The New Elvis (16 page)

No one knew a bigger story was about to unfold. After new mother, Caroline Dayton, was wheeled into her private room, she had difficulty breathing. Frantic, she searched for her call button, to no avail. Kevlar was outside her door and, with no medical personnel nearby, he ran to her side. Reaching out for Kev with one hand while clutching the bed railing with the other, Caroline caught his sleeve and tried to say something before she lost consciousness. Kev listened to the distant chatter down the hallway, and a split second later, he sprang into action. He found the call button beneath the bedding and pressed it.

A nurse rushed in. “What happened?”

Not waiting for an answer, she pushed Kev aside, blocking Caroline from his sight as she bent over the bed. Kev pulled out his camera and readied for a shot just as the nurse leapt back, hit the code blue emergency button to alert specialists trained to resuscitate dying patients, and flew out of the room to find Caroline’s doctor.

Kev walked over to the bed and framed his first shot with his compact digital Olympus. Facial cyanosis had set in, turning Caroline’s complexion a bruised indigo.
Click
,
click
,
click
, and
click
. Kev took shots from the left and right sides of the bed, as well as from the foot and from above, raising himself up so he could shoot downward.

Caroline’s doctor rushed in just as Kev moved away from the bed. Barely giving Kev a second glance, Dr. Vipont jumped on the bed and straddled Caroline to administer CPR. The nurse returned with an ambu bag and administered mouth-to-mouth with the reservoir of oxygen to force ventilation while the doctor continued chest compressions.

Kev had the pictures he wanted, but he remained in the corner of the room, his palms sweaty and his pulse pounding. The new mother was flatlining. He knew the statistics. Only five to ten percent of those who received CPR survived, and if they didn’t get her heart started soon, brain death was imminent. The code blue team flooded the room. Caroline was given medications to stimulate her heart while Vipont continued chest compressions. The flatline tone on the monitor sputtered and changed. Kev looked at his watch. The new mother had been gone four and a half minutes.

Vipont climbed off the woman and stepped back. “Get her to the ICU.”

Now alone with the doctor, Kev stuck his hand in his pocket and pressed the record button on his Sony. “Thank you for saving her life.”

Vipont turned. “Mr. Dayton?”

Kev wagered this doctor didn’t like country music and wouldn’t recognize Clay, and he’d been right. “Do you know what happened?”

She took off one of her surgical gloves and shook his hand. “Last time I saw something nearly identical to this was five years ago with a schoolteacher who also had a c-section. She had an amniotic fluid embolism.”

Kev’s puzzlement showed on his face.

“It’s a complication of childbirth. Amniotic fluid enters the bloodstream and passes through the lungs, causing cardiac arrest. Embolisms of this sort are very rare.”

“When can I see her?”

“Stay put. We’ll come get you when she’s stable.”

Now, still in a hospital room, but at Highland instead of Santa Del Rey, all eyes were on Kevlar as he read his story to the group.

“Issue number one, folks, all mine! Just as I predicted!”

Pia cut more slices of cake. “Yeah, Kev, it’s all about you. Who’s not here yet?”

“Us.” Dan Quaid and his cousin, Ron Fletcher, stood in the doorway.

Marilyn crossed the room. “You must be Dan’s cousin.”

He shook her hand. “Ron Fletcher, formerly of
The Pulse
in Chicago.”

“I’ve got to talk to you,” Dan told Marilyn. “But first, everyone, yes, this is Ron. He was writing for
The Pulse
, but I convinced him he’d be better off out here with me.”

There was no doubt in Marilyn’s mind that Dan and Ron were family. Both he and his cousin looked like ferrets, with sharp noses, pointy incisors, and dark hair slicked back with gel. Dan said his looks, or lack thereof, helped him get stories. Few celebrities expected a homely guy to be a threat. Pia gave Marilyn a silent signal to come and talk while Dan and Ron studied the sample issue of
DC
.

“What’s up?”

Pia handed Marilyn the knife. “I recognize Fletcher. He was at
Flash
, talking to Bertrand a week before you left.”

“Maybe he wanted to join Dan at
Flash
before they knew I’d be starting my own tabloid. Dan said he wanted Ron to move out here.”

“I’m not so sure. What if Fletcher is a friend of Cecil’s, and he’s here to spy on us? In fact, what if Dan and he are
both
spying on us?”

Marilyn knew Pia didn’t like Dan, so by default, she wouldn’t like his cousin. Pia was suspicious of how Dan got sensational stories she never managed to score, and Marilyn wrote it off to professional jealousy.

