“Frank?” The name of Matt’s mentor-turned agent from seminary again. “Oh, you mean Frank Sinatra.”
“Yeah. The Frank. He owned Vegas, but I overtook him, after all.”
“You could have overruled Colonel Parker on the Streisand film. He was just your manager.”
“Oh, no, sir. He did so much for me, and my mama was gone and there was only him to guide me.”
“He became notorious for mismanaging you and your money.”
The drawn-out sigh could have auditioned to be an aria. “I won’t say folks didn’t lead me astray. Things look different from a different place, a different time. But I can’t leave Vegas. This is where I laid it all down, every night. For my fans, my audience. Anyway, I have some tips for you.”
“Me?”
“Yeah. The billboards show you’re a blond guy. I hear you’re going TV.”
Matt cringed to hear that going out over the radio. The opportunity was hush-hush and very uncertain. Only four people in Vegas knew that. How—?
“Anyway, why I’m calling is I have some career advice. I was born blond. A natural blond. Not good. I noticed when I was real young dark-haired guys did better on the screen. Tony Curtis. Robert Taylor. I decided right then I needed to be dark-haired onstage…only those film actors didn’t have to sweat the rock and roll until the hair dye ran down into their eyes. And I did. That stung, and worse.
“But I don’t see your new talk gig involving a lot of sweat. So ditch the blond hair.”
“Thanks. I’ll consider it. Anyway, it’s good to hear from you. Again.”
“I’m a performer. Gotta stay up to wind down after my shows.”
“And you’re back at the International causing a sensation,” Matt pointed out.
“So they say.” The voice turned wistful, younger. “I’d like to try something new, but everyone wants the same old, same old. I finally was jus’ about to die of boredom, you know what I mean?”
“Well, hey, you gotta love your new Vegas digs. It’s a shrine, really.”
“Yeah. Classy. Everything I loved once is there now as well as in Graceland. My wheels, my wardrobe. Even Priscilla sometimes. Big change from my first gig in Vegas, that they said the usual gray-hairs in the audience didn’t get and wasn’t successful. It was, my man. They just didn’t know how. How I got some new tricks off the stage.”
“You know how back as a kid in Tupelo, Mississippi, I’d go to black clubs to hear the blues, and anywhere I’d go to black churches to listen to Gospel?”
“I know you loved blues and Gospel,” Matt said with a smile in his voice. “I do too. Especially Gospel. I went to black churches to hear it myself.” Matt didn’t mention he’d been a Catholic priest at the time.
Dave was smiling on the other side of the glass and every phone line had gone dead. People were just listening to that slow, musing voice.
Whether this was one of hundreds of Elvis tribute performers and wanna-bes, an obsessed fan, a deranged actor, a ghost, or a mass hallucination, it was ratings gold. And, Matt believed, the King might be feeling lonely tonight, but he had a message for Matt.
“You have a good show there, Mr. Midnight. Cool handle. You offer good advice, like to that little girl who doesn’t quite know where she’s going, or can go. I seen lots of little girls like that.”
“Thank you.” Matt quashed an impulse to add: “Thank you very much.”
“Nice and polite, but nobody’s fool. Now that ‘old Bill’ guy who called in. I don’t have a good feeling about him. There is something ‘off’ there. Reminds me a bit of the Colonel. Yeah, I know now he was bad for me in the end, but he tried real hard at the beginning, and I don’t have to see or hear or think about him anymore. We aren’t in the same place now, if you get what I mean?”
“I do”, Matt said. “And am glad to hear that.”
“I don’t wish anybody ill. We all are just all doin’ the best that we can, from where we come from and where we’re going.”
“You know, maybe I should turn this show over to you.”
The laugh was long and musical. “No, but you should get that black dye job.” The voice grew fainter and reminiscent.
“Jumpin’ Jack Robinson. Black cat. Wore a black-and-white, pin-striped zoot suit. He was like a fistful of jumpin’ jacks, all right. Man, he could make those zoot suit pantaloons and that long, long steel cat chain at the side shake, rattle and roll. Proud that chain came off a toilet. Makin’ do and makin’ do well enough to own his own club. Down some rickety stairs to a basement like in speakeasy days. Way off from where the New Frontier was on highway US-91.
“When I got married at the Aladdin in sixty-seven, Howard Hughes was buying the New Frontier and some guy named Steve Wynn had a small interest in it. I remember seein’ that in the paper and remembering my first Vegas gig. The New Frontier had a big cut-out image of me at the curb, grinnin’ with my guitar like I was a ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ sign. The city was not very welcomin’ that first time, until the Colonel got some teenagers in on the weekend.
“Anyway, after our performances, me and my three band boys didn’t go for gamblin’ casinos. We visited other acts. They were all white in those days, but we heard about this weird little place.”
Matt’s heart almost stopped. He knew what was coming.
“The Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club. Learned some moves off that cat I never did in Memphis. Killed, though. He was hung by that make-shift cat chain. Not long after I left town.
“Nobody much noticed me, until I had my TV comeback Special and came back to Vegas in sixty-nine. Whole different Vegas then. The Rat Pack with Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, and Sammy Davis, Jr. Two crooners, an actor-in-law to President Kennedy, a comic and a singin’, dancin’ dude like two Jumpin’ Jack Robinsons, all on the main stage of the big hotel-casinos. Like I was. The Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club wasn’t even history. No surprise. I was almost history before my comeback. Then the Rat Pack soon became history and Vegas was mine. For a time, Mr. Midnight. I think you know that. For a time. A time is all anybody gets and we need to make the most of it.”
Matt’s feelings and intellect suspended. Elvis at eighty, had he lived, back on the radio? Might as well be with half of Graceland a Vegas attraction now. A smart business decision. The “Memphis cat” and his heartland house and legend needed more tourist exposure.
What next? A Disney cruise? Elvis would love his Vegas shrine. He could relive his earliest days, when he used to sneak nights into the Zoot Suit Choo-Choo Club along with other performers around the dark side of the Strip.
“You still with me?” Elvis’s voice took Matt’s mind off of Jumping Jack Robinson’s murder, not suicide.
“So, Mr. Midnight. You should live up to your name. You wanna do some ebony black hair, so dark it gets blue highlightenin’. Blue Lightning. And don’t knock sweat. I don’t think a talker like you will sweat enough. A rocker will. That’s what they loved me for. I sweated my heart out for them. Once they don’t see you sweat, they don’t love you anymore. You’ve got to let it pour out.”
Dave was signaling something as the caller’s voice faded and stopped.
Pore out, Matt thought. Right. It’s all right, Mama. No, it wasn’t. Not after Mama died. What do you do when you’ve got everything in the world except the one who loves you?