Douglas, Nelson - Cat with an Emerald Eye

She buried her face in her hands and shook her head. He was so right: naked wasn't the best disguise, loud was.

Max wasn't too sure what Kinsella hath wrought. He waited for her to surface again. When she did, she had every right to openly swipe away a few tears.

"You are a lunatic! Still, you didn't get into Interpol in one day. You may be good, but you're not that good."

He shrugged, ready to be modest now that he had amazed. "I had a little help from some long-distance friends. They talked me past the books. They sent me some fairly volatile how-to stuff you can't get in bookstores."

He nodded at the piles of printouts.

"It sounds dangerous, Max." She was fully sober again.

He nodded. "But it was pretty dangerous out already. Don't you see? It's incredible what's out there. Information is power. I know everybody's said that, but now it means something to me, personally. Temple, I can find things out without having to risk going out. I was ready to break into police headquarters downtown to get the dope on those thugs, but now I don't have to risk it. I don't have to risk making some sort of deal with Molina, I don't have to expose myself."

"Molina? You mean 'that bozo' who didn't believe me when I said I didn't know where you were? You were planning to deal with Molina?"

He shrugged, looked away. "It was an idea. But more than that, Temple." He'd forgotten about the screen and its secret flow of information at last. He was looking at her now, convincing her, selling her. "Maybe, maybe I can unravel this business that's been dogging me for half my life. Maybe I can do it without having to vanish and run."

He wanted her to believe him, as she had once done. As it might be so easy to do again.

She sighed as she smiled. "It's your life, Max. I can tell you what I think, but I can't tell you what to do, or where to go, or not to go.

"I want you to tell me what you feel."

Oh, so many things, none of them quite entirely trustworthy yet, just like Max Kinsella, computer whiz kid.

"Hungry," she said.

Chapter 34

Tripping the Lights Fantastic

This is not an easy climb but I make it in forty seconds flat, even though it is the dark of night. I have been keeping a low profile for the past couple of days, for good reason.

It is not every day that a fellow learns he is the likely object of an assassination attempt. It is even unlikelier that said fellow learns of this conspiracy from the mouth of a dead cat. Actually, I prefer to think that the shade of the late Maurice was really an animated former life, say one through eight, rather than the actual corpus.

I mean, I would not like to be hauled out of my own Endless Sleep to make forced personal appearances before unwilling observers dressed in the same tacky old fur I had taken to the grave with me. I am told that human ghosts almost invariably appear clothed. I think such decency could extend to feline ghosts in death, if not in life. What would one wear? I assume anything is possible.

I myself would look dashing in a Cavalier outfit, a la Puss of the fancy footwear fame, i.e., Boots. Miss Temple Barr is not the only one who can obsess over elaborate accessories. A scarlet lining for my swashbucklers would contrast nicely with my coat color and symbolize my long career as a famed hunter and detective. I can forego the floppy hat (I saw entirely enough floppy hats at the last seance to last me at least three lifetimes), but a crimson ostrich plume would be nice. Especially if the ostrich went with it, yum yum. (I understand that ostrich is a delicate, chicken-like dish with a commendably low fat content. On the other hand, I do not know if low-fat cuisine counts for much on the Other Side, where hopefully we can all cavort, indulging in everything that is bad for us and the planet without limitation. That is my idea of cat heaven.) Right now I am climbing up hard and fast to get into Cat Hell.

I am over the last barrier in a flash. Still panting, I tackle the door. After one swipe of my powerful mitt, the latch cries for mercy and throws the door into my path. It is open only an inch, but an inch is always enough for a second-story man of my skill. I paw that door open and crash through into the dark beyond. I do not care who hears me. I am tired of the psychic, the subtle and the disembodied. I am mortal yet and I do not mind who knows it.

My quarry is cringing under the sofa, but I reach right in and make a lethal swipe, nails cocked.

I am rewarded by a startled growl from the dark underworld beyond the sofa fringe.

This changes into a glowing green scowl of two anger-slanted eyes. I snag said swaying fringe--a Fifties-vintage twine of cocoa and gilt--with one shiv and rip.

"No!" comes a horrified shriek. "Madame Electra adores every twisted strand on that fringe."

"I am not interested in Madame Electra's twisted strands. Come out here and face me like a physical being, or I will unstring this fringe from here to Hoover Dam. I will wrap the Circle Ritz up in it like a Christmas present. I will pull out all these gilt threads and give them to the flamingos at the zoo for nesting material--"

But my threats have worked. Karma slithers out from under the sofa, not a graceful move since she is too big-boned for such narrow spaces.

"I was napping," she sniffs, "and Madame Electra is sleeping, as every person of good will is at this time of night. What are you doing, barging into my temple at this hour?"

'Temple!" I snort. "I live with a Temple and that is all decent, law-abiding cats need. And I am not a person of good will at the moment. I am an injured party."

"You look unhurt to me."

"You above all ought to know that there are more than mortal wounds. You sent me off into a pretty pickle. Not only did I have to encounter a full program of human spooks, but when I was a good sport and went back to the haunted house for a private feline seance, what am I confronted with but a vengeful spirit of the feline kind."

"Oh. Perhaps your sins have come home to roost, Louie. That is what we of a more spiritual bent call karma. With a small 'k.'"

"Lose that smug smirk, sister! This was Karma with a capital 'K,' but not yours. Mine! The vengeful dude has no grudge against me, but he does expect me to make his killer pay. This puts me in the middle. I feel like that poor Danish dude, Hamlet, about to become somebody's scrambled-eggs-and-ham omelet. But I do not intend to let some woebegone wraith who is not even a relative spook me! I will not worry myself into a frazzle, lose myself in amateur theatrics and then end up in a mass duel of death. And given my upcoming contract for a television commercial and my rivalry with the reputed murderer of Maurice I, his body double, Maurice II, the scenario is looking awfully similar."

By now Karma has recovered her aplomb, particularly in the tail area, which she is grooming into a creamy plume that would look well upon the end of a quill pen. "I doubt that anyone would mistake you for Hamlet, Louie, or that this murderous Maurice II will get the better of you."

"He got the better of Maurice I, let me tell you. A sorrier dude I have never seen. I just want to know what was the big idea? Why did you have to whip me out on Halloween to all these eerie events. I have been subjected to seeing a whole slew of hangers-on from Elvis to Amelia Airheart. Now I have been commissioned by the dead of my own kind to confront a murderer. I am not a vigilante, but neither am I playing the patsy for anybody, not Maurice II and not you!"

"Louie, Louie, Louie. Calm down. Obviously you have psychic sensitivities well beyond the ken of mortal men, and even immortal ones. Elvis, you said? An actual sighting? Did you get an autograph?"