She had never been so organized, so ready for something, and so incapable of doing much of anything.
Temple began doodling in the notebook, trying to organize details about her plans for Phoenix Under Glass. On the raised stage, set construction and lighting crews were banging away while the mostly amateur actors recruited from the news business stood around in the wings, frowning at scripts and mumbling unmemorized lines to themselves.
Danny Dove darted from tech crews to the wings like a manic dragonfly with a case of schizophrenia.
"No, no, no! That's all wrong,'' he would shriek over the din. "Over there
"Yes! I adore it. Magnifique,'' he would carol encouragement a moment later.
The crews, used to directional mood swings, kept their blase expression no matter the reaction. They were, after all, union labor.
"That's where the mob would have a handhold in Vegas today," Temple muttered. ''Nothing glamorous anymore, just grunt work at a going price higher than the loftiest baby-pink spotlight in the house."
''How're you doing?" asked a voice so unexpectedly near that Temple jumped.
She knew her visitor was not a noxiously solicitous Fontana brother before she turned to look. The voice was girlish, though underlined with a gritty touch of Western twang.
Turning, Temple confronted a tomboy version of herself: an elfin, red-haired woman wearing a plaid cotton shirt, honestly frayed blue jeans, freckles and sandblasted Western boots.
"Jill Diamond." She extended a tanned hand for a brief but firm shake, then nodded at Temple's bum foot. "You're lucky you only twisted a hock on that basement stairway. Nothing's more dangerous than backstage areas. I don't know why they have all them showgirls on their stiletto shoes charging up and down those concrete stairs all night.
"Tradition. That's why they call them hoofers; no stage: elevator service, except for inanimate props. Oh. You must be: Johnny's wife--"
"Yup." Jill tossed her rusty braids over her shoulders as she smiled. ''I'm also Eightball's granddaughter."
"Eightball O'Rourke?"
''How many 'Eightbaills' do you think there are, even in this town?" Jill grinned. "I guess you're keepin' my granddaddy out late nights again."
"What do you mean?"
"Isn't he working another case for you?"
"Not that I know of."
Jill tossed the straw Western hat in her right hand onto the: tablecloth and sat gingerly on the velvet seat. "Well, shoot. He's been out and about more than an old soldier like him should be lately."
"What made you think he was working for me?"
"He did before. And ... he said it was for someone at the: Circle Ritz. I didn't expect him to name names. Professional discretion and all, you know. It isn't you?"
Temple shook her head. "It could be my landlady, Electra: Lark. She hangs out with that crowd."
"Crowd." Jill shook her head while she watched the hullabaloo on stage. "Those old galoots think they're still in their prime. Running Glory Hole as a tourist trap isn't enough for them. My granddaddy not only has to make like a Sam Spade: on Medicare, but now Spuds Lonnigan is opening a bar and grill at Temple Bar on Lake Mead. Calls it Three O'Clock Louie's.' That Glory Hole bunch should be napping at three o'clock in the afternoon, not remodeling some late-night dive."
'' The Temple . . . Bar?"
Jill's clear eyes turned to Temple. "That's right; 'Bar' with one r. Say, with your handle, I'd think you would know about Temple Bar. It's a landing on the lake. Boats and excursions. Can't figure why Spuds didn't name his place 'Spuds'.' "
"Three O'Clock Louie' has a certain . . . seedy charm," Temple conceded, with another nocturnal Louie in mind. "Van mentioned that I had a namesake around here, or vice versa. I've also got one in London. A boat dock on Lake Mead isn't quite as toney as Queenhithe wharf on the Thames in London, is it? So your grandfather didn't say what kind of case he was working?"
Jill shook her head. "He was tracing some shifty character he had no business messing with,
'cause he was keeping later hours than an old guy should, I know that."
"You worry about him."
"I'm the mother of a willful toddler," Jill confessed with a wry smile. "With me, worry is as contagious as measles."
"I'll be all right. Nicky's brothers are looking after me to a fare thee well."
"Now I'm really worried."
Jill slapped her hat on her blue-jeaned thigh out of long habit, then stomped back up the aisle on her petite cowboy boots.
Temple looked down at her notebook, on which she had continued to doodle. Temple Bar, it said in big letters. Three O'Clock Louie, Maybe she should offer this Spuds Lonnigan Midnight Louie as a mascot, arid she could do PR for the place. Naw, she had her hands--and feet--full with the Crystal Phoenix and the Gridiron already. Then, again ...
But who the heck at the Circle Ritz was Eightball working for? And working for hard enough that his granddaughter had time to notice, and to worry?
"Don't worry," a deep male voice urged seductively at Temple's left side. "We haven't cut your skit--yet."
"Crawford!" Temple scrambled to sit up straighter, the better to prepare for battle.
"Gout?" he asked with an automatic leer at her extended leg.
"Clout," Temple answered shortly. "I had to kick some crude dude who was staring at my legs." Despite the discomforting throb, she whisked her defenseless limb under the table.
"Rehearsals are going okay," he volunteered.
Buchanan gazed toward the stage, his akimbo arms pushing back his summer suitcoat the better to reveal his puny physique in a pale yellow shirt. Spending time around the male strippers at the Rhinestone G-string competition had spoiled Temple for the muscularly challenged.
''I don't know about Dove, though," Buchanan said in his usual basso grumble. ''He doesn't seem to recognize a good skit when he sees one."
From this Temple gathered that Danny Dove was not bowled over by Crawford's own material. No wonder the director was making such a big deal of her one and only number.
"I hear you've lined up some celebrity bits," she said, determined to turn the conversation to a subject more distracting to Crawford: himself.
"Yeah." His already deep voice went subterranean with self-satisfaction. Temple imagined a panther purring in the Grand Canyon. "David Copperfield is lending us his awesome assistant-babes to lead the Lace 'n' Lust chorus line for my 'Vegas is Bustin' Out All Over' bit."
"Crawford, that's so sexist it's got balls and chains as well as cobwebs on it."
"Hey, this used to be a purely stag event in the old days. If I don't cater to the good ol' boy element, we've got no show."
"I thought the Gridiron had matured, outgrown randy jokes and raunchy skits and scatological language. Isn't Vegas catering to the family trade now?"
"You know better than to believe press-agent hype, T.B. This town has always run on three things and always wilclass="underline" betting, booze and boobs."
"If you are typical of the boobs, I doubt it."
He made a face, but Temple didn't linger to study it.
Instead she struggled out of her cushy seat, then limped to the short set of stairs leading up to the stage. Two Fontana brothers were at her side before she could murmur "organized crime." They gallantly assisted her up the steps, which lacked handrails. They also cut a trailing Crawford Buchanan off at the pass with superior tailoring and stem Italian faces as beautifully stony as Michelangelo's David.