“This here zoo got a lotta friends. It’s the pride of Kresge. Them at the top are our Center Ring patrons. Even them Danish folk give money for the zoo!” He was in civic pride mode and beaming.
“We think this guy, Roman, moved on from the blonde lady you saw him with. He might have a new friend now. Any chance you’ve seen him in the last day or so?” I asked.
He turned his attention back to me, tilting his head back and looking down his nose again.
“Awww. That’s a cryin’ shame. They looked cute together.”
Morrison was still reading the patron list. “Floyd...”
“Then you haven’t seen him here with anyone new?”
“Floyd.”
“Just a second, Morrison. So, nobody new?” I asked again.
“Oh I don’t know. I mostly just sleep in here all day unless somebody needs somethin’. Hell, he coulda walked in an’ out with a line of Rockettes and I wouldn’t know.”
“Floyd, come look at this,” said Morrison.
“What is it,” I asked impatiently, stepping over to stand next to him.
Morrison pointed to one of the names on the list of donors. “Jon Burrows” was embossed on a small bronze plaque.
“Thought you might want to see this before we leave,” he said.
I turned back to the old guy.
“Do you know a guy named Jon Burrows?”
He worked his mouth but nothing came out. Finally, he just said, “Nope, can’t say that I do.”
I didn’t believe him.
“You do know him, don’t you? Does he come around often?”
Gus buried his lower lip under the whiskers of his mustache, sealing his mouth behind a wall of hair.
“Wanda sent me, remember? She also sent me to look for Jon Burrows. What do you know about him?” I pressed.
“I told you, son, I don’t know the man!”
Gus stood facing me, arms folded across his chest, lower lip pressing even more firmly up under his whiskers, saying nothing.
“Talk to me about Burrows. If you don’t I’ll tell Wanda that nice old man that used to bounce her on his knee isn’t being too helpful on official police business.”
He put his hands on his hips.
“In case you’re deaf, I’ll say it again. I. Don’t. Know. Him!”
Then he slammed shut the window we’d been speaking to each other through and started pulling down all the shades one by one.
* * *
Buddy’s obsessive need for Elvis to be alive had made me wonder about his mental state once or twice over the years. I’d gone along with it because I loved Buddy, but it just wasn’t a fixation I’d shared. Until now. I had to find out if Burrows was really Elvis so I could fulfill a dying wish and, as much as I liked Wanda, I’d spent too much time fucking around looking for her councilman.
I slapped my hand on the glass as he pulled down the last shade.
“Tell me about Jon Burrows!” I yelled. “Is he Elvis? Answer me!”
The handful of zoo patrons all turned to look in our direction. The zookeeper, who’d finished feeding the seal, was walking purposefully toward us, wiping her fishy hands on her pants.
Morrison grabbed me by the upper arm and spoke quietly in my ear.
“The dude probably doesn’t know all the donors, man. And pounding on his kiosk isn’t going to do you any good.”
The zookeeper was within shouting distance now.
“Is there a problem here, guys?” she asked.
Morrison squeezed my arm tighter. I grinned at the woman.
“No. No problem. We were just leaving,” I told her.
I pulled my arm out of Morrison’s grasp and started walking toward the car. He did a quick step and caught up to me.
“This town has a lot of secrets, Morrison,” I said angrily.
“Yes, it does,” he answered knowingly. “Where to next?”
I stopped walking and took a breath to calm down. “We are officially out of leads on Roman. We have an address for Jon Burrows and I need to get back to Buddy. I’m going to find him before Cougar Watts does and I don’t care who it pisses off.”
Especially if it’s Wanda, I thought. I bet she looks good when she’s angry.
Chapter Fourteen
Morrison finally directed me to a neighborhood filled with well-manicured lawns and generation-old trees, devoid of the split personalities that defined Old Kresge and Old Oksvang. It was a dull place for the King of Rock ’n’ Roll to have a home. I could easily picture Elvis playing bocce ball at the Roustabout, or having haggis, or whatever awful food the Danes eat, with the Colonel. I couldn’t imagine him living in the, well, ordinary world that was “new” Kresge.
Jon Burrows’s place was in a large, blue, single-story square with a white fenced porch that ran the full circumference of the building. I went up the porch steps to a wide oak door and reached out a finger to push the doorbell, but stopped an inch or two away from it.
“So, you going to ring that bell or point at it?” asked Morrison after we’d stood there a few heartbeats.
“I will. I’m just...I don’t know. Preparing myself.”
“For what? Haven’t you been preparing yourself for this for years?” he asked.
“I never thought I’d be this close. Honestly, part of me was relieved to be looking for Roman. What if this isn’t him?”
“Then you keep looking.”
Morrison was wrong. If this Jon Burrows wasn’t Elvis, Buddy’s quest would die with him and his belief that Elvis was still alive would put him in class of people who claim to see Big Foot or the Loch Ness Monster. I couldn’t go back to Vernon’s ranch and tell him that this one last lead, the last Burrows hunt he’d ever send me on, was a bust. I couldn’t go back unless I found Elvis.
