Cat in a Flamingo Fedora Read online

  It was already a long walk inside the Oasis to the elevators.

  Like all Las Vegas PR people, Temple had attended an occasional high-profile press party.

  She had been among crowds invited to hobnob with the newest semi-fading star to make a long Las Vegas engagement part of an attractive retirement package. Amazing how you almost never ran into the guest of honor at those wingdings.

  This was the first time she had been personally invited by the host of honor, and she didn't know quite what to expect. Darren Cooke didn't want her flackery skills, but what Savannah Ashleigh dismissed as her "Nancy Drew" proclivities. Temple was a teensy bit impressed that Cooke would take her seriously, and apparently he was in serious trouble. She wondered if she had a right to step in.

  The elevators were glass bullets, Hyatt-style, but fashioned like bejeweled Indian caskets. As her car rocketed smoothly up to the penthouse region, Temple was able to watch the lobby of greenery and temple ruins, exotic live birds and curtains of waterfalls slip past.

  The hall she entered was plain in comparison, although eastern fretwork shadowed the walls of many doors. Doors were fewer and farther between on these elevated levels than on the steerage floors below, which packed in tourists like desk keys.

  A door announcing itself as THE TAJ MAHAL SUITE bore the right number. Temple looked for a bell before she knocked, and found a gong affixed to the wall, with a mallet attached by a rawhide string.

  A modest rap produced a deep, mellow call. . . and no answer at the door. She could hear nothing through it, either the result of the Oasis's superior construction or evidence that she had gotten the date, time or room number wrong (or all three).

  Oh, great. Temple hit the gong again, harder.

  The door parted, then paused. A subdued clink and chatter leaked through the inch-wide opening. Then a hand with very long, very thick fingernails painted Passion Fruit Purple undulated through.

  Oh golly, Miss Germaine Monteil! She had forgotten that the fashionable set these days was wearing weird-colored nail enamels; her fingernails were a discreet flamingo tint. How remiss.

  The door widened and Savannah Ashleigh's face peered out.

  "Oh, it's you. Dare wanted me to see who it was." With that she shut the door.

  With that, Temple reopened the door and stepped in, ready to dip her flamingo polis h in Ashleigh blood, which was probably purple to match her nails.

  Since the one person in the room Temple knew had vanished, she edged along the room's fringes until she got her bearings. There was a good deal of gel- and mousse-mussed hair going in all directions and a lot of heavy metal masquerading as jewelry on both sexes. Actually, Temple realized that she should think in terms of all sexes, as in he, she and it. For besides the apparent hetero- and homosexuals present, another rara avis pecked around the premises, the anorexic, androgynous figures Temple saw in fashion magazines, either boys in makeup or muscular girls in tattoos.

  The older set, of course, was much more conventional and therefore much less interesting.

  Some men actually wore blazers, in such succulent desert tones as melon and sage green, with open-necked yellow shirts. Some of the past-forty women sported diamond jewelry instead of the usual toolbox accouterments.

  Then Temple spotted an old friend she recognized from many a press party and made for that spot like a camel in need of an oasis at the Oasis.

  The buffet table. Here the scene and activity and dramatis personae were old pals. Plates, paper napkins, platters full of . . . European crackers and beady black caviar, lox and olives, layered extravaganzas of tomatoes and capers and sour cream and chutney, everything that would look absolutely awful if it dropped on a Big White Shirt.

  Temple didn't care for caviar (too fishy) or chutney (too sweet-tart) or dry-cleaning bills, so she poured herself a ginger ale and nibbled crackers and waited to figure out what she was doing here.

  As she studied the room, which was much like Domingo's suite down the Strip: large, furnished with bland Hotel Ritz, walled with windows that showed only the blue-pink distance unless you went right up to them and looked down, she realized that the host was missing.

  Temple eyed the other guests again. No one was better at barging in and making herself at home than a PR woman, but these people were grouped into tight twosomes, like sets of Ken and Barbie. Savannah Ashleigh was negotiating an intense tete-a-tete with a partially shaved guy in his mid-twenties who wore jeans and a spruce leather jacket with no shirt under it.

