Daniel Klein (5 page)

Read Daniel Klein Online

Authors: Blue Suede Clues: A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley

Tags: #Fiction, #General, #Mystery & Detective

BOOK: Daniel Klein
12.25Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“But there was one exception, a makeup artist named Connie Spinelli. I got her on the phone at her home and she said that Holly McDougal was the wildest kid she ever knew. That she did all kinds of crazy things and told Connie all about them. She said that she had stories about Holly that would make a stripper blush to her ankles.” Clifford's sallow face momentarily brightened. “Those were her exact words—‘make a stripper blush to her ankles.' Droll image, eh, Jodie?”
“What exactly did she tell you about Holly?” Elvis asked.
“Not a thing, as it turned out,” Clifford said. “We made a date to meet the next morning at a coffee shop near the studio. I waited two hours for her, then went over to MGM and asked if she'd come in yet. She hadn't. In fact, they said Miss Spinelli's employment with them had been terminated the day before. I called her at her home again, but there was no answer. And when I went out there later that day, a neighbor said that she had gone out the night before and not
come back. She didn't come back the next day either. Or the next. And the day after that, we went to trial without the benefit of Miss Connie Spinelli's testimony.”
“Have you tried to find her since then?” Elvis asked.
“It was a little late for that, don't you think?” Clifford shrugged defensively. “Look, Jodie, I don't know what your relationship with Mr. Littlejon is. And God knows, I appreciate the way you do business.” Here, he patted his money-bulging pocket. “But I'd be misleading you if I told you we had a prayer of reopening this case, let alone of exonerating Littlejon.”
“How come?”
“Because you haven't heard the worst of it,” Clifford said. “Like about Miss Nanette Poulette, Littlejon's so-called girlfriend. If there were ever any doubts in the jury's mind before she took the stand, they were gone afterward. That woman handed them the keys to the California Correctional Institution and told them to lock Littlejon up and throw them away.”
“What did she say?” Elvis asked.
“She said in no uncertain terms that her boyfriend was a sexual pervert. She said he liked to play sick little games at home with her. Dress-up games. He'd bring home costumes from the wardrobe room for her to wear, Little Bo Peep outfits and little schoolgirl outfits. Those were his favorites, she said, the schoolgirl outfits with short short kilts and pleated white blouses. She'd put them on and then he would chase her around the house, calling, ‘Oh, little girl? Where are you? I'm going to get you, little girl.' And then when he caught her, he'd get rough with her. A good spanking for openers.”
Elvis put his hand to his forehead. If there was one thing about human nature that he would never understand, it was why people were always trying to turn sex into something that it wasn't. They took this God-given beautiful thing and turned it into scum. It was a psychological problem, he'd read, but that didn't keep Elvis from feeling utter disgust when he heard stories like this one. And he didn't think he could stomach many more like it. Maybe it was time to bail out of this whole business. Call the six hundred dollars in
Clifford's pocket an act of charity and get back to his real life.
“Littlejon denied the whole thing,” Clifford abruptly went on. “He told me she made the whole thing up, and the truth is, I tended to believe him. Because Nanette's little courtroom performance seemed to break his heart more that anything else that happened to him. He said that he'd never had a more tender love in his whole life than the one he had for her. Of course, Littlejon blamed himself for Nanette's lie. He said she was probably so hurt to find out that he'd been playing around with Holly that she wanted to get back at him. Sometimes, he even said that he deserved to spend the rest of his life in prison just for that, just for cheating on the love of his life.”
Once again, Elvis found himself feeling for that poor soul, Squirm Littlejon. “I don't suppose he has seen her since then,” he said. “No visits.”
“Not likely,” Clifford replied. “From what I hear, she's been doing very well in the movie business. She changed her name back to Nancy Pollard and went into some kind of production work.”
“Where?”
“MGM.”
Elvis impulsively reached for the phone on Clifford's desk. “Mind if I make a call?”
“Depends on where to.”
“Take it out of your expenses,” Elvis snapped, dialing the studio and telling the switchboard operator that he wanted to speak with Tom Parker.
“Who should I say is calling?” the operator asked.
Elvis eyed Clifford. “Jodie,” he said to the operator, “Jodie Tatum.”
Parker picked up himself. “Where the hell are you?” was his greeting.
“Sorry I'm late,” Elvis said. “Something came up.”
“Damn it, Elvis, do you know what it costs to keep twenty-five people standing around on a movie set? And all of them union, right down to the second gaffer?”
