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

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Daniel Klein (16 page)

BOOK: Daniel Klein
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“This is very sudden.”
“I know it is, Doctor. First, I couldn't wait forty years. Now I can't wait a day.”
Garcia hesitated for only a moment. “I will make arrangements immediately, Mr. Presley,” he said.
“Thank you, Doctor,” Elvis said. “Bring what you can for that DNA fingerprinting. I'll fix you up with a lab up here for the rest.”
“Very good.”
“And Doctor?”
“Yes, Mr. Presley?”
“Bring Dr. Suarez with you, if you don't mind. We need all the help we can get.”
“I will see if that can be arranged,” Garcia said.
Elvis told him to call back with his arrival time. When he hung up, Regis was still standing in front of him, still dripping, but now looking extremely agitated.
“I … I'm not sure I'm ready to see Delores just yet,” he stammered.
“Then don't look at her,” Elvis snapped. “Now what about Holly's safety deposit box? I want to get in there today.”
“Not possible,” Regis said. “I looked into it. You need to petition the court to appoint a personal representative for the estate. And before you even do that you have to conduct a search to make sure there's no existing trustee or conservatoire. And then you've got to wait until they set a hearing date for—”
“Hold on, Regis. If I walked into the bank today with the key to Holly's deposit box and said I wanted to get into it, what would they ask me for?”
“That's what I'm telling you. They'd need a court order designating you as the personal representative of the estate.”
“What does it look like?”
“What?”
“That court order thing. What does it look like?”
“You know, it's an official document of the State of California,” Regis said. “Letterhead, official seal, judge's signature.”
“You got one of those?”
“You mean from another case? Yes, somewhere, I suppose.” Regis gestured toward his file cabinets.
“Get it!” Elvis snapped. “Then get your friend next door to make up a new one for Holly's estate with me as trustee or whatever the heck it is. If he can do passports, this should be a piece of cake.”
“I could be disbarred for—”
“
Disbarred?
From what—the corner saloon? Get it, Regis! Get moving now!”
Once again, Regis hopped to it like a buck private.
Elvis picked up the phone again and had the long-distance operator connect him with Bob Reardon's private line at CCI.
“Warden Reardon here,” a decidedly tired and taut voice said.
“It's me, Elvis.”
“Jesus, Elvis! I can't talk with you now!”
“Reardon, don't shoot him, you hear? Order your men—”
“Right, heard all about it on the radio,” Reardon groaned. “You don't know what the hell you're talking about, buddy.”
“You're a patsy, Reardon. They're using you. After they're done, they'll hang you up to dry.”
“Go to hell, Elvis!” Reardon blurted. “I've got enough grief without you—”
“Don't shoot him, you hear?”
The phone went dead. Elvis tapped the cradle until he got the operator again. This time he gave her the number for the William
Jackson Clinic in Alamo. While it rang, Elvis watched Regis pull a file out of a cabinet and start for the door.
“It's out on the radio already,” Elvis called to him. “That should make them think twice about pulling any triggers out in Tehachapi.”
“Let's hope so,” Regis said. He actually saluted Elvis before heading next door to the Rodriguez Travel and Counterfeiting Agency.
The receptionist put Elvis right through to Billy Jackson.
“What's happening, Mr. P.?”
“More than I can tell you right now, Billy. But listen, are you still in contact with Connie Spinelli?”
“Close
contact,” Billy said. There was a smile in his voice.
“How close?”
“She's staying with me here in Alamo. I've been meaning to call you and tell you all about, but things have been moving kind of fast in my life, friend.”
“I'm real glad for you, Billy. But I want you to keep a close eye on Miss Spinelli. I'm dealing with some awful people out here. Terrible people. And they seem to have one heck of a long reach.”
“I hear you, I'll look after her,” Billy said. “Listen, you want to say hello to her? Actually, she's been meaning to call you herself.”
“Sure.”
Connie Spinelli came on with a girlish, “Hi there, Mr. Presley.”
“You sure sound good, Miss Spinelli.”
“Never been happier,” she replied. “Listen, Elvis, I happened to think of something the other day. I don't think it means anything, but remember when I said the man who threatened me had a World War One army outfit on? Looked all spick-and-span like it wasn't real, but out of a studio wardrobe?”
“Yes, I remember that.”
“Well, the thing I remembered is that one time my friend Patty over in wardrobe told me that this exec kept borrowing outfits from her. Mostly World War One stuff. All the same size. And Patty said she knew it couldn't be for a movie, because they weren't shooting any war pictures at the time.”
“What was his name?” Elvis asked. “The executive, I mean.”
