Cat in a Sapphire Slipper Read online

  He moved swiftly to the stairs and cautiously up the treads. The place may have looked like it dated from the last days of the frontier, but the steps were solid and creakless. All the better for serial hanky-panky in the night. Not that sex was on anybody’s mind anymore. Just its perennial partner. Death.

  Only when he reached the dark at the top of the stairs did Matt notice that Midnight Louie was no longer anywhere to be seen.

  Déjà Vu

  I am relieved that Mr. Matt Devine takes my hint and pulls an instant Mystifying Max-I ike vanishing act. Time to hang loose and regroup. What we have here is a cast of dozens with no guide as to who’s who and what’s what.

  What I do not like is seeing such heavy artillery in little dolls’ hands. Some may call me sexist, but some may also call me “Kitty,” so I do not apologize for anything. Clearly, the Aldo Fontana bachelor party has been driven to, and walked into, a serious kettle of sharks.

  First, I do my duty by my Miss Temple and stash her amour, Mr. Matt Devine, safely out of sight. That is not hard. He is taking the situation very seriously, and follows me like a lamb. He has never been one to underestimate a cat, especially moi, just like the F Boys do not underestimate the Female of the Species. Felines and females. Together we can tame Homo sapiens.

  Next, I ankle back down into the teeth of the “situation.”

  Like Nicky and Aldo Fontana and Mr. Matt, I find my way blocked at the bottom of the stairs by a dame.

  She is even dressed in a cute little outfit that shows off her gams and high-heeled little claws and her perky little face and figure. She has long black hair, green-gold eyes, and one white vibrissae in a field of black. (Vibrissae is the scientific name for the airy front feelers that allow a fellow or a gal of my persuasion to know where we are going, even in the dark. The human word “whiskers” is too rough-and-ready a name for such a subtle and sensitive attribute of my kind.)

  We joust vibrissae for a moment or two, getting to know each other.

  “Where are you going?” she demands.

  “I take it from your tone that this is your territory. Are you also in the employ of the armed forces occupying the place?”

  “Never,” she hisses. “But you are an invader too.”

  I eye my soon-to-be conquest. She is wearing a turquoise cape rimmed in matching marabou feathers. This is an irresistible lure for one of my sensitive yet macho nature. I have heard of these show cats in their Elizabethan collars and enhancing capes, but have never encountered one in the fur and flesh so closely. Usually they are caged to protect them from overmuch mauling. If this were a bachelor party for felines, she would be the icing on the fishcake. Merrrow!

  Still, something criminal is going down here, and it involves my friends, or friends of my friends, and I must stick to duty.

  “Stand aside, my dear lady. I am almost the only one of my party who is still free and free-ranging. I must protect my humans.”

  “And I mine!” she spits back. “Until I know you are to be trusted I am not turning even one more Las Vegas scoundrel loose in this place.”

  “Ah. Before I ask what you mean by ‘Las Vegas scoundrel,’ which strikes me as a case of blatant geography-ism, I must know what ‘this place’ is.”

  “Fair enough, Furface. This is the Sapphire Slipper, the finest and classiest little licensed brothel in Nye County.”

  I inhale deeply. A mistake. This kit is drenched in nip and Chanel No. 5. Umm. From what I can tell, she is fully pheromoned and furious, a bad combination.

  “And you are the cathouse—?”

  “Cat,” she snarls, as if daring me to make something of it.

  I take another deep breath, maybe just to inhale that hypnotic and potent blend of feline catnip breath and human high-dollar perfume. I scent something else as well. A scintilla of memory. I have met this lady before, in her younger days, on the Strip.

  For a moment I cannot speak, smell, or think. Can it be?

  “What do they call you here?” I ask, braced for a shock.

  She sighs. “What else? The clichéd cathouse cat.”

  “I mean, by name?”

  “Here? Baby Blue.”

  Baby Blue. It is not a bad name. But not the right one.

  “So, before you were a Satin,” I hazard.

  Her eyes grow round and amazed. Then she really looks me over.

