The Enigmatologist (3 page)

John
pulled into Las Vegas, New Mexico around 2:00 p.m. He took his time driving
down, hoping the guy in the picture had already left town and he could turn
everything over to the local sheriff’s department, let them deal with it. He
knew the only reason
The National Enquirer
hadn’t relinquished their
evidence was so they could still run their story. A ‘Killer Elvis’ would
generate headlines for years.

As he turned off the highway, his stomach tightened and
twisted, like the cheese and mayonnaise sandwich he ate around
Walsenberg
had been a little sour. But the pain didn’t last
long, subsiding as he drove through town.

Las Vegas, New Mexico was a mix of old brick buildings,
prefab homes, stucco covered bungalows, ranch style houses. All of them looked
like they were held together by rubber cement and thumb tacks. The town was old
and rough, the opposite of an expanding Denver. It was the inspiration for
paintings of a fading America, or the setting for modern Westerns where the
family farm is jeopardized by industrialization. It was the subject of lectures
from Intro to Rural Imagery and Its Use in Word Scramble Design.

Several motels punctuated Grand Avenue, many of them
newer, built as the town stretched. John ignored them, looking for something
that met his art school sensibilities. Then, on the corner of Baca Avenue and
Grand Avenue, a galloping centaur repeatedly shot arrows at Earth, all in neon.
The sign for The Sagittarius Inn. It was a nostalgic beacon that had flashed
the same message for sixty years. Charged by vintage neon, John pulled into the
parking lot and checked into the pink desert motel.

* * * *

The
photographer’s name was Mrs. Elizabeth Morris. John had asked the hotel manager
for directions to her house. She lived on the west side of town, on the corner
of Socorro Street and Montezuma Street, buried in an old residential
neighborhood. Addresses had faded from mailboxes like dates on weathered
tombstones.

John parked in front of a small brick house with a front
addition that looked like it had been done by family. Faded vinyl siding
contrasted brown brick. A fallen air conditioner rested under a lopsided
window. Patches of dead, brittle grass, fitful tufts on bald earth, were the
leftovers of a lawn that had died years ago.

He walked up the gravel driveway, past a brown ’74 Pinto
and a trailer on blocks.

At the door, he heard music playing inside. ‘
(You’re the)
Devil in Disguise’
. A minor hit for the unmistakable voice that
changed the world.

After a couple of knocks, a woman in a white blouse and
tan skirt answered. She was older, aged by the desert’s unforgiving sun and
dirt-flavored air.

“Mrs. Morris?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“My name’s John Abernathy. I’m a private investigator.” He
said this almost like a question, as if asking for confirmation, then handed
her his card.

“You don’t look like a private investigator,” she said,
arms crossed, looking at his dark green zip-up hoodie, its ratted cuffs stained
brown from lack of washings, his faded jeans, vintage
Cape Canaveral
t-shirt,
the iron-on decal of the show’s cast peeling on blue cotton.

“Yeah, I get that a lot,” he said, adjusting his glasses.
“I’m here on behalf of
The National Enquirer
. Do you mind if I ask you a
few questions?”

Her eyes widened and mouth opened. She flung her hands
over her mouth, trapping her excitement. But the seal broke. She squealed. John
flinched and stepped away from the door.

“I knew it! I knew you’d come!” She screamed, grabbing
John’s arms, jumping like a lottery winner. “This is about my photo, isn’t it?
Oh, please tell me it’s about my photo! Please tell me it’s about my photo!”

“That’s right,” John said.

“Oh, goodie, goodie, goodie!” She jumped, clinging to
John’s elbows, shaking him. He clutched her shoulders to stop her and moved his
hands down, dislodging himself.

“The
Enquirer
hired me to authenticate it, see if
it’s legit. Now, has anyone else come around asking about the picture? any
other reporters?”

“I didn’t send my picture to anyone else. I’ve been
reading the
Enquirer
for thirty years. I know it’s the only paper
qualified to handle this story.”

“Okay, good,” John said, relieved. The intern never
interviewed Mrs. Morris, had never made it to town, had died before he could
talk to her. His death had nothing to do with the photo. He was probably just
in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or saw something he shouldn’t have seen.
Either way, it was someone else’s problem. And John relaxed a little. The
tension of investigating a murder was released, replaced with the prospect of a
simple case. All he’d have to do was find the guy in the photo and prove he
wasn’t Elvis. Easy. But John knew better. He’d worked for Rooftop long enough
to know that nothing was ever easy. The kid might have died before he could
make it to town, but that didn’t mean the guy in the photo wasn’t involved
somehow, making it crucial that John find him, ask him some questions.

He pulled his phone out of his pocket and flipped through
the pictures saved in it.

“Now, just for verification, is this the picture you
took?” He showed her the picture of the overweight man.

“That’s my picture. Do you think it’s really him?” Mrs.
Morris asked, trying to contain her excitement.

“You know,” as John spoke, he felt greasy, like someone
who sold used cell phones at the carwash, but he thought he still needed to
earn her trust, “I’m not supposed to say this, but I’ve done a number of these
investigations, and I’ve got to say, your photo is the best documentation of an
Elvis sighting I’ve seen. A once-in-a-lifetime find.”

“I knew it! I knew it!” She screamed.

“I do have a few more questions I’d like to ask you.”

“Of course. Please come inside.”

John followed Mrs. Morris inside, but stopped at the door.
The sight of the walls of her living room caused him to drop his phone.

