Cat in an Alphabet Soup

5

The Fall Guy

Oh, the personal complications that result from the simple if somewhat unprecedented impulse to do a good deed in a naughty world.

I refer to my subterfuge of allowing someone else to stumble over the body while in pursuit of yours truly. I had not anticipated having to put up with the inconvenience of my own capture. Nor would it be lost on any of my intimate acquaintances that a canvas book bag, however sturdy, is less than sufficient to contain a dude of my fighting weight should I require egress.

Yet it is my last wish at the scene of the crime to create a scene of another kind, so I go quietly into that good, navy-blue-canvas night.

The portable cell is another matter. Even as clever an operator as myself knows that those steel bars latch on the outside. My particular prison is formed from nubbly plastic in an ugly shade of beige that resembles certain commercial cat foods of my very passing acquaintance. It does not do a thing for my coloring, not to mention a physique that was never meant to be crammed into a cell designed for the wimpy common housecat.

I take all this in relatively decent grace. The Master Plan calls for my swift and discreet removal from any connection—mental or physical—with the corpus delicti. As even schemes of mice and men oft gang a-gummy, to paraphrase the Scottish poet, so does Midnight Louie’s.

For one thing, I do not count on landing in the custody of a feisty doll like Miss Temple Barr. During my day in stir at the convention center she keeps me close by most of the time. (Who can blame her? She is not an undiscriminating little doll.)

This permits me to hear more than rests easily on my abnormally sharp ears. Although I have revealed the dastardly deed without establishing myself as a suspect, I had not expected my self-preservation tactic to make a sweet-and-tart little dish like this Temple doll the fall girl, so to speak.

It becomes clear, as the voices of ABA and convention center policy growl outside my polyurethane prison walls, that Miss Temple Barr is in worse trouble than myself, her job being that of burying bodies rather than tripping over them.

Although she reacts with enough fighting spirit to see her through a midnight free-for-all behind a mud-wrestling palace, my responsibility in this matter is all too clear: on my honor as a gentleman I am obliged to extract one little doll from one big mess that she would not be in—were it not for her unfortunate attraction to my fleeing form.

My strongest hand is to keep my cards glued to the chest, sit tight and play dumb. This is where the indignity comes in: I must allow myself to be treated like a domestic pet.

So I submit to being dragged from my cell in the most interesting garden behind the intriguing Circle Ritz without making a run for it. This joint, however unusual, is not up to the standards of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel. Any fool who knows Midnight Louie would anticipate my normal game plan upon release from stir: up a palm tree, down to a rooftop and outa there.

However, I restrain myself and it is a good thing. I have always been a superb inside dude, if I say so myself, and it is when I am wafted by elevator to Miss Temple Barr's charming Pied-à-terre, otherwise known as a crash pad, that I get the skinny on her situation.

She is worried; this is obvious when she thinks herself alone and unobserved. (Some of my best pals have said that I ought to go into this psychoanalyzing game. I have a talent for listening to people’s troubles—and I even have the whiskers for the job.)

Anyway, this little doll chirrups to herself and me as she goes about her nightly domestic duties, which include an outing to the Quik Pik for a bag of concrete makings and an aluminum roaster pan.

The last occasion I see a bag of that size and likely contents, Guido Calzone is preparing a pair of permanent booties and a quick trip to the bottom of Lake Mead for “Noodles” Venucci. As for the roaster pan, certain large fowls of my acquaintance have not fared well in such a vicinity.

Even worse than my speculations is in store, as I discover late in the night, but first the most important revelation. I find it on the inside of Miss Temple Barr’s closet door, always a significant location. People tend to stash their dope, as well as outgrown clothes and dreams, in closets. I am partial to such areas myself, mainly because they are cozy, dark and quiet, qualities not often to be found in the same place at one time in a town like Las Vegas.

Anyway, there it is, a poster of this commanding dude resembling a cross between Count Dracula and Tom Cruise. I have not encountered such a piercing stare since I went eye to eye with an ailurophobic pit bull. This particular poster boy has black hair. I have always found the ladies to be especially partial to dudes having black hair, with which I am especially well equipped. It is obvious that my undeniable attractions have led Miss Temple Barr astray, and not for the first time.

I explore my new base of operations while she snoozes in the bedroom. Not a bad pad; I discover several choice corners that are not really corners, more like angles. This appeals to my sense of humor, not to mention self-defense. And the patio outside the living room windows is on the second floor, making it a handy perch for tidbits of an avian nature.

Yes, Midnight Louie could do all right in this joint, and nowhere do I sniff the trail of a yammering human creature who is wet behind the ears and in other more unmentionable places and does not have the inbred good manners or sense to shut up and use its tongue for basic hygiene.

My own natural demands, I admit, compel me to explore the roaster pan, which Miss Temple has wisely tucked behind the guest bathroom door. This is a cheesy aluminum affair—talk about “Tin Pan Alley”—full up with the worst excuse for sand that I have ever seen—dusty, coarse nuggets of no earthly value whatsoever. When I give them an exploratory paw, a cloud of dust clogs my sinuses and cakes my freshly groomed top coat.

I am even more chagrined when I realize for what purpose this pathetic dish of gravel is intended. I am, however, a good citizen and no litterbug except when forced to it, so I avail myself of the opportunity to mark my new digs.

Later, I slip into the bedroom (I am very good at this sort of maneuver also, and have always been an “upstairs man”) and allow my little doll the honor of a warm body to curl up next to. This is not an unpleasant arrangement, especially when she wakes up and makes little manipulations with my ears, my favorite egregious zone. I cannot keep the ladies off me, to tell the truth, and have never been so crude as to complain about this turn of events.

But then, all of a sudden-like, Miss Temple Barr sits bolt upright, as if she has just taken a stroll down Nightmare Alley.

“Oh, kitty!” she says.

I cringe, which is hard to detect in the dark. No one calls me “kitty” except tourists; even though some twenty million of them mill around per year, I see as little of them as possible. Miss Temple Barr is not fully house-trained as yet, so I forgive her gaffe.

“Oh, kitty,” she coos again, like I say. "What a brilliant idea! You are going to help me defuse this murder thing!"

Now she is talking!

Of course I will make every effort to solve the foul deed so that my little doll’s job is no longer in jeopardy. I am relieved that she has tumbled so quickly to my unique value, even if it took a dream to do it. I return posthaste to my beauty sleep.

I know I will need my rest because I have a feeling (I am also a tad psychic, did I mention this?) that we are going to have a big day tomorrow.