"Sorry. I heard this news from Bastet herself, during a power-seance to call up Houdini last Halloween. I did not wantXo be the last in line of Pharaoh's private operators--I am not a snob myself--but I cannot duck my destiny. Especially when Bast herself is the message-bearer."
"You do not bear the mark of Bast."
"Oh, the old dame wanted to hang her signature earring on my clubby, ordinary ear, but I do not go for these sissy accouterments. I do not care how many supposedly macho dudes affect earbobs nowadays."
Hyacinth gasps. "You know of Bastet's earring?"
"Nobody punctures one of my extremities and lives to tell of it."
Hyacinth narrows her morning-glory blue eyes and hunches down. She resembles a pile of furred antlers in this position. A guy could commit hara-kiri on her hipbones trying to do the wild thing. I do not go for earrings, nor do I endorse this human fetish for females so skinny they become lethal weapons of the edged variety. However, when I am on a case, I cannot allow my preferences to get in the way of cadging information from a source. The fluffy furred images of the Ashleigh sisters flash before my memory. I guess I go for the pneumatic types. But they are not here and the subject before me is the sinewy Siamese called Hyacinth.
"So where did you two last perform?" I ask casually.
"Hong Kong."
I am impressed and allow it to show. 'That must be some flight from here to there."
"Oh, we stopped over in Paris first."
"Paris."
"Have you been there, Louie?"
Yeah, sure. Every other day. "Not. . . recently."
"It is a bit overpopulated with poodles, who are allowed an extraordinary freedom of the city, but it is a lovely metropolis. I have been to Caracas, Quito, Katmandu, Rabat, Singapore, Tokyo, Sydney and Amsterdam."
My flattery has gotten me everywhere, I see.
"Quite an itinerary. I just got back from New York myself."
"Oh, New York! We never stop over there. Too dirty, too noisy, too American."
"I can see that you are an international kind of girl."
She hunches down, leans her narrow face toward me, hisses through her fangs, "You ever had any Panama Purple?"
"Not to my knowledge."
"I have some in my treat bag. Want to try a sniff?"
Doing hallucinatory substances is not a requirement of my job, but I am curious about what this dame is into. And I can sniff the best of them under the table, if I have to.
So I look the usual curious and follow her as she leaps down to the floor and minces over to a purple-velvet bed. Sure enough, there is a drawstring bag beside it, a silk-floral affair (I believe the flowers are hyacinths), and Hyacinth herself is soon sticking her long aristocratic nose into it.
A whiff like medicinal marijuana puffs into the room. I am not much for either medicine or marijuana but it is not polite for a guest to turn up his nose at his hostess's best dishes.
So soon I am rolling in it. It is the weirdest nip I have ever encountered, and the dried leaves do indeed have a purple cast. Panama Purple, huh? I am not about to admit my ignorance of this primo stuff. But it is strong. Soon my head is in the clouds and my feet are in the air.
Miss Hyacinth is in the same state, but I am sorry to say it is not shared by her mistress when she comes into the dressing room.
I am aware of a cloud of floral chiffon floating above my eyes-- my slightly crossed eyes--of a perfume of distilled hyacinth that is distinctly floral and human, not feline. Long, daggerlike nails probe my underbelly under the guise of scratching my stomach.
"What have we here, Hyacinth?" a honeyed voice inquires.
Human voices, when honeyed, are more dangerous than the growl of a mountain lion.
"I believe that this pussycat was at the scene of a recent crime. Perhaps we should hold him as a material witness, hmm? Would you like that, my little beauty? Your very own personal playfellow?"
The four-inch-long blood-red shivs jab into my gut. "Of course you may keep him, my darling girl! What else are these foolish boys for? But we will put him away for the moment. We have work to attend to. Playtime later, my pet. Playtime later."
***************
Everything here is dark, but then there is nothing here.
I am flat on my back, in utter blackness, on a hard surface.
My ears and toes buzz. Actually, my ears ring and my toes tingle.
That Panama Purple stuff was more potent than a bull matador in mating season.
Of course I wake up alone. You can be sure that the treacherous Hyacinth is coming to in much softer circumstances, although the idea of being caressed by those artificial shivs that last I felt makes my skin crawl.
In fact, my skin crawls so much I almost think I could slip right out of it and through some crack in this box like smoke. But that delusion is just an aftereffect of the alien catnip. I stand, shakily, and nose the limits of my prison. As I suspected, it is one of these breakaway magician's boxes, but that does not mean I can wave my way out using my tail as a magic wand!
These devices are meant to deceive witnesses with their apparent integrity. I am well and truly trapped. It is a nasty feeling. Usually when one of my kind is trapped, we worry about the bored bean-counting ways of the local animal pound. (The beans they are counting are no doubt the heads of the doomed departing as they are admitted into their doors. I also think that they are called "pounds" in honor of the multitudinous pounds of flesh they do away with. Do you know that they actually keep track of how many victims they dust off in a year?) But evil as the animal pound is to all my kind, I fear I face a greater eviclass="underline" the unknown villainies of Hyacinth and her magician mistress.
Chapter 40
Command Performance
Matt's doorbell rang.
He rushed to answer it, thinking it might be Temple. Somehow he expected she would have to be as drawn to him as he was to her.
"Oh."
"You were expecting the Avon lady, maybe?"
"No. Just someone I knew. Better."
"And how many people in Las Vegas do you know better than I?"
She had him there. "Oh, about four."
"May I come in?"
"Uh, yeah."
"Sit down?"
"Uh, please."
"I can see you're really connected today. Something happen I should know about?"
"Probably lots of things."
The element of surprise had lost its sting. Matt pulled one of his second-hand chairs to the sofa table and gazed at the police lieutenant expectantly, a good student.
She wore her usual neutral clothing as a wall does its paint. It was hard not to see her and think of business, except when she sang at the Blue Dahlia, and that incarnation was such a 180-degree turn from her daily persona that it seemed a mirage.
"What can I do for you?" Matt asked.
"A lot maybe." Molina bit her lip, a tentative gesture he'd not seen in her before. "I need you to finger your attacker."
"You've got her in custody?"
"No. But we've got a lead on her, and she may be involved in a lot more than razor cuts."
"You make her sound like a barber."
"Barbers got their starts in medieval times as surgeons, blood-letters, do you realize that?"
"I've heard some history of the red-and-white striped barber pole. What does that have to do with what you want me to do?"
Molina laughed. "Nothing. Just a little social history. You'll need to get off work, I'm afraid.
You can have your supervisor call me, if necessary."
"Night work?"
"That's your police force at their best. I want you to accompany me to a show."