Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit (22 page)

“Oh,"
Temple blurted, "like the strippers use."

“
Right on." Shana eyed Temple with new respect,
as if she had grown a half foot in her estimation. "It casts this
white-purple glow and then this thing comes alive
like a landing strip
in Oz. Unbelievable.”

Matt nodded. "So they know you're 'Velvet Elvis,'
but
they don't know yet just how spectacular you are."

“
Right. Not until dress rehearsal. The thing is, the
jumpsuit is everybody's secret
weapon. Some of the vet
erans don't
care, but the rest of us keep our outfits under
wraps until we have to
show them off."

“
So any number of you could have a costume no one's
ever seen before?" Temple
speculated. That might ex
plain why no one had claimed the mutilated
jumpsuit.

Shana
nodded.

“
And that's why us asking about jumpsuits might get
the cold shoulder.”

Shana
nodded again.

“
Isn't it hard," Temple asked, "being
the only
woman?”

Shana shook her head. "No. And, after all, I've got a
pal in Priscilla, right?"

“You
and Quincey get along?"

“
She's an okay kid. Notice I did not say 'good.'
That
girl's got a lot to prove and no
one to show her the right
way to go
about it. But we get along. I haven't shown
her my Elvis suit,
though."

“Why
did you show us?" Temple asked.

Shana
shut and locked the case and resumed her chair
by the mirror before she answered.

“
Doing an impersonation
is different from any other acting job on earth. You're not digging into a
character
through the lines the
playwright gave him; you're dig
ging
into a real person through the life he lived, and in
this case, died. It's a commitment. It's an
education. If
you're any kind of
actor, it's a transformation. Even if
you're
a bad actor, and there are a bunch of those here,
you get caught up in the challenge, and maybe the
priv
ilege. You are an interpreter, and you want to be the best
damn one you can be. So, you've got a vested
interest,
in the end.”

She leveled a glance at Matt, and Temple noticed that
her eyes were a clear, strong, undrugged Elvis blue. Con
tact
lenses, again? Ever the cynic.

“
Whoever you're talking to," Shana went on,
looking
hard at Matt, "even if
he thinks he's a fraud, is in trou
ble.
Elvis-sized trouble. King-sized trouble. I'm riding
on his image. So I
owe it to Elvis to help.”

Chapter 21

Ya-kitty-yak

(Elvis never recorded "Yakety-yak," but it was
written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, who
wrote other songs Elvis
did record)

I
guess
I
never paid
attention when those Tarzan movies came on.

I
find jungle life fairly boring, not to mention hard
on
the ears: all those exotic birds and monkeys shrieking in the trees, the
stampeding elephants trumpeting like they
have just been drafted into a
mariachi band, natives
jumping up and down chanting, drums beating to beat the mariachi band .
. . not my scene.

Still, now I wish I had picked
up a tip or two on relating
to the
most intelligent life form outside of Homo sapiens
himself (and that is not saying much). See, these
things chitter. They chatter. They screech. It is very hard to de
code their ravings. Oh, they have those big brown
eyes
that everyone finds so
expressive. So do dogs, and you
know how many of their lightbulbs are on
permanent dim. They also are blessed with those blasted opposable
thumbs that have become the sine qua non of civilization.
(This means that you are nobody without
them.)
But most of the time those flexible
digits are only good
for curling
around the bars of a cage, and I do not see how that makes the species so
intelligent. You will not
find my
pinkies curling around the bars of any cage. They
will instead be kneading in fascinating rhythm
into what
ever soft surface is
available: a mother's milkwagon, a
pillow,
or whatever human epidermis is most unprotected
by distracting layers of
clothing.

It is while gazing on the almost-naked ape (this critter
is wearing the
obligatory diaper) that I happen on the dis
covery of my life. Why are cats superior to all other
spe
cies? We know that
they are, and that they have attained
this high station despite lacking the prized opposable
thumb or even the disgusting bark so hailed in the canine
species.

I have it. Call me Darwin! (But only as a middle name.
It is an extremely wimpy name and I only claim it in the
abstract
sense.)
The chimpanzee before me betrays
the clay feet of the
entire human race.

Diapers. This creature is wearing that so-undignified
banana bandana that marks a creature who is hopelessly
retarded in its elimination. The feline, on the other
hand,
is
notable for its neat personal habits indoors or out (un
less subjected to intolerable emotional stress). This
has
made
us a boon to humankind from time immemorial. No
other animal species is so remarkably tidy. This makes
us King of the Beasts. Or Queen, if Midnight Louise is
listening
in.

Once the innate inferiority of the creature before me is
clear, despite its
agile fingers and brain, I sit down and
take
charge.

