Cat In A Jeweled Jumpsuit

Temple was quiet until they were opposite Quincey’s dressing room again, and had no chance of being overheard.

“KOK. This Kyle Purvis guy sounds like one hell of an impersonator.” Temple eyed Matt soberly, then wiggled her eyebrows for comic relief.

“It’s hard to tell how good these guys would be onstage. The one who talked about Priscilla’s reasons forleaving Elvis, he struck me as having the natural equipment, maybe the temperament for the role.”

“Seemed kind of low-key for the King of Rock ‘N’ Roll.”

“Okay. Let me have it,” Matt said with resignation. “You think he is Elvis.”

“I think somebody wants somebody to think Elvis is walking these halls. It could be this Kyle Purvis.”

“Kyle Purvis. King of Kings,” Matt scoffed. “Somehow, I don’t think so.”

Chapter 19

You Ain’t a Hound Dog

(Sales of the Elvis version of “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog” exceeded six million copies in 1956 alone)

Every time I turn around in this Kingdome joint, I hear someone say that they owe it to Elvis.

I have never heard of a dead dude before with so many IOUs still out.

I owe nothing to no one, but that is the advantage in being nothing but an alley cat. Nobody expects anything of me, so I have an unlimited range of astonishment.

Right now I am determined to get into someplace where I should not go.

My only hope is the Marie-Antoinette hairdo on this little doll Quincey. If it is sufficiently cumbersome, she will be so occupied in getting it safely through the open door that she will not notice me flattened against the floor and wall next to the door. Like Elvis in his latter years, I do not flatten as well as I used to.

But these thoroughly modern misses have no idea how cumbersome big hair is, and I am counting on this as my advantage, since I have watched the Divine Ashleigh sisters try to sashay their Persian fluff through various apertures. They cannot pay too much attention to the surroundings.

I must wait a long time before the door opens again, during which time I hear the distant strains of “Suspicious Minds” being hummed by an awful lot of guys with no ear for music. At last I hear something from within the mysterious room. It is little Miss Quincey intoning, “Bye-bye, baby. Be good now.”

And then she is backing out of the doorway, bent over with the weight of her vertical coiffure.

I slither inside on my belly like a snake, or like Little Egypt shedding her veils when performing, wondering if I have solved all the mysteries rolled into one: Elvis is alive and well in a storage room in the Kingdome.

The door snaps shut behind me, and my strategy to use my dark coloration as camouflage has never been so successful. I am in the utter dark, invisible to all, including myself. I cannot so much as see my tail in front of my face, not that I should ever want to do any such thing.

Tails belong in the rear, where one cannot trip over them.

Now who can Miss Quincey have left in the utter dark, locked up, and still call “baby”? A ghost comes to mind. I do not believe that normal physical deprivations, such as light and companionship, would harm a ghost. Still, even a ghost is no one unless he or she is seen in the right places, and it would seem cruel to condemn a spirit, no matter how restless and in need of containment, in dark isolation.

On the other hand, Elvis had Dracula tendencies: staying up all night and going to bed at dawn; tinfoiled bedroom windows, whether at home or on the roam, to keep the light out; luring young, beautiful girls to his bedroom, where he engaged in much of what humans call “necking,” no doubt resulting in what humans call “hickeys” and what vampires call faucets.

This would certainly explain the “Elvis is not dead” notion. If he really were a vampire, all he would need is some native earth—in his case, Mississippi mud—and a nice hidden, dark location in which to stash a coffin. His documented midnight visits to Memphis mortuaries certainly lend credence to the vampire theory. If only I could go on talk shows without a mouthpiece! But since I do not deign to speak to humans, my media career will have to be confined to cat food commercials.

So I crouch just inside the door, envisioning rooting out a six-foot vampire with a depilatory problem.

Faint heart never won a fair fight. I guess I can go fang to fang with anything living or undead. I silently pad deeper into the dark. The floor is concrete, as it is in all backstage dressing room areas. It is also cold on the tootsies. In fact, it is cold and it is damp, which lends weight to my theory that Elvis is a vamp.

I hear a sudden machine-gun burst and flatten to the floor. Elvis kept those on hand, too.

Odd, though, no fire flashes have lit the dark.

My heart is pounding against the cold concrete to which it is pressed. In the restored silence, I can hear every beat, but little else. Another raucous outburst shatters the silence. I had hoped a vampire would stick to the gentlemanly and Old World weapons of fang and nail.

In an odd way, the sound effects resemble the chattering of an extremely noisy and noisome bird. Of course, this bird would have to be the size of a private jet to make such a racket… .

This is when I first seriously begin to get nervous about my situation. We all know that it is eat or be eaten in this predatory world. And there is nothing that so upsets an ace predator than the notion that there is a variety of one’s usual prey that is big enough and hungry enough to turn the tables on the natural order.

Let us just say that I would not like to meet up with thelikes of a bald eagle without the intervention of an avarian enclosure at the zoo.

Scrabbling sounds echo off the empty walls. Now, scrabbling sounds are an interesting phenomenon. It implies something animal (or at least avarian) rather than vegetable or mineral. It implies some rudimentary intelligence, but nothing human. The scrabble could be as small as a mouse, or as big as a housecat, or an elephant, I suppose.

So what scrabbles in the dark and also carries a machine gun? Although smell is not one of my primo senses, I put my nose into action. I sniff things that I do not consider eating material but humans do: fruits. Large birds will snack on certain fruits, I believe.

My blood chills. I hope the fellow inhabitants of this room are not parrots. They are not likely to eat me, but they can have nasty tempers and their beaks can do a lot of damage. But Quincey said “Bye-bye, Baby,” not “Bye-bye, Birdie.” And—by the way—was that not the title of the Broadway musical satirizing Elvis? I keep coming back to Elvis. Maybe Elvis just keeps coming back to me. Who could blame him? I cannot stand it. Ghosts are made to be banished. I am tired of having this specter hanging over my head, which it very well may be. I return to the door, guided by the hairline of light underlining it. Then I veer right and leap straight up, and repeat the maneuver, batting out a mitt on my descents. I am not fumbling for a doorknob in the dark, though I might be able to turn it if I got the right spin on my pinkies. I am going for a simpler feat, but the object of my gymnastics is like looking for a needle in a haystack, or a button in a Burlington Coat Factory. Or a single stud on an Elvis jumpsuit.

Then my mitt strikes something on my downward swing. There is a faint crackling above. Light winks on before I land. The naked flare of overhead fluorescents casts an eerie blue-white glow on the piled crates and concrete.

The scrabbling sound has stopped, and so has my heartbeat … almost.

I scan the premises for my fellow inhabitant, who should now be visible, unless I frown. One crate is made of chicken wire or such, and it is as big as a doghouse, if the dog in question were a mastiff.

Dogs do not eat fruit. I slink over, reassured by the sight of a huge padlock through a sturdy hasp.

My pupils are still needle-sharp slits, thanks to the downpour of fluorescent light, but I make out a huge, shambling shape scrabbling inside the construction.

I have found the King, all right. King Kong. I mean, Elvis’s face was furry in his heavy sideburn years, but this guy is wearing hairy all over his jumpsuit.

When he spots me he starts jumping up and down and screeching. He must weigh forty pounds. He bounces to the chicken wire and sticks his hairless fingers through, still chattering up a storm.

I cannot make out a word of it, but there is no doubt that I am facing an ancestor of Homo sapiens, the hairy little ape known as a chimpanzee. On the side of his cage, hanging off the top strut, I spy something shiny. A white jumpsuit, fit for a chimp.

Now I have seen everything.

Chapter 20

Walk a Mile in My Shoes

(Recorded during an Elvis show at the International Hotel, Las Vegas, 1970)

Temple leaned against the hallway wall.

“If I’d have known it was going to take this much hoofing to visit all of the Elvis impersonators, I’d have worn track shoes.”

Matt held up the wall beside her, even though it was painted institutional gray and liberally smudged with fingerprints, makeup, and the occasional billboard of graffiti. He glanced down at her feet in the begemmed J. Renee high heels she wore in honor of the jumpsuits, as she had informed him earlier.

“Haven’t you got something to switch to in your tote bag?”

“Yes, but that’s for really rough terrain. I refuse to get down and get sloppy when we’re paying calls on men who are more lavishly attired than I.”

“You have strange standards.”

“So I’ve been told.” Temple eyed him a little cautiously. He was really out of his element. “You did some pretty heads-up interviewing in there.”

“Maybe I’m getting good at my new job. But … all these guys, they start looking like clones after a while. Can you tell one from another?”

“It’s hard to see the person behind the persona. I bet that caused Elvis a lot of problems too.”

Matt nodded. He looked like someone who was tired of talking about Elvis, seeing Elvis, interviewing Elvis.

“Now he’s giving me problems,” Matt went on. “I’m obligated to take this caller seriously. Whatever else he is, he must be a very troubled man. Maybe he’s as likely to overdose any day now as Elvis was back in seventy-seven.”

“Yet,” Temple pointed out with her usual insouciance, “if you take him too seriously, you could end up a laughingstock.”

“Exactly. I don’t know what to do. I know what Leticia wants me to do: ride the radio Elvis for all it’s worth. But if the man is not just a joker, if he’s really convinced he’s Elvis, that could be dangerous.”

Temple pushed herself off the wall’s welcome support. “Let’s do this. Let’s forget about interviewing Elvis imitators; let’s cherchez le suit.”

“It’s true that these guys don’t talk like Elvis until they’re onstage, and then they use mikes, so my chances of recognizing a voice are nil. But no one so far has missed a jumpsuit.”

“We’ve only hit a couple dressing rooms.”

“Of forty guys.”

“Tell you what. Let’s find the girl’s dressing room. I for one am eager to glimpse Velvet Elvis.”

They trekked back down to Quincey’s dressing room, but it was empty.

“Too bad,” Temple said. “She’s the one most likely to know—”

“The girl most likely to know what?” a voice behind them asked.

They turned.

The woman was fashion-model tall, in other words, about six feet. Her jet-black hair was cut short at the sides and back, and full on top. She had the wide shoulders of an athlete on a willowy frame. She wore a T-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. With two-inch heels.

“We were looking for the women impersonators’ dressing room,” Temple said gamely, a feat, since at five-foot-nothing she looked upon model-tall women as a form of goddess. They always seemed more grown-up than she. She knew her attitude was an illusion and a throwback to her squat and powerless childhood, but she couldn’t help it. That some girls could actually grow like Jack’s bean stalk all the way to Giant World .. .

“You must be Velvet Elvis,” Matt said in a cucumber-cool fashion that only made Temple dislike her own awe all the more.

Tall men didn’t intimidate her. Tall buildings, horses, even elephants didn’t intimidate her, but tall women .. . at least this one didn’t carry a badge. Oops! Elvis had carried lots of badges. Maybe his impersonators did too.

“How’d you guess?” the woman asked with a grin. She was also disgustingly lean. Temple gritted her teeth, vowed to let Matt handle it, and repeated to herself three times: this is a media-designed, unhealthy role model; get over it.

“Shana Stewart.” The woman extended a hand first to Temple.

All right! Matt shook her bony hand in turn.

“My digs are right next door. I’m the only Elvisette here. There were a couple other girls, but they chickened out.”

The dressing room was a mirror-image of Quincey’s setup. Everybody pulled a lightweight chair from under the slab of dressing table that lined the walls, and sat.

“What are you interested in?” Shana asked.

“We’re interested in costumes. Jumpsuits,” Temple began in a crab-sidling manner. No sense telling her too much.

“I’m a radio talk-show host,” Matt said, giving his name, rank, and station call letters. “Someone’s been calling me, acting and sounding like Elvis. I’m trying to figure out if it’s a gimmick to promote the hotel and the Elvis competition, or if I’m dealing with a really sick person.”

“If you are, it sure could be Elvis,” Shana said ruefully.

Temple stared at Matt. He had blown his own cover, told this interrogatee everything, but he didn’t seemed worried about that at all.

Maybe Shana Stewart was a goddess, or at least a witch.

“How did you become interested in impersonating Elvis?” Temple put in, since frankness was obviously the order of the day, and she was frankly curious.

“Lily Tomlin. You ever see her do Tommy Velour, the quintessential lounge singer? Fabulous! Shows you what a woman can do when she cuts free of gender stereotypes. I’m a model.” As if Temple, ace amateur detective, hadn’t figured that one out! “I’d like to be an actress, but no one takes me seriously. I’m hoping for some coverage from this, maybe a career boost.”

“It’s quite a stretch,” Matt said. “You’d be hard to picture as a man.”

He sounded nauseatingly admiring to Temple. What had happened to all his ex-priest’s issues, like whether he could relate well with women after all those celibate years? That last line sounded like, well, a line.

Shana stretched back against the dressing table as if emulating Matt’s figure of speech. “That’s the point. If I looked butch to begin with it wouldn’t be as impressive an impersonation. And Elvis was a very pretty man, you know? That’s why he toughened up his image with blackhair and black leather. Didn’t want anyone to see the mama’s boy under the swagger. A shrink could have a field day with Oedipus complexes and repressed homosexuality with Elvis, but I think the guy was straight, that way at least.”

Temple thought it was time to assert her presence as expert interrogator. “I understand you have a very original costume and act.”

“Oh, the boys have been talking about me, have they?” Shana smiled conspiratorily. “That’s what you want: preperformance buzz. I let ‘em see just enough to get agitated about what I might be doing.”

“You’re a velvet painting come to life?” Matt asked.

Shana suddenly stood, which was quite a production at her height. She went to close her dressing room door. Temple was glad she was here as chaperone. Poor Matt wasn’t used to dealing with upfront females like this.

Shana turned, holding the door shut with her body. “You seem like a couple of decent people. I’ll show you my outfit if you keep mum about it. Oh, you can mention it and roll your eyes in front of the other Elvises, but that’s all.”

“We have become very good at rolling our eyes in front of the other Elvises,” Temple said demurely.

Shana’s raucous laughter bounced off the facing mirrors. “I bet you have!”

She went to a niche with a rod running across at shoulder height, but no costumes hung there, just a blue satin boxer’s robe and a big sweater. A long portable locked case, like sports equipment or a big musical instrument is carried in, leaned against the niche’s far wall.

Shana rotated the dial of a padlock, then cracked it open. The interior was lined in black felt, but something else black took up the space.

Temple and Matt came over to see better.

It was a black velvet jumpsuit. Heavenly bodies—constellations, planets, nebulae—decorated the flared bellbottom pants, the wide sleeve-bottoms and the front.

A dazzling asteroid belt six inches wide hung at the hips. Rather than being gemstones or studs, the celestial landmarks were laid out in something Temple, the glitz freak, had never seen before: aurora borealis rhinestones, only in chalky neon colors of lime green, hot pink, turquoise, and yellow.

“I’ve got special gels for the stage lights, kind of like black-light gels.”

“Oh,” Temple blurted, “like the strippers use.”

“Right on.” Shana eyed Temple with new respect, as if she had grown a half foot in her estimation. “It casts this white-purple glow and then this thing comes alive like a landing strip in Oz. Unbelievable.”

Matt nodded. “So they know you’re ‘Velvet Elvis,’ but they don’t know yet just how spectacular you are.”

“Right. Not until dress rehearsal. The thing is, the jumpsuit is everybody’s secret weapon. Some of the veterans don’t care, but the rest of us keep our outfits under wraps until we have to show them off.”

“So any number of you could have a costume no one’s ever seen before?” Temple speculated. That might explain why no one had claimed the mutilated jumpsuit.

Shana nodded.

“And that’s why us asking about jumpsuits might get the cold shoulder.”

Shana nodded again.

“Isn’t it hard,” Temple asked, “being the only woman?”

Shana shook her head. “No. And, after all, I’ve got a pal in Priscilla, right?”

“You and Quincey get along?”

“She’s an okay kid. Notice I did not say ‘good.’ That girl’s got a lot to prove and no one to show her the right way to go about it. But we get along. I haven’t shown her my Elvis suit, though.”

“Why did you show us?” Temple asked.

Shana shut and locked the case and resumed her chair by the mirror before she answered.

“Doing an impersonation is different from any other acting job on earth. You’re not digging into a character through the lines the playwright gave him; you’re digging into a real person through the life he lived, and in this case, died. It’s a commitment. It’s an education. If you’re any kind of actor, it’s a transformation. Even if you’re a bad actor, and there are a bunch of those here, you get caught up in the challenge, and maybe the privilege. You are an interpreter, and you want to be the best damn one you can be. So, you’ve got a vested interest, in the end.”

She leveled a glance at Matt, and Temple noticed that her eyes were a clear, strong, undrugged Elvis blue. Contact lenses, again? Ever the cynic.

“Whoever you’re talking to,” Shana went on, looking hard at Matt, “even if he thinks he’s a fraud, is in trouble. Elvis-sized trouble. King-sized trouble. I’m riding on his image. So I owe it to Elvis to help.”

Chapter 21

Ya-kitty-yak

(Elvis never recorded “Yakety-yak,” but it was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who wrote other songs Elvis did record)

I guess I never paid attention when those Tarzan movies came on.

I find jungle life fairly boring, not to mention hard on the ears: all those exotic birds and monkeys shrieking in the trees, the stampeding elephants trumpeting like they have just been drafted into a mariachi band, natives jumping up and down chanting, drums beating to beat the mariachi band … not my scene.

Still, now I wish I had picked up a tip or two on relating to the most intelligent life form outside of Homo sapiens himself (and that is not saying much). See, these things chitter. They chatter. They screech. It is very hard to decode their ravings. Oh, they have those big brown eyes that everyone finds so expressive. So do dogs, and you know how many of their lightbulbs are on permanent dim. They also are blessed with those blasted opposablethumbs that have become the sine qua non of civilization. (This means that you are nobody without them.) But most of the time those flexible digits are only good for curling around the bars of a cage, and I do not see how that makes the species so intelligent. You will not find my pinkies curling around the bars of any cage. They will instead be kneading in fascinating rhythm into whatever soft surface is available: a mother’s milkwagon, a pillow, or whatever human epidermis is most unprotected by distracting layers of clothing.

It is while gazing on the almost-naked ape (this critter is wearing the obligatory diaper) that I happen on the discovery of my life. Why are cats superior to all other species? We know that they are, and that they have attained this high station despite lacking the prized opposable thumb or even the disgusting bark so hailed in the canine species.

I have it. Call me Darwin! (But only as a middle name. It is an extremely wimpy name and I only claim it in the abstract sense.) The chimpanzee before me betrays the clay feet of the entire human race.

Diapers. This creature is wearing that so-undignified banana bandana that marks a creature who is hopelessly retarded in its elimination. The feline, on the other hand, is notable for its neat personal habits indoors or out (unless subjected to intolerable emotional stress). This has made us a boon to humankind from time immemorial. No other animal species is so remarkably tidy. This makes us King of the Beasts. Or Queen, if Midnight Louise is listening in.

Once the innate inferiority of the creature before me is clear, despite its agile fingers and brain, I sit down and take charge.

“All right. Settle down, Chiquita-chomper. I suppose I should know if you are a dude or a dudette. Well?”

The thing chitters at me in monkeyese. I scratch my nose in puzzlement. It repeats the gesture.

What a silly mug! Naked as a slug, despite the hairy coat that would do honor to a goat. And the thing smells to high heaven. No wonder it is locked up far from human sniffers.

I speak slow-ly and clearly. “Me Louie. You … well? Me Louie, you—”

“Chitter, chitter, chitter, chatter.”

“Enough of the chit-chat. Me Louie, you … ?”

The big ape starts pounding itself on the chest. Big hairy deal. If I had wanted a drummer, I would have asked for one.

Then I finally tumble. The critter is trying to use sign language. He is not saying “chitter chitter bang-bang” on his chest, he is saying his name. So I listen harder during the next outburst and come to only one conclusion. Am I a seasoned investigator, or what?

“Or what?” may describe my role as translator for a juiced-up monkey.

“Chatter?” I say, not believing my own words. “That is your name? Chatter?”

“Chitter chitter.” Head nod.

By George, I think he has got it. “All right, ah, Chatter.”

Grin grin, nod nod. Show teeth. Ugh! So square and dull and regular, no interesting predator peaks and valleys. No wonder humans seek out orthodontists. I would too if I had that in my family tree. Fortunately I go back to Ole Sabertooth Tiger, and there was nothing filed down about that Jurassic dude.

