk.”

  “Hot Femalie.”

  “Marilyn Manson-Dixon Line.”

  “Peter Rabid.”

  I am beginning to get the picture, and it is not early Marlon Brando. It is not even late James Dean. Or Peter Fonda.

  “You are saying you were outclassed by a gay biker gang?”

  “With assault rifles.”

  Hmmm. I do love an enigma. Unless it is female.

  Speaking of which, Miss Louise has managed to get Ma Barker up on her shaky pins.

  They emerge from the MASH unit, and Ma Barker sits down snarling.

  “All right, Grasshopper,” she says. “Are you telling us we were ambushed by the same gang you are after?”

  In a sense, yes.

  I nod sagaciously. I learned this from Three O’Clock. There is nothing more powerful from a middle-aged male than a sagacious nod.

  Not that I am middle-aged. I am just post-young-blood-stage.

  I sniff pretentiously and chew my cheeks. Marlon would be proud of me. What is needed here is not a fairy godmother, like Ma Barker, but cat-fairy godfather.

  “All right,” I rumble. “I eventually need youse guys back down there in decor-town. I need eyes and ears around Maylords. We are going to take over our Bast-given territory. But first we gotta scout the turf before we can roust those yippie-kai-yai-ai dudes in the Powder Puff Motorcycle Derby.

  “As soon as Ma Barker is fit to travel, she and I will do a little executive relocation search. Then we will get the whole gang together to kick a little people-butt.”

  The roar is deafening. And gratifying.

  Now all I wish I knew is what I am doing.

  An Officer and a Lady

  Carmen Molina sat on the breakfast barstool in her kitchen.

  Lieutenant C.R. Molina’s paddle holster, 9-mm semiautomatic, ankle holster, and .38 were locked in the gun safe in her bedroom closet.

  That locked Lieutenant Molina in the closet too.

  Sunday afternoon. Carmen could lounge around in jeans and flip-flops over a mug of gourmet coffee. Sunday afternoon, and she was actually at home, only the cell phone on the laminated countertop a link to the job that never died.

  The heel of her right flip-flop hung half off her foot. Something furry tickled her sole. One of the cats, also at play on a lazy Sunday afternoon. No early mass today, thanks to attending Saturday evening. No hot homicides at work. No mas. No more. For now.

  She sipped the black brew, as full-bodied as dark ale. Just the right temperature: barely cool enough to drink.

  Mariah came charging from the hallway, through the living room, into the kitchen and almost out the back door.

  “Goin’ over to Merrrodee,” she mumbled in passing.

  “Whoa! Chica.” The long arm of the law—and Carmen stood almost six feet tall in her flip-flops—reached out to corral her daughter’s shoulder. “I didn’t recognize that name. It’s not Miguelita?”

  “No. She’s—”

  “She’s what?”

  “We’re not tight anymore.”

  Tight?

  “Well, that happens,” Carmen said. “So who’s the new best friend this week?”

  “Oh, mo-ther! Melody. I’m going over to Melody’s.”

  Carmen frowned. “What’s the last name?”

  “Honestly, you have to know everything! I might as well live in the city jail.”

  Carmen examined her daughter as if she were someone else’s.

  Mariah had shot up three inches in the last year and two inches in front. She was pushing thirteen now. She wore cotton flowered capri pants that were a bit too tight and showed the baby fat still on her stomach, and a midriff-baring top that Carmen’s own mother would have made her burn. But that was close to thirty years ago in east L.A., and little girls today grew up a lot faster, even the ones in Catholic schools designed to retard the onset of that ol’ devil puberty.

  Puberty still played by the old rules. In the last few months Carmen had gotten used to sullen glances sliding away, long silences, rolled eyes, and the favorite expletive of the preteen set: “Oh, mo-ther !”

  In Mariah’s case, the Put-upon Almost-teen could add “Oh, mother the cop!”

  “I just want to know the girl’s name and family, chica.”

  “Melody Crowell.”

  “I’ve never heard you mention her before.”

  “Because she’s new at school.”

  “Her family moved into the neighborhood?” The core of the community was Our Lady of Guadalupe Church and school and the residents were mainly Hispanic-American.

  “She was transferred,” Mariah said, looking down. “From Robison Middle.”

  Robison. Molina saw numbers. The highest in the middle school system. Almost forty arrests, knife incidents, two gun incidents. Assaults on students and even a couple teachers. Controlled substances. The worst public middle school. Juvenile Delinquent Central. Not quite fair. Lots of kids got through there just fine. And lots didn’t and so parents tried to straighten them up by sending them to “stricter” Catholic schools. Ai-yi-yi-yi, as Ricky Ricardo used to say about his own live-in juvenile delinquent, his wife, Lucy. Back in the Stone Age before digital everything.

  “So what’re you two doing?”

  “Our nails, all right?” Mariah fanned out her stubby fingers, the nails alternating metallic purple and teal polish. Both chipped. Being a girly girl involved a lot of maintenance.

  “Looks like you need it.”

  Mariah relaxed a bit. “Melody’s cool. She’s got this, like, white-white hair. Straight to her shoulders.”

  “Natural?”

  “Mo-ther.”

  Eight-year-olds were into painted finger and toenails nowadays and carrying purses and cell phones. Ten-year-olds were spray-painting their hair. Eleven-year-old chicas were going blond and chicos were bleaching their buzz cuts platinum.

  Who was she to stop the preening of America?

  “You in too much of a hurry to wait a minute?”

  “What for?” Said suspiciously.

  “Want some coffee?”

  Mariah’s big brown eyes got bigger. “Coffee?”

  “Yeah. I made plenty.” Carmen pulled out the other stool and patted the olive vinyl seat.

  “Well . .
. yeah.”

  Carmen got up to fill another mug, doctoring it with a long shot of hazelnut-flavored creamer. When she came back to the countertop Mariah was perched on the stool, her precious little girly purse with the sequined Palm Beach tootsie emblem set primly in front of her.

  Carmen pushed the steaming mug over to her daughter and watched her sip, fight off making a face, then put the mug back down as carefully as she had deployed her purse.

  Carmen had given her only daughter a pretty name, one with Latina roots but skewed Anglo, all the better to bow to her heritage and still blend into a melting-pot world. A hell of a song associated with Clint Eastwood (and mama Molina had an unconfessable weakness for Clint Eastwood) went with it. What more could a girl want?

  To be called “Mari.” Not pronounced “Mary,” but Mah-ree.

  Carmen hoped it was a stage and wondered if her daughter realized that was a French pronunciation. Probably not.

  Mariah sipped again, her eyes not watering as much this time.

  They sat quietly for a few moments.

  “Is anything bothering you?” Carmen asked.

  Mariah sighed. Obviously, too many things to count.

  “I wish . . .

  “What?”

  “I wish . . . I didn’t have to go to stupid Catholic school. Otherwise, I’d be in junior high already and not be treated like a baby.”

  Carmen nodded. “That’s true. Not treated like a baby in what way?”

  “Duh! Dorky uniforms!”

  “They are pretty dorky.”

  Mariah eyed her with the usual suspicion mixed with a dash of surprise. “I thought you loved dorky. All mothers do.”

  “No. You’re right. I wear a uniform too. I need to not attract attention to myself in my job. Doesn’t mean I like that.”

  “And those clunky shoes you wear to work. No heels.”

  “I’m not trying to be Cher, hon. Just a working cop.”

  “You’re a lieutenant.”

  Carmen smiled at her daughter’s rare tone of pride. She couldn’t explain she had to be an officer and a lady. And to her mind that meant dull. “So what’s really bothering you?”

  “Nothing.”