Designated Targets

Then again, maybe he wouldn’t. If Slim Jim bought him a ticket out of Tupelo now, gave him enough money for a comfortable life, maybe the kid would never sing a song worth a tinker’s crap. Not that the thought really bothered him. Those songs were recorded by an Elvis from another time. No, this was all about who was gonna get paid for them.

Not some asshole called Colonel Tom Parker, you could bet on that.

Nope. “Slim Jim Enterprises” would be latching itself on to this particular money tit. And if the kid never became an actual recording star, just because he grew up rich instead of poor, well, who gave a damn? Slim Jim had grown up in a town a lot like this, with a daddy a lot like Vernon. And if some asshole had turned up on their doorstep, offering to buy them out of poverty, Daddy would have been trampled to death by the entire Davidson clan rushing to sign on the dotted line. And to hell with the consequences.

Slim Jim was only vaguely aware of the deepening dusk as he sat in the Caddy, chanting his way through O’Brien’s notes like some kind of mad priest. Yeah, Tupelo is a lot like home. Besides the two main roads in the center of town, every street was a strip of dirt or gravel. Clouds of dust would rise from them in summer. They’d turn into rivers of mud during the spring rains. Most folks would have worked the Roosevelt program during the Depression, cutting brush, fixing roads. Most, like Gladys Presley, wouldn’t ask for handouts, but would accept what was offered. The men would all be factory workers and sharecroppers.

Now most of them would be in the army or working in the war industries. Poor but honest, they’d think of themselves. Screwed and stupid was how Slim Jim would have put it.

A guy like Vernon Presley he could understand. He knew the type. He’d have had good intentions, but not enough character to see them through. Slim Jim wished they could deal with Vernon rather than Gladys. It was a laydown that they could sneak a signature out of old Vern, just for a crate of beer and a hundred bucks.

But O’Brien had been a real ballbreaker on that particular subject, even more so than usual. There’d be no grifting the Presley family. They’d get the industry standard percentage, and Slim Jim would take the industry standard cut. It was a shitload of money to be tossing away to a bunch of dumbass crackers, at least to his way of thinking. But she’d given him that stone face of hers again, and he’d buckled. She was a scary bitch—and bottom line, he was rich because of it.

“And then Vernon told Elvis he was responsible for his mama’s ill health because of the bad birth . . . ,” he continued, only half his mind on the task.

“No,” O’Brien said. “We don’t know for sure that that’s happened yet, so it’s better not to bring it up. But it’s supposed to happen around about now, so just keep it in mind.”

“Right.” He nodded. “So are we gonna fuck this puppy or what?”

His lawyer rolled her eyes, but she leaned forward to tap on the glass partition that separated them from the driver.

“Okay,” she said, raising her voice. “Let’s roll.”

It was a short drive from Priceville Cemetery to East Tupelo, a pissant little rats’ nest of meandering unpaved streets running down off the Old Saltillo Road. A couple of creeks, two sets of railroad tracks, some open fields, and a whole world of dreams separated the hamlet’s beaten-down inhabitants from the good people of Tupelo proper. Slim Jim wasn’t bothered none driving into such a place.

Nor, he noticed, was Ms. O’Brien. He figured it was just another one of those things about your dames from the future. Not much seemed to rattle them, unless you tried to cop a feel without being invited.

“That’s it,” she announced.

She indicated a small wooden frame house, a “shotgun shack,” they called them. This one stood about a hundred yards up the street they’d just entered. Dusk was full upon them now, and the car’s headlights lanced through the gloom and the dust and pollen that always seemed to hang in the air, even at this time of year.

“You sure you don’t want to do the talking?” he asked, suddenly nervous for no good reason. That wasn’t like him at all.

“You’ll be fine,” O’Brien assured him. “It’s just business. Be sure and treat them with respect.”

“But . . .”

“No buts. You’ll nail it. I’ve never known such a rolled gold bullshit artist. If you’d been born any luckier, you could have been a senator or a televangelist.”

Slim Jim wasn’t sure what she meant by that, but she didn’t seem to mean it as a compliment.

His driver pulled over into the gutter. As soon as he stepped out, the smell took him by the throat. Sour sweat. Outdoor toilets. Woodsmoke. Corn bread, grits, and boiled spuds. The smell of his childhood.