Cat in an Alphabet Soup Read online

  She debated retreating. Yet the place was so still. Empty. Utterly empty. The parquet felt warm under her silent stocking feet as she skated across it, afraid of slipping.

  The living room opened up before her, a book too dimly lit to read aright. A gap in the French doors was instantly evident, like a dog-eared page. One of the doors was ajar on an acute angle, admitting the heat of the night, and a grinding chorus of distant cicadas that she hadn’t noticed at first.

  A heavy scent of jasmine and gardenia also rolled in like fog from the patio. Temple paused at the living room wall, her fingers reading the Braille of the thermostat’s raised plastic letters. The tiny marker was parked in the Off zone—but what burglar would turn air-conditioning off?

  She shuffled further into the living room. Then she stopped. Something was missing. The cat should have sensed her presence by now. Louie should be stalking from some favorite retreat, or thumping down from atop the refrigerator, merowing for food. He should be wreathing her ankles, even in the dark, no challenge for his superior night vision. Where was the cat?

  Temple back-shuffled as silently as she had entered, and slipped out the front door, never turning her back to the room. Once in the hall with its feeble wall sconces and dull rose carpeting, she raced flat-footed for the elevator and hit the Up button.

  It took forever to come. She’d never noticed before how the gears clanked and squealed, how blasted loud the ancient mechanism was! It arrived empty. Temple darted in and pushed the P button. Inside, the car was richly paneled, like the exterior of a coffin. It jerked upward with the unholy racket of an unoiled guillotine being hoisted for the fatal drop.

  A clanking stop almost persuaded Temple’s heart to imitate it. She tore for the coffered double doors opposite, pounding them with both fists.

  They sprang open. Electra Lark stood there with her hair in stiff peaks resembling properly beaten egg whites. Little papers pressed onto her scalp. One egg-white peak was stained blood-red.

  “Temple! What is it? I’m doing my hair.”

  “God! I thought you were being scalped.” Temple scampered over the threshold and shut the penthouse doors behind her. “Someone’s in the building—or was. My apartment air- conditioning is off, one French door is wide open and the cat’s gone.”

  Electra whipped the hand towel from around her neck, thinking. “The maintenance man is gone for the night. It’s too bad that nice Matt Devine isn’t here.”

  “He isn’t?” Temple hadn’t considered that there might be advantages to being a damsel in distress.

  “Works nights.” Electra sighed. “We’ll have to be liberated ladies and do it ourselves. I’ll get a flashlight. We don’t want to give the intruder any more to see by than necessary, if he’s still there.”

  Temple nodded, and Electra vanished into her kitchen. Temple had never explored the inner depths of Electra’s quarters, but she glimpsed an odd green crystal ball on a huge claw-footed brass tripod in the living room—atop a blond TV cabinet from the fifties. A shadow flitted away as Temple strained to see into the half-glimpsed rooms; probably a phantom of her unsteady nerves.

  “This oughta do it.” Electra reappeared, waving an old- fashioned, silver-metal-barreled flashlight that reminded Temple of ancient Eveready battery ads. She just hoped a black cat of her acquaintance, her brief acquaintance, had the same nine lives the Eveready cat always did.

  They rode down the three floors in silence; the elevator did not. Temple had left her door unlocked, so they entered immediately on a well-oiled hush of hinges. Electra switched on her beam; the click sounded like a cocking revolver in the silence. A sickly circle of light piddled on the parquet.

  Electra and Temple followed the yellow ick road to the French door.

  “Oh!” Temple’s gardenia plant lay roots up, its terracotta pot smashed. Otherwise, the patio was untouched and deserted.

  “Better check out the other rooms,” Electra ordered. “I hold the flashlight out to the side, see, in case they’re armed. That way, they shoot at the light, but they don’t hit the torso or anything vital.”

  “No, just me,” Temple hissed, walking as she did to the right and behind Electra.

  Each room proved empty, even when Temple put on the overhead lights and they inspected corners and the shower stall.

  “I’ll check these closets,” Temple said quickly as Electra was about to jerk the Mystifying Max poster into the hard glare of her flashlight. Temple poked the light into the interior nooks and crannies.