“Okay, Chatter. G0000d monkey-wonkey. Ah … can you explain why you are locked up in here?”

Chitter chitter, blink blink. What is this guy, a hairy semaphore? I see that there is nothing to do but for me to forsake the sophisticated signaling system of my breed and descend to sign language as well. These crude charades offend my feline soul, but the dedicated investigator must sacrifice even dignity in the pursuit of an honest answer.

So I walk to the door. I walk back to the cage. I leanmy forelimbs up to the padlock, and pantomime a twisting motion. Then I sit down, do my best to impersonate an owl and force my purr into a trilling “Whoo-whoo-whoo.”

The big monkey tilts his ugly head and eyes me inquisitively. I am not about to repeat the performance, but I do repeat the question: “Whoo-whoo-whoo.”

Suddenly light dawns in those ancient brown eyes. The creature leaps up, assumes a bow-legged stance, and begins playing the air guitar as if he were auditioning for Saturday Night Live.

Naturally, I am startled by this unsuspected talent and leap back, in case this is St. Vitus dance and it is catching. Of course the conclusion is obvious. An Elvis imitator has incarcerated this poor benighted being behind these cruel chickenwire walls.

Verrry interesting.

But why was Miss Quincey Conrad paying surreptitious visits to the imbecile and calling him Baby? Is she perhaps acquainted with the hairy little fiend? Might there be some plot involved.

Ah-hah! I remember my detective antecedents, bom in the USA, even if they were first practiced on French soil.

I refer, of course, to what mystery readers of all ilk must inevitably be reminded of when confronted with a crime, a primate, and a mysterious motive.

Cherchez le chimp, bebe.

It is very possible that the individual who attacked the costume so senselessly, scattering nail lacquer and paper towels about, was this very creature I share confinement with. A chimpanzee is quite strong, and even more unpredictable. Elvis kept one, as a matter of fact, by the name of Scatter, and it drank beer and looked up girls’ skirts, much to the amusement of Elvis and the refined gentlemen of his entourage. Then the novelty wore off, and the animal, after being the life of the orgy for some time, was consigned to a solitary cage, where it died alone and unmourned. I cannot condone treating even a silly antecedent of humanity so callously.

Seems to me some son of Scatter would be very interested in laying some version of Elvis low.

Chapter 22

Help Me Make It Through the Night

(Recorded by Elvis in 1971)

“Elvis alert!”

The phrase, bellowed out, made Matt start and look behind him.

Almost midnight, but he was alone in the studio, and the alert was only on his headphones.

Leticia was grinning at him from the other side of the glass window, a vision in an orange and turquoise-trimmed silk tunic and pants. Matt imagined she was the kind of vision Elvis would have had after eating one of those nightmare meals made from his four favorite food groups: lard, sugar, salt, and carcinogens.

“You’re expecting that guy to call again?” Matt asked through the mike. He was relaxing into the radio routine: commercials were blaring to the outside world while the staff took a break before they were back on the air.

“I’m hoping, honey.” She winked.

Matt wasn’t hoping for another visitation from the Tabloid Twilight Zone, but he was prepared if it came. He’d not only read a lot of books about Elvis, but he’d made notes. Maybe he could trip the King up. Prove him the fraud he needed to be revealed as, in order to come to terms with himself. His real self.

This was Matt’s show, after all, and he wasn’t here to be made a fool of. He grinned at the shakiness of that assertion. Anyone who stuck their neck out with a live call-in show like this was in imminent danger of public folly.

But no tin-star Elvis was going to be his downfall….

Of course, the worst nightmare for a live call-in show was not a bizarre guest. It was the absence of any callers. Leticia had been known to assume other voices and call in herself, if need be.

That wasn’t necessary tonight. Calls came pouring in, including three referring to the previous night’s Elvis sounding (as opposed to sighting). Two callers were irate that the station would use such a blatant gimmick to hype the new Elvis attraction in town. One caller wanted to know if Elvis had been in the studio for the interview.

“It wasn’t a live interview, no,” Matt said, tongue deeply in cheek. “He called in just like you did.”

“Oh, wow,” the woman said. She sounded too mature to be making this call or saying “wow.” “Then he could be dead too.”

“You’re claiming to be dead?”

“No! I meant, it could have been a voice from the grave.”

“In that case, I’m very glad it wasn’t an in-person interview.”

“It’s not a gimmick, like that man said before, is it?” “If it is, it’s not a gimmick that’s originating here at WCOO. We were as surprised as anybody.”

“Too bad you didn’t have an expert witness there when he called. Someone who knew Elvis, who could say if it was really him.”

“I’m afraid I was pretty much alone here, except for a technician and my producer, and we’re all too young to have heard much of Elvis.”

“Hey, everybody’s heard of Elvis. My little niece, she does the cutest version of ‘Teddy Bear.’ She could come in and do it on the air. Or, over the phone … Brianna, honey, come to auntie—”

“No, uh, thanks. I just do counseling, not auditions.” “Well, what if Elvis wanted to sing on your stupid show?”

“I don’t know. I imagine”—he glanced at Leticia’s eager face through the glass that reflected his distinctly uneager face—“that he would sing if he wanted to. We don’t catch too many live performances of his nowadays.”

The caller was gone, disconnected before adorable little Brianna could toddle to the phone to lisp her way through anything of a musical nature.

Matt had time for one deep breath of relief before another voice boomed into his ear.

“You this here Mr. Midnight?”

“That’s right. What can I help you with?”

“It’s me that can help you, buddy. Lots of us remember Elvis real well. We can tell a fake five miles off. That guy who called you, he was a piker. I’d know Elvis anywhere.”

“A rabid fan, huh?”

“A rabbit what? I’m no rabbit!”

“I meant that you’re an expert on the King.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s mah era. Cherry Cokes and unfiltered cancer sticks rolled up in your T-shirt sleeve. Man, either one of ‘em would sear the rust off a tailpipe. I can tell you right now: that weren’t Elvis last night. No way. You’ve been took in, or you’re trying to take us in.”

“No, sir, we’re not. That call was totally unexpected. But it’s good to know that expert listeners out there are keeping us from being bamboozled by phonies.”

“Right. Happy to help out. I guess this is one time the counselor needed counseling.”

“You’ve got that right, brother,” Matt said fervently. As an Elvis-detector, he was a King-sized bust.

To his relief, the next caller was a disgruntled in-law who disapproved of how the newlyweds had spent their wedding money. This was a snap; as a parish priest, Matt had handled every conceivable pre-and postnuptual problem that three hundred-some unions could produce.

He glanced at the big school clock on the wall. Only five minutes to final commercials and no Elvis. Leticia was looking deflated, but Matt was feeling even more relieved. Mr. Show Biz he’d never be, if laying yourself open to every nut who could punch in a phone number was part of the job description. Give him ordinary people with dull, ordinary problems, superstardom and self-destruction not among them.

“Um, Mr. M-m-midnight?”

Matt’s muscles seized up as if he had turned into an instant corpse.

“Are, uh, you there, sir?”

Leticia had come alive like a football fan whose team had just scored two points by running over the goal line from a faked point-after position. Her smooth cappuccino features all tilted up, as if her head was a helium-filled balloon that would lift her entire 300-pound body out of her chair.

Matt had become enough of a media personality to realize that the sight of such an ecstatic producer was nothing to trifle with. He surrendered to show biz.

“Yes, I’m here. You wouldn’t be Elvis again?”

“Well, sir, that’s kind of a funny way of puttin’ it. I’ve always been Elvis, so I don’t have to be him again, if you get my drift. Once has been enough, let me tell you.”

“You had a lot of good times.”

“Oh, yeah. But before and after … they weren’t sohot. You know, a guy gets to thinkin’ when he’s all alone—”

“Are you all alone, Elvis?”

“Guess so. Ain’t seen nobody around lately. ‘Course, they know enough to leave me alone when I want to be alone, and to be there for me when I want ‘em to.”

“Sounds handy. Like a light switch.”

“What do you know about my flashlight?”

Matt hadn’t been referring to a flashlight, but he recalled a famous photo of Elvis carrying one like a baton. “Oh, saw some photographs of you with one dangling from your wrist. That would be in the seventies, wasn’t it?”

“Uh, yeah. Sounds right.”

“Why did you carry that flashlight, Elvis?”

“Well, I got eye problems. One-eye problem, I guess. Had to wear dark glasses. And I liked to know what was going on. Out there, in the dark.”

“You were being vigilant.”

“Yeah. That’s it.”

“You were something of a lawman, in a way, weren’t you?”

“Hey, you musta been a fan, Mr. Midnight, is that right?”

“I guess everybody was your fan.”

“Not ever’body. I had my naysayers. You can’t do anything unusual in the world without naysayers. But I could handle that. Hell, I had ‘em in high school; didn’t like me wearin’ my hair long or dressing like I did, wanted to beat me up. They weren’t gonna beat me up when I had law enforcement badges from almost every place in the country. Even one I got from drug enforcement, through President Nixon. He was very happy to meet me. I was a Jaycees Outstanding Young Man of the Year in seventy … one. Two? Somewhere in there. Didya know that?”

“I knew that, Elvis,” Matt said soothingly.

The caller seemed not to have heard him. “Naysayers.

Naysayers who sit in your own living room and then go out and take money from some New York publisher to make you look like a fool … make you look bad to your little girl … those kind are hard to take.”

Matt was silent for a moment too long. Dead air time was the bane of talk shows. But the man had sounded genuinely upset just then. Poor soul, did he really believe his own impersonation?

“That was rough,” Matt said. “When those guys got fired and wrote that tell-all book about you. You got . pretty sick after that.”

Pretty sick? He had died only a couple of weeks after the release of the scandalous Elvis, What Happened? book in 1977.

“Daddy done fired ‘em. First definite thing my Daddy ever did in his life, and it ended up gettin’ that awful book written. I talked to Red. He called, and I kinda asked him to stop it, but he said he couldn’t. He even tape-recorded me without my knowin’ and put that in his damn book! I couldn’t believe one of my guys would do that to me. Red was with me from high school. Why’d he do that, Mr. Midnight? Why?”

Matt glanced at the clock, pointed a forefinger at his wrist so that Leticia couldn’t miss it. She didn’t. Past one A.M. They were in overtime. But she just kept rolling her fingers in the gesture that meant keep going. Apparently, to continue the football metaphor, they were in sudden death overtime. Matt mentally scanned his skimmed reading material for the relevant response.

“Well, Elvis, he was mad, and Red always had a hellacious temper. He couldn’t believe he’d be fired after all those years with you, and his cousin Sonny had been fired too.”

“But to say those things in public, those private things—”

“You were rough on the people around you. Demanded all their time anytime you needed them.” “I had to! Good God, man, you don’t know what aperforming schedule I was on, from the earliest days when me and my two band guys was driving ourselves around, doin’ up to three shows a day. Then later, it was the movies, and those are long, long hours. Then later the tours. Colonel kept me hoppin’ with those two back-to-back Vegas shows a night, and road tours night after night, week after week. It’s a wonder I made it as long as I did.”

“As long as—how long, Elvis, until—?” Matt thought he had him.

The King sounded confused for the first time. His words slurred slightly. “Until I-I I just wore out, and, and I I… I took some time off.”

“Nothing happened, did it? Nothing bad?”

“Well … I got kinda sick there. Real sick. Collapsed, you might say. It’s pretty … fuzzy. I was takin’ these sleepin’ pills, see, could never sleep. Had too much energy when I was a kid and it carried over. And I’d sleepwalk, you know. People had to be there to watch me. That’s why I needed ‘em there for me, once Mama was gone. I’d just stroll out the door of the house and walk on down the road and Mama and Daddy would get all upset. That’s why I had to sleep with Mama all those years, so I wouldn’t wander outa the house, get run over or something.”

Matt hesitated. Here was an opening, should he take it? What was he, a counselor or a coward?

“You had a special relationship with your mother, didn’t you, Elvis?”

“Yes, sir, I did. I didn’t know it at the time, I guess. It just seemed natural. But we were real close. Never had no one close as her again. She was my best girl. Not that she was perfect. Kinda tried to hold me back when I got out on the road and ran into all those pretty girls. But mamas are like that. They want you be upright and clean, and, man, that’s hard with all those pretty little things screamin’ and carrying on. She liked some of my early girlfriends, though. June. And Anita. Just warned me about the blue-eyed ones. She had real dark eyes, my mama. Dark eyes. Dark hair.”

A pause lasted so long Matt thought they had lost him. He made a shrugging gesture at Leticia, who shook her head in mystification.

“ ‘Course my mama’s hair was dark later on because I got her to dye it black like mine. I figured we should match, you know. Like me and Cilia. My mama’s eyes got real dark towards the end there. She had these black circles around her eyes. Like bull’s-eyes. Poor little Mama, it like to have killed her when I was drafted and sent off to Germany. I think she died before I went so’s she wouldn’t have to see it.”

“But she would have gone with you. Your father did, and your grandmother, and Red.”

“Yeah, but … she hadn’t been well, my little Satnin’. To tell you the truth, though she wanted my success more than anybody and was tellin’ me I could do anything, she hadn’t figured on me bein’ gone so much. I’d never slept away from home until I had to go on the road with Scotty and Bill. And then I could afford to get a car or two, even my first Cadillac .. .man, was that a charge! And then I could take out girls, and Mama, she’d never figured on all that screaming stuff and girls tearin’ off my clothes and rioting and comin’ to my motel room doors. So she kinda felt she lost me, I guess. And I guess I was like any young guy, everythin’ was tumbling my way like apples off a tree, and I was gonna pick up a few and bite ‘em, you know what I mean? Mamas don’t like to think of things like that. They’re on a higher plane.”

“You mean in heaven?”

“Oh, yeah, my mama’s in heaven. If I hadn’ta believed that, I could never have gone on without her as long as I did.”

“And how long was that?”

“Well, my whole life.”

“And how old are you now?”

“Uh, oh, I don’t like to think about them things. When you’re a performer, you’re supposed to stay the same as you always were forever. Forever Young. It’s the name of a song. Just not my song, I guess. Never recorded it. Never sang it in concert. By that Dylan guy. Did a few of his. Pretty good songwriter. Couldn’t sing worth a rat’s ass, though. Nobody can nowadays. Elvis, What Happened? shit! What happened to the music world, huh? I had almost a three-octave range, and I used it. I did all those ballads. I sang good, like Lanza. And all of us guys who could sing, we’re history. These so-called singers today, they rasp, they screech, they shout, but they don’t sing, man. That’s the book they should have written: Elvis, What Happened to Good Singers? Makes you want to … well, that’s the problem these days. Isn’t anything much I want to do. I was getting that way before I, um, retired.”

“And what made you come out of retirement?” “Huh? What’s that you said? Mr., uh, Midnight, isn’t it?”

“That’s right. Mr. Midnight. And I asked why you came out of retirement.”

The laughter came then, long and trailing off into weary, high-pitched sounds, like he’d laughed until he’d cried.

“I dunno. I just can’t sleep. Never could. It gets old. And the pills don’t help anymore. Finally, the pills don’t help. I don’t know why, Mr. Midnight. I don’t know if I ever really retired, or if I’m coming out of it. I’m just all alone in this hotel room and it’s dark so I can’t tell if it’s day or night, and no one’s out in the other room, I guess, but there’s a phone in here, and a radio and an alarm clock, and I heard you talkin’ and thought I’d call. That’s all right, isn’t it? You got the time to talk to me, don’t you? They’re finally all gone, Mr. Midnight. You’re the only one I can reach anymore. It’s all right, isn’t it?”

“Yes. It’s all right, Elvis.”

But the line was also, finally, dead.

Chapter 23

Stranger in the Crowd

(Winfield Scott wrote this for Elvis, who recorded it in 1970 and was seen rehearsing the song in the documentary Elvis—That’s the Way It Is)

Pools of lamplight lay on the pavement like the spotlights Hercule Poirot walks through during the opening credits for his series on PBS’s Mystery! Matt enjoyed the various characters, particularly Miss Lemon, Poirot’s tart spinsterish assistant, who reminded him of many an efficient parish secretary.

The opening sequence always stirred memories of a cane-carrying Charlie Chaplin jerk-stepping out of the frame of some blackand-white silent film.

Matt felt he was moving under the stop-motion influence of a strobe light too. He always felt stiff and tired leaving the radio station, as if he’d been doing physical, instead of psychic work.

When someone appeared from the dark in front of him like a ghost, he stopped, alarmed.

“Mr. Midnight?”

She was young enough that his first instinct was to ask what she was doing out alone at this hour.

But she wasn’t alone. Another figure edged into the puddle of light ahead of him. Another young girl.

“Can we have your autograph?” the second curfew-violator asked.

“On what? And I haven’t got a pen.”

The first girl mutely extended a rectangular sheet.

Matt was shocked to gaze at his own image, a blackand-white version of the color photograph used for the single billboard the station had mounted in his honor.

“Where’d you get this?

“We called here earlier today to ask about autographs, and they said they were having some photos made up.” Oh, they did, did they? Since when? But here was a rollerball pen extended by fan number one. Matt looked around, finally spotting a newspaper vending machine. He went over and placed the photo on its slightly corroded metal top. Barely enough light spilled from the parking lot to show where the photo was pale enough to write on.

And what would he say? He looked up, smiling uneasily at the sober-faced girls … they had become three.

He felt surrounded, as if they were the brides of Dracula and he had stumbled into their grim, encompassing midst.

What would he say? Write, rather. Uh … best wishes. Dull. Ah … good listening, regards … ah, Mr. Midnight? Or Matt Devine. No, Matt Devine wanted nothing to do with this charade. The pen took over for his vacillating mind. “Good Listening, Mr. Midnight.” What did that mean? Who knew?

“Could you put my name on it?”

“Name?”

“Up there, over your shoulder. “To Cheryl Baker.” “Cheryl Baker.” He began writing it.

“Uh, no. With two r’s.”

“Huh?”

“There are two r’s in Cherryl.”

“Oh. Well, I’ll make the upper part of the ‘y’ into an `r’ and … how’s that?”

“Great! Thanks, Mr. Midnight. You were really super with that poor girl. Is she okay?”

“As okay as she can be at the moment. I think she’ll get better with time.”

“That was so awesome.” Fan number two crowded closer to extend a second photo.

He knew right where to sign this time. “And what’s your name?”

“Xandra with an ‘X.’ “

“You’ll have to spell that.”

She did, letter by letter, as if she’d done this before. Fan number three advanced in turn.

This was no slip of a girl, but a heavyset woman in the whimsical cat-print scrub-clothes that nurses wore nowadays. She must have come on her way to—or from—the night shift at a hospital.

This fifty-something veteran of such interchanges knew exactly what he was supposed to write. “From Mr. Midnight and Elvis, to Diane.”

“I don’t know if I’m entitled to sign Elvis’s name.” “You’ve talked to him, haven’t you?”

“I’m not sure. Are you?”

“Oh, yeah. I have listened to everything Elvis for years. I’ve been to Graceland three times for the August memorial.”

“Wouldn’t it be … pretty amazing if Elvis really were alive, and after all these years started calling some obscure radio show in Las Vegas?”

She shook her shoulder-length hair, which had once been springy and black but now was frosted with broad brush strokes of white. Matt guessed she’d worn the same haircut for three decades, and had worshipped Elvis through every one of them.

“Nope,” she said matter of factly. “I mean, not thatit’s not amazing, but Elvis was pretty amazing himself. He wouldn’t give up on his fans. And if he did get too tired and sick to go on, he might have arranged to disappear. He had the money to go anywhere or be anybody.”

“So why would he come back via live radio, over twenty years later?”

“He knew how to make an entrance.” She smiled and snapped the gum she was chewing. Matt caught a faint, nostalgic whiff of Juicy Fruit. “You can just never tell what Elvis might do.”

Matt recognized pure faith when he saw it. He had never seen it shown to anything other than a religious figure. Maybe the shrinks who identified Elvis as a shaman, a primitive holy man, weren’t all wet. Didn’t the faithful visit the burial shrine at Graceland every August, and every day of the year, making it second only to the White House in annual visitor count?

“From Mr. Midnight, who listens to Elvis,” Matt wrote. Anyone with a stereo could listen to Elvis. “Happy-ever-after listening.”

She read the inscription, pulling the photo close to her lenses. “That’s all right,” she said, grinning and nodding. “Elvis would have liked that.”

None of Matt’s autograph hounds (hound dogs?) were ready to leave, but stood shifting from foot to foot, grinning.

