His gel-slicked hair reflected the motion in the wall-cast videos as he nodded into the unlit direction of the proposed Chunnel of Crime.
As they walked forward, out of the elevator-cocktail area, work lights hanging above them glowed into life as they passed.
That caught the eyes on the cocktail carousel, where Nicky’s brothers were content to sit and sip and flirt with the waitresses dressed in pointy, short, and skimpy, patented Rat Pack sixties style. The Glory Hole Gang, though, couldn’t resist exploring the unknown dark for possible treasure. They deserted their drinks and came clattering after the disappearing party of four. So far, the lower depths of Gangsters were just that: a crude basement tunnel hacked from limestone.
“Love the ambience,” Nicky said. “Raw, real. We’d want to keep the earthy stone walls, dirt floor, dim lights, the sense of a primitive flouting of the supposed order and law above. Bathtub gin. Sin.”
“Nicky,” Van asked, “have you been tunneling through from the Phoenix already?”
“Ah, call it an investigative sampling,” he answered.
“Call it chutzpah,” Van said tartly. “So . . .”
She turned to the Glory Hole Gang, who’d regarded her with elaborate and even fearful courtesy since the introductions at the Crystal Phoenix. “. . . Am I to understand you five would look favorably upon reinventing Lake Mead’s popular Three O’Clock Louie’s restaurant as Three O’Clock’s Speakeasy subterranean bar and restaurant down here?”
“Ah . . .” Spuds, the short-order cook, rubbed his palms on his jeans’ side seams. “Yes, ma’am. All that deep frying is hard on the epidermis. I would be beholden if I could try a more varied and European, but kitschy, cuisine. I am a big fan of Julia Child and Wolfgang Puck. Something, uh, high-end, I mean. And fun.”
He winked, looking like Long John Silver in chef’s clothing.
Van blinked.
She turned to Temple. “Am I right in believing that your PR genes are eating all this up?”
Temple went with the flow. She rubbed her palms together, flexing her fingers and flashing her long, strong natural fingernails, painted Hyper Hussy Red, which was a bit toned down from her Scarlett-Woman toenail color.
“Yes, ma’am,” she decreed. “I could make this concept pop on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and every surviving newspaper online. Baaad is good. I’m thinking a downloadable temporary-tattoo page.”
Van’s delicate brows frowned ever so slightly. “Why the tunnel and riding the rails?”
Nicky, as usual, had an answer. “The average tourist can’t afford to rent a Gangsters limo for the whole evening. This way they invest in a kicky new-old drink and get a shot of speed and nostalgia in one bolt.”
“What about ventilation? Regulations? You’re talking an underground fast rail operation, no matter how short the distance.”
“We can handle it, Van,” Nicky urged. “We have the underground, Jackson Action Haunted Mine Ride okayed on the Crystal Phoenix end, and the rails are already laid. That’s why I brought in Santiago. He’s first and foremost a renowned and innovative architect. We’re lucky he’s interested in our rather limited project.”
“Nonsense, Nicky,” Santiago objected. “Las Vegas is a petri dish for architects. A playground. Anything goes.”
“Say,” Wild Blue Pike exclaimed as a new work light revealed more tunnel, “this sure reminds me of our mining days working the Silver Spoon out near Rabbit Hole Spring, don’t it, boys? This tunnel safe?”
“Of course.” Santiago was offended. “Everything above us and to the side has been shored up by steel struts. These ‘walls’ you see are concrete and stone aggregate, troweled on like hand-sculpted walls in houses. It only seems to be natural stone.”
“Waal, this don’t seem all that natural,” Cranky said, approaching a section.
He pulled a metal measuring tape off his worn leather belt and rapped it on the ersatz stone.
A small hollow knock sounded.
A Rat in Time Saves Nine Lives
Needless to say, I am always “all ears.”
And I am not alone. At the moment.
Miss Midnight Louise and I have been exploring the tunnel from the Crystal Phoenix side. “Spelunking,” I believe they call it.
I call it “looking for Elvis.”
