Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

“Jest our customers, ma’am,” Pitchblende pitched in. “Not much to gaze out on as they et but sand and desolation. We was used to living in ghost towns, but tourists kinda want water features and lots of local color and no two-block walks over sand dunes to get to their eats.”

“Next place over is still afloat,” Cranky Ferguson grumbled. “I think they paid protection to the Guy Upstairs to keep their waterline from wastin’ away.”

“Vagaries of nature,” Nostradamus put in, “are as cruel as odds at the track, but a little birdie—”

“A scavenger crow, no doubt,” Eightball put in.

“—tells me that the Glory Hole Gang is coming back.”

“Right on, Nostradamus!” Nicky’s clap on Cranky Ferguson’s shoulder raised a puff of sand dust. “Three O’Clock Louie’s is coming back, better than ever. What do you guys say to a new location?”

Nostradamus had been standing by, but now he tipped his hat. “I see there’s hefty business on the table, so I must amble on while I am able.”

The Glory Hole Gang nodded the bookie good-bye, then hunkered down for serious talk.

“Thing is,” Nicky said, “I recalled the operation and want to make Three O’Clock’s into a franchise, starting with a flagship restaurant at Gangsters and then going national. After all, the ex–Glory Hole Gang has a colorful early Vegas history, and we can theme the menu to those exciting days of yesteryear.”

“That’s the concept,” Temple asked, “a restaurant?”

“Just one aspect. After all, the Strip Hilton—all that’s left of Bugsy Siegel’s first Flamingo motel-casino—has Margaritaville. Maybe we’ll have Mobsterville. Reposition the name. The old-time ‘Families’ are as much a ‘cultural brand’ as Jimmy Buffet’s Island paradise.”

“That’s ingenious, Nicky,” Temple said, “but I’m not quite sold that it’s genius. ‘Life is a beach’ is a universal longing. ‘Life is a bitch’—maybe not so much.”

“Naw, it’s true. The Wynn Hotel has gone with a Sinatra theme for its priciest restaurant. Think the Ocean’s Eleven film revival. Nowadays it’s George Clooney instead of Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby. Hip, socially concerned, but with a huge wink at our origins. Transparency, right? Today’s political buzzword.”

Temple laughed. “You’re a marketing chameleon, Nicky. Just like the mob.”

“The mob,” Cranky scoffed. “They were a bunch of punks. Overestimated in the Vegas early days, mainly for notoriety.”

“Frankly,” Nicky said, “Bugsy had the vision. The big mob boys didn’t get it. Jersey Joe Jackson followed in Bugsy’s footsteps with his Joshua Tree Hotel-Casino, but they had limited eyesight. They thought motor lodge, not hotel, and would have been astounded by the mega-hotel concept that lines the Las Vegas Strip nowadays. When the mob went corporate, Las Vegas spread its wings. Sure, folks alive today waltzed around the mob fringes, and pockets of the protection racket exist, but now, enterprise has to go mainstream or die. You can’t have ordinary people hurting and be commercial. That’s why this economic tsunami is so disastrous.”

“It sure baked us outta business,” Spuds Lonnigan said. “What’s our comeback restaurant shtick here at Gangsters?”

“Speakeasy’s south. Way south. Underground, in fact, with no pesky problems with Mother Nature,” Nicky assured him. “I’m talking the look of a Prohibition Palace. Knock three times to get in. Bootleg liquor, prime stuff. Guys and dolls. A little gaming. A menu that’s a history of Vegas influences, Spuds, from lowbrow to high-hat. People will be greasin’ palms to get low down with the Glory Hole Gang and its members’ authentic ambience and cuisine celebrating the good ol’ bad days of miners and mobsters. What do you think?”

“Brilliant,” said Temple. “If the Feds don’t raid you, I can sell it until doomsday.”

Hands came up simultaneously to burnish grizzled jaws.

“We’re basically desert rats,” Cranky Ferguson noted, “ ’cept Eightball here got a city PI business going. Sure, we pulled that silver-dollar heist, train robbery stuff from the old days. You think you can sell us as city slicker mobsters?”

“Rat Pack,” Nicky pounced. “Only ahead of your time.”

They squinted dubiously, en masse. That was a lot of experienced doubt.

Temple knew her Vegas history. The famous Vegas Rat Pack had begun around the twin stars of Humphrey Bogart and Frank Sinatra in the fifties. Bogart died that decade, so the sixties became a second-stage Rat Pack heyday, with a nucleus of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joey Bishop, and Peter Lawford. Marilyn Monroe, Angie Dickinson, Juliet Prowse, and Shirley MacLaine had been “Rat Pack Mascots” at various times.