Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

I get a growl and a snort (a Scottish snort; I recognize the accent from my association with Baker and Taylor, the Scottish fold cats, on a previous case)." Tis no dump, you blathering numbskull, an' verra expensive as weel."

"Just wondered if you spotted a sleek little number who travels in pink. Shaded-silver Persian a little darker than yourself."

"More of your sort? I had no idea the hotel provided so much sport for its canine guests. I have, in fact, sniffed some sort of vermin being carted to and fro. I took it for an Angora guinea pig."

With great self-control, I refrain from turning Westie into Scarface, from now to eternity, for calling the Divine Yvette vermin.

"And where did you see this creature coming and going?" I ask sweetly.

"In the elevator. A great imposition. Your kind smells, you know."

"So does yours," I growl back, "and if you want to retain a sniffer to smell with, I would watch your lip."

I dart away before the little sucker can do me any damage, leaving him bouncing up and down on his short little legs and barking up a storm.

"Wescott, be quiet!" his mistress urges, looking around to see what might have got him yammering.

Of course I am invisible behind my palm pot once more, and a good thing, because I think if Wescott spies me, he will take off after me and drag his mistress right along for the ride, he is that mad. There is nothing like a Scot for making much over nothing.

Vermin, indeed!

I straighten my coat sleeves, then ponder another route to my destination. Elevator encounters hardly betray the floor and room number of my sweetie.

I manage to dive beneath the long marble registration desk, which is done up to resemble a banquet table decorated with goblets of fake wine and dishes of wax grapes set here and there.

The reservation staff is dashing back and forth attending to a long line of eager guests, and I have to keep a sharp eye on all five of my extremities. There are few occasions that I envy human beings anything, but the facility for strutting around on two legs, with only ten toes to get stepped on, does sometimes make me a teensy bit jealous.

I pace back and forth, dodging the swift and unpredictable footsteps of the personnel. I hear many names bandied about above me, but none that make my whiskers quiver: "Costner, Branagh, Schwarzenegger . . ." These bunch of nobodies are wasting the desk clerks' time when the staff could be answering inquiries for Savannah Ashleigh, the movie star.

Alas, the bell does not toll for her, proba bly because she is already checked in. And the Goliath has forty-eight hundred rooms. I will check out each and every one, if I must, but it will put me sadly behind schedule. At this rate, I will see Yvette on the set Tuesday sooner than I will find hide or silver hair of her here.

I have resigned myself to curling up on a box of Goliath maps (the hotel is so big each guest gets a map to follow around), and am yawning widely when my ears come out of the temporary deafness a good yawn induces to hear the magic word: "... leigh."

Now that could be Lee as in a last or first name. Or "lee" as in Levi's jeans. Or it might even be somebody talking about what nobody doesn't like, which is Sara Lee the dessert maker. Or someone could be discussing the Kennedy assassination and have dropped Lee Harvey Oswald's name into the hopper. Still, hope is a frail thing with feathers, and I go for things with feathers. I perk up both ears and smother my second, world-class yawn.

"Photos for Miss Ashleigh? I'll have a bellman take them up."

Yes! I leap up with joy, forgetting that I am reposing under a marble counter. Ouch! Then I hear the sharp ping of a bell. I wiggle down the underbelly of the counter and keep a sharp eye out for a bellman uniform.

Here I almost make a fatally wrong calculation. I am hunting for the usual uniform, navy with gold buttons, or perhaps a tasteful maroon or hunter green. What have I done? For a moment, I have failed to remember that I am in Las Vegas. Here a bellman can look like a bodybuilder and often does.

So I almost miss the guy in the thong sandals, the thong diaper and the sheet-swathed head.

But he is carrying a manila envelope and I have seen containers of that description all over Miss Temple's desk, full of photos, documents and what have you.

What I have is a lot of catching up to do before this desert-dude hops aboard one of the palanquin elevators and leaves me below, watching him defy gravity through the elevator's glass facade.

I make the same flight by the skin of my hocks and heels. Of course I am noticed, but I act like I know where I'm going and when a woman near the control panel asks, "Can I hit a floor for anyone?" I merow a very clear 'four."

She apparently does not hear me, which is lucky as the manila envelope is going much higher. In fact, it is going so high that all the other passengers exit beforehand, so while it is really hard to hide from the bellman, no one else is aware of me.

But the bellman begins doing muscle flexes in the rear mirrored wall as soon as everybody has exited, concentrating so hard on his biceps that he does not look down far enough to notice me. Miss Temple frequently bewails her short stature, but I must say that sometimes it is better to keep a low profile in this town, and this is one of them.

Once the elevator doors open at the twentieth floor, the bellman struts out, looking in every hall mirror he passes. There are quite of few of these, as the passage is tricked out li ke the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles.

(Some may wonder how an exceptionally short P.I. in Las Vegas, who has no formal education except what can be picked up on the street, can know about such ritzy foreign attractions. Quite simply, I am an autodidact, which means that I taught myself all I need to know and a good deal that I do not, but the non-need-to-know comes in handy to throw into my conversation now and then. I have read a lot of books in my time, under the pretext of snoozing on them. I use a technique called feed-reading. First I consume a meal generous enough to make me drowsy. Then I curl up on a newspaper or any old tome I can find. Once I am suspended in a state of absolute relaxation, I absorb the contents at my pawtips by a kind of osmosis.)

This is a tricky bit for me. I must "shadow" the bellman while remaining far enough behind that my mirror image does not show up in his view. This I manage until he stops at a door and knocks. Then only boldness will work. I sidle up right behind him, counting on the dim hall and the dark carpeting to camouflage me.

The resident is slow to answer. I wait, twitching my whiskers with impatience. So near and yet so far from my Divine Yvette.

At last the door is cracked open, with the chain lock still on!

"Miss Ashleigh."

"Yes," comes the breathy, foggy reply.

The front desk sent up a manila envelope for you."

"Slide it through the door," she requests throatily.

This will not do! It has been years since I have been able to shimmy through a door crack that is only as wide as a chain. Perhaps if I had been more dedicated to working out, I might manage it. But I have never embraced unnecessary movement.

What to do? I reach up with an unadulterated mitt and snag a claw on the glued flap at the envelope bottom. As the bellman reaches up with the envelope, I drag down. Bicep-pumping aside, I win, thanks to the surprise element coupled with my fighting-sharp talons.

"I dropped it, Miss Ashleigh, and the envelope is partly under the door. Maybe you could open the door just a little bit?"

"Oh, rats. Did you have to be so clumsy?"

But the door shuts and I hear the chain-lock slide being operated. The bellman bends over to lift the envelope (thus giving me an unwanted close-up of his thong diaper). By the time he straightens up, Miss Savannah Ashleigh is standing in the open doorway in a flowing black chiffon negligee bordered with black marabou feathers on every edge.