Unknown - 15_Cat_In_A_Neon_Nightmare

“He was a loser.”

“So was Jesus Christ.”

“Spare me! Next you’ll be asking mercy for Kathleen 0’ Connor.”

“Someone has to.”

“You won’t admit you’re relieved she’s dead?”

“Yeah, sure. Who wouldn’t be? But you won’t admit you’re sorry she’s dead. That’s what this is all about.”

“Me? Sorry?”

“She’s been in your life longer than any person you know. Longer than your dead cousin. Longer than Temple.”

“What do you know of me and who’s been in my life?”

“Only bits and pieces. But Kathleen, Kitty, was your demon longer than she was mine. Granted, she dug in her heels and really hounded me, but it was all misplaced obsession. I was a substitute for you, for the young you she had known years ago in northern Ireland.”

“I’m glad she’s dead.” Kinsella lifted both his glass and his eyes in a defiant toast.

“It’s your right. I can’t argue with it.”

“You’re not glad.”

Matt considered. In his worst moments he had imagined killing her to save others, but that was fantasy. The reality was that he felt relieved that Kitty wasn’t here to drive him to the end of his wits and his integrity. But anyone’s death as the price of his deliverance? No.

“Christ died to save our souls,” Kinsella said. “Would you wish that death undone?”

“That was different, preordained.”

“And wasn’t her death preordained? She must have harbored a secret death wish, pushing people to their limits, maybe hoping someone, sometime, would have the guts to kill her for it.”

“You didn’t.”

“No.”

“I didn’t either.”

“So God did it for us.”

“It’s too easy to attribute things to God, miracles or revenge.”

“Still…. A toast to God, for justice literally above and beyond the call of duty.”

“I don’t think God requires toasts.”

“Don’t underestimate Him. He gets them in mass every day.”

“That’s blasphemy.”

“That’s what they said of Jesus. ‘He blasphemes.’ “

“Irreverence then. And comparing yourself to Our Lord is more of it. Don’t argue the Testament with me.”

“Why not? What would we argue about? Temple?”

“You’re trying to pick a fight with me. Why?”

“I’m not.” Kinsella put his glass down next to the bottle. “I’m trying to talk to you instead of tap-dancing out an unwanted conversation, which is our usual routine. We have a lot in common. Too much probably, but the one thing we really have in common from this moment on is Kathleen O’Connor’s death. I’m not as happy about it as I should be, and you’re not as relieved as you should be. Aren’t you drinking?”

“Sure. We Poles are as prone to depression as the Irish anyday. Our homeland has been trampled under by centuries of invaders, we’ve been forced into exile and immigration, and beyond that, we’re the butt of Pollack jokes. At least Irish humor is always warm beneath the barbs.”

“I’ll give you that.” Kinsella touched glass rims with Matt. “Pollack jokes are meaner than Irish jokes. It’s damned unfair.”

Matt let the whiskey that was likely older than himself trickle down his throat. He was surprised that Kinsella would concede anything to him, even something as trivial as the denigrating ethnic humor sweepstakes, when Kinsella surprised him even more.

“Speaking of which, I don’t usually revert to ethnic stereotype,” he said, eyeing the bottle.

“And you don’t usually come looking me up.”

“No. This case seems to call for it. I have, after all, a confession to make. I think I killed Kathleen.”

Chapter 45

Cherchez La Femme

So I hear this tapping as of someone gently rapping on my … chamber pot, not my chamber door!

I open my snoozing eyes. I am resting in Miss Temple’s office, where I can get some peace and quiet of a night instead of enduring constant tossing and turning in the bed, my dear roommate’s specialty of late.

My litter box is only a few feet away, and someone is clawing the heck out of it.

No one is privileged to use Midnight Louie’s privy but Midnight Louie!

I am up and hissing like a radiator in an instant.

“Mine!” I yowl, advancing on the equally instant high heels of my fighting shivs.

“Relax,” comes an all-too-familiar drawl. “It is a long walk over from the Crystal Phoenix and I needed a pit stop. It is all in the family, right?”

“If you are speaking of a professional family—”

“Any other relationship involving you would be unspeakable,” Miss Midnight Louise responds.

“Our spats aside, what are you doing up and about after your recent six rounds with the Mojave Desert? Do you forget the extreme difficulty I had dragging you to the highway, then hitching a ride back to town in the back of a squad car, no less? Talk about a risky undercover assignment, that was my top job, mitts down.”

“I am as stiff as Miss Kitty the Cutter at the moment,” she admits, “but pampering will only delay my recovery. If I had been hit by a car near Twenty-fourth Street where the wild things hang out, no one would have stirred a whisker for me. Up there in Feral Country it is move or die.”

“I got you safely back to the Crystal Phoenix, did I not? And speaking of ‘knot,’ that is what all my muscles were in after squiring your semiconscious form around half of Clark County.”

She pussyfoots over and sits beside me. “You are the usual unsung hero, Pops, but that is the lot of an undercover operative. Speaking of which, I have been thinking.”

“Apparently this is such a rare occasion that you must get up in the middle of the night and hotfoot it over here without even remembering to use your own facilities.”

“Everything is such a territory issue with dudes. If you all could get over it we would have world peace.”

“Then what would there be to do? Sit on our assets and clip coupons?”

“Whatever.” She yawns.

I stifle a comment that such a young thing should be in bed by now. It sounds too solicitous and I would never like to be mistaken for solicitous. It ruins my image.

“So what is so earth-shaking that you need to ankle over here and play Oriental sand painting in my executive bathroom?”

“Something in Blues Brother’s testimony has been bothering me. I think we should visit the twentieth floor of the Goliath Hotel.”

“And risk all those bird droppings again?! They fly around unfettered up there, you know. I personally do not think your looks would be flattered by a bird poop chapeau.”

“Please, Pops! No need to get vulgar. We have dodged the airborne missives so far. There is something I really think you should know. Unless, you believe the savvy operator prefers to remain in the dark about some things.”

“Of course not. I am only in the dark if I know it.” Wait! That did not make sense. Oh well, no need to tip off the kit. “So you want me to hike back to the Goliath on a whim of yours?”

“Who knows?” she asks coyly, buffing her fingernails with her tongue. “You might thank me for it.”

Well, that does it. The chit is insinuating that she knows more than I do. I will not sleep the rest of the night worrying about that possibility anyway.

So it is that Midnight, Inc. Investigations creeps out of the well-lit comforts of the Circle Ritz, down a callused palm tree trunk, and out into the warm and well-populated Las Vegas streets.

By now we have made breaking into the Goliath and its bank of elevators an art form, if I do say so myself.

Miss Louise snags a fallen gaming chip in the casino and carries it by mouth to the elevator area.