Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Crimson Haze

Whoever this Three O'Clock Louie is--and the name has a splendid resonance, despite its more than somewhat imitative ring--I cannot let him take the fall for my fault, i.e., fathering Midnight Louise the Terrible.

I know how this little black banshee learned of this establishment: via the usual methods--

making herself invisible, keeping her ears perked and her mind percolating. I do not know how she will get herself to Lake Mead and the appropriately named landing of Temple Bar, but I have no doubt that she will accomplish this feat, and pronto. She has the genes for ingenuity.

As the vulture flies and he often does in this desert. Temple Bar is eighty-five miles from Las Vegas proper, if ever a city of such character can be considered proper.

Temple Bar is also in Arizona.

It just so happens that the bottom half of Lake Mead runs through the southern border of Nevada and Arizona. Most folks know that Lake Mead is the artificial result of Hoover Damn, which plunked a long, narrow, forked body of bright blue water shaped like a double fishhook right in the middle of a knot of mountain ranges.

What most folks do not know is that the Nevada/Arizona border runs right through it--

through the east-to-west horizontal, hook-part of Lake Mead. This means that opposite banks, at times close enough to shout across, are in different states. The border runs from Hoover Damn in the west right; to Iceberg Canyon on the east.

Why people would want to put something as essential as a state border right in the middle of a body of water where no one can see it boggles the feline mind. Those of our ilk know a thing or two about marking territory. Although we also employ running water to do it, we make sure that such benchmarks are on otherwise dry land, where they can be seen, and more important, smelled.

Still, it is not for me to decipher the mysteries of human behavior in other than criminal matters. I only know that I have a long, challenging journey to Arizona ahead of me, for Temple Bar sits on the south side of Lake Mead.

All is not lost, for I have certain contacts that I use when it is necessary to cover vast distances in a hurry and I am forced to rely on motorized transport.

So I hike over to the Gray Line Tours building, a low, nondescript structure most notable for launching a fleet of long, looming vehicles with an exhaust system that could singe the hair off a porcelain Chow. In addition to their size and power, these buses have a sinister look due to tinted wrap-around windows. I am reminded of limousines carrying a whole convention of shady characters.

Luckily, these buses chauffeur tourists around Las Vegas and beyond, and tourists are no more sinister than a chocolate Easter bunny.

In fact, before I had landed a place of my own, I used to hang out here quite a bit. The exhaust fume fog greets me like an old friend, rushing to fill my ears, eyes, nose and throat.

I amble among these idling behemoths, looking for the nine o'clock run to Lake Mead. This will ultimately get me to Temple Bar, hopefully before mayhem of the cat kind has been visited upon this Innocent Three O'Clock Louie Individual.

"Well," notes a bus driver of my acquaintance, bending to look me over. "So you're back again. I gave you up for a grim statistic. How are you doing, Blackie?"

(At times I have found it convenient to work under a nom de guerre , which is to say whatever someone chooses to call me. Usually such names sadly lack imagination, but have the advantage of applying to dozens of dudes.)

"Like some lunch?" The fellow sits on the high first step to his bus and offers me a bite of summer sausage on rye.

I wolf it down in the name of building rapport among contacts.

My host is Red Kimball, a veteran driver whose pale thinning hair still boasts a scarlet thread or two among the gray.

While I nibble on another piece of his sandwich, another set of Hush Puppies squeegees over.

"Look who's back," notes another old pal, Gloria. She squats to stroke my head. "This old boy doesn't look much the worse for wear."

"He's eating like he's been locked in a closet for a decade or two," Red says, more with admiration than pity.

"You want to ride to the Valley of Fire with me today?" Miss Gloria inquires solicitously.

I have trained these drivers to the notion that I relish the occasional joyride, and their clients always find my presence on board, eagerly staring out the windshield, "cute," so no one has yet reported me to the company as a stowaway. See what I mean about cultivating contacts for a rainy day?

Not that it is about to rain today or any time soon.

After disposing of the last crumbs on the parking lot asphalt, I scamper up the rubber treads of Red's bus. (What an obnoxious smell to encounter after lunch, but none of the odors broadcast by a bus are what a discriminating nose would call five-star.)

"Guess the old boy wants to go to Lake Mead with me," Red concludes with admirable logic.

He dons his visored cap and follows me up the rubber-mat road. Over the next half hour, we are joined by a straggle of tourists, all wearing short pants, short-sleeve tops, and sunglasses and cameras on cords around their necks.

I take my usual alert pose alongside Red, forelegs braced on the dashboard, my profile pointed toward the unknown future.

"Oh, look, Lucy! That cat looks just like the figurehead on a ship. Isn't that cute?"

(My unerring instinct for "cute" when it will do me the most good is almost as strong as my nose for news and penchant for crime.)

Soon our party is lurching out of the depot and onto the open road. Well, the road would be open if we did not have to navigate Las Vegas traffic until we turn onto Highway 95 and head for the wide, open shores of Lake Mead. Highway 95 whisks us through Henderson (the site of one of my more outre adventures involving a pack of coyotes) and then past such Lake Mead landmarks as Las Vegas Wash (I thought the only wash in L.V. was at the crap tables) and Boulder Beach (which will give an idea of the quality of the shoreline band hereabouts).

The difficulty of relying on transportation other than one's own four feet is that the route may be circuitous, or even involve pesky pauses. Thus when Highway 95 hooks upward through Boulder City (it is not; a city, that is), our bus pauses on the brink of a fearful drop-off point. In this steep mountain defile that only goats can traverse with any illusion of dignity rises a sheer cliff of concrete, a towering monument to the ingenuity of man. Hoover Damn. (I believe it is so called in tribute to all the cussing the massive construction job caused. Why it is also named after a vacuum cleaner, I cannot say.)

I am forced to remain aboard while the gaggle of tourists clatter and chatter off the bus to swarm around and into the impressive concrete-slab face of Hoover Damn. Myself, I do not give a Hoover for heights of this magnitude. Besides, the bus remains air-conditioned.

Red doffs his cap to swipe his forehead with a Kleenex, then extends me the hospitality of the second half of his sandwich. I do not wish to appear rude, so we have a nice little picnic there on the brink of the drink, so to speak.

After forty minutes and a chance to see a slide show about Hoover Damn on a giant screen (why they do not project the slides upon the multi-story pale facade of the damn itself I do not know), our merry crew is on its way. Through the Black Mountains to the White Hills we go, taking a sharp left to head north past Virgin Basin and then east again right to Temple Bar, which sits in the protected curve of Heron Point. Beyond us await a marina, ranger station, campground and trailer hookup facility, not to mention a restaurant, the so-called Three O'clock Louie's.

Soon I am stretching my legs alongside a wooden dock while tourist tennies trod over the planking to a restaurant that projects onto the lake's frilly blue waves.