Cat in a Quicksilver Caper Read online

  “Yes. Picture them as pit bull–Italian greyhound crosses. They’ve been extremely protective of me in the past. Sometimes I think ‘shady’ is just another word for sex appeal.”

  Randy laughed until he needed to quiet his hilarity with another tepid sip of wine spritzer.

  Temple went on. “Getting Clooney to attend the exhibition opening shouldn’t be too hard. Tape-cutting. Lots of high-roller comps from the hotel, the five-thousand-square-foot Nebula Suite, and flashy media up the ying-yang.”

  “I’ll let you look into that. I’ll do all the traditional stuff: local press, major national general interest media. Anything off the wall is your area.”

  “Don’t use that expression! We are talking about an art exhibition, after all. Nothing will be ‘off the wall’ on our watch.”

  “Done.” Randy gave Temple a rather anemic high-five. They were talking serious culture here, after all.

  Temple couldn’t believe it. The contract Randy would be sending to her home office at the Circle Ritz could keep her in everything, including Stuart Weitzman shoes, for a year. This was her first truly major PR commission for a major Vegas hotel. It took her breath away and almost took a girl’s mind off of all things Scarlett.

  When she got home, Louie was waiting on the kitchen counter-top, white whiskers twitching on his Jack of Spades black face.

  Temple opened three cans of mixed shrimp, scallops, and red snapper supper, and then added dollops of caviar and capers over the Free-to-Be-Feline cat health kibble he’d only eat if it was adulterated.

  Or maybe not. After gazing at the lavish stew, he turned tail and thumped down. She followed him anxiously into the living room, thinking he was expressing annoyance at her recent absences. Although he had hardly been confined to quarters lately himself. . . .

  By following him, she discovered that her answering machine was blinking red with a message.

  “Temple, you formerly red-headed little rascal!”

  Her aunt Kit’s dramatic contralto boomed into the room like a bolt of energy. “Thanks for the fix-up date. What a morning after! I felt like Judy Garland in the production number of ‘Get Happy.’ Remember that one? Judy in fedora and legs and black-tie jacket, borne aloft at the end by rows of chorus boys?

  “As chorus boys go, the Fontana Brothers are the cat’s pajamas, all nine of ’em. Does that have anything to do with lives? Unfortunately, not mine. One can’t have everything all at once. Listen, my dear. I’d love to spend some time with you. I’m not needed in New York for ages. Well, a week or two. No bloody book deadline. I’m at the aging Oasis where the damn reality TV show put us poor judges up. Can we get together?”

  Temple laughed at the message until she cried a little. (Scarlett O’Hara wake-up moments had a very bad effect on one.) Aunt Kit. Her Midwestern mother’s never-married sister, an actress turned novelist. In the old days, she would have officially been designated “spinster,” (kinda what Temple did for a living now, media wise). But Aunt Kit was the only woman in Temple’s family who’d gone somewhere and done something . . . adventurous.

  Yes, they could get together!

  Temple dialed the number Kit left and suggested that her aunt might want to do Vegas with a transplanted native and maybe bunk with her for a while.

  When Temple hung up, she cringed. What a coward! Aunt Kit in residence would keep both Matt and Max at bay while Temple tried to adjust to her brave new role as a woman with two equally appealing beaux: playgirl of the Western world.

  Eat Till You Drop

  “Are you ready?” Randy asked the next day at the New Millennium.

  He looked almost as quizzical as Danny Dove, Temple’s choreographer friend, at his most frantic or antic. She should be ready for anything, on the work front at least.

  Aunt Kit had been installed that morning in Temple’s humble home-away-from-Manhattan and was left to her own devices. Why did Temple think those started with the initial F? Rule, Fontanas, Fontanas rule the Strip. Their ladies never, ever will be anything but hip.

  Temple regarded the hotel’s deserted, gray flannel–upholstered media room, wishing she and Randy could sit here forever, playing tiddlywinks and video games with art and commerce.

  “Ready for what, Randy?”

  “Lunch with the Bigwigs.”

  “Why do I think that title is capitalized?”

