Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (14 page)

“
The problems you describe are very real, except
for
the scale you live your life on.
You're too pampered,
that's the
problem. You sound too isolated. If you have so many people around taking care
of your every want,
why do you need to call me?"

“
That's just it. Seems like they're not around any
more. First my mama gone, then my little-girl wife
and
my little girl, then some of the
boys turned on me. I
don't know what
to do. I try to go on with my shows,
but
they take so much out of me, and it gets harder and
harder to live from show to show. Oh, they say, see
a
shrink, but I'm not gonna have no
guy rootin' around in
my head where
no one can see it. I'm in a rut and I
don't
know how to get out of it. I need to talk to some
body I don't pay, and you're the only one I could think
of.”

Matt caught sight of Leticia's flailing arm, hand point
ing
to her wrist watch. Almost out of time.

“
You have big problems all right; more than a few
minutes
on a phone can solve."

“
Maybe I can call again.”

Matt
devoutly hoped not, but this show was like an
old-fashioned
confessional: you couldn't stop anyone
who wanted to from walking in,
keeling down, and con
fessing all their sins.
Here, at least, you could cut them
off
the air if they took too much time, and this guy
definitely had.

“
You can always call again," Matt said
reassuringly,
but he had already grown
cynical enough to add men
tally,
if anyone lets you through.

“
That's good. That's all right." The man sounded gen
uinely relieved, and Matt felt a stab of pity for him.
"Thank
you. Thank you verra much.”

Matt rolled his head on his shoulders while taking off
the headphones, reducing the muscle tension. The fading
rant of a local car dealer commercial was still droning
in
his ears when Leticia burst into the studio.

When a woman has the face of an archangel, the energy of
a whirling dervish, and a three-hundred-pound
body,
any place she enters is a break-in.

“
I know. I let this guy run
on too long."

“Too long? Didn't you
recognize his voice?"

“
Recognize his voice?
The only celebrity I ever coun
seled
before was at ConTact, and this wasn't him. This
voice was baritone, all right, but with a slurry kind of
accent."

“
A Southern accent,
maybe."

“
Yeah, but it was, ah,
softened, like he'd been out of
the South for some time."

“
Oh, he sure has, honey chile. That man has been
off
the planet for twenty-two years."

“
He's that far gone mentally, huh? Sorry, I guess
I'm
not up on the entertainers at all the hotels. Should I have known
him?”

Leticia said nothing, just came over and enveloped
him
in a smothering, industrial-strength hug.

“
Matt, baby, you are the sweetest, out-of-the-loop
thing, bless your heart. Don't you even have a
clue who
that was? Watch our numbers
soar now! That was the
Hillbilly Cat,
Mr. Las Vegas, the King of Rock 'n' Roll,
E. the P., the no-longer-late Elvis Presley, or I'm just
ninety
pounds of soggy grits and chitlin's."

“
But ... he's dead."

“Not on WCOO-AM he isn't.
Ohhh, baby!"

Chapter 14

Louie
_,
Louie

(Elvis
recorded the 1898-composed "The
Whiffenpoof Song," which
mentions a Temple
Bar and Louie the bartender in 1968; it was
used in 1969's
The Trouble
with Girls)

Okay,
Elvis never recorded any version of my eponymous
song, that venerable drinking anthem that has so enliv-
ened the past couple decades.

But he
did
record "The Whiffenpoof Song," another, far
older drinking song in which I and my Miss
Temple Barr
are mentioned. (Indirectly, of course, but we always were
discreet. Or rather, I was. I cannot speak for Miss Temple Barr, especially
during her obscure years before she met me.) The King recorded Whiffenpoof back
in '68, and it was
used a year later in one
of his films,
The
Trouble with
Girls.
Not that the King had any trouble with girls other than beating them
off.

This is how I know so much about the ultimate E. We have a lot in
common.

After my
undercover visit
to
the Kingdome. it
is natural
that
Elvis should be on my mind. I have retreated home
to the Circle Ritz overnight, so Miss Temple finds me in
nocently sitting on her sofa or her bed, whichever will
lnconvenience her most at the moment, apparently lazing
away my days and nights. Like Nero Wolfe, my mind is
most active when I appear most physically inactive.

It is clear that any hijinks involvlng Elvis, whether at
the
Crystal
Phoenix or the Kingdome, will require a vast in
sight into the man, his life, and times. For me, this is
a
snap. We have a lot in common.

You could say that Elvis Presley and I are synonymous
with
Las Vegas.

True, he did not appear to recognize the concept of
"low-profile," and I am a master of blending
into my en
vironment,
but we share a certain raw animal magnetism
and a taste for exotic dishes both voluptuary and
culinary.

