Cat In An Aqua Storm

33

Electra City

Matt Devine stepped around to the passenger door of the aqua Storm and opened it.

Temple couldn’t “just say no” when Matt had offered to drive tonight. How could she explain knowing that he had no license? He must have had one once upon a time. He knew how to drive.

“Are you sure you want to return to the scene of the crime?” he asked.

Beams of light lanced the Saturday night Las Vegas sky, announcing the strippers’ competition to the very heavens. The colossus’s diaper was the focus of a thousand kilowatts of laser light every seventy-five seconds. A neon sign boasted Babes... Bodies... Boys.

“And miss Electra’s debut?” Temple answered. “Your landlady’s not a stripping finalist every day. I hope you don’t regret skipping your stint at ConTact tonight.”

He shook his blond head, which looked as gilded as Gypsy or June in the artificial light of the hotel entrance. “No regular client is calling now. Even though I said that knowing is worse than not knowing, I’m grateful you managed to solve who she was. I won’t have to wonder about what happened to her forever.”

“Forever,” Temple said, “is a long time.”

Matt nodded. “So is a day. Or a night. Why is Electra going through with the stripper contest?”

“She’s getting a charge out of it, what can I say? We can at least try not to laugh.”

“I’m not in a laughing mood.”

“Me, neither.”

They entered the hotel, Temple bracing herself to pass the Sultan’s Palace and The Love Moat. Then Matt started asking her about the details of the case and she forgot to brood over these emotional landmarks.

“Molina says the case is cut and dried,” Temple told him. “Wilma—Carter’s her last name—has a history of mental illness, and there’s no doubt her daughters were molested by her husband. They’ve all vanished, and she’s left holding the bag of guilt. She’ll be put away, but not in prison. It’s harder to get out of a mental hospital than a jail, these days. Would you think I was crazy if I visited her?”

“I’d think you were a twenty-four-carat human being. I envy you,” he said, as the velvet ropes parted for Temple’s VIP pass. It was the least Ike Wetzel could do, and Ike Wetzel always did the least.

“Why?”

They were soon seated in a wine-velvet-upholstered banquet. An obsequious waiter dashed up with glasses of champagne on the house.

“Why?” she repeated after they had settled in.

“ ‘Friday’s child is loving and giving,’ ” he quoted, toasting her with a tall, thin flute that sparkled like a yellow diamond.

“When and where were you born?” she asked, curious to the last.

“I’ll tell you someday. Shhh. The show’s about to start.”

“Are you sure you really want to see something this risqué...?”

“Shhh,” he said. “Kitty did it. I want to know why.”

The show began. There was the flare of prerecorded music, the parade of performers. The glitz, the glory, the get-down-and-dirty nitty-gritty of bump and grind. The grinning boys showing off muscles visible and invisible. The glorious girls with bodies a Barbie doll would die for. The Over-Sexty set, never saying die.

A vroom, vroom growled from the wings.

Temple clutched Matt’s arm. “Holy hot rod, here comes Electra!”

“Introducing Moll Philanders,” the man at the mike intoned.

Dry-ice fog drifted across the stage. Temple expected Dracula, and instead got a sleek silvery form that spit luminous flames—how the Hesketh had Electra managed that? The cycle was ridden by a dark, ambiguous helmeted figure. “Born to Be Wild” revved up on the sound system.

As the Vampire stopped with a batlike screech stage center, the leather-clad rider dismounted, kicked the stand into action, and began to peel leather from skin, and pose beside, atop and under the motorcycle. Temple especially appreciated her trick of lying back along the leather seat, her legs flailing in time to the raw beat.

For an old broad, Electra was pulling out all the stops. Except. After the chaps peeled away, and even as the jacket was tossed, she whirled it around her head. It became a fringed cape that swirled through the smoke and covered her like a Turkish towel. The audience saw a lot of discreetly bare shoulder and knee, but not much more.

A lot of flash, and very little flesh. Theater to the Max. Temple stood applauding at the end, tears of pride in her eyes. She understood Ma Bartles. Go, Electra! Give the lie to getting old and giving up. Matt was on his feet beside her, clapping sans tears.

It didn’t seem right without Midnight Louie there.