Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "I think Louie's getting enough A La Cat to gain weight!" she announces to one and sundry.

  And in this little moment of owner hubris, she loses her grip on me. I slide back to the car seat like a sack of potatoes.

  "I will get him," the director suggests gallantly.

  But, before he can move, the car I am stalled in does.

  "Clete! Hit the brakes!"

  "Where are they on this antique?" Clete yells back as he and I roll toward a very long, low, expensive-looking convertible covered in chrome.

  A good question. I hop over the high front seat with my usual agility and find myself staring into the dark cavern of the floorboard, which bristles with gear sticks and other strange equipment. It resembles no car of my acquaintance, and I have motored extensively. Maybe my old man would have a tip or two on how to stop this rolling death trap, but he is not here.

  "Oh, Aunt Kit's kaboodle!" Miss Temple exclaims, the only one with the sense or guts to run alongside the moving car. "Clete, can you hit anything on the floor to the left of center? The brake must be there."

  "I cannot feel nothing but the gas pedal, lady, and you sure as hell do not want me flooring that by accident." Clete, wrestling with the giant steering wheel, overturns it in a panic that has us weaving right and left like a shuttle-bug.

  I jump into the dark at his feet, hoping to avoid a crushing. The pedals look confusing even to me, just faint shapes in the dark I am used to seeing in. I identify the gas pedal, though, and hurl my full weight on the pedal left of it. Nothing happens, except that I am jostled to the floor.

  I leap upon the next pedal and feel a slight hesitation in our progress. Bingo! Now to get some human muscle on the job.

  I insinuate my forelimbs up the guy's right pant leg. He begins giggling, partly in panic, partly because my light touch tickles him. Then I snick out the shivs and claw down hard. He screams and tries to stomp me as if I were a bug. Maybe a foot-long centipede. I wait until the peril of the last moment, then leap aside onto the center hump. His combat boot stomps the brake so hard that both our noses hit solid surfaces. His head impacts the center of the steering wheel, which sets off a terrible sustained honking note; I bump into the center hump, sorely abrading my second-best sensory organ on the console.

  Despite my cosmetically tragic injury, I clamber up and over into the rear seat, glad the Divine One had been removed before the rough stuff started. I also begin licking my nose, imagining how delightful it would be were the Divine Yvette loose and able to tongue my wounds.

  Everyone outside the car is agog, helping the driver exit, asking if he's all right and how he stopped the car. The injustice of the moment stings worse than my skinned nose.

  A museum attendant runs up to study the car that has stopped ... oh, maybe six inches from the sleek little vintage convertible's side.

  "I cannot believe this happened. The emergency brakes are set on all these cars every day we open, but this one has its emergency braked pulled up and out. It was useless!"

  "How much strength would it take to disengage the emergency brake?" my mistress's curious voice pipes up from somewhere very near.

  "Not much. A two-year-old could do it."

  I plant my mitts on the open windowsill and glare back into the once-adjacent vehicle our slo-mo rush to oblivion has left behind. Maurice is in a mirroring position to mine, except that he is grinning whisker to whisker. I am beginning to bet that a well-trained eight- or nine-year-old could do it too, and did.

  "I got the footage," the cameraman is yelling. "Louie going over the seat into the front compartment, Clete yowling and hitting his head."

  "Yeah, Clete," the director asks. "Why did you scream like that?"

  "I do not know." Clete rises from his dazed seat on the running board. He inches up his right pant leg. "Felt like a dozen scorpions stinging me, and I stomped down on it so hard I hit the brake. Sure couldn't see it."

  "Well, look at that," the director says.

  They look, even Miss Savannah Ashleigh, who has minced over to eavesdrop on everything.

  "Cat scratches," the director says in an awed tone. "The cat scratched you so you'd stop the car."

  "I do not think so," the dazed Clete says. "I think the cat was just trying to hide under my legs."

