LONELY STREET
By Steve Brewer
© 1994 Steve Brewer
SMASHWORDS EDITION
Chapter 1
Limelight has always settled heavily on my family's shoulders. It began with my grandfather, or at least that's as far back as I've cared to trace this particular family trait. He was the only person who died in the Martian invasion in "War of the Worlds." That would qualify him for martyrdom in most invasions, but since "War of the Worlds" was a radio play, it only made him look stupid.
My grandfather, Pincus Cutwaller, a stiff-backed Mississippian who developed a device that squeezed more oil from cottonseed, made his first and only trip to New York City in 1938, to pick up an award from The American Society of Inventors. It was a proud moment as he waved farewell from the back platform of the train as it departed Nazareth, Mississippi. It was the last time his family would see him. His only daughter – my mother – was nine years old.
The American Society of Investors being the prestigious group it is, my grandfather was put up in a suite on the fourteenth floor of the Waldorf-Astoria. The room had such an excellent view that he spent most of his time standing at the window, watching the city bustle.
I believe he was standing there when an excited radio announcer first broke in with news that Martian spaceships were laying waste to the New Jersey countryside. The news must've startled him terribly. They found him splattered on the sidewalk before Orson Welles revealed, heh-heh-heh, that this was only a fiction created by Mercury Radio Theater.
My mother always clung to the belief that he fell. He must've been leaning out the window, she always said, trying to get a glimpse of those spaceships, and he just slipped.
Of course, this position made my mother all the more amusing to the newspaper reporters who stopped by our house once she became something of a media oddity herself. You might remember her as "the Jesus Lady in Nazareth, Mississippi."
Her real name is Eloise Cutwaller Mabry. She was a good mother in most ways. Just a little eccentric, maybe a little overly religious. Sorrowful portraits of bleeding Jesus hung on most of the walls of our house. Later they were replaced by framed front pages from supermarket tabloids featuring my mother's visitations from the Lord.
The visits began in late 1967 and ended less than a year later, but they defined my mother's life, for her and for the world.
The first visit came late one night when my mother was sitting alone in the kitchen, fretting. She often sat up late, muttering to herself about people who'd ruined her family's reputation by insisting her father had been fueled by fright when he went flying from that hotel window.
She looked up from her coffee to see a man, a personage, illuminated in the hall that framed the back door. The man had flowing brown hair and a thick beard and his face was tan and gaunt. A light seemed to burn in the back of his eyes.
He said, "Why are you still awake? Did you know I was coming?"
My mother said later she was unable to answer, unable to break the lock with his eyes.
She said a lot of things, unfortunately saying many of them to the local newspaper editor, who soon had TV stations and tabloids breathing down our necks. People drove slowly past our house, and you could just feel them pointing and telling their children about the strange woman who believes Jesus visits her. Hysterical women and old black people would stop by with messages they wanted her to give to Jesus. Soon the house overflowed with gifts and flowers and cards and sacks of mail. When the newspapers reported that Jesus seemed most interested in the items of food and paid hardly any attention to the letters, supermarkets' worth of groceries began showing up at our door.
Of course, that's when the grumbling started in town. But the fact is my mother wouldn't let us touch one crumb of that food. She saved it all for Jesus' visits. And who would be brave enough to swipe something from the cache of Our Lord? What if it interfered with someone getting a blessing, a cure for a disease or something? Anyway, suffice to say Jesus got his pick of the goodies and we ate the same old grits and salt pork.
Reporters staked out our house, but Jesus wouldn't come if anyone other than my mother was awake. He somehow knew if someone was watching, which added to the mystique.
Finally, of course, Jesus slipped. He wandered out of the house, his belly full and my mother wondering at the fractured parable he'd struggled to tell her, and walked right into the hands of the sheriff.
Jesus turned out to be a hippie who'd built himself a wigwam in the woods, or at least that was the police version. The fervent man never answered to any name other than Jesus Christ, and he seemed confused about which Nazareth he'd landed in. They tried to charge him with fraud, but the judge freed him on his own recognizance (if you can't Jesus, who can you trust?) and Jesus disappeared.
My mother couldn't just let it lie. She couldn't accept that she'd been had by an LSD-addled wildman. She insisted it really had been Jesus, and the police had made a terrible mistake in handcuffing Our Lord. That kept the headline writers cranking for a while. And it was enough to run off my old man, a long-haul truck driver who just stopped coming home from the road. After that, we scraped to get by. Still, my mother didn't learn her lesson. She kept talking to reporters about Jesus. Once a year or so, one would stop by our old frame house in the woods and interview Mama about "the visitations." I still see the occasional anniversary story in the Albuquerque papers.
Out here, of course, folks don't know about my connection to "the Jesus Lady" and I don't spread it around. I try to live my life as quietly as possible. I'd always hoped the Cutwaller curse of infamy would skip a generation.
The gullibility my mother and her father shared is not the kind of trait you want to pass on. Maybe that's why I've never had any kids, never even been married. If it's in the family line, maybe it will stop with me.
Maybe that's also why I decided to become a private eye. If I'm gullible, I tell myself, if I've got that terrible Cutwaller gene, then I won't make it long in this business. So I keep testing it, keep double-checking everything, trying to make sure I'm not being fooled. And if I am fooled, I keep quiet about it.
Truth is, I never really expected to make it as a private eye. And that's nearly been the case. The work has been so sparse over the past few years that I've spent more time reading paperbacks about private eyes than I have doing actual investigating. But jobs trickle in and I manage to keep afloat.
The trick to any kind of fringe business like this is low overhead. I may have the lowest overhead of anyone you've ever met. I work out of my Central Avenue kitchenette, which costs less than three hundred a month. I drive a twenty-year-old Chevy Nova (Spanish for "no go") that costs me nothing but gas and insurance. The only business expenses are the five-hundred-dollar license fee the state wants every year and my ad in the Yellow Pages: "Wilton 'Bubba' Mabry, Confidential Investigations, E. Central Ave."