“I'll cover it. Be there in an hour.” Elvis hung up and nodded to
Clifford. “Listen, I've got to be somewhere, Mr. Clifford. I'll see if I can find that stuntman, Grieves. Miss Pollard too. And if anybody knows what became of the Spinelli woman. Meantime, why don't you go out to Miss McDougal's neighborhood again and root around. I'd skip her mother and neighbors this time, but maybe you can find where she went to school and her church and people she knew there.”
Clifford's eyes belied a flicker of anxiety. It probably wasn't simply the prospect of roaming around East L.A. that worried him—it was the prospect of having to leave his office at all.
“One last thing,” Elvis said, standing and gesturing to Clifford's desk. “I'd like to take the transcript of Littlejon's trial with me. Bedtime reading.”
Now Clifford looked seriously alarmed. “I, uh, I don't think that would be such a good idea,” he stammered.
“Why not?”
“You see, there's only one copy, Mr. Tatum, and-”
“I'll take good care of it.”
“It will just seem like a lot of mumbo-jumbo to you,” Clifford persisted.
“You get a lot of experience with mumbo-jumbo in my business,” Elvis replied, extending his hand across the desk. “Let's not waste time, Mr. Clifford.”
Clifford reluctantly gathered up several sheaves of paper, stuck them helter-skelter into a file folder, and handed them to Elvis. He followed Elvis to the office door.
“Some people say that everybody has a twin,” Clifford blurted out as Elvis was about to leave.
“What do they mean by that?”
Clifford shrugged, smiling grimly. “That whatever you do, there's somebody out there—your twin—doing the exact opposite thing at the same time.”
“What the devil for?”
“Balance,” Clifford said. “Cosmic balance.”
O Shine On Me!
E
lvis came trotting into Colonel Parker's office at one-fifteen, one hour to the minute after he'd phoned.
“Do me a favor, Colonel,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt. “Call down to makeup and say I'm on my way. Likewise to wardrobe. I'll be on the set in thirty minutes flat. You tell Gene I'm just aching to dance the hoedown.”
Colonel glanced up at him from his desk, a disdainful expression on his face. “You seem awful cheerful for a man who just skimmed four thousand dollars off our profits,” he said.
“Got to be,” Elvis replied, slipping out of his shirt and tossing it on a chair. “There's a lot of sorrowful people out there. Got to keep the balance.”
“Well, while you're feeling so chipper, you might want to take a look at this morning's mail.” Parker wagged his head toward the corner. Two more peach crates had been added, both of them brimming with film scripts. “Sixty-five so far, and that's before the morning papers came out,” Parker said. “But you'll be pleased to hear that at least three of them are by truck drivers. Didn't see any by fishermen though.”
“Actually, it's sixty-six,” Elvis said blithely, already on his way out the door. “I got one hand delivered to me last night.”
Madge Dickerson greeted him at the makeup department door with, “So, who are you today, Elvis?”
“Jodie,” Elvis replied, settling into the leather-padded chair.
“Well, then it's a good thing I snatched that wig back from Mr. Parker,” she laughed. “That man was growing attached to it.”
“He always wanted to be a blond,” Elvis said, closing his eyes tight as Madge began lathering on the tawny foundation that was supposed to give Jodie Tatum a woodsy appearance to contrast with the soft, pale face of his look-alike cousin, Lieutenant Josh Morgan. “You've been here quite some time, haven't you, Miss Madge?”
“Too long.” Madge intoned. Elvis could picture the expression of mock despair on Madge's face as she said this. She was a hefty woman in her late forties who dyed her hair a different color every week “just to keep the mirror from getting bored” she explained. Madge encouraged the impression that she'd seen it all in her day and was not about to get excited by finding any celebrity perched in her makeup chair, not even Elvis Presley.
“Then I suppose you remember a gal named Connie Spinelli who used to work down here,” Elvis said, trying to keep it casual.
“Yup,” Madge replied, not missing a beat as she patted Elvis's face with a cotton ball to soak up the excess foundation.
“Whatever happened to her, you know?” Elvis went on as if he was just passing the time of day.
“Couldn't say,” Madge said. Then, “Going to do your lashes now, honey, so don't squeeze so tight, okay?”
Elvis did as he was told. “Couldn't say or wouldn't say?” he said.
“Just
not
saying,” Madge said, giving the ends of Elvis's lashes a smart upturn. She'd once told Elvis that he had the longest lashes of any man she'd worked on since Clark Gable.
