text: A Dangerous Game of Cat and Mouse: or You Can Be the Mouse and I Will Be the Cat Part 1 of 3 I knew trouble when I saw it. What walked through my office door was about six and a half pounds of premium grade high-octane trouble. She was a classic beauty - lithe, long-legged and almond-eyed. Dainty feet. She had the kind of eyes that lied to you, straight out, but you couldn't hold it against her - and you couldn't help wanting to believe her. I dropped the mouse I'd been working over. I hardly noticed it run across the floor back into the hole it came out of. Fine. I could start up with him again later. Right now there was the most beautiful female I'd laid eyes on in months. In my office. Looking right at me. She closed the door with her hip. The hairs on my arms rose. "Someone told me you're called Harry," she purred. My voice came out thick, but I managed to say, "That's right. I'm Harry, the private dick." I hesitated, then asked, "What can I do for you, Miss?" "Call me Cleo," she said. Her voice was light and whispery. I glanced at my water. It was too early to start drinking. Cleo climbed on top of my desk, and the temperature in the room climbed five degrees. She did that sweet little roll that only females can pull off: she put her shoulder on my desk, started a somersault - in mid-twists, she flipped onto her back, giving me a long look down her tender white belly. "I can't find my friend," she said, wistful. "I'd like you to find him for me." It felt like I had a hairball. I couldn't cough it up or swallow it down. It wasn't really a hairball - it just felt like one. That's what happened every time I got stuck on a dame. I felt sick. I held back the hacking. She just kept that sweet green-eyed gaze trained on me. I stared back. "Well?" she demanded. I realized she wanted me to say something. I had lost track of the conversation. Was it about a toy? A bird? I remembered something about a mouse. Maybe it was a spider. I tried shaking my head, but it just made my ears itch. Great. I was sinking in a pit and the pit kept getting deeper. "Of course," I said. I meant, of course I was getting stupider with every passing second: there was a pretty little long-haired calico stretched out on my desk. Who'd have any sense looking at that? No matter that I had lost any brains I ever had, my words sounded like an answer to her. She jumped up and gave me a sunny smile. That was it. Her smile broke my old heart into a million pieces. The shards left behind couldn't have been any smaller if she had smacked them with a ball peen hammer. She winked her pretty green eyes at me. That would have been the end of me, except I was already lost. "Super! Why don't you start now?" "Ok." I kept staring at her. "Aren't you going to do something?" she demanded after a couple moments. "If you're going to find him, don't you need to get up or something?" Dimly, I remembered something about a friend. Her friend. The memory got closer and closer. Right. She was looking for her friend. "What's your friend's name?" I asked. "Pookums." "Ok, sweetheart, what's his name?" I winked at her. She gave a little snort. "That is his name, silly. He's called Pookums." She paused, and added, "He has one of those long, involved names, like Sir Pointy-Toe Plushbottom Pookums Snookums Rex the Fourth. But to his friends, he's just Pookums." "Hm. Purebred," I said. Purebred cats always had the kind of name no one could remember long enough to yell out the back door. I'd have to make a note to start looking for a spoiled brat-cat. I fished around in the top drawer of my desk. I pulled up string, some old tinsel and a milk jug ring. I gave up the search for a pen for the moment. Note-writing would have to take a back seat to something much more important: Cleo was stretching, and it made the room a little brighter. And another five degrees warmer. "He's a Himalayan. Flame point." I couldn't help rolling my eyes. One of those, I thought. A fancy-pants pussy cat with a pedigree a yard long and a name twice as long. One of those designer cream puff kitties who wouldn't know which end of his paw to hit with if it came down to a brawl in a back alley. A momma's boy kind of cat who probably had a silver bowl with his name engraved on it. He probably had a personal trainer and a shrink. Hell - he probably had his own lawyer on retainer. It was always the fluffy, fancy-pants guy who raked in the classy dames. I looked at Cleo's wistful face. In my mind's eye, she was sinking her pretty little face into his six inch deep fur, purring like a race car engine, her claws unsheathed to just the tiny points as she started to knead his side. I could smell her body warming to him... I jerked my mind back to the office. Cleo was drinking my water. "Hey!" I said. She turned to smile. "I swear I don't have cooties, Harry." "No, it's not that. It's just old water and probably tastes like medicine. I dipped my finger in the bowl, you see, and my medicine..." She licked her