Cat In An Aqua Storm

11

The Naked and the Dead

Temple had learned in her TV reporting days that the best way to sniff out a new environment was to follow her nose for novelty. The born newshound’s tenacious curiosity often leads down offbeat byways that no one else would bother investigating. She'd snagged some of her best news stories that way. If she followed her instincts, she’d have a handle on the stripper competition by noon.

Not that Temple really wanted a handle on the dizzying array of activities erupting all over the ballroom. A rapid glance around showed a circus of firm flesh on the half shell, most wearing little more than a thong-style G-string... Samsons with bulging muscles and oiled tans and long hair tickling their shoulder blades... Delilahs with thin thighs and flat stomachs and breasts that were anything but flat. The current robust, hirsute view made the trendiest health-club exercise floor seem populated by dull and flaccid duds.

All of these beautiful people in motion were under-studying Narcissus, gazing raptly into perimeter mirrors as they stretched muscles and studied costumes under the overhead spotlights. Taken together, they seemed larger than life, not just because they all conveyed a kind of in-person, airbrushed comeliness, but because even most of the women were model-tall.

Temple felt like Pinocchio at the fair, an undersized stranger out of her depth and in danger of succumbing to something, even if it was only amazement. Her gaze inventoried the huge ballroom while she decided who to approach first: the Amazonian miss with Raggedy Ann red hair who was affixing helium-filled balloons to her skimpy bikini, or the apparently naked, tattooed muscleman emerging from the bottom half of a gorilla suit.

“Barr, is it?” a male voice behind her said, gruffly.

She turned, expecting Billy Goat himself in person. She was relieved to face one of the few fully clothed men in the room. However, a peach knit shirt under a Madras plaid sport jacket paired with black trousers was no advertisement for the post-Eden advantages of clothing. Once past the color clash, she saw a man in his thirties: good-looking in an aggressive, humorless blue-collar way.

“Ike Wetzel,” he introduced himself. “Lindy said you were good at your job, but I might as well tell you I woulda got along with Buchanan better. I see enough of broads all day in my work.”

“What is your work?” Temple asked, knowing that a self-directed question turneth away wrath, or at least sour preconceptions.

“I run Kitty City.”

She looked blank.

“On Paradise Road.”

“Oh, the topless place. You’ve got the sign showing cats in anatomically incorrect positions.”

“Right.” His muddy brown eyes flicked her up and down, an unconscious gesture designed either to take in what she was wearing, or to mentally take it off. “I’m cosponsoring this competition thing. A lot of my girls have their hopes pinned on it. I don’t want this murder messing up their chances.”

“It sounds to me like the only person this murder has messed up so far is the victim.”

“Let’s keep it that way,” Wetzel suggested. He frowned, an expression that came easy to the permanent furrow between his dark brows even when he was trying to look genial, which he wasn’t at the moment. “It’s bad enough that we got cops all over the premises. Your job is to get the attention off the corpse and back on the corpuscles—on what every red-blooded guy wants to know about the greatest strippers in the world.”

“I understand,” Temple said, “but aren’t men competing, too?”

“Yeah, a few.” Wetzel snorted his opinion of that trend. “Separately, though. Concentrate on the gals. They draw the real dough. Male strippers are a passing fancy, except in the gay clubs. And even in the straight clubs, broads don’t tip as good as guys do.”

“Maybe women don’t get the same service,” Temple answered coolly, recognizing a moment too late that she had let herself in for any number of double entendres.

Not to worry. Ike Wetzel wouldn’t recognize an opening for a double entendre if it parlay-vouzed Français with a Milwaukee accent and asked him to dance. Down-the-middle-of-the-bowling-lane kind of guys don’t notice linguistic detours.

“Women’s hearts just aren’t in it,” he commented disdainfully. “Watching guys strip is good for a giggle when they’re out in a gaggle, but they’re not connoisseurs of the art.” He pronounced it “con-no-sirs.”

“So lay off the guys and the old dames. Stick to the foxy chicks.”

“Any other advice?” Temple’s temper simmered behind her most professional facade. Ike Wetzel seemed as impervious to veiled indignation as he was to treading on professional toes.

