First I study the terrain for any discreet exit available. The air-conditioning vents, besides being mostly in the ceiling, are also covered with screwed-on grilles. I am not particularly adept with screws.
Next I practice jumping up to the thermostat and moving the dial with my right mitt. I have not been required to exert myself to this extent of late and am soon huffing and puffing. Once I manage to move the mechanism, I am ready to tackle the Big Outdoors. Miss Temple Barr's apartment features French doors to the patio that open with a lever rather than a knob.
It will take some superfeline leap to tilt the balance on one of these lever devices from the floor, but, to my recent good fortune, Miss Temple Barr's dietary regimen has done nothing to reduce my fighting weight—normally about eighteen pounds.
Since the French latches are lower than the thermostat, I am now in fine shape to bound up and put my mitt to the metal on the way down. After five of these love taps, the latch clicks. Then it is but a matter of hooking my nails under the door and pulling until it cracks open. After which, I nose through, inspect the patio for any pausing tidbits, leap up to the edge—accidentally overturning a pot containing a rank-smelling plant—then down to the top of the umbrella table on the patio below, where I rip some canvas to break my fall, then bound to the chair and so on down to the street. Those patios and French doors could not keep out a tumbleweed.
My journey to the target structure is unremarkable.
Suffice it to say that I know my way around every over-baked square foot of this tortilla-flat town. Even at night the asphalt warms my toes.
I take a sudden chill, however, when I glimpse the animal pound silhouetted against the moon-silvered clouds. Too many of my kind have been snuffed there, for no greater reason than they were considered homeless.
I would not wish such a fate even upon a dog. There are also rumors that certain of my kind are singled out for shipment to laboratories, where scientists see no harm in experimenting on any species on earth so long as it is not their own.
Yet there is no help for it. I creep closer, keeping to the shadows, my ears flat so the delicate pink lining does not pick up a stray streetlight, and my mouth shut so my teeth do not betray my approach. (I have been told that I sport quite a dazzling set of incisors.)
At a rear window I hear the heart-rending cries of my captive kind, plus a lot of yammering from the idiotic dogs, who will raise about the same ruckus for a simple rabies shot as they would for the end of the world.
I hoist myself up, but all I can see is a slice of the main cell block. The mewling of the infants is the hardest to take. I must admit that I have not spent much time around the young of my kind, but they produce a united wail that comes close to the outcry of a human newborn of my (fortunately) temporary acquaintance.
In this unsung cacophony I detect a foreign element and pick out the unmistakable brogue of the Highland twosome. I am brought abruptly back to earth, mainly because the grip of my claws has given out.
What to do? It dawns on me rather swiftly that the missing Baker and Taylor have likely been deposited in this Auschwitz-on-the-Mojave since sometime Friday. They have less than twenty-four hours of survival left, unless someone does something about it.
I pace the ground outside their prison. I sit and muse upon the moon when it coasts free of passing clouds. I weigh options. I clean my ruff and box my ears, hoping for some stroke of genius to strike.
Nothing occurs. Only one course remains. This will have to be an inside job. I do not kid myself; even a dude of my weight, finesse and manual dexterity has never broken into—or out of—an animal pound cage.
I will have to go undercover, allow myself to be captured and do what I can as an inside man. If all else fails, I have one card up my sleeve. Maybe, just maybe, the little doll I left lonely at the Circle Ritz will tumble to my possible whereabouts and ride to my rescue. Hell, she can even walk. If she is fast enough, we might even spring Baker and Taylor.
If she is not, give my regards to Broadway.
17
Missing Purrsons
Eightball O’Rourke was waiting for Temple and Emily Adcock next to the equestrian statue of Julius Caesar that stood, appropriately, kitty-corner from Caesars Palace.
At a distance, the famous hotel and casino glittered frosting-white in the hot sunlight. An endless driveway from the Strip bracketed fountains that led to a reproduction of the headless Winged Victory statue. A semicircular facade of columns fronted the hotel proper and framed a line of oversize marble goddesses, replicas of world-renowned statues. Cars swept up the curved approach—Mercedes, Cadillacs and costly custom jobs wearing more chrome than paint.
The scene at the foot of Caesar’s statue was more humble. Emily had brought the money, neatly wrapped in brown paper. Temple was impressed by the solid brick formed by $5,000 in small bills.
She didn’t try to pay O’Rourke by check, but handed him three fifty-dollar bills.
“This is our money, Mr. O’Rourke,” Emily said after the terse introductions. “Mostly mine. I’ve got to get those two cats back. What are our chances?”
He stuck the parcel in the crown of the Western hat he carried. “Not good. Odds are never good on kidnapping. Too easy to lose the object of the game once they’ve got the cash. Kidnapper don’t care, and if the victims is cats, well—some folks don’t care for cats. Usually crooks. Hell, crooks don’t care for their kinfolk or womenfolk. Why should they care for cats?”
“There’s no guarantee, then?”
“Nope. But I’ll do my best to make the drop so it looks like this here young lady done it.”
“Me?” Temple said. “If I’ve got to be involved, why pay you?”
O’Rourke flipped up the rear skirt of his shapeless polyester-knit sport coat to reveal the gun butt in the back of his jeans. “I’m muscle.”
“You’re muscle!” Temple snorted impolitely. “Even I can see your bald spot when I’m wearing my Charles Jourdans.”
Eightball O’Rourke most likely had no idea that Charles Jourdan French pumps were not only expensive, but arch-breakingly high-heeled. However, he immediately absorbed the gist of her words.
“I’ll do my best to tail the wrong-doer, ladies. More than that you cain’t ask in a kidnapping. If those cats are safe, the napper’s the only one who can lead us to ’em. Now, you with the stilt shoes, wander along the road there behind me and make a big deal of stopping to fix your heel when you reach the third statue of whazzits from the entrance. If you got the ransom note, they expect you to show some interest in this-here drop.”
“It’s Venus,” Temple said. “The statue. Then what?”
“Then amble off. Speaking of statues, you know what happened to Lot’s wife.”
“Salt?”
O’Rourke nodded soberly. “Enough for a whole box of soda crackers. Don’t look back.”
Temple had not expected to play a part in this drama, if only a walk-on. Even at ten on Monday morning, tourists were trickling out the doors and hoofing up the long expanse of curved front walk, just as Temple was doing behind Eightball O’Rourke.