Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

“I can’t know about that, not really.”

“N000, you can’t. And I can’t really know about that poor Pakistani girl, much as I came close to her experience.”

Matt nodded, acknowledging what she had confided to him during a previous session at Buff Daddy’s, her childhood sexual abuse.

There she was on the radio, a disembodied voice that was mother confessor to anybody who chanced to call in.

In person she still hid behind a wall of flesh, flaunting what was pretty about herself, but keeping it to herself.

“So what happened last night that was so bad?” she was asking softly now, the pacifier of a fresh Bloody Mary sitting before her again. “Just losing it? The virginity thing? I’d like to know, since I’ve never misplaced mine yet.”

“Me neither,” Matt admitted, as he had not yet told anyone else.

The perfectly plucked and groomed eyebrows lifted without wrinkling her smooth, brown forehead. “You neither? How’s that possible?”

“I got to talking to her. The call girl. I’d been assured she was a perfect pro, that there was no way I could take advantage of her. Turns out, she couldn’t take advantage of me either.”

“She wouldn’t play?”

“Not so much that. It’s when we got talking … you know what happens with that. You connect, whether it’s over the airwaves or face-to-face. She wasn’t as ‘professional’ as advertised. She had, as they say, issues. I had issues. So … nothing happened.”

“All that angst and nothing happened? I am disappointed, my boy. I may be sympathetic, but I like a good gossip as much as the next person. So that leaves you witch-bait. Still. I say you should have checked your conscience at the front desk and gone for it.”

“Maybe. But then I’d have a better motive for her death. Maybe.”

“Death? Whose death? I hope that motorcycle mama.”

Matt shook his head. “She was there only in spirit. Everything was between me and this woman, Vassar. I left thinking it was all right. I left her the money. She understood why I couldn’t sleep with her. Weird expression. It’s about anything but sleep, as far as I can tell. Anyway, she didn’t take my walking out on her as personal. In fact, I think she was beginning to examine some personal issues. I considered that a positive step. Maybe I was wrong.”

“You jilted a ho’ and hoped that she was reconsidering her lifestyle? I have heard of unreformed do-gooders, but that beats all.”

“Yeah, I’m a compulsive do-gooder, all right. Anyway, sometime after I left at three in the morning, I don’t know when, Vassar slipped, jumped, fell, or was pushed off the twenty-fourth-floor tier of the Goliath Hotel and fell all the way to the third-floor neon ceiling. The impact killed her.”

“Holy smoke, child. You saying you’re not only still a virgin, but you’re a murder suspect too? That witch-woman on the bike is a double whammy, that’s for sure. I’d like to send her over to Pakistan.”

For a split second he actually relished considering it. “No. We don’t want to do that.”

“Speak for yourself, John, such as you are.”

Chapter 13

… Maxed Out

It turns out that we turn up a not very interesting menagerie of bored and thus talkative pets on the twentieth floor of the Goliath Hotel. You would think it was the Noah Hotel and we were the head-counters for the Ark.

I make it one snapping turtle, two trilling lovebirds, three twitching bunnies, four porky pigs, and a python in an air duct, five gnawing ferrets, six yapping lapdogs, seven afghan hounds, eight cooing cockatiels, nine hamsters running, ten gerbils a-gyrating, eleven iguanas leaping, and twelve pampered pussums.

Unfortunately, none of them have anything significant to say, so Louise and I pad out through the kitchen again, snagging an errant shrimp and a fallen-by-the-wayside gourmet turkey burger on the way out.

We pause for a snack behind the hotel’s rear Dumpster, which is camouflaged as a mini-ark in keeping with the Goliath’s biblical theme.

“I must compliment you on your restraint today, Miss Louise,” I say after disposing of the shrimp. I have a weakness for seafood, so I leave the turkey burger, unnatural hybrid that it is, to her. She can take it. She is a modern girl.

“How so?” she asks, patting daintily at her whiskers.

‘We encountered a lot of tasty tidbits on the hoof, paw, and belly up there. I imagine during your life on the open road you must have had to dine on their cousins frequently.”

‘What I dine on when or where is none of your business. Certainly now that I have a personal chef I do not need to rustle up my own foodstuffs.”

“So Chef Song at the Crystal Phoenix hotel is still laying down the rice bowls for you in return for his precious koi going unmolested in the hotel pond, is he?”

“Why should you care? I have never cared for carp. By any other name, and price, koi are still carp. And it is obvious that you have converted completely to health food. I saw the bowlful of Free-to-be-Feline on Miss Temple’s kitchen floor myself. It is amazing that you do not lose weight on such a macrobiotic diet, but perhaps your metabolism has slowed down with age.”

I am speechless. The little twit can load a couple sentences with more insults than Don Rickles can pack into a Milton Berle roast.

“Then you had better hasten back to your gourmet Asian cuisine at the Phoenix,” I say finally. “I need to check on Miss Temple.”

We agree to part ways and I hoof it back home, meditating on that full bowl of Free-to-be-Feline Miss Louise spotted. It is always full because I do not eat that disgusting health food, which is probably composed of compressed seaweed and sawdust. Certainly the army-green color would not appeal to anything other than a buck private and I have never considered military life.

Back at the Circle Ritz, I let myself in through the trusty French doors on the patio, having vented my temper with Miss Louise, tooth and nail, in climbing the palm tree that so conveniently shades the building.

My dear roommate is in residence at the moment, and greets me with happy little cries. I respond with unhappybig cries, and am rewarded when she opens a can of baby oysters and shuffles them over the Free-to-be-Feline in a succulent chorus line as an encouragement.

I wolf them down. Several hours in Miss Louise’s company is very draining.

“Now do not eat just the oysters, Louie,” Miss Temple advises me fondly. “The part that is really good for you is underneath.”

That is always what they tell you and you cannot believe a word of it, whoever they are or however well-meaning they are! I am a great believer that the “good stuff” is usually right on top and easy as pie to reach for those who would take it. Observe the case of Adam and Eve, though that turned out badly, but that is only because it was an object lesson. The lesson is that you must be surreptitious in pursuing the objects of your desire. Do not just reach for them and grab them right out of the Crystal Phoenix koi pond in broad daylight.

So I manage to move a few unappetizing pellets around with my nose in such a manner that my movements could be mistaken for actually eating the things. I see that I must export a few to the wastebasket by dark of night. If I do not disturb the underlayment in my bowl, Miss Temple can on occasion get as stubborn as a Yorkshire terrier and hold back on the toppings.

After my bit of domestic undercover work, I hop up on the sofa arm to smooth my whiskers and bib.

A rat-a-tat of fingernails on the glass panes inset into the French doors alerts both me and my lovely roomie. I manage an under-my-breath growl as Miss Temple rushes to admit Mr. Max Kinsella.