Cat In A Flamingo Fedora

Chapter 33

At the Drop of a Card

Temple awoke the next morning with flamingos on her mind.

Dream fragments still floated on the out- of-focus white screen of her ceiling. Oh, yeah. She had been doing a fandango with Max, for an audience of flamingos, who were swiftly grabbed by passersby for use as . . . golf clubs.

Then Midnight Louie had waddled by, upright on two feet, wearing an orange vest and top hat, clutching a pocket watch and complaining that he was late for work. Electra appeared out of nowhere as the Red Queen, followed by a pack of Darren Cooke's conquest recipe cards.

Matt had been nowhere in sight in this Mad Hatter's dream, which was typical.

She sat up in bed, donning her glasses to inspect the coverlet for Louie. He seldom stayed out all night anymore, but he had now.

Flamingos. Things had been so hectic lately that she'd forgotten to check in with Domingo.

And she hadn't gotten a message from the A La Cat film crew, so she didn't know when Louie would be needed next. Perhaps not until Yvette had recovered from her dysentery or distemper or whatever was supposed to be wrong with her, besides sprinkling in her carrier and shrinking when wet. Meanwhile, Temple could laze in bed a little and speculate on all sorts of things that were none of her business, always the most fascinating topics of consideration.

Had Sid Caesar stepped into Darren Cooke's soft shoes yet? Did it feel creepy to stand in for a dead man? Omigosh! She'd neglected to ask the director for a free show pass for Electra. Even with Cooke dead, she was sure a devoted fan like Electra would want to see what he would have been doing if he weren't dead.

Snatches of the chorus production number swirled in her head, the human hoofers intermixed with quick-stepping flamingos. Pretty good show. Clever idea to hark back to Las Vegas's colorful days of yore, when larger-than-life figures like Bugsy Siegel and Howard Hughes had made Las Vegas their private playpen, then ultimately the world's.

Actually, the revue, with its tribute to Bugsy and the Fabulous Flamingo hotel that he founded, was more appropriate to the current Flamingo Hilton. The one that gave Domingo's installations such a run for the money with its lavishly lit facade of a flamingo chorus line. Bits of the original 1946 structure still lurk within the thrice-rebuilt hotel today. And Temple had learned why Bugsy (who hated his nickname) had named his hotel-casino the Flamingo: Flamingo was a nickname for his feisty girlfriend Virginia Hill! Virginia apparently turned a vivid shade of red when she drank, which was often. Temple would have to tell Domingo sometime ...

Flamingos. So many feathers to cover a gawky-graceful bird that only weighed three to seven pounds, including lightweight, long neck and legs--even the six-foot-tall ones, which would almost match Max's height. . .

Temple's hand drew patterns along the comforter's zebra-stripes. Darren Cooke had almost been ready to perform that revue for an audience. He'd been drenched in Old Las Vegas flavor for weeks. He used a recipe box to hold Cooke's cookies and their cards. Why wouldn't he use a flamingo box to hold the missing manila envelope?

Nothing to do with Domingo's presence here. That was coincidental. But the Flamingo Hilton's safety-deposit boxes... Cooke must have stayed there before, been "comped" as a celebrity. Wouldn't the management have let him use a hotel safe for a few weeks if he had asked? Treating celebrities with discretion had been a Las Vegas password even before Sinatra's Rat Pack ran up tabs and tabloid coverage in the sixties.

Temple checked her clock face in the harsh light of day. Ten-thirty. Time to rise and shine, Lt.

C. R. Molina!

Temple speed-dialed the police number, and was lucky enough to reach Molina eventually.

"Barr," Temple said as brusquely as Molina announced herself. "Have you tried the guest safes at the Flamingo?"

"For what? Being broken and entered?"

"Not tried in that way. Have you checked to see if Darren Cooke kept a box there?"

"Why would he? He wasn't registered there."

"Maybe not this trip, but I've got a hunch he might have hidden the envelope of letters there."

"You left out 'crazy' in front of 'hunch.' We don't have time--"

Temple cut her off. It felt good. "Only the police could find out for sure. What would it take?

A phone call? I'd be happy to identify anything you find."

"It takes a warrant too. And I bet you'd be--" Molina began, but Temple hung up.

Being a chicken, she had mumbled " 'Bye" first.

****************

Temple figured she could handle the second stage of this paper chase herself. She called the Oasis and asked for a room. The operator put her call through, but the phone rang until it tripped a voice-mail request to leave a message.

