Cat in an Alien X_Ray Read online

  “And this time, they are after not only us, but bigger prey too. We have stumbled on something fishy in the way of murder most mystifying.”

  Okay. My ma is a canny street fighter and survivor. Not every single black female of a certain age runs her own street gang. Yet she is of an older generation and has her stubborn misconceptions. I would not go so far as to say she is superstitious. I mean, it is pretty hard for her to avoid black cats crossing her path every which way but loose. Still, she does subscribe to some way-out ideas, like being a PI makes me a lazy lout and alien visitors are interested in a mass abduction of her precious clowder.

  “Now, Ma,” I say. “I have told you before that no alien force is coming to take you away, except the SPCA, and you all are in a TNR zone these days.”

  “Twilight Zone, I told you so.”

  “I am not referring to the spooky TV show. ‘TNR’ stands for Trap, Neuter, Return. The human do-gooders seek to prevent unwanted littering by whisking our street people away to low-cost neutering facilities. It is a good program for those who, unlike myself, are not able to avail themselves of such voluntary choices as vasectomy.”

  “Hmph,” says Ma. “The way I hear it, you were captured and whisked away just like the rest of us, only you got dumped on a plastic surgeon rather than a vet. I tell you, what is going on now in town is a vast alien conspiracy.”

  Ma sits down to groom her mustache. (This does happen to older females, you know.) Sadly, her coat is terminally raggedy and she just manages to swirl the split ends around in a different pattern.

  “It is just Planned Pethood, Ma,” I suggest.

  “Do not be an ignorant pup,” she growls.

  Now my back hairs are getting themselves in a twist. You do not call Midnight Louie canine, no matter who you are.

  “Settle down, Louie.” Her crooked paw pats my side whiskers. “We can have our own opinions about the alien conspiracy to whisk our population away to some hidden and forbidden planet, but you will not be able to deny what the Cat Pack has seen over on Paradise.”

  I am somewhat mollified, if not momified. “All right. Show me the way. But first I have to reverse engineer the claw marks you have put into the back of Miss Temple’s sofa.”

  “From what I hear of her romantic life, she does not see much of the back of the couch.”

  By then I am using a single delicate shiv to restore the disturbed upholstery threads and too busy to take offense. It is true my Miss Temple has been distressingly involved in the mating game of late, and she does not have the handy on and off switch known as “heat” to moderate things.

  But I would not be here if it were not for such urges, so who am I to complain?

  “Ma!” I have now reached the breached French door. The lock is visibly sprung, and long track marks scar the exterior wood. “You are as bad as that renegade human known, not fondly, as Kitty the Cutter.”

  Ma shrugs and emits the short, almost gacking sounds that pass for amusement with her. “Kitty the Cutter—cute nickname. You can call me Cutter for short,” she says with a sharp cuff to my shoulder.

  I do not know why Ma is so fearful of alien abduction. If these so-called aliens were advanced enough to traverse space to get to Earth, they would not take her on a bet.

  Chapter 9

  Close Encounter

  Had he always been a nightcrawler? Max Kinsella wondered about that as he wandered the brightly lit gaming aisles. The Goliath, an older Las Vegas hotel-casino, looked as tired as an aging bookie despite being tarted up with new carpeting and gaudier lighting fixtures.

  He’d spent the day wandering the Strip, staring at familiar Las Vegas icons until his eyes could hardly focus. It worked like putting the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle together.

  The Crystal Phoenix stirred rough cuts of Temple from a handheld movie camera, her red hair, her red car, her laugh. Memory hallucinations of Lieutenant Molina and her haunting ex, Rafi Nadir appeared suddenly at other locations, even the elusive glimpse of a black cat.

  The person or persons unknown who’d arranged his almost-fatal fall probably hoped he’d remain a walking blind spot forever.

  Now, though, he was back at the Goliath, where he’d performed the main magic show for a year, and it was feeling alarmingly familiar, like he belonged here. The up-late energy of a frenetic casino in the very wee hours seemed to spark even more memories.

  A few passing faces looked vaguely familiar. Joy pulsed through him like a drug high. His traumatized memory was tiring of being a drag. It was starting to spark into life. He looked around, cherishing the familiar for the first time since he’d been back in the United States.