Central Avenue has been sort of a hobby of mine since I first came to Albuquerque fourteen years ago. I was just a kid then, fresh from the Mississippi piney woods, beginning a four-year hitch in the Air Force. I was assigned to Kirtland Air Force Base as a military policeman. Since it was peacetime, I spent most of my time standing beside a brick kiosk, waving cars through a gate.
Albuquerque had seemed something of an arid paradise to me then. There were mountains, for one thing, and no humidity and few mosquitoes. The people carried a frontier mentality, rugged individualism, that was different from the repressed plantation-owner/slave/white-trash class structure I'd grown up with in Mississippi.
I tried to go back. Not to stay, but to visit my mother and the few cousins who haven't joined the diaspora that's put finger-licking Southern rednecks in even the most cosmopolitan American cities. Even if I hadn't wanted to join that migration and escape the humiliation of being descended from the Cutwallers, I would've had no choice. Life in the desert had spoiled me. When I went back South, it was as if I had malaria. The humidity made me sweat and swoon, made my clothes stick to my body as if I'd showered fully dressed. Once I completed my tour, it was clear Albuquerque, or someplace like it, would have to be my home. It's too cold up north for my thin skin, and the South now seemed as damp and hot and impenetrable as the Amazon basin.
So I stepped off the safe confines of the base and into the city I would claim as my own – unemployed, under-skilled and largely unmotivated.
Being a military policeman prepares you for a career as a cop on the outside, and that's about all. Growing up around pot-bellied cops right out of a Burt Reynolds movie had persuaded me law enforcement wasn't for me. Besides, I was sick of uniforms.
I went where all unemployed pilgrims go when they arrive in Albuquerque – Central Avenue.
Central is better known as old Route 66, famed in song as the place to get your kicks. These days it's more of a place to get kicked. Or beat up or stabbed. At least that's the case on East Central, where I live.
In the late 1960s, years before I'd even heard of Albuquerque, the interstate highways bypassed the old boulevard, forcing the city to lift up its skirts and settled down farther north. All the subsequent growth, which was considerable, occurred around the crossroads of I-25 and I-40, or somewhere along their shoulders.
Old neon-lit motels along Central had defined Albuquerque for years as a pit stop on the way to California. They suddenly found themselves empty, their business lost to the Ramadas and Holiday Inns and Motel Sixes along the freeways. Ownership changed, rates were slashed and the motels began a slow side toward deterioration.
Nowadays the motels are owned by families from Indian and Pakistan and freaking Zanzibar for whom owning their own businesses, no matter how ratty and run-down, is the American Dream. They're unbothered by a clientele of bikers and hookers and dope dealers and drunks.
Bharat "Bongo" Patel, the Hindu who owned the Desert Breeze Motor Inn, where I live, is as placid and friendly a man as you'd ever want to meet. Smiling at whores as they check in for an hour at a time, gladly selling individual cigarettes to winos for a dime apiece. But hint that Bongo might not get his rent on time, or that a check might bounce, and his face goes even darker and his brows knit and you get the itchy feeling that curved knives could be in your future.
Not that I hold it against him. Business is business. And if it weren't for ambitious immigrants like Bongo, we fringe dwellers would be without a roof over our heads. A Sun Belt city like Albuquerque regularly rips out the old to make room for the new and more expensive. Bongo's people are holding the line.
So, Central Avenue and the hot pink archways of the Desert Breeze have become my home. I like to think living among the criminal element and recent immigrants teaches a person tolerance. It also teaches suspicion, the perfect counterbalance to gullibility.
Which brings me back to this Elvis business. Like I said, I've lived here a long time now and any number of street people along Central might've sent his pal Buddy to look me up. No one's admitted it, and I don't blame them, considering how it all turned out.
Chapter 2
I was finishing a shave with a disposable razor that was past its prime, carefully trying to reach the whiskers that hide in the cleft of my chin, when Buddy knocked on my door.
I went to the door wearing only my jeans, dabs of lather and specks of blood mingling on my face. My hands were empty, but my old snub-nosed Smith & Wesson sat on a low table behind the door. In this neighborhood, it's good to keep it handy.
If I'd known what was to come, I might've just picked it up and shot Buddy on the spot. Put him out of my misery.
"Mithter Mabry?" something about the way his thick lips worked told me this was a lifelong impediment.
"Yes?"
"I'd like to talk to you. I think I might have thum bithneth for you."
"What?"
"A job?"
"Oh sure, come on in."
I backed away from the door, angling to the right to keep close to my revolver. "Have a seat."
Buddy barely fit into the thrift-shop armchair in the corner. He settled between the chair's arms, let them hug close the rolls of fat that started just below his armpits and ended somewhere near his knees. His brown hair was slicked back from a shiny pink forehead and he wore a loose jacket and tight pants of after-dinner-mint green, what they used to call a leisure suit.
He practically dripped gold jewelry – rings and a watch and a bracelet that said "Buddy" and a couple of chains that nearly hid among the folds of flesh under his chin. The jewelry told me two things. One, Buddy, if that was his name, had money to spend on whatever "bithneth" he was bringing my way. Two, he either didn't know the neighborhood or what foolhardy. That much gold, passed through a pawnshop, could keep a junkie supplied for a week.
I found a towel to wipe the lather from my chin.
"Now," I said, "what can I do for you?"
"Well, I hope I've come to the right perthon." He intertwined his fat fingers in his lap. "Have you done much in the way of thecurity work?"
"Some." To say anything more might reveal too much. If this guy had money to spend on security, I was willing to take it, even if my usual jobs were more along the lines of snapping Polaroids of cheating husbands. Security was easy. Long as I didn't have to wear a uniform.