No way, Temple thought, with all the savvy of a PR veteran. Leaving messages gave people time to think about what they'd say to the message-leaver. Temple didn't want that. Surprise was paramount when you wanted to elicit a confession. And she did think one aspect of the Darren Cooke death called for a confession.

So she decided to take a chance on trying another likely site in person. She went on a whim.

She had a hunch, and a nagging, itchy hunch is as demanding as any unsatisfied drug habit.

The drive wasn't long, but it gave Temple time to plan her approach. She would be matter-of-fact, but nonaccusatory. The idea was to confirm a suspicion, not to stir up defensive anger.

She parked in front this time, in plain sight, and neared the windows with their blinds drawn tight against the . . . overhead sun, which wouldn't hit the glass full on until late afternoon. A little early to be so discreet.

Temple's knock set the closed miniblinds shimmying against the door's inset glass. She knocked again. And again.

Finally she walked to the corner, counting and studying cars, and down the side street to the building's rear. Parked halfway down that side, all by its lonesome, sat an old Volkswagen Beetle convertible painted a dazzling new white.

Her hunch already paying off, Temple marched back to the Strip shopping center's front facade and the blind-shrouded office.

She knocked again, waited, then said loudly, "I know you're in there, and I won't go away.

You could leave, of course, in the car parked out back, but I'd just find you someplace else."

She waited, forbearing to knock again.

Finally, the door blinds rattled. A lock clicked. Temple turned the knob and entered.

The outer office seemed almost as dim as last night, even with all the tabletop lamps on.

Against one wall, the copier wheezed. Temple could see its tiny green operating lights from the door.

Alison Darby looked hot and bothered in a shapeless gray jogging suit with baggy pants. Her fashionably cut, burgundy-tinted salon hairstyle was flat on one side and pushed into an inappropriate pouf on the other, as if slept on. Her face was in similar condition, puffy and hollow at the same time, making her look far older.

"Did you often sign documents for Darren Cooke?" Temple asked, figuring her victim was stressed enough to tell the truth without thinking about it.

"Sign? What are you talking about? Why are you here? I've got to finish up the office work quickly, because I certainly can't afford an Oasis room now that Darren's dead."

"A lot of secretaries do it, forge their bosses' signatures. I bet they get pretty good at mimicking their handwriting too."

"Personal assistant," she corrected. "I wasn't just a secretary, though it sure looks like it now." She eyed the office and rubbed a sweatshirt sleeve against her damp forehead, making the improbably magenta bangs stand up like soldiers on parade.

"Why kill yourself? Surely his widow will want you to stay on as an employee and sort through things."

"No. I don't think she will. And, anyway, I don't want to stay any longer than I have to."

Harried, she eyed the idling copy machine.

Working over a warmed-up copy machine under a deadline can be a sweaty job. Temple knew, having done it just the other night. But she guessed that something else might be making Alison Darby so hot under the collar.

"Just tell me if you wrote Sunday's date on my card in Darren's bedroom that day. Because it isn't quite his handwriting."

"How do you know?" The tone was sassy teenage challenge.

"Because," Temple said gently, "I looked at Darren's other cards, with his real handwriting on them, in the box in his office, right back there."

Alison glanced backward, as horrified as if the ghost of Cooke had strolled out from the office.

"And I copied them, like you're doing now." Temple nodded to the pile of index cards beside the copier. "Look. I know you were trying to protect your boss. I don't know what you thought you'd accomplish by making me seem like one of his conquests, but that won't hold up. Michelle has my card now, and the police will have it soon."

"Michelle!" Alison cast anxious glances from Temple to the copier. "Why would she have it?"

"I'm not quite sure. You may have left it in his bedroom to be found, or have brought it here to the recipe box, where it was accidentally found. Michelle might have come in one day--"

"I couldn't refuse her keys to the office."

"No. But you didn't have to point a finger at me through my card. I was only in the bedroom with Darren for a few minutes--"

"That was always enough for him!" she spit out.

"But it wasn't enough for me. And all the time in the world wouldn't have been enough for me if the man were Darren Cooke."

"You ... didn't like him?"

"Let's sit down at the desk, at least. Oh, I liked him. He could be very charming. But I knew his reputation, his game, that's all. I wasn't about to play."

Alison regarded her with a certain numb approval. "You would have been an exception."

"You were an exception too, weren't you?"

She paused on the brink of saying something, then broke into wild, almost operatic laughter, too forced to be genuine. Maybe it was early hysteria.

"A notable exception," she finally panted between the gusts of harsh laughter that rocked her. "To the end."

