“And, besides,” Macho Mario said, reaching inside his jacket, which made the haughty Santiago flinch, “I have a little something—”
Temple pulled her feet in tight as the black boa gathered close to her and emitted a ganglike growl.
“Not to worry, little lady and little kitty cats.” Macho Mario extended a long cream envelope to Temple. “Here’s a gift certificate for a big little shopping spree at Gangsters Moll Mall for any damage our ride here might have done to your rolled-down hose.”
He managed to sneak in a pat on her bare knee as she took the envelope. His thick, still-jet-black eyebrows rose. Macho Mario hadn’t realized hose was passé for modern, comfort-driven women.
“Uh, sorry for ruffling your . . . fur, Miss Barr,” he said, hastily reclaiming his hand before any of the four cats could snap it off, and sending Nicky an apologetic look.
Macho Mario Fontana might be old mob, but he had no idea who possessed the important fur not to ruffle in this gangster car, Temple thought, looking down and smiling on a constellation of green, and one set of gold, cats’-eyes.
That would be Midnight Louie and the latest hot new gang in town, the Cat Pack.
On Thin Ice
After uniformed officers had hauled away the urbane and protesting Santiago, who claimed he had lawyers on three continents and would use them to sue everyone in Vegas involved in this travesty, Detective Ferraro asked “the principals” to remain behind, while the Glory Hole Gang and the Fontana brothers—the elegant Revienne escorted in their midst—took the trio of Chunnel elevators up to the exit on the Crystal Phoenix’s landscaped grounds.
Nicky and Van and Temple and Uncle Mario had no such luck losing their accompanying four cats, who ignored police wishes and stuck around, sometimes quite literally. Midnight Louie and Louise shadowed Temple and Van, while Three O’Clock glued himself to Nicky’s pant leg. Uncle Mario had somehow ended up with Ma Barker at his feet, favoring him with frequent upward but off-eyed glances that were either admiring or murderous.
“I hope you enjoyed your Columbo moment, Mr. Fontana,” Ferraro began.
“Of course,” Macho Mario beamed. “It was a pleasure to nail that phony.”
“I meant Mr. Nick Fontana,” Ferraro said. “That was a risky stunt, but it was worth shaking that cool customer up for interrogation. I had no idea Miss Barr would be on board for it.”
“She pushed her way into the car. What could I do?” Nicky asked innocently.
“You couldn’t overpower her?”
“You don’t know women, detective. The smaller they are, the more tenacious. They don’t call those stiletto heels for nothing.”
The detective eyed Temple’s spike heels. “I guess those are oddly fitting today.”
She immediately got the allusion. “Because Cosimo Sparks was murdered with a very thin dagger, like a stiletto?”
“And how do you know that?”
“Just . . . guessing from the context.” She’d never squeal on Coroner Bahr. She wasn’t a dirty rat.
“Pretty clever,” Ferraro said, turning to Nicky. “You got the evidence?”
Nicky reached into his breast coat pocket and pulled out a tiny tape recorder, not a firearm. “He didn’t actually confess, but he was pretty rattled by the dead man’s rerun appearance in his own media show. Broke the car window.”
“Glad the blood on his hands is his own doing,” Ferraro noted, pocketing the tape.
“Well said,” Nicky answered. “I’m just glad the Glory Hole Gang is cleared.”
“What?” Temple demanded. “Have I been totally out of this loop? They were suspects?”
“You should be ‘out of the loop,’ ” Ferraro said, his lean face stern. “I’ve heard a bit about your civilian snooping. Not to be encouraged. Yeah,” he finally admitted, “they were mixed up with Jersey Joe Jackson and his stolen silver dollars and rumored hidden stashes of other assets through the years since the late forties. We couldn’t come up with a motive for Sparks’s murder other than attempted robbery.”
“Not Sparks’s attempted robbery?”
“Could be, and Santiago could have come on him cracking the safe while inspecting the tunnel before the vault was opened, but why would a rich guy—and he is—kill someone for an empty vault? It looked more like money from the past was involved, with those few silver dollars found in the vault. When we searched the old boys’ suite . . .”
Temple’s jaw dropped and she stared at Nicky.