Of course, I do not tell Missy Louise that. She is most skeptical on the subject of Elvis. She would better believe me if I said that Michael Jackson had appeared to me in the tunnel created a few seasons back. Actually, since that was named the “Jersey Joe Jackson Action Attraction,” I would not be surprised if the King of Pop had popped in to visit the King en route to rock ’n’ roll heaven.
I must say I am glad that a major concert career is not in my past or my future. It seems to be a fatal job choice.
This subterranean rendezvous was Miss Midnight Louise’s idea. She hissed the suggestion in my ear during the brouhaha of the Midnight family reunion at the police substation, whilst my parents (her grandparents) were squaring off.
“I have been eavesdropping in the Crystal Phoenix executive offices,” Louise informs me as we amble along in the almost-dark, following the steel tracks of the defunct Haunted Mine Ride portion of the attraction.
I spot a faint glow far ahead of us, but I do not wish to mention any lights at the ends of tunnels, because (1) it is a cliché, and I am nothing if not original, and (2) that has become a phrase synonymous with moving on to another existential plane, like death, and I do not intend to use my battle-sharp shivs for plucking a harp quite yet.
“Eavesdropping is admirable,” I admit, “and one of our species’ finest skills. The human observer sees us as flicking our ears against the incursions of vermin, when their banal maunderings are the object of our interest.”
“It is not very banal around the Crystal Phoenix of late,” Louise says dryly. “Not with Mr. Nicky and Miss Temple around to cook up new promotional schemes. Miss Van von Rhine and I have our mitts full keeping the lid on.”
“Never fear. I am here to supervise now.”
Miss Midnight Louise favors me with the sight of her tail high-flagging it ahead of me down the Chunnel of Crime-to-Be.
I remind myself that we are possibly—even probably—related and follow her in what you might call a disinterested way and I might call a darn shame.
The overhead work lights remind me of a night game of baseball or some other entertainment where human and feline interests meet. I must say the human recreational propensity for chasing balls of all sizes, from tiny golf ball to big basketball, is one of their most endearing qualities.
Even as I muse, Miss Midnight Louise can be seen to stop suddenly ahead.
She crouches and freezes.
I trot to catch up to her, but just as I arrive she bounds away.
I am too old to fall for this game!
I bound after her to the section of wall where she has landed.
Alas, by the time I hit the wall, she has bounded on, and I bounce off rough concrete like a Ping-Pong ball. Not the kind of sport I had in mind—me being the thing that is smacked, whacked, and dribbled.
(In fact, a bit of unleashed drool from the impact is now meandering down the hairs of my chinny chin chin.)
I pause to hastily tidy my moustache, shocked to see Miss Midnight Louise shooting along the base of the wall some thirty feet away. Luckily, she stops to start digging frantically, so I am able to come abreast of her.
Will I deliver a verbal thrashing!
Before I can get my growl wound up, I hear heavy footsteps approaching.
“Dig, you old fool!” Miss Midnight Louise admonishes me, when the snit should be on the other mitt. “They will never get the idea unless we ham it up like crazy.”
I agree that humans can be unbelievably dense, but am myself a bit puzzled.
“Dig!” she orders. “Unless you want your roommate to walk right past the entrance to the third tunnel.”
Third tunnel? What are number one and number t
wo . . . ? No, I am not referring to the coy way people describe the major variations of dog doo-doo and dog dewatering.
We have tunnels from Gangsters and the Phoenix meeting in the middle.
Third tunnel?
I see only a crack in the seam where dirt floor meets plastered wall.
Then a small furry head pokes through.
I need no further invitation to scrape away with all shivs going like a circular saw. No dirty rat is going to move in on my territory, which is anywhere I happen to be.
“Louie!” a familiar oncoming female voice calls in shock behind me.
“Louise,” calls an even more shocked male voice.
“Dig until we bare dirt,” Miss Midnight Louise hisses into my ear hairs until they tickle. “They will not get the picture unless we draw out every last detail.”
“Must be mice,” I hear Macho Mario Fontana say, dismissing our prey.
Mice? My well-placed spitball would handle mice. We are talking bigger game here.
