Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

And . . . the Synth would not be pleased. Or maybe those manipulative shadow figures would be delighted with the carnage, and the publicity.

Poor Temple! Her career was at stake, and he had not only meddled in it, but devastated the site of her greatest PR triumph.

Damn!

His back burned with raw fire, the badge of a cat’s tragically misguided courage. Otherwise he could have saved a human life, no matter his suspicions about its purpose. Shangri-La had been a mystery, maybe a criminal, but until tonight, she had been living. Her life had hung from his hands and slipped away.

He felt sick, as sick as when the IRA pub bomb had turned his boyhood best friend, his cousin Sean, into exploded bits of flesh and blood.

How could he face his uncle and aunt, his family?

He couldn’t then.

He couldn’t now. He had to go away, run far, find some way to make reparations. Leave home. Leave Temple. Leave Las Vegas, leave life and death behind him. Again.

Damn!

Cat’s Cradle

Triage is not a skill you usually find in PIs, or the apparently humble pussycat.

But I gaze down from the lip of the Big Cats staging area about as horrified as I have ever been in memory.

Shangri-La lies there, a mangled white butterfly on the white marble floor, a small pale form, framed by pieces of black platform that circle her like flotsam from a shipwreck. A shipwreck in the sky.

What to do? Where to go?

The Cloaked Conjurer is stirring at the mouth of his staging area where Mr. Max deposited him with superhuman strength. For even he cannot fool Midnight Louie. I would know those moves anywhere.

I glance at the Big Boys, who have realized that the act has turned deadly wrong.

“Return to your cages and sit tight,” I tell them. “Someone will come for you when they think of it.”

They retreat as meekly as the Cowardly Lion after Dorothy has slapped his nose. I am afraid I had to unsheath my shivs and do a little nose whacking myself to force them back from the deadly, drop-off edge.

I dash around their cages and to the connecting hall, taking a left and another left in the ill-lit maze all backstage areas are, the better to keep audiences from seeing in.

I have guessed right. CC is pushing himself up to his knees and leaning over the edge in an attempt to view the same horrible sight I have seen. He is shocked and groggy, so I am forced to take a stand in his path. I hiss and growl and slash him back, as if I were the trainer and he the cat act.

“I must be hallucinating,” he mutters during his retreat. “Lucky and Kalúha have shrunk? And Shang and Hyacinth too?”

When I have herded him ten feet back from the edge, I hear the scrabble of rescuing hands and feet in the maze of service chutes honeycombing this sky-high stage.

Not Mr. Max’s. He is long gone and that is one party in this tragedy I feel no need to follow. Worry about is something else. He tried for a two-fer save. Had not the misguided Hyacinth scourged his back, he might have made it. I sincerely hope her boast of curare-painted nails was all bravado. I watch her struggling in her bungee cord cradle. I shall never hear the truth from her lips. Shangri-La has made her eternal peace with solid marble, but Hyacinth will never make peace with me. I cannot help but think that they were two of a kind: unhappy, scrappy souls. Only Hyacinth remains now, but for the intervention of a few threads, and Shangri-La perhaps has brought her end upon her.

Still, my Miss Temple is somewhere far below, by herself, trying to salvage order from tragedy.

I duck into the entrance/exit tunnel designed for Hyacinth . . . and nearly swallow my own tongue to see her silhouette waiting for me.

Maybe nine lives are literal with her kind of cat. Maybe she is some immortal emissary of Bast and I have failed to save her. Maybe I too will soon be floating like a butterfly and landing like the QE II. . . .

“Louie! We must get to the floor below.”

The silhouette says Hyacinth but the voice says Squeaker.

“Are you okay?” I ask, astounded.

“No, of course not. I witnessed everything, as you did. Hyacinth, as you saw, felt strong enough to perform herself. And then some. Poor misguided creature! She had no idea her interference was what doomed her mistress. If only there was something we could have done.”

“Not without leaving our hides on the exhibition floor.”

“I saw you warn Lucky and Kahlúa. And the Cloaked Conjuror is safe?”

“Yes.”

“Who was that masked man?”

I am certain that Squeaker, fresh from a shelter experience, has not logged the hours I have in watching high-number cable channels with ancient TV show reruns, so I only say the truth.

“I think he came to steal the Czar Alexander scepter but discovered that someone had got here before him and rigged the whole suspended performance area to collapse.”

“We all could have been killed then, if he hadn’t been here?”

“Sure as shootin’,” I cannot resist saying, thinking of the Lone Ranger’s silver bullets.

“At least CC and the Big Cats are safe.”