Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

It also had its architectural “whales”—hotel-casinos lined up along the Strip, each one grander and more expensive than the next and inevitably sliding into “old-hat, second tier” as heaver behemoths sprang up along the eternally elastic Strip.

Yet Vegas had always sported the more budget-minded hotel-casinos among the major glamour-pusses, and smaller outfits had also thrived just off-Strip.

Temple was surprised the next day when Nicky collected Van from her literal ivory tower and herded her and Temple and the entire Glory Hole Gang into one of the Crystal Phoenix complimentary airport vans.

First of all, Van didn’t normally “herd.” Secondly, Temple had never ridden in the hotel’s vans and appreciated the navy blue Ultrasuede upholstery and soft piped-in music. The regular airport round-trip was short, but Vegas traffic could be balky.

Even here Van’s white-glove service showed.

As did her impatience as she tapped one Italian designer pump on the immaculate navy blue carpeting.

Temple, meanwhile, was as excited as a kid heading toward Disneyland. You could live in Vegas and never visit the Hard Rock Hotel, for instance, or even Circus Circus on the Strip. She’d only thought of Gangsters as a limo service with a cool office-cum-parking lot with hot-and-cold-running Fontana brothers running it in turn.

Perhaps the Fontana boys and their cool Italian tailoring had distracted her from looking up any farther than six feet something.

For there’d always been “some building” towering behind the enterprise, and she knew Gangsters was a hotel-casino with some intriguing attractions, but Temple had only visited it a couple of times when funnyman Darren Cooke had appeared there with tragic results in her case called “Flamingo Fedora.” So she’d never really checked it out.

Now she was craning her neck so hard as they approached the car services’ headquarters that the seat belt threatened to decapitate her. Short women often felt more threatened than safeguarded by vehicle seat belts. Temple was beginning to think the auto industry had it in for anyone under five feet four.

Gangsters was another relatively “short stack” hotel, like seven-story Bill’s Gamblin’ Hall, once known as the Barbary Coast, nestled on a Strip corner dominated by towering properties. Bally’s and the Flamingo were on its east side, and Caesars Palace and the Bellagio across the Strip.

Gangsters Hotel-Casino had capitalized on a reputation as a well-kept secret. It was only a block off the Strip and eight stories taller than just plain Bill’s.

As Nicky and the whole Glory Hole Gang hustled to help her and Van down from the high-step-up vehicle, Temple glimpsed an edge of unlit neon sign atop the building that looked as high-profile as the Hard Rock Hotel’s iconic guitar and thrusting, neon-fretted neck.

But first Temple needed to get her feet on the ground, and when she looked up to human height again she was greeted by a reception committee of eight Fontana brothers arrayed on either side of a suggestively red carpet, wearing not their usual sherbet-tinted summer suits, but pink pinstriped navy suits with black silk shirts accessorized with Miami Vice neon-colored ties, ranging from peach to turquoise to hot pink to cobalt, melon, and purple.

Van bowed her flaxen-haired head, perhaps the only female on Planet Vegas immune to the conjoined attractions of the brothers Fontana. That was probably from having been married to the youngest, Nicky, and the absence of the eldest, Aldo.

The middle of the pack seemed more like clones, but Temple had always found that the Fontana brothers’ biggest charm, their unanimity. Somehow it made their high spirits and good looks less overwhelming.

As they extended their welcoming, finger-spread “jazz hands” of Broadway dance ensembles to the visitors, the Glory Hole Gangsters do-si-doed down the red carpet in their battered cowboy boots, well-worn jeans, and plastic mother-of-pearl-buttoned plaid shirts.

It was desert western versus Vegas dude.

“Love the suits,” Eightball O’Rourke said. “I can’t give up my jeans, but I’ll do the shirt and jacket with my bolo tie.”

Nicky had escorted Van and Temple by the simple gesture of extending both arms, so the women inspected the honor guard from vastly different points of view. Van was theme-hotel executive, dubious to her pale pink–painted toenails.

Temple was curious down to her “Tara O’Hara Scarlett”–painted toenails just what Gangsters would reveal beyond this production-number greeting. Obviously, some remarketing renovations had already been done.

What the interior revealed was Macho Mario Fontana, the boys’ uncle, who had dyed-in-the-DNA-authenticated mob roots, as a tour guide.

On his pasta-enhanced rotund form, white pinstripes looked like parentheses with a stutter, but they matched the silver streaks in his Men’s Spare Club toupee.