“So tell me how I’m supposed to make the city’s criminal past sexy,” Temple told Nicky.
“You don’t have to. That’s the beauty of my concept.” He spread his Italian-suit-tailored arms. “Me.”
At the uninterrupted silence, he eyed his wife and hastily corrected course. “Us. I’m remembering what the Crystal Phoenix was almost named if you hadn’t had a better idea, Van.”
“Way back when we decided against calling the hotel the Fontana?” Van asked, still unsure what her volatile spouse was getting at.
“But the Fontanas are still here in Vegas, and better than ever,” Nicky answered.
Temple stayed out of it. This was sounding too marital for her input.
Faint worry lines schussed across Van von Rhine’s pale brow like tiny ski tracks. “ ‘Fontanas’ as in your family?”
“Family—that’s it! She is sharp, isn’t she?” Nicky asked Temple.
“Like a Jimmy Choo stiletto,” Temple agreed. “I must admit that I’m still just a blunt Cuban heel. I don’t get where you’re going, Nicky.”
“At least you’re not a yes-woman.” He turned the wattage of his smile on her as he sat in the neighboring chair. “The Jersey Joe Jackson Action Attraction under the hotel grounds has been idle since Vegas decided to forget going ‘family attraction’ years ago as a bad bet. I say we go Family with a capital F, as in Fontana.”
“Nicky,” Van said, “that city mob-museum project goes off and on faster than the semaphores on the Vegas Strip. It got caught in the last election’s rebellion against ‘pork’ and is seriously compromised.”
“True. And they started out so coy, calling it the ‘redacted’ museum. Redacted,” Nicky jeered. “What kind of word is that? What tourist knows that word? Only English majors. Vegas is not an English-major kind of town.”
“You know it.” Van called him on it.
He shrugged. “I needed to know it to figure out what the heck the mayor was thinking.”
“That’s a good point,” Temple said, watching Van’s arched foot in its white patent-leather peep-toe Ferragamo pump tapping the carpet. Her own silver Stuart Weitzman T-strap sandal offered plenty of “peep toe.”
She herself and the mostly torrid Vegas climate favored high-heeled sandals and open-toed shoes. Women liked to go bare-legged and show off colorfully painted toes. Or maybe the nail-polished toes announced they were going bare-legged. Temple could remember, as a child, when clingy, bothersome pantyhose was required. Most women had tossed away that fashion “rule” along with strictly prescribed skirt lengths.
Some fashion mavens sneered at white patent leather, but it was hard to come by in shoes and Temple adored it for surviving all extremes of the elements, from heatstroke to flash flood, both possible in Vegas.
Considering extremes, Temple also thought now was the time to pour the oil of PR on the marital CEO waters.
“You’re right, Nicky,” she told him. “The Vegas powers-that-be have spent almost fifty years soft-pedaling the city’s colorful mob roots. The idea of creating a major mob museum here has been floating around for years, but everyone’s afraid of that three-letter word.”
“When you’re afraid of something, you need to face it and flaunt it,” he answered.
“Yes, the chamber of commerce types did look silly with that business of blocking out the word mob from the Mob Museum title.”
“I’m no English major,” Van said, “just international business. What does redact mean, anyway?”
“Editing or revising a piece of writing for publication,” Temple explained. “The museum backers actually crossed out the word mob in the title of the Mob Museum. Trying to have it both ways in PR is foolhardy.”
Temple quickly printed out the name with a felt-tip pen on Crystal Phoenix letterhead, then inked out the word mob.
“Why on Earth, or even in Vegas,” Van asked, “create a tourist destination you can’t advertise?”
“Why,” Nicky asked back, “duplicate what’s already there, aching to be expanded and ballyhooed?”
“I agree, but what’s already there?” Van asked.
“The Fontana family’s mob museum,” he answered in triumph.
Silence ensued again. In it, Temple noticed that the hotel cat, Midnight Louise, had either entered on hushed little cat feet or, more likely, arisen from a concealed napping spot in the executive office suite.
She was now sitting demurely at Van’s ankles, licking her clawed front toes one by one, grooming her own brand of “peep” toenails, Temple thought.
Although Midnight Louie, Temple’s … roommate, had inspired this feminine version of his name for this once-stray cat, Louise was smaller than he, with longer black hair. She was just as spit-polished as her larger, buzz-cut, and “butcher” version.
Midnight Louise flicked a paw over one ear, as if cleaning it for better reception. Ears R Us.
Seeing that blot of black on the pale carpet, Temple finally got Nicky’s reference, thinking of another glitzier blot of black on the Vegas scene.
“Nicky. You mean Gangsters!”
He nodded, pleased as a teacher with a prize student. “Like gangbusters! You got it, Miss Temple.”
Van was puzzled. “That’s a small off-Strip hotel-casino setup.”
“I’ve been there,” Temple said. “Lots of ‘local color’ from the delicious bad old days. A string of indecently stretched black limousines always underlines the entry canopy. You’d think it was a funeral fleet. The hotel facade is polished black marble and neon-lit glass blocks. Very Art Deco. The upper stories are capped by a huge neon fedora and gun barrel, both cocked, with veiled red lights visible as squinting eyes in the eaves’ eternal penumbra.
“Customers are escorted inside by broad-shouldered men in sinister fedoras who wear pastel ties against dark shirts and suits. ‘Le Jazz Hot’ and forties swing is on the audio system.
“It’s a modest six-hundred-room hotel, but has the four-star Hush Money steak house, Speakeasy bar and restaurant, and a four-thousand-seat theater and gaming casino that’s ‘raided’ nightly by the fake feds. The Roxie, a vintage movie theater, even plays newsreels—about gangsters, of course.
“They have a small museum with gats and getaway cars from the gangland days of old, and up-to-date shopping in flanking wings: Gents and G-Men on the left, with the Moll Mall on the right.”
“That does sound like a smart concept,” Van conceded, “one that’s been totally overshadowed, Nicky, by your brothers’ allied and adjacent booming exotic limo service of the same name. Bad misfire. A clever concept lost in the execution.”
“Ouch.” Nicky mock-cringed. “Don’t say ‘execution’ in connection with mention of the family business.”
“Hardly a ‘family’ business. You’ve never linked the Crystal Phoenix with your uncle’s or brothers’ Vegas doings. Smart.”
“Yeah, yeah, I’m the white sheep of the family. On paper.”
Van placed the flats of both hands on her floating glass desktop and levered herself to her full heeled height.
“Nicky Fontana! You don’t mean to say you’ve been secretly backing your relations’ questionable ventures? That is ‘Death in Vegas.’ ”
“I’m saying I have pull with the Gangsters’ owners, that’s all.”
Temple exchanged a glance with yellow-eyed Midnight Louise, who was frozen in mid-grooming, paw lifted, ear cocked. This was hot news.
“And,” Nicky continued, “I happen to know this brouhaha about a city mob museum has spurred the owners of Gangsters, the best little undermarketed hotel-casino in town, not the limo service of the same name, to launch a redo, taking and running with the mob theme barefaced, instead of resorting to pussyfooting around and ‘redacting’ history.”