So it had to be him. But what if it was? What would I say?
Only one way to find out, I decided.
I pushed the doorbell and a series of chimes rang out deep within the house.
And then we waited.
Nothing.
Morrison and I looked at each other again. I opened the screen and rapped on the door.
“Special delivery for Jon Burrows!” I yelled.
Still nothing.
“We need your signature, sir!” I yelled and knocked for a second time.
“Maybe he’s not home?” Morrison said.
I handed him the keys to the Camaro.
“There’s a small leather pouch in the glove box, would you go get it for me?”
Morrison took the keys and walked over to the car while I looked around the porch. A mailbox on the railing contained a few weeks’ worth of deliveries. I flipped through it. Junk mail, requests for unneeded clothes, all addressed to Jon Burrows. Some bills too, so someone was living here.
Morrison returned. “What’s inside?” he asked, handing the leather pouch over to me.
“You’ve seen a lot of detective shows on TV, Morrison,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“I’m going to tell you something about being a detective. Those shows are full of shit. No detective ever has adventures like the ones on TV. We don’t find dead bodies. We don’t carry guns. We don’t have sidekicks. No offense, but you’re just tagging along.”
“None taken.”
“But there is one thing they have on TV detective shows that we private eyes have in real life.”
I opened the leather pouch and slipped several delicate metal instruments out of their sheaths. “Lockpicks. They set you back a few hundred bucks and take hours of practice to master, but they’ll save you days of waiting around or following someone to get what you need,” I said as I found the two probes I wanted.
“So we’re going to break i
n?” he asked.
“We are.”
A pick set is really just a few specialized fingers small enough to get inside the lock for you, to feel out the contours of the tumblers, and then set them in place. When you have them lined up, you open the door. The lock on Burrow’s door was older, probably made in the ’50s or ’60s, and took all of thirty seconds to get through.
“You have got to show me how to use that,” Morrison told me.
“As soon as you get your P.I. license. Come on.”
The door opened into a sparsely furnished living room. Along one wall was a wide, comfortable looking couch that had seen better days but was still serviceable. To the side of it was a hard-backed wooden chair with a well-padded seat and a guitar stand. Resting in its cradle was a 1970 Gibson Dove guitar with ebony finish and an American Kenpo badge lacquered onto the body of the guitar, just to one side of the bridge.
It was the guitar from Buddy’s story.
I’d found Jon Burrows. His Jon Burrows.
“What’s that smell?” asked Morrison.
I hadn’t noticed it at first, but there was something rotten in Burrows’s house.
“Old food? Maybe a dead rat,” I said, heading over toward the guitar.
Morrison pulled a few brown leaves from the ficus sitting next to the window.
“This guy either doesn’t know to water his house plants or he hasn’t been here in a long time,” he said.
I sat down in the chair and picked up the Gibson. Resting it on my knee, I strummed it clumsily.
“You look like the cat that ate the canary,” Morrison said.
“Elvis had a lot of guitars. Hundreds maybe.” I placed the Gibson back in its cradle and stood up. “But there were a few he really loved. One was a 1970 black Gibson Dove that he played on tour and in Vegas.”
“Is that it?” asked Morrison.
Morrison sounded as excited as I felt.
“No. The one he played in Vegas was customized, it had ‘Elvis Presley’ inlaid into the fret board in mother of pearl. Jon Burrows couldn’t carry that around if he wanted to keep his secret identity a secret.”
I turned back to the guitar. “But this is the kind of guitar Elvis would want to have.”
“Why?”
“That is the logo for the Kenpo Karate Association of America.”
“What does this have to do with Elvis?” asked Morrison.
“Elvis black belted in Karate. He had this very decal applied to two of his favorite guitars, including the one he played in Vegas and for Aloha from Hawaii. Buddy lacquered a Kenpo badge onto his guitar to make it more authentic. That’s why Burrows had to have this particular Gibson when he saw it hanging on the wall in Buddy’s shop. If he’s Elvis, it is a piece of his old life that no one would ever connect to him.”
Until now. Seeing the Gibson had convinced me the Burrows I was hunting really was Elvis. Who else would pay so much for a six-string like this one?
“You need more than a guitar to convince me this guy is Elvis.”
I needed more too, but I was starting to believe that maybe Elvis really was still alive!
“So let’s see if we can find anything else to back me up,” I said
A quick search of the living room and kitchen yielded a few years’ worth of phone books, utensils, and some takeout menus. I also found an auto insurance policy on a Caddy in Jon Burrows’s name that matched the one Gerald Bixby had sold him. But nothing that screamed Elvis Presley like the guitar did. What we didn’t find was the source of the stench, which was getting stronger and more cloying the longer we stayed.
“I think the bedroom’s back there,” I said, pointing to a door off the side of the kitchen.
“Can we open some windows or something before we look around any more?” asked Morrison, holding his nose.
“You open that window and I’ll turn on the fan over the stove.”
The kitchen smelled like a rat died under the floorboards. I started flipping light switches looking for the stove fan. I eventually found the right one and the exhaust started up with a mild grinding sound.