“Well-—” He no doubt intended his knowing smirk to be a confidential grin. “Off the record, put your time in on my girls. They do real well at these things. If you’re nice to me, I might even be able to tip you off early who’s gonna win.”

“Mr. Wetzel, if my job included being nice to everybody, I wouldn’t get anything done.”

“Just letting you in on who’s who around here. Buchanan knew the score.”

“Exactly what did Buchanan know?” a new voice asked sharply. The voice was low, an excellent thing in a woman, but hardly soft and gentle, and that was an even more excellent thing in a Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department homicide lieutenant.

Wetzel turned, his eye whites widening as he found C. R. Molina regarding him with an expression even more perfectly deadpan than his own.

“Buchanan knew—knows—the clubs, the scene,” he sputtered. “You know what I mean, Lieutenant.”

“I hope so.” Lieutenant Molina turned deliberately to Temple, her blue eyes narrowing. “You homesick for the ABA, or what?”

“ ’Scuse me,” Wetzel said, eager to be off. “I gotta take care of some things.”

The women watched him leave in mutual silence, then returned to the business of fencing each other.

Molina hadn’t changed a bit, Temple saw. She was wearing one of her nondescript neutral-tone poplin suits, even in July—navy, this time. She hadn’t shrunk by so much as one of her imposing five-foot-ten inches. She hadn’t loosened her by-the-book manner one tiny turn of the screw. And she hadn’t plucked one forceful hair from her luxurious black eyebrows.

“I’m filling in for Crawford Buchanan on publicity,” Temple told the policewoman, finally answering her ABA jibe.

“Since when does Barr race to the rescue of Buchanan?”

Temple wished that high heels elevated her to more than a scant five-foot-four. “He's had a heart attack," she said with high dignity.

“I’m aware of that. It happened during my interrogation. I repeat: since when do you run to Buchanan's rescue?"

“I know he's a creep, but..."

Molina raised her formidable eyebrows, obviously not about to be convinced by the quality of mercy.

Temple shifted her weight to her other heel, and her defense to fiscal issues everybody understands, presumably even police personnel. “The job pays well," she said in steely tones.

“Make up your mind, are you here in the cause of guilt or greed?"

“Maybe I just know how it feels to stumble over a dead body when you're the one who's supposed to keep things running smoothly."

Molina abruptly changed the subject. “Buchanan was badly shaken, though he probably didn't admit it to you. Not a pretty murder."

“Not... a suicide?"

Molina's long, disconcerting silence forced Temple to fall into her trap and babble on, giving information instead of getting it. “Hanging seems a cumbersome way of killing someone, but I guess the victim had taken a blow to the head first, so it can't be suicide."

“Why not? The victim could have banged her head while mounting the dressing room chair to position herself by the hook. And how did you know about the head wound?"

“Someone told me."

“Who?"

Temple hated revealing a source, especially a ludicrous one. “Savannah Ashleigh."

“Savannah Ashleigh—? You do get around. How long have you been here?"

“About an... hour."

Molina sighed and reached into her side jacket pocket. Temple had never seen the lieutenant carry a purse. What little makeup she wore, and any necessities, must be crammed into her pockets along with a badge and a gun, presumably.

Temple studied the plain-Jane card Molina’s fishing expedition produced for her perusal.

“Call me if you hear anything that you think that I don’t know,” Molina said. “This is another cast-of-thousands murder scene, and I can’t afford to ignore rumors. But keep your nose out of the murder investigation.” Molina turned to go.

“Wait, Lieutenant! What do you know, so that I know what you don’t know, and don’t try to tell you what you already do know?”

“That’s one of those Temple Barr tortuous tunnels of illogic, isn’t it? Anyone ever tell you that you were terminally nosy?”

“Nope.”

“Then let me be the first. All right, the facts will be in the papers, many of them. You might as well get the proper information from the horse’s mouth so you don’t go blundering into trouble.”

“Could we sit?” Temple asked.

Lieutenant Molina glanced down at Temple’s baby-doll shoes and shook her head. “Those things can kill you.” But she pulled a vacant folding chair over and sat.

