Cat In A Zebra Zoot Suit

32

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It had become dismayingly evident, during my earlier walkabout of the home site with the Misses Temple and Electra, that something dark and dirty is transpiring too close for comfort.

All my fringe senses (those a bit beyond the usual five) tell me that the Circle Ritz residents have only scratched the surface of what criminal or even mystical schemes may be deploying under our very noses.

This is not something I can share with the ever-skeptical Miss Midnight Louise. She is a modern girl, and scoffs at my seasoned intuition.

So. The next step is clear. I must prepare to humble myself in pursuit of deeper intelligence. The only question is whether I begin this quest with the insufferable Karma, Queen of Metaphysical Mumbo-jumbo, or with the equally annoying Ingram, who sits literally atop books and books of information, and presumably has more private access to Google than I would ever dream of.

I decide that Ingram is the better bet.

I also decide that I will not boldly go via the bookstore front door, where Ingram can see me waiting and not make one attempt to attract Miss Maeveleen Pearl’s attention to admit me. Arranging an audience with Ingram is always complex. So I hunker down at the building’s side and wait for an opportune customer to appear, alongside of whose ankles I can slip within.

In my hunting days when I had to crouch in a prey-blind, I was prepared to wait patiently for hours upon a likely prospect. Alas, we are all now in an era of fast food, me included. Once I discovered I could work at the Crystal Phoenix with a nearby fishing hole, the koi pond, and tourists spreading their bread upon the waters by dropping tidbits for my maintenance, patience flew out the window.

I had heard about the Great Bookstore Recession, whereby such enterprises large and small and independent and franchised faced terrible losses at the advent of digital books and online retailing, but until you have sat for four hours on a weekday waiting for a customer to come, you do not realize what a travesty all this is.

At last some soul with a late lunch hour walks by and straight for the front door. I am almost catatonic with boredom by then and barely shake myself into action in time to streak for a disappearing pair of ankles.

“Oh, my goodness,” the woman says, spinning as I whisk past her and behind a table display. “Did you know,” she asks the approaching Miss Maeveleen Pearl, “there is a cat in here?”

“Yes. He is sleeping in the window display. His name is Ingram. If you are allergic, I can remove him to the stockroom.”

Stockroom? I visualize pairs of feline-size Old Salem penal stocks imprisoning Ingram, who already wears prison stripes. I see Ingram’s fore-and-aft soft pink footpads (mine are Bad Boy black) sticking through the wooden manacles, for passing vermin to tickle with their feelers. A comforting picture.

“I love stores with resident cats,” the woman customer is saying. “Ingram is a strong presence. I could swear I felt a welcoming fur-rub on my leg coming through the door.”

“I do not doubt it,” Miss Maeveleen says, leaning confidentially close. “I often think cats can astral-project.”

“That is just what I am looking for, a fun mystery series. So there is one about a cat that astral projects?”

“If there is not, there soon will be,” Miss Maeveleen assures her, guiding her to a shelf where every book cover features homebody tabbies surrounded by images of food, items from every imaginable domestic hobby, and things that go bump in the night.

Holy Sam Spade! I shake my head. These domestic slaves do not walk the walk (the mean streets) or talk the talk (though several seem to be more than somewhat chatty with their amateur sleuth owners). I am sworn not to talk to humans by my own druthers. I lead; they follow if they are smart.

Unfortunately, I can and do talk to the animal kingdom. A P.I. must have some reliable sources.

A low, slow, advanced-degree East Coast drawl unrolls behind me. “So, Louie, what brings you to my cozy nook?”

Ingram apparently resided with a Yale professor early in life. I turn and face the music, probably something maddeningly repetitive, like Bach.

“I did not realize we were neighbors now, Ingram. How long has this been going on?”

“Less than a year in this area. You stopped consulting me long before that. Apparently you joined the flight to All Things Internet, as my employer faced rising rents and dwindling brick-and-mortar customers.”

“No, Ingram. Trust me. I interact with the Internet only when an errant toe activates it if my Miss Temple has left it on.”

“Hmm. Now you need some live-and-in-person information and have come crawling back to me for free advice and research, I suppose.”

“Er, I do not crawl.”

“I would advise you to at least beseech if you want anything here.”

“I only need important information about Las Vegas history that may result in a renaissance for the Thrill ‘n’ Quill and all its literary works.”

“And you are going to accomplish this all by your large little self?”

“Can the oxymorons. Our two closest human associates will benefit, if we can prepare the ground for a fruitful future.”

“You are saying a farmer’s market will be joining this sorry little street of broken retail dreams?”

“Not necessarily, although it is not a bad idea. I was speaking metaphorically,” I point out.

