Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit Read online

  The owner of it advanced on them fast. His mai-tai fruity Hawaiian shirt was louder than his hacksaw voice, but he was built like an aging bull. Brillo pad curls of iron-gray hair covered his head and poked out of the shirt’s v-neck.

  He stopped beside Temple and Electra. “These girls want work at the new place? The redhead is scrawny, but the blue-hair could help the girls with the wardrobe, such as it is.”

  The women’s jaws dropped and then shut in unison.

  Buchanan quashed a nasty giggle.

  “So,” Temple said, nudging Electra silent with a genteel tap of a steel heel on her instep. “You’re the owner of this forthcoming enterprise, sir?”

  “One of ’em. I don’t rule out scrawny, mind you. It’s the customers.”

  “I would like to work for you, but in my capacity as a PR manager.” Temple whipped out her card, which read TEMPLE BARR, P.R.

  “Heh,” he said, punching the beefy hand that held her card forward in a thumbs-up position. “Like Magnum, P.I. Clever.”

  “My chief client is the Crystal Phoenix.”

  “The Phoenix.” He savored the name, nodding appreciatively. “Classy Strip hotel-casino. I could use a little class. But very little, if you know what I mean.”

  She smiled sweetly. “I do, Mr.—”

  “Nemo. Leon Nemo.” His gazed narrowed. “The Phoenix. The Fontana boys are all over that operation, and others around town.”

  “Indeed they are. But you’re, um, sponsored by the Lust ‘n’ Lace. They’re a long-standing Vegas tradition too.”

  Leon’s hands, beefy and hairy but expressive, pantomimed playing an iffy piano. “Just as a familiar introduction of a new tune. My people are an indie operation.”

  “I’m an independent operator too.”

  “I bet you are, Red.” He leaned away to look down. “Nice ankles. You planning on doing some jack-hammering in those heels?”

  “If needed.”

  Louie began weaving defensively around her ankles. Nemo looked away, back to her face. “So what brings you to my site?”

  “Curiosity.”

  Leon looked down again. “That the name of your cat?”

  “It could be.”

  “I like cats. You never know what they’re thinking and you can’t hear ’em coming. That’s the way people should be. No useless yapping.”

  “Speaking of useless yapping,” Temple jerked her head over her shoulder, indicating Crawford Buchanan eagerly eating up their conversation.

  Nemo got the message. “Thanks for the run-by, Buchanan. I’ll call you later. I got another fish to fry now.” He looked down at the cat as Buchanan departed with a sour look.

  “His name is Midnight Louie,” Temple said.

  “Yeah, he’s a Louie, all right.” Nemo squatted down, showcasing bare knees and hairy calves. “Big fellah. Put ’er there, Louie.”

  Louie sat back on his haunches, then patted the back of Nemo’s hand. Like your average harmless Curious Kitty.

  “Nice baby claws, Louie.” Nemo grunted as he stood again and laughed. “He was holding back until he decides about me. I like cats. Velvet when you meet ’em, but steel like your heels when you cross ’em. So,” he asked Temple. “Why are you here in this dead neighborhood eyeballing a sign for a live X-rated adult show?”

  “I like to keep track of new business opportunities in Vegas. What does puzzle me is the zoning restrictions. This neighborhood is zoned residential, mixed use, which covers small businesses. Not so sure that covers an adult business.”

  “Zoning regulations?” Nemo slapped the rear of his khaki Bermuda shorts. “Right here in my back pocket.”

  Temple nodded. He seemed confident, and she knew adult enterprises were part of the city’s bread and butter…and influence was peddled freely.

  Electra finally unleashed her pent-up questions. “So who sold you this land? I heard it was an out-of-town owner.”

  “And how did you know that, Grandma?” Leon raised furry eyebrows. Temple thought of the Caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland.

  “Well, sonny,” Electra said in no-nonsense tones, “I was married to the man. He swore never to sell it without telling me. I can’t believe Jay would sell out to an adult entertainment club. He was brought up Baptist.”

  “Oh, ma’am.” Nemo waved gently placating palms. “This is not an extension of Vegas’s second biggest X-rated store since the Adult Superstore. No tawdry warehouse operation like that.”

