Midnight Louie 14 - Cat in a Midnight Choir (33 page)

“Oooh.” The Great Dane sits down and still manages to be as tall as Miss Temple barefoot. “I do not feel so well. I have an upset stomach.”

“That is what you get for accosting everybody who crosses your path in the dark.

“No. It is all the rich food that the chef leaves out for me.”

“You ran away from home — okay, a hotel — and you have a chef feeding you? Some political statement.”

“Chef Song means well, but his style of food is alien to my diet.”

For a moment my mind boggles at a Dane subsisting on bok choy and egg foo yung, although I do think that they would have sushi in common, or pickled herring at least.

“So you are another pet of Chef Song,” I say, my mind always on my investigation.

“I am no one’s pet,” he growls, leaping to his nine-inch-nailed feet, which scrape the concrete as chalk does a blackboard.

This gets my back up of course, and it looks like our little back-alley do-si-do is on again.

“Wow,” he says, his artificially perked ears backing off a little. “You look just like those Halloween dudes. Pretty spooky.”

“Now that is an out-and-out stereotype,” I say as I de-arch my back and let my electric hairdo settle down into the usual sleek pompadour. I have learned to speak his language. When that happens, fisticuffs can be avoided. “You should be ashamed of yourself, a denigrated species in your own right, passing on the prejudice.”

He lies right down, snugs his huge black nose between his fawn-colored paws and whimpers. “You are right. I am a bad dog.”

Great Bastet! These self-accusing sessions try my patience. It is too easy these days to chew your own mitts instead of looking around for the mitts that pull the strings.

“Look,” I say. “I do not care if you are a pit bull on speed or Charo on chew sticks, I just want some information. I am looking for a dame. A little doll. Looks a lot like me except she is smaller, fluffier, and, er, meaner. She is one of Chef Song’s favorites.”

“Oh, Louise! Why did you not say you were a friend of Louise’s? She is the cat’s, uh…” He thinks, visibly. “…peignoir. Such a sweet little gal. She is the one who hooked me up with Chef Song after I had fled my life of enforced luxury.”

“Happy to hear it,” I grit between my teeth.

My supposed partner has never lifted a whisker to negotiate a truce between my and my worst enemy on two legs, Chef Song, who is sentimentally attached to a food source, his koi and mine, our mutual gold mine, the fascinating fins in our lives. You would think a chef who serves sushi would understand my wee addiction to koi fresh from the pond. I cannot help it that he has made the odd decision to watch these fish instead of serving or eating them.

“When did you last see the little…dear?”

“Hmmm. Yesterday. It was egg drop soup and szechuan shrimp. Made me sneeze and rub my nose.”

When I look blank he adds, “Lunch.”

“Lunch yesterday.You say that Louise ate this disgusting slop?”

“She is quite the…connoisseur.”

“Why do you pause so long between words?”

“I must remember my mistress’s expressions. She speaks to me only in…French.”

No wonder the poor fellow is so confused and an easy target for extremist political activists. Why cannot his mistress speak his language, Danish? People are so self-centered.

“And what nationality is your mistress?”

“Ah…Californian. Or is it Vegan?”

No wonder! I did time at an upscale Palo Alto motel in my youth, and the sympathetic ladies used to leave out chocolate cake for my starving pals. Maybe to them chocolate
is
protein. At least it is not fatal to cats, as it is to dogs, though it is hardly the nutrition needed by the starving.

“Well, I will leave you by the Dumpster here. Perhaps you will find something succulent, besides me, inside. You need to get off that foreign food.”

I have what I needed to know, so I skedaddle. I leave the Great Dane torn between two cuisines: Chinese and Chinese, fresh or well-aged junk food.

It is obvious that a rescue mission is called for at Los Muertos.

I recall the trail left indoors by unseen hordes of cats. If Midnight Louise has run afoul of a gang, she could be minced mouse by now.