Temple sank onto the abandoned chair behind her. Even sitting, Molina loomed, but at least Temple didn’t feel like a tourist overshadowed by the Statue of Liberty freshly togged out in navy poplin.

“I just skimmed the news story last night,” Temple admitted. “Who was the victim?”

Molina pulled a narrow-lined notepad from her roomy jacket pocket and flipped through. “Went by the stage name of Glinda North. Real name: Dorothy Horvath. The other strippers say she had a face that would stop even a zombie in his tracks. The manner of her death took that away along with her life. Born March 4, 1963, in Tucson, Arizona. Claimed to be twenty-six. Birth certificate says thirty. Not much traceable family, schooling, employment record. There rarely is for these women. The clubs, the road, they’re home for strippers, a big, extended family.”

“And do they have family quarrels?”

Molina smiled tightly and shut her notebook. “Funny you should ask. Most definitely. Over men, over billing, over acts, over costumes. That rhinestone G-string she was found hanging from—”

“How is that possible, Lieutenant? A G-string is pretty skimpy. Is there enough of it to hang from?”

“Men in jail cells have hung themselves from shoelaces. There’s plenty of play in a G-string, and most stage G-strings are pretty strong. They’re tip-money clips, after all. Plus, the strippers lose that thin thread of decency, and they’re violating some state’s obscenity laws. That’s a jailable offense. ’’

Temple smiled her agreement. “I remember from my Guthrie Theater days in Minneapolis. No matter how delicate they look, stage costumes are made industrial-strength to hold up to repeated wearings. And rhinestones would have to be stitched to some powerful backing, like flesh-colored horsehair netting.”

The lieutenant nodded without comment, which told Temple that Molina had investigated her background thoroughly enough to know that Temple had worked PR in regional theater.

“This wasn’t just any rhinestone G-string,” Molina added.

“There’s a difference? You have been taking a crash course in burlesque, Lieutenant!”

“A definite difference here. Glinda North won the G-string that killed her two years ago in this same competition. She was making a comeback. The other strippers thought she stood a good chance of winning a second Rhinestone G-string.”

“Like family,” Temple repeated slowly, “and like family quarrels. Sibling rivalry. One of the other strippers might have wanted to keep Glinda from competing.”

“Just don’t forget that when you’re tripping through the tulips here in Pastie Land. Keep out of what you don’t understand.” Molina stood and moved her chair back to its former place, as if anyone would care amid that orchestrated chaos. Maybe Molina did.

Temple frowned, biting her lip, as she imagined what a strangled face would look like: swollen, distorted, discolored? No wonder Crawford had keeled over, especially after seeing someone he had hoped to date—the two-timing rat!—in that condition.

“You don’t really think Crawford might have done it?” Temple asked Molina’s already retreating navy blue back.

The tall lieutenant turned and paused a few feet away. “Anybody might have done it.”

“Not me,” Temple couldn’t resist pointing out. “This time I didn’t find the body.”

“But Buchanan did. Rivalry, remember? Maybe you wanted his job. You got it, didn’t you?”

“Hey!” Temple was on her feet, indignant. “I turned this puppy down. I was offered it first and refused.”

“You did?” Lieutenant Molina stalked back to stare down at Temple. “Why?”

“I find the ambience a little cheap, all right?”

“True, pasties aren’t as highbrow as books.”

“And I’m not sure women would do this for a living if they weren’t exploited.”

“What about the men?”

“I don’t know,” Temple confessed. “I hope to find out.”

“Stick to your amateur sociology,” Molina advised, amusement seeping through her stoic facade. “Keep out of amateur crime-solving.”

“Yes, sir.”

Molina no longer looked amused. She turned on her sensible heel—Temple had checked her footwear out: navy-blue, low-heeled matron-issue for fallen arches, ick!—and left Temple teetering atop a coil of heavy cable.

She picked her way among the cables, trying not to let the bulky tote bag overbalance her.

Where to start in such a wonderland of overexposed flesh? Despite Temple’s theatrical background, which inured her to casual states of undress backstage, she found this single-minded focus on presenting the naked flesh disconcerting.

She’d have to get over that. Anything Crawford Buchanan could do, she could do better.