On the wall next to him hung movie posters, Elvis in
colorful shirts being rugged, a clock where Elvis’s arms pointed to the hour
and minute and his hips swayed to the pulse of sixty beats per minute. Against
the far wall, a display case contained autographs, promotional photos, concert
programs, hair clippings tied with a bow resting on a small, satin pillow.
Magazines with Elvis’s faded face, from the different stages of his career,
weighed down the second shelf. The overburdened shelf sagged like an older
Elvis waistline. Porcelain busts, large and small, some formed into salt and
pepper shakers or figurines depicting movie scenes, lined the fireplace mantle.
On another wall hung a series of toy guitars decorated with images of young
Elvis encouraging children to learn his songs. Plates hung above the guitars,
showing highlights from Elvis’s life, the scene from
Jailhouse Rock,
or
Elvis surfing, scenes portraying him as vibrant. On a table next to the couch
was something resembling a
Fabergè
egg on a stand,
adding an implied class to the room. The egg was open, split down the middle,
revealing a tiny Elvis in a Vegas jumpsuit, like he had just hatched and was
ready to do two shows a night and matinees on weekends. And of course there
were recordings, shelves of 45s and 33s in plastic sleeves.

John had expected a normal southwestern home, with ceramic
cacti and purple and turquoise art like the houses depicted in his Regional
Home Décor 202 textbook. Unlike those homes, Mrs. Morris’s place wasn’t
dedicated to the desert’s color scheme. It was a shrine to the fallen King.

“Your home is amazing,” John said, in awe of her idolatry.
She was the type of person John and his art school friends would simultaneously
mock and revere for the sincerity of her devotion to kitsch. He picked up his
phone and walked around her living room, looking at her collection. He reached
out, jerked his hand back, then gave into temptation, picking up memorabilia.
He fondled a porcelain figurine, Elvis in a racecar from
Viva Las Vegas
.
He ran his finger over a gold ring with a diamond-studded horseshoe and horse
head. But stopped at a faded dental mold. A human incisor had been placed in
the mold. Next to it, a framed letter of authenticity. John knelt to get a
closer look at the tartar-covered relic. He shook his head, doubting that a
modern day grave robber had ripped out Elvis’s tooth, then mounted and sold it.
Then again, he couldn’t believe someone would buy half the memorabilia in Mrs.
Morris’s home, like the sombrero stitched with Elvis eating a fish taco that
hung on the wall next to the window.

 
“Well, I’m
glad you like it,” Mrs. Morris said, standing in the kitchen door watching him.

“Some kids I went to school with, they would die if they saw
this place. You mind if I take some pictures?” John asked, putting the stopper
back in an Elvis-shaped bourbon decanter.

“Of course. I’m happy to share my collection.”

John took pictures on his phone, then sent them to some
friends from art school.

Mrs. Morris stood in the kitchen doorway, her hands folded
at her waist. She smiled, happy that someone else appreciated her collection.
In the kitchen behind her, a crumb-filled Cool Whip container sat on the yellow
linoleum.

“What, no Elvis dog bowl?” John asked.

“Oh my, no. Elvis is way too pretty for the dog.”

The living room couch had also received the Elvis
treatment. It was airbrushed with Elvis’s face. John sat on it, gingerly.

And there.

Above the fireplace.

Elvis painted on black velvet, completely naked, with an
erection. John’s erectile knowledge was limited to his own, when he woke in the
morning, and a magazine Jimmy
Rosebottom
had brought
to school in the third grade. He thought he was a good size, but Elvis’s
painted erection, the length of a kielbasa, the girth of the fat end of a
baseball bat, made him feel inadequate.

“You like my painting?” Mrs. Morris asked.

“Uh, yeah.” John shook his head, refocused, his attention
magnetized by Elvis’s painted
wang
. He quickly took a
picture.

“Sometimes I can’t stop staring at it,” she said.

“I see why,” John said, resting his elbow on the couch
armrest, propping his head on his hand, fingers shielding him from the
painting.

She sat in a chair across the room, moving a quilt made
from cloth replications of Elvis album covers, and said, “Most people think I’m
a little odd for filling my house like this, but I don’t care. It makes me
happy.”

“I can see that. So, how did you get into collecting?”
From watching Rooftop, John had learned that the easiest way to get someone to
open up was to ask them about what they loved.

“Well, I suppose it all started with Elvis’s second
appearance on Milton
Berle
, June 5
^th
,
1956. I’ll never forget that day. We just bought our first TV and were really
excited to watch a broadcast from New York City. Well, I was, anyway. Herman,
my husband, was an old fuddy-duddy and never cared for that sort of thing.
Well, Elvis performed ‘Hound Dog’. In all my life I’d never seen anything like
it, the way he moved and shook his hips. Well, when he danced something moved
inside me. I jumped up and asked Herman if he would dance with me, but he sat
in his chair grumbling about corrupting the youth of America. Herman turned off
the TV and went and put on a Bing Crosby record. I used to love Bing, but after
hearing Elvis, Bing sounded like sour milk.

“The next day, I went out and bought my first Elvis
record. The man at the store looked at me funny. I was embarrassed and told him
it was a birthday gift for my niece. I don’t think he believed me. I was ashamed,
really, not telling him the record was for me. I didn’t have the confidence to
be independent back then.”

“You seem alright to me.”

“Well, I am now. Thanks to him.” Mrs. Morris pointed to
the picture of naked Elvis. When John lived in the dorms, he heard passionate
students tell stories about how an artist, filmmaker, or musician changed their
lives. And he knew he was about to hear the story of how Mrs. Morris was
reshaped by Elvis.