Daniel Klein

by Blue Suede Clues: A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley

  “Not even,” the other one murmured. “Still a few months shy of seventeen.”

  Elvis sat perfectly still, staring at the blank monitor, a sick feeling in his gut. The fire in his groin from watching Holly’s little exhibition was still there, still tingling, and it revolted him. Everything about it revolted him. That she was only a child. That the body which had just now tantalized him was long gone, dead and gone at the hands of a grotesque killer. And, on top of that, hearing his own voice as the soundtrack for Holly McDougal’s precociously torrid rock and roll fandango made the whole thing even more repulsive. Elvis, the Pelvis, corrupter of youthful innocence. He felt like begging God for forgiveness.

  “That Wayne, he sure knows how to get them going, doesn’t he?” the younger man was saying.

  “Wayne?”

  “You know, Wayne LeFevre,” the young man said to Elvis. “They like to bring him in for the screen tests of those young girls. He has a special knack for bringing out the sauciness in them.”

  So that’s who that familiar voice belonged to—Wayne LeFevre, Elvis’s double, the man who offered himself up as a consolation prize every time Elvis spurned the advances of some ardent chorus girl. Somehow it fit that Wayne would be the in-house cheerleader who brought out the sauciness in eager young auditioners. And after the screen test, what? Did Wayne parlay his helpful hints into some personal action? Had he taken Holly McDougal off to an empty office and made his moves on the child? Elvis’s disgust redoubled.

  “Looks like there’s more on there,” the younger archivist was saying, gesturing to the reel on the Moviola. “Want to see it?”

  Elvis sighed. “I guess so,” he said.

  On TAKE #3, Holly was joined by two other women, one on either side of her, all three in black leotards. This time the music was a Broadway show tune; apparently, they had taught Holly the steps before the take. Obviously, the purpose was to see how she worked with other dancers, how well she fit in. The routine was low-level Vegas—high kicks with their hands on each other’s shoulders, a pinwheel thing with Holly in the center, then some snaky shimmying. Holly excelled at the shimmying—it began at her knees, worked its way up to her hips, and then her entire torso did a shake, rattle, and roll that had her fine breasts undulating under the leotard like conical Jell-O molds. It was surely more than a healthy man could bear.

  Elvis noticed that the dancer on Holly’s right kept stealing glances at Holly while they shimmied. This girl, also a blonde, was taller and thinner and obviously more practiced, but her own undulations could not begin to compete with the bouncy sensuality of Holly’s, and it was clear from the expression on her face that she knew it. Knew it and resented it. It was like Gene Nelson said, two things the camera always catches are boredom and envy. Well, even on this three-by-three screen, the envy screamed out at Elvis. But who the heck was that screaming it?

  “Freeze it, can you?” he suddenly said.

  The image froze and Elvis leaned in closer to the little monitor. By God, he was right: the envious blond dancer was Nancy Pollard. Apparently, as Nannette Poulette, she had been a blonde, but the face was the same. And so was the small-breasted, willowy body. How about that? Poulette/Pollard had been jealous of Holly McDougal’s shimmy long before she began practicing it on the stunt-shack cot with her boyfriend, Squirm.

  A minute later, the film flapped off the reel; the screen test was over. Elvis’s two hosts asked him to autograph stills from Jailhouse Rock, which he gladly did, finally learning their names: Paddy Spence and Paddy Spence, Jr., father and son. Archiving film was the family trade.

  Elvis hobbled back down the basement hallway to the elevator and rang for it. When the door slid open, there was Colonel Parker standing inside, gazing out at him. Once again, Parker had that look of a scolding father on his face. If Elvis hadn’t been on crutches, he would have bolted.

  “Heard you were down here, son,” the Colonel drawled. “Now this kind of thing can’t be doing your ankle much good, can it?”

  Elvis stepped into the elevator without responding. He had intended to go up to the ground floor to meet Joey, but instead he punched the button for the floor below it, the first basement. He didn’t want to spend a minute longer than necessary with Parker today.

  “So how’d your meeting with Nancy Pollard go?” Parker asked. There was enough syrup in his voice for a double-dip sundae.

  “It went,” Elvis answered. There was no sense in even asking how the Colonel knew about the meeting.

