“He’s not a saint, and it would take the patience of one to stand for this.”
“I’m emailing you a photo of Sean and Deirdre, his wife.”
“I am not going to be emotionally blackmailed into going AWOL from Vegas to Racine, Wisconsin, of all places.”
“Sure you will. You’re a compassionate guy, too.”
“I’m not looking at the photo if you send it. You cannot guilt me into putting Matt second again.”
“Listen. Tell Matt that helping me settle the Kelly and Kinsella family matters is the surest way to get me out of the picture.”
“Kelly and Kinsella. Sounds like a law firm.”
“Or a string of Irish B and Bs.”
“You retired? Impossible.”
“You not curious? Impossible.”
“Okay. I am curious. Where is Kitty the Cutter in all this?”
The pause was ominous. “She’s confined to Ireland at the moment. We observed her grown daughter at a distance and then toured a Magdalene asylum so she could vent her spleen on an old nun, me, and God.”
“Grown daughter? My God. You believe in living dangerously more than ever.”
“Think about it, Temple. Racine won’t be dangerous, just exhausting. The ends of stories always are. I need you.”
And then he hung up.
Well, dang and a worse word for emphasis. She didn’t need him. Not anymore. Last thing she needed. Her renegade thumb had brought up the photo. She’d expected Max Jr., but Sean Kelly’s graying mahogany-red hair and freckled face spotted with specs of what must be shrapnel startled her.
Deirdre had a long, thick bushel of curly red-gold hair and a Sean O’Casey face, naturally strong and handsome. Temple had loved to recite the Irish playwright’s dialogue in playwriting class in college. Had Temple’s red hair been a main attraction for Max? Had Max’s Irish heritage attracted her? Had both of them been drawn to unsuspected traces of their pasts, although Max’s had been bred in the bone and the blood, and hers only in the imagination?
Temple looked at the phone screen, the photo. Time to turn the page. Close the book.
She’d ask Matt to write the last chapter. He deserved it.
45
Last Acts
The day after the night he’d stormed Electra’s new building, been released by Molina to make his midnight radio show just in time, and had come home to Temple’s place for a fervent and fevered reunion after they’d had a double dose of the aphrodisiac of danger, Matt stood in a small lot near a busy, cheesy Vegas corner staring at a motley assortment of older-model cars.
He’d lived such a straight and narrow life as a priest he had mounted up few regrets. Maybe not strangling Cliff Effinger was still one of them, given how deeply the man had impacted his, and also Temple’s, life even after his nasty end.
Now he regretted sacrificing Electra’s Probe to storming her new building’s front doors. A sincere regret, but one also selfish. Now he had to buy a replacement car for undercover work, ASAP, and be discreet about it. He’d never had a father to teach him to drive or to buy a car.
There’d been nothing for it but to call the man standing next to him, a man less than ten years older. When he’d reached Rafi Nadir at the Goliath Hotel, he hadn’t known how to describe what he needed.
“Hey,” Rafi had responded jovially. “What you need, my man, is a Tote-the-Note place. What kind of credit can you come up with?”
“Solid.”
“Or better yet. Cash?”
“How much?”
“You’re the wheeler-dealer. Tell me.”
“I was a priest for many years. I saved the little I earned.”
“Priest? You’re not doing badly with the redhead for all that.” Before Matt could take offense, Rafi said, “Sorry. I’ve run into some Catholic chicks in my time. Okay. Grab a cool five grand cash in small enough bills to haggle with, and meet me where I tell you. Four p.m. I’m on night shift. I’ll pick you up.”
“Uh, thanks. I think. Last time you picked me up was kind of a downer.”
Rafi chuckled. “Don’t worry. We’re going to enjoy this.”
Rafi had been optimistic. Rafi had enjoyed it. They had played good cop/bad cop—guess who was which ?—and Matt left in a 2001 gray Chevy Impala LS, rear spoiler, dickered down to thirty-nine hundred and ninety-five.
