Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

But Los Muertos…a few hours ago and in broad daylight I would have strolled by without a second thought. Now, though, I think. And it comes to me that muertos must have something to do with death, or the dead.

So I am in the right place, the Dead Place. Now all I have to do is figure out how to get into where nobody ever gets out.

I sit down under an overarching oleander bush and am rewarded by the hiss and sting of a venomous serpent on my rear end.

I bristle and leap around to face the attacker, which is a little too little too late, apparently. Ask not for whom Los Muertos is named: it is named for me. A sinking feeling in the pit of my pith tells me I may be done for. There is no antidote for snakebite way out here, alone, in the dark.

Unfortunately, I am not alone in the dark. I gaze into the chilling sight of a dark open maw with two world-class Dracula fangs bared for a second, totally unnecessary, lethal strike.

“You are sitting on my train, Pops,” the snake hisses. “Move or I will staple you to the nearest prickly pear.”

“Midnight Louise! What are you doing here?”

“None of your business,” hisses my darling daughter-not, closing her maw to reveal her piquant little black face, which is purely feline.

“It is my business if you nearly give me a cardiac arrest. I thought I had been hit by a rattlesnake with a contract to kill.”

“No one would sic a rattlesnake on you, Dads. You have not aggravated any feuding Mormons lately. Besides, you are a polygamist by nature. You would be kissing cousins with the early Mormon patriarchs.”

“Leave the Mormons out of this. I want to know what you are doing out here alone at this late hour.”

“Since when do you play the stern parent, Daddy Densest? The real question is what brought you here.”

“Business, which is none of yours.”

“So I guess we are even. This is what they call a Mexican stand-off. Unless you want a way in, which I can provide for a price.”

“And the price?”

“We are partners.”

The nauseous feeling in the pit of my pith lurches into a vomitous feeling. I sense the Mother of All Hairballs coming on.

“Throw up anything gross and you are on your own.”

“I am merely…gagging. So show me the way to San Jose.”

“Odd you should mention that. There is a handsome statue of St. Joseph just inside the gates, along with a raft of plaster-winged angels. And farther in, a quite nice grotto to Bastet.”

“Bastet! She does not get any respect here in Vegas!”

“Perhaps you underestimate our esteemed Egyptian goddess. Like me, she gets around.”

“The females of the species always do,” I grumble. “That is what is wrong with the species.”

“What? I did not hear you, Daddio Dearest.”

She has turned her back on me and is wiggling through the oleander thicket and toward a stone wall.

There is nothing like a dame for pointing out that she is younger, sleeker, and more limber than you, particularly if she is claiming to be your offspring.

I belly down and crawl right after the minx. Midnight Louie can do night recon with the best of them. Black berets are built in with us.

The oleander stalks prick like barbed wire and my dress blacks will be sadly disheveled, but I manage to push myself through the tunnel of missing stones to the other side.

I allow my innards to expand, shake out my outer coat, and gaze upon the moonlight grazing among the short grasses and tall monuments.

“This is a cemetery,” I complain. (I am too young to be in such a place.)

“Hmmm,” Miss Midnight Louise says thoughtfully, rubbing against my side.

Kissing up will not cut any crypts with this dude.

“So why are you here?” she asks.

That was my question, but it has been forgotten. “I am hunting Big Game.”

“You are always doing that, to hear you talk. I suppose you want a tender reunion with Butch and Osiris.”

“Tender I will leave to you. Reunion, yeah.”

“Follow me.”

This is not what I had in mind, but I have almost no choice. I am still trying to figure out what Miss Midnight Louise is doing on the premises when I find myself past all the monuments and tomb-stones and crypts and other gruesome but ornate set dressings.

I hear the tinkle of…a waterfall, I hope. Either that or the MGM Grand’s giant Leo the Lion statue is taking another untimely, three-story leak.

There are walkways of flat stones, bowers of exotic plants, patches of clipped thick Bermuda grass, sandy pits…this is either a really nice golf course, or it is —

A growl that sounds like marbles the size of basketballs being shaken together makes the ground vibrate.

I freeze.

“Do not worry,” Miss Louise purrs in that superior tone that makes me want to slap her whiskers off. “It is a friend of ours. Of mine, I should say.”

“You have earth tremors for friends?”

“Just Lucky, I guess,” she answers with a grin that would make the Cheshire Cat frrrrrow up.

We round an outcropping of canna lily leaves and come face to face with this large black dude with a mug the size of a beach ball.

Black panther, no doubt about it. Lean, mean, and counterculture, if domestication is the name of your game.

A huge black paw lifts and hangs over Miss Midnight Louise.

I gulp, then leap forward to knock her to safety.

The looming paw does not descend, but Miss Louise swipes me again on the rear.

“Ow! What was that for!”

“Conduct becoming a male chauvinist porcine. I do not need protection from Mr. Lucky. Do you not recognize Butch from the Rancho Exotica? He is the one who shared his dinner with poor Osiris, thanks to me.”

“Oh. Sorry, Mr. Butch. I mean, Mr. Lucky.”

The paw lowers and tickles my ears, and my back and my everything.

“Is this your poor old dad?” the black panther’s voice growls like thunder above me. “He was most valiant in your defense, although sadly ineffective.”

“That is my dad. He wants to see you for some reason. I am sure he will update me shortly.”

Well, what is a practical private eye to do? I am where I want to be, about to interview who I want to see. The only fly in the ointment is the odious Miss Louise, and telling her so would be highly self-destructive in present company.

So I do the right thing, ignore the chit, and get down to the chitchat with the Big Boys.

Saturday Night Stayin’ Alive

Women in strip clubs that catered to men either had business in being there, or no business at all in being there. Women with no business at all being there attracted attention, all of it either bigoted (“dyke!”) or unflattering (“frigid freak”).

Molina couldn’t afford attention and she couldn’t admit to her real business in being here at Saturday Night Fever — police business — so tonight she was a location scout for C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation.

It gave her a professional payback to name-drop the hit forensic science TV show that uses Las Vegas as a backdrop for its high-tech and personal look at maggots, body parts, and implausible police procedure.

Tonight, Molina was here on official business, and she was not alone.

Visibly alone, yes. Actually, no.

She glanced in the mirror behind the bar at Sergeant Barry Reichert, who usually did undercover drug detail. His dirt-biker ensemble and party-animal attitude fit right in at Saturday Night Fever.

At the moment he was stuffing ten-dollar bills in about six G-strings at a prodigious rate, all the time getting paid back in information that was worth hundreds.

Molina sipped her watered-down no-name whiskey and kicked back, despite the relentless overamped beat of music to strip by: loud, all bass, and brutally rhythmic.