Carole Douglas - Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

“Uh, thanks. I think. Last time you picked me up was kind of a downer.”

Rafi chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’re going to enjoy this.”

Rafi had been optimistic. Rafi had enjoyed it. They had played good cop/bad cop—guess who was which ?—and Matt left in a 2001 gray Chevy Impala LS, rear spoiler, dickered down to thirty-nine hundred and ninety-five.

“It’s sort of dull,” Matt had told Rafi while the papers were being processed.

“That’s the idea. Be unnoticeable.”

So Matt drove his new old car to Woodrow Wetherly’s place, learning the vintage dashboard layout as he went.

This was a different encounter. Now Matt had seen what had been in the trunk of the beater car that had gone from Wetherly’s place into the desert and back.

The car and the trunk that had been waiting outside Electra’s hulking new building…

…while the lethal chandelier had emitted its last rays of electrified light before being later disconnected, disassembled, and taken away, like Leon Nemo, Punch Adcock and Katt Zydeco.

…while Matt had seen the driver he’d followed to Red Rock Canyon and back finally leave the Chevy and slip around to the back of the building.

…when Matt had left the Probe carrying its jack and sneaked up to the Chevy trunk to find out what buried desert treasure occupied its trunk. He’d hardly needed the jack to break in, the locking mechanism was so flimsy.

He had been braced for bones.

What he saw in the dim light from the street lamp was worse.

When he’d pulled off the bulky canvas covering, he’d found the bulky, battered old 35-pound jackhammer powering a long thick chisel spike, its angular steel pointed like a pencil that had been sharpened by a razor knife. The metal body was spotted with dark gouts of red paint.

A.k.a. blood.

Mobster Giaccomo Petrocelli. Jack the Hammer. So named for jack-hammering people to death.

A legend long dead, but not forgotten.

And his favorite murder weapon retrieved to murder again.

Then Matt saw the headlights of a fleet of silent oncoming cars, obviously Fontana Inc., and decided to bust the Probe into the building…now!

That was last night. This was tonight. So here was Matt, where he did not want to be, but had to be.

“You know,” the old guy said, leaning back into his big, battered recliner. “The time has come to talk of many things.”

Matt felt like the Walrus strolling down the path with the Carpenter toward some innocent oysters. Rightfully. Who would eat whom?

“Yes, my young friend. Kid. Sonny boy. I suspect you are on the verge of knowing too much. Your Midnight Hour may be closer than you think.”

“I do think that myself,” Matt said.

“And yet you came back. You’re beginning to interest me again. I admit you could have your uses. ‘Call me irresponsible’,” he crooned in a raw croak. And cackled. “I always did love Sinatra. And I don’t think your foolish alibis will bore me.”

“Is that the next line of the song?” Matt asked.

“Maybe. Depends on you if there is a next line to the song.”

Tailpiece

Midnight Louie Sounds Off

Call me Speechless. Which is my default setting anyway.

Who knew I was in for a career revival? When my Miss Temple comes home and falls on her knees before me and nuzzles my neck I know something fishy is up and it is not Chicken of the Sea.

I also know I am not Bast with a gender adjustment and do in no way merit bowing and scraping.

“Oh, Louie,” she exclaims. “It is so exciting.”

Yeah? Say Fancy Feast is importing sea scallops on the half-shell for my personal supply and that would be exciting.

She then unrolls this media deal and tells me what a star I will be and how we will work together again and be able to use the new zebra-stripe carrier I abhor while flitting from city to city to do talk shows.

At last! My previous on-camera brilliance has been identified. I have even been able to drag Miss Temple along in a bit role, obtaining her a certain fame and a slew of new high-heeled shoes for me to embrace in a little game of Kick and Bite the Leather. Plus she will get a payment almost as handsome as I am, and residuals. Perhaps a Pixar movie someday.

But then…she starts sweet-talking me into the infamous plan to conceal my svelte athletic form in a stupid zebra-striped zoot suit, not to mention a matching new version of the previously offending fedora hat. Using the Fontana brothers as a backup act in similar baggy pants and zebra-print lapels does nothing to assuage my sense of being presented as a figure of fun rather than of 007-level rakish charm. Is this proper attire for one who has been favorably compared to Sherlock Holmes (without the aversion to females), Columbo, and Mike Hammer?

Who does she think I am, Lord Peter Wimsey?

I turn my head and look at the ceiling, all disinterested like, so she will owe me. However, after my transcendent experience with Elvis and the gang at Zebra Zoot Suit Choo-Choo, I figure I owe it to my public to get out there again and cut a rug and earn my treats. Karma is not the only one who can channel the past.

Now on to the nitpicking. No good deed goes unpunished, it is said, and here all we of Las Vegas Cat Pack nation are indeed going unhailed and unheeded.

After running our footpads off on the piping-hot Vegas pavements from the edge of Downtown to the Lower Strip turf to track a murderer, tail sleazy purveyors of naughty entertainment and foil scheming mobsters, we have been left high and dry. With not even a little catnip to make the “high” part of the state pleasant.

And these are not the only sins Miss Temple has committed recently.

I can eavesdrop on a cell phone call. My burning ears tell me Miss Temple may be rushing off to an alien clime called Wisconsin, leaving Mr. Matt Devine in the lurch and surely miffed. I cannot blame him. My Miss Temple may mean well, but she can exhibit a shocking disregard for her nearest and dearest in her quest to solve everyone else’s problems personally. I too suffer from this tendency.

I am mightily miffed myself, and have hied myself up a floor to Mr. Matt’s residence, where we can hang out together as two wronged bachelors. Miss Midnight Louise argues that only Miss Temple can “compensate” for Mr. Max’s memory issues on the momentous occasion of reuniting with his family and his newly found-alive cousin Sean. Miss Midnight Louise was always partial to Mr. Max, who has always been overrated in my opinion.

We shall see whether my candidate or hers will win out in the end.

Very Best Fishes,

Midnight Louie, Esq.

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Fort Worth TX 76163-1555