"You know what I think?" Temple said, keeping her voice even and low. "I think you marked my card because you were trying to protect him."

"Protect him?" Her light eyes stared as if Temple were speaking Urdu.

"I think you found his body that Monday morning before anyone was alerted. Maybe you went back to the suite early. He had to be at Gangster's by nine. Maybe he usually went over the schedule bright and early every morning.

"Only this morning, he was dead. When I left Sunday noon, he was depressed. He could have gotten a lot more depressed by midnight. I think you didn't want it to look like a suicide, so you marked my card and brought it here and put it in the box, hoping suspicion would fall on me, a handy stranger. That's why you didn't destroy that incriminating recipe box. You hoped that if the police suspected something other than suicide, they would hunt farther afield, learn about Darren's office and then find my card, dated the last of all his ladies.

"You didn't know that I would be the last person to be suspected of anything, since I'm known to the local police already--"

"You are? My God, what are you?"

Temple shrugged modestly. "What my card says. A PR freelancer. I help the police sometimes. I can help you now, if you'll just confirm my scenario. Then all the pieces will fit together. I'm not angry that you tried to implicate me, I just want to know why you wanted to implicate someone in what was so clearly going to be declared a suicide."

" Why? " Her fingers drove into her scalp at the temples, pushing her short hair spikes into a punk Mohawk. "You're right. I found him. That morning. Such a shock. Such a surprise. I didn't expect him to escape."

"Escape--?"

"I had to think. I didn't know what the police would conclude. If they'd realize it was suicide, or wouldn't know he had a motive--and then some!--for that. I wanted to cover everything. So I did what I did, don't even remember half of it, except I handled everything with a plastic bag left over from the party." She glanced up, smiling crookedly. "I even wrote Sunday's date on your card with that damn plastic around the pen. That's why the writing wasn't perfect! Usually my imitations of his handwriting are perfect."

"We--"

"You're not alone?" Alison looked wildly around the office.

"My associates," Temple went on, giving an unforgivably wrong impression, but beginning to feel a bit uneasy. Alison appeared to have emotions and motives Temple hadn't dreamed of.

"They thought for a while that Darren made a call late that night, just as someone unexpected was arriving. A woman, of course."

"He ... called someone that night? At midnight?"

Temple nodded, watching Alison unravel with every revelation. Amateurs should never involve themselves in criminal matters; they have no idea of the consequences.

"That lead turned out to be ... unreliable," Temple said. "Still, you should know that ... we have a fair idea of why he killed himself, and there's no sense in letting it go public. Such a sad, private story should remain private."

"You . . . idiot!" Alison was standing, her hands still clawing her scalp, as if they would start pulling out hanks of hair at any moment. "Keep it private! I don't want it private. I want the world to know what he was, especially now that he's escaped. What have I got to lose, lady? You tell me. You think you know why he committed suicide? Well, think again. I know. "

The intensity of her furious, taunting tone startled Temple. Everything she said to try to make things better seemed to madden Alison more.

"I'm only trying to handle this delicately--"

"There's no delicate way to handle it." Alison began pacing behind the desk, back and forth like a caged hyena. "Delicate?"

"Then you know about the letters?"

"Of course I do. First of all, I was his personal assistant these last nine months. Nine months.

Such a nice, round number. I got all the mail. He couldn't get there first without making a suspicious fuss about it."

"You didn't... read them first?"

"Yes, I did. I read them first, because I wrote them first."

Adrenaline pushed Temple to her feet, although that didn't do her much good. She suddenly realized that Alison Darby was bigger-boned and taller than she, and much more agitated.

"How did you know that the call was made at midnight?"

"Because it was around then that I arrived. I wasn't exactly checking my watch, but I should know roughly the time for the most important moment of my life."

"You found him at midnight, then? Dead?"

"No." She came deliberately around the desk, ready to push her face up against Temple's to make herself exactly clear.

Temple forced herself not to back up, knowing any weakness would only undermine her position. Tracking a woman who had hastily implicated her in a suspicious death was one thing; confronting a possible murderer was another.

"He was alive then, our Darren," Alison said, seeing him again. "Very much so. A little drunk, but he was used to functioning that way. And seeing me really perked the old guy up. Pulled out all his energy and charm. He'd been working on me for months, for so long that he'd given up. I had been the one Untouchable around him, and then there I was, in my French negligee I'd paid half a month's salary for, and he paid me pretty good. That's the only thing I'll miss. The salary."

" You were his midnight visitor?" Temple sounded more confused than she meant to.