  What a crazy scene Las Vegas was. He and his fellow post-midnight travelers were awash in a galaxy of winking lights, hearing computerized whoops and zings, pings and rings, inhaling stale cigarette smoke. Gaming, drinking, and smoking were the Three Musketeers of Vegas good times. The casinos would never ban smoking, so despite the air-conditioned chill, the scene was vaguely hellish.

  Max weaved through crowds of grinning Vegas Strip zombies, haggard and staggering people refusing to admit it was nearly 3 A.M., when all good boys and girls should be at home and in bed with their significant others.

  “Max Kinsella!” a hearty male voice hailed him. “What dead-end alley have you been hiding in?”

  Hester Polyester, a dedicated octogenarian player of the cheapest slot machines, heard his name called too and looked up from the cartooned fruit and other icons floating before her red-rimmed eyes.

  Max stopped and stared at the elderly woman. Her name and claim to fame were just “there.” Could it be this easy?

  Meanwhile, someone reached to grab and stop Max in his tracks just as Max realized he recognized the voice, Thumbs Kerrick, a veteran Goliath pit boss.

  Max winked at Hester to put her next on the greeting list. He turned toward Kerrick and his question, which was being repeated.

  “Where the heck have you been, you Mystifying Max, you? Just vanished after your gig was up. Not polite.”

  “Your shift over?” Max guessed.

  Kerrick pulled him toward a couple empty slot machine spots. “On break.” He released Max’s arm in its linen sport coat. “Best biceps in the business still,” Kerrick said, grinning. “For a tall skinny dude, you’re deceptively strong.”

  “I’m a magician. We’re all deceptive.”

  “You haven’t been a magic man in this town lately. No, seriously. I thought you and your act would be moving up-Strip.” He lowered his voice. “Then it went to hell. Rumor was the police were hot to question you on the dead guy found in the, you know—” Kerrick jerked his head toward the light-bristling ceiling.

  Bells and chimes whooped from various areas of the casino, the siren sound of someone else winning far away.

  “My contract was up that night,” Max said. “I was gone the minute the greasepaint was off. So who died?”

  “Mr. Nobody. Maybe that’s why the Goliath became Cop Central. This tall lieutenant was all over the staff like a cheap leisure suit, gave the word ‘grilling’ the sniff of the Spanish Inquisition and burning at the stake. Sure wanted to talk to you bad.”

  “So in my absence, he endeared me to the staff by putting the heat on them. Sorry, Thumbs. I didn’t know. I was long gone.”

  “She.” Thumbs eyed Max like he would a potential card counter, with suspicion. He may have overdone the innocent act. “The lieutenant was a she.”

  “Good-looking?”

  “Ah, Max!” Laughing, Thumbs punched him on the cast-iron biceps. “That’s why you skedaddled, isn’t it? Woman trouble. I knew it.”

  Max considered, then nodded. “You’re right. Woman trouble. And, Thumbs, this jacket is designer linen. It wrinkles easily.”

  “Well, I won’t wrinkle your wearables again.” Thumbs patted down the lapels like a tailor. He’d always been a hands-on kind of guy. Ex-muscle for the mob, went the rumor. “Still, it’s good to see you. Some of us wo
ndered if there were two dead guys in that incident, but only one body was found.”

  “I know I seemed to vanish. Too bad the murder happened the same night my contract was up. I heard about it later, but I didn’t want to tangle with that pit bull of a suspicious cop. I needed to go away to reinvent myself.”

  “You’re like a cat, Max. Always another life to live.” Kerrick lifted a palm to slap Max’s arm again, then just wiggled his meaty thumbs in a signature farewell wave.

  Max remained still as Kerrick moved on.

  What he’d confirmed to the pit boss was true enough. A woman had been in trouble, and would have been in more if he hadn’t left town. Someone had been after him, and would have soon leaned on his innocent significant other if not drawn away by his disappearance. From what Temple had admitted just recently, Max didn’t move quite fast enough. The thugs found her, and Matt Devine was there for her when Max was just some absconding guy without the decency to leave a good-bye note.

