Cat In A Crimson Haze

Chapter 31

Kung Phooey

Here it is, the dawn of the day of my little doll's greatest triumph, the Gridiron show. I should be present in my always-elegant black tie and tail.

As luck would have it, and as is usual of late, my personal matters are interfering with my professional prowess.

I cannot claim that I planned on attending this Gridiron dinner and show. Satire is not my strong suit. Still, I planned to be about the premises for moral support and even had intended to show my puss at the Circle Ritz when Miss Temple Barr was dressing for the grand event.

She needs me to press her best duds when they are laid out on the bed prior to donning, though she has a cute habit of pretending to protest my help. Then, too, I am adept at weaving in and out of her legs and leaving my calling cards--tiny black hairs--on her pantyhose, usually a pale color that will benefit from some dash and contrast. I also help Miss Temple locate her missing evening bag by lying on it until she notices me, shoos me away and discovers the absent purse right under my nose.

My many adventures down Life's meanest streets does not mean that I have lost my delicate domestic touch. Even the most macho dude will benefit from tending to the care and coddling of the human companion.

However, the day begins with a revolting event at the Crystal Phoenix that rockets me into an entirely different direction.

I am innocently enjoying the late morning sun among the canna lilies, especially since I do not detect the inhibiting presence of Miss Caviar. I am not to be left alone for long, though. v I hear a scrape of long nails on flagstone, then a disgusting snuffling sound that would serve well on the soundtrack to The Hound of the Baskervilles.

Who is sniffing around the imperial koi pond?

In a moment I have parted the calla leaves with my face to view a sight to turn a Samoyed a whiter shade of pale. The dog from the Dumpster is back and he is playing kissy-face with my carp!

I bound out on all four rollerblades. "Take a hike to Pike's Peak, scavenger, or you will be feeding goldfish, instead of vice versa! What makes you think you can intrude on Crystal Phoenix grounds?"

He backs up, belly dragging over the rough stones.

"Do not be so testy. I thought you were . . . gone."

"Why would you think such an unlikely thing?"

He whines a little and rubs his nose on the ground. I can see that Miss Caviar's lesson has made a humbler hound out of this hard case.

"I heard that you were taking a dip in Lake Mead."

"From whom?"

He sits back and hefts a hind leg, thereby showing all sorts of unmentionables, to scratch thoughtfully at his freckled chin. "Chihuahua named Chi-Chi. Hotel guest. Says the resident black pantheress overheard his mistress chattering about some new joint on Lake Mead called Three O'Clock Louie's. She jumped him a few minutes later while he was doing his business in the dog-walk and forced him to give her the whole poop on this Lake Mead location, Temple Bar. She must have outweighed the poor little blighter by a full pound. Only his mistress coming along with the doo-doo bag and scooper saved his hide. Anyway, this feline Rambette took off, vowing that this Three O'Clock place had something to do with her rotter of a father and that a floater would soon be found In Lake Mead if she had anything to say about it."

"Her . . . father? Why would she think that?"

He pauses to bite a flea on his shoulder. I begin to wish I could don latex, like the cops, when interrogating lowlife witnesses.

"Seems the joint on Lake Mead has a mascot--black dude just like you. Guess they are related. At least she seemed to think so."

"That may be," I say, letting my shivs click to the stone all at once. "But I still patrol these grounds. In future, think twice before you figure that Miss Caviar's absence gives you trespassing room. Now beat it, before I decide to make mincemeat of you."

He growls a little to show yellowed teeth, but I hold my ground. He backs away before turning tail and hieing back to the Dumpster where he belongs.

I remain, triumphant but disquieted.

This Three O'Clock Louie is nobody to me, but he is obviously about to pay for the sins of the father, merely because his name bears an almost actionable resemblance to mine. I admit that I am annoyed to learn of a dude of the same color treading so close to my own, unique moniker.

Time was when black cats were considered unlucky in this town and I alone dared to show my puss, and then some. Still, being a copycat is not a capital crime. I cannot knowingly let my own offspring commit murder of the wrong guy.