Pia was insistent. “Something fishy is going on.”

Dan walked up behind them, and Pia jumped. “What are you girls whispering about over here, and what do I have to do to get a piece of cake?”

Belle finished unwrapping gifts from Dan and his cousin. Each box held a medium-sized cashmere sweater—a solid blue one from Dan and an argyle print in olive, white, and gold from Ron.

“So, we’ve got a problem,” Marilyn announced. “PPP refused to do a full print run, but Chester Mowbrey gave me a contact in San Francisco.”

Ron stepped forward. “I know I’m the new guy, but my old college roommate’s dad owns a press in Chicago. Have you heard of Insert Press and Distribution?”

Marilyn’s jaw dropped, and the ferret cousins chuckled.

Before Ryan could take a bite into his Hard Rock, legendary ten-ounce burger, a tiny, humpbacked man who looked past ninety made his way across the restaurant and stood before him.

“Pardon me for interrupting,” he said, “but I knew Elvis back in the day, and you’re his spitting image.”

Ryan pushed his chair back and rose up in greeting. “Have a seat.”

The man pulled out a chair and settled into it. He had a smallish head, a beak-like nose, and coffee-bean-colored eyes that looked alert and curious. What hair remained on his head was gauzy grey. “Last thing I worked on was his
Live on Stage in Memphis
album. I’m just a behind-the-scenes guy, but I was there for a lot of important moments. My name’s Barney Stern.”

Ryan still had his burger in his hands. He hadn’t taken a bite. “Ryan Wyatt.”

“Go ahead and eat, kid. You’re a growing boy.”

Ryan bit into the burger, then placed it on his plate and removed the top bun, scraping the fried onion ring off but leaving the lettuce, tomato, pickles, cheddar, and bacon. He replaced the bun top and took a second bite.

“You’re not from here. You on vacation?”

Ryan spoke through his mouthful. “Los Angeles. Here to see Graceland with my girlfriend.”

Barney rubbed his hands together. They were large, but the rest of him was spindly and thin. “Good, good. How old are you?”

“Eighteen. Just graduated.”

“Got any plans?”

“College, eventually.”

The old man smiled. “Bet you can sing.”

“A little bit.”

“Give me a few bars of a song.”

A bit of sliced tomato fell out of Ryan’s mouth. Was this guy serious?

“What? You’re shy? Let’s go to the john.”

Ryan was still staring at him.

Barney broke into a crafty smile. “Don’t worry, kid. I’m not some old perv. Consider it an audition.”

Ryan put his burger back on his plate, wiped his hands, and followed the old man to the restroom, where the old man leaned against the wall and waited. With
Blue Hawaii
fresh in his mind, Ryan began to sing “Can’t Help Falling in Love”.

A toilet flushed, and a man came out of a stall. He gave them both a look, washed his hands, and left, but Ryan didn’t stop singing. Barney’s attention was rapt, his sharp eyes gleaming.

At song’s end, the old man applauded and grinned, his teeth as yellow as hundred-year-old piano ivories. “Rock-A-Hula, Baby!”

“Rock-A-Hula,” Ryan replied, taking a slight bow.

The old man fumbled in his pocket. He pulled out a wilted wallet and removed a business card, extending it toward Ryan with an unsteady hand.

“If you ever feel like seeing the world, call this guy. He’d hire you in a second. Tell him Barney recommended you. I don’t say that to all the kids. You gotta have charisma and talent and, buddy, you’ve got it, without a speck of doubt.”

Ryan accepted the card without looking at it.

Barney wasn’t done. “Talent like yours is authentic, and to me, anything authentic is the truth. You know what The King said about the truth?”

Ryan shook his head and held the bathroom door for the old man, allowing him to totter ahead of him.

Barney stopped outside the restroom and rested his ancient claw on Ryan’s arm. “Truth is like the sun. You can shut it out, but it ain’t going away.”

Dan and Ron escorted Marilyn out to her topless MG, squeezed into half a space near the elevator on the third floor of the hospital parking structure.

On the way, she told the cousins about her return trip from PPP that morning. A bright yellow Ford Focus ST followed her onto the northbound 101, so she kept an eye on her rearview mirror as she merged from the slow lane to the far left and fastest one, next to the carpoolers. After a mile of industrial buildings, Section 8 housing developments, factories, fields, cement walls, overpasses, and on-ramps, the Focus joined her in the fast lane, two cars back. After another mile passed, and she slid across the lanes back into the slow lane to see if he’d follow her. After half a mile, he crept in next to her and then scooted directly behind her. Startled, she moved into the middle lane, and he followed. Cutting back, he followed again. There was a break in the glut of traffic, so she careened all the way from the slow lane into the fast lane, then back again, and the Focus followed.