  He sighed. It had been the only way. If some men’s pasts were checkered, his was shamrock-patterned, none of them the lucky, four-leafed variety.

  Turning, he approached Hester Polyester.

  “That Kerrick,” she told him in a cigarette-hoarse rasp as soon as he was within hearing range. “Always Mr. Friendly, but he keeps an eagle eye on things.”

  Her face had the surface of a suede walnut shell, all furrows. Bifocals made her pale eyes child-huge as they looked up at him through the upper portion. She knew the Strip like the myriad lines on her wrinkled palms, but still seemed an innocent.

  “He moves me along,” Hester said with a grumble, “so I don’t become a ‘fixture.’”

  “You aren’t a fixture, Hester,” Max told her. “You are a legend.”

  He smiled as he pulled over an empty stool and sat to give his less-than-rock-hard quads and calves a break. He could walk without a hitch in his step now, but the cut-bungee-cord fall still took a toll.

  “So what’s new here?” he asked Hester.

  “Besides you coming back and the nickel slots clinging on in the old town like dandruff on a fancy Afghan hound?”

  Max smiled, knowing that any casinos Hester didn’t cover in her daily and nightly rounds, her husband, Lester, did. The “Polyester” surname came from the ’60s-vintage sherbet-colored leisure suits the pair wore. Probably purchased at the Goodwill.

  Characters like this were becoming rarer on the Strip, diluting the place’s rich, eccentric flavor.

  “That’s a tasty mint green pantsuit you have on, Hester,” Max told her.

  “Exactly right, honey. ‘Mint.’ As in moneymaker. My lucky suit. Nobody knows that shade of color no more. You never miss a thing, Max Kinsella, not even about what a lady is wearing.”

  “That’s because I’m a metrosexual.”

  “I’m too old to care where you have sex. I’m a suburban-sexual myself. You are still as charming as ever, Max. Now get outta my face and let me whip this rotating fruit salad on the ridiculous computer screen into tutti-frutti Jell-O.”

  Laughing, he obeyed and headed through the casino for the lobby entrance, glad he’d put in an appearance so word would get out: Max is back. He was through with keeping a low profile.

  He’d always been a high-risk kind of guy. Now that he’d tucked Temple Barr safely back in her cozy life as a PR whiz and newly engaged girl, he was ready to draw out his most lethal enemies for one last hand-to-hand showdown, including Kathleen O’Connor in any one of her myriad disguises.

  He moved confidently onto the lobby’s marble floors, hearing his feet hit the stone sharp and clean with no hesitation. Yes indeed, Max is back.

  He stopped dead.

  The last person on earth he’d expected to run into here was now moving toward him. There was no place to hide for either of them.

  Chapter 10

  Mother Ship

  If there is anything a hip cat about town—particularly if that town is Sin City—loathes to admit, it is that he has anything in common with inferior species, namely canines and Homo sapiens.

  Now, Homo sapiens—“saps” for short, in my opinion—is an easy enough breed to manipulate or avoid. Most canines are too herdlike to do more than pity.

  However, it is possible, in our pursuit of ultimate felininity, we hip cats may show some symptoms we have in common with one or both inferior species.

  That is why my extended family includes life partners and my so-called parents, Three O’Clock Louie and Ma Barker, along with Ma’s clowder of street gangsters. Miss Midnight Louise, purported daughter, is my partner in Midnight Investigations, Inc., I being the capital I in “Inc.” and Louise being the dot at the end of the “Inc.”

  Whatever our social ranking, we all have gathered on the fringe of desert that dips into the city proper on a night when the moon is a pale round mottled marble in the sky.

  Coyotes and dogs may howl and bay at the moon.

  Human beings may spoon and moon at the moon.

  We of the Sacred Breed worshipped in ancient Egypt, however, sit in quiet contemplation.

  That is because we have a mystical gene going back to our golden olden days when the cat goddess Bast oversaw the pinnacle of catdom.

  So sometimes her call sings through our veins and to the very tips of our vibrissae, “whiskers” (oh-so-sadly human) in the common expression.

