“This and a Swiss Army knife are always in my jeans,” he explains.
Miss Van von Rhine quirks a smile at her confident spouse.
“You’d be wrong, Nicky. This isn’t as old as it looks, and it looks less like a stock certificate and more like a bearer bond.”
“Bearer bond?” Miss Temple asks. “Is that worth anything?”
“Ten thou,” Mr. Nicky says, taking it to stretch the crumpled paper smooth, “to anyone who holds it in his hand.”
“Or hers,” Van says, taking custody.
Girls can be so possessive.
Love Connection
It was early evening by the time Temple returned to her Circle Ritz condo. She was still a having a brain attack that made her stomach turn cartwheels. What an amazing turn of events! What a PR break, if she handled it right.
She had to slow down and think. She had to call Matt.
First, though, she had to take a shower and blast the plaster and limestone dust off her epidermis and out of her hair. The showerhead installed over the vintage bathtub was a fancy chrome “waterfall” type, expensive and European-made. Its warm, tingling downpour rinsed her right off. Yup. She was enjoying one of Max’s upgrades of the premises. She so did want to wash that man’s memory out of her hair.
Perhaps only leaving the condo that had initially been “theirs” would end the unwanted memory reruns. Matt’s unit was too small for two, though. Unless Electra would let them remodel two units into one, they might have to move out. Darn. Rip Midnight Louie from his charming Circle Ritz home? Unthinkable!
Temple, now double-wrapped in a huge Crystal Phoenix bath towel (perk of the job), padded barefoot and dripping into the main room. She threw herself down on the living room couch and picked up her iPhone to dial Matt’s cell phone. No answer.
He often turned it off when traveling, perhaps the only annoying habit he had. When Matt was on camera on a major TV talk show, he sure didn’t want a ring tone broadcasting over the air, even though Temple had installed Leonard Cohen’s awesome “Hallelujah” and it was pretty playable.
She left a message, part love note and part incoherent job report, disappointed. Matt always had long business dinners at fancy places when he was in Chicago, so they often didn’t connect until midnight or later.
Temple couldn’t wait that long. She was bubbling over with ideas and anxieties (wasn’t that always the way?) and needed to run them by someone she could trust. What she was planning was risky to the point of being a hokey failure, but her job depended on selling her bosses and the public on her thinking. A consultant always needed someone close to consult.
Matt’s room phone rang and rang.
She tried the cell phone again. If the dinner ran late and the wine had been primo, she knew Matt would call her on the room phone from bed. He knew she liked to wake up to his voice, and while it wasn’t totally phone sex, it was sweet-little-nothing sex that left them glowing and intimately connected, long-distance.
Matt’s experience hosting The Midnight Hour radio call-in program had made him a sex symbol to thousands of women, and Temple had that smooth baritone on personal speed-dial. She indulged in a little shiver that cooled down her overactive brain.
Temple kept her old-fashioned line phones because they were cozier to cuddle up to and she used a headset on her cells for business calls. She didn’t want to get brain cancer from long cell phone calls. Well, it could happen! Besides, her longtime bedroom phone was shaped like a red spike-heeled shoe and she’d never give it up.
Temple jumped up and went to her tiny black-and-white kitchen that would wake up a narcoleptic. She opened the refrigerator and stared inside, then did the same with all her cupboards. She hadn’t eaten dinner but she was too jumpy to find anything appetizing … except her absent fiancé.
Back to the living room to scan the day’s newspaper.
She jumped up again in five minutes and did an all-room under, inside, and above search for Midnight Louie. At least she could tell him her plans. He listened with remarkable attentiveness and intelligence and only yawned occasionally during her monologues.
But the only black body hairs and rare white whisker she could find were throwaways. Who knew where he’d gone after the hubbub in the Chunnel of Crime-to-be?
Back to the kitchen. Caramel corn. No! Blueberry yogurt. No. Try the phones again. No answer.
She finally went to bed without supper, all alone without her iPhone. She found a terrible sixties movie on a bottom-feeder cable channel and watched it until her eyes crossed and her nerves flatlined and … she went to sleep.
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.”