  There is a long silence while our vibrissae tremor.

  “Louie?” she says at last.

  “The very one.”

  “But, but . . . they said you had been run down by a Brinks truck.”

  “Almost. It was a close shave and a haircut. I was hitching a ride downtown when I was discovered. The guard managed to sock me in the gut with a bag of nickels from the slots. I hit the pavement at twenty-five miles an hour. Between one thing and another, I was off the streets for a few weeks before I finally recovered.”

  “No wonder I could not find you. I had to go to a shelter to have my litter.”

  “You were with kit?” I feel as if my gut has taken another shot of nickels. What I most fear may be what I have to face as the truth. “What happened to them?”

  Satin shakes her head. “They took them all away, but nobody adopted me. My coat was thin and dry from caring for five kits. I was doomed to a quick exit via the needle until the Sapphire Slipper head lady came in . . . and now they are all in danger—”

  “Shh,” I hiss gently. “If these Sapphire Slipper ladies saved your life, I will save theirs.”

  “How can you? Outsiders with firearms and issues of their own are all over the place. They invaded and took over our premises before your bachelor bridal party arrived.”

  I cringe a bit to hear my associates, the formerly fearsome Fontana brothers, described as my “bachelor bridal party.”

  Satin continues her under-the-breath report. “I managed to slip away unnoticed, but all my Sapphire Slipper ladies have been under guard since two hours before your limousine of humans arrived. That is a most impressive vehicle. You must have become a major entertainment figure to travel in such style. I have seen some fancy rigs pull up to the Sapphire Slipper, but never a stretch Rolls-Royce.”

  “Stretch Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud,” I correct gently. “Yes, I have been in the personal appearance game . . . New York . . . television.”

  I do not mention that my moments of fame were shilling for a cat food brand I would not touch with an infected toenail. “But now I am back home and working freelance. This is your lucky day. I am a professional. I am founder and CEO of Midnight Inc. Investigations.”

  “You are a private dick?”

  “So they tell me. You can see that I am not exactly at a loss here. Yes, you are right about the Limey limo, ducks. My Las Vegas posse travels only first class, and that is how I will bust us all out of this trap.”

  “Your posse is large and many, but now they are disarmed and helpless.”

  “Not usually. But we are armed and dangerous, are we not? You still have your shivs, right? These ladies of the night were not so foolish as to disarm you?”

  She flashes them with a sudden spurt of street spirit. That is my black Satin! After my recovery from the Brinks job, I found no word of her on the Strip, although I hunted for months. A classy lady like Satin does not disappear unless she is kidnapped for domestic servitude, or worse, dead.

  I take a deep breath, like Mr. Matt in a crisis. I do not doubt that Satin lost all her offspring to adoption, but some placements may not have, er, taken. I have a horrible feeling that I know one of her lost litter. There is a chilling likeness about the nose.

  Miss Midnight Louise would not be able to keep her claws out of my hide if she knew her assumption of my paternity was right, and that her mother survived to become the house cat at a hooker emporium.

  I shudder, which Miss Satin mistakes for regret, rather than fear, thank Bast!

  “It is all right, Louie. I do not blame you for my condition and fate. We knew so little abou
t safeguards in those days.”

  “Right,” I say.

  I do not know much about them these days either, except that I am surgically sterilized so I can play without paying. “Let us pad into the parlor and see who has the guts and smarts to take down the whole Fontana family at once.”

  Cell in Solitary

  Matt listened hard in the dark at the top of the stairs. The silence downstairs was reassuring, for the moment. No gunshots and crashing bodies or furniture.

  He slipped out of his loafers, stuffed them in his side jacket pockets as best he could, and moved slowly down a long, low-lit hall like a hotel’s.

  Actually, the layout of this place should come pretty close to a hotel.

  The first room—a bedroom—he ventured into was a fussy Victorian affair: high four-poster brass bed with a lot of knobs and curlicues, dressing table, upholstered ottomans, fringe, and feathery dried floral arrangements.

