Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (38 page)

“
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 any
thing
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 laugh
able 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
Mil
lennium.”

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 mill
ing
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, El
vis 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 expres
sion 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-year
old 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 security
types, 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
imita
tors?”

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 re
porter.
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 any
body
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
sys
tem. 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 El
vis 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 col
lected, 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 every
thing 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
think
ing: 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.
Prob
ably
tomorrow night. I should be on.”

He waved and dove back into the multitude, the jew
els on the back of his jumpsuit flashing like a semaphore
that
turned red, yellow, and green all at once.