cat in a crimson haze

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  ''Now" Ralph asked, ''where would you like to go?"

  "To the Gridiron rehearsal. Didn't that move to the actual stage yesterday?"

  "You are correct."

  "No more dark, damp, dangerous basements," said Emilio.

  "You will be safer up here," Ernesto announced.

  "Uncle Mario's men are patrolling the lower regions," Julio added forbiddingly.

  "And the railings are fixed ... with concrete," Rico put in modestly.

  "Is there nothing we can do?" Eduardo demanded with a note of pleading. "Nicky will be mad if we don't make ourselves useful."

  "Mad again," Ralph said.

  "Well ..." Temple hated useless people, too.

  She eyed the brothers. Why did she get the impression that each bore a bulky something under his left arm, except for Ralph, who sported a suspicious lump under his right arm? Ralph must be a lefty. Why did Lieutenant Molina never look like she'd used a wad of wet newsprint for deodorant? Surely the police went armed in a town where a gat of gangsters packed more iron than a team of manic mangier-operators?

  Temple lifted her obligatory tote bag crammed with everything essential to her working life--in other words, almost, everything portable she owned.

  "Could one of you carry my bag?"

  Several brothers dove for the privilege, converging on Temple, a flapping phantom of albino crows. . . .

  Half an hour later, Temple was ensconced front-row center on a banquette in the Crystal Phoenixes Peacock Theater, the smaller of its two performance facilities.

  Her injured foot lay elevated on the crimson velvet banquette seat as if awaiting a glass slipper. She hoped it was a Weitzman plastic and Plexiglas pump. She certainly faced no shortage of Prince Charming candidates. One had recently deposited a short-stemmed goblet of sparkling mineral water before her. Another had opened a lined notebook. Three gold-trimmed Mont Blanc pens, produced in an instant by three different Fontana brothers--did that make them "Fontana pens?"--lined up at her right hand like well-decorated soldiers at her service.

  She had never been so organized, so ready for something, and so incapable of doing much of anything.

  Temple began doodling in the notebook, trying to organize details about her plans for Phoenix Under Glass. On the raised stage, set construction and lighting crews were banging away while the mostly amateur actors recruited from the news business stood around in the wings, frowning at scripts and mumbling unmemorized lines to themselves.

  Danny Dove darted from tech crews to the wings like a manic dragonfly with a case of schizophrenia.

  "No, no, no! That's all wrong,'' he would shriek over the din. "Over there

  "Yes! I adore it. Magnifique,'' he would carol encouragement a moment later.

  The crews, used to directional mood swings, kept their blase expression no matter the reaction. They were, after all, union labor.

  "That's where the mob would have a handhold in Vegas today," Temple muttered. ''Nothing glamorous anymore, just grunt work at a going price higher than the loftiest baby-pink spotlight in the house."

  ''How're you doing?" asked a voice so unexpectedly near that Temple jumped.

  She knew her visitor was not a noxiously solicitous Fontana brother before she turned to look. The voice was girlish, though underlined with a gritty touch of Western twang.

  Turning, Temple confronted a tomboy version of herself: an elfin, red-haired woman wearing a plaid cotton shirt, honestly frayed blue jeans, freckles and sandblasted Western boots.

  "Jill Diamond." She extended a tanned hand for a brief but firm shake, then nodded at Temple's bum foot. "You're lucky you only twisted a hock on that basement stairway. Nothing's more dangerous than backstage areas. I don't know why they have all them showgirls on their stiletto shoes charging up and down those concrete stairs all night.

  "Tradition. That's why they call them hoofers; no stage: elevator service, except for inanimate props. Oh. You must be: Johnny's wife--"

  "Yup." Jill tossed her rusty braids over her shoulders as she smiled. ''I'm also Eightball's granddaughter."

  "Eightball O'Rourke?"

  ''How many 'Eightbaills' do you think there are, even in this town?" Jill grinned. "I guess you're keepin' my granddaddy out late nights again."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Isn't he working another case for you?"

  "Not that I know of."

  Jill tossed the straw Western hat in her right hand onto the: tablecloth and sat gingerly on the velvet seat. "Well, shoot. He's been out and about more than an old soldier like him should be lately."

  "What made you think he was working for me?"

