The cars’ exuberantly accessorized exteriors were a different matter.
Even the lowlier cars sported bubble fenders and running boards. They had Bugsy-eyed headlights sitting up high and lonesome above twin chrome horns and fog lamps, alongside dazzlingly large vertical chrome grills, almost like horizontal harps. Some big-city mobstermobiles screamed “sleek and expensive.” Others hoarsely declared “Clyde Barrow’s hijacked budget back-road Fords.” Some were pricey Packards and Buicks, according to Nicky, who introduced the lineup like a proud father. One was a gorgeous dark purple Hudson Terraplane.
“Did they have stretch limos in the gangster days?” Temple dared to ask.
“Since before the real Depression, little girl,” Macho Mario replied. “I’ve ridden in a beauty like that Hudson, only it was painted a rich cream color. That car was class. Black is for funerals.”
“Cream is too visible for a getaway car,” Nicky pointed out.
“Since nineteen twenty-eight,” Eduardo Fontana said, bending down to answer Temple’s question. “That’s when the stretch limos first came in. There are plenty of the oldies still out there. We picked up some for this light-rail gig. Our own street chauffeuring business relies on creating new lavishly customized stretches with a Vegas theme.”
Temple nodded, having seen the mind-blowing old and new selection in the car service’s parking lot.
“These smooth rides-on-rails are perfecto,” Santiago proclaimed, his white tropical suit blossoming into the Fontana’s dark pin-striped midst so he looked uncannily like a ghost of the brothers’ usual selves. “In South America, older American cars are treasured.”
Temple swallowed her natural comment. She could picture Santiago being driven around Vegas in a white stretch 1961 Cadillac limo with chrome fins from here to eternity to match his ego.
Meanwhile, Macho Mario was playing the tribe elder and escorting the renovation’s main forces into various cars.
“Here.” He gestured the five booted and bejeaned former miners, who looked the most at home in a dark tunnel, into a six-seated thirties Ford. “You Desert Rat Pack boys can ride in the Longhorn-mobile.” He gestured to the pair of chromed steer horns riding the car’s narrow hood.
Nicky joined the diminishing knot of guys surrounding Temple. She was surprised the Fontana brothers and Glory Hole gang had gathered around her and Santiago, when not thirty feet away, Van von Rhine stood with her statuesque blonde classmate from Swiss finishing school, Revienne. Two sleek blondes should attract more men, Temple thought, especially the charm-spreading Santiago.
Hey, Temple thought again, Van had snagged the first Fontana brother to ever wed. Opposites do attract, and Revienne seemed born to snag another bachelor Fontana brother. Then Temple would have a fourth bridesmaid for her so-far-fictional wedding party. Better to dwell in the future than the confusing past.
She cocked her head and cast an inquiring glance from Eduardo to Revienne to Eduardo. “I’m surprised you and your bros aren’t making a beeline to that foreign honey.”
His head shook almost imperceptibly. “She’s taken.”
“How do you know?”
“That’s my job. I work in a ‘people’ business.”
“She says she’s single.”
Eduardo discreetly elbowed his nearest brother, temporarily known as Ralphie the Wrench, in the, ah, elbow. When Ralph looked his way, Eduardo shifted his eyes sideways to Revienne.
“Nice icing, but no go, bro,” Ralph murmured, smartly shooting his suit sleeves to reveal the onyx links on his baby’s-blush-pink shirt cuffs.
Fontana Brothers were so cool.
If guys unafraid to wear pink were wary of Revienne, it explained why Temple found her troubling. It seemed the woman was watching them all, Temple especially. Temple must be imagining that, because she was not the type people took seriously enough to watch. Which was their mistake. So maybe Revienne was not just foxy looking, but foxy sharp.
Temple glanced back as the last Glory Hole Gang scuffed boot heel disappeared into the vintage Ford. They’d never had the money their old associates, Boots and Jersey Joe, had cheated them of, but then they were here, still kicking and cooking; Boots was just a bizarre museum piece, and Jersey Joe, the ghost of a sad, reclusive bankrupt.
Temple’s heart warmed to see the Glory Hole Gang together again, jazzed on a new enterprise at their ages, a recognized historic part of the Vegas scene, worthy of a prime seat at the pre-pre-pre-opening run of this groundbreaking new attraction.
