Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit Read online

  “Weel, I need the money.”

  “So Diane told me. So you sold me out.”

  “I didn’t know about the strip club, honest.”

  “Oh, now you’re being honest.” Electra looked over her shoulder. “Better take notes on your phone, Temple. Jay Edgar Dyson is being honest.”

  The name made Temple blink, but Electra seemed to think nothing of it.

  “This is a red-letter day,” Electra said. “Or night, rather. Honest as a…carnival barker. So my livelihood has to go down because yours crashed?”

  “Folks aren’t much into big recliners, except old people, Electra.” He shrugged. “I didn’t want to do it, but these big-time Vegas investors are real persuasive. I actually got comped at Harrah’s when I arrived, and I thought I could win the money to tell them to go fly a Fokker 100.

  “That’s an early airplane, isn’t it?” Temple wanted to know. “And who comped you?”

  “This rep for the buyers. Nemo is his name.”

  “Wait.” Temple’s suspicions were confirmed, but she wanted to make sure. “Leon Nemo isn’t the buyer?”

  “Naw. Some other parties, I guess. Real estate investors.”

  “Buyer-schmuyer,” Electra said. “What I need to know…is it a done deal?”

  “I signed something.”

  “What?” she demanded. “An intent to purchase? A deed?”

  Jay’s wrinkled brow just aggravated her more. “You always had the business head of a turnip,” she told him. “I don’t. I do have the divorce agreement, and it states I have a right to buy the property first.”

  “Maybe.” Jay shrugged again. “But the property’s in my name and our divorce papers are what you might call a gentlemen’s agreement.”

  “No gentleman involved,” Electra shot back.

  “Anyway, these people got the money to get their way. They are made of money down to their undies, I’d bet.”

  “How much did they offer?”

  “That’s private,” Jay said. “And so’s my room. I’m thinking you and your pint-size deputy better leave.”

  He shuffled forward, a wall of high and wide, but not handsome, bulk. Electra retreated in revulsion, pushing Temple into the doorway.

  “You…cheap, thieving jerk,” Electra accused as she backed away into the noisy night. “Some people aren’t fit to occupy space on the planet. How much did they pay you? I want my money from our deal.”

  “None of your beeswax, hon.” Jay grabbed the door edge to shut them out.

  “You can’t run away from me. I know people you don’t want to mess with in Vegas,” Electra fussed. “You’ll be sorry—”

  “I’m betting my people are nastier than your people, Electra,” Jay said as he slammed the door closed in her face.

  Behind her, Temple teetered on the edge of the concrete walkway, even though her sneaker soles were flatter than a morning-after wallet.

  Electra backed right into her. “Sorry, hon! Hon. He called me ‘hon’, can you believe it?”

  Temple edged around to Electra’s side. “We better leave.”

  They stepped forward into a waiting circle of women. Black, white, Asian women, and one maybe-woman, all on six-inch hooker heels.

  “That old guy cold cock you, sistas?” asked a black woman in a blonde wig.

  “It’s all right,” Electra said. “I have some persuasive bill collectors.” She pulled a bit of gun butt out of her shoulder bag.

  “Some kink you must have on,” another Sister of the Night commented. “What is it, grade-school girl and nun clown?”

  Temple just wanted to be away from there. “You got it. We are a sister act,” she said, citing some TV show icons of the past forty years. “The Flying Nun and Betty White. Red-hot act. We have a tight schedule. Gotta go.” She grabbed Electra’s elbow and propelled them both toward the car.

  “Weird. Must be doing well with that,” a last comment drifted after them.

  “Oh, my Lord,” Temple said as she buckled her passenger seatbelt. “That was a weird, useless outing. I thought for a moment you were going to pull out your gat and shoot him.”

  Electra’s profile was grim as she turned the Probe under a streetlight and into the traffic flow. “That was a useless ex-spouse. What a louse. What a coward.”

  “Maybe,” Temple said. “Maybe not.”

  “You’re standing up for him?”

  “No. I’m saying maybe he’s been dealing with some local Big Bad Wolf worth being scared of. I don’t like the vibe I’m getting off the people associated with this strip club project.”

