by Rene Fomby
I give him my best attempt at a wry smile. “I mean, he is a politician, right, Tommy? Being a liar isn’t exactly a disqualifier for the job.”
“No, you’re right about that, Moose.” Tommy hooks a claw over his shoulder in the direction of the front door. “And we’re losing valuable sunlight right now jawing about something we just can’t fix at the moment. The solution to that problem will have to come later, when the election’s finally over. So, for right now, we gotta find someone somewhere who can point us in the direction of this Himalayan chick, Julia Strange. And get to her before she manages to spill her guts out all over the streets of Chicago. Maybe even literally spill her guts, given everything that’s at stake here…”
Just the mention of the work ‘steak’ sets my mouth to watering, and I’m wondering whether we might find time to scare up a little snackie or two before din-din, as I hop off my seat and race after him out the door. Leaving Tony behind, still quivering on top of the desk like a cat that got left out in the cold.
The Dead Fish Bar, 11:30 a.m.
T
he dilapidated sign over the equally dilapidated entrance says we’re at the Dead Fish Bar, and judging from the stench that’s filling my ample nostrils right about now, I’d have to say there’s plenty of truth in their advertising. If anything, the place should be called the Dead Whale Bar. It’s that bad.
Tommy turns to me just as we’re about to enter and pulls me aside. I look up at him, gleaming brightly in the last rays of sunshine before we step inside the bar. He’s the perfect specimen of a feline, tall and thin, but somehow also radiating both a physical and an inner kind of strength, his black fur and alabaster chest just screaming big money.
He lays a paw on my shoulder, softly. “Look, Moose, let’s be frank with one another. This is serious business we’re involved in, the kind of business that gets people hurt if they’re not careful. I know Fat Tony—or whatever his name is—thought you were ready for this, but I think it’s pretty obvious right now that his judgment in these kind of matters is pretty suspect…”
Part of me is offended by all this, by the suggestion that I can’t handle this kind of dangerous situation. But, to be frank, another part of me is thankful for the get-out-of-jail-free card. As Bella keeps telling me, I was never really trained for this type of high-stakes undercover action. (Yes, I finally figured out what they were really talking about back then. You think I’m stupid? Duh!)
I’m just about to take him up on it when it all suddenly hits me. When I first hired Tony to look into Penny’s murder, he wanted to send me home to sit on my paws, the same as Tommy. But, as it turned out, without my help, especially my unique ability to deal with the canine side of the investigation, Tony never would have gotten anywhere with the probe, and Killer would likely now be buried somewhere in a tall pile of discarded dog carcasses in the county dump, instead of lounging around safely in the warm luxury of his nice new home, probably with his new little mistress’s arms wrapped tightly around his neck.
And, if anything, what’s at stake here—and yeah, I figured that part out, too!—is not just one dog’s life, but the safety of all pets, all across our planet. Unlike one certain female Corgi back in my neighborhood, this is just not the time to Welsh on my obligations to my community. Especially since it’s the same community that stepped up so bravely for me when I needed them to help me save Killer.
I give Tommy a big smile and shake my head. “Nope, gotta see this one through, Tuxedo. This is not the time to cut and run.”
“Are you sure about that?” Tommy doesn’t seem all that convinced. “I mean, this is Big Ollie’s world we’re stepping into. One wrong move from any of us and—”
Whoa! That stops me in my tracks. “Big Ollie? Isn’t he the loan shark killer whale from the Shedd Aquarium, the one I almost took out a loan from back when we needed to score some explosives?” Once again, I seem to be at least one step behind everything that’s happening all around me in this case. “Why should we worry about him? What we’re up to, it doesn’t sound like we’ll need to be borrowing money anytime soon. And if we do need some cash, I’m sure PETSEC’s good for it.”
