Daniel Klein

by Blue Suede Clues: A Murder Mystery Featuring Elvis Presley

  “Craziness,” Murphy said. “Fits of disgust. They hate themselves for sinking so low, and they turn it around and blame it on the whore. She’s the Jezebel. She’s the one who made them sin, so she has to be punished.”

  “Dr. Freud again,” Regis said.

  “Sometimes it’s another kind of craziness,” Murphy went on. “Humiliation. Sexual humiliation. Say the john can’t get it up or he’s self-conscious about his size or something like that. The girl smiles at him funny, probably not meaning anything at all by it, but the john gets it in his head that she’s laughing at him and goes berserk. Strangles her in a rage.”

  Elvis shook his head. In the past few days he’d heard enough about sexual craziness—especially of the male variety—to last him a lifetime.

  “We’re closing in, friends,” Regis said gleefully. “Process of elimination. He was one of Holly’s customers and he has a lot of power. Enough power to get Reardon to do his bidding. And to get Will Cathcart offed by a bull.”

  “If,” Murphy said. “If any one of your cockamamie assumptions is true. Especially that one about the raging bull that’s a hit man.”

  Elvis glanced at Murphy in the rearview mirror. He had the panicked look of a man being strangled by second thoughts.

  “I’m sorry, gentleman,” Murphy said quietly. “But it still makes more sense to me that Littlejon is McDougal’s murderer and he’s a talented escape artist. Occam’s Razor—the simplest explanation is usually the right one.”

  “Damnation! It’s him again!” Elvis hollered.

  The baby blue Beetle had suddenly appeared in his mirror, swinging directly in back of him from the right lane. Same driver in the same nightwatch cap, but this time Elvis got a better look at what the man was waving in his hand: a cardboard box with a gleaming, blood-red skull and crossbones painted on its cover. Elvis floored the accelerator and the Eldorado lurched forward, its tires spitting sparks.

  “What the hell?” Murphy sputtered as he was thrown back against his seat.

  Next to Elvis, Regis had pivoted around and was staring out the rear window.

  “Mean-looking bastard!” he cheered. “Man’s been threatening Elvis ever since he got on this case. Got a simple explanation for that, Murphy?”

  Elvis was weaving in and out of traffic at sixty-plus, but every time he looked in the mirror he saw the Beetle still hanging on his tail.

  “Must have a Corvette engine in that darn thing!” Elvis called, hanging a hard right and cutting across two lanes onto the shoulder where he kept the pedal floored, bouncing from one pothole to the next as he shot past the cars on his left.

  “Hell, let him catch us, Elvis!” Regis crowed. He was clearly having the time of his life. “There’s three of us. We can take him.”

  “No, please,” Murphy moaned. He had crawled down into the space behind the driver’s seat and was trembling. “Really. He could have a gun.”

  “No problem!” Regis cackled. “He’ll only have time to shoot one of us.”

  Elvis took the first exit on two wheels, flashed through the red light where the exit lane met the access road, made a U-turn, and tore back onto the highway. His timing was perfect. Six cars ahead of them was the Beetle. Elvis had not only lost their pursuer, he was now behind him.

  “Whoopee!” Elvis howled.

  “Gorgeous!” Regis cheered. “Work of art, Elvis!”

  Murphy’s shiny pate emerged from behind Elvis. His face was flushed but he was grinning from ear to ear. He raised his right hand in a flourishing salute and cried out, “Athos!”

  “Aramis!” Regis chimed in, also raising his right hand.

  Elvis looked over at Regis questioningly.

  “Say, ‘Porthos,”’ Regis murmured.

  “What for?”

  “The Three Musketeers,” Regis said. “He’s the third.”

  Elvis nodded. He was quiet for a moment, then slowly released his right hand from the steering wheel and held it aloft. “Porthos,” he mumbled.

  Both Regis and Murphy immediately began thumping Elvis on his shoulders, laughing and cheering and bouncing in their seats. Yup, it was just like the old days tooting around Tennessee with Scotty and Will, even if half the time he didn’t know what the heck Murphy and Regis were talking about.