  “Because it is. Today. Russia is no longer a Red State, excuse the expression.”

  “Politics,” Temple said. “Damned if you don’t play politics, damned if you do.”

  “This exhibition is a touchy blend of Russians Red and White. Ready to walk the tightrope?”

  Temple thought about walking her own personal tightrope between two guys and a gal: Max. And Matt. And C. R. Molina, the interfering homicide lieutenant. Guess which one was the gal? If you could call it that.

  “Tightrope walking? What,” she asked Randy, “do you think a self-respecting freelance PR person in Las Vegas has been doing all these years?”

  “Excellent. We’ll be lunching in the Red Planetarium Room.”

  “Why am I not surprised?”

  Temple seriously wished for her natural red hair back when she sat down to lunch in the Red Planetarium Room fifty stories above the Strip.

  The restaurant revolved, of course. In a city dominated by mini-me skyscrapers like the Eiffel Tower and the New York, New York faux skyline, real elevation was a turn-on. The ceiling was a slowly spinning electrified night sky as seen from Mars, with Earth a mar-bleized blue-and-white beach ball dominating the distant glittering galaxies.

  Larger-than-life-size Greek-style nude statues in red marble depicted Mars, the Roman god of war, and his Greek counterpart, Ares. Not to mention several naked unnamed goddesses. The room was awash in red velvet and stainless steel.

  Although the rococo decor befit the last Romanov czars of Russia, the dominating red color scheme was a slap in the cool white-marble faces of White Russians, the aristocracy ushered out of the mother country so violently by the “Red” Communist Revolution in the early twentieth century.

  At least the tablecloths were whiter than the snow-capped Ural Mountains separating expansive European Mother Russia from equally sprawling Siberia and Asia. At a huge round table curled into the tufted shell of a crimson velvet banquette sat a coven of strangers, eight, from Temple’s hasty summation.

  Let the introductions begin! Shortly thereafter, she concluded: too bad the table was surrounded by the most dyspeptic mugs on the planet.

  The exhibition curator was a tall, snowy-polled stork of a man named Count Ivan Volpe. A French citizen, his family had fled the 1917 Russian revolution for Paris, as had so many aristocratic White Russians, or supporters of the czars. Ever after, French culture had a distinct Russian accent in such artistic circles as dance and graphic design.

  Temple couldn’t decide whether Volpe would be best typecast as an impossibly snobby Parisian head waiter or an autocratic Slavic prince. Either way, his accent was divine. The women at the table, though few, perked up to hear it.

  A decidedly proletariat-looking man—strong nose, strong back, weak chin—who spoke neither English nor French, was introduced as Dimitri Demyenov. This Russian government representative was accompanied by two Russian tractors who stood silo-still behind him throughout lunch.

  Not literal tractors, mind you, just the human equivalent of same: bull-necked, rhino-chested men in black-green suits with the no-nonsense tailoring of flak jackets.

  Temple was surprised that the Terrible Two didn’t overtly taste Dimitri’s dishes before he did. Who could forget the dioxin poisoning of presidential candidate Victor Yushchenko in the Ukraine?

  Olga Kirkov was the exhibition designer, obviously a former ballerina—such a tiny, fragile creature, as creased and transparent as old lace. Imperial in mein and manner, her eyebrows were so elevated they could have been McDonald’s golden arches etched in mourning black. There was something childlike about her immobile,
disciplined features, like a doll with seven facelifts.

  Her opposite was the thirty-something feature writer for Artiste magazine, a glossy national review of multimedia events. This tall, awkward bundle of hyper-intelligent bones with popping doe eyes had a name ideal for her job, though Paris Hilton it was not: Maven Abernathy.

  The portly gentlemen were harder to distinguish: expensive but not too-designer suits, ebbing age-paled hair, glittering rimless glasses, soft pink hands that honed their only calluses on board reports, not elite gym weight machines.

  Two represented sponsoring corporations, adding luster to their corporate logos for backing a bona fide crosscultural coup. And for flashing their company names in front of the millions who visited Las Vegas and the hundreds who covered its every wink and twinkle and buzz on multimedia outlets day in and day out.