My duty lies with Miss Temple on the day of her grand night out, but this happy association is not to be. If my choice lies between Temple Barr and Temple Bar, I am forced to pursue that headstrong alleged offspring of mine. Someone must preserve this poor, unsuspecting dude from a date with the feline equivalent of a jackhammer.

Whoever this Three O'Clock Louie is--and the name has a splendid resonance, despite its more than somewhat imitative ring--I cannot let him take the fall for my fault, i.e., fathering Midnight Louise the Terrible.

I know how this little black banshee learned of this establishment: via the usual methods--

making herself invisible, keeping her ears perked and her mind percolating. I do not know how she will get herself to Lake Mead and the appropriately named landing of Temple Bar, but I have no doubt that she will accomplish this feat, and pronto. She has the genes for ingenuity.

As the vulture flies and he often does in this desert. Temple Bar is eighty-five miles from Las Vegas proper, if ever a city of such character can be considered proper.

Temple Bar is also in Arizona.

It just so happens that the bottom half of Lake Mead runs through the southern border of Nevada and Arizona. Most folks know that Lake Mead is the artificial result of Hoover Damn, which plunked a long, narrow, forked body of bright blue water shaped like a double fishhook right in the middle of a knot of mountain ranges.

What most folks do not know is that the Nevada/Arizona border runs right through it--

through the east-to-west horizontal, hook-part of Lake Mead. This means that opposite banks, at times close enough to shout across, are in different states. The border runs from Hoover Damn in the west right; to Iceberg Canyon on the east.

Why people would want to put something as essential as a state border right in the middle of a body of water where no one can see it boggles the feline mind. Those of our ilk know a thing or two about marking territory. Although we also employ running water to do it, we make sure that such benchmarks are on otherwise dry land, where they can be seen, and more important, smelled.

Still, it is not for me to decipher the mysteries of human behavior in other than criminal matters. I only know that I have a long, challenging journey to Arizona ahead of me, for Temple Bar sits on the south side of Lake Mead.

All is not lost, for I have certain contacts that I use when it is necessary to cover vast distances in a hurry and I am forced to rely on motorized transport.

So I hike over to the Gray Line Tours building, a low, nondescript structure most notable for launching a fleet of long, looming vehicles with an exhaust system that could singe the hair off a porcelain Chow. In addition to their size and power, these buses have a sinister look due to tinted wrap-around windows. I am reminded of limousines carrying a whole convention of shady characters.

Luckily, these buses chauffeur tourists around Las Vegas and beyond, and tourists are no more sinister than a chocolate Easter bunny.

In fact, before I had landed a place of my own, I used to hang out here quite a bit. The exhaust fume fog greets me like an old friend, rushing to fill my ears, eyes, nose and throat.

I amble among these idling behemoths, looking for the nine o'clock run to Lake Mead. This will ultimately get me to Temple Bar, hopefully before mayhem of the cat kind has been visited upon this Innocent Three O'Clock Louie Individual.

"Well," notes a bus driver of my acquaintance, bending to look me over. "So you're back again. I gave you up for a grim statistic. How are you doing, Blackie?"

(At times I have found it convenient to work under a nom de guerre, which is to say whatever someone chooses to call me. Usually such names sadly lack imagination, but have the advantage of applying to dozens of dudes.)

"Like some lunch?" The fellow sits on the high first step to his bus and offers me a bite of summer sausage on rye.

I wolf it down in the name of building rapport among contacts.

My host is Red Kimball, a veteran driver whose pale thinning hair still boasts a scarlet thread or two among the gray.

While I nibble on another piece of his sandwich, another set of Hush Puppies squeegees over.

"Look who's back," notes another old pal, Gloria. She squats to stroke my head. "This old boy doesn't look much the worse for wear."

"He's eating like he's been locked in a closet for a decade or two," Red says, more with admiration than pity.

"You want to ride to the Valley of Fire with me today?" Miss Gloria inquires solicitously.

I have trained these drivers to the notion that I relish the occasional joyride, and their clients always find my presence on board, eagerly staring out the windshield, "cute," so no one has yet reported me to the company as a stowaway. See what I mean about cultivating contacts for a rainy day?

