Carole Douglas - Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

But the lone star of the auction was a velvet painting of Elvis.

The loot went to prove, said one bidder, that you can steal millions of dollars, but you still can't buy taste. Still . . .

The item that attracted the most interest, that everyone wanted his or her picture taken with, that made it into the single photo used to illustrate this cornucopia of ill-gotten gain up for sale, was . . . the velvet painting of Elvis.

It went for $1600 to a pawnshop owner who intended to display it with a plaque describing where it came from.

Because that was the point. Elvis did one extraordinary thing with his life of fame and fortune and talent and lost opportunities: he never left his roots. He never stopped being a poor boy from Memphis. He never went Hollywood or St. Tropez, and never reinvented himself as a banner boy of Taste.

An Elvis is an Elvis is an Elvis, as the poet said about the singular and lovely rose.

He was a King even a crook could aspire to. And maybe more than one had.

Chapter 557

Scratch My Back (Then I'll Scratch Yours)

(In 1966's Paradise, Hawaiian Style, Elvis sang this seductive number with pussycat Marianna Hill)

I am still on self-assigned duty in the Kingdome.

It seems that guys in black suits do the security detail around here, so I figure I might as well stick around too until I see my little doll through her descent into Elvis-mania and back onto solid ground again.

Despite the overpopulation of Elvi, I have tumbled to some other suspicious overpopulations too. Like three times as many Memphis Mafia members as there should be. Given my unique position in undercover work, I am soon eavesdropping on everybody.

You would be amazed how dudes on both sides of the law are willing to unburden themselves of information that should be kept hush-hush in front of a least-likely suspect like myself. They should be ashamed! But their indiscretion is my information highway, so I do what I do best: creep around, look innocent as well asdeaf, blind, and dumb, and soak up the situation.

One thing going down that I decidedly do not like is the absence of Miss Quincey Conrad and the subsequent presence of my Miss Temple. When I see the Fontana brothers come in early flourishing a plastic clothing bag about eight feet long, I am pretty sure what Miss Temple is up to: an unauthorized Priscilla Presley impersonation. EPE (Elvis Presley Enterprises) will not like this, and I am even more against it.

I am well aware of the climactic role this Priscilla person is supposed to play in the ceremonies up top. And I am well aware that young Quincey was subjected to some sinister tricks that may culminate in something even more sinister . . . death.

Steps must be taken, and it will be hard to shepherd events onstage with 100 Elvis tribute performers milling about among two dozen Memphis Mafia wannabes from the highest and lowest ranks of both law enforcement and organized lawlessness.

I have a strong sense of competence as well as responsibility, but even I know that an operation of this scale is too big a job for the likes of me to make much of a difference.

Unassisted, that is.

So I amble down the hall—no one, and I mean no one thinks much of an ace mouse-snapper like me hanging out in basement dressing room areas—to my least favorite door.

Even from outside I can smell the fermenting fruit, not to mention bodily fluids.

I close my eyes and insert a forelimb beneath the crack under the door. I can only push a few shivs through, but these I wiggle around.

Primates are notoriously hard to teach, especially if they are of a higher order, but this primate is on the primitive side, and I soon bent it to my superior will. As soon as it hears the scrape of my shivs on the concrete floor inside the storeroom, I hear an answering scrape along the lock of its cage, which I have fixed to never quite close by sacrificing a luxuriant tuft of my own hair-shirt, thrust into the mechanism.

Because the dumb little ape is brown, and I am black, and the storeroom lighting is the usual monkey piss color they use in such places, the human who cares for the odious Chatter was not likely to see my modification of the lock.

So Chatter, using its obnoxious jointed fingers and rotten opposable thumbs, is soon free as a bird on helium. I hear the creature working to turn the doorknob and admit me.

Despite the fancy forelimb appendages, it is a good three minutes before the door is cracked and I eel in. "Shut it, quick!" I order.

“Why shut? Just open."

“Because I want it shut! Took you long enough." "The hair got caught under my nails."

“Braggart!" Just because my nails are not broad enough to entrap much of anything . . . I hate one-up-apeship.

I pace, because I am getting worried. "Did you see your so-called master today?”

Chatter sits back on his obscenely hairless rear and rocks happily. "Oh, yes. We had kiwi and banana." "How terrific. How is your master?"

“Busy. No time. Brings and is bye-bye."

“I bet. Listen, I know you are not a dog, and that you do not have the brains of a cat. But do you think you can sniff, see, find your master in a place crowded with strange people and smells and sounds?”

Chatter lives up to his name and begins gibbering. He goes so far as to bite his nails.

“Idon'tknow. Idon'tknow. Been in dark so long. Scared, Louie. Chatter do tricks. Look up skirts. Can look up skirts."

“There will be no skirts on this scene, except one, and it goes all the way to the ground, and then some. You willhave to forget the vulgar tricks you were taught and concentrate on one, very important thing."

“Yes? What?”

The hairy little ape is agitated. Personally, I would not keep anything I was devoted to in the dark like this, no matter what I was up to.

“Now, now. Smooth that savage brow. Nothing to worry about. Uncle Louie is here. All you have to do is clear your mind of all confusion. Just go where I say and find your master."

“No trick? Master like trick."

“No trick. Just find your master. He, she, or it will like that trick plenty.”

Chatter hop-slides over to me and puts a big hairless mitt on my paw. His long fingers curl around it as if we were holding hands, had we hands. I control my aversion.

“Scared, Louie. Big place. Noise. People. Like . . . zoo. Like lab."

“Lab? You were in an experimental lab?"

“Big lab. Small cage. Dark like this half the time." Chatter frowns. I am beginning to find his almost-human expressions creepy. "Master take away.”

I shift my weight from forelimb to forelimb and do it again. "That is good. You owe master a big kiss for that one. That is all you have to do: find master. I will be there to protect you." Too bad I cannot protect his master.

“Okay." Chatter leaps up and down. "It is game. Fun. Find master. Louie say find master."

“Louie say find master. But first we wait until there is a lot of thump-thumping on the stage upstairs. Then we go, quietly, up."

“Game. Trick. Chatter love trick.”

Yeah. I was hoping that Chatter's master would just love this trick to death.

Chapter 56

Who Are You (Who Am I)

(From 1968's Speedway)

"Boys," said Temple in her second-best Mae West voice, "you are the finest fairy godmothers a girl ever had." "Watch it!" Karate Elvis glowered.

Her hand dropped its instinctive caress of the new wedding gown, a column of shining white fabric and iridescent beads that hung from the otherwise empty rod in Quincey's dressing room. "How did Minnie make this up so fast?"

“Minnie made the first gown," said Oversized. "She loves a challenge, and you and Quincey are the same petite size as Priscilla.”