Simon Hawke - The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez

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The Nine Lives of Catseye Gomez

e-book ver. 1.0

With a fond tip of the fedora, this one is dedicated to The Master,

Mickey Spillane, and his immortal creation, Mike Hammer.

Some things never change. And some things never should.

One

JUST when you think you've got the whole game knocked and are ready to settle back for the sweet ride of

comfort and security, life comes along and deals you a hand you wouldn't bet on in a game of penny ante

with a bunch of Cub Scouts. I guess I should've known better. An old trooper like me should be used to it by

now. I've had more ups and downs than a yo-yo in the hands of a hyperactive ten-year-old, but I guess even

old troopers get complacent.

See, the secret to dealing with the curve balls life has a tendency to throw at you is to roll with the punches

and always land on your feet. I'm good at that. You might say it's an inbred talent. Name's Gomez. I'm a cat.

A thaumagenetic feline, if you want to get precise about it. That means I'm no ordinary cat, which by now I

guess you might have gathered. What I am is a product of thaumagenetic engineering, a marriage of sorcery

and science, and that means I'm a few giant steps removed from my ordinary feline cousins.

Don't get me wrong, when I say "ordinary," I don't mean it as a put-down. I get along just fine with my ordinary

cousins-most of them anyway-but the fact is that so-called ordinary cats still basically look and act pretty

much the way Nature had intended. Me, I'm a whole different ball of wax. I'm a whole lot smarter. I can talk

and I can read, and that ain't bragging, brother, it's just the way my brain was engineered. Don't ask about the

details-I'm no scientist, and I'm certainly no sorcerer, though I know a lot more about sorcery than science,

mainly because I've lived with an adept. It's an interesting story, and one that's probably worth telling.

See, back in the old days, what they refer to now as "the pre-Collapse period," science and technology were

pretty much the basis for reality. Nobody believed in magic. Nobody worth taking seriously, anyway. There

have always been people who've believed in all sorts of crazy nonsense, from UFOs to dead celebrities

hanging out at the local 7-Eleven, and back then, anyone who seriously believed in magic was either given a

nice rubber room to play in or featured in the supermarket tabloids. However, all that changed, and rather

dramatically too, when the clock finally ran out on them and the world was plunged into the Collapse.

You've studied about it in school and you've heard the stories from the old folks who still remember it. It was

pretty ugly. Back then, people had believed there was no such thing as a limit to growth. They were always

robbing Peter to pay Paul, living on borrowed time and handing down their problems to the next generation.

Now, you can only do that sort of thing for so long before it comes time to pay the piper. Well, the time

came, and they paid. They paid big-time.

See, they'd finally managed to use up most of their natural resources, and what they hadn't used up, they'd

poisoned. No more fossil fuels. The wells ran dry. The air wasn't fit to breathe. The water wasn't fit to drink.

The overpopulated urban centers were choking on their own garbage and drowning in their own effluvium.

Yeah, not a pretty image. Environmental disaster never is, especially when it happens on a global scale.

The warning signs had all been there, and they'd been around for years, only nobody paid attention. Greed,

power politics, venality, corruption, all those sterling traits of human nature that often make me wonder why

the cockroach isn't the dominant species on Earth today led to the disaster now known as the Collapse. It all

finally fell apart. The doomsayers had been proven right, but they probably took little comfort in the accuracy

of their foresight.

Like I said, it got pretty ugly for a while. Governments collapsed, economies collapsed, law and order

collapsed.... I guess that's why they called it the Collapse. The darkened cities became free-fire zones. The

outlying areas became a no-man's-land of guerilla warfare among small and well-armed enclaves. It was

everybody's favorite postholocaust scenario, except that it never took a holocaust to bring it about. The real

miracle was that nobody freaked out and pushed the button, but then, they'd already trashed the world almost

to the point of oblivion and were probably desperate to save what little they had left. Saner minds prevailed,

though sanity was an extremely relative term in those days. (And in many ways, it still is, but that's another

story.)

The Collapse had plunged the world into a modern dark age, where the machinery all stopped and mankind's

feral instincts took over. It wasn't very pretty. And then something happened that no one had expected,

something that came from so far out of left field it took decades before the public consciousness could even

deal with it. Magic was reborn.

Actually, to be precise, it had never really died. It had simply been forgotten. What little history of magic use

remained had long since been relegated to myth and folklore. Even today, most people don't know what it's

really all about... and if they did, they'd lose their cookies.

Tom Malory set it all down in his book, The Wizard of Camelot, or most of it, anyway. There were certain

things he had held back, but only because he would have caused a panic if he'd told the whole truth and

nothing but. This isn't the original Tom Malory, you understand, the one who wrote Le Morte d'Arthur, in which

he set down the legend of King Arthur for posterity. This was his namesake, and no relation, a guy who'd

been a soldier in the British army and an urban Strike Force cop in London during the Collapse. What

happened to that Malory has become widespread public knowledge. He wrote about it afterward and retired a

rich man, but for the record, he was right there, from the beginning, when magic came back into the world.

He'd moved his family out of London, to the countryside, where it was somewhat safer, but life was still no

picnic. They were living hand to mouth, just barely getting by, and his kids were freezing in the biting cold of

the English winter. No fuel available. There was some coal and there was wood, but it was a seller's market,

and Malory could not afford the going rate. What was the poor guy going to do, watch as his wife and kids

died of pneumonia? No, of course not. He did what any self-respecting man would do when caught in such a

situation. He went out to steal what he could.

Not far from where he lived, there was a small forest preserve, one of the few wooded areas left standing in

that defoliated world. It was surrounded by tall fencing and barbed wire, patrolled by well-armed guards, and

the grounds inside the enclosure had been mined. But Malory was a desperate man, and he'd had

commando training. He managed to break in, with an ax. The way he tells it, he wasn't really sane at the

time. He'd passed the breaking point. He didn't think that the most he could carry was a measly armload,

assuming he didn't get caught while he was chopping wood in a protected national preserve, and it was hardly

worth the risk. It certainly never occurred to him that what he'd done was about to change the world. He just

broke in there, desperate and feverish, and went a short ways in, so that he'd be out of sight of the perimeter,

and what he came across was the biggest grandaddy of an oak tree he had ever seen.