In the next hour she met and quizzed a confusing array of acts. Bambi and Thumper, a rare man-woman stripping team, explained that some local ordinances decreed women-only and men-only stripping nights to skirt the X-rated area of live sex shows.

Wholesome and smiling like insurance sellers, the couple sported matching glossy brown tans and bright lime thong-style bottoms. Bambi had submitted to donning a tight, cutoff T-top for the rehearsal, but the thin material left nothing to the imagination but the placement of any identifying marks.

Near the stage, an arresting pair of gilt-haired twins in gold lamé bikinis were mirroring each other’s moves through and around the prop of an empty-looking glass frame.

“Bikinis?” Temple asked. She didn’t consider beach-wear imaginative enough for a stripping costume, despite the fact that some current bathing suits seemed designed to give local decency codes a workout.

The twins immediately posed as if modeling the swimwear, stomachs taut, rears firm, and bosoms high, wide and handsome.

“I’m Gypsy,” said one.

“June,” trilled the other in the exact same vocal tone.

“Wait’ll you see our act,” Gypsy added.

“Gold body paint from head to toe,” said June.

“And we don’t wear the bikini top for our act.” Gypsy.

“Just darling little golden cones.” June.

“With gold chain tassels.” Gypsy.

“Gold paint?” Temple interrupted their informative duet. “Isn’t that stuff dangerous? Didn’t a body double die from it in Goldfinger?”

“We’re a body double and we’re not dead,” June resumed in turn.

“Say,” said Gypsy, flashing perfect teeth. “That’s cute: Body Double. Maybe we should have named our act that.”

“Our name is cute, too,” June insisted, executing an eerily identical smile.

Temple tumbled. “What is it?”

“The Gold Dust Twins,” they declaimed together, turning cartwheels in opposite directions, so spokes of bare brown legs flashed by.

They finished and came together, clonelike.

“How did you get into stripping?” Temple asked.

“Easy,” said Gypsy.

“As pie,” June added.

“We did dance and gymnastics together,” Gypsy said.

“And cheerleading and modeling.” June.

“And our bodies were great.” The modest Gypsy.

“And the money is great.” The practical June.

“How much?” asked the curious Temple.

The twins regarded each other and shrugged in tune.

“Depends on the quality of the clubs, but five hundred a night,” Gypsy said.

“Special dates, up to fifteen hundred.” June.

“One thing is sure.” Gypsy.

“Beats Doublemint gum commercials. Have you seen those yucky green maillots the latest twin models were wearing?” June’s expression grew pained.

“Vile,” Gypsy agreed, also wincing. “Like fifties girdles.”

Temple nodded, too. “You’re right. Gold’s the only way to go, onstage and off.”

She moved on, unable to resist computing what five to fifteen hundred a night added up to compared to her off-again, on-again freelancer’s income. Maybe she could do a Munchkin act. But before she got carried away, there were more mysteries to conquer in the art of the striptease.

An earnestly bouncy young woman in a pearl-dotted fuchsia spandex cummerbund that somehow had been stretched to cover the essentials, however barely, top and bottom, answered Temple’s question as to how she got started.

“Majorette,” said the girl who performed by the name of Racy. “And I played golf and tennis in high school.”

She bent over from the waist, hands to the floor, without flexing her knees. Spandex boldly left where spandex had been before, exposing cleavage north and south.

“So you’re basically an athlete,” Temple hazarded.

Racy stretched her lean ectomorphic form into a backward shimmy. “Yeah, I guess you could say so.”

Temple left her there, defying gravity, and gingerly approached an Amazon with Cher-black hair tumbling down her lean bare back. Black was her color: thigh-high patent leather boots and a silver-studded wet-look G-string/teddy combination topped with a velvet garter belt. Open-knuckled wrist-length black gloves and an understated leather riding crop completed the outfit.

She posed in the mirror, jutting hips in turn, cocking out first one knee, then another, analyzing her looks and movement with concentrated objectivity.

“May I ask your stage name?” Temple said a bit diffidently.

The woman flicked a glance to Temple’s notebook. “What are you writing down?”