Matt looked up for some reason, beyond their imprisoning semicircle.

A fourth figure stood silhouetted in the light of a distant lamp.

Its wide-legged stance made clear that it wore bellbottom pants. The night was chilly, maybe fifty-five degrees. Matt assumed the bulky but truncated outline of a classic ‘cycle jacket. The outline of the figure’s hair made its gender murky.

Disturbed, he stared, trying to read recognition into what was little more than a cardboard cutout. For an instant he wondered if a fan had brought along one of those lifesized standup celebrity cutouts. He had seen them in various models: Marilyn Monroe, Captain Kirk and … Elvis Presley.

Someone tugged on his sheepskin jacket sleeve for attention. “Could you autograph a photo for my friend Karen who couldn’t come?”

“For Karen-who-couldn’t-be-here,” he wrote, already showing the cautious sensitivity to double-meanings of someone who thought his least act might return to haunt him.

Return to haunt him.

He glanced up again to the inadvertent spotlight cast by the street light. The pool of light was vacant. Elvis has left the parking lot.

Matt shook off the eerie speculation and his own superstition. The only ghost he recognized came and went with the adjective “holy.”

As he was signing the Mr. Midnight name, he heard a motorcycle cough into life and roar away. Fast.

Chapter 24

Tutti Frutti

(Raucous rock ‘n’ roll number Elvis sang on the Dorsey Brothers TV show, 1956)

“You’re as bad as my mother!” Quincey complained. “I don’t want my big chance ruined.”

“Being a harassment victim is a ‘big chance’?” “Show business can be rough.”

Quincey turned back to the mirror to fluff up her already high hairdo. Instead of wearing half of the hair up and the other half down her back—with one coy lock flipped forward over her shoulder—Quincey had teased the hairpieces into a mound as high as her face was long.

Her face was especially long now with teenage angst. “I don’t need ‘bodyguards.’ I’ll look like a kid or something.”

“Or something,” Temple agreed, surveying the bizarre child/whore façade Quincey had perfected, just as Elvis had ordered it done more than thirty years ago, partly to make his teenage houseguest look old enough to avoid dangerous gossip. “Frankly, bodyguards will only add to the illusion that you’re the real Priscilla. Besides, these aren’t the usual type of bodyguards. Believe me, they’ll blend right in.”

“Oh. ‘Blend in’ how? Are they the reincarnation of the Memphis Mafia? Fat old guys in dark suits and hats and sunglasses. Gross.”

Temple sighed. She knew everybody over twenty was ancient to a teen angel-vixen like Quincey. Still, she had gone to some trouble to provide low-profile protectors for the kid, and would have liked a smidgeon of credit for being cool for an old person. Apparently, having concerns for someone’s safety had cost her the “cool” credentials.

“Shall I ask them in to meet you?” Temple said. “Them? I’m gonna be trailed by two fat old guys in glasses? Double gross.”

“Not exactly.” Temple pushed herself out of the chair, her high heels clicking concrete all the way to the ajar door, and sounding just a tad miffed. “Fellas, you can come in now.”

Come in they did, two by two, just as the animals had entered the ark. Two, and then four, and then six, and then eight, and then the company’s lone last member.

They filled up the mirrors and the dressing room, six feet tall and nine strong. They loomed. They glittered. They were all Elvis, Elvis to the ninth power. They were, in a word that Quincey would respect, awesome.

She had almost knocked over her chair as she jumped to her feet to take in this manifestation. “What is this? Who are they?”

“Meet Full-spectrum Elvis, a new and original act for the competition.”

After a long pause, during which Quincey scanned every incarnation of Elvis: the raw fifties kid in the pink-and-black pants and shirt, Gold-Lame-Suit-withRhinestone Lapels Elvis, Tuxedo Elvis, Motorcycle Elvis, Blues Brothers Elvis, Karate Elvis, Cape-and- Cane Elvis, Jumpsuit Elvis, and, last but definitely not least, Oversized Elvis.

Seen in this historical perspective, it was obvious that the many overweight Elvises on the imitators’ circuit portrayed a minority version of the superstar. Only the last Elvis, Oversized Elvis, could be described as “gross.” Temple credited this man with a true actor’s devotion to a role for donning the required fat-suit beneath the jeweled jumpsuit.

The rest of them were trim, foxy-looking dudes with their naturally dark hair moussed, fluffed, and tousled, wearing their blue suede shoes or miniboots, and their various intensity of sideburns, from eyelash-thin to Bigfoot-sized radiator brush.

“How are more Elvis imitators going to do anything to guard me?” Quincey asked a bit less sullenly. She was the age when somewhat older men were intriguing. In fact, at sixteen, she was already a bit old for the real Elvis.

“That’s easy,” Motorcycle Elvis said, stepping forward so his neck-to-ankle black leather suit squeaked. “We are muscle first and musicians second.”

“And,” Cape-and-Cane Elvis added, sweeping aside the cape with his cane to reveal a sidearm, “we follow Elvis’s sterling example in accessories. Or perhaps I should say ‘steel-blue’ example.”

Quincey’s pale hazel eyes widened enough to push back the raccoon rings of eyeliner surrounding them. “Elvis was a gun nut. You guys could get into trouble for carrying concealed weapons.”

“Only if you tell on us, little lady,” Fifties Elvis said with an off-center smirk.

“Now.” Gold Lamé Elvis made a fingernail-buffing gesture on his rhinestone lapels that must have scratched his knuckles. Maybe they itched. “At least one of us will be with you at all times. The others will blend among other Elvis types and see what they can learn about whoever might have gone after your lovely neck with a razor blade.”

“I guess that’s all right,” Quincey allowed. “You guys don’t drag down my Priscilla outfit. Some of these Elvis costumes are so cheap and cheesy.” Then a girlish storm threatened. “Except him.” She pointed a perfectly manicured pale pink fingernail at Oversized Elvis. There was an awkward pause. “Really, Priscilla was out of the picture by the time Elvis got so gross. I’m only pointing this out for reasons of historical accuracy.” She eyed every one of them except Oversized Elvis. “It’s not like I have anything against Old Elvis.”

Of course she did, Temple thought. And so had the millions of people who voted a few years ago for the Young Elvis postage-stamp image, not the Mature Elvis likeness.

Oversized Elvis ebbed diplomatically to the back of the entourage. He also serves who only stands and waits.

After some discussion, it was decided that Fifties Elvis and Motorcycle Elvis should share the first-shift duties of shadowing Priscilla.

Temple retreated into the hallway with the remaining seven Elvi.

“You look terrific, guys!” she told them. “How did you rustle up such high-class King duds so fast?” She hadn’t a prayer of telling who was who behind the assorted Elvis facades and decided to refer to them as their costumes dictated.

“No problem,” said Tuxedo Elvis, his curly shirtfront ruffles matching the boyish wave in the locks that brushed his forehead. “We had the hair already, Super-glue provided the sideburns.”

“Hair is easy to duplicate. What about the costumes?” There was much blue-suede shoe shuffling.

Fifties Elvis bashfully tapped his shoe-toe on the concrete, then shrugged. “The hotel has this ‘see yourself as Elvis’ photo booth. They have everything but the suit he was buried in.”

“That would be tasteless,” Oversized Elvis said. “Even Elvis wouldn’t have liked that pale suit with the blue shirt and white tie.”

Temple was not assuaged. “Wait a minute! A photo booth does not explain how you all got duded up in period so fast.”

Karate Elvis launched himself into a fighting pose. “It’s like this, Miss Temple. We know the operator and know how to encourage cooperation.”

“Moolah.” Cape-and-Cane Elvis nodded knowingly. “And then we got Minnie the Miracle-worker to fit everything and gussy up the outfits—”

“The theatrical seamstress, Minnie Mabel Oliver. I remember her! I met her during the Darren Cooke case.”

“Was that a case?” Gold Lamé Elvis asked. “Or was it an accident?”

“The jury’s still out,” Temple said grimly.

“Just like it’s still out on Elvis’s death.” Karate Elvis executed a leap that landed him nearly on top of Temple.

“I don’t think so, boys. Besides, we don’t have to worry about a dead Elvis on the premises. It’s ‘Priscilla’ I’m concerned about. Apparently everybody around Elvis disliked her.”

“Well, she wasn’t one of the boys, was she?”

Temple stared at Blues Brothers Elvis, whichever Fontana brother he was. “That’s very true. It was a primal battle for control of Elvis: would his shy, sensitive private side win, or the adolescent bad boy that the world idolized?”

Motorcycle Elvis executed a pelvis move that left no doubt which side of Elvis he was voting for.

“Either way, I guess he was charming as a prince.” “You got that right,” Cape-and-Cane Elvis said. “A Prince of Darkness.”

“Well, you guys are all princes for taking on this bodyguard detail. You’re not actually competing, I hope.”

Motorcycle Elvis managed a devilish grin that lifted his upper lip, left side, just like the original’s. “Why not? Where else can we learn who might be pestering our little Priscilla? Elvis wouldn’t like that.”

“He was very protective of her.”

“She was his bird in a gilded cage, and that chick was not gonna fly away on him.”

“But she did,” Temple said. “And a lot of people blame her defection for his decline and fall.”

“Enough to kill even her image?” Tuxedo Elvis asked.

“That’s what Elvis was all about, wasn’t it? Image. In that kind of world, even a jumpsuit isn’t too inanimate to hate.”

They nodded soberly.

Someone who would stage the killing of a costume was not operating with all hinges screwed in tight.

Chapter 25

Fame and Fortune

(The first song Elvis recorded after leaving the army in 1960)

“I can’t do it,” Matt said. “I can’t play games with a sick man.”

He was staring at the front-page headline on the Las Vegas Scoop that lay across Temple’s coffee table: IS IT ELVIS, OR IS IT EYEWASH? Matt had brought the tabloid journal here. It was more of an advert than a newspaper. Temple’s coffee table wouldn’t be caught dead upholding the sleazy daily that took Las Vegas’s pulse at its most diseased. Other cities had their artsy “alternative” weeklies that covered the arts. Las Vegas had the Scoop (what she considered short for Pooper Scooper) whose motto could be: “All the dirt that’s fit to sling.”

The subhead was even worse: “Talk Jock Shoots Breeze with the King.” Then the story: Hot new after-hours air-head Matt Devine at WCOO-AM has held a couple post-midnight tête-à-têtes with the purported King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, worth mentioning only because said purported King is also purported to be dead.

Elvis, don’t be cruel! Tell us if it’s really you waxing melancholy at length—at Long Playing length, maybe; remember those good ole LP days?—in conversation with Mr. Midnight.

On the other hand, our spies (and we have countless spies everywhere, thank you, loyal readers) tell us that local radio’s recent hero—he talked a homicidal new mama into sparing her infant until the cavalry could get there—was seen hobnobbing with the Elvis imitators in town for the Kingdome’s gala opening next week.

Could our local hero be craving more publicity and making sure that he gets it with the collusion of an out-of-town Elvis? Makes you wonder. But then maybe that’s what the radio shrink and WCOO-AM want: all of us wondering and tuning in.

How about opening the air waves to the skeptics, Mr. Midnight? Viewers should call the Midnight Hour with some hard questions for the show’s most famous (and surely phony) guest. Think you’re enough of an Elvis expert to stump the supposed King himself? Call WCOO-AM from midnight to 1 A.M. and put Mr. Midnight to the test. Maybe you’ll be a local hero for putting a faux Elvis to rest.

They regarded the story silently, until Matt spoke again. “You’re the media expert. What should I do now?”

“I bet this is Crawford Buchanan’s work, even though the story doesn’t have a byline. It’s tawdry, cheap, and despicable … but I think it’s a good idea.”

“Seeing that the so-called Elvis is kept off the air?” “No! Letting the listeners call in and try to stump him. Bet Leticia could kiss the guy who wrote this article, even if it is the Awful Crawf. It’s great marketing.” “That’s just it! I don’t think we have a right to ‘market’ a sick man.”

“Maybe not, but maybe he’s not so sick.”

“How can you say that? I’ve heard genuine hurt in what that man says.”

“Then help him. Help him understand himself; that could do him good, whoever he is. And maybe connecting him with his ‘fans,’ even indirectly, will help him more.”

“Listen to yourself, Temple! ‘His fans.’ That’s what I’m worried about, people being so crazy themselves wanting to have the King back that they’ll buy any scheme or delusion.”

Temple shrugged. “That’s the great American public at its best. They want to believe, even if they know deep down it’s a snare and delusion. That’s what all entertainment is about: erecting illusions, fulfilling wishful thinking. Build it and they will come. You know there’s a whole world of Elvis worshippers out there hoping he isn’t dead. Maybe he can live a little, love a little again, through your show.”

“ ‘Live a Little, Love a Little …’ Even you, Temple, have sold out! This is insane. I can’t counsel a dead man through a delusional go-between. This guy might be suicidal, and if the ‘fans’ call in grilling him, who knows what he might do?”

“Good point.” Temple frowned down at the Las Vegas Scoop. “You should be the go-between for the fans. Don’t let them call in directly, just relay their questions, or bring up the issue when you talk to him.”

“He might not ever call again.”

“I doubt it. The King performed up to the very end. That’s the only thing that kept him going even as it destroyed him. He’ll call again.”

“I don’t like it,” Matt said.

Temple frowned again. Saleswomen at cosmetic counters cringed in agony if they caught her doing it, but it was one of her best expressions. Anyone who couldn’t frown couldn’t express uncertainty, and anyone who couldn’t express uncertainty in this world was doomed to disappointment.

She sighed. She knew Matt was terribly sincere, which made him such an excellent foil for the insincere of the world. If he had sensed honest turmoil in his caller, then it was there. Therefore the caller wasn’t a cynical user, at least not totally, no more than Elvis had been once the bloom had blushed off the rose of his naive country-boy youth and upbringing.

“It wasn’t your Elvis”—Matt groaned at her use of “your”—“that brought me to the Kingdome, you know. This whole Elvis thing does involve me, professionally, in a way.”

“What way?” Matt was sounding suspicious and hard-nosed. Good; progress. Lesson one from Life’s Large Instruction Book: Trust no one, especially those you trust most of all.

“There’s been a construction holdup at the Crystal Phoenix. I went over to investigate, then ended up at the Kingdome.”

“What could an Elvis attraction have in common with the classiest little hotel in Las Vegas?”

“That was the construction holdup. They’re excavating the Jersey Joe Jackson action attraction mine ride.” “So?”

“The workmen were balking at digging any further.” “More money?”

“Less shock waves.”

“Shock waves? Underground tremors?”

“Of a sort. They were seeing things.”

“Well, it is a ghost attraction, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but not for this ghost.”

“What ghost?““They’re convinced it’s Elvis.”

“Elvis has gone underground? At the Crystal Phoenix?”

“Do you see any reason someone trying to hype the Kingdome would put in a guest appearance at an underground attraction at another Vegas hotel?”

“Only if he was trying to tunnel his way out of a crypt, and Elvis is very definitely buried in Memphis, at Graceland, in the Meditation Garden, along with his mother and father, and grandmother.”

“If he’s dead.”

“Temple! Things are weird enough without you jumping on the ‘Elvis lives’ bandwagon.”

“I agree that it’s unlikely, but let’s give Elvis a chance. Let his fans, or detractors, call in with itsy-bitsy facts about his life that could trip up an imposter. You relay them in a nonchallenging way, crediting the person who asked the question. Maybe the station could give a trip to Graceland to whoever comes up with the question that stumps the King.”

“Temple, that’s so tawdry, cheap, and despicable. If I weren’t looking at you right now, I’d think you were a Crawford Buchanan imitator.”

“I agree. But … this kind of bad publicity in the Scoop could put your newborn career in jeopardy. You have to demonstrate somehow that this phone-in from Elvis isn’t a put-up job. You have to give the public a shot at proving that he’s a phony.”

Matt ran his fingers into his Fantastic Sam’s low-cost haircut.

“My career,” he said as if naming a new enemy. “Suddenly I’m getting some decent money. I seem to be naturally good at this talk radio stuff, I’m getting a following, I’m getting criticized by the press—”

“Oh, puh-leeze.”

“By the tabloid press, such as it is. Everybody has a stake in me, Leticia, the station, the public who believes I’m a good guy because of the baby incident, only now I’m maybe a bad guy because I might be a colluding fraud. I don’t know what to think and do.”

“Ever think that’s how Elvis began to feel?”

“No. I’ve never really put any effort into thinking how Elvis got the way he got, until now. If this is just a taste of the price of fame, it’s pretty bittersweet.”

“That’s why you can’t stop now. It’s not just the public you owe something to. And the story doesn’t really have to have a pat ending. Let me put it another way: you have to give this man who sounds like Elvis a shot at proving he’s who he says he is.”

Chapter 26

Let Me Be There

(A “sugary pop confection” says one biographer, that Elvis sang in a 1973 concert as he began to retreat from the musical ground gained during his post-comeback touring schedule)

“Have you considered the advantages of an expert assistant?”

Temple considered Electra Lark first.

Her landlady had rung the bell and spent the past fifteen minutes sitting on her sofa bruiting about her qualifications as an Elvis expert, ranging from attending the vital February 14 concert in Carlsbad to avid perusal of virtually every Elvis book published.

“I know, I know,” Temple finally said, interrupting the flow of fannish enthusiasm. Electra was looking more like a toy troll than an Elvis freak today, with her white hair tinted a clownish carroty red.

“Have there been any more manifestations in the Crystal Phoenix underground zone?” Electra asked eagerly.

“‘Manifestations’ implies an incorporeal presence,”

Temple said uneasily. “All I had for witnesses were some workmen more likely to see Elvis in a shapeless blob of light than Princess Diana.” She squinted her eyes at Electra. “It’s hard to picture you in a poodle skirt with a ponytail and anklets, screaming over Elvis. Now that’s a manifestation.”

Electra surprised Temple by blushing, very faintly. “You never saw the man perform live. He put his whole heart and soul into it. You could see it. It was like he was singing just for me, and even if he wasn’t, you felt united with everybody else there. I guess the word for Elvis live was electric.”

Temple was unconvinced. “And if the fifties were such a sexually repressed time, how could all those girls line up outside his motel rooms? According to your own books, Elvis was hooked on adolescence, and adolescent girls, and he followed through. How’d he get away with it, and why were so many of those sweet little fifties girls so available?”

“Simple. The parents were uptight and repressed. The kids had the same hormones that propel rock groupies today, and they were really desperate to break out. Why do you think Brando and The Wild One and rebel-actors like James Dean were so popular?”

“Didn’t Elvis idolize those actors … or, actually, idolize those rebel roles they played?”

“Yeah. And Elvis brought that rebel persona off the screen and into the performance halls. Live. You could touch him if you got up close enough and rushed the stage. You could be invited into his motel room if you hung out by his door and got lucky.”

“Wasn’t anybody worried about venereal disease and unwed pregnancies then?”

Electra thought about it. “Oh, we worried, but we didn’t know much what to do about it, so we took our chances.” She smiled at Temple’s shudder of disbelief. “It was a superstitious era. You know, if the time of the month was right and you used a Coca-Cola douche rightafterward, nothing would happen. Besides, Elvis was into necking and snuggling more than the actual act.” “Must have burned off all his night moves on stage.” “In some ways he was an innocent teenager just like us. That’s what we saw in him. He was from the same uncertain, kept-dumb mold as we were, overprotected for our own good. So for us to get out there and rock, and drive all the adults crazy with the suggestion of sex … it was heaven.”

“It ended up being sheer hell for Elvis. Not even his most loyal fans could deny that.”

“No.” Electra settled into the sofa pillows, contemplative, her usually cheerful and plump sixty-something face sagging into seriousness. “In a way, Elvis paid the price for our innocence, and we were innocent, even when we thought we were being daring. People just didn’t know back in the fifties and sixties what sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll could do to you, performer and audience. But, good golly, Miss Molly, it was great to be there. And great to get out alive.”

“Elvis didn’t.”

Electra inhaled deeply, then held her breath. She spoke in a long, strong rush. “Temple, that’s why I want to go over to the Kingdome with you. I think I could really help. I’ve been listening to Matt’s program.”

“Every night?”

“Sure. Haven’t you?”

“I’m a working girl.”

“Or has Max been commandeering all of your time?” “If only. Max has been out of town.”

“O000h.”

“What does `Oooooh’ mean? Never mind. I still haven’t the time to stay up nights and listen to the radio.”

