Stuart Kaminsky - Show Business is Murder

She faltered, her creamy complexion taking on a rosy tinge. “Well… I…”

Hmmm, I thought. There’s a story here after all.

I made a wild guess, my particular specialty. “Did you sleep with him?”

She slowly nodded.

“Why,” I said, “do you want me to find him?” And I hoped the answer wasn’t: I’m carrying Elvis’s love child.

She once again dipped into the mailing envelope and handed me the contents. There were a number of photographs of Alicia Kingston performing upon Elvis Presley what in some southern counties was referred to as an “unnatural act.” Actually, it looked pretty natural in the photographs, but I’m just a private eye in a small northern Michigan resort town.

In addition to the photographs was a neatly typed letter demanding five thousand dollars or copies would be sent to Alicia’s husband. She would be contacted and instructed on when and how to deliver the money.

I opened my top drawer and found a blank contract. I slid it across to Mrs. Kingston and handed her a pen. “I think I can help you,” I said.

Once she was gone I retrieved the bottle from the bottom drawer. Maalox, it said on the side. I took a swig and toasted my P.I.’s license. “Here’s to gainful employment.”

MAURICE WINSTON HADa head as smooth and hairless as a solar reflector, a thin humorless mouth, and the domineering arrogance of a first-class concierge. I stepped up to his desk at the Grand Bay Resort and handed him the snapshot. “I’m looking for this man,” I said.

Maurice didn’t smile, smirk, or snicker, but he couldn’t control the gleam in his eyes. “Jakob,” he said, “I believe Mr. Presley is dead.”

“Come on. You’ve got the Elvis, uh-”

“The Amazing Elvis Extravaganza,” he completed.

“Yeah. That’s it. Starts tomorrow, right?”

“Correct. Will this gentleman be attending?”

“I hope so. Are there any reservations for Elvis Presley?”

Unblinking, Maurice said, “Several.”

“Several?”

“There are seven.”

“How do you plan on keeping them straight?” I asked.

I wouldn’t have sworn to it, but I think Maurice smiled. Just a tiny bit. Then I got the room numbers of the seven Elvises. On my way out, Maurice said, “So this is your new career, Jakob?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m a licensed private investigator now.”

“My niece says your class on the American detective novel at the university was the most enjoyable class she took.”

“I’m much happier as a P.I.,” I said.

“Perhaps Prozac would have been easier,” Maurice said.

“WHY?” SHE DEMANDEDof me, tears glistening on her cheeks. “Why is Elvis doing this to me?”

I patted her hand and said nothing. Elvis was doing this to her because she was a gullible flake, but I didn’t think that would go over well. Her check hadn’t bounced and we had a contract. Satisfying her delusions was all part of the service. In her mind Elvis was alive and well; he had not grown old and fat and addicted to over-the-counter medications. The reality of Elvis’s ignominious death never registered on her in any way, not as an ode to the dark side of fame, not even as an advisory for the positive effects of a high-fiber diet. To her Elvis was alive and well and bopping her in a Motor City motel room.

I assured her I would do my best to locate Elvis Presley and retrieve the negatives. In the meantime, she was to sit tight and wait for him to contact her.

THE NEXT DAYI paid another call to the Resort, intending to knock on the seven Elvises’ doors, looking for the man in the snapshot. I stepped into the lobby, all spacious atrium, soaring spaces, and glittering poshness. I stopped dead in my blue suede shoes. The lobby was jammed with about thirty men who were, well… Elvis. Some of them were dressed in rhinestone-studded jumpsuits, others in brown suits, jeans, and tee-shirts, you name it. But each and every one of them resembled, in some way, the man in the snapshot. Elvis had not left the building. Elvis had tripped and fallen on the Xerox machine.

I groaned. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Maurice laughing.

I fought my way through the Elvises, looking each of them closely in the face, trying to match one of them to the photograph. It was about as possible as looking fashionable in a white jumpsuit when you’re a hundred pounds overweight. These men all had black pompadours, long sideburns, and fried grits accents. I eliminated a few, trained investigator that I am: too young (twelve), female (sex change?), and Japanese… (nah!) There were two who were very overweight, doing an Elvis-late-in-his-career routine, no doubt. Finally I made it to the front desk where Maurice was calmly waiting for me.

“Hello, Jakob,” he said. “What can I do for you?”

I held up the photograph for him to re-examine. “Have you seen him?”

“Nearly a hundred times.”

I sighed. “How many are there?”

He handed me the flyer for the Amazing Elvis Extravaganza. It advertised 101 Amazing Elvises. I was looking for an Elvis in an Elvis stack. “One hundred and one,” I repeated in a stunned whisper.

“Yes,” Maurice said. “And I understand the Grand Finale is a mass chorus singing ‘Jailhouse Rock’ a capella .”

Before I could respond, Maurice patted my hand and suggested I go into his office and put my head between my knees. Instead, I went knocking on the doors of the performers who had registered under the name of Elvis Presley. The first two doors I knocked on didn’t draw a response. The third door did-it swung open. An unlocked, open door to a private eye is like steak tartare to a pit bull. I glanced cautiously up the hallway, then down, then stepped into the room.

“Hello? Elvis? You in here?”

Elvis was not present. Alicia Kingston was. She was lying in the middle of the floor with a knife through her heart.

DETECTIVE RAY CHURCHglanced at me over his reading glasses. “Why are you here, Jakob?”

“I’m a big Elvis fan,” I said.

“Let me rephrase that.” Church paused long enough to glance into the middle distance with his blue-gray eyes, then said, “Why are you here, Jakob?”

There was enough menace in the second version to count as re-phrasing, so I told him about my search for the Elvis who was blackmailing Alicia Kingston.

“Huh,” Church said, using the edge of his notebook to scratch at the silver hair at his temples. Church was a big, powerful man in his mid-forties who looked like he spent a lot of time in a fishing boat with a rod and reel in his hand. As a matter of fact, he had retired from the St. Louis P.D. and moved to Grand Bay two years ago, hoping for just that. “Well, Jakob, I guess we’ll have to round up the, uh, usual suspects.”

“Usual?” I said.

“Work with me, Jakob,” he said. “Work with me.” He shook his head and muttered, “Show business.”

IT WAS THEoddest lineup in history: six Elvis imitators leaning against a wall in an open conference room provided by Maurice Winston. It was like that old ad: short ones, fat ones, even ones with… well, no chicken pox, at least not as far as we could tell. The Elvises who had legally changed their names to Elvis Presley ranged in age from twenty-two to fifty-three and seemed to range in weight from a ninety-eight-pound weakling to a three-hundred-fifty-pounder who looked like a heart-attack-in-training. The seventh Elvis in the room was the guy who ran the Elvis Extravaganza, and his legal name was Myron Shalton. Everybody called him Big Elvis. Shalton was in his fifties and looked like what Elvis would have looked like if Elvis had lived, spent a couple months at Betty Ford, changed his diet, hooked up with a personal trainer, and aged gracefully.