"Could you be available for thuch work now?"
"You mean today?"
"I mean thith minute."
"Depends on what it is."
"Of courth. But it'th pothible you could be available?"
"Well, I'm sort of between assignments. I might be able to squeeze something in, if it's the right kind of work."
In fact, it had been nearly three weeks since I'd had any kind of assignment and I had just been worrying about where I was going to find the money to keep Bongo happy. The first of May was just around the corner.
"I work for a thelebrity who happenth to be in Albuquerque at the moment," Buddy said. "Thomebody hath been harathing him and we think adding extra thecurity for a few dayth would be a good idea."
"Who's the celebrity?"
"Then you want the job?"
"I don't know. Depends on who it is and who's bothering him."
Buddy looked perturbed.
"I'd rather not thay. Thith thelebrity liketh to keep a, uh, low profile."
"Uh-huh. So you want me to drop everything and go with you, and I'll find out who and what and where once I'm committed to doing it."
"If that theemth unreathonable, perhapth I thould look elthewhere."
"Hold on. Don't get your bowels in an uproar. It's not that I don't want the job. It 's just an unusual way to go about it, don't you think?"
Buddy had no answer. He seemed to be thinking over whether he'd disclosed too much.
"How much does this job pay?" I asked. After all, "how much" was more important to me than "who." Always is.
"How doesth thirty dollarth an hour thound?"
My stomach flopped.
"It sounds like you've got yourself a security man. Let me get a shirt."
I fetched my favorite shirt off the peg behind the bathroom door. It's a heavy flannel, navy blue with lines of color shot through it to make an open plaid. I usually wear it with the tails hanging out so I can tuck the Smith & Wesson into my jeans at the small of my back. It was getting too warm for the shirt, but I couldn't bear yet to put it away for the summer. I smiled at the thought of the new shirts I could buy with Buddy's money.
Budd was silent in the other room. I checked my teeth in the mirror as I buttoned the shirt. I was beginning to get a bit of a tan, and Bongo hadn't even opened the motel pool yet. The way my hairline is receding, there's more of me to tan all the time. Fortunately, I'd gotten Mabel, a mulatto hooker who lives in my building, to give me a free haircut only a couple of days before and I looked almost respectable. I stuck a tatter of toilet paper on a nick, then went into the other room, rolling up my sleeves.
"Thath what you're wearing?"
"What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing. Ith jutht that you might, you know, not blend in tho well."
"How am I supposed to know? You won't tell me where we're going."
Buddy cleared his throat, setting his jowls to trembling.
"Thorry. You'll be fine." He waved his fat hands in a sort of blessing.
"I always dress this way. People don't look at you if you're wearing casual clothes. They don't pay any attention. That's the way I prefer it."
I don't know why I felt insulted. For thirty dollars an hour, I'd wear clown shoes and a propeller beanie. But I felt compelled to hand out some fashion advice of my own.
"If I were you, I wouldn't come into this part of town wearing so much jewelry. You could get mugged."
Buddy grunted to his feet.
"I don't worry about that." He smiled without showing any teeth. "I can take care of mythelf."
"Is that a fact?" I let him see me stick the pistol in my belt and secure the clip-on holster. I arranged my shirttails and said, "Let's go."
It was one of those spring days in Albuquerque when the sun glares in a cloudless sky and the yucca is in bloom and the wind blows about sixty miles an hour. Buddy hustled across the parking lot, the wind snatching at his clothes. He moved surprisingly fast for someone built like a slug.
I hopped into the passenger side of a tan Cadillac Seville with tinted windows after Buddy popped the power door locks. Leather upholstery caressed my body. I closed the heavy door gently, shutting out the howl of the wind so completely that the sand and litter seemed to whip across the parking lot under their own power.
I had plenty of legroom even though the seat was adjusted for Buddy, who was several inches shorter than my six feet. He couldn't get any closer than arm's length to the steering wheel because his huge, polyester-slick gut pressed against it. He looked like he could steer with that thing.
"Oh, thereth one thing. I almoth forgot."
He tried to lean across toward me, but was pinned by the steering wheel. He huffed and said, "Can you get thomething out of the glove compartment for me?"
"Sure."
I turned the latch and the door fell open. Inside, a revolver similar to mine lay on top of a manila envelope and usual assortment of registration papers.
"That envelope ith for you."
Central Avenue, gold jewelry, Cadillac, now practically handing me his gun. Never seen anybody so careless. No wonder these people needed protection.
I opened the envelope and pulled out a single sheet of white paper. It was some sort of boilerplate with a place for me to sign and date at the bottom.
"Ith a thtandard form. You thwear you won't write a book about the thelebrity or talk to the media about him." Buddy shrugged. "Thath thow bithneth."
I glanced over the form. It seemed to be exactly as he said. Writing a book about an encounter with a celebrity hadn't even occurred to me. But once he mentioned it, I suddenly wasn't sure I wanted to sign that form. I always try to keep all my options open. Buddy handed me a gold ballpoint and I leaned over so I could use the dash like a desk and clumsily signed the form with my left hand. Buddy didn't seem to notice.
I might as well get this out of the way: I know wrong-handing my signature doesn't get me off the hook legally. A deal is a deal and I'm breaking it by writing this now. But the way I see it, they didn't live up to their end of the bargain either. Besides, I don't expect anyone to ever take me to court. They've got more to lose than I do.
I put the form back in the envelope and handed it to Buddy, who tucked it inside his jacket. The engine leaped to life enviably, and we headed downtown.