chops. "No. It's fine." Then, sharply: "What kind of medicine, Harry?" "Ringworm," I managed to say. What a sap I was. Dames made me nervous, and beautiful dames made me stupid. It was a deadly combination. "Ringworm? That's kind of quaint, Harry. I was afraid it was something worse." She gave a cute little sneeze. I knew what she meant. A cat had to be so careful these days. There were things out there that could kill you without you ever knowing it was there, until suddenly everything inside you fell apart. I'd been around long enough to see a lot of friends go out like that. Rotting from the inside out and dying an inch at a time. Without any warning, she stood, arched her back in a quick stretch, yawned broadly - then said, "See you around, Harry." Before I could answer or tell her what I planned to charge her for finding Mr. Pookums-with-the-long-stupid-name, she disappeared through the door. It was like someone turned out the light in the world and plunged me into darkness. There was a quiet rustle. The mouse had come back. The stupid little chump heard the door close and figured all the cats were gone. It was just his bad luck that mice can't count higher than one. He didn't stand a chance against an experienced tabby like me. Within ten seconds, I had the mouse on his back, pinning him with one paw at his throat. "How many fingers am I holding up, Chuck?" I taunted him. "One!" he squealed. "Wrong!" I cuffed him in the head really hard, rolling him past my water bowl. I ran over and pinned him again. This was my favorite game... Games never last as long as you think they should, unless they last way too long. Cat and mouse left me in serious need of regrouping, so I stretched out on my desk. I knew I should lock the door, but I wasn't expecting anyone, and I was just going to catnap for a minute or two. Besides, the sun was so warm, slanting through the window. As my eyes drifted shut, I watched dust motes dance in the sunbeam. It was dark when I opened my eyes. I had only a half-second to focus before something hit me square in the forehead and landed me on my side on the floor. Whatever that something was, it picked me up neat as a pin and sailed me against the wall. I landed on my feet, but had no time to plan a defense: it was on me like stink on a dog. I turned my face away. If I could have plugged my nose, I would have - even if it cost me the fight. It picked me up again and headed out the door. It definitely was a dog. It smelled like cooked meat left out of the refrigerator too long. It had teeth as big as my ears and breath hot as the asphalt on a sunny day in August. If that wasn't enough to convince me I was being carried by a dog, I got a good look at his profile by the light of a street lamp. He was not just any dog. He was the ugliest dog I had ever seen. He didn't have a muzzle. He had a face. Dogs don't have faces, not proper faces with cheeks and grins. Dogs have muzzles - long and pointy, or long and droopy, or short and snipey. The thing carrying me was half the size of a horse and had a big, wide, meaty face. If he had been a human, he would have looked like a prize fighter who went one too many rounds. There was nothing in the cat world that compared to that kind of ugly. The thing gave me a shake and let go. I fetched up against the curb and fell in damp leaves in the gutter. He took a menacing step toward me. Now I got a look at the whole dog. He looked like half mastiff, half bull-dog and all mayhem. He was short-haired, white-furred with scars all throughout. Pure muscle under the scarred pelt. Torn ear. The skin under his left eye sagged. His mouth split his head in two sideways in an obscene pink grin, and six inches of tongue lolled out the side. He was not the usual stupid dog like I hoped. There was a mind behind those beady eyes, a mind like an adding machine. Fangs like Ginsu knives. Breath like poison. Coiled like a spring, he walked slow, letting me savor the size and shape of my last moments on earth. "You mind letting me know why you're making a milk shake out of me?" I demanded. He stopped walking. Drool spilled out of his huge maw as he answered. "Sure. My boss sent me. Either you pay the rent, or I take it out of your hide." So that was it. Jingles, the rat terrier who owned the building, was trying to muscle more out of me. Himself a shrimpy dog, he sent one of his enforcers. I could have handled Jingles. Nothing short of a stick of dynamite could have handled the dog facing me. I told the ugly mug: "I already paid the rent. I sent Jingles a dozen cheeseburgers yesterday." By now, drool was splattering on the pavement. "My boss said he didn't get the whole dozen." I started, "But - " and never got to finish the sentence. The thug's huge greasy lips closed over my neck and shoulders, and I got shaken like a rag. My brains were still rattling when he dropped me to the pavement for the second time. I lay there. “This time I’m being nice about it,” he warned. “You owe my