Carole Douglas - Brimstone Kiss

These thirties' silk velvet gowns were second skins. Talk about being panty-line prone! You didn't dare put underwear beneath them, whether you were Jean Harlow or Delilah Street. This one wrapped across the bodice and featured billowing and tucked sleeves and the usual bias-cut skirt that clung like static to the wearer's butt and thighs. In other words, it was a classic man-trap I'd usually never take out of my collection closet.

The "demned elusive" silver familiar had converted itself into a two-inch wide rhinestone belt that shone like a galaxy against the deep, dark universe of blue velvet.

I carried a silver mesh Whiting and Dave clutch from the period and did indeed wear "slippers," a blue-sequined version of the ruby red pumps Dorothy had to hang onto in Oz.

If this outfit didn't shock the CinSim known as Rick into babbling more than his full name, rank and serial number, I would lose my faith in vintage elegance.

The Seven Deadly Sins had already performed and retired from the stage, leaving the regular tourists holding the dance floor that surrounded the Inferno Bar.

I flashed on myself in the mirror behind the Tower of Babel of liquor bottles at the back of the bar. I'd accessorized my outfit with a rhinestone tiara, a popular look in the period, so I looked like the Queen of Romania.

And so Nick Charles said when I approached him.

I cut to the chase. "Where's this Ric imposter?"

Nicky sipped from his ever-present martini glass. "Better have an Albino Vampire before you approach the fellow. He's been drinking the house bourbon."

Hard bourbon just wasn't a Vegas drink. We like our vices more elaborate here.

I looked at the martini glass with its opaque white brew turning crimson at the very bottom. I decided I needed to improvise something extra, something more stimulating for a drunk and dislocated CinSim.

I told the bartender as I eyed the usual wall of liquor bottles against the back mirror, "Something new, Lou. Pour two jiggers of the Inferno Pepper Pot vodka, a jigger of DeKuyper 'Hot Damn!' Hot Cinnamon Schnapps, and two jiggers of Alizé Red Passion passionfruit, cognac and cranberry blend. It needs a jalapeño pepper on the rim if you use a martini glass, but leave both them out for now. Use a tall, footed glass and bring it to me down the bar in three minutes."

I took my Albino Vampire in hand and sauntered to the bar's darkest end.

Holy star power! I instantly recognized the long-faced guy in the rumpled white tropical Bogart suit. It was Bogart in his second-most-iconic film role, Rick Blaine of Casablanca fame.

Bogey had always been more rough-cut than handsome, but he looked confused and morose now. As I hitched myself up on the barstool beside him, he flashed a sullen glance from under untidy brows, eyeing the Albino Vampire.

"You drinking milk, sweetheart?"

"With a kick. Try some?"

"Nah. I don't drink booze I can't see through. Those are dames' drinks."

"You noticed." The point was, he hadn't, but now he gave me the once-over and obviously liked my vintage look.

The bartender brought over a tall, iced glass the color of a blood orange.

"Try this instead of that straight rotgut," I urged.

"I can't quite see through it."

"You can't quite see through my gown but you still like it."

He eyed the bloody cocktail. "What's this called?"

What name would appeal to a tough guy like Bogey? "A… Brimstone Kiss."

"Sounds like something you'd sip on all night long and I'd knock back in couple slugs."

There were two ways to take that line so I sat pat and kept quiet.

He took the glass and a long swallow, then smacked his lips and nodded. "Volcanic. What's a classy dame like you doing in a gin joint like this?"

Good. He thought he was in his own Casablanca bar. "The same thing you are. Trying to forget."

"No, I'm trying to remember." He took another bolt of Brimstone Kiss and made a face at the heat, which warmed his unfocused gaze as he took another look at me. "Black hair, blue eyes. Somebody told me about a dame like you, before I fixed it with the Nazis and the corrupt Frenchy and got out of town."

"Out of Casablanca?" I'd always wondered what had happened to Rick after he saw Ilsa off in that plane the midgets were readying for take-off. A famous fact about the movie was that the plane was a model so small the producers hired midgets to be shown working on it in the background. They may have been the ex-Lollipop Leaguers from The Wizard of Oz.

Maybe Ilsa and Victor Lazlo were going to Oz to escape the Nazis.

"Yeah," Rick said now, frowning as his CinSim programming took over again. "I wasn't supposed to leave Casablanca, ever, but that weasel Ugarte showed up again and said I had to find a dame. Black hair, blue eyes, easy on the peepers. You fit the bill on all counts, sweetheart."

"Thanks." I sipped the Albino Vampire, buying time to calm down. "Ugarte" had been played by Peter Lorre, whom I'd just seen during my dangerous expedition to the Karnak.

Nicky, the high society private dick, was right. This CinSim Bogart had an urgent message for me and it was coming through a fellow CinSim with a double "real/reel" life link to him. And a connection to the truly creepy crew at the Karnak!

I felt a pinch on my blue velvet butt that indicated the Invisible Man was here, and goading me on. That cinched it. Claude Rains, a.k.a. the Invisible Man, had played the corrupt French inspector in Casablanca . Apparently, Claude was joining Nicky and Godfrey in urging me to give Bogey my prime attention.

I didn't know their motivations, but my own interior warning system was on red alert now too. Something huge must have happened to have the CinSims uniting to overcome their bondage and get to me.

"How is Ugarte?" I asked carefully, not wanting to spook the displaced CinSim.

"Not good, but then the greasy little con man doesn't deserve 'good'. God, this booze is worse than the stuff I serve in my own place in Casablanca. I've been burned to the core by a classy dame before or I'd take you and your big blue eyes home with me."

"Where is that now?"

"Uh…dive called the Noir Café Parisienne. Downstairs, I think. Say, what is this place?" He hunkered over his lowball glass of bourbon, brooding again and tuning me out.

I nodded Nicky over for consultation. "He's an Inferno house CinSim?" I whispered.

"Quite right," Nicky confirmed. "From one of the signature theme clubs. There's a place for every taste in the lower depths. I heard him mention that miserable lowlife, Ugarte. He's from Casablanca , but that CinSim isn't on Christophe's payroll."

"Then how would Rick get a message from him?"

Nicky cleared his throat and downed some gin and vermouth mouthwash. "Sometimes we CinSims have vague memories of the other characters in our 'set'. Sometimes we don't. I remember Nora and Asta, of course," he mused nostalgically. "They would look swell hanging out on a barstool here."

"Does the hotel allow pets in?"

"Asta is not a pet," Nicky said indignantly, quashing a hiccup.

I agreed. The lively wire-haired terrier had been a child substitute for the sophisticated sleuthing couple…until the movies had put a real baby into the fourth sequel. The series was killed with the fifth. Hollywood, and now cable and broadcast TV, was always killing series that way.

I frowned like Bogart as I thought aloud. "So a CinSim can't even move from one venue in the same hotel to another?"

"Not without breaking its lease conditions and that does something to the old bean." He tapped his forehead. "Maybe they have us microchipped. That Ugarte must have broken his house rules too. And violently. Most unusual, and disturbing. Then Rick here started muttering about blue-eyed, black-haired dames into his bourbon-vile stuff!"