Nothing.
Max was free to move on to the next low point of the evening.
Chapter 24
Chuck Wagon
You would think Miss Midnight Louise was a casino owner showing off a new armored truck.
There we are gathered in the delivery area behind a wholesale grocery establishment far from the shake, rock, rattle and roll of the Strip, our only audience a circle of Dumpsters and our only spotlight the sickle moon-on-the-half-shell, peeking over the rippled edge of a corrugated roofline.
There is just me and Miss Louise. Oh. And the two noses with fungus among us, name of Golda and Groucho.
I cannot believe that I am out here of a chilly March night with my dearly beloved not-daughter, Midnight Louise, and two pieces of dandelion fluff that have been foisted upon me by my erstwhile assistant, Nose E.
“What did you say these two are?” I hiss at Louise as we all hunker down near ground zero, eyeing the object of our expedition.
“Yorkshire terriers.”
“Well, this is not Yorkshire anymore,” I say, inhaling a bit of desert sagebrush on the wind and exhaling it with an untimely sneeze.
“Shhhh!” Louise hisses back at me. “And you say they are noisy.”
I eye our objective: the truck.
It is big, white, and nondescript, in fact a refrigerator on wheels.
Miss Louise is trying to sell this anemic pumpkin on ice as our coach to the palace. Or our buckboard to the ranch.
“Think of it as a chuck wagon,” she urges. “Meals on wheels. You can snack on the way.”
“And freeze our tails off,” I growl. Then I look at Golda and Groucho. I realize that I am not sure if they have tails. “Ears off.” Do they have ears? “Noses off.” I know they have noses. Those I can see, those shiny wet-asphalt blobs dead center under the perky little red bows on their noggins. I think there are matching eyes behind the waterfall of silky gold and gray hair dangling from the bows.
“These two will be frozen Vienna sausages before we even get out of Vegas,” I say. “Noses on ice are worth nothing.”
“The unit is not fully refrigerated. They do not wish to deliver ice cubes, merely keep the fresh meat from spoiling.”
“This is my aim exactly. I wish to keep the fresh meat from spoiling, namely us.”
Midnight Louise shakes her head as if to dislodge a flea in her ear: me.
“Look, Pops. Do not tell me it cannot be done, because I have already done it and anything I can do you can do better.”
“Darn tootin’,” say I before I can think. I am about to head out to the ranch on a chuck wagon with climate control with one setting: chilly.
“And,” Midnight Louise adds with a glance at our two canine partners, “I did not even have earmuffs for my trip to and fro.”
So it transpires that we all hunker down behind a Dumpster and wait until men pushing carts of raw meat come out of the building. They open the double doors at the truck’s rear and start loading. It is interesting that this delivery van only operates under dark of night. Miss Midnight Louise has scouted the delivery service for Rancho Exotica, decided that we need trackers, no matter how minute, and that we can rescue the leopard and clear it of murder with the mere use of our wits and the Yorkie’s miniature noses. I am not convinced of any of it.
“How do we get in the truck undetected?” I wonder in a soft growl.
“I will distract the men just before they finish loading. You three hop in and hide. I will come in last. On arrival they will unload and then take each cartful away. That is when we debark.”
“These two will never debark.” I jerk my head over my shoulder at the twins, who have been mum as ordered, but not without as much fidgeting as a human two-year-old would do.
It goes just like she wrote. Well, almost that way, not counting hitches. And there are plenty of hitches. When the last cart is almost unloaded, Midnight Louise creeps around to the front of the truck and there emits an unearthly scream. In other words, she sounds like a puma in heat. I thought she had been surgically prevented from engaging in such tasteless displays. So much for modern birth control methods.
The two men hesitate, scratch their heads, look around the side of the truck.
Miss Louise leaps atop the truck’s hood and we hear the sweet sounds of claws scratching painted metal.
The men run around to the front of the truck.
“Come on!” I order the twins. “Eats ahoy.”
I hear their tiny nails making mouse tracks behind me as we race to the truck’s gaping back doors.
I am ready to leap up into the icy heart of darkness when I hear an objecting squeak behind me.
“Mr. Midnight!”
I pause to regard the speaker: Golda. Or Groucho. They all look alike to me. “What?”
“We cannot leap that high.”
“Oh, for Bast’s sake…that is what you get for having pushpins for legs.”
Meanwhile, there is screaming and cursing coming from the front of the vehicle. Louise is doing the screaming. She is a strong girl, but I do not know how long she can hold the attention of two cursing teamsters without incurring severe bodily harm.
Nothing for it but lowering myself to their level.
I bend down, bare my incisors and canines, squint my eyes shut in distaste, and bite down on dog hair until I have pincered a scrawny bit of loose skin along with it.
I leap into the truck, one Yorkie dangling from my mouth like a mouse wearing a Brigitte Bardot wig. I deposit it behind a huge slab of meat.
I bound down, get another mouthful of Yorkie toupee and vault upward again, my pads kissing chill aluminum flooring. This one I hide behind a stack of semifrozen mackerels.
Then I lay me down to sleep behind what would be a standing rib roast, were it cooked, and prepare for a cold, bumpy ride, also waiting for Midnight Louise to pounce down beside me.
The sound of a few last items being tossed into the truck makes me cringe. It is dim enough in here that a few extra carcasses aren’t going to show much, but I do not want post-flattened Yorkie when we arrive at the ranch.
Suddenly it is as black as midnight. The double doors slam shut; the latches fall to.
Trapped until arrival.
And where is Louise?
Could something have happened to her?
Naw.
I am not going to worry about it.
I have enough to worry about.
A yip from one side of the area is echoed by a sneeze from the other.
Oh, great. Nasal congestion. Just what a sniffing-nose dog needs.
I may be riding on one nostril and a prayer tonight.
The truck jerks into gear. I try to sense if we roll over any impediments.
Naw.
Midnight Louise is one tough kitty-cat. She will be fine.
She will be high, dry, and dogless, safe in the city, while I roll toward the Great Nothing in the company of two toy terriers and a truckload of fresh meat designated for the gullets of seven-hundred-pound Big Cats.
The only thing that is going to eat Midnight Louise is knowing that she missed the boat to fun and adventure in greater Las Vegas.
Who has chosen the better part, I ask you?
I, ah, I ah…ask…ah…you…ask…as…ah CHOO!
Chapter 25
Guilt-Edged Invitation
When Max knocked on the scuffed apartment door he wasn’t surprised to hear a muffled radio or television blare through the hollow-core wood.