She may not be a Miss much longer if she weds Mr. Matt Devine as planned, alas. 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 her one hundred.
Yes, she is a tiny thing as humans go, but 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.
So back to me again. Yes, the neon-lit Strip is my beat.
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…gets me overlooked and underestimated, which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfect undercover guy. Miss Temple Barr and I make ideal roomies. I like to hunker down under the covers with my little doll, but she also tolerates my wandering ways.
Call me Muscle in Midnight Black. I play bodyguard without getting in her way. 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. I remain aloof from these alien matters among humans. I will not give away the more intimate details of my roomie’s lifestyle. Let me just say that everything it seemed you could bet on is now up for grabs and my Miss Temple may be in the lose-lose situation of her life and times.
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-seven 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 a Zebra Zoot Suit. I assure you that no cats were actually forced to wear a zebra-striped zoot suit during the events of this book. Not to my knowledge.
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, aka The Mystifying Max
The 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, aka magician Gandolph the Great, in undercover counterterrorism work all over Europe.
Miss Temple’s elusive ex-significant other has also been sought—on suspicion of murder, no less—by a hard-nosed dame…
LIEUTENANT C. R. MOLINA
This 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, aka 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 now in line for hosting a national talk show.
MR. RAFI NADIR
After blowing his career at the LAPD when Miss Lt. C. R. Molina mysteriously left him, and for years the unsuspecting father of Mariah, he is moving up in Vegas hotel security jobs. 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 that her dad was a dead hero-cop.
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 but now has 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.
Someone arranged for Mr. Max Kinsella to hit the wall of the Neon Nightmare club with lethal impact while undercover. His 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 Mr. Max has vanished again, no doubt making himself a target who will take Kathleen home again to Ireland, where they can lay to rest her ghosts, and his. And maybe make ghosts of each other for eternity.
All this human 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.
That is how things stand today, full of danger, angst, and confusion. 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.
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?
1
Off-Black
In every relationship, there are times when polite illusions must not only be tolerated, but embraced.
At least, that is what I tell myself as I sneak out of my Miss Temple’s rooms long after my namesake midnight hour, dragging a white plastic Albertson’s grocery bag over the walnut parquet condo floor to the ajar patio door, and outside.
With a powerful swing of my neck and shoulder muscles, I cast the bag and its ghastly contents over the balcony’s low railing. The bag plummets through the night like a suicide victim in a nightshirt. It lands one story below with a sickening crunch on the asphalt, barely missing the rooftop of Mr. Matt Devine’s freebie silver Jaguar. Car, that is, not the Big Cat.