Cat in a Zebra Zoot Suit

34

Cat and Mouse

I like my routines, especially at mealtime. If anything could be more aggravating than the human propensity for impulsive changes of routine it is realizing I must beat the Circle Ritz ladies to the Thrill ‘n’ Quill and get Ingram to set the stage there.

Since my unearthly experience at the abandoned building, I realize I must direct my charges’ attention to the exciting but deeply obscure days of yesteryear in Las Vegas. That is the only way to put them on the path to solving the puzzling murder that occurred just last week.

“Zoot Suit Choo-Choo” is not a search term I can easily persuade Miss Temple to input into her computer. Although I have in the past shown some digital dexterity over the operation of a printer, answering machine, and even rather creative arrangements of the alphabet on a keyboard, I am not suited to conveying long written messages.

No, it is my curse and gift to find creative ways to prod these unobservant humans into making leaps of logic. As it happens, a bookstore in the neighborhood might turn out to be a boon.

I am on the sidewalk outside the Thrill ‘n’ Quill in five minutes. I expect it to take me at least fifteen to get inside and set about my business. Even then, I am counting on luck and Ingram’s encyclopedic memory of every item on the store’s shelves. Bast knows, he has slept on every book and shelf in his long (and lazy) pseudo-literary career.

Still, a mean-street walker like me can use a sedentary assistant to consult, a feline kind of Mycroft to my Sherlock Holmes.

Ingram is in his usual spot pursuing his usual occupation. He is sound asleep in the store window. I leap up to tap the window glass. One striped ear tip twitches. I leap again, using the points of my shivs to turn a dull tap into sharp rap. One yellow eye-slit opens.

And shuts. What you might call an open-and-shut case. I do not have time to waste. I shall have to appeal to the denser species.

I go to the glass door, where I am more visible. I sit, clear my mind (which is hard because much is on it) and pretend I am Miss Electra’s cat, Karma, in one of her New Age trances. Then I look into the store where Miss Maeveleen Pearl is bustling about near a row of shelves, back to me, and concentrate on my best weapon, The Stare.

If you Stare, they will come.

Well, maybe not right away. And I do not have time to waste. I twitch my whiskers and Stare Harder. I Stare so hard I am going cross-eyed. My vision blurs and then resolves into the striped brown side of Ingram pacing back and forth in front of the door.

At least his change of position has spurred some inside action.

Miss Maeveleen is bearing down on us like a movie closeup, her face growing jolly pink giant huge as she bends over to study the bottom of the door.

“Ingram,” she says, “you have not seen your friend from the old shop in months, poor fellow. I will let him in to visit, but you are not going out.”

Small chance of that. Ingram does not like to get his white gloves and spats dirty.

I eel through the crack and greet my hostess with a single ankle rub and a small chirp. We are not on intimate terms and I do not want to overdo it. Doling out the demonstrations of affection keeps the mystique going.

Ingram pads over to an overstuffed armchair near a reading table and jumps onto one arm. I notice some fancy crockery on the floor near a wall, but am not here to cadge a meal or a drink, so I loft atop the other chair arm.

And pose.

“How precious.” Miss Maeveleen is there with her cell phone camera and Ingram is quick to offer a practiced head tilt. Then we are rid of her for now as she goes off to Facebook us, and we can get down to business.

“She is right,” Ingram growls. “A year ago you dropped me like a nickel down a slot.”

“My case load turned in a direction not requiring your expert help and depth of knowledge.”

“Phhtt,” he says. “Flattery is the resource of the unimaginative.”

“You are right. The information I need and any way of conveying it from one species to another is virtually impossible in this case. I was overconfident to disturb you for such a hopeless task.” I gather myself to jump back to the floor.

“Wait. The least you can do is tell me what crazy tangent you are chasing now.”

“It involves murder, of course, and strange, exotic human rituals that would make a cat laugh, were evil not involved.”

“‘Evil’, you say. Evil under the Las Vegas sun?”

Now Ingram is paraphrasing an Agatha Christie title. He does not realize I know this and know it shows his weakness for a mystery.

“Yes, but extending back decades. Too old to be found.”

“Historical, you say?”

“And far too obscure to convey, even with the photographic memory and wide resources you possess.”

“Try me.”

“And the time factor is…hopeless.”

“Try me.” He is almost begging now.

“If you insist. I hate to set you up to fail, and Miss Temple and Miss Electra will be taking Miss Maeveleen to lunch in less than twenty minutes.”

“Tell me!” Ingram is now almost grinding his fangs.

I shrug and give my thick ruff an absent lick. “I need to find a book with a particular reference. The phrase in question is ‘Zoot Suit Choo-Choo’.”

“I thought-we had discussed that thoroughly. Oh. I suppose you are trying to relive your triumphs in the À la Cat commercials. The Fontana brothers ‘made’ that production number. They wore the zoot suits and you stumbled and tumbled down the stairs.”

“I was tripped by my evil rival, the spokescat Maurice.”

“If you say so. However, the zoot suit, unlike you, has an interesting history and may be represented in books in inventory. Let me think.”

Ingram closes his eyes and rapidly drones, “Zoot Suit. Referencing the Zoot Suit Riots of the nineteen-forties. Not in Las Vegas, though. L.A. So. Nothing in Historical Las Vegas section. Two in Entertainment section. Not in Fiction. Three books in Fashion. Four in Sociology. One in Cat, the Forties. Three in World War Two. Nothing in Trains, History. And certainly nothing under ‘Choo-Choo’ but The Little Engine That Could, Children’s Fiction.”

