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Matt frowned. “I don’t have a VCR.”

“Yet. One more improvement of modern life to invest in, son,” she added in a relaxed baritone drawl.

Matt looked at her as if he’d never seen her before. “That was pretty good for a girl who’s no Elvis freak.

If you can do Elvis that well, how good would a real Elvis imitator sound?”

“Like the real thing. Especially if he had a facial structure that actually resembled the King’s. The shape of the facial mask affects how the voice is produced. Ever notice how lookalikes usually sound alike?”

“No.”

“Well, they do.”

“Come to think of it, there was a priest in Arizona we always used to say looked and sounded like Gig Young, the actor.”

Temple giggled.

“Why are you laughing?”

“If you knew Gig Young’s wicked, womanizing ways … well, him as a priest is pretty funny. Plus, he committed suicide.”

“Poor man. But no way would he have been priest material. So I’m still in a pickle: how do I keep from looking like a complete fool the next time the guy calls, if he does?”

“Oh, he probably will. Even if he’s just a nut with no motive but exposure, kind of like a psychic flasher, he’ll want more attention. Say, I wonder—? May I use your phone?”

“I can’t resist anyone who says ‘may’ instead of `can’.”

“Only every other Tuesday.” Temple picked up the heavy receiver. Matt, parsimonious former priest, had ordered the least fancy model. She dialed a number she knew by heart.

“It’s not … him,” Matt mouthed suddenly, glowering as much as one with his sunny blond looks could. He referred to Temple’s significant but often missing-inaction other, Max Kinsella. Temple shook her head, unwilling to get into personal differences.

“Hi!” she greeted whoever answered, her PR person’s voice set on High-energy Percussion. “What do you know about Elvis? Oh, really? No kidding. Can you get some to Matt’s place? Right now? Good.”

“Temple, what have you done?” he asked the minute she hung up.

“I’ve brought in an expert witness: a fairy godmother with a heavy Elvish fetish, it turns out.”

“Who?”

“Oh, a music lover of our acquaintance.”

“Not Lieutenant Molina.” Matt sounded shocked.

Temple couldn’t talk for laughing. “Holy Half-note! Not Molina. I wouldn’t sic her on you for anything. She not only is convinced Max should be on the Ten Most Wanted List for something, but she thinks I’m a pest who couldn’t figure out what’s in the mystery meat for dinner, much less decode a recipe for murder. Besides, she’s into oldies older than Elvis. Can you imagine her and Elvis together? Ugh! Joan Crawford and James Dean. No way. You’ll like your friendly neighborhood Elvis expert. I guarantee it.” The doorbell rang. “And here comes—”

Temple pranced to the door on her mid-heel pumps to flourish it open.

Behind it stood Electra Lark, wearing a subdued blackand-pink muumuu and carrying two canvas bags bulging with books. She assumed the wide-legged and -armed stance of an entertainer as she belted out:

“If your baby done left you, You’ve found the right place to dwell.

The bellhop is a black cat, The landlady’s dressed in black, Down Las Vegas’s own Lonely Street, At Huh-Huh-Heartbreak Huh-Huh-Hotel.”

Chapter 16

Send in the Clones

(Elvis never sang or recorded the schmaltzy ballad “Send in the Clowns,” but he should have)

“I feel like a fraud,” Matt said, examining the vast white elephantine bulk of the Kingdome complex shining in the thin winter sunlight.

“You do have a radio show,” Temple pointed out. She locked the Storm and they started walking into Kingdome World.

“But not the kind of radio show that would ever welcome an Elvis imitator.”

“Not knowingly anyway,” Temple agreed.

“And what makes you think I could recognize a voice I heard only once among this horde of burning hunks of love.”

Temple paused to eye him. ” ‘This horde of burning hunks of love.’ That’s good. Very hip. You must have absorbed a lot from Electra’s Elvis books last night.”

“A lot and not enough. I’ve never glimpsed a more promising or a more poisoned life story before, not even in confession. These tell-all books do tell it all, don’t they?”

“I don’t know. I never read them.”

“Virtuously indifferent to other people’s dirt, or just too busy?”

“A bit of both, I imagine. So Elvis’s private life was as spectacular as his public success, huh?”

“Both seem to have gone up and down. I can see why the mysteries of Elvis are so tantalizing…. What is that?”

Matt had stopped to stare at the four-story-tall tilted guitar in the Kingdome’s massive atrium. Heads could be seen zipping along the handle and strings while musical riffs boomed out from everywhere.

“It’s a slide. A guitar slide, get it? Popular with kids.”

“I guess making noise always is,” Matt shouted over the hullabaloo. “Are you sure I can use my radio show as a pretext to listening to various Elvis voices?”

“Who’s to challenge you? Publicity-hungry Elvis imitators would cozy up to a scrofulous porcupine if they thought it meant airtime. Speaking of which, Crawford Buchanan will suck up any attention this circus can get him. You are Media now, Matt. You can go anywhere and ask anything and people will trip over their own toes trying to catch your attention.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it. But at least I might get to see your major crown of thorns in a brand-new hairdo.”

“Oh, the Crawf’s Elvis pompadour does nothing for him, not that anything would. Try not to laugh out loud.” “The Crawf?”

“His unofficial stepdaughter’s term. I had stereotyped her as a rather vacant sleazehead, but it turns out that’s just the façade of a typical teenager nowadays. Quincey may not be a happy camper, but she’s not such a dim Coleman lantern, after all.”

“How could she be a happy camper, with the Crawf for a father figure? I recall Buchanan as an obnoxious combo of bootlicker and egomaniac, and I don’t find that particularly laughable. Those people can be dangerous. That’s what some of Elvis’s Memphis Mafia turned into.”

“Obsequiously overbearing?”

“Well, only obsequious to Elvis; overbearing to everyone else.”

“Sounds big-time dysfunctional.”

“And what do you call this?”

Temple lowered her eyes from the circling Elvis statues on high to the milling crowds, among whom the Elvis-like black-shag wigs and industrial-strength sunglasses materialized here and there. And this was just the come-as-you-weren’t public; they hadn’t even encountered any genuine imitators yet.

“You know,” she mused, “Las Vegas could be the world’s first theme park for the dysfunctional. I never thought of the old town as therapy.”

“Or metropolitan enabler,” Matt said. “I’m glad I skimmed Electra’s books. This all should mean a lot more to me.”

“If it means anything at all,” Temple agreed. “I thought we’d take advantage of our on-site guide.” “On-site guide?”

“The Priscilla impersonator.”

Matt’s pale eyebrows lifted. “The cynical teenager. Should be interesting. Can I expect tattooed and pierced flesh?”

“Only razor-burned.”

This time no screams led the way to Quincey’s dressing room.

In fact, a uniformed Kingdome security guard blocked the backstage route to the dressing rooms below.

A Kingdome security guard uniform was the same Men in Black outfit Crawford had affected yesterday: white shirt, black suit, narrow black tie, fedora, and ultradark sunglasses.