Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Luckily, he walks wherever he is going. I do not think that Vito is the kind of a dude that would care to be linked to a specific license plate at this time and place.

Anywhere Vito can walk without scaring the horses, I can. I am a stalking shadow that blends into night whenever I ^ wish to. And I do wish to, for Vito stops and turns to scan for suspicious sorts every so often.

I am as suspicious as they come, but he never sees me. Even if he did spot me, he would dismiss me as some mute, homeless dude of no danger to him. That Is the beauty of my cover: everybody underestimates me. And I am known for keeping my mouth shut.

Anyway, we stroll the cooling streets toward the south side of town where the rents get lower and the clientele descends to their level. Soon we have hit bottom: the parking lot of the Araby Motel.

What can I say about the Araby Motel? Forty years ago, it was a chi-chi little motor lodge, the latest thing in Western accommodations for the travelers wishing to see the U.S.A. in their Chevrolets.

Today it is someplace only Bette Davis could love. What a dump. Even the stray dogs in this town avoid the Dumpster behind the Araby Motel, for fear of finding an unappetizing dead body or two. Sometimes they are even human.

Not many cars litter the asphalt, but those present are missing mufflers, paint, various windows, brake lights, door handles and other accoutrements of safe motoring. Many are also missing valid Nevada license plates.

The Araby Motel is laid out like an exclamation point: a long, low one-story string of rooms stretching out from a registration office that sits under a tower of tired neon. Earthworm-pink cursives spell out "Araby Motel" above a sputtering green minaret. These are "Miami Vice"

colors with an emphasis on the "vice."

My quarry does not stop at the so-called office to collect a key, but heads for the littered sidewalk in front of the string of rooms. Each room has a door and a big rectangular window that is more or less covered by a sagging drape in varying patterns of Filth, Dust or Disease.

At number four, our feather-sniffer stops to knock.

It opens enough to showcase another appetizing sort, a tall, blowzy man whose face and form seem to have sunk into a permanent state of walking decay. The two talk for a moment.

The tone does not seem particularly friendly from my vantage point under a permanently parked seventies-something Opal with an oil leak that would do credit to the Exxon Valdez . I wheeze, trying to breathe over the chemical fumes, and miss the dialogue.

Then Vito is reluctantly admitted to the other man's castle. Through the sagging arras at the window-slit I can glimpse a homely glow of candelabra and no doubt hear the pluckings of the village troubadour upon a lute if I perk my ears In the proper direction. Certainly my imaginary view of the room's interior Is more pleasing than the likely landscape, which I have no desire to see in person, or imagine in reality.

I belly-crawl past a flattened tire, avoiding the oily mess, when I spot another stalker in the shadow of a Woodstock-vintage psychedelic-painted Volkswagen van.

On soft-soled feet I pussyfoot closer for a look.

I am not reassured to recognize the dude who is unknowingly sharing stakeout duty with yours truly. I know what has brought me to this unlikely site: the suspicious behavior of the unlovely Vito, who likely has mob connections.

But what even more unlikely circumstance has brought the darling of Our Lady of Guadalupe and the ladies of the Circle Ritz to this debased joint in the surreptitious flesh at half-past three a.m.?

Mr. Matt Devine is not about to answer my humble question, and the situation promises to remain an impasse, so I slink away.

Chapter 14

Game for Murder

Temple was beginning to know the Crystal Phoenix almost as well as she had known the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, from front to back and top to bottom.

She loved being house-mouse familiar with the ins and outs of a major public building possessed of a certain aloof glamour.

Everybody likes to be an insider, but nobody demands the inner circle view more than a reporter turned public relations specialist.

Despite the Crystal Phoenixes low-brow, high-profile image compared to an understated arts institution like the Guthrie, theater and hotel weren't that unlike beneath their dramatically different skins: each had lobby, bar, stage and a paying audience.

And the belly of each beast was a fascinating below-stage labyrinth of storage and dressing rooms, props and costumes, and elevators that whisked the initiated to the performance areas above.

These vast, semi-deserted spaces seemed mysterious, especially in daylight hours. They whispered and rustled with the ghosts of a full house of impending noise and activity after dark.

Temple's high heels challenged the echoing silence as she trudged alone through the area, her tote bag swinging against her hip like a metronome keeping time to an unheard rhythm. She peered into empty dressing rooms; how could anyone ever resist the drama of such places between shows? Maybe she was superstitious enough to wonder if some of the whispering ghosts might be the shades of Kitty or Glenda. Or did she expect to encounter one of their legion of sad, still-living sisters? They all were glamorous but victimized women that men liked to look at . . . and often used and abused 'til death did them part. Stripper or showgirl, they all claimed they made a good living off the men in the darkened houses, no matter how many of them came to a bad dying.

No one was down here now. Temple told herself: not at the Crystal Phoenix, where not even the ghost of Max Kinsella prowled. Not some creepy stalker, and not some unsuspecting victim, especially not her. Now.

Then she heard voices, echoing and arguing. Her pace quickened. There was a creep down here, after all, but not an unexpected one. Unfortunately, she had an appointment with him.

The ajar doors to the unused set-construction area were tall enough to admit King Kong.

Temple scuttled through, following the trail of the voices around an impromptu screen of vertically stored flats. About fifteen people milled near some empty metal folding chairs strewn across the paint-splotched concrete floor.

On its Jackson Pollack surface, masking tape outlined a rough quadrangle shape that duplicated the dimensions of the hotel's secondary stage upstairs. An upright piano, once painted shiny white but aged to crack-checkered ivory, sat solo where the orchestra would be.

A small man in a tangerine knit shirt leaned an elbow on the music rest, picking out loud, familiar notes with one lollygagging hand.

O-kla-hom-a , the syllables rang in Temple's head, only she had recently rewritten them: Oh, Las Ve-gas . . .

Crawford Buchanan hadn't lied, then. This wasn't some sleazy ruse to get her alone in the hotel basement, but a legitimate Gridiron rehearsal of her skit.

Temple, suspicions lulled, finally allowed herself to feel pleased. Writers for the Gridiron were traditionally forbidden any role in rehearsals. They would see their work onstage only for the one-time performance, like the rest of the paying customers. They wouldn't even know which--if any--of their submissions had been accepted.

In fact, twenty-five years before. Temple had heard, women writers couldn't even attend Gridiron shows. They had been forced to write their skits blind, ignorant of audience and ambiance, which was just as well. She had also heard about earlier Gridirons: raunchy, foul-mouthed, sexist, racist exercises that committed an almost as bad crime against humanity by not being remotely funny. No wonder so few women wrote for them in the bad old days, or had wanted to.