Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (49 page)

Temple's mind's eye saw senior citizens, even if they
used to rock 'n' roll. But who could channel Elvis bet
ter?

“
Izzy, is there anybody in this competition who
could
really be Elvis?”

He shook his head. "No contest. I'm probably the
closest
thing to reality, and I'm a far cry. A far cry. Hey.
Young lady. You just reminded an old man how inad
equate he
is."

“
No. I just reminded you how close you are. No one
else?"

“
Well ... I've seen most of the acts
rehearsing." He
shook his frosty
head. "Naw. Maybe . . . that guy they
call the King of Kings. Maybe him. Maybe. Heck, lil'
darling shiksa. He looks too young, but then you
kinda
hope Elvis would be Forever
Young. He's got the power.
Part of it, anyway."

“
Do you think he could still
be out there?"

“
Sheesh! Where'd this
kid learn to ask questions? No.
Elvis
is dead. He killed himself after everybody around
him let him down, after he let everybody around
him
down. He's better off dead. He
had too much pain. He
had too much .
. . too much. The man makes me cry.
That's
why I 'do' him. He makes me feel. That's a lux
ury at my age.”

Electra took his hand.

“
I'da saved him if I could," Izzy said, "but no one
could.
And especially not you, kid. Especially not you.”

Temple,
chastened, thought. She thought, rebelliously.
Elvis was out there somewhere, or all of this wouldn't
be
happening.

Elvis
was out there somewhere.

Chapter 47

There Goes
My Everything

(Elvis recorded this song about a broken
marriage
in June of 1970; it did well on three
charts)

"Isn't
Izzy something?”

Electra had scrunched down in her theater seat to stare
at
the dark stage of the Kingdome showroom.

“
You sound like the teenager you're dressed as. He's
an interesting man—"

“
And were you really serious with all those Elvis
questions?
Do you think the real King might be around?"

“
I don't know what I think, but when you figure in
that Matt is getting very credible calls from a
possible
Elvis . . . and that Quincey was seriously harassed, some
thing sinister besides murder is going on, but it
seems
so scattershot.”

Electra's eyes were still only for her new beau.
"Izzy
doesn't really expect to win," she
explained. "He just
does this to have
some fun. Who's gonna let a realistic-looking Elvis win? Everybody wants Elvis
at his peak,
even on stamps."

“I
guess he was something in his prime, to go by the
Fontana brothers." Temple eyed the awesome clot of
mostly
early Elvi at stage left, near the band.

“
They are so cute! I don't know if the judges would
let a whole litter win, but I'd vote
for those boys any
day.”

Temple scanned the seats in front of them in the house's
raked tier. Shiny black helmet heads pock
marked
the burgundy velvet seats like beetle backs.

She spotted Mike and Jerry fussing with their jump
suits in the wings, and the King of Kings watching from
the shadows of the flies. Probably sizing up the com
petition. From what the guys had said, dark horse Elvi
were always showing up at competitions, ready to dazzle
the
jaded Elvis world.

“
Even the contestants who've already rehearsed can't
stay away," Temple mused. "Guess they want to the see
the competition strut their stuff. Look! That's
the King
of Kings guy down behind the
Fontanas. What's he do
ing talking to the band? He's had his time on
stage."

“
He sounded like a perfectionist," Electra
said. "Elvis
was. You think he could really be . . . our boy?"

“
No! But he is uncannily good. Twenty years too
young. Although, if Elvis had cleaned up his act,
dumped the drugs, got some medical attention for
his
ills, lived clean, maybe he could look a couple decades younger.
Sixty-four isn't so old nowadays."

“Glad
to hear you say it, dearie!”

Before
Temple could congratulate herself on her new
maturity
about advancing age, the onstage band mem
bers geared up with the squawk and stutter of tuning
strings and
instruments.

Crawford stepped up to the center-stage mike. "Num
ber
ninety-nine.”

Entry forms rustled in the
echoing house, but Temple
and Electra were not
among those granted official doc
uments.

A guitar screamed, then twanged. The drums beat
their way in and then everything was cooking in the
manner
of overdone rock 'n' roll, a vaguely dissonant, deliciously anarchist stew of
sound.

A dark figure in the wings rushed forward, then slid
into a long knee-slide onto center stage: Young Elvis in
his fifties suit—loose pants, tight jacket, and energy in
carnate.

He rose by pushing his knees together until he was
balanced on the balls of his straddled feet, part acrobat,
part spastic. The musicians ground down into their
instruments as their music mimicked his gravity-defying
gyrations. "Tutti Frutti," the newest Elvis was howling
like a madman, or a mad dog, or maybe only like a
dislocated
Englishman in the noonday southern sun.

“Wow."
Temple sat up, Electra taking notice with her.