Albuquerque doesn't really have a skyline. Its office towers are scattered – some downtown, some uptown, even a few sprinkled along Central, right in the motel district. The biggest cluster of so-called skyscrapers is downtown, in the Rio Grande valley, the lowest point in a mile-high city. The Sandia Mountains, two miles high, dominate the view so completely that buildings seem puny in comparison. I guess the city's architects figured that out a long time ago, and never got too ambitious. At least not until recently. Two buildings went up downtown a few years ago. One's the Hyatt Regency and the other, bigger one is an office tower. They have matching, stylish peaked roofs that stand out above their flat-topped competitors. The taller one, tallest in Albuquerque, is something like twenty-two stories. Mississippi has taller buildings than that.
It was to these pink marble pride palaces that Buddy took me. The workday had started and most people were indoors, safe from the wind that roared through the empty streets. Somebody had lost a newspaper and its pages flew through the canyons between the buildings like a flock of pigeons. One page wrapped around the Cadillac's antenna and flapped like an ambassador's flag as Buddy steered us into the parking garage under Albuquerque Plaza.
After he squeezed the car into a slot, Buddy removed the newspaper page and carefully wadded it into a ball with his pudgy hands.
"I hate newthpaperth. I hate everything about them."
He looked at his hands, which were black with ink, grunted, and tossed the paper ball into the bed of a nearby pickup truck.
We silently rode up an elevator and popped up like gophers in the lobby of the Hyatt. As Buddy had predicted, I felt a little underdressed amid the plush carpet and chandeliers, but we crossed the lobby quickly and got into another elevator.
It was just the two of us, so I said, "Want to tell me who it is we're going to see?"
"Maybe it would be betht if we left nameth out of this. You'll probably recognithe him, but don't call him by name. It maketh him nervouth. He'th regithtered here as Mithter Aaron. You jutht call him thir."
That rankled a bit, but I told myself I'd call him Your Royal Highness as long as I got my money.
"Jutht call me Buddy. Everybody doeth."
"I go by Bubba."
"I know."
The elevator doors opened on the fourteenth floor and we stepped into an empty corridor. A window down the way looked out onto the tops of familiar buildings and the new perspective made me feel dizzy. I followed Buddy down the hall and waited while he wormed a card key out of his pocket and used it in the lock.
I motioned for Buddy to go first, and was slow to pull the door closed behind me. Not that I didn't believe there was a show business type who wanted protection somewhere in the suite. Just trying to be careful.
A television silently flashed its picture in one corner of the room. The furniture was low and heavily cushioned, and pastel prints hung on the pale mauve walls. A door stood open to reveal a king-sized bed in the next room. Behind the bar, stirring a Bloody Mary, stood Elvis Presley.
Chapter 3
I knew it was him (or an extremely good imposter) immediately. You don't grow up in Mississippi, the King's birthplace, without being deluged by his image. Not that I'd been a big fan. I'm not much on music myself. I usually use my transistor radio for sports.
By the time I reached high school and began paying attention to popular music, Elvis was in his polyester jumpsuit phase and somehow didn't appeal. We didn't have much to be proud of in Mississippi, but Elvis was one item and he didn't have to embarrass us by dressing like Liberace. Least that's how we felt at Nazareth High.
My interest, like everybody else's, peaked briefly when his sudden death was reported in 1977. But the story quickly got ugly, with allegations of drug abuse and suspicions about the coroner's report and rumors the King had been enthroned when he strained his way to a heart attack.
I knew there was a whole cult of people who refused to believe such an ignominious end. I'd seen a poll on TV that said something like seven percent of all Americans believe Elvis is alive. I'd seen the bumpers stickers that say, "E.P. PHONE HOME." But I'd always assumed it was just wishful thinking. I'd never even considered he might be alive. And I certainly never expected the secret to be revealed to me, the grandson of Pincus Cutwaller.
The living Elvis had let his hair go gray, part of his disguise, I suppose. But it was still the same shape. The sideburns, the forelock, the sleek sides. The gray looked funny streaking back from his sideburns, out of place in a haircut better suited to a juvenile delinquent than to a man who'd be sixty years old any minute now. His face had held up better, still smooth and high-cheeked, with that Cupid's bow mouth. He was a little thick around the middle, but trimmer than when he'd supposedly died.
Best of all to an old Nazareth High alumnus, he was wearing regular clothes – designer jeans and a loose-fitting golf shirt. He had the same taste in jewelry Buddy had, but I guess that was to be expected. What do you do with a fortune when you're a fugitive? Wear it on your body. Would Elvis Presley still have a fortune? Had he stashed enough away before he "died?" I got a little internal flutter at the prospect.
The surprise must have registered on my face. Elvis looked amused, like he'd seen it all before. He cocked his upper lip into that famous sly smile and winked and said, "Want a drink?"
"Sure. I think I need one." He smiled more broadly and dropped some ice cubes in a glass.
I looked over at Buddy, but he was no help. He just grinned the way Elvis did, enjoying the moment. I guess it happened so rarely, them letting somebody in on it, that they got a kick out of it. My knees felt rubbery and I slid onto a barstool.
"Buddy tells me you're from Mississippi." Elvis mixed the drinks as he spoke. I nodded and tried to close my mouth. "That's the main reason we picked you."
Elvis' voice sounded a smooth and nasal as it had in all those bad movies he'd cranked out in the Fifties and Sixties. Just enough baritone to make you feel rock 'n' roll could break out any minute.
"I wanted someone with, um, Southern sensibilities."
"I've got the right pedigree, but I don't know how that sensible that makes me." I didn't want to come off too flip, but my mouth was sort of operating on its own. I was overwhelmed by the sight of a dead man pouring tomato juice.
"I like the way Southern people operate. We're always polite, you know, well-mannered, but effective."