Not that it is about to rain today or any time soon.

After disposing of the last crumbs on the parking lot asphalt, I scamper up the rubber treads of Red's bus. (What an obnoxious smell to encounter after lunch, but none of the odors broadcast by a bus are what a discriminating nose would call five-star.)

"Guess the old boy wants to go to Lake Mead with me," Red concludes with admirable logic.

He dons his visored cap and follows me up the rubber-mat road. Over the next half hour, we are joined by a straggle of tourists, all wearing short pants, short-sleeve tops, and sunglasses and cameras on cords around their necks.

I take my usual alert pose alongside Red, forelegs braced on the dashboard, my profile pointed toward the unknown future.

"Oh, look, Lucy! That cat looks just like the figurehead on a ship. Isn't that cute?"

(My unerring instinct for "cute" when it will do me the most good is almost as strong as my nose for news and penchant for crime.)

Soon our party is lurching out of the depot and onto the open road. Well, the road would be open if we did not have to navigate Las Vegas traffic until we turn onto Highway 95 and head for the wide, open shores of Lake Mead. Highway 95 whisks us through Henderson (the site of one of my more outre adventures involving a pack of coyotes) and then past such Lake Mead landmarks as Las Vegas Wash (I thought the only wash in L.V. was at the crap tables) and Boulder Beach (which will give an idea of the quality of the shoreline band hereabouts).

The difficulty of relying on transportation other than one's own four feet is that the route may be circuitous, or even involve pesky pauses. Thus when Highway 95 hooks upward through Boulder City (it is not; a city, that is), our bus pauses on the brink of a fearful drop-off point. In this steep mountain defile that only goats can traverse with any illusion of dignity rises a sheer cliff of concrete, a towering monument to the ingenuity of man. Hoover Damn. (I believe it is so called in tribute to all the cussing the massive construction job caused. Why it is also named after a vacuum cleaner, I cannot say.)

I am forced to remain aboard while the gaggle of tourists clatter and chatter off the bus to swarm around and into the impressive concrete-slab face of Hoover Damn. Myself, I do not give a Hoover for heights of this magnitude. Besides, the bus remains air-conditioned.

Red doffs his cap to swipe his forehead with a Kleenex, then extends me the hospitality of the second half of his sandwich. I do not wish to appear rude, so we have a nice little picnic there on the brink of the drink, so to speak.

After forty minutes and a chance to see a slide show about Hoover Damn on a giant screen (why they do not project the slides upon the multi-story pale facade of the damn itself I do not know), our merry crew is on its way. Through the Black Mountains to the White Hills we go, taking a sharp left to head north past Virgin Basin and then east again right to Temple Bar, which sits in the protected curve of Heron Point. Beyond us await a marina, ranger station, campground and trailer hookup facility, not to mention a restaurant, the so-called Three O'clock Louie's.

Soon I am stretching my legs alongside a wooden dock while tourist tennies trod over the planking to a restaurant that projects onto the lake's frilly blue waves.

I am also watching dozens of carp school by the tourist walkway, making a solid gold, glittering carpet of scales punctuated by round, staring fish-eyes and round gaping mouths.

It is too easy to snag carp when they are begging, and they are shameless beggars. No finesse. Just gimme, gimme, all day long. I watch them wistfully, but dare not linger. These carp have waxed fat on tourist bounty; if I pause to ingest one, I risk seriously slowing myself down.

In the name of my rescue mission, I must travel on an empty stomach. (Although the summer sausage and rye are doing a rumba in my stomach, I only indulged in them to win Red's regard. Nothing gives a human such vicarious pleasure as overfeeding an animal.

The moment I separate from the tourists, I make good time sniffing the surrounding terrain.

The rocky shore of Lake Mead is seldom washed by rain, which means that scents ferment in the scalding heat for a good long time.

Away from the gadding crowd, the shoreline is mostly deserted in more ways than one. I bear south on the sandy rocks, the morning sun massaging my left shoulder with welcome heat.

