Cat with an Emerald Eye

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  So, though he tried to regard the Vampire as merely the best and the cheapest available, practical transportation, considering his situation, he couldn't fool himself.

  all that power unnerved him. The machine's great worth as a classic 'cycle (hey, he had used the right, hip term almost naturally) made him edgy. Its implied silver sexiness made him feel like an imposter.

  It was such... flagrantly conspicuous consumption. It was so... inescapably macho. And just in running operation terms, it was so much machine that Matt sometimes thought it would fly.

  And it was menacing, he knew, when he rode it wearing the anonymous, shaded-visor helmet the law required.

  People on the street expected something of the man who rode such a machine, and it wasn't him.

  Matt opened the shed's double wooden doors that opened on the back of the Circle Ritz's parking lot. All that late-day light made the 'cycle shine like a nova star. The Vampire screamed its presence just by sitting still, its powerful engine not making a single, pulsing, impatient vroom-vroom.

  He mounted it, turned the key, eased it as slowly as it would go out the doors, turned it to idle, pushed the kickstand down, the one he never trusted to hold up half a ton of steel and chrome.

  After he shut the shed tight and locked it, he came around to the waiting Vampire.

  He rode it competently, he knew, but not with ease or style. Sometimes, when in traffic, he appreciated the machine's liquid slipping past stalled cars, in and around obstacles. Sometimes he almost felt the slipstream smoothness of it, the tilt of his weight as it wove this way or that, so they were one, footloose entity.

  Those moments were rare. Mostly he was worried sick about it. Worried that someone would steal it from outside ConTact despite the lock. Worried that the throttle on the handle would take on a will and life of its own and run away with him. Worried that someone might think he thought he was somebody for having such a monster. Worried. Worried. Worried.

  That's what he had studied to do for all his life: worry about right and wrong, all his actions and pretensions, other people's good regard, his grades, his state of grace, the afterlife, today's small sins.

  Matt detached the helmet from the rear. Electra's "Speed Queen" helmet hung on a hook inside the shed. Matt's helmet was his only investment in his motorcycle-riding career, and he didn't want anything written on it.

  He smiled as he booted the kickstand aside and revved the engine simultaneously.

  A Hesketh Vampire's corporate symbol was a chicken, royally crowned and prominently displayed. Only the British could get away with that kind of underplaying. Still, Matt didn't think a "Chicken" emblazoned helmet would do his health any good.

  With the one thousand cc engine growling out fair warning to any small-cylinder vehicles foolish enough to be out there, Matt revved and roared his incongruous way onto the side street.

  He still caught the lurid comet tail of the Strip's evening rush hour when he headed to ConTact at six-thirty. Tonight the wind was chilly, and his nylon windbreaker offered as much protection against it as waxed paper.

  Potential speed demon or not, he got caught, along with about three hundred cars, by the long red light at Sahara Avenue.

  While their conjoined engines idled, growling like sleeping tigers, a stream of pedestrians filled the crosswalks. Matt shivered as he kept the big bike balanced. It was colder sitting still than pushing into the wind, oddly enough. The lined leather gloves he wore on rare visits home to Chicago were welcome. He saw why leather had become a hallmark of the biker crowd: practicality. The menace had come afterward.

  Maybe it was because his mind was on idle, and growling with impatience like the surrounding cars. Or because his thoughts had hopscotched to Chicago, knee-deep snows and bitter, biting wind. Bitter, biting memories.

  Or because the day was in that twilight zone, when traffic lights are just beginning to brighten in contrast to the waning natural light, when shadows seem to stretch over Las Vegas all the way from the western mountains. As if a giant hand were reaching out to squeeze the light out of life like wringing lemon juice from a rind.

  Or maybe it was Temple's talk of seances and death and ghosts.

  But Matt recognized a certain shamble as it moved past his day, dreaming vision. A man in the crowd: aviator sunglasses, though the daylight had given up the ghost for today; cowboy hat; jeans jacket; hunched shoulders. Sideburns.

  Matt blinked.

  The man was already three quarters of the way through the lengthy crosswalk, swallowed to all but the high-crowned, dingy Western hat by the people who had followed and passed him.