  Just then someone sidled up to Temple.

  "I'm Mr. Cooke's personal assistant. I don't believe we've met."

  The tone implied accosting a gate-crasher. The speaker was all of twenty-five herself, a tall, willowy young woman with artificially wine-red hair wearing a strapless spandex tube dress with a safety-pin dog collar. One multi-pierced ear dangled a cascade of silver charms to her collarbone. Yet despite the theatrical getup, she seemed all business.

  "I certainly would have remembered," Temple said with her most charming smile. "I confess I'm new to the Sunday-brunch set. Mr. Cooke invited me only yesterday at Gangster's."

  Two tiny frown lines defaced the pale complexion. "He never mentioned you."

  "How can you be sure? You don't know my name."

  "He tells me everything," she began, with an odd combination of stridency and uncertainty,

  "but he's been on the phone in the master bedroom for, oh, minutes and minutes."

  "I suppose it wouldn't hurt anything if I waited until he came out."

  "Only . . . you don't know anyone here."

  "Only ... Savannah Ashleigh. And I see she's lost in conversation with that yummy young mugging victim in Claude Montana leather."

  The girl jerked her messily teased red poll in that direction. "That's Mosh Spiegel, the famous dirt biker."

  Temple had never heard of any famous dirt bikers, unless you counted Evel Kneivel.

  "Well, I'm Temple Barr, and I'm here at Mr. Cooke's request. I'll just have to entertain myself while I wait for him, unless you want to entertain me until he comes out."

  "Uh, I have things to do." A long, bony hand with gnawed fingernails waved toward the buffet. "Eat something, or... whatever."

  Whatever seemed the only option, so Temple prepared herself to hold up the wall for some time. Sitting solo in a standup crowd like this was isolating and awkward. Most guests were either very young (which meant even younger than Temple) or quite middle-aged (which to Temple meant over forty-five). But that made sense. Darren Cooke was easily in his early fifties, no matter how much the plastic surgeons pinned his ears back year after year. Of course he would still attract the young and trendy; all stars did, even when their twinkle was mostly in the surgeon's laser-light.

  Temple nibbled on what resembled a mutilated carrot. She hoped it was a carrot. She switched walls. Then she ambled to the windows to look out. Usually at a party, looking out attracted another looker-outer. Not here. She could have been invisible, in fact, was, because she was unknown. Should have brought Midnight Louie. He was a great conversation-starter.

  And then, staring at the great nothingness beyond Las Vegas, at unchanged easygoing mountains whose brown summits snagged clouds as airy as biplane pilots' long, fringed white silk scarves, Temple realized the obvious.

  Darren Cooke had consulted his "Nancy Drew" because something in his life disquieted him.

  Why wasn't he coming out?

  Temple set her ginger-ale glass on a table and turned toward the closed door at which the personal assistant had cocked a dyed-red eyebrow.

  She met the assistant on an intercepting path.

  "You can't go in there," the woman said.

  "You ever wonder why he's left his guests alone so long? Mr. Cooke didn't strike me as the reclusive type. Not at his own party."

  The frown returned, rather deep for such a young forehead. "He did seem .. . surprised by the call."

  "Maybe you better check on him."

>   A blank stare.

  "A shocking call. Heart attack maybe."

  "No." The young woman seemed truly alarmed. "Not a heart attack. He's too young--" She turned and ran for the door.

  Temple shook her head. Darren Cooke was way past "too young" for a lot of things. She discreetly followed the woman. No one else noticed; they were too busy performing the latest chitchat.

  Temple paused outside the ajar door. Only silence seeped through. She pushed it slightly, encountering a barrier.

  The girl was standing two steps inside, frozen.

  Oh, my god, Temple thought. Not at his own party.

  She pushed the door until it butted the girl, then pushed harder, until the girl gave way.

  Temple stepped in, shutting the door behind her.

  She didn't see what she expected, but neither had the personal assistant.

  Darren Cooke was alive and well, sitting on the massive emperor-size bed, by the telephone.

  A bottle of tall, clear liquor guarded the tabletop receiver. The faint drone of a dial tone wafted all the way to the door.