  He spotted an oil lamp on the dresser and found a box of long farmers’ matches beside it. The oil broadcast a heavy floral scent once the flame was going. Matt stifled a sneeze and went back into the hall, using the flickering light to search for a rear exit. There had to be one, thanks to fire safety standards.

  He surveyed each room he passed, making sure they were vacant.

  It was like opening the doors onto a series of stage sets. The entrances were set back in niches. Every room had its theme, although shades of blue decorated each one. The colors reminded Matt of the Virgin Mary, hardly the idea here. After three “visitations,” he realized that a blue glass Cinderella slipper was a feature in every vignette.

  Some rooms teemed with vintage froufrou from the Gay Nineties to the 1940s. After that, nostalgia faded and the décor was showy modern, furnished with sleek mirrors and stainless steel and suede. Every room was pristinely neat, lavish and gaudy in whatever its style, and empty.

  How unnerving to think that each room had hosted a paid-for thousand-and-one one-night stands . . . several times over if the bordello was a few decades old.

  Some rooms had Jacuzzis and brittle little fountains everywhere. Some rooms, both Victorian and modern, housed strange devices of leather and metal that looked as if they’d been imported from Inquisition Warehouse.

  Matt was glad his knowledge of the darker shores of sex for sale was pretty limited.

  As he suspected, the hall ended in a back service stairway. He eased the heavy metal fire door open and padded down a few steps. Muffled voices!

  He crept down a few more risers.

  Several voices. The captives wouldn’t be jawing away like this. The gang must have taken over the back rooms as their headquarters while the Fontana party and the residents were held hostage in the front parlor and the adjoining barroom he’d glimpsed through the double interior doors before he’d ducked out.

  Not good. He leaned against the wall, holding up the oil lamp and hitting redial on Nicky’s cell phone. No bar graph showed up, nothing but a message that the phone was “searching for a signal,” and then nothing.

  Matt was searching for a signal too.

  Call it a sign.

  Courtesans on Parade

  Of course, nobody notices a couple of cats roaming the premises.

  Some of my breed might be a bit miffed that humankind is so ready to overlook the species the ancient Egyptians worshipped. Unfortunately, any remaining Egyptians have lost the faith. Besides, being overlooked has always been my ace in the hole. Especially if you are black and low-profile. Now we are two.

  So Satin and I ankle into the main parlor. I must say I shudder at what I see.

  One by one, the Fontana boys have been gestured at major gunpoint into this room. All I see of the gangsters are black boots, leggings, turtleneck-sweater sleeves, and leather gloves. And black 9mm guns to match. I must admit I admire the unknown perps’ color choice, although it has long been the uniform of cat burglars, including myself.

  Satin and I follow the latest Fontana brother to suffer this indignity, unnoticed.

  One of them, maybe Ernesto, is being patted down, front and back—intimately—by agile gloved hands, and relieved of his signature Beretta.

  I shiver as I observe this. This is not something a guy ought to undergo in front of witnesses, particularly several older brothers.

  I growl my protest to Satin.

  “Yes, Louie,” she comforts me. “It is most ignominious. My ladies here exist to coddle the male ego. They devote their lives to it. Such violation is . . . unthinkable. Males egos are such delicate flowers.”

  “Uh. I am a catclaw cactus kinda guy myself. Violate me and I dig deep. These guys are merely playing along for the moment until they figure out the who and why of this high-handed, high-artillery assault. The Fontana family goes back to the days of Thompson submachine guns. True, these bozos got the drop on them, but that will not be all she wrote. Trust me. This is not over.”

  “So who are the gangsters who hold your male compadres captive?”

  A good question.

  Inside the room, I see the perps are wearing spandex masks that would make them as unrecognizable as Spider-Man’s evil twin. However, they have accessorized even that full coverage with large sixties-style black sunglasses, which gives them a creepy bug-eyed look.

  Additionally, they range from tallish to six-foot size and say not a word, letting the long lean metal barrels of their guns do the gesturing for them.

  All in all, this is a very disturbing and sinister mime act.

