Unknown - 16_Cat_In_An_Orange_Twist

And standing solo in the center of the spotlight, bewildered or maybe just chagrined, was the film’s instant star: Rafi Nadir. He was holding up his bare hands, as something really small and dark hit the pavement between his feet. It was not furry for a change.

Oh, no! Her pristine, hardly used Firearm Lite.

Something spat up asphalt only two feet from her face. A bullet.

Temple shut her eyes. The rider’s body jerked as more bullets kicked up asphalt all around them. Temple was in a maelstrom of heat and noise and vibration, hanging on and hoping to at least take out a Wicked Witch when she finally landed. The bike she was on roared into the desert darkness so near the Strip and all its works, so near the massive fantasy buildings squatting on ancient sands and calling themselves megahotels.

She had glimpsed the biker’s nom de road on the Darth Vader helmet: Gay Blade.

At least, Temple thought, she probably didn’t have to worry about being raped as well as killed.

Just the latter.

Which wasn’t as much of a relief as it should have been.

Chapter 52

Snow-blind

“You jumped the gun.”

I pick myself up, dust myself off, and see that I have made a five-point landing right atop a shiny black firearm that bears a sickening resemblance to one I have seen in my Miss Temple’s possession at the Circle Ritz.

I do not pause to admit the accuracy of Miss Midnight Louise’s observation.

Instead I observe twelve men in LVMPD vests advancing on us both, and the gun. And Rafi Nadir now making like a

starfish flat on the asphalt. I find myself in the grip of an urgent feline need for a luxurious roll on that very asphalt.

While I am making like the overbearing tar scent is catnip, I make sure to writhe and rub and lick any trace of fingerprints from the weapon in question.

By the time the hobnail boots are close enough to kick us, I have spurted away, having ensured Miss Louise’s equally fast

exit by giving her a high five in the face followed up by a low four in the posterior.

Ma Barker and her gang have also engineered a discreet exit, leaving the humans to sort it all out for themselves, which is what they deserve after tonight’s boggled performance on all sides.

One of the humans so being sorted is Mr. Rafi Nadir. That will have high-level repercussions, I bet.

“Are you not worried about your roommate?” Miss Louise asks.

“Not at the moment.”

“She was abducted by a rogue biker.”

“I have a feeling that she can handle him better than I can. I am more concerned that the DEA guys round up all of those

buzzing bikers still trying to breathe free.”

“Then we had better give them a hand.”

So begins a long and lively session of the road game people call “chicken.”

The Barker Gang and Midnight Inc. Investigations take turns playing apparent roadkill, sending biker after biker careening out of control and into the handcuffs of the Vegas police.

When we have wiped up the parking lot of all the evildoers, the only thing that remains untouched is a pale trail of cocaine. (For some reason this human drug of choice always reminds me of flea powder, so I would as soon sniff that line of powder as I would vermin poison.) Sirens wail in the distance as I approach Ma Barker, who has mustered her troops from the sidelines with Gimpy as her aide-de-camp.

“So, Grasshopper:’ she says in a demanding maternal rasp. “All your big talk about relocating the colony in the convenient truck was pretext for using us to rat out a human smuggling operation.”

I hang my head. Actually, it is a little muzzy from all that pavement hitting and not too happy about being upright anyway.

“And when you told us to make ourselves right at home and paw the contents into prime napping conformation, you were actually using us to rake open hidden drug caches. `Scratching Posts Are Us,’ you said. Dig in.““I cannot deny it.”

‘The thieves would have slit the seams anyway and the phony truck would have disappeared with them after the transfer of the goods.”

“Yeah, but I wanted the ‘goods’ in free-falling condition, of use to nobody. It is bad, bad stuff, Ma.”

“Not to mention stuffing. You used us, Grasshopper.”

“Uh . yeah.”

“Fine job. We worked off every dead claw sheath in the colony tonight, and in a good cause too. That dreadful white powder,” she adds, shaking her head. “It is like mainlining eraser dust, but these headstrong humans have no control. I had hoped to leave that behind in our previous territory, Grasshopper. You did not tell me we were moving into snow country here.”

“A fluke,” I say. “We have made the case for the LVMPD, although we will get no credit.”

Ma Barker touches the tip of one shaky mitt in the lethal white trail. “It does not do a thing for me. Why does it make these humans perform such capers, including the risk of trying to smuggle it?”

“To each his-or her-own,” I say. “I wish I was a little bird on the wall of the CAPERS unit when Mr. Rafi Nadir is brought

in for questioning.”

“You wish you were a little bird?” Ma Barker’s disgust comes through loud and clear despite her weakened state. “What are you supposed to be? A parakeet? A canary?”

“I am not colorful,” I say with great dignity, “and I do not sing for my supper. And were I literally a bird, I would be a big one. A big black one. A raven.’

“Raving mad,” says Miss Louise, “but he certainly knows w h i c h s i d e h i s F r

glances at the empty spot where Miss Temple’s erstwhile gun and her equally erstwhile ally laid. “Though he is oddly complacent about where that bread butterer is now.”

“That is because I have superior knowledge, Louise.”

“How superior?”

“That is for me to know and you to find out. Too late.”

Chapter 53

Blinded by the Knight

Temple had ridden pillion on a motorcycle before. Well, once. But she had never been slung over the gas tank facedown like a sack of produce. Mashed tomatoes, say.

By the time the machine grumbled to a swaying stop somewhere in the unlit night, then tilted onto its kickstand, her fillings were doing the rhumba and her sinus cavities echoed like the Carlsbad Caverns.

So when she was hauled up by the cowl collar on her sweater and set like a Beanie Baby on the long leather seat facing backward … which meant she was facing straight into the helmet of her captor, she was too jolted to bolt.

In fact, all she cared about was that the ceaseless, shuddering motion had stopped, and her with it.

Presumably, she faced the ringleader of the foiled expedition.

He had certainly zoomed out of nowhere and taken prisoners, solo. Her. Still, he had taken her along for the ride.

Presumably he didn’t intend to kill her until she squawked. Er, talked. When she did, she would surely stutter.

He dusted her off, patted her down-way too well for a gay guy-and pulled up the smoke Plexi visor on his helmet.

Even in the wan light of a desert moon, with dust acting like gluey mascara on her lashes, she could see the obvious.

“Max? How the heck did you become a gay biker?”

“Knocked one out and took his place.”

“How did you know about any of this?”

“Temple, Temple, Temple. Do you really believe, that no matter how stressed out I am, I could hear about all the dangerous action in your life and not keep an eye on things?”

“You haven’t been around.”

“You haven’t noticed that I’ve been around. Maybe you’ve been seeing too much of the wrong people.” “And not enough of you, obviously.”

“I can’t change that, for the moment,” he warned her.