by Blue Suede Clues: A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley
Elvis gazed intently into Littlejon’s eyes. “And you didn’t do it,” he said.
“No, sir,” Squirm replied.
“Who did, then?”
“I wish I knew,” Squirm said. “I wish to God I knew.”
“Who do you think did it?”
“I really don’t know, Mr. Presley. Sometimes I think it might’ve been one of the other guys, the other stuntmen. I mean, when the trial came up every one of them swore on the Bible that they never even had sex with her. Of course, most of them were married, so that was probably the reason they did that.”
Elvis drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “And what do you want me to do for you, Freddy?” he said wearily.
Squirm shrugged. “Get me out of here,” he said softly.
“Just like that.” Elvis smiled in spite of himself.
“Got to be some way,” Squirm murmured. “I mean, it wouldn’t be right to keep an innocent man locked up for the rest of his life, would it?”
For a long moment, Elvis just gazed across the Formica-topped table at Littlejon. The man seemed to be shrinking before his eyes. Another minute and he’d be able to just slip out of those manacles and leg irons and walk right out of here, slinking between bars and through keyholes and disappearing into the Tehachapi Mountains.
“I keep having this feeling I’ve seen you before,” Elvis said finally. “Not just that Christmas Day.”
“You have,” Littlejon said quietly. “Just a little time after that. Out by your house on the Goethestrasse. It was a Sunday and one of the guys in my barrack brought me out for a football game. You and your friends from home against this pick-up team of GI’s. We were both quarterbacks—me against you.”
Now Elvis remembered that day precisely, remembered the skinny kid who could slither like a snake right through his line and make one touchdown after another until the middle of the game, when he just walked off the field without even saying a good-bye or a thank-you.
“Yes, I remember that day,” Elvis said, smiling. “How come you left before the game was over?”
Squirm lowered his eyes.
“You get hurt?” Elvis asked.
“Not exactly,” Squirm said. “I was kinda told to leave.”
“Who told you that?”
“One of your friends,” Squirm said softly. “Red, I think his name was. He told me I wasn’t playing by the rules.”
“Which rules?”
Littlejon looked up shyly. “The rule that says your team always has to win, Mr. Presley,” he said.
From the corner of his eye, Elvis saw the guard behind Littlejon stifle a smirk. For a second, Elvis felt so angry he almost stood up right then and there and marched out. But the truth stopped him. And the truth was that he’d known full well about that rule, even if nobody ever said it out loud in front of him. He hated to lose and everybody knew that, so they made sure it never happened. Made sure that the King would never have to suffer the humiliation of defeat in a sandlot football game in a little town in Germany. But at this moment, Elvis was feeling a much worse humiliation—the humiliation of admitting to himself that he’d known about that rule and let it stand. That surely could not be healthy for a man’s soul; it begged redemption.
“You must have a lawyer,” Elvis said to Squirm Littlejon. “What’s his name?”
“Had one,” Littlejon said. “Man named Regis Clifford in West Hollywood.”
“He still there?”
“Unless he’s already drunk himself to death.”
Elvis stood. “I’ll be in touch, Squirm,” he said.
Warden Reardon was waiting outside his office.
“The man on the radio said you were searching for the perfect movie script,” he said to Elvis, grinning. “Said you didn’t care who wrote it. And next thing I know, you’re calling me up on the telephone. If that’s not kismet, I don’t know what is.”
“Kismet?”
Reardon produced a large, maroon bellows envelope stretched to its limit.
“Well, you can stop searching now, Mr. Presley,” he said, handing Elvis the envelope. “Here’s your surprise—the script of a lifetime. True story. Nothing stranger than the truth, you know.”
Elvis took it. “Thank you,” he said.
Back in his car, Elvis took a quick look at the top page of the manuscript: The Singing Prison Warden: My True Life Story by Robert F. Reardon.