“Just some notes to myself. I’m doing PR for the competition, but got in late—”

“Oh, you replaced that Buchanan creep.”

“Right.”

“Well.” Shoulders shrugging, the woman returned her eyes to her image in the mirror and took a straddling stance while flinging her whip-hand behind her head.

This was a big-boned, plain woman, despite her aggressively erotic attire. Temple wondered how much she appealed to men on the town, with her lanky body, bony shoulders and stingy breasts.

“Switch Bitch.” The woman threw the words sharply over her shoulder at Temple, like a whip lash.

“I beg your pardon?” Temple responded, bridling. Was the creature inviting her to trade places?

The long, serious face peered past the false fall of luster-less curls. “My stage name,” she repeated patiently. “Switch Bitch.”

“Oh.” Temple nodded and wrote it down, desperately wondering how she could work that into a family-rated press release. Maybe she should stick to mentioning the straight acts, like Randy Candy, Lacy Lavender, or the ever-tasteful Otto Erotica.

She wandered on, clutching her notepad amid a mob carrying far more lethal props, beginning to feel that she was overdressed.

She didn't have to worry about approaching one of the he-men stalking to and fro with musclebound gait: a veritable Hercules stomped into her path, pectoral muscles twitching on his bare and hairless bronzed chest. Hadn't any of these people heard about overexposure to UVs?

“Hi” was his ancient yet unoriginal gambit. “You're new here.”

“Yup.”

“Don't be shy, little lady. Find a spot and get to work.”

“I am. I'm doing PR for the competition, so I’m going around getting a feel for—er, a grip on... I'm learning about the contestants.”

“Great.” He grinned down at her in utter self-satisfaction, blocking her way with his inescapable nudity as well as his formidable physique. As a stray riff from another stripper’s nearby boom box surged to a climax, he circled his hips and ground a pelvic bump in her direction.

Temple gazed on massive thigh muscles oiled to mahogany perfection, and a commendably flat groin clothed only in a glossy gold G-string and apparently housing a croquet ball. She was not impressed. She had heard about rock stars and their socks in the crotch trick.

“Ah, very nice,”^, she said, taking advantage of his frozen pose to skitter around and past her human obstacle.

“Hey, don’t you want my name?”

The man actually sounded hurt, so Temple stopped a safe distance away, turned and held her pen at the ready.

“Ken,” he said, flashing teeth, charm and smoldering eyes. “I’m with Newd Dudes. N-e-w-d. We’re the hottest group on the Coast.”

“Newd Dudes,” Temple repeated. “Shrewd. See ya.” And she clattered away so fast she bumped into someone.

“Oh. Sorry!” Temple recognized the T-shirt. “Lindy, isn’t it?”

The woman nodded, glanced back at the still idiotically grinning Newd Dude, then jerked her head toward the ballroom doors. “Listen. I could use a smoke in peace. Come on down to the dressing rooms, and I’ll fill you in on more stuff about the contest.”

Temple hesitated. She wasn’t crazy about cigarette smoke, but she could use a break from so much blatant skin. Not being used to it, she didn’t know where to look. She felt like a nun in a nudist camp.

“Shell shock,” Lindy said with a grin that revealed she could read Temple’s mind. “Civilians always get it the first few hours. Come on, there’ll be fewer girls down in the dressing rooms and you can get some straight dope. Strippers don’t screw around with half-assed answers.”

“No, they don’t. I can see that,” Temple agreed as Lindy propelled her past an agile miss engaged in bending from the waist and sliding to the floor by doing the splits. “Isn't the dressing-room area where the murder occurred?"

Lindy was making top time in her battered sneakers, but she stopped on a dime at Temple's question.

“Yeah. It's hard for the girls to use that room now. Dorothy was a sweet girl. But that Savannah Ashleigh bitch wouldn't keep the room after the killing—claimed it upset Yvette, her cat—so the regular working girls got it."

“That’s right." Temple followed Lindy into the relative normalcy of the hall outside the ballroom. “Savannah Ashleigh's cat was in the dressing room during the murder. If only cats could talk." She considered how much Midnight Louie had already witnessed of her life and times. “On the other hand, thank God they can't."