That exquisite smell of leather filled my nostrils.  It was a surrounding smell, of
comforting, animal flesh, an all too familiar scent.
 I thought for a brief moment.  I first donned the costume of a cat last Halloween
and had inadvertently stopped a rape.  Now very few days or so I donned a
much-modified version and went looking for trouble.  I was remined of something my
father taught me when I was young: ‘If you go out looking for trouble, you’ll always find
it.’  I did.  He was right.  From time to time, I made a difference.  Somehow it was worth
the injuries, the pain, being shot at.  I can’t explain it.  I’ve stopped trying.
 Adrenaline pumped into my veins as the thigh-high boots slid on. first the left, then
the right.  A final check in the full-length mirror toward the back of the battered
Volkswagon van.  Carefully, the last detail, my hair was already tucked into a ponytail,
and then into a hair net, on top of which I gently placed a golden wig.  Perfect.  I smiled,
the enhanced canine teeth gleamed underneath the sodium street light, while the vertical
contact lenses completed my inhuman transformation.
 The interesting part, was, did the Cat need Jessica, or did Jessica need the Cat?
 An interesting internal war, for I could not exist without either, and yet, there were
many different wars within.
 The pointed ears were a recent addition, and the rumors around Laketon were that
there was something unholy prowling about the city.  Laketon was not where I was now,
however.  I was in Chicago, and I had work to do.  The London Fog trenchcoat drifted
lazily around my ankles, and the brown aussie hat completed the ensemble.
 I reached upward, and gently closed the monitor panel of the laptop that I’d been
keeping an eye on for quite some time.  Its’ clock indicator read oh-one fifteen, and the
moon was full.  As I secured the laptop, I hit a secondary switch that allowed me to open
the doors without the interior lights lighting-up.  Quietly, I slid the door open and exited
it, and from a distance, touched a signal on my belt that operated the alarm system.
Unlike most, it didn’t beep, but merely activated.  No reason to announce my presence.
Yet.
 I had been watching my quarry for three days now, enough for him to make the
same mistake all three days.  The only difficult part of the equation would be the dog.  A
big pit bull that I presumed literally slept with the guy.  Reminds me of a really bad joke:
What’s meaner than a pit bull with AIDS?  The guy that gave it to him.
 Quickly I slipped into the alleyway and up the fire escape.  I made my way to the
roof with little difficulty and found the padlock on the exterior door nothing short of
laughable.  A ten-second lock, as I termed it.  I believe it was just under fifteen.  Have to
work on that.  The fire exit stairs took me down to the third floor, and there in the
darkness were a couple of  Nick’s thugs, playing a game of cards in the hallway.  One
more floor down, and I stepped into the elevator, and tapped the ‘3’ button.  Sometimes
the easiest ways were the most direct.
 When the bell rung again and the doors slid open, the lapels of the trenchcoat were
high, and all that kept it together was the belt.  I hummed in a sloppy way to myself, and
tilted ever so slightly, fumbling with some keys.  Both men stood, and one smiled.  I
ambled down the hallway.
 “Hey there cutie, where you goin’ to?” The one on the right said.
 “Oh just heading on, er,” I faked drunkenness, “home.”  I said turning toward him.
The one on the left got a donkey kick to the crotch followed by a hammer fist which
knocked him into unconsciousness.  I grabbed the second thug and brought his face to
mine.
 “Sweet Jesus Christ.” He said, and fainted.  Good help was so hard to find.
 I could hear the snuffling at the door,  as Fido’s nose did its work.  He made some
kind of mewing sound.  Bastards had probably had his vocal chords removed.
 The door on the lock was a twenty-second version of the one on the roof, and
Fido, well, I didn’t believe in hurting things unnecessarily, so Fido got himself a face full
of pepper mace.  So did the guys on the floor, who would have a fun time when they
woke up.
 Nick was asleep.  I do love a dramatic entrance, so I killed the apartment’s
breakers, and tickled his feet.  He came upright in bed.
 “Louise?  ‘zat you?” He fumbled with the light.
 “Steerike one.  Nick.” I said in a soft, succulent tone.
 “Zelda?  Sweets, is that you?”
 I really dislike pet names.  I leaped to one side, and grabbed an arm, wrenching a
pinky back as far as it would go.  This woke him up, and then I struck a blow to his neck,
flipped him bodily over, and began to grossly manipulate his spinal column.
 “Now then Nick, you’ll find that you’re paralyzed.  Most unpleasant feeling, isn’t
it?  You have a few options available in a minute, after I’ve finished my spiel.  You see,
you have a marker I want.  No, scratch that, I want all of them.  Every marker you own.
You see, while I don’t particularly care for gambling, I certainly don’t care for the degree
of  larceny, extortion and corruption that you represent.  So here’s the deal, you give me
the markers, and I let you live, and you can walk and talk again.  I’ll let you stew it out for
a moment.
 Quietly, I brought in his thugs and handcuffed them together, in such a manner that
would leave them quite unpleasantly stretched out.  I could see Nick’s eyes glittering at
me in hatred.  I turned the master bedroom breaker on, and then gently lowered myself
into a ‘splits’ position.  I reached upward, toward the bed and brought Nick’s head
gingerly around, didn’t want to break it, not quite yet.  My face was a scant foot away,
and I turned on the lamp.