  “No?” Electra asked hopefully.

  “No, no no. This is a small and intimate place, fitting for the neighborhood.”

  Electra took a deep, earnest breath. “So it’s a done deal.”

  “Good as Fool’s Gold. Don’t worry. No X-rated movies or walls full of you-know-whats,” Leon explained. “This will be just a nice, quiet, neighborhood topless stripper bar on a major scale.” He turned to Temple. “Nothing you couldn’t promote with the same classy style you’d use for the Crystal Phoenix, Miss Temple Barr, P.R.”

  His self-satisfied, somehow dirty smile made Temple think of someone who knew more about her than she’d like. Someone who’d been pawing through her underwear drawer for a prank. Someone who thought all women were alike, and lying if they said they didn’t live up to his slutty expectations.

  Someone Temple would like to kick down a flight of stairs. She probably was staring daggers at him, to no effect, when Electra grabbed her elbow.

  “Maybe it’d be all right if we looked over the building,” she suggested.

  “Sure. Be my guests.” He gestured to the shabby structure and then headed to a Lexus SUV parked suspiciously far down the block.

  Temple was reluctant to leave Nemo with the last word, and a smirk to boot, but Electra had pulled her off balance, so she spun around on one steel heel to watch him leave.

  “We can inspect the property, thanks to Nemo,” Electra said, “but you don’t have time to worry about him. You and Matt are leaving for an important family reunion. I’ll ask Ernesto and his brothers about this Leon Nemo. The Fontanas know the sleazy operators in town. And they’d know about zoning and such, given all their business interests.”

  “That’s a great idea, Electra. And what they don’t know, the guys’ uncle, Macho Mario Fontana does. He has true mob associations from his distant past to call on.”

  The prolific Fontana family exploited a vague aura of faded “mob”, but was most noted for its crew of sleek, mostly bachelor men-about-town. Besides Nicky, the youngest brother who operated the Crystal Phoenix, the other nine brothers ran a mob-themed hotel and custom limo service, both called Gangsters. You need to go for a ride in Vegas? Fontana Inc. will provide with panache. It was all a harmless take on family history.

  Electra turned to eye the diminished billboard, too distant to read now. “I have to check my files too. I’m foggy on where my property ends, since I left a bunch of it undeveloped.”

  “You mean that outfit may not have all the rights they’re claiming?”

  Electra’s custodial hand squeezed Temple’s forearm.

  “I mean I do have some hidden resources.” Electra winked. “Don’t worry about me now. It’s a good thing you’re slated for a family visit in Minnesota so you young folks can settle where you need to be once you’re married. You’ve given me an idea or two.”

  “Really? I am distracted with this trip coming up so fast. Our Mr. Leon Nemo was more than vague on the zoning question. Even if this was a sealed deal, I’m sure you’ll find a way to make Lust ‘n’ Lace’s excursion into live entertainment…history.” Temple gazed around again. “Say. Where’s Louie?”

  “I saw him snooping around the construction office in the RV after Nemo left. I’m thinking he’s smelled something fishy about that outfit too.”

  “Especially under that aluminum temporary foundation surrounding the RV,” Temple said. “So if the cat’s away, maybe we mice should play.”

  Electra stared at the abandoned hulk. “I’m dying to see w
hat Nemo and his silent partners think is so valuable about this building Jay owns. Let’s explore.”

  8

  Off Market

  “What a dump,” Temple said once they were through the double entrance doors, using an iconic Bette Davis line from an old movie.

  “Beyond the Forest,” Electra said.

  “What?”

  “The name of the movie Bette Davis said that ‘dump’ line in. I saw it.”

  “In first run?”

  “No, on Turner Classic Movies, silly. I’d have to be a zillion years old to have seen the first run.” Electra looked around and bit her lip. “The building does look awful stripped down and empty.”

  “Dump” was too good a word for the interior space.

  The exterior looked like an abandoned factory, but they hadn’t realized the second-story windows had been painted over. They stood inside a dim, gray cube divided into smaller dim gray interior cubes facing onto a wide central aisle.