“It’s sort of dull,” Matt had told Rafi while the papers were being processed.
“That’s the idea. Be unnoticeable.”
So Matt drove his new old car to Woodrow Wetherly’s place, learning the vintage dashboard layout as he went.
This was a different encounter. Now Matt had seen what had been in the trunk of the beater car that had gone from Wetherly’s place into the desert and back.
The car and the trunk that had been waiting outside Electra’s hulking new building…
…while the lethal chandelier had emitted its last rays of electrified light before being later disconnected, disassembled, and taken away, like Leon Nemo, Punch Adcock and Katt Zydeco.
…while Matt had seen the driver he’d followed to Red Rock Canyon and back finally leave the Chevy and slip around to the back of the building.
…when Matt had left the Probe carrying its jack and sneaked up to the Chevy trunk to find out what buried desert treasure occupied its trunk. He’d hardly needed the jack to break in, the locking mechanism was so flimsy.
He had been braced for bones.
What he saw in the dim light from the street lamp was worse.
When he’d pulled off the bulky canvas covering, he’d found the bulky, battered old 35-pound jackhammer powering a long thick chisel spike, its angular steel pointed like a pencil that had been sharpened by a razor knife. The metal body was spotted with dark gouts of red paint.
A.k.a. blood.
Mobster Giaccomo Petrocelli. Jack the Hammer. So named for jack-hammering people to death.
A legend long dead, but not forgotten.
And his favorite murder weapon retrieved to murder again.
Then Matt saw the headlights of a fleet of silent oncoming cars, obviously Fontana Inc., and decided to bust the Probe into the building…now!
That was last night. This was tonight. So here was Matt, where he did not want to be, but had to be.
“You know,” the old guy said, leaning back into his big, battered recliner. “The time has come to talk of many things.”
Matt felt like the Walrus strolling down the path with the Carpenter toward some innocent oysters. Rightfully. Who would eat whom?
“Yes, my young friend. Kid. Sonny boy. I suspect you are on the verge of knowing too much. Your Midnight Hour may be closer than you think.”
“I do think that myself,” Matt said.
“And yet you came back. You’re beginning to interest me again. I admit you could have your uses. ‘Call me irresponsible’,” he crooned in a raw croak. And cackled. “I always did love Sinatra. And I don’t think your foolish alibis will bore me.”
“Is that the next line of the song?” Matt asked.
“Maybe. Depends on you if there is a next line to the song.”
Tailpiece
Midnight Louie Sounds Off
Call me Speechless. Which is my default setting anyway.
Who knew I was in for a career revival? When my Miss Temple comes home and falls on her knees before me and nuzzles my neck I know something fishy is up and it is not Chicken of the Sea.
I also know I am not Bast with a gender adjustment and do in no way merit bowing and scraping.
“Oh, Louie,” she exclaims. “It is so exciting.”
Yeah? Say Fancy Feast is importing sea scallops on the half-shell for my personal supply and that would be exciting.
She then unrolls this media deal and tells me what a star I will be and how we will work together again and be able to use the new zebra-stripe carrier I abhor while flitting from city to city to do talk shows.
At last! My previous on-camera br
illiance has been identified. I have even been able to drag Miss Temple along in a bit role, obtaining her a certain fame and a slew of new high-heeled shoes for me to embrace in a little game of Kick and Bite the Leather. Plus she will get a payment almost as handsome as I am, and residuals. Perhaps a Pixar movie someday.
But then…she starts sweet-talking me into the infamous plan to conceal my svelte athletic form in a stupid zebra-striped zoot suit, not to mention a matching new version of the previously offending fedora hat. Using the Fontana brothers as a backup act in similar baggy pants and zebra-print lapels does nothing to assuage my sense of being presented as a figure of fun rather than of 007-level rakish charm. Is this proper attire for one who has been favorably compared to Sherlock Holmes (without the aversion to females), Columbo, and Mike Hammer?
