Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“I know it,” I said. “But I have to admit I’m not what you’d call one of your regular readers.”

“Well, I should hope not, Bernie. Our readers move their lips when they think. Our readers write letters in crayon because they’re not allowed to have anything sharp. Our readers make the Enquirer ’s readers look like Rhodes scholars. Our readers, face it, are D-U-M.”

“Then why would they want to know about me?”

“They wouldn’t, unless an extraterrestrial made you pregnant. That happen to you?”

“No, but Bigfoot ate my car.”

She shook her head. “We already did that story. Last August, I think it was. The car was an AMC Gremlin with a hundred and ninety-two thousand miles on it.”

“I suppose its time had come.”

“That’s what the owner said. He’s got a new BMW now, thanks to the Galaxy. He can’t spell it, but he can drive it like crazy.”

I looked at her over the brim of my glass. “If you don’t want to write about me,” I said, “what do you need me for?”

“Ah, Bernie,” she said. “Bernie the burglar. Sweetie pie, you’re my ticket to Elvis.”

“The best possiblepicture,” I told Carolyn, “would be a shot of Elvis in his coffin. The Galaxy loves shots like that but in this case it would be counterproductive in the long run, because it might kill their big story, the one they run month after month.”

“Which is that he’s still alive.”

“Right. Now the second-best possible picture, and better for their purposes overall, would be a shot of him alive, singing ‘Love Me Tender’ to a visitor from another planet. They get a chance at that picture every couple of days, and it’s always some Elvis impersonator. Do you know how many full-time professional Elvis Presley impersonators there are in America today?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, but I have a feeling Holly Danahy could probably supply a figure, and that it would be an impressive one. Anyway, the third-best possible picture, and the one she seems to want almost more than life itself, is a shot of the King’s bedroom.”

“At Graceland?”

“That’s the one. Six thousand people visit Graceland every day. Two million of them walked through it last year.”

“And none of them brought a camera?”

“Don’t ask me how many cameras they brought, or how many rolls of film they shot. Or how many souvenir ashtrays and paintings on black velvet they bought and took home with them. But how many of them got above the first floor?”

“How many?”

“None. Nobody gets to go upstairs at Graceland. The staff isn’t allowed up there, and people who’ve worked there for years have never set foot above the ground floor. And you can’t bribe your way up there, either, according to Holly, and she knows because she tried, and she had all the Galaxy ’s resources to play with. Two million people a year go to Graceland, and they’d all love to know what it looks like upstairs, and the Weekly Galaxy would just love to show them.”

“Enter a burglar.”

“That’s it. That’s Holly’s masterstroke, the one designed to win her a bonus and a promotion. Enter an expert at illegal entry, i.e., a burglar. Le burglar, c’est moi. Name your price, she told me.”

“And what did you tell her?”

“Twenty-five thousand dollars. You know why? All I could think of was that it sounded like a job for Nick Velvet. You remember him, the thief in the Ed Hoch stories who’ll only steal worthless objects.” I sighed. “When I think of all the worthless objects I’ve stolen over the years, and never once has anyone offered to pay me a fee of twenty-five grand for my troubles. Anyway, that was the price that popped into my head, so I tried it out on her. And she didn’t even try to haggle.”

“I think Nick Velvet raised his rates,” Carolyn said. “I think his price went up in the last story or two.”

I shook my head. “You see what happens? You fall behind on your reading and it costs you money.”

Holly and Iflew first class from JFK to Memphis. The meal was still airline food, but the seats were so comfortable and the stewardess so attentive that I kept forgetting this.

“At the Weekly Galaxy, ” Holly said, sipping an after-dinner something-or-other, “everything’s first class. Except the paper itself, of course.”

We got our luggage, and a hotel courtesy car whisked us to the Howard Johnson’s on Elvis Presley Boulevard, where we had adjoining rooms reserved. I was just about unpacked when Holly knocked on the door separating the two rooms. I unlocked it for her and she came in carrying a bottle of scotch and a full ice bucket.

“I wanted to stay at the Peabody,” she said. “That’s the great old downtown hotel and it’s supposed to be wonderful, but here we’re only a couple of blocks from Graceland, and I thought it would be more convenient.”

“Makes sense,” I agreed.

“But I wanted to see the ducks,” she said. She explained that ducks were the symbol of the Peabody, or the mascot, or something. Every day the hotel’s guests could watch the hotel’s ducks waddle across the red carpet to the fountain in the middle of the lobby.

“Tell me something,” she said. “How does a guy like you get into a business like this?”

“Bookselling?”

“Get real, honey. How’d you get to be a burglar? Not for the edification of our readers, because they couldn’t care less. But to satisfy my own curiosity.”

I sipped a drink while I told her the story of my misspent life, or as much of it as I felt like telling. She heard me out and put away four stiff scotches in the process, but if they had any effect on her I couldn’t see it.

“And how about you?” I said after a while. “How did a nice girl like you—”

“Oh, Gawd,” she said. “We’ll save that for another evening, okay?” And then she was in my arms, smelling and feeling better than a body had a right to, and just as quickly she was out of them again and on her way to the door.

“You don’t have to go,” I said.

“Ah, but I do, Bernie. We’ve got a big day tomorrow. We’re going to see Elvis, remember?”

She took the scotch with her. I poured out what remained of my own drink, finished unpacking, took a shower. I got into bed, and after fifteen or twenty minutes I got up and tried the door between our two rooms, but she had locked it on her side. I went back to bed.

Our tour guide’sname was Stacy. She wore the standard Graceland uniform, a blue-and-white-striped shirt over navy chinos, and she looked like someone who’d been unable to decide whether to become a stewardess or a cheerleader. Cleverly, she’d chosen a job that combined both professions.

“There were generally a dozen guests crowded around this dining table,” she told us. “Dinner was served nightly between nine and ten p.m., and Elvis always sat right there at the head of the table. Not because he was head of the family but because it gave him the best view of the big color TV. Now that’s one of fourteen TV sets here at Graceland, so you know how much Elvis liked to watch TV.”

“Was that the regular china?” someone wanted to know.

“Yes, ma’am, and the name of the pattern is Buckingham. Isn’t it pretty?”

I could run down the whole tour for you, but what’s the point? Either you’ve been there yourself or you’re planning to go or you don’t care, and at the rate people are signing up for the tours, I don’t think there are many of you in the last group. Elvis was a good pool player, and his favorite game was rotation. Elvis ate his breakfast in the Jungle Room, off a cypress coffee table. Elvis’s own favorite singer was Dean Martin. Elvis liked peacocks, and at one time over a dozen of them roamed the grounds of Graceland. Then they started eating the paint off the cars, which Elvis liked even more than he liked peacocks, so he donated them to the Memphis Zoo. The peacocks, not the cars.