Nothing really got lost. Even Boots had experienced his new day in the sun, if a bit too literally. And, thanks to his supposedly hidden loot, Jersey Joe Jackson had remained a force around the Crystal Phoenix long past his death.
Heck, with all the dead actors resurrected for these still and moving media effects, this could be considered a zombie jamboree. The party certainly was of mixed company.
Lined up along the dark place where dark floor met dark faux-stone tunnel wall was Midnight Louie . . . and Midnight Louie and . . . Midnight Louie and . . . Midnight Louise with the waggly, fluffy tail.
Maybe Temple’s suddenly misty vision was turning Louie into multiple images. She wasn’t surprised to see him. He often decided to go everywhere that Temple went, and his coat was black as coal. His last command performance with the Cat Pack had been stellar.
She was sure Macho Mario wouldn’t have a free car to usher Louie and Louise and pals into. Three O’Clock Louie she recognized on second thought. He had finally moved his center of operations from Lake Mead to the Glory Hole Gang’s Gangsters suite and the Speakeasy bar and restaurant.
She recognized from the Neon Nightmare the cat among them with the half-masted eyelid. Poor thing. She’d take it home to the Circle Ritz if she could catch it . . . which didn’t look likely from the battle-scarred condition of that eyelid.
“Okay,” Macho Mario announced behind her, addressing his nephews, “boys, you climb into the stretch nineteen thirty-seven purple Hudson Terraplane.”
“There are eight of us,” Julio’s deep voice objected.
“Bend your knees and scrunch. Besides, purple complements that girly pink in your pinstripes.”
“Ah, Uncle Mario,” they moaned in chorus.
“Guys are secure enough these days to wear pink and carry mother-of-pearl pistols,” Ralph said.
“Only on Broadway, boys, only on Broadway. Now, scat!”
Temple turned to watch. It was like loading up a clown car, all those tall, lean, butch but modern and sensitive Fontana brothers, crouching to enter the Tom Wolfe–extravagant Chrome-Covered Purple-Flake Streamline Baby, baby!
Revienne should be so lucky to have such a ride.
Temple took a step forward to get into the next free car, a totally cute black thirties number that was tiny and low-slug but all bubble curves, when Nicky’s hand on her arm held her back.
“Getting whisked away by your own publicity plans?” he asked softly. “Let Van and Revienne ride in that petite mobster motor.”
“But . . .” Temple watched two smooth blonde heads duck inside and sighed. “Oh. Yeah. It suits them.”
She had to admit, blondes seemed made for black gangster cars. Maybe she could hitch a ride on a Mickey Rooney jalopy with a rumble seat.
“We’re the ones who orchestrated this trip down memory lane,” Nicky went on. “You, me, Santiago, and, of course, Uncle Mario as a rep of the old days, will bring up the rear.”
“Right,” Temple agreed, no longer carried away by her own hype.
Count on Nicky to save the best for last. The next car was to drool over. It was the always-elegant-and-deadly black, of course, with whitewalls and a running board and dainty, classy, cuff-link-size touches of chrome here and there and everywhere, like diamond jewelry on wet black velvet.
Nicky gestured Santiago in first, so Temple had less far to crawl in. Santiago doubled over, but his wool-silk suit blend didn’t wrinkle, just as his face never did. So mahogan
y rich and dark and sooo smooth.
Nicky bent to take the opposite seat, his uncle easily managing to follow. Macho Mario had inherited the Fontana empire when short and stocky genes ran in the family, before the next generation got their cod-liver oil and vitamins and added a few inches to better show off designer Italian tailoring.
Temple bent only slightly to walk into the commodiously high seating area. Before Nicky could draw the door shut after her, a wave of Cat Pack oozed inside to circle Temple’s bare ankles—and help show off her black-satin forties-style strappy platform heels, which matched the car with their rhinestone-buckled ankle straps.
She giggled.
The Cat Pack tickled.
“Well,” said Macho Mario, eyeing the four black cats. “Some people think these things are unlucky, but I say, at least we’ve got personal protection against those dirty rats we saw down in the tunnel at the empty Jersey Joe Jackson vault. I always said Jersey Joe was all hotel and no capital. And his Action Attraction never got tourist traction. This will be the first time the old fool made money in Vegas, instead of hiding it.”
