Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit

Previously in

Midnight Louie's

Lives and Times .. .

How sad that my singing voice is more scat than lyrics,
for my personal theme song would have to be "There Is
Nothing Like a Dame.”

I admit it. I am a shameless admirer
of the female of
the species. Any species. Of course not all females are dames. Some are little dolls, like my petite roommate,
Miss
Temple
Barr.

The difference between dames and little dolls?
Dames can take care of themselves, period. Little dolls
can take care of themselves also, but they are not
averse to letting the male of the species think that they
have an occasional role in the Master Plan too.

That is why my MissTemple and I are perfect
roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I make my
self useful, looking after her without letting her know
about it. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. In our time,
we have co-cracked a few cases too tough for the local
 
fuzz of the human persuasion, law enforcement divi
sion. That does not always win either of us popularity
contests, but we would rather be right than on the side
lines when something crooked is going down. We
share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp
fingernails.

So when I hear that a reality TV show is coming to
Las Vegas to film, I figure that one way or another my
lively little roommate, the petite and toothsome, will be
spike-heel high in the planning and execution. She is,
after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las
Vegas
is full of public relations of all stripes and legali
ties. In this case, though, I did not figure just how
deeply she would be involved in murder most media.

I should introduce myself: Midnight Louie, Pl. I am
not your usual gumshoe in that my feet do not wear
shoes of any stripe, but shivs. I have certain attributes,
such as being short, dark, and handsome . . . really
short. That gets me overlooked and underestimated,
which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am
your perfect undercover guy. I also like to hunker down
under the covers with my little doll. My adventures
would fill a book, and in fact I have several out. My life
is just one long TV miniseries in which I as hero extract
my hapless human friends from fixes of their own making and literally nail crooks. After experiencing the dra
matic turn of events recently, most of my human
associates are pretty shell-shocked. Not even an ace
feline PI may be able to solve their various predica
ments in the areas of crime and punishment . . . and
PR, as in Personal Relationships.

As a serial killer–finder in a multivolume mystery series (not to mention a primo mouthpiece), it behooves
me to update my readers old and new on past crimes
and present tensions.

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is a
pretty busy place, and I have been treading these
mean neon streets for seventeen books now. When I
call myself an "alphacat," some think I am merely asserting my natural male dominance, but no. I merely
reference the fact that after debuting in
Catnap
and
Pussyfoot,
I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as
B
to
Z.

That is where I began my alphabet, with the B in
Cat
on a Blue Monday.
From then on, the color word in the
title is in alphabetical order up to the current volume,
Cat in a Hot Pink Pursuit. (Yeow!
Pink is not my usual
macho color.)
Since I associate with a multifarious and nefarious
crew of human beings, and since Las Vegas is littered
with guidebooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide a
rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map
of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:
To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee,
Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace
MISS TEMPLE BARR,
who has reunited with her only
love. . .

. . . the once missing-in-action magician
MR. MAX
KINSELLA,
who has good reason for invisibility. After his
cousin
SEAN
died in a bomb attack during a post-high
school jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor,
GANDOLPH THE GREAT,
whose unsolved murder last Halloween while unmask
ing phony psychics at a séance is still on the books. . .

Meanwhile, Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegas homicide
LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA,
mother of preteen
MARIAH .. .

. . .
and the good friend of Miss Temple's recent
good friend
MR. MATT DEVINE,
a radio talk-show shrink
and former Roman Catholic priest who came to Las
Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, now dead
and buried. By whose hand, no one is quite sure.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Lieutenant Carmen
Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame
MR.
RAFI NADIR,
the unsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las
Vegas
taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing his
career with the LAPD .. .

. . . or that Mr. Max Kinsella is aware of Rafi and his
past relationship to hers truly. She had hoped to nail
one man or the other as the Stripper Killer, but Miss
Temple
prevented that by attracting the attention of the
real perp.

In the meantime, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local
girl that young Max and his cousin Sean boyishly com
peted for in that long-ago Ireland .. .

