Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (9 page)

She pushed off the bar and headed for the door. Halfway there a drunken topless stripper collided with her.

“Hey, who was that lady! Whatcha doin’ here?”

“I’m a location scout.”

“Location scout?”

“For a TV show.”

“Oh, a TV show. C’mon, you gotta be in the picture.”

“No.” Molina pulled her arm away.

“We’re all having our picture taken. It’s Wendy’s birthday. C’mon.”

Molina didn’t have to “c’mon.” A bunch of strippers surrounded her, hanging off her shoulders and making her part of a topless chorus line.

“That’s it, ladies,” a guy shouted over the noise,“get closer now. Smile.” The photographer backed up to include the whole impromptu row, the camera’s long telephoto lens obscenely erect given the atmosphere.

Molina ducked her head, let the false hair fall forward over her face just as the camera flashed.

“Sorry, ladies, I’m outa here.” She pulled away, the drunken one clinging.

“It’s my birthday,” she slurred,“you gotta say ‘Happy Birthday’.”

“Happy Birthday Suit,” Molina muttered, making for the door.

She wasn’t happy about being in a photo. These pro-am shutter bugs always haunted strip clubs, selling prints to regulars and the girls themselves, cataloguing offstage life and likely illegal activities.

The whole scene had a stench that was almost smothering. She crashed through the door to the outside, suddenly understanding what prisoners must feel on release.

Air. Black night. Bright constellations falling to the ground, like angels, and becoming neon signs. Another night on Paradise. On Paradise Avenue in Las Vegas, a long, straight row of strip clubs magnified to infinity.

When you thought about the endless numbers of women who found a tawdry glamour and even self-esteem in flashing nudity at men, and the families they came from that made this strip-club life seem a far, far better thing than they had ever done…. Molina shook her head, though no one was there to see it.

In another moment she herself didn’t see the gaudy neon tracks of signs narrowing into the distance like lonesome train rails. Her mind was back in the Valley Hospital room, watching a girl who called herself Gayla lying pale and lost in some monotone film nightmare produced by that low-budget pair of mind-numbers: pain and pain killers.

The injuries from the attack Molina had almost witnessed in the Kitty City strip club parking lot were minor, but Gayla’s voice rasped from a near-throttling. Her knees had been skinned, her wrist sprained. All minor injuries in a major-trauma world.

“Did you see or hear anything? Anyone?” Molina had asked.

Gayla’s red-blond frizz of a hairdo had thrashed back and forth on the pillow.

“No, ma’am,” she said, either reared in a household that taught children respect for their elders and authority figures…or that beat the hell out of them until everyone they met was a force to be reckoned with and kowtowed to.

“No, ma’am. If I’da seen something I’da screamed. You know? I just sort of slipped and my throat was all tight, and my elbows and knees burned and someone was leaning over me.”

“Someone. Tall, dark?”

Gayla frowned. Every night she saw faces on the other side of the spotlights, all blurred and all Someones. “Dark. The hair. Maybe.”

Maybe. Maybe Kinsella. Maybe…Nadir.

“Were the eyes dark, or light?”

“It was night.” Gayla finally sounded indignant enough to speak up for herself, for everything she missed really seeing as it was because life was nicer that way. “I couldn’t see eyes. I didn’t see face. Just something…dark coming at me and knocking everything out from under me. And breath. It was hot on my cheek.”

“Breath. Did you smell anything on it?”

“Wow. You know, when I was feeling sick there on the ground, it did seem my sense of smell kicked up. Like when you —”

“When you what?”

“You
know
.”

“No, I don’t. When?”

“During…it.”

“Oh. That.” Molina sighed. “So what was the smell in the parking lot?”

“What? I wasn’t doing…it.”

“The attacker’s breath. What did it smell like?”

Gayla’s faced screwed into such exaggerated concentration that she winced when her muscles hurt from it. “Gum, I guess.”

“Gum?”

“Gum.”

Molina chewed on that. Neither suspect was what she’d call a gum-chewing man. Unless he’d drunk something that often flavored gum.