  "It does not matter," the director replies, stepping back to view the car and me in it. "We will shoot some new stuff to intercut with what the cameraman got now. Louie finding the brake and doing his scratching-to-save routine. We will put some catnip on your leg, that ought to do the trick. Then Louie leaping into the backseat again-- we have got that--and perhaps getting cozy with Yvette. Or she could push the A La Cat bowl to him this time. I love it."

  "What about Maurice?" the trainer asks in a grating tone.

  "Huh? Oh, him. I guess we could close with a shot of the Louie-mobile taking off and shooting a cloud of dust into the back of his car, all over his inferior brand of cat food."

  "Great work, Louie." The director reaches into the backseat to pull me out.

  He even scratches my ears, but I do not admonish him for this liberty. I like the way he thinks. I also watch the animal trainer quietly collect the disgraced Maurice.

  Missed again, buddy. Too bad the cat is not out of the bag--and the commercial--entirely.

  Chapter 21

  An Inspector Calls

  Matt felt as serene as the blue rectangle of cool water in the pool three stories below. He had just been beside it in the warm November sunshine, doing his tai-chi routine and then a more conventional Western meditation on the blue mats.

  His panicked feelings about the ConTact caller had receded like a high tide. His head and emotions were clear; he felt exonerated, forgiven. Having just gotten up an hour before, he was hacking together a cold breakfast: cereal, milk and half a cantaloupe, when the doorbell rang.

  Who could that be? he wondered, discounting Temple. She was off turning Midnight Louie into a TV star, and landlady Electra had lots of weddings scheduled for her attached wedding chapel, the Lovers' Knot.

  So he opened the door, cantaloupe cleaver still in hand. Lieutenant C. R. Molina stood there, looking like an enlisted woman in navy blue.

  "C--" he began to greet her.

  She held up a hand he was surprised to see was not white -gloved.

  "None of that Carmen stuff, Devine. I'm here on official business."

  Her officer act was second to no one else's. Crisp, authoritarian, humorless, she could have been an archbishop. He gave way as she entered, glancing sardonically at the large kitchen knife.

  "Just, ah, butchering the breakfast cantaloupe. You care to see?"

  "No. Put your food away. This will take only a few minutes. I hope."

  He reluctantly left her in the barren living room, looking at his things--or the lack of them--

  in her see-all, know-all way. In the kitchen he threw his partially assembled breakfast in the refrigerator. The cereal would get soggy, but that was hardly a major loss.

  He glanced down at his white gi and bare feet. Hardly formal enough attire for an official police visit, which is no doubt why they love to make them unannounced. Control is the name of their game, and they are used to getting, and keeping, the upper hand.

  He hurried out again, wondering how many conclusions her penetrating eyes had drawn from his few possessions.

  "Coffee?" he asked.

  "No. For me it's lunchtime, which I usually don't have time for, except at my desk." She was studying every piece of furniture frankly, the phone on its wobbly secondhand table, the single and ugly floor lamp, the odd book, the sparse wall ornaments.

  "Looks like a class photo," she commented when pausing before a huge horizontal black-and-white picture.

  "Eighth-grade graduation photo. St. Stanislaus."

  "And you are ... let me see if I can pick you out of the lineup. Hmm, there. Second row, far left. Cute as a little blond bug."

  "I don't know about the cuteness, but I a
m on the left, I remember."

  "You hang up a photo and don't know where you are in it?"

  "I didn't have much to hang up, and I haven't much looked at what I did hang up. Too busy."

  She turned from the wall. "I'm impressed," she admitted. "So uncluttered, even ascetic. I would have thought ex-priests would go in for material possessions after years of not having very many."

  "Rectories are usually crammed with parishioner hand-me-downs, dark heavy old pieces, rather depressing. And I haven't had time to furnish this place. Temple wants to take me to the resale places, but--"

  "But you'd see more of the same you saw in the rectories. Can I sit?"

  "Of course. I forgot to make it plain. Have only the one sofa, though."

  "This one will seat three or four. It ought to do for us, don't you think?"

  "I can stand."

  "I'd rather you didn't."

