Right now, though, I am only pretending an interest in the quick-fried cuisine. I am trawling for a sucker, preferably a kid or a middle-aged lady. Dudes are useless for my purpose.
I glance back to mark the spot I want to aim at by the black lump of Three O’Clock’s form. The sun is getting hot, and I do not want him to cook more than the ground beef here.
My nimble mitts quickly spar with my cheeks, giving my snappy white whiskers a tangled and bedraggled look, then I roll over in the sand several times before hitting the asphalt surrounding the café. Yowsa! Hot on the bare tootsies.
I suppose I could say I then “hotfoot” into the restaurant “like a scalded cat.”
No. I am too cagey for that. I duck under the nearest vehicle, where the tarmac is shady and cool. By darting from shade to shade, I am able to approach the exterior tables that afford a nice view of the sandy lonesome that used to be lakefront.
Perfect.
I scoot under the first family-of-five table I can spot. Even more perfect! There I peruse four sets of legs and a child’s seat with kicking tiny tennies barely below chair-seat level.
The sweet sound of kiddie fussing whines above my head. Below I see two sets of large ugly tennies and two sets that barely reach the floor, one accessorized with Hello Kitty pink anklets.
I manage not to toss my cookies at the sight of this supercute kitty face swinging in duplicate so close to mine.
I brush my furry puss on the slender bare leg between anklet and shorts.
A small face ducks under the table level, as if searching for something dropped. The mouth makes a silent elongated O.
It disappears, and a French fry plops down beside me. The grease smell almost knocks me over, and the big dollop of attached tomato ketchup could make an Italian greyhound nauseous. I pull back my whiskers and harf and garf the fry down, even though it is death to my cholesterol count.
Another follows. This one I grab and retreat out of reach to eat in patented Hungry Stray Kitty behavior, which says: You feed and I will eat but Touch Not the Cat.
By then the smallest foot set is beating its heels on the chair legs and screaming up a storm. I must say not even a Siamese cat can compete with a human toddler for range and screech effect when howling.
I look up from burping after downing the second fry to see my Hello Kitty friend crouching on the wooden boards, a grease-stained napkin tucked like a hobo’s kerchief into her ketchup-stained little hand. I even sniff hamburger.
Good girl!
No one is watching as I lure her tidbit-by-tidbit down the few steps and onto the parking lot. Now I am simply picking up the latest offering, another fry, and moving away, hunching over it, watching her approach. Just as she gets within reach, I pick up my fry and retreat.
Nothing is as determined as a nine-year-old animal-loving kid attempting to feed a poor, starving stray kitty.
I have her out on the Lake Mead sandlot and halfway to Three O’Clock’s position before the howling heel-kicker can take a breath for another two-minute aria.
Of course every eye in the place has been surreptitiously glued to the screaming Mimi, and the mortified parents are totally concentrated on trying to stifle the sound without doing anything that would bring in the child-protection agencies.
Meanwhile, they fail to notice that Daughter Dearest is decamping on the trail of a no-doubt filthy, diseased, or even rabid stray cat.
I hate to play on my kind’s totally bad rap or the touching humanity of children, but private dicks are always being forced to cross moral lines, if you go by the books and movies.
By the time I hear the hue and cry raised back at the restaurant veranda, Hello Kitty has forgotten feeding me and is busy watching Three O’Clock wash his whiskers beside the bizarre leg-bone setup.
Shortly after a half dozen hysterical people have assembled, my friend Hello Kitty is snatched up, up, and away, and cell phones are put into instant service.
My major hope is that the angered villagers do not get lethal and decide against leaving stray cats and concrete-imbedded leg bones of unknown origin to the authorities.
Thanks to the urgent lobbying of our friend Hello Kitty Anklets, the hysterical adults are persuaded to withdraw and leave bad enough alone.
Luckily, what is left these days of the electronic media arrives first to get the money shot: Three O’Clock and I licking our outstanding whiskers over the macabre mortal remains.
(I had a devil of a time convincing Three O’Clock to smack his whiskers. He said that was rude and the act of a “whippersnapper.”
I said, “No, it was the act of a whiskersnapper.”)
My next challenge was arranging for us to snatch a ride with a TV-station van back to Vegas, undetected, and before the well-meaning animal-rescue folks took us for mere stray cats and tried to “save” us.
Sigh.
Now my Miss Temple has again tried to “save” me from myself by locking me in. She thinks.
I tell you, being a superhero of your species is very frustrating work. Pleased to have finally safely stowed away Three O’Clock—for his sake and that of Greater Las Vegas—I now have a chance to rest my weary feet and mind, eat something that is not greasy, but desert-dry, like Free-to-Be-Feline, and catch a few Zs. As in Zorro! En garde, world!
The Guggenheim of Gangsters
Las Vegas had its “whales”—big spenders who dropped millions on the gaming tables and were treated like sultans for it.
It also had its architectural “whales”—hotel-casinos lined up along the Strip, each one grander and more expensive than the next and inevitably sliding into “old-hat, second tier” as heaver behemoths sprang up along the eternally elastic Strip.
Yet Vegas had always sported the more budget-minded hotel-casinos among the major glamour-pusses, and smaller outfits had also thrived just off-Strip.
Temple was surprised the next day when Nicky collected Van from her literal ivory tower and herded her and Temple and the entire Glory Hole Gang into one of the Crystal Phoenix complimentary airport vans.
First of all, Van didn’t normally “herd.” Secondly, Temple had never ridden in the hotel’s vans and appreciated the navy blue Ultrasuede upholstery and soft piped-in music. The regular airport round-trip was short, but Vegas traffic could be balky.
Even here Van’s white-glove service showed.
As did her impatience as she tapped one Italian designer pump on the immaculate navy blue carpeting.
Temple, meanwhile, was as excited as a kid heading toward Disneyland. You could live in Vegas and never visit the Hard Rock Hotel, for instance, or even Circus Circus on the Strip. She’d only thought of Gangsters as a limo service with a cool office-cum-parking lot with hot-and-cold-running Fontana brothers running it in turn.
Perhaps the Fontana boys and their cool Italian tailoring had distracted her from looking up any farther than six feet something.
For there’d always been “some building” towering behind the enterprise, and she knew Gangsters was a hotel-casino with some intriguing attractions, but Temple had only visited it a couple of times when funnyman Darren Cooke had appeared there with tragic results in her case called “Flamingo Fedora.” So she’d never really checked it out.
Now she was craning her neck so hard as they approached the car services’ headquarters that the seat belt threatened to decapitate her. Short women often felt more threatened than safeguarded by vehicle seat belts. Temple was beginning to think the auto industry had it in for anyone under five feet four.
Gangsters was another relatively “short stack” hotel, like seven-story Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall, once known as the Barbary Coast, nestled on a Strip corner dominated by towering properties. Bally’s and the Flamingo were on its east side, and Caesars Palace and the Bellagio across the Strip.
Gangsters Hotel-Casino had capitalized on a reputation as a well-kept secret. It was only a block off the Strip and eight stories taller than just plain Bill’s.