  Still. Matt studied his position. Far right lane. Guy heading away from him to the left.

  Couldn't be worse, couldn't be more impossible. About as impossible as that walk, that hesitating lope that never seemed in a hurry to get anywhere, but always got there faster than you thought. The icy wind Matt felt was not external. Cold was not a consideration anymore.

  How could he ... ?

  The semaphore light changed to green. Surrounding cars sprang forward, fog lights straining into the creeping shadow of night. Matt found himself making a split-second decision. Maybe the Hesketh Vampire was making it: leaning left, slipping into a slot between a dawdling Volvo and a sprinting Camaro, nipping across the path of a lumbering limo as long as the buffet line at the Goliath. Dodging front and rear fenders, coasting between the massive metal walls of Chevrolet Suburbans, only inches to spare. He felt like Charlton Heston in the chariot-race scene from The Ten Commandments. Only Matt's rival was not Messala with a whip wanting to win at any cost, but the invisible whip of memory, which al-ways drove to lose....

  By the next traffic light, Charleston Boulevard, Matt was first in line in the left turn lane, waiting, waiting for time to make the red light green. Don't it make, don't it make, don't it make your red eyes green? When the light finally blinked, the Hesketh Vampire whipped around the concrete island in a U-turn so tight that Matt felt momentarily horizontal to the street.

  Now he was veering across lanes to the right. God, if he so much as scraped Electra's--

  Kinsella's--precious scooter! That Geo wasn't moving, so... in and out. The machine was a born accomplice to recklessness, Matt was discovering. It seemed to exult in his insane stampede across lines of traffic. Where would the walker be now? Turning left or right along the Strip?

  Heading straight on Sahara? Anywhere in the crowd. Matt's only edge was that battered hat.

  Back at the same intersection as before, only facing south, with the light having withdrawn another three shades pale and the whole flat valley looking drenched in dusk, with darkness soon to clench its angry, hidden fist until the evening sky was squeezed of everything but stars....

  Which way?

  No choice.

  The light ahead had gone green. A pulsing, pausing metal wall leaped forward, the Vampire first again. Matt scanned the groups of people dribbling into Circus-Circus, the ones walking down the sidewalk to the Stardust or the Frontier, the Treasure Island and Mirage, or even the Luxor's far faint obelisk and pyramid.

  No cowboy hats, no hats at all.

  A driveway. Had to turn around, go back.

  No driveway, not for a long time. The Strip was like that, long segments of hotel frontage uninterrupted by anything but panhandlers.

  Where? Vanishing where, even now? Back there.

  Matt was sweating despite the chill wind. Rivulets ran down the sides of his face behind the Plexiglas visor. Had to turn back.

  The Vampire jumped the curb like a steeplechase steed, cruised across the sidewalk and bumped down into the next driveway, not even noticing what it led to, intersecting the long semicircle almost at the halfway point.

  Matt followed it around until it hit a parking-lot road heading west. He streaked along the straightaway, swerving when a car poked its headlights out of an aisle between parked vehicles.

  A horn screamed annoyance, but he and the Vampire were d
ucking into another aisle, hunting for an exit.

  They paused together at the deserted entrance to Sahara, hearts beating in concert. The engine's rumble was louder. A few people ambled along the sidewalk on either side, but the cold was too off-putting to encourage much foot traffic on this dead side of the hotel.

  Matt looked right and left. Saw no cowboy hat. He lifted the amber-smoke visor to study the street again, Nothing. No one worth anything.

  Finally he checked his watch, its pale green face night time bright now in the deepening dusk.

  Ten to seven. Time to get to ConTact.

  Matt waited anyway. Maybe the man had stopped to buy a newspaper from the corner machines. Maybe he would come by, if he hadn't ducked into Circus Circus or Slots-A-Fun.

  Maybe he was still walking east on Sahara.

  Maybe he was, but Matt had to get to work on time. He was needed there. Here, he was chasing his imagination. The wind dried the liquid on his skin into pinpricks of sleet. He gave the Vampire its head, like a horse. And it took it. It rolled out onto the asphalt of the street, purring.

