Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

The Softer Side of Vegas

The empty lot opposite Maylords Fine Furnishings is a scruffy bit of sand and sagebrush not far from the Las Vegas Strip.

Folks who fly into Sin City only see the high-profile skyline, not the flat lots in between. Granted these checkerboard squares of empty real estate are worth the ransom of an Enron executive (pre-downfall). Yet to the tourists who trot by on their way to the next overblown attraction, they look pretty tacky.

And here is where my kind has always set up shop: on the outcast fringes of populated areas, where they can forage, be overlooked . . . and sometimes be tended by the soft-hearted.

So. I got Ma Barker and her north-side gang transferred down-Strip to the softer side of Vegas during one of my recent capers. They are all summa cum laude graduates of the Feral Seize and Suture program, meaning they are the last of their breed.

I admit I am sorry to see the last of us street folk subdued. We are like the lonesome hobos of decades gone by: free and free living. Railriders and kings and queens in disguise.

But it is a rabies tag world these days. My goal is to ease this ragtag community over to the parking lot of the Circle Ritz, where they can live out their days, and nights, as local celebrities, thanks to the attentions of Miss Electra Lark and her tenants, who are also lone strangers in their own human way.

My Miss Temple, of course, would be the first to offer them shelter, did she but realize that they existed. Although I have come to know her circle of loved ones and acquaintances well during our mutual adventures, she has never quite wised up to my extended family.

It is about time that she did.

So, I round up Miss Midnight Louise, who occupies my old post of house detective at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino. Some say she is the spitting image of myself. Black, ballsy, and cool. Well, delete the ballsy. What is the female version of that? Gallsy? And I am Palsy?

Some say she is just spitting mad.

She says she is my unsanctioned daughter and that I am a deadbeat dad.

I say . . . call me a Clairol blond. Who knows for sure?

Meanwhile, I am stuck with her. Being a practical cat à la T. S. Eliot’s streetwise breed, I allow her to delude herself. So, I sidle over to the Phoenix and find my partner in Midnight Inc. Investigations lounging under my old favorite stand of canna lilies next to the koi pond.

“Popster!” she greets me.

I look around to see if anyone feline or human has overheard this humiliating term. Kits, these days. Tattooed and microchipped. Born to be wild but happy to be post-modern media children.

“I need an inside kit and an outside herder.”

“Tell me more.” She settles onto her haunches, a sign of budding maturity.

Louise is not quite my spitting image, although her temperament sometimes matches mine. Her eyes are 24-karat gold where mine are emerald green. And her coat is longer and softer, as becomes a girl. I hunker down as well, ready for a cat-to-kit talk.

I start. “You know Ma Barker and her gang have moved downtown.” Ma Barker is my, well, ma and possibly Louise’s grandma. We had a touching reunion during one of my recent cases. That is to say that shivs and whiskers were brushed, but nothing came of it but a mutual resolve to keep out of each other’s hair.

“Thanks to you,” Louise acknowledges. “But Ma Barker and her crew are still a feral gang. Anybody might be after them to wipe them out.”

“Right. But I have plans.”

“You always have plans.”

“This is a good one. I want to relocate them to the Circle Ritz.”

The hair on the back of her neck stands up. “You did not want to relocate me there.”

“You have a good position here at the Crystal Phoenix. The house executive chef is in the palm of your paw. These are, well, street people in fur. They need someone to watch over them.”

“You?”

“Somewhat. Mostly they need my human associates, which are all a soft touch, once their potential is pointed out to them.”

“Hmm.” Louise settles deeper into her ruff, which has grown fluffier as she has matured.

I admit I am taken aback by her new Mae West look.

“So, you need my help?” she asks.

“We need a Moses.”

“I am a girl cat.”

“Well, a”—boy, am I stuck—“a Joan of Arc. To lead them to the light.”

“She led the French to battle and darkness.”

“This is different. Plus, I could use you later on the scene of what may become a foul crime.”

“That sounds more up my alley.”

“The New Millennium.”

“Oh, that New Age planetary place!”

I explain what is going down there nowadays.

“The Czar’s Scepter? I do know a couple of Russian Blues who might give me an in.”

“Russian Blues? Those are pretty aristocratic cats.”

“I am a modern girl, Daddy-o. I can do country or haute couture.”

Manx! I am not sure I can “do” either. But leave us not let Miss Midnight Louise know that! Like the Mystifying Max, misdirection is one of the few weapons I have left in a tricky, hostile world.

“So,” I say, “if you could hang around the New Millennium when you are not chatting up the Ma Barker gang for the move, it would help me out a lot.”

“And what will you be doing?’

“Fixing my Miss Temple’s personal and professional life, as usual,” I growl.

“She seems to have an inordinate amount of both, for a ginger-cream.”

I have never heard Miss Louise sound so . . . catty before.

“Just do your job. I will handle the delicate diplomatic bits.”

“Yes. I have glimpsed your delicate diplomatic bits and they leave a lot to be desired.”

That is Miss Midnight Louise these days. Ma Barker all over again.