Midnight Louie 05-Cat in a Diamond Dazzle

by Douglas, Carole Nelson

  "What walk-on with the guys?"

  "Every contestant comes out first on the arm of what they call 'a romance industry professional,' "

  Troy explained. "That could be a cover artist or even an editor, not jest a book-writer."

  Nance grinned. "Gives the ladies a chance to get all gussied up and get their names and their book titles or whatever called out," Nance said. "They do put on the pooch."

  Troy frowned. "Speaking of dogs, I sure hope I don't get one for my escort this year," Troy said.

  "Honey, that batch of ladies are worrying the same thing about you guys right now, don't you fret."

  Nance was laughing.

  "So the matchups aren't announced yet?" Temple asked.

  "Naw, we do that on pageant day," Troy said. "It don't keep the ladies from coming around, though.

  They want to know what the setup is, and what they have to do. 'Course, they gotta wear high heels and those long dresses, and this runway is pretty dicey. They're in and out of here all of the time."

  "Speaking of which, I have to check on something backstage."

  Temple excused herself to follow Molina's route up to the stage, her mind churning. It sounded like everybody and anybody at the convention could find an excuse to be backstage, and as if no one would be noticed. Temple hoped Molina had somehow found her way out. She arrived behind the curtain, relieved to spot no familiar face, although she recognized the various portions of male anatomy hustling to and fro in an undressed condition. She'd just think of England and forget about it.

  But where was Danny Dove?

  She asked that question of a guy nailing down a section of the raised backstage ramp Troy had mentioned. He gestured left, so she edged into the wings to find Danny consulting with the sound man.

  "Let's set a level and keep it," Danny was saying, "no matter what. I hate it when the sound goes up and down like a see-saw. So unprofessional."

  He turned away and saw Temple waiting.

  "Hello, Miss Muffett. What can I do for you?"

  Temple edged nearer the wall, for more privacy. "I need a favor."

  "You need only ask."

  "I want to get closer to the pageant. I need a reason to hang around."

  "You can be my assistant and carry my clipboard." Danny slapped this everpresent artifact against his blue-jeaned leg.

  "Something that gets me in greater contact with the contestants."

  Danny's lowered blond eyebrows forced his forehead into corrugations of worry. "I thought we had a boyfriend."

  "I did, too. Had, past tense. And that has nothing to do with my request. My aunt Kit said the best way to get acquainted with the contestants was to be a model in the pose-down."

  Danny's eyebrows seemed to be leaving the planet.

  "Who is your aunt? The Mayflower Madam? Do you know what the pose-down is?"

  "It sounds like something in wrestling."

  His laugh was loud, long and delighted. "So it is, in a way." He pulled her deeper into the shadows and lowered his voice. "Dear girl, do you have any idea of what you're putting yourself in for? No, of course not. The pose-down is the pageant's third and final tier. First the boys come out in evening clothes with authoresses and other interesting and interested females on their arms. Piece of cake. Then they come out solo and introduce themselves. Then they come out bareback."

  "Everybody rides a horse?"

  "I was speaking literally. It's the equivalent of the swimsuit competitions in women's beauty pageants, except that too many hairy legs might offend the refined sensibilities of this particular audience, so our boys wear tight jeans, or less, and a broad smile."

  Temple nodded. She was not surprised that, with the amount of upper body development on some of these guys, inspecting their progress would serve everybody's mutual interest.

  "The third, and final, heat--if you'll excuse the expression under these circumstances--is the pose-down."

  Temple nodded seriously.

  "That's when the men come out in costumes fit for a historical romance cover and assume cover poses with young lady models."

  "That doesn't sound too hard."

  "Oh, my dear. I have tossed a ballerina or two around a stage in my time, but that is nothing compared to this. You must be prepared to be nuzzled, nibbled, smooched and pawed by almost-nude savages who are seeking a like degree of dishabille from you. You must expect to have your skirt pushed up and your bodice pushed down. You will suffer from tickling hairs, particularly from these pre-Delilah Samson types. You will be bent backward like a bow. You may be thrown belly-down over a shoulder like a feed sack. You may even be, horror of horrors, 'dipped.' "

  "What is ... dipped?"

