Cat On A Hyacinth Hunt

Chapter 13

The Mummy Swims at Midnight

"I smell a rat," Miss Midnight Louise observes as the wall of human feet, legs and foot-powder odor behind us disperses among the Oasis's neon-scrawled temple pillars.

"That would not be unusual for the vicinity of a wharf, even an ersatz one."

"I did not like the cut of the figurehead on the intruder barge."

"Well, if it offends you, it will remain underwater and out of sight until the sunken barge is reeled back on its underwater track to its berth behind the hotel. So you need not trouble yourself about it."

"I saw it move."

This gives me pause. Wait! I already have paws. Rather, I should say, this makes me blink.

And think.

Now there is not a species on the planet that is better equipped to detect the infinitely small motion than ours.

I would not be boasting to say that I can spy the tremor of the forward feeler on an ant at thirty paces. I would be only modest to claim to see the winking facets on the eye of a fly perched atop the MGM lion's three-story-tall, noble leonine head. I could even spot a beauty mark on the heaving, er, pastie on the Tropicana's lead chorus girl from the back row.

But the problem is, I did not notice any unsanctioned movement on the wooden figurehead leading the doomed barge to the bottom of the vasty deeps of the Oasis watering hole. Granted, I was more interested in making sure ... seeing that Bastet kept her magnificent likeness carved in stone than in eyeing prow decorations. So I think that Midnight Louise is all wet, but I see that her curiosity has been aroused, and since she has so little in her life of an arousing nature, I take pity on the poor thing and decide to humor her. I can at the same time impress her with my awesome knowledge of how Las Vegas works behind the scenes.

"Very well, my little chickadee. We can stroll around to the staging area to inspect the disturbing figurehead. I am sure that close up it will prove to be as wooden as any figure on the burial chamber wall of a pyramid tomb."

"Now that you mention it, the figure reminded me of a mummy."

"I doubt the folks behind this display would use something as mundane as a mummy for a figurehead. Mummies are extremely featureless and pale."

"Like a ka?" she asks as we stroll toward the moat of desert landscaping that surrounds the Oasis Hotel.

"I have never seen a ka. You would have to ask Karma."

"Karma?"

"Have you never met Karma, Miss Electra Lark's reclusive associate?"

"I spent as little time as I could at the Circle Ritz."

"A pity. Karma is worth consulting, especially when the Unknown rears its indeterminate head." Actually, I am picturing the territorial dispute if these two headstrong babes should meet. No doubt it would be amusing.

"I do not need consultants," Miss Louise says as we trot over the cool, shifting sands trucked in from Mexico. "My senses are sharp and reliable."

Of course I understand the unspoken insult: Midnight Louie is over the hill and too slow to sniff, see and strike these days. Miss Midnight Louise has a lot to learn, but I let her lead the way for the moment.

The launching area is hidden from public view by a high stucco wall and a swaying conga line of palm trees. A knothole-ridden wooden gate offers our only peek into the area. In the checkered illumination of low-intensity work lights we can see the backstage crew readying the two barges for the next show in fifty minutes.

"I'm over the gate. See you later, Pop."

Miss Midnight unsnicks her shivs and is soon scaling the knot holed boards like a feline fly.

Quite an impressive demonstration of athletic ability and youthful enthusiasm. I watch her plummet to a patch of sand on the other side like a stuntcat. She strolls toward the activity with tail high and not a backward look.

Too bad. She misses me scaling the gentle slope of a palm tree, thumping down a couple feet atop the stucco wall and then lofting down from oleander bush to wheelbarrow to ground.

At no time did I tax my limbs or tender pads with a jump of more than two feet. In addition, I was pretty much invisible most of the way, unlike Miss Strut-Your-Stuff Midnight Louise, who is ankling in and out of the work lights like a stripper playing peekaboo with a spotlight.

There is one additional sense to the sight, sound, touch, smell and taste Miss Louise is relying on, and it is not that vaunted sixth sense that our breed are often credited with. It is a sense that must be aged, if not pickled. It is called "common sense," and there is nothing common about the way I use it.

