Cat In A Zebra Zoot Suit

11

Off Leash

It has been a long night.

Alas, I did not turn tail and publicly snub Punch Sullivan and all his works by stalking off after my Circle Ritz ladies this morning. Frankly, I wanted to explore this unlikely site for serious contemporary reconstruction by myself.

The clod called Punch Adcock took some misplaced comfort in my remaining with him on-site.

“See. This cat knows where the action is going to be,” he tells Miss Katt Zydeco.

She, bearing a feline name, is much more realistic. “Forget it, Punch. It is not our job to deal with that ditsy dame crew or the cat they came in with from up the street. We have more important duties tonight.”

Wonderful. By then I am out of sight underneath the temporary “skirt” of the forty-foot RV. What a perfect eavesdropping site and base of operations.

Perfect, that is, until Miss Midnight Louise slithers in beside me.

“Ideal observation post, Pops. Guess your years as a homeless street person were good training for a useful life, now that you are living La Vida Gigolo at the Circle Ritz.”

Miss Midnight Louise is adept at making statements that one answers at one’s peril, because no way can I come out a winner on that set of implications.

“You can stay,” I announce, magnanimous, because I cannot dislodge her without a lot of sound and fury of the cat kind that will give away our surveillance. “Our role here is to wait and watch. It is like Star Trek. No interference with the alien species and their alien actions.”

“Sure, fine. I see you are still stuck in the milieu of your second-to-last case, where reported UFOs got the Strip in a furor. The aging individual must beware of living in the past.”

“If I were living in the past, I would certainly see that you had remained a mote in Bast’s eye.”

For once a comment of mine has puzzled my alarmingly obstreperous maybe-offspring.

Her furry forehead furrows. “I must confess, although the older generation may be horrified, that I do not believe in Bast.”

“Certainly that is your choice, Louise,” I reply. “Bast has endured for five thousand years, almost as long as our kind. Unfortunately, there is very little else for us to believe in these days. Unless it is Free-to-Be-Feline.”

“That is a scientifically vetted healthful and planet-friendly food source,” she says. “You are short-sighted, but inadvertently generous, to share your bottomless supply with Ma Barker’s clowder.”

I see we are treading delicately around each other so as not to widen the generation gap. It is at times like this I wish I had Karma, Miss Electra’s supposedly psychic Birman cat, to kick around. “If you insist on horning in on my investigation, Louise, I will ask you to remain silent and to follow my instructions. I am expecting mind-blowing revelations later this night.”

Miss Midnight Louise sighs. “You sound like some of my most annoying suitors before I was mercifully made indifferent to the reproductive imperative. However, since you are the best your benighted generation has produced, I will do my best to help you, Daddy-o.”

I am touched. I am also convinced that I will need some decent backup before this night is over. Or, at the least, a witness.

I have lived in Las Vegas since I was spit out onto the street to make my way.

In that respect, I am not unlike the average tourist who visits this town. It is all a matter of luck, good and bad, and luck is a matter of self-esteem.

I have seen many things, good and bad, and have experienced both…the touching charity of a homeless person offering me a pinch of cold, abandoned fast-food burger. The rib-kick of a drunken casino winner, swaggering out of a Strip hotel. The tears on my shoulder-blades from a fifteen-year-old hooker on the notorious Minnesota Strip, who believes for a precious moment that I have it worse than she does.

In all of this, I have grown philosophical. I have also learned a bunch.

So I hunker down, as dudes of my breed, size and color can and have done for many decades and centuries, and wait to see what will transpire. Luckily, I can wait with my eyes closed. I shift into daydreaming mode. And then it is night.

Am I knocked back!

Louise curls sharp shivs into my shoulder. (I prefer tears, no matter how poignant. In that Minnesota Strip instance, I managed to find a nearby undercover policewoman and intrigued her to follow me back to the young girl and get my tearful hookup off the streets, at least for a while.)

Anyway, I needed a wake-up pinprick. This deserted lot is suddenly Ringling Brothers Central.

An hour after the sun goes down, an old Volkswagen van covered in wild psychedelic artwork from the sixties lurches into the parking lot and backs up to the rear door. Power to the People is written on its side. The passenger opens the back doors to reveal one big mama of a generator. The driver comes around to Dumpster dive in the metal container next to the door and pulls out a mess of heavy cables he starts laying out in the parking lot.