“That is too great a leap for a lowlife like you. Try plain English, if you can.”

I hold my temper and shivs in check. “Someone vandalized the Lovers’ Knot wedding chapel attached to the Circle Ritz and someone was killed in the old empty building down the street the other direction. You need to help me assist Miss Electra Lark, who owns the very floor your feet pad upon. If we can prove that this man named Dyson’s killing is linked to an outfit that tried to force Dyson, Miss Electra’s ex-spouse, to sell his property in the area, the ladies can launch a new, improved retail concept.”

“Human relationships are intricate and often deadly. You are saying Miss Maeveleen may be forced to move again otherwise?” Ingram’s furrowed brown brow resembles corrugated cardboard. He sure is slow on the uptake.

“Yes! The purchasing party intends to turn the building into a huge strip-tease and sex salon club.”

“Oh, my. What a sleazy twist of fate. Miss Maeveleen refused to carry Fifty Shades of Gray and now she would have its associated unmentionable products sold practically next door.” Ingram shudders.

I lean close. “Then tell me about the building. I broke in to survey the crime scene and got a weird vibe there. I heard tell it has had many uses through the years before it ended up as an abandoned antique mall. There must be a reason someone was killed over it and the land it occupies.”

I know I have Ingram in the center pad of my mitt when he curls his clipped nails against his chest and narrows his eyes. “This is not the first instance of homicidal violence on that site.”

I am not a dunce when it comes to feline psychology. I assume a “mirroring” posture to further cement Ingram’s decision to be my confidential informant once again. “You do not say. How do you know?”

“It was in a book. Everything is. It would not do you harm, Louie, to spend more time warming the covers of a good book than warming a TV remote between your tender pads.”

My jet-black pads are way more street-seasoned than Ingram’s effete paddies, but I nod without defensive comment, and go on. “Miss Electra says the building has had many previous tenants, back to its start as a nightclub.”

“A nightclub?” Ingram sounds indignant. “Do you have any idea what kind of a nightclub?”

“I suppose the place offered the usual ho-hum human pursuits, strong drink and silly dances.”

“Hmm. You are basically right for a change, but we are talking about the post-World War Two, pre-Strip Las Vegas, when Bugsy Siegel took over the creation of the Flamingo Hotel for the Chicago Outfit.”

I am no scholar, but Vegas is my beat and I know its landmark moments. “That entire building is indeed a monument if it dates back that far. I also know a fragment of the original Flamingo is rumored to still exist in the current, many times remodeled version.”

Ingram’s front shivs mangle the needle-pointed pillow that bears his name. He must be auditioning for a cat cozy mystery cover.

“Imbecile,” he murmurs with a French accent. “The nightclub here was a secret site.”

“Secret?” All my PI instincts quiver.

“Underground.”

“Literally, or figuratively?” I ask, giving an amused, intellectual sniff. Two can play at that game.

“Both,” he ripostes, tapping the top of my mitt with a sharp nail. I guess you could call it a literal riposte.

I wait with bated, and baited breath. I would not want a whiff of my lunchtime tuna braised in shrimp sauce to distract Ingram from a revelation.

“You will recall,” he goes on with a yawn, “that during Prohibition bathtub gin and other illegal quaffs were served in private clubs, often below-ground in basements.”

“I recall, but not personally.”

“Later, during World War Two another item of culture was forbidden.”

“Marijuana?”

“Well, yes, that, but this was in the wearing apparel category.”

“All right. I give up. The only wearing apparel I am up to date on are my Miss Temple’s high-heeled shoes and the collars forced upon domestic dogs. And perhaps a certain flamingo-pink fedora once forced upon me during my À la Cat TV commercial days.”

Ingram has ignored me. “The establishment I reference featured swing dancing and such popular new libations of the decade as the Martini, Manhattan, Gimlet. Whiskey Sour, Gin rickey, Sidecar, Brandy Alexander, Brandy Stinger, Pink Lady, Tom Collins, Rob Roy, Sloe gin fizz, Bloody Mary, and the Shirley Temple.”

By the end of this recital I am doing a Slow Gin Fizz in anticipation of a possible slugging match between Tom and Rob, and Mary and Shirley.

“Rum,” Ingram drones on, “was in more supply during the war years, so rum cocktails like the Hurricane and the Dark ‘n’ Stormy were invented then.”

“Where do you pick up this stuff?”

“The museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans was drowned out by hurricane Katrina and relocated to the late Aladdin Hotel Desert Passage for almost two years in the mid-2000s. Any true connoisseur of Las Vegas would know that.” Ingram lifts three eyebrow whiskers and looks down his common pink nose at me.

“You are talking of a bunch of recent has-beens. What about this old-time underground joint in the building just a few pit stops up the street?”