What happened after that is legend now. He looked at this huge tree, miraculously left standing after all those

years of people chopping down everything in sight, stared at it, at this leviathan that could keep his family

warm for months, maybe even years, and he just went crazy. He screamed and attacked it with his ax, but

all he ever got in was just that one first blow, because the moment the ax had struck the tree, a bolt of

lightning came down from the thunderclouds roiling overhead and split the oak right down the middle. And

standing there, right smack in the center of the split, was Merlin, the legendary wizard to King Arthur.

Turns out it wasn't a legend, after all. For two thousand some odd years, after the sorceress Morgan le Fay

had tricked him and entombed him in that living oak, protected by a spell, Merlin Ambrosius had slept in

some kind of enchanted, suspended animation, dreaming the events that took place in the world outside. It

wasn't Tom Malory who broke the spell; he just happened to be there when the enchantment ran its course

and Merlin was released. But he was there, at Merlin's side, when the Second Thaumaturgic Age began and

the world was dragged kicking and screaming out of the Collapse and into a magical new dawn.

All this happened many years before I was born, of course, and I wouldn't be the cat I am today if Merlin

hadn't brought back magic to the world and founded schools of thaumaturgy that would teach the old

forgotten arts to his new pupils. The twenty-third-century world of today has come a long way from the

Collapse. The union of magic and technology has brought about a kinder, gentler world in many ways.

Thaumaturgy is a nonpolluting resource, and so the air is clean now, even in the cities. Cracked and buckled

pavement has been replaced by grassy causeways, since vehicles that operate by magic skim above the

surface and have no need of asphalt roads. Acid rain is something that's just read about in history books

now, and magic properly applied by reclamation engineers has cleaned up landfills and toxic-waste dumps

and brought new meaning to the term biodegradable.

Graduate schools of thaumaturgy turn out new adepts each year, of varying levels of talent and achievement,

from lower-grade adept up through the ranks to wizard, sorcerer, and mage. Your basic lower-grade adept is

usually someone with just enough talent to master a few fairly undemanding spells, such as levitation and

impulsion, which are used to drive taxicabs and trucks. A wizard can do considerably more, such as

maintaining the spells that allow power plants to stay on line, and certification as a sorcerer opens up the

corporate world to the adept, with a career and lifestyle right up at the top of the social pecking order. Nothing

like living high and skimming off the cream. But not all sorcerers opt for the business world. Some go into the

fields of art and entertainment, and that's where I come in.

One of the most respected positions in the world of art is occupied by the thaumagenetic engineer adept, part

scientist, part sorcerer, who specializes in creating hybridized new life forms for the enrichment of your

private life. A thaumagene is the ultimate form of pet these days. You can go out and get yourself a snat, a

cute and furry little creature that's a magical hybrid of a snail and cat. It's soft and cuddly, and it purrs and

vibrates and clings to walls and ceilings. Silly things, but they're very big with single women. Or you can get

yourself a paragriffin, a hybrid of a parrot and a miniature lion, or perhaps a leopard. It flies and talks, and you

can teach it songs. Or, if that's not to your taste, you can get a dobra, a hybrid of a cobra and a dog, and

you'll have something spectacularly ugly that you can take for walks out in the park, and pity the poor burglar

who tries to break into your home. If you've really got the scratch, you can get yourself a living sculpture,

something crafted out of precious stones and metals, then magically animated. Just the thing for the coffee

table or the breakfast nook. Me, I'm at the low end of the scale, and I make no bones about it. I'm your basic

thaumagene, economy-class model, one of the two traditional categories of pet. You got your dogs, and you

got your cats. Look normal, act pretty much like they're supposed to, only with highly developed brains and

the capacity to speak and reason. We're the most inexpensive kind of thaumagene, and, consequently,

there's more of us around.

Personally, I like the way I am. I'd rather look like an ordinary cat than like some high-toned piece of living art.

I'm not pretentious, just your basic milk and kibbles kind of guy. Black, with white markings on my face and

paws. I've got one distinguishing characteristic, though, and that's Betsy, my magic Chinese turquoise

eyeball. See, I never had what you might call a normal sort of life, normal for a thaumagene, at any rate. Back

when I was still a kitten, even then, I had my pride. Sitting in a window of a thaumagene shop, mewing and

pawing at the glass each time some skirt came by to take a peek and mutter, "Oh, how cute"-no, sir, not my

style. I wanted out. And so I slipped the lock on my little cubicle one night and struck out on my own. Guess

I've always been the independent type.

Those were lean and hungry days. Living by my wits in the alleys and back streets of Sante Fe, New Mexico,

scratching and clawing for survival, eating out of garbage cans and dumpsters, sleeping in basement window

wells and thrown-out cardboard boxes, it wasn't easy, I can tell you that. But it was freedom, Jack, and I

loved the sweet and heady taste of it. I never knew the pampered life, and I guess that made me what I am

today. I had my share of scraps, some of which I won and some of which I lost, but as I grew older and leaner

and meaner, the losses came less frequently. It was in one of those scraps in which I barely squeaked

through by the skin of my tail that I lost my eye. Ran into a dog that wanted what I'd scored for dinner. I was

hungry and I didn't want to share. Well, turned out the dog was a coyote, and by the time he decided I was

more trouble than I was worth, I'd gotten chewed up pretty bad. Scratch one eyeball. Hurt like hell, but I had

the satisfaction of not backing down. Stupid? Maybe, but you back down once, you'll back down twice, and it

can get to be a habit. I've got enough bad habits as it is.