Then a plain white van pulls up with a flashing neon sign on its side:

POP-UP CASINO

$$ VIDEO POKER $$

DUSK TO DAWN

LAY YOUR BETS AND WALK AWAY

WITH LUCKY LOOT

From our lowly observation positions, Miss Midnight Louise and I keep our peepers set on wide VistaVision focus.

Speechless (our normal condition, actually), we watch men pour out of the van and wheel dollies into the depths of the abandoned building. In minutes, the basement door disgorges crews of the same men wheeling huge video poker machines onto the dirt, crushing the few straggly weeds.

Usually seen in long rows in huge hotel casinos, gaming machines look like the innocuous wall of video games they are. One by one, at night, wheeled out of an abandoned hulk, they resemble invading cyber-aliens.

Soon, a couple dozen slot machines have rolled out from the central building into ragged rows on the sandy lot.

“Some of those machines are antique one-armed bandits,” Louise points out.

Yeah, they are. Folks used to have to pull a lever to make the cherries wheel around or the poker hands show up card by card on an animated, colorful screen. Now, instead of feeding quarters or even nickels into slots, player use five, ten and twenty-dollar bills and push one big square button.

At least a while back you could lose a few calories as well as your paycheck at a casino slot machine. Now you lose “long green” in the time it takes a bill, courtesy of Uncle Sam, to be automatically sucked through a slot. And your forefinger can wrack up losses faster than a thoroughbred springs out of a Kentucky Derby gate.

Before our eyes, more cars are wheeling onto the lot in front of the trailer. People from nowhere are screeching in on new and old wheels, setting up shop as an outdoor gaming parlor.

“This,” I declare, “is weird, even for Vegas. ‘Dusk to Dawn.’ That is like eight p.m. to five thirty a.m. I never knew this secret gambling stuff was going on.”

“This is more than weird,” Louise whispers back. “Those are vampire hours. Could something supernatural be occurring?”

Before I can answer, I hear the screech of speeding automobiles hitting the brakes. This unlit side street is suddenly illuminated by headlights that quickly go dark and is lined by parked vehicles, from which clots of four to seven people pour out. Wait. Not just people. Guy people. Of course the male of the species is the most hardened gambler. The female favors better odds than mere chance.

“Oh, my mama’s lumbago,” Louise hisses under her breath. “This has turned into a secret betting parlor under the stars. Even though gaming is legal in Las Vegas, licenses are still required. What the Havana Brown is happening here?”

Normally I know everything, but must confess to ignorance in the current instance. This nighttime carnival must have a rhyme or reason, but I am without a clue in this case.

Although the sun has slinked out of sight for the day, I am not surprised to see some usual suspects strolling onto the frantic scene.

Punch Adcock and Katt Zydeco, who would be dressed to the nine lives were they feline, play hosts, and escort the imported gamblers to various slot machines. Leon Nemo cruises the chaos, his eye on his Rolex wristwatch.

Louise and I watch a few dozen gamers argue about the house rules (only cash and gone by 5:00 a.m.), but the house, well…rules. Even more suspicious, Adcock, Zydeco and Nemo’s cell phone cameras record all the frenetic doings of this elite few on the night crew.

After weary hours of crouching on my fore and aft limbs alongside my far more limber associate, I see the bettors shuffle toward the curbs to depart. Nemo counts out a paltry few bucks, which are pushed into gamblers’ pants pockets as they leave.

Vehicle engines rev at the curbs. The pack of gamblers vanish in a herd of red taillights. Leon Nemo adds to the fan of bills representing the night’s slim “take”, and distributes them among the musclemen scooping up the slot machines on dollies and returning them to the unplumbed depths beneath the ex-antique mall.

He is left with empty hands and a grin we can see even from under the RV.

“This is the most bizarre event I have ever witnessed in Las Vegas,” I impart to Louise’s petite ear, which twitches. “And that is saying something given the over-the-top entertainment on the Strip.”

“That is indeed a first,” she admits. “Oh, I am tired of serving as a stock-still vermin attraction. Tell me we can fold our tents for the night.”

“Agreed. I need time to think on this startling event, which,” I proclaim, “is even odder than when UFOs were reported buzzing the Las Vegas Strip. What is most wrong here, is that I do not see anyone profiting in any way from this night’s events. That is just plain unnatural in Las Vegas.”

“Agreed. An absence of greed is hard to stomach. Oh, my aching pads!”

On Louise’s last comment, we scratch our heads literally and simultaneously, and depart for our separate home, sweet homes.