Cat in an Ultramarine Scheme

by Carole Nelson Douglas

  The elderly require patience. I examine the poor old dude’s precious find again.

  Hmm. It is old like him; no wonder he is so attached. My initial description was not without merit. I sniff the upright sticks. There is a pair. Two. They are broken at the ends and tobacco stained. Or that color. They are embedded in a rock of some sort. Actually it is of a smoother surface and consistency than broken-off rock chunks. It is also the wrong color. Around here rocks are reddish.

  So we have brown broken sticks in gray stone.

  Three O’Clock slaps me on the shoulder blades as if I need a burping. “Well, Sam Spade?”

  I nod slowly. You could knock me over with a carp tail.

  “You are slamming homers in the right ballpark, Pops.”

  Pops? Where did I get that revolting nickname?

  “Do not call me that, sonny,” Three O’Clock growls. I do not blame him.

  “Sorry, um, sire. You speak true. I mean, you are not telling any fibs. In fact, in this case the fibula and tibia are telling a sordid tale all by themselves. I refer to the thinner and thicker set of human leg bones, which appear to have been booted in concrete, hacked off at the knees, otherwise known as patellae, and dumped in Lake Mead long enough ago to melt all flesh from bone.

  “You found the bottom of a body, but there’s no getting to the bottom of this case. A surviving shoe or footprint has long since deserted that concrete casing. This is an empty shell. Even Vegasset TV-show forensics couldn’t come up with anything from this.”

  “Too bad,” Three O’Clock growls, “because I can. Obviously, this was murder by the mob, and the mob has officially ebbed in Vegas since the sixties. These are old bones, boy, and the method of murder is some long-gone gangster’s personal fingerprint. Mark my words.”

  The old boy is right on this much. I am going to have to drag back to town and work hard to influence my usual humans to get the Law out here to retrieve the remains.

  Or . . . I turn back to shore and sight along the landmarks so I can lead the bloodhounds back. Also, I need to relocate the old man to an assisted-living facility in Vegas without tipping him off to my ploy.

  Elder care is such a drag.

  Ganged Up

  Temple and her bosses returned to the executive office suite. Nicky planned to show Temple more plans for a revamped Gangsters. Van, looking pale and wan and dubious, opted out.

  “Come on down,” Nicky urged Temple, as their private elevator sped straight to the main floor.

  “The hotel has a Door Number Three?”

  “Kinda,” he said. “We blocked off the Jackson Action Attraction a while back, when ‘family theme park’ wasn’t working in Vegas.”

  “Everything is a work in progress in this town,” Temple agreed.

  “Except your love life, which has finally settled down, I hope.”

  When Temple started at the reference, Nicky winked.

  “Come on, PR lady. I saw you and Matt Devine at Aldo and Kit’s wedding. Looks like you two are planning to go forth and do likewise pretty soon.” He shook her arm slightly. “Congratulations, right? I’m glad Aldo’s going over to the matrimonial side is shaking loose other confirmed bachelors from their routines.”

  “Confirmed bachelor” was as good a description of an ex-priest as any, Temple decided. Matt certainly had been confirmed.

  “We’re not announcing anything official yet,” she said.

  “ ’Course not. I just can’t help noticing stuff. After the wedding, your aunt hiked her bouquet straight to your hot little hand.”

  “That Kit. Quite the athlete.”

  “And I noticed something big and hopefully not hot on it.”

  “You mean this glitzy number?” Temple waved the vintage ruby-and-diamond ring on her left hand. Being bicolored, it didn’t scream “engagement” ring. “Matt and I were engaged then, but we didn’t want to steal any of Kit and Aldo’s spotlight.”

  “That’s a one-of-a-kind stunner,” Nicky said.

  “Thanks.” Temple waggled her ring finger again so he could admire it.

  “I meant you both,” Nicky added with Fontana gallantry.

  She blushed, as meant to.

  “You want to watch that nobody steals it,” he warned.

  Even as she nodded, Temple recalled the unique “unofficial” engagement ring from Max she’d worn for such a short time before it had been stolen, and found, and then confiscated. Now the man who’d given it to her was unofficially missing in action. Maybe he’d been confiscated too. Enough bittersweet moment and looking backward!