  “Me neither. It sounds like they’re putting pressure on Jay Edgar, but, believe me, baby. Nobody can do that better than I can, and I have just begun to fight.”

  14

  Ride and Seek

  When I spot Miss Electra Lark pulling out her old Probe car from behind the storage shed that houses Mr. Max’s Hesketh Vampire motorcycle, all the Sensing Something Strange hairs on my hackles rise.

  I then spy my own Miss Temple exiting the Circle Ritz wearing sunglasses after dark, stopping to perch on the top step while our esteemed landlady gets her car. Why is Miss Electra not driving her usual Elvis Blue Suede Shoes edition Volkswagen Beetle?

  I race over to the oleanders ringing the parking lot. A certain stand of the hedge they form always harbors a guard cat or two from Ma Barker’s clowder. I have ensured this handy presence by dragging down excess bounty from my despised stock of Free-to-Be-Feline for the feral community. My act of charity was almost outed last night by the mysterious intruder.

  This is an excellent exchange program. Inside, I get kudos and head pats from Miss Temple for “doing so much better on eating your healthy food”. Outside I get shoulder rubs for providing gourmet inside-cat food to the feral crew.

  This is known in international diplomatic circles as a win-win situation.

  Luckily, my business partner and aspiring daughter, Miss Midnight Louise, happens to be on Free-to-Be Feline patrol tonight. She eats up that trendy tasteless kibble that resembles rabbit turds. I keep silent on the matter, since it is handy to have her in my debt, but I would like to believe that no blood relative of mine would eat that stuff if not forced.

  “Quick, Louise!” I say. “I need some impromptu tailing.”

  Her pointed little face with the harvest-moon-golden eyes pokes through a makeshift bonnet of spiky green oleander leaves. I must admit she is enough of a looker to be a relative, but I am not copping to that rap. They can sue guys for illegal littering these days, you know.

  “Is Mr. Max back?” she asks eagerly.

  “We have just determined he is gone, so no.” He is her favorite tailing assignment, but she has been put on the Mr. Matt Devine detail in recent weeks and is none to happy about it, given the nightly round trip to outlying radio station WCOO.

  “And,” I add, “no silver Jaguar detail for you tonight, Mr. Matt is already at the radio station. Miss Electra’s getting out the old Probe. Something Is Up.”

  Miss Louise boxes her airy eyebrow hairs. “That is a very rough ride. Perhaps they are just going out for a Dairy Queen.”

  “Whatever! I want you undercover and with them. Hurry. You’ll have only a minute to eel into the backseat when Miss Temple enters the front one.”

  “At least she does so slowly, so as not to scuff her precious shoes. Although they are oddly ordinary sneakers tonight. Now that is suspicious.”

  “You cannot judge her on that. Poor people! They are forced to cover their very insufficient lower feet. They do not have our elegant retractable shiv design. At least my Miss Temple paints her pathetic toenails a vibrant Predator Red to make up for it.”

  Louise has tired of me defending my roomie. Her black coat melts into the asphalt as she hastens away, avoiding overhead lights. She is lurking beside the doorstep as the white Probe appears and stops.

  Miss Temple enters the passenger seat, and slams it shut more speedily than is her wont. I cringe. />
  Yet when the Probe pulls away, Miss Midnight Louise is nowhere in sight, not even a hair of her luxurious rear member caught against the white car door.

  What a relief! I would never hear the end of it if her precious “train” had suffered a fender bender. And so to bed.

  With the flurry of Miss Temple and Mr. Matt leaving to catch a plane early the next morning, I do not expect a report from Louise for a while.

  After they depart, I am enjoying a morning snooze from my undercover position beneath the oleander bushes, imagining my lost love, the Divine Yvette, cosseting my ears and purring pretty little French nothings into them. You might wonder how a French purr differs from a plain American one. There is a world of difference, believe you me.

  “Phffft.” I awake spitting. Miss Midnight Louise is looming over me, cleaning her toe hairs right under my nose. I sneeze again. “You will never pass as French with that kind of public grooming,” I warn her.

