Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (47 page)

Their rhythmic greeting dance paused.

They lifted throats and eyes to the edge of the rock garden that was their home.

A small cat stood there, under the glare of a security light.

Max stared, expecting it to be Midnight Louie, though how he would have gotten here…

But this cat’s coat was pale, as were the eyes that shone sky-blue in the spill of sodium iodide rays from above.

The darkness beyond the shower of light, behind the cat, turned into a figure as Max’s vision adjusted. The form was curlicued like a silhouette portrait cut with manicure scissors from stiff black construction paper. This thing was more solid, more like paper-thin wrought-iron, a creature of razor-sharp extremities…gown, nails, the curled ends of hip-length tresses as dark as night would be without security lights.

Shangri-La.

Max templed his fingers, drew himself into one long line of watching black, an impassive vertical of stasis and potential.

Behind him, leopard and panther pushed against his legs, their massive throats growling gently.

He was taken aback that his presence had the capacity to surprise her, but she clearly was shocked. Perhaps she overestimated the estate’s security measures.

“You violate this place,” she said at last. Her husky soprano trembled slightly with some strong but undecipherable emotion.

Shangri-La was nothing if not feminine, but like many Asians, had a throaty intonation. It reminded him of Temple’s voice, so charmingly rough for such a small, smooth package.

“This place is inviolate,” he answered. “At least to the cats, and I am their guest.”

She stood unmoved, her fluttering pennants of garb frozen as still as the carved draperies on a black jade statue of Quan Yin, the Buddhist goddess of compassion and mercy.

Shangri-La, he was sure, neither possessed nor desired either virtue.

“Guest?” she repeated, outraged by the term.

He offered the truth as a pretext. “I procured them for the Cloaked Conjuror. I wanted to see how they were doing.” He’d also wanted silent but amenable company after the night’s extreme stresses: almost losing Temple, almost losing to Molina.

“The cats will not always come when you call,” she warned him.

But they would. That was his gift.

The small Siamese in the spotlight hissed at him and retreated to her side, to the dark side. Its blue eyes flashed stoplight-red from the night.

Max studied Shangri-La. She reminded him of something. Something lethal.

Medusa.

That’s what her spiky, trailing tendrils of hair and gown recalled. Medusa, the snaked-haired Gorgon whose very glance was fatal poison.

Perseus had needed a mirror to defeat Medusa; he had needed to slay the image to destroy the monster. To see her face was to glimpse your own death, even as she in turn saw your future.

They stared at each other through the dark. Max wondered why this alien magician had allied herself with the Cloaked Conjuror and against him…against Temple, for Shangri-La had stolen the ring he gave to Temple and she must have allowed the ring to find its way, for some reason, to Lieutenant Molina.

Was she a professional rival of his in her own mind? Perhaps the intervention was even personal. Perhaps Shangri-La had left Temple’s ring…his ring…on the scene of Gloria Fuentes’ murder. But how could this woman know who had given Temple the ring, know of their connection?

What else might she have left, where, for others?

The ritual dagger on Professor Mangel’s killing ground?

And why?

Was she an agent of the Synth? One thing was certain. Like him, she was a magician, and she would keep her secrets to the death.

While he had been thinking about her, she had been thinking about him.

“Come here again,” she said, “and it will not be worth your life.”

She put a period to her threat by choosing to disappear in a fountain of fireworks. And her little cat too.

Max and the big cats were not impressed. They had made such exits many times themselves.

He massaged the sharp shoulder bones behind their heads.

The night held one immutable boon. Cher Smith’s killer was finally identified and captured. She had been a child, and her murderer was a child. It was an answer, but not a solution.

Max sighed as the cats pressed closer, as if cold.

At least he could put one lost soul to rest, even if only in the cemetery of his mind. At least he could reduce by one the number of lives on his conscience.

No one could take that away from him, not even Molina.

Matt woke up.

Slowly.

Very slowly.

Woke up early for a man who worked a night shift. Only 9:00
A.M.
It must have been a dream
, he thought.

Then he thought,
This must be how people who get drunk feel the next morning. The classic Morning After.

And he thought, finally and with the dawning shame of honest recollection, with horror,
No, it’s not a dream. It’s history. My history now. And forever.

Life’s Little Addenda

The lieutenant slapped the flat of her hand down on the desk, hard.

Between her gritted teeth came a murmured mantra like the
shshshshsh
of waves stroking the beach, only fast and furious.

She rose and stalked out of her office, still
shshsh
ing under her breath like a demented librarian.

“
Sheesh
.” Detective Merry Su’s nervous sideways glance met Detective Morris Alch’s. “This is bad, Morrie. Triple bad.”

“That wasn’t some, ah, Chinese curse? Well, I couldn’t quite make it out.”

“It wasn’t Latin, and unless you tell me it was Yiddish —”

“Yeah, I was hoping it was some kind of prayer, too.”

“Homicide lieutenants don’t pray.”

“At least not in public.”

“Especially not in public.”

They were quiet for a long moment. Morrie Alch was still stunned, like the first time he visited his mother in the assisted care facility and she’d screamed a string of obscenities at him. Alzheimer’s will do that to you, to you and your mother.