  Beyond the fussy parlor, I glimpse an empty bar area with the usual clubby look, carpet and leather chairs, mirror and bottle glass. I suggest we remain in this “debriefing” room in our guise of helpless domestic pets.

  My description is not half wrong. The masked thugs stripping the Fontana brothers of their weapons are also making unwarranted searches of their underwear.

  “Oof!” Emilio objects, avoiding an illegal forward pass with a swiveling hip movement that would do any running back proud. “There is nothing resembling lead there.”

  I bite my tongue. The nature of this disarming is suddenly all too evident to my super feline senses. The “gangsters” are all of the female persuasion.

  I spot the long nailed hands under the leather gloves and watch them add another Beretta to the impressive pile, and shudder. Wait until the boys discover they have been disarmed by women. That is not a macho position to be in.

  “The gangsters have very agile and clever claws,” Miss Satin allows.

  That is the thing. This gang of masked women have high-end manicures and their claws are all utterly false, the glue-on kind adapted in envy of my kind.

  Why do these dames need these guys disarmed and dangerous?

  I am detecting a certain barely veiled lust.

  I must admit that I am used to that reaction among the female faction, as are the Fontana boys. It is just that we are not used to being disabled because of it. I do not know how to convey these ugly realities to poor little Satin.

  While I dither, so uncharacteristically, she is coming to her own conclusions from her years in the brothel.

  “These women do not want hostages,” she merows in my ear.

  “They want mates.”

  This wafts a vibrissa too close to our own once-upon-a-time relationship.

  I huff up my collar into an impressive ruff and growl.

  No one notices.

  “All right,” one of the masked and clawed dames (you would think she was the homicidal Hyacinth, a Siamese of my acquaintance) snarls. Yes, she snarled, just as you and I would, if we were both feline.

  “You boys can settle down here now that your claws are clipped. Sit down. Look and do not touch. Say nothing. We will let you know what comes next.”

  Puzzled and disarmed, the Fontana boys sit gingerly on the froufrou pieces of furniture. I understand their conflict. A macho guy doesn’t do blue satin, but neither does a gentleman poleax a lady, not even an armed and dangerous gang of them.
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br />   “Now see here,” Macho Mario says, not moving a muscle.

  “You do not know who you are tangling with.”

  “It is you who are ignorant of the fury of your opponents,” one dame says in a credible baritone growl.

  “Sit. Don’t move. We have business elsewhere in the establishment, but are leaving guards at each archway.”

  A gentleman does not poleax a lady, but Macho Mario’s expression as he drops his weight into a pale blue velvet upholstered Victorian chair indicates he may now be willing to make an exception.

  After the gang presence withdraws, I notice that Mr. Nicky Fontana, the youngest and only married brother, and the only CEO among them, is missing.

  So I inform Miss Satin, sotto voce. (This is an operatic term meaning under my tuna breath.)

  After she reels away, she comes up with a rejoinder. “Why would they single out your Mr. Nicky?”

  “I do not think they did. They are interested in the bachelor party. He is not a bachelor and thus escaped their notice, like my Mr. Matt.”

  “Tell me again about ‘your Mr. Matt.’ “

  “He is the only cream in the all-black flock, also not a Fontana. He was just along for the ride.”

  “So were you,” she points out.

  “So, they got a couple of ringers in the bunch. Let us remain in the parlor and see what the Fontana boys and the ladies of the house have to say to one another.”

  While we creep farther into this Suite in Blue, we see the house ladies sitting up straighter than the Teetotaler Ladies Tea Society on one side and the Fontana boys staring at their polished shoe tips and their buffed nails on the other, with a couple of the black-clad posse in between.

  Aldo is checking the ticking old-fashioned mantel clock every thirty seconds. He is calculating that this was supposed to be a boys’ night out, an all-nighter. No one will miss them until at least one P.M. tomorrow, Tuesday, give or take a hangover or twelve.

  I see that the gang has removed all of their Rolexes as well as the Italian hardware. So is profit the motive, or something more personal?