Unknown - 22_Cat_In_An_Ultramarine_Scheme

“You know the story of Al Capone’s Chicago vault, found decades after his death and famously broken into on live television with Geraldo Rivera at the microphone in nineteen eighty-six. No? Forgotten about that? Let me fill you in.”

Buchanan began pacing in front of the looming steel vault door.

“Capone took over the Chicago Outfit in nineteen twenty-five, before Vegas was a glimmer in the mob’s eye. He was a primo mob boss. He planned the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre and ran the operation from a suite in the Lexington Hotel until he was arrested for income-tax evasion in nineteen thirty-one. Capone was kaput.”

Temple was wishing by now that Crawford was kaput. Every bit of this exposition could be cut, and probably would be.

“So, folks,” Buchanan continued, “the old Lexington Hotel was long overdue for renovation by the eighties. When a surveying crew comes in, what do they find? A series of secret tunnels. Yes, folks, tunnels just like this one linking Gangsters with the far older former Joshua Tree Hotel-Casino, where Jersey Joe Jackson holed up until his death. And in those Chicago tunnels, they found escape routes to local taverns and brothels. They even found a shooting range! And rumors of a secret vault beneath the hotel.” His radio baritone deepened into a thrilling basso: “Just. Like. This. One.”

Crawford straightened his slight frame even as his voice grew deeper and more powerful.

“By then, Geraldo Rivera himself was kaput. He’d been fired by ABC, but he cooked up a comeback broadcast, a two-hour live special program of opening that vault. Thirty million people and standing-by IRS agents and a medical examiner watched, breathless to find Capone’s buried riches or bodies.

“Inside the finally-opened vault? Nothing. It was empty, but Rivera’s career was revived.

“And, don’t forget. This is Vegas, babies! We’ve already had a notorious vault excavated and found it stuffed with treasure, if not bodies. Vegas’s shady founding father, Benny Binion, had a son named Ted, probably killed because of a massive vault buried in the desert, which authorities opened on his death in nineteen ninety-eight. The vault was … crammed with six tons of silver bullion. Six tons! Not to mention scads of chips and paper currency and piles of uncirculated mint Carson City silver dollars, more than a hundred thousand, worth millions. And that was only a decade or so ago.”

This recital was actually causing some onlooker jaws to drop, including Temple’s. She glanced around. Even Santiago’s eyes were glinting with speculation. This tunnel was his playground at the moment… . Might he find more vaults?

Maybe there was something fabulous inside this vault.

“Remember,” Buchanan egged on his now-actually-spellbound audience, “for the last century, Vegas remained a playground for outlaws, from train robbers to mobsters to corporate shysters.”

Buchanan was in full flight of fancy, covering all bases.

“This is not Al Capone’s vault and maybe not even Bugsy’s vault, but it may be Jersey Joe Jackson’s. He died supposedly broke, atop this very ‘hunka hunka burnin’ hidden treasure. Remember? One of Jackson’s reputed stashes of mint silver dollars worth millions was discovered a few years ago deep in the desert. Imagine what the cagey old fart would have buried in his own backyard!

“We’re talking fast-buck operators from the Vegas founding era, when Bugsy and his Jersey-Joey-come-lately desert empire-builder pal, Jackson, were putting up the Flamingo and the Joshua Tree Hotels,” Buchanan went on. “We know Bugsy was shot dead in his girlfriend’s Beverly Hills living room, but Jersey Joe literally faded away in Vegas, just a few hundred feet from and above this very spot. He died in a modest suite in his abandoned Joshua Tree Hotel—”

Temple considered it a Howard Hughes story gone very wrong, much sooner.

“—a hotel now risen from the ashes as the glamorous Crystal Phoenix.”

Temple also considered that finding that desert cache unfortunately unmasked Jackson as a cheating member of the Glory Hole Gang of prospectors.

The surviving gang members were all on site now, grizzled and creaky but still possessing camera-ready grins. Their colorful, Old Vegas presence had really helped roust the media for this admittedly hoary and hokey stunt à la Geraldo’s highly hyped The Mystery of Al Capone’s Vault.

Sensationalism was the name of the media game in print or on film these days, and retro was popular … again.

Macho Mario had made it plain to all comers that he was personally hoping that the opened vault would reveal a scantily clad pinup-girl poster on the inside of the door, number one. Then a fortune of some kind.

The surprise existence of the vault was genuine. It predated the Crystal Phoenix excavation and was located beyond the area the hotel had cleared. Although a rat hole circled it, the vault door was sealed tight as a submarine’s engine room.

Temple would forgo pinup girls, but some souvenirs from the Titanic, say, would be most welcome. Even some more vintage silver dollars. Jersey Joe was rumored to have had more than one stashing spot, and the area above them had been raw desert back in the fifties.

The shrill drone of the drills slipped into another range of shriek.

With a crack, the locking mechanism gave way. The metal door’s huge hinges slipped, sending up clouds of stone and metal powder from the surrounding structure.

Fontana brothers frantically clapped the dust from their immaculate silk-blend dark suits, now the same pale color as the powder.

“Pay dirt!” Crawford Buchanan bellowed, pushing Pitchblende O’Hara and Wild Blue Pike aside to jerk on the gleaming brass spoked wheel that would open the door.

Nothing happened. He jumped up and down on the spokes like a monkey on a stick.

Nothing moved.

“Now, there,” said Macho Mario, his stocky figure in Fontana signature threads pushing to the fore, “I’m head of the family. I’ll do the honors.”

He grabbed the huge loosened wheel and tugged. Then he grunted and twisted. Finally, he fell back, panting.

“I thought you cut through the lock,” he yelled at the sweat-streaming workmen who had dutifully ebbed aside to let the big shots claim the glory.

Everyone stared, stymied, at the metal powder-dusted door.

Then, while no one was trying, it slowly edged ajar four inches.

“Jersey Joe’s ghost!” Crawford shouted. “Human hands were not touching the handle just now. I was watching and swear it.”

Absolutely true. The hovering videographers focused for a close-up of the waist-high mechanism.

Temple’s brow crimped with consternation. This was a great effect, but someone must have engineered it. There would be hell to pay when the media realized that. Being short, she looked down, wondering if a concealed chain of some sort had been attached to the door base.

A motion at the door’s very bottom caught her eye. A black cat muzzle retreated from the opening.

No, Temple thought. Impossible. Midnight Louie had “nosed” the metal door open? From the inside?

She watched his black form slip out and vanish unnoted among the videographers’ jean-clad legs as they jockeyed to film the ajar door, not the exiting cat.

Nicky took matters into his hotel owner’s hands and stepped up to jerk on the immobile metal spokes with both fists. That old Fontana-brother magic still worked. The bank-vault-thick door groaned open with a clank befitting Marley’s ghost … and out came … walked … another black cat, to Temple, anyway, the first giant step for catkind to all the other witnesses.

Midnight Louise sat in the opening and yawned.

“Someone’s already breached the vault,” Eightball O’Rourke accused. “This isn’t any debut opening. It’s a setup job.” He glared at Crawford Buchanan.