“Is the bigger one our Three O’Clock Louie?” I hear chubby Spuds Lonnigan inquire in a slightly breathless wheeze.
He is a fine one to mistake me for my older, fatter father! That is like the potbellied stove calling the cattle black. Or some such phrase.
I hear a sharp squeal from within the wall and see that Louise has pinned a long, hairless tail with her fanned front shivs.
“Rats,” my brilliant Miss Temple points out. “We will have to fumigate. No way Gangsters can run a restaurant down here until the entire rat population is completely eradicated.”
Murderous little thing, is she not?
That’s my roomie!
I lay a big mitt over Louise’s dainty one and pull back with one powerful jerk, revealing the entire rat. Case closed.
Before I can do a karate chop to the neck, the rat’s racing claws kick something big and dusty out of its hole right into our faces.
We sneeze in tandem, our claws relaxing in one uncontrollable reflex moment.
Rats! Exhibit A is history. We step back, boxing our nostrils and vibrissae free of some pretty well-aged dirt and sand.
My Miss Temple approaches on her hind claws, aka spike heels, and bends to pick up the trash. Humans, even the best of them, are hard to figure sometimes.
It is obvious that Louise and I deserve to be picked up and made much of for our valiant effort to seek, find, and agitate vermin. Not that we would accept such namby-pamby fondling even when well deserved. We are professionals. Just buy us a steak and salmon dinner and call it quits.
Miss Temple unfolds the wad of paper.
“This looks like . . . a stock certificate.”
“Yeah?” Nicky asks. “That’s worth about a penny these days.”
Miss Van von Rhine stretches out a hand. “Let me see.”
The light is dim, but long, tall Pitchblende O’Hara steps up and produces a tiny high-intensity flashlight.
“This and a Swiss Army knife are always in my jeans,” he explains.
Miss Van von Rhine quirks a smile at her confident spouse.
“You’d be wrong, Nicky. This isn’t as old as it looks, and it looks less like a stock certificate and more like a bearer bond.”
“Bearer bond?” Miss Temple asks. “Is that worth anything?”
“Ten thou,” Mr. Nicky says, taking it to stretch the crumpled paper smooth, “to anyone who holds it in his hand.”
“Or hers,” Van says, taking custody.
Girls can be so possessive.
Love Connection
It was early evening by the time Temple returned to her Circle Ritz condo. She was still a having a brain attack that made her stomach turn cartwheels. What an amazing turn of events! What a PR break, if she handled it right.
She had to slow down and think. She had to call Matt.
First, though, she had to take a shower and blast the plaster and limestone dust off her epidermis and out of her hair. The showerhead installed over the vintage bathtub was a fancy chrome “waterfall” type, expensive and European-made. Its warm, tingling downpour rinsed her right off. Yup. She was enjoying one of Max’s upgrades of the premises. She so did want to wash that man’s memory out of her hair.
Perhaps only leaving the condo that had initially been “theirs” would end the unwanted memory reruns. Matt’s unit was too small for two, though. Unless Electra would let them remodel two units into one, they might have to move out. Darn. Rip Midnight Louie from his charming Circle Ritz home? Unthinkable!
Temple, now double-wrapped in a huge Crystal Phoenix bath towel (perk of the job), padded barefoot and dripping into the main room. She threw herself down on the living room couch and picked up her iPhone to dial Matt’s cell phone. No answer.
He often turned it off when traveling, perhaps the only annoying habit he had. When Matt was on camera on a major TV talk show, he sure didn’t want a ring tone broadcasting over the air, even though Temple had installed Leonard Cohen’s awesome “Hallelujah” and it was pretty playable.
She left a message, part love note and part incoherent job report, disappointed. Matt always had long business dinners at fancy places when he was in Chicago, so they often didn’t connect until midnight or later.
Temple couldn’t wait that long. She was bubbling over with ideas and anxieties (wasn’t that always the way?) and needed to run them by someone she could trust. What she was planning was risky to the point of being a hokey failure, but her job depended on selling her bosses and the public on her thinking. A consultant always needed someone close to consult.