  Temple gazed up the central staircase to the second floor and the dust-dulled giant glass chandelier overhanging. The U-shaped second-story balcony overlooked the wide central aisle downstairs. Most of the temporary walls that divided vendor spaces were still up, creating an impression of ticky-tacky one-room housing units in endless rows on two stories, like jail cells.

  “So sad.” Electra shook her head, her fanciful hair the only vivid color in a place of concrete floors and naked cinder-block walls. “All the dealers gave their spaces and the dividers so much personality when it was an antique mall. Cornelia used a folding screen with fabric panels to suspend her vintage hats, all velvet and feathers. Georgia kept a huge stuffed black panther over there. It was studded with a rainbow of rhinestone pins. Hank used stackable cubes to hold his old chrome toasters and other quaint appliances. Everything shone and sparkled and radiated new life for old things.”

  “What’s the story on the ten-foot-long chandelier?” Temple turned her neck back as far as it would go to take in the tower of dusty glass that hung over the top of the stairs, and over her and Electra, like an elegant unused guillotine.

  “It was from some old movie. George never sold it because he wanted four thousand dollars for it.”

  “He just left it here when the mall closed down?”

  “I think he made a deal with the woman who rented the building after that. It would be murderously hard to move.”

  “All these funky items were a hop-scotch jump away from the Circle Ritz, and a vintage-hound like me never got a whiff of its existence? I must be losing my touch.”

  “You’ve been a little busy, dear, with your job and the occasional diverting murder and the always diverting two beaux.” Electra sighed. “I once needed to juggle boyfriends myself.”

  “Well, one of them has diverted himself out of the country, so I’m finally and inexorably and permanently a one-man woman.”

  “I find that a bit…boring, to be honest.”

  “You had—what?—five husbands. That was more than diverting, Electra, it smacks of being hooked on weddings.”

  “I finally did find a way to have as many weddings as I wanted without all the messy men-stuff involved.” Electra winked and patted her hair. “I’ve told you before that some of my generation had Elizabeth Taylor disease.”

  Temple’s wrinkled brow prompted an explanation. “If we liked a man and he liked us, we married him, to avoid any example of wrong-doing.”

  “Even if the man was married to someone else first, I suppose. Did you know Elizabeth Taylor quoted that Bette Davis ‘dump’ line in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?”

  “No, but I’m sure that Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t afraid of any wolf in Hollywood. Anyway, the antique mall went under before you gifted Las Vegas with your presence. A woman who provided Strip shows with costumes and wigs then used this place as a storage facility for a short while.”

  “Even worse!” Temple exclaimed. “I’d have loved to see her collection of all that glittery stuff. The costume department was my drug of choice when I did PR for the Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis. Ah, the scent of the grease paint and rhinestone glue, the roar of the crowd and the rustle of the costumes.”

  “I guess that Vegas was your cup of cake, then, even though your family felt that Max had ‘dragged’ you away with him to Sin City.”

  “My family was more than a smidge overprotective of the only girl, and I was also the youngest. I needed an escape clause and Max—”

  “You don’t have to explain yourself to me. I’d sign on the dotted line with him in a heartbeat. Poor boy. Aced out now. If you and Matt move to Chicago, it’d be nice to have him back at the Circle Ritz.”

  “I don’t even want to think about that! What I need to think about is Matt and my looming trip to Minnesota. My family has been beastly to any boy who’s been involved with me since Terrence Schulenberger as a maple leaf danced around my daisy face in the kindergarten program.”

  “You’d make an adorable daisy! I don’t see Matt, or Max, as a maple leaf, though.”

  “Electra! I’m asking advice here, since you’ve gone through the engagement process five times. Should I wear this Art Deco engagement ring Matt bought me from Fred Leighton’s at the Bellagio? Maybe I should slip on a more modest Midwestern ring for the trip.”

  Electra grabbed Temple’s left hand to study the scintillating flash of dueling diamonds and rubies, of ice and fire. “Fred Leighton? That’s where the movie stars shop. How much did it cost?”