My pace quickens, though I am not much paying attention to where I am going. It disturbs me that I found no trace of her on my previous visit.

The idea is strangely upsetting. I am almost run over by a skateboarder.

Of course if I can recruit Osiris and Mr. Lucky to my side, I might stand a chance.

But how to get them into the house? It will not be through Miss Louise’s discovered dryer vent pipe, of that I am sure. Unless Mr. Max Kinsella can shrink two Big Cats to the size of Pomeranians.

And of course there is the matter of where he might be even if I were able to find a way to persuade him to come to Louise’s aid. We do not talk the same language, the Mystifying Max and I.

Irreconcilable Differences

“Tess,” Temple said, figuring that she’d react most naturally to the same first initial as her real name.

She glimpsed her shoulder-length ash blond hair in the facing walls of mirror, fascinated by how different she looked. Besides, it was less stressful than eyeing her conversation partner.

“So, Tess,” said the tall, virtually naked woman standing in the middle of the room. She did wear very high heels, however. “How long have you been selling this stuff?”

“This stuff” was the gaudy array of nylon spandex concoctions that hung from a giant version of a steel key ring hoop around Temple’s right wrist.

“Not long. This is my sister’s stock, but, well, she’s a little freaked by the parking-lot attacks.”

“So are we.” The woman’s long artificial fingernails paged through the bountiful patterns of skimpy stretch fabrics and cut a silver lamé number from the herd. “Let me try that one.”

Temple spun the hoop until that item was near the latching mechanism. She sprung the hoop open and lifted off what looked like tangled suspenders…or, to her mother’s generation of women, a sanitary napkin belt…or to eleven-year-old boys, maybe even a slingshot. Or maybe not, considering how sexually sophisticated eleven-year-old boys were getting nowadays.

“Cute.” The woman twisted to face one set of mirrors, crushing the fabric strips against her naked torso.

I have been here before, I have seen this before, I am not uncool about it.

Temple repeated this mantra once more, still searching for someplace neutral to look. She had never gotten into the girls-in-the-buff health club scene, but always ducked into shower stalls or toilet cubicles to change clothes in decorous privacy. Perhaps that was because she was small…and, ahem, small…and would seem even smaller in all departments by direct comparison.

“Great!” The happy customer delicately stabbed her four-inch spikes through certain openings in the fabric like someone doing a Highland fling. The stretchy fabric was pulled up into snug place, becoming a teeny tiny thong on the bottom half and a random arrangement of straps on the top that could take a passing swipe at covering her nipples. Sort of.

“How do you know where all that’s supposed to go?” Temple asked. “And doesn’t it…chafe?”

“Oh, it’s not on long enough to do much of anything. And it goes where I say it goes. How much did you want?”

Temple had been coached, but the ridiculous price stuck in her craw. “Forty-five dollars.”

“Fine.” The woman’s nails rifled a lime-green sequined bag big enough for a cell phone and some paper money to pull out a fifty-dollar bill. “Keep the change. I really just love this.”

She writhed into various poses in the mirror, working the straps off her shoulders, down her stomach. Every move was judged through narrow, dispassionate eyes.

“You’ve got some sexy fabrics there,” she told Temple.

“Thanks. You’ve got some sexy moves.”

“You ever stripped?”

“Ah…I’m too short for it. I’m told.” This was the only time in her life Temple had been pleased to be found wanting in height.

“Oh, don’t listen to anyone else. You could build a real exotic act around being so little. You know, china doll, or Catholic school girl. That’s always a popular one. The guys go wild over those little plaid uniform skirts.”

“Oh, really. Why do you think that is?”

“Grade school repression, silly! When you work up an act, you gotta think: what would a horny twelve-year-old find sexy?”

“That young?”

“Oh, they can be sixty or seventy and still think like that. Generally, they like the illusion of really, really innocent or really, really naughty. So what’s your sister’s name?”

“Ah…oh, my sister.” Desperate. “C-Carmen.”

