Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Satin continues her under-the-breath report. “I managed to slip away unnoticed, but all my Sapphire Slipper ladies have been under guard since two hours before your limousine of humans arrived. That is a most impressive vehicle. You must have become a major entertainment figure to travel in such style. I have seen some fancy rigs pull up to the Sapphire Slipper, but never a stretch Rolls-Royce.”

“Stretch Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud,” I correct gently. “Yes, I have been in the personal appearance game . . . New York . . . television.”

I do not mention that my moments of fame were shilling for a cat food brand I would not touch with an infected toenail. “But now I am back home and working freelance. This is your lucky day. I am a professional. I am founder and CEO of Midnight Inc. Investigations.”

“You are a private dick?”

“So they tell me. You can see that I am not exactly at a loss here. Yes, you are right about the Limey limo, ducks. My Las Vegas posse travels only first class, and that is how I will bust us all out of this trap.”

“Your posse is large and many, but now they are disarmed and helpless.”

“Not usually. But we are armed and dangerous, are we not? You still have your shivs, right? These ladies of the night were not so foolish as to disarm you?”

She flashes them with a sudden spurt of street spirit. That is my black Satin! After my recovery from the Brinks job, I found no word of her on the Strip, although I hunted for months. A classy lady like Satin does not disappear unless she is kidnapped for domestic servitude, or worse, dead.

I take a deep breath, like Mr. Matt in a crisis. I do not doubt that Satin lost all her offspring to adoption, but some placements may not have, er, taken. I have a horrible feeling that I know one of her lost litter. There is a chilling likeness about the nose.

Miss Midnight Louise would not be able to keep her claws out of my hide if she knew her assumption of my paternity was right, and that her mother survived to become the house cat at a hooker emporium.

I shudder, which Miss Satin mistakes for regret, rather than fear, thank Bast!

“It is all right, Louie. I do not blame you for my condition and fate. We knew so little about safeguards in those days.”

“Right,” I say.

I do not know much about them these days either, except that I am surgically sterilized so I can play without paying. “Let us pad into the parlor and see who has the guts and smarts to take down the whole Fontana family at once.”

Cell in Solitary

Matt listened hard in the dark at the top of the stairs. The silence downstairs was reassuring, for the moment. No gunshots and crashing bodies or furniture.

He slipped out of his loafers, stuffed them in his side jacket pockets as best he could, and moved slowly down a long, low-lit hall like a hotel’s.

Actually, the layout of this place should come pretty close to a hotel.

The first room—a bedroom—he ventured into was a fussy Victorian affair: high four-poster brass bed with a lot of knobs and curlicues, dressing table, upholstered ottomans, fringe, and feathery dried floral arrangements.

He spotted an oil lamp on the dresser and found a box of long farmers’ matches beside it. The oil broadcast a heavy floral scent once the flame was going. Matt stifled a sneeze and went back into the hall, using the flickering light to search for a rear exit. There had to be one, thanks to fire safety standards.

He surveyed each room he passed, making sure they were vacant.

It was like opening the doors onto a series of stage sets. The entrances were set back in niches. Every room had its theme, although shades of blue decorated each one. The colors reminded Matt of the Virgin Mary, hardly the idea here. After three “visitations,” he realized that a blue glass Cinderella slipper was a feature in every vignette.

Some rooms teemed with vintage froufrou from the Gay Nineties to the 1940s. After that, nostalgia faded and the décor was showy modern, furnished with sleek mirrors and stainless steel and suede. Every room was pristinely neat, lavish and gaudy in whatever its style, and empty.

How unnerving to think that each room had hosted a paid-for thousand-and-one one-night stands . . . several times over if the bordello was a few decades old.

Some rooms had Jacuzzis and brittle little fountains everywhere. Some rooms, both Victorian and modern, housed strange devices of leather and metal that looked as if they’d been imported from Inquisition Warehouse.

Matt was glad his knowledge of the darker shores of sex for sale was pretty limited.

As he suspected, the hall ended in a back service stairway. He eased the heavy metal fire door open and padded down a few steps. Muffled voices!

He crept down a few more risers.

Several voices. The captives wouldn’t be jawing away like this. The gang must have taken over the back rooms as their headquarters while the Fontana party and the residents were held hostage in the front parlor and the adjoining barroom he’d glimpsed through the double interior doors before he’d ducked out.

Not good. He leaned against the wall, holding up the oil lamp and hitting redial on Nicky’s cell phone. No bar graph showed up, nothing but a message that the phone was “searching for a signal,” and then nothing.

Matt was searching for a signal too.

Call it a sign.

Courtesans on Parade

Of course, nobody notices a couple of cats roaming the premises.

Some of my breed might be a bit miffed that humankind is so ready to overlook the species the ancient Egyptians worshipped. Unfortunately, any remaining Egyptians have lost the faith. Besides, being overlooked has always been my ace in the hole. Especially if you are black and low-profile. Now we are two.

So Satin and I ankle into the main parlor. I must say I shudder at what I see.

One by one, the Fontana boys have been gestured at major gunpoint into this room. All I see of the gangsters are black boots, leggings, turtleneck-sweater sleeves, and leather gloves. And black 9mm guns to match. I must admit I admire the unknown perps’ color choice, although it has long been the uniform of cat burglars, including myself.

Satin and I follow the latest Fontana brother to suffer this indignity, unnoticed.

One of them, maybe Ernesto, is being patted down, front and back—intimately—by agile gloved hands, and relieved of his signature Beretta.

I shiver as I observe this. This is not something a guy ought to undergo in front of witnesses, particularly several older brothers.

I growl my protest to Satin.

“Yes, Louie,” she comforts me. “It is most ignominious. My ladies here exist to coddle the male ego. They devote their lives to it. Such violation is . . . unthinkable. Males egos are such delicate flowers.”

“Uh. I am a catclaw cactus kinda guy myself. Violate me and I dig deep. These guys are merely playing along for the moment until they figure out the who and why of this high-handed, high-artillery assault. The Fontana family goes back to the days of Thompson submachine guns. True, these bozos got the drop on them, but that will not be all she wrote. Trust me. This is not over.”

“So who are the gangsters who hold your male compadres captive?”

A good question.

Inside the room, I see the perps are wearing spandex masks that would make them as unrecognizable as Spider-Man’s evil twin. However, they have accessorized even that full coverage with large sixties-style black sunglasses, which gives them a creepy bug-eyed look.

Additionally, they range from tallish to six-foot size and say not a word, letting the long lean metal barrels of their guns do the gesturing for them.