I tromp over Dead Fred’s nose, which is not prevaricatingly long (although the dummy maker must have had a sick sense of humor as something else on this anatomically correct stiff is), and nose the door open a smidge with my own admirably proportioned schnoz.
That it obliges my nudge tells me Miss Louise has gone this way. I slip out into the semidark and pull the door almost shut again.
Of course I am at a loss, while Miss Louise has obviously scouted this terrain previously.
I am really going to bawl her out for numerous acts unbecoming to a partner when I find her. I eye the room. It is vast, shadowy, and smells of mothballs and dustballs. I am guessing it is a mostly unused storeroom. The Cloaked Conjuror had hit Las Vegas like a leopard-spotted tornado only months ago. I imagine clandestinely finding and purchasing this hideout was a difficult job, and did not leave much time for dusting every nook and cranny.
Housekeeping is such a bore anyway, which is why it is better done by the female of the species. I note with disgust that my particular female of the species has carefully used her fluffy rear member to blur her distinctive footprints across the wood-plank flooring.
I must follow in her footsteps, but more slowly, lacking the builtin feather duster, as my aft member is long, strong, and buzz-cut. See what I mean about females being suited for domestic tasks?
After backing to the door and doctoring my trail with dust-busting swipes from my front mitts, I am able to nose another door open and survey a long hallway with the kind of railing that nasty Damien kid from the Omen films would love to push an unwary relative over.
I am nobody’s unwary relative, not even Miss Louise’s, so I look sharp both ways before pulling the door almost shut behind me — I believe in rapid retreats — and tiptoeing down the long, thread-bare carpet that looks like something Queen Elizabeth tossed out at Windsor Castle. After the fire.
Wherever my wandering waif has gone, it is somewhere in a decaying mansion filled with the ancient traces of — I sniff the air — rats, bats, and…cats!
Somehow I do not believe that Miss Midnight Louise all by her lovely self in a few hours has accounted for the distinct attar of cats I sense in the air. Nor is that a lingering scent of days gone by, as is the essence of rat and bat.
These are contemporary cats. Alarmingly current cats, and of a strange, potent, malodorous breed I have not encountered before, not even in my wide and long travels.
That darn brat! She has rushed in where her elders would hesitate to tread, and now I have to get her out of trouble before anything drastic happens. I sniff again, though I am sadly lacking the specialized skills of even the smallest breed of dog. Ah! A waft of willfulness. An odor of the nunnery. A scent of superiority. Midnight Louie has his quarry and he will hunt her down.
Easier vowed than done.
I soon discover that the house is vast and rambling, a shadowed stucco labyrinth accessorized with enough black wrought-iron railings and lighting fixtures and hardware to supply the Spanish Inquisition for a couple hundred years.
Corners that aren’t occupied by vintage magical artifacts are the property of empty suits of armor or such wall ornaments as fully loaded medieval cross-bows.
While human occupation seems distinctly sparse, I scent enough passing cat tracks to make me think the place is haunted by unseen felines. Maybe Los Muertos are really Los Gatos Muertos.
The hair rises on my hackles at that encouraging thought.
Worse, with all the Big Cat spoor, I cannot detect the delicate trail of Midnight Louise. It had been a black day (excuse the expression from the senior partner of Midnight Inc.) when she had undergone the politically correct procedure: it had neutered her scent trail as well as her feminine nature. Not that Miss Midnight Louise had ever displayed much of a feminine sensibility, before or after her operation.
I rest in the shadow of another of the empty-headed knightly guards and ponder what to do next. This joint must have as many rooms as a yuppie has flavors of exotic coffee to brew in the granite-kitchen-countertop Krups.
I think like a crook.
What would be the creepiest, most inaccessible, unsuspected part of this mausoleum where I could get up to nefarious doings uninterrupted?
There is only one answer. Well, two. Either the attic or the basement.
Now, basements are a rarity in Las Vegas. Hot climates don’t lend themselves to cramped, damp, clay-walled holes in the ground. Most homes here are built on concrete slabs. Residents know that there is nothing creepier under their toes than some flattened scorpions crushed during construction.
Myself, I will take a dusty, dry old attic over a dank, dark basement any day,
Which is why I suspect this joint is old enough, and was lavish enough in its heyday, to have supported such a nice, builtin set decoration as a basement. I mean, the place already is a perfect setting for a slasher movie.
The only nice part about hunting for a basement is that the entrance is usually near my favorite part of any domicile: the kitchen.
So I pad over cool tile, keeping near the walls where I can always slink under a piece of furniture at a moment’s notice. I finally find the stairs, snaking up the wall like a boa constrictor up a banana tree trunk.
And there I finally hear something: sound and motion in what has seemed until now a dark and deserted house.
It looks like I will be visiting the attic, after all.
And then I freeze, so still my whiskers would snap like whips if I were to move again.
I am not alone.
Not only that but the presence I now sense is not one of the many domestic cat trails I have crossed during my wanderings. It is not feline at all, which is odd in this house so marked by the presence of my kind, small or gigantic.
It is man. One man. As black as the night we share. I watch him move like a tide of shadow up the staircase, always rising, never seeming to move much, yet eating up steps like the ocean swallows sand.
I allow one whisker to twitch in recognition. Or tribute. It is the only human I would consider for a partnership in Midnight Inc. It is the incomparable cat burglar in the midnight cat suit. It is Mr. Max Kinsella himself out for an undercover stroll, right where I have decided all the action is. Or where it would be did either of us know what most of this action was about.
I wonder if Miss Temple knows that he goes wandering around at night without her.
I suppose she does. She is a very modern lady. She certainly knows that I do, and what is good for the Tomcat is good for the Maxman.
Frankly, I am pretty impressed by Mr. Max’s savvy and nerve. He is a lot bigger and thus easier to spot than I am.
I decide to follow his lead and pour myself up the stairs like a sinuous Slinky toy defying gravity and going up, not down.
No one notices Mr. Max, and Mr. Max does not notice me.
That is the way it should be.
If only Miss Midnight Louise was not a loose cannon somewhere in the vicinity, I would not have a thing to worry about.
Not that I ever worry.
Vamp…
Shaken by the imagined lethal consequences of his own scenario, Matt dialed Molina’s office as soon as he got back to his apartment.
She had said “later.” Now was later. Maybe too late.
“I’ve really got to talk to you privately right away,” he said as soon as she answered, skipping the usual greetings, not even saying who he was. He sounded more like her than himself, but none of the usual social chatter seemed necessary anymore. “Right away.”
“That’s obvious,” she said. “Where? You’re apparently too freaked to tolerate a police station meeting.”
“Freaked.” The word made his mind speed down emotional dead ends like a rat navigating a maze of brain tissue. “I guess you could call it that. Some place where no one could draw the wrong conclusions. Some place…happenstance.”