  “Anyway,” she said, back to business, “how long have you had this mob theme in mind, Nicky?”

  “Longer than I’d care to admit,” he said, casting a gaze upward at his wife’s office. “Van was the only child of a widowed German hotel hotshot. She grew up in a rotating roster of posh hotel suites and doesn’t get the Italian big-family feeling.”

  “Especially when that big Family has a history with a capital F in it.”

  “Well, yeah.”

  Temple laughed. “You don’t do ‘sheepish’ well, even though you’re the Fontana family’s self-described ‘white sheep.’ You can confess to me, Nicky. You are thrilled as hell to get your entrepreneurial teeth into a mob-themed upgrade of Gangsters before the city powers-that-be even get off their conservative duffs.”

  “They’ve committed twelve mill to it, but they’re waffling all over the Strip and the media. Now it’s a ‘law enforcement’ museum, so no official toes get stomped on. The public doesn’t want political correctness in Vegas. They want a free-for-all. You have a taste for the jugular too. Admit it, Barr. You live to scoop the competition.”

  “I do have TV reporter roots, from back in the day when news had to be vetted and reliable and wasn’t just an Internet streaming-of-consciousness.”

  “So. We’re both on the side of old-fashioned values,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “Family on my end, and a publicity-snagging public-relations coup on yours.”

  “Legitimately publicity snagging.”

  “Right,” Nicky said. “Legit. That word is engraved on the Fontana family escutcheon.”

  “Uh-huh. Like the Fontanas have a stone shield somewhere that’s engraved with the family coat of arms. That’s for European aristocracy dating back to the Middle Ages.”

  “I know what the word escutcheon means. Jeez. Give me some credit. We have lots of Fontanas beyond the middle-aged, some in the Old Country still. I guess you could say our coat of arms is etched on our epidermis. Me and my brothers all get the family tattoo when we turn twenty-one. Wanna see?”

  “I can wait,” Temple said, although wildly curious about the exact location and design of the tattoo on all ten Fontana brothers. She would think they’d have individual druthers.

  She imagined that her aunt Kit, latest Fontana family in-law with her recent marriage to Aldo, knew more than she ever would on the subject. And would never tell . . . without the investment of a whole bottle of wine. Which might be fun.

  “Say,” Temple said, “where are you steering me? We’re not going underground to the former Jackson Action ride site?”

  “Nope. Not yet. We’re hitting the hotel bar. I have some folks I want to take a meet with.”

  “You are beginning to sound more and more like an escapee from The Sopranos.”

  “Gotta get in the mood and the mode,” said Nicky, expertly steering her through the milling crowds, which were milling a bit less these days. “We need some extra oomph and publicity bad. With all this talk about an official mob museum, if we can move fast enough, I figure we can steal the thunder and produce heat lightning of our own.”

  They had reached the Crystal Court bar, a tropical paradise of flora and fountains and bright sparkling water and crystal chandeliers.

  Nicky’s light touch on Temple’s elbow escorted her through a scattering of chic cocktail table setups to a parlor palm–shadowed corner booth so low-lit she’d need a see
ing-eye dog to get back there on her own.

  That traitorous thought made her look around guiltily for Midnight Louise, but if the ladylike black cat had followed them to this conspiratorial corner, she’d be invisible.

  Temple felt totally undercover. Even the usual tabletop glass candleholder was shrouded by a net of black widow veiling.

  “Ah. Mr. Nicky Fontana and Miss Temple Barr bestow their presence. Welcome to our reunion conference.”

  A dapper little man stood to greet them. From his white-banded black fedora to the red carnation in the lapel of his pin-striped gray suit, he looked the mobster-movie fashion plate.

  “Nostradamus,” Nicky exclaimed, “I didn’t expect you here. I haven’t laid anything resembling a bet since I married Van.”

  “Not to worry, Mr. Big Shot. A bookie seeking bets I am not. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the fabled desert gang. Old times pass, but can come back around like a favorite boomerang.”

  Temple eyed the five old men seated in the semicircular leather booth. She’d heard lots of stories about them, and now, bad luck had certainly “boomeranged” them back into the bosom of the Crystal Phoenix family. Their quirky faces resembled a line of English Toby mugs, except their heights weren’t uniform like the character barware, but as jagged as the Specter Mountains around Vegas.

