Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir Read online

  “Baby food,” Osiris sneers. “They give you human baby food, buckets of it.”

  Mr. Lucky ignores the attempted ignominy, as I would do in his position. “And her extremities appear to have been dipped in some sort of mud. They are all dirty brown.”

  I chortle to hear the hated Hyacinth cut down to size by the Big Cats. My every encounter with her so far has ended with me caged or drugged, not a sterling record for a street-smart shamus. But even she would not dare to challenge these big dudes.

  Midnight Louise is not amused. She never is.

  “I have seen the cat in question. She is a lilac-point Siamese and is supposed to look like that, including the blue eyes, which are highly prized by humans. The only thing unnatural about her is the colored enamel on her claws, and that is perpetrated by her mistress, who presents a rather gaudy stage presence herself.”

  I cannot believe that Miss Louise has beaten me here to lay eyes on my bête not-noir in her new lair before I have! To lay eyes on both of them, in fact, Shangri-La and her hairy familiar.

  “I need to check these babes out,” I say.

  “I bet you do,” Mr. Lucky says with a wink. “I must say you get around for a little guy.”

  I fluff my ruff, but Midnight Louise is not impressed. “I have got the whole layout down cold. Come on along and I will show you.’Bye, boys.”

  There is little left for me to do but to sashay after Louise like she is cheese and I am a rat. When I catch up with her, I decide to assert my age and experience.

  And then I get a brilliant idea. These dames are big on family trees, and have I got a claw off the old cactus for her!

  “Say, Louise.”

  “Miss Louise to you, since we are not related, as you keep reminding me.”

  “It is funny you should mention that. Before I came here I ran into a rather large piece of auld lang syne.”

  “Huh?” She stops and twitches her tail. “I am a Scottish fold, ye dinna hae ta speak Scots to me.”

  “I mean I encountered a figure from my past. My earliest years. It was quite a shock.”

  “I am surprised you remember anything that far back.”

  “Ungrateful kit! I am not about to forget my own mother.”

  “Mother?” She actually stops and sits, squashing that metronome tall of hers. “How can you be sure? You must not have seen her since you were six weeks old. I certainly did not see mine after that, though whether it was because she was dead or domesticated I cannot say.”

  “Well, my ma is neither dead nor domesticated. She runs a feral gang on Twenty-fourth Street, a pretty raw neighborhood. She has survived being kidnapped by the Fixers and is doing just fine. I would say she said hello if there was any chance that you two were related, but it does not look like there is.”

  “Liar!” she spits. “So my grandmother is alive.”

  I do not say anything to dissuade her. Dames love to imagine long lines of interelated individuals, whether they be human or feline. Perhaps that is why the human ones watch soap operas.

  “Do you think she would know anything about my mother?” Louise asks.

  “Could be.”

  “I suppose you did not ask, you irresponsible lug!”

  “There was not time. I was about to be jumped by the Wild Bunch or whisked away for an unnecessary globe-otomy by the Fixers.”

  For some reason Miss Louise finds this amusing. Her shiny black lips curl like whiskers with a permanent wave. “Yeah. I suppose in your condition you could be mistaken for an unneutered male. Who would dream an alley cat like you had benefitted from a human-style vasectomy?”

  “Not the Fixers,” I admit with a shudder. “Now, where are these dames of Asian persuasion? I have reasons for tracking down Shangri-La and her evil sidekick Hyacinth.”

  Midnight Louise sits down in the middle of a flagstone walk between a luxurious growth of giant-leaved plants imported to give the Big Cats a touch of jungle clime.

  I can tell right off that she is about to be obstinate.

  “We need to make a deal,” she says.

  “About what?”

  “Our relationship.”

  Dames!“We do not have one.”

  “I wonder if the delightful lady gangster you met on the north side would agree if she laid eyes on me.”

  “A mother may recognize a grown kit, especially when the kit in question was such a remarkably smart and personable little nipper, but no grandmother is going to recognize an offspring once removed. Let us face up to the common prejudice: we black cats all look alike.”