Elvis heads throughout the auditorium and in the
wings
snapped to attention.

Tutti Frutti Elvis had the right stuff, all right, Mama.
His suit shook, he shook, everything had to shake 'n'
bake,
and rock, rattle, and roll along with him.

When the number ended, a ragged chorus of claps
hailed
a rehearsal that had been performance-perfect, but already the lacquered Elvis
heads were consulting.

Temple could almost hear their judgments from where
she
sat: too raw, not enough variety; a shot of adrenaline, soul but no subtlety.

She
wasn't sure Elvis was about subtlety.

“
That young man has drive," Electra said,
fanning
herself. "Whew."

“But
he couldn't really be Elvis."

“
Him? Heavens, no! Way too young. Way too . . .
well,
Elvis.”

Still,
Temple could tell from the checkerboard of chat
ter and silence all over the theater
that this Elvis was a
new force to reckon with.
Acts were being modified even now to meet the challenge.

The next Elvis to rehearse was Jerry. She recognized
him as he walked up to give the director his stat sheet
and nervously eyed the musicians. She could guess that
he wanted to give them special instructions so his set
would
match the dynamic difference offered by the unexpected Elvis ahead of him.

While
Jerry negotiated, the audience fidgeted.

Temple
searched the wings for Tutti Frutti Elvis. She
hadn't seen his like around this place before. Even the
King of
Kings must be checking his crown.

Then the sound of an out-of-tune electric guitar
shrilled up onto the stage and into the sparsely occupied
seats like a dentist's drill hitting a nerve.

The
place had terrific acoustics.

Temple realized that she had heard this instrument
before, and it was a set of human vocal cords pressed
into
their worst extremity.

Quincey!
Her latest aria in terror lofted to the distant ceiling like a solo from
The
Phantom of the Opera.

Temple bolted from her seat. "Now what?"
Luckily,
she had her running
shoes on, and she put them to good
use.

“
Wait!" came Electra's diminishing plea behind
her.
"You don't know what you're rushing into.”

But
Temple did. Another nasty impractical joke had
obviously been played on the piece's much-abused Pris
cilla. She remembered the puffy, red, razor-etched
"E"
on Quincey's neck that
she had flashed like Elvis flaunt
ing one of his cherished
law-enforcement badges when
pulling over a
cute chick on wheels for a mock traffic
citation in Memphis. That girl's notion of self-esteem would have done a
sword-swallower proud. And here
Temple had promised her mother to watch
over the kid.

Other people were rushing toward the sounds, but
none
of them knew the route as well as Temple.

She got there first.To find
. . .

To find Quincey still in her civvies, with only the
swollen brunette beehive on her head, her fingers press
ing into her soft, teenage cheeks, screeching like a
slasher-movie
patron.

No
violated jumpsuit lay on the dressing room floor.
No blood dripped down Quincey's neck or
hands. Nothing was wrong.

Quincey pointed, hiccoughing with hysteria when she
tried
to speak.

“
Hmmmph, hummmph," she wheezed, a dagger-
long fingernail pointing as if transfixing a
killer in a stage play. "It's a ruuu-uuu-uuu-ined. They mur-mur
murdered
it. My bee-bee-bee-eueueueu-ti-ful gown.”

Temple stared to the aluminum rod suspended across
the mostly empty expanse of the dressing room clothes
niche.

The
white wedding gown hung there, shredded like a
toilet-paper mannequin. Cut into ribbons, the gown
hung, a
tortured ghost. Glittering piles of severed beads
mounded like decorative Christmas sugar at its jagged
hemline.

Another costume had been
expertly assassinated. Why?

“
There, there. There, there.”

The 3-D wool poodle on Electra's shoulder was soak
ing
up Quincey's tears. It was hard to tell which sparkled
more: the rhinestones glinting on the poodle's collar, or
the salty teardrops falling to the fabric in
cataracts of
distress.

Temple would not have known Quincey had that
much
water in her.

In
the hall, the crew and performers shuffled and commi
serated. Even Awful Crawford paced and stewed,
more worried about the show going on than Quin's
wel
fare. Preopening theatrical disasters were always exag-
gerated.
Lost costumes were mourned like long-lost
relatives.

Temple
dared not admit that she was relieved that the
cause of Quincey's alarm was so minor. Not that you
can tell a sixteen-year-old girl that her
destroyed prom-
queen wedding gown is a
small price to pay for a whole
skin and a whole mind.

Memphis Mafia were shouldering into the room to
take charge, enough of them to staff a Strip hotel and
the
local office of the federal government too.

Temple exchanged eye contact with the string of Fontanas
penned behind a wall of black wool sleeves in the
hall
with the other spectators, including the Crawf, thank God.