  “Sure a lot of shoes in there,” Electra noted.

  “But not much else. No Midnight Louie, either. Electra, he’s gone!”

  “Now, now.” Electra Lark left it at that. She was not a believer in false sentiments.

  Temple checked her watch. Only 10:27 p.m. She could hardly call the police about a door they would say she’d left unlatched, or an air-conditioner they’d assume she’d left off. Or a missing cat who’d never been domesticated in the first place.

  Some of her belongings looked vaguely disarranged, but who was to say that wasn’t the vanished Midnight Louie doing some creative nesting? Who was to say that the wind hadn’t blown the door ajar, and that the vagabond cat had leaped out when opportunity knocked?

  “What a shi—shazam of a day.” Temple locked the errant French door.

  “Will you be able to sleep, dear? I mean alone.”

  “I’ve managed it so far,” Temple said ungraciously, “although I turned down an offer tonight that begins to look better by the millennium.”

  “You keep this flashlight tonight. I’ll have Mr. Marino check your thermostat and the door in the morning. We can reach you at the convention center these days, I suppose.”

  “Not until almost eleven,” Temple said. “I’ll be running an errand first.”

  Compared to this unsettling night, a rendezvous with a catnapper was beginning to sound like the answer to a maiden’s prayers.

  16

  The Ultimate Sacrifice

  It is a far, far better thing that I do than I have ever done. It is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

  I quote, of course, from the immortal Who the Dickins. To which I say, baloney! There is one thing for certain that “it” indeed is... the biggest gamble of my career.

  No, let me be utterly honest. It is the biggest gamble of my life. Perhaps I should say lives, though I cannot be sure how many of these I still possess, having never been one to keep count.

  I can count days and hours, however. Where I am now, the sun does not shine, but the people provide a convenient reckoning of the passing hours by coming and going in eight-hour shifts around the clock, just as they do in the hotels and casinos and jails.

  This is no hotel or casino, but that does not mean a guy cannot gamble his life away here in a very few hours.

  It is dark now, which would be comforting were it not for the insistent whines of those loudmouth losers in the adjoining cell block. What a bunch of lily-livered squealers. I have never had much time for dogs.

  Yes, you have apprehended correctly. Midnight Louie is in stir. Not only that, my cage is located on Death Row. Oh, it is not so labeled, but I am not born yesterday.

  I have much time now to meditate on my past life, or lives, and my many sins of commission and omission. I am outside the Sirocco Inn when Gino Scarletti buys it—not the inn, the farm, otherwise known as six feet of dirt, downward. But the cops never hear a peep from me;

  I am still light on my tootsies even if I acquired some pinchworthy inches lately, and I rabbit that one.

  Did I ever mention how I single-handedly saved the Crystal Phoenix from utter destruction at the hands of a mob of crazed killers? No? Good.

  I am also the silent type—it does not pay to know too much in this town, as I say before and will again. Mostly I mull how my last life now hangs by the fragile thread of a certain little doll's ardent regard. I am not the first dude whose well-being depended on some dame, a
nd, frankly, the record is not good.

  Some may wonder how a savvy sort like myself has landed in such a pickle. It is—like the foregoing Dickins's Tail of Two Kitties—a long, sad story, and no consolation to know that Baker and Taylor lounge not five ceils away, together still, but not for long.

  How it all comes down is like this.

  After I find that know-it-all Ingram and learn that the able Sassasfras believes a pair of Scottish type to be languishing in the city pound, I decide to check it out for myself. Sassafras is one sharp old doll, having been put in the pound—and been bailed out by her delinquent owners—more times than she has had kittens or conniption fits, which is to say a lot. If she says they are having scotch with their soda water at the pound these days, those fancy cats are there.

  The first snag is when Miss Temple Barr, whose education on a gentleman-about-town’s needs is still in the formative' stages, locks me in her apartment for the night.