  “Actually, I was not interested in any personal relationship,” she says silkily. “I was speaking purely of business.”

  “Oh. Right. You work for me. Sometimes.”

  “I have worked with you, sometimes, when it suited me. I believe it is time for a more formal arrangement.”

  “What? I should pay you?”

  “We should be partners.”

  “Partners! I do not need a dame for a partner any more than I need a dustball dog for a sniffing substitute.”

  “Yet you have employed both on several of your latest cases.”

  “Aha! You admit that I do have ‘cases.’”

  “I will…if you admit that we are probably blood related.”

  “Hell, an average cat couple can create over four hundred thousand offspring in seven years, which I admit is a long run for your average street cat. All cats are probably related.”

  “Do not swear, Daddikins,” she purrs in an odiously sweet manner. “It is a bad example for the boys.”

  I turn to find black and spotted muzzles parting the glossy leaves. “Ah…nothing to worry about. Just a little family discussion.”

  The leaves close like emerald curtains and we are alone once more.

  “See,” says Louise. “That was not so bad. We can consider this a family business. No one will think anything of it.”

  I think something of it, and it is not good! But I have not lasted in a cruel world so long without being a smidgeon adaptable, so I lick my lips and weigh how badly I want to track down the rotten Hyacinth against how much I hate conceding anything to Midnight Louise.

  “All right,” I say. “You are in the firm: Midnight Louie and Son.”

  “And son!”

  “That is what they usually name two-generation businesses.”

  “I am not a male!”

  “Yeah, well, one could not tell by looking at you. You could be one of these poor souls the Fixers got. A business has to have a name the public will have confidence in: Midnight Louie and Son. What’s not to love, like, and lap right up?”

  “How about Midnight Louie and Daughter?”

  I try not to snerk up my plush leather glove. The kit is so busy defending her gender she has neglected to note that I remain the first and foremost element in the billing.

  “Who ever heard of a PI firm with ‘and Daughter’ in the name? Not that I concede that you are, of course. My daughter, that is.”

  “I do not care what you concede. I am not moving a foot on the way into that Fort Knox of a house until you come up with something reasonable.”

  When a dame uses the word “reasonable” she means her way, period.

  I shift my weight from forefoot to forefoot. I must admit that Midnight Louise has certain talents she may have gotten from a brilliant second-story dude like myself. She does have potential, and I could use a schnook now and then. But I cannot stomach, in this life or any other of my remaining eight,“Midnight Louie and Daughter.”

  If ever I was called upon to be brilliant and devious, it is now.

  I clear my throat. I hum a few bars of “Melancholy Baby.” I rid myself of an irksome nail sheath.

  “Quit stalling, Mein Papa. You are cornered and you know it.”

  I am at my most inventive when cornered, so…invent!

  “All right,” I say portentously. “We will be partners in a firm. We will have a sexy, Richard Diamond kind of aura
.”

  “Richard who?”

  “TV PI, had a secretary with a world-class pair of gams.” (Which were provided by Miss Mary Tyler Moore, who went on to become even more famous for tossing a hat into the air at the opening of a TV show.)

  Midnight Louise blinks. I do not think that she knows a “gam” from a “gat” or she would be all over me for that sexist remark. I swallow my smirk.

  “We will have a name that says it all,” I go on, caught up in my own scenario.

  “We will be equal,” she warns, flattening her ears and fluffing her fur.

  I am not afraid of a family spat with Midnight Louise, but I am well aware that her lurking backup outweighs me twenty to one, and there are two of them.

  I straighten, shake out my coat until it is in gleaming order, and pronounce: “Midnight Inc. What could be better?”

  I catch her flat-footed and wimp-whiskered. “You mean like in India ink?” she asks, confused.

  “No. As in Murder Inc. Capisce?”

  “It does sound dangerous,” she concedes.

  “It is compact.”

  “It does include both our names.”

  “Indeed.”

  “It is gender neutral.”

