Cat in an Alien X_Ray Read online

  At least here in this domain where the women come and go, talking of mojitos and Michelangelo, I can keep my eyes on the restaurant entrance across the way. I can also spot the telltale style, color, and audible ring of my Miss Temple’s current heels when she leaves. When I tail her, I can get a notion of whom she has met and for what purpose.

  I will not bore you by reporting all the chitchat I overhear in the next hour or so. Or the extreme prices of so-called casual wear from an outfit named Dulcie and Gabby Anna.

  The continual scrape of hanger tops on rods and incoming and outgoing waves of a dozen different designer fragrances lull me into something resembling a stupor.

  My eyes pop wide when I realize I have gazed unthinking on my little doll’s ankles leaving the restaurant in—she has cheated on me!—flats. Shoes that are all sole and no heel at all. No soul.

  Someone in a pair of pale pants and oxford shoes was ankling along right beside her.

  I throw caution to the caftans and corner like a Maserati outta the joint, immune to the oohs and aahs my exit leaves behind me.

  Alas, the pathway between the casinos is a sea of legs mingling in all directions. I need height to spot my flat-footed roommate and her mysterious escort.

  Sliding and dodging among the many hairy bare legs (the Terrace Pointe Café overlooks the hotel’s main pools, which are about the size for a dozen orca whales, not to mention overweight gambling “whales”), I race to out-amble my prey.

  I concoct a plan. The Wynn has a famous place where a two-story wall of glass overlooks a wall of falling water. Folks like to gather there for a quiet drink. (That is what anyone who spends four hours on the Vegas Strip requires, a quiet drink. I do not use addictive substances, but do take a wee nip now and then. I especially like mine organically grown. I know, that is very ’70s.)

  Anyway, I am planning to hitch a ride to the top of the magnificent white-plastered rotunda above the cocktail joint, from where I can spy Miss Temple’s red hair and petite form with no trouble, even if she is going barefoot!

  The beauty of my plan is that all the customers (I guess at the Wynn they are “clients”) are facing out into this brilliantly sunlit façade. Anyone who happens to turn and spot me will be “light-blind” for many moments, and I plan to keep moving.

  My ride to the top may be as yellow or red as a priceless Italian sports car, but it is a much humbler and common domestic object.

  Yes, friends, I am going to be doing the Mary Poppins act. Not with the clumsy black bumbershoot the Brits favor, but with the floating fanciful umbrellas that constantly rise up and down in the area known as Parasol Up and Parasol Down, which will in future be known as Louie Up and Louie Down.

  Everyone’s ground-level focus faces away from me as I tumble into the belly of an upside-down yellow puffy number dripping tassels. Yeah, it is a girly sort of ride, but I use what is at hand, and the green piping matches my eyes.

  There is nothing black here but me, so I will be clearly visible when I reach the second level, where viewers loiter to watch the parasols glide up and down like hot-air balloons.

  Oops! Is it possible some of these open umbrellas are programmed to close now and then? I seem to feel my airy carriage turning into a deflated balloon and scramble to attach myself to a passing purple-and-gold parasol that is going … down, not up!

  Below me lies the sea of white giant umbrellas covering the outdoor tables. Around and above me waft the Technicolor flock of floating parasols. I almost hear a Viennese waltz playing as they lilt up and down and leap like the pink-toe-shoe-and-tutu-wearing hippopotami in Disney’s Fantasia while I spring froglike from one moving silken lily pad to another.

  From the three viewing balconies on the second level (that would be Parasol Up) come exclamations and exhortations.

  “How’d that cat get in here?”

  “Maybe he thinks the parasols are birds.”

  “Dumb cat.”

  “Oh, the poor thing. He could fall and die!”

  “He could fall and kill someone.”

  “Someone call Security.”

  “I’m filming. Get outa my way.”

  “Hey! They said at the desk, pets weren’t allowed at this hotel. I had to leave my Mexican hairless at home.”

  “This is going on YouTube.”

  And, cruelest cut of all, “Is that a big fat bat, Mommy?”