boss six cheeseburgers by tomorrow night, or you’re going to be a small midnight snack. There won’t even be a red smear left if you don’t pay up.” He smiled. There was nothing but death behind the smile. “I’ll be back at midnight. Don’t make me have to hunt you down.” He leaned in for a close sniff of me. It was a nice touch. My bladder ached to let loose. In one of those weird lucid moments, I read the tag on his collar. It was a simple enough name: Malice. After the long sniff, which also covered me in spit, he trotted off, disappearing into the darkness. A white dog that size disappearing into the night just wasn’t right. He should have stood out like bird shit on slate. Instead, he was gone. It took me ten minutes to stand up after Malice left me. My back legs kept going east, while the rest of me leaned west. It wasn’t the first time I’d been roughed up, but I could tell it would be a long time until I couldn’t predict the weather by the knots in my back. I looked at the sky. It was only ten o’clock. I had all night ahead of me, and already I was feeling my age. I had to get some fast answers about a floofy-poofy cat, and I had to get my hands on some cheeseburgers even faster. I had no doubt Jingle’s enforcer would make good on the threat. My first stop was the home of Spiny the sphinx, just down the alley. He knew everything that went on because he never left his window seat. There was a reason for that: it heated up like an electric blanket. He toasted himself all day and night. Maybe he got down to eat once in a while, but in all the years I knew him, I’d never seen it happen. I forgot how ugly he was until he greeted me at the window - then I got the reminder. Even though Spiny was sitting down, I could still see the loose, hairless folds of skin hanging at his haunches. He looked like a beige-pink balloon that had lost too much air. He didn’t have ear hairs. That was disturbing. His ears were black on the outside - the skin itself was black. He had no eyebrows. He was lucky to have two short, crooked, mutated whiskers coming out of each side of his nose. As I looked in the window at him, I wondered if he resented humans for engineering his misery. But that’s not the sort of question you should ever ask, especially when you needed to call in some markers. Like I did. “Hey, hey, Harry,” he chirped. Even his voice was odd. He sounded more like a wounded bird than a cat. “Hey, hey, Spiny,” I responded in our routine greeting. “What do you know?” “I know everything, dumb ass. I’m a sphinx, remember?” he said. With a grunt of pain, I jumped up on the outside ledge. “Who chewed you up and spit you out?” he asked. “One of Jingle’s boys. Name of Malice. He shook me down for the rent, but I already paid it.” Spiny nodded to himself. “What?” I said. “Doesn’t it strike you funny you should pay and still get worked over?” Now that he mentioned it, funny wasn’t the exact word - I would have called it “suspicious”. Jingles never roughed me up before. I never gave him a reason to. It was just good business to stay on each other’s good side. “What are you saying?” Spiny shot me a look out of the corner of his eye. No eyelashes. I still wasn’t used to the cat, no matter how long I knew him. “Harry. Jingles is a rat terrier. He gets bigger dogs on his payroll to do his dirty work, but nothing too obvious. He goes for the medium mutts. The dog who worked you over was as big as a Buick. It’s not Jingles’ style.” I was starting to feel queasy. “How do you know it was a big dog who did this to me?” Spiny said, in the gentlest voice I’d ever heard from him, “You want to sit down? You got fang marks in your back.” I sat down. Then I fell down. I opened my eyes. It was dark. I half expected to be in Spiny’s front yard where I fell from the window ledge. It didn’t feel like grass under me. It felt like a blanket still warm from the dryer. I picked my head up. I was in Spiny’s perch, toasting my aching back and nursing a headache so bad it made my teeth hurt. I craned my neck until I caught sight of Spiny. He was curled up in a chair. He was wearing a red fuzzy sweater. It covered him from the flappy folds under his chin to the flappy folds in his groin. I tried to stand up and the perch squeaked. “Hey, hey, Harry,” Spiny chirped. “Hey,” was all I could muster. “Stan brought you in and doctored you up.” Stan was the human Spiny lived with. He was okay as humans went. He didn’t do any of that creepy baby-talk, and he didn’t do the cutesy stuff with perfumed shampoos and jeweled collars. In my book, that made him okay. That he brought me in and patched me up - without taking me to the vet who would more than likely suggest that putting me down would cost less than fixing me up - well, that made him more than okay in my book. My estimation of Stan went from okay right up to all right. I still couldn’t stand up straight, but I wasn’t going to lose any more time. “What time is it?” “It’s four in the morning.” “I have to get going. I have