Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

Temple often turned to baths as her own private think tank, especially in this old fifties tub that was deep and wide enough to float in. Thoughts somehow grew as airy and improvisational as the sudsy coverlet of clouds that shifted on the water's warm surface.

"Might as well have tried to help Crawford Buchanan with his sulky stepdaughter," Temple addressed the admirably echoing tile walls. "At least I would have known enough to just say 'no'

in his case, under any circumstances. But Darren Cooke was a star, he really needed some nobody's encouraging words and savvy insight into human behavior. Savvy, huh! Insight, huh!

Suckered again."

Temple grabbed the barge of Ivory soap that obligingly floated as advertised, and smashed it on the water. Tile walls wept tepid tears. "What a skunk. That guy will use any excuse to hit on a female. I can't believe that I thought he possibly could care about anything besides the notches on his Calvin Kleins! I hope the Daughter from Hell chases him from here to Pago Pago."

Of course no one could hear her fine denunciations; nothing could view them except the mirror above the sink, and it was fogged over. An apt symbol, Temple thought, for her recent perceptions. Well, nothing had been lost except a tiny remaining strand of illusion and a couple hours of a Sunday morning. Getting back to work with Domingo tomorrow would be a refreshing contrast. At least he flaunted his mistress, so he was hardly about to try anything tacky with Temple. Right?

Imagine, using the letters from that poor demented child to gain female sympathy as a preseduction ploy!

Temple rose from her steamy cleansing ritual, wrapped herself in a huge white bath towel and pattered across the black-and-white tiles to the bedroom, which was empty and cool. She stashed her retrieved shoes in the closet, safe from tooth and claw... and, even worse, saliva.

Then, still wrapped like a mummy in the ankle-length towel, she decided to raid the refrigerator, given how few of the buffet's expensive tidbits she had been able to eat.

Louie watched her from the sofa, the unread Sunday paper beside him and now beneath a proprietary paw.

"That's mine when I come back," she warned him.

Cats made excellent company. They received comments with grave attention but no overreaction. They were rarely anxious or milling underfoot, like dogs. Instead, they surveyed matters with supreme calm from a lordly or ladylike distance, which is why some people disliked them.

Temple was not in the mood for catlike detachment at the moment. After she made a mug of instant hot chocolate, she skittered out the kitchen's other end to the spare bedroom/office, where her answering machine was set up.

Sure enough, the little red Rudolph-nose button was winking, blinking and nodding. Her finger hesitated over the playback lever. Did she want to hear from somebody unwelcome today? Did she really want to know about something she would have to do tomorrow? Did she care to tend to any kind of business at all?

She shrugged and pressed the button.

After some rewinding and squeaking, the thing settled down and replayed . . . Matt's voice.

Thank God. The intonation of calm and reason. "Temple," it said, "I've got something important to show you. I know it's early Sunday morning, but could I drop by later?"

Early Sunday all right, only 11:30 a.m. Matt's call must have come after she'd left at nine-thirty. What was he doing up so early on a Sunday, other than habit? If she'd been at church like other good Las Vegans, she would have avoided the debacle at the Oasis. Temple picked up the receiver and dialed Matt's number, pleased to realize she now knew it by heart.

He answered on the second ring, completely amenable to cocoa and cinnamon rolls. Fifteen minutes.

Temple scrambled to claw the packaged rolls out of the freezer, then ran to dig culottes and a knit top out of her bedroom closet. She even had time to read the funny papers before he arrived.

And he arrived bearing another roll of paper: naked newsprint in the bland, oatmeal color of pulp.

"What is it?" Temple asked. "Not a treat for Louie?"

"If it becomes one, I'll have his ears for it," Matt announced gravely. "It cost me a lot." The second sentence was even grimmer than the first. He glanced at Temple to make sure she was fully awake. "Sorry I called while you were asleep. I was pretty anxious to show you this."

"Wasn't asleep, silly. Was out."

"Out? Already? What's happening in Las Vegas before noon on Sunday besides gambling and church?"

Temple shook her head. "You forgot the other part of Las Vegas's trinity of ete rnal verities, even on a Sunday: food. Obligatory brunches. Cocktail wienies instead of sausages, caviar instead of coarse-ground pepper on your scrambled eggs, mimosas instead of grapefruit juice."

Matt made a face, before sitting on the sofa with Louie. Actually, right beside Louie. In fact, so close that Louie struggled upright and moved down a foot. Matt edged right into the empty spot, so he sat dead center on the sofa. He laid the rolled paper on the coffee table, then waited for Temple to come stand beside him for the unveiling.

She sat beside him instead. "Well?"

He unrolled the top, setting the crystal ashtray that was never otherwise used on one corner. Then he unfurled the rest like an old-fashioned parchment window shade, turn by turn, so the face drawn on the paper appeared inch by inch.

Temple held her breath from the top of the western hat to the dented collar points on the western shirt at the bottom.

"Is that really him?" she asked.

"Close enough for discomfort." Matt shook his head at the likeness. "I don't know whether to tape it on the wall and heave rotten eggs at it, or what."

"Shoot it down in size on a copier and make flyers, even a few laminated 'wallet-size' copies you can flash in person. Then start asking people if they've seen the party in question. So this is Cliff Effinger."

"In disguise," Matt cautioned her, "and aged by an artist's guesstimate."

"Who's the artist and how did you get onto him?"

"Her," Matt corrected swiftly. He kept his eyes focused on the sketched face floating above the clutter.

It must be like looking down at a body in the morgue viewing room, Temple thought.

"Molina called me yesterday, out of the blue, appropriately, and suggested I try a police artist."

"You barely glimpsed the figure you saw on the street."

"But I never forgot the man he used to be."

"And this is the result. Does it look ... right?"

Matt nodded slowly. "A remarkable job. She's really very good, this woman. Makes you remember things you didn't even know you'd forgotten, like a bump on a nose."

"That is some hokey getup."

Matt nodded. "Hokey like a chameleon maybe. Didn't your friend Max say that extremes are a disguise in Las Vegas?"

"Friend Max said that naked was no disguise in this town, only noisy was; loud clothes, loud pose. This dated urban-cowboy getup does it. You remember the hat and the sideburns more than you do the man under and behind them."

"If I hadn't known him from before, I'd have been hopeless at providing a description. Janice aged him to the right degree after I'd described all his features."

Temple clasped her elbows and nodded as she studied this likeness of a dead man walking.

Cliff Effinger was not a savory customer, no matter what he wore or whether he were dead or alive.

"At least you accomplished something this weekend. I got sidetracked and, boy, am I sorry."

"What happened?"

"My brunch was more like a 'crunch,' and I was the main course. I'm still kicking myself for going."

"What could happen at a brunch?"

"Darren Cooke."

Matt finally looked up from the pinched, sketchpad face he couldn't tear his eyes from.