Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  “I did not realize we were neighbors now, Ingram. How long has this been going on?”

  “Less than a year in this area. You stopped consulting me long before that. Apparently you joined the flight to All Things Internet, as my employer faced rising rents and dwindling brick-and-mortar customers.”

  “No, Ingram. Trust me. I interact with the Internet only when an errant toe activates it if my Miss Temple has left it on.”

  “Hmm. Now you need some live-and-in-person information and have come crawling back to me for free advice and research, I suppose.”

  “Er, I do not crawl.”

  “I would advise you to at least beseech if you want anything here.”

  “I only need important information about Las Vegas history that may result in a renaissance for the Thrill ‘n’ Quill and all its literary works.”

  “And you are going to accomplish this all by your large little self?”

  “Can the oxymorons. Our two closest human associates will benefit, if we can prepare the ground for a fruitful future.”

  “You are saying a farmer’s market will be joining this sorry little street of broken retail dreams?”

  “Not necessarily, although it is not a bad idea. I was speaking metaphorically,” I point out.

  “That is too great a leap for a lowlife like you. Try plain English, if you can.”

  I hold my temper and shivs in check. “Someone vandalized the Lovers’ Knot wedding chapel attached to the Circle Ritz and someone was killed in the old empty building down the street the other direction. You need to help me assist Miss Electra Lark, who owns the very floor your feet pad upon. If we can prove that this man named Dyson’s killing is linked to an outfit that tried to force Dyson, Miss Electra’s ex-spouse, to sell his property in the area, the ladies can launch a new, improved retail concept.”

  “Human relationships are intricate and often deadly. You are saying Miss Maeveleen may be forced to move again otherwise?” Ingram’s furrowed brown brow resembles corrugated cardboard. He sure is slow on the uptake.

  “Yes! The purchasing party intends to turn the building into a huge strip-tease and sex salon club.”

  “Oh, my. What a sleazy twist of fate. Miss Maeveleen refused to carry Fifty Shades of Gray and now she would have its associated unmentionable products sold practically next door.” Ingram shudders.

  I lean close. “Then tell me about the building. I broke in to survey the crime scene and got a weird vibe there. I heard tell it has had many uses through the years before it ended up as an abandoned antique mall. There must be a reason someone was killed over it and the land it occupies.”

  I know I have Ingram in the center pad of my mitt when he curls his clipped nails against his chest and narrows his eyes. “This is not the first instance of homicidal violence on that site.”

  I am not a dunce when it comes to feline psychology. I assume a “mirroring” posture to further cement Ingram’s decision to be my confidential informant once again. “You do not say. How do you know?”

  “It was in a book. Everything is. It would not do you harm, Louie, to spend more time warming the covers of a good book than warming a TV remote between your tender pads.”

  My jet-black pads are way more street-seasoned than Ingram’s effete paddies, but I nod without defensive comment, and go on. “Miss Electra says the building has had many previous tenants, back to its start as a nightclub.”

  “A nightclub?” Ingram sounds indignant. “Do you have any idea what kind of a nightclub?”

  “I suppose the place offered the usual ho-hum human pursuits, strong drink and silly dances.”

  “Hmm. You are basically right for a change, but we are talking about the post-World War Two, pre-Strip Las Vegas, when Bugsy Siegel took over the creation of the Flamingo Hotel for the Chicago Outfit.”

  I am no scholar, but Vegas is my beat and I know its landmark moments. “That entire building is indeed a monument if it dates back that far. I also know a fragment of the original Flamingo is rumored to still exist in the current, many times remodeled version.”

  Ingram’s front shivs mangle the needle-pointed pillow that bears his name. He must be auditioning for a cat cozy mystery cover.

  “Imbecile,” he murmurs with a French accent. “The nightclub here was a secret site.”

  “Secret?” All my PI instincts quiver.

  “Underground.”

  “Literally, or figuratively?” I ask, giving an amused, intellectual sniff. Two can play at that game.

  “Both,” he ripostes, tapping the top of my mitt with a sharp nail. I guess you could call it a literal riposte.