  Now this is a swell place with many amenities, but a dude has gotta do what a dude has gotta do. As soon as she exits for what is obviously a hot date, probably with the snake-eyed Svengali on the bedroom closet poster, I hone my neglected housebreaking skills. Ingram tells me that many people nowadays are interested in what they call "polite procedure," so I will describe the method of my egress, since I am nothing if not polite.

  First I study the terrain for any discreet exit available. The air-conditioning vents, besides being mostly in the ceiling, are also covered with screwed-on grilles. I am not particularly adept with screws.

  Next I practice jumping up to the thermostat and moving the dial with my right mitt. I have not been required to exert myself to this extent of late and am soon huffing and puffing. Once I manage to move the mechanism, I am ready to tackle the Big Outdoors. Miss Temple Barr's apartment features French doors to the patio that open with a lever rather than a knob.

  It will take some superfeline leap to tilt the balance on one of these lever devices from the floor, but, to my recent good fortune, Miss Temple Barr's dietary regimen has done nothing to reduce my fighting weight—normally about eighteen pounds.

  Since the French latches are lower than the thermostat, I am now in fine shape to bound up and put my mitt to the metal on the way down. After five of these love taps, the latch clicks. Then it is but a matter of hooking my nails under the door and pulling until it cracks open. After which, I nose through, inspect the patio for any pausing tidbits, leap up to the edge—accidentally overturning a pot containing a rank-smelling plant—then down to the top of the umbrella table on the patio below, where I rip some canvas to break my fall, then bound to the chair and so on down to the street. Those patios and French doors could not keep out a tumbleweed.

  My journey to the target structure is unremarkable.

  Suffice it to say that I know my way around every over-baked square foot of this tortilla-flat town. Even at night the asphalt warms my toes.

  I take a sudden chill, however, when I glimpse the animal pound silhouetted against the moon-silvered clouds. Too many of my kind have been snuffed there, for no greater reason than they were considered homeless.

  I would not wish such a fate even upon a dog. There are also rumors that certain of my kind are singled out for shipment to laboratories, where scientists see no harm in experimenting on any species on earth so long as it is not their own.

  Yet there is no help for it. I creep closer, keeping to the shadows, my ears flat so the delicate pink lining does not pick up a stray streetlight, and my mouth shut so my teeth do not betray my approach. (I have been told that I sport quite a dazzling set of incisors.)

  At a rear window I hear the heart-rending cries of my captive kind, plus a lot of yammering from the idiotic dogs, who will raise about the same ruckus for a simple rabies shot as they would for the end of the world.

  I hoist myself up, but all I can see is a slice of the main cell block. The mewling of the infants is the hardest to take. I must admit that I have not spent much time around the young of my kind, but they produce a united wail that comes close to the outcry of a human newborn of my (fortunately) temporary acquaintance.

  In this unsung cacophony I detect a foreign element and pick out the unmistakable brogue of the Highland twosome. I am brought abruptly back to earth, mainly because the grip of my claws has given out.

  What to do? It dawns on me rather swiftly that the missing Baker and Taylor have likely been deposited in this Auschwitz-on-the-Mojave since sometime Friday. They have less than twenty-four hours of survival left, unless someone does something about it.

  I pace the ground outside their prison. I sit and muse upon the moon when it coasts free of passing clouds. I weigh options. I clean my ruff and box my ears, hoping for some stroke of genius to strike.

  Nothing occurs. Only one course remains. This will have to be an inside job. I do not kid myself; even a dude of my weight, finesse and manual dexterity has never broken into—or out of—an animal pound cage.

  I will have to go undercover, allow myself to be captured and do what I can as an inside man. If all else fails, I have one card up my sleeve. Maybe, just maybe, the little doll I left lonely at the Circle Ritz will tumble to my possible whereabouts and ride to my rescue. Hell, she can even walk. If she is fast enough, we might even spring Baker and Taylor.

  If she is not, give my regards to Broadway.

  17

  Missing Purrsons

  Eightball O’Rourke was waiting for Temple and Emily Adcock next to the equestrian statue of Julius Caesar that stood, appropriately, kitty-corner from Caesars Palace.