  “She doesn’t have any real power, you know,” Parker said. “Girl couldn’t green-light a two-minute cartoon.”

  “That a fact?” Elvis said. “Then how come her title’s director of project development?”

  “Politics,” Parker responded, simpering. “It’s all politics in this business. Who you know and who you’re sleeping with.”

  The elevator shuddered to a stop and the door slid open.

  “So who are you sleeping with, Colonel?” Elvis asked, deadpan.

  Parker cracked up like it was the funniest darned thing he’d ever heard. “Mrs. Parker on alternate Tuesdays,” he replied. “It’s all the politics she can stand.”

  Elvis stepped off the elevator, but Parker held the door open. He reached into his shirt pocket and withdrew a slip of paper. “My girl took a call for you from that nigra friend of yours in Alamo,” he said, handing the paper to Elvis. “This something I should know about?”

  “No,” Elvis said. “But there is something I did want to talk to you about.”

  “What’s that, son?”

  “Those blue suede shoes you want me to wear in my next picture for fifty grand,” Elvis said.

  Parker beamed. “Incredible deal, isn’t it?”

  “I’d sooner go barefoot,” Elvis said.

  12

  The Bum

  The message from Billy was short and simple: a telephone number with an Atlanta exchange and “Call after seven P.M.” It looked like Billy had located Connie Spinelli already, God love him. Elvis tucked the note in his pocket.

  Elvis found the stairwell and limped up to the first floor with both crutches under his right shoulder and his left hand on the railing. His ankle was throbbing like the devil again, so at the landing, he took out the vial of painkillers and bit off half a pill. Just enough to dull the pain without losing his mental edge.

  The first thing Elvis saw when he pushed open the stairwell door was Joey and the Colonel standing next to a potted palm in the vestibule. Colonel was in full-command mode, wagging a stubby finger in Joey’s face and jawing a mile a minute. No doubt giving Joey instructions to get Elvis home and in bed ASAP: time is money and sprained ankles are untimely.

  Elvis let the door swing closed in front of him, still standing in the stairwell. He dragged himself back down the stairs, then followed the first basement corridor to the rear of the building and limped back up to the first floor. No sign of Joey or the Colonel from here—they were on the other side of the elevator shaft. Elvis slipped out a back door and motioned to an MGM valet who was standing under an awning drinking Coke out a bottle. Nice product placement. Elvis asked the kid to bring his car around. The boy hesitated, eyeing Elvis’s bandaged left ankle.

  “Not a problem,” Elvis said, winking. “It’s my brake foot.”

  It wasn’t a problem, either. The Eldorado had automatic shift with plenty of room to stretch out his leg where the clutch would have been. He probably should have driven himself to the studio in the first place, except that Joanie and Joey would have kicked up a fuss. For a motherless child, he sure had a truckload of mothers.

  Elvis headed out to the edge of the parking lot, then swung around onto the driveway, skirting the main entrance of the MGM building. He slowed to a halt at the front gate and rolled down his window. Nobody in the guard house to lift the gate. Elvis waited a couple of minutes, then tapped out “Shave and a Haircut” on his horn. A few seconds later, the guard came chugging up behind the car.

&nb
sp; “Sorry, Mr. Presley,” he said. “Had to take care of the flag.”

  He stepped into the guard house and the gate swung up. Just as Elvis started through, he caught a glimpse of the studio flagpole in his side mirror: it was at half-mast. Elvis inched back to the guard house.

  “Somebody die?” he asked the guard, gesturing toward the pole.

  “Nobody important,” the guard said. “But they want me to lower it for anyone connected to MGM. Turns out that’s half of L.A.”

  Elvis nodded. “Who was it?”

  “Stuntman,” the guard said. “But not on the lot—nothing to do with a picture. Accident at a rodeo somewhere in Nevada. Got kicked in the head by a crazy bull. Dumb way to die, wouldn’t you say, Mr. Presley?”

  Elvis felt his heart accelerate. “What was his name?”

  The guard lifted a clipboard off of a hook and looked at it. “Cathcart,” he read. “Will Cathcart.”

  Elvis’s head began to spin. He closed his eyes. For a moment, he felt like he was again suspended from that stunt harness, a puppet swinging uncontrollably, colliding with struts and walls, raucous laughter soaring up at him. Mickey Grieve’s laughter.

