Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

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.”

“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?”

“The workmen chipped away all the concealing construction and I got this idea.”

“Obviously.”

“Given the legends about the Phoenix’s own Jersey Joe Jackson hiding stashes of cash and silver dollars in and around Vegas, I want the workmen to open the vault in full media presence. The public loves the idea of buried treasure, so the ‘opening’ should bring out all the syndicated media from Los Angeles as well as all the usual suspects in Vegas. Nicky could not buy better exposure. But I need to get the whole setup together really fast. What do you think?”

“I think you’re brilliant. If anyone can pull this off, you can.”

“It might be a real tangle who gets the money, but that’s up to the powers-that-be to decide.”

“True, but I think you should get a bonus.”

“Bonuses are good. That would help with the bridesmaids’ costs for the wedding.”

“Bridesmaids, plural? You are planning on a big production.”

“I always plan on a big production, keep that in mind.”

“I do, I do.”

“And that’s what you’ll be repeating at the altar. Gee, I hope I’m not biting off more than I can chew here.”

“You’re talking about the unveiling of the vault again, I hope.”

“Yeah.” Temple suddenly felt a nasty, aching gnaw in her stomach. Cold feet?

“What’s the worst that could happen?” she asked him.

She answered her own question before he could.

“The worst that could happen is that vault could be absolutely empty.”

“I’ll say a prayer that it isn’t,” Matt promised.

“Thank you, Matt!”

The Deity having been invoked, they wound up the conversation with a few innocent but extended good-byes, and Temple hung up.

The gnawing feeling in her stomach wasn’t cold feet about anything. Apparently her nervous fit was over. She knew her course.

She jumped out of bed, heading for the main room and the kitchen.

She was starved! Starved for … blueberry yogurt with a crisp topping of … caramel corn.

Whose Vault Is It?

Temple found it impossibly nerve-racking to have all of Fontana, Inc. peering over her shoulder, including Van von Rhine.

Not that Temple’s shoulders were broad or high enough to keep a grasshopper from kibitzing over them.

“You’re sure we went with the right announcer?” Van asked.

Underground, in the hard-surfaced tunnel, her hushed whisper carried as if she were yelling through a megaphone.

Not to worry. The announcer was absorbed in fussing with the tiny earphone in one ear and eyeing himself in a mirror the prop girl was holding up.

“Is this all the camera-power opening Bugsy Siegel’s vault could pull?” Macho Mario Fontana demanded from behind Temple’s other shoulder.

“It’s all the major stations as far as L.A. and several national news feature shows, including Excess Hollywood,” Temple assured every Fontana ear within hearing, which included Nicky and eight of his brothers, who formed an impressive crowd on their own. “Everybody’s pooling camera teams now. Recession.”

“Recession!” Macho Mario ridiculed. “In my day we had goddamn real Depressions, not these pansy recessions.”

“Watch the political correctness,” Nicky growled.

“Now I can’t even say the word Depression?”

“It’s the flower thing, Zio Mario,” Julio put in as the second-oldest and therefore bravest nephew on site.

“I will call a g-d daffodil a daffodil. And who is this limp-wrist holding the microphone? I wanted someone with authority, like Robert Stack or Charlton Heston.”

“They’re dead.” Julio broke the news.

“No kidding? And they didn’t even announce it on TV? The world is going to the bloodhounds.”

Temple didn’t want to admit she shared the paterfamilias’s anxiety.

She’d wanted Geraldo Rivera, but he’d been booked.

At least she’d found someone who remembered who Geraldo Rivera was.

Basically, this job required a huckster who deeply believed in his own seriousness.

Meanwhile, the pneumatic hammers drilled into the rock surrounding the massive metal door of the vaunted “vault.”

Rock shards littering the packed dirt floor and the support structure’s wooden ribs made this section of tunnel feel like the belly of a petrified whale. The vault had been sited halfway between Gangsters’ and the Crystal Phoenix’s stoutly supported tunnel of faux-rock mine walls bolted into strong concrete beneath.

Everybody present wore hard hats, including the videographers toting large cameras on their shoulders, giving them Alien monster silhouettes.

The Phoenix’s section had built-in temperature controls, but this new area was the last freshly excavated bit from the Gangsters side and oddly combined hot and cold spots. It felt dank, but also steamy.

Temple figured a little sweat added to the ambience, and it certainly made the drill operators’ tan, muscled, bare arms look wrestling-ring ready. Two of the four videographers were female and were not missing panning the local color.

Somehow Crawford Buchanan, self-proclaimed local “personality,” radio vagabond, and perpetrator of cheesy events usually involving underage females, was the exact right figure to ballyhoo the forthcoming mystery revelation. His short stature, black suit, and gel-slathered, black-streaked white pompadour made him an “anti”-Santiago. It also brought a funereal gravity to an operation that threatened to reveal … “Bugsy Siegel’s vault, folks. This massive rusted steel door has been dated to be at least forty years old,” he shouted into the mike over the racket of spitting faux rock and concrete.