Spuds Lonnigan came clunking out, wiping his wet hands on another checkered linen towel. Cranky Ferguson was munching on one of those flaky French pastries too delicate to put down, but he carried a saucer under it to catch crumbs.
Eightball O’Rourke exited the kitchen last. Whoops! He was not the last. A large black cat, not Midnight Louie, ambled out, tongue working some dropped morsel out of his long white whiskers.
“Three O’Clock has moved in?” Temple asked, pleased. “I thought he wouldn’t let you guys near him when you left the restaurant at Temple Bar.”
“Ah, he jest visits for the chow train,” Cranky said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “He’s like your house cat, a will-o’-the-wisp.”
“Not in girth,” Temple said.
“None of us are wispy these days,” Spuds said, “ ’cept Wild Blue and Eightball.”
“And our Miss Temple,” Eightball loyally pointed out. “I noticed,” he added, “you been admiring our footwear. There a reason you want our feet all in a campfire circle?”
Eightball was not a man to be fooled.
“Absolutely,” Temple said. “I confess. I was sizing up your feet.”
“And … ?”
“You’ve always worn cowboy boots?”
“Hell, yes,” said Wild Blue, “even in my flying days.”
“We don’t say ‘hell’ in front of ladies,” Cranky warned him.
“It’s okay now,” Temple countered. “I’m here to examine your boots, which is not a very ladylike pursuit.”
“Phew,” Pitchblende said. “You shore don’t want us to take ’em off before suppertime.”
“Sit down and make yourself at home,” Eightball urged. “You can eyeball our foot-leather better close-up.”
Temple smiled and pulled a folder out of her ever-present tote bag.
“I’m trying to solve the identity of the Three O’Clock Louie’s once-submerged corpse.”
Wild Blue winced. “Poor guy who was et away almost down to his anklebones? Those Lake Mean carp were hungry suckers, even when our restaurant was still going. Hate to think what they did before there were piles of tourists to feed ’em.”
“More like piranha,” Spuds agreed. “Say, we could serve catfish and call it something like Cannibal Catfish.”
“So you saw that TV news piece. How about Capone’s Catch of the Day?” Temple suggested.
“More refined and Frenchlike,” Eightball agreed. “But how come our boots are suspects? Forgive me, Miss Temple, but even we can’t string out a pair of boots for more ’n twenty years’ wear. That Lake Mead dead guy musta passed back in the glory days of the forties and fifties, because as Las Vegas heated up as a tourist destination, you did not wanta pollute the wonders of nature they could be bussed out to, or have an indiscretion caught on a boat anchor and causing consternation.”
“Gotta give whoever dumped that body in concrete booties credit,” Cranky added morosely. “Didn’t get found until Mother Nature sucked all that H-two-oh outta the lake.”
“You guys go back that far, along with Jersey Joe?”
“Yes, ma’am, ’cept we are all still alive. Living out in the desert keeps all that carbon monoxide from the Strip out of a man’s lungs,” Pitchblende said.
“Did Jersey Joe get too big for his boots when he stole all those silver dollars you all found? Did he dress like a dude?”
“ ’Course he did.” Eightball snorted.
“You woulda thought he was the second coming of Roy Rogers,” Spuds said. “Bolo ties with western suit coats. Boots pointed enough to make a horse run away from him.”
“So he went ‘Hollywood,’ like the movie Melody Ranch’s singing cowboys?” Temple asked, to make sure they were talking the same language and style.
“Oh, yeah. Got way above us and hisself.” Wild Blue said. “Dollar cigars. We didn’t figure it out at first, where he got the money. Thought he won it gambling, or one mob or the other was backing him. He always had big plans.”
“We had Jilly to raise, number one,” Eightball said gruffly. “That changed our dreams of hitting a strike at an old mine. We only did that train robbery to get a fund for our girl, and when we found all the silver dollars gone from our mine tunnel, we figured at first other prospectors took ’em, not one of our own gang.”
“JJ was a disappointment,” Cranky said. “But he was long dead and gone, and the Joshua Tree Hotel and Casino was a wreck no one wanted to take on, by the time Solitaire Smith and that tourist gal stumbled on one of JJ’s new hiding places for the silver-dollar hoard.”
“We’d been hiding out all those years from that robbery, and turns out it wasn’t necessary. The dollars were only worth anything to those ‘numisintist’ people.”
Temple couldn’t help smiling at Spud’s mangled version of the word.
The Glory Hole Gang had all been roped into being stepfathers for Eightball’s orphaned granddaughter, and dreams of riches and glory had faded with their quirky responsibility for a young girl. Jill grew up looking out for her gang of uncles. Now she was Mrs. Johnny Diamond and lived on a lavish ranch that the Crystal Phoenix’s never-fading ballad singer kept as a retreat after his nightly shows.
The whole Crystal Phoenix family, Temple knew, would be devastated if any of these old guys had anything to do with killing the sunken soul Midnight Louie and his daddy had found on the bottom of Lake Mead.
“So,” she said, taking a deep breath. “Did you know anyone else in the old days who could have afforded a custom pair of silver heel-capped cowboy boots signed by a master silversmith out of Hollywood named Bohlin?”
She tossed the close-up photo of the maker’s stamp onto the coffee table that centered the sprawling conversation-pit sofas.
And all conversation stopped.
Every last man stared at the black-and-white photo as if it were an eight-foot-long rattlesnake sunning on a hot rock six inches from their cowboy-booted ankles.
They should have been safe from any poison, but just seeing the possibilities made their blood run cold.
“Oh, man,” Pitchblende wailed. “I saw those things fresh outta the box. Real fine box, with all this girly tissue-stuff wrapped around them for shipping.”
“Darn and definitely darn,” Wild Blue pitched in. “He did leave town without notice.”
“Forever,” Cranky intoned.
“I thought it was another fast deal down Arizona-way,” Eightball said.
“He never did like water,” Spuds mourned. “Only in his whiskey.”
Temple sat still and silent, realizing she had kicked off a wake.
For Jersey Joe Jackson? Didn’t seem quite right.
Motorpsycho Nightmare
Max dreams and knows it.
He’s riding a sleek silver motorcycle.
Through the Alps.
Revienne Schneider is riding pillion behind him, clinging. She is not the clingy type.
It this weren’t a dream, she’d be hurling Freudian interpretations his way.
Motorcycle, symbol of freedom. Alps, symbol of hubris and danger. She would yank him off his electro-glide high horse, bring him down to Earth.
So he knows dreamland is not throwing the sexy, brainy shrink at him, but someone else, the visceral, gut-wrenching shrew who is riding behind him in Revienne’s intellectual sheepskin clothing. Riding him.
Rebecca was a spoiled, conniving bitch in the famous novel of that name. And dead.
Now he sees the woman passenger’s long black entangling hair whipping around his face like a mesh mask. The burr on his back is Black Irish, just as he is. Thorny. Dogged. Just as he is. Deceptive. As he can be if he has to. Hate filled, as he never was, unless it was at himself.
Maybe that is the key to Rebecca. Her hatred was always self-directed, and turned outward.