“It was a she,” Miss Spinelli replied. “Woman named Aronson over in development.”
“Thank you, Connie,” Elvis said.
“I'll put Billy back on,” she said.
“Mr. P.?” Billy's voice.
“What is it, friend?”
“You take care, you hear? I can't be losing any more kin in this lifetime.”
“God bless, Billy.”
“God bless, Mr. P.”
As soon as Elvis got the dial tone again, he called the Colonel's office at MGM without so much as taking a breath.
“Parker here.”
“Tom, it's me. Any calls?”
A sound like a sputtering lawnmower erupted in Elvis's ear. For the first time that morning, Elvis had to smile.
“Any calls?” Parker bellowed. “Any
calls
? Nothing but calls, nonstop.
New York Times
. ABC radio.
Where are you? What the hell are you up to, Elvis?”
“Taking care of business,” Elvis said.
“
Who's bloody business, boy
?”
“Squirm Littlejon's, for one.”
“Jesus, Elvis! You're killing us, do you know that? Killing every damned thing I ever worked for. They're going crazy over here. The last thing MGM wants is for this Littlejon business to burst into some kind of—”
“I don't give a mare's rear end what MGM wants, Colonel,” Elvis hissed.
“By God, you will, son!” Parker barked back. “You will and then it's going to be too late. You got a demon inside you, boy. A demon that's doing it's damnedest to destroy you.”
“I got a demon, all right, Colonel,” Elvis replied evenly. “And he's been suffocating for years.”
Elvis hung up before Parker could say another word. Regis was back, standing in front of him with a surprisingly animated expression
on his face. He'd probably snuck in another little tequila toast with his friend, Rodriguez. Never mind—at least he was back in action again.
“Rodriguez'll have that court order made up in a couple of hours,” Regis reported proudly. “I got inspired in there, Elvis. Listen to this.” He unfolded a piece of paper and read, “‘This instrument grants access, including but not limited to, the following sites and institutions: Barclay's Bank of London, Los Angeles Savings and Loan, the Brink's Bank,—'See that? I bury it in there so they'll never suspect—”
“You're a genius, Regis,” Elvis said, rising. “But it's time to pack up, partner. Grab that DNA kit. We're going to a funeral.”
The Ceremonial Blotting of the Tears
M
ike Murphy was coming up the stairs two steps at a time as Elvis and Regis came scrambling down. Murphy was a lanky young man with a freckled face that didn't quite fit with his prematurely bald head.
“Mr. Presley! Thank God, it is you.”
“Mr. Murphy, glad you could make it,” Elvis said, not missing a step. “I do appreciate you keeping your end of our bargain. Word's out on the radio, I hear.”
Murphy made an abrupt about-face on the stairs and fell in step behind them.
“My ass is really on the line, you know, Elvis,” Murphy said.
“Whose isn't these days?” Regis chimed. The man's mouth was clearly in full working order again.
Grabbing one of his crutches from the wall on his way out the door, Elvis used it as a cane as he made his way to his car. Murphy followed and automatically got into the back seat when Elvis opened the door for him. Regis gave directions to the L.A. suburb of Maywood and they were on their way.
Elvis snapped on the car radio and scanned up and down the dial, stopping whenever he heard an announcer's voice. In five minutes time, they heard three separate news bulletins on Elvis Presley's suspicions about the Littlejon prison escape. Two of the three included droll allusions to the questionable status of Elvis's mental
condition, one of these suggesting that he was popping pills of some kind, but Elvis couldn't have cared less because all three reports concluded with an update on the manhunt in the Tehachapi Mountains: Not a sign of Frederick Littlejon. The Squirm slithered on.
Elvis gave Murphy a run-down on what he'd been up to the last few days, leaving out parts and names that he didn't want in the press just yet—no mention of Connie Spinelli, nothing about Holly McDougal's call-girl operation or her impressive savings account. But he went into detail about Garcia's conclusive medical evidence that someone other than Squirm Littlejon had had sex with Holly just prior to her murder.
“Let me get this straight, Presley,” Murphy intoned from the back seat after Elvis had finished. “This stuntman, Grieves, was probably threatening you, but you're not absolutely sure. And he may have been responsible for Will Cathcart's death, but it might have just been some crazy bull with high blood pressure. But the one thing you are sure of is that this doctor somewhere in the middle of Mexico has figured out a way to pin-point who exactly had sexual intercourse with who and when. Except that nobody in the world believes him.”
“That's right,” Elvis replied.
“I better start looking for work immediately,” Murphy groaned.
“I got a job for you already,” Elvis said.