He opens his eyes and blinks. “Anything sound useful?”

“I know most of that,” I mutter. “I thought Miss Maeveleen Pearl ran a mystery bookstore. Her inventory is long on miscellanea and short on murder.”

“An independent bookstore owner today has to be resourceful. We are hanging on by my dewclaws. You already know about the Zoot Suit and the riots, why come to me again?” Ingram asks.

“Because I need to get the Circle Ritz ladies to trip over something concrete that will get them thinking about the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo club that existed in that abandoned building back in the fifties. I am sure there are clues there to a contemporary crime.”

“And how do you know this?”

“Uh, certain connections.”

“What connections?”

“Okay, it is a hunch.”

Ingram glares at me.

“I had a…dream.”

Ingram shakes his head slowly.

“Call it Karma.”

“That flake! I am talking documented history here, not woo-woo speculation. There is nothing concrete about that site down the block except it will be the end of all small businesses in the neighborhood.”

Ingram is, sadly, correct. I cogitate. When I look up at Ingram again to declare defeat, I am mesmerized by his…feet. His right shivs are tapping his folded forelimbs in agitation.

“I am forgetting a prime sales category at the Thrill ‘n’ Quill, so to speak, Louie.”

“Am I suppose to wax hopeful over the word ‘prime’ or ‘category’?” I ask sourly.

“Both, my good sleuth. Miss Maeveleen has descended, er, expanded, into selling used videos.”

“So? I can see all that on retro TV. Miss Temple does provide me with best in cable and recorded entertainment.”

Ingram lifts an admonitory claw. On him it is not a weapon of mass deconstruction. “Tut, tut. You say the Circle Ritz headwoman and your paramour are arriving here soon?”

I do not quibble about his demeaning descriptions. He would not fare well by me either. “Yes. It is our last best chance to clue them in on the nefarious doings at the future Lust ‘n’ Lace strip club site.”

Ingram shudders in distaste. “Ghastly name. Let them come, and I will build it. A stunning big ‘reveal’, as we say in reality TV, only this will be live and in furperson. just get them to follow me when they arrive.”

Am I to pin all my hopes on Ingram as Pied Piper? I must say he is the brainy type. And, when it come to push versus shove, when it comes to Ingram versus my Miss Temple’s keen investigative instincts, I must put my money on her making the giant leapt for human kind.

It has been a twenty-minute wait and I am nibbling on my toenails.

The clever gong of funeral bells reverberates when Miss Electra and Miss Temple enter the mystery bookstore. I was too intent to notice that small touch on my earlier visit.

The three women confer, tsking over the challenging economic climate for the small entrepreneur, the crassness of the Vegas Strip mentality, and the superiority of cats over men as boon companions. Sadly, my Miss Temple is silent on this key issue, but she always is the diplomat.

Then Ingram goes to work as an ankle massager of world-class moves. I am shocked, but have agreed to give him the lead role.

Within two minutes he has the trio cooing over the rack of plastic-covered recorded items. Within thirty seconds he has pried one loose. It tumbles to the floor.

“Oh, look,” says Miss Electra Lark, “the clever boy has selected our latest home entertainment. What a fun fat cat on the cover.”

I manage to catch a glimpse of Ingram’s selection and am left speechless and barely able to wiggle a whisker, or whisk past a female ankle.

“Zoot Cat” is pictured on the cover. It is that loathsome Tom from the Tom and Jerry cartoons where the Jerry-mouse gets Tom-cat’s goat every episode. These are artifacts from a politically incorrect age and I am shocked that they are still available in their old, unadulterated form.

“Maeveleen,” Miss Temple says, fishing the odious portrayal up off the floor. “So you have a DVD player for this vintage cartoon?”

No, no! It is denigrating to cats everywhere. We are long past these dated depictions as dumb and gullible and manipulated by mice. We are the smooth operators these days.

I cringe as Miss Maeveleen produces a laptop computer and the tinny period music unfolds and we all see the dated cat action in cartoon view.

“Yoo-hoo! Hey, Toots!” yells Tom at the door of a lady-cat. “What’s cookin’, Toots?”

Tom peeks through the window and sees Toots listening to a radio while painting her claws. The radio airs a commercial for a zoot suit. Tom decides to make his own zoot suit from an orange-and-green hammock.

Tom cat goes awry right there with that awful color combination, I think with a shudder.

Toots loves the suit Tom models for her…the coat hanger that widens the jacket shoulders and the long pocket chain, which is actually a bathtub plug.

“Now you collar my jive,” Toots says. “You are on the right side, you alligator.”

They jive dance, but Jerry clips the hanger in Tom’s jacket to a window shade, then kicks Tom. As Tom pursues the fleeing mouse, the shade unravels and rebounds, rolling up Tom and tossing him into a fishbowl, where his wet zoot suit slowly shrinks. It pops off his body and drifts to the floor. Jerry jumps into the shrunken suit, now a perfect fit and dances away.

Everybody laughs.

“You know,” Miss Maeveleen says, “this reminds me of a fifties-era nightclub near here called Zoot Suit Choo-Choo. Isn’t that funny?”

Very unfunny. This is a cartoon entertainment, but they have always been about violence.

Maybe even murder.