  "You have done the tango?"

  "Not in this lifetime."

  " 'Dipping' is similar, but much deeper and it should be performed by an expert, 'else the dippee, that is to say the lady, could suffer permanent back injury."

  As he spoke, Danny took Temple's hand, then whirled and tilted her until her torso was horizontal to the floor. She had a swirling impression of the wires and flats in the flies above. She had a sense of bending over backward until she broke. She had a tummy-churning fear that she would fall or be dropped much farther than the distance to the wooden backstage floor.

  "You see?" Danny brought her up slowly, with perfect control, but she could feel his arm muscles trembling with strain. "And I am a professional. I have done this for a living. These guys are, on the whole, untrained amateurs."

  "Do I have to get dipped?" Temple inquired in a small voice.

  "It won't be your choice, believe me." Danny threw his hands up. "That's all these unoriginal bozos know to do with a woman. They want to come out, show their muscles and dip the nearest female.

  When you are dipped, you must not try to hold your head up. It creates too much strain, and besides you want a long, vulnerable throat line so the gentleman can go for your jugular like Dracula, and then you will have to try not to sneeze when his languishing locks tickle your nose."

  Temple blinked.

  "In addition," said Danny, "you must keep on your face at all times a vacant, simpering expression that says you find the proceedings so impossibly exciting that you can hardly wait for the next gentleman caller and the next nauseating dip."

  "That really doesn't sound too much different than the high school prom," Temple said. Still, she knew the secret terror of someone who announces that she will go on a really big roller-coaster ride and then wishes she hadn't. "I've had some acting experience. And in high school, I even played the shrew in Shakespeare's, The Taming of."

  "Hah! In that play Katarina gets to knock the men around. In these vignettes, they will be pouncing on you. And imagine how two-hundred-and-twenty pounds of unfeeling muscle feels when it pounces in its own clumsy, oafish way."

  Temple didn't have to imagine. She recalled the dubious benefits of having been uplifted by the adorable Fabrizio. For one of her petite size, these muscle men seemed abnormally huge and hazardous to her health. Still, a pose-down model would have a golden opportunity to get to know the contestants, and to find out what the contestants knew about Cheyenne's death.

  "I appreciate the warning, Danny, but I'm afraid I have to do it."

  "You are inserting yourself into another life-and-death situation." He was speaking of more than the pose-down. "Why?"

  "Lieutenant Molina asked me to tell her the lay of the land."

  "Lieutenant Molina did not mean undercover investigation."

  Temple sighed. "Cheyenne wanted to talk to me the night before he died. I didn't take him seriously, but I think he had suspicions."

  "Why would he come to you?"

  "I'm good at figuring things out. Except I didn't figure out that he wanted to speak to me about something important. He never got another chance.

  Danny shook his head. "I'll try to assign you the contestants with the least resemblance to King Kong, but I can't control everything." He thought. "And
I don't want another murder. Especially yours."

  "You think that there might be one?"

  "Don't you?"

  "I don't even have a full suspect list for this one yet." That reminded her that Danny was the perfect person to ask about something that had been bothering her, if only she had the nerve.

  "Was Cheyenne bisexual?" Temple asked bluntly.

  Danny hesitated for a long time. "Sexual preferences aside, I'd say he had a universal soul. He was soft inside, if you know what

  I mean, with a very thin protective shell. He meant well. He had charisma, but it was built on deference. He wanted to be . . . useful to people. Maybe that was all kinds of people in all kinds of ways.

  Maybe that meant being used at times. He wasn't a user, though."

  "You liked him."

  Danny nodded. "I thought he was too nice for this game. I guess I was right." He glanced at Temple.

  "What do you think of these Incredible Hunks? As a woman, I mean."

  "Me? I'm the undercover investigator. I don't have an opinion."

  Sure you do." Danny crossed his arms and grinned.

  "I don't even read romance novels. Well, I didn't until I got here and had a few thrust upon me.

