Cooke was a man of many talents. Comic, film actor, cabaret performer. He looked as lethal as Sam Spade in his angled fedora and wide lapels, his profile a deep, hawkish shadow behind him. He could have been John Garfield or James Cagney, those macho masters of menace in a dozen gangland sagas. At first glance he was Tyrone Power-handsome except ... his looks just missed leading man, which was why his format was the spoof, the takeoff, the almost-serious impression that turns on itself to go for laughs instead of thrills and chills.
It weren't as if Cooke had Crosby's ears or Hope's nose. Nothing so obvious. But like Steve Martin or Jim Carrey, he seemed more natural mocking himself. Now he was featured in a revue mocking Las Vegas' mobster roots.
"They're rehoising, lady." A thug, also obviously from Brooklyn via Central Casting, paused in cruising the casino aisle to eye her suspiciously as she hesitated before the theater.
"That's okay, bud. I'm here to pick up one of the cast members ." Quite literally "pick up."
"I guess you can go in, but keep it shut."
Temple wondered whether he meant her mouth or her mind. She ducked past the entrance curtain (nice touch) and down the slanted aisle toward the only lights and action in the theater, the stage with its cast of dozens milling about.
Nothing onstage held anything but a passing interest for her. She headed for a line of bored and downcast people slouching in the first row, fencing in two bored and downcast cats.
"Is Louie done?" Temple bent to ask the director in a whisper. Maybe Louie could get her guest passes to the show, now that he was a card-carrying member of the animal performer's union.
Kyle Conrad was an acidic man in his forties, whom she suspected of secretly hating cats.
"Apparently," he said. "Mr. Comedy King onstage has called for so many reruns that they haven't even gotten to the 'Viva Las Vegas' number on whose coattails we're supposed to ride."
"Don't you mean cattails?" put in one of the commercial stylists, a bouncy twenty-something woman named Marcy Givens.
Temple was amazed. "But this is your second day on the set. You mean you haven't even gotten a chance yet to block out the scenario?"
"We're a charity operation," Kyle said. "Charity operations sit around on their cans day in and day out."
"But then ..." Temple was shocked. "Poor Louie's been confined to that awful carrier all day for nothing."
Temple brushed past the stalled crew members to crouch beside the carrier in question. A pair of resentful green eyes stared out from the dark interior.
"Louie!"
"He's had the three required bathroom breaks." Sharon Hammerlitz, the animal trainer, a jeans-clad woman with an aggressive blond buzz-cut, had followed her. "But he doesn't much care for cat litter."
Temple pinched the door mechanism open and thrust in a hand.
"He growled when I did that," Marcy noted.
"Maybe you had cat litter on your hands." Temple scratched Louie's velvety chin and was rewarded with a basso purr.
From onstage came the inevitable aural chaos of rehearsaclass="underline" people outshouting each other, set pieces scraping into place and properties in motion clattering.
One voice overrode it all. "Okay, people! We finally got the Big Daddies sketch right. Let's break for today. Well start with the chorus number tomorrow."
A big chorus of groans came in unison. "Awwww."
"They're all in costume for it now, Darren," a flunky's timorous voice explained.
"Change back. What's the big deal, people? I've got two-dozen changes in a two-hour show. You don't hear me moanin' and groanin'. This is what you get the big bucks for, so hustle the bustles back to the dressing rooms. Everybody'll be fresher in the morning anyway."
"As the chicken said to the egg, The yolks won't be any fresher,' " someone threw out in parting.
Nobody laughed.
The tramp of departing feet accompanied by low grumbles indicated that the chorus was in retreat. In the first row, another grumbler added, "These cats won't be fresh in the morning after sitting around for two days."
"They'll be fresh for acting up," the trainer added more loudly. "And they're amateurs on top of it."
"Who's an amateur?" an indignant new voice demanded.
Temple knew that voice and didn't want to. She straightened as a willowy platinum blond woman came stalking down the aisle on heels so high they wobbled.
The woman brushed past Temple, and Louie, to pause dramatically two seats down.
"How is Mummy's little sweetums?" With one smooth unzipping, little sweetums was swept from her pink canvas carrier and lofted into her mistress's arms.
Normally the sight of the petite shaded-silver Persian cuddled against her mistress's matching hair would have been pretty enough to photograph, as had been duly done many times before.
But on this occasion, the seraphic expression on Savannah Ashleigh's over made-up face was falling faster than Lucifer exited Heaven.
"Why .. . what's wrong, baby?" Savannah whirled to face the line of numbed crew members.
"Yvette is . . . wet!"
"Maybe she drooled," Marcy suggested hopefully.
"She is not wet in the area that drools! How has this happened? Who was responsible for giving her potty breaks? I suppose she hasn't had a dab to eat all day too! And you call yourselves animal handlers? I should sue."
Before anyone in the front-row seats could rouse themselves to a defense, an energetic patter of feet came bouncing down the temporary steps at stage right.
"House lights!" a lusty male voice demanded.
He got 'em. Temple blinked at the sudden burst of high-power light. So did the moles on the commercial crew who'd been huddling in the darkened house all day.
Inside his carrier, Midnight Louie did not blink, although he rose and thrust a furry black paw through the grill work.
" 'Vannah, that you?" Darren Cooke himself--he who had commanded, "Let there be light"--came straight for Savannah Ashleigh and her publicly embarrassed cat, squinting slightly from the ordered light. "Haven't seen you for an age, luv!"
She dodged his automatic embrace by turning away, Yvette still in her arms, and offering her cheek.
"Touch not the cat, darling; she's been kept waiting all day and is . . . cranky."
"Not unlike her owner, as I recall," he answered in a stage whisper. With his booming voice, even a discreet comment rebounded to the back wall.
Cooke turned and took sudden notice of the glum people in the front row. "And who are we?"
"We are a television-commercial crew," Kyle answered for one and all. "We have permission from the club to piggyback a forty-five-second spot on your big Las Vegas number."
"Oh, yeah. I heard about that. Savannah oughta look drop-dead gorgeous against the tutti-frutti gangster chorus we've got in that number. Once we get it rehearsed tomorrow, you can take all the time you want to set up and film. The chorus boys and girls are paid for a full day. I'll get done fast, so you guys can go to it."
Sighs and murmured thanks exploded from the front row.
Darren Cooke turned his special crooked smile on Savannah. "Anything for you, dollface."
She wriggled uneasily, whether from prolonged cheek-to-cheek contact with Yvette in her disgraced state or from Darren Cooke's embarrassingly wrong assumption it was hard to tell.
"Wrong dollface," Temple couldn't help putting in.
Her comment drew Cooke's direct gaze and thousand-watt, professionally whitened smile.
"Who are you?"
"Temple Barr. My cat's in this commercial too, just like Savannah's."
He whirled to the actress. "Your cat! Not you?"
"They wanted Yvette desperately. I didn't want to stand in her way."
Cooke turned back to Temple, the charm still radiating on full wattage. "And where is your cat?"
"He's the malcontent in the carrier."