  We suspend our daily struggles for food, warmth, zebra-pattern comforters, and Free-to-Be-Feline pellets and are drawn to a special spot, rather like ’60s folks to a hootenanny.

  Only we remain silent, sober, and soulful.

  Our very presence signifies that something momentous is about to happen.

  Naturally, I expect to figure out what it is first, because I am the private investigator of the lot and that is my job, to walk these lonely wastelands and restore order and justice.

  Did I mention that we are meeting behind the deserted construction area—of which there are many in post–Great Recession Vegas—that sits opposite the Convention Center area?

  Word on the street and around the Dumpsters is that something big is going up here, and going down tonight.

  The construction is swathed in one of those gigantic plastic sheets that environmental artists like Christo employ to gift-wrap various iconic building and geographical areas, even whole islands.

  Fear not. It is merely one of the many stalled construction projects turned abandoned slum by the Great Recession.

  So there Ma and me finally stand on the stub-end of Vegas, looking around the shallow, sandy landscape, viewing a scene of ruin out of Hollywood’s latest disaster movie.

  I am a simple fellow. I suppose you could consider me a survivalist.

  I wear built-in camo to blend into shade and shadow. If I cannot find, chase, and catch food, I know how to scout and score OPF. Other People’s Food. I do not want my sovereign liberty to roam curtailed. I kowtow to no civil or religious authority, save She Who Must Be Obeyed, and, fortunately, Bast, the ancient Egyptian cat deity, keeps herself on the down low these days.

  In a bow to modern mores (and because it was forced upon me by a vile enemy), I have had Planned Pethood thrust upon me and been rendered responsible to pursue my wildest dreams without fear of unwanted offspring. (If only my wildest dreams would let themselves be caught!) Oh, well, there is always another feline fatale around the corner.

  Despite having angled a cushy position with a human roommate, I could revert to wandering wayfarer status in a heartbeat. Or so I like to think, though I would dearly miss the zebra-pattern comforter that makes such an ideal background for my reclining magnificence.

  However enterprising I am as a small business owner and pillar of the community, I must admit many others of my breed do not have the luck and wiles I have had and do need a hand and a handout now and again.

  This economy has been the pits for every life-form except rich roaches and other lowlifes that take and do not give—who knows?—perhaps alien visitors among
them. Bring on more worry and woe!

  I eye the blasted site that looks like the moon on a lush day and pick out members of Ma Barker’s clowder hunkered in the shadows of isolated piles of lumber, rebar, coated concrete blocks, and other leftovers of stalled construction.

  The Strip itself still glows, shines, sparkles, and glitters, but the backlot behind the façade is showing its age and decrepitude.

  “So what is here to draw the gang?” I ask Ma as we crouch behind some burnt-out oleander bushes that died of thirst. Things wilt in Las Vegas if not watered regularly.

  “In the dark before the dawn, vermin.”

  “I thought you were the darlings of the police substation and dined on fast food.”

  “Even they are on a budget. And we need to exercise our survival skills.”

  “This close to the Strip?”

  “That is where the most deserted areas are now during the economic downturn.”

  It is a sad comment when your own mother starts sounding like a stockbroker.

  “We arrived around three hours before dawn and were ready to leave in the still-dark. Only we were disturbed at the gathering.”

  “By—?”

  “Small darting lights that enlarged and faded, flying in formation.”

  “Aw, come on, Ma. I am a rational dude. Trust me. The Strip is riddled by gimmicky dancing lights all over the place.”

  “This occurred above this deserted place only. But that is not all.”

  I sigh and wait.

  “There was a mother ship. A huge, hovering flying thing just above the ground that emitted a blinding death ray.”

  “A death ray. Holy Flash Gordon, Ma! If you had ever been domesticated and moved indoors to watch movies from all eras on television, you would know that death rays are a corny invention of special effects technicians. FX, the humans call it for short. Special effects. A trick. An illusion. A delusion.

  “What you saw was probably some advertising gimmick … maybe helium balloons loosed on an unsuspecting public. Right out in front of the Paris is this huge illuminated balloon and gondola. This stuff is all pure Las Vegas hype.”