The sound of a police siren pierced the noise of the traffic. Blue lights strobed in her rearview mirror, and the officer used his loudspeaker to command her to pull over. Chastened, Marilyn slid over to the guardrail on the shoulder and waited. The door on the driver’s side of the police car slammed, and she watched in her side mirror as a beefy, African-American cop made his way toward her car, pausing at her rear bumper, bending down as if to inspect something. It took half a minute for him to rise to his full height of six-foot-six and approach the driver’s side. “License and registration.”

She grabbed her pocketbook. Past the tissues, gum, makeup, scraps of paper, loose coins, and Bic pens, she found the pouch she kept her identification in. Unzipping it, she flipped past her credit cards until she came to her license.

“And registration.”

With a sigh, she leaned over to open her glove box.

“Slowly,” he warned.

She pulled out the paperwork and handed it to him.

“I’ll be right back.”

“Can I just ask—” she began.

His response was a glance over his shoulder. She pushed the eject button on her CD player, removed Coldplay’s
Mylo Xyloto
, and put the disc back into its case. Ahead, up the freeway, the Focus was parked on the shoulder beneath an underpass.

A chill ran through her.
Who is that?

The officer returned to her window and handed back her license and registration. His nametag said “Griffin”. He took two steps back and began writing a ticket.

Marilyn was aghast. “What did I do?”

“Failure to signal when changing lanes.”

“What? No one does that.”

“Then they should all be fined. Including you.”

“Someone was chasing me. They’re driving a yellow Focus.”

Griffin stopped writing on his pad. “Oh?”

“They’re right up—” Marilyn searched the shadows beneath the underpass.

“Right up where?”

“Up there. They were parked and waiting.”

“Have you been drinking?”

“No. I’m telling you the truth.”

Griffin surveyed the empty stretch of shoulder, then tore the ticket off his pad and handed it to her. Marilyn felt like crumpling the ticket and throwing it at him.

“What do I do if they come back? Maybe it’s road rage. Maybe I accidentally cut them off and they’re going to shoot me.”

The cop almost cracked a smile. “If you see your imaginary yellow Focus again, here’s my card.” He passed it to her and began to walk away.

Marilyn studied it. Alan Griffin was a sergeant with the LAPD.

Dan and Ron stood by the trunk of Marilyn’s car and listened to her story. When she was done, Dan hunkered down and felt beneath her bumper. “You say the cop bent down around here?”

Marilyn nodded. “But I don’t think he put anything under there. He’s a cop.”

When Dan stood up, he held a tiny black device in his hand. “You don’t, huh?”

Ron was excited. “Let me see that.”

Ron examined the device while Dan grinned at Marilyn.

Even though she knew the answer, she asked, “Is that like one of ours?”

Ron pointed to a serial number alongside the magnetic strip. “LAPD.”

Dan chuckled. “Deep.”

Marilyn asked another question she knew the answer to. “Why track me?”

Dan ran his fingers along his thumb, suggesting money was at play. “I think at least a cop or two are in Bertrand’s pocket.”

Ron walked three cars down and stuck the tracking device beneath the bumper of an off-duty United taxi cab. “This should keep them running all over town.”

There was no need to enter the room quietly when Ryan made it back to the hotel. Bea was sitting up in bed, watching Elvis sing about the warden throwing a party in the county jail.

Ryan held up the container, announced he’d brought her food, and then proceeded to come over to her bed and open the Styrofoam box so she could see what was inside. Her eyes lit up. He’d brought her a honey citrus grilled chicken salad topped with all kinds of goodies from blue cheese to spiced pecans to orange slices to red pepper strips to dried cranberries. She picked at the lid on the four-ounce cup of dressing and poured it liberally across the top of the bed of grilled Cajun chicken and greens. Ryan dug inside the white bag and came up with a plastic fork and three napkins. After handing them to her, he went and sat down at the end of her bed to watch her eat. Her hair was damp with sweat, hanging in droopy hanks that now appeared light brown. Her eyes looked tired, but she was smiling. She didn’t need to ask where he’d been. The bag had the Hard Rock Café logo on it.