Cat in a Flamingo Fedora Read online

  "I'd have to find out."

  "Then make it so."

  "Oh, you watch Star Trek: The Next Generation reruns too."

  Domingo's brooding intensified. He could have given the young Marlon Brando a run for his acting money.

  "Popular culture must be watched with only half a mind. Garbage in, garbage out. I would like my flamingos to pay true tribute to this benchmark site, but I will not have them outshone by a nervous flock of neon flash-dancers. I must think. Where else do you see flamingos?"

  Temple considered it bad PR to say that she could die happy never seeing a single plastic flamingo in Las Vegas, no, not even atop a swizzle stick.

  "A fleet of wading flamingos in the Treasure Island moat might add a subtropical touch to the proceedings," she offered hesitantly.

  Like most artists, Temple was sure, Domingo did not appreciate kibitzers.

  "A pirate ship is sunk during the hourly sea-battle, isn't that the case?" he asked.

  "No, a British Navy ship is sunk, briefly. Like the British lion, it only lies down to rise again.

  Law and order go down to the pirate ship's guns."

  "Then Domingo's flamingos will rise, in a sunset cloud, along the verges of the moat. It will be a Kodak moment for all the tourists. Do you think the hotel will agree to my installation?"

  Temple decided to unveil her own piece of performance art. Unlike Domingo, she did not require a booming voice and big gestures, just the facts that were her job to know, and tell.

  Her shrug was rueful and vague. "I have your press kits. The installation of a miniature Alps of soldered-together lira in the Trevi Fountain in Rome should impress them, along with the hundred herds of sheep in the courtyard of the Louvre. That the French would tolerate the droppings alone speaks well of the importance of being the object of your attentions. I know the hotel's hierarchy, and should be able to bow and scrape my way up it.

  "But you must understand something, Domingo. This is not some hundreds-of-years-old city with a flagging economy and tourism business, and a need to sacrifice its ancient monuments to the latest international artistic whim. This is Las Vegas, a back-lot Baghdad-on-the-Mojave thrown up almost as fast as the pyramids in a Cecil B. DeMille epic. Bugsy Siegel may have given it a kick in the pants, but the mob and Howard Hughes built this city and now the corporations own it. Corporations don't need anybody.

  "Maybe in the sixties and seventies Las Vegas was still hungry enough, or greedy enough to court good--or even better, bad-- publicity. Now Las Vegas doesn't even bother. Anything lavish and large that the mind of humankind can produce, Las Vegas can reproduce for three times the money in one-thousandth the time. This is not a real city, it's an open-air carnival, and it doesn't need flamingos, or Domingos. But I can ask, and maybe they'll say yes."

  Domingo had listened, hands in pants pockets, head lowered like a bull's.

  "This is half my point. Everything is owned. Every artwork must be begged for. There is so much empty land in the United States, near Las Vegas, but it is all owned. The artist is owned. If they say 'no,' they become a part of my art."

  "And if they'yes'?"

  "They become a part of my art." Domingo smiled for the first time. "How will a small little thing like you broach all these lords of Las Vegas and get anything?"

  "I'll do my best. And you do have a pretty impressive reputation."

  This time Domingo shrugged, both his shoulders rising like snowcapped mountains moved by a volcanic emotion.

  "When you get to the top of the hierarchy, arrange for an appointment with me. I speak best for myself, but have no time to hack my way up the mountain."

  Temple nodded. She had expected no more, nor no less.

  "Verina will get you all that you need. Our office is off the Strip."

  He waved them both away, going to the window to gaze down on the real Las Vegas in miniature, the cluster of grandiose buildings laid out like Tinkertoys on a barren stretch of desert ringed by mountains. For all its multimillion annual visitors and staggering construction projects--Temple wouldn't be surprised to see an Ark Hotel go up with two of every animal on earth except the gambling, overpopulating human kind--for all its hubris, Las Vegas was still a sand-castle city, a puny architectural pretension huddled in the center of nature's most life-hostile, wide-open vista; cheek by cheeky jowl with wind-sculpted scarlet stones of the Valley of Fire, which in the ruddy gore of a desert sunset outshone all the neon that Hoover Dam could electrify. It was an oversize dollhouse, maybe, for boys instead of girls. Marzipan and mirrored glass, air-conditioning and laser-lights, stuffed toys and cotton candy.

