All the performers nodded to Temple waiting alone in the wings as they exited. She was the prize. The High Princess who would award the Sacred Belt.
It lay near her in an open box long enough to hold roses: a five-inch-wide length of inscribed metal that would look heavy even around Mr. T’s 24-karat neck.
Temple felt cultural confusion. In a way the artifact was the Sword in the Stone. In a way it was the National Wrestling Federation trophy belt. It was Platinum Records and Latinum bars, a cross-cultural mélange of trophies both fictional and factual.
It meant nothing and everything, just as Elvis had. It meant life and death, just as Elvis had.
She was Priscilla, she was Guinevere. Both had feet of clay while they wielded belts of gold.
She was mortal, she was eternal.
The sword was in the lake, the sword was buried in a bejeweled back.
She was a symbol, she was a solver of symbols. She was nuts to be here.
Then the nine Fontana boys bounced onstage, each to a twanging guitar chord, each in a pose that reflected his version of Elvis.
“Lawdy Miss Clawdy,” wailed the first.
“You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Hound Dog,” whined the second.
“Running Scared,” howled the third.
“Farther Along,” crooned the fourth.
“Find Out What’s Happening,” urged the fifth. “Any Day Now,” moaned the sixth.
“Love Me Tender,” whispered the seventh.
“Crying in the Chapel,” blazed the eighth.
“Amen,” intoned the ninth.
They got a standing ovation.
Temple was among the clappers who blistered the heels of their hands.
Then someone else was gyrating on stage. Kenny! Looking much larger than himself, larger than life.
“Do You Know Who I Am?” he wailed with savage passion, hips swiveling like a stopped-up pepper shaker on a humid, Gulf-coast restaurant table.
Temple jumped up and down in the wings. “Go, Kenny, go!” An exiting Elvis glowered at her. She wasn’t supposed to show favoritism.
Temple settled down to look around. No one much noticed her. She really wouldn’t come into play until she awarded the winner’s belt.
If the killer was an Elvis freak, and if “Priscilla” was his next target, it didn’t make sense to kill her until all the shouting was over.
“Hey!” Oversized paused by her. They had to whisper, which helped disguise her voice.
“You guys did good,” she told him.
“Thanks. You okay, Miss Quincey?”
“Fine.”
“You want some us to hang out by you?”
“Naw. What’s to worry? I’m packing a really mean hair spray.”
Oversized laughed. “You always did. Well, if you’re okay—”
“Go on. Wait for the rankings. I’m sure you guys got at least an eight.”
“It’s like the Olympics, right? Ten’s the winner.” “But eight’s not to sneeze at. Go on.”
“You’re sure in good spirits, Miss Quincy. I can’t see why Miss Temple wanted us to leave you to your own devices, seeing as how your own devices involve some pretty strange stuff.”
“I’m fine.” She pushed Oversized away, quite a feat given his bulk, and her lack of it. “Quincey” couldn’t take too close examination.
She watched him join his brothers in passing behind the black velvet back curtain to the stage’s other side, where Crawford held forth as emcee and they could watch him. It only Crawf were the target most likely … ! She felt terrible about deceiving them, but the show must go on.
The King of Kings’ show wouldn’t go on.
Temple lost her sense of time and place as she thought about Lyle. She had really liked him in the few minutes they had talked, and would probably never know what he had done to merit witness protection, or death. Maybe nothing but blow the whistle. Why would a man risk his life for recognition as someone he could never be? If the King of Kings had lived and won, a protected witness really couldn’t afford that much attention. Nor could the “real” Elvis, if Lyle had been what Crawford thought he was.
Being Elvis seemed to be an unhappy vocation all around. What was the attraction? Did they all hope to do Elvis better than Elvis had? No, it was something else. They all wanted to save Elvis.
Turn back the clock, step on their blue suede shoes. If they could change something in the Elvis legend, they could change Elvis himself. Save him. Even Priscilla was still engaged in that very mission, through Elvis Presley Enterprises. Redeem the past by preserving it in plastic for the present and future King.
Beam me up, mama.
The stage was sprouting new Elvi like legendary dragon’s teeth sowed soldiers.
But the routine—Crawford’ s slightly lugubrious emceeing, sudden entrance, hard-chord intro, quick and dirty rendering, fast exit—was becoming routine. Repetitive drudgery, as it had been for Elvis, in the end.
Temple heard the numbers work their way to the inevitable countdown.
Sixty-seven. Eighty-three. Ninety-four. She yawned. Gosh, she hadn’t seen Electra’s new boyfriend, Today Elvis, perform yet. A shock of white hair would be anice change from all the black. Funny guy. Israel what? Feinberg. Not a likely Elvis impersonator name. Unless … wasn’t Israel an anagram for Is real? Could it be? Where was he? The watch she wore under Priscilla’s long, dainty Cinderella-gown sleeves read almost midnight. A rat-a-tat of bass guitar chords preceded a rebel yell. An Early Elvis in black leather came sliding across the dark stage floor on bended knees, a guitar cocked at his leading hip like an ax.
“(You’re the) Devil in Disguise” was the song, and a madman incarnate delivered it straight from Beelzebub’s mail room.
Temple straightened up, blinked, and only then noticed a pale satin rope looping down from the heights above her misty headdress.
Every eye in the place fixed on the magnetic Elvis on stage. Tutti Frutti Elvis from rehearsals, Temple realized belatedly. Why did he change his number … ? Her hand lifted to bat at the encroaching stage line. Wait! There were no white ropes backstage, only black—The dangling bridal rope was looping around her neck.
She twisted her head away, but the pouf of veiling over her exaggerated hairdo made it hard to see. Holy Hound Dog! Someone was trying to strangle her! Bucek had been right.
Her arms flailed so sharply Minnie’s shoulder seams ripped like pressed wood in a table saw.
Beads rained past her veiling, bleached poppy seeds falling to the stage floor, but Temple couldn’t hear their brittle landing. Everything was pulsing to the song’s driving beat; the stage floor was heaving, her throat was tightening and her eyes were losing focus in a pale, many-layered haze.
The corner of her eye caught a compact black form launching at her head, launching beyond her head.
Something was screaming, screeching. Not her, her voice was silenced.
The white satin snake at her neck loosened and fell away just as the onstage Elvis charged into her vision like a rocket.
He grabbed her elbow.
His grip forced her to duck and run forward. By center stage she had been dragged to her knees beside him, skidding on yards of beaded organza.
They were sliding together like suicidal skiers toward the stage’s far corner rim, a satin garrote trailing over Temple’s left shoulder like an aviator’s scarf, like the scarf that had caught in Isadora Duncan’s car wheels and killed her. What a way to go! Elvis and Priscilla skidded to a dead stop at the very brink of the stage, cheek to cheek, right where a phalanx of photographers in the pit were posed to snap their picture.
Temple coughed discreetly. “Nice timing,” she complimented her unknown savior. One of Bucek’s ersatz Memphis Mafia men? She never would have credited the FBI man with such flair.
“Rotten planning,” he muttered through her smile and his into her almost-kissed lips.
The voice was as unmistakable as Elvis’s. “Max!?” “May I call you Cilla?”