Cat In A White Tie And Tails

Max brought up the UNLA site on Garry’s computer. Las Vegas aerial views were “weary, stale, flat,” as Shakespeare’s Hamlet had described his life before it all blew up and went to hell.

But not “unprofitable.”

The landlocked campus was a compressed intellectual island in a sea of commercial “strip” developments and sprawling residential desert areas. Like moats of hot metal, traffic hemmed in the campus most of the year. It had no place to expand, yet needed to establish a strong physical presence.

That was exactly how Max felt at the moment, hemmed in by his loss of memory and self, “tasked” as the bureaucrats put it, to change his world and help the people in it, including himself.

An on-campus visit might be most enlightening.

Chapter 18

Trapped, Stacked, and Zapped

I am not surprised. My nappers repair to a deserted building probably on the south side of Chicago cheek by jowl and growl with Bad, Bad Leroy Brown of song fame. They dump my carrier on a hard concrete floor dulled by forty years of dust, dirt, and random elimination.

They leave me in the carrier, deprived of food, water, and facilities.

They have no idea that I can unzip my prison with the flick of one fang. They have no idea that I am a self-directed “plant,” not the green growing sort, but a live listening device.

“I still say we should have snatched the little redhead,” the one I will call Lefty says.

“Nah,” says Shifty. “This is better. The little redhead will get real hysterical about the pussycat being grabbed. You saw her in the airport.”

“If we’da got the cat in the airport, we’da have the goods by now. Whoever thought Cliffie Effinger had anything anyone with big-time cred would want?

“You remember that little piece of plumbing poison?”

“From back in the street gang day, almost forty years ago at St. Matthias.”

I hear packing crates being shoved around, beer can tops being popped, and, ugh, cheap cigars being lit.

“Hand me some of that sausage. Ole Effinger sure landed in a soft spot. The wife do not look so bad even now.”

“She was younger then.”

“So were we then.”

And I was not even here then, so get on with it, fellas. Although it is interesting to realize that Mr. Matt’s given name—which is Matthias, not Matthew—has a long Chi-Town history.

“What are we doin’,” Lefty says, burping, “holding alley cats hostage?”

“The Vegas contacts are under a lot of pressure on this. Money’s money. And I hear ole effing Effinger knew the key to where a lot of it is just lying there waiting to be claimed. Nothing on the Vegas end is coming up likely, not even that big underground safe that was found a few days ago. But a few months ago rotten little Cliffie made a trip back to Chicago just before the honchos nabbed him for a little waterboarding interrogation.”

Lefty shudders. “I would have screamed like a girdle.”

“‘Girl.’ Screamed like a girl.”