Cat on a Hyacinth Hunt

by Carole Nelson Douglas

"I believe the line is: 'and to the place where Louie dwells, to dear old Temple Bar.'"

  "If so, it certainly was a prophetic naming. I believe that your Miss Temple is a female of accomplishment worthy of admiration despite her inexplicable association with you, but isn't she a little young to be celebrated in song by drunk undergraduates of Eastern educational establishments?"

  "I notice a distinct improvement in your vocabulary level from associating with me, but unfortunately not in attitude. You are leaping to the erroneous conclusion, as usual. The

  'Temple Bar' in the song is not a person, any more than Temple Bar' landing on Lake Mead is. It is a bar."

  "Aha! I might have known."

  "And 'Louie' is the esteemed proprietor of same."

  "Are there any esteemed barkeepers?"

  "Apparently in song."

  "Speaking of keepers, you are right at least that Miss Temple will be haunting the Crystal Phoenix more of late. Groundbreaking has begun."

  I cannot let Miss Louise's latest gratuitous dig go unplumbed. "Miss Temple Bar is not my keeper. I allow her to consider herself responsible for me--though that often entails odious or even torturous visits to the vet--but the fact is that I am the one who keeps her from disaster during her forays into crime and punishment."

  Now that I have put Miss Louise in her place, I can inquire into the tidbit of news she has dropped like a guppy into a Great Lake. "So what ground are they breaking at my dear old stomping grounds?"

  "They are tearing up the back lot for the latest theme scheme in town," she says, wetting a foremitt to stroke her airy eyebrows into place.

  "Oh, yes. The Jersey Joe Jackson memorial ghost town and mine ride."

  "The construction site is attracting the usual lowlifes."

  I nod. Construction sites mean construction workers. And construction workers mean brown-bag lunches and fast-food wrappers and leftovers.

  "I do not mind the homeless making discreet forays into the daily garbage, but the pickings also attract scavengers that cannot be tolerated at an upscale place like the Crystal Phoenix."

  I nod again, as the foul word finally slips my lips. "Dogs."

  'The occasional dog is all right as long as it does not whine and beg excessively. I am talking about packs."

  "Dogs tend to congregate in cowardly gangs."

  "I am talking wild dogs."

  I lilt my luxurious brows without bothering to groom them first. Miss Midnight Louise is a petite thing, for all her big mouth, and I cannot see her facing off a pack of wild dogs.

  "If you mean coyote clan, I could put out the word on the sand that they are to steer clear of the Crystal Phoenix."

  "Like they would listen to you."

  "Hey. I handled a tricky case for them. For the head coyote, in fact. Mr. Big."

  "I have not heard of a Mr. Big in the coyote clan around here."

  "This was the Big Mr. Big. The one the Paiute Indians call The Trickster God. He can take on all shapes and all colors and all species. Believe me, he is one awesome dude."

  "Oh, Daddio. You and this New Age kick of yours. Cats of your generation are such an old-fashioned and superstitious lot. Coyote clan is a gang of nervy, nomadic scavengers who may be pretty wily, but are basically garbage collectors and public nuisances. My sole problem with them is that the only cat they have the sense to respect is a desert puma. I have to make my point--" here, she flicks out a set of dainty but razor-sharp shivs "--with them over and over.

  They are beginning to regard four tracks across the snout as some sort of gang initiation rite and are sending all their young toughs to me. You would think I am a tattoo service."

  "You need not act like a puma to make your point. They will listen to me without me lifting a shiv. I tell you, they owe me. I will come over some night and tell them to get lost."

  "No! I have enough to patrol with all the construction mess without looking out for you too.

  Besides, are you not going to be bouncing in and out of town as a fast-food endorser?"

  'That remains to be seen. Miss Temple unmasked a killer at the advertising agency that is deciding the spokescat sweepstakes."

  "Not good PR." Louise's jet-black brow frowns. "I hope she does not find any dead bodies in the Phoenix's construction ashes. We do not need the bad publicity."

  "She cannot help it. She has a natural affinity for murder."

  "Hmm," Louise purrs unhappily, hunkering down for the show.

