Cat In An Alien X-Ray

“Try it before you convert.” Molina tapped a folder on her desk. “Back to the undying rumors of the mob. So you and Temple Barr are now the chaperones of this interesting treasure chest of Effinger’s?”

Matt hesitated, not sure how much he wanted to reveal. Certainly, talk of the Synth and Ophiuchus would get him laughed out of Molina’s spanking new office and destroy this new personal rapport over their lives as bastard kids, an echo of his recent sessions at the Goliath.

Molina wasn’t lingering on personal revelations anyway. “Aren’t you two setting yourselves up to get the unfriendly attention Effinger and your mom got?”

“That hadn’t occurred to me.”

“If there is anything suspicious going on in your family link to Effinger, it always defaults back to Vegas, where you and Temple Barr and even that annoying cat live. That should have been the first thing on your mind.”

It would have been, Matt thought, if he hadn’t been distracted by becoming the sole target, he hoped, for the unfriendly attentions of Kathleen O’Connor.

Could the mob or any undying remnant really be any worse?

Chapter 35

Black Ops

If anybody had told me I would be playing the role of co–cat burglar with my maybe-baby Miss Midnight Louise in order to break into the Metro morgue … well, I would have taken them off at the anklebones, or hocks, depending on the species.

We have interrupted our tour of the outer limits of a low municipal building on the southern fringe of Downtown, where the nightly light show is bright. Here are silence and shadow.

Morgues tend to be sedate sites, and the residents even more so.

Still, this is a morgue in a city teeming with celebrities and paparazzi. Every window is shuttered and locked tight, and the entry door requires checking in and ID. The only “ID” me and Miss Louise could ever have is that brand name of medically approved canned pet food only the terminally ill would deign to touch with a pooper scooper.

The warm Las Vegas night seems to have been put to bed early around this place. I led the perimeter search and now we are sitting by the parking lot door planning our next move.

At least this is one occasion on which the know-it-all Miss Louise has not a clue.

“You admit,” she tells me, “you have never been inside the morgue.”

“But I have often been on very close terms with individuals destined for the morgue.”

She sniffs. “I was closer than you to the current victim under discussion.”

“My dear girl, the dead man—or whatever species, domestic or feral alien—and I fell ten stories together. That betokens a closeness a mere postmortem sniff cannot match.”

“Boots on the ground count more than aerial displays, Daddy-O. I was first to reach the body and the first to detect those ‘unusual cryptic marks’ all the tabloids are making a front-page fuss about. Laughable. Even bad journalism has slipped to the level of fish wrappings.”

“You simply recognized the Cat Pack’s handiwork. That was no leap of brain power. Some commentators have come closer to the truth.”