“Well, I don’t sleep as well as when I was a wildly innocent young thing, so I’ve been faithfully listening to the Midnight Hour. Matt’s doing very well, isn’t he?”

“You can’t argue with success.”

“Have you heard his anonymous caller?”

“You mean the undeclared Elvis? Yes. Matt brought me a tape.”

“You two whippersnappers are too young to realize this, but that’s a very credible Elvis on that phone line.”

“The town is packed with very credible Elvises who are gambling a lot of time and money on winning the title of best dead Elvis around.”

“Still . ..”—Electra picked a few stray Louie hairs off the sofa seat—“I was there from the beginning. I’ve seen the documentaries, the movies, the retrospectives.” Electra nodded. “That’s a very credible Elvis. Too credible to just write off and forget.”

“Electra! The story that Elvis is alive is the cheapest, most obvious tabloid news rag staple of the past two decades. Even Awful Crawford is using it in the Las Vegas Scoop. Even Awful Crawford is debunking the idea. He’s challenged listeners to call in and play Stump the Superstar with Matt’s midnight Elvis.”

“What a great idea!”

“Yeah, that’s what I told Matt.”

“I could come up with some great questions.”

“Call ‘em in, or slip them under Matt’s door.”

“But I still want to see the scene of the crime.”

“Electra, there’s no crime here but malicious mischief: violent trashing of an empty Elvis jumpsuit and the more serious act of etching an `E’ into Quincey’s neck. From what I read about Elvis and his redneck bully boys and flunkies, they perpetrated a lot of malicious mischief themselves on movie sets, in major hotels, and at Graceland.”

“Exactly.” Electra’s eyes narrowed, and that’s when Temple noticed that she was wearing violet-colored contact lenses. What a chameleon! “You’ve heard of mischievous spirits, haven’t you?”

“So now you’re resurrecting not only Elvis, but his whole band of merry men?”

“You said that the girl playing Priscilla was attacked, didn’t you?““Yes.”

“I rest my case. Priscilla and the Memphis Mafia had a major power struggle.”

“And she won, because Elvis is dead and she’s running Graceland.”

“Especially interesting when you realize that Elvis left her out of the will and left everything to Lisa Marie.” “Then how did she—?”

“Lisa Marie was a minor when Elvis died, that’s how. She gets nothing out of it, just builds an inheritance for Lisa Marie.”

“Who married Michael Jackson.” Temple shook her head. “Another victim of rock ‘n’ roll.”

“Lisa Marie or Michael?”

“One, or both. I don’t care!”

“It really makes sense that she married him, you know. He led the lifestyle her father did: the forced isolation from fans, turning his home into an eternal playground, renting amusement parks to entertain his family and friends.”

“Why did they both do that? Too much time and money?”

“Too much fame, and too many fans everywhere they went. They needed the entourage to beat off the fans. They couldn’t go to public places to enjoy themselves. They had to become isolated and make their own worlds. And everybody around them got hooked on the idea.”

“Sometimes being ordinary is a boon, isn’t it?”

“Being ordinary is always a good place to hide,” Electra said, nodding. “Now. Can I go along to see all the Elvi? Please, Mommy, puh-lease?”

Who could turn down a whining sixty-seven-yearold teenager? Not Temple.

“Sure,” she said. “Friends and relatives of the performers are always hanging around the dressing rooms and house during rehearsal. Welcome aboard, and consider yourself a preview audience.”

Chapter 27

Where Do I Go from Here

(Recorded in a 1972 session where producer Felton Jarvis fought Elvis’s depression and torpor)

The King was feeling restless.

He knew he should be out there, performing.

The times they were a-changing.

Other performers were catching up to him. In the early days, he had the whole stage to himself. No rivals.

But then he had to leave home, leave his family, go off to a far place, and prove himself all over again in a new role.

There, he was supposed to blend in. You’re in the army now. Be a regular guy. It would be dangerous to stand out. Just be the same, simple, polite country boy everyone from Ed Sullivan to the general press had taken a shine to when they weren’t blasting him for being a scandalous influence on the youth of America. An aw-shucks, apple-polishing country bumpkin.

He wasn’t as simple as they thought, never had been. First in his family to finish high school. That meant a lot to hismama. She hadn’t liked him striking out on his own after high school much, or some of the people he’d gotten mixed up with. Traveling people. Drinking people. Girl-chasing people. But that came with the lifestyle, and, heck, he’d enjoyed those first deep breaths of freedom. He wasn’t the high-school loner anymore. He was the man with the power. Every guy wanted to be his friend. Every girl wanted to be his girl. Man, those were the days. Nobody worried about AIDS or anything serious. Everybody just had fun, staying up all night.

After all, his new career called for late hours, so why not party the whole night through? And, heck, he’d always had nightmares and would try to walk away from them … right down the road from the little house in Tupelo. Mama had kept him sleepin’ by her until he was twelve, though he’d figured out not to mention that much, or how she walked him to high school every day. No wonder the hoods tried to beat him up, especially when he started wearing his hair long before anyone had even dreamed of the Beatles.

But once he broke free, he knew just where to go for inspiration. Music first, then Lansky’s second, where the colored rhythm-and-blues singers bought their fancy duds. Before he knew it, he was on the road, and that’s when he discovered girls as a lot more than a prom date. He never stopped discovering girls. That’s what he liked, the discovering.

His mama, she about had a fit. She’d always doted on him when she wasn’t raking him over the coals for some misdeed or other. Now here he was off with strange men, meeting strange women who really, really wanted to meet him, and more. Then when that army thing came up, he was gone far, far away, like he’d been kidnapped or something, from her point of view. Taken away. Over Jordan, only this river was an ocean.

He knew deep in his heart that his mama just feared for him out in that big, funky, weird world. She grieved for him so. And it killed her. He knew that. In some ways she was right. It was way more dangerous out there than he had thought. But it was dangerous in here, too, Mama, he told her for the hundredth time. He talked to her sometimes, yeah, but it was like talkin’ to a dead twin. Kinda natural, after all, to talk to someone who was that close for that long. You’d think people could understand his losses. Uncles and aunts and cousins dyin’ left and right. He always said please and thank you, like she taught him, and sir and ma’am. These were words of respect, and you got to respect other people no matter who you are. Or were.

Ma’am is just Mama moved around.

The King sighed. Mama had moved around plenty in her lifetime. From Mississippi to Memphis, Tennessee. From one mean little house to another. There was no phone or running water in the house where he was born and Jesse Garon had died, or maybe had been born dead. He wasn’t sure which. He just knew that he sometimes could hear Jesse’s voice, so far away it sometimes seemed inside himself. He had a lot more inside himself than anyone gave him credit for, even when they were heaping praise or blame on him.

There were many times when he got tired of it all, when the music seemed the farthest thing from the center of his life.

First they couldn’t say enough good things about him. Then they couldn’t say enough bad. He just never really got taken seriously. They even made fun of his fans. And it was worst after his … collapse, when he had to leave his world and disappear.

Then all the books came out saying how strange he had been, from what he ate to how he slept with girls to how he played, even his spiritual aspirations. He was the butt of the whole world. And they never saw, never could or would see that everything he did, everything he became, came about because of the life he lived, because his fans loved him so much they could have almost torn him apart. And, in the end, maybe they had.

But they were keepin’ the legend alive now, for good or ill. Whether he wanted to get up, get dressed up, and go out and do it again, or not. Whether he could carry around this ole body anymore, or not.

They kept him movin’, that’s the truth.

The King got up from the bed, went to the wall of closetsand began sliding mirrors away from his own image, until he confronted racks of pale ghosts: an endless row of empty, glittering jumpsuits.

Which one tonight? Which one was fit for a King? Which one was fit for a King to go out and die in?

Chapter 28

Don’t Be Cruel (to a Heart That’s True)

(Elvis fell in love with this 1955 Otis Blackwell song; it was the first of three of his recordings that were number one on all three charts: country, pop, and rhythm and blues)

Matt was beginning to hate his new job.

Every Midnight Hour was now a suspense show: Would “Elvis” call or not? And when? Matt couldn’t help bracing himself for each new caller, breathing relief when it was just some ordinary person on the line, yet feeling a frisson of disappointment deep within. Was he becoming hooked on celebrity too? Or was something else going on here? He understood that he had a cohost now. A ghost cohost. Everyone in the studio mimicked his own cool excitement. Pros under pressure, loving and hating it. All performance was a two-edged sword that way, and Elvis’s weapon of choice had been particularly sharp because of his extreme fame and fans.

Matt now kept a cheat sheet in front of him. A list ofquestions for Elvis, with names attached. His fingertips spun it on the tabletop. This move turned the counseling game into a quiz show. How could he claim any pretenses to serious counseling when his client had to play games to prove he was who he implied he was? Of course, Elvis had always loved games, arrested adolescent that he was. Still, Matt’s ministerial past demanded that he do more than play media games. Was this bizarre charade damaging or helping the man who called on him for help? Maybe, Matt hoped and prayed, exposing Elvis’s dysfunctionalism via a voice in the night would help everybody: the caller, Matt himself, the audience. Everybody, of course, except the dead man talking.

Poor Elvis! The weight of his family history and his fame had become as massive and ungainly as his dying body. Elvis had stood on a slippery mountain of uppers and downers, thousands of pills, and ultimately hypodermic injections, a year. His favorite reading was books on spirituality and medical textbooks. He knew the Physician’s Desk Reference better than most doctors; armed with erroneous authority, he hooked his entourage on the same pharmaceutical seesaw of manic depression that he rode.

Another call was waiting.

Matt punched the button to release a voice. It took a heart-stopping moment to realize it wasn’t the one he expected every time he answered.

By then, the caller was well launched, eerily echoing his conscience.

“—you’ve got a nerve. Playing with the reputation of a dead man. I hope all the Elvis fans out there get together and protest. Can’t you do something on your own, without riding on a dead man’s coattails? Elvis means something to a lot of people, and this cheap radio trick doesn’t fool us, no, sir. You oughta be shot.”

“Wait a minute. We just take the calls that come in, like yours.”

“Yeah, and some of ‘em are put-up jobs. Come on! This actor you’ve hired is so cheesy, my twelve-year-old kid could do a better Elvis imitation. And don’t think we all don’t know that a bunch of these imitator guys are in town for the Kingdome opening. Hell, we Elvis fans just might boycott that big opening—how’d you like that, Kingdome people?—if you don’t cut off this corny gimmick with that phony Elvis. Leave the man to rest in peace. Show a little respect. Get a life!”

Matt gave Leticia a stunned look through the glass. She was as shocked as he. But this was a show, and it must go on.

“Obviously,” Matt commented into the foam-headed mike that had begun to feel like a friend, and maybe an only friend, “this caller is more in the mood for giving advice than asking for it.”

Another call. “I’ve been listening all week, and that last guy is right. That Elvis thing is taking the air time away from normal people. We got problems with bills and kids and all sorts of things superstars wouldn’t know anything about. I never liked Elvis when he was alive, and I don’t want to hear about him, or from him, now.”

“Believe it or not,” Matt answered wryly, “Elvis grew up in a house—several houses, because the family was so poor they kept losing places—that was full of problems like bills and yelling parents, just like everybody else.”

“Yeah, but he ended up with money to burn. That’s sure not like everybody else.”

“He ended up with dozens of people—family and friends who worked for him—to support, including the federal government, which is all of us, because he never took business deductions. For most of his career, he was in the ninety percent tax bracket. And he paid it, without complaint.”

That floored this caller. Matt blessed Electra’s supply of Elvis tomes.

“I love Elvis,” came a faded, female voice next. “I’ll take every chance I can get to see or hear him again, even if he’s not real. You keep talking to that man, Mr.

Midnight. He seems like he could use a friend. Elvis always had more friends than he knew.”

“Oh, I think he knew. That’s why he was able to perform when he was really ill. He kept going despite a lot of physical problems, and enough psychotropic drugs to stop an elephant.”

“Psycho-what?”

“Heavy mood-altering medications.”

“They all came from doctor’s prescriptions, didn’t they?”

“Yes, but Elvis manipulated the prescriptions. He had feel-good doctors in L.A. who would write him what he wanted.”

“Elvis wasn’t the first one. Look at Judy Garland. I took diet pills when I was in high school, back in the … well, back when Elvis was doing it. Our family doctor gave ‘em to me, these pink-and-white capsules. Made my mind race, made me think so much, think about all the things I was going to do. And I never wanted to eat. ‘Course, I couldn’t sleep a wink for the first month I was on them. And, then, after I lost ten pounds, I could sleep better, but they didn’t work to stop my appetite anymore.”

“What did you do then?”

“Nothing. Stopped taking them.”

“That’ s the difference. Elvis and his entourage never let the party stop; they just increased the dosage.” “But the pills were legal.”

“They aren’t anymore.”

“Why did Elvis do it? Why didn’t he just stop when they wore off, like I did?”

“He came from a family with a tendency to chemical addiction. He led an upside-down lifestyle as a performer that was hard to maintain without artificial energy. He thought they were harmless if a doctor prescribed them.”

“So did we. Then. We all thought Doctor Knows Rest “

“Doctors didn’t understand the many faces of addiction. Oh, they knew morphine and heroin were bad, but other stuff … And Elvis was coming into the sixties and seventies, when a lot of people started experimenting with all kinds of drugs. He was a man of his time.”

“You know, that’s what really bothers me. It was the drugs. I don’t understand why nobody stopped it.”

Matt shook his head, even though his caller couldn’t see gestures. “You can’t stop a person who’s addicted to drugs. It’s truly the hardest thing in life to overcome. It’s the last thing in life that person has, and so often the only exit from addiction is death. Elvis may have been a superstar, but when it came to drugs, he had no edge over anybody else. And that’s sad, no matter who it happens to.”

“I’m just so glad I was smart enough to quit taking diet pills all those years ago.” Her voice paused. A deep, trembling sigh. “I’m still fat, though.”

“You’re still here,” he said gently.

The commercial break gave Matt time to contemplate his unexpected—unwanted—new role as an Elvis apologist. From a lifestyle point of view, the man had been everything he wasn’t.

Leticia’s orange-painted lips were mouthing “poor baby” at him through the glass. Matt took a swig of lukewarm spring water. He felt as if he’d been wrung out and then hung out to dry. And this hadn’t even been the main event: the night’s Elvis appearance.

At least the phone lines were jumping, and in talk radio, that was the name of the game.

Chapter 29

Return to Sender

(Otis Blackwell’s song was the only quality number on the soundtrack of Girls, Girls, Girls, a 1962 film)

Temple hated to admit it, but Electra’s notion that the spirit haunting the Kingdome backstage area was more likely a vengeful Memphis Mafia member than the King himself made sense.

Of course, she didn’t for a moment believe in spirit manifestations. In the two incidents, flesh and blood had been attacked in actuality, or in simulation. As if the whole thing were a show. A production number.

It was possible that some Elvis advocate was so caught up in the past that he, or she, needed to protest the presence of an ersatz Priscilla.

Temple found the razor attack the most disturbing. Despite Quincey’s tough teen bravado, the act had been cruel and personal. If whoever did it had an opportunity to approach the real Priscilla … but that was the point. He didn’t, or he wouldn’t have bothered Quincey. And anybody that could do that to a sixteen-year-old girl—! Temple had paused under the soaring dome, which played endless footage of Elvis in concert. Evidently, running pre-existing film was estate-approved. Most of it was in blackand-white, so the effect was eerily like storm clouds clashing above, a pre-Technicolor twilight of the god.

Electra had temporarily abandoned Temple to make a round of the domed chamber’s vast perimeter, admiring each designer Elvis in its niche.

Around Temple, gawking tourists thronged, often bumping into her, the lone stationary object, as they gazed up at Elvis in 3-D surround.

Somebody bumped her and didn’t back off.

A half-second later she shook off her thoughts enough to become annoyed. “Hey!”

“Hey, hey, hey! You ticklish, T. B.?”

“Get your hands off my ribs, or you will be corned beef hash.”

Crawford Buchanan backed away just enough so that she could focus on his abhorable face. It was grinning.

“What is that dreadful smell?” Temple demanded.

“My cigar.” Buchanan swaggered the small brown cylinder to the side of his mouth. “A Tampa Jewel, like Elvis used to smoke,” he said through his cigar-clenching teeth, just like a melodrama villain. “Got it in the gift shop.”

“He smoked cigars, too? Not my type.”

“All of us big shots smoke cigars. It’s a guy thing.” “That’s what I mean.”

“So what are you doing here alone?”

“I’m not alone. Just because I look alone doesn’t mean I am.”

“Oh, come on, T. B. You don’t have to pretend with me. You haven’t always got some guy on a string, like you want me to think. Afraid to admit you could use an escort? I don’t see any rings.”

“You would have, but I lost it.““That ‘lost ring’ excuse is as old as Elvis.”

“It happens to be true in my case.” Temple felt a justifiable stab of self-pity. Not every woman lost her engagement ring to a traveling magician’s sleight-of-hand. She’d barely had it for two weeks, and, presto! Gone forever.

“Now, don’t pout. Crawford’s here to turn every saltwater tear to pure cane sugar.”

“Yuck!” Temple said.

He leaned close. The more she expressed her distaste, the more he felt compelled to force himself on her. She wondered for a wild moment what would happen if she actually encouraged him … but she couldn’t count on an equal and opposite effect.

“You’d cheer up if you were sitting on what I’m sitting on,” he whispered in sing-song, taunting tone.

Temple didn’t want to know what he was sitting on. “I doubt it.” She scanned the crowd, looking for the loud beacon of Electra’s muumuu—chartreuse, black, and orange today.

“I am on to something so big it’ll rock this town right off its blue suede shoes.”

“That’s hyperbole even for you.”

“It’s the biggest story of the century.”

“Isn’t that premature? The century isn’t quite over yet. I believe 2001 is the actual date.”

“And it won’t be over until I break this story. Believe me, this is the Big One. I can write my own ticket when this gets out.” He leaned closer, radiating cigar stench. “And you can ride it with me.”

“Why should I want to?”

“Because nobody can resist a success.”

“I can, very successfully.”

He blew a thin stream of blue smoke over her right shoulder. “Tut-tut, T. B. You talk a good game, but you’d fold like everyone else if you knew what I’m sitting on.”

“Well, I guess nobody will until you get up.”

“Oh, I will, when I’m ready. And then everyone will notice me. The story of the century. Want a clue?” “No.”

Leaning to whisper in her ear. “It’s the biggest, hairiest hot flash since Abel axed Cain.”

“Cain killed Abel.”

“Details.”

“So what have you got? King Kong?”

“Even better.” Buchanan’s smile wrapped itself around the soggy cigar end. “But you’ll see. You’ll see.”

At last he moved on, a small poisonous cloud of Tampa-jewel cigar smoke hanging over his head like a visible miasma of bad news.

Hot story, ice-cold heart, Temple thought. As if all someone had to do to earn her interest was have a career conquest. King Kong! Well, the Elvis dome was big enough to hold a mythical beast of that size, but even Elvis couldn’t live up to that scale.

Electra returned from her circuit, flushed and impressed.

“Those jumpsuits are fabulous. I can see why they have to keep them so high up for security purposes—they must be worth millions, altogether—but I’d love to see them closer up.”

“Have you ever been to Graceland?”

Electra lowered her pale eyelashes demurely. “I’m afraid so. It was years ago, of course. I happened to be in the neighborhood.” She answered Temple’s unspoken question. “In Atlanta. Distances aren’t that far in the East.”

Temple nodded at the non sequitur. Obviously, Electra had gone considerably out of her way to visit Graceland. “I’ve seen pictures. Graceland is not that impressive.”

“It is when you think it’s what a dirt-poor teenage boy was able to buy for his mother in three short years of performing music that nobody had ever heard quite that way before. And that two-story, pillared portico reeks of Southern dignity. Of course the inside is decorated ingot-rich-quick kitsch, but Elvis was a musical genius, not an interior designer.”

“What I find impressive,” Temple admitted, “is the performance records he set in this town. Did you know that he outpulled them all in terms of audience numbers—Sinatra, Streisand, Dean Martin—and that was after he made his comeback in the late sixties.”

Electra nodded, as somber as Temple had ever seen her. “That. time I saw him perform live back in the late fifties. He was pure heat lightning, energy and music and raw sex branded white-hot onto that stage and searing out into the audience.”

“A hunk-a-hunk-of-burning-love. Stupid lyrics.”

