Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Temple surveyed the living room where Jersey Joe Jackson had wheeled his last deal. By the time of his death, he had lived here in sufferance, according to some, a penniless, aging has-been tolerated only for the memory of his own legend.

She toured the last living arrangements of the late Jersey Joe Jackson, pausing at the lamp to shake her head at the shade's whimsical form--that of a crimson-laced corset. Surrealism, she recalled, had influenced late forties decorative accessories, however funky the form.

The apple-green satin drapes framing the windows fell in still-shining cartridge pleats, fluted like a classical column. Padded valances were upholstered in the same satin, and curled on the ends like huge Ionic capitols, or an upswept forties hairdo. Given their formality and height, Temple couldn't help thinking of Lieutenant Molina.

Midnight Louie, having successfully drawn her attention to the blinds, had retreated to the chartreuse-upholstered sofa. There, the green of his eyes shone to advantage in the flattering daylight that shrank his dark pupils to mere slits.

Temple analyzed the room, understanding why it was part of what was called a ''Ghost Suite."

The forties-style furniture was an odd albino amalgam of modern lightness of color and traditional eighteenth-century furniture forms. The graceful blond mahogany legs of sofa, tables and chairs seemed almost gilded in the afternoon light, but they were actually silver-white in tone, except for the frankly blond cabinet between the windows.

The carpeting was dark, the better to show off the ashen-legged furniture. Temple stared down at a matted ocean of forest-green leaves and exotic maroon blossoms. She felt she was walking on Monet's water lilies.

A pale Sheraton desk hugged the wall by the door. Temple trod water lilies to the desk, then switched on the green-glass-shaded banker's light hunkering over a gold-tooled, green leather deskpad.

She wasn't surprised that everything worked here. The place was untouched, but not untended.

The effluvia of thirty years or more floated in the shallow central desk drawer. Old bank books bound by rotting rubber bands. Stamps so outdated they were worth only a penny.

Unused stationery as yellow and brittle as autumn leaves. Some of it was imprinted ''Joshua Tree Hotel & Casino," with smaller block letters underneath announcing ''Las Vegas's biggest little hotel."

Temple was surprised by the number of stubby pencils in the drawer, a collection formed before the dawning of the age of ballpoint and felt-tip pens. The gaudy barrel of a fifties Esterbrook pen rolled under her fingertips as she probed.

She found a letter to Jersey Joe Jackson on faded rose stationery signed "Mona." The contents were almost deliberately bland and there was no return address.

Temple pulled out the delicate desk chair and sat on its bold maroon and forest green satin stripes relieved by a pinstripe of chartreuse.

Dust fuzz hobnobbed in the drawer corners with rusted paperclips. Someone had lined the drawer with the same bamboo and jungle growth wallpaper that swathed the walls. Not Jersey Joe, Temple would bet. Anyone nicknamed Jersey Joe would not be the drawer-lining type.

She found a string of tiny keys, the type shaped for hard-sided suitcases of another era, for ladies little jewel boxes and diaries, for strongboxes and secret cabinets. They jangled like jewelry and would have looked swell--that was a forties expression, wasn't it, along with jeepers creepers and mairsy doats?--silverplated and dangling from a chain bracelet today.

What did these fascinating Lilliputian keys open once? Why had a two-timing crook with a penchant for squirreling away ill-gotten goods kept them? Didn't anybody at this hotel have a curious bone in their body?

The room's silence was utter, to the point of rebuff. Temple fished out something caught in the crevice of the drawer--a holy card edged in gilt, picturing some pastel-tinted female saint or other looking sappy under a coyly tilted halo. The back text marked the passing of one Harold Lynch on October 8, 1943. Poor Harold had only been thirty-three. In the drawer's right back corner, a white satin garter coiled like a deflated balloon. Several dull red wooden gambling chips lay scattered amid the dusty papers like lost coat buttons.

The deeper but smaller drawers on either side held plastic boxes filled with paperclips and rubber bands, a deck of well-thumbed playing cards bearing the image of a robust pinup girl with very long hair and legs.

"Ouch!'' Temple had found a hoard of thumbtacks-- rusted.

She slammed the offending drawer shut and squeezed her fingertip until she had produced a Sleeping Beauty drop of blood as crimson as a Ceylonese ruby cabochon.

She rose and went through an ajar door, looking for the bathroom. She found herself in a dim bedroom and stumbled her way into a black-hole-of-Calcutta closet before trying another doorknob with her good hand.

This time there was a wall switch. It flooded the room with a funhouse-mirror-view of Temple holding her right wrist and blinking.

The bathroom was smaller than it seemed. Tiled in large squares of mirror, none of which matched reflections perfectly with their neighbors, it created a fractured, surreal multiplicity of images--maroon porcelain pedestal sink, commode and built-in bathtub; black octagon-tiled floor and--surprise!--a silver-leafed ceiling that softly echoed the reflections below.

Temple went to the sink and turned a massive porcelain handle.

Water flowed, not fast, but it flowed. She guessed that even the original plumbing to this suite had been left intact during the remodeling.

The water washed away her blood, its brightness lost against the sink's maroon bowl.

Temple pinched forefinger and thumb together and hoped the pressure would stop the bleeding. She wasn't half done here and it would be tacky to drip blood on the furnishings.

Presumably that grisly privilege would be left to the ghost of Jersey Joe Jackson when, and if, he decided to show himself.

Leaving the bathroom light on. Temple moved back to the bedroom and opened the blinds at its two windows. She turned to face twin beds covered in chartreuse satin . . . and one of them was doubly upholstered, since Midnight Louie was now sprawled in jet-black array on the becoming back-ground.

''Oh, you think you look like the cat's pajamas on that poison green color, don't you?" she chided Louie, glad nevertheless for his company.

''Now. The silver dollars were hidden in a mattress. If I were going to hide something as large as an architectural plan, a mattress would do fine."

Temple squatted by the twin bedframe bare of lounging cat to pull up the coverlet. The white cotton sheets were scratchy. No ironing-free miracle-fiber blends in the forties, and no color but white.

She untucked the generous bottom sheet--no fitted sheets then, either--and grimaced to unveil a modern-looking mattress. Digging the sheet free around the bed, she finally revealed an appalling label: Beautyrest. She doubted that brand dated to the forties, and doubted even more that this cloud pattern fabric did. Nothing leafy, green, or jungle like about it.

Louie squeaked a protest when she jerked the bottom sheet free on the neighboring mattress to find the same disgusting, spanking new, modern-day fabric. When Jill and Johnny had discovered what they had been sleeping on--a mound of stolen silver dollars, and what were they doing in this supposedly never-rented room anyway?--the old mattress covering must have shredded. Van von Rhine, tiptop hotel manager that she was, had replaced it with a new one, and its mate, so the two beds, however unused, would match.

Temple made obeisance to the beds--and indirectly to Midnight Louie, who had not moved so much as a hair as she wrestled the linens--then retidied the sheets.