The Voice had called Matt since Darren Cooke's death, so how could Matt have heard a woman arrive during a call from some other sex addict, at the same time as this woman here actually did visit Darren Cooke's suite?

"And how! He was ready. He went from the dumps to the Alps in five seconds flat. It gave me a sense of power. Him needing a woman that bad. Needing me." She sat suddenly on the desk's front edge, all threat gone.

"So we went into the bedroom, and did it."

Temple, her legs as weak as Jell-O straws, sat again in the chair.

Alison knew she had a paralyzed audience. She went on with a kind of holy satisfaction.

"This is what I trained to do since I was fifteen, and Mama finally told me who my father was. I went to secretary school not only to get the skills to get close enough, but to get an idea of how to dress and groom my nails, how to speak and write properly. It would have been so easy to grow up like I really was from the gutter he left us in, but I knew I'd never have any thing better, never have any peace, until I prepared for my Plan, and executed it."

"He was your father, and you had sex with him?"

"He thought so, but I wasn't really there," she said witheringly. "I was back in junior high, where they made fun of me and my clothes and ways. I could even smell the lead-pencil shavings in the dirty, smudgy sharpeners."

"And that was your plan, always?"

"Part of it." She looked sly and smug now.

Temple could think of nothing more to do than to interview her. She knew how to keep people talking about themselves. Although Alison had no obvious weapon on her, she was armed with obsessive years of vengeful plotting. It made her formidable beyond any gun or knife.

While she had talked, and Temple had asked, Temple had been studying the room in quick glances. Matt's voice came into her head: "Anyone who attacks you knows what weapon he'll use; only you know what weapon you can find and use."

Temple hadn't sat down out of shock, or a wish to give Alison the advantage of a greater height over her. She'd sat because the chair had rollers. On the vinyl-tiled floor she could suddenly push off and get away, or get to something, faster than Alison could react. But what to flee to? What to use to overpower this demonically driven young woman?

"So after you and he were through--"

"I told him who and what I was. He was... sputtering. He couldn't believe it, but I convinced him. Before she died, Mama had given me the date he was in town, what show he had been doing, what he drank that night, everything. From the day she told me, I kept a scrapbook of anything I could find about him. Old stuff, new stuff. Where he went, I went in my mind. The letters didn't start until I was almost ready. I wanted to let him know what he had left out there.

Who he had left out there, alone."

"But neither your mother nor you gave him a chance to know you."

"Did he come back to his one-night stands to see how they were doing a year or twenty later? This man was a machine. A jackhammer just loose on the street, smashing into anything around it. If you were a woman, and got in his path, you got drilled and were supposed to like it.

And, then, after all that damage, he had the gall to get married."

The words "get married" rang with contempt.

"To have 'a baby.' His first baby, the papers said. Not quite. That's when I began the letters, a couple of years ago. Then I tried to get a job with him. I had to make him think I would be another easy one, but just a little bit hard, so he'd actually hire me to wear me down. Boy, did it bother him to find me so hard. I could see it in his eyes. So I tormented him for nine months, and kept sending my letters and watched him fall apart."

"I still don't understand what you got out of all this, besides revenge."

Alison picked up a letter opener that Temple had been discreetly eyeing. The pewter handle was molded into the masks of tragedy and comedy, so it was probably an award Cooke had won.

She laughed, throwing her head up as if to defy a higher power. "I was going to get money, honey. Lots of money. That's what I told him. This was gonna be the most expensive night in his whole life. He was going to pay for sex, for once. If he didn't want me telling my story to all the tabloids: I SLEPT WITH DADDY DEAREST! If that would hurt his career, or his reputation or his marriage or his new little girl, why then he'd have to pay me. He'd have to give me half of everything he had, and then he'd give me the other half."

She shrank into herself a little. "For a while there, I thought he was getting so freaked out that he'd kill me, especially when I told him Stage Two of my Plan." Her face screwed into distaste. "But he caved in. He started whining and swearing that if he'd known I existed he would have been there. Sure. He said I couldn't hurt innocent people, and I said I was innocent before Mama told me and before people started hurting me."

She shook her head. "He was pathetic when I left, but I never thought he'd kill himself. What a stupid thing to do! He had a show, he had lots of money. I woulda left him keep some. I woulda kept quiet. Did I want the world to know this creep was my father? That I had to screw him to get anything out of him, any time, any attention, any money? It would have worked fine!

But then he had to get dramatic and go kill himself."

