Cat In An Alphabet Endgame

Previously in

Midnight Louie’s Lives and Times…

A cat is said to have nine lives.

Where I live, on and off the Strip, the odds are your average hip but homeless street cat will be Las Vegas lucky to live three lives.

(I prefer “homeless” to mean “free to be me”, and I did quite well as a self-employed individual, finally becoming unofficial house detective at the Crystal Phoenix hotel-casino.).

One thing led to another, and now I reside at a cool condominium off the Strip, and volunteer as full-time bodyguard to Miss Temple Barr.

She is quite the fearless and feisty little doll, who has the advantage of looking as cute as a Yorkshire terrier that has just chewed your Christmas slippers to Kingdom Come while possessing the incisive insight of Miss Marple on speed.

We are quite the crime-fighting team, both of us being underestimated, which is annoying in my case because I am large and muscular for my breed, have all my hair follicles operating on full power, move with leopard-like grace, carry more razor-sharp blades than an infomercial Ginsu knife pitchman and, on top of that, am quite the dude with the ladies.

So you would think I am a pretty keen keeper of my own nine lives.

Hah!

Since I became an undercover private investigator dedicated to assisting a few of my closest human associates, I have been running through lives willy-nilly. Right now, not only are the next three in doubt, but if life were a craps table—where it is for many who only visit here—I would need to be rolling “boxcars”, with sixes face up on both dice. That roll is otherwise called (after me, doubtless) rolling “midnight”. To the individual not knowledgeable about gambling, that would add up to the number twelve.

To put all my cards on the table here, my circle of protectees has outperformed their growth potential, and I do not have lives enough to sacrifice for the looming trouble I see brewing for each and every one of them.

Miss Temple Barr has no idea the man she has put all her money on in the romance stakes is now risking his paltry single life investigating some more than just shady Las Vegas mob history.

Or that the man to whom she first lost her heart has made a dangerous deal with vengeful terrorists to betray the cause she and both of her main men have been pursuing for so long.

Or that sundry other people she trusted and considered honest are secretly at odds with those who should be their allies, keeping each other in the dark, and my Miss Temple most of all.

It is to shudder. And perhaps too much for even my capable shivs to sort out.

Here 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 room with Titian-haired, live-in gal pal and amateur detective, Miss Temple Barr.

She may not be a Miss much longer, alas, if she weds Mr. Matt Devine as planned. 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 Miss Temple’s one hundred.

Yes, she is a tiny thing as humans go, but as I said, 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.

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…makes me your perfect undercover guy. Miss Temple Barr and I are ideal roomies.

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.

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-eight 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 an Alphabet Endgame. I assure you that this is indeed the end of the Alphabet series, books A to Z sandwiched between two novels with “Alphabet” in the title. That is it. Finis, as the French say. Or is that fin? Or finito? Whatever, I can advise that it would not be wise to overlook anybody’s multiple-lives factor for the near future.

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, a.k.a. The Mystifying Max

They 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, a.k.a. magician Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work all over Europe.

Now however, those events have been turned inside out. Mr. Max, during his latest Ireland visit, has made a dark bargain—with what is left of the Irish Republican Army after the Northern Ireland peace agreement—to save a life. And he still remains under suspicion of murder, no less—by a hard-nosed dame…

LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA

This tough 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, a.k.a., 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 in line for hosting a national TV talk show. Now Miss Temple’s wellbeing may be protected only by Mr. Matt sacrificing his own.

MR. RAFI NADIR

After blowing his career at the LAPD when his live-in lady, not yet Miss Lt. C. R. Molina, mysteriously left him, has been for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah. 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 years ago that her dad was a dead hero-cop. There are soon going to be no hero-cops in this secret and shattered family.

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, who 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.

Now reunited with her long-ago IRA associates, Miss Kathleen knows a life is at stake unless the man she has tormented for the past two years betrays an associate of his she stalked.

Someone (Miss Kathleen?) arranged for Mr. Max Kinsella to hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while undercover. His enduring 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 he returns as a secret agent again.

All this human conniving and canoodling and 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.

MA BARKER

My long-lost mama who gave me a last tummy-lick and prodded my rear out of our humble abode next to the Bellagio Dumpsters. (Even high-end hotels need down-to-earth garbage control.) I elected to continue on my own, though Ma now runs the toughest feline street gang in Vegas. She is not pretty, but she is pretty effective. I have never quite banished a quiver at the memory of a four shiv-tip disciplinary slap-down from Mommy Dearest.

So that is how things stand today, even more full of danger, angst, and criminal pursuits. 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.

I comfort myself that my ordeals may soon end and I can pull the covers up over my thick blanket of pages and catch some beauty sleep for a decade or two. But wait…

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?