  I settle down beside her. One by one the torch-topped poles lining the opposite shore in front of the Oasis Hotel's Karnak Temple facade are whipping into gas-fired life, the flames rippling and snapping like scarlet flags in the night.

  The staffs of firelight play over the thirty-foot-tall statues glimpsed beyond the tall, fat pillars. Naturally, I have selected a

  CAT ON A HYACINTH HUNT * 107

  viewing spot on the wharf directly opposite my patroness, Bastet. She is a tall stately woman with arms crossed upon her proud bosom, and the dignified head of a Somali cat. The flames reflect like a wink from the gold earring in one erect ear tip.

  "You realize," I comment to Louise, "that if you are my daughter, and I make no concessions by speculating, you are descended on the female side from Pharaoh's Footstool."

  "Shhh! The show is starting!"

  Louise is gazing ahead as if stalking prey, and I see why. Something low is glinting through the water. It looks like a crocodile, but it is the size of the Loch Ness monster. In the flickering torchlight, the head lifts out of the water, a predatory beak on an epic scale. We are talking a bird-headed reptile here. This particular combination of totems is very dear to the feline heart, especially the heart of the desert-dwelling feline. Consider it a feast of Godzilla with feathers.

  Of course the entire show is an ancient-world version of the Mirage Hotel's famed pirate ship encounter in a man-made moat farther up the Las Vegas Strip. Let us face it; with all the fresh construction here, it is hard to come up with a new shtick.

  Speaking of shticks, long gilded oars are beating the water into ripples, like on sand dunes.

  The torch flames skim along every moving surface, turning the lagoon into a black bolt of moire taffeta that rustles with chilling movement.

  Behind us, onlookers have crowded into a solid wall, despite the late hour. I would be nervous to have all those human feet straining toward my rear member, except I too am caught up in the spectacle.

  Then drums erupt like the distant strikes of a giant. Hollow, echoing beats simulate the heart of the monster barge as its oars cut through the water like dull sheers slicing ebony silk.

  A gasp in unison turns all heads in the opposite direction. Another low, dark gilded beast of the submarine night is surging toward its opposite number. Oiled galley-slave arms writhe like pit vipers as they propel the oars in their lumbering rhythm.

  Suddenly a fireball erupts in the black sky over the lagoon. I am highly doubtful that the Egyptians had fireworks, but they could have had an unsung Chinese advisor ... or perhaps a well traveled cat who had the ear (and foot) of Pharoah, a cat who had preceded Marco Polo to China by several hundred centuries, a Midnight Marco, so to speak.

  While the fallout of sparks showers down upon temple and water and wharf, Midnight Louise stirs beside me. "Hmmph. You would think with all the money for foolish spectacle in Las Vegas they could get a better carver for the figurehead."

  Much as I revere Egyptian art, I would have to admit I find it a bit wooden, so I am not surprised that this mockup does not pass Miss Louise's connoisseuress's standards. Meanwhile, I am gazing left at the incoming barge as on-board torches flap into life like tethered birds of prey.

  I recognize the jeweled glow of a splendid throne, and sitting on it is that splendid dame of Old Egypt, Miss Cleopatra herself, decked out to make any chorus girl take notes. Her barge boasts a busty figurehead with a jackal head that reminds me of the one at Cleopatra's Barge restaurant at Caesars Palace (the bust, not the jacka
l head). Since the Oasis is owned by the same lot that run Caesars, it is no surprise they reinforce each other's theme.

  By now two sets of tom-toms are striking enough tympanum to raise the dead, which is not to be unexpected in an ancient Egypt-inspired spectacle. The jackal-headed god Anubis strides forth between two pillars, a limp human form dangling from his extended arms. Gore has been selling since Moses was knee-high to a Neanderthal.

  I take a quick peek at the statue of Bastet to see if she is undergoing any changes, since not even statues in Las Vegas are permitted to just stand there anymore, but must do parlor tricks, or at least vaudeville turns.

  Now Anubis's voice booms out, and he sounds an awful lot like the hairless fellow who does voice-over advertisements on TV ever since he quit captaining a starship. I guess the Brits had their sights on north Africa even back in ancient times.