  “Of course,” I growl. I hate gender neutral.

  “It will do.”

  With that she turns on her tail and struts forward, assuming that I will follow.

  Having dodged “Midnight Louie and Daughter,” I do. For now.

  I do. The expression smacks indecently of wedding vows.

  Well, there is always divorce and, in business unions, dissolution. And finally, in Midnight Inc.’s line of work,’til death do us part.

  Sunset Boulevard

  I stare at the pool behind the house.

  It is big and old-fashioned, just a huge, deep rectangle of blue mosaic tiles seen through a glassy viewfinder of chlorinated water, darkly. Some jungle leaves the size of elephant ears float like lily pads, lending an air of disuse or of the macabre, I cannot decide which.

  I almost expect to see William Holden floating facedown in the limpid water as I look beyond to the stucco mansion looming beyond the pool like the white cliffs of Dover.

  “What a spread,” I say.

  “It belonged to Carissa Caine, a mistress of Jersey Joe Jackson before he lost his stash. That man had more mistresses than Howard Hughes had phobias.”

  Louise sits to tick off her research on her toes. Or perhaps she is licking off her research from her toes. Now that she is my partner, I will be darned if I will call her “Miss” anymore. Business is business. “That is why a spread of this size still exists inside Las Vegas,” she goes on. “It was like Sleeping Beauty’s castle. Jersey Joe went crazy and while the tabloids were busy reporting his slow self-destruct, Carissa faded away, as untouched as this mansion. She was a little touched in the mad sense of the word, because she didn’t want to be alone after she died, so she turned the streetside acres into a cemetery. Everybody forgot about the house and grounds behind it.”

  “Only in Las Vegas can the façade become the reality,” I note. “So the Cloaked Conjuror grabbed up this cold property when he started getting death threats for exposing the secrets behind magical illusions in his act.”

  “He wanted to be near the Strip, but needed to be discreet. Los Muertos was perfect.”

  “‘Lost’ Muertos is more like it. And the Big Cats up front make dandy bodyguards.”

  “Oh, the Cloaked Conjuror has every security device in the firmament. Even the Mystifying Max would have trouble breaking into this joint.”

  “But you cracked it.”

  “I am small and subtle,” she says demurely.

  “Small, yes. So Hyacinth and her mistress now inhabit the house with the Cloaked Conjuror?”

  “His friends call him CC. It saves one’s breath.”

  “Yeah, one would worry about saving one’s breath around this creepy place.” My ears prick up, and then my nostrils flare. “Dogs?”

  “Not just dogs. Rottweilers.”

  “Oh, weinerschnitzel! How do we get around them?”

  For answer she leaps into one of Sleeping Beauty’s thorny vines and starts climbing.

  She may be small and subtle, but I am larger than life. I follow in her footsteps, but not without collecting as many snags as a cheap pair of nylons. All right, pantyhose. A guy must move with the times, although even my Miss Temple, the high-heel queen, hates pantyhose. I do not want to mention how many times she goes bare-footed and high-heeled, but I understand that this is all the fashion now among the starlet set.

  I manage to muffle any cries of protest as I am raked right and left on the way up.

  I suppose my reward is the sight of two Rottweilers, heads bowed and nostrils sucking sand, snuffling and whimpering at the foot of the vine that has been our high road to heaven.

  Louise is already intently pawing a mullioned window.

  I join her on the wide sill to lick down my worst wounds and cowlicks.

  “Forget the grooming fetish,” she advises. “No one will see us to care how smooth your coat is. I hope.”

  “So this Shangri-La is crashing with CC.”

  “Speak sense, Poppy.”

  “She is residing at the house. Do you suspect some hankypanky?”

  “Really! I choose not to dwell upon the disgusting mating habits of humans, which never cease. I suspect that since CC must remain in constant hiding, anyone who joins the act is forced to stay here so they can practice.”

  “Practice! Mr. Max Kinsella has never been seen to practice.”

  “No doubt he has his own hideaway for the purpose, unless you believe that magicians can really work magic?”

