Cat In A Sapphire Slipper

Excellent. I could use a little traveling music.

Luckily, I saw Fontana Inc. and their expert fingers and enviable opposable thumbs manipulate the limo’s many functions from the long thin control console set into the padded leather ceiling. Of course, this useful unit was not designed for a guy of my height, one foot at the shoulder.

It will take multiple bounds up and a delicate touch on the controls, but there is only one simple function I crave.

The engine starts with that leopard purr of a really big, fine vintage motor.

The walls of the Sapphire Slipper should be shaking and baking now.

So this villainous dim-bulb, Gherken, thinks that the sound of one of their legendary limos starting up will not draw a sharp Fontana ear, much less ten of them?

I add my purr to the Rolls’s throaty roar.

Jump. My shivs have split ends, but I punch a spot I noticed before. Manx! There are more tiny controls on human communication devices lately than on a Victorian high-button shoe! If I ever have to rely on text messaging, I am a dead dog.

It takes only the pointed end of one shiv to manipulate this console. Too bad I was never much of a game boy, although I know my way around a television remote.

Jump.

Punch.

Miss.

Jump. Punch. Very near miss.

The limo is inching onto the rough desert pathway, trying to sneak past the bordello.

I have lift-down!

I hear a stir at the Sapphire Slipper’s port cochere as the Rolls glides by on a muffled growl.

I have three inches (not to get personal) and am going for four.

Jump. Punch.

This is a jerky process, but then we have a jerky driver.

Jump. Punch.

I let out an ear-piercing battle cry unmistakable to my kind. It is so ear-piercing I could open a shopping mall kiosk with it.

Jump. Punch. Jump. Punch. Seven inches. Jump. Punch. Jump. Punch. Nine inches. We are getting into X-rated territory now . . . Jump. Punch.

And Miss Midnight Louise lofts through the lowering side window into the moving limo.

Jump. Punch. Jump. Punch. The Rolls is picking up speed. Gherken knows he has been seen. Satin, panting a bit, tumbles inside beside me.

Jump. Punch.

I hear an exterior piercing scream and spot eight shivs clinging to the three inches of window still up. A mighty leap for mankind and also for Ma Barker.

Miss Midnight Louise plants her forepaws on the leather door upholstery, sinks in her shivs, and grabs her granny (maybe; I do not lose my wits even in a life-and-death crisis), by the nape of the neck and throws her into the limo with us.

“I must lower the chauffeur’s window next,” I advise my troops.

Out the open window, I spot Fontana brothers, bearing Berettas, running to pursue us. The Rolls is accelerating to full speed.

Jump. Punch. Jump. Punch. Jump. Punch.

I am getting the rhythm. The dark glass behind the driver goes down like the evening sun, fast at the end.

The villainous Gherken’s neck is pale and bare and great meat for the three midnight-black, blood-lusting brides of Dracula I have summoned.

Through the clear windshield, I see a white car with a red blinking light on the roof careening toward us, followed by two white vans swerving alternately on two wheels, with a big hairy man behind the wheel of the lead van, grinning like a Hell’s Angel.

The Rolls is gathering real speed. It is the Power Ranger of the Gangsters’ fleet. Reinforcements will be too late once it hits the highway, although a helicopter can pursue it. But a highspeed chase in such a cumbersome vehicle is bound to hurt someone.

I order the attack. “You go, girls!”

Before you know it, Gherken is wearing a fang and claw necklace and screaming his head off, his hands also off the steering wheel, just as the zing of Beretta bullets takes out all four tires on the Rolls.

We Rolls to a lamentedly lumpy stop.

I leap into the front passenger seat, right into Miss Temple’s lap, and plant a big, wet juicy one on her sadly furless little cheek.

“Louie, ow, that scratches! And, watch it, your claws are sharper than broken glass. Louie, are you all right?”

Now I am.

Peace in the Valley

“Asylum?” he asked.

“Alyssum,” her voice answered, laughing. “Sweet alyssum. It’s a flower.”

He was lying on the mountainside, every sinew and joint aching. Somewhere half a mile above was the civilized comfort of the clinic. He was mired like the Cowardly Lion in a field of flowers, his legs weighted by plaster casts.

If he hadn’t been a mountain climber before, he damn sure was now. His chest heaved for air, and his shoulders and arms shook from using the metal crutches as pitons to dig into the tough sod and pull his plaster-weighted legs behind him.

She wafted the small blossom under his nose again. “I need to get to one of these high mountain farmsteads. Ask for food, beer, a saw.”

“Not water?”