There could be no doubt. Molina’s unprecedented mantra had been
ohshitohshitohshitohshitohshit.

This would be nothing new in the rough-edged world of cops, except that Molina’s management style had been to avoid the obvious, including cuss words.

Hearing her violate her own inviolate rule was surprisingly shocking, like catching your parents having, um, sex.

“She takes these particular murders hard,” Su said.

“So hard that I heard from a pal in Vice and Narcotics that she looked into the last case personally, on her own time.”

Another meeting pair of sideways glances. Molina was the ultimate delegator. She gave her detectives the widest latitude, expecting them to put it to good use and answer for it any time she asked.

“I suppose,” Su said, “after having just solved that stubborn stripper murder case, this new one makes it seem like that never happened.”

“This case is nothing like a stripper murder. No, really, it’s not. No connection, believe me. A high-end call girl named Vassar, of all things, killed at the Goliath? It’s a different class of victim, different venue, different murder weapon. Everything is different. I don’t get why the lieutenant should flip at the mere mention of the case.”

“She’s really put all of our, and her, efforts into nabbing this stripper killer. Having another dead woman turn up the very same night the stripper guy is nailed is discouraging.”

“The lieutenant doesn’t get discouraged.”

“She doesn’t swear either.”

“It wasn’t swearing, really, kinda more like a —”

“Like a whole string of swear words. I’ve never heard one from her.”

Another long silence.

Morrie shuffled his feet and creaked in his chair. Sitting here was like waiting for the principal to come back, only the principal had just gone off cawing like a crow.

“Years ago,” he said in a nostalgic vein, “I had the very first woman to make lieutenant for a boss.”

“Poor Morrie. You can’t get away from us.”

“Not that I haven’t tried. Anyway, she was from Texas. Stringy woman. Face you’d put a mud fence around to improve the view.”

“So what were her other advantages in the job?”

“Other than being as tough as barbed wire, she did one thing that told the guys she meant business.”

“Yeah?”

“It was f-word this and f-word that, and freaking f-word in every which way.”

“I’m free, yellow, and twenty-one, Morrie. You don’t have to sugar-coat it.”

He looked away. “I got a daughter your age.”

“I suppose that could be Molina’s reason for never talking the talk. Her daughter’s pretty young yet.”

“Kids you take seriously. You don’t want the toilet-mouth of the block. Monkey hear, monkey do. You let go at work, you can’t hang it up at home.”

Su crossed her arms. “A lot of cop talk is pretty sexist.”

“It’s something a guy’s gotta do to make sure the other guys know he’s a guy.”

“I can take it. Dish it out too.”

Morrie shrugged. “Some women overcompensate. You don’t. Molina neither. I didn’t realize how much she didn’t until just now.”

“So it’s bad.”

“She’s been working overtime, real overtime.”

“You think she’s cracking?”

“Naw, but she ain’t happy about this last killing. Responsibility will get to you if you let it. We’re not here to save anyone, just to find the guilty.”

“I can’t believe I heard Molina say that.”

“Nothing shocks you, remember?”

“That’s why I hate it when something does.”

Morrie nodded. “I know what you mean. My daughter?”

“Yeah.”

“After all that, she grew up to be a real toilet-mouth.” He shrugged. “What are you gonna do?”

Su shook her head sympathetically. “Shit.”

Midnight Louie Sings the Blues

Give a dude a dame, and you might as well carve “Finis” on a block of marble bearing his name somewhere, hopefully not at Los Muertos.

I have seen enough of that place to last an entire one of my nine lives.

Here I spend half the case worrying about the welfare of my so-called “partner,” and she gets to show up at the curtain call and kick ass.

I get to watch.

This is not the sort of claws-on action I am used to providing.

I can only conclude that this revolting denouement is due to a surfeit of females in my life. There is the errant Miss Temple, who is always getting herself into as much hot water as another infamous redhead, Lucy Ricardo. There is my newly discovered mater, the unfortunately named Ma Barker. There is the vicious Hyacinth herself. There is the unforgettable and lethal Kitty the Cutter. There is the relentless Lieutenant C. R. Molina.

And there is my partner in crime writing, Miss Carole Nelson Douglas, who appears to revel in showing us guys in a less than flattering light.

Is there a hidden message here? Is this some feminist, humanist tract that I have innocently become entoiled in?

I get to do the dirty work! Do you hear me? Little dolls are supposed to stand on the sidelines and cheer me on. Or swoon at my approach when I deign to make it.

From now on, it is sheaths off.

I am the alpha element here, not to mention the titular hero.

(I like that word “titular.” It means the whole enchilada is named after me. Not literally. Aw, now it is getting complicated. Dames must be at work again.)

Of course, when I think about it, that only means that someone else did the naming, and what can be bestowed, can be taken away.

Still, it cannot hurt to reestablish my territory.

I am feline, hear me roar!

Hark? Is that an echo?

Oops. It is Osiris, joining in from across town.

I guess we Big Guys did our part, and we have to give the little ladies a solo bow now and then.

It does not really mean anything.

Unless the little ladies take offense.

Very best fishes,

Midnight Louie, Esq.