He put an edge on the last word as it scissored through his smile. Something about it made me uneasy. Looking back, I should've realized that for someone as big as the King to have lived underground virtually undetected for fifteen years would require a certain amount of ruthlessness. But at the time I was too stunned that he was up and walking around. I suppose he knew that. If he knew anything about the Cutwallers (and I suspect that sometimes), he would've counted on it.
I said something automatic about always getting the job done as Elvis handed me my drink and motioned for me to follow him to the sofas in the main part of the suite. The window overlooked Civic Plaza with its fountains and acres of gray concrete and the excavation for some new building, where ant-sized men dodged yellow earth-moving machinery. They were always building something downtown, but nobody but office workers and tourists ever came down here.
Elvis saw me looking and said, "Albuquerque. How long you been living here, Bubba?"
"Fourteen years or so. Long enough to know my way around."
"I was thinking before you got here about what a funny word that is, Albuquerque."
"It's Spanish."
"Uh-huh. And Mississippi is Indian. You only live places with funny names?"
"Never thought of it that way, but, yeah, I guess so."
Elvis grinned again. "'Course, about every place in this country's got a funny name, if you look at it that way."
"Guess you've seen 'em all, huh?" My mind was beginning to click. He'd have to keep moving. Even the most isolated spot gets visited by mailmen, delivery people, plumbers. Somebody would eventually recognize him. He could never stay long in place.
"A few." Elvis seemed to read my thoughts. He didn't want me thinking too hard about the logistics. He set his drink on the coffee table and got down to business.
"I suppose Buddy told you I'm being harassed."
"He mentioned it."
"As you might guess, my privacy is of utmost importance. If anyone learns that I'm who you think I am" – he grinned – "the press would come swooping down on me and my life, the way I've chosen to live it, would be over."
I glanced at Buddy, who looked angry at the prospect.
"When I sent Buddy to find you, I had planned for you to just stick close to us and keep an eye out for anyone who might be getting close."
"A bodyguard," I offered.
"More like a bird dog, if you'll excuse the expression. Buddy guards my body just fine. I was going to have you tail us to make sure nobody else was. Flush 'em out."
"I see. But something changed."
"Right. After Buddy left, I got a telephone call." He gestured to the phone on the side table, as if offering proof it had happened this way. "And I found out where this guy is staying. So now I'm thinking we'll have you watch him instead."
"Surveillance instead of security." I was all business now.
"Right. Same fee okay?"
"Yes, sir." There, I'd said it and it hadn't hurt a bit.
"I'm in the middle of some, uh, delicate negotiations here in Albuquerque." He smiled at the way the words rolled off his tongue. "It won't take long, but it's important nobody messes in my business while I'm here."
"You want him scared away?"
"You mean rough him up? No, that's not necessary. I want you to be a polite Southerner at all times." He leaned back on the sofa, stretched his arms along its back. He smiled over at Buddy, then back at me.
"You probably won't even get a chance to speak to the man. I don't want him to know you're watching. Just keep any eye on him and report his movements to us. We'll be able to tell if he's getting too close or going to the media."
"And if he does?"
Elvis' eyes glittered. "Then we'll decide what to do next."
I must've gulped or something because he quickly added, "I don't think it'll come to that. The guy seems harmless. He's just a fan who's clinging to the past. This kind of thing comes up from time to time in show business."
Or the no-show business, I thought.
What I said was: "How did you handle it the other times?"
Elvis gave me that hard look. This was a man accustomed to getting his way, no questions asked. Before he even answered, I knew I'd made a mistake and I'd better keep my mouth shut if I wanted my money.
"This particular situation hasn't come up before." He spoke with finality, and I bobbed my head like the village idiot. "But in similar cases, let's just say we've been polite but effective. Just like I want you to be."
He leaned over and jotted on a pad of Hyatt stationery. He ripped off the page and handed it across to me.
"That's the fan's name and the motel where he's staying. The phone number is ours here at the hotel. I'm, uh, usually in."
He smiled at me and I found myself smiling back and it was all so damned conspiratorial that I believed it despite myself. Look at the guy. He's freaking Elvis. No question. And I'm helping him out, helping him keep his secret from America. Such a secret. I'm one of the very few who know he's alive. I got a thrill of power, of inclusion, of being part of the team. I stood up and pumped his hand and told I'd get right on it.
On my way out the door, I said over my shoulder, "It's, uh, been nice meeting you."
He grinned and swung his hips to one side, playfully cocked a finger at me. Like it was a pistol. Like I was his audience.
"Thank you. Thank you ver' much."
I was in a daze as I followed Buddy back to the Cadillac. I stared out the window as we glided through the sunny streets. The wind appeared to have let up some, though tumbleweeds still bounded across the Central near the boarded-up brick buildings of old Albuquerque High.
"You okay?" Buddy asked. I glanced over, but he kept his eyes on the road.
"Yeah. Just a little stunned, I guess."
Buddy chuckled. "Motht people react that way."
"Are there many? Who meet him, I mean?"
"Damned few." Buddy's face went serious as soon as he'd spoke and he slammed his fat lips shut. His job rested on revealing nothing, and his expression told me mine did, too.
We were almost to the Desert Breeze before we spoke again.
"Thee thith car?" he said suddenly, startling me a little. "Mithter Aaron gave me thith car. Jutht gave it to me. He liked the way I handled a, um, problem for him one time. Tho he gave me thith car."
"It's a great car."
"It thure ith. Every time I drive it, I love that guy even more."
Buddy blushed at this confession, then barged ahead.
"Mithter Aaron liketh to give people thingth. He callth them bonutheth."
I barely followed that, but I nodded eagerly.
"If you do your job well, maybe he'll give you a bonuth."
He pulled the car into the cracked asphalt lot in front of the Desert Breeze and stopped. I ran my hand along the leather-bound dash of the Cadillac, smelled the car's sweet aroma. The thought of owning such a car suddenly filled me with lust and envy and greed. I swallowed hard and nodded, showing I understood the many possibilities the world could offer.