Enter Paulie. Professor Paul Ramirez was his full name, and he was Dean of the College of Sorcerers at the

university. He found me in the street, where I'd collapsed, too tired and too weak and too full of pain to move

another step. He picked me up and took me home with him, and I was so messed up, I didn't have the

strength to argue. He nursed me back to health and, when I got better, took me to a thaumagenetic vet. I

could've had a brand-new eyeball, cloned and grown in a vat, but Paul was not a rich man, despite being a

sorcerer. He was a teacher, and teachers do it for the love of teaching. It sure as hell ain't for the money. The

best he could do for me was a prosthetic eyeball, made of turquoise. It was a stone he'd had around,

intending to get it made into a ring someday, but he gave it to the vet, who cut it and set it nicely in my eye

socket.

Frankly, I liked it a lot better than some fancy, cut-glass eye. It's a Chinese turquoise, of a beautiful,

robin's-egg-blue shade, with a fine, vertical matrix running through it that almost resembles a feline pupil. I

thought it gave me character, and the other felines in the neighborhood agreed. A foxy, little alabaster Persian

by the name of Snowball dubbed me Catseye, and the handle stuck. Catseye Gomez I became,

unregenerate hardcase and all-around troubleshooter.

I never did become a pet. Paulie was an all-right guy, but I was just too damned set in my ways to change.

You want some servile creature that gets all excited when you come walking through the door, rubs up

against your legs and has an orgasm when you stroke it, go get yourself a poodle, man, that ain't my thing.

But Paulie understood that. We were both loners, in our way, and we just sort of took up with each other,

both of us coming and going pretty much the way we pleased. Paulie had his career, I had my wandering

ways.

Every now and then, Paulie'd have a bunch of students from the college over for some Java and late-night

conversation. One time, one of them left behind a book. Something he'd been reading for a pre-Collapse

literature class. I found it on the floor. The ability to read had been bred into me, but up to then, all I'd ever

read were labels on greasy, thrown-out cans of tuna I'd picked out of the garbage, and the oil soaked

newspapers fish heads were wrapped in. This was something new. I read the tide. I, the Jury, by some guy

named Spillane.

It was a tale about a private eye named Hammer. Mike Hammer. Tough guy who packed a .45 and took no

crap from anybody. Once I'd started it, I couldn't stop till I had read it all. This Hammer was a guy after my

own heart, an hombre I could really understand. It was like coming home. This guy Spillane knew about the

hard life. He knew the streets and alleys, the shadows where the lizards lurk, the baser side of human

nature-of all nature, for that matter- and the never-give-an-inch attitude it takes to make it through the cold,

dark night. Man, I was hooked.

When Paulie got home, all I could talk about was this guy Spillane, and the stories he told about Mike

Hammer, and I wanted more. Paulie'd never heard of him, but he found that kid's professor and asked him

about this writer named Spillane. It wasn't easy, and it took a lot of searching through the antique bookshops

of the city, but Paulie eventually brought home everything this guy Spillane had ever written. My Gun Is

Quick. Vengeance Is Mine. One Lonely Night and The Big Kill and Kiss Me Deadly and the rest of them.

Man, this guy could write. It was as if he knew all about the kind of life I'd led, only Mike Hammer was a

human, not a cat. Not much difference beyond that, though. Give either of us any shit and we'd rip your throat

right out.

I got through all the Spillane books, and Paulie found me more. He brought home books by Ross MacDonald,

stories about a private eye by the name of Lew Archer, maybe not as tough as Hammer, but just as

uncompromising in his way. That led to Raymond Chandler and his hero, Phil Marlowe, and then to Dashiell

Hammett and Sam Spade and the Continental Op. Maybe things were different back in the days they wrote

those books, but I realized one thing. Not all humans were the same. Some were just like me. Tough and

feral creatures of the night, hard-bitten scrappers who fought the good fight, grabbed life by the throat and

shook it, wringing out each precious drop of blood and letting its hot fire flow coursing through their veins. I

would've understood those guys, and I would've been proud to know them. And in some ways, Paulie was like

that, only a lot more civilized.

I found that out the way I've learned everything else. The hard way. You'll remember when I said that if most

people knew what magic was really all about, they'd lose their cookies? Well, here's how I found out.

A murderer was on the loose in Santa Fe, a vicious serial killer whose victims were found horribly mutilated

and drained of their life energies, their very souls sucked dry. This could only mean one thing. The killer was

an adept, a necromancer. A wizard who killed to drain his victim's life energy and absorb it, like a vampire.

The police had no idea what to do. This was way out of their league. But there was someone who could stop

the killer, three someones, to be precise, who flew in from New York when they heard what was going down.

And one of them was Merlin.

Merlin had taught Paulie everything he knew, but this wasn't quite the same Merlin that Paulie remembered.

That Merlin had died in a struggle with the Dark Ones, but his spirit had survived, to possess a flaky kid from

London by the name of Billy Slade. Then there was Kira, a sexy knockout from Lower Manhattan who had

made her living as a thief until she found a greater calling, and Wyrdrune, a dropout student of the

thaumaturgic arts who had the ability to shapechange into his alter ego, a cold and ruthless mercenary by

the name of Modred, the immortal spirit of King Arthur's son.

From the three of them, Paulie and I learned that there was once another race of beings on this Earth, not

unlike humans, with coppery-gold skin and bright red hair, and that they were magic users. It was from them

that humans got their legends of immortal gods and demons, vampires and witches. They were called the Old

Ones, and they used humans in their sacrificial rites, taking their life energies to empower their magic spells.

As the primitive humans started to evolve, many of the Old Ones came to feel that it was wrong to use them

in this way, and they started to practice what became white magic, thaumaturgy, a way of taking only some

of their life energy and allowing them to recuperate. But there were others, the Dark Ones, who would not give

up the old sorcery of death. They were the necromancers, and the rift between them and the others led to

war. In the end, the Dark Ones were defeated, and entombed forever in a hidden cavern deep beneath the

earth, while the surviving Old Ones scattered and lived out the remainder of their lives pretending to be

human, to avoid persecution by those who had once been their victims.

