It was so new and daring that it would eventually get that Hillbilly Cat named the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, which is what everybody decided to call the new blend once it was rolling off of every radio in the country.
What do I know about music? Listen, I have been a backyard one-man band all of my life. All of us down and out sorts, whatever the color of our coats, like to get together for a good community wail now and then. Not that my breed has ever been much chased by record companies throwing big-money contracts at us, just by irate sleepers hurling shoes and chamberpots. Not everyone has an ear for music. And, luckily, almost no one has a chamberpot these days.
I must say that I am glad to see my Miss Temple getting out of the house and into a new environment. She has spent far too much time around the Circle Ritz these days, worrying about the care and feeding of this one human dude or the other, when there I sit needing a fresh bribe on my dry pile of Free-to-Be-Feline nuggets.
But I see that shenanigans of a sinister sort have lured her from the domestic front to the center of the newest action on the Strip, and that cannot be a bad thing.
As for someone who would find it necessary to create his—or her—own murder victim before plunging in the fatal dagger, what can you expect in a town that is all show and go and no substance? I see that the age of the Virtual Victim is upon us, especially when someone has gone to the trouble of offing the mannequin of a dead man. Pretty soon there will be a computer game available for this scenario.
But for now, the outré spectacle of a murdered costume is real-time, in the here and now.
Only in Las Vegas, of course.
Chapter 11
Any Way You Want Me
(A million-selling hit Elvis recorded in his Golden Year of 1956 at RCA)
A head poked around the dressing room door.
“I heard about the deceased jumpsuit and came to see it if was one of mine.”
The face was cherubic under a gleaming helm of high, wide, and handsome dark hair, with the heavy sideburns resembling the hinged metal side-flaps on a knight’s helmet.
Temple had never pictured Elvis Presley as Sir Lancelot, but these stylized wigs sure made the comparison apt. The hair looked lacquered enough to resist a direct hit by a medieval mace.
“Hi, Kenny,” Quincey greeted him.
The Elvis imitator sashayed into the room, still gazing at the fallen jumpsuit with fascinated disbelief. “Man, that’s one of those wool-gabardine numbers out of De-troit. Must be worth three grand … or was before the blood got on it.”
“Nail polish,” Temple said, drawing his attention for the first time.
“Say, this must be a shock for you, kid, coming over to visit your classmate and running into a ruined Elvis suit.”
Most gainfully employed women of thirty would be thrilled to be taken for a high-school senior. Temple, at five-feet-three tops in high heels, considered it a declaration of war.
“I do PR for the Crystal Phoenix,” she said as crisply as a military officer giving rank. “We’ve had a … manifestation at a construction site and I came over here to look into it.”
Kenny frowned, which did not budge his hairline a centimeter. “Why would you come over here to check out a problem on a work site all the way over at the Crystal Phoenix?”
“The disruption was apparently an Elvis sighting.”
“Whoo, boy! There’s a few of those in town right now, and I bet that’s always happening.” He nodded at the suit. “Wow. This thing has been laid out, excuse the expression, in the position of a chalk body outline from a crime show on TV. D’you suppose the suit was out for an unauthorized walk, got attacked at the Phoenix, and made it back here before collapsing?”
“Anything is possible,” Temple said, meaning it.
Standing here talking to a five-feet-six Elvis clone (the real one had been around six feet, she guessed) with a sixties Priscilla Presley looking on was more than a trip down memory lane, it was a trip, period. And trips like that, Temple had supposed, were mostly of seventies vintage, when LSD was the operating system of choice.
Quincey must have decided that too, because she sat down and returned to arranging her layers of false eyelashes in the mirror, using a straight pin to strip the excess mascara off each one. There was a lot of excess mascara to lose.
Kenny shook his head sadly at the dead jumpsuit. “I’m glad it isn’t one of mine. Bet it wasn’t insured either. We put a lot of time and heart and soul into our acts, but we put our cash into the jumpsuits. And the hair.” He pointed upward, as if anyone could miss the Hair.
“So word about the ruined jumpsuit is getting around,” Temple said, encouraging further confidences.
She wanted to figure out if there was any reason an Elvis imitator would make an unscheduled appearance at the Jersey Joe Jackson Mine Ride-in-progress. Or if anyone might have a motive for laying someone’s expensive costume low. Anything that touched the Crystal Phoenix was her business.
Kenny pulled out a wooden chair, flipped it around and sat so he could cradle his forearms on the back. He was a bantam Elvis, chunky, with overdeveloped muscles rather than fat, his high hair like a brunet coxcomb. Despite his rounded features, no one would mistake him for a high-schooler. Temple guessed that he was a decade older than she.
“Word gets around,” Kenny admitted. “We all watch what the others are doing.”
“Paranoid?”
“Naw, eager to learn. After all, there’s no one like us, right?”
“How many are running around the hotel?”
“Gosh, maybe a hundred.”
“A hundred?”
“This is the biggest Elvis-impersonator competition ever. Everybody’s here from the Grand Old Men who invented the art to the rawest new kids on the block.”
“And where do you rank?”
“Somewhere in the middle.” Kenny grinned. “But anything can happen. It’s a competition, right?”
“Competitive enough for somebody to ice somebody else’s jumpsuit?’
“Gee, Elvis was red, white, and blue suede shoes. I’d hate to think someone would get petty in his name. None of us would be doing this if we didn’t revere the man’s talent and what he stood for. So, no, I can’t imagine one of us sinking that low. Besides, any competition’s a crapshoot. It’d be better to attack the judges than some poor innocent jumpsuit.”
“This looks like a pretty spectacular one. I’d hate to duplicate it on short notice.”
Kenny shook his head mournfully. “I couldn’t feel worse seeing that destroyed there, other than seein’ some guy in it. God, I put in every spare minute and nickel for the past three years to get myself here. When I first started performing at karaoke clubs around Philly, I got laughed off the stage until I got good enough to laugh back. Someone who’d ruin any Elvis imitator’s mainstay deserves to be stabbed in the back too.”
“But your suits are safe.”
“Better be. I got two. A lot of guys only got one and they put all their hopes and dreams and their best buddies’ cash into it. Families, friends, they gotta support your Elvis habit, or you wouldn’t make it this far.”
Temple was actually starting to choke up over the ruined jumpsuit.
For an Elvis impersonator, she saw, a jumpsuit was a costly second skin. Designing and underwriting one was the single biggest commitment he made to his avocation. Whoever had thrust the gaudy dagger through the rhinestone stallion had also stabbed a metaphorical blow into the owner’s heart.
Malicious mischief wasn’t quite strong enough to describe the ruin wreaked here.
“It could be dirty tricks before the competition,” she said.
Kenny nodded. “Or it could be someone who hates the King, in any form.““That would mean you all were in danger.”
Kenny’s bright blue eyes squinted almost closed. “He did get a lot of death threats when he was alive. You’d sorta hope that would stop when he was dead.”