"He's dead, and we ain't."
"So much the better. We can ... er, exploit his, ah, colorful legend without treading on any living toes."
"We?"
"Well, think about it. Wasn't Jersey Joe an original member of the Glory Hole Gang?"
"Yeah, sure . . . but not for long."
"Why not?"
"For one thing, he ran off with half the silver dollars we lifted off the train in that heist. Then he hid them around town--and Vegas was mostly brush and bobtail in the forties--in all his private little hidey-holes."
"Didn't you Glory Hole guys bury what was left in the Mojave, so successfully that even you couldn't find the cache for forty years?"
"Yeah, but that was because the terrain shifted. Desert will I do that, you know. Skitter around on you like a sidewinder rattler in a windstorm. Wind, gully-washers, they all scrape the.'
face off the desert floor, the way time erodes people's faces. Look at mine. Can you even imagine what I looked like at your age, girlie?"
Temple shook her head.
Where did it come from, the seaming and searing? The eyes sinking like burned-out suns and the ears and nose growing wild. She thought of the sand-eaten features of the real sphinx and shivered a little at the notion of the cosmetically enhanced one at the Luxor. Behind Eightball's wizened visage, she glimpsed a muscular, wiry young fellow tanned the color of Corinthian leather in a white undershirt, sweating in a shipyard somewhere, working for Uncle Sam.
"The thing is," she said, 'We're interested in your age. Your Age. A time when watches ticked and ladies' nylon stockings had seams and we all had a kinder, gentler view of everything. When even shady ladies were classy and guys could shave with straight-edge razors and wear hats.
Fedoras. That's the ticket. That's the ambiance. That's . . . jazz."
"I don't get it? Why are you spouting this stuff to me?"
"Because I want to pick your brain, Eightball. I want to bring back the Glory-Hole days. Out on Lake Mead at Temple Bar. Here in town, at the Crystal Phoenix." And I want to bring a boys'
band to River City. Right here. Do you buy that tuba? How about a French horn? A PR person is always one dance step removed from a conman. Buy the sizzle, not the steak; the shining brass band, not the song; the surface cha-cha-cha, not the underlying instinct. The song-and-dance woman, not the amateur detective. . . .
"You've got some scheme--" he began, sounding uncertain.
''Not a scheme ... a theme! For the Phoenix, for Temple Bar and Three O'Clock Louie's, even for the Glory Hole Ghost Town. And the link is . . . Jersey Joe Jackson."
"A guy who gave sewer rats a bad name when he was alive!"
"But he's dead now. We can use him with impunity. As he used you, as he made you poor fellows parboil in nowhere while he lived it up at the . . . what was the Phoenix called in the old days, before Nicky and Van revived it?"
"The Joshua Tree," Eightball said with venom. "A common, stingy kind of cactus with big ideas and lots of stingers."
"Joshua Tree." Temple shook her head in distaste. "If he named the place, he didn't have much flair."
"Jersey Joe didn't have flair, he had nerve. That's what ended up on top in those days. Like Bugsy Siegel and the Flamingo. Nerve. We were kids. Spuds, Wild Blue, Encyclopedia and the rest. We were schmoes."
"Schmoes?" Temple was lost.
"Stand-up fools made to knock down. But schmoes always come back for more, bounce back, and we did, one more time; than Jersey Joe, in the end. In the end, that's all that matters."
"Why was Jersey Joe such a successful con man? What did he have?''
''Besides nerve? He had half our silver dollars. Somehow he cashed them in to buy the land and put up the Joshua Tree and still bury this stash of silver dollars in his mattress. Can you believe it? The guy owned his own hotel on the Strip. He had his own suite in it, like a poor man's Howard Hughes, and he stashes a hoard of the stolen silver dollars in his mattress. Then he hangs on, and loses everything and the hotel is a wreck and a ruin and deserted, and he dies.
And years later someone bounces on his broken-down mattress and out tumble a king's ransom in silver dollars,"
''No," said Temple quite sincerely. "I can't believe it. Why did he stay in those rooms when the hotel was such a wreck?"
"He'd become a derelict, that's why. A derelict at the heart of his own lost empire. And--"
Eightball lifted the butt of his cigar from the ashtray to regard it fondly, as an old friend that had died, and therefore, quite naturally, stank. "There were rumors."
"Rumors?"
"Guy like Jersey Joe always is better at rumors than reality. They say he was sitting on a gold mine. That the Joshua Tree was built on a hidden vein of glory-gold so thick and long and bright it would take you to Oz and back. They say the dirt and desert beneath the hotel is eaten away by earthworms. Tunnels. Secret passages. Gold for the taking, if you can find it. That useful?
That suit your theme-scheme. Missy?"
"Oh, yes," said Temple. "To a Tee and that rhymes with B to Z and that stands for Truth. Oh, yes, thank you very much."
Temple shoved her tote bag back on her shoulder and stood.
"By the way, who at the Circle Ritz is keeping you up past your bedtime these days?"
Eightball picked up the dead cigar, flicked his Bic and sucked on it until the tip reddened in the steady flame. "You know that information is confidential," he offered on an exhalation of putrid smoke.
Temple backed up, but not off. ''Nothing's confidential to a PR person but her client's business. I suppose the same is true of a P.I.?"
Eightball nodded, still puffing away poisonously. The room was clogging with smudge.
"Just tell me this," Temple pushed. ''Are you still working for someone at the Circle Ritz?"
"Maybe not."
"I guess you wouldn't be averse to helping Electra out in a jam," Temple suggested.
"Guess not, but maybe not."
She frowned. Eightball hadn't flickered an eyelash at mention of her landlady's name. Was that a sign of iron control, or of ignorance? Who else would employ him, if not her or Electra...?
Temple recalled the phantom figure she had glimpsed at the Crystal Phoenix. An aura of Max was settling ever lower on this whole muddled landscape, from the Crystal Phoenix to the Circle Ritz.
"It's not . . . couldn't be . . . Max ..." she thought aloud.
Mention of that name alarmed Eightball as nothing else had.
"No!" he said quickly. "Not him. Never laid eyes on the guy."
Except that Eightball's emphasis had been on him.
So he had been hired, not by Max, but by another "him" who was associated with the Circle Ritz.
Temple nodded slowly.' 'Goodbye, and thanks for the information."
Eightball watched her suspiciously, not sure to what "information" she referred, which was just the way Temple wanted it. Let him stew for a while.
Temple wove her own way out of the house, bumping gently against dim walls. She was also beginning to see her way out of the current maze. Not him, but a he.
Was it Matt, who had been so busy and distracted lately?
Matt, who she had worried, was pulling away from her because she had been too pushy?
Maybe Matt was simply pushing in another direction.
Maybe not.
Maybe they were both headed in the same direction from two different places. And maybe the collision point was the Crystal Phoenix.
Chapter 27
Lou Who?
Although I am used to undercover operations, it is more than somewhat galling to be forced to slink around my former digs like a criminal.
But this is exactly the lot that is mine at the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino, now that Caviar, a.k.a. Midnight Louise, has taken over my turf. Normally, I would not sit still under the nearest topiary tree chewing my nails while some upstart usurps my territory.