"Free-to-be-Feline," Temple confided.
"I beg your pardon?" Van von Rhine's pale eyebrows elevated like polite ghostly caterpillars
''Louie would never leave his Free-to-be-Feline," Temple explained with laudable confidence, ''especially now that I dish shrimp Creole over it. Lots of shrimp. Cans of it. It's good for him; the Free-to-be-Feline, not necessarily the shrimp."
"I see." With Cinnamon whisked away, Van's voice indicated boredom with feeding formulas. She sighed. "As for your presence today, Nicky insists it is high time for a hotel makeover. I suppose he's right, given the appallingly short attention-span of the American public. In Europe, hotels pride themselves on their immutability, not on an annual facelift."
Temple remembered the lightly tanned Italian Romeo who had accompanied his wife to the convention center office to reclaim Louie weeks before, luckily to no good effect. Louie, borne away in a silver Corvette, had returned alone and on foot, and that was the end of his unofficial residence at the Crystal Phoenix. Temple wondered why, then sniffed a lingering scent of infant on the air--part Johnson & Johnson's powder, part Pampers, part pea. Perhaps Louie was even more allergic to something besides unadulterated Free-to-be-Feline.
"Wasn't the Crystal Phoenix completely redesigned only a couple years ago?" Temple asked.
"Exactly my point." Van von Rhine, baby and beast dispensed with, resumed her executive manner by folding pale, manicured hands on her sleek, glass-topped desk. "Las Vegas is changing before our eyes. Miss Barr. When Nicky and I introduced the remodeled Crystal Phoenix, 'class,' elan, what-you-will was a novelty in Las Vegas. Now . . . well, I can't say the town has grown sophisticated, but the marketing emphasis has changed. One must keep up with modern times. The Crystal Phoenix is not about to desert the 'classy' image that has set it apart, but we also must bow to modern economic pressures. We must offer a Family Plan."
Temple nodded seriously. She had never fallen in love with Las Vegas, although she had always rather admired its unpretentiously wacky instincts. But the feisty, money-grubbing town that Bugsy Siegel had imagined in the forties, that had exploded in the fifties, expanded in the sixties, frolicked in the seventies and splurged in the eighties had foundered in the nineties.
Las Vegas needed more than a face-lift to compete with Disney World and dial-a-lottery. It had to showcase more than babes, betting and blinking lights; more even than computerized slot machines and the occasional dose of class. It had to dispense family entertainment.
"Gentleman Johnny Diamond, our ballad singer," Van went, on, "was always behind--and therefore has come out ahead of--his time. The hotel decor, which I supervised, is refined to the max."
Temple winced at the last word of the last expression, for personal reasons.
"Our floor show," Van said with prim satisfaction, "was always more reminiscent of the Lido in Paris than the Lace 'n' Lust downtown. But I admit that the Crystal Phoenix lacks the proletarian approach. We must reposition ourselves to attract the full-value, family customers that Las Vegas seeks nowadays. Can you devise a program for us, Miss Barr, that converts 'class'
into 'family class?' "
''What a challenge," Temple responded to buy time. "Perhaps I should inspect the operation first."
"Excellent idea." Van von Rhine's trim fingernail, buffed to a rosy sheen, pressed a call button on her desk.
Instantly, a young man knocked on the door and entered the office. "You rang? Your slave is absent and I was passing by, so I thought I'd answer and see what was shakin'."
"Ralph," Van said, looking none too pleased, "Miss Barr needs a tour of the hotel. Is Nicky around?"
"Nicky is always around."
Ralph's lazy grin struck Temple as familiar, not only for its easy intimacy, but for its current shape and form.
Ralph was not an apt name for a suavely swarthy guy in his late twenties wearing a Nino Cerutti ice-cream suit guaranteed to melt female hearts at fifty paces. Temple would have taken him for the lounge singer, Johnny Diamond, had Van von Rhine not called him ''Ralph."
"In other words," Van said, frowning, ''Nicky's nowhere to be found when he's needed. I'm afraid that you'll have to escort Miss Barr yourself."
Ralph shrugged exquisitely padded shoulders. "No problem." His introductory glance was flattering to Temple, who had recently passed the landmark of thirty, and was therefore likely an "older woman" to him.
"One of Nicky's brothers," Van von Rhine added dryly. "I think you'll be safe."
"Really?" Temple's voice lilted with interest.
The Fontana brothers were infamous in Las.Vegas for their obscene number (nine or ten.
Temple recalled), their spiffy tailoring, and their latent mob tendencies. Nicky, of course, was the impeccably respectable businessman of the bunch with his purchase and restoration of the Crystal Phoenix and his marriage to Van, the daughter of a German hotel manager. The other Fontana boys were unwed, and apparently unemployed in any recognized legal occupation.
Temple had never met a Fontana brother in the flesh, besides Nicky, and found the species attractive but too overwhelming to take seriously.
Ralph managed to beat her to the office door without looking as if he had moved, and flourished it open. Normally, Temple hated gallant gestures, especially when performed in Cinemascope, but a Fontana brother was too much of a living legend to rebuke.
She sailed through on her conservatively tailored Evan Picone pumps, hoping that she sounded as brisk and businesslike as Van von Rhine at her most Teutonic. Landing a Strip hotel account was big-time, almost more than Temple liked to handle for a reasonably relaxed lifestyle.
Still, if she had to pick her favorite Vegas hostelry, it was the Crystal Phoenix. This was not simply for sentimental reasons: that it was, for instance. Midnight Louie's former headquarters, or that Max Kinsella had wined and dined her at the rooftop Fontana Lounge when announcing their joint purchase of the Circle Ritz condominium.
Temple frowned. Best not to let past disappointments shadow the present.
"Are you familiar with the hotel, Miss Barr?" Ralph inquired with a smile that was almost shy.
Perhaps the bachelor Fontana brothers were used to running in a pack.
"I know the public areas," Temple said, "but not the quirky little aspects every hotel has."
"Quirk is my specialty," Ralph promised, extending his hand like a tour guide, the better to display the gold oval of a Roman ring. A real Roman ring.
Where did the Fontana boys get their money? Not from their notorious uncle, Macho Mario Fontana, at least not publicly. Temple began to chafe at the notion of getting mixed up with shady company. The Crystal Phoenix, and Nicky and Van, had impeccable reputations, but the brothers did not. Of course. Temple's own record on shady associates wasn't triple A, thanks to Max (Mr. Interpol Pinup) Kinsella.
Ralph proved to be a decent guide. While he did not neglect such highlights as the water-garden lobby, the Ultra suede-covered gaming surfaces and the palm-dotted outdoor pool area, he did point out the quirky.
"The Midnight Louie memorial pond," he said -solemnly with crossed hands and bowed dark head near a stand of canna lilies.
Temple gazed into the shade-dappled pool, in which large, richly scaled fish schooled like angry piranha.
''Gorgeous goldfish!" Temple admitted.
''Chef Song's private stock. And don't let him catch you calling them goldfish. Or carp. My brother Armando called them carp in his hearing once, and almost lost his ears to a meat cleaver. The word is 'koi.' K-o-i, but you pronounce it like it had a 'w' in it. K-w-o-i."
"Kwoi," Temple repeated, amused by Ralph's careful explanation. She already knew the term, but decided not to tell him. "Why is it Louie's memorial garden? He isn't dead yet."