  “I think you know our history consultants, Miss Barr.” Nicky grinned at the fivesome settled onto the booth’s leather upholstery.

  “Gracious,” she said, feeling the need of a genteel expletive, “it’s the Glory Hole Gang, live and in person, every last man.”

  The grins spread.

  “Miss Barr,” Eightball O’Rourke acknowledged with a nod. “We’re wedged in here too tight to stand like little gentleman, thanks to our larger brethren.”

  He remained wiry and cue-ball bald. She had seen the most of Eightball, so she racked her brains for the other guys’ handles, and colorful nicknames they were.

  Next to O’Rourke sat another half-pint, Wild Blue Pike, the longtime flyboy. He still flashed sky blue eyes and a shock of snow white hair. Spuds Lonnigan, main cook at Three O’Clock Louie’s restaurant on Lake Mead, remained a generously built man with growing gut and thinning hair, as did Pitchblende O’Hara. Cranky Ferguson, on the other hand, was as lean and lanky as an uncooked spaghetti noodle.

  Temple recited each name as it came to her, and she nodded at each man, amazed to recall them rightly. What a PR ace she was! Then she realized the Glory Hole Gang members were just too durn colorful to forget. She had to grin back at them. It was like seeing your favorite grandfather after too much time between family reunions, although it had only been a couple of years. The pace of life in Vegas and the massive number of people who came through the toddlin’ town could still amaze someone used to dealing with conventions of twenty thousand attendees and more.

  “Set and chat awhile,” Eightball urged.

  Nicky and Temple took the end seats. Nicky ordered beers all around, except for a white-wine spritzer for Temple. The youngest Fontana brother was the perfect host. He’d long ago noted that her “working drink” went light on alcohol.

  Temple flashed him a smile of thanks and turned back to the assembled two hundred years of Vegas history seated beside her.

  “What are you boys doing here?” she asked, falling into Mae West mode, although she was far from the “Dolly Parton of the Thirties.” Somehow vintage Western dialogue went with the Glory Hole Gang like neckerchiefs and dust, both the desert and gold variety.

  “I thought you were running Three O’Clock Louie’s restaurant on Lake Mead,” she added, letting them tell her that it was kaput.

  “The water done petered out on the restaurant at Temple Bar, Miss Barr,” Spuds said with a sad shake of his balding head. “We was high and dry as Noah’s Ark aground on global warming.”

  “Ah . . .” Temple had read and heard of Lake Mead’s shrinking shoreline, as drought dried up its waters, but out of sight, out of mind. She’d forgotten about Three O’Clock Louie’s at her namesake Temple Bar, a longtime mark on the map, but not as long as it had been a River Thames landmark near the London Inns of Court.

  “Omigosh!” She stared at Nicky as it sunk in that natural ills often caused financial ones. “That’s why the Glory Hole Gang lost the restaurant?”

  “Jest our customers, ma’am,” Pitchblende pitched in. “Not much to gaze out on as they et but sand and desolation. We was used to living in ghost towns, but tourists kinda want water features and lots of local color and no two-block walks over sand dunes to get to their eats.”

  “Next place over is still afloat,” Cranky Ferguson grumbled. “I think they paid protection to the Guy Upstairs to keep their waterline from wastin’ away.”

  “Vagaries of nature,” Nostradamus put in, “are as cruel as odds at the track, but a little birdie—”

  “A scavenger crow, no doubt,” Eightball put in.

  “—tells me that the Glory Hole Gang is coming back.”

  “Right on, Nostradamus!” Nicky’s clap on Cranky Ferguson’s shoulder raised a puff of sand dust. “Three O’Clock Louie’s is coming back, better than ever. What do you guys say to a new location?”

  Nostradamus had been standing by, but now he tipped his hat. “I see there’s hefty business on the table, so I must amble on while I am able.”

  The Glory Hole Gang nodded the bookie good-bye, then hunkered down for serious talk.

  “Thing is,” Nicky said, “I recalled the operation and want to make Three O’Clock’s into a franchise, starting with a flagship restaurant at Gangsters and then going national. After all, the ex–Glory Hole Gang has a colorful early Vegas history, and we can theme the menu to those exciting days of yesteryear.”