Who does she think I am, Lord Peter Wimsey?
I turn my head and look at the ceiling, all disinterested like, so she will owe me. However, after my transcendent experience with Elvis and the gang at Zebra Zoot Suit Choo-Choo, I figure I owe it to my public to get out there again and cut a rug and earn my treats. Karma is not the only one who can channel the past.
Now on to the nitpicking. No good deed goes unpunished, it is said, and here all we of Las Vegas Cat Pack nation are indeed going unhailed and unheeded.
After running our footpads off on the piping-hot Vegas pavements from the edge of Downtown to the Lower Strip turf to track a murderer, tail sleazy purveyors of naughty entertainment and foil scheming mobsters, we have been left high and dry. With not even a little catnip to make the “high” part of the state pleasant.
And these are not the only sins Miss Temple has committed recently.
I can eavesdrop on a cell phone call. My burning ears tell me Miss Temple may be rushing off to an alien clime called Wisconsin, leaving Mr. Matt Devine in the lurch and surely miffed. I cannot blame him. My Miss Temple may mean well, but she can exhibit a shocking disregard for her nearest and dearest in her quest to solve everyone else’s problems personally. I too suffer from this tendency.
I am mightily miffed myself, and have hied myself up a floor to Mr. Matt’s residence, where we can hang out together as two wronged bachelors. Miss Midnight Louise argues that only Miss Temple can “compensate” for Mr. Max’s memory issues on the momentous occasion of reuniting with his family and his newly found-alive cousin Sean. Miss Midnight Louise was always partial to Mr. Max, who has always been overrated in my opinion.
We shall see whether my candidate or hers will win out in the end.
Very Best Fishes,
Midnight Louie, Esq.
Want Midnight Louie’s print or e-scribe Scratching Post-Intelligencer
newsletter or information on his custom T-shirt?
Contact Louie and Carole at PO BOX 33155
Fort Worth TX 76163-1555
Or sign up at www.carolenelsondouglas.com.
E-mail: [email protected]
Tailpiece
Carole Nelson Douglas on Where
Midnight Louie is Going…or Not
Some readers have been fretting in recent years that arriving at the Z book in Louie’s Alphabetical adventures means saying “Goodbye”. We were flattered. We were also worried about reassuring readers in a New Media world where book format, distribution, and sales has changed, changed utterly in just a few years.
First, the next book is Cat in an Alphabet Endgame.
Well, doesn’t that mean “the End”?
It means the end of the alphabet titles, but not of Louie and his world. Now, because of cataclysmic changes in the publishing industry, books don’t need title signals to the order in which they were written to be read.
After Louie debuted in Catnap, not wanting to imitate an established, hugely successful cat mystery series’ title format, I used Pussyfoot for my next title. (This is admirable ethics, but very bad marketing.) In fact, I refused to use the publisher’s proposed title sequence as “too close,” but did come up with a format with “cat” in it. By then, I realized that the series would unreel like an ensemble-cast TV series that lasted several seasons. So when the publisher accepted Cat on a Blue Monday, I realized the titles could continue with an internal alphabet on the color (or pattern, later) word.
That solved a problem of book marketing then. Mysteries series couldn’t be numbered, because if every title was not currently on the store shelf, readers wouldn’t pick up a series at Book Four, say. And all books sold on shelves, not websites. For a lovely long while my Midnight Louie and Irene Adler series occupied two entire shelves at the chain bookstores. Then chain stores started stocking fewer books. (Independent bookstores offered book-savvy clerks to advise readers about book order, but began to suffer from the Big Box competition.)
As Crimson Haze and Diamond Dazzle came out, readers began noticing the internal alphabet, just another fun little “clue” they figured out. Meanwhile, I was constantly explaining that the alphabet started with the second letter on the third book, after Catnap and Pussyfoot. I suggested to the publisher that we combine the first two books under a new “A” title, Cat in an Aqua Something. They graciously took a hard look at doing that, but the combined “A” book would be too long to market at a low-enough cover price.
