Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Jill shook her head. "He was tracing some shifty character he had no business messing with,

'cause he was keeping later hours than an old guy should, I know that."

"You worry about him."

"I'm the mother of a willful toddler," Jill confessed with a wry smile. "With me, worry is as contagious as measles."

"I'll be all right. Nicky's brothers are looking after me to a fare thee well."

"Now I'm really worried."

Jill slapped her hat on her blue-jeaned thigh out of long habit, then stomped back up the aisle on her petite cowboy boots.

Temple looked down at her notebook, on which she had continued to doodle. Temple Bar, it said in big letters. Three O'Clock Louie, Maybe she should offer this Spuds Lonnigan Midnight Louie as a mascot, arid she could do PR for the place. Naw, she had her hands--and feet--full with the Crystal Phoenix and the Gridiron already. Then, again ...

But who the heck at the Circle Ritz was Eightball working for? And working for hard enough that his granddaughter had time to notice, and to worry?

"Don't worry," a deep male voice urged seductively at Temple's left side. "We haven't cut your skit--yet."

"Crawford!" Temple scrambled to sit up straighter, the better to prepare for battle.

"Gout?" he asked with an automatic leer at her extended leg.

"Clout," Temple answered shortly. "I had to kick some crude dude who was staring at my legs." Despite the discomforting throb, she whisked her defenseless limb under the table.

"Rehearsals are going okay," he volunteered.

Buchanan gazed toward the stage, his akimbo arms pushing back his summer suitcoat the better to reveal his puny physique in a pale yellow shirt. Spending time around the male strippers at the Rhinestone G-string competition had spoiled Temple for the muscularly challenged.

''I don't know about Dove, though," Buchanan said in his usual basso grumble. ''He doesn't seem to recognize a good skit when he sees one."

From this Temple gathered that Danny Dove was not bowled over by Crawford's own material. No wonder the director was making such a big deal of her one and only number.

"I hear you've lined up some celebrity bits," she said, determined to turn the conversation to a subject more distracting to Crawford: himself.

"Yeah." His already deep voice went subterranean with self-satisfaction. Temple imagined a panther purring in the Grand Canyon. "David Copperfield is lending us his awesome assistant-babes to lead the Lace 'n' Lust chorus line for my 'Vegas is Bustin' Out All Over' bit."

"Crawford, that's so sexist it's got balls and chains as well as cobwebs on it."

"Hey, this used to be a purely stag event in the old days. If I don't cater to the good ol' boy element, we've got no show."

"I thought the Gridiron had matured, outgrown randy jokes and raunchy skits and scatological language. Isn't Vegas catering to the family trade now?"

"You know better than to believe press-agent hype, T.B. This town has always run on three things and always will: betting, booze and boobs."

"If you are typical of the boobs, I doubt it."

He made a face, but Temple didn't linger to study it.

Instead she struggled out of her cushy seat, then limped to the short set of stairs leading up to the stage. Two Fontana brothers were at her side before she could murmur "organized crime." They gallantly assisted her up the steps, which lacked handrails. They also cut a trailing Crawford Buchanan off at the pass with superior tailoring and stem Italian faces as beautifully stony as Michelangelo's David.

"Little Miss Curlytop!"

Danny Dove greeted Temple with such a radiant smile that she couldn't have her usual hissy fit when compared to the adorable Shirley, which happened all too often due to her petite size, wavy red hair and first name.

"I knew we'd have you back up on your toes in no time flat,'' he went on. ''Speaking of flats, how do you like your 'Las Vegas Deluxe' set?"

"Looks great. Very Busby Berkeley."

Danny frowned so severely that even his perfectly marcelled blond hair seemed to pucker under its trendy retro-pomade. "Busby Berkeley is too awfully camp these serious, pre-millennium days, darling. Shall we say very mock-Memphis, like the Luxor?"

"Whatever, it's splendid, Danny." Temple eyed the exaggerated Las Vegas skyline etched in colored chalk on stretched black velvet panels that fenced the back of the stage. "How are your special effects coming?"

Danny rolled his eyes with delight. "Orgasmic!"

Temple had not meant to inquire into Danny Dove's private life, but before she could utter words to this effect, he went on in living color and full plume.

"Only--please, dear Miss Temple!--enough of these naughty no-no's like your backward tumble down the stairs. We're using the stage elevator from the magic shows for the end of your skit. Then we drench the whole chitty-chitty-shebang with an absolute oh-my-miasma of dry-ice mist, tinted passion-fruit crimson. The piece de resistance prop will drop from above; the most tacky deus ex machine of all time. Voila ."

He pointed high into the murky stage flies to a huge, hovering silver disc.

"Thanks to my percolating purple-crimson mist," Danny promised, "our UFO will appear to rise from the nether regions, with forty glamorous chorines dancing the Watusi around its spiral ramp--a bit of the old Busby, there. Then we yank the bloody thing upward in a finishing flourish ... all lights blinking and smoking like mad, with the girly chorus singing their little glotti out. Smashing."

Temple craned her neck upward and nodded politely, trying to picture the effect. Mentally she added glittering fairy lights and neon constellations to the black-velvet-painting night-sky backdrop. Danny was right. Smashing.

"Looks cheap to me." a sneering voice said.

How did Crawford Buchanan get up here? Temple wondered with irritation. Where were her upstanding body guards when she really needed them?

''This is stupid." Crawford obviously enjoyed standing behind the pair and carping. ''You're making a big mistake, Dove, putting big bucks into this dumb number. Who wants to see the Goodyear Blimp on stage besides opera-goers?"

For emphasis, and to demonstrate his disdain, Buchanan jerked a cable that trailed to the stage floor, part of the intricate network that hoisted the big silver blob.

Danny Dove turned on Crawford Buchanan as if he had been talking pig swill. ''I am the director. You are the bureaucrat who stapled a few skits together. I make this garbage work, and most of it is, especially your scripts."

''What would an effete toad-dancer like you know about entertainment?"

Temple, PR instincts to the fore, edged between the two men, truly a showdown of pygmies.

She was too much of a pipsqueak herself to act as an effective buffer, especially balanced like a stork on one leg. But matters were desperate. Veins were standing out on Danny Dove's forehead, and Crawford's dark-lashed eyes were venomous slits. Another kind of Dove was called for, the peace-keeping female of the species.

"Guys, please!"

Crawford brushed her aside, literally, the better to face off with Danny Dove.

Ordinarily a soft shove wouldn't have damaged more than Temple's dignity. With the weakness of her ankle, though, it pushed her into a flat-footed stumble. Temple grabbed for the nearest stable object (other than the testosterone-tempered Dove and Buchanan).

Her hand curled around the hanging rope. Temple heard the pound of running feet: a herd presumed. The Flying Fontana Brothers should have kept Awful Crawford offstage in the first place.

The rope jerked her upright again. Then, just as she grabbed for a shred of balance, the entire length of cable dropped past her in punishing coil after coil, like a whipsnake.