Кэрол Дуглас - Cat In A Quicksilver Caper

True, she lavished more than the usual affection on me, even clutching me to her breast (which is not such a great treat for a dude such as I, if you wish to know; we do not like forced confinement, even in comfy places). Please, let us come to you. It works out much better.

Anyway, I put up with this mushy stuff because we go back a long way and have done some heads-up crime-solving together. A dude owes it to his partner, even when the going threatens to get slushy.

And it is not that I am such a big fan of Mr. Max Kinsella, who previously occupied pride of place here at this Circle Ritz unit, i.e., the bed. I mean, he is probably an okay magician and he does have undercover aims for the betterment of humankind—not that humankind much deserves it, from my observation—but there is only room for one black-haired, agile, and sexy Alpha Male in this unit, and it is I.

You will note that I am schooled in the nuances of human grammar as well as kung fu.

And I have nothing against Mr. Matt Devine, who once devoted himself to the service of humankind (boy, they do get a lot of devotion for such a sorry species) and, during his priesthood days, actually gave up using what I almost lost. Even Miss Midnight Louise has a soft spot for him and she is one hard mama, let me tell you, speaking as her delinquent supposed-daddy. So I do sympathize with a well-meaning dude who is trying to enter the Alpha Male sweepstakes so belatedly in life. Not everyone can have my advantage of being born to be bad.

But my first and foremost loyalty is to my Miss Temple. She is not only Recently Blond, she is recently tempted by the New Dude on the Block.

Well, I am the grayer head here by a single hair. I will not tell you where it is.

So, I sense that I will have to seek advice outside my usual, normal guy-type venues.

Ick!

However, for the good of my devoted roomie, no sacrifice is too extreme.

The Deal of the Art

The New Millennium Hotel’s vast, soaring, empty exhibition space rivaled the square footage and chambered nautilus design of the Guggenheim Museum West at the Venice Hotel and Casino up the Strip. Temple eyed its scope with a frisson of pride that this might be her next assignment.

The Guggenheim Museum in New York City and its Western branch at the Venice Hotel in Las Vegas made strange bedfellows, but Las Vegas was built on making strange bedfellows. Or making bedfellows of strangers.

Nowadays in the City That Never Sleeps, though, class is a more cherished commodity than wretched excess for its own gaudy sake. To this has Las Vegas ascended: the city now boasts a mini Guggenheim Museum as well as a mini Eiffel Tower. Pretty soon it may boast a mini me.

New York’s famous Frank Lloyd Wright–designed museum was created decades ago for its Manhattan setting. It is a top-heavy organic space, with galleries spiraling upward around a soaring central atrium.

The vaulted exhibition space at the New Millennium is less natural and more high-tech, an eight-story Star Trek holodeck now vacant but capable of running any exhibition “program” needed.

“You like, I see,” said Randall Wordsworth, the New Millennium’s chief PR honcho.

He was an affable, well-fed, graying guy who looked liked he had been born with the low blood pressure needed to navigate a major Las Vegas attraction through endless media hoopla.

“It’s a totally blank canvas in three-D,” Temple said, trying to get her focus right despite three cups of espresso. It was 12:30 P.M. and she still was not quite there yet. “There’s nothing you can’t do in this space.”

“Exactly. We plan to use it for three-dimensional multimedia, multicultural exhibitions. The opening art exhibition will be spectacular, but so will the elevated magic show occurring above it. A double bill of eye candy and live entertainment. You see our problem.”

“Two-dimensional artworks like paintings, no matter how rare and spectacular, are static.”

“Exactly.”

“But the more you jazz up the exhibition itself,” Temple went on, “the less respect you get from the major national media, and the higher risk you run of something invaluable being damaged, or even stolen. What to settle for? Glitz or guilt? Essentially, this new upscale trend has made the Las Vegas we know and love bipolar.”

Wordsworth laughed. “That last analogy earns you a free lunch at our Jupiter restaurant. And my dedicated admiration.”

Over a sumptuous lunch of Martian greens and Saturn scampi (the New Millennium boasted a relentless solar system theme), Temple and Randy Wordsworth discovered that they were both pros at public relations.

That wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was discovering that they both performed the same tightrope act of being meticulously honest with the press while keeping the interests of their billion-dollar-baby employers foremost.

Lying to one for the other never came out as well as it was supposed to.

“Truth will out,” Randy mused over the arugula and other less identifiable but no less trendy greens, “and show up on Access Hollywood.”

“Or Sixty Minutes , even worse.”

“So our jobs—” he began.

“—are to prevent anything bad from happening that might make the six P.M. news, et cetera.”

“I’m amazed some major hotel hasn’t snagged you for PR director,” he noted, sipping the white wine spritzer the canny PR person uses to imbibe socially without losing an ounce of keen observation.

Or weight, unfortunately, Temple thought.

“I’m happiest working with a variety of projects,” she explained. “And I’m the semiofficial permanent floating PR consultant for the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino.”

“Nicky and Van Fontana’s place! Class act. ‘Choice,’ as Spenser Tracy said when he met Katharine Hepburn. Sad that they’re both finally gone now.”

“You mean Tracy and Hepburn, not Nicky and Van, of course. Sad and a heck of a lot less interesting.”

“That’s exactly why I’m looking for outside assistance with the White Russian exhibit.”

“I can’t see why. You’re a total pro.”

“Thank you. I’d like to keep it that way.”

Temple nodded. “When what we do works, nobody notices.”

“With this exhibition, the New Millennium competes directly against the Bellagio and the Venice, which started the Art of Vegas trend. A lot is on the line, going upscale like this. Your reputation for, er, uncovering crime scenes is another reason we’d like you on board. An exhibition like this attracts the criminal elements. We have security, of course, but we’d like someone on staff who can blend a suspicious mind with publicity concerns.”

“You need a Nancy Drew with a communications degree.”

“Right. And since you’ve done PR in the past for purely cultural institutions, I could use you to handle special touchy corporate sponsor events and high-gloss artsy-fartsy print media. Glitz I get. With quiet snobby stuff, I gotta admit, I’m out of my element. If Art in America deigned to notice us, I’d swoon.”

“I can’t guarantee that, but I can give it the old art college try. What about the show’s basics, like security?”

“Absolutely the latest high-tech world-class museum paraphernalia. I can’t be specific—”

“Of course not. The fewer who know how and where, the safer the installation. But with all that archaic bling from days of empire, your prime audience will be women, and we’re generally a rule-abiding lot. Sometimes too much so.”

“Yes. Women will be dazzled by the paintings, the artifacts, the jewels, the gowns, the tragic death of the Romanovs, and the brutal end to empire.”

“And they’ll hopefully urge their honeys to dazzle them after a tour of the exhibition with the costly but less arty goodies in the exhibition gift shop and the hotel’s Milky Way shopping arcade.”