Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (11 page)

“I know Elvis must have, but
even the imitators?"

“
Oh, yeah. Unlike the cover hunks, their job isn't tak
ing it off. Their job is putting it on. The whole
schmeer.
Suit, shoes, belt, hair,
sideburns. Even a girdle, if nec
essary.
People think women are phony when they dress
up. Hah! No, those guys pay bunches and bunches to
look like a
has-been."

“So you don't get the Elvis
mania."

“
Oh, I get it. I mean, when he was young he knew
how to be one foxy dude, once he got over having
been a total groadie nerd in high school, but that's no reason
to hold anything against him. I mean, a lot of
surprising
people were total groadie nerds in high school."

“All surprising people were
total groadie nerds in high school."

“Really?"

“Haven't you ever felt like
a total groadie nerd?"
Quincey curled
the end of a false tress around a fore
finger. "Maybe. Once. For a
few seconds. But I got over
i
t."

“
Hmmm. Anyway, you came in here to make up, and
that's when you
found him?"

“
I came in here to check on my makeup bag." She
nodded at a
quart-size quilted fuchsia zipper bag on the otherwise empty length of communal
dressing table.
"Sometimes those Elvis
boys borrow my stuff, you
know?
Especially my Daddy Longleg's Centipede Swee
tie mascara."

“They use mascara?"

“Oh, girl. He did. Why
shouldn't they?"

“No reason. I mean, men in
theater use makeup: foundation, eyeliner, but mascara—?"

“
Well, what's a poor guy to do when his eyelashes
fade?"

“But Elvis was
dark-haired."

“
Only after a good dose of Lady Clairol. That's why
he had to
mascara his lashes and dye his eyebrows. I've
researched
these things. That's why Priscilla dyed her
hair jet-black. Elvis wanted her that way too. Her real
hair was,
you know. Dishwater brown. Yuck."

“What color is your
hair?"

“
I don't know. Maybe brown or something, but not
often. Well, you must know; you do your hair
red."
"No, I don't 'do' it. It grows in that way."

“
You mean you look like this naturally? Way cool.
Some people are
born lucky."

“Not many. And none of them
like their original hair, believe me. Why was Elvis hung up on dark hair?"

“He decided that dark-haired
actors had better movie careers, that they came off better on the screen."

“
You
have
researched
this." Temple couldn't help
sounding impressed.

“
Oh, yeah. I even had to go in and apply for a library
card so I could take out all the books on Elvis. No
way
am I being paid enough to buy
them. Did you know
there were places
that had all these books on people's
lives,
with all the dirty parts left in? Free? Weird. And
Elvis was one of the
weirdest."

“So I've heard tell."
Temple turned to regard the con
struction on
the floor. "It's the wig that fools you into
thinking it's a real body at first glance. Somebody
worked overtime to fashion this makeshift
Elvis. Any
idea why?”

Quincey
interlaced her dagger-tipped fingers. "Yeah.
They all hate me.
They want to get me. This was just
another warning.”

Temple
pulled out a wooden chair and sat on it. "1
know about that."

“
Is that why you're here?" Quincey's posture perked
up. She looked like an overdressed puppet whose
invis
ible strings had just been pulled taut.

“Yup. Your mother called me
in.”

Quincey deflated into a
scornful sixteen-year-old. "My mother."

“
She's really concerned about you. Okay, that's an old story and you're
tired of it. But after what I've seen here,
I'm concerned about you too.”

Quincey slumped, lipsticked
bottom lip swollen with rebellion. "You're not my mother."

“
Darn right, I'm not. So I can walk right out on you, and this murdered
scarecrow, and my conscience won't
bother me one little teeny bit."

“Good!"

“Just what I think."

“Then why aren't you
walking?"

“
And leave the scene of a crime unguarded? You go
ahead."

“Right." Quincey jumped
up, shaking out her Priscilla
tresses like a
spoiled preschooler. "I know what I'm do
ing, I'm getting paid for it. I'm good at it. I'll be all
right."

“Right."

“Okay." Quincey
swept—and in a floor-length pink polyester dress with girlish ties at the back
it's hard to "sweep"—to the dressing room door.

“
Not only that," Temple added grudgingly. "You've
even
got the screams down real good.”

Quincey's
back stiffened. Then she turned. "You re
ally think someone
wants to kill me? I mean, Priscilla?"
"I don't know yet. Do you?”

Quincey
shook her head, no small achievement with
about twelve
pounds of borrowed hair on her head. "Did
you hear about the . . . tattoo?"

“I heard about a razor
attack."

“
Oh, Mom loves to exaggerate! It was just four little
slashes. Really, all the girls at school are so
jealous. It's
so cool, and I didn't
even have to pay for it. And no
one
can blame me for getting it, like a real tattoo. 'E' as in Elvis. The girls at
school are beginning to think
even
Elvis might be cool. So I didn't tell them the really
bad parts about
his life."