  As they approached the East L.A. branch of the Savings and Loan bank, Regis pointed out Norma McDougal waiting for them. Norma was still wearing her pea green smock for bed-pan duty at the nursing home where she worked, but even in a Dior gown she wouldn’t have looked like much. Funny thing was, she definitely looked like a sister to Holly—blond hair, turned-up nose, saucer eyes—but every feature was just a tad off, a fraction too much. The blond hair looked like soiled sand instead of new-grown wheat, the up-turned nose bordered on the piggy, and Norma’s saucer eyes were so wide set that the one on the left looked like a walleye. The line between beauty and beast was a narrow one, all right. Probably if you looked at their DNA side by side under Dr. Garcia’s microscope, there wouldn’t be a whole of difference between Norma’s and Holly’s—just a microscopic speck that made all the difference in the world.

  But what was that difference, really? Norma McDougal may have been the beauty-deprived sister, but she was surely the only living one. And standing in front of the Savings and Loan in her spattered smock, she had a look of childlike hopefulness on her homely face—probably evoked by the prospect of coming into her late sister’s savings account, a small fortune that would allow her to throw away that smock forever. But whatever put that expression there, it was surely a look of living and breathing hope.

  When Norma saw Elvis Presley exit the car along with Regis and Murphy, that look changed to stupification, then to near ecstasy. She backed up unsteadily against the bank window, blushing deeply.

  “Afternoon, ma’am,” Elvis said, extending his hand. “Glad you could make it so quick.”

  Norma stared at him, speechless. She couldn’t quite get her hand out to meet his.

  “Got the key?” Regis asked.

  Norma nodded, and then Elvis led the way, limping without his crutch into the local branch of Los Angeles Savings and Loan.

  It was one of those frozen-action things again, like a single film frame locked on the Moviola screen. The entire bank—customers, tellers, officers, security men—came to an abrupt halt, whatever they were doing, and gaped at Elvis.

  “Good afternoon,” Elvis said to one and all.

  “Good afternoon, Elvis,” one and all replied in chorus.

  One of the bank officers came surging forward, trying to assume a just-another-day-at-the-office expression on his baby face.

  “How may I help you, Mr. Presley?” he said.

  Elvis pulled the spanking new court order from his pocket and unfurled it in front of the banker’s face.

  “Need to get into the safety box of Miss Holly McDougal,” Elvis announced. “This here gives me permission to—”

  The bank officer led the way to the vault without so much as a glance at the document; apparently, it was not good form to question the documentation of such an important new customer. Rodriguez would be disappointed to hear that his outstanding work had gone unappreciated.

  “These people are with you, I assume,” the banker said, gesturing to Elvis’s entourage as they waited for a guard to open the barred gate to the vault.

  “They surely are,” Elvis replied. “This here is my lawyer, Mr. Regis Clifford. And this is Miss Norma McDougal, Miss Holly’s sister. And over there is Mr. Michael Murphy. He’s my personal biographer, writes down every little thing I do.”

  “A pleasure,” the banker said. His nothing special going on here demeanor was rapidly being replaced by an expression of golly a celebrity close enough to touch. Elvis wished the man had stuck with his first attitude.

  Norma slipped Elvis the key, then he and the banker entered the vault where the banker inserted the master key into one slot and showed Elvis where to insert his. Elvis slid out Holly McDou
gal’s safety deposit box. It was heavy and awkward to carry, its contents rattling and shifting as Elvis limped out of the vault behind the banker. A horseshoe of gawkers had assembled just outside the barred gate to the vault and now the banker hissed for them to give Elvis some privacy, like a zookeeper shielding his prize bear at feeding time. Elvis, Regis, Murphy, and Norma followed the banker into a little cubicle where Elvis set the box on a counter and then let himself down heavily into the sole chair. Darned ankle was acting up again. Elvis lifted the box’s hinged cover.

  Its contents glistened like a galaxy of stars. There were enough diamond and emerald bracelets and necklaces to deck out an entire royal family.

  “Jesus!” Murphy said, Regis echoing him a beat behind.

  “Hot dog!” Norma McDougal exclaimed. At this point in her mind she probably wasn’t simply jettisoning her nursing-home smock, she was replacing it with gowns from every shop on Rodeo Drive. “Where the heck did Holly get this stuff?”

