Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

Temple looked around. "I guess so." She frowned at Buchanan, still shivering on his bench. "Apparently they're hanging the Crawf out to dry. You know, keeping him waiting until he cracks and comes up with a good excuse for being here. I'd almost feel sorry for him if I didn't know his biggest regret is not being able to get back to the Scoop to break the story."

“Temple, control yourself! Everything you've told me about him makes him the most venal, obnoxious man in Las Vegas, and that's a hard title to earn here."

“Yeah. Think about the competition he's up against. Colonel Tom Parker. I'm going to breeze by the dressing rooms and see if there's any reaction there."

“Think they've heard?"

“This is a pretty bizarre event to hide. Besides, I just directed the investigation toward the Elvis pageant. I bet those impersonators will hunger for my hide; they don't want to break their concentration for anything."

“They should be glad you're here to protect their hides. If someone wants to kill ersatz Elvi, there's a whole menu to choose from."

“I suppose you'll sacrifice your time and your best interests to accompany me down into the heart of Elvisdom?"

“You do need a witness to prove the innocence of your intentions. Just how many Elvi did you say are on tap downstairs?"

“It's a regular microbrewery of megalomania."

“Oh, goodie!" Electra rubbed her hands together and put her muumuu in motion.

Chapter 33

Bad Moon Rising

(Elvis sang this Credence Clearwater Revival hit in some of his 1970s concerts)

Matt shrugged on his faux sheepskin jacket, but he didn't pull on his leather gloves.

He knew by now that a straggle of fans would be waiting outside the radio station for him to autograph a motley assortment of ephemera: his photographs, their autograph books, even the occasional T-shirt.

Leticia Brown encouraged this departing ritual. He dreaded it.

For one thing, he couldn't help feeling defeated at the end of every show. The Midnight Hour had turned into the Elvis Hour. The phone lines bristled with calls from pro-and anti-Elvis listeners. The list of stump-Elvis questions had grown to three pages.

As if sensing this mob excitement building, the mysterious caller had remained mysteriously silent last night. Matt was being upstaged by a no-show.

He was annoyed with himself for not liking it, for wishing the sonofagun would end the suspense and just call, even it was to admit the whole thing was a hoax. Which was what it had to be, of course. Better to be revealed as the butt of a sick joke than to be stood up by a phantom.

They were always female, his fans, and they made him nervous. They looked at him with such fevered, hungry eyes, especially the Elvis groupies, as if he were an artery to the heart-blood of the King. He had a feeling they would slit his throat if they thought that would revivify Elvis.

Why else were they standing out here in the chilly dark collecting worthless autographs from the pen of a pseudonym? Still, they flocked to him when he exited the building with the touching excitement of residents of a home for the mentally challenged welcoming a rare visitor to their world.

And maybe he was more than slumming in the alternate universes of talk radio and media idolization. Maybe if they didn't have this outlet, this hope, their lives would implode, or explode.

Matt smiled and signed, won over despite himself by their enthusiasm. Of the six fans tonight three werestudents and three were middle-aged. The twenty-five-toforty-five-year-old age group seemed to have better things to do than fandom.

He glanced beyond their crowding shoulders to the distant street light.

No ambiguous silhouette stood in wait.

Matt wondered if he had become caught up in Elvis fever, had imagined that witness to his first encounter with fans. Was this how Elvis had started? With a paltry few? No, they had come in droves from the first. Evidently Matt didn't have that animal magnetism.

The very notion made him laugh, and the fans laughedwith him, delighted that he seemed happy to give them attention.

Attention. That was the key. Every human, and every animal, craved it. At times. Now he'd had his fill.

The street light had a running mate tonight: a full moon that hung above it like a hovering UFO. Blue Moon of Kentucky. Something Elvis had sung, or some amalgam of song and memory that Matt had made up? He wished them good night and mounted the English-made motorcycle called a Hesketh Vampire, so well named for nocturnal jaunts.

They eyed it with satisfaction. Elvis had loved motorcycles.

I hate this thing, Matt wanted to shout at them. It was borrowed, once-removed, from a man he at best disliked and at worst envied and feared. It was as obvious and noisy as it was spectacular and fast. Spectacular and fast had never been Matt's speed.