  At the light he watched the steady red while scanning the intersection crowds for the right cowboy hat, for any cowboy hat.

  There was none. Green blossomed in the dark as he and the Vampire started forward like automatons. A LVMPD police car passed in the opposite direction. Matt held the 'cycle to a decorous speed and pattern now: stayed in place, kept to the right lane. He looked right and left, but saw nothing.

  Still, he was certain of something. The man who had crossed the Strip while he waited stalled at a red light had walked like only one man he had ever known. Cliff Effinger. The stepfather from Hell who was supposed to be dead.

  Matt knew that rolling walk, as surely as he had been uncertain of the corpse lying still and chill in the coroner's viewing booth. Matt looked down again from a distance on the earthly remains of the reputed Cliff Effinger. He couldn't identify him for sure, as Lieutenant Molina had wanted. Yet the man-in-a-crosswalk's name had screamed out with every step he took.

  So, was Effinger the mysterious corpse who had fallen to the Crystal Phoenix craps table a few weeks ago? Or was a dead man walking? Was he anonymously patronizing the same casinos that had drawn him to Las Vegas so many years ago? How would Matt find him, if his instinct was right?

  What would he do if he did find him?

  His hand twisted on the Vampire's throttle. The bike plunged forward into the valley of the green light. Matt hadn't noticed that it had changed, but somehow the motorcycle was always one heartbeat ahead of him.

  Chapter 20

  Second Sight

  While Miss Temple Barr and Miss Electra Lark have scampered off to the psychic fair, I remain at home, trying to catch up on my catnaps.

  That late-night lalapalooza at the Hell-o-ween Haunted Homestead certainly gave me plenty to dream about. I have not seen such a stellar lineup of spooks since I accidentally stumbled into the wax museum over on Harmon.

  Frankly, I cannot make head or tail of what was real and what was not that night, and I am not used to being in the dark about such matters. Perhaps I have made a mistake in not accompanying my roommate and her landlady to the Oasis, but I do my better thinking with plenty of sleep. Between these two females and the Sacred Cat of Karma upstairs, I have barely been able to slit an eye shut.

  So I drowse, but by evening I awaken to a familiar assault: getting the psychic saltshaker on the tail, so to speak. I lurch groggily upright, eyeing the ceiling. I know the familiar who is pulling my plume.

  "All right," I tell it. "I am not up to another scaling of the Sacred Pyramid. This time Midnight Louie does not go to the mountain; the mountain slides down to his level. Get it?"

  I wait for all heaven to break loose, but the ceiling is silent and still. No disgruntled gobs of plaster come at me like spitballs, no conjured enforcers, like tarantula spiders, rain down on my rebellious head.

  Something out of the ordinary does occur, though. A spark flashes in the middle of the bedroom television screen, and I have not hit the remote control, not even in rolling over to get up. No picture fills the dark space, only the original spark, which bounces around like one of my favorite toys, a Ping-Pong ball. In fact, I am about to rush the TV screen for a game of cat and mouse when a voice begins broadcasting in my head.

  My first suspicion is aliens taking over the airways, but the tone of the voice convinces me it is just Karma blowing the usual hot air. Her actual words do not bear repeating (that is to say, I cannot bear repeating them to any interested parties), but the upshot of her bulletin is that a second seance will soon be in progress at the haunted house and I should attend.

  This piece of intelligence perks up my ears and winds up my tail. A second seance? Will Miss Temple be angry to miss such a landmark event! Although I hate to owe Karma for anything, I tip my invisible fedora in her direction before making my way out.

  How, you may ask, is Midnight Louie going to leave the Circle Ritz with the bathroom window still closed tighter than a cashier's till? Elementary. I will repeat myself and slip out the same French door that Karma's little out-of-body light beam jimmied open not long before. It never bothers me to accept the aid of a lesser light. I have proven myself to be a supreme escape artist many a time before this. No doubt that is why Houdini waited until last to show up at the previous seance. He must have become tired of always having to prove he can still do it.

  In fact, I am beginning to adopt that attitude myself when it comes to my love life.