Over the years, they interbred with humans, until they no longer were immortal, but their abilities were

genetically passed on, though they became diluted over time. Humans with abilities like extrasensory

perception were people who were descended from the Old Ones, just like those who possessed the natural

ability to study thaumaturgy and become adepts. Merlin, himself, had been a half-breed, whose father was an

Old One, and when he brought back magic to the world, its power had awakened the imprisoned Dark Ones

and they had broken free. And the killer loose upon our streets was one of them.

Paulie and I helped stop the vicious necromancer, and, as a reward, Merlin had cast a spell upon my

turquoise eye before he left. He gave Betsy the ability to hurl bolts of thaumaturgic force, but this ability was

limited by the strength of my own life force. If I cut loose with Betsy, it would take a while for me to get back

enough strength to let 'er rip again, but that's because magic has its own laws of energy that cannot be

violated. You won't hear me complaining. I've got something no other thaumagene will ever get. My sweet and

trusty Betsy, my own version of Hammer's .45. Don't mess with me, Jack. My claw is quick.

After the necromancer was defeated, things settled down in Santa Fe. Paulie had been injured in that final

confrontation, and for a while, he was blind. It was only temporary, and everybody thought he would recover.

But it was more than just his vision that the necromancer had burned away. He had burned away a part of

Paulie, and what was left was not enough to keep him going. He got his vision back eventually, but he just

kept getting weaker. I stayed by him, and I watched him fade away, and it just tore my heart out, for Paulie

was as close a friend as I had ever had, but there was nothing anyone could do. One day, he simply closed

his eyes and never opened them again. And that was that. I was alone again. I'd been that way before, been

alone most of my life, but it just wasn't the same. I missed the man. I missed him with a gnawing in my gut

that made me want to take on the whole world and scratch its eyes out.

I left the house and took to the streets once more. I just couldn't go back there. It hurt too much. Every day,

I'd go to visit Paulie's grave, and I'd sit there and have a conversation with him. I talked, and I hoped that,

somewhere, he was listening. And then, one day, as I was laying on the grave a fresh rose I'd torn up out of

some old lady's garden, I heard a voice behind me call out my name.

"Gomez? Catseye Gomez?"

I turned around with a snarl at this unwarranted intrusion on my time with my old friend. "Yeah. I'm Gomez.

Who wants to know?"

"The name's Solo. Jay Solo. And Paul Ramirez was a friend of mine."

"Is that so? I never heard Paulie mention you."

I looked him over. Feisty-looking character, not too tall, broad in the chest, dark-haired, maybe in his fifties.

Had a look about his face I recognized and liked at once. A tough and lived-in look. The look of a guy who's

been around and seen a few things in his life that maybe weren't too pleasant, things that might've bothered

him, but not enough to grind him down.

"Paulie?" he said, with a wry smile. "Somehow, I've never thought of him as Paulie. With us, it was always

Solo and Ramirez." He shrugged. "It was a long time ago."

"What were you to Paulie?" I asked.

"A friend," he said, simply. "We knew each other back in Cambridge, Massachusetts, when he was studying

with Merlin and I was going for my criminology degree. He used to date my sister. I'm afraid it didn't turn out

too well. I liked him, you understand, liked him a lot, and I tried to warn him. My sister... well, let's just say it

wasn't in the cards and leave it at that. He got pretty torn up about it. After we got out of school, we went our

separate ways and kind of lost touch with each other. I don't guess he'd talk about those days too much."

"I see," I said. "Well, if you want some time with Paulie, it's okay with me. I'm about through here, anyway."

"It was you I came to see," said Solo.

"Me?"

"I've been looking for you ever since I got to town about a week ago."

"Yeah? Okay. You found me. So?"

Solo stared at me for a moment, then moistened his lips nervously and took a folded piece of paper from his

pocket. "Paul wrote me a letter," he said. "It must have been.. .just before he died. I'd like to read it to you, if I

may."

Something suddenly felt real tight inside me. "Yeah," I said. "Go ahead."

"Dear Solo," the man read. "I know it's been a lot of years, and a lot of water under the bridge. But there's one

thing time has never changed, even if we haven't stayed in touch too well. I still consider you one of the

closest friends I've ever had. I would have said the closest friend, but there's another friend who's just as

close, someone who's like a brother to me, even if he isn't human."

I looked away and closed my eyes, feeling as if somebody'd grabbed my heart and started squeezing.

Goddamn, Paulie....

"His name is Gomez," Solo continued, "Catseye Gomez, and he's a cat. A thaumagene." Solo glanced up

from the letter. "He goes on here to tell me something about you, about how you two got together and what

you're like and some of the things you've been through... anyway. ..."

He looked back down at the letter and continued reading. "The thing is, old friend, I'm dying. There's nothing

to be done, and by the time you get this, I'll probably be gone. I've taken care of most things in my will, but

there's one thing I'd like you to take care of for me, and it's the one and only thing I've ever really asked of

you, and the last thing I will ever ask of you. Look after Gomez for me. Not that Catseye needs much looking

after, he's a real independent sort. He's very much his own person... well, I tend to think of him as a person...

and if he knew that I was writing this, he'd probably get angry and want no part of it. He's a tough old cat who

grew up on the streets and knows his way around. He can take care of himself, believe me, but somehow, I

just hate the thought of him being on his own, without a friend, back on the streets again after I've gone. He's

been a loyal and true friend, Solo, just as you have been, and in different ways, at different times, you two

have been very important parts of my life. Neither you nor Gomez are exactly spring chickens anymore, but

unless I miss my guess, I think the two of you will find you have a lot in common, and I'd like to do just one

last thing before I go. I'd like very much to bring my two old friends together. In a way, it's like completing

something, I suppose. I don't know how either of you will feel about the idea, and I'm not asking for anything

like a firm commitment. I'm just asking you both to give it a try. One last favor for a dying man. I think you'll

both find it hard to turn that down. I hope so. But I'm pretty sure you won't regret it. Do it for me. And think

about me when I'm gone. Good-bye, old friend." Solo looked up from the letter. "Love, Paul."