  Despite the rude comments, I paddle and churn and claw my way upward, hearing telltale hisses of fabric in my wake. Steve Wynn will be after my skin. Luckily, one of my type looks much like another on first glance and I doubt there will be any organized witch hunt.

  I ignore the, uh, catcalls, and continue to walk on moving parasols, making a last daring leap to the brass top rail on the balcony and bounding off it to the floor.

  “Get that cat!” a few someones yell in chorus, but there are so many tourists consulting smartphones or texting as they tour that I am soon lost in a welter of moving legs.

  I am an expert at doing a serpentine do-si-do through that kind of crowd. My prey is heading for the exit. That means I only have to sprint through some luxurious displays of exotic plants and flowers. The fancy loam is clogging up my shivs, but dirt is great camouflage for me, and my trail can be detected only by a sinuous shaking among the greenery. I bust through to the south entrance and out in plain sight of Bast, parking valets, and everyone …

  … to see the sassy rear of a little red Miata disappearing down the driveway.

  What an expedition. What a day.

  When I see sassy rears, I expect a lot better success rate than this parasol chase.

  Chapter 7

  Stunted!

  Temple found the rubber soles of her “sensible” ballet flats no match for rubble.

  She’d agreed to meet Silas T. on this uncivilized stretch of Paradise Road, but had underestimated the ability of her soles to deal with desert hikes.

  Well, walks anyway.

  Her tender arches strove for balance on the sharp irregular surface of stone-studded sand. It was like walking over a spike-embellished Hells Angels motorcycle jacket, not that one of those guys would ever do a Sir Walter Raleigh and throw his outer garment down for a lady to walk on.

  Beside her, Silas T. Farnum hooked his thumbs in his trouser belt loops and gazed at the desolate sun-baked scene like Alexander the Great contemplating an empire extending from the Arabian and Caspian to the Black and Mediterranean Seas. She guessed that’s why history called that sort “visionaries.”

  Farnum’s vision was on the small side, like him. “That’s it, right there.”

  Temple squinted despite sunglasses. No gigantic hotels shaded this backlot to Vegas Strip glory. Looking where his stubby forefinger pointed, she saw what seemed like a giant parking garage abandoned after going up a scant ten stories. It was just a skeleton of a building, intersecting girders and concrete making a dull gray brown plaid mostly obscured by giant tarps and plastic sheeting. Past its homely, raw structure, Temple glimpsed gaudy slices of completed Vegas Strip edifices.

  “That’s all you’ve got?” she asked Farnum. “I’m sand-blasting my insteps to see another stalled construction project?”

  “Not … quite. Watch the top of the building.”

  “Building” was an overambitious word for it, but Temple dutifully looked.

  A blast of noise right beside her made her jump. That was some phone ringtone he had. Deep drums throbbed.

  She glanced sideways, disapproving, only to see him holding a small recording device with a mighty big sound she was starting to recognize.…

  Farnum beamed. “The symphonic opening theme to 2001: A Space Odyssey. So glad a person of your generation recognized it. That confirms you’re the one for me.”

  “Well, I may not feel confident that I’m the ‘one for you,’ Mr. Farnum.”

  “Are you watching the top of the building, Miss Barr?”

  “All right, but if I’m watching that space, I’m giving it one mo
re minute flat to impress me.”

  He just chuckled.

  Had Temple been wearing her usual spike heels, she would have kicked herself for being dragged into this iffy outing with a certified fruit loop. Here she was always telling Matt he was too sympathetic to life’s losers. At least that was his job. Her job was publicizing legitimate enterprises.…

  Temple stared as she saw the familiar disk of the spaceship Enterprise rising like the Earth over the moon in the film 2001: A Space Odyssey. No … that iconic Star Trek ship had big thrusters behind the main disk. This thing was all disk as it elevated against an ocean-deep sky of intense blue. This thing was a—

  “It’s you.” She turned on Farnum. “It’s you releasing those fake UFOs all over the Strip.”

  He shrugged modestly. “Well, my minions anyway. I’ve stationed operators in all the highest towers.”