Morrison put his head out the open window and inhaled. “Being a private detective is pretty boring.”
“I didn’t ask you along. Going to come back with me?”
“Go ahead. I want to breathe fresh air for a minute.”
I liked Morrison well enough, but having someone along for every aspect of an investigation was one of the most irritating experiences I’d ever had. I was secretly pleased he decided to stay behind.
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob. I could be just seconds away from proving that Jon Burrows was Elvis. I turned the handle and opened the door. The fetor, which so far had just been unpleasant, hit me like a wall. I choked on the acrid smell of ammonia.
“Oh God!” yelled Morrison. “I think you found the rat. Shut the door!”
I ignored him.
A short hallway led to the bedroom. On the immediate left, through a door, was a small bathroom with a shower, toilet and sink. I almost didn’t look inside. Elvis had been “found” dead on the commode and I was afraid I would have come this far only to find him, again, dead on the toilet. But the bathroom was empty.
I pushed through the stench and down the hallway into the bedroom proper. The drapes were all pulled closed but I could make out the dark shapes of a queen bed, unmade, a closet, and a man sitting in a rocking chair in the corner. He was holding a guitar.
“Hello!” I said, not really expecting an answer.
Receiving none, I went to the nearest window, which also happened to be furthest from the man in the chair, and pulled open the blind.
The sudden burst of sunlight sent a fright through the swarm of flies that had been crawling on the man in the corner. They rose up in a cloud and dispersed through the room like spectators at a cockfight when the fuzz shows up.
Private detectives don’t stumble across dead bodies. It just doesn’t happen. But across the room from me, still visible through a haze of flying insects, was exactly that. A dead body.
If I were a TV detective, this is the point in the story when I would figure out what the decedent died of, when he died, who killed him and why. But not in my story. As the scattered flies settled down, I puked. I retched half-digested Cobb salad all over the bed.
Something—probably the sound of my lunch coming up—brought Morrison into the room. When he hit the wall of decay he paused and raised his arms, as if to shield himself from it. I don’t know if he saw the body, but I assume he did. I know he saw me on my knees by the side of the bed, because he calmly came over to me, raised me up by the arm, and led me back to the living room, shutting the door behind us as we left.
Leaving the flies to their feast.
* * *
It might have been five minutes or five hours, but I suddenly realized I was sitting in the hard-backed chair by the old Gibson, holding a glass of water. Morrison was standing above me with his hand on my shoulder, saying something I wasn’t listening to because I was thinking about the guitar the man in the chair was holding. It wasn’t just any guitar. It was a simple, wooden, ’50s—era Kay. No guitarist, let alone an aficionado, would play one. They were originally just a few bucks a piece and manufactured by the thousand. As guitars go, it is a piece of crap. But Kays hold a place of honor among Elvis fans. They were sold exclusively through local hardware stores and mail order catalogs. Hardware stores like the Tupelo Hardware Store, where Elvis said he bought his first six-string.
There are a lot of stories about what happened to Elvis’s first guitar. One says that he gave it to a man named Red West in the midfifties when Red decided to attend Jones County Junior College in Mississippi. Another story has it that Elvis traded in his old Kay guitar for a brand new Martin guitar at O. K. Houcks
Piano Company in Memphis, Tennessee. The same O. K. Houcks where Ike Turner said he saw his first Fender guitar and an electric bass.
There is a third story about Elvis’s first guitar. This story, and this is the one that most diehard Elvis fans believe, is that Elvis left that first guitar of his with his beloved mother shortly after the Sun recordings, when he went on tour. That guitar remained with her through his stint in the army, through all of his films, even through his first marriage. It wasn’t until after his mother’s death that Elvis rediscovered the old Kay among her belongings. There are stories of Elvis having friends over to Graceland and staying up late into the night, drinking, smoking and playing old Gospel tunes on his very first guitar. After Elvis’s official death, there was no sign of it, which is why the first two stories have persisted.
Just seeing a dead body in a house with the name Jon Burrows on the mailbox wouldn’t convince me I had seen the body of Elvis Presley. Not even my dad’s guitar or the Kay was enough proof, but it was probably too much for Buddy to hear.
“Floyd? You okay man?” asked Morrison.
“Does the phone work?”
“I haven’t tried it.”
“If it works, call the Sheriff’s Department and tell them we found a body.”
“What am I going to tell Buddy?” kept running through my head. He was right. He’d been right all along. But I’d been too late.
At least it wasn’t Watts who’d discovered Burrows’s corpse.
* * *
I don’t know what stumbling across dead bodies in big cities like Boise or Salt Lake is like, but in Kresge it was a pretty quiet affair. It only took Wanda twenty minutes to round up a coroner and make it out to Jon Burrows’s house.
Morrison waited outside. He couldn’t stand the smell. I waited in the living room, sitting next to the Gibson, while the officials went about their business.
Wanda came out of the bedroom with some white paste under her nostrils. I wondered briefly if it would be difficult to get out of her mustache.
Elvis Sightings (An Elvis Sightings Mystery) Page 14