I felt like I had a hairball the size of a Frisbee stuck in my throat. "Damn, Paulie...." I said.

"Well..." said Solo. "I've always been pretty much of a loner, myself, but if Paul Ramirez considers you a

friend, then so do I. So what do you say, Gomez?"

What the hell was I supposed to say? Hell, I didn't even know the guy, and I wasn't in the market for any new

best friends, but how do you turn down a dying man's request? Especially when it was the best friend you'd

ever had?

"Like Paul said, Gomez, we're not talking about any firm commitments here. We're just talking about getting

to know each other, and if it doesn't work out, we'll just part company with no hard feelings and I'll take you

anywhere you want to go. It's up to you. What do you say?"

I sighed. "Well, what can I say? It's for Paulie. And if Paulie thought you were worth getting to know, then I

guess that's good enough for me. But I do what I damned well please and I sure as hell ain't no pet."

"That goes without saying," Solo replied. "Like I said, no strings. We'll just spend some time talking about

our old friend and see where, if anywhere, it goes from there. You call the shots."

"Sounds fair enough," I said. It was for Paulie. Besides, I was always a good judge of character, and there

was something about this guy Solo that I liked from the beginning. "Okay. Where to?"

"I've got a rented car," he said, jerking his head back toward the lot. "We'll drop it off at the Albuquerque

airport and catch the next plane back to Denver."

"Denver?" I said.

"Yeah, it's where I live," said Solo. "Don't worry, you get a round-trip anytime you want it."

"Denver?" I said again. I'd never even considered leaving Santa Fe. I'd never been anywhere else. I didn't know

anything about Denver, except that it was in Colorado. I didn't even know what this guy Solo did for a living.

"What do you do in Denver? You mentioned something about criminology?"

"I'm commissioner of police."

"A cop, eh?" I said. I couldn't help it. I thought about Mike Hammer and Pat Chambers, the police captain

who'd been Hammer's closest friend. Ironic? Maybe. Fate? Who the hell knew.

"Yeah," said Solo. "Hope you haven't got anything against cops."

I smiled. "Aren't they supposed to be the good guys?"

"We're supposed to be," said Solo. "I like to think we try, anyway."

I nodded. "Yeah, well, all anyone can do it try. Denver, huh?"

"Yeah. Denver."

"What the hell. I've never been to Denver."

I glanced back toward the grave and thought, Paulie, I sure hope you know what you're doing. I said a silent

goodbye and went with Solo to his car. We got in and he turned the key, activating the thaumaturgic battery.

The rental hummed to quiet life and rose about two feet off the ground. Solo turned it around and we softly

skimmed off toward Albuquerque. For a while, neither of us spoke. It felt a little awkward, I guess, and neither

of us was really certain what to say. We were each doing a favor for a dead man, a man who'd meant a lot to

us. What we'd mean to each other, if anything, remained to be seen.

Like I said before, life tends to throw you a curve every now and then. Most of the time, you can't really see it

coming, but you roll with the punches and try your best to land on your feet. But then, I'm a cat, and cats

always land on their feet. A low rumble of thunder echoed through the sky like a growl as we left the

cemetery behind.

Denver, Colorado. A new town. New turf. Maybe a new beginning for an old trooper. Anyway, we'd soon find

out.

Two

THE flight to Denver taught me a thing or two about perspective. I'd always thought of myself as a cat who's

been around, but though I knew every street and alleyway in Santa Fe like the back of my paw, I learned that

I never had any idea of just how much was out there that I didn't know. Oh, I'd read a book or two and

watched TV with Paulie, but knowing there's a lot more out there beyond your city limits is not the same as

actually seeing it for yourself. Especially from the sky. And I learned something else, as well. I hated flying.

If God had meant for me to fly, he would've given me wings, or at least arranged for the thaumageneticist who

designed me to do it. I knew about airplanes, of course, I'm not a moron, but I'd never actually flown in one

before and it gave me the willies. The planes they use now, for the most part, are still the same ones that

were used back in the old days, except now they don't have jet engines anymore. If you were to go up in the

cockpit, and nobody but the crew gets to do that, you'd see two pilot adepts and a navigator sitting up there,

in a cockpit stripped of everything except the radio and navigation instruments. The two pilot adepts take

turns flying the plane, literally holding it up in the sky through sheer force of will. Levitation and impulsion

spells are among the least complicated of magical incantations, but there's a big difference between scooting

a taxicab or bus a couple of feet above the ground and holding up a plane at twenty thousand feet. It takes a

lot of effort, and the pilot adept has to concentrate like hell. It really wears them out, which is why there are

always two per crew, and after every flight, it takes them a few days to recuperate and get their strength

back. Airline pilots have to be at least fifth-level sorcerers, and they are among the highest-paid adepts. Much

is made of how much safer flying is today than it was back in the old days, but that was little comfort to me.

The Bureau of Thaumaturgy, under the administration of the ITC, the International Thaumaturgical

Commission, has certain rules that pertain to public transportation. It's all right for private and rental vehicles

to be powered by thaumaturgic batteries, but trucks and public transportation vehicles can only be operated

by certified adepts. It has to do with insurance, a concept that survived even the Collapse. Nevertheless, the

fact that there were two pilots in the cockpit who unquestionably knew what they were doing did not make the

flight any easier for me. Especially since the damned airline regulations required me to travel in a fucking

catbox.

I had to give Solo credit, though. He sure as hell put up a fight about it. I didn't know what kind of experience

he'd had with thaumagenes. Most people, if they didn't own one, have at least encountered thaumagenes, but

I had no idea if Solo was a pet owner or not. He'd mentioned being a loner, though, so I'd kinda assumed he

meant that literally. Nonetheless, perhaps I should've asked. I could see things getting a bit sticky if the

police commissioner had an attack-trained dobra hanging around the house. In any case, he made one hell of

a stink about their goddamned "policy," and he even made them bend a little. If they'd had their way, I

would've been tranqed and stuck back in the cargo bay. Yeah. Good luck getting near me with a needle.