  "He did before. And ... he said it was for someone at the: Circle Ritz. I didn't expect him to name names. Professional discretion and all, you know. It isn't you?"

  Temple shook her head. "It could be my landlady, Electra: Lark. She hangs out with that crowd."

  "Crowd." Jill shook her head while she watched the hullabaloo on stage. "Those old galoots think they're still in their prime. Running Glory Hole as a tourist trap isn't enough for them. My granddaddy not only has to make like a Sam Spade: on Medicare, but now Spuds Lonnigan is opening a bar and grill at Temple Bar on Lake Mead. Calls it Three O'Clock Louie's.' That Glory Hole bunch should be napping at three o'clock in the afternoon, not remodeling some late-night dive."

  '' The Temple . . . Bar?"

  Jill's clear eyes turned to Temple. "That's right; 'Bar' with one r. Say, with your handle, I'd think you would know about Temple Bar. It's a landing on the lake. Boats and excursions. Can't figure why Spuds didn't name his place 'Spuds'.' "

  "Three O'Clock Louie' has a certain . . . seedy charm," Temple conceded, with another nocturnal Louie in mind. "Van mentioned that I had a namesake around here, or vice versa. I've also got one in London. A boat dock on Lake Mead isn't quite as toney as Queenhithe wharf on the Thames in London, is it? So your grandfather didn't say what kind of case he was working?"

  Jill shook her head. "He was tracing some shifty character he had no business messing with,

  'cause he was keeping later hours than an old guy should, I know that."

  "You worry about him."

  "I'm the mother of a willful toddler," Jill confessed with a wry smile. "With me, worry is as contagious as measles."

  "I'll be all right. Nicky's brothers are looking after me to a fare thee well."

  "Now I'm really worried."

  Jill slapped her hat on her blue-jeaned thigh out of long habit, then stomped back up the aisle on her petite cowboy boots.

  Temple looked down at her notebook, on which she had continued to doodle. Temple Bar, it said in big letters. Three O'Clock Louie, Maybe she should offer this Spuds Lonnigan Midnight Louie as a mascot, arid she could do PR for the place. Naw, she had her hands--and feet--full with the Crystal Phoenix and the Gridiron already. Then, again ...

  But who the heck at the Circle Ritz was Eightball working for? And working for hard enough that his granddaughter had time to notice, and to worry?

  "Don't worry," a deep male voice urged seductively at Temple's left side. "We haven't cut your skit--yet."

  "Crawford!" Temple scrambled to sit up straighter, the better to prepare for battle.

  "Gout?" he asked with an automatic leer at her extended leg.

  "Clout," Temple answered shortly. "I had to kick some crude dude who was staring at my legs." Despite the discomforting throb, she whisked her defenseless limb under the table.

  "Rehearsals are going okay," he volunteered.

  Buchanan gazed toward the stage, his akimbo arms pushing back his summer suitcoat the better to reveal his puny physique in a pale yellow shirt. Spending time around the male strippers at the Rhinestone G-string competition had spoiled Temple for the muscularly challenged.

  ''I don't know about Dove, though," Buchanan said in his usual basso grumble. ''He doesn't seem to recognize a good skit when he sees one."

  From this Temple gathered that Danny Dove wa
s not bowled over by Crawford's own material. No wonder the director was making such a big deal of her one and only number.

  "I hear you've lined up some celebrity bits," she said, determined to turn the conversation to a subject more distracting to Crawford: himself.

  "Yeah." His already deep voice went subterranean with self-satisfaction. Temple imagined a panther purring in the Grand Canyon. "David Copperfield is lending us his awesome assistant-babes to lead the Lace 'n' Lust chorus line for my 'Vegas is Bustin' Out All Over' bit."

  "Crawford, that's so sexist it's got balls and chains as well as cobwebs on it."

  "Hey, this used to be a purely stag event in the old days. If I don't cater to the good ol' boy element, we've got no show."

  "I thought the Gridiron had matured, outgrown randy jokes and raunchy skits and scatological language. Isn't Vegas catering to the family trade now?"

  "You know better than to believe press-agent hype, T.B. This town has always run on three things and always will: betting, booze and boobs."

  "If you are typical of the boobs, I doubt it."

  He made a face, but Temple didn't linger to study it.

