Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (57 page)

A silence greeted this theory, during which they could
all
hear a really dreadful version of "Suspicious Minds" filling the
stage.

“You
want us to watchdog the Crawf?”

Temple laughed at their hound-dog-long Elvis faces.
"Guess
you heard Quin discussing her adored stepdaddy.
Yeah, watch to make sure he doesn't fall apart on stage
and ruin the show for all the genuine
impersonators who
are not Elvis, really."

“
Purvis." Cane-and-Cape lifted the former, and
tossed
back the latter. "Not such
a far-fetched idea. The guy
had something."

“
Maybe, but do you think someone would kill to win
a
contest, or to keep Elvis dead?"

“
In this crowd," Fifties said, surveying his
clones
backstage, "anything is
possible, including the impos
sible."

“
Do not worry," Oversized assured her. "We
will
watch the little weasel like hawks."

“
Are you going to stay now to watch our act re
hearse?"
Karate asked eagerly.

“
I can't. I promised a friend I'd stay out of the
field
of fire," she answered mendaciously.

Mendaciously was one of those long, not-readily
known words that made lies sound like something
naughty but noble. The fewer people who knew who the
real fake Priscilla was tomorrow night, the better. That
was
where she disagreed with FBI-man Bucek.

“
Meanwhile, once you get off, do you think you can
dig
up a new bridal outfit for Quincey?"

“
We got these swell costumes in no time flat,
didn't we?" Rhinestone Elvis waggled his glittering lapels.
"I want that cut down to my size after this is
over,"
Temple said, narrowing her eyes.

“I
don't know, Miss Temple." Oversized twinkled his
Elvis-blue eyes. "We might be too fond of our personas
to
pass them on."

“
Just pass on the name of your tailor, which I
already
know. But I'll see you in all
your onstage glory tomor
row night. I'm sure I won't be able to keep
Electra from
dragging me to the actual show.
What exactly is your
act?"

“We
do a medley of song titles." Fifties struck a guitar-twanging pose.

“
One Elvis, one title," said Karate, leaping
into a
deadly stance.

“Oh,
really.”

Temple
couldn't picture it, but perhaps originality
counted. Then
again, she thought—waving good-bye to
the guys and hustling offstage and
through the empty
house, gazing at Elvis to the umpteenth power—maybe
when it came to Elvis
impersonation, originality did not
count.

Chapter 54

Double
Trouble

(The title song from Elvis's
1967 film)

Temple
sat staring at the morning paper.

An
illo on the top front above the masthead showed a pseudo-Elvis in full writhe.
"Night of 100 Elvises,”

read
the teaser head.

The
Kingdome should be happy for this plug for its imminent six-hour opening
extravaganza of Elvis, Elvis, Elvis.

But
the local highlight of the day wasn't what had riveted Temple's eyes to
9.3-point Roman type.

What
had done that was the one-column crime story
below the front-page fold that
announced "Elvis imitator
iced.”

The
headline was crude and would drive advocates of
the term "impersonator," and even "tribute
performer"
nuts.

But that wasn't what had Temple staring like a zombie
at
the tiny type.

No, it was Lyle Purvis's name, right there in black
and-white. She was sure the reporter had gotten it right.
"Lyle
Pervisse." It was too odd to be a misspelling.

A rollerball pen drooped
from her nerveless fingers.

She wasn't sure she had done her task right, so tried
again: The "le" from Lyle, and the "vis" from Pervisse
equaled Elvis. That left the "Ly" from Lyle and
the "e"
from isse for "Ley. That mean the
"Pers" from Pervisse, combined with the Ly and the e, added up to
PresLey.

Oh, my.

Lyle Pervisse's name was an anagram for Elvis Pres
ley. Elvis ("lives") Presley had loved anagrams.
Of
course, everyone who heard the name
"Pervisse" thought
of the more common, phonetic
spelling, Purvis.

Could the unthinkable be?
Had the Crawf been
right? Had Lyle Pervisse really
been Elvis?
No.

He had been an Elvis fanatic. As a protected witness,
he could take any name he chose. He chose an anagram
of Elvis Presley. If anybody noticed, he was certified as
an
Elvis nut, not a rat fink on the run.

And he had to have been a rat fink on the run from
the Mob to need the witness protection program.
Simple.

Even
a crook could have an Elvis obsession. Maybe especially a crook.

