Katt Zydeco was showgirl tall, wearing the riding habit look so popular: skintight jeggings and high boots. Her long hair was frankly dyed jet black. Pancake makeup couldn’t disguise the badly pitted complexion some unlucky teenagers carry for life. Katt must be in her late thirties.
Punch Adcock. Hard to say if he was chubby or beefy, but his expression was petulant, and his lips pursed like a rather nasty Cupid’s. His eyes were too close together and his huge shoulders hunched. All in all an unappetizing actor, as the cops might say.
Challenge radiated off both figures. Who are you? Why are you here? We’ll handle you, toots, don’t worry.
Temple had immediately dropped Nemo’s name, sure he was the boss of the operation. Now she had to patty-cake these two unforgiving characters into pretending to be the professional managers they could never be.
Piece of angel-food cake.
“I’m Temple Barr. I do public relations for several on-Strip businesses.”
“Well, we’re in the public relations business ourselves,” Punch said with a smirk at Katt. “We have to beat our customers off with a stick. Like what do you rep?” Punch asked, unconvinced.
“Like Gangsters, both the limo service and hotel-casino, and the Crystal Phoenix Hotel.”
“Sniffs like all Fontana operations. Pure bottled spaghetti sauce.” Punch snorted in distaste. His nose did indeed look hard used from his boxing days.
“It’s true Mama Fontana’s Italian sauce empire underwrote most of the family businesses,” Temple said. “Still, it’s one of the most profitable brands along the Strip, and this project, being a bit off-Strip, could use extra PR promotion.”
“So you’re sneaking around here looking for a job.” Katt Zydeco put one booted foot before the other as she stalked toward the two women.
Electra gave a little mewl of warning and grabbed Temple’s arm.
Temple agreed. These were tough customers. Time to show them a bit of T as in Teflon.
She stepped out on her steel-heeled Weitzman’s to match Katt Zydeco step for step and meet her in the middle.
“Nice boots,” Temple said.
“Nice booties,” Katt said. “I do like the ankle accessory.”
Temple didn’t wear ankle bracelets. Then she felt the velvet brush. She looked down. Midnight Louie, of course, putting one sleek black velvet foot ahead of the other at a pace that had matched the two women’s.
“Something I picked up in a dark alley some time,” Temple said, stopped and shrugging.
“Hope it didn’t require medication,” Katt said. “Nemo is interested in your services?”
“He likes my pedigree.” Temple cocked an eyebrow.
Katt Zydeco stopped her catwalk advance and shrugged in her turn. “If you’re good enough for Nemo, you’re good enough for me.”
“Hey,” Punch said. “What just happened here? We okayed Nemo hiring this little clueless redheaded dame and her cat and her grandmother? Or what?”
Temple flashed one of her cards at him. “Looks like it. Expect to see a lot more of us as the Lust ‘n’ Lace empire expands. We are the total package when it comes to viral social media expansion.”
Punch’s jaw remained dropped at hearing Temple’s jargon, as if hit by a heavyweight. Temple turned Electra around and they left.
She hoped Midnight Louie had followed suit and left with them (but she didn’t look back because it would ruin their exit), so Punch would really be confused.
She was sure Louie’s chronic curiosity would not allow him to leave such a mysterious building unexplored.
9
Girls Club
“Well, Electra,” Temple said on returning to the Circle Ritz lobby, “I guess we’re back in the strip club business.”
“What do you mean?”
“We need to pay Les Girls a visit.”
“Why would we want to visit a strip club,” Electra asked glumly, “when we’ll soon have a new one so conveniently located in our backyard?”
“We’re visiting Lindy Lukas.”
“Lindy Lukas? I don’t know—oh, yeah, the ex-stripper. We met her during the G-string murder case, when I made my stripping debut on Max’s Hesketh Vampire motorcycle.”
“I think the motorcycle stripped more than you did on that occasion, Electra.” Temple’s smile grew sad. “I have one of the stripper’s extra pair of black-cat design spikes, but I’ve never worn them. It’s hard to walk in a murder victim’s shoes.”
“No kidding, but why are we seeing Lindy?”
“I’m guessing if Katt Zydeco was a stripper, Lindy would know her.”
“That’s right. Lindy is head of WHOOPE, the professional strippers organization. What did it stand for again?”
“It was an unforgettably labored group acronym. Not my work. Let’s see. We Have an Organization Of Professional Ecdysiasts.”
“Ecdysiasts describes snakes shedding their skins, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“That doesn’t seem fair,” Electra said. “From what you learned at the stripping contest, some of them are from abusive backgrounds. They’re hardly snakes.”
“And some of them are savvy self-employed businesswomen. You can’t stereotype them, so let’s see what Lindy knows about the new game in town.”
Visiting a strip club in Las Vegas meant mingling with a crowd, even in the middle of the afternoon.
Neon sandwiched Les Girls inside and out. Its several stages fostered a sense of intimacy over the space of a football field of skimpily clad flesh. Acts were mostly aimed at men, but women and couples populated the milling audience.
The Frenchified name invoked Les Miz, the nickname of the smash musical made from Victor Hugo’s downer novel Les Miserables, “Les” being the French for “the”. “The Girls” were the consortium of strippers and ex-strippers who owned it.
When Temple asked to see Lindy, she and Electra were escorted to the office by a tanned hunk wearing only a black satin posing pouch and bow tie. They skirted what looked like a Roman orgy scene featuring rock-hard pecs both female and male. Temple found women’s naked breast implants, all equally round and hard, as sexy as pink rubber duckies, but she wasn’t a man. She was also a 32A, so might be prejudiced.
“It’s so plastic,” Electra commented. “Having something like this attracting crowds and parking and noise twenty-four-seven would drive out my tenants and kill my wedding clientele. The battle’s lost.”
“Hang in there,” Temple said, regretting the expression at once, given their escort.
Lindy’s office reeked of twice the cigarette smoke in the performing area outside, but when the door shut, the raunchy music and din died.
“Hey.” Lindy rose from behind her huge, paper-covered desk. “It’s the gals from the stripper contest, Miss Nancy Drew, Jr., and Ms. Motorcycle Mama. Is that killer cat of yours still smokin’ and tokin’? Miss…Tempe as in Arizona, isn’t it?”
“Temple as in Acropolis. No, Midnight Louie never inhales anything but his food, as long as it isn’t Free-to-Be Feline.”
“Say, my Chauncey loves that Free-to-Be stuff, but he’s just a ‘found’ cat, nothing Fancy Feasty.”
“The best kind, like Louie.”
“Have a seat, if you can shovel ’em off.”
They followed her advice, heaping more papers on the desk.
“I see,” Temple said, “you have a desktop computer. Haven’t you gone paperless yet?”
“No,” said Lindy, “and I haven’t quit smoking yet either.”
Temple had judged Lindy as a plain speaker from the first time she met her, which was why they’d come here. Lindy’s T-shirt and jeans covered a buxom frame that hinted at a previous life as a Nature’s Best hourglass figure, back when she was performing stripper.