“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, âPorthos,”' 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 Hollyâblond hair, turned-up nose, saucer eyesâbut 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'sâjust 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 faceâprobably 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 bankâcustomers, tellers, officers, security menâcame 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 toâ”
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 McDougal'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 herânot 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, âThat'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 alongâthe 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 smileâhe'd seen that one coming.
The Shame
R
egis'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 Actrapidâpork 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 Timâhe'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.
Just then Regis came sailing back in the door, freshly shaven, his hair slicked back, and an expression of happy resolve on his patrician face. The man seemed to spin around a hundred and eighty degrees on a regular basis. Murphy looked from Regis to Elvis to the tips of his well-worn shoes.
“Nothing,” Murphy mumbled to Elvis. “He didn't say anything important.”
“I think we deserve dinner, boss,” Regis declared cheerfully.
It was dark, Littlejon was probably safe for the night at least, Grieves would be near impossible to track down at this hour, and Elvis hadn't eaten a thing since his complimentary donut and coffee at the Stardust Cabins in Yosemite some sixteen hours ago.
“My treat,” Elvis said.
In the spirit of his renewed resolve, Regis waved off the large pitcher of sangria that the waiter automatically brought to their table at La Cucina. Instead, he told the waiter to just bring out whatever dishes were ready to serve and to keep them coming until they screamed for him to stop.
“I wonder what Squirm's doing tonight,” Elvis said, as he dipped his first chunk of bread into the guacamole.
“Sitting in a tree and howling at the moon,” Regis said wistfully.
Murphy cocked his head and smiled. He seemed to have emerged from the nervous funk brought on by his phone conversation with the jeweler.
“You sounded like Fats Waller just then, Elvis,” he said. “Fat's always ends his last set by saying, âI wonder what the poor people is doin' tonight. And I wish I was doing it too.'”
“Good man, Fats,” Elvis said.
“Good eater too,” Regis said as a double portion of
albóndigas en chipotle
was deposited in the center of their table.
In the corner of Elvis's eye, Squirm's face suddenly flashed on the screen of the television set over the bar. Elvis immediately stood, jarring the table and knocking one of the
albóndigas
out of the serving dish, then limped over to the bar to listen, but the story was finishing up by the time he got there. Several of the drinkers were laughing.
“What's new about Littlejon?” Elvis asked them.
“He just have his dinner, Senor Presley,” one of the drinkers said, grinning and raising his beer in a toast. “To Squirm-ay!
El bandito diminuto!
”
“Squirm-ay!” his companions echoed.
“One person see him eating steak at a restaurant up in Oildale,” the first man said. “Another person see him eating tacos down in Grapevine. Either way,
el bandito diminuto,
he eating good.”
“Gracias,” Elvis said, and he returned to the table feeling more optimistic than he had all day. Not only did Squirm still have the authorities baffled, but he seemed to be evolving into a folk hero in the process. God love
el bandito diminuto!
Elvis and his friends ate nonstop for over two hours.
They saw the envelope leaning against the wall of Regis's door as they came to the top of the stairs at ten thirty. It was a large manila job with a metal clip holding down the flap. ELVIS in newspaper
letters was taped to the front. Somebody had clipped out his name from the morning's headlines.
Regis handed the envelope to Elvis, unlocked his door, and flipped on the lights. Elvis limped over to Regis's desk and heaved himself into the chair. He turned the envelope over in his hands uneasily. The way they'd stuck his cut-out name on it made it look like a ransom note in the movies.
It turned out to be worse than a ransom note. Much worse.
The first piece of paper Elvis withdrew was also written in letters clipped from a newspaper:
STOP SNOOP NOW OR THIS GOES PUBLIC
The second piece of paper was thicker. A contact sheet of 35mm black-and-white photographs. Elvis had to bring it up to his nose to make out the images: photographs of Ann-Margret and himself.
Naked.
Elvis began to tremble. His gut churned. He felt dizzy. He squeezed his eyes shut and opened them again, but when he looked at the contact sheet the images remained the same: Ann-Margret and him making love.
Most of the little squares were fuzzy, out of focus. And many were at bizarre anglesâa stretch of thigh jutting from one edge of the frame to the other; the bottom of a single foot; a giant elbow filling the entire frame. But scattered among these were three or four photographs that unmistakably revealed the faces and bodies of both Elvis and Miss Ann.
In the corner of one of the shots, Elvis glimpsed a piece of sheet music on the edge of a table, but it was too small to make out the song. In another, he saw the top of a race-car helmet, the one he wore to play Lucky Jackson in Viva
Las Vegas.
In another, the skimpy top of a swimsuit hanging from a plastic doorknob. Elvis recognized the knob; it was on the door to his location trailer in Vegas. The photographs must have been taken through a crack in the curtains of that trailer window.
The cramp in Elvis's gut turned vicious. He could kill whoever
took these pictures. Kill whoever was blackmailing him with them. Kill him with his bare hands. Wring his neck and watch his eyes pop out without feeling a shred of guilt.
“What is it, Elvis?” Murphy asked tentatively from the other side of the room.
Automatically, Elvis pressed the photo sheet against his chest.
“Nothing,” he mumbled.
Nobody could see those pictures.
Never
! Not just Priscillaâ
Nobody!
At that moment, Elvis would murder anyone who even
looked
at them. Murphy. Regis. Anybody. Kill them right there on the spot. Tear their eyes out after viewing that filth.
“You don't look too good,” Regis said, sitting down behind his desk opposite Elvis.
“Shut your mouth!” Elvis barked.
Elvis stuffed the contact sheet back into the envelope, the blackmail note after it. It wasn't just what this would do to him and Priscilla. Not just the public disgrace either, even though that would surely send his career into a tailspin. It went way beyond that. It went straight to his mother's grave. Because it was
shame
. Ungodly
shame
. The
shame
of sullying all that was good and decent about being Gladys Presley's sole surviving son. The
shame
of being pornography. Yes, that is exactly what this made himâpornographic filth. Just like some of those church people had been saying about him all along, that all his hip wiggling had nothing to do with music and everything to do with sex. Wanton sex. Public sex.
Filthy
sex.
Without thinking, Elvis reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the vial of painkillers. He screwed off the top and shook out a pill. Then another.
“Don't!”
Regis blurted.
“Leave me alone.”