  Instead she struggled out of her cushy seat, then limped to the short set of stairs leading up to the stage. Two Fontana brothers were at her side before she could murmur "organized crime." They gallantly assisted her up the steps, which lacked handrails. They also cut a trailing Crawford Buchanan off at the pass with superior tailoring and stem Italian faces as beautifully stony as Michelangelo's David.

  "Little Miss Curlytop!"

  Danny Dove greeted Temple with such a radiant smile that she couldn't have her usual hissy fit when compared to the adorable Shirley, which happened all too often due to her petite size, wavy red hair and first name.

  "I knew we'd have you back up on your toes in no time flat,'' he went on. ''Speaking of flats, how do you like your 'Las Vegas Deluxe' set?"

  "Looks great. Very Busby Berkeley."

  Danny frowned so severely that even his perfectly marcelled blond hair seemed to pucker under its trendy retro-pomade. "Busby Berkeley is too awfully camp these serious, pre-millennium days, darling. Shall we say very mock-Memphis, like the Luxor?"

  "Whatever, it's splendid, Danny." Temple eyed the exaggerated Las Vegas skyline etched in colored chalk on stretched black velvet panels that fenced the back of the stage. "How are your special effects coming?"

  Danny rolled his eyes with delight. "Orgasmic!"

  Temple had not meant to inquire into Danny Dove's private life, but before she could utter words to this effect, he went on in living color and full plume.

  "Only--please, dear Miss Temple!--enough of these naughty no-no's like your backward tumble down the stairs. We're using the stage elevator from the magic shows for the end of your skit. Then we drench the whole chitty-chitty-shebang with an absolute oh-my-miasma of dry-ice mist, tinted passion-fruit crimson. The piece de resistance prop will drop from above; the most tacky deus ex machine of all time. Voila."

  He pointed high into the murky stage flies to a huge, hovering silver disc.

  "Thanks to my percolating purple-crimson mist," Danny promised, "our UFO will appear to rise from the nether regions, with forty glamorous chorines dancing the Watusi around its spiral ramp--a bit of the old Busby, there. Then we yank the bloody thing upward in a finishing flourish ... all lights blinking and smoking like mad, with the girly chorus singing their little glotti out. Smashing."

  Temple craned her neck upward and nodded politely, trying to picture the effect. Mentally she added glittering fairy lights and neon constellations to the black-velvet-painting night-sky backdrop. Danny was right. Smashing.

  "Looks cheap to me." a sneering voice said.

  How did Crawford Buchanan get up here? Temple wondered with irritation. Where were her upstanding body guards when she really needed them?

  ''This is stupid." Crawford obviously enjoyed standing behind the pair and carping. ''You're making a big mistake, Dove, putting big bucks into this dumb number. Who wants to see the Goodyear Blimp on stage besides opera-goers?"

  For emphasis, and to demonstrate his disdain, Buchanan jerked a cable that trailed to the stage floor, part of the intricate network that hoisted the big silver blob.

  Danny Dove turned on Crawford Buchanan as if he had been talking pig swill. ''I am the director. You are the bureaucrat who stapled a few skits together. I make this garbage work, and most of it is, especially your scripts."

  ''What would an effete toad-dancer like you know about entertainment?"

  Temple, PR instincts to the fore, edged between the two men, truly a showdown of pygmies.

  She was too much of a pipsqueak herself to act as an effective buffer, especially balanced like a stork on one leg. But matters were desperate. Veins were standing out on Danny Dove's forehead, and Crawford's dark-lashed eyes were venomous slits. Another kind of Dove was called for, the peace-keeping female of the species.

  "Guys, please!"

  Crawford brushed her aside, literally, the better to face off with Danny Dove.

  Ordinarily a soft shove wouldn't have damaged more than Temple's dignity. With the weakness of her ankle, though, it pushed her into a flat-footed stumble. Temple grabbed for the nearest stable object (other than the testosterone-tempered Dove and Buchanan).

  Her hand curled around the hanging rope. Temple heard the pound of running feet: a herd presumed. The Flying Fontana Brothers should have kept Awful Crawford offstage in the first place.

  The rope jerked her upright again. Then, just as she grabbed for a shred of balance, the entire length of cable dropped past her in punishing coil after coil, like a whipsnake.