He nodded confirmation. “The police asked, so we got them all out of there on a pretext.”
“How could anyone think the Glory Hole guys . . . ? They’re in their eighties.”
“Greed never dies, Miss Barr, you should know that.” Ferraro’s lip quirk could have been the start of a smile. “Anyway, we found an ice pick among their test-kitchen supplies. It looked as clean as a whistle and new as a store-bought razor blade, but forensics found Santiago’s DNA on it, which was easily obtained from all over the media wizard’s Fontana Suite.”
“Why would Santiago kill Sparks?” Temple asked. “Greed is a pretty broad category.”
“For some reason, Santiago could have been looking for Jersey Joe’s treasure, now that he was in the vicinity.”
That just lay there, as linguistically lame as it was as a motive for murder.
“What about the hesitation marks on Cosimo’s body?” Temple asked.
Ferraro frowned at her as fiercely as he had at Midnight Louie. “You have some inside access to the forensics report, Miss Barr? I thought Lieutenant Molina had enough of your fringe investigations.”
“I was a reporter, Detective Ferraro. I hear things.”
Midnight Louie chose that moment to take a long stretch up the detective’s pant leg. His full-length reach was awesome, almost crotch-high.
Ferraro stiffened like a frozen haddock, winced, and gazed down into Louie’s big green eyes. Louie’s big black claws had probably pricked through his lightweight slacks fabric into his skin, but very delicately.
“I hate cats,” Ferraro said, “almost as bad as amateur dicks. Get this one off me, and I’ll overlook your possession of police information,” he told Temple, never breaking Louie’s stare.
“Louie! Down!” Temple ordered, as if he were a dog. She wasn’t sure how he’d react to that indignity.
Louie held his pose and Ferraro’s gaze for a long, deep moment of mutual standoff, then dropped back on all fours.
“We won’t keep you, Detective,” Nicky said. “We’ll, uh, read all about it in the Review-Journal.”
Ferraro turned to go.
Temple spoke. “What if those ‘hesitation marks’ on the body were prod marks?”
Ferraro turned back, looked at her, at Louie, and then nodded. He knew a bit about prod marks personally now.
“Good point. Sparks failed to find the loot, and once Santiago saw the empty safe, he thought he’d been deliberately led astray and tried to ‘prick’ Sparks to give out the ‘real’ location of the Jackson treasure. For some reason, Sparks couldn’t, or wouldn’t, then Santiago lost it, like he did in your car,” Ferraro said, nodding at Nicky.
“Frankly, despite his DNA on the ice pick, the motive is all iffy and airy-fairy, and I doubt we’ll convict. Where did Santiago run into this slightly eccentric retired magician? Why would a sophisticate like him buy this bizarre Jersey Joe Jackson hidden-money rumor, and then kill over it? Right at the site of his brand-new toy about to debut. He would have had to have had a lot more visceral motive than a rich man’s unending greed to go through all that.”
“I don’t know,” Temple said, who thought she did, “but he was in and out of the Glory Hole Gang’s suite and test kitchen next door to his like a neighbor with a borrowing fetish. I saw that while I was visiting the old boys briefly.”
“At least,” Ferraro said, “your ultrasenior-citizen friends are in the clear. If I were you, I’d leave it at that and be happy.”
Temple nodded
quickly. “You’re right, detective. All’s well that ends well.”
He actually grinned, but it looked forced. “We’re in agreement on that.”
She turned to Nicky when it was just her, him, Macho Mario, and Midnight Louie again.
“I can’t believe you engineered that stickler detective into letting you take Santiago for a ‘ride’ to his arrest.”
“It was a hard sell,” Nicky admitted.
“And you didn’t even tell me? I’m your PR person, Nicky. That was . . . cold.”
“I only told Uncle Mario, and I had to do it that way.”
“Well, letting Santiago luxuriate in his own setup and then slipping in a whole new scenario—how’d you do that, anyway?”
“Please. Vegas is teeming with special-effects people. You got the dough, they got the go. But the police demanded secrecy.”
“I get that, but why the big production?”
Nicky waggled his handsome head from side to side and shrugged with his hands in his pockets like a misbehaving twelve-year-old.