"When people don't do their jobth, Mithter Aaron geth very upthet. I've theen him be very, um, aggrethive when he doeth'nt get hith way. Do you follow me?"
I nodded. This part I had sensed.
"What about you, Buddy? Are you an aggressive person."
"Not me, boy. I'm your friend."
I must've grinned.
"Theriouthly."
Chapter 4
Don't get the idea that I'm some closet boozer, but when I got to my room, I went immediately to the kitchen shelf where I hide the bourbon. I only keep it on hand for medicinal purposes, for use in times of great shock or illness or depression or the occasional rainy day. I find it handy to keep a double shot glass upside down on top of the bottle. Saves searching in times of emergency. I poured it half full and downed it and poured another before I took a deep breath. Then I set down the bottle and sipped the second one.
I went to the front window and peered through the slit between the curtains. The wind-swept lot contained only the usual rust-spattered heaps. The dark-windowed Cadillac had vanished.
I had to ask myself whether it had all really happened. Here I was in my room with a drink in my hand. Maybe I'd had a hallucination or a blackout or something. I groped in my shirt pocket for the slip of paper with the address and Elvis' phone number. The smooth paper felt like magic between my fingers.
It was then, I think, that the Cutwaller connection first occurred to me. Now I knew exactly how my mother must've felt when she looked up from the kitchen table and saw Jesus in the doorway. What an awesome thing! To be singled out for a face-to-face revelation from a great, if dead, celebrity! (One dead much longer than the other, granted, and hers was the Son of God, so that counts for a lot. But mine was a thrill, too.)
Of course, I was lucky enough to know how her transcendent experience turned out. I had no intention of becoming a nationwide laughingstock.
The thought that this Elvis thing could all be an elaborate hoax sobered me right up. I went into the bathroom and washed my face with cold water and combed my thinning hair. I've always thought of my hair as being a shade the peroxide companies would call "sheepshit brown." In retaliation for such ingratitude, my hair was packing up and moving on, starting at my forehead and working its way irretrievably toward my back. Looking into a mirror always got my mind off whatever problem I was facing, and got me thinking about my hair.
Here's what I decided while I was standing in the bathroom: Even if this guy's not Elvis, he's got me on the tab for thirty bucks an hour. For that much money, I'll play along as long as I can. I'll do my job like he was any other customer, and I'll take my money and if I end up the butt of some stupid joke, that'll be just fine. If I like the joke, I'll laugh and shrug and take my money and go my merry way. If I don't like the joke, I'll laugh and shrug and take my money and maybe kick somebody's ass, but it'll be the same amount in the bank account.
Thinking about it this way made me feel tough and alert and suspicious. Polite but effective. I'll do the job and I'll watch my own back and all the while I'll keep my eyes open for any slip-ups that would show the guy wasn't really Elvis Presley.
And, what the hell, if he is Elvis, maybe I'll end up with a Cadillac. I was keeping my mind open. That's all I'm saying.
I gave my teeth a quick brushing to get rid of the liquor, then braved the wind to reach my old Chevy. Bolstered by booze and machismo and the keen edge of self-doubt, I was on the job.
My first stop, naturally, was the address Elvis had written for me: The Double Six Motel, a former Travel Inn that catered to people who get off the freeway and wander two miles down Carlisle Avenue until they find a motel on Central. This was a not a big market, so the owner also did a trade with hookers. Thanks to him and his competitors across the street, this two-block strip remained one of the city's few true red-light districts. A block to the west, past the Planned Parenthood building, and you're into a strip of the trendiest shops in the city, reborn on Route 66. To the east, motels and cars lots and used furniture stores march away toward the mountains. But right here, it could be any hooker district in any city in America – women in tight clothes looking for rides, johns shopping from slow-moving cars. The hookers call it The Cruise.
I didn't know the guy who ran the place, but I'd heard he was from Pakistan or Afghanistan, some freaking place like that. I pictured him as being like Bongo, small and dark and smiling and sneaky. I'd lean on him a little, maybe slip him a few bucks, and he'd tell me everything I needed to know about Mr. Harold Tankersley.
That was the name on the slip of paper Elvis had given me. I'd memorized the information, then carefully hidden the paper in my Gideon Bible. It wasn't much, but it was in his handwriting.
I parked the Chevy and walked across the lot to the lobby of the Double Six, looking around for any vehicle that might be following me, for any hidden cameras or microphones. Like most Americans, I harbor a secret fear that I might be suckered by "Candid Camera" for all the world to see. This Elvis thing would be just like something they'd cook up. Make a jackass out of a private eye in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Look, viewers would say, here's someone silly and prideful enough to think the living Elvis would seek his help.
No sign of Allen Funt. I rang the buzzer by the locked glass lobby door. Most business was done through a drive-up window and the owners apparently wanted to encourage that practice, but I kept buzzing until a woman in a sari came scowling to the door. She was small and the color of tea leaves, like Bongo, and she had a dot in the center of her forehead. More Hindus, I thought. These people I know. No reincarnation jokes. Don't offer a hamburger. Don't say, "Vishnu were here." The woman made a shooing motion with her hand, but I shook my head and smiled and made a threatening motion toward the buzzer with my finger. She unlocked the door and opened it a crack and said, "What you want?"
"I'd like to speak to the manager."
"You a cop?"
"Private investigator."
"Go away."
"Are you the manager?"
"No. Go away."
"Let's let the manager decide that."
"He's not here."
"I could push this buzzer all afternoon. I don't have anything else to do."
She glared and huffed, but she let me in. The place was done in mismatched pseudo-wood paneling and the concrete floor was painted lime green. Sagging, gut-sprung furniture was arranged around a television in one corner. A metal stool topped by the Yellow Pages and a flat pillow stood by the drive-up window. A gaily patterned cloth curtained the door to the rooms beyond.