I may need my muscles loose for the coming fray.

The dainty Caviar, a.k.a. Midnight Louise, may be a hard case to trail. Since she has had the dread surgery to prevent offspring, she will leave no rich, siren smell in her wake. As; for this Three O'clock Louie who is so bold as to make light with my name, I am not familiar with the dude and must separate the scents of my species from others, such as fox, skunk and the aforementioned coyotes.

But it appears that the skills of my merciless nose are not required. My ears perk to the sound of hissing and scraping.

Either a nest of rattlesnakes is holding a limbo contest over the next rise of rock, or I have come upon a contretemps between two of my own kind.

I bound atop the ridged red rock, lashing my tail to announce that someone to reckon with is on the scene.

I am not a split-second too early.

Were I not prepared for the event, I would think I was seeing double.

Two black cats circle on the barren soil below, backs humped, tails spiked like cactus, heads hunkered down beneath predatory shoulder blades.

Low moans and growls echo from the surrounding rocks. This is either an embarrassing private moment or a rumble, of the first order; with my kind such distinctions are sometimes hard to make. Each stalks slightly sideways, the better to keep an evil eye on the other. Neither gives ground, nor growl, nor glance to my arrival.

The piquant Caviar I have seen in full battle fluff before. She is petite by virtue of her gender and her tender age, but manages to swell to the impressive size of a sheared beaver muff.

The dude who has commandeered a portion of my name (and I really think there ought to be a law against such trespassing) is altogether a huskier sort, as one would expect of the male of the species. In full battle bristle, he is the size of a tumbleweed and has command of an impressive array of snarls, wails, belly-whines and cat curses.

I cannot help feeling a pang of anxiety for the well-being of my impudent offspring. She may have strange modern ideas; she may not respect her elders as she should, especially me; she may be in the mood to commit patricide, but she also may be my own flesh, fur and blood. I am proud of her for facing off this seasoned dude three times her size.

Everyone knows better than to interfere between two felines in a state of such savage fury, but Midnight Louie makes his own rules, and his path is clear. I must preserve from harm the innocent dude who is about to be turned into instant sushi merely for being mistaken for yours truly and the sire of the lion-hearted little minx below. I must also spare this idiotic offspring of mine the fruits of her misguided vengeance, which could be a fatal dose of the cactus known as

"catclaw."

I dart down the rocks, adding my own guttural wail to the proceedings.

I have forgotten the impact of sudden movement on an eclectic lunch, and pause. To burp.

Luckily, the contestants do not appear to hear this decidedly unwarlike sound.

With a bound, I flare my own magnificent coat into a state resembling Phyllis Diller's coiffure and land dead center of the quarreling cats.

Furious at having their unshakable glares so rudely disrupted, they snap their eyes to me, theirs hisses reaching an apex of hysteria.

I turn slowly, as a martial arts master surrounded by uppity students.

I speak even more slowly, selecting my syllables carefully, choosing a hypnotic lower register to disarm the combatants.

"You must. . . control yourselves," I suggest in my deepest baritone, a combination of a purr and a growl.

"Who do you think you are?" the purported daughter demands in a raspy voice. "Kitty Kong?"

I bow. I am not the figure purported to rule all cats, but I will masquerade as anyone to avoid a tragedy.

"Listen, layabout," she adds in the disdainful tone that is native to her. "Get out of the way.

This is a family matter, a blood feud. I do not need any overage hotel hang-around telling me what to do. This dude is my runaway father."

She scowls at the individual beyond me, whom I confront next.

Well. He is a large son of a bitch. (I am not using bad language here, as this is a breeding term among the canine species, and this dude is larger than your average lapdog!) His bile-green eyes spit figurative sparks at me while his mouth makes with the real spitballs.

"Listen, whippersnapper," he snarls. "Get out of the way. I was baldly attacked by this back-alley scrapper, and no one keeps Three O'clock Louie from administering a well-deserved licking."

I whirl to confront Caviar. "You see? His name is Three 0'Clock Louie, not Midnight Louie.

This is the wrong dude."

