Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“Come on, Daddy-o,” I urge with a growl. “I have just the retirement pad for you. Only a few hundred more steps.”

Argh, matey. Yo-ho-ho, and a cache of cement booties.

Frankly, my feet feel like they have been cast in hot concrete and my legs worn down to the bare bones by the time I herd Three O’Clock through a stand of oleander bushes into a de-lovely clearing dominated by my favorite fast-food restaurant, a big brown Dumpster.

“Have you taken me in a circle, Grasshopper?” Three O’Clock asks out of the side of his mouth. Who would have thought the old man had so much sarcasm in him?

“This looks like the abandoned restaurant you just rescued me from. Only I do not get a lake view.”

“Such as it was,” I point out. “I do not believe your vision was keen enough to enjoy the distantly sparkling ripples.”

“My eyes are a durn, er, sight better than yours, lad. Who spotted those pathetic bird bones sticking up out of the lake-bottom sand?”

“Who moved mountains to get them discovered by human movers and shakers?”

“Humans are a cruel breed,” he says, shaking his grizzled head. “They toy with their kill. I have heard that all my life, but until I saw the pathetic pair of leg bones sticking out of the concrete ball like plant supports in an empty flowerpot … The poor victim was poured into his fatal cement footwear while still alive, you know. Vicious breed, humans. And you lead me into the heart of their darkness here in Sin City.”

I sigh. “We are speaking old-time gangsters, or someone modern who was trying to emulate them. I am sure my friend the coroner, Grizzly Bahr, is even now dating and dissecting the whole gruesome mess down to the DNA.”

“They have an ursine coroner here? That is open-minded. I am impressed.”

I sigh again. My old man is not the only one who has chewed through a dictionary or two in his day.

“The name Grizzly is a nickname, Daddy-o. His surname is spelled B-a-h-r. No genuine bears work for the Las Vegas forensics department.”

“Bahr, eh? Related to your cross-species lady friend? The one you sleep with?”

“You have been living with professional bachelors too long out at Lake Mead. You should be so lucky to have a human fan who has a lakeside recreation area named after her, although I think it was just a weird coincidence.”

“I see another weird coincidence,” the old guy says, jabbing me in the ribs with a jovial mitt of half-unfurled claws. “Who is that hot babe I see sniffing along the Dumpster edge?”

Can it be? Has Ma Barker, his old inamorata and my old mama, edged into sight just at this convenient moment? Manx! The sire’s eyes must be broken if he considers her a “hot babe,” although I will take any happenstance luck I can right now.

I look where he is leering.

Horrors! Double horrors.

What is Miss Midnight Louise, my detecting partner and stridently proclaimed daughter—therefore the old guy’s granddaughter, no less—doing here?

I was hoping to arrange a meet between Three O’Clock and Ma Barker and gang. Not between the Senile and the Nubile.

“She is fixed,” I hiss in his somewhat battered ear.

“I do not care who she is fixed up with, I am tossing my whiskers into the ring for that chick.”

What a cluck!

“She is also kin,” I add, emphasizing my point with a cuff of shivs to the jaw.

“These things are hard to trace among a nomadic kind.”

“Make one mew out of line and she will perforate your liver from the outside in. Trust me, I know this kit.”

“So you want to keep her to yourself.”

This is seriously not true. “She is a business partner, and that is it.”

“Oho.”

Before I can argue further, a low and hackle-rising growl from the oleanders behind us delays further discourse. Then comes the reading of the riot act.

“You two roadkill bums can forget drooling over anything you see,” Ma Barker glowls. “This is my gang’s territory, and you are trespassing. I can scar your behinds with my initials and give you a sex-change operation before either one of you drifters can muster a rusty shiv.”

Meanwhile, Miss Midnight Louise has scented our presence and is heading our way at top speed, claws kicking up asphalt like it was unclumpable litter-box sand.

“You take the spitfire up front, and I’ll reverse to face the hellion at our rear,” Three O’Clock says.

What is a parent for but self-sacrifice, right? Except I am the one sacrificing my most vulnerable end. Papa is literally saving his ass.

I comply, knowing Ma Barker will recognize her baby boy from any angle and Miss Louise has already ID’d Three O’Clock as the stranger on the block.

“You are in bad company, son,” Ma Barker growls at my rear. “Who is this aging sack of hairballs you have been foolish enough to bring here?”

Meanwhile Louise continues her liberated she-devil act. “Freeze, stranger! Do not turn around to face me or you will be looking up Eye Patches Are Us on the Internet.”

“He is just a homeless guy I found out at Lake Mead,” I say, not ready to make introductions under the circumstances. Family reunions can be so difficult.

“We are all pretty much homeless, except for you,” Louise notes.

“Have a heart,” I urge. “He is a relative.”

“I object,” Three O’Clock growls. “The one behind me who bedazzled my old eyes with her cute not-interested act is too good-looking to be a relative, and the one in front of me now is too ugly.”

I squeeze my eyes shut, awaiting Three O’Clock’s instant annihilation.

“Say,” hisses Ma Barker, “my raccoon shiner does not permit me the crystal-clear vision of my youth, but I am old enough to know you are not so bad yourself, stranger.”

Huh?

Miss Louise goes whisker-to-whisker with me to whisper, “What can Ma Barker be thinking?”

In a moment we, gasp, then know.

“You remind me,” Ma Barker says, “of a smarmy, swaggering, swell-headed young tom who used to come around when I was more receptive to gentlemen callers.”

“I was all that,” Three O’Clock admits proudly, “except I do not know ‘smarmy’ from blarney.”

“They are the same.”

Ma Barker’s right mitt clips him a smart one in the chops. And possibly the loins. She always excelled at one-two punches.

At any rate, Three O’Clock rolls into a ball, spins a few times, and ends up back on his pins three feet away.

“Can that be you, Pool Hall Polly?” he asks. “I recognize the English.”

Ma Barker bats her eyes like a baby doll, including the one that is still at quarter mast from the raccoon incident.

Louise and I exchange a shocked stare and back off to let this play out unassisted.

“So,” Ma says, “sonny boy managed to catch up with your mangy hide. What are you two bad boys up to now that you have twice the chutzpah and half the brains?”

“We are working the case of the truncated shin bones, doll.”

I wait to see Three O’clock caroming off the back wall of the police substation that is now Ma Barker’s hideout.

Instead, she rubs back and forth on the base of the oleander bush. “So you want in on our boy’s private-eye business?”

“No way,” Miss Midnight Louise snarls.

“Right,” I second. “It is bad enough I got saddled with a girl. I do not need a geezer.”

“Pipe down, junior,” Three O’Clock says, “and let your elders settle this.”

“I am not a ‘junior,’ ” I point out. “And you better act more humble if you want to get bed and board at Ma Barker’s headquarters. She runs this outfit.”

“Really?” Three O’Clock noses toward Ma Barker. “I have been retired from the nautical life in Puget Sound for a couple of years, but if you have need of an enforcer …”