  There's such a range in the books, from embarrassing adolescent drivel to extremely sophisticated literary sagas. I notice the same range in the cover models. Some seem all muscle on the outside, the equivalent of the ever-popular female bimbo, with hair mousse for brains and the sensitivity of a moose--north woods variety. Others are accomplished, attractive, well-rounded performers. They all have a public persona, though, that one would do well not to take too seriously."

  She sighed and joined Danny in leaning against the wall. "I did that with Cheyenne. He approached me for a drink the night before he died, and I brushed him off. My friends were teasing me, and I didn't want to be taken for a vain, silly woman with a flattery threshold of zero. I think he wanted to talk to me because he was worried about something. He was on the scene when I meddled in the stripper killings.

  You know, I underestimated him because he looked too good to be true. And now he's dead."

  "Hey!" Danny shook her arm. "You're not superwoman. One chat wouldn't have stopped a murderer." He looked amused suddenly. "Are you always so contrary with the opposite sex?"

  "You mean Matt. That's right, you met him. He's too good looking to be true, too, but he is. It's me I distrust, not them. I don't want to be hooked by the shallow."

  "Then move out of Las Vegas, honey! Nothing on the Strip is more than skin deep, not even the skin."

  "You didn't answer my original question. Was Cheyenne bi- sexual? I'm not just being nosy. If true, it would enlarge the cast of suspects, and the range of motives. Lieutenant Molina asked me to background her."

  "The Dragon Lady of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department is taking hints from amateurs?"

  "She's keeping an open mind. What about Cheyenne, bisexual or no?"

  "Probably." Danny shrugged. "I didn't pay much attention to the daily do-si-do. Some people--gay and heterosexual--do like the edge of being with someone who cuts both ways."

  "Even in the age of AIDS?"

  "Especially in the age of AIDS. You forget that gays aren't the only ones who run on self-loathing. The promiscuous lifestyle isn't 'gay' in the old sense, or glamorous and knowing, or even smart. If being gay can be hell, I imagine that being bisexual nowadays can be purgatory."

  "I'm surprised. I would have thought you, of all people, would be comfortable with your orientation."

  He laughed, as if to say, "Oh, you kid!"

  "Look, darling girl. The flagrant act is a kind of bravado, and a kind of defiance. Even straight theater people spread around the easy affection, because we all graduated from the same Odd Duck School.

  We're family, all of us in the sweetie, dearie, darling set, who assemble and disperse for temporary shows, temporary togetherness. There's both an intimacy and an eternal isolation.

  "High school was hell, and being openly gay was suicide in my day. You barely begin to guess who you are at that age, sexual preferences aside, except that you know you don't fit in a thousand ways."

  "Who does fit?" Temple wondered suddenly. "Do all the supposedly cool kids really feel so sure behind the facade?"

  "A few are cursed with no self-doubts. That's why the supercool kids in high school never amount to much afterward. That was it. Their peak. At least the ugly ducklings are still waddling toward swanhood later in life."

  Danny leaned against the homely concrete wall by the back-stage phone. With its graffiti of phone numbers, it reminded Temple of a set from West Side Story.

  "Anyway," he went on. "I knew as soon as I hit high school that my social life was going to be non-existent. I was already being called queer for taking dance lessons, then I realized that I wasn't going to be any Adonis, or any taller than five and a half feet. Kids like me back then usually found an older guy outside high school who would use us, or we might use them. Which was which wasn't always clear. But I still had to ask some poor girl to the high school prom, and sweat it that she'd turn me down, or--

  worse--think that my invitation meant something. After I got out, I stumbled into the underground gay scene. And then I did it all, took all those risks, too soon and too long. And I developed my front-fag, my swish and bravado just so everybody would know where I was coming from, especially me. Hey, it keeps women from getting the wrong idea, heaven forbid. Well, I guess heaven wouldn't want to forbid that, a gender-preference conversion, but it ain't gonna happen. I'm so gay that I don't understand bisexuals."

  "Me neither," Temple agreed. "Sometimes I think celibacy is the simplest answer."