Santiago seemed uneasy about the foot-level feline honor guard. He shook out his pale, exquisitely flared boot-cut pants legs and muttered, “Black cat hairs,” with a shudder. “Not unlucky, only tasteless.”
He moved to edge away from his window seat, but Nicky put a hand on his arm.
“Better stay put. We’re not using seat belts yet. No time to install them in these vintage honeys before the trial run. Hang on, we’re moving!”
The cars were indeed starting up, but it was a smooth, whoosh sort of thing, no “road feel” that Temple could discern.
Oh, wow. The ride was so smooth and creamy, while the film images projected on the static poster images on the tunnel walls created this jagged, wild, video-game double-action scene that was instantly adrenaline pumping and absolutely hypnotizing.
Santiago might be a prima donna pain, but his media work was . . . magic!
Temple leaned her head closer to his to see out the dark-tinted side window, mentally dodging bullets and tough talk, looking Edward G. Robinson in the eye as he aimed a big pistol right at her, and then a bullet sound whizzed by in an echo of harmless but heart-rate-upping rat-a-tat-tatting. She’d only been so sound-surrounded at a Cirque du Soleil show, when massive timpani drums had everyone’s seat bottoms and pulses throbbing into breath-catching heart-attack mode.
Her pulse was leaping now, but in a good way, a live-entertainment high. She was feeling breathlessly alive, as if they were all escaping the past and daily life and death. What a pseudorush.
Then the tinted window she was craning past Santiago’s sharp, sun-baked profile to see through, viewing the visual wonders, turned 3-D. The scene morphed. She was staring into a face hanging in space outside the tinted car window, a face that was a combo of the Joker’s twisted clown visage from Batman and the talking Magic Mirror from Snow White. Its features, almost Silly Putty human, seemed totally real. They moved in their own space and plane, and reassembled into . . . Jersey Joe Jackson’s.
Temple was amazed Santiago had reached that far back into local history. Jersey Joe’s name was known, but you’d only see his photographed face on Internet sites, if you bothered. As she had.
Now a voice whispered, inside the car interior, right next to them all.
“Welcome to my ‘Chunnel of Hidden Trea sure.’ If you come to rob me you will find only empty vaults and busted dreams, but if you come to enjoy the ride, you’ll get more than you bargained for. . . .”
At that, the facial image dissolved into a younger, plumper visage, a face suspended over a formal winged collar and tie. It reminded Temple of some slot machines that featured a magician’s face and disembodied white gloves laying out the video poker cards . . . and now here came the gloves, protruding their fingers into the actual passenger compartment. Oooh, spooky!
Only the cards it laid out were tarot cards.
“The magician, oh my,” the face said, in stagy tones, white gloves flaunting the card in question.
It was amazing how the bones of the face pushed through the window glass, as if it were only a cellophane cerement. Temple cringed back as an actual tarot card flipped into the limo compartment. Louie reached out a clawed forefoot and snapped it down to the carpet, anchoring it with a sharp nail.
She stared at Santiago, wondering. Had he used this multimedia display to program something personal?
The echoing voice filled the car interior.
“Magic never dies,” it pronounced. “Am I mere bones in a morgue or a disembodied voice on a manipulated movie screen? Does it matter? I live, I speak, I watch, I intrude. I am the ghost in the machine. I live to avenge untimely deaths. Murders. I take vengeance.”
Temple jerked back, surprised.
What a lifelike effect. What a gruesome segment. Maybe too scary for the public . . . She’d have to mention that to Nicky and Van. Whoa! She had goose bumps, though. Super effective.
Oops, Temple thought. My lord, it resembles an actual, animated death masque. Not exactly promotable. Temple was betting the wax sculptor who’d created the Boots concrete memorial had accomplished the model for this filmed resurrection.
“Where is the money?” the eerie voice intoned from the 3-D death masque. “Follow the money. It was in the vault. Then I ended up there, dead. Stabbed.”
Temple knew by the prickling of her thumbs that something wicked this way comes. . . .
Actually it was by the prickling in her panty hose, had she been wearing any. She could feel the cat hair around her calves flaring and prickling instead of tickling.
