Cat In A Topaz Tango

“How are we going to get out?” Topaz asks.

I can tell she has never done a stakeout before. Before I can explain that we will get out as we got in, the key scrabbles in the door again. We whoosh back into the cubicle, undoing all our good footwork.

“Listen!” I hiss.

Our backs arch in unison as we hear the scrape of a shoe cleat on the plain tile floor. I duck my head under the door to peek. A pair of large, black, Cuban-heeled shoes stands before the locker. We hear the combination lock spinning and clicking, the door opened and shut.

Then the shoes and wide-bottomed black trousers head for the door.

I poke Topaz in the shoulder with a rude claw and whisk out to race through the door before it closes and locks automatically. The minute I am through, I throw all my weight against it to force it to a standstill.

Miss Topaz eases out at an unruffled pace while I huff and puff from my effort. “Quick!” she says, “he is wasting no time.”

All we have seen from our floor-bound rear viewpoint is that he is a tall white male with a loping stride. I was right! He is carrying a stolen guitar case, and his hands are gloved in black leather. The shirt, cape, and hat must be in the case.

We weave in and out of the forest of moving legs, leaving squeals and curses in our wake, rather like Moby Dick, only unlike the white whale, we are black. And not a marine mammal.

Black Legs leads us on a hard chase all through the casino and then the shops and then the meeting areas and then the service areas to the utter rear of the building. A last gray metal door opens at his push, a one-way exit. Before it shuts on his vanishing heels with the one bent nail we elect to eel through.

The heavy door slams shut, but we have split—literally—to either side and the shadows. He turns to check that no one is coming through the door behind him.

A Dumpster awaits; his goal all along. I hear the huge truck gears grinding a few blocks away. This one knows a fast trash pickup will swallow the evidence he deposits now in minutes.

He will leave his load and vanish. We need a way to ID him. My shivs are still throbbing from marking his rear pants. At least they were not denim, but something sleazier for dancing. I am betting he is not dumping those, because his blood is on the ass. Not enough to drip and leave evidence unfortunately.

“We must mark him,” Topaz’s hot breath wafts in my right ear. She has slipped into my shadow.

I explain I already have, and how.

“Something visible to humans,” she insists.

“I know. I suppose I could claw his face.”

“You are already bruised from fighting this man. He would smash you to the ground.”

I am not afraid of taking on this literal bruiser again, but claw marks would only mean something to someone who knew and believed in my crime-fighting nature, like Miss Temple.

The light from the dim security lamp in the distance catches on Topaz’s collar.

“Duck,” I tell her, nudging her behind me, with her amber crystal drops swinging like a lady’s earrings.

“How do these come off?” I ask. “When the tourists collect them for the prize?”

“Something called a ‘spring ring.’”

“Sit still. I am going to see if my front fang can spring one of those babies free.”

“Louie! This is no time to be collecting prizes. You are cheating.”

“No, but he will be. Now be patient and keep quiet.”

“Well!”

But she does. Of course I am forced into some very intimate quarters, mouth to mouth almost, as I struggle to work a topaz drop free without the aid of an opposable thumb.

Our hot breaths mingle. I growl a little. Topaz unintentionally purrs a little. I could get used to this, but—dang!—the glass jewel suddenly is in my mouth. I mean, good!

Our quarry is squatting by the open guitar case, drawing out the black accessories of villainy: the flat-brimmed hat and cloak. Which he folds back in the guitar case. He stands and strips off his long-sleeved black shirt, revealing pale white skin. He dons a short-sleeved shirt from the case and sits on the concrete to take off the flamenco boots and pulls out a pair of simple black slip-on shoes. His folded pants are beside him.

I slip up on them soft and silent as a shadow, and tuck the pendant in the left rear pocket. Just for a backup. And because I am enough of a street cat still to believe that tagging a perp should fit the crime, I use my strongest remaining front shiv to slash an initial into the back heel of one shoe: the letter L.

Fenced In

After a not-so-jolly room service breakfast at eight, Rafi sat on the suite’s sprawling main sofa manning his cell phone and jotting notes on the hotel stationery.