  At a distance, the famous hotel and casino glittered frosting-white in the hot sunlight. An endless driveway from the Strip bracketed fountains that led to a reproduction of the headless Winged Victory statue. A semicircular facade of columns fronted the hotel proper and framed a line of oversize marble goddesses, replicas of world-renowned statues. Cars swept up the curved approach—Mercedes, Cadillacs and costly custom jobs wearing more chrome than paint.

  The scene at the foot of Caesar’s statue was more humble. Emily had brought the money, neatly wrapped in brown paper. Temple was impressed by the solid brick formed by $5,000 in small bills.

  She didn’t try to pay O’Rourke by check, but handed him three fifty-dollar bills.

  “This is our money, Mr. O’Rourke,” Emily said after the terse introductions. “Mostly mine. I’ve got to get those two cats back. What are our chances?”

  He stuck the parcel in the crown of the Western hat he carried. “Not good. Odds are never good on kidnapping. Too easy to lose the object of the game once they’ve got the cash. Kidnapper don’t care, and if the victims is cats, well—some folks don’t care for cats. Usually crooks. Hell, crooks don’t care for their kinfolk or womenfolk. Why should they care for cats?”

  “There’s no guarantee, then?”

  “Nope. But I’ll do my best to make the drop so it looks like this here young lady done it.”

  “Me?” Temple said. “If I’ve got to be involved, why pay you?”

  O’Rourke flipped up the rear skirt of his shapeless polyester-knit sport coat to reveal the gun butt in the back of his jeans. “I’m muscle.”

  “You’re muscle!” Temple snorted impolitely. “Even I can see your bald spot when I’m wearing my Charles Jourdans.”

  Eightball O’Rourke most likely had no idea that Charles Jourdan French pumps were not only expensive, but arch-breakingly high-heeled. However, he immediately absorbed the gist of her words.

  “I’ll do my best to tail the wrong-doer, ladies. More than that you cain’t ask in a kidnapping. If those cats are safe, the napper’s the only one who can lead us to ’em. Now, you with the stilt shoes, wander along the road there behind me and make a big deal of stopping to fix your heel when you reach the third statue of whazzits from the entrance. If you got the ransom note, they expect you to show some interest in this-here drop.”

  “It’s Venus,” Temple said. “The statue. T
hen what?”

  “Then amble off. Speaking of statues, you know what happened to Lot’s wife.”

  “Salt?”

  O’Rourke nodded soberly. “Enough for a whole box of soda crackers. Don’t look back.”

  Temple had not expected to play a part in this drama, if only a walk-on. Even at ten on Monday morning, tourists were trickling out the doors and hoofing up the long expanse of curved front walk, just as Temple was doing behind Eightball O’Rourke.

  While Temple watched, Eightball suddenly paused, whipped an automatic—camera, that is—from his coat pocket, planted a booted foot on the raised concrete rim and shot the facade of Caesars. He doffed his hat, swept his sleeve over his brow and bent as if to adjust his boot. Though Temple didn’t see it, this had to be the moment when he placed a plain brown paper parcel (chock-full of some very fancy green paper) at the feet of the proper goddess.

  Eightball strolled on. By the time Temple reached Venus, her watch said three minutes to ten, the assigned hour of delivery. She peeked over the whitewashed rim. A brown parcel lay at the goddess’s bare feet, which matched most of the rest of her.

  Temple sat on the rim and fiddled with her shoes. She twisted to regard the larger-than-life-size looming goddess, which for some reason reminded her of Lieutenant C. R. Molina, and trailed a hand over the edge until she touched the package. Then she rose, shook her apparently pained foot and gamely limped into Caesars Palace.

  Then it was through the crowded lounge area, along the marble-paved Appian Way mall of exclusive shops, out a side door, then around to the back and a rendezvous with Emily at the statued Caesar’s feet.

  “Well?” Temple was, justifiably, breathless.

  “I don’t know.” Emily said. “I watched, but... Several people came along after you stopped. Couples, a street person in a wheelchair, a really pitiful man—Lord, he can have the money if he found it; um, some kids.”

  “Did you see O’Rourke again?”

  “No.”