And cat claws in three-four time, kneading warning into the unseen black carpet on the car’s floor.
She had to admit she hadn’t expected this demo ride to be so . . . ghoulish, so in your face.
So . . . like from a major historical theatrical masterpiece, like Hamlet.
“The play’s the thing,” to prick “the conscience of the King.” The king . . . of chutzpah?
“This is absurd,” Santiago objected. “This part is not of my creation. This is a cheap fright show. I demand you restore my immortal and elegant Rat Pack figures—Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. They had charisma, talent, a deathless magic.”
“Like Cosimo Sparks?” Nicky asked. “He was a stage magician once, still dressed like a magician of the old school, in white tie and tails. Was it hard to stab him through that starched shirt?”
“I? Santiago?” His chiseled features tightened with dismay instead of warming with rage. “How dare you! I am internationally renowned, as you well know. I am not some cheap . . . gangster, stabbing someone with a . . . shiv.”
Midnight Louie leaped up between Temple and Santiago and issued a low rumbling growl, the likes of which she had never heard from him. It gave her chills and forced Santiago cringing into the corner of the car. Louie was a big cat, and every black hair was puffed out like hackles as he stared at Santiago, until the man blinked and looked away.
“Get that wildcat away from me,” Santiago snarled in turn, his head turned into the car window as if about to kiss the now-frozen grotesque face of Cosimo Sparks.
“We’ll get you away,” Macho Mario assured him, “for a lot of years in prison.”
Midnight Louie leaped onto Temple’s lap, so she tumbled over sideways, just as Nicky and Macho Mario pulled major iron from their shoulder holsters. Like guns. Like big guns. Like they were ready to use them for real.
Santiago tried to lurch somewhere, his hips slamming Temple’s back into the hard leather seat, his hands meshing with the taunting 3-D face in the car window.
He’d worked this audiovisual magic. He knew it was an illusion, a high-tech, amazing, and breathtaking illusion—didn’t he? Magicians like Max and Cosimo Sparks knew illusion from reality. Santiago, mystic architect, did not seem to know.
His hands crashed through thick tinted glass as they sought to touch, to stop, to s
trangle the dead man’s image, spraying blood and sharp shards, some maybe of bone.
Temple cringed against the seat back as the whole Cat Pack clan joined Louie in surrounding her with a moat of fang and claw, and she felt boas of black cat fur wreathing her torso.
And lots of sharp claws braced on her—ow!—thighs.
Macho Mario and Nicky grabbed Santiago and pulled him onto the opposite seat, stuffed immobile between them and two gun barrels.
The window image had vanished. Only the faces on the graphic tunnel walls flashed past, and then the steel vault, all impressive metal facade and empty significance.
“That’s the wrong vault,” Santiago shouted. “That vault is a substitute. It’s empty. It’s not supposed to be empty.”
“Nor are you,” Nicky said, producing handcuffs from his jacket side pocket and wrapping Santiago’s back-pinned wrists as Uncle Mario kept the gun at the man’s chest. “You’re just another empty suit, Santiago, running a scam to feed your greed. And we Fontanas hold the key to your past and your future. Arriba!”
“Thanks for taking us for a ‘ride,’” Macho Mario chortled, holstering his revolver once the man was manacled. “Brings back the bad old days in the most delightful way. Unfortunately, modern times are not in favor of ‘offing’ bad apples on the spot. We have Detective Ferraro and other officers of the law waiting at the other end to take you into custody for killing Cosimo Sparks. Thanks for the really thrilling ride.”
Scowling and handcuffed, a silent Santiago remained bracketed by the Fontana family while the car rushed past the effects he’d created.
Temple, upright again, with four cats for seatmates, leaned across to whisper into Macho Mario Fontana’s ear.
“I’m surprised you’d let a girl go along for the action and danger.”
“Ah, Nicky told me you’d get more violent if we didn’t than if we did,” Macho Mario whispered back. “The detective did whisk Van and her long-stemmed girlfriend out of harm’s way.”
“Santiago could have been armed,” she admitted, leaning back to her side of the car.
“Only by his massive ego,” Nicky put in. “He thought he was home free, and also free to hunt a second vault’s cache to his heart’s content.”
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