  “Those otherworldly balloons are radio controlled, but I’m not, Mr. Farnum. My PR practice does not go in for cheap tricks. I am outta here.”

  She would have spun on her heel, but she didn’t have one right now. The move just ground her sore soles deeper into the loose stones.

  “Ow!” she exclaimed, disliking the weakness of her position both physically and mentally. She’d let herself be charmed and taken for a ludicrous ride. Being a hundred pounds and five-foot-zero often got her dismissed as young and silly, not serious, and now she’d earned that designation.

  “Wait, Miss Barr. Just look at the building once more, for the space of a nanosecond.”

  Temple glared, but he’d produced another small black device from his summery suit jacket pocket.

  She glared. At the building, not the man.

  And it was gone. No, replaced by a dazzling tower with a glittering, spinning top. Blink. No, all that raw concrete and steel was still there.

  Had she eaten something at lunch, something sprinkled over her salad while she’d gazed at the patio gardens? Something in the wine? She hadn’t seen the bottle opened. Careless. She was alone with this strange man and possibly doped in the medical sense of the word.

  “What did you see?” Farnum demanded with almost a giggle.

  “A magical illusion. A trick. I must admit it was a trick on a David Copperfield scale. A whole building shifting skins, I mean. But, I warn you. I’ve … associated with magicians. You’re using some kind of controlled projection.”

  “On this size and scale?”

  “Copperfield does it,” she repeated.

  “Do I look like him?”

  “More like the anti-Copperfield,” she admitted.

  “I told you I would take you to where X marks the spot. This is the spot. This is the secret to be revealed in delicious bites by you. Sound bites, film bites, cell phone bites, old-fashioned print bites. Think. What did you see?”

  “In a nanosecond? I saw a tower—as if Vegas isn’t filled with them. It could have been the Stratosphere across the Strip. Something revolving, suspended. Again, like the roller coaster around the Stratosphere. I guess the icing on the layer cake could be a giant version of your annoying mini flying saucers.”

  “UFOs.”

  “UFOs. So I’m to ‘sell’ an alien slide show?”

  “You’re to sell a mystery.”

  “That’s a disappointment.” She saw Farnum’s thumb click his creepy black box again and whipped her head around to spot the special effect it created. This second glimpse rang a bell in her cerebellum, or wherever memory cells abided, about an almost ancient local … and mark.

  She pinned Farnum with her sternest look. She knew Vegas history better than anyone. “This site. It once hosted a Las Vegas landmark. In fact, Howard Hughes bought it before it opened, and when it was imploded, they used the footage in a movie called Mars Attacks! They called it the Landmark Hotel and it was a tower topped by a flying saucer and it was leveled in 1995. Are you telling me you have a freaking time machine?”

  “Oh, no, Miss Barr. That would be an old, clichéd idea with little glamour and appeal.”

  Temple gave a relieved sigh. She wouldn’t have to call for the men in white to take him away, after all, and she was sure he wasn’t a Man in Black. He’d never make the height requirement.

  “Although time travel is closer than you think,” Farnum said. “What I have—what we have, is the latest in futuristic technology. I’ve created a stealth building that will soon be unveiled for gathering witnesses from the, shall we say, fringe scientific theory community. I have three thousand confirmed attendees driving and flying and possibly walking here at this moment. Also arriving will be media from all the alien-centered cable TV programming.”

  “Alien-centered programming” sounded even more sinister to Temple. Was it a fancy name for mind control? Meanwhile, she needed to grasp what was going on.

  “When were you going to tell me that the circus was coming to town? Never mind. So they paved Paradise and put up a parking lot and now you’ve erected a ‘stealth’ building on it?”

  Farnum nodded soberly. “Night crews have been working on it here for months, not knowing the building goes into hibernation once they leave. First you see it, then you don’t.”

  She stared at the dreary unfinished mass of the parking garage. “How was I supposed to market an invisible building? What kind of a convention would anyone hold in an invisible building?”

  “You must never underestimate the power of the human imagination when it boldly goes seeking alien life-forms. We have Voyager cruising out beyond the solar system after thirty-five years and now Curiosity scanning Mars. Soon Las Vegas will share in the wealth and debut the hotel-casino Area 54—‘a little more far out than Area 51.’ My motto.” Farnum beamed at her.