  Step right up, folks. You pays your money and you takes your chance.

  Even Domingo.

  Chapter 7

  Call Again. . .

  "I've been thinking about you," Matt told his most devoted caller.

  "Oh?" The Voice sounded intrigued, even pleased. Matt smiled grimly. Manipulating back was too satisfying. Man was the only animal that could become his own tormentor.

  "You've only been calling me for the last eight months."

  "You counted. I'm flattered."

  "No, I checked the logbook."

  "Logbook?" A tinge of panic.

  "As a nonprofit agency, we have to account for ourselves." This was an off-white lie; in reality, the book logged crank callers. But Matt wanted his caller to see the larger network beyond the lone counselor on the phone. He got quite a reaction.

  "More than anything, you have to remain private. Discreet. Isn't confidentiality what you promise, what you sell, what you get paid for?"

  "Is that how you think of us, as hookers? As an intimate service you pay for?"

  "Why not? I've done it all my life. Paid for service. Nobody ever does anything for free, one way or another."

  "That's a cynic's self-justification."

  "What's this 'we' all of a sudden, anyway? I thought it was just you and me. You trying to hide behind an organization, Brother John?"

  "Isn't everybody nowadays?"

  "Not me. I stand alone."

  "Except on the phone."

  "Not fair! We're supposed to be talking about me, not about what you think of me."

  "I don't think anything of you. I'm an organization man, remember?"

  "I don't care who you are. That's the beauty of this arrangement, isn't it? We don't have to know each other. We don't have to like each other. But you have to answer the phone."

  "You don't have to call."

  A pause.

  "There's where you're wrong. I do."

  "Is it another addiction, then?"

  "Life is an addiction, Brother John. You ever think of it that way? That if we're not addicted to staying alive, we die?"

  "You say you're not suicidal--"

  "It's a phone! You say a lot of things on the phone . . . that you're interested in somebody's deal, or body. That you won't be late for an appointment you have no intention of keeping. That you wish somebody a 'Happy Birthday' or a good life. None of it's necessarily real."

  "I'm not a debating society. I'm here to help. It seems to me the only help you need is a twenty-four-hour on-line baby-sitter."

  "What is this, tough love? You used to just listen. I could hear you being nonjudgmental.

  Then, a call or two back, it changed. Why?"

  "At least you're thinking about somebody besides yourself."

  "Is that it? I'm too self-centered? Why shouldn't I be? I'm famous for it. That's why I liked talking to you. Usually I have to give people a certain amount of time to spout off about themselves, but you . . . you would just listen. You could be a robot for all I know."

  "Is that your ideal partner for a heart-to-heart, a robot?"

  "You don't get it. That's not an insult. That means you're good at what you do. You don't let you get in the way. Talking to you is like talking to myself, and then I see things ..."

  "Insight is important, but--"

  "No, you listen, listen to me
about what you should do, for a change. Don't judge. You never know what circumstances made me the self-involved pig I am. You never know how much I might hate this wonderful famous self of mine, or how many people around me might hate it too. You never know when my talking to you might be a matter of life or death. Do you? Do you, Brother John?"

  What could he say? Nothing. Matt felt his shoulders sag.

  "Now, listen..."

  Chapter 8

  Breaking the Carrier Barrier

  "Stone walls do not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage," but a cat carrier makes a pretty good chastity belt. Like the Cavalier poet-dude, Richard Lovelace, I speak from painful experience.

  And I am not feeling very cavalier right now. There we are, the Divine Yvette and me, together on a glamorous assignment; workmates, co-stars. There are our separate carriers, into which we are placed for hours on end without even an opportunity for a little sniff and whisker-tickle.