Matt’s room phone rang and rang.
She tried the cell phone again. If the dinner ran late and the wine had been primo, she knew Matt would call her on the room phone from bed. He knew she liked to wake up to his voice, and while it wasn’t totally phone sex, it was sweet-little-nothing sex that left them glowing and intimately connected, long-distance.
Matt’s experience hosting The Midnight Hour radio call-in program had made him a sex symbol to thousands of women, and Temple had that smooth baritone on personal speed-dial. She indulged in a little shiver that cooled down her overactive brain.
Temple kept her old-fashioned line phones because they were cozier to cuddle up to and she used a headset on her cells for business calls. She didn’t want to get brain cancer from long cell phone calls. Well, it could happen! Besides, her long-time bedroom phone was shaped like a red spike-heeled shoe and she’d never give it up.
Temple jumped up and went to her tiny black-and-white kitchen that would wake up a narcoleptic. She opened the refrigerator and stared inside, then did the same with all her cupboards. She hadn’t eaten dinner but she was too jumpy to find anything appetizing . . . except her absent fiancé.
Back to the living room to scan the day’s newspaper.
She jumped up again in five minutes and did an all-room under, inside, and above search for Midnight Louie. At least she could tell him her plans. He listened with remarkable attentiveness and intelligence and only yawned occasionally during her monologues.
But the only black body hairs and rare white whisker she could find were throwaways. Who knew where he’d gone after the hubbub in the Chunnel of Crime-to-be?
Back to the kitchen. Caramel corn. No! Blueberry yogurt. No. Try the phones again. No answer.
She finally went to bed without supper, all alone without her iPhone. She found a terrible sixties movie on a bottom-feeder cable channel and watched it until her eyes crossed and her nerves flatlined and . . . she went to sleep.
The old-fashioned ring from the bedside phone gave her the expected but still pleasant little shock.
“Oooh, is this my secret midnight caller?” she cooed into the shoe phone’s toe, only then realizing something might have gone wrong at the Phoenix and midnight was prime time there.
Matt’s laugh was low. “Hi, Lolita. This is Lonesome calling. You sound all sleepy and warm.”
“And I’m only wearing a towel.”
&n
bsp; “You just showered?”
“No, hours ago, but I went to bed early just so you could wake me up.”
“I could wake you up a lot more if I were there.”
“I know. So it was a late dinner? I left messages on all your phones.”
“The cell’s on off in my jacket pocket, but I saw your red light blinking on the hotel phone the second I got in. You must be ready for business.”
“For you, always.” Temple let her voice exit intimate mode. “But I really do have business to talk over with you.”
“So you’ve been so frantic to reach me just for . . . business?”
She started to explain, but he interrupted.
“Actually, Temple, I might have some work stuff to discuss with you before this trip ends. So what’s up besides me?”
“Oh, really? You just made me forget what I was going to say.”
“Small chance. I can hear your PR vibes revving up even now. Spill.”
“Okay. I’ve got this really wild idea for promoting Nicky Fontana’s mob-style update of the Phoenix ex-underground attraction and Gangsters Hotel and Casino. Guess what we found in the under-construction tunnel connecting the two properties today?”
He knew better than to guess and she rattled on.
“It’s so incredible. Midnight Louie and Louise found it, chasing a rat into a hole and digging out an old bearer bond for ten thousand dollars!”
“Louie stuck in a paw and pulled out a plum?”
“Financially speaking. Van said bearer bonds never lose their value. Whoever holds ’em can cash ’em.”
“I imagine Louie and Louise were relieved of their find?”
“They may be smart, but they don’t have bank accounts. Van has the bond now, but one of the Glory Hole Gang thought the side wall was hollow in one spot, and the workmen went at it with pneumatic drills and the Glory Hole Gang grabbed pick axes and the noise and dirt were atrocious, but they uncovered a buried vault door right in the middle of the tunnel! I mean a bank-style, heavy-metal vault door. Locked. Can you imagine if the vault is stuffed with bearer bonds and silver dollars?”
“Big news,” Matt agreed. “What are you going to do with it, Ace?”
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