Cat In An Ultramarine Scheme

She remained unruffled, even by the use of the first name she hated. Fire and ice worked well for them, Temple had always noted.

“You see,” Van told Temple, confirming her observation, “Nicky can sell ice to Eskimos and even get away with mussing my coiffure. Can you sell his hairbrained concept? Granted, his hair is very good. Still.”

Temple tried not to giggle. Sometimes spending time with the pair was like babysitting Grace Kelly and Tony Curtis in some never-made sixties romantic comedy.

All ten Fontana brothers were noted for good hair. Only Nicky, the youngest, and now Aldo, the oldest, had married. The other eight remained Vegas’s most eligible bachelors, en masse. Even Macho Mario Fontana, the family patriarch, had great hair, high-end, store-bought, and solid silver, the color of the old dollar coins used for some Vegas slot machines until the seventies.

Silver dollars were now history here. And so seemed to be the endless building boom that had produced profitable minarets of condo towers before the current financial unpleasantness. The Crystal Phoenix always moved conservatively and stayed small, so it had deeper pockets than some far-more-famous Strip names.

“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?”