“Not when Elvis sang them. He got more feeling out of a song than you believed it was possible to put in. And he was always so charming and gorgeous.”

“Electra! You were a groupie.”

“I wasn’t always ‘of indeterminate age,’ you know. And I’ve had a few husbands.”

“A few!”

Electra’s shrug made the flowers on the muumuu shoulders do the hula. “A few,” she repeated, and said no more.

Temple let her gaze drift to the surrounding Elvis statues. “It’s all so garish, so gross.”

“That was the seventies, kiddo. It’s just that Elvis is so famous his image is frozen in time. If you’d seen his contemporaries then you’d realize he wasn’t that over the top. Don’t you remember the glitter rock ‘n’ roll crowd, Elton John with his huge glitzy sunglasses, David Bowie, KISS … ?”

“I was just a kid; they were antiques.”

“Besides, he was inspired by Liberace. When they met and he discovered Liberace was also a twin, they really hit it off.”

“Now Liberace I appreciate. A master of high camp. Liberace turned glitz into a gold mine. He could make those glitter rock stars look like they were wearing tinfoil.”

Electra nodded. “You have something there. So explain to me again how the hotel is able to exploit Elvisdom without violating the estate trademarks.”

“It is fascinating,” Temple said, much more turned on by marketing magic than dead legends. “Everything here is ‘Almost Elvis.’ Nobody can copyright anything in its generic form, so that’s what the Kingdome homed in on. Like selling Elvis’s favorite brands of things in the gift shop. And capitalizing on his love of fast vehicles of any description in all their indoor/outdoor rides, calling the whole thing Raceland.”

As she talked, she guided Electra past the blinking, buzzing, neon-lit entrance to Raceland. A bumper-car attraction in which all the vehicles, modeled after Elvis’s favorite cars from pink Cadillacs to black Stutz Bearcats to Mercedes, clashed at the behest of their drivers aged eight to eighty.

“There’s a pink Cadillac tunnel of love farther in.” Temple gestured past the busy casino areas that acted as a river of commerce between the theme-park attractions, the machines burping out electronic versions of the apparently hundreds of songs Elvis had recorded during his twenty-four-year career.

“And of course they can play his music, as long as they pay for the privilege.”

Electra shook her head in wonder. She suddenly stopped and pointed. “Look! There’s some Memphis landmarks. Ohmigosh, ‘The King’s Clothing Emporium.’ Elvis shopped at Lansky’s Clothing Emporium in Memphis from the time he was seventeen years old. He wasn’t afraid to sing black or dress black. Do you realize how gutsy that was for a poor white kid to do in the early fifties?”

“I knew he was the bridge bringing black music into the mainstream. Those books you lent Matt pretty universally agree on that, if on almost nothing else.” Temple stared at the simple storefront now glitzed up with neon signs in the windows and above the door. “Yup, they have Elvis clothes for sale there, blue suede shoes and pink-and-black pegged pants, ascots, karate gis, Hawaiian shirts, inexpensive but noisy jumpsuits in sizes infant to 4X.”

“Oh!” Electra stopped to stare as tall, square white pillars loomed out of the neon mist pulsing above eye-level all around the Kingdome. “Gladys’s Home Cooking. This place is like Wonderland, slightly kinked. Graceland is a restaurant here.”

“Clever marketing,” Temple agreed. “You can have anything you want at Gladys’s Restaurant: fried-bananaand-peanut-butter sandwiches, even burnt-black bacon, some of it really only low-fat turkey. Would that Elvis had access to such healthful food! That’s how they got around duplicating Graceland. They used parts of it and called it Gladys’s.”

“The gladioli are a nice touch. Elvis loved puns.” Electra paused to admire dramatic stands of the vibrantly colored tall flowers massed around the restaurant’s sloping “front yard.” “But they always make me think of funerals.”

“Not inappropriate here. You should see the Medication Garden.”

“Medi-ca-tion Garden?”

“All herbs, you see. Not like the Meditation Garden at Graceland, where the family is buried now. This garden isn’t officially on display yet. It’ll open the night of the Elvis competition, when the winner comes over here to cut the ribbon.”

“Oh, Elvis loved the Meditation Garden. Can’t I peek now?”

“Security would get its nightsticks in a tangle over that.”

“Were they able to suggest the family graves at all?” “I don’t know. I didn’t look into this area, just backstage.”

“Please,” Electra begged, voice quivering. “The garden is the best part of the real Graceland. I’m dying to see how they evoked that without violating any estate prerogative.”

“Well …” Temple looked around. The discreet path that led to the Medication Garden would probably be lined with spotlights by the formal opening night, but now it was definitely a path less trodden. In fact, it looked like a dead end.

She herself was dying to know how the hotel would produce what people expected to see without treading on a copyright or a trademark. How do you construct a Disneyland without Mickey Mouse? So she led Electra past the DO NOT ENTER sign and through a winding, foliage-edged route that reminded her of the Enchanted Forest in Oz.

“The Meditation Garden is so impressive at Graceland,” Electra was still recalling. “Do they have the lovely stained-glass panels and fountains here?”

“I did hear that there’s a pool, but no graves. I guess graves aren’t considered commercial in Las Vegas. I heard they did something spectacular so you can visit and meditate on the many stages of Elvis.”

The path flared like a bellbottom pantleg into a semicircular stage scene. A kidney-shaped pool whose waters were that ultrasweet pastel aqua-sky color Matt Devine had called Virgin Mary Blue lay in the background like a parenthesis curving around a colonnade of white pillars. Between the pillars, jewel-toned stained-glass Elvi shone like Saturday-night saints. Amid the flower beds offering an incense of pungent herbal aromas lay a smaller semicircle of what, at first glance, resembled a quintet of Sleeping Beauties in their glass coffins.

Temple gazed down on the display, at first not aware that instead of actual figures, jewel-emblazoned jumpsuits lay in state. Despite the priceless opportunity to see the costumer’s art so close at hand, Temple had thesudden, sinking vision of the man who had once worn such creations. She saw him melting like the wicked witch in Oz, until only these empty suits, these abandoned carapaces were left. He had probably died long before he had ceased to wear and perform in them.

“These jumpsuits are even more exquisite than the ones in the dome.” Electra bent to study the jewel-encrusted emblems. “Are these real gemstones—?”

“Careful! Whatever they are, there are probably pressure alarms all over the place, like in museums. Stay on the path.”

Temple felt a chill beyond the mere worry of tripping some exotic security system. She had recognized the middle suit, a simpler, street-model suit: It was covered in solid white rhinestones, like one of Liberace’s grand pianos dressed in mirror tiles, but the shirt beneath it was pale blue, and a white rhinestone tie dissected the vacant chest like the bottom Y of a coroner’s autopsy cut. Strip the suit of its skin of glitter, and Temple recognized the simple ensemble Elvis had been laid out and buried in almost twenty years to the day after he had hysterically seen his mother to her own rest: the white suit Vernon had given him, blue shirt, white tie. Temple suddenly thought of the dead twin buried in an unmarked Tupelo grave forty-one and a half years before Elvis was laid out in Graceland; what had he worn to be buried in, Jesse Garon? Electra grabbed her arm and squeezed hard. “Look! What can they be trying to do there? Why is that jumpsuit floating in the pool?”

Because one was, front-side down, floating like a giant dew-begemmed lilypad riding the azure of Hawaiian coves, sparkling and spinning in the gentle current of recirculating chlorinated water.

Only this jumpsuit was inhabited. A man’s dark hair floated free above the high Napoleonic collar.

And a man’s bloated white fingers, choked with chunky gold rings, spread like dead starfish at the ends of the glittering jumpsuit sleeves.

And, a man’s bare heels protruded from the flared, floating bellbottom pantlegs.

Electra shrieked, but not at the sight of the dead man.

Temple stopped herself from following suit, also glimpsing a long rope in the water. No, not a rope, just the pool creepy-crawler, an automated vacuum on a length of hose that kept the water clean.

Then the hose twisted up as if animated and entwined with the real beast that had been loosened on this garden of Elvisian Eden. Temple finally joined Electra’s vocalizations.

A huge, mottled snake coiled around the floating corpse and dragged it down into the crystal-clear water, a snake as big around as a fireplug, as long as a living room.

A snake right out of Graceland’s Jungle Room, a South American constrictor as big as the Ritz, the Circle Ritz.

Chapter 30

Crawfish

(A highlight duet from King Creole, 1958)

There I am, the intrepid investigator, pinned belly-down in the dirt by an allergy attack.

An overwhelming scent of lemon and mint (not my odors—or colors—of choice) has hit me like a wall of Kryptonite blocking Superman’s heroic powers.

This place looked like an ordinary, innocent garden of Eden. How was I to know it was packed with pharmaceutical flower beds? All I need to fully incapacitate myself would be a wave of coconut-scented tanning lotion. Luckily, no human hide is sunning near the swimming pool, and the chlorinated fumes it dispenses act on me like smelling salts did on ladies of yore. Nothing like strong chemical odors to disperse a fit of the vapors one can ill afford.

Meanwhile, my two lady friends—imagine seeing them here!—continue to caterwaul.

In Miss Temple’s case, I am sure the appearance of the gigantic reptile is far more responsible for her unusual screaming fit than the mere presence of a dead body floating in the pool. Miss Temple is on familiar terms with dead bodies. Even the fact that this one is so garishly attired should not be sufficient to launch the current hysterics.

On the other hand, that is one big mama of a water snake. No doubt it has done body-double work for Nessie of Scotland fame. Me, I am not afraid of snakes unless they carry concealed poisons. Otherwise, they make charming playthings. I do love how they slide across the floor like a bit of yarn dangled to challenge my mitt-eye coordination by humans hoping to amuse.

Still, despite my high opinion of Miss Temple’s intrepitude, I have never told her of the family of garter snakes that found their way under the French doors while she was gone. Of how I discovered them rooting in her assorted sundries drawer and was forced to herd them off. It took the better part of the afternoon for me to escort them to the patio and then down the palm tree trunk. Since these were mere . what does one call baby snakes? Snakelets? … youngsters, I delicately nipped each one up by the neck and transferred it to the tree trunk, from where it wiggled down into the waiting, er, presence of Mama.

But yonder ophidian is not on quite the same scale, excuse the pun, as a string of garter snakes. I have not seen such a large specimen since the movie Anaconda! came and went faster than a whipsnake.

Yet despite the presence of a snake capable of strangling King Kong and the debilitating weeds contaminating my immediate area, I realize that I have an emergency job of herding to do: my two dear ladies had better shut up and skedaddle before they are caught raw-throated at the scene of a crime.

Ere I can leap from my cover, sneeze for their attention, and drive them out of this wonderland of weirdness, I spy the suspicious character I have been tailing emerging from behind a stained-glass representation of Elvis crucified against a cloak of gold.

The newcomer has not the mythic appeal of Elvis’s concert pose, despite being appropriately dressed in black from fedora to his suede shoes. All I can think of is that the Circle Ritz ladies must not be discovered alone with the corpse, whoever or whatever it is.

The figure in black is headed right toward their unsuspecting backs, so I head right for its unsuspecting feet.

This is what they call a “sacrifice play” in certain sports. I sacrifice my well-being and get a good kick in the ribs, while my opponent plays right into my hands, or feet, and goes tripping toward the edge of the pool without even a pause to doff the sunglasses.

Into the chlorinated drink the thing in black goes, with a yowl that would do a Siamese queen in heat proud.

In one agile move I have accomplished two things: I have distracted the newcomer from the presence of my lady friends, and I have managed to achieve their instant silence.

My distraction thrashes in the water, screeching in panic. This unfortunate shortly realizes that it is sharing a small, artificial body of water with a corpse and a giant snake, not exactly the human’s idea of a picnic. Apparently, it is also howling because of something it knew, and I did not realize. The creature cannot swim. Oops. That snake will owe me one.

Of course all my heroics are for naught. Once the Misses Temple and Electra realize that a live person has joined the bridge mix thrashing up the waters, they go into action.

Miss Temple kicks off her shoes. For a dreadful moment, I fear that she is going to do something utterly foolish like leaping into the feeding frenzy now boiling up bubbles in the water like something from Jaws you really do not want to see up close and personal.

But instead of diving in, she kneels at the pool edge and stretches out her hands, while Miss Electra sits down and grabs her ankles.

I am still recovering from my self-sacrificial loss of breath and cannot lend assistance, although I do not for the life of me see how I can be of any further service. No doubt the individual in the water (the one who is not dead) would agree with me. Certainly the anaconda, or the boa constrictor, or whatever variety of overgrown jungle snake it is, would second that opinion.

I hear grunts, howls, groans, and then coughs.

I also hear the onrush of feet pounding the sodded path. The imitation Memphis Mafia, otherwise known as Kingdome Security, has arrived in a panting pack.

One can only conclude that too many unauthorized personnel are cluttering up this crime scene already. I retreat back into the herbal hothouse, smothering uncontrollable sneezes. Miss Temple will just have to talk herself out of this one without me.

Chapter 31

In the Garden

(Recorded at Elvis’s first session with Felton Jarvis as producer in 1966)

“He’s dead,” Temple sputtered, shaking off the water the rescued drowning victim had shaken on her the moment all three had hauled themselves back from the pool’s edge on hands and knees. “Why did you rush in to rescue him?”

“Ohmigod!” shouted a Memphis Mafioso who had just arrived poolside. “That jumpsuit is ruined. We’re all in the soup.”

Publicity-phobic hotel security staff in Las Vegas always possess a big heart.

Other men in black fedoras and suits were arriving, bearing aluminum pool hooks like lances. They began gingerly hauling the resurfaced suit, and its contents, to the pool’s shallow end. Other men in brown work jumpsuits arrived, bearing bigger metal hooks, and began fish-ing in the deep end for the coiling ropes of agitated serpent.

“I tripped,” the soggy person in their grasp admitted. “I wouldn’t have gone for a dip with that sea monster to save my life.”

“Who are you people?” a disgustingly dry Mafia man asked, looming above them. “And what happened to the man in the suit? Did he fall in?”

“And how did the snake get loose?” another Mafioso demanded.

“The snake is supposed to be here?” Temple asked, amazed.

“Not here. Nearby.”

Electra cleared her throat. “Could you gentlemen lend me a hand to get up? Thanks.” They grunted, whether from effort or acknowledgment of her gratitude it was hard to say.

Temple scrambled up on her own power, despite skidding on the wet pool coping. Her emerald-leather J. Renee sandals were so water-spotted they resembled snakeskin.

She watched the security men lift the thoroughly soaked figure that had dashed into the pool. She was getting an awful feeling that her shoes had been ruined for naught. That choked, water-logged voice had a familiar ring and now she knew why .

“Let me go! I’m all right,” Crawford Buchanan spat, quite literally, so damp was he from head to toe.

“But he sure isn’t.” A workman with a hook gazed on the snagged jumpsuit. “No point in even trying CPR. This guy’s been floating here long enough to turn colors. Don’t look, ladies!”

Temple and Electra stared avidly toward the pool, but Crawford Buchanan averted his face, pushing his sunglasses more firmly onto his nose.

“So he’s been dead for some time?” Temple asked. “And how long could the snake float? Swim? Hang out?”

“The police coming?” the workman asked, ignoring Temple. “We can’t hold this guy against the side forever, and I guess they won’t want us bringing him out of the pool.”

“What about Trojan?” a workman across the pool asked plaintively. “I don’t want him getting contaminated by any, uh, decayed stuff.”

“That chlorine would purify a cesspool,” a Mafioso suggested.

“Oh, God,” wailed the Crawf. “I can’t believe what I might have inhaled. I’m going to puke.”

Temple minced back, leaving Crawf to the disgusted mercies of the Memphis Mafia.

Electra had retreated to a curved concrete bench from which one could contemplate the glorious luciteentombed suits, so Temple joined her.

“I guess we’re witnesses.” Electra couldn’t conceal a slight tone of pride.

“Yeah. Also suspects.”

“Oh. I hadn’t thought of that. Why did that foolish man blunder into the pool like that?”

“I don’t know, other than ‘fools rush in,’ and Crawford Buchanan is certainly one not to suffer gladly, in both the passive and active grammatical sense. What I’d like to know was why dear old ‘C. B.’ was lurking around here.”

“Also the snake.”

“That is so bizarre. Elvisdom can embrace almost any eccentricity, but I don’t see why massive South American serpents would be among them.”

“It’s the other exhibit.” A brown-jumpsuited attendant who was not busy holding something against the pool wall with a hook had overheard them, and now approached. He lit a cigarette.

“Better not do that: contaminating the crime scene,” Temple warned.

“Who are you? The coroner?”

“No, but unless you don’t want the police to think that you were lurking here smoking cigarettes until your victim showed up and you pushed him into the pool with the snake you had brought in, I wouldn’t smoke around here.”

This was obviously a guy born to trample Don’t walk on the grass signs. “I’ll take my butt with me when I leave,” he said with a sneer.

Temple didn’t point out that everybody usually did that, and other people took their heads with them too. “You’ll leave ashes, trace DNA maybe, who knows what? The police love that sort of high-tech evidence nowadays; saves them from doing a lot of legwork finding the perp. Now, what ‘other exhibit’?”

The man, busy jamming his cigarette back into a half-empty pack, jerked his head to the left. “Over there. It’s not open yet. ‘The Animal Elvis,’ ” he declaimed sarcastically. “Duplicates of the horses at Graceland: Rising Sun, the palomino horse he rode. Priscilla’s Domino. Then there’s Elvis’s chow-chow. And Priscilla’s poodle.”

“And an anaconda named Trojan?” Temple prompted. “How does that fit into the Elvis bestiary?”

“Wow, lady. Elvis was into a lot of strange things, but I didn’t hear he was into that.”

“Never mind,” Temple said. “I’m asking how the snake fits into the Animal Elvis exhibit.”

“I just handle the stock. Must have some connection. Maybe Elvis dated a belly dancer.”

“They don’t work with snakes.”

“I don’t know. All I know is that scaly mother is gonna be a truss-buster to fish out of that water. Whoever got it here didn’t work alone.”

Temple allowed the information to sink in. An interesting observation. But who would go to all this snake-toting trouble to off an Elvis impersonator? A jealous rival, or several? A crazed fan, or several? Animal rights activists? And why the snake? Such a cumbersome set dressing. Or was it the murder weapon? Or, if it was just set dressing, what was the message? A twenty-foot-long anaconda named Trojan.

Oh.

Temple finally got one message.

Why the anaconda was named Trojan.

And that gave her one connection to the King right there. As Electra had just pointed out, Elvis had loved puns.

Was Somebody Up There laughing at them? Or was Somebody Not Up There who should be?

Chapter 32

I’m Gonna Sit Right

Down and Cry

(Over You)

(One of the first songs Elvis recorded for RCA in early 1956)

Crawford Buchanan was shaking like a willow in a windstorm.

He looked worse than a drowned rat, huddling under the “Kingdome” decorative blanket that had been rushed in from the hotel gift shop.

He sat alone on his own Medication Garden bench, teeth chattering too much to talk. Thank goodness, Temple thought.

She preferred the bench she and Electra occupied outside of Crawford’s talking range, where she could catch phrases of officialese when the interior air-conditioning drafts were right.

“. .. least it wasn’t one of the damn display jumpsuits,” a Mafioso muttered.

“Bet they’ll be checking the Elvis impersonator roster,” another speculated.

The body lay by the pool edge, clothed in a garbagebag-green body bag. Temple wondered why that deep black-green color was considered appropriate for disposal of everything from orange rinds to corpses, and who decided such things.

Perhaps it wasn’t quite as chilling as dead black.

The site now teemed with uniformed Las Vegas Metropolitan police officers, latex-gloved evidence technicians and video camera operators, some plainclothes detectives scouring the scene, and the gathered hordes of early arrivals. None of them looked remotely familiar, and for that Temple was grateful.

Eventually, the inevitable happened. A man ambled over to them, laminated police ID clipped to his suit coat lapel, and flipped open a notebook. He rested a foot on the empty end of their bench and took down their names, addresses, and phone numbers.

“You two found the body?” he finally asked.

“Not so much ‘found’ as turned around and noticed,” Electra said quickly.

“You mean you had been here a few minutes before you noticed it?”

“Yes,” Temple said, having learned through her dealings with Lieutenant Molina that interrogation sessions were like a dance class: it was better to let the police lead and the witness follow.

“I understand this part of the hotel wasn’t open yet.” Temple and Electra nodded in tandem.