Even if they'd tried one of those cute little dart guns, I would've had a surprise in store for them with Betsy.

Fortunately, that one never came up. Solo wound up buying another fare, and I got to ride with the regular

passengers, but I had to stay inside that stupid wire cage. Solo was very apologetic about it, though, and

made sure I had the window seat, which, quite frankly, I couldn've done without. He got the stewardess to put

some pillows on the seat, so the box could sit higher and I could see out through the window. At first, I

thought it might be interesting, but once we gained some altitude, I changed my mind. Yeah, it was

interesting, all right, but downright unnerving. I decided that when I'd had enough of Denver, Solo could

damned well put me on the bus.

My first sight of Denver as the plane came in for a landing told me that it was going to be a very different

scene from Santa Fe. For one thing, it was a hell of a lot bigger, sprawled out in a huge valley at the foothills

of the Rockies. The tall buildings of the downtown area stuck out like a small island in a sea of business and

residential structures that glowed like the embers of a dying campfire at sunset. The plane came in over the

runway, only not on a descending approach. The runways had been laid out in lighted grids. The air-traffic

controllers directed the pilot to the proper one and, once he was over it and had the okay to land, the plane

simply descended in a gradual drop, like an elevator. There was a shuttle waiting to take us to the terminal,

where we didn't have to wait for our luggage. Solo had only a small canyon and me, well, I travel light. I was

just glad to be out of that damned box.

We took a cab to the downtown area, where Solo had an apartment in one of the luxury towers. On the way,

he kept up a sort of running commentary, pointing things out and telling me about the town. I wasn't too

impressed with my first sight of it.

Guess I was spoiled by Santa Fe. See, the folks in Santa Fe have always had a thing about preserving the

special atmosphere and culture of their town. Development was a dirty word in Santa Fe, and there were

strict regulations about such things as the height of buildings and the style of the structures within the city

limits. In Denver, the people didn't seem to care that much about what happened to their town. The

architecture was a garish mix of old and new, and the streets had no charm about them whatsoever. Neither

did the drivers. Traffic was dense, and everybody fought for what little available lane space there was. Not

much chance for grass to grow with so much traffic blocking out the sun above the vehicular causeways, and

Denver, Solo said, suffered from chronic water shortages, so the scrubby short prairie grass we skimmed

above looked decidedly anemic.

At one time, according to Solo, Denver had been known as the Queen City of the Rockies, and back then

that wasn't a reference to its sizable gay population. The architecture had been primarily of the Victorian

style, along with a rather blocky, but not altogether unattractive style of house known as the "Denver Square,"

of which there were still quite a few remaining. However, in the days just prior to the Collapse, a large influx of

people from the east and west coasts had changed the demographics of the city, and Denver had started to

lose its own unique identity. They didn't want it to be known as a "cow town" anymore. They wanted to

"imagine a great city," which had been a popular progrowth slogan at the time, and in the process of

imagining a great city, they had apparently managed to ruin a pretty good one.

Then came the Collapse, and, like most other heavily populated urban centers, Denver suffered. There had

been riots and burnings and chronic shortages and power outages and, eventually, Denver had succumbed to

the same anarchy the rest of the world had been plunged into. That had been a little over three-quarters of a

century ago, however, and since then, they'd made a lot of progress. Or, at least, so Solo said.

I guess I'd been spoiled by Santa Fe. My "City of the Holy Faith" had not been hit as hard by the Collapse as

most other places had been. The people had pulled together and managed to largely preserve their graceful

and laid-back Southwestern lifestyle. But then, there had never been any major industry in Santa Fe, and the

city was in a rather isolated location at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo mountains. The people had simply

banded together, and since many of them were artists and various counterculture types, they'd had an easier

time of it, shifting to an agrarian, barter-based economy. Denver hadn't been so lucky.

The great city they'd imagined had been plunged into a great nightmare of darkness and fighting in the

streets. And I got the impression that not all of that had been put behind them. But then, I thought, maybe I

was being unfair. I had only just arrived. Why not give the place a chance? What the hell, I could always go

back home, right?

The cab dropped us off in front of Solo's building, and we went through the front doors into the lobby. The

security guard on duty at the desk was a senior citizen, and I noticed that he greeted Solo with a warm smile

and a "Good evening, Commissioner."

"Evening, Joe," said Solo. He paused briefly to introduce me and tell the guard I'd be staying for a while. Joe

smiled and greeted me politely.

"Ex-cop," said Solo, as we headed toward the elevator.

"I guessed," I said.

He pushed the call button and the doors opened.

"Floor, please," said the elevator.

"Ten," said Solo.

"Thank you, Mr. Solo." The doors closed, and the elevator started to ascend smoothly. It was very plush in

there. Carpeted, nice paneling. The elevator's voice-command capability meant it was computer controlled,

very slick and fancy. I gathered that the rent here wasn't cheap.

We got off at the tenth floor and went a short distance down the hall to apartment 10-C. Solo opened up the

door and stood aside to let me in.

"Well, here it is," he said. "This is where I hang my hat."

I sauntered in and looked around, twitching my tail back and forth. A nervous habit. "Nice," I said.

"It's got a nice view of the mountains from the balcony."

It did, too, from what I could see through the sliding glass doors, but after that plane ride, I'd had about

enough of heights for a while.

"Would you like something to drink?' asked Solo, automatically, and then he remembered he was talking to a

cat and added, awkwardly, "I... uh... always keep some milk around for my coffee."

"Milk would be fine, thanks. I take it neat, in a saucer."

Solo looked at me, saw that his leg was being pulled a bit, and grinned. "Neat, in a saucer, coming right up."

