Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

The first underground attraction had borne his name and gone belly up. Temple didn’t want to jinx this new project that Nicky had his heart set upon.

Lake Mean

It is about an hour’s drive from Vegas to Temple Bar, which is actually in—shhh!—Arizona.

State lines are iffy around the meandering shoreline of Lake Mead and the soaring bulk of Hoover Dam. They are easier to find on a map or as the crow flies.

Imagine how thrilled I am to see roadside signs advertising Temple Bar Days, apparently a new annual April shindig. They spelled my roommate’s name wrong, though, using only one r in Barr.

They are always doing that to me as well.

Louis! I see my name written that way again and again.

What do they think I am? A foppish French monarch with a tail of Roman numerals attached to his first name like fleas? I am all-American and the One and Only moi, thank you. Merci. Arrive-derci, Roman.

Lou-ee. That is my name. Plain and fancy. Capital L, small o-u-i-e. Such a meaning-laden name. Except for an a, it is a compact and elegant assembly of all the vowels in the English language. A portmanteau name, as the French might put it. Okay. No a. But I have always been a the, rather than a mere a.

The feline PI in Vegas, as opposed to a feline PI in Vegas.

I suppose Miss Midnight Louise would take exception to my claim, but she is a rank upstart. I was in this town first and foremost. In fact, the way she tells it, she would not be here were it not for me and my unsanctioned love life.

Anyway, all my observations of the physical sort on this road trip are confined to craning my neck at banners visible in the upper area of the windshield. I am a stowaway, riding behind the gearbox amid the perfume of oily rags, dusty boots, and Red Man chewing tobacco.

The radio blares out “Redneck Woman” to match, while I picture what my Miss Temple would think of my current … er, ambience. Thus amused, I wait for the driver to gather up his invoices before dismounting. I have about half a second to tumble outside on his work-boot heels before the heavy truck door will bisect me like a bug.

I hover behind his sweat-stained seat, lunging and retreating twice as he remembers another piece of paperwork and turns back to claw it into his grubby mitt.

Although it is only April, every little reek is magnified by the sun’s heat beating down on hot metal like it was my personal toaster oven.

At last we both set foot on the desert floor and go our separate ways. He stomps over to a mobile-home office, where the cement mixer disgorges Butch, who immediately trots off on his rounds. I scuttle into the gravel truck’s shade to inhale a few deep breaths of the sage and creosote bushes.

The Mojave Desert is not my favorite perfumery, not like a New York New York Hotel delicatessen, say. But I will take Ma Nature over manmade smells any day.

When I edge into the open to explore, I quickly discover that Temple Bar is not the place I used to know.

Oh, the marina and café are still there, and so are the rambling wooden verandas of Three O’Clock Louie’s restaurant and bar. But the shoreline boats are bobbing a couple football-field lengths from where they did when last I saw them, and there is a long rambling bridge from the highway to Three O’Clock Louie’s. Over dry desert!

What the hell—? Oh. Three O’Clock’s does not even look operational. Good news for the café next door scarfing up all the business. Bad news for my esteemed sire of the same name. Butch claimed my dear old dad had sent for me, but maybe his license has expired by now too. Sudden accidental death is not unknown to our kind.

With these dire thoughts, I start padding over the wooden bridge toward the deserted restaurant. I suppose in these hard times many eating establishments have faded away like old soldiers, but I am getting worried about the old dudes who founded and ran this place. Collectively, they were once known as the Glory Hole Gang, and they had “retired” to one of Nevada’s innumerable ghost towns before being persuaded back into what passes for civilized society these days.

Come to think of it, I have not heard any fresh reports of Jersey Joe Jackson’s ectoplasm showing up in the Crystal Phoenix Ghost Suite either. I will have to get Midnight Louise on that as soon as I get back.

Meanwhile, I have arrived at the restaurant proper, once on the lapping waters of Lake Mead and now as high and dry as an old hippie on weed. The building is shuttered and obviously empty.

So who was around to feed Three O’Clock enough to keep fur and claw together, so he could survive to send Butch for me? Certainly not Eightball O’Rourke, sometimes Vegas PI. Nor his old-time cohorts, Wild Blue Pike, Pitchblende O’Hara, Cranky Ferguson, and Spuds Lonnigan.