Cat In An Alien X-Ray

Previously in

Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times …

Las Vegas is my beat.

I love this rambling, gambling entertainment capital with its super-sized dose of lights, action, and cameras—security or otherwise.

The lights … the security and tourist cameras … and the action remain as bright and frenetic as always. Our landmark hotel-casinos and allied institutions are still puttin’ on the glitz.

For a Las Vegas institution, I have always kept a low profile.

You do not hear about me on the nightly news. That is how I like it. That is the way any primo PI would like it. The name is Louie, Midnight Louie. I am a noir kind of guy, inside or out and about. 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. I also like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll. So would some other guys, but they do not have my lush hirsute advantages.

Miss Temple Barr and I make perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I play her bodyguard without getting in her way. Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. 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.

Our most recent crime-busting adventure took us deep into a conspiracy of magicians that resulted in a string of murders being solved, while some remain unsolved.

That Neon Nightmare club, now shut down, was also the site of a key incident in this ongoing tangle. That event was a shakedown, not a murder. And—I must blush to admit, if I ever do anything as wimpy as blush—I was not there to witness this event, in the course of protecting my Miss Temple. I hear on good authority that two takeover thugs (wearing concealing masks and cloaks à la Mr. Darth Vader of film fame) crashed a meeting of the conspiring magicians who called themselves “the Synth.” The pair demanded at gunpoint the Synth members present hand over a hoard of concealed cash. In my absence, the Las Vegas feral cat pack, led by Miss Midnight Louise (no relation) made the invading pair into props for an Olympics-level scratching post claw-down. The Vaders fled, trailing blood, but remain anonymous.

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. Why can they not be sensible and let Mother Nature or a visit to the vet for what is called “altering” arrange these things? Or resort to breeders, aka “matchmaking sites,” if you are of the tony, pedigreed sort? While it is important that humans assist in discouraging the overpopulation of our kind, when it comes to their own mating behavior, there is an overpopulation of indecision and angst.

I do not see how having two perfectly adequate males as a selection for one’s life mate is a problem. If, unlike me, you have not had the happy procedure that allows me to be a bon vivant simultaneously entertaining multiple dating possibilities whilst not littering irresponsibly … you are out of luck, so get over it and go monogamous for life. Otherwise, I can recommend a good surgeon who tosses in a free tummy tuck with the deal.

I cannot give away the more intimate details of my roomie’s life. 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.

Here is the current status of where we are all at:

None can deny that the Las Vegas crime scene is big time, and I have been treading these mean neon streets for twenty-five books now. I am an “alpha cat.” Since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I commenced to a title sequence that is as sweet and simple as B to Z.

My alphabet begins with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. After that, the title’s color word is in alphabetical order up to the, ahem, current volume, Cat in an Alien X-Ray.

(Obviously, a large dose of Weird has hit Sin City, the one blot on the map it is hard to out-weird. However, my breed is known for a mystical bent, not to mention reincarnation to the power of nine, so I am more than somewhat ready to tango with anything alien.)

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, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drew on killer spikes, freelance PR ace Miss Temple Barr, who had reunited with her elusive love …

… the once and future missing-in-action magician Mr. Max Kinsella, who 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.

The elusive Mr. Max has also been sought—on suspicion of murder—by a hard-nosed dame, Las Vegas homicide detective Lieutenant C. R. Molina, single mother of teenage Mariah.…

Mama Molina is also the good friend of Miss Temple’s freshly minted fiancé, Mr. Matt Devine, aka Mr. Midnight, a radio talk show shrink on The Midnight Hour. This former Roman Catholic priest came to Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather and ended up becoming a syndicated radio celebrity.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen Regina Molina is not thrilled that her former flame—Mr. Rafi Nadir, working in Las Vegas after blowing his career at the LAPD, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah—now knows what is what and who is whose.…

Meanwhile, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that Max and his cousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland …

… one Miss Kathleen O’Connor, deservedly christened Kitty the Cutter by Miss Temple. Finding Mr. Max as impossible to trace as Lieutenant Molina did, Kitty the C settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearest innocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine.…

Now that Miss Kathleen O’Connor’s sad, and later sadistic, history indicates she might not be dead and buried like all rotten elements, things are shaking up again for we who reside at a vintage round apartment building called the Circle Ritz. Ex-resident Mr. Max Kinsella is no longer MIA, although I saw him hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while in the guise of a bungee-jumping magician, the Phantom Mage.

That Mr. Max’s recent miraculous resurrection coincides with my ever-lovin’ roommate going over to the Light Side in her romantic life (our handsome blond upstairs neighbor, Mr. Matt Devine) only adds to the angst and confusion.

However, things are seldom what they seem, and almost never that in Las Vegas. A magician may have as many lives as a cat, in my humble estimation, and events now bear me out.

Meanwhile, any surprising developments do not surprise me. Everything is always up for grabs in Las Vegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significant others.

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, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her as Midnight Investigations, Inc.…

… and needing to unearth more about the Vaders and the Synth, a cabal of magicians that may be responsible for a lot of murderous cold cases in town, and are now the objects of growing international interest, but as MIA as Mr. Max has been lately.

So, there you have it, the usual human stew—folks good, bad, and hardly indifferent—totally mixed up and at odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously, it is left to me to solve all their mysteries and nail some crooks along the way.

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?