Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

It is about time that she did.

So, I round up Miss Midnight Louise, who occupies my old post of house detective at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino. Some say she is the spitting image of myself. Black, ballsy, and cool. Well, delete the ballsy. What is the female version of that? Gallsy? And I am Palsy?

Some say she is just spitting mad.

She says she is my unsanctioned daughter and that I am a deadbeat dad.

I say . . . call me a Clairol blond. Who knows for sure?

Meanwhile, I am stuck with her. Being a practical cat à la T. S. Eliot’s streetwise breed, I allow her to delude herself. So, I sidle over to the Phoenix and find my partner in Midnight Inc. Investigations lounging under my old favorite stand of canna lilies next to the koi pond.

“Popster!” she greets me.

I look around to see if anyone feline or human has overheard this humiliating term. Kits, these days. Tattooed and microchipped. Born to be wild but happy to be post-modern media children.

“I need an inside kit and an outside herder.”

“Tell me more.” She settles onto her haunches, a sign of budding maturity.

Louise is not quite my spitting image, although her temperament sometimes matches mine. Her eyes are 24-karat gold where mine are emerald green. And her coat is longer and softer, as becomes a girl. I hunker down as well, ready for a cat-to-kit talk.

I start. “You know Ma Barker and her gang have moved downtown.” Ma Barker is my, well, ma and possibly Louise’s grandma. We had a touching reunion during one of my recent cases. That is to say that shivs and whiskers were brushed, but nothing came of it but a mutual resolve to keep out of each other’s hair.

“Thanks to you,” Louise acknowledges. “But Ma Barker and her crew are still a feral gang. Anybody might be after them to wipe them out.”

“Right. But I have plans.”

“You always have plans.”

“This is a good one. I want to relocate them to the Circle Ritz.”

The hair on the back of her neck stands up. “You did not want to relocate me there.”

“You have a good position here at the Crystal Phoenix. The house executive chef is in the palm of your paw. These are, well, street people in fur. They need someone to watch over them.”

“You?”

“Somewhat. Mostly they need my human associates, which are all a soft touch, once their potential is pointed out to them.”

“Hmm.” Louise settles deeper into her ruff, which has grown fluffier as she has matured.

I admit I am taken aback by her new Mae West look.

“So, you need my help?” she asks.

“We need a Moses.”

“I am a girl cat.”

“Well, a”—boy, am I stuck—“a Joan of Arc. To lead them to the light.”

“She led the French to battle and darkness.”

“This is different. Plus, I could use you later on the scene of what may become a foul crime.”

“That sounds more up my alley.”

“The New Millennium.”

“Oh, that New Age planetary place!”

I explain what is going down there nowadays.

“The Czar’s Scepter? I do know a couple of Russian Blues who might give me an in.”

“Russian Blues? Those are pretty aristocratic cats.”

“I am a modern girl, Daddy-o. I can do country or haute couture.”

Manx! I am not sure I can “do” either. But leave us not let Miss Midnight Louise know that! Like the Mystifying Max, misdirection is one of the few weapons I have left in a tricky, hostile world.

“So,” I say, “if you could hang around the New Millennium when you are not chatting up the Ma Barker gang for the move, it would help me out a lot.”

“And what will you be doing?’

“Fixing my Miss Temple’s personal and professional life, as usual,” I growl.

“She seems to have an inordinate amount of both, for a ginger-cream.”

I have never heard Miss Louise sound so . . . catty before.

“Just do your job. I will handle the delicate diplomatic bits.”

“Yes. I have glimpsed your delicate diplomatic bits and they leave a lot to be desired.”

That is Miss Midnight Louise these days. Ma Barker all over again.

Designing Man

“Thanks for coming,” Danny Dove greeted Matt at the door.

Matt wished that he was still so naive that he didn’t detect the inadvertent pun in that greeting.

The door Danny opened was one of a shining black enameled double set. This neighborhood was high-end and this Big White House (a domestic version of Hollywood’s Big White Set) was palatial. Still, Danny Dove, Temple’s bereaved friend and Las Vegas’s prime big-time show choreographer, stood in its doorway looking like death warmed over and fricasseed for good measure.

Matt felt uneasy, unsure quite how to take openly and obviously gay men like Danny. The church’s longtime “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy had put it crosier-deep in unaddressed issues about gay and pedophile priests. Who could hurl the first stone?

Matt the priest had been heroically virginal, playing by all the ancient rules. He was heterosexual, but he couldn’t disown his non-hetero seminary peers. Or non-seminary non-heterosexuals. Dogma was one thing. Real life was a lot more complicated, including his.

“How are you doing?” he asked Danny. Carefully.

“Rotten. Why else would I have asked you over?”

Matt didn’t mention his own resemblance to Danny’s recently dead significant other, Simon. He understood the need to clutch at a lost past. He still felt uncomfortable acting as a stand-in for a dead man, but his job wasn’t his own ease. Only the ease of others.

“Drink?” Danny asked.

Danny Dove was a sophisticated man. The toast of the Las Vegas Strip. A world-class choreographer. The best of his generation. Today, at high noon, he held his cocktail glass like Captain Hook had hoisted his metal claw. Part of him, but hated.

“Yeah,” Matt needed to roll with Danny’s needs before he could fully understand and address them.

“I always knew you were all right.” Danny headed for the cocktail cart.

Well, no. Matt had not always been all right, but he was getting there.

“To our mutual friend Temple,” Danny said, lifting his glass. “She tried to help.” He bowed his head over a major piece of Baccarat crystal.

Sometimes people needed the Eucharist. Sometimes some people needed St. Glenlivet more.

“I’m not sure why you called me,” Matt said.

“Raised Catholic, what else?”

“I’m not a priest anymore.”

“No, but . . . you feel like one, only as freaked out as I am.”

“Thanks. I think.”

“And. You look like Simon. You have his innocence. That’s what got him killed. Innocence. Tell me how to live in a world without innocence.”

“I can’t. I can’t live in it either.”

Danny sat, hard, on a white leather sofa. The whole house was a Big White Set from a thirties movie. Matt realized that anyone who didn’t fit into Here and Now invariably harked back to There and Then.

“I need a counselor,” Danny said. “I’ll go crazy with Simon gone like this. I’ll hurt someone, probably myself. I was raised Catholic, did you know?”

Danny had repeated himself, but Matt said no.

“If you guys don’t accept me, where’ll I go now?

“I accept you.”

“But do they accept you?”

“Maybe not. I haven’t asked yet.”

“So, you ask? You leave it up to them?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re supposed to be sure! You’re the goddamned religious nut.”

Matt held back a glib answer. Pain was a powerful force. Was he a freak, as Danny and Simon had felt in their own small, painful world? And if not, what was he?