The Hindu woman shouted through the curtain in some other language. It sounded, I swear, like she said, "Sucky-ducky."
A turbaned hulk ducked through the door. He was at least three inches taller than me and was built like a lumberjack. His skin was pale and his mustache was long, the tips waxed into near-circles. His hawkish eyes directed their glare at me. I was taken aback. I'd expected another half-pint Hindu, someone I could threaten. This was not that guy.
"Good afternoon," I said. I fished my P.I. license from my hip pocket and held it in front of his face. "I'm a private investigator," I said, in case he didn't get it. "I'd like to ask you some questions about one of your tenants, if that would be all right."
"Which tenant would that be?" He spoke with British accent.
"Harold Tankersley."
"Why do you need information about Mr. Tankersley?"
"I have a client who says Mr. Tankersley is harassing him."
"How's that?"
"I can't say, really."
The turban one harrumphed and crossed his arms over his chest like he was guarding a harem. Maybe he was.
"I'd pay ten bucks for the information."
"Ten dollars is an insulting amount for a bribe."
"Sorry. It's all I have on me."
The woman had climbed precariously back onto the stool and settled onto her Yellow Pages. She was still barely tall enough to make a presence in the drive-up window, and the manager towered over her as they whispered in some clackety language. I heard him mention Tankersley's name in English, so I knew we were getting somewhere. I got the sense the woman and the owner hated each other. Their conversation was brisk.
The owner turned back to me and said, "I know nothing of this man, but the woman says he checked in two days ago. He is only in his room at night. He brought no on else there, not even a prostitute."
"Do you know where he's from?"
"We do not keep such paperwork. Ownership of the room key is registration enough for us."
"You must change the locks a lot."
"That I do. I also trounce anyone I catch using one of our keys without paying."
"That should work."
"It does."
"Which room is Tankersley in?"
"Number six, but he's not there now."
"What kind of car does he drive?"
He spoke sharply to the woman, who replied in kind.
"She doesn't know anything about cars. It's a blue rental. Bailey's Rent-a-Car."
The woman obviously did a good job keeping an eye on the place. I wondered briefly if she would watch Tankersley for me, but she didn't look friendly and I was pretty sure I didn’t want to get in the middle of whatever was going on between her and the owner.
I reached for my wallet, but the owner said, "Don't insult me again." I thanked him and eased back out into the wind.
I'd parked my car around the corner, out of sight of the lobby, and it looked like I was returning to it as I headed for Tankersley's room. He's left a light on, but no one answered my knock. The woman in the lobby was batting a thousand so far.
The chrome "5" on the green door of the next room dangled upside down from a single nail. It clattered when I knocked.
There was a long silence, then the door was snatched open so suddenly I about jumped out of my socks.
"Yeah? Whaddayawant?"
Lot of speed freaks live in these old motels. You can always spot them. Skinny, pale guys with long, greasy hair, dressed like bikers. Very high-energy, very twitchy, very temperamental. This guy fit all those descriptions except for the clothes. He wore only a black Metallica T-shirt and red nylon briefs. His room was dark and smelled funky and I could hear somebody else moving around in there.
"I said whaddayawant?" Mad already, mean.
"I, uh, I'm a private investigator. I'd like to ask a few questions about one of your neighbors."
"Don't know 'em. I'm busy now. Bye."
The door slammed shut about an inch shy of my nose.
I was a little hesitant approaching the door to Number Seven. Polite but effective, I muttered to myself, and I knocked.
I remember wondering, Why does it take these people so long to answer their doors? They're single rooms. How far away can they be? Then the door swung slowly open. A blonde stood in the shadows, her arms crossed, sizing me up. She wore very little clothing, and lace and satin made up what little there was. The first things I noticed, naturally, were her breasts, which were full and oval. They pushed against the transparent black fabric that half-covered them. A black lace g-string, black nylons and spike heels made up the rest of the ensemble.
"Come on in." Her voice was soft, husky, like everything she said should be whispered. "Shut the door."
The only light was what leaked in around the drapes. The room smelled of cheap perfume, something floral, and toothpaste. The bed was mussed, and there were enough beer cans and toiletries around to tell me she'd been staying here a while.
She stepped up to me and threw her arms around my neck and pressed her mouth to mine. Her body fit nicely against me and her breasts felt warm through my shirt. I was surprised, of course, but I tried to relax and enjoy it. These cases of mistaken identity always sort themselves out soon enough.
She broke the liplock and let her head fall back, showing me her pale throat and her wet, open lips. It was too dim to get a really good look at her face, but it didn't matter. Her hands felt hot on the back of my neck. I found my hands around her lower back, fondling the flesh that bulged from under her g-string.
Her pelvis was tight against mine. She leaned back, watching my face for a reaction. She took one hand from the back of my neck so she could slide it up my loose shirt. She dragged her fingernails down my chest and stomach. She stepped back just enough to give herself room to work, and was unbuttoning my jeans when I said, "My name's Bubba. I thought you might like to know."
"Mm-hmm." She contentedly lowered my zipper, unbothered by my feeble attempt to set things straight. She was peeling back the two halves of my pants, exposing my dingy briefs, when she caught herself and froze.
"I thought you said on the phone your name was Mike."
"I didn't call you on the phone."
My thumping heart stumbled a beat as she turned brusquely away. She picked up a pack of cigarettes from on top the shabby dresser. She lit one, didn't offer to share, huffed out the smoke. She gave me a good going-over with her eyes, then said, "So you're not Mike?"
"No. I'm Bubba."
She opened a drawer and rummaged around.
"You got fifty dollars?" She didn't look at me.
"Not on me."
