“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.
Temple pushed to the forefront, even though she might accidentally and unprofessionally appear on camera.
“This vault was not accessible beforehand,” she insisted. “We checked it last night and again this morning.”
“Stop the fussing and see what’s inside,” Eightball O’Rourke urged. “You folks call yourself media, but you don’t have the curiosity of that little cat there. Now that’s better, but don’t trample her. That’s the Crystal Phoenix mascot.”
“Midnight Louise?” Van von Rhine’s soprano suddenly cried into the milling people and rising dust. “Don’t hurt her!”
Temple herself was pushed aside by Crawford Buchanan as he elbowed through the narrow opening. She didn’t see Louise underfoot anywhere.
“I got it!” Buchanan crowed, his voice echoing off metal. “I’m inside. Whoo! What a rank whiff. I sure hope paper money doesn’t mildew. Get me some light here.”
In seconds, the press of light-bearing workmen and videographers had pushed the heavy door open wide and rinsed the dazzling silver metal interior with light.
It illuminated a room-sized empty safe, all right, except it wasn’t empty.
Gasps echoed in the sodden air.
“Let me out!” Buchanan ground the Cuban heels of his pimp shoes into Temple’s tender instep as he stampeded past. “It smells like a cat box in there.”
By now everyone had stopped crowding and yelling in the opening.
By now every eye, human or mechanical or digital, had fixed on the rotund corpse of a man in white tie and tails who lay oddly but stiffly splayed on the red satin lining of his evening cloak on the safe’s steel-gray metal floor.
His white gloves, cane, and a top hat that lay on its glossy black side were arrayed near his pale, bloated features.
“What a rip-off!” someone yelled. “It’s a wax dummy.”
That certain “someone” had been Crawford Buchanan.
As usual, he was terribly wrong.
Someone else had to do something. Temple guessed it was up to her.
She stepped forward, ripped the mike from Crawford’s clammy yet clutching grip, and considered bending down to press her fingers against the formal gentleman’s carotid artery just above the high starched collar.
Overkill, so to speak, she decided.
Obviously, the man was as cold and unmoving as a still photo, yet definitely not made of wax. He was dead. Morally, ethically, spiritually and physically, positively and absolutely, undeniably and reliably and most sincerely … dead.
Shock had turned everyone present into stone. Then the videographers all rushed forward, grunting to seize the best camera angle.
A wall of expensive dark tailoring materialized in front of them, blocking Temple from being overrun. A six-foot wall of gangster-suited muscle between her and a media feeding frenzy was even more welcome than silver dollars.
When she spoke she knew she was heard but not seen, and that was fine with her too.
“I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen of the media. We need to clear the scene and call the police. No more filming.”
Like a row of ultradressy football linemen, the brothers Fontana swayed en masse this way and that to block all camcorders and cell-phone cameras.