Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir Read Online Free Page A

get results.
    Still, sometimes it is best not to show up in the company of a girl. She might be mistaken for your mother.
    So it nears my namesake hour when I slink solo into a neighborhood where even the pit bulls and housing developers do not go.
    This is the north side of town where the abandoned houses and cars are all older than the Nixon administration. “Run-down” would be a high compliment in this area, and run down is what careless intruders usually get.
    I pass a few rats the size of Midnight Louise scurrying in the opposite direction.
    One stops to hiss in amazement at my presence, and at the fact that I am heading in the direction that he and his cohorts are fleeing like the, er, plague.
    I hiss back. His claws scrape the cracked asphalt like dry leaves as he skitters out of sight.
    I shrug my coat collar up around my neck to keep the wind from picking all my pockets. It also looks as if I am making a fashion statement instead of just having the hair on the back of my neck at permanent attention.
    The effective operative does not wish to look scared into a new hairdo.
    Either somebody is fitfully beating on a hollow tin drum…or the trash cans are rocking in the wind. Or somebody is trying to stuff a body in ’em. Or, more likely, pull one out for supper.
    I did mention that this was a rough crowd. Of course now you cannot see a soul, not even a rat.
    That is how I know I am just where I want to be.
    I sit down to survey the place, casually clipping my toenails in the light of the only working streetlight within six blocks.
    While sharpening my shivs, I regard a street in ill repair that cuts like a rusty knife through what amounts to one big empty lot.
    Islands of trash thrust up from the flat desert landscape here and there. I recognize articles of furniture missing stuffing and upholstery, and large black-green garbage bags big enough and lumpy enough to hold sufficient dead bodies to populate a zombie movie, and maybe a sequel or two. Broken amber-colored empty bottles exhale the sour stench of beer so flat it is looking for a singing teacher.
    However, my connoisseur’s sniffer notices something else among the odors of decay: the whiff of fish. Oh, it is not the delicate, scaly scent of freshly caught fish, such as you find at the edge of a koi pond, but the odor of the canned stuff they sell in the stores. Being that my old man was once the mascot on a Pacific Northwest salmon boat, I prefer to catch my own, but it is clear that the pre-caught kind of fish is here to catch something else.
    I rise and swagger over to the nearest hummock of trash.
    It is not long before I am close enough to notice something familiar jammed in among what is left of somebody’s Tia Evita floral reclining chair. I spot the familiar crosshatching of thin gray metal wires.
    Normally such sights give me a chill of apprehension, but tonight I emit a soft purr of satisfaction instead. Everything is as bad as I had hoped it would be.
    In not too long a time, I shall be at the mercy of the most fearsome street gang this old town has ever seen.
    What I do to keep my Miss Temple out of danger and in arch supports.

 

Midnight Consultation
     
    Max stretched, pushed Temple’s compilation of dead people aside, and consulted the watch on his right wrist as his long arms folded around her.
    “Almost the witching hour. We could tune in Mr. Midnight for a bedtime treat.”
    “Listening to a bunch of strangers whine about the personal lives they don’t have? Not me.”
    “You’re not a fan?”
    Temple yawned pointedly. “Who can stay up that late anymore?”
    “You’re right. I should let you get your beauty sleep.”
    “Since when have you ever done anything you ‘should’ do? Max, what’s the matter?”
    “What isn’t the matter? Listen, Temple. You stood by me like, I don’t know, like the brave little drummer girl, when everyone thought I was a cad and coward and a murderer.”
    “Everyone?”
    “Well, mostly