“You can always call again,” Matt said reassuringly, but he had already grown cynical enough to add mentally, if anyone lets you through.
“That’s good. That’s all right.” The man sounded genuinely relieved, and Matt felt a stab of pity for him. “Thank you. Thank you verra much.”
Matt rolled his head on his shoulders while taking off the headphones, reducing the muscle tension. The fading rant of a local car dealer commercial was still droning in his ears when Leticia burst into the studio.
When a woman has the face of an archangel, the energy of a whirling dervish, and a three-hundred-pound body, any place she enters is a breakin.
“I know. I let this guy run on too long.”
“Too long? Didn’t you recognize his voice?”
“Recognize his voice? The only celebrity I ever counseled before was at ConTact, and this wasn’t him. This voice was baritone, all right, but with a slurry kind of accent.”
“A Southern accent, maybe.”
“Yeah, but it was, ah, softened, like he’d been out of the South for some time.”
“Oh, he sure has, honey chile. That man has been off the planet for twenty-two years.”
“He’s that far gone mentally, huh? Sorry, I guess I’m not up on the entertainers at all the hotels. Should I have known him?”
Leticia said nothing, just came over and enveloped him in a smothering, industrial-strength hug.
“Matt, baby, you are the sweetest, out-of-the-loop thing, bless your heart. Don’t you even have a clue who that was? Watch our numbers soar now! That was the Hillbilly Cat, Mr. Las Vegas, the King of Rock ‘n’ Roll, E. the P., the no-longer-late Elvis Presley, or I’m just ninety pounds of soggy grits and chitlin’s.”
“But … he’s dead.”
“Not on WCOO-AM he isn’t. Ohhh, baby!”
Chapter 14
Louie,Louie
(Elvis recorded the 1898-composed “The Whiffenpoof Song,” which mentions a Temple Bar and Louie the bartender in 1968; it was used in 1969’s The Trouble with Girls)
Okay, Elvis never recorded any version of my eponymous song, that venerable drinking anthem that has so enliv-ened the past couple decades.
But he did record “The Whiffenpoof Song,” another, far older drinking song in which I and my Miss Temple Barr are mentioned. (Indirectly, of course, but we always were discreet. Or rather, I was. I cannot speak for Miss Temple Barr, especially during her obscure years before she met me.) The King recorded Whiffenpoof back in ‘68, and it was used a year later in one of his films, The Trouble with Girls. Not that the King had any trouble with girls other than beating them off.
This is how I know so much about the ultimate E. We have a lot in common.
After my undercover visit to the Kingdome. it is natural that Elvis should be on my mind. I have retreated home to the Circle Ritz overnight, so Miss Temple finds me innocently sitting on her sofa or her bed, whichever will lnconvenience her most at the moment, apparently lazing away my days and nights. Like Nero Wolfe, my mind is most active when I appear most physically inactive.
It is clear that any hijinks involvlng Elvis, whether at the Crystal Phoenix or the Kingdome, will require a vast insight into the man, his life, and times. For me, this is a snap. We have a lot in common.
You could say that Elvis Presley and I are synonymous with Las Vegas.
True, he did not appear to recognize the concept of “low-profile,” and I am a master of blending into my environment, but we share a certain raw animal magnetism and a taste for exotic dishes both voluptuary and culinary.
Neither of us went for health food, that was for sure. I am certain all are familiar with E’s adoration of burnt-black bacon, hard-fried eggs you could use as blackjacks, buttermilk biscuits, and the infamous fried bananapeanut-butter sandwiches. To him, fruit and vegetables were major abominations, as the Free-to-Be-Feline food pellets that resemble health-store pills are to me.
I do lack E’s flair and passion for dressing up, and I do not need the services of his later, ever-present sunglasses. My sunglasses, like my concealed weapons, are built in. I have these laser-fast pupils that contract to shut out too much light. I bet Elvis would have really grooved on my eyes, could he have begged, borrowed, or bought them.
And he would have tried
Chapter 15
Heartbreak Hotel
(Written by Tommy Durden and Hoyt Axton’s mother Mae, snapped up by Elvis in November 1955, and recorded in January 1956; Elvis’s first million-seller)
“Temple,” Matt said to Temple over the phone, “can I presume on your expertise again?”
“Something to do with talk shows?”
“Just my radio show. Could you come up and hear my new tape player?”
“Now?”
“Today would be good. Before I have to do another show.”
“That urgent? Well, sure.”
Temple hung up, looking through her closet for some visiting outfit more appropriate than a sweat suit.
As she hopped on one foot hunting the matching shoe on the closet floor, she did wonder how Max would like all this semiprofessional hobnobbing between his former rival and herself. Darn him, anyway! Why did he have to be off on one of his mysterious missions, which had gotten mysteriouser after the recent murder of the stripper he had tried to help? Temple froze, transfixed by a stab of real worry. Max ran on an exaggerated sense of responsibility for every ill in the world. His teenaged cousin’s tragic death in Ireland had started the cycle so long ago … who would end it? Of course, it was ludicrous to consider Matt anyone’s rival. A less competitive personality she had never met, or maybe she’d just never seen him want anything he had difficulty getting. Like her.
Had she been drawn into this help-Matt campaign as a clever way of entangling her emotionally? Matt had shown signs of being seriously interested, also confessing that he had a lot of personal issues to resolve first. She sighed. Ex-priests were so hard to read. She only knew one, admittedly.
By the time she’d worried the pros and cons of both men to shreds in her mind, she was dressed and ready to visit the apartment directly overhead. What Max might think of such neighborliness was none of his business, so long as it was just neighborly.
When Matt answered her knock, he seemed too excited to notice her appearance. “What do you know about Elvis Presley?” he demanded before the door had even closed behind her.
“Elvis Presley?” The weird coincidence knocked her out. “Strange that you should ask, but virtually nothing.” “As little as I’m likely to know about him?” “Probably not that little.”
“Then listen to this.” Matt grabbed her wristgrabbed!—to hustle her into the living room. There he positioned her dead center on his red suede couch.
He then grabbed (grabbed again) the stereo remote control from one of the modest gray coffee table cubes. He pointed it at the shelf unit stereo, which squatted like a technological god on a primitive islander’s makeshift altar: a board across two brick pillars.
“Listen!” Matt ordered.Ordered? Matt? He didn’t even sit beside her, but paced behind the sinuous fifties-style sofa, so she couldn’t crane her neck to read his face for some clue to this charade.
A moment later Matt’s voice came over the tape, mel-low yet intense, that nice combo of styles he brought to electronic media so naturally that seasoned on-air personalities would spit to hear it.
A young girl’s voice, vacant and unformed, was fad-ing off.
On came a man’s voice, a little mushy but also mel-low in its own way.
Temple listened for a few moments, then planted her elbows on her knees and her chin on her fists and listened harder. Behind her Matt paced, his footsteps making the fifty-year-old wood parquet floor creak at intervals, like a scratch in an obsolete vinyl record.