Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

I should introduce myself: Midnight Louie, PI. I am not your usual gumshoe, in that my feet do not wear shoes of any stripe, but shivs. I have certain attributes, such as being short, dark, and handsome . . . really short. That gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. My adventures would fill a book and, in fact, I have several out. My life is just one ongoing TV miniseries in which I as hero extract my hapless human friends from fixes of their own making and literally nail crooks.

After the recent dramatic turn of events, most of my human associates are pretty shell-shocked. Not even an ace feline PI may be able to solve their various predicaments in the areas of crime and punishment . . . and PR, as in Personal Relationships.

As a serial killer finder in a multivolume mystery series (not to mention a primo mouthpiece), it behooves me to update my readers old and new on past crimes and present tensions.

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is a pretty busy place, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for eighteen books now. When I call myself an “alphacat,” some think I am merely asserting my natural male and feline dominance, but no. I merely reference the fact that since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot , I commenced with a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

That is when I began my alphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday . From then on, the color word in the title has been in alphabetical order up to the current volume, Cat in a Quicksilver Caper .

Since I associate with a multifarious and nefarious crew of human beings, and since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:

To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace MISS TEMPLE BARR, who has reunited with her elusive love . . .

. . . the once missing-in-action magician MR. MAX KINSELLA, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin SEAN died in a bomb attack during a post–high school jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor, GANDOLPH THE GREAT, whose unsolved murder while unmasking phony psychics at a Halloween séance is still on the books. . . .

Meanwhile, Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA, mother of teenage MARIAH . . .

. . . and the good friend of Miss Temple’s recent good friend, MR. MATT DEVINE, a radio talk show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Las Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, now dead and buried. By whose hand no one is quite sure.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, MR. RAFI NADIR, the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing his career at the LAPD . . .

. . . or that Mr. Max Kinsella is aware of Rafi and his past relationship to hers truly. She had hoped to nail one man or the other as the Stripper Killer, but Miss Temple prevented that by attracting the attention of the real perp.

In the meantime, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that young Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland . . .

. . . one MISS KATHLEEN O’CONNOR, deservedly christened by Miss Temple as Kitty the Cutter. Finding Mr. Max impossible to trace, she settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine . . .

. . . who is still trying to recover from the crush he developed on Miss Temple, his neighbor at the Circle Ritz condominiums, while Mr. Max was missing in action. He did that by not very boldly seeking new women, all of whom were in danger from said Kitty the Cutter.

In fact, on the advice of counsel, aka AMBROSIA, Mr. Matt’s talk show producer, and none other than the aforesaid Lieutenant Molina, he had attempted to disarm Miss Kitty’s pathological interest in his sexual state by supposedly losing his virginity with a call girl least likely to be the object of K the Cutter’s retaliation. Did he or didn’t he? One thing is certain: hours after their iffy assignation at the Goliath Hotel, said call girl turned up deader than an ice-cold deck of Bicycle playing cards. But there are thirty-some-million potential victims in this old town, if you include the constant come and go of tourists, and everything is up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

All this human sex and violence makes me glad I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter . . .

. . . MISS MIDNIGHT LOUISE, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Inc. Investigations, and who has also nosed herself into my long-running duel with . . .

. . . the evil Siamese assassin HYACINTH, first met as the onstage assistant to the mysterious lady magician . . .

. . . SHANGRI-LA, who made off with Miss Temple’s semi-engagement ring from Mr. Max during an onstage trick and has not been seen since except in sinister glimpses . . .

. . . just like the SYNTH, an ancient cabal of magicians that may deserve contemporary credit for the ambiguous death of Mr. Max’s mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great, not to mention Gandolph’s former onstage assistant and a professor of magic at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Well, there you have it, the usual human stew, all mixed up and at odds with each other and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?

Eve of Destruction

Max Kinsella was the Man in the Moon.

Here at the Neon Nightmare club, he was part of the dark, neon-lit dreamscape. A hybrid of magician, acrobat, and superhero, he hung high above everybody else, a nightly phenomenon easily taken for granted. Anonymous. Easily over- or underestimated.

Sometimes he was a star swinging down on a bungee cord into the mosh pit on Neon Nightmare’s black Plexiglas floor, sprinkling firework tricks on the well-oiled crowd dancing the night away.

Beyond one perfectly safe confederate, no one knew he was the Phantom Mage, not even the love of his life, Temple Barr. It was a little bit of knowledge that was really too dangerous to have and to hold, especially for anyone he cared about deeply.

But he was playing double solitaire this time. No one knew that hidden rooms honeycombed the pyramid-shaped nightclub’s inside walls. There, he came and went using his real persona: Max Kinsella, who had performed as the Mystifying Max until forced out of Vegas. Now, for a select audience of conspirators, he played the disgruntled ex-magician. He was consorting with the group of aggrieved old-time magicians who called themselves the Synth, magicians who might be behind high stakes Las Vegas villainy like murder and money laundering and even international terrorism. His real role was infiltration, investigation. His purpose was exposing and bringing the Synth down. That sole act might save innumerable lives. But the Synth did not run on blind trust.

So, to his nightly role at Neon Nightmare, he had added a Synth-demanded assignment: playing high-flying technician in the “heavens” over the New Millennium Hotel’s extravagant soon-to-open exhibition of White Russian nineteenth-century treasures. Ripping off the exhibition was Max’s entry fee for membership in the Synth. They’d always suspected his motives. If he committed a high-profile crime in their service, they controlled him.