  Cooke was slumped over, elbows on his knees, a bathroom water glass tilting in one hand.

  The other hand was clenched in his perfect two-hundred-dollar razor-cut.

  "Darren, what's the matter?" The personal assistant sounded like a hysterical teenager.

  Cooke turned toward the door. He seemed to have heard the girl, but he focused on Temple. The Hollywood tan, whether from the sun or a bottle, looked like a waxy yellow buildup on his too-taut face.

  "Good," he said, straightening. "Keep the guests happy, Alison. And you"--he was lost for a name, then found one--"Nancy! You stay."

  Temple exchanged a puzzled glance with Alison, who tucked her glossy features into a disapproving pucker suitable for a nineteenth-century old maid, and left.

  Temple took the seat Cooke indicated with a sweep of his manicured hand. It was a biscuit-colored suede chaise longue worth about three grand.

  He pointed again, now to the travertine bedside tabletop. "Ouzo. My favorite private stock.

  Straight from Athens. Want some?"

  Temple nodded. She didn't, but finding a glass would help the man pull himself together.

  He lurched up and disappeared beyond a set of double doors that likely le d to a palatial bathroom. While he was gone, she studied the master bedroom, which was as close as she'd ever come to High-Roller Heaven. Not for real VIPs the garish, gaudy excesses of lower-level suites, the ones that make the magazines and newspapers, the ones everybody likes to snicker at, for their sunken Roman baths, built-in waterfalls and tacky theme-park decor. Everything here was expensively plain and simple, boring even.

  She looked down at her feet and wiggled her toes. The absurd flamingo-pink feather pom-poms on her toes fluttered and flirted back. That was her reality check; that's what kept her feet on the ground, the sweet eternal extravagance of shoes. Sole on ice. Not ouzo.

  He came out finally, empty glass in hand, an ordinary heavy hotel glass, thick and clumsy.

  "I'm not drunk, just. . . stunned."

  "Maybe you need more help than I can give." Temple started to rise.

  "No. No Papa Bear of police. No Mama Bear of shrink. You're like Baby Bear's bed and chair and porridge, just right. You won't scare the house." He sat on the bed's edge, then poured a couple inches of what looked like water into the glass. "Besides, Savannah hates your guts, and Savannah hates only people with class."

  "If you know that, why do you know Savannah?"

  He pointed wearily at the bottle. "My favorite private stock. Women without class."

  "Aren't you married?"

  "Oh." As if he had forgotten. "Oh, yeah. To a classy lady. Did that right, when I finally did it."

  He glanced up through ruffled eyebrows, the thicker lintels age offers fading eyesight. A remnant of boyish charm trickled through. "You don't care. What can I do? Pay you? Give you comps? Why are you even here?"

  "I'm curious."

  "Like your cat. Midnight Louie. Light-Foot Louie." He laughed until the room rang. "What a performer, that cat. Knows how to hog the spotlight, and that's what fame is all about. Ask O. J.

  Look. I'm not drunk. I know what you're thinking. I know what I'm thinking." He pointed to the abandoned phone receiver, still droning. The warning yodel that it was off-the-hook had long since given up the ghost. For some reason, Darren Cooke wouldn't--couldn't--break the connection with that dead phone line.

  "Phone's a best friend to a guy in my game. Traveling. Alone. Phone home, if you got one, or got anyone there. Phone room service. Phone Athens for ouzo." He snapped his fingers. "It's the geezers' Internet."

  "Sometimes people phone you."

  "Yeah. Not often. Fans. Don't want fans on the phone. Letters are okay. Letters are distant.

  Impersonal." He frowned. "Usually. The phone is personal."

  Temple sipped the ouzo for lack of anything else to do. Never had it. A sharp licorice tang and the sting of almost-pure alcohol. She had heard ouzo could knock out a sailor, and she had never been to sea.

  "What's wrong?" she asked.

  "I don't know." He opened the bedside-table drawer and pulled out a manila envelope.

  An ordinary manila envelope. Temple took it when he offered it, amazed at where common ground existed. He was a star, but he stuffed the secrets of his shredded life into an ordinary manila envelope just like everybody else.