  I wait with bated, and baited breath. I would not want a whiff of my lunchtime tuna braised in shrimp sauce to distract Ingram from a revelation.

  “You will recall,” he goes on with a yawn, “that during Prohibition bathtub gin and other illegal quaffs were served in private clubs, often below-ground in basements.”

  “I recall, but not personally.”

  “Later, during World War Two another item of culture was forbidden.”

  “Marijuana?”

  “Well, yes, that, but this was in the wearing apparel category.”

  “All right. I give up. The only wearing apparel I am up to date on are my Miss Temple’s high-heeled shoes and the collars forced upon domestic dogs. And perhaps a certain flamingo-pink fedora once forced upon me during my À la Cat TV commercial days.”

  Ingram has ignored me. “The establishment I reference featured swing dancing and such popular new libations of the decade as the Martini, Manhattan, Gimlet. Whiskey Sour, Gin rickey, Sidecar, Brandy Alexander, Brandy Stinger, Pink Lady, Tom Collins, Rob Roy, Sloe gin fizz, Bloody Mary, and the Shirley Temple.”

  By the end of this recital I am doing a Slow Gin Fizz in anticipation of a possible slugging match between Tom and Rob, and Mary and Shirley.

  “Rum,” Ingram drones on, “was in more supply during the war years, so rum cocktails like the Hurricane and the Dark ‘n’ Stormy were invented then.”

  “Where do you pick up this stuff?”

  “The museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans was drowned out by hurricane Katrina and relocated to the late Aladdin Hotel Desert Passage for almost two years in the mid-2000s. Any true connoisseur of Las Vegas would know that.” Ingram lifts three eyebrow whiskers and looks down his common pink nose at me.

  “You are talking of a bunch of recent has-beens. What about this old-time underground joint in the building just a few pit stops up the street?”

  Ingram rubs his pads together, preparing to deliver one of his endless lectures from which I will get a few measly nubs of useful information.

  “The place was called Zoot Suit Choo-Choo. It was where hep cats and hipsters wearing zoot suits danced to swing music and tossed their lady friends and long, long watch chains around like dough in a Pizzeria. Miss Maeveleen keeps a poster of an old cartoon movie short called Zoot Suit Cat on her wall, if you can bestir yourself to pad over to her desk and look.”

  This will require a leap down, an amble among freestanding bookshelves, and a leap up.

  “A picture is worth a thousand words, Louie,” Ingram snickers.

  So I make the trek and confront the strangest getup I have ever seen on a feline standing upright like a man. It makes my flaming flamingo fedora pale by comparison, from the flat wide-brimmed hat to the long coat with big shoulder pads over pantaloons starting under the forelimbs and bagging down until tight at the ankles. This literal “hep cat” is swinging a watch chain so long it could lasso a llama. This is the zoot-suit getup worn by the dudes I saw cavorting during my basement dream state.

  I take all this in and return to Ingram without incident.

  “Well?” he demands.

  “I have seen people thusly costumed in films on the Retro TV channels. What is with the watch chain so long you could trip on it?”

  “They were named after us, Louie. ‘Cat chains.’ Every hip young m
an wanted to be a ‘cool cat’. Some hipsters wore real gold chains. The poorer sort used the pull chains from water closet appliances.”

  “You mean toilets? That does not sound ‘cool’, but crass.”

  “I am amazed that even you, Louie, would find your sensibilities challenged by that. Anyway, the government banned the Zoot Suit.”

  “That is unAmerican!”

  “You are ignorant. You, as a black cat, should remember how your type was subjected to chromatic cleansing in the witch-hunt days.”

  “I am well aware of four centuries of rabid persecution and burning. It is amazing any of us are left, and we still are left behind at shelters when it comes to adoption time, because the ignorant still superstitiously avoid black cats. So the ignorance is all on the side of homo sapiens, thank you very much.” I shudder. “Who gave this human species the right to rule the world?”

  Ingram blinks his eyes but does not answer. He does however, continue his lecture. Since this is what I do not pay him for, I listen.