  ''Watch out!" a man shouted.

  Temple looked up to see a sky of silver collapsing down upon her, upon them all.

  A flying tackle of Fontana brothers--pale as Cool Whip-- rushed forward in a wedge formation. Temple, Danny, Crawford ... all were swept away, wood chips in a water drain.

  Temple had enough wits about her to see that the two arguing ,men had toppled like bowling pins under the force of Fontanas leveled at them.

  She herself--oh, my--was levitated in the manner of a musical comedy vamp, so she perched on the impeccably padded (and probably impeccably pecced) shoulders of Fontanas twain. She couldn't lean over far enough to read their name tags and find out who her rescuers were, specifically. Too bad.!

  In the wings, frantic tech crew members male and female were swinging from various ropes.

  Under their combined weight and quick thinking, the footloose UFO had halted in mid-air just three feet above the stage.

  When four Fontana boys applied themselves to the ropes like dapper but demented bell-ringers, the mechanism lifted slowly into the darkness of the flies where it belonged.

  ''Oh, my God.'' Danny Dove had forgotten spats with obnoxious show chairman. "Dear girl!"

  He leaped up to look up at Temple with devastated eyes. "You could have been killed.

  "We could have been killed." Crawford Buchanan was rising from the floor with far less grace and speed than Danny Dove. His prized ice-cream suit looked as if it had been double-dipped in soot. He glared accusingly at Temple.

  "Don't look at me," she said, pleased to be in a position to stare down at Crawford as if he were a bug. "I didn't write this unauthorized landing into the script."

  "We were all in jeopardy, but our dear Miss Barr was in the direct . . . line of fire, so to speak." Danny extended a hand, which Temple took.

  She found herself wafted to the floor like a thistledown ballerina. Danny's looks were deceiving; the dancer/choreographer was as strong as piano wire.

  "That UFO weighs a ton," he fretted. "I don't understand--"

  A Fontana brother--Ralph--came swinging down from the flies like Flynn to the rescue, only on a rope and a hope instead of a wing and a prayer.

  ''Cut," he pronounced, displaying the end of the fallen cable.

  "Sabotage," Danny instantly diagnosed.
His eyes narrowed at the descending Adonis in Armani. "I love your earring."

  "It's nothing," Ralph said modestly, missing the point and Danny's proclivities, if he had not missed the Significance of the sliced rope.

  Temple again felt an overwhelming urge to intervene. Interpret. Peacemake. Oh, blessed are the seriously straight, for they shall be politically incorrect until death do them part.

  Until . . . death.

  She looked up at the UFO rising jerky foot by foot to the rhythm of the stage ratchets, rather like bad poetry.

  "Danny, do you think--?"

  "I definitely do, darling." His demeanor was utterly serious now. "First the stairs. Now the . .

  . alien object. I'm dreadfully sorry, dear lady, but I fear that you are the subject of a nasty objective. I always thought that this show would be murder."

  Chapter 22

  Skits Ahoy!

  "I don't get it," Temple said. ''Why are you making a federal case out of this? It was just a stupid stage accident."

  She looked from Lieutenant Ferraro to Lieutenant Molina, fervently hoping that this was a nightmare induced by a conk on the head' with a fake UFO: not one but two homicide officials interrogating little old her. Again. Molina smiled, and when Molina smiled at something Temple had said, that usually meant trouble.

  ''You are batting a thousand today," Molina told her. ''First you avoid being squashed like a ladybug by an unanchored UFO; now you've anticipated the actions of two branches of the law."

  "Huh?" Temple didn't mind playing dumb when she was feeling thoroughly stupefied.

  Besides, she was still reeling from the close call with the runaway UFO, not to mention the threat of imminent demise while in the company, however unwanted, of Crawford Buchanan.

  Imagine ending up next to that creep in the morgue!

  Temple remained puzzled. Why had hotel security hustled her to this secluded office right after the mishap? She hated being pulled untimely away from the sight of Crawford Buchanan whining and threatening law suit. Dousing that legal fire was a lot more important than submitting to another police grilling. Large portions of her anatomy would soon show pemanent parallel tracks, she was sure. . . . And what was this gruesome twosome doing at the Phoenix so conveniently, anyway?