  “When I want to pass as French, I will eat some pâté de fois gras.”

  “Goose liver is not my favorite appetizer. Neither is it the goose’s. So you accompanied the Circle Ritz ladies home last night?”

  “I accompanied them home early this morning. They barely missed coming through the parking lot ahead of Mr. Matt Devine.”

  “Why, that would be almost three a.m.”

  “I am stunned by your adept math skills, Daddy Densest.”

  “What would the ladies be doing out at such an hour?”

  “What ladies of the night do.”

  “What? Not my Miss Temple.”

  “And your Miss Electra. They visited a party who was checked into the Araby Motel.”

  Now I am sitting up, nursing my indignation. “That is a low-brow haunt of lowlifes and the ladies of the night they attract.”

  “Or the ladies of the night attract them. It is not fashionable, and especially not French, to bad-mouth ladies of the night nowadays. That is a lifestyle choice.”

  “Not for my Circle Ritz ladies.”

  “Chill, dude. From what I heard, they were there to admonish a certain resident named Jay Edgar Dyson.”

  “So this human was of the male persuasion?”

  “In a very understated way.”

  “Huh?” Louise can get on her high horse to the point of vagueness.

  “Like you, only in human terms. Old, fat, and apologetic. A good role model for you.”

  “Most amusing, Louise, but untrue. I am merely middle-aged, solidly muscled, and never apologize. That way lies the low road to cringing and whining like the inferior canine species.”

  Louise fans her fore-scimitars to show off their exquisitely curved points. “You are right that this Jay person alternated between whining and bluster. I had to listen at a steel door, so some comments were slightly garbled. Jay Edgar is a former mate of Miss Electra Lark and is allowing shady characters about Vegas to buy property of his that adjoins your landlady’s holdings.”

  “I knew she was upset about neighborhood interlopers, but am surprised Miss Electra owns enough real estate to have it considered ‘holdings’. This is beginning to sound like a game of Monopoly. That should be fun.”

  “Not for Jay Edgar. Miss Electra cussed him out worse than a rabid wolverine. She was mad enough to end his leash on life, and as much as said so.”

  “That does sound like no chance of a reconciliation.”

  “Both of your Circle Ritz lady friends gave him the two a.m. shuffle, and left him flat. He came out shortly after to try his luck with the lurking ladies of the evening, but they said his tastes were too peculiar and moved their business operations to the motel down the street.”

  “Well, that is a whole lot of nothing to report.”

  “It would be, if that was all I observed.” She flicks a crumb of Free-to-Be-Feline from one long whisker. (Why has Miss Midnight Louise bought the party line on that putrid excuse for kibble? Sometimes I think she does things just to annoy me.)

  “Okay. Spill,” I tell her.

  An elegant mitt-sweep sends an anthill of army-green pellets tumbling around my toes.

  “Consider it spilled,” she says. “And here’s my last nugget of information. A weasely dude with ungroomed long hair and a soul patch came slinking along as soon as the ladies of the night left. He knocks and is admitted after Jay Edgar says something about getting out a bottle. I figure they will jabber until dawn, which is already paling the night sky, so I ankle out of there.”

  “How did you get back to civilization?”

  “I hopped a ride in a seventies Cadillac Eldorado with a custom pearlized white and metallic magenta paint job, padded gold vinyl top, gold hubcaps on Gangsta whitewalls and interior black shag so long the three lady and two guy riders did not even notice me.”

  “Louise,” I say, “you hitchhiked in a pimpmobile. Not classy. How close to home did that ride get you? You must have had to hoof it from the Strip.”

  “Not to worry. The Eldo stopped in our own backyard and I slipped out with the occupants.”

  “Our backyard? Where?”

  “Right by that big old deserted building that has your favorite Circle Ritz ladies in such a tizzy.”

  15

  Cat Track Fever

  “It’s a good thing,” Max mused from under the face-shading brim of a tweed hat tilted low over his eyes, presumably to aid sleep, “that airlines banned the use of metal knives after 9/11.”

  His six-foot-four frame was stretched almost full-length as his torso leaned back on maximum recline in the plane seat, but his knees were folded so his feet were braced on the bulkhead wall dead ahead.

