Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (38 page)

“
I-I-I-I-I
…

“
Ran
…

“
All
…

“
The
…

“
Way
.”

“Admirable devotion to duty. But you should have saved a couple breaths for your report.”

Frankly, I am impressed. But it never does to let underlings know when they have done well. Management by creative tension has always been the watchword of my breed. Keep ’em guessing, keep ’em on their toes, and keep ’em worrying about what I really think.

“So where did she go?” I finally ask.

“
Ba-ba-ba-ba
—”

“Bally’s?”

“
Ba-ba-ba-ba
—”

“The Ali Baba Room at the Alhambra?” Not exactly a strip club, unless you consider it a Las Vegas Strip club, but they do have belly dancers.

“Eee —”

E
. Now what in Las Vegas begins with
E
, except
E
lvis?

“Duh-duh-duh.”

Duh is right!

“Catch your breath and show it who is boss. There, that is the ticket. Give the old brain case a good shake to free all the fleas in your ears. Now, from the top.”

“Bah-bee.”

“Bobby?”

“Duh-alls.”

“Bobby…Dulls.” Light strikes. “Baby Doll’s!”

My informant’s head nods like one of those idiotic toys with a spring for a neck and sawdust for brains.

What else can you expect from a mere dog but extreme panting and stupid facial tricks?

“Baby Doll’s,” I repeat, to make sure I heard the little bowhead correctly. Those cranial barrettes will cramp your cerebellum. “It is a strip club. That makes sense. And you ran all the way to and fro?” This is quite a hike for a three-pound floor-duster like a Maltese.

Nose E. nods his fuzzy little face from which the tongue has protruded like the tag on a zipper the whole time. “I could not…keep up.”

Some dogs love to chase cars, but this one’s legs are so short he should chase Hot Wheels. To be fair, tailing little dolls is not his bailiwick. The Nose Pose is his game and it has made him tops in his field of drug-and bomb-sniffing.

“Did my clever marking technique work?” I ask.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Midnight. The scent you, er, drizzled on the right rear tire was impossible to lose. Unbelievably rank. I have to say you cats have it all over dogs when it comes to the odiferous art. Although I soon lost sight of it — your Miss Temple drives like an Indy Five Hundred speed demon, I might say — I was able to track the Miata all the way to Baby Doll’s parking lot. That is not a very nice place, you know.”

“I know.”

“That was not a very nice thing to do to a human’s new car, either.”

“I know, but it was for her own good and, beside, humans have the nasal sensitivity of a stainless steel beak. So you left the Miata, and Miss Temple, at Baby Doll’s?”

“Yeth.”

Funny. I had never noticed that Nose E. lisped before. Why am I not surprised?

“Good work, half ounce. I will take it from here.”

He trails me, everything jiggling like a chorus girl’s…uh, pompoms: hair, head bow, tiny white whiskers that would look about right on a lab rat.

“Oh, Mr. Midnight. I hate to leave a job half-done. Let me go with you! I like to be in on the search and seizure.”

“Trouble is, the action is not going down at Baby Doll’s. I just wanted to make sure that my Miss Temple was safely out of harm’s way. So trot back to the Old Groove, or whatever it is called, used record store your human, Mr. Earl. E. Byrd, operates. You can rest easy in a job well done. Now it is time for your biggers to take over.”

“Oh! You are just like the Federales!”

“Huh? The only thing Mexican about me is any jumping beans I choose to carry.”

“The FBI and the NSA and all those Big-time Initial Guys. They always want me and Earl E. to bow out after I have identified the perp.”

“No doubt it is for your own safety. You are civilians, after all.”

“And you are not?”

“I am an…exception. Your reward will be hearing how well everything went now that I am on the case. See you later, Tater Tot.”

I take off at a lope I know the exhausted Nose E. cannot imitate. I have heard Miss Temple bemoan her short-legged stride often enough to realize where his true weakness lies. Industrial strength sniffer, but wimpy ankles.

I try not to gloat as I streak through the dark Las Vegas night, sure and powerful as my own stride.

For once I have both Miss Temple Barr and Miss Midnight Louise safely diverted to the side while the real action is going down elsewhere. Not only am I a knight errant protecting the weaker females of the species, but I am establishing my supreme territory as Crime-Solver Extraordinaire.

My small deposit on the tire of Miss Temple’s new car is only a drop in the bucket of my forthcoming triumph in the art of territory marking.

Now I am up against the big boys: Mr. Max Kinsella and, uh, Ms. C. R. Molina.

I am in my proper element: on the prowl alone and pulling everyone else’s strings.

How sweet it is!

Secret Showdown

He came through the door like an Old West gunfighter.

In fast and hard, so even the heavy metal door swung open and came to a dead stop for a few seconds.

He paused to survey the scene.

In a Western movie, every eye in the place would have been on him.

At Secrets, he went unnoticed.

The door’s weight reversed the opening momentum and swung slowly shut. By then he had melted into the mob scene.

Or not quite melted.