  Matt shrugged and followed her over to the plaid sofa, wincing upon remembering that only one cushion was unsprung. If he could maneuver her onto the good one-- But Molina was not one to be maneuvered, even for her own comfort. She sat on the second-from-left cushion (sprung), forcing him to select the end one (also sprung).

  "I'm investigating a death," she began.

  "Not a murder?"

  "Not... yet. Have you ever heard of a man named Darren Cooke?"

  "Not until very recently."

  "How?"

  "Temple mentioned him in connection with a cat commercial her Midnight Louie is in.

  Apparently he's some sort of entertainer."

  " Was some sort of entertainer."

  "Sorry. I know he is dead, but I knew so little of him when he was alive, that it hasn't really hit home. His death, that is."

  "Maybe this will hit home."

  Molina drew a business card from her side jacket pocket and threw it down on the empty seat cushion between them. This was the unsprung cushion. The card lay on the tautly plumped cushion as if on a presentation pillow. It was a ConTact card.

  "I-I recognize the card, but what has that to do with Darren Cooke?"

  "It was found in his possession. If you'll turn it over, you'll see the name 'Brother John'

  written on the back. In Cooke's handwriting, I might add. Was he a phone pal of yours?"

  "I don't know. All my callers are anonymous."

  "You must get some clues to their backgrounds, though: ethnic, regional, education level, and so on."

  "Yes. Most don't call more than once."

  "But some do."

  "A rare few."

  "--who would therefore stick in your memory?"

  "Possibly."

  Molina narrowed her eyes, letting their electric blue diminish to two slits, like in an armored tank. "You're being fairly evasive for the good, honest ex-priest you are. What are you hiding?"

  "Uncertainty."

  "Yes, priests aren't trained to deal with that."

  "Listen, Lieutenant. I'm not a priest any longer. I'm not hiding behind a clerical robe."

  "I can see that." Molina eyed his gi with some amusement.

  It made Matt feel like a twelve-year-old playing at martial arts. He understood that part of her interrogation technique was to juvenilize subjects so they would respond to her as an authority figure. He'd had enough of playing an authority figure, but guessed that if Molina wanted to go head-to-head with him in this mode, he could pull up enough experience to outgun her. She had gone to Catholic schools herself, after all.

  "Lieutenant," he said, donning his parish-priest demeanor that cowed the faithful and drove the preteen girls wild, despite his best intentions, "you must understand that I cannot jump to hasty conclusions. My job is to help people, not hunt them down. I accept them for what they say they are, and we go from there. There was one repeat caller who had delusions of being Somebody. He was a sexual addict who hated himself for his addiction, as so many addicts do at times. It's possible he was this dead man. I'll just have to wait and see if he calls again, and since his calls have been so erratic, that may be quite a while."

  Molina sat forward on the sprung cushion, oblivious to its discomfort. "Was your frequent caller suicidal?"

  Matt nodded. "At times. He was older, had more at stake, including a marriage, his first. I referred him to three top psychiatrists, but he delayed contacting any of them. A common denial mechanism. He was using me as much as he used any woman; he's an inveterate manipulator, too hooked to stop."

  "Hmm. Could be Darren Cooke. If we got a tape of his voice would you recognize it?"

  "Maybe. It was distinctive, strong. But a lot of men with strong voices call me, and claim to be big winners or Somebody, and they're compulsives, all right, but gambling is their game, or drinking or drugs.

  Our callers are really anonymous, given the huge base of troubled people here in Las Vegas."

  "But he was suicidal?"

  Matt nodded again. How many ways did he have to say it?

  "Cooke's death certainly looks like suicide. Was your caller distraught enough about his addiction that he would have killed himself after having ... entertained a woman?"

  "Very much so. He was trying to follow the straight and narrow, had a new wife and a baby daughter that he adored. All addicts build their fantasy worlds on a foundation of self-loathing. I hope I do hear from him again," Matt added in a burst. "I hope my man is not your man. That mine is alive and still has a chance to beat his addiction."

