Douglas, Nelson - Cat in a Flamingo Fedora

Temple shook her head, wondering if she should volunteer her presence at the Sunday brunch, a much more incriminating day.

While she debated, Molina snapped her notebook shut and turned off her tiny tape recorder. "Just checking on the decedent's last days. He strike any of you as suicidal?"

More head shakes, very definite.

Temple sat there biting her tongue. If she didn't volunteer her presence in Darren Cooke's suite, admitting it later would look very bad. Perhaps if she had a private word with Molina --

But the lieutenant had stood and was thanking them perfunctorily for their time. The chance, now lost, would be awkward to reclaim.

"Well, are you coming?" Savannah Ashleigh demanded beside Temple. "We're back in business as usual, and your big tomcat must be gnawing at his carrier grille to get another chance to sully my little Yvette."

"Louie doesn't sully anything," Temple answered, hastening after the others and leaving Savannah to reinsert Yvette in her carrier, zip it up and come trailing after.

Chapter 20

Louie Goes for a Ride

I am a tad peeved with Gangster's.

Their advertisements claim they will pick up anyone anywhere in town. They certainly pick up Miss Savannah Ashleigh and the Divine Yvette, and bring them to the set every day that we are shooting. They certainly return Miss Savannah Ashleigh and the Divine Yvette from whence they came at each day's end.

Why, then, am I suffered to be "dropped off' and "picked up" by Miss Temple Barr? It makes me sound like dirty laundry. Of course, I realize that Miss Temple is a working mother (so to speak, especially if it is Savannah-speak, though Miss Temple has never called me "Mummy's little darling baby." Thank Bast!).

Still, I think I would look most elegant arriving in the passenger seat of a long, black limo.

And it appears that I am finally going to get my due. The Divine Yvette and I are about to be portrayed as passengers of some fancy vintage mobmobile. We are also going to be fed again (the best part of the commercial racket). As I overhear it, this sequence is a takeoff on that mustard commercial where two old British snobs roll up to the stoplight in their chauffeured Rolls-Royces, each of them slathering something they call Great Poop-on on their wienies. This strikes me as a strange name for a product meant for public (if not proletariat) consumption, but those Brits have some weird names for things and I do not always hear too well as I snooze during every commercial I am subjected to.

I do not get to slather Great Poop-on on my wienie for this commercial. I must scarf down more A La Cat from a sissy dish without a dab of Great Poop-on to make it palatable. (This Great Poop-on has a spunky, spicy taste, though its name is for the birds, or rather something that went through the birds. I think it is the same "Poop-on everything" they are always asking people for in the advertising biz. If these Madison Avenue hucksters can sell that poop goop, they can certainly unload a lot of A La Cat with two glamorous types like myself and the Divine Yvette hyping it from here to cat heaven.)

The car the Divine One and I will share is no limo, but one of those cavernous, beetle-back black numbers from the thirties. We do at least have a front-seat driver, a dude who looks like he escaped from Alcatraz. Dis is one tough-looking dude, let me tell you, and the Thompson submachine gun poking a steel nose under his zoot-suit lapel only adds to the ambience.

We are stuffed in the backseat, which is then hit with about two million kilowatts of spotlight. Now I know what they mean by the phrase "being on the hot seat," for those lights could broil an ice cube. I inquire whether my lady friend is suffering due to the heavy fur coat she wears at all times.

"No, Louie," she tells me while lolling on her side to cool off. "Being overheated is one of the prices of natural beauty." Va-va-varoom!

All around us sit polished, stalled cars of a similar vintage, though some are more colorful than our hearse like vehicle, like tan or even cream-colored. But most are the same basic black as our car.

Of course we are back in costume: I in my flamingo-pink fedora, Yvette in her feathers and diamonds. Our A La Cat servings are salmon fricassee , so the color goes well with my dashing but ridiculous headgear. If Bast had meant me to wear a hat, she would have made them all with ear-holes. A massive picnic hamper reclines on the car floorboards. Its open cover reveals such niceties as silverware and china plates, cans of pate and long loaves of French bread, none of which appeal to our predators' palettes. But I suppose it adds some eye-appeal to the human viewers who actually buy the glop that the poor house cats are forced to eat.

I glimpse my mortal rival, Maurice, on the sidelines. He is out of his carrier and in the cat trainer's arms, apparently quite the favorite. I realize that the animal trainer has a big stake in her alley cat's mangy hide. Favoritism is an ugly tendency.

The next thing I see I do not like one bit. The crew is rolling another humped, black car alongside ours, with another punk-looking driver and--who do they plunk in the backseat but His Majesty Maurice Two, the Maurice One slayer? That is like Macbeth giving King Duncan a friendly ride home in his Rolls while his missus lurks in the boot with a knitting needle.

Miss Temple has dawdled behind, no doubt questioning the boys and girls of the chorus about the demise of their leader. I know it is important for her to feel useful by making her little inquiries, but I do think she should be here protecting our contract from infringement. In my understanding, this was to be the Midnight Louie/Divine Yvette show. Maurice was nowhere mentioned.

And he also has footloose privileges while the DY and I are locked up. This kind of favoritism will only give him a chance to booby-trap the commercial. He has deceived this same set of subcretinous humans before. So he is only a body double who offed the celestial body he was substituting for, i.e., the star. They do not know nor care.

At last my ears hear tiny heels clicking on the hard-composition floor paving the car-museum area. I leap up and put my paws on the sill created by the rolled-down window.

You should hear the screeching! You would think a colony of bats were abroad.

"No! No paw prints on the finish!" the crew screams, descending on me in a raving horde.

"Ugly damp pads."

They are lucky that I make my protest only with paw prints. There are other, even more corrosive ways of damaging prized human property, if I make myself clear?

Miss Temple does not help my cause.

"What has he done now?" she asks, clattering up to the car door I am desecrating.

"He was sitting in the backseat nice as pie," the trainer explains, "then he was up on his hind feet looking around."

Miss Temple, to give her credit, examines the scene of the crime by walking around my car.

"Maybe he's upset because this other male cat is hogging the backseat of the neighboring vehicle. I thought Louie and Yvette were the focus of the commercials. What's Maurice doing here?"

Way to go! Keep those legal beagle tough questions coming.

On the seat beside me, the Divine Yvette bestirs herself. "Is that nasty Maurice causing problems, Louie? I do not like him. He is a bad boy!"

My heart glows to hear my rival dismissed by the one who counts.

"Do not flutter your furs, my dear," I return in my manliest swaggering tone. "My mistress will make Vienna sausage out of him, with no Great Poop-on to ease the transition."

The animal trainer comes to loom over Miss Temple, which is not hard to do even when she is wearing high heels, which only make her a feisty but tottery five-feet-three.