Cat In A Zebra Zoot Suit

Previously in

Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times…

What is a humble hotshot PI to do?

Here I sit in Las Vegas, a city that has been a Capital of Crime for seventy-five years. I have an inkling that my nearest and dearest clients have scattered or are ready to scatter to the wind’s four corners.

(Why the wind has corners, I do not know. I have four corners myself…right front and rear shiv holders and left front and rear shiv holders.)

Anyway, shivs aside, how am I supposed to keep an eye on those who need it if they are planning on leaving me at home alone?

Although we just successfully concluded the case of Murder Most Rock ‘n’ Roll and the music show is a hit performing nightly at the Crystal Phoenix, I have not forgotten the messy, ragged ends of the previous adventure.

Not long ago, my posse—both human and feline members—had their lives on the line, but the Las Vegas Cat Pack came through the confrontation with snaggle-tooth and ragged nail mostly intact. The outcome is that all of my human associates are concealing the facts of what went down from the police, and, like the Cat Pack, the offending psycho is nowhere to be found.

I was not the only one among the wounded—if you count broken nails as a wound, and I do. Mr. Matt Devine was shot in the side, not seriously only because I launched my twenty fully-packed pounds at the perp’s weapon as the gun fired. He is recovering nicely under the ministrations of my doughty roommate, Miss Temple Barr.

Mr. Max Kinsella received another blow to his already banged-up head. Who knows what setbacks his recovering AWOL memory may encounter?

The Cat Pack acted only as intimidating muscle, under my direction. However, their usual leader and my esteemed streetwise mother, Ma Barker, performed a banshee howl as I jumped the gun and I then administered a four-shiv slash to the assailant’s face as a coup de claw.

This “coup de claw” is a classic finishing move in the art of cat fighting, a swipe across the kisser. Since our opponent is a female of her species, she will see my handsome white-whiskered black face and razor-sharp stilettos every time she looks in a mirror.

Perhaps I should formally introduce myself as founder and CEO of Midnight Investigations, Inc. I plied the mean streets of Las Vegas for many years as a bachelor about town, and then moved into PI work. I now have my own condo with my Titian-haired, live-in PR woman and amateur detective (thanks to me), Miss Temple Barr.

She may not be a Miss much longer if she weds Mr. Matt Devine as planned, alas. Our cozy condo does not need interlopers, especially on the California king-size bed, which is perfect for the two of us right now, with my curl-upable twenty pounds and her one hundred.

Yes, she is a tiny thing as humans go, but she has the heart of a mountain lion and the relentless investigative instincts of a bloodhound. Actually, she is much more attractive in human terms than this characterization sounds.

So back to me again. Yes, the neon-lit Strip is my beat.

For a Vegas institution, I have always kept a low profile. I like my nightlife shaken, not stirred. Being short, dark, and handsome…really short…gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. Miss Temple Barr and I make ideal roomies. I like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll, but she also tolerates my wandering ways.

Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. I play bodyguard without getting in her way. We share a well-honed sense of justice and long, sharp fingernails and have cracked some cases too tough for the local fuzz. She is, after all, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full of public and private relations of all stripes and legalities.

So, there is much private investigative work left for me to do, as usual.

Then you get into the area of private lives. I say you get into that area. I do not. I remain aloof from these alien matters among humans. I will not give away the more intimate details of my roomie’s lifestyle. Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs and my Miss Temple may be in the lose-lose situation of her life and times.

Since Las Vegas is littered with guidebooks as well as bodies, I here provide a rundown of the local landmarks on my particular map of the world. A cast of characters, so to speak:

To wit, the current status of who we are and where we are all at:

MIDNIGHT LOUIE, PI

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-seven books now. I am an “alpha cat”. Since my foundation volume, Cat in an Alphabet Soup (formerly Catnap) debuted, the title sequence features an alphabetical “color” word from A to Z. So, Cat in an Aqua Storm (formerly Pussyfoot) comes next, followed by Cat on a Blue Monday and Cat in a Crimson Haze, etc. until we reach the, ahem, current volume, Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit. I assure you that no cats were actually forced to wear a zebra-striped zoot suit during the events of this book. Not to my knowledge.

MISS TEMPLE BARR, PR

A freelance public relations ace, my lovely roommate is Miss Nancy Drew all grown up and wearing killer spikes. She had come to Las Vegas with her soon-to-be elusive ex-significant other…

MR. MAX KINSELLA, aka The Mystifying Max

The were a marriage-minded couple until he disappeared without a word to Miss Temple shortly after the Vegas move. This sometimes missing-in-action magician has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin Sean died in an Irish Republican Army bomb attack during a post high school jaunt to Ireland, Mr. Max joined the man who became his mentor, Garry Randolph, aka magician Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work all over Europe.

Miss Temple’s elusive ex-significant other has also been sought—on suspicion of murder, no less—by a hard-nosed dame…

LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA

This Las Vegas homicide detective and single mother of teenage Mariah is also the good friend of Miss Temple’s freshly minted new fiancé…

MR. MATT DEVINE

Mr. Matt, aka Mr. Midnight, is a radio talk show shrink on The Midnight Hour. The former Roman Catholic priest came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather and ended up a syndicated celebrity now in line for hosting a national talk show.

MR. RAFI NADIR

After blowing his career at the LAPD when Miss Lt. C. R. Molina mysteriously left him, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah, he is moving up in Vegas hotel security jobs. Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame now knows what is what and who is whose…since she told Mariah that her dad was a dead hero-cop.

MISS KATHLEEN O’CONNOR

Deservedly nicknamed “Kitty the Cutter” by my Miss Temple, she is the local lass that Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in long-ago Northern Ireland but now has turned embittered stalker. Finding Mr. Max as impossible to trace as Lieutenant Molina has, Kitty the C settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, primarily Mr. Matt Devine.

Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s popping up again like Jill the Ripper has been raising hell for we who reside at a vintage round apartment building called the Circle Ritz, owned by seventy-something free spirit, Miss Electra Lark.

Someone arranged for Mr. Max Kinsella to hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while undercover. His traumatic memory loss means he knows he and my roommate were once a committed couple, but he recalls none of the emotional and, ahem, spicy details. So far. And now Mr. Max has vanished again, no doubt making himself a target who will take Kathleen home again to Ireland, where they can lay to rest her ghosts, and his. And maybe make ghosts of each other for eternity.

All this human sex and violence makes me glad that I have a simpler social life, such as just trying to get along with my unacknowledged daughter…

MISS MIDNIGHT LOUISE

This streetwise minx insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Investigations, Inc. She alleges that I am her deadbeat dad, but I will never cop to that charge.

That is how things stand today, full of danger, angst, and confusion. However, things are seldom what they seem, and almost never that way in Las Vegas. So any surprising developments do not surprise me. Everything in Sin City is always up for grabs 24/7—guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps, Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

With this crew, who could?