“Less than a year in this area. You stopped consulting me long before that. Apparently you joined the flight to All Things Internet, as my employer faced rising rents and dwindling brick-and-mortar customers.”
“No, Ingram. Trust me. I interact with the Internet only when an errant toe activates it if my Miss Temple has left it on.”
“Hmm. Now you need some live-and-in-person information and have come crawling back to me for free advice and research, I suppose.”
“Er, I do not crawl.”
“I would advise you to at least beseech if you want anything here.”
“I only need important information about Las Vegas history that may result in a renaissance for the Thrill ‘n’ Quill and all its literary works.”
“And you are going to accomplish this all by your large little self?”
“Can the oxymorons. Our two closest human associates will benefit, if we can prepare the ground for a fruitful future.”
“You are saying a farmer’s market will be joining this sorry little street of broken retail dreams?”
“Not necessarily, although it is not a bad idea. I was speaking metaphorically,” I point out.
“That is too great a leap for a lowlife like you. Try plain English, if you can.”
I hold my temper and shivs in check. “Someone vandalized the Lovers’ Knot wedding chapel attached to the Circle Ritz and someone was killed in the old empty building down the street the other direction. You need to help me assist Miss Electra Lark, who owns the very floor your feet pad upon. If we can prove that this man named Dyson’s killing is linked to an outfit that tried to force Dyson, Miss Electra’s ex-spouse, to sell his property in the area, the ladies can launch a new, improved retail concept.”
“Human relationships are intricate and often deadly. You are saying Miss Maeveleen may be forced to move again otherwise?” Ingram’s furrowed brown brow resembles corrugated cardboard. He sure is slow on the uptake.
“Yes! The purchasing party intends to turn the building into a huge strip-tease and sex salon club.”
“Oh, my. What a sleazy twist of fate. Miss Maeveleen refused to carry Fifty Shades of Gray and now she would have its associated unmentionable products sold practically next door.” Ingram shudders.
I lean close. “Then tell me about the building. I broke in to survey the crime scene and got a weird vibe there. I heard tell it has had many uses through the years before it ended up as an abandoned antique mall. There must be a reason someone was killed over it and the land it occupies.”
I know I have Ingram in the center pad of my mitt when he curls his clipped nails against his chest and narrows his eyes. “This is not the first instance of homicidal violence on that site.”
I am not a dunce when it comes to feline psychology. I assume a “mirroring” posture to further cement Ingram’s decision to be my confidential informant once again. “You do not say. How do you know?”
“It was in a book. Everything is. It would not do you harm, Louie, to spend more time warming the covers of a good book than warming a TV remote between your tender pads.”
My jet-black pads are way more street-seasoned than Ingram’s effete paddies, but I nod without defensive comment, and go on. “Miss Electra says the building has had many previous tenants, back to its start as a nightclub.”
“A nightclub?” Ingram sounds indignant. “Do you have any idea what kind of a nightclub?”
“I suppose the place offered the usual ho-hum human pursuits, strong drink and silly dances.”
“Hmm. You are basically right for a change, but we are talking about the post-World War Two, pre-Strip Las Vegas, when Bugsy Siegel took over the creation of the Flamingo Hotel for the Chicago Outfit.”
I am no scholar, but Vegas is my beat and I know its landmark moments. “That entire building is indeed a monument if it dates back that far. I also know a fragment of the original Flamingo is rumored to still exist in the current, many times remodeled version.”
Ingram’s front shivs mangle the needle-pointed pillow that bears his name. He must be auditioning for a cat cozy mystery cover.
“Imbecile,” he murmurs with a French accent. “The nightclub here was a secret site.”
“Secret?” All my PI instincts quiver.
“Underground.”
“Literally, or figuratively?” I ask, giving an amused, intellectual sniff. Two can play at that game.
“Both,” he ripostes, tapping the top of my mitt with a sharp nail. I guess you could call it a literal riposte.
I wait with bated, and baited breath. I would not want a whiff of my lunchtime tuna braised in shrimp sauce to distract Ingram from a revelation.
“You will recall,” he goes on with a yawn, “that during Prohibition bathtub gin and other illegal quaffs were served in private clubs, often below-ground in basements.”
“I recall, but not personally.”
“Later, during World War Two another item of culture was forbidden.”
“Marijuana?”
“Well, yes, that, but this was in the wearing apparel category.”
“All right. I give up. The only wearing apparel I am up to date on are my Miss Temple’s high-heeled shoes and the collars forced upon domestic dogs. And perhaps a certain flamingo-pink fedora once forced upon me during my À la Cat TV commercial days.”
Ingram has ignored me. “The establishment I reference featured swing dancing and such popular new libations of the decade as the Martini, Manhattan, Gimlet. Whiskey Sour, Gin rickey, Sidecar, Brandy Alexander, Brandy Stinger, Pink Lady, Tom Collins, Rob Roy, Sloe gin fizz, Bloody Mary, and the Shirley Temple.”
By the end of this recital I am doing a Slow Gin Fizz in anticipation of a possible slugging match between Tom and Rob, and Mary and Shirley.
“Rum,” Ingram drones on, “was in more supply during the war years, so rum cocktails like the Hurricane and the Dark ‘n’ Stormy were invented then.”
“Where do you pick up this stuff?”
“The museum of the American Cocktail in New Orleans was drowned out by hurricane Katrina and relocated to the late Aladdin Hotel Desert Passage for almost two years in the mid-2000s. Any true connoisseur of Las Vegas would know that.” Ingram lifts three eyebrow whiskers and looks down his common pink nose at me.
“You are talking of a bunch of recent has-beens. What about this old-time underground joint in the building just a few pit stops up the street?”
Ingram rubs his pads together, preparing to deliver one of his endless lectures from which I will get a few measly nubs of useful information.
“The place was called Zoot Suit Choo-Choo. It was where hep cats and hipsters wearing zoot suits danced to swing music and tossed their lady friends and long, long watch chains around like dough in a Pizzeria. Miss Maeveleen keeps a poster of an old cartoon movie short called Zoot Suit Cat on her wall, if you can bestir yourself to pad over to her desk and look.”
This will require a leap down, an amble among freestanding bookshelves, and a leap up.
“A picture is worth a thousand words, Louie,” Ingram snickers.
So I make the trek and confront the strangest getup I have ever seen on a feline standing upright like a man. It makes my flaming flamingo fedora pale by comparison, from the flat wide-brimmed hat to the long coat with big shoulder pads over pantaloons starting under the forelimbs and bagging down until tight at the ankles. This literal “hep cat” is swinging a watch chain so long it could lasso a llama. This is the zoot-suit getup worn by the dudes I saw cavorting during my basement dream state.