Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A White Tie And Tails

“Yeah,” mocks another. “The wimpy curtain hitting the window glass in the draft of the ceiling fan. We saw them drive out of here in the rented sedan, all four, all dressed up like for a funeral. They ain’t coming back soon.”

Spare me the crude contractions. This is not an episode of Jersey Shore.

I gaze out on mud-edged work boots.

“Good,” says Mr. Hearing Things. “I will leave a note under the old lady’s pillow. That ought to put a wasp in her—”

No lady will be the object of crude language when Midnight Louie is around. I strike like a snake, a shiv finding the sweet spot between the ankle-boot top and the wrinkled jeans bottom as the creep bends to place his latest poison pen note under Miss Mira’s pillow.

“Ow!” he yells, straightening up in a hurry.

“What is the matter now?”

“A wasp stung me.”

“Get real.”

“No. Look. My leg is all red in this spot. It is bleeding.”

“I am not looking at your bleeding ankles. Maybe you got an allergy. Leave the note and I will do something nasty with a butcher knife and whatever is in the meat drawer in the kitchen on the way out.”

“It is not just the two chicks now. They have visitors.”

“So. We back off because of ‘visitors’? We been hired—”

I wince again. As grammar goes so arrives the coarseness of modern life.

“—to terrify and that is what we do best. That dude is the woman’s son. I bet if we got a hold of him we could get her to come across.”

“I would rather kidnap the little redheaded chick. Less trouble and more fun.”

Their footsteps thud out the door and into the living room, then soon stomp onto the kitchen tiles like jackhammers.

I rocket out after them, intending to do massively more epidermal damage with my own butcher knives. Well, X-acto knives on steroids.

I run right into the open maw … of the leopard-print carrier, which a rude boot kicks shut on me before I can turn around in the canvas tunnel.

“I told you I heard something in the bedroom,” says one. A boot kicks in at me. “Wasp. I was right. Kiss your kisser good-bye, puddytat.”

Light returns to the tunnel as the boot draws back for a kick. I gather into a crouch. Luckily, Miss Temple has chosen a commodious carrier, I am planning to land atop the boot, sink in my staples, and ride it out of captivity. Of course, I may be flung spine-first into a wall, but I also plan to use the Mr. Max Kinsella survival strategy and go as limp as a kitten before I hit.

I admit I am being a trifle optimistic about my survival chances here.

“Hold it,” the other guy says, kicking my assailant’s boot aside. He bends to zip the lip of the carrier shut.

“This plays right into our hands. Talk about smaller and less trouble. We have got our hostage. You know how regular people go all puddly about animals in jeopardy. Just let me write a note and stick it into the maple countertop with a butcher knife and we are outta here.”

Mr. Kickapoo is not convinced. “Should there not be blood on the knife? There is on my ankle.”

“Will you forget about your friggin’ ankle?”

“Or we could hack off the tip of his tail.”

“You want to put your hands into that wasps’ nest? You could contract blood poisoning. I am not going to drop you off at the ER. Too risky. You will end up in the same landfill I will leave the cat in. I will bury the little devil and you so deep, it will make the Jimmy Hoffa disappearance in Detroit look obvious.”

Landfill. Great! I have found some very tasty snacks around landfills. Plus there are trash trucks coming and going constantly on which to hitch a ride back to town. One man’s doom is another cat’s opportunity.

Am I glad to have distracted this two-man destruction crew into leaving my nearest and dearest alone.

Chapter 17

Subterranean Sunday Blues

First the news shows reported that “troubles” in Ireland still showed signs of life—and death—thanks to surviving veterans of the years of civil strife.

The lighted screen served almost as an LED crystal ball for Max, opening up the world of Garry’s own investigations and questions.

Now it seemed the IRA links in Las Vegas were alive and well also.

Max hunkered down again over Gandolph’s laptop at the kitchen table, a glass of Jameson at his right hand. Thanks to Lieutenant Molina’s thorough search of the cupboards recently, he now knew where the hard stuff was kept.

He sat back. Molina. He was ideally placed regarding her. Rafi Nadir, her ex, was loyal to Garry and now to Max by proxy. The homicide officer wanted to keep Max busy solving the mysteries of his own life and times for some reason.

Suited him. While burning personal issues distracted Molina and Rafi, he was in emotional limbo and better able to concentrate on why he’d been marked for death here and in Northern Ireland.

Max took a slug of whiskey. It would be tricky, but he needed to get closer to Temple Barr. She was a walking memory bank of his past as well as all these pesky Las Vegas crimes that had haunted Garry and maybe caused his death on foreign soil, putting him into an unmarked grave, maybe.

Max’s fist hit the table, sloshing whiskey too close to the computer and its precious information.

Temple Barr. She was young, she was lovely, she was engaged. Only a jerk would deliberately get between her and her righteous fiancé, the honest ex-priest turned media hottie. And could he still pull that off, in his diminished condition?

Max smiled ruefully. Probably only in his diminished condition. Temple was too soft-hearted for her own good. And gutsy. “Come home, Max.”

Damn. He’d needed that from her then. Now he needed to know what Miss Temple knew; she’d probably tell him gladly if he asked. He had no time to waste. He was too obviously back in town and sure to draw the wrong sort of attention. If only he could crack Garry’s computer password. There must be more on it than the Ireland tourist information he was pulling up.

He sipped and thought. Rafi remained his best bet now. That professor’s death on the UNLA campus was also the best trail to follow when Max wasn’t shadowing himself for Molina. The newspaper archives were skimpy. RESPECTED PROF FOUND DEAD. MAGIC WAS HIS MINOR.

Max had located an old calendar entry on Garry’s computer about a magic-show poster exhibition at that same time. Garry, Garry, Garry. He’d kept Max alive. Max had to honor his memory and answer all the questions Gandolph the Great had been pursuing.

Max brought up the UNLA site on Garry’s computer. Las Vegas aerial views were “weary, stale, flat,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet had described his life before it all blew up and went to hell.

But not “unprofitable.”

The landlocked campus was a compressed intellectual island in a sea of commercial “strip” developments and sprawling residential desert areas. Like moats of hot metal, traffic hemmed in the campus most of the year. It had no place to expand, yet needed to establish a strong physical presence.

That was exactly how Max felt at the moment, hemmed in by his loss of memory and self, “tasked” as the bureaucrats put it, to change his world and help the people in it, including himself.