Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

Better Bred Than Red

Hot news is hot news even when it is hot mews.

I allow my Miss Temple to mistake me for a stuffed pillow (a role I had more than enough of during one of our previous adventures), but the moment she leaves the condo, I bestir myself. I also desert the Circle Ritz, my home away from homicide, for the New Millennium, my homicide away from home.

I cannot tell you how all my hunting instincts sit up and take note when I hear that the dead man in the exhibition area may be from Chechnya (or could be connected to some rebel cause there?). I have relatives in Chechnya. (In fact, I have relatives all over the globe. Those of us who do not cling to limited pedigrees are truly universal. Some call us “mongrel” but it might as well be “Mongol” as not.)

Global politics is not normally my bailiwick. (Bailiwick is a good old-fashioned word for “arena of operation.”) My arena of operation for the nonce (another good old-fashioned word) is the New Millennium and the White Russian exhibition. By now, I have found a handy ground-floor entrance: the back area where they download the Big Cats every day for rehearsal.

I merely hop through the bars of their cages—all right, I have to shimmy-shimmy my midlife male middle through the iron uprights—then I can hunker down between their extended forelegs and pass as a shadow. We are all big black dudes, after all.

Kalúha is cool, but I have to watch Lucky, as he is new to the act and at times does not realize his own strength. Sometimes when he yawns, his lower jaw knocks my skull sideways. But a few blows to the cerebellum does not stop the streetwise shamus, as all the noir detective novels point out ad nauseam.

By the time the boys are transferred to their holding cages up top I am freewheeling and hard on the trail of crime and punishment. First, I need to know if the Big Cats have any insight on Russian politics.

Zip. Nil. Nada. These guys are huge and brawny and cooperative, but not much in the little gray cell department.

So I slink about the upper area, blending into the matte black paint job as long as I keep my eyes slitted almost closed, looking for some high witness I have missed interviewing. See, the guy was found dangling just above the apex of the exhibition area. That was sixty feet below the magic show staging zone. I figure somebody up there was not only watching, but pulling the strings.

CC and Miss Shangri-La are not on the scene yet, so I edge to the rim of a ledge to gaze down at the busy work below. It is way higher than an elephant’s eye up here and is in no way a beautiful morning, so I am not surprised when a cold bolt of fur and claws bowls me over and has me hanging by my flimsiest nail sheaths from the wooden platform.

I gaze up into celestial blue eyes rimmed in predator red. Before I can blow my cover and whimper “Squeaker,” I watch those Babyface Nelson–blue eyes blink.

“You!” Miss Hyacinth hisses. “I would help you up but my curare claws might bring you even farther down. Now we will see what upper foreleg strength will do for a common street fighter.”

She steps back out of sight, leaving me to heave myself up on semi-solid ground sheath by sloughed sheath. I hear their tiny clicks hitting hard surfaces below like invisible hail.

Panting, I have regained my footing and stare my sudden tormentor down. That is just an expression. She remains with me up here, on this pseudo–crow’s nest perch. I wish one of those bigbeaked black birds were up here. They would teach Miss Hyacinth a thing or two.

While I catch my breath, she eyes me up and down, no doubt regretting that my “down” was not fatal. That is always the thing with these feline fatale types: they have to establish their street cred.

“Midnight Louie,” she acknowledges. “I thought you had taken a few days off to bury your impertinent daughter after our encounter at CC’s estate.”

“Hmph,” I say, “more like her burying me. I see you survived her onslaught.”

“Easily.”

I look into those crystal blues and know she is lying. Her set-to with Miss Louise is why a body double is in this new show. And . . . she might have enjoyed the superiority of helping me back up on the platform, except I can sense a certain delicacy in the joints on her part.

For a moment a soupçon of sympathy vibrates through my vibrissae (that is whiskers to you!). A domestic-size cat is always at a disadvantage on stage. Hyacinth is struggling to keep up with the Big Boys despite suffering a world-class catfight a few weeks back against my purported daughter, Miss Midnight Louise. I would have to say Louise may indeed be my spawn, for she won that one, pads down.

So, Hyacinth had thrown her weight around on me because it is her best weapon at the moment, curare-painted nails or not. Besides, she probably has a soft spot for me, anyway. Who would want to off the only reproductively harmless macho housecat in Las Vegas? The Big Boys would have her for lunch, or elevenses, if it were left to them.

“I did not know you were interested in high-wire acts,” she says from her usual defensive crouch, which emphasizes the sharklike sharpness of her shoulder blades. Her coat is the same pale cream shade but her dove-gray trim shows slight scars.

“Me? An aerial act? Bast forbid.”

“You do look a little bottom heavy.”

“Physique has nothing to do with it. I am an earth sign.”

“Oh, really? Which one?”

“Well, I do not believe in that astronomy stuff so I cannot say. Maybe, uh, Taurus.”

“Ah. The bull. As in slinging lots of it. Why are you here? This is my mistress and my new gig. Intruders are not welcome.”

