Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

She went to the door, and opened it.

Into the shockingly bright daylight Louie bounded. The bordello was like a casino in that all sense of “outside” disappeared when one was inside. Time stopped. Night was eternal.

Louie had just reminded her that a bright, sunlit world surrounded them. The light also showed how alarmingly tight the wisp of nylon was around his neck.

“Wait! Louie! That thing could choke you if it caught on something.”

He stopped, as if understanding her. Temple ran to catch him. He darted off, around the building’s corner.

Darn! Trust a cat to act independent just when he most needed a little human help. Temple stomped over the hard, shifting sandy ground through the desert scrub.

The building’s exterior looked rough and tawdry in daylight. The courtesans’ quarters off the main building’s kitchen was just a string of linked single-wide trailers.

Louie led her around them into higher brush and cactus that raked her bare calves. Temple stopped, blinking in the hot sunlight.

“Louie, you dork! I am not chasing you over the equivalent of the Ethel M Chocolate Factory cactus garden. I refuse to follow you another step.”

Silence. Then a pathetic yowl from out of sight.

Temple glanced back at the Sapphire Slipper. The front entrance was almost out of sight. She sighed and trudged forward again, surprised when a rough-sided wooden structure came into view.

She edged closer, hearing something faint and tinny.

A radio?

Someone was out here? A caretaker? No one had mentioned . . .

The sound cut off, as if it had been a mistake.

A gash of bright red near the worn wooden barn door ajar on its shaky hinges made her tiptoe over the sand.

Louie had found something out here he was returning to. Maybe food. She saw shreds of what looked like cooked meat on the sand near the door. Or, he had found someone .

Radio Silence

The last thing I expected to hear from the barn was a blast from the past.

But there it was, for a few unguarded seconds, some soul anthem, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T.”

I realize at once what has happened, especially since the radio went dead again, fast. Our resident killer has gotten one of the three disabled vehicles going, and the radio had been left on when it was stopped.

The reviving vehicle could be the brothel Jeep Tracker, or its van, or it could be the Gangsters’ Vanillamobile. That station sounded like something the long-stemmed Asiah would listen to once the limo’s dividing window was up and no sound would flow through to the main body of the stretch Rolls.

Whatever the vehicle and whoever the driver who had tuned into that station, now an escape vehicle is coming to life, and my Miss Temple and I are caught like deer in the headlights. Well, headlights are not very strong in daylight, but the fact is something inside the barn is primed to start moving again soon and we must get our rears in gear too.

I wheel around and dash toward my Miss Temple at a gallop, finding she is only twenty feet behind me, which is good trotting for a short-legged breed like her, but not good enough for effecting a fast, quiet, and unseen retreat.

I hear the barn-door hinges squeal behind me, and watch Miss Temple’s face register dismay in front of me.

Talk about caught between a car and an accident waiting to happen!

I expect Miss Temple’s face to register some joy or relief at my presence on the scene, but she is busy freezing in midturn and looking behind me and putting her palms up in the air to test the desert breeze.

I do a one-eighty and would put up my dukes too, if I didn’t need them to stand on at the moment.

The villainous Gherken is poised with the shadow of the barn behind him, wearing a sinister five-o’clock shadow and a lean and hungry look that would do a wolf proud. A very real Uzi is pointed at my Miss Temple. And he does not even need fishnet hose to wield it with scary style and confidence.

“Just what I needed,” he says. “My ticket out of here.”

The nasty black metal nose of the Uzi beckons us into the barn.

We go.

I do not know if the villainous Gherken notices me, or cares, but as soon as I am back in the shadows, I dive into the barn’s deeper darkness, trying to work the stupid lingerie off my neck. All it will do now is attract the wrong kind of attention.

“You picked the perfect time for a stroll,” he tells my roommate. “Good for me, bad for you.”

I can see him check his watch.

“You are coming with me as a shield. The johns will be wheeling in any minute now, but I intend to be on the highway by then.”

He looks around and spots the ditched thong.

I hunker down behind the Tracker in shame and fury as he uses my former neckerchief to tie Miss Temple’s hands behind her.

“You will ride shotgun with me,” Gherken says, dragging her into the front passenger seat of the Rolls. “We are leaving in style. If you’re good and I can spare the time, I will drop you off somewhere in Death Valley. Even alive maybe, baby.”

He gives out the evil laugh beloved of villains everywhere. My Miss Temple tries to get her feet out the door before it shuts, but he kicks her ankles back in, making her bite her lips in protest.

She buys me just the time I need to slink onto the black floor carpet and squeeze my capacious guts through a slit the size of Satin’s tail into the limo’s main body. Luckily, the Brits were still making those high-end snooty cars as roomy as Checker cabs back when this vintage beauty was created.

Okay, two of us are taken hostage now.

Much better.

I notice that the villainous Gherken has left the dark window behind the driver’s seat up.

Excellent. I could use a little traveling music.

Luckily, I saw Fontana Inc. and their expert fingers and enviable opposable thumbs manipulate the limo’s many functions from the long thin control console set into the padded leather ceiling. Of course, this useful unit was not designed for a guy of my height, one foot at the shoulder.

It will take multiple bounds up and a delicate touch on the controls, but there is only one simple function I crave.

The engine starts with that leopard purr of a really big, fine vintage motor.

The walls of the Sapphire Slipper should be shaking and baking now.

So this villainous dim-bulb, Gherken, thinks that the sound of one of their legendary limos starting up will not draw a sharp Fontana ear, much less ten of them?

I add my purr to the Rolls’s throaty roar.

Jump . My shivs have split ends, but I punch a spot I noticed before. Manx! There are more tiny controls on human communication devices lately than on a Victorian high-button shoe! If I ever have to rely on text messaging, I am a dead dog.

It takes only the pointed end of one shiv to manipulate this console. Too bad I was never much of a game boy, although I know my way around a television remote.

Jump .

Punch .

Miss.

Jump. Punch . Very near miss.

The limo is inching onto the rough desert pathway, trying to sneak past the bordello.

I have lift-down!

I hear a stir at the Sapphire Slipper’s port cochere as the Rolls glides by on a muffled growl.

I have three inches (not to get personal) and am going for four.

Jump. Punch .

This is a jerky process, but then we have a jerky driver.

Jump. Punch .

I let out an ear-piercing battle cry unmistakable to my kind. It is so ear-piercing I could open a shopping mall kiosk with it.

Jump. Punch. Jump. Punch . Seven inches. Jump. Punch. Jump. Punch . Nine inches. We are getting into X-rated territory now . . . Jump. Punch .