There was only one Christian cemetery in Maywood but by the time they found it, the funeral service was already in progress. Elvis opened up the cell-gathering kit that Dr. Garcia had put together for him. He made up vials with a few drops of suspensory fluid in the bottom, pasted blank labels to each, then handed Regis a handful of tweezers, eyedroppers, and little squares of blotting paper, and stashed the rest in his jacket pocket.
“Garcia says just about anything does the trick,” Elvis said. “A fleck of skin, a teardrop, a strand of hair. They all got the same markers under a microscope.”
Murphy rolled his eyes heavenward; he looked like a man who had just gotten off the plane in the wrong country.
“Got to be sure you got the right name with the right sample, otherwise it's useless,” Elvis went on. “That's your job, Murphy. Maybe tell them you're doing a story on the funeral for the
Times
and you want to spell their names right.”
“Just like that,” Murphy said incredulously. “While they're saying the Lord's Prayer, you and Regis attack them with eyedroppers, and then I ask them to spell their names.”
“Something like that,” Elvis said, pulling out his crutch from behind the driver's seat. “We'll play it by ear.”
Indeed, the preacher was leading the assembled mourners in the Lord's Prayer as Elvis, Regis, and Murphy approached the grave site. As Elvis had hoped, there was a load of the stuntmen present—he recognized some of them from pictures he'd been in, and the rest he could tell by their bowed legs and leathery faces. Squirm's fellow stuntmen were surely prime suspects. There was no sign of Grieves, though, and that was a real disappointment because he was at the top of his suspect list.
There were several surprising mourners on hand: Miss Aronson was standing next to Ned Florbid, MGM's production executive, both in expensive-looking tailored black outfits. Pretty high level representation from the studio for the funeral of a stuntman—especially for one who'd only been working for them for a year. And, lo and behold, standing just behind Jilly-Jo Cathcart and her two children was none other than Wayne LeFevre. Now what the devil was he doing here? Whatever the reason, Elvis was glad he was here; ever since Elvis had heard Wayne's oily encouragements on Holly's bump-and-grind screen test, he had suspected that his double had developed more than a passing acquaintanceship with the murdered teenager. This little stop at the Maywood Cemetery held the promise of being unusually efficient.
They were up to “Give us this day our daily bread” when the first mourner spotted Elvis limping toward the grave. She was a frail-looking woman of about forty in what was undoubtedly her Sunday dress and probably had been for a couple decades of Sundays. A
neighbor or rodeo wife, Elvis figured. When she saw Elvis, she stopped in mid-prayer and crossed herself like she had just had a vision of the Holy Mother. She nudged the woman next to her, pointed with her eyes, and when this other woman saw Elvis, she stopped praying too, right before she'd been forgiven her trespasses. Then a third mourner spotted Elvis and only few seconds later the preacher was left to finish the Lord's Prayer on his own, Amen.
Total silence as everyone stared at Elvis and his companions. The color came up in Ned Florbid's face so fast that he looked like he had acquired an instant sunburn. Miss Aronson winked nervously at Elvis. And Wayne LeFevre did a double take worthy of Buster Keaton.
“Forgive me for coming so late, Miss Jilly-Jo,” Elvis said finally, nodding to the widow.
“Honored you could make it at all, Elvis,” Jilly-Jo responded, nodding back to him.
The preacher, a white-haired, bushy-eyebrowed man in black clerical robes, gave Elvis a flinty stare which said that in the eyes of the Lord, Elvis was just another sinner. Elvis had to agree with that, all right, especially considering what his mission was on this sacred ground.
“Going to sing the hymn for us, Mr. Presley?” It was the poor-looking woman who had first spotted him.
“If that's what Miss Jilly-Jo and the preacher desire,” Elvis replied softly.
Jilly-Jo looked expectantly at the clergyman who sighed and then said grudgingly, “I guess that would be all right.”
Quickly, Elvis dug into his pocket and slipped Regis his share of the cell-gathering kit. “Go for the teardrops,” he whispered urgently. He closed his eyes and offered up a silent prayer, begging the Lord's forgiveness for the duplicity in what he was about to do, and then he spread his arms wide and began to sing:
On the other side of Jordan
Where the tree of life is blooming
There is rest for the weary
There is rest for me …
It was Elvis's favorite gospel hymn, full of comfort and redemption, and loaded, too, with memories of that funeral at the colored church in Maury City where he'd first met Billy Jackson. There was no problem singing it pure and from the heart—there never was. But as he sang, and as he watched the soulful strains work their way into even the most hardened hearts of those assembled at Will Cathcart's grave, Elvis felt a hollowness deep in his soul. If it was a sin to sing a bloodless song in a Hollywood movie, it was surely a worse sin to sing a masterpiece of feeling for the sole purpose of turning heartfelt tears into incriminating evidence.