She glanced at Temple. "So he left your card on his nightstand. For all I knew, you'd let him drill you, so I wrote the date down, just in case they could tell he'd had sex, so they would think you were his last woman. Then I'd be clear, and a lot poorer." She sighed. "It was over too fast. It wasn't any fun. He wasn't even a good lay."

"That's not the way genetic evidence works," Temple said, surprised to find her voice hoarse. She hadn't said much in a long time. "They'd have had to test us pretty quickly to prove anything. Besides, he'd showed me your letters. That's why I was in the bedroom, as I told the police. The daughter would have been a suspect sooner than any woman in the vicinity. You had a built-in alibi; you didn't have to use me."

"You read my letters?" Her face twisted with anger again.

"Skimmed a few, that's all."

"Those were private! I can't believe he showed them to anyone. And to you, a stranger. Or are you lying? You could be lying about everything."

She stood up, the pewter dagger in her hand jabbing toward Temple.

"He was honestly upset by those letters, Alison. And not just because you might have frightened him. He was trying to straighten out, trying to make his marriage work. I do believe that. He did love his baby daughter, and I think he would have loved you if he'd known about you. Babies were the only women he didn't have to perform for. Why didn't you just write him, nicely, when you first found out?"

"Because my mother said he wouldn't care. He'd been a young man, and young men don't look back. He was too rich and famous to care. He probably didn't like children."

"Maybe. But he did finally marry a woman, and have a little girl. Maybe he was thinking about getting older, and leaving all he had earned behind him. Maybe he wanted a little boy or girl to leave it to. Maybe that could have been you."

"No!" She stabbed the letter opener into the wooden desktop so hard it stuck there.

Temple had been hoping for that when she goaded her. Hoping that she'd strike the desk and not Temple. The letter opener might pull out easily enough, but Alison would have to go for it, and by then Temple would have propelled herself back to the copier, and pushed it over at Alison if she followed. Then she could spin the corner water cooler into the center of the room.

... by then she should be able to reach and unlock the door, get out into the street and daylight and--

"It never would have been me!"Alison buried her face in her hands. "Mama was just a pretty girl, she wasn't no French model. She wasn't good enough for him, even I knew that when I looked at her, later. We were a step up from white trash, that was all."

"You're better than that now, because you hated him," Temple pointed out.

"What?" Alison looked at her suspiciously, through wet fingers, like a difficult child.

"You made something of yourself, out of hatred. You can type, spell, use a computer, run an office, stand in a roomful of celebrities and come off as a sophisticated woman. You can get another job, just because you can do it. You can go somewhere."

"I had no place to go, ever, but here! Here to get him. And now I have, and it's nothing, like everything else. You are downright crazy, lady!"

"You can't be prosecuted for a man's suicide. You can't be prosecuted for incest. The blackmail isn't in the letters, as far as I saw. There's only your word on it, and why would you incriminate yourself?"

Alison took a deep, ragged breath.

"Oh, that's right. For vengeance, to expose him. But you say he was mad enough to hurt you, but didn't. He hurt himself instead. Maybe if you'd come at it another way, it wouldn't have been like this. I suppose you could humiliate his widow and child. They have a lot more than you, so maybe they deserve it. But they're just a Mama and her Baby alone now, trying to make a go of it. And sure, you could have taken the sleazy tabloid coverage if it had hurt him, but he's dead. He can't be hurt. Only the Mama and Baby he left behind. And you, you'll find that the tabloids leave you feeling dirty all over finally."

"So what should I do?" she asked quietly, like a child.

"Take some time. Think about it. You should talk to somebody about everything. A doctor or a shrink. There are women's centers with groups."

"I been alone on this."

"Maybe you don't have to be alone on the aftermath." Temple stood. "I'd better take the file box and the cards. What were you copying them for, anyway?"

"I was gonna give 'em to her, to Michelle." She hung her head. "But something's been bothering me, ever since he died on me. It's like I've lost a reason to go on. Like I been cheated. I don't care anymore. I been trying to go through the motions, thinkin' and schemin' and plannin'

how to make everyone pay. And I just don't care anymore. Maybe he was ... too easy."

Temple nodded. "Maybe you're better than he was." She got up, fetched the recipe box, with its syrupy floral paintings, and collected the loose cards by the copier.

Walking to the door made her feel like a target, but when she had opened it and turned, Alison was still sitting slumped on the desk, the letter opener impaled beside her. Hmm, like father, like daughter, perhaps.

Temple walked back and took it, wresting it from the Danish modern teakwood.

Molina would hate having Temple's fingerprints over everything, but Temple thought she'd better preserve the evidence, even though she doubted that there was a case to be made from it.