Carole Douglas - Cat in a Red Hot Rage

Previously in

Midnight Louie's Lives and Times .. .

Crime, chicanery, and chicks are my beat.

I am a noir kind of guy, inside and out.

I admit it. I am a shameless admirer of the female of the species. Any species. Of course, not all females are dames. Some are little dolls, like my petite roommate, MissTemple Barr.

The difference between dames and little dolls? Dames can take care of themselves, period. Little dolls can take care of themselves also but they are not averse to letting the male of the species think that they have an occasional role in the Master Plan too.

That is why my MissTemple and I are perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I make myself useful looking after her without letting her know about it. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. In our time we have cracked a few cases too tough for the local fuzz of the human persuasion, law enforcement division. That does not always win either of us popularity contests, but we would rather be right there than on the side- lines when something crooked is going down. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails.

So when I hear that any major new attraction is coming to Las Vegas, I figure that one way or another my lively little roommate, the petite and toothsome, will be spike heel–high in the planning and execution. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public relations of all stripes and legalities. In this case, though, I did not figure just how personally she would be involved in murder with hattitude.

I should introduce myself: Midnight Louie, Pl. I am not your usual gumshoe, in that my feet do not wear shoes of any stripe, but shivs. I have certain attributes, such as being short, dark, and handsome ... really short. That gets me overlooked and un- derestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. My adventures would fill a book, and in fact I have several out. My life is one ongoing TV series in which I as hero extract my hapless human friends from fixes of their own making and literally nail crooks.

After the recent dramatic turn of events, most of my human associates are pretty shell-shocked. Not even an ace feline PI may be able to solve their various predicaments in the areas , of crime and punishment ... and PR, as in Personal Relationships.

As a serial killer finder in a multivolume mystery series (not to mention a primo mouthpiece), it behooves me to update my readers old and new on past crimes and present tensions.

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is a pretty busy place, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for nineteen books now. When I call myself an "alphacat," some think I am merely asserting my natural male and feline dominance, but no. I merely reference the fact that since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I then commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

That is where I began my alphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. From then on, the color word in the title is in alphabetical order up to the current volume, Cat in a Red Hot Rage.

Since I associate with a multifarious and nefarious crew of iuman beings, and since Las Vegas is littered with guideDooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a rundown of the ocal landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak: To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace MISS TEMPLE BARR, who had reunited with her elusive love ...

... the once missing-in-action magician MR. MAX KINSELLA, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin SEAN died in a bomb attack during a post–high school jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor, GANDOLPH THE GREAT, whose unsolved murder while unmasking phony psychics at a Halloween séance is still on the books....

Meanwhile, Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegas homicide detective LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA, mother of teenage MARIAH ... and the good friend of MissTemple's recent good friend, MR. MATT DEVINE, a radio talk-show shrink and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Las Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, now dead and buried. By whose hand no one is quite sure.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame, MR. RAFI NADIR, the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing his career at the LAPD ... or that Mr. Max Kinsella is aware of Rafi and his past relationship to hers truly.

In the meantime, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that young Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland ...

... one MISS KATHLEEN O'CONNOR, deservedly christened by Miss Temple as Kitty the Cutter. Finding Mr. Max impossible to trace, she settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine .... who is still trying to recover from the crush he developed on MissTemple, his neighbor at the Circle Ritz condominiums, while Mr. Max was missing in action. He did that by not very boldly seeking new women, all of whom were in danger from said Kitty the Cutter.

In fact, on the advice of counsel, i.e., AMBROSIA, Mr. Matt's talk-show producer, and none other than the aforesaid Lieutenant Molina, he had attempted to disarm Miss Kitty's pathological interest in his sexual state by supposedly losing his virginity with a call girl least likely to be the object of K. the Cutter's retaliation. Did he or didn't he? One thing is certain: hours after their iffy assignation at the Goliath Hotel, said call girl turned up deader than an ice-cold deck of Bicycle playing cards. But there are almost forty million potential victims in this old town, if you include the constant come and go of tourists, and everything is up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

All this human sex and violence makes me glad that I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter ...

... missMIDNIGHT LOUISE, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Inc. Investigations, and who has also nosed herself into my long-running duel with ...

... the evil Siamese assassin HYACINTH, first met as the onstage assistant to the mysterious lady magician ...

... SHANGRI-LA, who made off with MissTemple's semi-engagement ring from Mr. Max during an onstage trick and has been seen since only in sinister glimpses ...

... just like THE SYNTH, an ancient cabal of magicians that may deserve contemporary credit for the ambiguous death of Mr. Max's mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great, not to mention Gandolph's former onstage assistant as well as a professor of magic at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Well, there you have it, the usual human stew, all mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?

Chapter 1

Last Seen Dead

It is enough to break a guy's heart ...

. if a macho dude like me could ever admit to having one.

I sit, apparently calm and dignified, on the off-white sofa in the living room of what you could call my digs, my crib, my flat ... okay, "our" condominium unit at Las Vegas's only round five-story 1950s landmark, the Circle Ritz.