“You two don’t look like scofflaws.”

“Thank you,” Electra interjected.

The detective was not interested in bestowing compliments; he just wanted to know the why and wherefore. “I’ve … been involved with the Elvis pageant,” Tem-ple said. “Electra was, is, an Elvis fan and was curious about how the hotel was going to evoke the Meditation Garden. We figured we wouldn’t hurt anything if we took a look.”

He nodded and took notes, allowing Temple to take her own mental notes: nice-looking in a bland way, probably a family man with two kids and a wife and a minivan. Quietly intelligent, preferred pencils to pens, maybe an artistic streak… .

“What did you think when you first saw the body?”

“That it wasn’t a body,” Electra blurted out. “Well, we’d been looking at all these Elvis jumpsuits around here, out in the dome and in these display cases here, and then there was that murdered jumpsuit in the dressing room the other day.”

“Murdered jumpsuit?”

Electra, cow-eyed, glanced toward Temple. It occurred to her too late that she might have said too much.

Temple answered. “An Elvis jumpsuit was found with some red nail polish splashed on the back and a dagger pushed through it.”

“Was this reported?”

“I was told that hotel security was alerted and that the police would be keeping an eye on things, but that was just hearsay.”

“Hearsay.” The yellow pencil was held poised over the pad like a strike-threatening snake. “You a lawyer, ma’ am?”

“No way. I’m just saying what I heard. You’d have to check with the hotel and the police department to find out exactly what was reported and what was done about it.”

“What is your occupation?” he persisted.

“I’m a public relations specialist. Freelance.”

He glanced to the knots of people strung around the pool. “In your professional opinion, is this good, or bad, publicity for the hotel?”

“Sudden death is always bad publicity for a hotel.” “Sudden death of a guy in an Elvis suit?”

Temple sighed. “That’s iffy. Some people can’t get enough of Elvis, alive or dead, living or dying.” “Could it have been a publicity stunt gone bad?”

“I don’t see how. If the area was open to the public, maybe. You know: see Elvis wrestle an anaconda in the Graceland pool … but that doesn’t make any sense! Aside from his Jungle Room, Elvis didn’t have anything to do with snakes. Unless it was some of the people who surrounded him.”

“Oh?”

“I didn’t have any particular snakes in mind; just the general show-business variety.”

“What about that Buchanan guy?”

“You noticed the affinity.”

“You know him?”

“Only as much as I have to. He’s a local writer, I suppose you’d have to call him. For the Las Vegas Scoop.”

The detective nodded with that patented noncommittal expression they must go to police academy to master. “And why do you suppose he was here?”

“I have no idea. He just came barreling out of the bushes and rushed straight into the pool. He claimed he tripped over something.”

The detective flipped his notebook back a couple of pages. ” ‘Some kind of animal, low and furred, like a weasel.’ The brownsuits say that there’s no weasel in the Animal Elvis exhibit.”

“The only animal we’ve seen here,” Electra put in, “is that awful snake. Did they finally take it away?”

“Yes, ma’am. Quite a struggle I hear. Too bad a snake doesn’t leave tread marks.”

Electra shuddered at the implication.

The detective slapped his notebook shut and took his foot off the bench. “Thanks for the cooperation.”

“Like we were gonna take the Fifth,” Electra muttered as he left. “Can we go now?”

Temple looked around. “I guess so.” She frowned at Buchanan, still shivering on his bench. “Apparently they’re hanging the Crawf out to dry. You know, keeping him waiting until he cracks and comes up with a good excuse for being here. I’d almost feel sorry for him if I didn’t know his biggest regret is not being able to get back to the Scoop to break the story.”

“Temple, control yourself! Everything you’ve told me about him makes him the most venal, obnoxious man in Las Vegas, and that’s a hard title to earn here.”

“Yeah. Think about the competition he’s up against. Colonel Tom Parker. I’m going to breeze by the dressing rooms and see if there’s any reaction there.”

“Think they’ve heard?”

“This is a pretty bizarre event to hide. Besides, I just directed the investigation toward the Elvis pageant. I bet those impersonators will hunger for my hide; they don’t want to break their concentration for anything.”

“They should be glad you’re here to protect their hides. If someone wants to kill ersatz Elvi, there’s a whole menu to choose from.”

“I suppose you’ll sacrifice your time and your best interests to accompany me down into the heart of Elvisdom?”

“You do need a witness to prove the innocence of your intentions. Just how many Elvi did you say are on tap downstairs?”

“It’s a regular microbrewery of megalomania.”

“Oh, goodie!” Electra rubbed her hands together and put her muumuu in motion.

Chapter 33

Bad Moon Rising

(Elvis sang this Credence Clearwater Revival hit in some of his 1970s concerts)

Matt shrugged on his faux sheepskin jacket, but he didn’t pull on his leather gloves.

He knew by now that a straggle of fans would be waiting outside the radio station for him to autograph a motley assortment of ephemera: his photographs, their autograph books, even the occasional T-shirt.

Leticia Brown encouraged this departing ritual. He dreaded it.

For one thing, he couldn’t help feeling defeated at the end of every show. The Midnight Hour had turned into the Elvis Hour. The phone lines bristled with calls from pro-and anti-Elvis listeners. The list of stump-Elvis questions had grown to three pages.

As if sensing this mob excitement building, the mysterious caller had remained mysteriously silent last night. Matt was being upstaged by a no-show.

He was annoyed with himself for not liking it, for wishing the sonofagun would end the suspense and just call, even it was to admit the whole thing was a hoax. Which was what it had to be, of course. Better to be revealed as the butt of a sick joke than to be stood up by a phantom.

They were always female, his fans, and they made him nervous. They looked at him with such fevered, hungry eyes, especially the Elvis groupies, as if he were an artery to the heart-blood of the King. He had a feeling they would slit his throat if they thought that would revivify Elvis.

Why else were they standing out here in the chilly dark collecting worthless autographs from the pen of a pseudonym? Still, they flocked to him when he exited the building with the touching excitement of residents of a home for the mentally challenged welcoming a rare visitor to their world.

And maybe he was more than slumming in the alternate universes of talk radio and media idolization. Maybe if they didn’t have this outlet, this hope, their lives would implode, or explode.

Matt smiled and signed, won over despite himself by their enthusiasm. Of the six fans tonight three werestudents and three were middle-aged. The twenty-five-toforty-five-yearold age group seemed to have better things to do than fandom.

He glanced beyond their crowding shoulders to the distant street light.

No ambiguous silhouette stood in wait.

Matt wondered if he had become caught up in Elvis fever, had imagined that witness to his first encounter with fans. Was this how Elvis had started? With a paltry few? No, they had come in droves from the first. Evidently Matt didn’t have that animal magnetism.

The very notion made him laugh, and the fans laughedwith him, delighted that he seemed happy to give them attention.

Attention. That was the key. Every human, and every animal, craved it. At times. Now he’d had his fill.

The street light had a running mate tonight: a full moon that hung above it like a hovering UFO. Blue Moon of Kentucky. Something Elvis had sung, or some amalgam of song and memory that Matt had made up? He wished them good night and mounted the English-made motorcycle called a Hesketh Vampire, so well named for nocturnal jaunts.

They eyed it with satisfaction. Elvis had loved motorcycles.

I hate this thing, Matt wanted to shout at them. It was borrowed, once-removed, from a man he at best disliked and at worst envied and feared. It was as obvious and noisy as it was spectacular and fast. Spectacular and fast had never been Matt’s speed.

He hated the ostentatious way you had to rev the engine before kicking off onto that aerial act of balancing a thousand-pound machine like it was an English bicycle. And the thing tilted like a pinball machine on curves and turns, defying gravity.

Elvis had loved the rush of speed, at first in any wheeled vehicle, than in any kind of mood-altering pills by the fistful.

Matt only felt safe being sober, maybe sometimes in the worst, humorless sense of the word. He really had to look into buying a car, when he had a minute, now that he had the money. At least motorcycle helmets guaranteed a measure of anonymity, as well as safety, he thought, fastening his. He felt instantly cocooned, muffled, disguised, and glanced back at the dark knot of people gathered against the station building’s lit panel of glass door.

Then the Vampire swooped him away on a rush of air, sound, and motion, a magic carpet that roared. The motorcycle thumbed its chrome tailpipes at the deserted streets as he made his way toward the lights and the main thoroughfares. Its Vampire whine lifted into the wind and then skittered away like an echo.

The full moon rode over his shoulder, almost as if it was an unborn twin to the silver ‘cycle … a high, shy shadow of the machine clinging to the ground. Matt could hear a distant howl borne by the wind. They kept pace, the moon and the motorcycle.

And then the second whine accelerated.

It was gaining on him.

The moon hung in its same position, eternally fixed to match the Vampire’s speed.

Matt checked the side mirrors.

A single moon of blinding light flared in his right mirror.

Either a car with one defective headlight was behind him, or another motorcycle was taking this same route.

He couldn’t make out much beyond the reflected Cyclops eye of light tailing him. Whatever sped behind was black and cloaked by the night itself.

He swerved suddenly left at an empty intersection with no stop signs.

The light swerved with him, showing up in his left mirror.

No car could maneuver that quickly.

Matt accelerated, the lighted dashboard dials seeming to intensify with the increased speed, as if the Vampire, given its head, was grinning like a Jolly Roger and showing neon teeth.

He knew the route; otherwise he wouldn’t have dared hit … fifty, fifty-five. The area was industrial, not residential, at least.

He didn’t know why, but he felt impelled to shake the shapeless form behind him.

It was like being a kid again, this visceral panic, this unshakable sense that something ugly was gaining on him.

Basements sometimes did that to you. Dark placessymbolically and implicitly connected to the blackest regions of imagination and primal fear.

Usually open streets had no potential for terror, not to men who thought they knew how to defend themselves, or at least to avoid obvious trouble.

But this burr of light that kept to the same, tail-gating distance, waltzing with the Hesketh Vampire in a dance nobody had requested or assented to … he had to lose it.

Matt recalled an abandoned service station coming up at the next intersection.

He would zip into it, through the empty gas lanes, around back and out the other side, onto a small road leading to an office park with a maze of buildings. He’d lose the thing that followed him there.

Islands of gas pumps looked like totems in the sick light from too few street lamps. He zoomed between them. A hard right almost had him reaching a foot to the ground to keep the cycle from overbalancing. But the Hesketh held, or he did, and the perilous, semihorizontal turn was history.

He fought the inclination to slow down as the maze of one-story buildings hunkered ahead like a Monopoly-board Stonehenge, lacking all rough edges and romance, but still a complex trap of confusing turns and dead ends.

He’d never navigated this place, but at least he knew it was there, and what it was. Whoever hid behind that single eye of light behind him couldn’t know even that.

A few security lamps spread a thin layer of light between the buildings. Matt turned left, and then right and right and left, angling for the complex’s opposite corner.

He lost the following light on the first turn, but the noise from both machines boomeranged from the glassand-stucco canyon they shot through.

He recognized that losing someone else meant risking losing himself, but by now his hands were sweating inside the leather gloves, and all pretense was lost. Someone was following him who didn’t mean to let him escape. He must escape.

Simple.

The tight maneuvers were making him breathless. This was insanely dangerous, to him and his menacing shadow. It had come down to who would survive the insanity first, and last.

The Vampire spurted out onto the empty freeway access road, jolting over potholes left by the searing summer heat. Matt’s teeth and bones were starting to ache from the grinding pace, from tension.

He decided to head for Highway 95 and the Strip. Maybe a crowd would be the best place to lose himself. His mirrors reflected empty, black night.

He couldn’t tell anymore if the noise thrumming in his head was the Vampire’s or another motorcycle’s or his own adrenaline-driven body’s magnified function.

The lights of Highway 95 flowed as slow as lava ahead. Above, a hunk of canary-yellow rock as big as the Circle Ritz mooned Las Vegas. His mirrors remained black and vacant.

He glided onto the entry ramp alone. No need to accelerate to freeway speed; he was already doing it, and then some. He couldn’t believe the needle: eighty.

And then … a pinprick in the mirror. A firefly. Growing.

Ninety.

The light clung, then grew again.

Matt tried to gauge the oncoming traffic. It was suicidal to enter the flow at this speed.

The moon in his mirror was swelling as if to duplicate its sister in the sky.

Crazy, crazy, crazy. Plus, he could get arrested.

He swerved onto the freeway, racing to beat a huge semi lit up like a Christmas tree. He was going way fast enough, but the semi was too close to cut in front of.

He did it anyway, feeling the tremendous wind-drag of the behemoth trying to suck him into its vortex. Pastit, he slowed his speed, clinging like a moon to the obscuring planet of a double-long trailer.

He glimpsed the driver’s face in the semi’s left mirror. A dirty look, maybe an obscenity. At least this rider of the night had a face.

Only double-eye lights flared in his mirror, solid rows of them.

After a couple of minutes, he allowed himself to drop back until the semi surged ahead at its steady sixty miles an hour. No motorcycles shared the crowded lanes with him.

On the parallel access road, though, a single red taillight skated away at an oblique angle until it became a tiny infrared laser dot fading into the absolute darkness of the surrounding desert.

Chapter 34

Playing for Keeps

(Recorded in 1956, when Elvis was taking control of his sessions with great energy)

ELVIS DIES! The headline was the usual supermarket tabloid screamer in tall, 72-point Helvetica bold type … except that the news reversed the usual claim.

Invariably, the tabloids announced that Elvis Lives! Temple was willing to bet that some blasé copy editor had jumped up and down for joy at the chance to write Elvis Dies! for a change.

Of course, this was the Las Vegas Scoop. Apparently Crawford Buchanan had finally dried off and coughed up what the police wanted to know. Then he had scurried back to the Scoop to paint a breathless account of the gruesome discovery in the Medication Garden.

The one fact he managed to ignore utterly was how he happened to be on the premises at that particular place and time.

Temple was intrigued to read that “busybodies-abouttown PR woman Temple Barr and justice of the peace Electra Lark” had “stumbled over” the body (pretty hard to do unless she and Electra had a hidden talent for walking on water), “sending up a wail that would do an electric guitar proud.”

Temple cringed to imagine Lieutenant C. R. Molina reading that line. Then she brightened. Molina would not be caught dead reading the Las Vegas Scoop, although Elvis might.

The account was full of lurid grace notes, including the design of the victim’s jumpsuit (Fourth of July explosions) and the anaconda’s exact length (eighteen feet), but it contained remarkably little news.

The morning Review Journal had been put to bed too early to report the murder. Instead, their feature page headlined: “Seeing Double?” Elvis, that is, a story on the multitudes of Elvis impersonators in town. Velvet Elvis had made it into a photograph. So had several more conventional male models, none of whom much resembled the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll except for the uniform hair, sideburns, and jumpsuits. Reviving Elvis was an imprecise art.

The Sun had the full-meal deal: it identified the dead man as an Elvis impersonator, so far unidentified. The jumpsuit, it mentioned, was an expensive version, not the usual costume-shop model. The victim’s hair was not only high, wide, and handsome, but also costly, and had clung throughout the impromptu rinse cycle in the pool.

As for the snake, it had “escaped a nearby animal exhibit.” An autopsy would determine its role in the death, if any. The authorities had no evidence that the death was a drowning, and there were no witnesses, except for two Las Vegas residents who had discovered the floating body while visiting the hotel’s herb garden.

Temple felt relief soften her muscles. This was such a ridiculous death to have discovered. It didn’t seem real.

At least her name wasn’t on it in a respectable newspaper. Yet.

She tapped her front teeth with the eraser end of a long yellow pencil. She knew the backstage area would be abuzz with gossip today. More than other performers, these men were not islands. Their whole existence was a form of denying death, so any Elvis death would diminish them. They would not go gently into that dark night.

She really needed to return to the Kingdome and view the aftermath of the articles herself. First, a phone call. She glanced at the clock while punching in numbers to make sure the hour was decent.

“Matt? Oh, I’m fine, but you sound like I woke you up. Oh, didn’t get to sleep until six A.M.? Whyever not?”

His answer was vague, saying the ride home had been windy and cold. He really had to get a car.

“Terrific. What kind?”

“Something reliable and economical.”

“Oh, phooey. You’re no fun. Listen, I’m off to the Kingdome, and I wanted to know what call-in Elvis said last night.”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing? Don’t tell me he sang instead?”

“Not a note, not a peep.”

“That’s … odd.”

“We don’t have a date every night.”

“Well … it’s really odd that he was mum last night when you know that an Elvis imitator was killed yesterday.”

“Killed?”

“Not necessarily murder. Could be a bizarre accident. Electra and I found the body.”

“I’m not going to ask how.”

“Just by being the usual nosy. I’ll spare you the lurid details. It’s in the evening paper if you want to read it when your baby browns are open wide. You do sound beat. How can radio chit-chat be so draining?”

“Waiting for someone to call who doesn’t can be a strain. And … other stuff.”

“Other stuff. Life is full of ‘other stuff.’ It’ll be really interesting to see if your call-in Elvis stops calling now that this guy is dead.”

“Why do you always see a death as linked to any nearby remote connection?”

“I don’t see. I suspect. What does your gut tell you?” “That I got to bed way too late this morning and need something to eat.”

“You want me to breeze upstairs and whip you up something?”

“No breezing, no whipping, and I would hope no snooping around the death scene.”

“Can’t promise anything. I’ll let you know if anything fascinating turns up.”

“It probably will. It always does when you’re around.” “Thank you!”

“Temple. Be careful. There are odd people out there.” “Sounds like you’ve had your fill of talk radio already.”

He didn’t answer, an ominous reaction.

“Let me know if Elvis calls again,” she said. “Temple, that’s a fantasy.”

“Matt, this is Las Vegas.”

Temple thought about Matt while she drove to the Kingdome.

He was usually as easy to see through as a crystal ball, but now, she sensed, he was trying to keep something from her. She couldn’t tell if he was feeling worried—not a new emotional state for him—or jaded. Jaded definitely would be a new emotion. How could he be Down when so many Up things were happening to him? A new media career, a modicum of fame and fortune, hero status … what more could any normal American boy want? Of course there were no normal American boys, or girls, just people muddling their way through the sweet mysteries of life. And now that Temple had ended the unhappy state of being torn between an ex-lover and one not-yet-and-maybe-never lover, she had no business being in Matt’s life. What did a fallen-away Unitarian have to offer a recovering Roman Catholic celibate anyway? Temple smiled to recall Matt’s astonishment at hearing that she had dropped out of a religion as broad-based and tolerant as the Unitarian Universalists, whose name said it all. Unification. Universality. She had neglected the Sunday sermons, that was all. The lessons stayed with you in spirit whether you were there in body or not. And she’d become so busy when she and Max began living together. A performing magician kept ungodly late hours, which didn’t lend themselves to keeping godly Sunday mornings.

When Max had vanished a year ago, everyone had been so ready to believe he was just another skedaddling scoundrel. Not Temple. And Max finally had returned, to confess that he’d left to safeguard her from the secrets of his dangerous undercover past. Matt and Max. Light and dark, quite literally, and both dogged by the darkness of that eternal mystery, their own tangled family relations. At least her family was pretty uncomplicated, if a bit overbearing. But now Max the performer had been forced into hiding, and Matt the modest priest cursed with matinee idol looks had been pushed into the limelight. And wasn’t sure he liked it! Did everybody get exactly what they didn’t want? Was that the sweet-and-sour mystery of every life? Maybe even hers? Temple felt a rare nostalgia for her fleeting television reporter stint. Maybe she should have persisted in TV, found another on-air spot. Hosting a local talk show, say. Cohosting. She was so good at talking to people, at finding out things about them. Gee, if she had Matt’s current opportunity, she’d be jumping in the air and clicking het heels, even if that did scuff good shoe leather.

But she wasn’t Matt, she wasn’t a talk-show host, andher off-campus assignment right now was to check out :he Elvisfest at the Kingdome. Which was good, because the felt sorry for Quincey, and responsible for her in a weird, big sister way. And in that regard, she really needed to follow up on her Grand Plan.

Half of her Grand Plan greeted her when she reached the dressing room area.

They were attired as sea-to-shining-sea Elvis: from East-Coast glitter Mafia to Hillbilly Cat metallic-thread rayon to Country Crooner rhinestones to Western Swinger to West Coast glitz tux to Hawaiian neon.