But that is exactly what he was doing and, by God, it was working. Everyone was now weeping, including LeFevre, even if he was well known for his playacting. Didn't matter—tears were tears however you produced them.
Through half-opened eyes, Elvis watched as Regis and Murphy approached the woman who had first spotted him. Regis handed her a square of blotting paper like it was some kind of holy sacrament. She hesitated, looking inquiringly at Elvis. Elvis gave her a solemn nod, like a personal benediction, and she took the paper, dabbed her tears, and returned it to Regis's outstretched hand. Murphy moved in to get her whispered name, jotted it down on a page of his reporter's notebook, then pressed the little square of tear-damp blotting paper under the name and flipped the page as Regis approached the next mourner. Smooth as silk, like a pair of altar boys who'd been doing this their whole lives.
It was as if he had created a brand new ritual—
the ceremonial blotting of the tears
—and the folks just accepted it as part of the service. Well, heck, how did any ritual get its start anyway? The wafers and wine, the holy water, the memorial candles? Somebody had to get it going the first time, somebody the congregation trusted to know the right and proper thing to do. Somebody they
venerated
, like Elvis Presley, the King.
O Lord, it is a fearsome power and I am unworthy of it.
Regis and Murphy kept passing among the mourners, offering up the little squares of blotting paper to mop their tears and then taking them back. Not to be left out, the preacher himself reached for one of the squares, dabbed his tears, and then, going one better, gave the ritual his personal imprimatur by pressing the blotting paper to his lips before returning it to Regis. Florbid was next, dutifully following the preacher's example—he was, after all, a company man. But when Murphy approach little Miss Aronson in her Rodeo Drive-mourning suit, the two eyed one another suspiciously before getting on with the ceremonial blotting.
Wayne LeFevre was another story. He smelled a rat and started to back away from the open grave the moment he saw Regis begin his little operation. No ceremonial blotting of the tears for Wayne, especially not with Squirm Littlejon's attorney as the altar boy. Elvis caught Murphy's eye and gestured toward LeFevre.
There is rest for the weary
There is rest for the weary
Elvis repeated the chorus as Murphy strode rapidly toward the retreating LeFevre. Elvis's double spun around and broke into a trot with Murphy now jogging behind him.
There is rest for the weary
There is rest for the weary
Elvis raised both hands, palms out, a regular preacher man blessing his flock as he watched Murphy closing in, his right arm outstretched. He was pointing his tweezers at LeFevre like it was a lethal weapon.
There is rest for the weary
There is rest for the weary
Murphy's hand shot out to the back of LeFevre's head, the tweezers gleaming in the midday sun. Suddenly, his hand snapped back and he came to a halt. He raised his tweezers high and grinned at Elvis. Cell specimen No. 16: a strand of Wayne LeFevre's hair! Wayne yelped a few choice words unbefitting these hallowed grounds and darted across the street.
There is rest for me.
Elvis brought the hymn to a close and the minister immediately handed a shovel to Jilly-Jo to throw the first soil on her husband's coffin. Next came her children, and now Elvis fell in line with the rest to take his turn. Ned Florbid and the Aronson woman managed to squeeze in just behind him.
“That was beautiful, Elvis,” Aronson whispered, touching Elvis's sleeve. “Very poignant. Very James Dean. I kept seeing the last scene in ‘Rebel Without a Cause.' Something for us to think about, eh?”
Elvis starred at her incredulously.
“Good to see you, Elvis,” Florbid was saying. “I didn't realize Cathcart's a friend of yours.”
“Was,”
Elvis murmured. “Strange Mickey Grieves isn't here. He was a good friend too, wasn't he?”
“He's working today. Monster picture,” Florbid said, then went on quickly, “We really have to talk, Elvis. Maybe we can grab lunch together after this.”
Elvis followed the line a step forward, not responding to Florbid.
“We all want the same thing, you know,” Florbid pressed on. “I mean, the studio is a hundred percent behind you on this Littlejon business. But there must be some way of handling it without causing so much—”
“Please!”
Elvis hissed, craning his head down so that his face was just a couple of inches from Florbid's. “A little respect. We're at a
funeral,
for heaven's sake!”
Later, when they were back on the road, Regis and Murphy in the
back seat stuffing little squares of damp blotting paper into the liquid in the test vials and inscribing the labels with their donors' names, Murphy asked Elvis who the little bleached-blond woman was. Elvis told him that it was Nancy Pollard's assistant, Aronson. “Why'd you ask?”
BOOK: Daniel Klein
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