Then came ebooks and bookselling websites. All of an author’s books were on virtual “shelves” together. Authors whose print books would have eventually moldered into forgotten dust now had a “literary legacy” with copyrights that would last for seventy years after their deaths.
I took this as time to tidy up the things that “can’t be helped” in the way traditional publishing worked. Catnap in eBook became Cat in an Alphabet Soup. Taking that as a “foundation” title, I changed Pussyfoot to Cat in an Aqua Storm, after the car Temple drove when the series began. Cat on a Blue Monday now fit in place. And I had an extra “concluding” book after Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit to wrap up the continuing personal storylines and crime plots, Cat in an Alphabet Endgame.
As for Louie and me, we’re looking forward to exploring a reimagined world where the old remains in place but fascinating new characters and cases show up. Louie’s a veteran at this, having debuted in the first category romance quartet (with mystery) and then moving to this mystery series when, as I found myself searching for a way to explain to a library audience recently, I came up with “he was violated by a romance editor”. We all laughed hysterically. The fact is forty percent of his narration went to the cutting-room floor, without me being notified.
I used to say you can do that to me (because worse violations have happened in publishing), but you can’t do that to a twenty-pound alley cat who thinks he’s Sam Spade.
But even Louie can’t reinvent himself single-handedly. Only readers can do that. Thank you all for your support of the long journey Louie and company have made. The four human protagonists have all been forced to reexamine their family origins and issues and their own misconceptions and flaws so they can reconcile their pasts with the present, and their futures. Louie’s cat family has made the journey too. Few authors are permitted, given the ups and downs of a publishing career, to finish such a long series.
It you think this sounds like “Good-bye,” it is really a way of saying, Hang on, the best is yet to be. In all of our lives.
Is Midnight Louie your kind of cat?
Carole has been dragging home rescue cats since she was old enough to walk. Louie is based on a survival-savvy cat someone else rescued, but Carole helped find him a home. If you like Louie and his books, let everyone know by posting a review at your favorite online retailer and sign up for ML’s Scratching Post-Intelligencer newsletter.
Visit Carole at:
carolenelsondouglas.com
www.wishlist.com
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Carole with the late Midnight Louie Jr.
ML III appears in the half-moon window
CAROLE NELSON DOUGLAS is the award-winning author of sixty-two novels in the mystery/thriller,
women’s fiction, and science fiction/fantasy genres.
She is noted for the long-running Midnight Louie, feline PI, cozy-noir mystery series (Cat in an Alphabet Soup, Cat in an Aqua Storm, Cat on a Blue Monday, etc.) and the Delilah Street, Paranormal Investigator, noir urban fantasy series (Dancing with Werewolves, etc.). Midnight Louie prowls the “slightly surreal” Vegas of today, narrating interlarded chapters in his alley-cat noir voice. Delilah walks the mean streets of a paranormally post-apocalyptic Sin City, fighting supernatural mobsters with Louie’s wile, wit and grit.
Douglas was the first author to make a Sherlockian female character, Irene Adler, a series protagonist, with the New York Times Notable Book of the Year, Good Night, Mr. Holmes, and the first woman to write a Holmes spin-off series. Her award nominations run from the Agatha to the Nebula, including Lifetime Achievement Awards from RT Book Reviews for Mystery, Suspense, Versatility, and as a Pioneer of Publishing for her groundbreaking multi-genre work. She has won a clowder of Catwriters’ Association first place Muse awards, and is a four-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s Rita award in four different categories.
An award-winning daily newspaper reporter and editor in Minnesota, she moved south to write fiction full-time and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. She does a mean Marilyn Monroe impersonation, collects vintage clothing and homeless cats, and enjoys Zumba, but has never danced with werewolves. (That she knows of.)
Visit Carole at www.carolenelsondouglas.com
https://www.facebook.com/CaroleNelsonDouglas
Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit Page 31