  Elvis opened his eyes and hit the accelerator. He pulled out on the access road and headed for the freeway. Cathcart had written that he had important things to tell Elvis right after he got back from the rodeo. God in heaven, you didn’t need to read Dr. Sigmund Freud to know that Will Cathcart’s death was no accident, whether it involved some crazy bull or not.

  Elvis was on the freeway before he realized that he was instinctively heading for West Hollywood—Clifford’s office. The day before yesterday, Squirm Littlejon’s case may have been a diversion from all the little messes in Elvis’s life, but that day was long ago and far away. A young man was dead. Elvis had been threatened within an inch of his life. If Holly McDougal’s mother thought her daughter was a choir girl, she’d been sitting in the wrong pew. And Nancy Pollard was either a better liar than she was an actress, or Squirm Littlejon was hiding something.

  Elvis pulled into the left lane to pass a poky Good Humor truck. And that is when, in his rearview mirror, he saw the blue Beetle slip in behind him. The same one as this morning, no doubt about it. The same bearded driver with a nightwatch cap pulled down to his eyebrows, and this time the driver was waving something in his right hand. It looked too large to be a gun, but Elvis wasn’t about to hang around to see what it was. He pushed down on the accelerator and shot ahead about thirty yards until he was a car length behind a station wagon loaded with children in party hats. Elvis swung into the right lane, flooring it.

  Man, he was flying now. Weaving in and out of all three lanes. He punched on the radio and like magic, there was Hank Snow filling the air with “It Don’t Hurt Anymore.” No, Hank, it don’t hurt. Not just now. Don’t know why, but the hurt is gone. Or maybe it’s still there but it don’t matter. Elvis began to sing along with Snow, substituting “It don’t matter any more” for “I don’t hurt any more.” He glanced in his rearview mirror. No blue Beetle. “No blue Beetle any more,” he crooned, lurching back into the left lane and sailing ahead like a human cannonball.

  The chorus came on, but this time old Hank had added some winds, a flutey thing that wound around the melody like a silver ribbon. He’d added some lights too, red and blue strobes that bounced around the interior of the Eldorado on the offbeat. Man, how did Old Hank do that? The man was a genius.

  “Pull over! Pull over immediately!”

  Elvis looked again in his rearview mirror. That’s where the lights were coming from. And that flutey thing too.

  “Pull into the right lane now!”

  Elvis pulled across two lanes in one swoop, then coasted to a stop on the shoulder, the cop car just behind him. He rolled down his window. Great air out there. Fabulous air out there.

  “You’re a menace, buddy! Doing ninety-plus,” the policeman barked. “License and registration.” He was a big man, no hat, no hair, and a fancy pair of aviator sunglasses. His face hovered in the car window like a shark in a fish tank.

  Elvis handed him his license.

  “Holy Mother of God, Elvis Presley!” the shark exclaimed.

  “Yes, sir,” Elvis said. “Sorry I was speeding. But somebody was following me and I was trying to shake him.”

  “I didn’t recognize you, Mr. Presley,” the policeman said. “I mean, I must stop one kid a day who dresses up like you. Sideburns, hair, the whole deal.”

  “No problem,” Elvis said. “Like I said, it’s this man in a blue Beetle. Been on my tail all day.”

  “Probably wants your autograph.”

  “I think he wants more than that, Officer,” Elvis said.

  “Well, I sure as hell want your autograph,” the policeman said, handing Elvis a traffic citation. “If you don’t mind, make it out to Tom—Tom Schultz.”

  “On this?”

  “If that’s all right, Mr. Presley.”

  Elvis inscribed the traffic ticket and returned it to Officer Schultz.

  “Thank you,” Schultz said. He removed his sunglasses and looked intently into Elvis’s face. “Excuse me if I’m out of line, Mr. Presley, but are you feeling all right?”

  “Just fine, thank you,” Elvis said.

  “Good. I’m glad to hear that,” Schultz said.

  “Why shouldn’t I be, Officer?”

  “Just something about your eyes,” Schultz said. “Look a little glassy. Sort of wobbly too. Like maybe you’re coming down with something.”

  Elvis laughed. “Oh, I’ve just been singing, Officer. Singing my fool head off with Hank Snow here, and it’s enough to bring tears to my eyes.”

