Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Alien X-Ray

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 wondered 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.