  "You?" Danny mocked her. "Miss Hot Redhead of the nineties? Besides, do you know any happy celibates?"

  "Maybe. At least they're disease-free."

  "And emotionally empty, I've got to believe. At least I was when I was celibate. I don't believe in taking physical risks, but emotional risks are always necessary."

  He paused, regarding Temple with a stark serious face that made carefree Danny Dove look like his own worried older brother. Even his happy, curly hair seemed to have straightened.

  "I'm not the gadabout gay you think. I have a partner," he said, still in a sober mood. "We've been together--monogamous--for seven years. He had HIV when we met, but he's hanging in there. Safe sex, of course, which is a bore but better than regret after the ball is over, so to speak." Danny's bawdy laugh deliberately broke the mood. Temple suspected he seldom allowed anyone to see his serious side.

  "Seven years. That's . . . great." Like all supportive murmurs, hers was vague and somehow inadequate. Even Temple wasn't sure whether she referred to the duration of Danny's relationship or the duration of his partner's survival. But Danny didn't care about the quality of her cue lines; he was reciting from his life story.

  "He's a landscaper. Really into xeroscape--native water-sparing plants. I worry about melanoma, out in this hot sun so much. I make him wear sunscreen, nag him about hats. He hates hats."

  She nodded. She hated hats, too, almost as much as she loved shoes.

  "And then I think--" Danny made a self-deprecating face. "Hey, at least what he does has a life beyond a few hours on stage. If he dies--when he dies--there won't only be a grave to visit. There'll be all those scrubby little, ecology-saving cactus corners to drive by every day. ..."

  "I'm sorry," Temple said, voice breaking and eyes welling. She disguised her emotional downfall by hugging Danny.

  His reciprocal hug nearly cracked her ribs. "You've got heart, girl." His voice was raw. "Don't you let anybody break it."

  Easier said than done, Temple thought, especially when she herself seemed bent on imperiling it.

  Chapter 23

  Catfood vs. Dogmeat

  I like to consider myself a pretty liberated guy, despite the usual hoots at that idea from the Midnight Louise corner. (And why, do you suppose, would such a
liberated little doll keep a name that is a rip-off of her unesteemed pater familias felinus?)

  Still, I must admit that some modern-day scenarios are enough to turn a few of my muzzle hairs gray, and I do not need any artificial assistance in that area nowadays.

  Scenario is exactly the word to describe the situation that has made a successful takeover bid on my mind these days, to the exclusion of such usually distracting and juicy subjects as Chef Song's koi pond and Miss Temple Barr's latest murder victim. (Although she and I share living quarters, we also share a penchant for dead bodies; we differ only in how they arrive in that state and what we desire to do with them afterward. Miss Temple is consumed by the cause and effects of said dead condition; I cause the condition and consume the effects. Except for these wee differences, we have much in common.) In the case of human demise, I can confine myself to pure curiosity: death as an intellectual exercise. This is why I have been so useful to Miss Temple during her homicidal adventures.

  But these days I have little appetite for the quick or the dead of any species, even the slow of paw and fin. I suffer from emotional indigestion, and the reason is simple: the ladylove of my life, the Divine Yvette, is pussyfooting up the stairway to stardom with some other dude.

  That he is a well-known media figure is yet another claw in my coffin.

  So while Miss Temple noses around below-stage, having put herself into the unenviable position of Incredible Hunk playmate, I play games of a different sort in a sequestered ballroom at the Crystal Phoenix. There the Divine Yvette is going for the animal acting Oscar by waxing enthusiastic over the latest Incredible Gunk designed to catch the feline fancy.

  If the script calls for her to throw cat fits over co-star Maurice, she will be a natural for the Incredible Acting award.

  I find my way onto the closed set by braving the kitchen during breakfast hour, under the cover of every stainless steel cart in sight. Should Chef Song spy me eeling beneath these low-lying islands of safety and concealment, I would lose more than a few loose hairs. His meat cleaver would give my coat a center-part so deep that I would develop a permanently split personality. And my nine lives would be down to four and a half and counting.