Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

This time Matt poured the shot glass contents into the beer. “That’s interesting. Could Effinger himself do that? Dump his double’s remains in the Phoenix spy areas?”

“I said ‘balls’. Does that word mean something else these post-college days in Chicago?”

Matt made an apologetic face. “I haven’t been quite honest, guys,” he said.

“Oh?” the word, spoken in tandem, sounded ominous.

“I need to know who offed both guys, Effinger and Effinger clone. Chicago doesn’t like muddy waters, even in the pirate ship attraction. Chicago wants to know what Effinger knew that a minor rat fink like him killed someone else to cover his tracks, or who did it for him. Chicago wants to know what results any enhanced interrogations on Effinger himself produced. It’s like before with Bugsy Siegel. Chicago wants to know. And what Chicago wants to know, Chicago gets. It’s a toddlin’ town, not a coddlin’ town. Capiche ?”

Meanwhile half the bar had gathered around, drawn by the words “Chicago” and “Effinger”. Matt sensed a noose pulling tight around the circular booth.

“Hey,” Wetherly shouted, because Ox was up on his feet along with six other heavy-muscled guys who moved when he did.

“So ‘Chicago’ is critical of hits on our turf?” Ox demanded. “And sends an errand boy to slap our wrists? We had our reasons and we’re not done with what got Effinger killed—the bastard never squeaked—and we don’t like accountants from Chicago coming around to crunch our numbers ’cuz we’ll crunch his nuts first.”

The Vegas nutcrackers leaned in, fists looking as big as boxing gloves moving toward Matt.

Uh-oh , he figured, go big or go home. He stood, overturning the huge round table, then crouched behind it, using it as a giant shield. Glass shattered, waitresses screamed, men cursed. Woody had dived to the floor off to the side.

Matt spun the bulky table onto its edge.

Matt half-stood to see the six guys grabbing for the table. He stood all the way up, pushing the heavy table’s single stainless steel support pillar into their midsections. They were the bowling pins and he was the ball. They clutched their guts in a chorus of grunts. Onlookers showed jaw-dropping disbelief as Matt rushed for the door, the six guys from behind recovering enough to lunge for him, tightening like a noose.

“Watch out, kid!” Wetherly shouted from somewhere faint and far away.

He busted through the exit door after smashing a waitress’s tray to the floor, now wet and paved with glass shards. More curses and thumps and chaos behind him.

Barely through the door, he hesitated to gulp in the hot, stale air.

“And away we go,” said someone outside, someone much too close, who grabbed the back of Matt’s plaid shirt and slung him out down along the sidewalk like sack of garbage. Gasping, Matt felt himself flung around a corner out of sight, against a dark wall by tall guy with a lot of moxie, muscle, and hair darker than the night around them. A half block away, the roar the Strip was again dominant.

Matt hauled back an arm and fist that meant business. “Dammit, Kinsella, if you really aren’t out of the country, I’ll knock you right over the border into Mexico myself.”

But the dark-haired man wasn’t tall enough to be Max Kinsella.

It couldn’t be… “Frank”?

“ Adios, amigo ,” the man said, and slammed him hard in the jaw.

11

Off Leash

It has been a long night.

Alas, I did not turn tail and publicly snub Punch Sullivan and all his works by stalking off after my Circle Ritz ladies this morning. Frankly, I wanted to explore this unlikely site for serious contemporary reconstruction by myself.

The clod called Punch Adcock took some misplaced comfort in my remaining with him on-site.

“See. This cat knows where the action is going to be,” he tells Miss Katt Zydeco.

She, bearing a feline name, is much more realistic. “Forget it, Punch. It is not our job to deal with that ditsy dame crew or the cat they came in with from up the street. We have more important duties tonight.”

Wonderful. By then I am out of sight underneath the temporary “skirt” of the forty-foot RV. What a perfect eavesdropping site and base of operations.

Perfect, that is, until Miss Midnight Louise slithers in beside me.

“Ideal observation post, Pops. Guess your years as a homeless street person were good training for a useful life, now that you are living La Vida Gigolo at the Circle Ritz.”

Miss Midnight Louise is adept at making statements that one answers at one’s peril, because no way can I come out a winner on that set of implications.

“You can stay,” I announce, magnanimous, because I cannot dislodge her without a lot of sound and fury of the cat kind that will give away our surveillance. “Our role here is to wait and watch. It is like Star Trek. No interference with the alien species and their alien actions.”

“Sure, fine. I see you are still stuck in the milieu of your second-to-last case, where reported UFOs got the Strip in a furor. The aging individual must beware of living in the past.”

“If I were living in the past, I would certainly see that you had remained a mote in Bast’s eye.”

For once a comment of mine has puzzled my alarmingly obstreperous maybe-offspring.

Her furry forehead furrows. “I must confess, although the older generation may be horrified, that I do not believe in Bast.”

“Certainly that is your choice, Louise,” I reply. “Bast has endured for five thousand years, almost as long as our kind. Unfortunately, there is very little else for us to believe in these days. Unless it is Free-to-Be-Feline.”

“That is a scientifically vetted healthful and planet-friendly food source,” she says. “You are short-sighted, but inadvertently generous, to share your bottomless supply with Ma Barker’s clowder.”

I see we are treading delicately around each other so as not to widen the generation gap. It is at times like this I wish I had Karma, Miss Electra’s supposedly psychic Birman cat, to kick around. “If you insist on horning in on my investigation, Louise, I will ask you to remain silent and to follow my instructions. I am expecting mind-blowing revelations later this night.”

Miss Midnight Louise sighs. “You sound like some of my most annoying suitors before I was mercifully made indifferent to the reproductive imperative. However, since you are the best your benighted generation has produced, I will do my best to help you, Daddy-o.”

I am touched. I am also convinced that I will need some decent backup before this night is over. Or, at the least, a witness.

I have lived in Las Vegas since I was spit out onto the street to make my way.

In that respect, I am not unlike the average tourist who visits this town. It is all a matter of luck, good and bad, and luck is a matter of self-esteem.

I have seen many things, good and bad, and have experienced both…the touching charity of a homeless person offering me a pinch of cold, abandoned fast-food burger. The rib-kick of a drunken casino winner, swaggering out of a Strip hotel. The tears on my shoulder-blades from a fifteen-year-old hooker on the notorious Minnesota Strip, who believes for a precious moment that I have it worse than she does.