Carole Douglas - Cat in a Red Hot Rage

Previously in

Midnight Louie'sLives and Times .. .

Crime, chicanery, and chicks are my beat.

Iam a noir kind of guy, inside and out.

I admit it. I am a shameless admirer of the female of the species.Any species. Of course, not all females are dames. Some are little dolls, like my petite roommate, MissTempleBarr.

Thedifference between dames and little dolls? Dames can take care of themselves,period. Little dolls can take care of themselvesalso but they are not averse to letting the male of the species think that they have an occasional role inthe Master Plan too.

Thatis why my MissTemple and I are perfect roomies. She tolerates my wandering ways. I make myself usefullooking after her without letting her know about it. Call me Muscle in MidnightBlack. In our time we have cracked a few cases too tough for the local fuzz ofthe human persuasion, law enforcement division. That does not always win eitherof us popularity contests, but we would rather be right there than on the side-lines when something crooked is going down. We sharea well-honed sense of justice and long, sharpfingernails.

So when I hear that any major new attraction is coming to Las Vegas,I figure that one way or another my lively little roommate, the petite andtoothsome, will be spike heelhigh in the planning and execution. She is, afterall, a freelance public relations specialist, and Las Vegas is full ofpublic relations of all stripes and legalities. In this case, though, I did notfigure just how personally she would be involved in murder with hattitude.

Ishould introduce myself: Midnight Louie, Pl. I am not your usual gumshoe, in that my feet do not wear shoesof any stripe, but shivs. I havecertain attributes, such as being short, dark, and handsome ... reallyshort. That gets me overlooked and un- derestimated,which is what the savvy operative wants anyway. I am your perfectundercover guy. I also like to hunker down underthe covers with my little doll. My adventures would fill a book, and in fact I have several out. My life isone ongoing TV series in which I as hero extract my hapless humanfriends from fixes of their own making and literally nail crooks.

After the recent dramatic turn of events,most of my human associates are prettyshell-shocked. Not even an ace feline PI may be able to solve theirvarious predicaments in the areas , ofcrime and punishment ... and PR, as in Personal Relationships.

As a serial killer finder in a multivolume mystery series(not to mention a primomouthpiece), it behooves me to update my readers old and new on past crimes andpresent tensions.

Nonecan deny that the Las Vegascrime scene is a pretty busy place, and I have been treading these mean neonstreets for nineteen books now. When I callmyself an "alphacat," some think I am merely asserting mynatural male and feline dominance, but no.I merely reference the fact that since I debuted in Catnap and Pussyfoot, I then commenced to a title sequence thatis as sweet and simple as B to Z.

That is where I began myalphabet, with the B in Cat on a Blue Monday. From then on, the color word in thetitle is in alphabetical order up to thecurrent volume, Cat in a Red HotRage.

SinceI associate with a multifarious and nefarious crew of iuman beings, and since Las Vegas is littered with guideDooks as well as bodies, I wish to provide arundown of the ocal landmarks on my particular map of the world. A castof characters,so to speak: To wit, my lovely roommate and high-heel devotee, Miss Nancy Drewon killer spikes, freelance PR ace MISS TEMPLEBARR, who had reunited withher elusive love ...

... the once missing-in-action magician MR. MAX KINSELLA, who has good reason for invisibility. After his cousin SEAN died ina bomb attack during a posthigh school jaunt to Ireland, he went into undercover counterterrorism work with his mentor,GANDOLPH THE GREAT, whoseunsolved murder while unmasking phony psychics at a Halloween sance is stillon the books....

Meanwhile,Mr. Max is sought by another dame, Las Vegashomicide detective LIEUTENANT C. R.MOLINA, mother of teenage MARIAH... and the good friend of MissTemple'srecent good friend, MR. MATT DEVINE,a radio talk-show shrink and formerRoman Catholic priest who came to Las Vegas to track down his abusive stepfather, now dead and buried. By whose hand no one isquite sure.

Speaking of unhappy pasts, Miss Lieutenant Carmen ReginaMolina is not thrilled that her formerflame, MR. RAFI NADIR, theunsuspecting father of Mariah, is in Las Vegas taking on shady muscle jobs after blowing hiscareer at the LAPD ... or that Mr. Max Kinsella is aware of Rafi and his pastrelationship to hers truly.

Inthe meantime, Mr. Matt drew a stalker, the local lass that young Max and hiscousin Sean boyishly competed for in that long-ago Ireland ...

... one MISS KATHLEEN O'CONNOR, deservedly christened by Miss Templeas Kitty the Cutter. Finding Mr. Max impossible to trace, she settled for harassing with tooth and claw the nearestinnocent bystander, Mr. Matt Devine .... who is still trying to recover fromthe crush he developed on MissTemple, his neighbor atthe Circle Ritz condominiums, while Mr. Maxwas missing in action. He did that by not very boldly seeking new women, all of whom were in danger from saidKitty the Cutter.

Infact, on the advice of counsel, i.e., AMBROSIA,Mr. Matt's talk-show producer, and none other than the aforesaid LieutenantMolina, he had attempted to disarm Miss Kitty's pathological interest in his sexual state by supposedly losing his virginitywith a call girl least likely to be the object of K. the Cutter's retaliation. Did he or didn't he? One thingis certain: hours after their iffyassignation at the Goliath Hotel, said call girl turned up deader thanan ice-cold deck of Bicycle playing cards. But there are almost forty million potentialvictims in this old town, if you include theconstant come and go of tourists, and everything is up for grabs in LasVegas 24/7: guilt, innocence, money, power, love, loss, death, and significantothers.

Allthis 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, who insinuated herself into my cases until I was forced to set up shop with her asMidnight Inc. Investigations,and who has also nosed herself into my long-running duel with ...

...the evil Siamese assassin HYACINTH, firstmet as the onstage assistant to the mysterious lady magician ...

... SHANGRI-LA, whomade off with MissTemple's semi-engagementring from Mr. Max during an onstage trick and has been seen since only insinister glimpses ...

... just like THE SYNTH, anancient cabal of magicians that may deserve contemporary credit for the ambiguous death of Mr. Max's mentor in magic, Gandolph the Great, not to mention Gandolph's former onstage assistant as well as aprofessor of magic at theUniversity of Nevada at Las Vegas.

Well, there you have it, the usual humanstew, all mixed up andat odds with one another and within themselves. Obviously,it is up to me to solve all their mysteries and nail a few crooks along the way. Like Las Vegas, the City That Never Sleeps,Midnight Louie, private eye, also has a sobriquet: the Kitty That Never Sleeps.

Withthis crew, who could?

Chapter 1

Last Seen Dead

It is enough to break a guy's heart ...

. if a macho dude like me could ever admitto having one.

I sit, apparently calmand dignified, on the off-white sofa in the living room of what you couldcall my digs, my crib, my flat... okay, "our" condominium unit at Las Vegas's only round five-story 1950slandmark, the Circle Ritz.

The round part you probably get. The Ritzpart is a word that was chichi way-back-when in the mid-twentieth century andsounds more like a cracker nowadays. Although that cracker is indeed round.