  "Beware the wrath of Osiris," Anubis hollers in hoity-toity tones. "Your kas will walk upon water before they sink beneath the anger of Cleopatra's warriors."

  "Our 'whats'?" Louise hisses next to me.

  "A 'ka' is a spirit. A soul. The animated remnant of a dead person."

  "Oh, come on! The only thing animated about a dead person might be the parasites it attracts."

  "Please! Must you be so graphic? Remember, we plan to eat dinner after this."

  "People food," she spits with disdain. "You are getting too soft, old man."

  I refrain from my usual reply to such lip: a smack in said lip. In this case, given our foggy genetic connections and gender differences, it could be construed as kit abuse, and I could be sued. It is getting in this country so that you cannot defend yourself against even your own (maybe) kin.

  I avert my gaze to the forthcoming flash. The intruder barge lobs a fire-bomb over the low-slung bow that explodes above the water and sinks into it like a cargo of shattered stars.

  By now the topside fireworks are shooting off in streaks of red, blue, green and pink. Those do not strike me as particularly Egyptian color schemes, except for the blue, and neither does the matching-hued neon hieroglyphs that light up the temple pillars and begin flashing on and off. I expect at any moment to read a neon crawl circling a pillar that advertises "Cleo's Dreadlocks Braided While You Wait" or "Ramses the Bookie" or "Sethos the Cabbie Charioteer."

  Though I suppose it would be the Book of the Dead that Ramses would be hawking.

  How very odd that when one thinks things Egyptian, one dwells on death. But, then, the culture set great store by death ... or, rather, by ritualizing the aftermath as well as the afterlife.

  I find it also odd that only the figure of Bastet remains in the dark, so to speak. Except for the fugitive passage of the surrounding neon blinking over her stony, sarcophagus-shaped form, she lingers in the shadows, calm and dignified.

  Then a vagrant shower of fireworks falls upon her shoulder, and her earring burns like a circle of molten lava.

  "It is sinking!" an onlooker shouts behind me.

  I glance to the water again. Of course the intruder barge is sinking. These water fights always end with the loser taking a bath in the briny deeps. By now the barge is a fiery pyre that slowly douses as it sinks. The galley slaves in their striped, sphinx-style headdresses dive into the spark-showered water like rather decorative rats.

  Not long after no trace remains of the sunken barge, Cleopatra's majestic ship glides through the glittering water where it foundered, the queen herself nodding regally to the witnesses, her barge now ablaze with fire-lit gilt and tinsel.

  The drums have reached a pitch that makes the wharf's heavy timbers shiver. I shiver myself in the cool January night, despite my heavy fur coat, despite the press of human body heat behind me, cheering the victorious queen, forgetting the fallen crew.

  I eye Bastet again across the gaudy gulf of showboat and fireworks and agitated water.

  She is shadowed and dark and calm. And ominous, very ominous. My whiskers twitch. I may not yet have a ka, Ra be praised, but I have a feeling that the other services of Pharaoh's Footstool will soon be called into action.

  Something is rotten in the Middle Kingdom. And I think Midnight at the Oasis is about to become Murder at the Oasis.

  Chapter 12

  Moral Bankruptcy

  Temple woke, aware that she had cold feet.

  The graceful Chinese slippers had long since gone the way of her wrinkle -resistant black knitwear. She was tangled with snakes of exotically patterned linens, a naked wrestler of the night.

  Above her, the opium bed loomed like a tree turned into a carved cinnabar box.

  Stained-glass night-lights glowed just above floor level, like safety beams establishing perimeters, or votives marking the presence of altars.

  She had worn no watch, nor wanted one.

  Yet now she had a sense of time suspended, and she knew, as she had finally known in New York, that Max was no longer there.

  But she was afraid to make sure, like someone awakened from a nightmare with a horrific vision still in fine -focus in her head. Temple suddenly perceived something odd about her night vision: she had not removed her new contact lenses. The optometrist had said that was fine, although not too often. She could see. See the razor- sharp halos of light around the plug-in night lights. See highlights in the mother-of-pearl fretwork, see sheen on the silken pillows.

