Douglas, Nelson: Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

Bud shrugged his shirted shoulders, which were nowhere near as broad as Domingo's.

"That's the point, Temple. Who can spoof a laughing stock? Domingo can't hurt us, and if he is so blooming artsy, no one can say that Las Vegas didn't have the sophistication to snicker at itself."

" Some in Las Vegas. Other quarters will definitely not be laughing. This could be dangerous, Bud."

"To you? Or Domingo?"

"To both of us, and to about one million plastic flamingos. One million--can anyone even make that many?"

"They're extremely popular all over South America and Mexico, I understand."

"How much?" Temple asked, unmollified.

Bud wrote a figure on a notepad and passed it to her.

She nodded. Flamingos were beautiful birds, actually. "That's per day. For how many days?"

Bud Dubbs smiled at her angelically. "As long as it takes to paint the town flamingo pink."

******************

Temple had not been satisfied with the information level and extent of press kits when she was a television news reporter, and she wasn't satisfied now.

As soon as she left the Convention Center parking lot, she pointed her Geo Storm's aqua nose toward the city library.

By computer or by fiche, she would learn all there was to know about this so-called artist, even whether Domingo was his last, first or an assumed name.

The trail led to the periodicals area, where she skimmed glossy art magazines she seldom saw. Inside she found more photos of the artist, who resembled the offspring of a weight lifter and an orchestra conductor. His arms were always elevated in big gestures, waving, directing.

Dozens of Domingo's faceless, nameless minions darted around arranging parachute silk or six-story-long strings of spaghetti or twenty miles of dry-cleaner bags over hill and dale and under bridges and around revered monuments and locations.

Only one Domingo project had been stridently rejected: a scheme to wrap the Black Hills of South Dakota with ant farms. Not only did Native Americans object, but insect-rights people feared that ants would die by the billions before the project was completed. That was the point, Domingo had protested. A parable of genocide. Weren't these red ants, after all?

"Loony," Temple said aloud.

"Shhhh!" hissed a pasty-faced wimp who was poring over a biker magazine. This was the Las Vegas library, after all.

Loony , she repeated to herself, reading that Domingo (no one knew whether it was his first, last or simply latest name, and he wouldn't tell) traveled with his female manager (read mistress between the lines). She leaned close to the photograph to study what would probably be her biggest problem, the Other Woman. She suspected that Verina (no last name, either) would naturally consider herself as the only go-between Domingo should ever require.

The woman was tall, thin and dark, just like Snow White's wicked, witchy stepmother, a chic, handsome forty-something who broadcast a Duchess of Windsor air of imperious command.

Suddenly Bud Dubbs's princely salary didn't look so royal. Did Temple really need this project, with all the other assignments she had to handle? Temple nodded to herself. Yes, to keep her bank balance from bouncing gently now and then. Freelance work was feast or famine.

Better to put the pedal to the metal whenever possible than to coast for a while and end up out of gas and stranded.

****************

From the library, Temple headed for the Las Vegas Strip. The sun shone bright on all the glassy hotel facades and unlit featured-attraction signs, but the distant mountains wore their autumnal pales. The air offered the ineffable crispness of November.

Seasonal change in the desert is subtle, which makes it all the more welcome. Now that Halloween was over, along with the disturbing events at the haunted house, nothing but happy holidays loomed, Temple mused: Thanksgiving and Christmas. Temple toyed with the idea of going somewhere else for one of them, like home to Minnesota, or even to New York to visit Aunt Kit. But then what would poor Max do, marooned as he was in the twilight zone of the rogue undercover operative? Or poor Matt, above ground but enjoying it no more than a groundhog who had emerged six weeks too early on February 2.

Groundhog Day. Now there was an unhappy holiday, if you could consider it one. An almost-certain decree of six more weeks of winter, laid on the head of some hapless little mammal subjected to an annual grilling under hot television lights. Not that six more weeks of any kind of weather mattered in Las Vegas, which was mostly fair and sunny, with a long, hot salsa-strength summer guaranteed.

Temple took a left off the Strip to Paradise, where the town's latest hot-cha-cha spot had hung its neon shingle.

To declare anyplace the latest hot spot was always dangerous; so many new attractions were springing up daily. Temple slowed the Storm to cruise past her destination.

Still, you couldn't go wrong naming Gangster's the waning year's newest diversion. Temple eyed the string of indecently stretched black limousines that always underlined the entry canopy.

Lest the uninitiated mistook the pervasive limos for a funeral-home fleet, the club's entry had been designed to banish that notion. Polished black marble, as slick as the elongated Cadillacs, faced the building front, along with neon-lit glass blocks in Art Deco designs. Through the etched-glass blocks the lurid lights flickered as shadows flitted behind them. The murky shadow-play implied action of the dangerous, sensual sort: dancing, gaming, fighting, mating.

Le Jazz Hot and Forties Swing drifted through the open double doors as clients were ushered inside by broad-shouldered men in sinister fedoras who wore pastel ties against dark shirts and suits.

The upper level of the building was shaped into a fedora and gun barrel, both cocked, with veiled red lights visible as squinting eyes in the eaves' eternal penumbra.

In high-rise Las Vegas Strip terms, the building looked as low and sleek and darkly intimate as the shadowed cars, but that was deceptive. Temple knew it also housed a modest, six hundred-room hotel, a four-thousand-seat theater, a giant gaming casino that was "raided"

nightly by fake feds, a vintage movie theater that even played newsreels, a museum filled with gats and getaway cars from the gangland days of old, and up-to-date shopping centers in flanking wings: Gents and G-Men on the left, with the Moll Mall on the right. (Some women, when shopping, presumably behaved like Mau-Mau insurrectionists.) In the area of parking space, though, Gangster's was hardly the bee's knees. Temple drove around to the side lot, which--unlike most Las Vegas car parks--charged a fee.

"Wish you had a courtesy lot," Temple grumbled as she took a chit from the cheeky attendant. "I'm just here to pick up a friend."

"Jeez, lady, keep your garters on. You get a free pull at the Electric Chair million-dollar bonanza slot inside." He spoke with a Brooklyn accent, provoking Temple to wonder how many aspiring actors were finding work at Las Vegas theme attractions these days.

She hustled inside, checking her watch. Six o'clock. She was supposed to have retrieved Midnight Louie from his day's labors at five-thirty.

The doorman was a brute in a navy pin-striped suit, his lapel adorned with a pink carnation.

Temple scurried into the marble -floored lobby, meant to echo to the click of women's high heels and the softer snick of men's patent-leather evening shoes.

Her Manolo Blahnik snakeskin pumps provided the proper click, but most of the tourists milling about inside wore tennis shoes that scuffed the mirror-polished floors.

Temple passed the uniformed hat-check girl and the page boy, zoomed past the Hush Money and Speakeasy restaurants and through the casino to descend to the theater.