4
Personal Business
Priscilla was waiting up for him. Two in the morning and she’s sitting alone in their bedroom wearing that purple silk dress with the ruffled collar buttoned up to the neck, her black-dyed hair piled on top of her head like Mrs. John F. Kennedy’s, except that she’d left a couple of ringlets hanging down on her forehead the way teenagers do. The rims of her sparkling dark eyes were pink from weeping, and there was a sorrowful pout on her sweet lips, but she held her head proudly erect and looked Elvis in the eye as he walked through the door. It was enough to break a man’s heart.
He had phoned Ann-Margret over in England and she had told him she’d never said those things to the press, but Priscilla would never believe that. Only one way to handle a situation like this: Start at full throttle.
“Good thing that woman’s over in London!” Elvis bellowed, striding toward Priscilla. “Otherwise she’d be missing a few teeth by now!”
Priscilla eyed him skeptically.
“Talking trash like that where I can’t put a lid on her mouth!” Elvis rambled on, reaching out to wipe the tears from Priscilla’s cheek.
Priscilla yanked back. “What else did you put on her mouth?” she snapped.
“That’s no way to talk, darlin’.”
Priscilla balled her little hand up in a fist, then shot a finger into Elvis’s chest. “You’ve been with that woman, haven’t you, Elvis?”
Elvis swallowed hard. “Not in the way you’re thinking,” he said.
“What way then?” Elvis had never seen her sweet young eyes look so hard.
“The movie way,” he answered. He was improvising now. “Happens all the time when you’re playacting lovers in a movie. Gets kind of confusing. You can’t always stop dead in your tracks just because they put the cap back on the camera at the end of the day.”
There was some truth in that—just not the whole truth. Priscilla stared at him, tears welling in her eyes again.
“I … I’m going home,” she whispered.
“Aw, darlin’, don’t say that.”
“I am. I’m going back to Daddy where I belong.”
“Please, darlin’.” Elvis kneeled down in front of her at the side of the bed. “I couldn’t even think of marrying a woman like Ann-Margret. Not when I got you waiting for me at home.”
Priscilla’s face still looked awful grim but the sniffling had stopped, so Elvis kept on talking at a fast clip, saying that what he needed from a woman was complete understanding and trust, and he knew he could never get that from an actress like Ann-Margret, who always put her career ahead of her personal life. Finally, he promised that he would never see Ann-Margret again, never even accept a movie role if she was going to be in the movie too.
“Honest and true?” Priscilla whimpered, raising her right hand in a kind of Scout’s honor gesture.
“Honest and true,” Elvis replied softly, although he did not raise his hand.
Priscilla settled down fast after that. They talked a while longer, deciding that the Colonel was probably right—it would be best if Priscilla went back to Memphis tomorrow and waited for him there so that the Hollywood gossip machine would get off both of their backs until this Ann-Margret thing blew over. And then there was nothing for either of them to do but to get undressed and into bed.
It would have felt so right to make love to Priscilla after all of the emotion they had just been through together. To take that moment to finally break his rule of chastity with her. And God knows, Elvis had the feeling. He wanted to scoop her young body up in his arms and
kiss it all over. But something stopped him and it wasn’t just the usual reason—that he wanted her to be a virgin when they got married. No, what stopped him this time was the image of a naked teenage girl lying dead on a cot in MGM’s stunt shack. It made his blood run cold and his sexual feelings go flat. He closed his eyes and nodded off to a dreamless sleep.
Joe knocked on the bedroom door at quarter to ten the next morning. Colonel was on the phone: Elvis was already an hour late for the reshoot. Elvis told Joe to tell the Colonel he was on his way, then made arrangements for Joe and his wife, Joanie, to take Priscilla to the airport for her flight back to Memphis. Joanie made him a stack of buttermilk pancakes and some sweet sausages, which he took out to the patio in the back.
It was another perfect sunny day on Perugia Way. The weather out here made Memphis seem positively frosty, yet there was something unsettling about it being the second week in November and not a yellow leaf in sight. It made it seem like time never passed, like he was trapped in a summer that would never end, and he missed the feeling that came with autumn, that feeling of gathering himself in like a caterpillar spinning itself into a cocoon, where he could sleep alone and dream of spring.
