I cannot take it, and soon drift off to LullabyLand, where cat food commercials are the main event, and people are confined to sixty second cameos. In my dreams, the Divine Yvette, shaded-silver queen of the screen, is joined by her glorious shaded-golden sister, the Sublime Solange. I feel my whiskers twitch with bliss. I am not only skimming down the endless flight of steps to their supple Persian sides, but I manage to give the evil Maurice a karate kick on the way down. He flies into the air and disappears in the dark wings of the stage set.
My triumph is complete … until the buzzer rings and hauls us all offstage.
I wake up punch-drunk and blinking, to find MissTempleon the telephone and the VCR tape on permanent hold. Mr. Matt Devine’s earnest face is frozen on the screen, but Miss Temple has finally turned her back on it.
“What?” she is saying. “That cannot be. It is ridiculous.” She pauses. “Of course I can come over, but I hardly expect to be able to do anything about it, other than to talk some sense into the workmen, and they are not the type to listen to me … no! I really do not need any more ‘backup,’ thank you very much, Aldo. I can handle this, solo.”
My ears perk up. If there is something to be “handled,” and if Miss Temple Barr is insisting to someone else that she can do it “solo,” my special skills will definitely be needed.
It sniffs as if something is up at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino, where Miss Temple’s grand plan of renovation is even now coming to fulfillment, now that the classiest little hotel and casino in Las Vegas is her biggest client. I have a major stake in the Crystal Phoenix from the old days. Back before it was remodeled into the elegant joint it is today, it was a derelict hotel along the Strip, like the Aladdin was now and then for years until it finally fell like the walls of Jericho a few months ago. The Crystal Phoenix is where I began my career as dudeabout-town and unofficial house dick. That was before I met MissTemple and we decided to share digs here at the Circle Ritz apartments and condominiums.
I glance at the television screen and wrinkle my nose. That was before Mr. Matt Devine came into the picture, or even before MissTemple came to Las Vegas in the mysterious company of Mr. Tall, Dark, and Debonair: Max Kinsella, a magician known as the Mystifying Max. He lived up to his billing by vanishing without a trace for several months, leaving a vacancy with MissTemple at the Circle Ritz that I slipped into like an eel on ice. But now Mr. Max is back, an ex-magician, but not ex-enough in other departments, which both Mr. Matt Devine and yours truly are not exactly gleeful about, if you get my drift.
But why should anybody get my drift? I know enough to keep my ears open and my lips buttoned. What they do not know that I know will not hurt me. If you can follow that, you are welcome to assume you have gotten my drift as much as anybody ever will.
Chapter 2
(You Were) Always on My Mine
(“You Were Always on My Mind” was written for Elvis and he recorded it in 1972. Willie Nelson’s hit 1982 version was named song of the year in both ‘82 and ‘83)
“I’m sorry to have bothered you,” Aldo Fontana greeted Temple in the bustling lobby of the Crystal Phoenix Hotel.
“It’s no bother; it’s my job. And I’ve been a little delinquent of late,” she admitted.
Aldo, tall, dark and deadpan, took the opportunity to look her up and down, all five feet of her, appreciatively. “I have always considered you a little delinquent, MissTemple. But I wouldn’t have said it.”
“I meant that I’ve been busy and have neglected the hotel project.”
“That is why I hesitated to disturb you.” He shook the sleeves of his chablis-colored designer suit until the left cuff brushed the face of his Piaget watch.
What did the Fontana brothers, all nine of them-excluding Nicky, who didn’t run with the pack—do for a living anyway? Temple wondered. After all, the long, Liquid lines of Aldo’s suit proclaimed it an Ermenegildo Zegna.
Las Vegas was packed with pricey boutiques carrying such exotic and costly goods. Temple, a confirmed window shopper, had long before learned what was affordable and what was stratospheric.
Aldo was likely packing something even more impressive than an invisible high price tag. She eyed the impeccable flow of his wool-silk blend for a bulkier accoutrement beneath the Dairy Queen–smooth exterior. Like a Beretta.
Aldo fidgeted as much as his tailoring allowed. “I called you because I knew the boss lady wouldn’t want to deal with this. Not that you’re not a very boss lady, only you’re not the boss lady, if you get my drift.”
The only drifts in Las Vegas were sand, so Templedidn’t let any grit lodge in her shoes at the notion that she was a mere second banana.
Van von Rhine, who managed the Crystal Phoenix with elegant ease, was also married to its owner, Nicky Fontana, Aldo’s “little” brother. Since all the Fontanabrood stood around six feet tall, such distinctions were pretty moot outside the family.
“What wouldn’t Van like?” Temple asked.
“The, er, nature of the crisis. For one thing, she would have to wear a hard hat that would muss up that neat French roll on the back of her head.”
“And you figure I can’t muss.” Temple ruefully ran a hand over waves of unabashedly undisciplined red hair.
“No muss, no fuss with TempleBarr, PR,” Aldo grinned as he parroted the name and title on her business card. “Besides, I need to check this out with a cool head before I report to the management. They tend not to believe me because I’m family, you know.”
“I know. My big brothers never did believe me about anything either, but you are the big brother here, Aldo.”
“And I am up to the job.” Aldo patted his breast pocket. Temple suspected he was referring to a hidden vein of lead and steel. “I see you have been eyeing my suit, which shows that you have not lost your impeccable taste since last we met. I wish to assure you that not only my software is first class, but my hardware also.”
This statement had a certain sexual connotation neither she nor Aldo chose to notice. One thing about the brothers Fontana, attractive and single though they might be: they always treated Temple with the benign unpredatory tolerance of Great Danes babysitting a Yorkshire terrier. Of course, in the dog world, the tiny Yorkie dominated anything bigger than itself when whatever breed it was … wasn’t looking.
“So you think there might be dirty work in the mine?” Temple led the way through the maze of moats, fountains, and crystal objects that comprised the hotel lobby.
“Mines are always dirty work.” Aldo sighed and looked down. “Your footwear is most attractive, but I fear it wasn’t made for underground exploration.”
“Listen, these high heels aren’t just for looks. They give me terrific traction. You ever heard of pitons?”
“But we will not be climbing, MissTemple, we will be descending.”
“The story of our lives and all human striving, right?” Temple stopped as they moved into the open area around the huge emerald-cut-shape of pool-blue water. Scaffolding draped in dusty plastic hid the entrance to the vast reconstruction project underway below.
“Lucky that all those tunnels from Jersey Joe Jackson’s heyday allow the Phoenixto expand below the surface,” Aldo mused. “Land along the Strip is going for a hundred grand a square foot these days.”
Temple gazed down at the burgundy leather toes of her shoes. According to Aldo’s latest statistics, just standing here was awfully expensive.
Aldo offered her a hand, while his other hand swept back a dusty swath of plastic. Temple ducked under it.
They suddenly stood in a shrouded world of long iron rods and lumber stacked around an elevator that was little more than a skeletal crate on pulleys.
Temple stepped aboard the wooden floor and tried not to watch while Aldo lowered the boom, so to speak.