“I'd sure like to talk with her, Madge,” Elvis continued.
“Connie was a talker, all right,” Madge said. “And that's a terrible quality for people in our line of work. We hear it all down here, you know. Something about sitting in this chair and being fussed over makes people open up like they were in confession. And that's why we learn to keep our own mouths shut. Most of us, that is.” She
fitted a net over Elvis's head and tied it tight. “It's wig time, sailor,” she said.
Elvis opened his eyes to see himself in duplicate in Madge's hinged mirror—that blond hillbilly, Jodie Tatum, again. So which twin was he? The one out in the world doing the right thing? Or the other one balancing the good deeds with iniquity.
He rose from the chair, clutching the makeup towel around his neck. There didn't seem any sense in pressing Madge any further about Connie Spinelli. Truth was, Elvis felt a grudging respect for her after all the blabbermouths who had served him a hamburger or filled his gas tank and then gone running to the nearest phone to call the newspapers and repeat every little word he had said to them.
“Thank you, Miss Madge,” he said, going out the door. He paced down the hallway toward the wardrobe room.
“
Mr
.
Presley?”
Elvis turned his head. For a fraction of a second, he couldn't see who it was who had called his name. But then he spied a tiny Chinese woman huddled between the water cooler and the wall. She looked frightened.
“Ma'am?”
“I know Connie,” the woman whispered. “I hear you ask.”
Elvis walked up close to her. Now he remembered where he'd seen her before; she was in charge of clean-up detail in the makeup room.
“Do you know where she is?” Elvis asked.
“Atlanta. Atlanta, Georgia,” the woman replied, still whispering. “She work in beauty salon there. Don't know name.”
“How do you know she's there?”
“She send my boy a birthday card,” the woman said. “She love children. Very good person, Connie.”
They both heard footsteps coming up behind them—it was a young man lugging an open box full of cowboy hats. He had that cocky air of most of the go-fers who worked on the lot, a look that said it was merely a matter of months before he'd be running the studio.
“Always happy to sign an autograph, ma'am,” Elvis intoned loudly for the go-fer's benefit, patting the Chinese woman on the shoulder. He waited until the young man had passed, then thanked the woman for her help.
She looked up at Elvis beseechingly. “Please, Mr. Presley,” she said. “Do not say I tell you. I need job very much.”
“Cross my heart,” Elvis said. “And God bless you, ma'am.”
Five minutes later, Elvis walked on to Sound Stage G in full Jodie Tatum regalia. “Beg your pardon, folks,” he called out to the actors and crew who'd been waiting for him since morning. “Something came up.”
A chorus of “That's okay, Elvis” and “No problem” came back at him. They were an obliging bunch, even if a sizeable part of their goodwill came from the fact that they were being paid in full for loitering on the set half the day. The assistant director saluted Elvis and called for everyone to hit their marks for the first take. They were just going to do four pickups from the hoedown sequence for coverage, he said, then he signaled a technician to start running the playback so they could get the rhythm in their bones. And there it was again, that god-awful singsongy riff on a Virginia reel, but this time it didn't grate on Elvis the way it had every time before; it was simply background noise for a job to get done and over with as quickly as possible.
Wayne LeFevre was in army uniform playing Josh Morgan today. As he sauntered past Elvis to take up his position, he gave Elvis a sardonic grin and said, “Been playing hooky again, pal?” Then Gene Nelson stepped out from behind the camera and gave his pithy directorial instructions: “Listen up, people. Look happy as pigs in clover, okay?”
They rewound the tape with the speakers still on; played backward, the piece had an eerie, Oriental sound—an improvement, Elvis thought, but nonetheless he readied himself to dance with a smile and a twinkle to rival any hog's. Gene called, “Action!” and off they went. Elvis jumped to it like a teenager at a state fair, swinging and spinning and leaping over hay bales with his head tossed back and
his hips swiveling. It felt good to throw himself into it completely. Funny how not giving a hoot about the whole thing freed him up. They were done, close-ups and all, in less than an hour and half.
As Elvis was leaving, LeFevre fell in alongside of him. “I'm going to miss this, partner,” he said, winking. “I just love being you, man.”