Temple looked up at her computer screen. She was in her
second-bedroom-cum-office. One of dozens of Web
pages
on Elvis was frozen on the screen.

It described a seventeen-million-dollar armored-car
heist in North Carolina. The crooks were caught, and their
ill-gotten gains were seized and sold at auction.
There
were more than a thousand items, including fifteen
vehicles from minivans to a BMW convertible. There
were rows of
tanning beds and big-screen TVs.

But the lone star of the auction was a velvet painting
of
Elvis.

The loot went to prove, said one bidder, that you can
steal millions of dollars, but you still can't buy taste.
Still
. . .

The
item that attracted the most interest, that everyone
wanted his or her picture taken with, that made it into
the single photo used to illustrate this
cornucopia of ill-
gotten gain up for
sale, was . . . the velvet painting of
Elvis.

It went for $1600 to a pawnshop owner who intended
to display it with a plaque describing where it came
from.

Because that was the point. Elvis did one extraordi
nary thing with his life of fame and fortune and talent
and
lost opportunities: he never left his roots. He never stopped being a poor boy
from Memphis. He never went
Hollywood or St.
Tropez, and never reinvented himself
as a banner boy of Taste.

An Elvis is an Elvis is an Elvis, as the poet said about
the
singular and lovely rose.

He was a
King even a crook could aspire to.
And maybe more than one had.

Chapter 557

Scratch
My
Back (Then
I'll
Scratch Yours)

(In 1966's
Paradise, Hawaiian Style,
Elvis sang
this seductive number with
pussycat Marianna Hill)

I am still on self-assigned duty in the Kingdome.

It seems that guys in black suits do the security
detail
around here, so I figure I might as
well stick around too
until I see my
little doll through her descent into Elvis-
mania and back onto solid
ground again.

Despite the overpopulation of
Elvi, I have tumbled to
some other suspicious overpopulations too. Like
three
times as many Memphis Mafia members as there should
be. Given my unique position in undercover work, I am
soon eavesdropping on everybody.

You would be amazed how dudes
on both sides of the
law are willing to unburden themselves of information that
should be kept hush-hush in front of a
least-likely suspect
like myself. They should be ashamed!
But their indiscretion is my information highway,
so I
do what I do best: creep around, look innocent as well as
deaf,
blind, and dumb, and soak up the situation.

One
thing going down that
I
decidedly do not like
is the
absence of Miss Quincey Conrad and
the subsequent
presence of my Miss
Temple. When
I
see the Fontana
brothers come in early flourishing a plastic clothing bag
about eight feet long,
I
am pretty sure what Miss Temple
is up to: an unauthorized Priscilla Presley
impersonation.
EPE (Elvis Presley
Enterprises) will not like this, and
I
am even more against it.

I
am well aware of the climactic role this Priscilla per
son is supposed to play in the ceremonies up top. And
I
am well aware that young Quincey was subjected to
some
sinister tricks that may culminate in something even more sinister . . . death.

Steps must be taken, and it will be hard to shepherd
events onstage with 100 Elvis tribute performers milling
about among two dozen Memphis Mafia wannabes from
the
highest and lowest ranks of both law enforcement and organized lawlessness.

I
have a strong sense of competence as well as re
sponsibility, but even
I
know that an operation of this
scale is too big a job for the likes of me to make much of
a difference.

Unassisted,
that is.

So
I
amble down the hall—no one, and
I
mean no one
thinks much of an ace mouse-snapper like me hanging
out in basement dressing room areas—to my least fa
vorite
door.

Even from outside
I
can smell the fermenting
fruit,
not
to mention
bodily fluids.

I
close my
eyes and insert a forelimb beneath the crack
under
the door.
I
can only push a few shivs through, but
these
I
wiggle
around.

Primates are notoriously hard to teach, especially
if
they are of a higher order, but
this primate is on the prim
itive side, and
I
soon bent it to my superior
will.
As soon as it hears the scrape
of my shivs on the con
crete floor inside the storeroom, I hear an
answering
scrape along the
lock of its cage, which I have fixed to
never
quite close by sacrificing a luxuriant tuft of my own hair-shirt, thrust into
the mechanism.

Because the dumb little ape is brown, and I am black,
and the storeroom lighting is the usual monkey piss color
they use in such
places, the human who cares for the
odious Chatter was not likely to see my modification of
the
lock.