Cat in a White Tie and Tails

Chapter 37

The Shadow Nose

My feet and heart are both primed to hop, skip, and jump over to the Oasis Hotel and Casino in the dark of my namesake hour.

Great Bast’s Ghost! When is a dude to get some downtime on his own in this world? When I was not in the bosom of my Miss Temple and Mr. Matt and his family members during the weekend Chicago jaunt, I was in the clutches of the low-end mob boyos and TSA security checkers coming and going.

These are not happy travel memories and involve many personal indignities too indelicate to describe, including derogatory comments about my carriers, especially Miss Krys’s homemade one, which occasioned open hoots of laughter. If I do return to Chicago, I will have to have a nose-to-nose with her.

Then, I come home on Tuesday and Miss Midnight Louise is always hovering somewhere, needing to unburden herself of endless “reports.”

Now, at last, my role as CEO of Midnight Investigations, Inc., and my need for a roam of my own have met. Something fishy is going on at the Oasis, at least in the Lusty Ladies and Laddies ship attraction.

There are times when I wish to keep a low profile and enter a major casino by the well-hidden rear service areas. This is not one of them. Crowds are milling in and out of the Strip joints despite … or because … of the nearing wee morning hours.

Most Strip hotels gussy up their entry approaches with large iconic sculptures and lush landscaping, so I can tiptoe through the manicured jungles as unnoticed as dirt: rich, almost-black loam is imported for the exotic greenery. I can also slink around the massive statues, in this case one of the facing elephants who suffer from a severe condition common to Las Vegas, called “gigantism.” These painted and overdressed pachyderms would be big even to the towering statue of Goliath down the Las Vegas Boulevard.

Getting through the casino’s front door is not the slick process I can usually execute. A lot of people are standing statue-still around something right in front of the rows of brass-framed doors.

I am forced into an intricate and risky weaving maneuver to pass but not tickle a forest of bare and hairy ankles so I can survey the object of their interest.

Hmm. Louise did not mention the megabucks forced into an elephant-palanquin-size treasure chest sitting on the front doorstep for all to see, and see through. The chest is clear plastic and rather ghostly. She is so fixated on Mr. Max Kinsella that she cannot see the moolah for the mush.

The ersatz sailing ship in the cove at the hotel’s side may be the scene of Mr. Cliff Effinger’s gruesome demise and now haunted by supervising thugs. And there may be an infestation of electric eels in the cove water. And it is somewhat interesting that Mr. Max was attacked there Monday night (yet again, yawn), but that is the price you pay for being nosy.

I say the big dough up for grabs Friday night is the far more likely target at the Oasis. And the dead-certain likeliest target to be found in the entire vast hotel-casino layout is the one I intend to track now, whose likeness is plastered above the doors nobody is watching now that so much fresh green money is on display.

Midnight Louie always has his eye on the prize, and in this instance it is not bankable.

An hour later, I am still searching. Vegas casinos would deny the comparison, but they are laid out like an Ikea store combined with a maze the size of Massachusetts.

I would bet all the money in the out-front treasure chest that the clever Norse pattern the Ikea store on a route where you can walk and walk and never quite exit. That way you see all the wares and make impulse buys. Same thing in a casino.

Just as I am about to be terminally overcome from the floor level foot odor, I am making a three-foot dash to the next craps table when a white tornado comes churning in my direction.

Busted! I am caught out in the open, the object of every eye that is not pinned to a slot machine or a gaming table.

Luckily, that is very few people. Unluckily, my right ear is the target of a hot wet slap in the face.

“Louie, old pal,” yaps the white dust mop of fur sporting hot pink satin bows about the ears, “whatcha doing here at the Oasis, huh, huh?”

Before I can answer this silly creature, a dog that weighs less than half what I do, speaks for himself.

“I have been riding at human shoulder-height for hours, sucking in secondhand smoke. I envy you having a job where you work best at foot-odor level.”

The little guy has a point. There are no health warning labels on Odor-Eaters. Some might sniff at this dainty excuse for a canine as a “ladies’ lap dog” but Nose E. has one of the most dangerous assignments around Las Vegas: hanging around the big social events and casinos, using his small but potent sniffer to target illegal drugs and explosives. Usually he is carried around by a hot chick or a big beefy guy like Mr. T who can flatten anyone prone to snicker at a man with a purse pooch.

“So what is up here at the Oasis,” I ask, “besides the million bucks awarded Friday to the gambler of the week?”

“That is chump change.” Nose E. paws at the inner corner of one black button eye, and seeming to stroke the side of his valuable nose like giving the high sign. White breeds have a tendency to eye stains, not a problem for one born to be black and beautiful. “The management is concerned about explosive traces in the casino.”

“This place could blow?” I cannot help sounding alarmed. “You are investigating the pirate ship attraction on the cove?”

