Carole Douglas - Cat in a Midnight Choir

Temple hoped that her price was the rock-bottom one it should have been.

She sighed deeply and then eased out the brake. Everyone always watched a new owner toodle away as if driving over shattered glass. Hah! She put the car in gear and spurted out onto the freeway access road like a crimson jackrabbit, safe but not sorry.

In a minute she was on 95, her short curls curried by the desert wind. The car fit her like glove leather, with which it was indeed lined.

The only negative was that her exit came up too quickly and she was soon trolling mundane city streets again (if city streets could ever be mundane in Las Vegas) at a sedate thirty-five miles an hour.

Taking a spin in her new car seemed like a good idea, but which direction could she spin it in? All dressed up and no place to go…

She knew: the Crystal Phoenix. The Grand Opening had been last week, so she wanted to sneak up on the crowds patronizing her various bright ideas there, the Jersey Joe Jackson Action Attraction, the petting zoo, the Domingo performance art garden…. Amid the opening crowds and hoopla, she hadn’t been able to savor every little touch.

Temple spun the small steering wheel around the next corner, and the next, until she was on the car-crowded Strip, just another gawker in a mechanical bumper-car game of hot metal, lurching her way to Byzantium, or at least the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino.

She drove up the long, curving drive, thinking everybody was staring at her, which they weren’t. There were far more pricy and exotic cars in the queue.

She hopped out to let the valet take the precious car instead of parking it in the far back lot and hiking up to the hotel’s rear entrance as usual.

Sticking the parking chit in her tote bag, where it was promptly lost, Temple strode into the main entrance on her high-rise heels.

Somebody whistled.

Obviously not at her.

She strode ahead as only a determined short woman can.

Someone whistled again.

She risked a glance over her shoulder: Armani suit at three o’clock high, bearing down on her in a cotton-candy cloud of unwrinkled wool-silk blend, no easy deed in Las Vegas.

So here she was: IDed, targeted, and shot down by a Fontana brother in full flight.

Whether Temple or the Fontana brother was in full flight was a good question.

She spun and stopped to wait for the inevitable to catch up with her.

“I am hurt,” he said when within hearing distance. “Miss Temple Barr deigns to visit my brother Nicky’s tacky little establishment and she intends to hit the front door without a suitable escort.”

He paused to fold his hands in front of him and smile rebukingly down on her.

“Take off those extreme-price shades so I can see the whites of your fine Italian eyes,” she said,“and can tell who you are. I don’t accept anonymous escorts.”

He shrugged and peeled off the wraparound Porsches.

Not Aldo, or Julio, or Rico, or Giuseppe, or Ernesto. Temple put her brain through boot camp. What were the other Fontana names? Not Vito. Or Fabrizio, thank Jove. Wasn’t one named something unlikely? Panache? Pinocchio?

“Ralph, at your disposal,” he said. “It appears that I am the only member of the family on hand to do the host’s duty. How may I be of service?”

Temple eschewed the obvious, as was always wise with a Fontana brother. “Well, I could use a good guide.”

“I am the best. To what?”

“To the best of the Crystal Phoenix. I’m here to give the new attractions a post-opening test drive, so to speak, as an unsuspecting member of the the public.”

“Speaking of test drives, I see you have a snappy new car. I can get you a Maserati for a very good price.”

“I don’t doubt it, Ralph, but the car I drove up in is the best I can afford and I think of it as a Maserati in training.”

“No doubt you are right.” He offered an arm. “Am I right in assuming that the honor of being your escort on this occasion will mean an expedition on the Jersey Joe Jackson mine ride?”

“Why, yes. You have any reservations about the JJJ mine ride?”

“Many, all having to do with digesting a superb lunch of veal Venezia at the Rialto.”

“Don’t worry. I left special instructions that the mine ride personnel be equipped with, how shall I put it, barf bags?”

Ralph nodded with monkish resignation most unusual in a Fontana brother, and swept open a glass door by its gilded phoenix handle.

Temple moved into the chill air inside, onto the soft hush of thick carpeting, secretly hoping that she would soon see a suave and elegant Fontana brother screaming and shaking and losing his lunch.

Because she had dropped in without making previous arrangements like a proper PR person, Temple and Ralph had to queue up and pay up at the ticket kiosk like any tourists.

“I could —” Ralph suggested, easing a supple calfskin wallet from his inside jacket pocket as another, cruder sort of fellow might tease the butt of a Beretta forth from the same site.

“No tips, please.” Temple frowned, employing her sternest tone. “I want to see how the system works without greasing.”

“I hope they grease the tracks,” Ralph muttered under his breath.

Temple noticed that his warm Italian skin now matched the pallor of his fine Italian tailoring.

The kiosk was manned by a Calamity Jane type. Temple had nixed the first suggestion of a dance hall girl with cleavage.

Calamity Jane came with side arms instead. “Howdy!” She paused in her spiel to aim her handy pistol at an animated bushwhacker in the faux desert terrain. “Don’t mind him. Jest a claim-jumper. Guess he’s jumped all the way back to St. Louis now. Jest follow the folks up front and keep to four lines and watch out for bushwhackers.”

“This bushwhacker,” Ralph asked. “Where did the expression come from?”

PR people are supposed to know everything, so Temple took an uneducated guess. “I suppose from all the missed shots miners fired at each other defending their claims. They probably hit more bushes than people.”

Ralph nodded, impressed. All that had touched his land of origin in the last century or so had been world wars. “The Wild West.”

“I hope so.” Temple was buoyed to see that the line was long. They had to baby-step along behind a full complement of riders. Once they had moved into the Old West Saloon the lights grew dim, the piano music came up, and they were passing a laughing crowd of seated patrons watching a burlesque show on the stage.

Part of the scene were live actors, part animatronic figures, and the line moved just fast enough that you couldn’t be sure which was which.

People around them laughed at the punchlines or buzzed about some subtle bit of business in one corner or the other. The scene was complex enough that repeated viewings would reveal new details.

There! Temple noted. In the corner. That byplay between the drunken snake-oil salesman, the temperance lady, and the visiting English duke was hers. She was a playwright!

She realized that people in line were turning around to eye her and Ralph. Did they know she was the creative genius behind this display?

Then Temple looked at the people looking at them. Tourists clad in saggy shorts and baggy T-shirts. She in high heels and Ralph in Armani looked out of place in the Wild West ambiance of the Jersey Joe Jackson Action Attraction. Jersey Joe Jackson had probably, and fortunately, never lived long enough to hear the word “ambiance” used.

Temple cleared her throat and looked down as their path led onto a crude wooden elevator. She catwalked onto the contrivance, setting each foot down so her spindly heels didn’t wedge into the spaces between the rough board floor.