  “That’s the concept,” Temple asked, “a restaurant?”

  “Just one aspect. After all, the Strip Hilton—all that’s left of Bugsy Siegel’s first Flamingo motel-casino—has Margaritaville. Maybe we’ll have Mobsterville. Reposition the name. The old-time ‘Families’ are as much a ‘cultural brand’ as Jimmy Buffet’s Island paradise.”

  “That’s ingenious, Nicky,” Temple said, “but I’m not quite sold that it’s genius. ‘Life is a beach’ is a universal longing. ‘Life is a bitch’—maybe not so much.”

  “Naw, it’s true. The Wynn Hotel has gone with a Sinatra theme for its priciest restaurant. Think the Ocean’s Eleven film revival. Nowadays it’s George Clooney instead of Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. Hip, socially concerned, but with a huge wink at our origins. Transparency, right? Today’s political buzzword.”

  Temple laughed. “You’re a marketing chameleon, Nicky. Just like the mob.”

  “The mob,” Cranky scoffed. “They were a bunch of punks. Overestimated in the Vegas early days, mainly for notoriety.”

  “Frankly,” Nicky said, “Bugsy had the vision. The big mob boys didn’t get it. Jersey Joe Jackson followed in Bugsy’s footsteps with his Joshua Tree Hotel-Casino, but they had limited eyesight. They thought motor lodge, not hotel, and would have been astounded by the mega-hotel concept that lines the Las Vegas Strip nowadays. When the mob went corporate, Las Vegas spread its wings. Sure, folks alive today waltzed around the mob fringes, and pockets of the protection racket exist, but now, enterprise has to go mainstream or die. You can’t have ordinary people hurting and be commercial. That’s why this economic tsunami is so disastrous.”

  “It sure baked us outta business,” Spuds Lonnigan said. “What’s our comeback restaurant shtick here at Gangsters?”

  “Speakeasy’s south. Way south. Underground, in fact, with no pesky problems with Mother Nature,” Nicky assured him. “I’m talking the look of a Prohibition Palace. Knock three times to get in. Bootleg liquor, prime stuff. Guys and dolls. A little gaming. A menu that’s a history of Vegas influences, Spuds, from lowbrow to high-hat. People will be greasin’ palms to get low down with the Glory Hole Gang and its members’ authentic ambience and cuisine celebrating the good ol’ ba
d days of miners and mobsters. What do you think?”

  “Brilliant,” said Temple. “If the Feds don’t raid you, I can sell it until doomsday.”

  Hands came up simultaneously to burnish grizzled jaws.

  “We’re basically desert rats,” Cranky Ferguson noted, “ ’cept Eightball here got a city PI business going. Sure, we pulled that silver-dollar heist, train robbery stuff from the old days. You think you can sell us as city slicker mobsters?”

  “Rat Pack,” Nicky pounced. “Only ahead of your time.”

  They squinted dubiously, en masse. That was a lot of experienced doubt.

  Temple knew her Vegas history. The famous Vegas Rat Pack had begun around the twin stars of Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra in the fifties. Bogart died that decade, so the sixties became a second-stage Rat Pack heyday, with a nucleus of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, Juliet Prowse, and Shirley MacLaine had been “Rat Pack Mascots” at various times.

  The men’s solo Vegas acts intermingled improvisationally, and they moved on to costarring in films, most notably the original Ocean’s Eleven. Nobody today could bundle that particular magic act of personalities and talent, so the Rat Pack, which never admitted to or liked that name, were now all dead but immortalized, despite the mob aroma that hallowed the singers. Sinatra had known Giancana too. Vegas tribute Rat Pack groups had abounded in recent years.

  “It could work,” Temple told Nicky after long thought, “if we resurrect Jersey Joe Jackson. He was the real deal, a founding figure like Bugsy Siegel, but mostly forgotten. He was also a member of the original Glory Hole Gang, wasn’t he?”

  “A rat,” Wild Blue Pike said, spitting into his palm to be polite in front of a lady, i.e., Temple. “He hid the money from our silver-dollar heist for his own self. Left us grubbing a living in ghost towns, hiding from the law for forty years while he built the Joshua Tree Hotel to rival Bugsy’s Flamingo and then presided over its decline.”