Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In An Aqua Storm

I retreat like the shadow I so much resemble and repair to the Circle Ritz to think things over. One thing needs no thinking: the Divine Yvette is still too close for comfort to the murder scene, and likely, to the murderer, as yet unknown.

This is why a day later I find myself in another dressing room occupied by little dolls in the business of dressing down. I have long made a habit of visiting the chorus girls’ backstage digs to pick up a nugget of good gossip (much tastier and more nourishing than this Free-to-Be-Feline stuff, believe me), get some strokes and lots of female admiration with no strings attached.

My favorite hangout is the Crystal Phoenix, but I have graced similar scenes in such establishments as Bally’s, the Flamingo, the Sands, Dunes, et cetera. I avoid the Mirage on principle, despite its many piscatorial attractions, including a shark tank. Some heavy muscle of the feline variety prowls that turf. These individuals wear black and white prison-striped suits, which is appropriate: their kind has often been kept behind bars, for good reason. They all answer to the name of "Tiger,” being associates of Siegfried and Roy, the magicians, and outweigh me by several hundred pounds.

I may be feisty, but I am not witless.

However, in all my rambles, which include the Lust ’n’ Lace downtown, I have never touched pad to the dressing room of Kitty City, for reasons other than the odiously inaccurate name of said establishment. Besides not having a single specimen of the advertised sort inside, Kitty City's little stripper dolls are always rushing from one club to another and have little time for exchanging pleasantries with a dude of my sort. Plus they live on Mars bars and diet soda, a regimen only slightly less appealing than Free-to-Be-Foolish.

I am not surprised to find that the Kitty City dressing rooms are less nicely appointed than others of my experience. Nor do I advertise my presence. I arrive in the late morning, the better to establish myself in a snooping spot before the first wave of lovelies hits in time for the lunchtime show. The deserted dressing room is barer than Mother Hubbard's cupboard and equipped with rows of mirrors that could betray my position of concealment, could I find one.

So I boldly leap atop one long countertop and inspect the place, not even pausing to admire my handsome reflections in the facing mirrors. The bruised Formica bears the residue of many long nights and a merry-go-round of dolls coming and going, most of it not visible to the naked eye. However, it is cat’s play to my naked nose.

Amid the bouquet of scents—body makeup, cheap perfumes, and (ugh!) coconut oil—I detect a faint odor of almonds. There is not the bitter overtone to the scent that would indicate poison, but it is an unusual smell that I have encountered twice before in the dressing rooms of the Goliath Hotel. Common scent is not what the riddle-solving investigator needs. Still, one of the three sources of this particular perfume is... none other than the Divine Yvette. I see a yet-unplumbed link between the murder at the Goliath, the stripper's competition, and Kitty City.

Girlish voices echo in the unadorned hall. While I debate playing musical cubicles in the adjoining rest room, the sound of oncoming footsteps forces me to dash for the only cover: an open metal locker currently occupied by a teal nylon gym bag. I dive into a tangle of jungle-print G-strings, feeling right at home with all those spots and stripes, and tunnel under the bag’s limp folds. There is a lot of me to hide and not much bag. I freeze, sensing the arrival of intruders not two feet away.

"God.” One contralto voice replays a classic line. “What a dump.”

“What’s this?” trills a soprano.

I can do nothing but shut my eyes as I await discovery and its traumatic consequences. At the least I will get kicked out. At the worst, I might be carried off on another visit to another veterinary clinic, which are no more than legalized shooting galleries with hypos, in my opinion.

“Can’t anybody even shut a damn locker door?” this high-pitched voice asks.

The locker door bangs shut, leaving me in the dark lit only by the luminous strips of the locker vent. Talk about a slammer. The latch is on the outside, and three feet up. Discovery, I decide, is no longer my Waterloo, but my salvation.

14

Kitty City Nitty-Gritty

T emple looked outfrom the cab at a windowless, bunkerlike cinderblock building whose only reason for existence seemed to be supporting the massive neon sign frame above it. Nothing was less glamorous than an unlit neon sign by daylight. The curved white-glass tubes that spelled out Kitty City looked dingy, and the cat shapes cavorting beside the name resembled ferrets.

Lindy wanted to pay the cabdriver, but Ruth wouldn’t hear of it. They spent a couple of minutes dividing the tab three ways, and Temple needed a receipt. The cabdriver was shaking his head and counting change by the time he watched them pussyfoot toward Kitty City.

Only a few vehicles dotted the asphalt parking lot—pickup trucks, a van or two, older coupes with their vinyl tops sun-blistered to a leprous peeling skin the color of a rusted orange.

Even from outside, Temple heard the brutal bass thump-thump-thump of a sound system at full throttle.

A canvas awning over the door featured a cat’s-eye graphic up front. The leering, green-eyed black feline face had none of Midnight Louie’s dignified intelligence, Temple thought somewhat smugly.

In the awning’s shade, Lindy pulled open a heavy, coffered door and moved into a blast of icy darkness throbbing with ear-piercing rock music.

Temple and Ruth followed, then stopped in the disorienting dimness, glimpsing clumped tables, the silver sheen of the obligatory slot machines and the glitter of a bar.

“It’s midday,” Lindy shouted. “Not too many customers. Come on.”

Leaning into the chill interior dusk and the wave of noise as if facing a north wind, Temple and Ruth followed Lindy to the relative haven of a table and chairs.

Temple exchanged her sunglasses for her regular glasses. As her vision adapted, she began to make out slim pale figures moving rhythmically in the darkness. One pranced on a low stage some twenty-five feet away, shadowed by her reflection in a semicircle of mirror behind her. Another was writhing around a chrome pole on the bar. Yet another danced on an empty table in the middle of the large room.

The scene reminded Temple of an Old Master’s evocation of a Renaissance Hell, especially when she inhaled and drew in the scent of stale smoke.

Gradually the room and its few inhabitants came into focus: men seated alone or in pairs at the scattered tables, and a glass-enclosed DJ’s booth above and left of the main, mirrored stage. True to the emblazoned but pallid TOPLESS! on the exterior sign, bare-breasted maidens writhed to the mind-numbing music on the various stages while a Big Mama of a giant-screen TV flickered images from a Western at the main stage’s right side.

A waitress wearing a long-sleeved French-cut black leotard whose bottom barely covered hers appeared from the dimness. A perky pair of cat—bat?—ears topped her brown shoulder-length hair. She had the fresh-faced appeal of a girl in a Clearasil TV ad after the medication had worked.

“Anything for you ladies to drink?”

Lindy ordered a screwdriver, Ruth passed, and Temple asked for a white wine spritzer, hoping that a wine buzz would help drown out the high-decibel rock music, not that one drink would do the job.