Unknown - Cat_In_A_Midnight_Choir-spaces_ru

“I mean I encountered a figure from my past. My earliest years. It was quite a shock.”

“I am surprised you remember anything that far back.”

“Ungrateful kit! I am not about to forget my own mother.”

“Mother?” She actually stops and sits, squashing that metronome tall of hers. “How can you be sure? You must not have seen her since you were six weeks old. I certainly did not see mine after that, though whether it was because she was dead or domesticated I cannot say.”

“Well, my ma is neither dead nor domesticated. She runs a feral gang on Twenty-fourth Street, a pretty raw neighborhood. She has survived being kidnapped by the Fixers and is doing just fine. I would say she said hello if there was any chance that you two were related, but it does not look like there is.”

“Liar!” she spits. “So my grandmother is alive.”

I do not say anything to dissuade her. Dames love to imagine long lines of interelated individuals, whether they be human or feline. Perhaps that is why the human ones watch soap operas.

“Do you think she would know anything about my mother?” Louise asks.

“Could be.”

“I suppose you did not ask, you irresponsible lug!”

“There was not time. I was about to be jumped by the Wild Bunch or whisked away for an unnecessary globe-otomy by the Fixers.”

For some reason Miss Louise finds this amusing. Her shiny black lips curl like whiskers with a permanent wave. “Yeah. I suppose in your condition you could be mistaken for an unneutered male. Who would dream an alley cat like you had benefitted from a human-style vasectomy?”

“Not the Fixers,” I admit with a shudder. “Now, where are these dames of Asian persuasion? I have reasons for tracking down Shangri-La and her evil sidekick Hyacinth.”

Midnight Louise sits down in the middle of a flagstone walk between a luxurious growth of giant-leaved plants imported to give the Big Cats a touch of jungle clime.

I can tell right off that she is about to be obstinate.

“We need to make a deal,” she says.

“About what?”

“Our relationship.”

Dames!“We do not have one.”

“I wonder if the delightful lady gangster you met on the north side would agree if she laid eyes on me.”

“A mother may recognize a grown kit, especially when the kit in question was such a remarkably smart and personable little nipper, but no grandmother is going to recognize an offspring once removed. Let us face up to the common prejudice: we black cats all look alike.”

“Actually, I was not interested in any personal relationship,” she says silkily. “I was speaking purely of business.”

“Oh. Right. You work for me. Sometimes.”

“I have worked with you, sometimes, when it suited me. I believe it is time for a more formal arrangement.”

“What? I should pay you?”

“We should be partners.”

“Partners! I do not need a dame for a partner any more than I need a dustball dog for a sniffing substitute.”

“Yet you have employed both on several of your latest cases.”

“Aha! You admit that I do have ‘cases.’”

“I will…if you admit that we are probably blood related.”

“Hell, an average cat couple can create over four hundred thousand offspring in seven years, which I admit is a long run for your average street cat. All cats are probably related.”

“Do not swear, Daddikins,” she purrs in an odiously sweet manner. “It is a bad example for the boys.”

I turn to find black and spotted muzzles parting the glossy leaves. “Ah…nothing to worry about. Just a little family discussion.”

The leaves close like emerald curtains and we are alone once more.

“See,” says Louise. “That was not so bad. We can consider this a family business. No one will think anything of it.”

I think something of it, and it is not good! But I have not lasted in a cruel world so long without being a smidgeon adaptable, so I lick my lips and weigh how badly I want to track down the rotten Hyacinth against how much I hate conceding anything to Midnight Louise.

“All right,” I say. “You are in the firm: Midnight Louie and Son.”

“And son!”

“That is what they usually name two-generation businesses.”

“I am not a male!”

“Yeah, well, one could not tell by looking at you. You could be one of these poor souls the Fixers got. A business has to have a name the public will have confidence in: Midnight Louie and Son. What’s not to love, like, and lap right up?”

“How about Midnight Louie and Daughter?”

I try not to snerk up my plush leather glove. The kit is so busy defending her gender she has neglected to note that I remain the first and foremost element in the billing.

“Who ever heard of a PI firm with ‘and Daughter’ in the name? Not that I concede that you are, of course. My daughter, that is.”

“I do not care what you concede. I am not moving a foot on the way into that Fort Knox of a house until you come up with something reasonable.”

When a dame uses the word “reasonable” she means her way, period.

I shift my weight from forefoot to forefoot. I must admit that Midnight Louise has certain talents she may have gotten from a brilliant second-story dude like myself. She does have potential, and I could use a schnook now and then. But I cannot stomach, in this life or any other of my remaining eight,“Midnight Louie and Daughter.”

If ever I was called upon to be brilliant and devious, it is now.

I clear my throat. I hum a few bars of “Melancholy Baby.” I rid myself of an irksome nail sheath.

“Quit stalling, Mein Papa. You are cornered and you know it.”

I am at my most inventive when cornered, so…invent!

“All right,” I say portentously. “We will be partners in a firm. We will have a sexy, Richard Diamond kind of aura.”

“Richard who?”

“TV PI, had a secretary with a world-class pair of gams.” (Which were provided by Miss Mary Tyler Moore, who went on to become even more famous for tossing a hat into the air at the opening of a TV show.)

Midnight Louise blinks. I do not think that she knows a “gam” from a “gat” or she would be all over me for that sexist remark. I swallow my smirk.

“We will have a name that says it all,” I go on, caught up in my own scenario.

“We will be equal,” she warns, flattening her ears and fluffing her fur.

I am not afraid of a family spat with Midnight Louise, but I am well aware that her lurking backup outweighs me twenty to one, and there are two of them.

I straighten, shake out my coat until it is in gleaming order, and pronounce: “Midnight Inc. What could be better?”

I catch her flat-footed and wimp-whiskered. “You mean like in India ink?” she asks, confused.

“No. As in Murder Inc. Capisce?”

“It does sound dangerous,” she concedes.

“It is compact.”

“It does include both our names.”

“Indeed.”

“It is gender neutral.”

“Of course,” I growl. I hate gender neutral.

“It will do.”

With that she turns on her tail and struts forward, assuming that I will follow.

Having dodged “Midnight Louie and Daughter,” I do. For now.

I do. The expression smacks indecently of wedding vows.

Well, there is always divorce and, in business unions, dissolution. And finally, in Midnight Inc.’s line of work,’til death do us part.

Sunset Boulevard

I stare at the pool behind the house.

It is big and old-fashioned, just a huge, deep rectangle of blue mosaic tiles seen through a glassy viewfinder of chlorinated water, darkly. Some jungle leaves the size of elephant ears float like lily pads, lending an air of disuse or of the macabre, I cannot decide which.