. . . one
MISS KATHLEEN O'CONNOR,
deservedly chris
tened by MissTemple as Kitty the Cutter. Finding Mr.
Max impossible to trace, she settled for harassing with
tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr.
Matt Devine...

. . . who is still trying to recover from the crush he
developed on MissTemple, his neighbor at the Circle
Ritz condominiums, while Mr. Max was missing in ac
tion. He did that by not very boldly seeking new
women, all of whom were in danger from said Kitty the Cutter.

In fact, on the advice of counsel, i.e.,
AMBROSIA,
Mr.
Matt's talk-show producer, and none other than the
aforesaid Lieutenant Molina, he tried to disarm Miss
Kitty's pathological interest in his sexual state by losing his virginity with a call girl least likely to be the object of
K. the Cutter's retaliation. Except that hours after their assignation at the Goliath Hotel, said call girl turned up
deader than an ice-cold deck of Bicycle playing cards.
But there are thirty-some million potential victims in this
old town, if you include the constant come and go of
tourists, and everything is up for grabs in Las Vegas
24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death,
and significant others.

All this human sex and violence makes me glad I
have a simpler social life, my prime goal being reunion
with .. .

. . .
THE DIVINE YVETTE,
the stunning shaded silver
Persian belonging to fading B-film star Miss Savannah
Ashleigh and once my partner in some cat food com
mercials, and such a simple hope as trying to get along
with my self-appointed daughter .. .

..
MISS MIDNIGHT LOUISE,
who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as
Midnight Inc. Investigations, and who has also nosed
herself into my long-running duel with .. .

. . . the evil Siamese assassin
HYACINTH,
first met as
the onstage assistant to the mysterious lady magi
cian . . .

...
SHANGRI-LA,
who made off with MissTemple's
semiengagement ring from Mr. Max during an onstage
trick and has not been seen since, except in sinister
glimpses . .

. . . just like
THE SYNTH,
an ancient cabal of magi
cians that may deserve contemporary credit for the
ambiguous death of Mr. Max's mentor in magic, Gan
dolph the Great.

Well, there you have it, the usual human stew, all
mixed up and at odds with one another and within
themselves. Obviously, it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las
Vegas
, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, pri
vate eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never
Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?

Chapter 1

Hello
Kitty

Homicide Lieutenant C. R. Molina's desk hosted two
very different images.

One was a glossy 11-by-17-inch poster of a Barbie
doll-cute teen girl tricked out in industrial-strength
amounts of hot pink.

The other was the same image, cut into jagged pieces that had been grafted onto photographed body parts of an actual Barbie doll.

The phrase "Teen Idol" on the first poster had morphed
into "Twisted Sister," with a welter of blood-red spatters, on the second one.

“Sick," Molina said, unnecessarily.

They all stood gazing down on the twisted twin
posters, neither of which was exactly wholesome. One
was merely Extreme Fashion. The other had been refashioned into something freakishly violent.

“Being the mother of a newly teenaged daughter, finding this stuff strewn around a shopping mall parking lot makes me shudder," Molina said. "The slashed poster reminds me that some things are scarier than adolescent hormones."

“Mariah's thirteen already?" Detective Morrie Alch asked, surprised. He was comfortably into his mid-fifties and his lone daughter was grown, gone, and a mother herself.

How Molina envied him.

“Just turned," she said. "A month ago. I'm already con
sidering a barbed-wire perimeter around the house. This
is so sick."

“
The Teen Idol concept," Detective Merry Su asked,
"or the threatening poster?"

“Both." Molina shook her head. "So tell me about this Teen Idol thing."

“Reality TV hits Las Vegas," Su said. A petite, twenty-
something, second-generation Asian American, Su
looked ready to compete for a teen title herself.

“Can't prove it by me," Molina answered. "We've been hosting reality TV since the New Millennium Hotel went up five years ago."

“It's a quest to name a 'Tween and Teen Queen," Alch said.