“Fetch my rhinestone sunglasses, boys,” Temple teased in a Mae West voice, hefting her forearm up before her eyes as if bedazzled. “So what’s the status quo?”

“Vadis?” Hawaiian neon Elvis tried.

“I just need to know the basics: who died, who cares.”

“Nobody knows yet—I’m not kidding.” Hillbilly Cat Elvis was so cute in his fifties muscle shirt and narrow belt that Temple wanted to pinch his arched upper lip. “Somebody says he was from Chicago, I think.”

“I suppose the Elvi come from all over,” Temple observed.

“Not many Italians.” West Coast Elvis twitched his shoulders in his sharkskin dinner jacket with the black velvet lapels.

The Fontana brothers may not have possessed Elvis’s facial features particularly, but at a universal six feet even and all imperially slim, they gave Temple a pretty good insight into just how gorgeous Elvis must have been in his prime. Dude-licious, one might say, to go with babe-licious, phrases Quincey would no doubt approve. Or “dig.” Or rock with.

“I imagine you hear all the gossip, being part of the show.”

“Hey, we’re more than that,” Oversized Elvis sounded distinctly aggrieved.

“Yeah,” said Fifties Elvis, “the management is using the pageant as an employee screening system.” He executed a swivel-pose onto the balls of his blue-suedeshod feet. “Several of us have been offered permanent positions in the hotel,” he added importantly

“Oh, really. And how would your brother Nicky at the Crystal Phoenix like that?”

Hillbilly Cat Elvis pouted. “He doesn’t have nothing to say about it. He never offered any of us a job.” “I didn’t know any of you were pining for jobs.” “We’re not, but it’s nice to be asked.”

It turned out that various brothers Fontana had been plucked from the mob, so to speak, for positions as gift shop sales clerk, parking valet, health club waterboy, floor show usher, waiter, bartender, and blackjack dealer.

“The idea is that every guest will get a young Elvis working his way up to serve them.”

“He had a lot of different jobs even in high school,” Karate Elvis put in. “That kid was no slacker.”

Temple shook her head. “Do you have to sing at any of these jobs?”

“Not a requirement. We can hum a little, though, and fidget our left legs.” Fifties Elvis demonstrated with a slacks-shaking shiver.

“That was the birth of the Delta boogie, you know. Elvis was a nervous-energy kind of kid and was always twitching something, particularly his left leg. That’s what really got his pelvis going. Who’d ever think a nervous tic would be the key to all those teen angels out there?”

“He caught on fast, though,” Motorcycle Elvis said. “You guys are sounding like fans. Did you start out that way?”

“Heck, no, Miss Temple. Except for Aldo, we thought he was this square old guy in Liberace leftovers who liked to blast out songs like churchy stuff and ‘Dumb Coyote.’ “

“I know ‘How Great Thou Art’ was one of Vegas Elvis’s staple hymns, but what was ‘Dumb Coyote’?““You know, ‘I am I, Dumb Coyote—’ “

Temple stared, dumbfounded. These guys were her age, but they didn’t have her broad background from doing public relations for a repertory theater. “It’s not `dumb coyote,’ “—she had to pause to keep from laughing herself sick—“it’s ‘I am I, Don Kee-ho-tay.’ Don Quixote. From the musical, Man of La Mancha, based on Cervantes’s eighteenth-century novel.”

“I don’t think that Man of La Muncha has played Vegas, Miss Temple.”

“Well, not the hotels. I’m sure a touring company played the civic center at one point, years ago. During Elvis’s heyday. Anyway, that’s the show-stopping song from the musical play, and Elvis sang that.”

“We didn’t really think he’d call himself a dumb coyote.”

“He was too cool a guy.”

Temple nodded, reminded how fast the plays and songs of the one day fade into the fads of the next generation, and how remarkable it was that no one was letting Elvis turn the same sepia-brown of memory.

Not while anyone was alive to don a jeweled jumpsuit and another man’s dream, anyway. Another man’s dream-turned-nightmare.

“Hey, Miss Temple, don’t look sad. I got some news that will perk you right up.”

“What is that?” she asked. They answered serially. “The scuttlebutt.”

“Around here.”

“Snake’s off the hook.”

“Didn’t do it.”

“Naw, the guy was throttled, all right, but the snake would have crushed his chest, not his throat.”

“So the snake is as innocent as a lamb.”

“Who’s guilty then?” Temple asked.

“We don’t know.”

“We do know that the so-called Memphis Mafia is crawling all over this place.”

“Hotel security.” Temple nodded.

The Fontana boys shook their heads until Elvis forelocks drew cocky, dark commas on every brow. They gathered even closer, lowered their voices to a softer, conspiratorial level.

“See, we know a bit about Mafia guys.”

“Just comes with the territory.”

“What territory is that?” Temple wondered.

“Being Italian, of course.”

“So what do you know?” she persisted.

“There’s Mafia here, all right. The real thing. Blending right in.”

“Since the death?”

Their weirdly inappropriate blue eyes exchanged fur-live glances.

“Since before. It’s a good thing we’re undercover. Otherwise, some wise guys would be giving us guff.” “And we’d have to give it right back.”

“Guff, that is.”

“Guff.” Why did Temple think that “guff” came with a caliber?

“The way it is, we’re in a perfect position to watch them watching everyone else.”

“You’re saying these are heavy players,” Temple tried to clarify.

“Yeah. Not any of Boss Banana’s local muscle-heads. These are outa-town dudes. Guys from the garbage and cement-mixing business. Old school.”

“Bet they could dig up Jimmy Hoffa in two minutes flat if they wanted to, and dump him on the main stage of the MGM-Grand to do a soft shoe.”

“Oooh.” Temple’s active imagination was about to make her sick.

But the brothers Fontana pressed so close they held her up, stiffened her spine, and maybe her upper lip, which had never been known to sneer.

“We also think—”

“Some of the suits—““Are passing as hotel security—”

“But are into security in a lot bigger way.”

“Like for the whole U.S. of A.”

Temple blinked. She thought. She thought like a gangster, which was a stretch a custom limousine would aspire to.

“Feds?” she whispered in disbelief.

Six blue-black helmets of Elvis hair nodded. “She’s fast for an amateur,” one said.

“What kind of feds? ATF? Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms?” Elvis had drunk occasionally, had always smoked little cigars, and was a major gun collector, and carrier, during his later years. “DEA? Drugs were really his Waterloo. IRS?” He had overpaid his taxes, to a ridiculous point. “Urn, what else is there?” Or maybe it had nothing to do with Elvis at all.

Their faces were impassive.

“We don’t know exactly. We just can smell shills on both sides of the law among the usual dopey hotel muscle. You know, you put on one of those uptight black suits, a white shirt and shades, and you could pass for a Blues Brother or a presidential bodyguard or an enforcer out of any northern city like Chicago.”

“Used to be a big Chicago connection to Vegas. Who do you think did in Bugsy Siegel?”

“But that was really decades ago. Way back beyond Elvis,” Temple objected.

“The Mob has a long memory,” Blues Brother Elvis said, his eyes hidden behind his shades.

“And so do we.” There was nothing hidden about Oversized Elvis’s expression.

Chapter 35

Animal Instinct

(This song was cut from 1965’s Harum Scarum and never heard or seen again)

When a really heinous crook is characterized as too evil to live, usually all and sundry describe him as “an animal.”

That is human nature for you, always looking for some other part of nature to take the blame for the bad stuff.

Sometimes they will call the offender “an insect,” but that is usually for piss-ant, penny-ante stuff.

I have long taken exception to the human tendency to attach their own kind’s worst actions to the animal world. It implies that we of the furred and haired and hided sort have no morals. And we do not. Morals are a cross that humans give themselves to bear. We merely have “behavior” and “instinct.”

And more brains and nicety than we are given credit for.

So I realize early on that the unfortunate serpent who was dunked into the pool with the corpus delecti is nowa suspect du jour. I also realize that the usually tongue-tied snake (and it has the forked tongue to tie) might have something relevant to say, and that I am the very one—the only one—ready, willing, and able to unlatch this snake’s two-way tongue.

Now this is no easy assignment. I have not conversed with serpents before, although I have had words with a lizard or two. Snakes are notoriously tight-lipped, as well as being a clannish sort. I can only imagine what a lone tropical snake imported to the concrete-and-neon jungle of Las Vegas might wish to keep to itself.

There is no good way to cozy up to a snake.

But I thrive on challenge, and Chatter has lived up to his name and been full of palaver but not much solid information, so I hie myself off to the Animal Elvis exhibition area behind the Medication Garden that proved so unhappy an experience for the two little dolls from the Circle Ritz, and for some benighted Elvis wannabe before them.

My little dolls need my usual stalwart assistance, though they do not know it, which is also usual. Besides, I am catching Elvis fever just like everybody else. Enquiring minds want to know who is messing with the King’s new playground.

I am not sure what I should expect besides dogs, horses, and. the serpent. I have never interrogated a zoo before. With horses I am on good, if somewhat distant, terms. I am a city lad and more inclined to hitching a ride on a passing pickup than on a horsehair hammock.

Dogs are always touchy. I have been chased for my very life too many times in my early days as a gentleman of the road. Although my species is adept at bullying the bully-boys, when we are young we are often not aware of our powers and may be intimidated. I am sorry to say that my forays with canines have left me with an understandable disdain for the breed. I will have to proceed delicately with the dogs, so as not to betray my natural dislike.

Luckily, the attraction—although I cannot see how a compound of animals not including any felines could possibly be termed an “attraction”—is not open for business yet.

I should have free run of the place.

I decide to hie up top to interview the noble equine first. I have never known a horse not to talk sense, and find it outrageous that such a mild and useful breed has been so badly misused by humans. Although I have been known to dream that I am the size and incisor-level of the awesome saber-tooth tiger so faint in my ancestry, I have never regretted being too small to ride or to bear or to drag burdens. It is one supreme advantage the domesticated branch of my species has.

The animals are kept, of course, in an outdoor park that I imagine evokes Graceland’s rolling acres.

I find Rising Sun, a handsome honey-blond stallion of the type called palomino, munching oats at an outdoor drive-up stand. I hop atop the feeding station. Poor critters are cursed with these big, square teeth and hence are condemned to chew leaves of grass until their enamel turns green. I do not understand how they can keep those huge bodies going without any good red meat in their diet.

“You are new,” the horse notes succinctly between mashing vegetation.

“But not green,” I add quickly, just in case he mistakes me for a hank of rye grass or something. With their eyes on the sides of their heads, sometimes horses cannot see every little thing clearly. Like me.

I explain my mission, during which Sun nods and munches judiciously.

At least I assume it is judiciously. Horses have that considering air about them, like trial judges. They may be contemplating deep matters, or they may simply be chewing every bite one hundred times, as advised by the health books.

I look around the meadow. “I can see dogs racing over yonder hill, but I find it hard to picture an anaconda in these happy fields.”

The horse stops chewing to regard me with a brown eye as velvety as whipped chocolate. Miss Temple may be a wimp for brown-eyed blonds, but not me. There are no brown-eyed cats, obviously another clear sign of superiority.

I decide I need to shave off a little erudition. ‘The snake,” I repeat pointedly.

Sun whinnies and shakes his head until his platinum blond mane shimmies. I am beginning to think that in the brain department, he would be similar to an actor found on Baywatch. This boyo is all muscle and sun-bleached locks. And health food.

But he snuffles out a sigh and resumes our fitful conversation. “If you meant the snake, why did you not say so? When you said ‘Anna Conda,’ I thought you were referring to an attendant I do not know.”

“I mean the snake.”

“I am not much afraid of that snake,” he boasts. “It is one of the biggest in the world.”

“But it is not poisonous. I can take care of it with my hooves. No, the kind of snake I avoid like a briar patch is the small, poisonous sort that could strike my hock before I knew it. This Anna Conda snake is too big to miss, and no danger to me.”

“You have any idea how it got out of this area into the pool?”

He shakes his glamour-boy mane again. You would think he was Fabio. “They kept the Conda under glass, in a special area with tropical vegetation. I assume the snake would have to wait for a keeper to come and free it.”

“But you know nothing about yesterday aftemoon, when it would have been released?”

“I was off for a canter with Domino.” He nods to the distant dark form of a horse, head bowed to the imported grasslands. “The tourists like to see us cavorting, you know.”

“There are no tourists yet.”

‘There will be.”

He retums to his feedbag.

That is the trouble with these ruminant animals; they think with their stomachs. And sometimes they have more than one.

So I hop down and go on the lookout for dogs.

This whole field setup reminds me of those cheap science fiction movies where the small set in front is supposed to fade into a painting at the back that is intended to depict the surrounding countryside. Only you can see the brushmarks even from the back row of the Lyceum.

I frankly do not find this bucolic scene thrilling, but I suppose Elfans who have or have not been to Graceland relish the country squire look of the place. I am rounding the corner of the small barn when I come face-to-face with a snub-nosed, bristle-ruffed, purple-tongued creature that resembles an unsanctioned union between a giant radiator brush, an Eskimo, and a wild pig.

A growl is the only clue that this sixty-pound critter is merely a dog.

“Get low!” a human voice shouts.

I do not need encouragement. I immediately dive behind a bale of hay.

Sure enough. A brown jumpsuit soon makes the scene.

“What are you growling at?” she asks the bristled pig who had been accosting me. “You know all the stock. Just pipe down and don’t scare the horses.”

The creature backs off and the lady animal tender moves on.

“I am glad the Jumpsuit warned me,” I say to all and sundry who remain around, which is Rising Sun, the head of the lovely Domino, who has now munched her way to the stable area, and, uh, this Brillo pad of pale hair which I discover is sitting right next to me. I have seen wads of hair bigger than this removed from washing machine lint traps.

But the wad tums to me and I spot a pair of beady black eyes amid the permanent wave.

“Nobody warned you, silly,” the lint trap says. `The keeper was calling the chow-chow off.”

Okay. I have heard of chow you can eat and ciao you can say “hello and good-bye” in Italian with, but I have never heard of a chow-chow you can call off-off.

Since the fuzzhead speaks with a funny French accent, I restrain myself, play the sophisticate, and merely reply, “Pardon,” with the accent on the second syllable.

“Getlo is the dog’s name,” fuzzhead says, “as mine is Honey.” With the accent on the second syllable, I might add.

“Getlo? What kind of name is that?”

“I agree. It is silly. But that was what Elvis called his chow dog in 1957 until it died in 1975, and that is what this edition must be called, as I am called Honey, after Priscilla’s poodle that Elvis gave her.”

I am relieved to know what species I am dealing with, I was having my doubts.

`Thank you for the clarification, Hon-eee.” (I make her name rhyme with “Paree,” with the accent on the second syllable so as to sound French.) “Why did you not say that the creature is merely a common chow dog? I am familiar with that breed, or at least their reputation for fierce guard work.” I do not mention that they also have a rep for going off half-cocked.

`These working dogs are so serious about their roles in life,” she adds with a blasé sigh. “I understand that my role is merely to decorate and entertain, hence do not have to throw my weight around like the savage Getlo.”

“You do not have much weight to throw around,” I note.

Any dame takes that as a compliment, and this one practically purrs. “I heard you nuzzling up to Rising Sun. Are you playing the detective?”

“I do not ‘play’ at anything,” I say in a growl.

“Oh, so serious. Do not bother asking those big chevaux anything. They are too high off the ground to know what is going on, particularly in regard to snakes.”

“Oh? So what do you know?”

She plants her slender forelegs with the wide, Persian-lamb cuffs emphasizing her delicate bone structure, and tosses her curled and perfumed tresses. ‘What should certainly be sufficient for you, mon ami. How are you called?”

“I am not called, as I do not come when called. But my name is Louie.” A rapturous squeal interrupts my spiel. “Midnight Louie.”

“Louie! So you are French!”

“I am whatever nationality it suits my purpose to be.” “A man of the world, no?”

“I get around. Now. Did you notice any people who were not keepers creeping around here yesterday? Any keepers acting odd? Did you see Trojan escape, or was he removed bodily?”

“I did notice a flurry of activity among the humans, which I attributed to the imminent opening of our attraction. More importantly, I detected several alien scents. If you like, I can lead you to Trojan’s quarters and tell you what scents remain.”

“Just the thing. You go ahead. I’ll follow.”

Well, that was a mistake. The poor kid’s tail has been shaved to the skin, with only a ridiculous pompon sticking on the end like a skewered mushroom on a shish-kabob tine.

But she puts her long, pointed French nose—leave ii to the English and the French to sport the biggest noses in the business, no wonder they do not get along with each other—to the ground and soon we are in sight of a huge glassed-in aquarium sort of setting, except it is all bushes and vines and only a little water.

Honey is making tiny circles all over the ground, calling out scents as she goes: “Jenny the Keeper. Carlos the Keeper. Stranger. Stranger. Getlo. Domino. Stranger. Jenny. Dennis the Keeper head. Stranger.”

“I make out four strangers. Just from yesterday?”

“Hmm. And that is all you can tell from the trail?”

“Unless I cross paths with any of these strangers again.”

“How do I, uh, break into this glass menagerie?” “That is your job.”

“And I do not see the resident.”

“That Trojan! He is very, how you say? Torpido. He is digesting somewhere behind all the leaves.”

“Seems like a snake that size should be more visible.”

“Oh, he curls up like the big ball of yarn. It is so cute.”

I am not convinced, but thank her politely for her help and check out the aquarium’s perimeter for possible entry.

The back wall is solid wood instead of glass, and soon I find a nice little doggie door through which the staff inserts Trojan’s lunch, which is probably South American rodents about my size and in my condition, alive.

Naturally, the doggie door is just my size, and it is not hard to shoulder my way through.

It is still and humid inside the minijungle that forms Trojan’s housing environment. Amazing how a few tropical plants can make the air so heavy it hurts to inhale. For one used to the sere Las Vegas atmosphere, as high and dry as a fine French champagne, this instant steam room is enough to dampen my fur and my spirits.

My first task will be to find my prey in this place so in need of a weed-whipping. My second task will be to convince my prey that I am not lunch, despite appearances. No, my second task will be to figure out a way to communicate with the prey so I can tell it I am not lunch.

A good thing I cannot sweat, because if I could this hothouse air and my perilous situation would have me dripping like a leaky faucet.

First thing I notice is that the vines, trunks, and foliage in this snake pit all have a lot in common with the resident-in-chief. The vines and trunks are as thick as the arm on a sumo wrestler, and the foliage is mostly green-brown and mottled.

I could be eaten by an errant leaf before I even know it.

Slinking around in this primordial feeding station is too dangerous. I decide on the bold approach, brushing my way past rubbery leaves toward the front display window.

On the other side I view the horses at their elevenses, and the topiary-trimmed form of little Honey watching me with bright, avid eyes.

Behind me is the heart of darkness, the jungle as even Elvis never knew it in his Jungle Room. There is a still, heavy silence holding Bast-knows-how-many-pounds of pulsating reptilian predator.

It is a good thing I do not have a snake phobia.

Positioned now, plainly visible, I begin a low croon not unlike the kind of blues us fellows like to improvise off the top of our fences during mating season.

It is halfway between a growl and a purr, or a hum and a howl. It is the blues like you hear it down every dark back alley in every big city from here to who-knowswhere. It is the St. Louie Blues, and the Las Vegas Blues and the Appalachia Blues and the Harlem Blues and the Globetrotter Blues.

My rear member begins to itch, then twitch, then beat back and forth like a metronome. Back/forth back/forth back/forth tick/tock tick/tock and undemeath it all I keep that eerie hum-croon going, with an occasional yowl for interest.

This Hillbilly Cat is cooking! I think Siamese and Burmese and Tonkinese and Balinese and Javanese, so there’s a little minor-key Asian wail to the tail-beat too. I envision cobra heads swaying in rhythm, rattle tails shaking up the maracas in the back section, asps etching figure esses like Olympic skaters. I envision Cleopatra and Little Egypt boogieing across the tropical wallpaper. They both look like Cher if her hair were a Medusa-do of funky snakes.

We are all percolating to the whine and the wail and the rhythm and the rock ‘n’ roll.

And then along comes Trojan, winding down from the big tropical what’s-it plant, his massive head nodding like it can’t stop, his thick coils pulsating to the beat.

In no time he has thumped to the floor of the case coil by coil, his eyes slitted to obsidian slivers, his body bobbing to the sound and the motion.

I let the wail wind down and keep the purr going strong. Then I slip in a significant question or two.

And it works like a charm.

