Читаем Cat In A Quicksilver Caper полностью

She is pretty poison, Miss Shangri-La’s performing partner from the storied land of Siam, now Thailand, who goes by the name of Hyacinth. Yet I am glad to see her again. Curare-painted nails and all. She stops to sit about two feet away, then curls her sinewy train around her gray-booted tootsies. I love boots on ladies!

You would never guess we were both balancing on a high-wire line sixty feet above a floor thronged with cops and major hotel executives.

She purrs. “They have taken our twirly toy away. I see you miss it.”

That is my Hyacinth. Heart of steel.

“I miss getting a good look and sniff around,” I say.

“You do not like to play with your food?”

“I am all work and no play, missy. I am a professional.”

“Performer?”

“Detective. You do remember me?”

“Oh! A shamus. You do not look Irish.”

“I am not! I am all-American, unlike you, lady. And we have met before.”

“Not to my knowledge. And I may be happy about that, if you are going to be so rude.”

“Look here, Hyacinth—”

“I am not Hyacinth. My name is . . .” Here she sighs. Pauses. Paws the adjacent ledge as if burying something stinky. “Squeaker.”

I am knocked speechless. Not only is this dame a double for the deliciously evil Hyacinth, down to her undercoat, but she has a moniker I would expect to find on a cat toy at Petco.

“Squeaker?” I repeat.

“I am told by my trainer that I was adopted from the shelter because I was a dead ringer for the commercially viable Hyacinth. But I was named because I had a”—another sigh—“ ‘screen door’ mew.”

“Screen door? What is that?”

“I do not know. Only that it has scarred me for life. At least my shelter name was feminine, Fontana.”

I do a drop back and ticker-clutch pose to convey my shock. I know ten cool cats named Fontana, and not one is a feline. But the little doll is still airing her grievances in the human nomenclature game, and I cannot blame her.

“Do I look like a ‘Squeaker’ to you?” she is demanding.

I do some heavy little-doll-aimed back-peddling. “Nope. You could be a . . . Cleo, or a . . . Sirena . . . or even a Britney, but not a Squeaker. No way.”

She sniffs. Mollified. Maybe she is Irish. “And you are—?”

“Midnight Louie. Dude about town. Private investigator. At your service.”

“Well, you go get that twirly toy back. I am so bored up here.”

“Not possible. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police have taken it home to take apart. They are very possessive, trust me. So, why are you up here?”

“I am to become part of the act, but only as a body double for my adopted sister Hyacinth. I did not want to do it but you know Hyacinth.”

“Not as well as I would like to. Sorry, Squeaker, but Hyacinth is hot.”

“And I am not? We are identical twins. What is the difference?”

What can I say? Squeaker seems the nice, shy, domesticated sort.

Her stepsister Hyacinth would carve your heart out with a toxic toenail and eat it. She is irresistible. The male of the species is pretty stupid. Of any species. But somehow we survive.

“So what is your part in the upcoming show?” I ask.

And she tells me, sweet trusting soul that she is.

I am getting a sense of the high jinks that are going to unwind up here. The dude on the yo-yo string is just the beginning. An unscheduled beginning. But I love getting in on the ground floor. So to speak. Or to Squeak. So I ankle over to my new partner in high crime and we talk further. Among other things.

A Heist Hoisted

“Déjà Vu,” Max said. Glumly.

“Double-jointed assistant at the Treasure Island,” Gandolph said, nodding, “worked under that name in the nineties I remember her well. Indian. Eastern, not Western. Best little sawed-in-half lady in the business. Great stage name: Déjà Vu. Those were the days.”

“Never knew her. I was speaking generally.”

They sat cloistered in the daylight darkness of Gandolph’s former home, now Max’s digs. The darkness came from metal security shutters at each window and door. The place was a fortress.

“Max. I know it’s a pain to be upstaged by a corpse.”

“It’s not a pain. In my case, it’s a habit.”

“We just have to wait until things settle down again.”

“Which will be in what century?”

“Sooner than you think and sooner than the media and the police will like. This Russian show is way bigger than a worker’s unfortunate . . . accident.”

“You think?”

“Or suicide.”

“Or murder.”

“See. So many to choose from. It’ll confuse the authorities.”

“You never used to be callous.”

Gandolph sighed. “I never used to be so close to mortality myself. You understand it’s crucial that you steal the Alexander Scepter. This is one lost life. What you can do inside the Synth could save dozens.”

“Somehow quantifying tragedy doesn’t do it for me anymore, Garry. At least the IRA has officially pulled its own teeth, though it can’t guarantee the shadow factions. But the rest of the world is running willy-nilly toward the same ugly, blind, political stewpot of tit for tat at any price. And who pays? Not the old, cold warriors. It’s the troops and the civilians. The casualties. The numbers, not the names.”

“You want to bow out?”