Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“Next place over is still afloat,” Cranky Ferguson grumbled. “I think they paid protection to the Guy Upstairs to keep their waterline from wastin’ away.”

“Vagaries of nature,” Nostradamus put in, “are as cruel as odds at the track, but a little birdie—”

“A scavenger crow, no doubt,” Eightball put in.

“—tells me that the Glory Hole Gang is coming back.”

“Right on, Nostradamus!” Nicky’s clap on Cranky Ferguson’s shoulder raised a puff of sand dust. “Three O’Clock Louie’s is coming back, better than ever. What do you guys say to a new location?”

Nostradamus had been standing by, but now he tipped his hat. “I see there’s hefty business on the table, so I must amble on while I am able.”

The Glory Hole Gang nodded the bookie good-bye, then hunkered down for serious talk.

“Thing is,” Nicky said, “I recalled the operation and want to make Three O’Clock’s into a franchise, starting with a flagship restaurant at Gangsters and then going national. After all, the ex–Glory Hole Gang has a colorful early Vegas history, and we can theme the menu to those exciting days of yesteryear.”

“That’s the concept,” Temple asked, “a restaurant?”

“Just one aspect. After all, the Strip Hilton—all that’s left of Bugsy Siegel’s first Flamingo motel-casino—has Margaritaville. Maybe we’ll have Mobsterville. Reposition the name. The old-time ‘Families’ are as much a ‘cultural brand’ as Jimmy Buffet’s Island paradise.”

“That’s ingenious, Nicky,” Temple said, “but I’m not quite sold that it’s genius. ‘Life is a beach’ is a universal longing. ‘Life is a bitch’—maybe not so much.”

“Naw, it’s true. The Wynn Hotel has gone with a Sinatra theme for its priciest restaurant. Think the Ocean’s Eleven film revival. Nowadays it’s George Clooney instead of Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. Hip, socially concerned, but with a huge wink at our origins. Transparency, right? Today’s political buzzword.”

Temple laughed. “You’re a marketing chameleon, Nicky. Just like the mob.”

“The mob,” Cranky scoffed. “They were a bunch of punks. Overestimated in the Vegas early days, mainly for notoriety.”

“Frankly,” Nicky said, “Bugsy had the vision. The big mob boys didn’t get it. Jersey Joe Jackson followed in Bugsy’s footsteps with his Joshua Tree Hotel-Casino, but they had limited eyesight. They thought motor lodge, not hotel, and would have been astounded by the mega-hotel concept that lines the Las Vegas Strip nowadays. When the mob went corporate, Las Vegas spread its wings. Sure, folks alive today waltzed around the mob fringes, and pockets of the protection racket exist, but now, enterprise has to go mainstream or die. You can’t have ordinary people hurting and be commercial. That’s why this economic tsunami is so disastrous.”

“It sure baked us outta business,” Spuds Lonnigan said. “What’s our comeback restaurant shtick here at Gangsters?”

“Speakeasy’s south. Way south. Underground, in fact, with no pesky problems with Mother Nature,” Nicky assured him. “I’m talking the look of a Prohibition Palace. Knock three times to get in. Bootleg liquor, prime stuff. Guys and dolls. A little gaming. A menu that’s a history of Vegas influences, Spuds, from lowbrow to high-hat. People will be greasin’ palms to get low down with the Glory Hole Gang and its members’ authentic ambience and cuisine celebrating the good ol’ bad days of miners and mobsters. What do you think?”

“Brilliant,” said Temple. “If the Feds don’t raid you, I can sell it until doomsday.”

Hands came up simultaneously to burnish grizzled jaws.

“We’re basically desert rats,” Cranky Ferguson noted, “ ’cept Eightball here got a city PI business going. Sure, we pulled that silver-dollar heist, train robbery stuff from the old days. You think you can sell us as city slicker mobsters?”

“Rat Pack,” Nicky pounced. “Only ahead of your time.”

They squinted dubiously, en masse. That was a lot of experienced doubt.

Temple knew her Vegas history. The famous Vegas Rat Pack had begun around the twin stars of Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra in the fifties. Bogart died that decade, so the sixties became a second-stage Rat Pack heyday, with a nucleus of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, Juliet Prowse, and Shirley MacLaine had been “Rat Pack Mascots” at various times.

The men’s solo Vegas acts intermingled improvisationally, and they moved on to costarring in films, most notably the original Ocean’s Eleven. Nobody today could bundle that particular magic act of personalities and talent, so the Rat Pack, which never admitted to or liked that name, were now all dead but immortalized, despite the mob aroma that hallowed the singers. Sinatra had known Giancana too. Vegas tribute Rat Pack groups had abounded in recent years.

“It could work,” Temple told Nicky after long thought, “if we resurrect Jersey Joe Jackson. He was the real deal, a founding figure like Bugsy Siegel, but mostly forgotten. He was also a member of the original Glory Hole Gang, wasn’t he?”

“A rat,” Wild Blue Pike said, spitting into his palm to be polite in front of a lady, i.e., Temple. “He hid the money from our silver-dollar heist for his own self. Left us grubbing a living in ghost towns, hiding from the law for forty years while he built the Joshua Tree Hotel to rival Bugsy’s Flamingo and then presided over its decline.”

“The Joshua Tree couldn’t keep up with the times,” Nicky added. “Jersey Joe ended up being the last resident and dying in the abandoned hotel. You guys later helped find one of his silver-dollar stashes in the desert and turned them in.”

“It’s a great story,” Temple decreed. “The whole Glory Hole Gang saga. Rags to riches to rags. From ghost towns to gangsters to tourist mecca. Nicky and I just need to lay it out new, polish it up, and the publicity will come rolling in.”

She glanced at him. When Nicky nodded, she stood.

“Is the Ghost Suite on seven still unlocked?”

“Sure,” he said. “Every time we try to lock it we find it open again. No sense messing with a ghost.”

“I’d like to go up there and give a ghost lockjaw,” Cranky Ferguson muttered, making a fist and punching the air.

“It’s no ghost,” Wild Blue scoffed, “jest broken tumblers. I can take a look at the lock mechanism.”

“No,” Temple said. “Midnight Louie and I have no trouble coming and going up there. Maybe we can re create the suite in Gangsters Hotel. In fact,” she asked Nicky, “don’t the two hotels’ back property lines abut?”

Nicky looked abashed. “Uh, yeah. I believe they might.”

“No wonder you can do an underground linkup, for the … Chunnel of Crime,” Temple said.

“Chunnel of Crime! Yeah,” Pitchblende O’Hara said, gulping the rest of his black and tan. “Love that. We were miners. And the old-time speakeasies favored basement and even cavern locations. When might you get working on it?”

Nicky shrugged. “Already cleaning up the area and installing a few surprises. Depends on when the boss lady okays the link from the Crystal Phoenix end.”

“So you old-timers also think it’s time to ‘come clean’ about the city’s mob past?” Temple asked.

“Nicky did when he reinvented the abandoned Joshua Tree Hotel Jersey Joe built before he went bust. He was a new generation pioneer,” Spuds Lonnigan said. “He did everything on the up-and-up, but on a manageable scale, and look how well the Crystal Phoenix is doing. Now that Vegas construction is in the doldrums, labor and materials are cheaper. Time for reinvesting in the future.”