Neither of us went for health food, that was for sure. I
am certain all are
familiar with E's adoration of burnt-
black bacon, hard-fried eggs you could use as blackjacks,
buttermilk
biscuits, and the infamous fried banana
peanut-butter
sandwiches. To him, fruit and vegetables
were major abominations, as the Free-to-Be-Feline food
pellets
that resemble health-store pills are to me.

I do lack E's flair and passion for dressing up, and I
do
not need the services of his later,
ever-present sun
glasses. My sunglasses, like
my concealed weapons, are
built in.
I have these laser-fast pupils that contract to shut
out too much light. I bet Elvis would have really
grooved
on my eyes, could he have
begged, borrowed, or bought
them.

And
he would have tried

Chapter 15

Heartbreak Hotel

(Written
by Tommy Durden and Hoyt Axton's
mother Mae, snapped up by Elvis in
November
1955, and recorded in January 1956; Elvis's first
million-seller)

"Temple,"
Matt said to Temple over the phone, "can
I
presume on your expertise again?"

“
Something
to do with talk shows?"

“Just my radio show. Could you come up and hear my new tape
player?"

“Now?"

“
Today
would be good. Before
I
have to do another
show."

“That urgent? Well, sure.”

Temple hung up, looking through her closet for some visiting
outfit more appropriate than a sweat suit.

As she
hopped on one foot hunting the matching shoe
on the closet
floor, she did wonder how Max would like
all this
semiprofessional hobnobbing between his former
rival and herself.
Darn him, anyway! Why did he have
to be off on one of his mysterious missions, which had
gotten mysteriouser after the recent murder of the
strip
per he had tried to help? Temple
froze, transfixed by a
stab of real worry. Max ran on an exaggerated
sense of
responsibility for every ill in the
world. His teenaged
cousin's tragic
death in Ireland had started the cycle so
long ago ... who would end it?
Of course, it was ludicrous to consider Matt
anyone's rival. A less competitive personality she had never met,
or maybe she'd just never seen him want anything
he
had difficulty getting. Like her.

Had she
been drawn into this help-Matt campaign as
a clever way of
entangling her emotionally? Matt had
shown signs of being seriously
interested, also confessing that he had a lot of personal issues to resolve
first.
She sighed. Ex-priests were so hard to read. She only
knew one, admittedly.

By the
time she'd worried the pros and cons of both
men to shreds in
her mind, she was dressed and ready
to visit the apartment directly
overhead. What Max
might think of such neighborliness was none of his busi
ness, so long as it was just
neighborly.

When
Matt answered her knock, he seemed too ex
cited to notice her
appearance. "What do you know
about Elvis Presley?" he
demanded before the door had
even
closed behind her.

“Elvis Presley?" The
weird coincidence knocked her
out.
"Strange that you should ask, but virtually nothing."
"As
little as I'm likely to know about him?" "Probably not that
little."

“
Then listen to this." Matt grabbed her wrist
grabbed!—to
hustle her into the living room. There he positioned her dead center on his red
suede couch.

He then
grabbed (grabbed again) the stereo remote
control from one
of the modest gray coffee table cubes.
He pointed it at
the shelf unit stereo, which squatted like
a technological god
on a primitive islander's makeshift
altar: a board across two brick pillars.

“
Listen!" Matt ordered.Ordered? Matt? He didn't even
sit beside her, but paced behind the sinuous fifties-style sofa, so she
couldn't crane her neck to read his face for some clue to this charade.

A
moment later Matt's voice came over the tape, mel-
low yet intense, that nice combo of styles he brought to
electronic media so naturally that seasoned on-air per-
sonalities would spit to hear it.

A
young girl's voice, vacant and unformed, was fad-
ing off.

On
came a man's voice, a little mushy but also mel-
low in its own way.

Temple
listened for a few moments, then planted her
elbows on her
knees and her chin on her fists and lis
tened harder.
Behind her Matt paced, his footsteps mak
ing the fifty-year-old wood parquet
floor creak at
intervals, like a scratch in an
obsolete vinyl record.

“
'Son,' " she repeated the caller once. "That's an old Southernism."

“
Speaking of old . . . how old do you think he
sounds?"

“Ummm.
Mature. Middle-aged. But with a mischie-
vous,
maybe even melancholy boyish quality ... no, not
quite
that, maybe a little self-mocking.”

Matt
aimed the remote and suddenly shot the sound
off, either pausing or muting the
recording. "So? What
do you think?”

She
finally turned to confront him. "I think if you hadn't mentioned Elvis,
I'd never be thinking what I'm thinking."

“Which
is?"

“That
it's supposed to be Elvis.”

Matt
made a noise behind her, then came around the sofa end to perch uneasily on a
curve. "What do you mean 'supposed'?"