“I am not an intruder.”

“Then what are you?”

For one thing, fast on my feet with a good story. “Ah, I represent the boys.”

“Boys?”

“Yeah. The Big Boys. I am their agent.”

“I do not have an agent.”

“That is because you have a verbal contract with your mistress. Never a good idea. You need someone between her interests and your interests.”

“My only interest is serving her.”

“Tsk.” I sit down and slick down the hairs between my nails. “An admirable, self-sacrificing attitude but short-sighted.”

“I am not short-sighted,” she declares, so angry that she crosses her pale blue eyes, thus proving my point.

“Every performer of every stripe should have a personal representative. An agent. Are you willing to take humans at face value? At their so-called word? There is no more slippery species on the planet. I give you Enron, Worldcom, Tyco.”

“I know no cats of those names.”

“Of course not! These are predatory humans called CEOs. I think it stands for ‘Cruel Evil Owners.’ They make man-eating tigers look tame! Of course there are way more of them than there are man-eating tigers left in the world.”

“So. Are you one of these ‘representatives’?”

“Yeah. I could be yours, if you were looking for something in the representative line. What kind of contract do you have with Miss Shangri-La?”

Hyacinth hunches sourly into her shoulder blades again. “She owns me and I pretend to let her think she ‘trains’ me.”

“That is it? No terms on length of contract? No bonuses for good behavior? No hazard pay for high-wire work?”

Where physical threat stands no chance against a spitfire like Hyacinth, she positively caves under the burden of legal language.

“None of that. Should I have it?”

“Absolutely. What about disability pay when you are sidelined and a double like Squeaker subs for you?”

“That namby-pamby, wishy-washy no-papers excuse for a Siamese! She is Melanie to my Scarlett. If I hadn’t strained my spine recently . . . er, during rehearsal, of course.”

Of course not. I know precisely when she sprained her spine: under the tender attentions of a spitfire masseuse named Midnight Louise.

Her eyes cross again as another thought occurs. “ ‘Pay’? Did you use the term, ‘pay’?”

“Pay. That’s what I got when I did a couple of TV commercials for some cat glop. All specified by contract, seven pages of contract.”

Hyacinth’s forehead furrows. It looks like bleached moss. “Maybe you should be my agent, Louie.”

I see my opening and I take it. “Sure thing, Princess. My cut is only fifteen percent.”

She rouses herself from her troubled reverie and snicks out eight purple-enameled shivs from her forepaws, plus two scimitarsize dew claws. “Your cut is ten percent, one for each of the trails I will leave in your hide if you try to cheat me.”

I see that even her strong, long lavender-enameled nails are flexed for quick action. I cannot swear that curare is mixed with that nail polish, but I would not want to test the theory on my own hide.

“Ten,” I agree. Besides, I am not in this for the commission. “Being your agent will entail my hanging about up here—secretly, of course. We never want to warn humans of impending legal obligations—and observing what you contribute to the operation and what would be just compensation. Grandfathered in, of course.”

“What does my grandfather have to do with this? He is retired from stud duty on a farm in New Hampshire.”

I am astounded that she knows the whereabouts of her grandfather, but most of these purebreds have nothing better to do than tote up their family tree back to Bast, no doubt. For all I know, my grandfather may be the Cheshire cat.

“ ‘Grandfathering in’ is a legal expression, meaning, um, your compensation must be paid retroactively.” I am not at all sure about this, but when in doubt, sound confident.

I watch her baby blues cross again. It is a rather fetching habit.

I am on a roll. “ ‘Retroactively’ means it goes back to when you first began working with Miss Shangri-La.”

“You mean she would owe me?”

“Indeed. I think she owes you quite a lot. You are the only performing housecat in the magic game.”

“How would I be paid?”

“Any way you like. Fancy Feast coupons. Bejeweled collars. French nail enamel. It would all be specified in the contract.”

“And could I trust an agent who maintains sleeping arrangements with a human who rubs my mistress the wrong way, and vice versa?”

“Business is business. A commission on a hot act is a commission.”

“Well.” Miss Hyacinth (formerly the evil Hyacinth, but a dude needs to show proper respect for a client or how will he get any for her in negotiations?) rises, stretches with only a trace of painful hesitation, and bares her fangs at me, in a friendly way. “I will show you all my hidey holes, for when I am having an artistic tantrum over the choreography. Perhaps not all, Louie. A girl needs her secrets.”

She is back to her flirting, fickle self and I feel pretty relaxed myself.

One does not wish to get too cozy with a deadly enemy, especially if one is using her for a higher purpose, but I have declawed the one creature up here who might blow my cover.

Now, she will be busting her gray velvet garters to conceal my presence. I will be able to spy for my Miss Temple and make sure her project goes as smooth as spider silk. She can cover the infighting on the ground level; I will handle the high jinks on high. Plus I may be able to collect a sweet commission. In one form or another.