MEANWHILE BACK AT THE RANCH

Dylan Weinberg, an eleven-year-old boy with a rare form of autism, is missing. A stock market wizard, he can only utter one word, 'Schnay'. Kinky takes the case but he faces a dilemma when Lucky, a cat from his aunt Nancy's Utopia Animal Ranch, also disappears. Kinky decides to put his faith in Village Irregular Steve Rambam, who was trained as both a cop and a rabbi, to help find the kid in New York. Meanwhile, Kinky hightails it to the ranch in Texas, where the only witnesses are a dim-sighted, eighty-year-old lady and a frisky canine named Mr Magoo. Luckily, it seems that Lucky stowed away in the back of Nancy's truck, got spooked by some wolves, and then somehow found his way home. As for Dylan, Kinky has a sinking feeling that Dylan's father, fed up with a mountain of medical bills, may have disposed of his sick son. In fact, Kinky finds him tucked away in a slightly less than Dickensian orphanage where he has been abandoned. It's a double happy ending, and even the great Kinkster is at a loss to explain it. The cat, of course, said nothing.