Trapped was the word, all right. Just about everything seemed like a trap these days—everything and everybody. Nibble the bait and the jaws snapped shut. Gotcha, Elvis! Gotcha in my arms! Gotcha in my movie! Elvis sawed off a chunk of sausage, dipped it in the melted butter, and stuck it in his mouth. But God knows, there was trapped and then there was really trapped. Now Freddy Littlejon, he was trapped for the rest of his life in a cell a quarter of the size of Elvis’s swimming pool. And for doing something that he swore on his mother’s grave he did not do. Of course, if he really was a murderer, swearing that he wasn’t on his mother’s grave probably would not present too much of a moral problem for him. You just couldn’t tell.
Elvis reached for the phone on the glass-topped patio table and dialed information. “Regis Clifford in West Hollywood,” he told the operator. “It’s a business, ma’am, a law office.”
There was only one Regis Clifford in West Hollywood, or in all of Greater Los Angeles for that matter. Elvis dialed the number and let it ring while he cut off a little wedge of pancake, mopped it around in sausage grease, and popped it in his mouth. The phone must have rung a good ten times before someone picked up, and then several seconds passed during which the receiver apparently dropped and bounced, then was picked up again, and a gravel voice said, “What?”
“I’m looking for Mr. Regis Clifford,” Elvis said.
“What for?”
“Personal business,” Elvis said.
“What kind?”
“I’d like to tell that to Mr. Clifford personally.”
“Well, personally I am Mr. Clifford,” the voice said. “Hold on a minute, would you?”
Elvis heard the unmistakable sound of liquid dribbling into a glass, then the strike of a match and a deep inhale.
“Had to get my breakfast,” Clifford said.
“You sleep in your office?”
Clifford laughed. “That’s right,” he said. “It’s one of the advantages of doing business with me—I’m on call night and day … . So what’s on your mind, Mr.—?”
“Tatum,” Elvis said, not really knowing why. “Jodie Tatum.”
“So what can I do for you, Mr. Tatum?”
“I’m a friend of Freddy Littlejon’s,” Elvis said.
There was a stuttering cough at the other end. Finally, Clifford said, “Listen, Tatum, I did the best I could for that little weasel, no matter what he told you.”
“I’m sure you did, Mr. Clifford,” Elvis said. “I’m just wondering if there isn’t something more we could do for him now.”
“Like what? Get him room service?”
“Actually, I was wondering if there was a possibility of reopening his case,” Elvis said, although this was the first time he had even put it to himself that way.
“And who would be footing for the bill for this particular enterprise?” Clifford asked.
“I would.”
“Are you employed, Mr. Tatum?”
“Now and then,” Elvis replied.
“How about now?” Clifford asked.
“What are your fees, Mr. Clifford?”
“A hundred dollars a day,” Clifford blurted out.
“That shouldn’t be a problem.”
“Plus expenses,” Clifford went on quickly. “That could bring it up to a good one-fifty to two hundred a day, depending on what’s involved.”
“I can manage that,” Elvis said.
“Minimum of three days,” Clifford said, his scratchy voice virtually rasping with excitement. “In advance, of course.”
“Of course.”
“I could clear my desk and get started on this immediately,” Clifford said ecstatically.
“I’d appreciate that,” Elvis said.
“Why don’t you come right over?” Clifford said. “Unless, of course, you want me to come to wherever you are. I can do that. It’ll cost you a little extra, of course.”
“I’ll come there,” Elvis said.
Clifford gave him the address, telling him it was one flight up, over a record shop.
“I’ll be right over,” Elvis said.
“Mr. Tatum?”
“Yes?”
“Cash,” Clifford said. “I like to do business in cash whenever possible.”
“That can be arranged,” Elvis said, and he hung up.
He finished off his breakfast, then brought his plate back into the kitchen where Joe and Joanie were stacking dishes in the dishwasher.