  And there is Maurice, the Yummy Tum-tum-tummy spokescat who was originally supposed to have had my part (that of love struck swain) in the new A La Cat commercials. He should be back in some Sherman Oaks compound chatting it up with the other trained animals. But, no, he is along for the ride. On the scene of the crime, so to speak. In the wings. I wish those wings were the real thing and on his back.

  For this is a very dangerous dude. I have it on good authority (albeit incorporeal) that Maurice Two is an imposter, like I told my old man. Poor Maurice One!

  Imagine drowning in Yummy Tum-tum-tummy! What irony. All those dead fish doing you in.

  Poetic justice, I suppose, but I have no intention of falling into a carp pond stocked with piranha.

  And when Maurice Two is around, any set piece or prop is a potential murder weapon.

  I am seeing potential for disaster everywhere I look.

  Take the human chorus line that is supposed to back up Yvette and me when we finally get our few, brief moments on the stage. All those size nine and ten shoes (and I am talking just the girl hoofers here; the boys probably wear elevens and twe lves), all those tap shoes, armed with steel plates. Say I slipped (or was pushed) coming down the long flight of stairs on which I make my dramatic entrance.

  I would make a dramatic exit under a hundred tapping feet. They could then market a new brand of cat food: Midnight Louie Pate. To think of it is to shudder, save there is no room in this cramped crate to so much as sneeze.

  So, in one respect, my incarceration offers a certain protection.

  But is life worth living under a constant threat? More than one human has pondered this question. I suppose I could seize the moment and endeavor to off the miserable Maurice Two before he offs me. This was the suggestion of Maurice One's pathetic shade. (Shade is a fancy word for ghost.) This dude came to me in a seance-dream. Although all the cats at the seance were actual felines, not another present was honored with a vision of Maurice One, so I know that our karma is irretrievably mixed. (And I am not speaking of the psycho cat named Karma who shares Miss Electra Lark's penthouse at the Circle Ritz. Okay, Karma is a psychic cat, but I prefer the other spelling.)

  Anyway, what to do? Watch my back, obviously. Take out Maurice Two if given time and opportunity, well ... no. I have spent too much time of late on the right side of the law. I am not a vigilante, just an ordinary street dude who happens to have a nose for trouble. Still, it is hard to play a sitting duck when you would rather be eating one.

  As for the Divine Yvette, she is happily ignorant of the dead-serious byplay. She gives me the baby blue-greens at every opportunity, although I detect a subtle change in her attitude. Her glances seem to be more of an appeal than a come-on. I think that she has sensed the tension and feels a corresponding distress.

  All of this does not bode well for the A La Cat commercial. But then, can a television commercial that combines a purebred Persian with an alley cat and a human chorus line i n Easter egg-colored zoot suits possibly go right? Especially when said Persian is wearing a diamond collar and said alley cat is forced to have a flamingo-pink fedora affixed to his head in ways that are too embarrassing to mention. And must it tilt down over one eye, so I cannot see when I am pussyfooting down all those stairs in front of a tidal wave of tap dancers also wearing fedoras tilted over one eye so they cannot see when they run me down and pound me into chopped liver? And kidney and tongue and tail.

  If you want a recipe for disaster and murder most musical, you could not find a better formula than at an A La Cat commercial filming in Las Vegas.

  Color me History.

  Chapter 9

  Call Her Stage Mama

  If ever a child of hers were in the school play, Temple would never show up at rehearsal to embarrass the poor thing, be it boy or girl.

  But Temple didn't have a child, she had an it. A cat.

  And supervising a cat's participation in a television commercial was more akin to being an animal-rights activist than a stage mother.

  Stage mothers were the pond scum of the earth and the dust ball under Sir Laurence Olivier's bed, for good measure. Animal-rights watchdogs were assertive, altruistic people.

  Why, then, did Temple feel like the fifth wheel on somebody else's little red wagon just for being back here at Gangster's, hovering over Midnight Louie's carrier like a loan officer expecting an imminent repossession of the family farm?

  Maybe it was the stormy look on the face of her competition for the stage -mother sweepstakes.

  Savannah Ashleigh, chic in an acid-green satin spandex jumpsuit, glowered at Temple and Midnight Louie's humble discount- store carrier as if they both were infected with the plague.

