“We can handle it, Van,” Nicky urged. “We have the underground, Jackson Action Haunted Mine Ride okayed on the Crystal Phoenix end, and the rails are already laid. That’s why I brought in Santiago. He’s first and foremost a renowned and innovative architect. We’re lucky he’s interested in our rather limited project.”
“Nonsense, Nicky,” Santiago objected. “Las Vegas is a petri dish for architects. A playground. Anything goes.”
“Say,” Wild Blue Pike exclaimed as a new work light revealed more tunnel, “this sure reminds me of our mining days working the Silver Spoon out near Rabbit Hole Spring, don’t it, boys? This tunnel safe?”
“Of course.” Santiago was offended. “Everything above us and to the side has been shored up by steel struts. These ‘walls’ you see are concrete and stone aggregate, troweled on like hand-sculpted walls in houses. It only seems to be natural stone.”
“Waal, this don’t seem all that natural,” Cranky said, approaching a section.
He pulled a metal measuring tape off his worn leather belt and rapped it on the ersatz stone.
A small hollow knock sounded.
A Rat in Time Saves Nine Lives
Needless to say, I am always “all ears.”
And I am not alone. At the moment.
Miss Midnight Louise and I have been exploring the tunnel from the Crystal Phoenix side. “Spelunking,” I believe they call it.
I call it “looking for Elvis.”
Of course, I do not tell Missy Louise that. She is most skeptical on the subject of Elvis. She would better believe me if I said that Michael Jackson had appeared to me in the tunnel created a few seasons back. Actually, since that was named the “Jersey Joe Jackson Action Attraction,” I would not be surprised if the King of Pop had popped in to visit the King en route to rock ’n’ roll heaven.
I must say I am glad that a major concert career is not in my past or my future. It seems to be a fatal job choice.
This subterranean rendezvous was Miss Midnight Louise’s idea. She hissed the suggestion in my ear during the brouhaha of the Midnight family reunion at the police substation, whilst my parents (her grandparents) were squaring off.
“I have been eavesdropping in the Crystal Phoenix executive offices,” Louise informs me as we amble along in the almost-dark, following the steel tracks of the defunct Haunted Mine Ride portion of the attraction.
I spot a faint glow far ahead of us, but I do not wish to mention any lights at the ends of tunnels, because (1) it is a cliché, and I am nothing if not original, and (2) that has become a phrase synonymous with moving on to another existential plane, like death, and I do not intend to use my battle-sharp shivs for plucking a harp quite yet.
“Eavesdropping is admirable,” I admit, “and one of our species’ finest skills. The human observer sees us as flicking our ears against the incursions of vermin, when their banal maunderings are the object of our interest.”
“It is not very banal around the Crystal Phoenix of late,” Louise says dryly. “Not with Mr. Nicky and Miss Temple around to cook up new promotional schemes. Miss Van von Rhine and I have our mitts full keeping the lid on.”
“Never fear. I am here to supervise now.”
Miss Midnight Louise favors me with the sight of her tail high-flagging it ahead of me down the Chunnel of Crime-to-Be.
I remind myself that we are possibly—even probably—related and follow her in what you might call a disinterested way and I might call a darn shame.
The overhead work lights remind me of a night game of baseball or some other entertainment where human and feline interests meet. I must say the human recreational propensity for chasing balls of all sizes, from tiny golf ball to big basketball, is one of their most endearing qualities.
Even as I muse, Miss Midnight Louise can be seen to stop suddenly ahead.
She crouches and freezes.
I trot to catch up to her, but just as I arrive she bounds away.
I am too old to fall for this game!
I bound after her to the section of wall where she has landed.
Alas, by the time I hit the wall, she has bounded on, and I bounce off rough concrete like a Ping-Pong ball. Not the kind of sport I had in mind—me being the thing that is smacked, whacked, and dribbled.
(In fact, a bit of unleashed drool from the impact is now meandering down the hairs of my chinny chin chin.)
I pause to hastily tidy my moustache, shocked to see Miss Midnight Louise shooting along the base of the wall some thirty feet away. Luckily, she stops to start digging frantically, so I am able to come abreast of her.
Will I deliver a verbal thrashing!
Before I can get my growl wound up, I hear heavy footsteps approaching.
“Dig, you old fool!” Miss Midnight Louise admonishes me, when the snit should be on the other mitt. “They will never get the idea unless we ham it up like crazy.”
I agree that humans can be unbelievably dense, but am myself a bit puzzled.
“Dig!” she orders. “Unless you want your roommate to walk right past the entrance to the third tunnel.”
Third tunnel? What are number one and number two … ? No, I am not referring to the coy way people describe the major variations of dog doo-doo and dog dewatering.
We have tunnels from Gangsters and the Phoenix meeting in the middle.
Third tunnel?
I see only a crack in the seam where dirt floor meets plastered wall.
Then a small furry head pokes through.
I need no further invitation to scrape away with all shivs going like a circular saw. No dirty rat is going to move in on my territory, which is anywhere I happen to be.
“Louie!” a familiar oncoming female voice calls in shock behind me.
“Louise,” calls an even more shocked male voice.
“Dig until we bare dirt,” Miss Midnight Louise hisses into my ear hairs until they tickle. “They will not get the picture unless we draw out every last detail.”
“Must be mice,” I hear Macho Mario Fontana say, dismissing our prey.
Mice? My well-placed spitball would handle mice. We are talking bigger game here.
“Is the bigger one our Three O’Clock Louie?” I hear chubby Spuds Lonnigan inquire in a slightly breathless wheeze.
He is a fine one to mistake me for my older, fatter father! That is like the potbellied stove calling the cattle black. Or some such phrase.
I hear a sharp squeal from within the wall and see that Louise has pinned a long, hairless tail with her fanned front shivs.
“Rats,” my brilliant Miss Temple points out. “We will have to fumigate. No way Gangsters can run a restaurant down here until the entire rat population is completely eradicated.”
Murderous little thing, is she not?
That’s my roomie!
I lay a big mitt over Louise’s dainty one and pull back with one powerful jerk, revealing the entire rat. Case closed.
Before I can do a karate chop to the neck, the rat’s racing claws kick something big and dusty out of its hole right into our faces.
We sneeze in tandem, our claws relaxing in one uncontrollable reflex moment.
Rats! Exhibit A is history. We step back, boxing our nostrils and vibrissae free of some pretty well-aged dirt and sand.
My Miss Temple approaches on her hind claws, aka spike heels, and bends to pick up the trash. Humans, even the best of them, are hard to figure sometimes.
It is obvious that Louise and I deserve to be picked up and made much of for our valiant effort to seek, find, and agitate vermin. Not that we would accept such namby-pamby fondling even when well deserved. We are professionals. Just buy us a steak and salmon dinner and call it quits.
Miss Temple unfolds the wad of paper.
“This looks like … a stock certificate.”
“Yeah?” Nicky asks. “That’s worth about a penny these days.”
Miss Van von Rhine stretches out a hand. “Let me see.”
The light is dim, but long, tall Pitchblende O’Hara steps up and produces a tiny high-intensity flashlight.