“
All right. Settle down, Chiquita-chomper. I
suppose I
should know if you are a dude or a dudette. Well?”

The thing chitters at me in monkeyese. I scratch
my
nose in puzzlement. It repeats the gesture.

What a silly mug! Naked as a slug, despite the hairy
coat that would do honor to a goat. And the thing smells
to
high heaven. No wonder it is locked up far from human sniffers.

I speak slow-ly and clear-ly. "Me Louie. You . . .
well?
Me Louie, you—"

“Chitter,
chitter, chitter, chatter."

“Enough
of the chit-chat. Me Louie, you . . . ?”

The big ape starts pounding itself on the chest. Big
hairy deal. If I had wanted a drummer, I would have asked
for
one.

Then I finally tumble. The critter is trying to use sign
language. He is not saying "chitter chitter
bang-bang" on
his chest, he is
saying his name. So I listen harder during
the next outburst and come to only one conclusion. Am I
a
seasoned investigator, or what?

“
Or what?" may describe my role as translator
for a
juiced-up monkey.

“
Chatter?" I say, not believing my own words.
"That is
your name? Chatter?"

“Chitter
chitter." Head nod.

By
George, I think he has got it. "All right, ah, Chatter.”

Grin grin, nod nod. Show teeth. Ugh! So square and dull
and regular, no interesting predator peaks and val
leys. No wonder humans seek out orthodontists. I would
too if I had
that
in my family tree. Fortunately I go back
to
Ole Sabertooth Tiger, and there was nothing filed down about that Jurassic
dude.

“
Okay, Chatter. G0000d monkey-wonkey. Ah ... can
you
explain why you are locked up in here?”

Chitter
chitter, blink blink. What is this guy, a hairy sem
aphore? I see that there is nothing to do but for me to
forsake the sophisticated signaling system of my
breed
and descend to sign language as
well. These crude cha
rades offend my feline soul, but the dedicated
investigator
must sacrifice even dignity in
the pursuit of an honest
answer.

So I walk to the door. I walk back to the cage. I leanmy forelimbs up to
the padlock, and pantomime a twisting
motion.
Then I sit down, do my best to impersonate an
owl and force my purr into
a trilling "Whoo-whoo-whoo.”

The big monkey tilts his ugly head and eyes me in
quisitively. I am not about to repeat the performance, but
I do repeat the question: "Whoo-whoo-whoo.”

Suddenly
light dawns in those ancient brown eyes. The
creature
leaps up, assumes a bow-legged stance, and
begins playing the air guitar
as if he were auditioning for
Saturday Night Live.

Naturally, I am startled by this unsuspected talent and
leap back, in case this is St. Vitus dance and it is catch
ing. Of course the conclusion is obvious. An Elvis
imitator
has incarcerated
this poor benighted being behind these
cruel
chicken-wire walls.

Verrry
interesting.

But
why was Miss Quincey Conrad paying surreptitious
visits to the imbecile and calling him Baby? Is she per
haps
acquainted with the hairy little fiend? Might there be some plot involved.

Ah-hah!
I remember my detective antecedents, bom in the USA, even if they were first
practiced on French soil.

I
refer, of course, to what mystery readers of all ilk must
inevitably be reminded of when confronted with a
crime,
a primate, and a mysterious motive.

Cherchez
le chimp, bebe.

It
is very possible that the individual who attacked the
costume so senselessly, scattering nail lacquer and pa
per towels about, was this very creature I share
confine
ment with. A chimpanzee is quite strong, and even more
unpredictable. Elvis kept one, as a matter of
fact, by the
name of Scatter, and it
drank beer and looked up girls' skirts, much to the amusement of Elvis and the
refined gentlemen of his entourage. Then the novelty wore off,
and the animal, after being the life of the orgy
for some
time, was consigned to a solitary cage, where it died
alone and unmourned. I
cannot condone treating even a
silly antecedent of humanity so callously.

Seems to me some son of
Scatter would be very in
terested in laying some version of Elvis low.

Chapter 22

Help Me Make It
Through the Night

(Recorded by
Elvis in 1971)

"Elvis
alert!”

The phrase, bellowed out, made Matt start and look
behind
him.

Almost midnight, but he was alone in the studio, and
the
alert was only on his headphones.

Leticia was grinning at him from the other side of the
glass window, a vision in an orange and turquoise-
trimmed silk tunic and pants. Matt imagined she was the
kind of vision Elvis would have had after eating one of
those
nightmare meals made from his four favorite food groups: lard, sugar, salt, and
carcinogens.

“You're
expecting that guy to call again?" Matt asked through the mike. He was
relaxing into the radio routine:
commercials
were blaring to the outside world while the
staff took a break before
they were back on the air.