  Temple retrieved her hand. “More than you should know, or I should wear without carrying a gun. Just think. This from the man who talked his talent agent into committing a portion of his commission along with Matt’s assigning ten percent of his fees to charitable causes. I don’t know what he was thinking when he splurged on this.”

  “That he knows you love vintage things, and, like the Clairol ads say, you’re worth it. Or do the ads still say that? I fear my decades are showing.”

  “Here in Vegas flash is common, and often taken for a good fake. I put it on for that disastrous dinner, but my folks seemed too dazed to much notice it. So what should I say about the ring if they comment on how expensive it is?”

  “That Matt picked it out for you and you love it and it’s both something old and something new for the wedding.”

  “That’s the perfect answer. Thank you, Electra!” Temple embraced her, then withdrew, shaking out her red-gold waves of hair. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about this meet-the-fiancé ritual.”

  “They didn’t approve of the last one, did they? But you’ve been independent and away on your own now for a couple years. You don’t answer to anyone but yourself.”

  Temple nodded. “Why do the people who want only the best for you become the last to admit that you know what you’re doing?”

  “It’s the parent thing. It’s hard to let go of feeling responsible. That’s why I do this.” Electra swirled one hand over her wildly color-enhanced hair. “If old Mom can be an unconventional free spirit, there’s nothing my grown children can do to shock me. Right?”

  “Right.” Temple looked around the forlorn space. “Why would anyone buy this sad mess for a strip club? The defunct Neon Nightmare club building. I can see that. But this? I don’t get it.”

  Footsteps interrupted her monologue.

  “Excuse us,” a woman’s voice said, “but what are you doing here?”

  “I might ask the same thing,” Electra said, stepping forward.

  The man answered. “We’ll be managing this new joint.”

  Temple jumped into the awkward moment of this standoff. “You must be Mr. Adcock and Miss Zydeco. So glad you dropped by. I talked with Mr. Nemo just now. Your plans for the building and site are wonderfully intriguing.”

  While laying down her PR patter, Temple did a fast read of the managerial couple.

  Katt Zydeco was showgirl tall, wearing the riding habit look so popular: skintight jeggings and high boots. Her long hair was frankl
y dyed jet black. Pancake makeup couldn’t disguise the badly pitted complexion some unlucky teenagers carry for life. Katt must be in her late thirties.

  Punch Adcock. Hard to say if he was chubby or beefy, but his expression was petulant, and his lips pursed like a rather nasty Cupid’s. His eyes were too close together and his huge shoulders hunched. All in all an unappetizing actor, as the cops might say.

  Challenge radiated off both figures. Who are you? Why are you here? We’ll handle you, toots, don’t worry.

  Temple had immediately dropped Nemo’s name, sure he was the boss of the operation. Now she had to patty-cake these two unforgiving characters into pretending to be the professional managers they could never be.

  Piece of angel-food cake.

  “I’m Temple Barr. I do public relations for several on-Strip businesses.”

  “Well, we’re in the public relations business ourselves,” Punch said with a smirk at Katt. “We have to beat our customers off with a stick. Like what do you rep?” Punch asked, unconvinced.

  “Like Gangsters, both the limo service and hotel-casino, and the Crystal Phoenix Hotel.”

  “Sniffs like all Fontana operations. Pure bottled spaghetti sauce.” Punch snorted in distaste. His nose did indeed look hard used from his boxing days.

  “It’s true Mama Fontana’s Italian sauce empire underwrote most of the family businesses,” Temple said. “Still, it’s one of the most profitable brands along the Strip, and this project, being a bit off-Strip, could use extra PR promotion.”

  “So you’re sneaking around here looking for a job.” Katt Zydeco put one booted foot before the other as she stalked toward the two women.

  Electra gave a little mewl of warning and grabbed Temple’s arm.

  Temple agreed. These were tough customers. Time to show them a bit of T as in Teflon.

  She stepped out on her steel-heeled Weitzman’s to match Katt Zydeco step for step and meet her in the middle.

  “Nice boots,” Temple said.

  “Nice booties,” Katt said. “I do like the ankle accessory.”