  “The jazz music scene of the twenties mingled black and white musicians, defying segregation laws. Cab Calloway, the black jazz singer, wore flamboyant Zoot Suits onstage. When swing dance came along, the Zoot Suit was the day’s street fashion, like baggy shorts and T-shirts are today among teens.

  “In 1942, the war effort banned excessive fabric, so wearing them became “unpatriotic”. Zoot Suit riots in Los Angeles were started by sailors in port taking swings at the hep cats as “unpatriotic”. Zoot Suiters were beaten and stripped and Zoot Suits burned.”

  “Like a book-burning?” I ask, aghast. “The getup is laughable, but so are all human clothes. Except my Miss Temple’s,” I add loyally.

  “The riots lasted ten days, Louie. Yet the Zoot Suit lives on. You were a cool cat in a Zoot Suit was the saying.”

  “Yeah, and sometimes dead meat too, given the chromatic cleansing against my particular coat color during the witch hunts in Europe and America.”

  Ingram produces a weary sigh. “At any rate, violence also closed the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo club. While the Mob liked its own sharp-lapelled, pin-striped suits and snappy fedoras, they saw troubles with Zoot Suit Choo-Choo attracting other ethnic guys who might organize. One hipster got hung there, by his toilet tank pull chain, and the club closed.”

  “Hanged?” This nugget of unexpected information sets me back on my tail. “Who and why?”

  “I do not know.”

  “You do not know?”

  “It is just a footnote in Las Vegas history.”

  “Not to the guy who was hanged. Where can I get information on this for Miss Temple?”

  Ingram yawns. “My afternoon nap time nears. Lure her into the store and get her to buy a book on Las Vegas history.” His eyes are half shut. I curl the tips of my shivs into his shoulder and shake it.

  “Me-owie!” he complains. “Do that again, Louie, and I will never enlighten you in future.”

  “How did you learn of this Zoot Suit Choo-Choo place?”

  “In a book, of course.”

  “Which book?”

  “I forget, and if I do not get my nap, I may even forget everything I know the next time you come in scraping for clues and unpaid research assistance.” This time his peepers close down completely.

  I sit there, perplexed. First I must attract Miss Maeveleen’s attention so I can be released to the wild. Then I must find some way to lead Miss Temple to Zoot Suits, the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo nightclub and an obscure seventy-year-old murder on the same premises where the former Mr. Electra Lark has bought the farm in the same fashion.

  There are times I have been forced to resort to charades to convey important news and clues to Miss Temple, but this whole Zoot Suit puzzle takes the cupcake.

  33

  Thrill and Quill

  When Temple heard Electra’s voice on her phone just before noon, she felt her stomach swoop a bit. What now?

  “We’ve got to have lunch,” Electra said.

  “Lunch…okay.”

  “I know this is sudden, Temple, and you have work to do, but it could be important.”

  “That’s one of the perks of working from home, Electra. I can always make time for a friend.” Temple reflected that was also a problem sometimes, as playing hooky often seemed more fun than fingers to the keyboard. “Anything new from the cops I should know about?”

  “No, not them, thank goodness, but I told Maeveleen Pearl the good news that I inherited that that pile of desert sand under that abandoned building.”

  “Maeveleen Pearl. The name’s familiar.”

  “She owns the Thrill ‘n’ Quill bookstore that relocated to my mini-shop street, which is soon to be elevated to an urban village, if you have your way and I’m not in the federal pen.”

  “Electra, don’t worry. Everybody’s working to clear you.”

  Midnight Louie had appeared from nowhere and was rubbing back and forth on Temple’s bare calves, which was pleasant but tickled.

  “Clearing me is taking a lot of work,” Electra remarked, “which isn’t encouraging. Anyway, we can meet on the site and lunch at a charming little catering café not far away.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “The Magic Muffin.”

  “Just what we need for the village.” Temple had a second thought. “Uh, it doesn’t sell marijuana, does it?”

  Louie stretched his forepaws up her legs, as if trying to reach the cell phone at her ear, or to listen in.

  “What a thought!” Electra laughed. “No, pot is not legal here in Nevada, though everything else is. Even medical marijuana is tightly controlled.”