  Temple nodded and shook hands where offered and finally sank onto her cushy red velvet place with spinning brain and rejoicing haunches.

  Randy would give her a remedial course in Mass Introductions 101 after lunch. For now, she just had to speak softly and make intense mental notes on the personalities and politics surrounding this ballyhooed event.

  First, there was the ordering ritual.

  A waitress in green body paint—whose costume was designed to show the most of it that was legal—declaimed the innumerable specials and took orders.

  Boris and Natasha, Temple’s nicknames for the unidentified standing goons, made furtive notes on everybody’s orders. Looking for poison or planning on planting it?

  Even the pre-luncheon drinks took on a political cast. Some ordered Black Russians, some ordered White Russians. Some ordered raspberry-red white-chocolate martinis, shaken, not stirred, renamed Pink Russians for this occasion. She and Randy shared a peace-keeping order: pink Zinfandel wine spritzers. The chitchat began over appetizers, a pan-galaxial platter of haute French, Russian, Asian, and Tex-Mex teasers.

  Every PR person in the business knows that meals and drinks are a professional hazard, rather like sand traps in golf. You have to play through them, but it isn’t pleasant or easy and you may end up looking like an idiot. Or in this case, fat.

  This was a crosscultural sand trap: Post-Communist New Russia huckstering its once-despised Old Russian aristocracy meets New Wave Las Vegas and American know-how/hype-now via the intervention of the delicate and decidedly iffy French connection.

  Snobbery and savvy were having an arm-wrestling contest in the subtlest of terms. Temple couldn’t help thinking that something had to give.

  The art people really couldn’t stomach the publicity hype and the tacked-on magic show. The hotel people couldn’t swallow Culture with a capital C when it didn’t include generous amounts of media slap, dash, and tickle.

  The expanding New Russia’s sense of enterprise couldn’t unloose the Old Red State need for heavy-handed control. The Old Las Vegas free-roulette-wheeling love of the art of the deal couldn’t slick down its cowlicks to kowtow to High Culture on a roll.

  Talk about a marriage made in Hell. This was a miscarriage made in Hellespont: Byron versus Hulk Hogan. Erté versus Eminem. Fabergé versus Rasputin.

  Something, Temple told herself for the second, third, and fourth time, has got to give. If this exhibition opened without a major media glitch, Temple and Randy would be so lucky they ought to enter the lottery.

  She couldn’t think of anything else that could be added to this recipe for disaster.

  Except . . .

  Elvis, we hardly knew ye. And you’re way better off left out of this fiasco.

  The Softer Side of Vegas

  The empty lot opposite Maylords Fine Furnishings is a scruffy bit of sand and sagebrush not far from the Las Vegas Strip.

  Folks who fly into Sin City only see the high-profile skyline, not the flat lots in between. Granted these checkerboard squares of empty real estate are worth the ransom of an Enron executive (pre-downfall). Yet to the tourists who trot by on their way to the next overblown attraction, they look pretty tacky.

  And here is where my kind has always set up shop: on the outcast fringes of populated areas, where they can forage, be overlooked . . . and sometimes be tended by the soft-hearted.

  So. I got Ma Barker and her north-side gang transferred down-Strip to the softer side of Vegas during one of my recent capers. They are all summa cum laude graduates of the Feral Seize and Suture program, meaning they are the last of their breed.

  I admit I am sorry to see the last of us street folk subdued. We are like the lonesome hobos of decades gone by: free and free living. Railriders and kings and queens in disguise.

  But it is a rabies tag world these days. My goal is to ease this ragtag community over to the parking lot of the Circle Ritz, where they can live out their days, and nights, as local celebrities, thanks to the attentions of Miss Electra Lark and her tenants, who are also lone strangers in their own human way.

  My Miss Temple, of course, would be the first to offer them shelter, did she but realize that they existed. Although I have come to know her circle of loved ones and acquaintances well during our mutual adventures, she has never quite wised up to my extended family.

  It is about time that she did.

  So, I round up Miss Midnight Louise, who occupies my old post of house detective at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino. Some say she is the spitting image of myself. Black, ballsy, and cool. Well, delete the ballsy. What is the female version of that? Gallsy? And I am Palsy?