“No, Moose, you’ve got it all wrong.” Tommy keeps looking back over his shoulder, nervously, like he’s expecting something or someone to come barreling out the door at him any moment now. “The Big O don’t just handle the consumer lending game, he’s got a fin dipped into just about every racket in the big city. Dames, drugs, numbers, you name it, he runs it. And if you accidentally pull off something that runs afoul of one of his operations, costs him any dough, baked or not, then bing-bang-boom, he’s got some goodfellas who’ll take it all out of your fur. And I mean that literally. After they skin the fur right off your back, that is. While you’re still alive. So, you still think you’re really up for that kind of action, little fella?”
Whoa, again! Now I really gotta step back and think this one through again. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m every bit as tough as the next dog—I’m an Aussie, don’t you forget—but I’ve got other obligations to folks back in the neighborhood that I need to be considering right about now. Obligations that will clearly require me to be wearing all of my own fur, if you get my drift.
I’m just about to cave on the whole operation and head for the safety of home, when out of the blue a giant black paw lands on Tommy’s shoulder from behind.
The Dead Fish Bar
I
t’s way too dark inside the doorway to see clearly who’s snuck up behind Tommy, especially since I’m still standing out in the middle of the blazing mid-day sun, but even so it’s pretty clear that whatever it is it’s huge, and it’s blending in way too well with the smoky stench vomiting out on top of us from inside the bar.
Tommy turns around slowly, ready to spring into action at any second. I can see the muscles on his legs tense up, all his claws now fully extended, and I crouch down into a fighting position myself. Whoever this big blob is, we won’t go down easy.
And then the blob steps out into the light. And becomes the biggest, blackest cat your eyes have ever seen. “Tuxedo! Moose! What brings you two around dese parts dese days? I’d have pegged the both of you for something a little higher class!”
It’s Ike! The Jamaican cat from down on the South Side, the one who helped Tony and me when we were trying to figure out who killed Penny!
I leap forward and stick out a paw. “Ike! It’s really great to see you, buddy! What are you doing all the way up here? Still living in that shed next to the school?”
“Naw, haven’t you heard, mon? De Fisheye and I have gone into bidness together. We’re repackaging de food other places be throwing out, then cleaning it all up and selling them like new on de street. You know, like de hippies all say, recycle, renew…”
It’s so great seeing him again, I can’t help but grin back at him like I have the rabies or something. “Hey, that’s a great idea. Get rid of all the unnecessary waste, and feed the furry folks, all at the same time!”
“An’ make some good money doin’ it, too. I mean, de cost of de goods approaches zero, if you get me. So it’s all in de profits.”
Pretty impressive, I must say. But then I always knew Ike had the smarts to really make something of himself someday. “Good for both of you! But, hey, do you remember my friend, Tommy Tuxedo? He’s was there at the prison break—”
“Shore I know of him! Everyone knows the Tuxedo! Give it dere, mon!”
The two of them bump fists for a second, and Tommy and I finally let out a tense breath.
“But, seriously,” Ike asks us, “what are you two doing hanging around a place like dis? Dese people, dey pretty scary folks, you know? Even I try to avoid dese kind of dives dese days. I’m only here to meet a fellow about a delivery.”
Tommy takes the lead explaining what’s been happening, leaning in closer. “We’re here working on a thing for PETSEC. I’d tell you more, but—”
“Den you’d have to kill me,” Ike responds with a laugh. “Yeah, good thing I’m not more curious, ‘cause I’d like to see you and Moosie give dat a good try!”
He has a point. Ike is easily twice the size of Tommy and me put together, and it’s all well-toned muscle, from the looks of what’s bristling just under his fur.
Ike looks out over my shoulder and into the street. “But hey, great seeing you guys, but my mon’s here, so I gotta go. Moose, don’ be such a stranger. Come visit with de Fish and I some time when you get a chance. We’ve set up our headquarters out in dat same alley where you met him de first time. You can’t miss it.”
