Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

When her legs were asleep to the hip and the paper was crushed beyond legibility, Louie would yawn, stretch, rise and go elsewhere. Often his farewell leap would leave a prick of braced hind claws in her thighs as he vaulted away. Sometimes, Temple thought, a cat was not unlike a live-in lover who left suddenly.

Despite Louie, or perhaps because of his inadvertent numbness therapy. Temple's ankle felt almost normal in the morning. The swelling was down, and by noon she was itching to return to the scene of the crime. Maybe this mysterious car that was to waft her to Temple Bar wouldn't show up, she thought hopefully as she buckled on her oversize watch.

Once a watch was on her wrist, she was ready to simmer, cook, parboil and rock and roll.

She was no longer chilling out at home, she was primed to do business.

So she paced, despite her ankle, waiting to go down to the lobby. There she would consult some old guy about a Lake Mead restaurant at an obscure site that coincidentally bore her name, minus a terminal "r."

When she rode down in the rickety elevator, every clack and clank seemed to chide her for deserting the action at the Crystal Phoenix. Why had she agreed to this bizarre side trip, other than the fact that a freelance PR person always can use another client and she had been eager to disarm Ralph, the human Doberman, who seemed ready to rend the flesh of any harmless being who crossed her path?

But maybe Ralph was right, Temple thought in the deserted lobby. She was about to ride--

with a stranger--to meet a strange man somewhere she had never been, on business she wasn't sure of. Maybe the police were right, too, heaven forbid. Maybe she was dangerous to somebody. Maybe that somebody would stop at nothing to stop her. Nostradamus could be an innocent shill, thinking he was acting for this Spuds Lonnigan. It could all be a--famous phrase from detective stories--a set-up, with her as the patsy. Well, she didn't play the patsy for anyone.

A cranky car engine idled outside. A heavy-metal door slammed. A shadowed figure was framed by the doorway, the blazing afternoon sunlight etching only a shapeless silhouette.

Temple braced her feet and clutched her tote to her torso, six pounds of shoulder-numbing sandbag.

The door whooshed open, admitting a shaft of heat that sliced the Circle Ritz's tepid coolness like a warm knife dissecting a stick of butter.

Temple cursed herself for being too trusting.

"Hi," said the newcomer's familiar, desert twang. "I'm your chauffeur to Temple Bar."

Temple baby stepped over the sleek marble floor until she was close enough to see features.

"Jill? Jill Diamond?"

"Yup. I'll run you out and back. A drive in the desert will be fun. Hope you don't mind a ragtop."

Boy, did Temple feel silly. Jill Diamond was almost smaller than she was.

And the vehicle that waited at the curb was almost smaller than the Storm, but not quite.

Jill's unlikely set of wheels was an ancient Jeep, painted a baby-blue that sand and sun had buffed by to a muted, matte finish like a beloved pair of time-faded blue jeans.

Temple climbed gingerly into the rough-and-ready vehicle. The seat was about as upholstered as a rock. Jill did equally rough-and-ready things with the stick shift, and the Jeep jolted into motion. Temple felt rather like someone riding a baby-blue bucking bronco. She jammed sunglasses onto her nose and dug for the sun-screen in her tote bag as the Jeep sputtered onto the Strip, then onto the highway.

Wind rushed by as if late for somewhere. Talk seemed too much trouble. Beside Temple, Jill's braids whipped behind her like pennants, while she squinted into the distance without benefit of such sissy accessories as sunglasses, aiming the Jeep for the farthest wrinkle of the horizon.

Steel-gray highway, blue sky and sage-green land streaked by. Mauvish mountains ringed the horizon like the jagged edge of tomorrow, a distant barrier to keep the pinball of the Jeep from shooting right off the map into Maybesville.

Temple laughed suddenly.

Leaping lizards, but a change of scenery . . . and locomotion . . . was exhilarating.

***************

"Sorry the ride was so rough," Jill said when she finally jerked the Jeep to a stop before a ramshackle wooden building on the shore of blindingly blue Lake Mead.

"No problem. Not much out here, is there?"

"You visit Lake Mead much?"

"Not really. It's . . . well, for tourists."

After dismounting the Jeep--that's how Temple thought of it, for the step-up was higher than she was used to--they ambled to the water's edge.

Without the engineering feat of Hoover Dam only miles away, none of this lucent water would lie here, as rich as lapis lazuli against the red-rock roughness of the surrounding land.

The lake glimmered in the sunlight, a hundred-carat sapphire set in an unforgiving rocky rim of desert landscape.

"It's almost unearthly," Temple commented.

Jill smiled. ''You're not the first to think so. Remember the scene in Planet of the Apes when the astronauts' capsule crash-landed in water? That footage was shot here. This place could pass for another planet, if you look at it right."

Temple turned to her. ''You don't seem--"

"Like a late-night lounge singer's wife? Nope. I grew up on this desert. I only went into town to play poker--professionally. What are you smiling at? The idea of a woman poker player?''

Temple shook her head. Jill was sure touchy on the subject. "No. I'm smiling at the idea of calling Las Vegas 'town,' as if it was someplace you went to buy feed for the stock."

"You can," Jill said seriously, wrinkling her turned-up nose. "Heck, you can even buy the stock there. Las Vegas is a lot of things, but to me, it's just a gaudy belly-button in what really matters. This land all around here, and what's on it, what time and tradition stamped into it."

Temple turned back to the building of unpainted boards. Despite its sand-blasted look, it now had a mystique, thanks to Jill's insight. ''What was this?"

"Oh, some boathouse/roadhouse long ago. Crazy as a bar and grill out here looks, I think Spud''s onto something. The boys have plans for this area, maybe even a paddlewheel gambling boat on the Nevada side of the lake and a water park, all in the weathered-wood ghost-town look . . . natural, you know?"

Temple smiled again, this time at the Las Vegas idea of "natural." Such effects invariably took unnatural amounts of time and money.

"I know what you're saying," she said finally. "I'm creating a similar theme-scheme for the Crystal Phoenix."

"That's why I thought you could help Spuds out. He's a hell of a cook, let me tell you. And my grandfather's old bunch, they spent too long alone on the desert. It's time for them to get into the mainstream."

"Eightball has certainly gone mainstream, and then some. Doesn't it worry you, a man his age playing private investigator?"

"Hell, yes! It worries me, and I spent my younger years worrying about these old coots while they were fussing about me. But them doing nothing worries me more. They're like lifers, you know, in prison, whose sentence just got commuted. It's a new world, so they might as well live in it."

'' The boys,' " Temple repeated ironically.

Jill nodded seriously. ''They are that. Come on and meet Spuds."

Jill's boot heels dug into the soft sand as the pair edged around the sprawling building to the lakeshore side. The weathered wood was a soft, ashen gray. Temple noted with favor, and a broad deck edged all four sides, a perfect site for al fresco dining.

Up front, a crude hand lettered sign over the door announced 'Three O'Clock Louie's."

Smaller printing beneath promised "Around-the-clock fun and food for the entire family."

From inside came, not the aroma of food or the chatter and laughter of fun, but the sound of hell-bent hammering interspersed with the occasional curse.