  “Let’s you and me walk to the Thrill ‘n’ Quill together,” Temple suggested. “I’d love to see the bookstore when we pick up Maeveleen. I’ll meet you at the wedding chapel side in an hour.”

  As she ended the call, Temple looked around.

  Louie had vanished as suddenly as he had appeared and cozied up.

  34

  Cat and Mouse

  I like my routines, especially at mealtime. If anything could be more aggravating than the human propensity for impulsive changes of routine it is realizing I must beat the Circle Ritz ladies to the Thrill ‘n’ Quill and get Ingram to set the stage there.

  Since my unearthly experience at the abandoned building, I realize I must direct my charges’ attention to the exciting but deeply obscure days of yesteryear in Las Vegas. That is the only way to put them on the path to solving the puzzling murder that occurred just last week.

  “Zoot Suit Choo-Choo” is not a search term I can easily persuade Miss Temple to input into her computer. Although I have in the past shown some digital dexterity over the operation of a printer, answering machine, and even rather creative arrangements of the alphabet on a keyboard, I am not suited to conveying long written messages.

  No, it is my curse and gift to find creative ways to prod these unobservant humans into making leaps of logic. As it happens, a bookstore in the neighborhood might turn out to be a boon.

  I am on the sidewalk outside the Thrill ‘n’ Quill in five minutes. I expect it to take me at least fifteen to get inside and set about my business. Even then, I am counting on luck and Ingram’s encyclopedic memory of every item on the store’s shelves. Bast knows, he has slept on every book and shelf in his long (and lazy) pseudo-literary career.

  Still, a mean-street walker like me can use a sedentary assistant to consult, a feline kind of Mycroft to my Sherlock Holmes.

  Ingram is in his usual spot pursuing his usual occupation. He is sound asleep in the store window. I leap up to tap the window glass. One striped ear tip twitches. I leap again, using the points of my shivs to turn a dull tap into sharp rap. One yellow eye-slit opens.

  And shuts. What you might call an open-and-shut case. I do not have time to waste. I shall have to appeal to the denser species.

  I go to the glass door, where I am more visible. I sit, clear my mind (which is hard because much is on it) a
nd pretend I am Miss Electra’s cat, Karma, in one of her New Age trances. Then I look into the store where Miss Maeveleen Pearl is bustling about near a row of shelves, back to me, and concentrate on my best weapon, The Stare.

  If you Stare, they will come.

  Well, maybe not right away. And I do not have time to waste. I twitch my whiskers and Stare Harder. I Stare so hard I am going cross-eyed. My vision blurs and then resolves into the striped brown side of Ingram pacing back and forth in front of the door.

  At least his change of position has spurred some inside action.

  Miss Maeveleen is bearing down on us like a movie closeup, her face growing jolly pink giant huge as she bends over to study the bottom of the door.

  “Ingram,” she says, “you have not seen your friend from the old shop in months, poor fellow. I will let him in to visit, but you are not going out.”

  Small chance of that. Ingram does not like to get his white gloves and spats dirty.

  I eel through the crack and greet my hostess with a single ankle rub and a small chirp. We are not on intimate terms and I do not want to overdo it. Doling out the demonstrations of affection keeps the mystique going.

  Ingram pads over to an overstuffed armchair near a reading table and jumps onto one arm. I notice some fancy crockery on the floor near a wall, but am not here to cadge a meal or a drink, so I loft atop the other chair arm.

  And pose.

  “How precious.” Miss Maeveleen is there with her cell phone camera and Ingram is quick to offer a practiced head tilt. Then we are rid of her for now as she goes off to Facebook us, and we can get down to business.

  “She is right,” Ingram growls. “A year ago you dropped me like a nickel down a slot.”

  “My case load turned in a direction not requiring your expert help and depth of knowledge.”

  “Phhtt,” he says. “Flattery is the resource of the unimaginative.”

  “You are right. The information I need and any way of conveying it from one species to another is virtually impossible in this case. I was overconfident to disturb you for such a hopeless task.” I gather myself to jump back to the floor.