“Will do, Ike,” I agree heartily with a short wave goodbye. “And give Fisheye my best. Good to see you two are doing well. Couldn’t happen to a finer pair of guys, I tell you!”
With Ike now leaving us and heading out into the street, we turn and head inside the Dead Fish, the earlier question about my staying on the team now apparently forgotten.
The inside of the bar is somehow even darker than it seemed from the outside, every surface grungy with filth and leftover cigarette smoke, the floor so nasty I almost wish I had my rain booties on as we stride purposefully but stickily across the room toward the main bar.
I check out the various denizens of the room as we stroll past, careful though not to make direct eye contact with any of them. It’s an odd collection of all kinds of animals, some domesticated, some very much less so, but all apparently having no place better to be on this, the first sunny day in weeks, than sitting in a flea-bitten bar tossing back foul-tasting, over-priced drinks. Not exactly this Aussie’s definition of a good time.
I grab Tommy’s arm to get his attention.
“Are you sure this is all that good an idea? Like Ike says, this isn’t exactly our type of crowd.”
Tommy gives me the kind of look you usually see folks give their paws when they’ve accidentally stepped in something.
“Here’s the thing, Moose. If time wasn’t a factor, we could play this out slowly, cast out a wide net and then throw back anything that didn’t turn out all that promising. But we don’t have the luxury of time, right now. We got less than a day and a half to solve this thing. Less than a day and a half to find out who’s been murdering the best secret agents this world has ever seen, hacking into a pee-mail network Q’ute Branch swears is unhackable, and threatening to disrupt one of the most important elections in animal history.”
He quickly studies the bar himself, and I get the impression he’s not liking what he sees. “Yeah, ideally we could set out some mousetraps here and there and then sit back and relax, waiting for one of them to snap shut. But that just isn’t an option for us here. We can’t set any mousetraps, because we don’t even know what kind of cheese to put in the traps. We don’t even know if our enemy is interested in cheese, for that matter. So that leaves us with only one option. We have to become the cheese, we have to lure them to us. Because we already know one particular type of cheese they’re going to want to come for. They are obviously fatally attracted to Double-O agents. And in just a few short weeks they’ve managed to eliminate the entire service, including Double-O Seven. So, if we have any chance at all of identifying who’s behind all this, of finding them in time to put an end to all the mischief, we’ve got to set that mousetrap. We’ve got to spread the scent of our own particular brand of cheese far and wide. And hope our trap gets sprung long before they can finish off all the cheese. While at least one of us is still standing.”
That makes sense, I have to admit, but I still can’t shake the feeling that it all seems like some kind of crazy suicide mission. But by now we’ve reached the main bar, and Tommy motions for me to hang back a foot or so while he handles business.
The bartender looks like the unfortunate result of some kind of mixed breeding operation that went very, very wrong. His fur is spotty at best, with a scraggly-looking brown mane loosely circling his neck, his teeth a mix of yellow and black. Where he has any at all. He’s wiping down a glass with a grease-smeared rag as Tommy slaps something down on top of the bar in front of him. Barkeep stares down at it, then up at Tommy, checking him out.
“Yeah, wutter yer havin?”
Tommy leans forward conspiratorially. “To start with, tuna if you’ve got it. Shaken, then poured.”
Barkeep nods, looking distracted, then stomps down to the end of the bar, muttering all the while to himself. He scrounges around under the bar for a few moments, finally returning with a small rusted tin can with no label. Pulling a bowl out from underneath the counter in front of Tommy and wiping it out with the elbow of his shirt, he raps the can down hard on the counter, twice, then pries open the lid and pours its contents out into the bowl. From where I’m standing it doesn’t look or smell all that bad, but I certainly wouldn’t want to be the first to sink my eyeteeth into that particular hot mess.
“Never seen you around these parts before,” Barkeep grumbles. “You gotta name?”
Tommy stares back into his eyes, unflinchingly. “Yeah. The name’s Tuxedo. Tommy Tuxedo. 009.”
