I figure they're paid a lot less than we think, as in every entertainment medium, on the other . . . before you sign a contract you should have an agent check into it."
"Photographs, agents; this is getting to be too much hassle. It just balloons. I don't even know what to wear."
"Let me think about it. I used to art-direct photo shoots for actors all the time. In fact, if you don't mind, l could be there for the actual shoot."
"I don't know how Ambrosia . . . Leticia would "feel about that."
"WCOO, huh? Seven to midnight. I'll listen in."
"Temple, I don't want you wasting a lot of time on my new job. I know you've got other things to do."
"Yeah, well, that's the great thing about freelance work. It's seasonal, in a way. With the Crystal Phoenix putting me on retainer for this Jersey Joe Jackson action-ride and theme-park expansion. I'm in pretty good shape financially. And so . . . l have a little extra time right now."
She didn't sound happy about it. So where is Max, then? He wanted to ask. But he wouldn't.
"I would feel better about this circus if you were along," he admitted. "I feel like an alien abductee in Radioland."
She laughed. "I bet. It's a hectic, crazy business."
When they hung up, Matt felt both pleased and disturbed.
Chapter 21
A Little White Lie
While I relax at Mr. Matt's digs, my mind returns to my recent epic effort in stage-managing the scene of the crime, entering instant rerun mode: Although our impromptu burial detail has been exhausting, Midnight Louise and I still have a busy day ahead of us.
We are headed downtown, and the only regular transportation in that direction between here and there is the animal control vehicle, and we do not particularly wish to be on the scene when it arrives to find the advertised body in absentia.
We stake out a likely intersection that otters the cover of some oleander bushes, which are even better for concealment than the potted palm of hotel-lobby legend.
When a white pickup truck idles at a red light, we leap as one into its empty bed.
Well, it's almost empty bed. Luckily, the sleeping dog that is lying near the cab has a collar and short chain on to keep it from jumping out of the truck when the vehicle is red-balling it at seventy miles down the freeway. (Dogs are dumb that way.) The chain also keeps it from lumping two hitch hiding cats not three feet away, although the dog, a Doberman-Rottweiler cross that would give pit bulls a bad name, stands up to curse us mightily for several blocks.
"Shaddupl" shouts the driver from the open front seat window.
Midnight Louise and I hunker down so the dog will look like he is kicking up the usual fuss over nothing, and do not so much as fluff our fur over the commotion.
So we provide good cause for this chained-down Rover to broaden his vocabulary for some three miles, before I spot the tarnished lady-with-a-red-lamp of downtown Les Vegas, the fish-tailed sweetheart of the Blue Mermaid Motel.
We are fleet shadows over the truck-bed side at the first red light to stop the vehicle in the downtown business area.
I head away from the spectacularly roofed mall over the major hotel and casinos here, toward the older side of town, which is to say seedier, which is to say the more interesting.
Here is where one can find Reprise, an establishment devoted to used records. So l tell Miss Midnight Louise when we arrive before its old-fashioned, narrow glass door with a big wooden frame.
A paper streamer slashing across a display window filled with dusty album covers announces
"Vinyl Clearance."
"I thought we needed a nose, not ears," Miss Louise carps.
"You need to keep your mind open and your mouth shut. Let me handle the negotiations."
A brick holds the door slightly ajar. The scratchy tones of some golden oldie album watts out the crack like the soundtrack of something in which Peter Lorre is murdered, or should be.
Inside, a subtle veil of dust motes drifts in air that is scented with stale cigarette smoke.
A couple customers stand in the aisles, paging through ancient album covers.
I weave my way through the display cabinets toward a doorway to the shop's rear, in which a beaded plastic curtain hangs.
"Quaint," Midnight Louise notes as we slip through the shimmying strands of grass-green, orange, and yellow.
No one seems to be around back here, but I am not worried.
I am not looking for the proprietor of this recycled record emporium, one Earl E. Byrd by name.
"There he is!" I announce, as my sharp eyes spot a familiar profile.
Midnight Louise's skeptical look sweeps up and around the room. "You need assistance in the eye department as well as the nose, Daddio."
I shake my head. Kits these days. They think they know it all.
"Try under the desk."
Louise lets the airy hairs above her eyes do a doubtful hula.
"You mean that dust bunny by the right front leg?"
I walk on over, and bend down to sniff the scrap of white fuzz on its wet black nose. lck!
That is another thing about dogs. Their snouts are always cold and waterlogged. Luckily, Nose E.'s eponymous schnozzola is as petite as the professional sniffer himself.
He yawns, showing rows of teeth the size of nine-day-old kitten claws. "Who's the babe?"
I lean low enough to flip back one of his droopy ears. "That is no babe, that is my, er, temporary assistant. She is very up on politically correct forms of address and such, as well as equipped with itchy trigger fingers."
Nose E. peers at Louise through the fringe of white hairs that has escaped the little red bow on his noggin--a bow that pulls his facial hair into a perky fountain of long topknot. I prefer to think of it as something a Japanese warrior might do to keep his coif battle-ready, but the fact is that Nose E. is Maltese, not Japanese. Although he descends through the noble wolf-spitz clan which boasts such big-boned members as malamutes and huskies and the Samoyed, oh my, Nose E. is the wart on the end of the family line: about four pounds of silky white hair over three pounds of ridiculously small body.
But while Nose E. is asking about the identity and purpose of Midnight Louise, she is pawing at my back and not keeping her nails in either.
"Sssst! Pops. Gotta talk."
I excuse myself to Nose E. and accompany Louise under a chair for a hasty consultation.
"I hate to tell you this," she begins, "but if that dust bunny is not second-cousin to a long-haired guinea pig, I will eat it. And I could, very easily. That shrimp must weigh less than a squirrel."
"Nose E. is not one to throw his weight around, that is true.
But he has the best nose in the business."
"Nose? I have known dust mites with proboscises that were bigger."
"Size is not everything, at least in this case. Nose E. is the primo dope-and-bomb--sniffer in the country. He and Earl E. have attended gigs from movie openings to presidential inaugurations. Nose E. goes undercover as a lap dog, but this lap dog is never napping. He may look cute nestled up to some starIet's implants, but one wrong perk of his paw and the undercover cops are all over anyone carrying illicit drugs or incendiary devices."
"That . . . Mite E. Mouse?"
"When will you learn that appearances can be deceiving? You thought at first that I was a big lazy galoot, and took how wrong that was."
"How wrong was that?"
"Plenty," I growl. "Now let me deal with Nose E."
So I ankle over to the little halt-pint and till him in on the problem, laying it on heavy about the widow in the window. Dogs are always a sentimental sort.
Soon l have him whimpering into his paws, but l do not want to overdo the shtick, as too much sentimentality will clog up Nose E.'s main asset.
He scoots out from under the desk, shakes himself oft, and declares himself ready to follow the scent at the some of the crime to the ends of the earth.