  Some say she is just spitting mad.

  She says she is my unsanctioned daughter and that I am a deadbeat dad.

  I say . . . call me a Clairol blond. Who knows for sure?

  Meanwhile, I am stuck with her. Being a practical cat à la T. S. Eliot’s streetwise breed, I allow her to delude herself. So, I sidle over to the Phoenix and find my partner in Midnight Inc. Investigations lounging under my old favorite stand of canna lilies next to the koi pond.

  “Popster!” she greets me.

  I look around to see if anyone feline or human has overheard this humiliating term. Kits, these days. Tattooed and microchipped. Born to be wild but happy to be post-modern media children.

  “I need an inside kit and an outside herder.”

  “Tell me more.” She settles onto her haunches, a sign of budding maturity.

  Louise is not quite my spitting image, although her temperament sometimes matches mine. Her eyes are 24-karat gold where mine are emerald green. And her coat is longer and softer, as becomes a girl. I hunker down as well, ready for a cat-to-kit talk.

  I start. “You know Ma Barker and her gang have moved downtown.” Ma Barker is my, well, ma and possibly Louise’s grandma. We had a touching reunion during one of my recent cases. That is to say that shivs and whiskers were brushed, but nothing came of it but a mutual resolve to keep out of each other’s hair.

  “Thanks to you,” Louise acknowledges. “But Ma Barker and her crew are still a feral gang. Anybody might be after them to wipe them out.”

  “Right. But I have plans.”

  “You always have plans.”

  “This is a good one. I want to relocate them to the Circle Ritz.”

  The hair on the back of her neck stands up. “You did not want to relocate me there.”

  “You have a good position here at the Crystal Phoenix. The house executive chef is in the palm of your paw. These are, well, street people in fur. They need someone to watch over them.”

  “You?”

  “Somewhat. Mostly they need my human associates, which are all a soft touch, once their potential is pointed out to them.”

  “Hmm.” Louise settles deeper into her ruff, which has grown fluffier as she has matured.

  I admit I am taken aback by her new Mae West look.

  “So, you need my help?” she asks.

  “We need a Moses.”

  “I am a girl cat.”

  “Well, a”—boy, am I stuck—“a Joan of Arc. To lead them to the light.”
r />   “She led the French to battle and darkness.”

  “This is different. Plus, I could use you later on the scene of what may become a foul crime.”

  “That sounds more up my alley.”

  “The New Millennium.”

  “Oh, that New Age planetary place!”

  I explain what is going down there nowadays.

  “The Czar’s Scepter? I do know a couple of Russian Blues who might give me an in.”

  “Russian Blues? Those are pretty aristocratic cats.”

  “I am a modern girl, Daddy-o. I can do country or haute couture.”

  Manx! I am not sure I can “do” either. But leave us not let Miss Midnight Louise know that! Like the Mystifying Max, misdirection is one of the few weapons I have left in a tricky, hostile world.

  “So,” I say, “if you could hang around the New Millennium when you are not chatting up the Ma Barker gang for the move, it would help me out a lot.”

  “And what will you be doing?’

  “Fixing my Miss Temple’s personal and professional life, as usual,” I growl.

  “She seems to have an inordinate amount of both, for a ginger-cream.”

  I have never heard Miss Louise sound so . . . catty before.

  “Just do your job. I will handle the delicate diplomatic bits.”

  “Yes. I have glimpsed your delicate diplomatic bits and they leave a lot to be desired.”

  That is Miss Midnight Louise these days. Ma Barker all over again.

  Designing Man

  “Thanks for coming,” Danny Dove greeted Matt at the door.

  Matt wished that he was still so naive that he didn’t detect the inadvertent pun in that greeting.

  The door Danny opened was one of a shining black enameled double set. This neighborhood was high-end and this Big White House (a domestic version of Hollywood’s Big White Set) was palatial. Still, Danny Dove, Temple’s bereaved friend and Las Vegas’s prime big-time show choreographer, stood in its doorway looking like death warmed over and fricasseed for good measure.