She turned from the drawer and brought a compact black semi-automatic up level with my eyes. The hole in the barrel looked very large for such a small gun.
"Then what the fuck are you doing in my room?"
I'd been holding my jeans up since she stepped away, and when my hands shot into the air, my pants dropped to my ankles. I realized as soon as it happened that I'd put myself in a bad position. She hadn't even told me to put my hands up.
"I'm a private investigator. I just wanted to ask you some questions about the guy in Number Six."
"I don't know the fat slob."
"I, uh, I thought you must've mistaken me for somebody else when you, uh, kissed me. But I didn't really get a chance to stop anything. And I was kind of enjoying it . . . "
But you're not Mike. And you don't have any money. Now get out."
She took a step toward me, holding the gun with both hands at arms' length. The right way. You might think a woman in skimpy black lingerie waving a gun around would be sexy, like the cover of a Mickey Spillane novel. But I'm here to tell you, it's not. There's a lot of weird stuff that might give me a boner, but not guns. My genitals were hiding somewhere near my liver.
"Can I pull my pants up first?"
"No."
I reached behind me ever so carefully and grasped the doorknob. I squeezed the door past my shackled feet. Then I shuffled backward out of the room, taking very small steps, nearly tripping over the threshold. She followed me, staying just out of reach, the gun pointed at my face. As soon as I hit the sidewalk, she reached out with the barrel of the pistol and swatted the door closed.
The wind whipped my bare thighs. I squatted to gather up my jeans before I noticed cowboy boots approaching on the sidewalk. They came up to me and stopped. I looked up a grinning redneck wearing a cap marked CAT. He had close-cropped black hair and jug ears and teeth big and white enough to have been stolen from a horse.
The redneck checked a slip of a paper in his hand, looked at the number on the door, then looked down at me.
"Looks like I'm in the right place," he said. "Guess I arrived a little early." He paused, grinned wider. "Did you?"
I pulled up my jeans and busied myself with the zipper. If the guy noticed the pistol clipped to my pants, he didn't let on.
"You must be Mike."
"That's right."
"She's still waiting for you. We had a little misunderstanding."
It seemed impossible that his smile could get any bigger, but it did.
"Uh-huh. Well, if you haven't soiled the fair flower on the other side of that door, then I aim to."
"She has a gun."
"Then I expect I'd better be nice to her."
He yukked and hitched up his pants and reached out to knock. I stepped aside and pressed into Tankersley's doorway, wincing in anticipation of the shots I expected to splinter through the door of Number Seven. The door opened only a crack this time.
"Mike?"
"That's me, honey."
She flung the door open and Mike stepped inside. I stood silently still as the door closed, waiting. Through the door, I heard Mike yell, "Whew-hooo-whee!" And I knew he'd been pleased by his fair flower. I felt a little pang of envy and regret. Why'd I have to go and open my mouth like that? I could've been Mike for a little longer. Of course, she probably would've shot me then, for sure. No way I could've come up with fifty dollars.
Chapter 5
I'd had enough of the Double Six Motel. I returned to my car, climbed inside and spent a minute rearranging my hair where the wind had exposed the thin spots. That calmed my nerves, and I cranked up the old oil-burner and drove west on Central, hunting for Rodent.
I read something in a magazine recently about how the whole economy is turning to information. We're not making anything, we're just selling information back and forth. At first, the notion upset me, but then I realized some people have always profited from that kind of racket. Rodent's one of those people. He took advantage of a natural ability to pick up gossip on the street, just by hanging out and keeping his radar-dish ears open, and he'd made a good living selling to whomever was buying. Cops, criminals, reporters, businessmen, people like me. It was understood by everyone that Rodent kept no secrets. He might rat on some street thug to the cops, then go to the crook and warm him the cops were after him and he'd better blow town. Two payoffs that way. A precarious business, but Rodent had survived a long time, and everybody'd sort of gotten used to him.
My personal feeling toward Rodent was that he'd be a waste of good spit. But there were times when nobody but Rodent could get information I needed, and I had come to more or less depend on him.
It wasn't sneakiness that earned Rodent his nickname, by the way. It was his looks. He had buck teeth and a pointed nose and those huge ears. Even his shoulder-length hair was like a mouse's, sort of gray-brown and fuzzy.
I found him outside a video arcade called Planet X. The sun was beginning to sink, and the wind was taking a breather. I stopped the Chevy in front of Rodent. He looked even scrawnier than when I'd seen him last. He leaned over to peer in at me as I rolled down the window. Even in the parking lot, I could hear the growl and yawp of video machines.
"Hey, Rodent. How's it going?"
"All right. Just hanging, you know. Selling joints to the schoolkids."
"What a guy."
"Hey, somebody's gotta do it. They need a little grass after a few hours in front of those video games. They get wound up on all that violence. You don't want them loose on the street like that, do you?"
Rodent could persuade you that providing bombs to terrorists would be a good way to make airline flights less crowded.
"Uh-huh. What's the word on the street?"
"Well, the word that doesn't cost you anything is that the cops are working a narcotics sweep up and down Central."
"So you pick now to sell pot?"
"Taking advantage of the marketplace. Everybody else is too scared. I don't worry. I'm connected."
It was a fact, and he said it that way. No matter how despicable the cops might find it, they needed Rodent on the street worse than they needed him in jail on some penny-ante charge. He was safe. But I might not be. Whenever I chatted with Rodent I felt like someone might be watching. It made me edgy. Rodent didn't seem to notice.
"So what can I do for you today?" he said brightly.
"Ever hear of a guy named Harold Tankersley?"
"Nah. Must be from out of town."
"I think so. He's staying over at the Double Six."
"Then he's definitely from out of town."
"Think you could turn up anything on him?"
"I can give it a try. If it's worth enough to you."