“The Colonel called on the other line,” Joe said. “I told him you were just going out the door.”
“Well, that is certainly true, Joey,” Elvis said, smiling broadly. “I am just now going out the door.”
5
Cosmic Balance
Elvis drove to West Hollywood and parked his El Dorado convertible in a lot on West Third Street, then caught a cab to Clifford’s place on West Eighth, all without being recognized, except by one person, the Mexican who managed the parking lot. He’d wanted Elvis to autograph a ticket stub and Elvis gladly obliged: “Miguel, Thanks for looking after my baby. Elvis.”
In the taxi, he considered messing with his hair in an attempt at disguising himself for his meeting with Clifford. For a fleeting moment, he even wished that he’d worn that hateful blond wig—that might do it, although it hardly seemed likely. But what the heck, he was who he was, and the main thing was, his business with Clifford had absolutely nothing at all to do with who he was. Astounding how much comfort that thought gave him.
The record shop on the ground floor of Clifford’s building was Mexican too, El Disco Norde, and its window was packed with 45s and albums in Spanish by people with Spanish names. But front and center was a 45 titled The Lonely Bull performed by an Anglo singer named Herb Alpert with a band called The Tijuana Brass. Next to it was an album entitled, Rubias, Morenas Y Pelirrojas, adorned with a picture of Elvis himself in a coat and tie. It was a kick seeing a photo of himself in the window of a store in a neighborhood he never even knew existed—and labeled in a foreign language at that. This was surely the part he liked the best about all that had happened to him in the last nine years—the way his music radiated out into the world and entered people’s lives like a mystery man who walks in a stranger’s front door and makes himself at home. But for the life of him, he didn’t know what Rubias, Morenas Y Pelirrojas meant or even which of his albums it could be.
Elvis took the steps two at a time, then paused a moment to catch his breath on the second-floor landing. There were three doors with opaque glass windows, one for a travel agency, one for a chiropractor, and at the far end a partially opened door inscribed REGIS CLIFFORD. ESQ., ATTORNEY AT LAW, and under that in smaller letters, SPECIALIZING IN IMMIGRATION AND DIVORCE LAW. Elvis walked to it and peered inside.
It was a holy mess in there. It
looked like a dingy, used bookstore that had suddenly changed its mind and become a single-occupancy room in a low-rent hotel—open books, unwashed plates, and an assortment of clothing crowding every available surface, including the window sills and a sink that was nestled below and between bookcases. Stooped over the sink with his back to him was a tall, slope-shouldered man in a loose-fitting black pinstriped suit with a cloud of smoke hovering over his head. He was washing dishes and singing to himself in a pretty decent baritone—some kind of folk song about flowers that bloom in the spring, tra-la, tra-la. Elvis knocked lightly on the door.
“Come in,” the man said, still washing, not turning. “Be right with you.”
Elvis stepped inside and waited until the man finished by wiping his hands on a gray-streaked towel. He turned and faced Elvis, a cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth.
“Mr. Tatum?” he said.
For a split-second, Elvis felt confused. Or was it reflexive disappointment that the man actually did not recognize him?
“That’s right,” Elvis said. “Mr. Clifford?”
The man nodded, proffered his hand, but then quickly withdrew it. “Afraid my hands are still wet,” he said. “I’ve been cleaning up. Big party here last night. Celebration. We won a major case.”
“Congratulations,” Elvis said, although he was pretty sure that it had been a party of one with nothing more to celebrate than the completion of the paperwork for a Tijuana divorce.
“I’ve got my Fredrick Littlejon file right over here,” Clifford said, gesturing to a mahogany desk by the window. The desk, like Clifford himself, looked as if it had once been quite elegant, a patrician family heirloom that over time had suffered the indignities of ground-out cigarettes, spilt TV dinners, and the occasional swift kick of frustration. Three books lay open ontop of it: one titled, Plutarch’s Lives, another called, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, by Sigmund Freud, and a fat one entitled, The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. There was something fitting about that last one being here.