to find this fancy-pants cat -” I couldn’t quite remember the name, but I’d be fine as soon as I was on my feet and hitting the pavement. “You’re not going anywhere. You’ve been out like a light since the night you got here, two nights ago. You’re in no shape to go anywhere.” I put my head back down. Jingle’s boy Malice would have come to my office and not found me. He’d be looking for me with a mind to turn me into fillet-of-feline. I was already as good as dead, so there was no reason not to rest. When I could walk without staggering, I left Spiny’s place. I was feeling better, but I still didn’t have any information on the cat named Pookums. Spiny knew about Cleo, though. He told me she was trouble - no newsflash there - and then he told me exactly what kind of trouble. It was out of line. She was the sweetest thing I had ever seen, and the whole reason I wanted to finish the job was just to get another fifteen minutes alone with her. I didn’t give a row of rats about her fine friend. Spiny told me she was a junkie. “Spiny, you wouldn’t know a nice girl if she cleaned her claws on you,” I told him. Spiny shook his pointy head. “I’m telling you,” he chirped, “she’s a user. Just look for the signs. That funny light in her eyes. Dreamy voice. Lots of rolling on the ground. Thirst. She’d sell you out for a dab of goofy-weed.” I rolled my eyes. I was already headed for the door. “She will cross you!” Usually Spiny knew what he was talking about, but he was wrong on this one. It was early in the morning, but already light out. I figured it would be the best time to hit the pavement and avoid the big ugly dog Malice. I headed straight up the middle of the sidewalk and kept out in the open. No shadows. No edges. No bushes. I wanted that one foot wide patch of concrete right down the middle. He wouldn’t want anyone to see him grabbing a cat in broad daylight. The citizens were not so jaded that they could watch 120 pounds of dog eat six pounds of cat. By citizens, I mean humans. Dogs would egg each other on if they happened on that kind of scene. “Get-that-kitty! Get-that-kitty!” Cats would simply disappear, unless there was a crowd of cats. I had seen cats take on dogs singlehandedly, but never one as huge as Jingle’s boy. One cat could take a miniature poodle, no problem. I had also seen cats tag team a bigger dog. Again, not one the size of Malice. Two cats could take a husky. With the size of dog out to get me, I wouldn’t look for any help to come from either cats or dogs if he just stepped out of the shadows - I was depending on the kindness of human strangers. So far, it was working out. By the time I got to my office, I was ready for a nap. The heat was wearing me down, and I still had a set of Ginsu wounds along my spine. It was right ahead of me: “G and H Detective Agency”. The door was open. It wasn’t just ajar. It was swinging crooked off the top hinge only, and the hinge looked about to crack open. Scratches ran the length of the door, big werewolf sized scratches. It looked like a combination of teeth and claws marks on the door jamb. It wasn’t the scratching or chewing that busted the door open. The whole door was cracked and bowed. That big ugly mug must have body-slammed it till it gave in. I didn’t trust the door - it could all come crashing down. I didn’t want to have a deadly overdose of wood if the hinge broke. But there was no other way in, not even through the window. Years ago the fire escape fell off into the street, so there was no way in the window unless I sprouted wings. The only way in was through the broken door. I eased past the door, waiting for it to creak or groan. The hinge held fast. The door was just the appetizer for the jumble that had been my office. It looked like the Jolly Green Giant had picked the room up in one huge hammy fist and shaken it like a snow globe. The papers from my desk drawers must have drifted down like snowflakes. They littered everything. I saw my water bowl. It was broken. There was a huge muddy paw print in the middle of it. I glanced around. Apparently, the lug liked to decorate every surface with urine. It smelled like the dog pound six weeks after Christmas. I watched where I stepped. The place was so turned over, I almost didn’t see it. Something caught my eye, so I bent down to look. Poking out from under a file folder, there was a small piece of pink stationery with one line written on it, right in the middle. It said: “Meet me tonight at Packo’s - Cleo.” I picked it up gingerly. It must have been the one thing in my office that Malice hadn’t taken a squirt on. I could smell Cleo on the note she left. The hair stood out on my arms. There was no date on the note. I hoped she hadn’t sat at Packo’s waiting for me, thinking I was a chump for standing her up. Putting myself into high gear, I headed for the hamburger shop on the corner. It was a little ma-and-pa place where families used to go. On hard times now, it was easy to get a seat in there even on