  Thinking of “dead”, he opened one eye to take in his seat partner by the window. “Otherwise,” he added, “I might have a miniature table knife between my ribs by now.”

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” she answered without turning to look at him. “I would never use a weapon on you that had touched airline food.”

  She pointedly gazed out and down through the small window, which Max knew showed only darkness lit by the tiny, lonely lights of big ships now and then. Max had made this flight many times and found the drone of a trans-Atlantic plane’s engines a lullaby. Not that he would sleep a wink on this flight, no matter how lazy and laid-back he appeared to be.

  Unlike Max, who’d shed his trademark black designer turtlenecks and slacks for blue jeans, a disgustingly casual plaid flannel shirt, and the narrow-brimmed Trilby hat that was often seen on elderly male Brit pub-goers, Kathleen O’Connor had only semi-reclined her seat for the sixteen-hour flight from Las Vegas to JFK to Dublin, Ireland.

  She wore a microfiber emerald pantsuit. A purple velvet beret tilted to the right haloed the panther-black hair that made her delicate pale profile into an exquisite cameo The flagrant hat somewhat distracted from the still-enflamed scratches flaring on her left cheek. Her schoolgirl-stiff posture made the dramatic outfit seem a costume, Max thought, and the injury a piece of stage makeup. Max had always told Temple that naked was the best disguise, and Kathleen, a.k.a. Kitty the Cutter, was the perfect example of that.

  As for Max, he was perfectly content to let Kathleen’s boldness distract from him. Besides her, there were plenty of people in Ireland, north and south, who wanted to kill him.

  “I’m disappointed,” she commented, almost as lazily as he’d been speaking.

  He waited.

  “No private jet? No shadowy international counterterrorism sponsor? Not even First Class?”

  “Bulkhead seats, though,” he said, proudly.

  “A perk for you. I don’t need that.” She was five-three, tops, and her feet in kitten-heeled black patent leather shoes were propped on a huge black tote bag.

  Max smiled again. Kathleen dressed as innovatively as his ex-fiancée, Temple Barr, except Temple was shorter and would have worn three-inch heels. Temple had also come up with the “Kitty the Cutter” nickname, and Max had to school himself to use the formal version now.

 
“Killing you,” Kathleen said, “was never my intention.”

  “Yes, that would have interfered with my ability to suffer for loving you and leaving you right after, but seventeen-year-old guys are fickle.”

  “Did you?” she asked sharply.

  “What?” Love me would always go unspoken with her.

  Her jaw muscles tightened. “He said you said you had.”

  “Matt Devine the radio shrink, you mean?”

  Your fiancée’s new fiancé.”

  “He’s a pretty good shrink,” Max admitted.

  Kathleen licked her bright fuchsia color lipstick, a rare nervous gesture. “He said because I’d lacked ‘all positive social connections’ growing up I couldn’t understand close bonds. Or the guilt and responsibility you owed your cousin when he was blown up in the pub bombing while we were…in Sir Thomas and Lady Dixon Park.”

  “You know, Kathleen, my memory is still really screwed up. Belfast was almost twenty years ago. The answer you want may never come to me. What about my answers? Were you behind sabotaging my bungee cord act at the Neon Nightmare club?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever don a Darth Vader mask and cloak to join your longtime IRA ally, Santiago, then threaten those disgruntled unemployed magicians who owned Neon Nightmare?”

  “Is it truly serious you’re being?” She sounded indignant. “Santiago liked over-the-top stunts, and those Synth freakos were meddling with old IRA business in North America, but me, indulge in any such fakery? If I threaten, I act.”

  “There were two Vaders. Both were attacked and marked by a pack of cats. You know the ones I mean. Santiago’s body bore the track marks down his back and legs when he was autopsied.” Max’s forefinger drew a soft line under Kathleen cheek scars. “Are you marked someplace other than this?”

  “Is it possible you’d like to find out for yourself?” Her words were part taunt, part seduction.

  “It’s more than possible you’d like to find that out for yourself. No one human scarred you, in that instance.”