Barkeep pulls back slightly, his eyes sweeping in a wide arc around the room. His voice is more than a little louder when he finally responds. “Ooh, we got ourselves a gen-u-wine Double-O agent here, eh? Im-pressive.”
The eye he’s giving Tommy suggests he’s anything but impressed. I carefully move in a little closer, just in case something goes down quickly and I need to have Tommy’s back.
Tommy flashes his trademark Tuxedo smile, a smile that must have cost him a small fortune. “Double-O in the flesh.”
“And I suppose you have a license to kill, like all the others?” Barkeep asks with a sneer.
Tommy looks nonplussed. “Yes, I do, as a matter of fact. Mice mostly, the occasional bird when I get the chance.” Tommy leans in even closer. “But enough with all this kissy-face small talk. I need answers, serious answers to some very serious questions, and Ollie tells me this is the place to start.”
Barkeep jumps back a bit at the mention of Big Ollie’s name, then he narrows his eyes.
“That’s a dangerous name to be throwing around in this bar, around these people.” He glances around the place again, and as I do the same, I see that virtually every eye on the bar is now focused like a laser beam on the center of our backs.
But Tommy seems oblivious to all that.
“So let’s start with you telling me what you know about the missing Double-O’s.”
The two of them engage in some kind of mutual assured destruction stare-down contest, Barkeep absent-mindedly wiping out the inside of the same filthy glass with the same filthy rag the whole time. Finally, he appears to give up on the pointless fight and cuts his eyes toward a back corner of the bar, far from the front door or any of the bar’s grime-smeared windows.
“Guy you want is back there. A Norwegian wharf rat, answers to the name Olaf. If he’s answering at all, that is. Go say your peace, and if he’s talking, he’s talking. But listen, when you’re done, you’re done, then get the hell out of here. I don’t need any trouble, not in my bar. And your kind always means trouble in these parts. Tuxedo.”
Tommy flashes him an unfriendly smile, then gives me a quick nod and heads toward the back corner of the room where Olaf the wharf rat is waiting for us.
The Dead Fish Bar
T
ommy slides into the empty seat across from the rat like he owns the place, and when Olaf doesn’t respond, Tommy reaches across the table and pours the rat’s beer out onto the floor beside them. The rodent is on his feet in an instant, a rusty but dangerous-looking blade held firmly in his left paw in front of him. And he’s massive, kind of like the rat equivalent of my buddy Ike. A low moaning noise like a dangerous storm is slowly escaping his mouth, a noise picked up by a frighteningly large number of other denizens of the bar all around us.
“Tell me why I shouldn’t just gut you right as I’m standing here?” Olaf asks
in a low and scratchy voice, moving easily and quickly around the table, the blade now just inches away from Tommy’s face.
Tommy doesn’t flinch, but I’m making myself busy checking out any available escape routes. And finding out that the bar’s remaining clientele appears to have closed them all off in an heartbeat. The bar has suddenly gone deadly quiet, and I can hear my own heart thudding loudly in my chest.
“Nice knife, little mousie,” Tommy growls in response. “But didn’t your mother ever tell you that’s it’s bad luck for little mousies to play with—mousers?”
I didn’t even see the move, and I was staring straight ahead at both of them at the time. One moment the rat is lunging forward, and the next moment Tommy’s behind him, pressing the business side of the knife hard into the front of Olaf’s throat. And, almost immediately, everyone else in the bar seems to have lost any interest in the little drama playing out at our table and have all returned to minding their own business. But as they settle back into their seats, I notice that most of them are still watching us very carefully out of the corners of their eyes. And various weapons I hadn’t seen before have now made their way to the tops of almost all of the tables.
Meanwhile, the rat is making a rather pathetic attempt to pry the knife away from his throat, but that only buys him a new line of blood now trickling down the front of his neck and onto the front of his filthy shirt. Tommy leans in, his breath tickling the rat’s right ear.