“Not in the assignment. I am not as credible in the great outdoors as you are, Louie. No, my beat is the casino. I am picking up very faint traces, meriting only a muttered whimper, not a full-blown aria of alarm accompanied by a paw lift and head tilt, which signals imminent danger.”

“Manx! Are you a prima donna or a narc?”

“A bit of both,” Nose E. growls. “It is a very specialized position.”

“Speaking of ‘position,’ why are you not—?”

Before I can finish my query, our down-low floor-side confab is joined by a third … I guess I should say … twins.

They are a pair of female feet attired in towering platform spikes that would be a nine on the Lady Gaga Scale. My poor Miss Temple is only a six even at her most extreme. Some are not born for glitter rock ’n’ roll.

Anyway, I have not seen the rest of this babe, but the ladder of leather strings from her toes to well above her ankles is severely challenging to my chaw-and-claw instincts. Ah, leather! So tangy, so pierceable, so … dead prey.

She is obviously Nose E.’s partner on this assignment and an updated clone of Miss Savannah Ashleigh, whose day has come and gone.

This new-model starlet bends down to regard Nose E. “Here you are! Cozying up to the house mascot. Naughty, naughty, boy! That is not your job. Oh. Speaking of jobs, if you had to have a bathroom break, you need only have done the blink-and-arf signal and I would have escorted you to the sward out beside the elephants.”

Bathroom break? I mince backwards. Nose E.’s kind is known to lift, aim, and spray on carpeting like this, whereas my breed is civilized enough to dig our own latrines far from the madding crowd. “House mascot”? What does that mean? I am nobody’s mascot.

She bends down again, no doubt attracted by my movement. “Oh, you lovely thing!”

A small improvement.

Her taloned hands feel my neck. Is this a Jacqueline the Ripper? I try to wriggle away but she is quite … firm.

“You are supposed to have a prize charm on your collar, but you seem to have slipped your collar, you naughty girl!”

What a dim bulb. This woman is twelve on the Savannah Ashleigh meter if she has mistaken Midnight Louie for a girl. And a common collar-wearer! Blasphemy, O Bast, hear me and be avenged.

I show my fangs.

“You must be tired,” she coos. “Such a big yawny-wawny.”

I … am … being … forced to discharge a hair ball onto the carpet like a misbehaving dog. Begone, foul temptress!

By now, thankfully, she has swooped up the unfortunate Nose E. to silicone bosom height. “You naughty, naughty boy. It is off to work we go.”

Nose E. is right. I have the better job.

The pair of stilettos stomps off, damaging the carpet with every steel-heeled step. I hear a hiss behind me and turn to find the object of my quest glaring from under the craps table. Her fabled golden orbs are in full phase, the pupils mere black dagger slits.

I swagger over as best I can while dodging shuffling tourist steps. In a moment we share our own island retreat in the chaos.

“Those purse pooches are taking over the neighborhood,” the lithe and lovely Topaz says.

She is the short-hair sort, black-panther sleek, and her larger-than-life image lounges on all the hotel-casino signage. The Oasis is a trendy multicultural mélange of Indo-Asian with a touch of Mediterranean. Topaz is the best thing on the premises.

I dare to greet her with a Nose E. pass (sans slobber) at her Cleopatra-collared neck, dangling its precious topaz jewel. This is a custom necklace, no lowly collar from a pet store. Topaz roams free in the hotel-casino, different charms on her neck netting the customers a nice prize. Tonight she wears the grand prize. No wonder the poor girl is hiding out.

“Why are you here, Louie?”

“Need you ask?”

Her purr would soothe the deaf.

So I warn her. “I am worried about something bad going down at the Oasis. There was a murder once on one of the cove ships and an attack there just last weekend.”

“I am not surprised,” she tells me in an urgent hush, “since my job is literally to ‘get around’ and allow the maximum number of tourists to spot me and thus win the daily prizes. Our security chief is meeting with suspicious strangers in the hotel-casino’s hidden service areas.…”

“As the murderer did when we solved my last case here during the reality TV dancing show…”

“Yes,” she hisses, “but this is no cakewalk. Security preparations for the big Friday-night prize drawing outside are complex, but I fear they are not enough.”

“So you suspect our inside man, Mr. Rafi Nadir?”

“No. However, I clearly see he suspects everybody else.”

“Not good. What can one man do against a mob?”

“You have uttered the word I dare not say. I am getting the distinct whiff of ‘mobster.’”

“Someone needs to stop this.”

“I am so glad to see you here, Louie.” She does the velveteen brush all along my side. “This is my home. I am the logo mascot. A mere canine bit of comb-leavings cannot do the job. I need major muscle.”

I am easy. “Do not worry, Topaz. I can provide that.”

You and what army? I can hear Miss Midnight Louise jeering.

And then I feel Topaz’s bristly pink tongue doing a swirl inside my ear and hear nothing else but purrs.