“The police came to me with their evidence and suspicions. It was all as thin as an ice pick, but I knew a high-profile arrest couldn’t go down at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel itself. People sleep there. You can’t have them thinking murderers are floating around. Van would kill me!”
Macho Mario nodded soberly. “Definitely.”
“So . . .,” Nicky said, “down here it fits. It’s all part of the ambience, right?”
“I suppose there’s a certain poetic justice to Santiago riding the rails to his own arrest.”
“You can work with that? I mean publicity-wise?”
“I can work with that. Publicity-wise,” Temple said. “You know, I’d just like to sit down here in the car seat and collect my thoughts.”
“Van wants all us Crystal Phoenix folks up in the Jersey Joe Jackson Ghost Suite for a cocktail calm-down in half an hour or so.”
“Just folks?”
Nicky glanced down at the four cats still swarming at Temple’s ankles.
“My brothers will bemoan the black cat hair on their usual pale and expensive Ermenegildo Zegna suits, but two of these four felines have lived at the Phoenix, and the quartet does seem to be the new Cat Pack in town. So sure, bring on the dander.”
On those not-feline-flattering words, Nicky grabbed his uncle’s arm and they headed for the elevators.
Temple sat, unsatisfied and uneasy.
Yes, it was good Santiago had been unmasked as someone criminal. Even now, he might not be fully unmasked. What if he’d been one of the foreigners in the Synth club room?
Whew. The Synth and its schemes remained a conundrum that could go any of a dozen ways. Whether the Synth’s extravagant mass casino heist scheme was a group delusion or they were being used by terrorists, it was best to keep them out of the limelight until some real evidence existed. The secret underground link between Gangsters and the Crystal Phoenix and Neon Nightmare needed to stay that way for a while too.
Temple was sure the new Cat Pack would be patrolling it for rats of any variety now.
Maybe stopping and arresting Santiago would end all the plotting. The Synth had lost their real leader, Cosimo Sparks, but had he been truly linked to a larger scheme, or playing some game of his own? The silver dollars and rat-snatched bearer bond proved the vault had once been full of filthy lucre. Had it been hoarded IRA money, though? And where had the guns and explosives gone, if so? Had Sparks gotten greedy or scared and decided to move the hoarded IRA money? Had he just found a Jersey Joe Jackson hoard and had he been trying to save the Synth’s Neon Nightmare investment? Or was he a true loyalist to the last-gasp alternate IRA cause, trying to protect its holdings from elements who’d raid it? Had he died rather than give Santiago the location of the moved treasure? Or had he simply known . . . nothing? And died because of that?
If Temple kept quiet about all these unsettling questions, maybe Max Kinsella’s name would never need to come into it. And he was the last thing she needed on her mind with a marriage to plan.
Besides, Detective Ferraro had been dubious a solid case could be made against Santiago. As long as all these questions remained unanswered, Max’s possible connections to all and any of it remained unknown to anybody but her.
Unfortunately, that put news of his fate in a similar limbo.
Might it be better for all concerned for the situation to stay that way?
Forever.
Beside her, Louie, surrounded by his triplets, meowed plaintively.
“Right,” she told him. “The old-time gangsters knew that sometimes ‘mum’s the word.’ That’s ‘meow’ to you.
“I’ll keep quiet about your street gang connections and we’ll all move forward. And you can be ring bearer again.”
Da Denouement, Dudes
I have been the life of the party before.
I have also been the death of the party, if the party in question deserved it.
All in the line of duty, defending my partner and her interests, whatsoever they may be.
I must say, she is sufficiently grateful. Although my not-inconsiderable contributions to subduing crime in Las Vegas and meting out punishment are often overlooked by officialdom (this was even a problem for Mr. Sherlock Holmes), my Miss Temple never fails to see that I get in on the celebratory party.
Hence, we are all gathered in the Jersey Joe Jackson Ghost Suite at the Crystal Phoenix, where a feast of gourmet appetizers is laid out for the guests of honor: yours truly, Pa Three O’Clock, Ma Barker, and the kit chit, Miss Midnight Louise.