"He could have changed his name," she spits, not a single hair going limp. I would like to know the name of her grooming products. "He might have heard I was looking for him. One thing was sure, he wasn't hanging out around the Crystal Phoenix any more."

"Crystal Phoenix?" Three O'Clock sounds confused. "What is that, a glass bird?"

"Sure, play innocent," Caviar says. "No doubt that is how you ensnared my poor deluded mother not a year ago. She may not be here to call you what you are, but I spit upon your whiskers! You are a faithless, irresponsible, dog-livered layabout I would be so ashamed to call my father that it Is better to wipe you off the face of the planet."

"Mother? Father?" Three O'Clock lets one dog-eared ear lift a little. "Am I hearing this right, young lady? You think I am the poor bloke who fathered you?"

"I expected you to deny it," she growls.

Three O'Clock shakes his massive head. I notice a scar running down his cheekbone. His muzzle is grizzled with years of knocking around an arbitrary world.

"I am not the dude you wish to denude."

"Your name is Louie!"

"True, and it always has been."

"But not . . . Midnight?"

He shakes his head again. "Nope. Midnight has never been my best hour. Besides, Miss, I could not be your much-hated sire. A year ago I was not even in Nevada."

"Prove it."

He sits down on his haunches. "That would be difficult. I would have to extract testimony from Mr. Spuds Lonnigan, the owner of Three O'Clock Louie's, and humans are decidedly dense when it comes to answering feline-cross-examinations."

"Then you are history, mister."

"What made you think I am your father?" he asks.

"I was named Midnight Louise when I was born, and my mother said I was the spitting image of my father. I figure him to be Midnight Louie, and such a personage is notorious around Las Vegas for begging a free meal, chasing every fluffball that came along and consorting with humans."

"Hmm." Three O'Clock relaxes enough to lift a paw and give it a considering lick. "Not a bad life. But who is this interloper who has dared to come between us?"

Caviar lets the gold of her glance flick over me. "Some has-been no-account house kitty.

Harmless if a bit meddlesome."

I am so speechless I cannot even muster a decent spit. Here I leap where wildcats fear to go, between two battle-mad combatants, and neither thinks much of my intervention, or myself!

"Listen--" Sister, I am about to say, but that is not quite correct under the circumstances.

"Listen, you little lynx. If you had half the brains of your old man you would not be here accosting the wrong dude. You would have figured out already that I am Midnight Louie!

Midnight Louise indeed. Your mama was sadly mistaken. You have not got the class for such a name."

"You!" She looks me up and down and back and forth as if she had never seen me before.

"You are just some overweight, would-be gumshoe with pretensions of grandeur. My father is a heavy dude. My father is the terror of the back alleys. My father is a rat, but he saved the Crystal Phoenix! and Johnny Diamond's life--"

"And fingered the ABA killer, and saved Baker and Taylor--the corporate kitties--even though they do have crumpled ears and awful accents, and nailed the stripper competition killer. There is a lot that has happened since your mama and I have parted ways."

"Parted ways! You deserted her, and all us kits."

"She wanted it that way. Said she did not like the hours I kept, or the danger of my job. Said she and the kits would be safer on their own. Would she have named you after me if she hated the sight of me?"

"She ... did not know what was best for her."

"Apparently you do. Listen, kit. My old man ran out on us kits, too. That is just the way it is.

It is better for everybody. I am not looking for him. I hold no rancor. In fact, I know where he is, and should I choose to be snarly about it, I could hunt him down and hand him a few swipes myself. After all, he is leading the sweet life on a Pacific Northwest salmon trawler, living on the high seas, sucking all the tuna and salmon and shrimp he could want, without a thought for me and my siblings, or you and yours. But do I blame the guy? No. We must all do what we must do."

All of a sudden I feel a tremendous swipe on my shoulder. I turn around, my temper ripe for a fight. I am saving this dude's neck, torso and toes, and he has to attack me from behind?

"What is your problem?" I ask.

Three O'clock tilts his big, battered head and gives me the green eye. "Just saying hello.

Son."