Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

“I bloody well know how important this assignment is.” Max had almost gritted his teeth.

Garry nodded, impressed by Max’s renewed vow of passion for the cause.

But Max the good agent wasn’t considering the global picture. He was thinking about the confined orbit of his own little life, a domestic life that he’d managed to build with Temple between the bullets and the subterfuge.

She wouldn’t wait forever for the normalcy he kept promising and failing to deliver.

Neither would anybody else, whether it was Lieutenant Molina, or Matt Devine.

Chapter 35

Lying Down on the Job

What did I overhear my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt discussing? Biker gangs? Gay biker gangs?

This is not a milieu in which I see my loving roommate making much headway.

Much as I admire her quick thinking and fast trigger finger on a can of cooking oil, I decide it is time for Midnight Louie to investigate Maylords, pronto and solo.

Louise and I have not taken vows never to part, thank Bastet. So Tuesday morning as soon as the big hand nears the

twelve and the little hand is past the nine I ankle and hitch my way over to the furniture store.

Getting in is a problem. Even a dude who prefers a cat condo to a Barcelona chair knows that such stores are Snoozer City until the working folk come in to browse on the nights and weekends.

So how am I going to crack the case if I cannot crack the doors into Maylords without being painfully obvious as out of place? It is not as if I can carry a credit card concealed on my person.

As usual, the out-of-sight service areas are my best shot.

I linger behind the always-welcome Dumpster, waiting for the store to open so they can rev up the delivery trucks. There is not much action and I almost snooze off myself, until I hear a suspicious scraping sound.

I open one weary eye. I am staring at a rat-sized furball with a comma for a tail and cubby cheeks. Not a rat. Not a squirrel. Hmmm. Perhaps an escaped exotic pet, like a gerbil or a hamster.

“Eek!” The creature scoots under the Dumpster.

Great. I will have to conduct my interrogation cheek-toasphalt.

“Whoa, there, son,” I say. It never hurts to establish a relationship with a source, no matter how tenuous. “I mean you no harm. I have breakfasted on Fancy Feast and Free-toBe-Feline and am full up in the prey department. I just want to know if you live around here.”

A series of cheeps comes from under the battered brown metal. Ah, this is a chicken of sorts: the humble prairie dog. I

feel pity for any creature unjustly tagged with a canine appellation, so tsk sympathetically at the little fellow.

“I will not bite,” I promise.

Apparently it has heard this line before, because it clucks and cheeps and skitters farther under its metal sanctuary.

“Honest,” I say, which does not calm the creature. “You happen to visit the vacant lot across the street?”

Well, imagine trying to interpret Peter Lorre on speed. Sam Spade never had to put up with this. I get a lot of nervous

chatter and finally a stuttered “Ya-ya-ya-yes.”

“Okay. I want to know about some bad actors. Big. Human. On nasty, noisy wheels.”

I glimpse something gleaming: beady eyes. “Huh-huhhuh-huge. Human.”

“Depends on your point of view. They are just big to me. So they have been hanging out there?”

“Only re-re-recently.”

“Since this big furniture store opened, right?”

“Fah-fah-fah-furniture store? What is that?”

`The building they just put up here, that made your Dumpster lunch line possible.”

“Oh. The Gi-gi-gigantic man-mountain.”

“Right!” If that is what this little guy wants to call a prime retail location, fine.

“Ya-ya-ya-yes. But as soon as the man-mountain came, the snorting, howling beasts came and then the Big Boom and I had to move.”

I guess that the Big Boom was shooting gallery night at Maylords Friday last. But I am fully satisfied with the interrogation,

if not with the condition of my stomach, which is, in fact, growling.

This tidbit in motion must be getting my old hunting instincts in gear.

At least I know now that the bikers who hassled my Miss Temple are not fast-food-emporium parking-lot muggers, but are, as I suspected, connected to Maylords. They may even have been the shooters on Maylord’s opening night. Hmm.

“What was that you said, sir?” the quavering voice inquires from under the Dumpster.

“I said, ‘Beat it, before I make a prairie omelette of you. And stay away from that vacant lot. I am redeveloping it as a highdollar gated community for some low-riders from North Las Vegas.”

I hear only a frantic scrabbling for an answer. This prairie dog was chicken.

It only takes a couple of hours and fending off an invasion of fire ants with hopes of using my person for an ant-hill, but at last I hear

the shifting gears of a monster truck.

Before you can say “Lift that bale,” I am out of jail and waiting patiently behind a parked tire for human feet to enter Maylords. Work boots soon do just that and I bide my time.

I want to enter as they exit, for then they will be toting some big piece of furniture I can use as an awning when I sneak in. There is nothing like toting three times their own body weight to distract people from looking too hard at what is underfoot.

So I have flattened myself against the wall near the door when it whooshes open, letting out a frosty breath of air-conditioning and two grunting, cursing men in support belts.

They should take a lesson from the humble ant, I muse as I observe a conga line of said critters, who can move many times own weight over long distances … 000ps! On the other hand, the humble ant is humble precisely because it is so easily stomped on by a size twelve work boot. So much for trying to use Midnight Louie’s nose as a sun shade!

I whisk around the size twelves in question and into the cool environs of Maylord’s shipping and receiving area. The floor is unembellished concrete, but these pads have trod Las Vegas’s meanest streets and are as silent as melting snow as I waltz in and around and under shrouded pieces of furniture and into a hall that leads to a repair shop that connects to the showrooms.

Voila!

I stand in a hall of mirrors. And ottomans. And breakfronts. And credenzas and etageres and everything elegant that my ladylove, the Divine Yvette, would adore.

I have entered an upholstered and carpeted world, salted with the tangy scent of leather, every surface a potential scratching post or snoozing spot. Every potential scratching post or snoozing spot is costly and oh-so-accessible. I am, in fact, in Cat Heaven.

Before I go ape without the aid and abetting of catnip, I resolve on a course of action. I must be invisible. I must be all

ears. I must absorb the sights, sounds, personalities and underlying criminalities that swirl into an unsavory stew in this place.

Hmm. Savory. Stew. Is that a lambskin ottoman I see before my very nose?

No. I must leave no trace, not even a genteel marking ceremony to memorialize my presence.

I soon pad along the cool tiles until a sight strikes a blow of familiarity to my eyes. It is simply two framed prints, but Ihave

heard my Miss Temple swooning over them. They feature long, narrow ladies in elegant dress and were perpetrated by an artist known as Er … Tay. Rather sounds as if the chap was burping. Ur-tay.

I loft atop a lovely lavender leather sofa in a neighboring room setting and proceed to curl up on it until I resemble a pillow. An

extraordinarily large, furred pillow, but one as motionless as stone.

Like the bearskin-hatted guards at Buckingham Palace, I am impervious to distraction. Nothing will disturb my concentration or