A bunch of Fontanas also happen to be present, and the Glory Hole Gang. Actually, Miss Van von Rhine, being the hostess from whom all good things edible and drinkable flow at this affair, and my roomie are the only females present, the Midnight family femmes excepted.
Apparently, Miss Van von Rhine’s hot blonde foreign friend, Revienne, had a headache after all the Chunnel of Crime ride excitement and is dining quietly in her room. Fine. Leaves more for me and mine.
And what a spread the Glory Hole Gang helped lay out! The overgrown members of our party are nibbling from a long table with some foodstuffs the Cat Pack is being polite about and leaving for demolishment later.
Along a classy plastic runner on the vintage carpet are exquisite Asian dishes tricked out with exquisite tidbits of world cuisine, including anchovies à la orange, shrimp and liver with sautéed giblets, and catfish in a sauce of liver and milk.
Maybe not your menu, but right up my alley.
“The Jersey Joe Jackson Ghost Suite is filled up to the gills,” Miss Temple notes.
I do like her figure . . . and figures of speech. “Gills.” Aaah. I foresee a leisurely midnight dip at the koi pond.
So does Chef Song, who is presiding over the buffet table and knifes me a sharp warning look. I am reminded that the kitchen is among the most likely places for an “accident” in the house, and that a kitchen tool was the murder weapon in this case.
“Stifle yourself,” Midnight Louise hisses in my ear. “This is the family ‘coming out’ party at the Crystal Phoenix. There shall be no crude fishing expeditions.”
“Look at that cat’s poor eyelid, Nicky,” Miss Van von Rhine croons, bending low to examine Ma Barker’s puss.
I squint my eyes shut. Miss Van von Rhine will get four in the first three epidermal levels from Ma for that liberty.
“I know a great eye surgeon for that,” Miss Van von Rhine goes on, speaking directly to Ma, “if you would consent to drop by my office with Midnight Louise and let me treat you to Gangsters’ new spa for a facial and even maybe a tummy tuck. We will have a plastic surgeon on hand for Botox and laser eye lifts.”
Eek! A tummy tuck is my mark of honor for surviving a premature surgical attempt on my, er, fur balls.
I am amazed to see Ma Barker erupt in a purr and rub on our hostess’s ankles.
Female! Thy name is vanity! What a traitor.
Whilst I am stewing
about the turn of events—I seem not to be the object of every eye—Miss Midnight Louise slinks up to me again.
“Good job, mein papa. Who knows what that South American terrorist would have done to our poor human associates had we not been there to staple his treacherous suit lapels to his epidermis through his trachea.”
Females can be so visceral.
I do see how Ma Barker, after her harsh street life, might be ready for the Queen for a Day treatment. As for my esteemed pater, Three O’Clock has drifted to sleep with his whiskers in the catfish pâté. Pater is in the pâté. What a family! I could die.
“Louie,” says my Miss Temple, “it has been a busy day, and I think you and I should head home to the Circle Ritz.”
Sweeter words were never spoken. I cannot wait to hit the solo sack with her and have my . . . tummy tuck scratched. I am the exclusive sort.
Meanwhile, there are some tiresome matters, always as clear as a crystal phoenix to me, that the humans always have to settle.
“What made you suspect Santiago, Nicky?” my Miss Temple asks.
“Actually, my brilliant wife. Van, do you want to explain?” He turns to her with a bemused smile.
She shrugs charmingly. “It was nothing. Merely my broad knowledge of international finance.”
Macho Mario barks out a laugh at the word “broad,” which evokes cocked shivs in the Midnight family females, not that anyone biped would notice.
“I always say, Nicky,” he predictably says, “if you do not have it, marry it.”
Mr. Nicky Fontana is a modern dude and knows to give credit where credit is due. “And how did your superior knowledge save the whole project and remove the blot of a murder rap from all my nearest and dearest? Dearest.”
“You . . . flattering phony Santiago, you,” Van answers with a smile. “Temple came to my office and asked me to explain bearer bonds, after we found that one . . . ‘rat dropping’ in the tunnel.
“I explained that they had been a convenient way to do international transactions and were available for up to ten thousand dollars apiece. The investment was poor because they often did not earn interest, and their usage is being phased out as we speak.”
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