Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

He pointed a sleek silver remote at the hi-def TV. The dark screen jumped into life, a continual sweeping pan of what Temple would call an existential gangster movie—part comic superhero movie, part black-and-white vintage hits and chases, the Fast & Furious of mob nostalgia, accented by metallic, symbolic splashes of red, all to a frenetic Carnaval musical beat.

All three stood mesmerized and shell-shocked. Temple was aware of a layer of immense stage-set detail behind the hurtling cars and street scenes and running, shooting figures. There was a 3-D feel, although none of them wore assisting glasses.

“This would require an age limit,” Van said.

Santiago shrugged. “The family approach was tried in Las Vegas and failed. As well as impose a dress code on Carnaval in Rio. I would say, what you call PG-13. But no need to worry: this is not a ride for infants in strollers.”

“Nor all women tourists,” Temple pointed out.

“Women shop and eat in Vegas. Men gamble and seek excitement. Many women too, no?”

His intriguing-colored eyes bored into hers. It was either a challenge or a come-on or an intimation that he knew she was not a stranger to the aftermath of violence, at least.

Oh, yes. Tomás Santiago needed a lot more looking into, a lot more serious looking into. Maybe Detective Alch could be persuaded to do that. Or Frank Bucek in the FBI’s L.A. office, Matt’s former seminary teacher.

Temple smelled something highly fishy about this artsy entrepreneur from the tropics. She knew that many South American cities were rife with crime and corruption. The white suit could almost be a disguise.

“That, my friends,” Santiago declared inaccurately, as far as Temple was concerned, “is just the suggested canvas of our new Las Vegas sensation.”

She and Van were not “sold,” although Nicky was still pop-eyed enamored of the sample show. It had all the action, all the motion of the Dire Straits song “Walk of Life.” Temple recalled a line about “Down in the tunnels, trying to make it pay.”

Wasn’t that the “Talk of Life, and Death,” here? Violence and double-talk? Turning the day time into the night? Peddling mayhem, not history.

Temple didn’t think shopping and eating would shut up her objections.

“Of course,” Santiago said, clicking to another program, “you can’t appreciate the three-D of those scenes if you’re not riding in the magic limos.”

“Magic limos,” Nicky repeated. “I like that phrase.”

Santiago gave him the exotic-elixir-salesman wink and hit another button on the remote control.

The screen became a black slate of sliding, continuous motion, like the tinted windows of a limo.

“A blank window?” Van objected.

“Ah, yes, dear lady, but it is far from blank. It is a porthole on the past, a magic slate for the future. Behold.”

“Behold” the hokey, Temple thought, but even her eyes were glued to Santiago’s TV screen.

For a moment the dim windows looked as if raindrops were sliding across their surface at seventy miles per hour.

Then … the drops resolved into a human face, a human face under a fedora brim, shaping itself from the curved window into a three-dimensional presence, a recognizable, talking, three-dimensional presence that seemed to leap out of the TV screen into the room with them, the same size as any human present.

Nicky sounded both awed and leery. “Okay, Santiago, I know you’re a media wizard, but how’d you get Frank Sinatra to do a personal appearance on your mini movie screen?”

“God,” Frank was saying, “where the hell is my regular ride? Look,” Ol’ Blue Eyes said, staring straight into every eye present. “I appreciate you giving me a lift in your subterranean U-boat here, folks. The Sands goofed on priming my limo, and I gotta get to the Crystal Phoenix for Deano’s solo show. Shirley and Marilyn will be there, and we’re all gonna have a time of it, right?”

The voice was that resonant speaking baritone heard round the world.

“How did you reconstruct the Chairman of the Board?” Nicky asked.

“Why?” Van asked.

“The mob controlled and socialized with a lot of Italian singers and celebrities in the forties to the sixties because they owned the nightclubs and theaters,” Temple answered. Las Vegas history was her business. “Sinatra and Dean Martin outlived the mob-boss era. Remember, JFK was sleeping with Chicago’s Sam Giancana’s mistress.”

“ ‘Camelot’ corrupted. I don’t want to remember that,” Van said.

“We’ll keep the Kennedys out of your zipped-up club-car tour of the ‘Chunnel of Crime,’ right?” Nicky asked Santiago.

“Of course.” Santiago reassured him. “We’ll only revive the infamous dead who are well known for their Las Vegas associations.”

“What about Jersey Joe Jackson?” Van asked.

“Jersey Joe … who?”

“A minor figure,” Temple told him, “affiliated with the Crystal Phoenix when it was the Joshua Tree Hotel back in the day.”

“What is this ‘Joshua Tree’?”

“A big, tree-like desert cactus,” she explained. “About as uninteresting as Jersey Joe Jackson.”