  She pulled the papers out slowly, feeling them first. Stationery, that slightly soft weight.

  Serviceable, store-bought goods, nothing expensive, unlike everything else in this room.

  "I've been getting those letters for the past couple years. From my daughter."

  "I didn't know--"

  "Neither did I."

  His left hand--ringless--ploughed through his dark hair. The ruffling gesture never revealed a glint of silver. Washed away, rinsed away. He drank from his glass and spoke again.

  "Neither did I. No one ever said I had a daughter, or a son, or a goddamn golden retriever.

  Not one woman, asking for money, asking for marriage, asking for anything. The women have never asked for anything. I guess I was enough."

  "Or you weren't worth asking for."

  He looked up. "I'm a rotter, aren't I? Never married, never wanted to ... until lately. The man women love to love, and love to hate and maybe both." He pointed to the phone. "She hates me. She's never met me except through tabloid TV but she hates me. I've been sitting here listening to the drone of her disconnected hate for half an hour. Look at those letters."

  Temple didn't want to. This wasn't work for Nancy Drew. This was the dregs of someone else's life, not clean like a dead body you don't know. This was a live body on the dissecting table. She didn't need to crawl over it like a maggot.

  "Listen. I don't have any friends," he said. When she looked up, his smile was crooked, but working on being charming again. "Just girlfriends. I can't tell my wife. We have a daughter. It would scare her to death that some ... stranger from my past is out there, hating me, hating us.

  Maybe hating our kid. I love that little girl." His voice almost broke. "Me now . . . maybe Padgett later."

  "This is way over my head."

  "I know. But for right now, I need to talk to somebody who's totally outside of it. Nobody I know, nobody I don't know. Don't you see? You're just right, like Baby Bear. I need somebody who's over their head, like me. Until I can sort it out, and then, I'll do the right thing and I'll tell the police and hire the bodyguards, but right now I need Nancy Drew, you know. Somebody normal, who's as surprised as I am, but just a little bit objective."

  Temple had started to skim the letters. They weren't what she had thought. The envelopes were sealed with fanciful stickers. The letters themselves were illustrated with rubber stamps and multicolored inks. Artworks of a sort, expressing admiration and connection and a desire to be friends. Like letters a foster child in a foreign land would write
a sponsor at first, crude, reaching-out letters, eager and innocent.... The handwriting changed, Temple saw as she shuffled through them, carefully organized by date and rubber bands. Organized by his hand, this man who had someone to do everything for him but solve his life puzzles.

  "What's your name again?" he asked.

  "Temple Barr."

  "Temple. Good name. Like all my friends are naming their kids. We're old hell-raisers and late-life dads, but we can afford it. We can afford to give our kids weird wacky names, and the position and money to live 'em down. They don't have to be Tom, Dick or Harrys; Joanne, Marjorie or Marys. Padgett. It's got class. It says I'm somebody unique, right?" He frowned as he glanced at the droning phone receiver.

  "What name does she sign?" Temple asked, turning to the letters' second and third pages.

  Nothing. Your daughter. No name other than that.

  "I called," he said. "Called them up, called them all up, everybody I could think of, or whose phone number I could find. No, they said, no abortions, no hidden clauses, no kids. I was careful.

  I knew to be careful. Wouldn't you think the woman would know?"

  Temple nodded. "Weren't there other women, not-famous women who maybe didn't know how to be so careful?"

  "I didn't exploit anyone. They knew what it was. They were of age. They were smart, attractive women. So what's the sin in that? I didn't want to be tied down. The house, the car, the dog, the wife, the kid. Everything a 'the.' Me 'the' husband. I wasn't cut out for that. So they called me a playboy. The guys always leered and the women, they kept coming. It was so easy."

  Temple sighed. "Maybe she isn't your daughter. Maybe she just thinks so."

  "Does that make her any less . . . worrisome. Or dangerous?"

  "No. Maybe more so. Look, Mr. Cooke. Call the police, call a crack private-investigative agency. Don't sit here in a hotel room with a bottle of ouzo and a stranger."

  His head lifted. "I feel better."

  "Is that all it's about? You feeling better?"