  “Of course not. But what has brought you to trespassing on such sinister grounds?”

  Midnight Louise shrugs the silver-tipped ruff that nestles around her shoulders like an open bear trap with a fun-fur cover. “I wanted to check up on the boys, make sure that they were being treated right here.”

  “Like you would be able to do something about it if they were not,” I jeer.

  She ignores me, which is very hard on a jeerer. “Everything was on the up-and-up on the outside, where the Big Cats are kept. It was what was going on in the inside that kept me sniffing around.”

  “How did you manage to breeze in through a window if the joint is so protected by security?” I ask, eyeing the cushy chamber beyond the mullioned window. A guy could film Rebecca here, the place looks so old-Hollywood-style lush, and creepy in that inimitable blend that only black-and-white movies can convey.

  “I did not. Every aperture is wired for sound and fury, including the chimneys.”

  “Then how do we —?”

  For an answer she flips her busy tail in my face and ankles off along the ledge.

  I cast one last hungry look at the Leave Her to Heaven bedroom, all chiffon and brocade and oil portraits of to-die-for dames and tall glass perfume bottles that resemble a cityscape of mid town Manhattan.

  Instead of busting into Manderlay I am taking the high road to agoraphobia.

  At least Louise is doing point.

  Way up here the oleander bush tops scratch on the brickwork and it is a hard twenty-foot fall to the foundation landscaping, which looks to be a variety of thorny hedge.

  At last Louise pauses at a porthole the size of a salad plate and sits down with unpardonable pride.

  “This is a peephole?” I suggest.

  “This is the only unwired entry in the place.”

  I peer through the aluminum-lined opening. “I can see why. A snake would have trouble breaking and entering here.”

  “Luckily, the snakes stick to the ground cover.”

  I peer below, picturing serpents writhing among the thorns. No way do I want to go down.

  “This is a perfect entrance,” Louise goes on. And on.

  It seems she has stumbled across a former clothes dryer vent pipe in a closet that everyone has forgotten wa
s once an ultra-modern second-floor laundry room, only now it is filled with racks of costumes and stage props. The pipe, she says, exits into the back of a red-satin-lined cape, sort of like the escape chute on an airliner.

  A moment later, the tip of her tail is vanishing into the pipe. She has not even paused to consider that I might be a rather tight fit. Young kits nowadays!

  Normally the Rule of Entry and Exit is: if the head will fit, you must commit.

  However, this helpful motto does not allow for individuals whose proportions tend more toward those of Nero Wolfe than the Thin Man.

  I must admit to wolfing down my food more often than not of late, especially when I get out and have a chance at something other than that arid mound of Free-to-be-Feline Miss Temple keeps endlessly replenished at the Circle Ritz. Luckily, Las Vegas is as much a town to eat out in as to lose your lunch (and bargain buffet breakfast) in.

  However, I cannot have Miss Louise saying I am the slowpoke of the outfit, so I nose my way into the pipe.

  It is dark and cold as only bare metal can be in this climate. I can already feel my innards shrinking from the chilly contact, which will only do me good in slithering through this foul worm-hole.

  Still, it is quite a job to wriggle through, requiring all my superior muscular strength. I recall an anaconda from a previous case and pretend that I can propel myself by rippling muscle tone alone, as Trojan did.

  Finally my head pokes through into free space. I feel like I can breathe again, and grunt and huff as I pull my body through the eye of the needle that Miss Louise’s wonderful, handy, forgotten entryway has proven to be.

  I plop with a thump onto the advertised red satin lining of the cape, which is so slippery I can barely get the traction to push myself upright without flailing my battle-shivs through it until it is shredded wheat.

  Altogether a most undignified illegal entrance. The only thing missing from this comedy of erroneous entry is the usual dead body I have a knack for stumbling over, especially in strange places, in the dark.

  I attain my balance and swagger forward. Fortunately, this closet is so dark that the hypercritical Louise has not witnessed my struggles.