weekends. The younger, hipper crowd had moved on, and the families stayed home, minding their pocketbooks. I ran around back to the dumpster and popped inside. It was usually good for a couple of burgers. It must have been my lucky day. I found four burgers and a shopping bag that wasn’t even dirty. I packed the burgers into the bag and hopped out. I needed two more, and I could pick them up along the way to Albertine’s house. Albertine lived on the rich side of town. She was an ordinary gray cat, but somehow she had made it in the world of designer cats. I knew she still carried a torch for me, and I cared about her - but it just wasn’t like that for me. I needed her. She could get information that was hidden from me. She was in the in crowd, one of the beautiful people - there were things they would tell her but bury from someone like me. Right now, I needed a break on Pookums the Fancy-Pants, so I couldn’t afford to have a conscience. The sidewalk met my feet heavily. I looked at the sky. I had plenty of time before I had to be at Packo’s - it was a late-night cathouse that didn’t open the doors until midnight and it stayed open until dawn. There was no reason to rush, but I found I was dragging along slower and slower. I hardly had the steam to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I stuck to the center of the concrete. It would go very badly for me if Malice caught up with me in this condition. My luck held. I walked until I thought I couldn’t walk anymore. I sank into a rhythm. Suddenly I realized I was only a block from Albertine’s. I sped up as much as I could. I was panting by the time I reached her porch. I trotted up the steps and jumped onto the window ledge. I scratched the window frame until I heard movement in the house. Albertine opened the catdoor. It was one of those fancy magnetic catdoors. The magnet was on her collar - it operated the door. “Why, it’s you -” I came through the door. I had to shoulder her aside, and I could see the surprise on her face. “What in the world is going on?” I headed for the middle of the foyer, motioning her closer. I wanted that magnet as far from the door as I could get it. “There’s a dog after me. One of Jingle’s boys. Big bruiser called Malice.” Her face showed the appropriate amount of horror. “Good heavens, Harry. Come in the kitchen. We can talk there.” As I told her everything that happened, Albertine paced the kitchen floor. I could see she wasn’t happy about Cleo, but what else should I expect? Albertine was still sweet on me. She also didn’t look so happy about Pookums. She waited until I unloaded everything, then she sat down across from me, her feet all tucked together, her perfect tail wrapped around them. Maybe she wasn’t a purebred, but she was still a queen for all of that. “Harry, Harry, Harry. You don’t know how much trouble you’re headed for, do you?” I supposed she meant Cleo, so I said, “I can handle whatever comes. Cleo’s a nice girl, so don’t worry about it.” She laughed. “Cleo? Oh, Harry, she’s just a small piece in the bigger game. She’ll bring you heartache, of course, and I can see there’s nothing I can do to save you from it. But that’s not what I mean. I mean Pookums. He’s a bad seed. He may come from good stock, but he’s a bad one. He deals.” That caught my attention. “Deals?” Albertine shook her head like I had said something stupid. “Why do you think Cleo is so interested in finding Pookums?” I sat there blinking at her. She laid it out for me: “Cleo uses. Catnip is her drug of choice. Pookums deals catnip. He deals it for sex, usually.” Here she gave me her serious face. “Harry, Cleo is a special client of his. She’s spayed. She’ll never have kittens, and she isn’t interested in Pookums like that. But he’s interested in her, so he deals to her for favors. This is one twisted knot you’ll never get apart.” I looked her over. She was always honest with me, but I was looking for some telltale sign that she was not being straight with me. Looking for a sign that she was mistaken or confused. She had to be wrong about Cleo. “If that’s true, then what does she need me for?” “Pookums has been missing for days.” I let it sink in. That matched the scenario. What was Albertine getting at? “So she came to me to help her find her friend. That’s what she told me.” Albertine tried to nuzzle me. I shouldered her off, realizing too late that I had just crossed the line with her. She cuffed me across the nose. “Get out.” “Albertine...” “Get out now. You’re headed for a world of hurt. You can’t see it coming. You probably wouldn’t care if you did see. She has you whipped, Harry, and you’re not thinking.” I stood up to leave. “I don’t know why I care about you, Harry. You’re a louse. But you should know this: Pookums isn’t just off having fun. He didn’t disappear on his own. Rumor has it he had help disappearing, and he won’t be back. This is out of your league. I just needed to tell you. If you don’t leave this alone, you’ll end up dead.