  Holy Havana brown, but, baby, it is cold outside! I hate these cooler Nevada nights, and immediately wish I was back on Miss Temple's bed watching a good basketball game.

  But I know that the best antidote to a dose of below-the-belt temperatures is a brisk trot that really gets the old fat rolls swaying. Within half an hour, I am once again outside the disreputable fagade that represents the pinnacle of the human imagination for horror. Frankly, the real horror is its pathetically low profile in the fright department. But I do not take a visit to this second seance lightly; now that certain celebrity ghosts have found a way through to the mortal world, they could make a mass comeback. Just think of all the former performers who could return to torture our airways in the future: Desi Arnaz and Vera Zorina, just to run the gamut of talent from A to Z.

  Despite this awful scenario, I do my duty. I find a chink in the building fagade that has been plugged by the wind-blown refuse. I two-step right over Crawford Buchanan's barely recognizable mug and an old Mystifying Max flyer to wriggle into the false floor area where cords and hoses and pipes--oh my!--make like spaghetti. Soon I am shaking dust and dirt from my outer coat and trotting up to the room that rises and sinks like an elevator. I prefer to consider it a mobile but somewhat square crystal ball, given the glass walls surrounding it.

  Who will be here? I wonder, not even thinking of the spirit world yet. Who will the mediums be? Or is that the media? There will surely be multimedia here this cold autumn afternoon. I hope one of them is that dame in white. I can tell from thirty feet away that she does not care for my kind, so I could make sure to land on her snow-white lap just to make things interesting I always do love to leave my calling cards where they are not expected, and some shiny black hairs would relieve the dull monotony of her garb.

  I bound up the stairs to the room's only doors, which stand slightly ajar.

  But the chick et al. have flown the coop. No one is there. I see only the table and its complement of high-backed wooden chairs. No arms clench the carved oak chair arms. No feet fidget under the table. No human heads peek over the high backs.

  I am about to get dramatic and draw the curse of catkind down upon Karma (there is nothing like an empty stage to bring out the Olivier in me), when I hear an odd sound and freeze, my every overcoat hair on end. (All right, I have heard an odd sound here before, but then I was not present all by my lonesome.)

  The sound is mechanical, a hum from a hundred generators, ye
t soft and utterly without expression or variance. I remember how UFOs are always seen hovering over power lines. Has no one considered that visitations to successful seances may be aliens trying to communicate? It seems to me that there is quite a connection to be made, and several lucrative books and videotapes in it. I am surprised that Mr. Crawford Buchanan has not dreamed up a show on this for Hot Heads: Humming Hominids from the Hyades Haunt High Desert House not far from Hacienda Hotel for Halloween!

  I am ready to execute an about-face when I hear another sound: a tiny chime that sounds odiously familiar. I search the shadows for the source of the noise. The chime tinkles again, just as I spot a form sliding bonelessly from one chair seat to the floor.

  "Out, out, damn Spot," I am about to abjure, except that it is not a dog. Nor is it a frog. Nor a tarantula. Not even anything so mouse like as a bat.

  "What are you doing here?" I demand.

  He sashays over to me, collar chiming like the pendant on one of those cud-chewing bossies'

  necks. Behind him comes the hum, even and loud, only now I recognize the source.

  "I am assisting Karma tonight," Ingram says, sitting before me to polish the knuckles on his immaculate white gloves. "We need to know who you saw the last time, as we do not wish to call up legions of spirits we will simply have to return to sender, A wearying process for us all, including the returnees."

  "How do you know so much about this Spiritualism stuff?" I wonder.

  "My dear chap, I am a bookstore mascot. I have spent hours poring over the many tomes on the paranormal that pass through the Thrill n' Quill. Miss Maeveleen Pearl is a great fan of the supernatural."

  There he sits in his tattered, tiger-striped sweater that is all baggy at the elbows and hocks, his yellow eyes amber with satisfaction, acting as if he owned the occult.

  "I am not sure," I say, "that I wish to sit in on a stance run by a bunch of amateurs."

  "Amateurs? Louie, you do not know our pedigrees." He nods over his tacky shoulder.