  “Good question,” Elvis said. Although Norma might be pleased to hear that her beautiful, angelic sister had been into prostitution, Elvis didn’t see any reason to tell her—not yet, at least. In any event, this display of gems confirmed his suspicion that Holly must have been involved in a more profitable enterprise than simply charging rent for her young body.

  Regis abruptly reached for the one necklace that was all diamonds, brought it close to his face and studied it.

  “You know something about jewelry?” Elvis asked him.

  “Not really,” Regis said, setting the necklace back into the box. “My mother had a weakness for diamonds that my good father indulged. But she never wore them outside the house. Afraid they’d get stolen. Kept them in a safe, just like Holly.”

  “Don’t see the sense in that,” Elvis said.

  “Simple greed,” Murphy said. “Like those people who buy stolen Rembrandts on the black market. They can’t show them to anyone, but late at night they take them out, gaze at them and think, ‘That’s mine. All mine.’”

  “Still don’t see the sense,” Elvis said, poking at one of the bracelets. He wondered vaguely what Priscilla would do if he brought something like it home to her. Wear it to the drive-in?

  “First thing to do is figure out if any of it is stolen,” Regis said. “And probably best not to involve the authorities.”

  Norma looked aghast. Surely it wasn’t the possibility that her late sister had been a thief that bothered her. No, it was the chance that some of this treasure would have to be returned to its rightful owner.

  “I know a jeweler who keeps up on stolen items,” Murphy said. “He’s been known to keep a secret too.”

  “Give him a call,” Elvis said. “And see how fast he can get over here.”

  They all had to wait while Norma did a thorough inventory of the jewelry, describing each piece in meticulous detail in a notebook she had brought along—the girl was nothing if not efficient. Then Elvis returned the box to the vault. Back at the banker’s desk, Murphy phoned his jeweler friend while Elvis signed several documents giving the jeweler permission to inspect Holly’s treasure trove on the premises. Elvis also signed several sheets of the banker’s personal stationery, autographs for every member of his family plus a few favorite clients. In exchange, the banker promised to hang around after closing time with a security guard to let the jeweler in to do his business.

  Outside, Elvis offered to give Norma a lift back to the nursing home, but she gave him a lopsided smile and said she’d rather walk, and that, anyway, she wasn’t going back to the nursing home today or any other day. Man, she was spending her sister’s money already; Elvis sure hoped she was legally entitled to it. In the meantime, he dug into his pocket, pulled out three fifty-dollar bills, and handed them to her.

  “What’s this for, Mr. Presley?” the girl asked, wide eyed.

  “Lunch,” Elvis said, getting into his car.

  The FBI story was all over the car radio, already coupled with an adamant denial straight from J. Edgar Hoover’s press secretary.

  “Nice touch, that denial!” Regis cheered. “Now the story really sounds true!”

  Murphy said that he was feeling nauseous again.

  One of the radio reporters announced that Warden Reardon’s dogs had just finished leading the search party in a futile four-mile arc in the northeast Tehachapi range, bringing it back to where they started from. He said there was talk of replacing both Reardon and his dogs. Elvis had to smile—he’d seen that one coming.

  20

  The Shame

  Regis’s phone was ringing as the three men rambled into his office. Regis picked up; it was for Elvis.

  “Elvis here.”

  “It’s me, Binxter Bartley out in Sparks, Mr. Presley,” the voice said. “Remember? I showed you the bull. Dead one.”

  “Yes, Mr. Bartley. I remember.”

  “I got Doc Freeman here,” Bartley said. “The vet. I’m going to put him on, okay?”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Mr. Presley? This Dr. Arthur Freeman.” A high, twangy voice.

  “Yes, Doctor.”

  “I can’t tell you how strange this is,” the vet said. “Talking to Mr. Elvis Presley in person.”

  “Yes, sir,” Elvis said.

  “Most of the time I just talk to animals, you know,” Freeman went on. “Horses, cows, sheep. And here I am talking to Elvis Presley.”

  “Yes, Doctor, must be strange,” Elvis said, sitting down behind Regis’s desk.

  “Can’t get over it,” Freeman said.

  “Well, there you go,” Elvis said. He was trying to bend over to massage his throbbing ankle, but couldn’t quite reach it.