  Temple wished that it were so, but only for the privilege of passing on the lethal germ to the film star. On the other hand, a nice dose of plague might spring Temple and Louie from the tedium of waiting for the hours and hours it took to set up a TV commercial.

  Temple flipped down the empty theater seat to the left of Louie's big beige carrie r and sat.

  Savannah Ashleigh, glaring, did likewise on the right side of Yvette's carrier, a small pink bit of baggage like her mistress.

  "I'm here," Savannah announced to no one in particular, and thus to everyone, in her breathy ersatz-Monroe diction, "to see that my Yvette gets the proper number of potty breaks."

  "Funny," Temple said. "I am here to see that my Louie doesn't get pointless trips to the box.

  He has such terrific self-control, you know, due to his sturdy proletarian roots."

  "He is a Communist cat?" Savannah's heavily powdered brows, clashing together, raised a small dust poof of disapproval.

  "I was speaking of his vigorous bloodlines."

  "You mean alley-cat stew!"

  "Exactly. Louie's genes have not been watered down by generations of over breeding. No wonder your Yvette . . . wets."

  "Yvette is a sensitive, delicate creature who takes her responsibilities before the camera to heart. Has your cat had any on-camera experience?"

  "Quite a bit, lately," Temple said loftily, thanking her unlucky stars for the recent Halloween-seance filming that had put Louie in the spotlight. For once Crawford Buchanan and his cursed Hot Heads kamikaze camera lens were good for something. "And, of course, Louie's done a good deal of still work." Like the newspaper photos recording his exploits in the body-finding and death-defying departments.

  "Still studio work means nothing these days." Savannah's dismissive shrug further dislodged her off-the-shoulder neckline.

  "I guess you should know," Temple conceded politely.

  "At least Yvette can benefit from my vast experience in the film field. Your Louie is not so blessed. Cats are not often called upon to do--what is your line of work?--oh, yes. PR."

  Savannah might as well have articulated the childishly dismissive word, "Pee-yew."

  "Somebody has to do it," Temple said cheerfully, "and Louie is actually quite good at it.

  Guess he was born with cat charisma."

  "We shall see when the film beg
ins to roll," Savannah retorted dubiously. "No director can afford expensive delays and reshoots for an amateur."

  "You should certainly know," Temple answered again, much less politely.

  An even more impolite silence ensued, just as a lull in the onstage action arrived. The previous day's dress-rehearsal cast was scattered around the dramatically tiered set, a symphony in sherbet-colored costumes.

  Temple didn't care much for revue-style shows, and Las Vegas versions were more bloated than most: bloated with dancers and production numbers, with chorus girls attired as God made them, except for pounds of glitz everywhere on their persons that immodesty permitted, with ponderously written jokes as ponderously delivered.

  Still, the Darren Cooke show, from what she had glimpsed of it, seemed determinedly snappy. Its star sucked energy from being onstage as greedily as every little lightbulb in Vegas siphoned off the millions of kilowatts generated by nearby Hoover Dam.

  Hoover Dam. Temple pictured that Cinemascopic curve of mighty gray wall, plastered with pink plastic flamingos, twisting gently in the breeze like rearview mirror trinkets. A monumental achievement...

  An assistant mounted the stairs to the stage, Yvette's pink carrier in hand. Apparently she had no stand-in, poor overworked little thing.

  Temple glanced across the two in-between seats at the other bereft owner. The shared stress of waiting helplessly while one's beloved pet was carted away to the crowded stage had done nothing to melt the Iron Curtain between the two women. Savannah rose to stalk away on Miami Beach, wood-soled high-heeled sandals. Their slender straps carried a cargo of enough fake fruit to make Carmen Miranda's neck snap.

  Temple shrugged to herself and scrunched down in her seat to watch the forthcoming action.

  "May I join you?"

  The tone was low, but the timbre thrummed with excitement. Temple glanced up to see why, amazed when Darren Cooke, every razor-cut hair precisely out of place, pushed down the flip-up theater seat to sit beside her.