  She couldn't see Max.

  Wouldn't see Max?

  Dreaming?

  Seeing too much? Or too little?

  All she had to do was reach out and find something besides twisted bedlinens and scattered pillows and satisfaction.

  After New York, she didn't dare.

  Chapter 13

  The Mummy Swims at Midnight

  "I smell a rat," Miss Midnight Louise observes as the wall of human feet, legs and foot-powder odor behind us disperses among the Oasis's neon-scrawled temple pillars.

  "That would not be unusual for the vicinity of a wharf, even an ersatz one."

  "I did not like the cut of the figurehead on the intruder barge."

  "Well, if it offends you, it will remain underwater and out of sight until the sunken barge is reeled back on its underwater track to its berth behind the hotel. So you need not trouble yourself about it."

  "I saw it move."

  This gives me pause. Wait! I already have paws. Rather, I should say, this makes me blink.

  And think.

  Now there is not a species on the planet that is better equipped to detect the infinitely small motion than ours.

  I would not be boasting to say that I can spy the tremor of the forward feeler on an ant at thirty paces. I would be only modest to claim to see the winking facets on the eye of a fly perched atop the MGM lion's three-story-tall, noble leonine head. I could even spot a beauty mark on the heaving, er, pastie on the Tropicana's lead chorus girl from the back row.

  But the problem is, I did not notice any unsanctioned movement on the wooden figurehead leading the doomed barge to the bottom of the vasty deeps of the Oasis watering hole. Granted, I was more interested in making sure ... seeing that Bastet kept her magnificent likeness carved in stone than in eyeing prow decorations. So I think that Midnight Louise is all wet, but I see that her curiosity has been aroused, and since she has so little in her life of an arousing nature, I take pity on the poor thing and decide to humor her. I can at the same time impress her with my awesome knowledge of how Las Vegas works behind the scenes.

  "Very well, my little chickadee. We can stroll around to the staging area to inspect the disturbing figurehead. I am sure that close up it will prove to be as wooden as any figure on the burial chamber wall of a pyramid tomb."

  "Now that you mention it, the figure reminded me of a mummy."

  "I doubt the folks behind this display would use something as mundane as a mummy for a figurehead. Mummies are extremely featureless and pale."

  "Like a ka?" she asks as we stroll toward the moat of desert landscaping that surrounds the Oasis Hotel. />
  "I have never seen a ka. You would have to ask Karma."

  "Karma?"

  "Have you never met Karma, Miss Electra Lark's reclusive associate?"

  "I spent as little time as I could at the Circle Ritz."

  "A pity. Karma is worth consulting, especially when the Unknown rears its indeterminate head." Actually, I am picturing the territorial dispute if these two headstrong babes should meet. No doubt it would be amusing.

  "I do not need consultants," Miss Louise says as we trot over the cool, shifting sands trucked in from Mexico. "My senses are sharp and reliable."

  Of course I understand the unspoken insult: Midnight Louie is over the hill and too slow to sniff, see and strike these days. Miss Midnight Louise has a lot to learn, but I let her lead the way for the moment.

  The launching area is hidden from public view by a high stucco wall and a swaying conga line of palm trees. A knothole-ridden wooden gate offers our only peek into the area. In the checkered illumination of low-intensity work lights we can see the backstage crew readying the two barges for the next show in fifty minutes.

  "I'm over the gate. See you later, Pop."

  Miss Midnight unsnicks her shivs and is soon scaling the knot holed boards like a feline fly.

  Quite an impressive demonstration of athletic ability and youthful enthusiasm. I watch her plummet to a patch of sand on the other side like a stuntcat. She strolls toward the activity with tail high and not a backward look.

  Too bad. She misses me scaling the gentle slope of a palm tree, thumping down a couple feet atop the stucco wall and then lofting down from oleander bush to wheelbarrow to ground.

  At no time did I tax my limbs or tender pads with a jump of more than two feet. In addition, I was pretty much invisible most of the way, unlike Miss Strut-Your-Stuff Midnight Louise, who is ankling in and out of the work lights like a stripper playing peekaboo with a spotlight.