“
I'm sure he appreciates your discretion, wherever
he
is."

“He
really, you know, liked girls my age. Or younger. Even when he was really old,
like forty."

“
Really?" Despite her acceptably cool tone,
Temple
felt a stab of what could only
be borrowed maternal
outrage.

“
That's why
I'm
so perfect to play Priscilla.
I'm just
like her." She moved to
the mirror, stared at her false
image. "I even look like her.”

Temple didn't tell her that Priscilla in this form was
an icon, just as Elvis in his many incarnations was al
ways an icon. That these carefully created images could
be assumed by anybody who cared enough to try rea
sonably hard. Archetypes. Sixties Priscilla the virgin-
whore. Elvis . . . the what? Temple could tell by taking
one look at Quincey's Priscilla what the image con
veyed. She didn't know enough about Elvis to do other
than guess. Rebel, maybe, like James Dean. But that had
to
have been fifties Elvis. What would explain seventies Elvis?

“
How did you get this gig?" Temple asked.
Merle had
told her, but she wanted to
hear Quincey's version.
Mother and
daughter were each at an age, and a stage
in their relationship, where the chances of anything
about them
jibing were nil.

Quincey
sighed. "Crawf, who else?"

“
`Crawf?' That's what you call him?"

“Yeah.
What's it to you?"

“I
call him 'Awful Crawford' myself."

“
`Crawf' sort of sounds like
barfing.""Especially if you have a cat."

“You have a cat?"

“As much as anyone ever
does."

“Crawf hates cats."

“
I'm not surprised. You
can't trust anyone who
doesn't like cats.”

Quincey' s Egyptian eyes lowered to the gaudy faux
body on the floor. "Did Elvis like cats, I
wonder?"
"Don't you know, with all that
reading?"

“
No . . . he had a few dogs and horses, but I never
heard
of a cat.”

Temple
nodded sagely. Sometimes the most important things about people never made it
into the history books.

Chapter 10

The Hillbilly Cat
Scat

(Elvis
was called the Hillbilly Cat in tribute to
his mingled country
and rhythm and blues
persona
early in his career)

Did
Elvis like cats?
Does your daddy not dance
and your mama not rock
'n' roll? I thought so.

I have made it over to the Kingdome hard on my little
doll's
heels.

And
my little doll's heels are usually hard on her and anybody who gets in her way.

So
I am discreetly eavesdropping from the hall when
this discussion over the fallen, fake-dead Elvis takes
place.

There
are so many fake-live Elvi in the world, not to
mention just in this hotel right now, that a dead Elvis, fake
or
not, has by now become a novelty.

Like
all of my breed, I thrive on investigating novelty. That is why I cannot resist
following Miss Temple to this emporium of all things Elvis, and my instincts
prove true,
given the shenanigans I am (over)
hearing about. While
a punctured jumpsuit hardly has the makings of a
federal case, a punctured Priscilla Presley impersonator sniffs of
nefarious deeds to come. My expert help is now at
the
service of one and all, whether they know it or not.

And I know a thing or two about the cool cats of the
world. That is how I am aware that when Elvis Presley
first burst onto the music scene, they did not know
whether he was black or white or blues or country, so
they
called him the Hillbilly Cat. See, hillbilly music was
all-white whining, and rhythm and blues were only wailed
in black bars then, so combining the two sounds
was
something daring.

It was so new and daring that it would eventually get
that Hillbilly Cat named the King of Rock 'n' Roll, which
is what everybody decided to call the new blend once it
was
rolling off of every radio in the country.

What do I know about music? Listen, I have been a
backyard one-man band all of my life. All of us down and
out sorts, whatever the color of our coats, like to get
to
gether for a good community wail now
and then. Not that
my breed has ever been
much chased by record com
panies throwing big-money
contracts at us, just by irate
sleepers
hurling shoes and chamberpots. Not everyone
has an ear for music. And,
luckily, almost no one has a chamberpot these days.

I must say that I am glad to see my Miss Temple get
ting out of the house and into a new environment. She
has spent far too much time around the Circle Ritz these
days, worrying about the care and feeding of this one
human
dude or the other, when there I sit needing a fresh bribe on my dry pile of
Free-to-Be-Feline nuggets.

But I see that shenanigans of a sinister sort have lured
her from the domestic front to the center of the newest
action
on the Strip, and that cannot be a bad thing.

As
for someone who would find it necessary to create his—or her—own murder victim
before plunging in the
fatal dagger, what can you expect in a town that is
all
show and go and no substance?
I see that the age of the Virtual Victim is upon us,
es
pecially when someone has gone
to the trouble of offing
the
mannequin of a dead man. Pretty soon there will be
a computer game available for this scenario.

But for now, the outré
spectacle of a murdered cos
tume is real-time, in the here and now.