So I follow in the shadows, hearing a worker or two comment on my darling daughter's passage. Luckily, none of them is a perverted cat-hater, so she makes her way unmolested to the dock where the vanquished galley is rising slowly from the dead depths thanks to the services of an automated winch. The technology here is so up-to-date that nothing human is hanging around to watch the Good Barge Bathyscope come afloat again save us two cats.

Miss Louise does not turn when I slip from the shadows to sit beside her.

"This is more interesting than the show out front," she comments. "That rat I smell is even ranker back here."

I nose the air several times, until my white whiskers wave like semaphores. I inhale the scents of stale water, chlorine, grease, wet wood, spent fireworks, human sweat... and fresh kill.

Fresh kill is barely detectable, except to the natural-born predator's nostrils. I may be semiretired when it comes to slaying for my supper, but old instincts never die. Miss Louise is revoltingly right. The resurrected barge has brought up something dead.

There it sits, unattended, barely riding out of the water more than eight feet at the prow.

Miss Louise trots around the side to board it.

I eye the jump and decide to supervise from the dock. Someone needs to play lookout anyway.

She looks like the cow jumping over the moon as her form is silhouetted briefly against an aureole of light as she leaps aboard. I watch her lithe bounds from oar to oar. She moves like the daughter of a Mexican jumping bean, showy but not subtle.

Luckily, the area remains deserted. I watch her make like a wire-walker as, foot crossing before each foot, she minces out over the prow.

Sure enough, the figurehead is not only mum, but swathed with gauze like a mummy. Not just painted gauze, real gauze. I know this because Miss Louise reclines at the prow's very tip, then catapults over the edge.

I shut my ears, my ears flattened back, waiting for the flying water-drops that betoken her imminent midnight dip in the mighty Nile of the Strip.

I hear a muted growl of annoyance, and peek.

Miss Louise is dangling from the mummy's head like a mouse from an alleycat's jaws, her sharp little shivs clinging to mere gauze.

Her tail works wildly, trying to compensate for her unbalanced position.

But, sure enough, the gauze is giving, ripping away, stripping off the mummy's anonymous face.

I squinch my eyes half closed. I do not like to see the dead violated, especially if the dead in question is maybe a couple of grand old in years. Is there no respect for age anywhere? Even if this is just a mock mummy, I expect the unseen face to be the usual freeze-dried skeletal mess that plays so well on TV late shows. Cannot an old dude even be allowed to rot in peace, If not rest in peace?

But I am wrong.

There is plenty of flesh on the face so slowly being revealed by the weight of Miss Midnight Louise's hanging form. Fresh flesh. Fresh kill.

Miss Louise claws upward to avoid losing her grip and swags down more of the material. I glimpse open eyes, like cueballs with black leeches on them.

Speaking of black leeches, that is what Miss Louise herself looks like dangling from the deceased.

Finally, even one of the lazy-faire workers around here wakes up enough to spot her swinging like a bell from the prow of the barge.

"Hey!" he shouts originally. "Get off that prop."

I do not see an airplane propeller anywhere in the vicinity (although if you would wind up Miss Louise and swing her by the tail she might resemble one), but she evidently decides that she has done her duty in attracting human attention to the obvious scene of a crime.

She climbs the poor dead dude's face like he was chopped liver and scrambles over the prow-top to repeat her tap dance down the oars and to the dock.

Without a word, we act as one and dash back into the shadow of some shed.

Meanwhile, yon worker shambles over like the man with the hoe in the famous painting.

He stops where I had sat to observe the unveiling, and stares long and hard at the prow and the tawdry figurehead.

"Mummy," he mutters, but he is not calling for his maternal parent. "We didn't have no mummy up front. It was an Egyptian mermaid. With great boobs." He edges toward where the dock meets water, and looks harder.

I was not aware of such a thing as an Egyptian mermaid, although, judging from the figurehead fronting Cleopatra's Barge Restaurant at Caesars Palace, great boobs appear to have been a classical human theme. That asp must have had a field day.

Anyway, yon slow-witted witness suddenly straightens and hollers. "Hey! Guys! There's this stiff on the prow. Get over here!"

A stiff on the skiff. Finally, the light dawns. Louise and I eye each other in the dusk of our cover. Are we going to make a night of it and see what happens next? You bet your best sarcophagus!