  “Beam me up, Scotty,” she muttered.

  Too bad that was just an expression and there was no way for her to turn into a sparkly silhouette and disappear.

  When it came to alien life-forms, Silas T. Farnum was a doozy.

  Chapter 8

  Unlawful Entry

  If Dear Abby ever needs another secretary, I believe that I am now fully qualified.

  Talk about standing by your human. I am the poster boy for that theme song. I am sure my off-camera antics yesterday morning aided Miss Temple in handling the family business that often can be so difficult for her kind. I myself avoid phone calls in favor of a nose-to-nose meeting of the minds.

  I do know something about large, untidy families, though. I sympathize with my little doll, being born the only girl kit—and the runt of the litter at that—with four hyperactive bruiser boys for what humans call “siblings.”

  I would call those brothers from the apparently savage and freezing stretch of northlands called Minnesota one thing: bozos. It is too bad my Miss Temple was not really born into la famiglia Italiana Fontana.

  If anyone in Vegas could possibly fill my boots on protecting my little doll, it is a posse of Fontana brothers. Like me, they offer proper due respect to the females of our respective species.

  My Miss Temple is no longer wishing to work as an official private eye, given the dangers she faced in her first run at the profession, but I cannot allow her to trot out alone on her snappy platform heels this noon. Errands for her public relations business are not life threatening, and she returned from her Wynn meeting no worse for wear and ready to serve me dinner.

  Me, duty done, I head for the living room couch for the night, stretching luxuriantly on my back. My role as an action hero is tabled for now and I can become the usual domestic sofa spud.

  I gaze up at the unique arched white ceiling, which reminds one of sand dunes and makes the daylight seem like reflected water. This is as close as I wish to get to that irksome invention called “beach.” Sand between my toes. Ouch! Sand dulling the polish on my concealed shivs? No thank you! Sand fleas hitching a ride on my shoulder blades just where I cannot reach … never again!

  I curve into a comfy kittenish curl, since I am on my own and fancy-free. I twitch the only white fea
ture on my whole black-satin bodysuit; my whiskers. A purr rumbles in my throat and rib cage. I am starting to dream about Topaz, the Oasis Hotel feline mascot, a sleek and nubile black-like-me beauty who—

  Crash bang!

  My world explodes. I do a double-axle twist. Ripping sounds up the back of the sofa raise the hairs on my spine from my hackles to the tip of my tailbone.

  A speeding black bullet hits the sofa cushion beside me and ricochets off.

  A few black hairs drift down into my face like falling eyelashes.

  By now I have all four on the floor and am in full frontal battle mode. Only then do I realize this entire exercise in adrenaline has been a false alarm.

  “Louise,” I admonish the smaller black furry form facing me across the coffee table, a pile of tumbled newsprint between us. “That is no way to interrupt your superior’s beauty sleep.”

  “Beauty sleep! My superior! I will give you a beauty sleep with a slap across the kisser.”

  My eyes widen. My mistake. I am not looking into the mellow yellow gold eyes of my partner in Midnight Investigations, Inc., but the green peepers that feature one fight-sagged lid and the snaggle-fanged visage of my long-lost and now-found dam, Ma Barker.

  Damn.

  “This is what you do on your off time?” she demands. “Lie about, you lackluster layabout? You would be a poor excuse of a leader if I ever abdicated from running the police substation clowder.”

  “I was taking a well-deserved rest. I only yesterday defended my Miss Temple during an uneasy phone call.”

  “No doubt a political solicitation.”

  “And you cannot break and enter here in your rowdy, alley cat way, Ma. Miss Temple might assume I am sharpening my shivs on her French doorframes and upholstery. I have always been the perfect indoor gentleman. What is the rush here?”

  “Look, Junior. I have not got all day. My gang is waiting for us and it is only hours before the light of day, and that kind of exposure is dangerous. Those alien visitors that drop unidentified flying objects into our innocent midst to trap us and bear us away for medical experimentation are back.