“The scent. Was it cinnamon? Spearmint? Fruity?”

“I don’t know. For just a second I thought…maybe spicy, I don’t know.”

Spicy. Did they put cinnamon sticks in anything besides hot Christmas punch? Or maybe it was breath mints! Any scents similar? Check it out. Check out every damn breath mint on the market.

“But you didn’t see anything?” Molina pressed.

“I told you, no!”

“Did you sense how tall the man might be? He was behind you. He choked you, forced you down. Did he feel like a shadow of yourself? Not much taller, but stronger? Or did he come from above, like a tree, bearing down?”

“Gee. I don’t know.” Her vacant, pale eyes, no color to speak of, like her opinions, her testimony, blinked rapidly. “I can’t say. It was like a…spike, driving me down. I just gave, without thinking about it. It was so sudden, I didn’t know anything else to do.”

Molina looked at this frail young woman. She was a willow, this girl. She would bend to any will stronger than hers, and every will was stronger than hers. That was why the attacker had picked her. He knew a beaten-down soul when he saw it. It was so unfair! Those whom life had already battered gave like reeds and took more battering.

Molina reached to cover Gayla’s hand on the thin hospital blanket. “I’m sorry. We’re going to find the man who did this. Stop him.”

Gayla nodded, looked like she believed her. Smiled a little. Sadly.

“There’s always another, though,” she said. For the first time during the interview, she sounded very, very certain about something.

Molina’s flashback faded, leaving her back in the Las Vegas night, standing alone on Paradise, not certain about anything except that she had to catch an elusive killer.

Too bad that arresting either of the two leading candidates for the honor would be disastrous for either her career or her personal life. Or both.

Asian Persuasion

It turns out that I need an interpreter with the Big Boys. By allowing Miss Louise to check out their circumstances at the canned hunt club first, I have encouraged them to bond with her, not me.

You would think that male solidarity would overcome a little exercise in charity like visiting the imprisoned, but no such luck. Mr. Lucky, the black panther, and Osiris, the leopard, now think that Miss Midnight Louie is the cat’s meow, and I am merely a tolerated hanger-on.

At least I am allowed to eavesdrop.

“So how plush a pad is this?” she asks.

“Like the cemeteryscape up front,” Mr. Lucky says,“this is a fine and private place.”

I do not think that he means to paraphrase a poet, especially a Cavalier poet, but he does. I refrain from pointing it out. This is not a poetry crowd.

“You will get used to the funereal facade,” Osiris assures his new roommate. “It is a security dodge that protects all our hides, including that of our esteemed sponsor, the Cloaked Conjuror.”

“An artful dodge,” I put in with admiration. “Hiding behind a cemetery is what you might call ironic, as his life is always in danger because his act reveals the ploys behind some of the most famous magical illusions of all time. That is why the Cloaked Conjuror must disguise his face and voice even on stage. Of course he makes enough moolah at it to challenge that casino known as The Mint for the title.”

“I do not know about him,” Mr. Lucky replies with a hackle twitch. “That creepy leopard-spotted mask is insulting to the real thing, and his voice sounds like he is gargling rattlesnakes. I liked the Man in Black who stole us back from the ranch better.”

“Mr. Max,” Mr. Lucky purrs in basso agreement. “I have heard of him often on the Big Cat circuit. It is a shame that he has retired from the magician trade nowadays. He was the best. We guys in black are pretty hard to beat.”

“Hear, hear!” I put in, but am ignored, except by Miss Louise, who corrects me. “Gals in black, too.”

“Speaking of gals in black,” I put in, hoping to be heeded for once,“I hear you two big guys are going to be working with a new female magician. How is that going?”

“How does a pipsqueak like you know about our secret sessions?” Osiris growls.

“I hear things others do not. It is my job. I am a private investigator.”

“She does not wear black,” Osiris says,“this new lady. At least not all the time, although I commend the truly long fingernails she wears. As long as some human females’ high heels. Four inches, I would say.”

“Awesome,” purrs Mr. Lucky, cleaning between his own four inch shivs.