The place was a lot different from Paulie's adobe house in Santa Fe. For one thing, it was an apartment, not a

house, though its square footage wasn't all that much less than Paulie's home. As far as apartments went,

these were pretty classy digs. I made a quick walk-through inventory. Big living room with a nice fireplace,

two bedrooms, large bath, separate kitchen, dining room, large balcony. The carpeting was thick, wall-to-wall,

brown pile, and fie furnishings looked as if they'd all been bought at once. It was the kind of thing a decisive

man who didn't want to waste a lot of time would do. Went in, knew what he wanted, picked up a set.

Everything matched, and most of it looked reasonably new. Big, brown leather and mahogany, sturdy kind of

stuff, built for comfort with lots of room to stretch out. None of that steel and glass crap. One of the end

tables held an honest-to-God Remington bronze that had to be worth a fortune. There were no paintings on

the walls, but there were several large, nicely framed Civil War prints by Don Troiani. Again, not cheap. And

again, revealing an old-fashioned, manly kind of taste that would give a decorator fits. I noticed a couple of

guns hanging on the wall. Antique, black-powder, cap-and-ball revolvers. Navy Colts, by the look of them. I

wasn't an expert, but I read a lot, and Paulie had a taste for American history, as well. One of the bedrooms

had been turned into a study, with bookshelves and a large oak desk stained dark walnut, with a comfortable

leather swivel chair behind it. The desk held a computer, a pipe stand, and a cork-lined humidor, and there

was a nice residual smell of cavendish tobacco in the air. Another old-fashioned and outmoded habit. There

was no sign of a woman's touch anywhere about the place. Definitely bachelor digs. Warm and comfortable

and tidy, with no concessions to style or fashion.

"Milk, straight up, in a saucer," Solo said, putting the dish down as I sauntered back into the living room.

"Place meet with your approval?"

"Sorry about that," I said. "Didn't mean to be nosy. It's an inbred trait."

"It's okay," he said. "You hungry? I'm afraid I don't have any cat food, but I can go out and pick some up."

"Thanks, but I'm okay for now," I said.

"You got any preferences?" he asked. "I mean, like particular brands?''

"Hey, man, I spent most of my life rooting around in the garbage for food," I told him. "I'm not a fussy guy. I'll

eat just about anything except birds. I hate birds."

Solo grinned and sat down on the couch. "Well," he said, a trifle awkwardly, "here we are."

"Yeah, here we are," I said, taking a seat on the carpet. I didn't know the rules yet, so I had no idea if the guy

had a thing about animals on the furniture. When you're a guest, you try to be polite.

I guess neither one of us really knew what the hell we were supposed to do. It wasn't exactly your normal sort

of situation. Hey, buddy, do me a favor, take care of my cat after I'm gone. It was pretty obvious that I wasn't

your average cat. Hell, I wasn't even your average thaumagene. I had plenty of rough edges. I didn't even know

if Solo liked cats.

"So, how do you feel about cats?" I asked him, figuring that at least one of us had to start somewhere.

Solo shrugged. "I don't know really. I've never had one. I guess I'm not really a cat person. Not that I've got

anything against cats, you understand, I've never had a dog, either. And I'm not too crazy about birds, myself.

Had a hamster once, when I was a kid."

"A hamster, huh?"

"Yeah. It died."

"Sorry to hear that."

"I felt sorta sorry for it, sitting in that cage all the time, and I used to let it out to run around. One time, it got

away from me and scurried off somewhere. My mother found it. She sucked it up into the vacuum cleaner."

I tried, but I just couldn't make it. I managed to keep it down for about five seconds, and then I had to laugh. It

just started coming up, and there was nothing I could do to hold it in. The thing is, my laugh sounds a whole

lot like a hairball coming up. It starts with this wheezing, hacking kind of sound, and then settles down into a

sort of rhythmic snorting, and for a second, Solo looked alarmed, thinking maybe I was choking. Then he

realized that I was laughing, and he started laughing, too.

"Actually, it was a pretty traumatic experience for me, as a kid," he said, when we'd both run out of steam.

"I guess it was, at that," I said. "Sorry for laughing, but..."

"Yeah, I know," he said. "Freaked out my mother pretty badly, too. I mean, one second she's just vacuuming

the rug, and then there's this soft, funny sort of chunking sound-"

I started to lose it again, and that set him off, too.

"Oh, hell," he said, trying to catch his breath. "I can't believe I'm laughing about this. I cried for days. We

pulled it out of the bag and it was all mashed up and covered with dust-''

And we both promptly lost it again. I couldn't even sit up straight. I just fell over on my side and lay there on

the carpet, helpless with hysterics. It's not that I find cruelty to animals amusing, you understand, nor that I

have a morbid streak.. .well, maybe I do, who knows? But it was just funny as hell somehow. Aside from

which, a hamster's really nothing but a rodent, and you know how cats are about mice. I mean, if God hadn't

meant for us to bat 'em around, he wouldn't have made 'em so fucking small and stupid.

There was a knocking at the door, and Solo got up from the couch, wiping his eyes. "Excuse me a minute,

will you?" he said, heading for the door.

What happened after that kinda put a damper on the evening. He opened the door, and I heard him say

something to someone, and then my ears pricked up as I caught the unmistakable scent of a dog. The dog

must have smelled me at about the same time, for the next thing I knew, there was a high-pitched, yipping

sort of bark, and the most ridiculous thing I ever saw came barreling around the corner into the living room.

It was one of those small French poodles, with its hair cut in that goofy way that leaves bare patches of skin

here and big, fluffy balls of hair there, and it even had a ribbon tied up in the hair on top of its ratty-looking

head. But that wasn't the worst part, though it was bad enough. Somebody had actually dyed the stupid thing

pink.