Chapter 36

Little Sister

(Blues number Elvis recorded in Nashville in 1961)

“It is so creepy around here. I can’t believe I gave up singing in a grunge band for this.”

Quincey hunched over the long empty dressing table, her white go-go boots dispiritedly turned out at the ankles, her sleeveless A-line pink polyester dress seeming to hold her up by its severe architectural lines alone.

“I didn’t know you sang,” Temple said cheerily.

Quincey’s eyes gazed rebuke through her black holes of mascara. “I don’t. That’s why I would have been so perfect for the job. Are you sure Courtney Love started this way?”

Temple took in the outfit and the lonely ambiance of the deserted dressing room. Being the only peahen in a clutch of male peacocks couldn’t be described as fun. “I’m not sure anybody started this way, including Priscilla Presley. Have there been more threatening notes?““To me? No.” That fact seemed to further dispirit Quincey. “I am the forgotten woman at this thing,” she announced, “now that somebody has offed an Elvis.” “The death hasn’t been labeled a homicide yet.” “What else could it be?”

“An accident. A suicide.”

“Suicide. Now that I can buy. This whole gig is suicidal.” She threw a tube of Daddy Longlegs’s Centipede Sweetie mascara onto the scuffed tabletop. It rolled all the way to the other end, like a ball down a bowling lane, where it crashed into a bumper of scratched Formica. “I mean, I am bored to death! It’s all sitting around, waiting for the guys to get ready to run through their acts. Like, I’ve been forced to bring homework and even look at it here.”

Temple eyed a slim book with one lined sheet of notepaper stuck askew between its pages. This did not look like serious study.

“That’s show biz,” she said matter-of-factly. “Waiting for your time to come. In fact, Michael Caine once said he got paid nothing to act, but a very lot of money to sit around and wait.”

Quincey stared at her, as if riveted by this gem of theatrical wisdom. “Who’s Michael Caine?” she finally asked.

“Oh, nobody. The Brad Pitt of several generations back.”

“Brad Pitt. Yuck. Totally retro. He’s really let himself go.”

“Oh. I guess Elvis holds the record, then. He kept his fans for over twenty years, and even death did not them part.”

“But they’re all crazy.” Quincey sighed. “I guess crazy fans are better than no fans.”

“You could quit, you know. They can find another Priscilla.”

Quincey seemed to consider the idea. “It is a drag going to school during the mornings and then coming over here to sit around in case someone needs me to stand there while they rehearse the awards ceremony. Like anyone cares who wins best scarf-tosser and biggest belt buckle.” Her eyes grew suddenly calculating. “But if I quit, I wouldn’t have a chance to meet any cute Elvises.”

“I didn’t think there were any.”

“Well, the bodyguards aren’t bad.”

“The Memphis Mafia? I thought those old guys in hats and suits creeped you out.”

“Not those guards. The ones you got me. They’re the best-looking Elvises in the place.”

“Ah. They’re still a little old for you.”

“Please, moth-ther, give me a break. I like older guys if they’re not really old, like thirty or something.”

Before Temple could get into basic arithmetic with Quincey, obviously a subject she’d skipped in school, the dressing room door banged open against the wall. A phalanx of suits filled the doorway.

Three abreast, this particular outcropping of the Memphis Mafia resembled Siamese triplets. The black suits melted into one vague blob, and their three pale faces protruded like mushrooms under three very black caps … that is, fedoras.

“Okay, lady,” one addressed Temple. “Up against the mirror. What is your business here?”

“Ah, I’m Quincey’s manager.”

When they looked blank as well as menacing, she pointed to the seated Quincey, managing to impale her finger into a rat’s nest of Clairol’s blackest embrittled with hair spray. Yuck.

The Mafia guys were not distracted.

“You haven’t been around before,” one said.

With their eyes narrowed into tough-guy slits, the guys looked even more like Siamese triplets. Temple couldn’t tell which one had spoken. Of course they spit out their words between almost immobile lips, like Bogart on a laryngitis day. Must have been that damp andfoggy ending of Casablanca. Poor guy. Paul Henreid got the girl, and he got the upper respiratory infection.

Temple coughed discreetly. “Managers come and go. I have other clients, you know.”

“That right? She got a right to be here?” one asked Quincey.

A rebel glint brightened the tiny eye-holes between Quincey’s quintuple-strength false eyelashes. With one word she could rid herself of a voice for maturity and prudence.

Also a cohort in a hostile world.

“Sure.” Quincey punctuated her casual response by snapping her bubblegum. It echoed in the empty room like a gunshot.

The boys stiffened and clapped hands to armpits. Then they began clearing their throats, shuffling their feet, and backing out of the room before they looked even more foolish. Pulling firearms on two lone women would look like overkill.

“Were those the real Kingdome Memphis Mafia, or shills?” Temple wondered aloud.

“You mean there are fake hotel security guards?” Quincey paled a little. “Who can you trust around this place?”

“Regard it as the real Graceland, and trust no one.”

“You know, that’s true. Elvis had closed-circuit TVs in his bedroom so he could watch people around the house and decide whether to come down and play. So many people came around, it got so he couldn’t see them all.”

Temple shook her head. “Was that in his later years? Paranoia seems to be the last stage before complete breakdown.”

“Maybe I’m being paranoid.” Quincey clasped her narrow white arms and shivered. “I’m sure not going to be voted Miss Congeniality here. Do you suppose the guy in the pool had his throat cut? With a razor?”

“No! Definitely not.”

“How do you know?”

“There would have been blood, for one thing.” “In a big pool like that?”

“Good point, Quincey. The large amount of water would dissipate any blood. But why slit someone’s throat and throw him into a pool? Overkill, if you ask me.”

“Las Vegas is an overkill kind of place,” Quincey said earnestly. “I mean, I wasn’t going to freak because of some funny notes, and whoever wrote the ‘E’ in my neck could have just as easily slit my throat, but didn’t. But now there’s a really dead guy—and I’m getting a little worried.”

Temple leaned against the tabletop. “So that’s why you were so cool about that razor incident. You’d already figured out it wasn’t a serious attack.”

“I figured it was some publicity stunt. And hanging around here hadn’t gotten so boring yet.”

“Well, hang in a little longer. As your ‘manager,’ I’m going to visit the other dressing rooms and see if they’re talking about you.”

Quincey tossed the immovable edifice of her hair and used a pick as long as a chopstick to torture the topmost strands even higher. “They better be talking about me. I’m not wearing this creepy crepey polyester dress just for my health, you know.”

Temple nodded and left, refraining from mention of the seventies urban legend that polyester caused cancer. Quincey had enough to worry about.

Chapter 37

From a Jack to a King

(One of Vernon Presley’s country favorites, recorded by Elvis in 1967)

“Gotcha!”

“You idiot! Get your hands off me.” Temple had pulled away from whoever grabbed her and adapted a battle-ready martial arts stance.

Crawford Buchanan, dry but otherwise as slimy as ever, was leaning against the wall where he had suddenly appeared.

“What’s the matter?” he taunted. “Snake got you a little nervous?”

“No. Not that snake, anyway. Why are you here pestering me, anyway? I thought you had major news stories to write. ‘Elvis Dies!’ Really. Are your trying to build the death in the pool into some kind of Elvis legend?”

“I’m not here to pester you,” he answered, shoving himself off the wall and batting his naturally dark-lashed eyes. Temple thought unhappily of Daddy Longlegs’s Centipede Sweetie mascara. “I’m here to keep an eye on Quincey.”

“The way you were doing when she got slashed.” “I can’t be around here every second.”

“I haven’t seen you around here at all, until now.” Temple glanced down the empty hall beyond him. Nothing that way but storage rooms. “And what were you doing up in the Medication Garden? And why the twenty-foot dash into the pool?”

“You sound like the police. I’m a reporter as well as an emcee, right? So I have to check things out. My being in the Medication Garden when the corpse turned up was just a piece of good luck. I tripped over one of those damn critters from the Animal Elvis exhibit when I saw the body after you and the landlady noticed it. Believe me, I had no urge to share a pool with that snake and its prey.”

“I see you’ve got your followup article written.” Crawford grinned. ” ‘Giant Snake Gets Elvis All Shook Up.’ How does that grab you?”

“Not much better than you did just now. The autopsy results aren’t even in. It’s irresponsible to blame the death on the snake.”

“Maybe, but it’s sure spectacular. My next piece will be Elvis’s resuscitated career all washed up now.”

“You’re not going to try to turn the dead man into the real Elvis, are you?”

“Why not? Any dead Elvis could be the real one in disguise. Why do you think Elvis is the story that won’t die? It’s classic. It’s beautiful. You can speculate on anything and it’s impossible to prove different. It’s even better than Amelia Earhart.”

“It’s the story that won’t die because irresponsible so-called journalists like you keep beating a dead horse.”

“Irresponsible? You think I’m irresponsible?” He edged nearer again, his anger turning him from a laughable pest into a sobering threat. Temple retreated despite herself, until her back was hugging the wall. “I’ll showyou! I’m sitting on a story so hot that it’ll make me the journalist responsible for the biggest story of the Millennium.”

She didn’t know what to say in the face of Crawford’s angry but impressive conviction.

She didn’t have to say anything. Jumpsuit Elvis had appeared behind Buchanan like the Caped Crusader. He caught up the Crawf by the scruff of his black mohair suit coat and practically lifted him off the ground.

“Hey, there, son,” he intoned in a passable imitation of Elvis’s laid-back jovial country drawl, “you don’t want to scare the ladies, and you sure don’t want to make me mad.”

When he let Crawford’s black wingtips touch concrete again, the toes did a nervous little tap, like a puppet’s whose strings were too short, before the soles came down solidly.

“You phoney bozos!” Crawford’s invective spit and hissed. “You’re laughable, get it? But no one will be laughing at me when I’m ready to move. Get outa my way.”

Crawford shoved past Temple and surged down the hall toward the other dressing rooms, soon lost in a milling crowd of Elvis impersonators.

“I shoulda smashed him while I had him. You okay, Miss Temple? He tried to use you as a discus.”

“He was really hot under the mohair. I’ve never seen him like that.”

“Mean as a wolverine.”

“I guess.” Temple shook her head. Dead or alive, Elvis certainly brought out strong feelings in people.

“I’m sorry I deserted my post.” Jumpsuit Elvis nodded to the dressing room door. “There was lots of talk down the hall, and Miss Quincey said she’d be all right.”

“She was fine. The Crawf apparently isn’t worried about her at all.”

“Why should he be?”

“He’s her mother’s boyfriend, for one thing. And it was his idea to have her play Priscilla. He’s the emcee for the pageant.”

Elvis’s face had grown darker and darker of expression as Temple had explained the status quo. “She’s an awful pretty little thing to bring into this crazy place.”

“Ah … which one are you? Ernesto? Julio?”

“Um, Ralph.”

“Well, ‘Um Ralph,’ I hope you’re not digging too deep into the Elvis mythology. Quincey is only sixteen. You wouldn’t be getting inappropriate ideas?”

“Sixteen! What kind of rat would bring a sixteen-yearold girl into this? Urn, you think maybe I’m getting into my role too much, Miss Temple?”

“How so?”

“Elvis had a hangup for real young girls. Do you think someone else’s spirit could take over a guy?”

“How so?”

“Well, I notice a lot of the guys here, the impersonators. Some have named their kids after Elvis or Lisa Marie. They get so into their roles it’s a good thing there aren’t TV sets around the backstage area.”

“TV sets?”

“I’d expect some of these guys to shoot out the picture tubes when they get a little frustrated. Elvis was kinda crazy that way.”

“From what I’ve read, Elvis was drugged out of his mind, all on doctor-obtained prescription drugs, of course. Any of the impersonators seem to be taking drugs? There might be pressure to use speed to better imitate his energetic performances. The guy who went into the pool might have had a drug overdose.”

“When you get down to the other dressing rooms, send a couple of my bros back, and I’ll start asking around.”

“Has anybody mentioned which Elvis impersonator died?”

“Naw. I’ve seen the police all over the place asking questions, and even these Memphis Mafia hotel securitytypes, but you know what me and my brothers think of them.”

“That they’re more than who they pretend to be. But what else can you expect at a gathering of Elvis imitators?”

Ralph struck an Elvis pose and sang the opening of “T-R-O-U-B-L-E.”

Temple nodded her approval. There was an Elvis song for every occasion. Despite his increasingly calamitous lifestyle, the man had been a singin’ fool.

She was relieved to see that Crawford Buchanan had disappeared from the dressing room scene before he could make another kind of scene.

Elvis certainly brought out strange passions in people.

Not her. She was merely masquerading as an inquiring reporter, not in the trying and true C. B. gossip-rag mode.

“You covering this?” a friendly voice called out. “What happened to your on-camera guy?”

Temple smiled wryly at the assumption that she was an off-camera producer and Matt was the upfront reporter. Guess she’d been right to leave TV news.

Mike—or was it Jerry?—came barreling out of a crowd of his twins to say hello.

What a perfect situation for murder: a confusing mob of potential victims/killers all done up to look like each other.

“Wow.” Mike seemed out of breath. “This is a media frenzy. It’s great for the pageant and us guys, but kinda hard on the hotel and the dead guy. I just got interviewed for Hot Heads. You know, the entertainment world TV show? I got to do a minute of “Suspicious Minds” for their cameraman. They want to use the song as a theme for what might be going on here.”

“Clever. And good exposure for you. Say, has anybody figured out which impersonator died in the pool?”

Mike bit his bottom lip, which emphasized the slight curl in the upper left lip. Just like Elvis.

“Mike, before you answer, how do you do that?” “Do what? Besides being cool and being Elvis.” “The lip curl. Isometric exercises?”

“Naw. Too hard.” He leaned so close that Temple could smell the Dentine on his breath. “Trade secret. Promise you won’t use it.”

“I look like I could imitate Elvis?”

His laugh caused smooth dark heads all around to turn their way. “Guess not. Liquid latex. Used for years by old-time stage actors. Guess the special effects wizards have higher-tech methods nowadays.”

“Oh, yeah. That’s the stuff that tightens the skin and makes realistic scars.”

“I use just a little. If the spotlight catches the shiny part, it looks like sweat.”

“Sweat is good?”

“Sweat is great. Elvis perspired like a sprinkler system. It showed he was giving his all. Had guys onstage bringing him water and towels. In with one, out with the other. Did you know that some of his costumes weighed thirty pounds?”

“Figures. Opera costumes are awfully heavy, and Elvis was his own opera company, wasn’t he, with the elaborate costumes, and giving away scarves and kisses?”

“His jumpsuits were made of wool gabardine from Milan, Italy. Most guys here, we can’t afford that, not even for what it cost Elvis twenty years ago.”

“You know, the more I hear about Elvis, the more I get this sense of a heavy weight pulling him down. Literally, like the costumes, but also in the retinue he collected, the superstructure he had to support of people and debts, and then his own spending sprees.”

“You’re right. The man just finally sank under the weight of everything everyone put on him, and everything he needed to keep himself going, holding up the movies and the tours and the relatives and the fans and the employees. Like that world guy, you know—?““Atlas.”

“Right. Atlas. And the biggest thing to hold up was mostly the expectations, including his own.” He glanced down at the white silk scarf around his neck. “A lot of people have the real thing of these, not just soaked with Elvis’s sweat, but in a way his blood and tears too. When I do my act, this ends up wringing wet. I’m a basketcase. High, too, but a basketcase. I can see it myself, just pretending to be him. It was just too much for any one person to do alone. And Elvis was alone. He always kept lots of people by him, but he was always alone.”

“No one from the pageant is obviously missing, though?”

“One of us? Not that we can tell. There is one rumor going around. That it was KOK. You remember, the King of Kings we were talking about the other day? Nobody’s seen him around, and since he lives in Vegas that’s kind of unusual. Frankly, a lot of us were worried about the competition. He usually makes all the major Elvis events. Not that anybody would want the dead guy to be him. Still, we figure if he hadn’t shown up yet, he probably just wasn’t going to. So … the man in the pool could be anybody, even a fan who just wanted to wear an Elvis suit to the hotel opening. Of course a thing like this attracts a lot of wild cards. Real amateurs, first-timers, craaaazy folks. Hey, I know what you’re thinking: as if the rest of us Elvi weren’t.”

Temple absently watched the flood of Elvi in the hall ebb and flow. “No one ever claimed the suit that was trashed either, right?”

“I haven’t heard that anyone did.”

“Heard what happened to it?”

Mike shook his head. “Remember. Hot Heads. Probably tomorrow night. I should be on.”

He waved and dove back into the multitude, the jewels on the back of his jumpsuit flashing like a semaphore that turned red, yellow, and green all at once.

“Mine eyes dazzle,” Temple muttered.

Elvis had died young, but he certainly hadn’t stayed that way.

She wandered among the many faces of Elvis. Most of them didn’t look like they had started out resembling Elvis. No, first had come the admiration, then the imitation.

She would bet that most of them hadn’t done any more performing than at a local karaoke bar before donning sideburns and low-slung belts like glitzy holsters.

A slight Asian man danced through the crowd, on his way somewhere in a hurry. Five-feet-three, lean as stir-fried chicken, he caught the look of the young, mercurial Elvis better than the heavyset Caucasian men who outnumbered him forty to one.

Someone tapped her on the shoulder. Temple spun around, ready to snarl.

“Electra! What are you doing here?”

“I got invited back,” Electra said smugly, shaking her shoulders. “By Today Elvis.”

“Today Elvis?”

“You must have seen him around. The only guy with white hair, like Elvis’s father Vernon had before he died. He’s the same age Elvis would be today: sixty-four. Poor Elvis, he won’t have to wonder if we’ll still need and feed him at sixty-four. Anyway, Today Elvis was pretty impressed by my Elvis collection. Course, you don’t know with these guys if it’s you or your sweat-stained scarf, but I never could resist a younger man.”

“Elvis would be sixty-four?”

“Don’t look so amazed. He’s still pretty young. Clint Eastwood is pushing seventy.”

“It’s just that I’ve been looking at the photo-bios and you get to thinking that’s reality. So you have a, like, date with Today Elvis?”

“He invited me to watch the rehearsals.”

“Really. I should do that.”

“I’m sure you can hide behind my muumuu when I present my pass. If anyone spots you, I can say you’remy twelve-year-old granddaughter. Just wear your hair in pigtails.”

“And ditch the high heels. I know, Granny. Did you hear anything from Today Elvis about the identity of the dead man?”

“No one here has a clue. They counted noses and they know it’s not one of them, that’s all.”

“So when’s the rehearsal?”

Electra checked the hot-pink patent leather watch on her chubby, freckled wrist.

“Is that an—?”

“Elvis watch from the fifties. Yeah. My mother screamed at me for a week for spending my money on junk. I don’t wanta tell you what it’s worth today. Even you might mug me for it.”

“You’ve never worn it when I’ve been around before.”

“I don’t wear my souvenirs. But these guys appreciate this stuff. Makes me the queen of the hop again.” Electra primped her hair, which had been rinsed a tasteful lavender. “The rehearsal is in twenty minutes, and only the media is allowed in. Besides friends and family of the performers, of course. Which is we. Us?”

“Whatever. I can’t be grammatical without a pencil or a keyboard in my hands. Let’s duck into Priscilla’s dressing room so I can change into my tennies, and then it’s off to see the weird wolves, Granny.”

Quincey was absent from the room, so Temple did a shoe-change, and in forty seconds flat her feet were level instead of inclined.

“You do look awfully young,” Electra commented, “without those high heels.”

“Don’t even need pigtails, huh?”

“A bow on one side of your head would help.” “Argh! I don’t do bows.”

On that declaration of independence, they left the dressing room and climbed the backstage stairs. At the top stood a man in black, legs spread, hands clasped in front, poker face shaded by a snap-brim early-sixties fedora.

“You okayed for the rehearsal area?” he asked. Electra flashed her yellow pass card. Temple flashed what she hoped was an eager teenage grin.

With a grunt, the guard nodded them past.

“This reminds me of the security the real Elvis had,” Electra grumbled as Temple led her through the clutter of the wings to the steps leading down into the vast theater’s house.

“I can’t believe you actually lined up and screamed. Those girls in the photos look so—”

“So uncool. Sweaters and bobby socks, and those circle skirts that swept the floor when you sat and that everybody stepped on. That’s what Elvis should have sang, ‘Don’t Step on My Pink Poodle Skirt.’ “

“Hardly suitable for Elvis.”