I try not to shudder, knowing that the evil Shangri-La and her light-fingered mandarin stage-shivs stole my Miss Temple’s ring as part of her so-called act three months ago. Besides, it is more important to know what Shangri-La is up to now.

“So Miss Shangri-La is indeed joining the Cloaked Conjuror’s act?” I say idly.

“And that kitten of hers.” Mr. Lucky lifts a paw the size of a catcher’s mitt and licks it cleaner than home plate.

“You mean” — my breath catches in my lungs like a two-pound koi in the throat — “a piece of fluff about the size and weight of Miss Midnight Louise here, only pale of coat?”

“She is a funny-looking feline,” Mr. Lucky says,“not a symphony in monotone like Miss Midnight Louise. Her eyes are an unnatural blue shade, her body is the pale liverish color of the pablum I am given when I am sick and off my feed —”

“Baby food,” Osiris sneers. “They give you human baby food, buckets of it.”

Mr. Lucky ignores the attempted ignominy, as I would do in his position. “And her extremities appear to have been dipped in some sort of mud. They are all dirty brown.”

I chortle to hear the hated Hyacinth cut down to size by the Big Cats. My every encounter with her so far has ended with me caged or drugged, not a sterling record for a street-smart shamus. But even she would not dare to challenge these big dudes.

Midnight Louise is not amused. She never is.

“I have seen the cat in question. She is a lilac-point Siamese and is supposed to look like that, including the blue eyes, which are highly prized by humans. The only thing unnatural about her is the colored enamel on her claws, and that is perpetrated by her mistress, who presents a rather gaudy stage presence herself.”

I cannot believe that Miss Louise has beaten me here to lay eyes on my bête not-noir in her new lair before I have! To lay eyes on both of them, in fact, Shangri-La and her hairy familiar.

“I need to check these babes out,” I say.

“I bet you do,” Mr. Lucky says with a wink. “I must say you get around for a little guy.”

I fluff my ruff, but Midnight Louise is not impressed. “I have got the whole layout down cold. Come on along and I will show you.’Bye, boys.”

There is little left for me to do but to sashay after Louise like she is cheese and I am a rat. When I catch up with her, I decide to assert my age and experience.

And then I get a brilliant idea. These dames are big on family trees, and have I got a claw off the old cactus for her!

“Say, Louise.”

“
Miss
Louise to you, since we are not related, as you keep reminding me.”

“It is funny you should mention that. Before I came here I ran into a rather large piece of auld lang syne.”

“Huh?” She stops and twitches her tail. “I am a Scottish fold, ye dinna hae ta speak Scots to me.”

“I mean I encountered a figure from my past. My earliest years. It was quite a shock.”

“I am surprised you remember anything that far back.”

“Ungrateful kit! I am not about to forget my own mother.”

“Mother?” She actually stops and sits, squashing that metronome tall of hers. “How can you be sure? You must not have seen her since you were six weeks old. I certainly did not see mine after that, though whether it was because she was dead or domesticated I cannot say.”

“Well, my ma is neither dead nor domesticated. She runs a feral gang on Twenty-fourth Street, a pretty raw neighborhood. She has survived being kidnapped by the Fixers and is doing just fine. I would say she said hello if there was any chance that you two were related, but it does not look like there is.”

“Liar!” she spits. “So my grandmother is alive.”

I do not say anything to dissuade her. Dames love to imagine long lines of interelated individuals, whether they be human or feline. Perhaps that is why the human ones watch soap operas.

“Do you think she would know anything about my mother?” Louise asks.

“Could be.”

“I suppose you did not ask, you irresponsible lug!”

“There was not time. I was about to be jumped by the Wild Bunch or whisked away for an unnecessary globe-otomy by the Fixers.”

For some reason Miss Louise finds this amusing. Her shiny black lips curl like whiskers with a permanent wave. “Yeah. I suppose in your condition you could be mistaken for an unneutered male. Who would dream an alley cat like you had benefitted from a human-style vasectomy?”