Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Leopard Spot

Then she stared at what lay in the palm of her hand. A pair of white minibinoculars, something alien with two round sides. It didn’t look like an America Online CD, much too small, but who knew what innovation lurks in the heart of today’s technology?…

She groped in the empty package and pulled out a plum: a piece of memo paper folded in half.

“Not for correction,” the typed capital letters read, “except in color.”

Weirder and weirder. Carmen twisted one plastic screwtop. Too small to be plastic explosive…would she quit thinking like a cop for one single minute—? No.

Floating in a viscous fluid was a bit of colored Saran Wrap. Huh?

“Mom, I need some advice,” a voice piped over her shoulder. It dropped a register. “Mom! What are you doing with a contact lens?”

So that’s what this was. A set of contact lenses. Not for correction, except in color .

The abrupt, one-word signature below the cryptic phrase suddenly registered.

Chameleon .

“Oh, my God…”

“I haven’t even made anything yet,” Mariah complained defensively.

“Oh, not you!” Carmen turned and smiled encouragingly, like all mothers everywhere. “Go to it, niña . If you make it, I’ll eat it.” She would regret this promise.

The manila envelope was still pregnant with possibility, another lump. She midwifed out another sibling: some solution in a bottle.

A whole kit and kabottle. Soft contact lenses. A change of eye color. Boring brown, she noted.

Somewhere, sometime in her nightly undercover rambles she had crossed paths with him. He was sending her a message: if you play at undercover work, dress the part. Do as I do, do as I did, and hide your lying eyes.

She pushed the hair she didn’t need to brush aside back from her face anyway, remembering her image in the mirror, the mirror she so seldom consulted. Vanity was not a vice.

She had worried that a haggard face might betray her to a friend.

She had been on the right side of the law for too long to think like a perp. Moving onto dangerous ground, she had counted on her altered getup and her cop’s instincts to see her enemies first, before her vivid eyes gave her away like a blue-light special at Kmart. Gave her away…

To Max Kinsella.

And to Rafi Nadir, should she be caught off guard and meet him face-to-face. According to this packet of joy and admonition from Kinsella, she had come too damn close to meeting Rafi for any of their goods.

Would she heed the warning?

Of course.

Did she appreciate it?

Hell, no.

“Dinner’s ready,” Mariah caroled from the kitchen.

It was much too soon for anything edible.

Carmen put on a happy face, if not contact lenses, and went into the kitchen.

She smelled burning cardboard.

Chapter 33

Track of the Cat

The desert sky looks like one of those Strip hotel dioramas: big bowl of dark sky, twinkling lights for stars, a nice crescent moon tilted artistically low on a horizon tinted a smoky indigo color from the distant aurora borealis of Las Vegas.

Except that this sky is real, and dark, and deep.

The dark in the building behind us is even more impenetrable.

“I smell something bad, Mr. Midnight,” Groucho pipes up.

And I do mean “pipes.” The pipsqueak sounds like a soprano cricket.

“So do I,” is my response. “And do you know what it is? I smell a rat.”

“We are not afraid of rats,” Golda puts in.

“I mean the human kind,” I start to respond, just working up a really withering retort, when someone else decides to do it for me. A roar rends the night like it is a silk curtain.

All of our ears flatten in joint pain and consternation. A lion’s roar in the wilderness is a primal thing. It sounds fiercer than the volcano in front of the Mirage at eruption time. Worse than a jetliner taking off from McCarran. Probably worse than a tornado coming to take you away to Oz.

While we all wince in common pain, my two henchthings whimper.

Sounds of an ominous nature occur behind our backs: the scrape of claw on concrete, a soft growl that never ends, heavy breathing. I feel hot breath on my spine.

I turn, resigned to laying down my life in defense of the wimpy.

Although I have also been resigned to the fact that the canine species, no matter how ridiculous, is gifted with superior sniffing power, I discover that my prime sense is the most useful now. By the all-seeing eyes of Bastet I observe that the impenetrable darkness is not quite impenetrable.

As my legendary night vision adapts to the situation, I discern a life-saving fact: bars.

Then I discern the nature of the awesome feline muscle behind those sweet bars: a Big Cat whose silhouette is a negative of the night. A mirror image of myself magnified about twenty times.

Finally the gent gives up the growling and shows his teeth. I survey the Rocky Mountains of feline dentures and cannot help noticing that both Midnight Louise and I would fit fine in there, along with the Yorkshire constabulary.

A paw the size of a dinner plate thrusts through the bars.

I am afraid the dinner plate is out here, and we are sitting on it.

“ Back! Back! ” comes a falsetto cry.

Golda has leaped to my side and our defense with an ear-splitting yap.

“ Back, back! ” seconds Groucho, now pressing against my other side.

Half-pint courage is all well and good, but not when you are facing about forty quarts of snarling predator power.

Our opponent’s jaws spread wider.

I expect to hear a Fee, fie, foe, fum any second now, as this giant gets ready to grind the bones of whoever is dumb enough to stand up to it.

Then I hear something crack, and close my eyes. Bye-bye, bitty dog!

But the fluffballs bracketing me have not been snagged by the exploring mitt, and my eyes widen as I see the grin of death before me turn into a…yawn.

Another impressive jawbone crack, and superfeline smacks his fangs. “You. The runt cub in the middle. I saw you in my cage the other day, making off with part of my lunch.”

“Me? No, sire. I mean, sir. I was in Las Vegas doing my nails at the time. This is my first visit to Rancho Exotica. I swear it on my mother’s vibrissae.”

A growl again, but it sounds like a chuckle. “You do not look big enough to have whiskers, Cub, but maybe your mother might.” The huge eyes blink at my bodyguard. “Usually visitors bring rodents along only if a snake is in residence, and there is none on the premises now.”

“Snake.” I have visions of a boa constrictor big enough to swallow the Ritz Hotel. “Rodents. Oh, you mean my, uh, muscle. These are not rodents; they are miniature dogs.”

“Dogs.” The big dude yawns again. “They are lucky they feed us well here.” The broad brow furrows. “All except the theatrical guy from the New Millennium Hotel. Him they did not feed well. But he did not stay very long. Our population keeps coming and going, I am not sure why.”

I am not about to tell this dude the facts of life at Rancho Exotica. No use upsetting the natives when they might develop a nervous appetite in response.

“Yeah, well, I am a private investigator operating out of Vegas, and I am here to find out why some of our best cats are disappearing.”

“Vegas?” The big guy almost grins. “I hear that town is filled with disappearing cats. I am from Provo myself. I was a roadside attraction at a reptile ranch until the authorities confiscated me. Then I did time at an animal rehabilitation ranch until the management had a big spat over the donation money. We ended up being shipped hither and yon. And this is my hither.” He yawns again. “It is not a bad life, no worse than any other place I remember, but somewhat boring.”