One eye in the house had noticed his entrance and still followed his black-clad form through the smoky haze.

Molina couldn’t believe her luck.

Kinsella here. Undisguised. Wearing his signature black, looking almost naked in a sleazy turtleneck (which probably meant it was ) and tailored slacks, looking a lot like a ninja as he circled the crowd and the stage, looking for someone.

Who?

Likely Temple Barr, but Molina would have spotted her even if she had been got up like a Munchkin from
The Wizard of Oz
. The notion was so pleasing that she smiled into her sob-sister margarita…it was criminal how weak they mixed these drinks in the strip clubs…not her jurisdiction, thank God.

But Max Kinsella was.
Baa baa, black sheep, have you any bull? Yes, sir, yes, sir, three bags full
.

Midnight Choirboy

I cruise by the Secrets parking lot, but not much seems to be happening.

Much as I would like to settle down at the edge of the parking lot and watch two ace trackers from different hunting parties stake out the same watering hole, I find that when I have a chance to sit still, I get antsy instead.

It has been just too long since I last heard head or tail of Miss Midnight Louise.

I know for a fact that my Miss Temple is safely deployed at the one place the dude in question is not likely to show, Baby Doll’s.

I do not know anything about the disposition of Miss Midnight Louise other than that she is not at the Crystal Phoenix, or the Circle Ritz, or here or anywhere she should be breaking a nail to get to with a report, at least.

While I sit there chewing my nails I find my noggin cogitating. I am not sanguine about finding Miss Louise in that cavernous place, and I do not like contemplating the many unseen, if not unsniffed, signs of major muscle of a feline nature about the place.

It is quiet here, except for intermittent slices of unholy midnight howls that emanate from Secrets every time the single wide front door opens and shuts to let merrymakers in or out.

I am a bit perturbed that all is normal here. I am even more disturbed to see a stripper leave the premises for the night escorted by a dude with major workout issues. Apparently Secrets has installed a killer security system: see the ladies to and from their cars. With everyone but me carrying cell phones these days, it makes sense.

I had better swing by Baby Doll’s on the way to Los Muertos, just in case. It is only a mile or two out of my way.

Oh, my aching pads! When they slapped the tag “gumshoe” on Pls, they must have meant we pound so much pavement pursuing leads that our shuffling feet get so weary they end up sticking to the street.

I am not sorry to leave the dimly heard hell-raising chorus within behind as I plod through the black-and-neon checkerboard of a Las Vegas night, wishing I had at least one of my two little dolls in my sights.

No Dice

Max circled the room like a wolf marking his territory. Secrets was doing business as usual, crowded with pleasure-seekers lost in their own vice of choice: booze, babes, or maybe just mind-shattering sound.

The crowd was large and self-absorbed. Even the strippers seemed oddly isolated as they writhed onstage to the music they had chosen. Stripping had always struck Max as a solitary vice on both sides of the spotlights.

He hadn’t bothered to disguise himself, not even with attitude. Still, his striking appearance barely registered on Secrets’s many employees and clients. Everything was expected, including boredom. Damn it, if Temple had tracked a killer here, he wanted the bastard to be aware of him, his presence. His threat.

Even Temple didn’t seem to be here.

Max sighed. He’d have to check the stripper dressing rooms to make sure she wasn’t backstage. That would draw out whatever testosterone troops guarded this place. At Secrets they would be fairly discreet.

Rafi Nadir’s stint here must have been an aberration. This place’s pretensions to business class over coach wouldn’t support obvious muscle like him.

Besides, Nadir had never worked here after the night Max had taken Cher away from him in the parking lot. Max had checked. He could have decamped out of shame at being outsmarted and outmuscled by someone as apparently easy as Max.

Max wasn’t about to bet on shame being a big part of Rafi Nadir’s psychological makeup. Aggression, yes.

Max scanned the entire scene like a panoramic camera, identifying the cast of dozens: the familiar bare figures of girls onstage or lap dancing at the tables, the lapdog circle of guys transfixed like risen mummies before the footlights. Instead of craving revivifying tanna leaves these zombies were shedding leaves of green bills into the teeny-weeny bikini bottoms of various strippers. Down the snatch.

There was even the hard-boiled dame at the bar…a retired stripper, or maybe a club photographer. No camera, so she was some other hanger-on in the whole elegantly sleazy scene.

The illusion he required: the instant perception by one and all that he belonged here, that he could go where he wanted with no one objecting.

Max scanned the room again, 360 degrees, and found his course of action.

He walked through the tables, past the obscenely boogying couples, behind the dazed wannabe studs playing hang-dog at the stage lip.

Ducked into the glass-enclosed sound booth at the side of the stage.

“Hey, DJ!” he addressed the slack-jawed youth at the console. “Bitchin’ job, man.” He flashed a hundred-dollar bill, dropped it onto the feedback dial. “I could use a sharp sound-meister like you at my new club down the Strip, X-treme Dreams. Meanwhile, play ‘Misty’ for me, huh? Double speed.” Max winked. “I gotta see a babe about a takeover bid.”