  Elvis turned up the radio by way of demonstration, but Hank was now gone, replaced by Jimmy Gilmour and the Fireballs singing “Sugar Shack.” Not much of number, that one. Elvis snapped it off.

  “Well, you take care of yourself, Mr. Presley,” the policeman was saying. “And if you ever need anything—escort, special detail—you just give me a ring, okay?” Schultz handed Elvis his card, winking. “Tell you what, Elvis, I’ll escort you a bit now. Make sure no beetles are on your tail, especially none of those new English Beetles—Ringo, Paul, none of ’em. Ha!”

  With this, the officer of the law burst into a boyish giggle and sauntered back to his car. He followed Elvis, his lights flashing, all the way to the West Hollywood exit.

  Elvis had to smile when he saw the note on Clifford’s door: INVESTIGATION IN PROGRESS. BACK BY FIVE. The man had flair. Of course, there was something of the little kid who was just playing at a grown-up job in the way he put it—“Investigation in progress.” Sounded like something Tubby might say to Little Lulu. Then again, the same could be said about Elvis himself, that he was just playing at being a detective. Surely that is the way the Colonel would put it.

  Elvis darn well didn’t feel like limping down the stairs again and waiting for Clifford in his car, but there were no chairs in the hallway. He could knock on the chiropractor’s door—DR. HIRAM GOLDSTEIN, DC, SERVING THE WELL ADJUSTED SINCE 1946—or on the door to the Spanish travel agency, but just now he wasn’t up to being recognized and all that usually followed from that.

  He limped on one crutch over to the corner between Clifford’s office and the travel agency, set both crutches against the wall, lowered himself onto the floor, and leaned back with his legs stretched out in front of him. That felt a whole lot better. Man, he was tired. He let his head loll against the wall, his eyelids fluttering. He was about to let his eyes close completely, when he suddenly saw another man sprawled on the floor across the hallway from him. The guy looked like a derelict who had crawled inside to catch a snooze away from the street. His face was blank, his eyes rheumy, his mouth slack. A bum.

  It only lasted an instant. Then Elvis realized that he was looking at himself reflected in the frameless mirror next to Dr. Goldstein’s door. He was that guy with the glassy eyes slumped against the wall next to a pair of crutches. He was
the bum who had crawled inside like a wounded dog. Elvis put a hand to his face, watched his reflection mime him. His twin. The man he would have been. Could have been. Still could be. His eyelids began fluttering again, then closed completely, and Elvis drifted off into the sleep of the wordless song.

  13

  El Vez Perez-Lee

  “You look like crap.”

  “What?”

  “You, pal. You look terrible.”

  Elvis blinked open his eyes. Regis Clifford was stooped over him, waving a paper cup of coffee under his nose. Elvis looked around; he was in Clifford’s office, slouched in the chair across from the attorney’s desk.

  “How’d I get in here?”

  “Doc Goldstein helped. In fact, he gave you a little adjustment along the way. Your neck crackled like a string of firecrackers.”

  Clifford handed the cup to Elvis who took a long swallow. It tasted awful, but did the trick. Coming fully awake, Elvis realized that he had enjoyed another one of those deep and renewing mini slumbers.

  “Ready to hear my report?” Clifford said spiritedly. He looked peppier and more clear eyed than either of the other times Elvis had seen him. Far peppier.

  “I’m ready,” Elvis said, taking another gulp of bitter coffee.

  “Okay,” Regis said, sitting on the corner of his desk. “First, we’re going to Mexico tomorrow. Leave at five in the morning on the Tequila Express. Hector—Dr. Garcia—is expecting us. And listen to this, he has new data for us, something he’s done on his own. Didn’t want to tell me what it was until we got there, but he says it proves that Littlejon is innocent.” Regis leaned toward Elvis. “You do have a passport, I hope.”

  “I think so. From the army.” Elvis shrugged. “But I left it in Memphis.”

  “Okay, okay. I’ll come up with something. But now for the big enchilada.” Regis rubbed his palms together. “Norma McDougal, Holly’s big sister. Norma and I had a lovely little lunch today at The Palms in Santa Monica. Crab salad, avocados, Chardonnay. Courtesy of my employer, by the way, but it was well worth it, believe me, Elvis.”