I don't know if it expected me to arch my back and spit or take off running with a stark, raving terror, but it's

kinda hard to get scared by anything that looks so goddamned silly. It came racing up to me, yipping like an

Indian, and when I didn't turn tail and run, it dug in and stopped about six inches away from me, all ribbony

and pink malevolence, and bared its teeth and started growling.

"Fuck you," I said, and gave it the claws. Just reached out with a quick right and raked it one, right across its

wet and shiny little nose.

The damned thing squealed like a pig caught in a meat grinder and beat a hasty retreat, crying out, "Mommy,

Mommy!"

Mommy? I felt like I wanted to puke. Being somewhat distracted by the pink avenger, I hadn't noticed the

skirt who came in with Solo. She was a real elegant-looking number, dressed in a formfitting, clingy outfit that

didn't leave much to the imagination. For that matter, if she'd been wearing a sack, it wouldn't have left much

to the imagination. You can't hide a body like that without really working at it.

I have to confess that human bodies don't really do anything for me, but some human females I can find

aesthetically appealing. They're usually the ones who have something of the cat about them, the ones with

lean, slim bodies and long legs and a sinewy, graceful way of moving. This lady wasn't one of those. This was

the kind of babe Hammer would've liked. Voluptuous, with generous, curvaceous hips, small waist, and large

breasts that strained at the fabric of her dress. What they call "an hourglass figure." .I've noticed that a lot of

human males seem to really lose their cookies over female anatomy like that. I don't know what their thing is

about breasts. Far as I can see, they're only fat.

"Ohhh, my poor baby!" said the skirt, crouching down to scoop up her fluffy, whimpering, pink thaumagene in

her arms. "What did the nasty kitty do to my Pinky?"

"The nasty kitty gave Pinky a swat in the kisser," I said, wryly.

She stared at me with loathing while she cradled her trembling pink poodle in her arms, protectively. "You

horrible thing!" she said. She glanced at Solo. "What is that?" she asked him, in an accusing tone.

"A cat," said Solo.

"I know it's a cat," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "What's it doing here?"

"Visiting," I said.

She ignored me. "Jay, where did you get that awful beast? Don't tell me you actually went out and bought

it?"

"Nobody buys me, lady. I'm not for sale," I said. "We had a mutual friend in common, if it's any of your

business, and he passed on recently. We were just getting together at his request to trade some war stories

and remember what a privilege it was to know him. And if that ridiculous-looking dog of yours hadn't gotten in

my face, I wouldn't have gotten into his."

She just stared at me with her jaw hanging open while Solo stood there, looking uncomfortable, and then

Pinky whined, "The kitty hurt me, Mommy!"

"Mommy" turned to Solo and said, "Jay, you're not going to keep that mangy beast, are you? 1 insist you

lock it up somewhere! It's scaring Pinky. Look how he's trembling!"

"Hell, lady, if I had to go out in public looking like that, I'd tremble, too," I said.

The look she gave me was pure venom.

"Jay.. ."

"You want I should leave the room?" I asked him, remembering that it was, after all, his home.

"No, Gomez," he said. "You stay right there."

"Jay!"

"Gomez is my guest, Barbara," Solo said, "and your dog came bursting in here and went after him. Far as I'm

concerned, the stupid mutt got what it deserved."

He immediately went up quite a few points in my estimation. But then, I should've known. Any friend of

Paulie's was liable to be a stand-up guy.

' 'Jay!'' said the skirt, again, in a shocked tone of voice.

"If you can't control your dog, Barbara, then I suggest you keep him on a leash," said Solo. "Gomez is a

friend and he's staying."

"Well! Then maybe I should leave!" she said, in a huff.

"Maybe you should," said Solo.

She stared at him with disbelief, then gathered her wits and turned angrily and stalked back to the door. Solo

held it open for her.

"If you think I'm going to stand for this sort of treatment," she said, icily, "then you are very much mistaken."

"Good night, Barbara," said Solo.

"Good-bye, Mr. Solo!"

I think she would have liked to slam the door, only Solo was holding it for her and she had precious, trembling

Pinky in her arms. She stalked out angrily and he closed the door behind her.

"Sorry about that," I said. "I didn't mean to spoil anything for you."

Solo simply shrugged. "Oh, you didn't spoil anything," he said. "Barbara lives just down the hall. She moved

in a couple of weeks ago. She's divorced and she's been dropping hints that we should get to know each

other better, coming by and wanting to borrow coffee or have me open a jar of pickles, all that sort of thing. I

hadn't quite figured out a way to brush her off politely, but I guess you just took care of that. She was getting

to be a bit of a pest."

"Lot of guys wouldn't mind that kind of pestering," I said.

"I guess not," Solo replied, "but Barbara's not really my type."

"What is?"

He walked over to the desk and picked up a small picture frame. He carried it over and held it out so I could

see it. It was a photograph of a lady with a lot of cat in her. She had short, blond hair worn down to her collar,

green eyes, a small and slightly turned up nose, nice cheekbones, and a smile that lit up the world. She was

dressed in faded jeans and a man's white shirt, with moccasins on her feet. The photograph had been taken

outside, in a park. She was sitting on a swing, with one arm up above her head, holding onto the chain, and

her head cocked to one side, resting on the arm. Slim body. Long legs. Nothing like Barbara at all. Just

looking at the photograph, I could tell that when she moved, it would be with a lithe and supple grace, natural

and unselfconscious. The photograph was signed, "Forever, Lisa."

"Pretty lady," I said.

"My wife," Solo replied.

I was surprised. I hadn't seen any evidence of a woman around the place. And then his next words answered

my unspoken question.

"She died about fifteen years ago."

"I'm sorry."

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TheNineLivesofCatseyeGomezCopyright©1992bySimonHawkeAllrightsreserved.e-bookver.1.0Withafondtipofthefedora,thisoneisdedicatedtoTheMaster,MickeySpillane,andhisimmortalcreation,MikeHammer.Somethingsneverchange.Andsomethingsnevershould. One JUSTwhenyouthinkyou'vegotthewholegameknockedandarereadytosett...

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