Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

Now the water has dried up like the worldwide credit system, a matter of ecology mirroring economy.

I do not know what I expected to see. Maybe carp corpses glittering with solid gold scales. A few diamond rings that slipped from careless hands into the deep blue waters would be rewarding, but it looks as if the metal detectors have already scoured the surface, given the sand is burnished in circles as if a wax buffer had been over it.

So all I see is cracked yellow sand harder than stone and the same old, same old that spells M-o-j-a-v-e Desert. This once-submerged dirt is decorated by patches of burnt brown grass and a few scuzzy green areas, maybe moss where some moisture might have gathered. Beyond it the ringing low hills show a wide beige watermark I’ve heard called the lake’s “bathtub ring.” Mostly, the dry land is parched, marked only by the island of an abandoned rowboat trailing a desiccated fuse of rope and some small rocklike hummocks.

Manx, if I had wanted to walk on the moon, I would have applied to NASA!

And if I had wanted to chap my pads, I could have walked the Strip from one end to the other and at least had a few morsels of fast food out of it, either boxed or bagged on the hoof. Or a Paw and Claw dinner of mouse and lizard, not that I eat much that has not been fully prepared and is fit for human consumption these days.

The overhead sun beats down on our black coats. I pause to look back. The ersatz, ramshackle bulk of the restaurant seems far away. Even farther is the sparkle of blue shore and the bob of white boats next door. Add a bit of carp gold, and I would be a happy hiker.

As it is …

“Look here, Three O’Clock,” I say. “I have developed pretty good distance eyesight from many long nights spent ogling the neon on the Strip. I can see a bright band of blue water that marks the lake’s new water’s edge. I can see enough sand and abandoned anchors and driftwood and plain old junk to background a Pirates of the Caribbean movie. But no hide nor hair of a dead body do I see. So you have no case.”

“No?” Three O’Clock does the senior scamper and cackle to a spot ten yards farther on.

I slog over to examine an odd and unpromising “find” about the size of a picnic hamper for munchkins, except it is in no way appetizing.

“Daddy-o,” I say, once again adopting Miss Midnight Louise’s casual manner of addressing me, “what is this? Some carnival stilt-walker dumped his huge clown shoes and sticks cut off at the calf overboard. Maybe he was giving up the circus and made the grand gesture on Lake Mead. Maybe he was impressing a girl. Humans will do that.”

By now Three O’Clock is having a senior tantrum, hissing and spitting.

“Did I sire something with kitty litter for brains? With the eyesight of a bat? The mental acuity of a hedgehog? The arrogance of a hedge-fund manager? Great Bast, help me, boy. You are a detective like I am a Fig Newton! Open your eyes and your mind.”

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.”