Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

Meanwhile, the pneumatic hammers drilled into the rock surrounding the massive metal door of the vaunted “vault.”

Rock shards littering the packed dirt floor and the support structure’s wooden ribs made this section of tunnel feel like the belly of a petrified whale. The vault had been sited halfway between Gangsters’ and the Crystal Phoenix’s stoutly supported tunnel of faux-rock mine walls bolted into strong concrete beneath.

Everybody present wore hard hats, including the videographers toting large cameras on their shoulders, giving them Alien monster silhouettes.

The Phoenix’s section had built-in temperature controls, but this new area was the last freshly excavated bit from the Gangsters side and oddly combined hot and cold spots. It felt dank, but also steamy.

Temple figured a little sweat added to the ambience, and it certainly made the drill operators’ tan, muscled, bare arms look wrestling-ring ready. Two of the four videographers were female and were not missing panning the local color.

Somehow Crawford Buchanan, self-proclaimed local “personality,” radio vagabond, and perpetrator of cheesy events usually involving underage females, was the exact right figure to ballyhoo the forthcoming mystery revelation. His short stature, black suit, and gel-slathered, black-streaked white pompadour made him an “anti”-Santiago. It also brought a funereal gravity to an operation that threatened to reveal … “Bugsy Siegel’s vault, folks. This massive rusted steel door has been dated to be at least forty years old,” he shouted into the mike over the racket of spitting faux rock and concrete.

“You know the story of Al Capone’s Chicago vault, found decades after his death and famously broken into on live television with Geraldo Rivera at the microphone in nineteen eighty-six. No? Forgotten about that? Let me fill you in.”

Buchanan began pacing in front of the looming steel vault door.

“Capone took over the Chicago Outfit in nineteen twenty-five, before Vegas was a glimmer in the mob’s eye. He was a primo mob boss. He planned the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre and ran the operation from a suite in the Lexington Hotel until he was arrested for income-tax evasion in nineteen thirty-one. Capone was kaput.”

Temple was wishing by now that Crawford was kaput. Every bit of this exposition could be cut, and probably would be.

“So, folks,” Buchanan continued, “the old Lexington Hotel was long overdue for renovation by the eighties. When a surveying crew comes in, what do they find? A series of secret tunnels. Yes, folks, tunnels just like this one linking Gangsters with the far older former Joshua Tree Hotel-Casino, where Jersey Joe Jackson holed up until his death. And in those Chicago tunnels, they found escape routes to local taverns and brothels. They even found a shooting range! And rumors of a secret vault beneath the hotel.” His radio baritone deepened into a thrilling basso: “Just. Like. This. One.”

Crawford straightened his slight frame even as his voice grew deeper and more powerful.

“By then, Geraldo Rivera himself was kaput. He’d been fired by ABC, but he cooked up a comeback broadcast, a two-hour live special program of opening that vault. Thirty million people and standing-by IRS agents and a medical examiner watched, breathless to find Capone’s buried riches or bodies.

“Inside the finally-opened vault? Nothing. It was empty, but Rivera’s career was revived.

“And, don’t forget. This is Vegas, babies! We’ve already had a notorious vault excavated and found it stuffed with treasure, if not bodies. Vegas’s shady founding father, Benny Binion, had a son named Ted, probably killed because of a massive vault buried in the desert, which authorities opened on his death in nineteen ninety-eight. The vault was … crammed with six tons of silver bullion. Six tons! Not to mention scads of chips and paper currency and piles of uncirculated mint Carson City silver dollars, more than a hundred thousand, worth millions. And that was only a decade or so ago.”

This recital was actually causing some onlooker jaws to drop, including Temple’s. She glanced around. Even Santiago’s eyes were glinting with speculation. This tunnel was his playground at the moment… . Might he find more vaults?

Maybe there was something fabulous inside this vault.

“Remember,” Buchanan egged on his now-actually-spellbound audience, “for the last century, Vegas remained a playground for outlaws, from train robbers to mobsters to corporate shysters.”

Buchanan was in full flight of fancy, covering all bases.

“This is not Al Capone’s vault and maybe not even Bugsy’s vault, but it may be Jersey Joe Jackson’s. He died supposedly broke, atop this very ‘hunka hunka burnin’ hidden treasure. Remember? One of Jackson’s reputed stashes of mint silver dollars worth millions was discovered a few years ago deep in the desert. Imagine what the cagey old fart would have buried in his own backyard!