Elvis gave him a bemused smile. On location up in Big Bear, LeFevre had made a pass at every female he came within ten feet of, regardless of whether she was attached or remotely interested in him—even pretty much regardless of how she looked. He'd beam that hundred-watt grin of his, tell the girl in question that she was the most delectable little thing he ever did see, and then, often as not, suggest that he was already seriously considering marrying her. If he struck out—which seemed to happen nine times out of ten—he'd just bow and grin and say that it was surely a terrible waste of a divine opportunity, then turn to the next one and start all over again. More than once, immediately after Elvis had politely spurned the advances of some chorus girl on the set, LeFevre had appeared in a flash, telling the girl how badly he felt for her, but to cheer up because he, himself, was her consolation prize. “Hey, I'm almost Elvis anyhow,” he'd tell her. “Except
I
got all the time in the world for you.” When it came to chasing women, one thing old Wayne had going for him was an utter lack of pride.
“See you again sometime, Wayne,” Elvis said.
“Hope so,” Wayne replied. He angled his large head—the exact same size as Elvis's—to Elvis's ear. “But not soon, I figure. You're going back East tomorrow, right?”
Elvis shot him a quizzical look. “Oh, I'll be around for a bit,” he said.
Wayne appeared distressed for a second, but then quickly resumed his boyish grin. “Well, you just keep sending the overflow in my direction, okay, pal?”
Back in his dressing room, Elvis closed the door and slid the bolt shut. He picked up the phone and gave the switchboard operator a number in Alamo, Tennessee. A minute later, he heard a young
woman's soft Southern voice say, “William Jackson Clinic. How may I help you?”
Elvis couldn't speak. It was not Selma's voice. Of course, it wasn't. But at that moment, those words and that soft voice warmed his blood and cradled his heart as if it really were Selma DuPres on the other end of the line, as if the one woman he had ever loved fully and unconditionally were still alive and working in his good friend Billy Jackson's medical clinic in the colored section of Alamo. Elvis tried his best not to think about Selma any more. But truth to tell, he thought about her every day.
“I'd like to speak with Doctor Jackson, please,” Elvis said at last. “If he's not too busy, that is.”
“Who's calling?”
“Just a friend,” Elvis said. “An old friend.”
“It's Mr. Presley, isn't it?” the woman said. Elvis could hear the easy smile in her voice and it made his heart ache even more.
“Yes, Ma'am, it is,” he said.
“I'll get him for you,” the woman said.
While he waited, Elvis heard the familiar sounds of Billy's waiting room in the background—the crying babies, the laughing mothers, even the rolling snores of the elderly folks who lined the chairs along the wall, folks who came in every day just because it made them feel safe and comfortable to be there. Probably even more of them were showing up since the air conditioning had been put in—Elvis's gift to the clinic last Christmas.
“Well, as I live and breathe,” Billy said as he came on the phone. “How are you doing, Mr. P.?”
“Okay, Billy. How about yourself?” Elvis said. God, it was good to hear Billy's voice again.
“Middling to fair,” Billy said with a laugh. “We've got ourselves a new strain of flu down here. Virus must come from all those Northern kids buzzing around town registering us colored folks to vote.”
“The bad with the good, huh?”
“Bad's worth the good in this case,” Billy said.
“Amen to that,” Elvis said. Then, “I see you've got a new nurse working for you.”
“That I do, Elvis,” Billy said softly, a tenderness in his voice. The man knew instinctively how hearing the new girl's voice must have affected Elvis. “I put flowers out in the cemetery every week like you asked,” Billy went on. “And I speak your love to Selma.”
“I truly appreciate that, Billy,” Elvis said, his eyes spontaneously filling up.
“So what can I do for you, Mr. P.?” Billy asked, sounding sunny again.
Elvis swallowed hard. “I want to ask a favor,” he said.
“Shoot.”
“I need to locate a woman named Connie Spinelli,” Elvis said. “She's in Atlanta working in a beauty parlor. That's all I know. But I'd like you to find her and tell her to call me immediately. Collect, of course. Or get her number and I'll call. Tell her it's important. Somebody's life depends on it.”
“I see,” Billy said.
“I know you're busy, Billy,” Elvis went on. “So you just tell me if you can't do it and I'll understand.”
“It sounds like something I could make the time for,” Billy said.
“I appreciate that, Billy,” Elvis said. “I'll wire you money for the fare and expenses.”

Other books

Accidentally Amish by Olivia Newport
Kiss Me by Jillian Dodd
Project Ouroboros by Makovetskaya, Kseniya
The Fifth Dawn by Cory Herndon
Double Tap by Lani Lynn Vale
Salted Caramel: Sexy Standalone Romance by Tess Oliver, Anna Hart
Stealing the Bride by Paulin, Brynn
Hunter by Adrianne Lemke