“I can slow and stop you two girls,” I protest, “but once you have Hyacinth on that cable netting, you three will outweigh me.”
Louise is now head rescuer and not to be gainsaid. “Hopefully, we can all scrabble back up the rope while you hold everything steady. You do know how to hold the rope steady? You just clamp your two paws together on it and pray.”
Before I can get out a quick ejaculation to my favorite Egyptian goddess, Bast, the impetuous Louise has extended shivs on every limb and leaped onto the pile of limp cable, pushing it and herself out over the looming gulf that is now dark and empty, although cordoned off with crime scene tape.
If this does not work, there will be much speculation in the Las Vegas papers tomorrow about how and why four formerly cool cats should choose to leap to their deaths like lemmings, a vastly inferior species.
Before I can blink or get a go-ahead from Bast, the disabled snarl of rope and Miss Midnight Louise flash past my puss. Squeaker leaps aboard, grappling hook shivs sinking into the cable.
So far, so good. We now have three ladies in dire peril.
I throw a full body slam at the long rope rising up as they sink down and pin it to the mat . . . or to the platform that supports me. If this thing goes, we are all pancakes.
My move was made just in time. The falling cage of cable jerks to a halt opposite Hyacinth’s clinging spot.
I feel the rope fibers fighting to slip through my shivs but tighten everything I have, and it holds.
I watch while Squeaker leans out and prods Hyacinth with a delicate shiv. Shangri-La’s partner seems dazed and lethargic. I guess seeing your main human go smash on a marble floor is not a life-instilling experience, even if Shangri-La was bad to the bone from the word “Shazam.”
Maybe this rescue attempt is misguided.
Squeaker has overcome her timidity to reach out even farther and sting Hyacinth’s long, lean dangling form with a spurful of shivs. Getting her own back, in a way, prodding the other cat to a life-affirming leap onto the already hefty mass of rope I am anchoring.
Louise and Squeaker have started clambering up, making the whole rope quiver like a bowlful of Santa Claus belly. This is not helping me maintain my grasp. And Hyacinth is still playing the swooning southern belle. In moments, the whole kit and caboodle will plummet down, unstoppable, and I will be the sole survivor. Or the counterweight.
It is not in my code to let the women and children sink with the ship.
Belle. Hmmm. Bell!
I embrace my rope and swing out over the abyss.
Whomp!
I descend like a dude who has been presented with custom-fit concrete booties.
My move works like a charm. The Medusa-mass of entwined rope and feline hitchhikers snaps right up to the ceiling pulley, allowing Louise and Squeaker and Hyacinth to drop off on a secure platform and lay there preening their nails.
It does, however, also leave me swinging out over the abyss like that ugly bell-ringer guy from France. Not my favorite position in front of the ladies.
“Louie!” Miss Squeaker cries in heart-rending fashion.
Miss Midnight Louise is mum, and I can see that Miss Hyacinth is still comatose and that she is the only one not licking her ravaged nails, which might give some credence to that curare-nail-polish boast, which means my Miss Temple’s Mr. Max is in dire danger of blood poisoning.
But it does not behoove me to reflect on the imminent danger other dudes may be facing. I have done my survival of the species thing and saved the ladies.
Who will save Midnight Louie?
You can bet it is not going to be the ASPCA.
I take a deep breath and suck in my gut.
Someone has to reach for the falling star; I guess it is up to me.
First I go limp. Second, I let go.
A chorus of wailing disbelief from above cannot stop me.
I swing down onto the platform that Hyacinth claimed and snap my shivs out so I slide down it. It gives under my flailing weight and sinks like an elevator. As the momentum gets suicidal, I release every shiv, and catch hold of the thin bungee cord that Shangri-La fell from before Mr. Max made a superhuman effort and caught her by one wrist.
I am hanging by two nail sheaths, but the bungee cord has enough elastic left to stretch gently under my slighter feline weight. I am still downward bound and can see only the furtive glimmer of security lamps on the geography below.
The bungee cord is getting tired of the down escalator and is tensing its fibers to rebound up again.
I let go and close my eyes, calling on Bast.
I see a transparent pyramid coming up at me fast, planning to transfix a very tender part of my anatomy on its sharp, onion-dome tip. I execute a Greg Louganis triple-twist-and-turn dive to make a one-point landing—stomach down—oooof! There goes my Salmon Supreme with Smoked Oyster Sauce—and I am sliding down the steep smooth invisible roof, searching in vain for the 365-carat diamond on the Czar Alexander scepter to wink at me. It is gone for good and I may be a goner for good too.
I have engraved four lines into the pyramid side before I slide off onto the viewing platform surrounding the scepter area. I land on all four feet—whew, that stings!—my head unbloody and unbowed, but my pads burning like Hades and my head aching like Zeus’s before that upstart Athena burst out from his brain.
“Way to go, Daddy-o,” a voice calls from high, high above. Midnight Louise, of course. “I never knew that you had won a Purple Heart in Olympic air skiing.”
My heart is not all that is gonna be purple from this little stunt.
Deadhead Curtain
Raiser
“Sorry,” Detective Alch told Temple way too bright and early the next morning, “but I’ve asked around this entire end of the hotel, and you’re the only one who’d seen Shangri-La without makeup. And that includes her performing partner, the Cloaked Conjuror. So, you’ll have to do ID duty.”
“She was right down here with me the other day, on the main exhibition floor. Dozens of people could have seen her.”
“But they didn’t. You say you did.”
“I thought I did.”
Alch scratched his thatch of salt-and-pepper hair, more from habit than necessity. “At least we’ll know if the Asian woman you talked with was the dead woman, or not.”
Temple sighed. Deeply. “You mean I have to go the coroner’s facility.”
“Not a formal autopsy. They have a viewing chamber.”
“I’ve heard of it,” Temple said quickly, recalling Matt’s description of IDing his dead stepfather.
“Ordinarily we could use a photo,” Alch said, “but this is a pretty critical ID since the victim was anonymous, in a way. Can’t take any chances. Sorry.”
Everyone was telling her he was sorry these days. Except Matt, for a change. A big change. But now she was sorry. She hadn’t told him about Max’s latest gig as Suspect of the Week.
“You’ve got a lot of catch-up work here at the New Millennium, I know, Miss Barr,” Detective Alch said. “I’ll drive you over personally and have you back ASAP.”
“Where’s your partner, the petite fleur of the Crimes Against Persons unit?”
Alch guffawed at that description. “ ‘Petite fleur’ with dragonclaw thorns. Sorry, no Su on board. Naw, they always send me on these unpleasant runs. Figure I’ll ease along the poor civilian who has to gawk at dead bodies.”
“Quite a compliment,” Temple allowed. “Molina knows I wouldn’t do it if she asked.”
“Now of course you would. You’re a good citizen. Clear up this thing with a solid ID, and who knows what suspects we could find other than your boyfriend.”
“You know?”
“It’s my job to put two and two together, and you two have been a duo for a long time.”
“A long time,” Temple repeated.
By then Morrie Alch had her out the door and was ushering her into the front seat of an unmarked police car. It was a nondescript vehicle except for the flat computer screen and keyboard and two-way radio enthroned on the console.