  “So I looked at that bull what gored Cathcart,” the veterinarian said. “Monster animal. Good ton of prime beef.”

  “Big,” Elvis said encouragingly.

  “So the deal is, somebody shot him up with Actrapid—pork insulin,” Freeman said. “Enough to bring an elephant out of a diabetic coma.”

  “What?” Elvis sat upright again.

  “I did a blood test on him,” Freeman went on. “Looking for glucose. And it was off the charts. That’s what made me test for insulin.”

  “You think that’s what killed him?”

  “The bull?”

  “Cathcart.”

  “Both,” the veterinarian said. “Animal was pumping so much sugar he was seeing red. Literally. Capillaries in his eyes must have been flooded. And that’s just for starters. Blood pressure soaring, hormones going haywire. Any one of them is enough to make a bull go crazy and give him the strength of a whole team of oxen. At least for the five minutes or so before it makes his heart stop.”

  “You sure he was injected with it?” Elvis asked.

  “Had to be,” Freeman said. “You couldn’t get a bull to eat that much pork insulin if you wrapped it in daisies.”

  “How soon before Cathcart climbed onto the bull would that have been?” Elvis asked.

  “Couple of minutes,” Freeman said. “No more than that or he’d of keeled over in the pen.”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” Elvis said. “I’d sure appreciate it if you wrote all of this up and sent it to me.” He gave him Regis’s address. “Is Binxter still there?”

  “Sure is, Mr. Presley,” the vet said. “But before I sign off, I just got to tell you how much everyone out here in Sparks appreciates what you did yesterday. Righteous, you know? And funny how you dedicated that song to Squirm Littlejon, saying he was innocent and all, and now he’s on the loose down there. It’s like he heard you singing to him.”

  “Just a coincidence,” Elvis said.

  “Maybe,” Freeman said. “But a funny coincidence anyways.”

  Binxter Bartley came on the line.

  “Were you around the pen when Will got up on that bull?” Elvis asked him.

  “Yup.”

  “Who else was there?”

  “Joey,” Bartley said. “He’s the regular bull wrangler. Me and T
im—he’s the other one helped you up on the bandstand. And then one of Will’s pals from Hollywood.”

  “Mickey Grieves?”

  “Yup, he was the one,” Bartley said.

  “Thank you, Binxter.”

  “My pleasure, Mr. Presley.”

  Elvis replaced the phone and looked up. Regis was on his way out the door to the hallway bathroom; Murphy was inspecting the lawyer’s helter-skelter library.

  “We got that one right,” Elvis announced to Murphy. “Mickey Grieves killed Cathcart, even if he is just a cog in the machine. Get your tweezers out, Murph. We’ll need a piece of his DNA before Garcia gets here.”

  While he was sitting at Regis’s desk, Elvis made two more calls: one to his Bel Air doctor, Belizzi, who taught at U.C.L.A., and the other to the only hotel in the West Hollywood Yellow Pages that had a Spanish name, the San Vincente Inn. Belizzi reluctantly agreed to turn over a corner of his lab for a few days to Elvis’s doctor friend from Mexico. And the receptionist at the San Vincente Inn said she would be delighted to reserve five of their very best rooms, starting tonight. The moment Elvis hung up on this second call, the phone rang again. He picked it up with, “Regis Clifford’s law offices.”

  A man with what sounded like a German accent wanted to talk to Mike Murphy. He identified himself as a jeweler, and he said he was calling from an office at the Los Angeles Savings and Loan. Elvis waved Murphy over.

  “Murphy here,” was all Mike said and then he just listened, nodding, starting to jot down notes, then stopping, all the while his long forehead puckering and twitching, his jaw going slack, then his mouth dropping open, until finally he said, “Thanks, Henrik. We’ll be in touch,” and hung up. He stared at Elvis, chewing on his lower lip.

  “What’d he say?” Elvis said.

  “None of it … none of it appears to be stolen goods,” Murphy began slowly. “But most of it is insured. Heavily insured.”

  “By who? Does he know?” Elvis asked.

  Murphy did some more lip-chewing.

  “He needs to do some doublechecking,” he said quietly.

  “What the heck did he say, Murphy?” Elvis said, raising his voice.