“Carmen? That doesn’t exactly go with Tess.”

“Theresa,” Temple said.

“My real name’s Monica Mary, and now I get it. Theresa and Carmen. You girls could do a sister act, you know, a real nun thing. Go over big.”

“Not with the Vatican, I think.”

“I got news for you. They don’t come here.”

“Anyway, if you like our stuff, I’ll be around for a while.”

“How come you’re not afraid of the Stripper Killer?”

“Ick, is that what they’re calling him?”

“That’s what we’re calling him. So you’re not afraid.”

“I am, but I need the money more than…Carmen. What do you think? Are any of the clubs a bigger target? Am I safer here? What about when I should leave? I hear that poor Cher Smith was attacked at two
A.M.
Maybe if I made sure I was out of the clubs by one
A.M.
—”

“Hey, two
A.M.
’s a good time. It’s when we kind of shift off, although here in Vegas you can go all night.”

“You mean that a lot of you leave around two
A.M.
Wouldn’t the parking lot be crowded then?”

“It’s not like we run in packs. We’re all pretty much loners. It gets intense in the dressing room, but what we like about the life is we can come and go when we please. A lot of us get picked up, you know? We don’t have to worry about parking lot prowlers when a Hell’s Angel on a Harley shows up to carry us home.”

Swing low, sweet chariot.
Temple nodded, thinking she’d rather take her chances in public with the Stripper Killer than have a Hell’s Angel in her private life.

The door to the dressing room banged against the wall. Two women came caroming in with the speed and impact of bowling balls, toting tiny purses and huge gym bags.

“Monique! That’s absolutely adorable, girl!” screeched the black woman with blond hair.

Monica Mary, aka Monique, stretched and preened in her silver lamé slingshot.

“Where did you get it?” demanded the white woman with the long, jet-black Afro.

Obviously, exotic was in. Guess they didn’t call it exotic dancing for nothing, since that was a sound-alike for erotic.

Monique’s daggerlike nail pointed at Temple’s hoop of overpriced Spandex.

By the time Temple departed, her hoop was lighter and her wallet was fatter.

She had glimpsed the girly backstage atmosphere at strip clubs before. It always made her feel sad, the sooo high school element of girls having a good time experimenting with makeup and clothes. Only these girls were here to take off the clothes. Once they’d been cheerleaders and prom queens, or maybe not either. That was another route to the black lights that cast an ultraviolet purple haze that made whites look lurid on cheesy stages in every major city and minor hamlet across this land.

This backstage interaction was the oddly innocent side of the industry, and it struck Temple as more real than all the calculated moves and pouty faces under the spotlight. It was a female support group, only most of their support seemed to come from ultra-narrow spandex.
A band of spandex is comin’ after me…comin’ for to carry me home.
Only it wasn’t a band of angels that had carried Cher Smith home.

Girls just want to have a good time, but some of them never learned a liberated way to have it.

Temple checked her watch before diving through the door that led to the major sound-system assault in the club area. Just past midnight. Matt Devine would be taking his first call of the night at WCOO’s Midnight Hour. To watch the two
P.M.
“shift change,” Temple would have to kill some time and she didn’t want to spend it backstage slinging spandex suspender sets.
She sells spandex suspenders at the strip show
. No thanks. Let sister Carmen handle that part. Carmen. Why had her subconscious been unable to dredge up any name but that one? Weird.

In the performance area, Temple managed to climb onto a bar stool and sat facing the club, her ring of costumes covering her lap like a folded coat.

“Drink?” the bartender hinted behind her.

Nothing was free in a strip club, especially not a barstool.

Temple dug out a ten-dollar bill and asked for a margarita. That ought to buy her about half an hour.

“Sell any?” he asked when he plunked the pale, snot-colored drink in front of her. She would bet that there was about as much tequila and lime in the glass as there was Carmen in her Northern European soul.
Nada.