Ingram rubs his pads together, preparing to deliver one of his endless lectures from which I will get a few measly nubs of useful information.

“The place was called Zoot Suit Choo-Choo. It was where hep cats and hipsters wearing zoot suits danced to swing music and tossed their lady friends and long, long watch chains around like dough in a Pizzeria. Miss Maeveleen keeps a poster of an old cartoon movie short called Zoot Suit Cat on her wall, if you can bestir yourself to pad over to her desk and look.”

This will require a leap down, an amble among freestanding bookshelves, and a leap up.

“A picture is worth a thousand words, Louie,” Ingram snickers.

So I make the trek and confront the strangest getup I have ever seen on a feline standing upright like a man. It makes my flaming flamingo fedora pale by comparison, from the flat wide-brimmed hat to the long coat with big shoulder pads over pantaloons starting under the forelimbs and bagging down until tight at the ankles. This literal “hep cat” is swinging a watch chain so long it could lasso a llama. This is the zoot-suit getup worn by the dudes I saw cavorting during my basement dream state.

I take all this in and return to Ingram without incident.

“Well?” he demands.

“I have seen people thusly costumed in films on the Retro TV channels. What is with the watch chain so long you could trip on it?”

“They were named after us, Louie. ‘Cat chains.’ Every hip young man wanted to be a ‘cool cat’. Some hipsters wore real gold chains. The poorer sort used the pull chains from water closet appliances.”

“You mean toilets? That does not sound ‘cool’, but crass.”

“I am amazed that even you, Louie, would find your sensibilities challenged by that. Anyway, the government banned the Zoot Suit.”

“That is unAmerican!”

“You are ignorant. You, as a black cat, should remember how your type was subjected to chromatic cleansing in the witch-hunt days.”

“I am well aware of four centuries of rabid persecution and burning. It is amazing any of us are left, and we still are left behind at shelters when it comes to adoption time, because the ignorant still superstitiously avoid black cats. So the ignorance is all on the side of homo sapiens, thank you very much.” I shudder. “Who gave this human species the right to rule the world?”

Ingram blinks his eyes but does not answer. He does however, continue his lecture. Since this is what I do not pay him for, I listen.

“The jazz music scene of the twenties mingled black and white musicians, defying segregation laws. Cab Calloway, the black jazz singer, wore flamboyant Zoot Suits onstage. When swing dance came along, the Zoot Suit was the day’s street fashion, like baggy shorts and T-shirts are today among teens.

“In 1942, the war effort banned excessive fabric, so wearing them became “unpatriotic”. Zoot Suit riots in Los Angeles were started by sailors in port taking swings at the hep cats as “unpatriotic”. Zoot Suiters were beaten and stripped and Zoot Suits burned.”

“Like a book-burning?” I ask, aghast. “The getup is laughable, but so are all human clothes. Except my Miss Temple’s,” I add loyally.

“The riots lasted ten days, Louie. Yet the Zoot Suit lives on. You were a cool cat in a Zoot Suit was the saying.”

“Yeah, and sometimes dead meat too, given the chromatic cleansing against my particular coat color during the witch hunts in Europe and America.”

Ingram produces a weary sigh. “At any rate, violence also closed the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo club. While the Mob liked its own sharp-lapelled, pin-striped suits and snappy fedoras, they saw troubles with Zoot Suit Choo-Choo attracting other ethnic guys who might organize. One hipster got hung there, by his toilet tank pull chain, and the club closed.”

“Hanged?” This nugget of unexpected information sets me back on my tail. “Who and why?”

“I do not know.”

“You do not know?”

“It is just a footnote in Las Vegas history.”

“Not to the guy who was hanged. Where can I get information on this for Miss Temple?”

Ingram yawns. “My afternoon nap time nears. Lure her into the store and get her to buy a book on Las Vegas history.” His eyes are half shut. I curl the tips of my shivs into his shoulder and shake it.

“Me-owie!” he complains. “Do that again, Louie, and I will never enlighten you in future.”

“How did you learn of this Zoot Suit Choo-Choo place?”

“In a book, of course.”

“Which book?”

“I forget, and if I do not get my nap, I may even forget everything I know the next time you come in scraping for clues and unpaid research assistance.” This time his peepers close down completely.

I sit there, perplexed. First I must attract Miss Maeveleen’s attention so I can be released to the wild. Then I must find some way to lead Miss Temple to Zoot Suits, the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo nightclub and an obscure seventy-year-old murder on the same premises where the former Mr. Electra Lark has bought the farm in the same fashion.

There are times I have been forced to resort to charades to convey important news and clues to Miss Temple, but this whole Zoot Suit puzzle takes the cupcake.