 I could feel his pulse rise as he surveyed my face, the tiger-striped makeup, vertical
eyes, fangs.
 “Now Nicky, let’s see if you’re ready to bargain.” I said aloud, and released part of
the vertebrae with an unpleasant sound.
 “Goddamn bitch.” Were his first words.  My first strike was to his face, I shattered
his nose.  Blood spewed.
 “Again.” I replied.
 “What the hell did you do to me.”
 “Nothing that a good chiropractor and a year of physical rehabilitation won’t cure.
I don’t think you’ll be able to be making book for awhile.”
 “Look, I can pay you anything.”
 “Yes, you will.  Your markers, where are they.”
 He made a mistake.  He looked away, and at a wall, just for a second.
 “Wall safe?  How quaint.” I slid a Hustler pinup away, and of course, it was there.
“The combination.”
 “Release me.”
 “You’re really not in much condition to bargain.  Let me demonstrate.” I walked
over to him, and grabbed a leg.  “Can you feel me lift this?” He shook his head no.  “Now
I can control precisely where your paralysis begins and ends.  I can turn you into a head
that sucks baby food through a straw for the rest of your damn life.  Do you understand?
There are things worse than death, and having someone wipe your ass for the rest of your
days just might be one of them.”  The dog’s tears had finally washed enough of the pepper
spray away.  Warily, it came toward me.  I leaned low, and extended an upright hand.  It
came closer and I gently petted his head.  It cooed in a heartbreaking manner.  “Had his
vocal chords pulled, did we?” Nick simply nodded.
 I led the dog into the bathroom, and closed the door.  On my way in I plucked a
very sharp-looking butcher knife and carried it concealed into the room.  One of his
lackeys was stirring and the pepper spray caused him to be noisy.  I smacked him back
into unconsciousness, and brandished the knife at the same time.
 “Now just imagine still being that talking head, and having no way to talk?” I
smiled gleefully.”
 “Mary Mother of God, help me.”
 “You just don’t get it, do you? If I’d wanted to kill you, I would have.  Heck, I
could have sniped you from a rooftop at any time during the last three weeks.  I just want
your markers.”
 “Fifteen, seventeen, fifty-three.” He said.
 “Such a reasonable fellow.” The safe opened under my dexterous manipulations,
and I pulled out sheaf after sheaf of paperwork: pictures, dossiers, addresses, notebooks,
phone numbers, about sixty-five thousand in cash, jewelry and a small pouch of loose
gemstones.  All of these went into the trenchcoat, save for the dossiers.  I reserved one of
them, and took the rest into the bathroom, and Fido and I burned them.  He was really
quite the nice hound, for a pit bull, that is.  He stood quietly, as I re-introduced his master
to paralysis and began to systematically break both his legs, kneecaps, and thighs.  I
looked at him, and he wondered precisely what was occurring, as he could feel none of
the exquisite pain which I was forcing upon him.  As I began to break each finger, he
slipped into shock.  I released control of his motor functions as the second hood, the one
that I had kicked in the crotch came to.
 “Tell you what I’m going to do.  You answer one little question, and I’ll wash the
pepper spray out of you eyes.”
 “Anything!” He practically screamed.
 “What’s the dog’s name?”
 “Max.  He-his name is Max.”
 “Thank you.  You’re a very reasonable man.” I unhandcuffed him, and led him into
the bathroom whereupon I washed his eyes.  When he blinked and he began to look
around, I knocked the wind out of him, and inadvertently cracked his skull against the
bathtub.  It looked serious.
 Max and I went downstairs and I set him inside the van, wrote the apartment’s
number on a piece of paper, and taped it to a phone booth.
 “911, fire, police or medical.” The EMT operator asked.  Speaking through a
cloth, I gasped, “medical” and shattered the handpiece against the phone booth.
 Three days later, Max and I took a trip to see a friend in the hospital.
 “Your marker.” I tossed it to him.  “I’ve already called your old sponsor.  I swear
to you, if you don’t, I’ll know, and if I find out, I’ll make what he did you you look
comfortable.”
 Miles looked at me, and at the pit bull in my hand.
 “Wasn’t that?” He looked at me, gesturing toward the dog.
 “Wasn’t what?” I replied.  “Max  here?  I just got him out of the pound.  It seems
some mean man had his vocal chords cut out, and so a kind woman took him away from
the mean man.  I don’t really care for pit bulls, but he’s such a reasonable dog.”  Max’s
tongue panted heavily even in the air-conditioned room.  I dropped him on the bed and he
began to snuffle toward Miles.
 “My friend, you have a problem.  You asked me for help, and I’ve given it to you,
in the best way that I see fit.  The rest, is up to you.” Miles looked at me with tears in his
eyes.
 “I don’t know how to...”
 “Get some help.  You were in the program before.  It works, you know it, and I
know it.  Your old sponsor is willing, you just need to be able.  I can understand a
backslide, just try not to let it happen again, okay?”
 He smiled weakly.
 “Good-bye, Miles.  I’ve got to get home.”
 “Good-bye, Jessie.  I’ll go.  I promise.”
 “Yes.” I smiled, “you will.” I turned on my heel and left.