Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

“So tell me about your business.”

“It is a one-dude operation. Private-eye stuff. That is why I am here. I am looking into a case involving some Big Cats.”

“You know some Big Cats?” She actually sounds impressed. I am impressed.

“Some.”

“Then why did you not bring one along for backup?”

“These big guys do not just meander out on the streets. There are laws.”

“Well, boy, you are lucky I am part of this colony because your meatballs would have been chili powder in another couple of seconds, and I am getting too old to rumba without activating my rheumatism. So I suggest we go over and ask the boys what you want to know and then you skedaddle.”

“Yes, Ma.” There was never any point in arguing with her. She was the Sultana of Swat when it came to keeping her litters in line. “Uh,” I add as we amble over to the others. “What is your name besides Ma?”

“That is it. Ma. Ma Barker.”

“You are not a dog!”

“No, but I bite like one. Just remember that.”

In a moment I am huddling with the Wild Bunch.

“I am looking for a man,” I begin.

“Why come to us? We have nothing to do with that species if we can help it.”

“I cannot argue with your good taste, but this man has a place where he keeps Big Cats. It is a hideout, see. No human knows where it is. I figure you guys” — Snow Off-white bristles and hisses — “and dolls might have an idea where it is. I know you get around and I figure you have your ears to the ground better than anybody.”

“ Hmm ,” says Tom. “We do not roam as much as we used to now that our numbers are being whisked away and returned all meek and meatball-less. But I wonder if you could be talking about the Dead Place?” He glances at the others.

Oh, great. Like I need to visit another Dead Place. “What is this joint?” I ask.

“I have smelled Big Cat there,” Snow Off-white mews. She rolls her yellow eyes. “Very Big Cat.”

“But nobody human goes there much,” Tiger adds. “That is why we explore sometimes. It is not far from here and there are trees to climb.”

“It is like a park,” Ma puts in. A lot of these street types do not even know what a park is.

I nod. “It would be a rich man’s estate, but no one would know.”

Whiskers tremble sagely all around. “That is it, then. The Dead Place. People do not like Dead Places. They stay away and then we can come out and play. Not even the aliens with the silver ships who abduct us go there.”

“I have been thinking of moving the colony there,” Tom admits, “but we grow weak and fewer, and many like the free food too much. We have gone soft.”

“Not very. Trust me,” I reassure them.

So I get the general location of the Dead Place, which I am happy to learn is in Las Vegas proper, if there is any district in Las Vegas you could call “proper.” I had enough treks into the desert during my last case to leave permanent sand calluses between my toes.

Then I bid the gang adieu. Ma escorts me to the edge of their territory.

“Imagine,” she muses with a trace of fondness, but very little. “The Grasshopper hangs with Big Cats.”

“You could come back with me. I am sure I can get you a cushy position at my pad, the Circle Ritz.”

For a moment her eyes soften.

I press on. “Air-conditioning. Sunspots. Security. Down comforters.”

She shakes her head. “They need me here. We are dying out, of course. That is the plan.”

I try one last ploy. “Ah, Dad has retired on Lake Mead. Runs the goldfish concession at this eatery they named after him, Three O’Clock Louie’s.”

“Your father is a restaurateur?”

“Sort of.”

She shakes her grizzled head. “I thought he had to follow the sea.”

“He followed it to a salmon boat in the Pacific Northwest, but he came back here to retire.” I look at her edgeways. “Maybe he wanted to find us.”

“Three O’Clock! He always was a loner, that one. We had some good times, though. Nice to see you, boy.” She cuffs me one more time. “But do not come around again. I may not be here to save your ashcan.”

I gulp. I have not mentioned her maybe-granddaughter, Miss Midnight Louise. The maternal instinct is a hormonal thing with our breed: strong as steel when kits are coming and growing…gone with the wind once they have left the litter.

Still, her eyes are suspiciously shiny as I turn away and begin my long midnight stroll toward the Dead Place.

Dead Air Time

Matt Devine pulled off the huge foam-padded earphones.

This heavy-duty headset always reminded him of the “earmuffs” people wore at target-shooting ranges.

Some nights, wearing them, he felt like the target.

“Rough shift?” a woman’s voice asked.

For a moment he was disoriented. Without the strange, isolated intensity of a phone-line link to the whole, wide radio-listening world, the nearby unamplified sound of a normal human voice was surprising, even alarming. He’d thought he was alone.

Matt swiveled around on his stool. Had she —?

But it was only Letitia, the host who preceded him on WCOO’s nightly schedule of moody music and listener requests followed by his Mr. Midnight call-in shrink gig.

“Letitia. I didn’t know you’d stayed for my show.”

She lowered herself to the empty stool. This was quite a production, because there was well over three hundred pounds of Letitia to lower.

“I’m your producer, after all.” She folded her arms over her formidable chest and stared at him.

To the world of the airwaves she was her pseudonym, Ambrosia, the warm, maternal voice that teased mention of hurts and shy loves out of anonymous callers and then played the perfect song to celebrate or soothe. “You Light Up My Life,” “The Rose,” (Matt had to admit he liked the clean poetry of that one), that sort of thing. Most of the songs were soothers, and Ambrosia’s hokey therapy worked wonders. Matt, formerly a priest in a fairly formal religion, tended to distrust easily accessed emotions, but he couldn’t deny the magic Letitia/Ambrosia performed each night from seven to midnight.

Even her morbid obesity wasn’t unusual for a radio personality. Radio was the ideal medium for the less-than-medium attractive. Garrison Keillor wasn’t only a self-proclaimed “shy person,” but one of the homeliest men in the public eye since Abraham Lincoln. It had made him a star. On radio, and then in books. Not on TV.

Hefty size aside, Letitia was gorgeous and dressed like an MTV queen. Tonight she wore a pleated tangerine polyester pantsuit draped with a chest plate of African beads. The seriously chubby fingers braced on her knees were choked with high-carat solitaires of semiprecious gemstones. Silky smooth brown skin set off her eyes the way black velvet showcases diamonds, and they were meticulously made up with metallic swaths of shadow. Looking at her was like regarding a bird of paradise.

“You look gorgeous tonight,” Matt couldn’t stop himself from remarking, though he seldom felt comfortable complimenting a woman on looks alone.

“Thanks.” Her self-esteem preened visibly. “You look pretty good yourself.”

“It’s not anything I do,” he said, instantly uncomfortable.

She just shook her head. “I told you when I hired you that you were too pretty to be on radio, but that’s okay. They can hear it in your voice.”

“People can hear how I look?”

“They get an image. If you have a nice voice, it’s a nice image. Radio’s the only place I can be taken for a size six, honey!”