  Molina nodded, picking up the ConTact card and slipping it back into her pocket.

  "Why did this man keep calling you?"

  "He said I helped him."

  "You sound dubious."

  "The trouble with all addicts is that they'll say anything to win the world over to believing that they don't have problems, or that they've got their situation well in hand. You must know that. Deception is their stock in trade. They're so used to it, they hardly recognize it as deception. It's called 'delusional sincerity' in the textbooks. They believe their own lies."

  Molina nodded as she stood and walked toward the door. "I've dealt with a lot like that in interrogation rooms." At the door she turned back to him. "Listen, don't get your Catholic conscience in a wad over this guy. My guess is suicide will remain the diagnosis. But he's a famous guy and we have to investigate his last days just to be sure. You any good at martial arts?"

  Her last question caught him off guard.

  "I've studied for years, but I've never had to use it. So I guess I don't know. I like it for the mindset, the meditative quality."

  "A pacifist to the core," she said, laughing.

  "Maybe," Matt conceded sheepishly.

  "Maybe not," he told the door after it had shut behind her.

  Chapter 22

  Flamingo Tango

  The empty lot was a sea of that indescribable shade of pink called flamingo when Temple stopped by the first installation site in the morning.

  She could hardly get near it for the rubberneckers slowing their cars to ten miles an hour to gawk at the latest imitation life -form to descend on the Strip.

  Since it would take her at least fifteen minutes to come abreast of the driveway into the vast sandy parking lot the site was, she followed Mad Matt's example with the Hesketh Vampire and drove over the curb. An aging Geo Storm was not a motorcycle. Two sets of wheels jolted over the barrier, nearly knocking Temple's big plastic eyeglass frames off her retrousse nose and giving her a very French nosebleed.

  She parked as soon as all four wheels were on sand, ignoring the indignant honks of people who had no business being there anyway.

  By ones and twos, at close range, the plastic yard ornament was a cheap thrill. Two for nine ninety-five. You could see the manufacturing seams and the molded-feather shapes.

  But here . . .

  Domingo's plan was more than a two-dimensional layout on paper. He had made sure that certain flamingos were propped up higher than the rest, as if standing on hillocks, or walking on water, if one
were paranormally inclined.

  The effect was of waves of flamingos. Through the sun shimmer came an odd illusion that they moved, that feathers ruffled and long necks bobbed. Temple could sense what a real flock of thousands of flamingos would look like in the wild. There were few library books devoted to the subject. One ancient text--so old it was illustrated with black-and-white photos! --written by a British explorer who nearly lost his life pursuing the haunts of Great and Lesser Flamingo tribes in Africa, said that the sight was so overwhelming that he could hardly describe it. And considering his long and precise descriptions of alkaline mudflats, that was quite a concession to loss of words.

  Now Temple glimpsed his awe. She actually was impressed by Domingo. If art was getting people to look at their world in a different way, he was a genius. There they bloomed en masse, like so many cactus flowers, unreal as anything around them, yet representing a form of natural life seldom seen in its glory.

  The display both mocked and celebrated the artificiality that was Las Vegas. It looked as if all the half-million plastic flamingos sold in both the Americas every year had marched here in protest at being parceled off two by two. This was a flamingo convention, and surely not the oddest birds to descend on Vegas over the years.

  "You like?"

  Temple started to find Domingo beside her, his showman's arms lowered for once.

  "It's... amazingly lovely," she said.

  "Much that we do not look at closely is lovely." Domingo had no accent, but he phrased his words like someone foreign to the English language. Somewhere in that tone was flattery.

  Temple tore her eyes from the flamingos--and it was an effort-- to view their assembler.

  Domingo was smiling at her, looking far more human than she had ever seen him.

  "Here is your hat. I understand it was forcibly borrowed the other day." He bowed (another foreign affectation) as he handed it back.

  "I wasn't expecting it back."

  "A shame. I have had a word with the ... mynah bird who took it. She will not trouble you again. Or me."

  "Verina? But she--"