Cat in a Jeweled Jumpsuit

Exit the man who was born to be Fate's most famous dead man walking. Still walking.

Enter the fabulously flawed legend that won't die. Enter the King.

Prologue

The King of Rock 'n' Roll

The King was getting a bad feeling, the way his mama used to sometimes.

She'd been right about the Colonel.

Beware the blue-eyed woman.

Huh! She'd been damn right about that one.

Look at Cilla, running the whole shootin' match at Grace-land now. Who'da thought that pretty little thing would turn out to be tougher than 'em all, in the end? 'Course, he'd raised her up. And if there was a lot he'd sheltered her from bein', there was a lot he didn't shelter her from seein', maybe just to learn what not to do.

Taking Care of Business was an okay motto, but all Cilla had wanted then was TLC. That's what all the King's men and women got: gold bracelets and necklaces reading TCB for the guys, TLC for the girls. He was good at handing out the trinkets. But the fact was he'd never been any damn good at TCB, anyway. He just let his father Vernon run things, or not run things, and let the Colonel take over. Anybody walking in off the street wantin' to do-for him was welcome, then they'd take-from ... hell, if he'da known, he should have given Cilla the TCB job. Woulda given her something to do at Graceland'sides bitchin' about his boys ... and his girls.

'Course she had something to work with when she took over. Bein' dead does a lot to raise certain people's stock. Look at JFK. Or Marilyn. Man, he never met her, and she was a little old for him and a little fat (look who's talkin'). Didja see her in Let's Make Love, where they were spoofing his sudden fame in a musical routine? One hot number. Not the delicate, dark-haired type he loved. Still, that woulda been something. But it ain't over till it's over, you know? Lookin' back does no damn good. The tell-all books and coffee-table picture books and the movies and videotapes and miniseries and the special edition watches and the pink, white, and blue trinkets; they do the talkin' nowadays. TCB.

Only one who hasn't been heard from on the grand glory days and sad last nights of Elvis Aaron Presley is the King his own self. And even that isn't impossible. Heck, all the King's men had mostly used ghost writers to get their side of things down on paper.

And here he was one.

The King laughed, staring at the two silent-running TV sets tilted like gaming consoles into the green Naugahyde ceiling above him in the blacked-out bedroom. He shot the remote at them in turn, revving up the sound, speeding through channels, past reruns of old movies featuring dead pals and girlfriends. But some of them were still alive and kicking, his ex-buddies, ex-babes, ex-hangers-on.

Just like him.

The King is dead. Long live the King. Live and in person! News flash: It lives! Even the word "lives" is just a mixed-up Elvis.

He laughed, and hummed a few bars of "It's Now or Never"while surfing the babbling channels over and over and over. The place was dark as a tomb, and freezing cold. He couldn't tell day from night.

He had always liked it that way.

Chapter 1

The King of Rock and Roll 'em!

I am taking my ease in the living room of Miss Temple Barr's flat at the Circle Ritz apartments and condominiums, a snazzy fifties joint built like a four-story black-marble hockey puck. In other words, it is round, and therefore definitely not square.

You could say the same about me.

Miss Temple has shut all the miniblinds to dim the chamber, and is now cursing the darkness because the VCR is not working and she cannot see to correct the problem.

I myself have never troubled to keep up with these new-(angled devices. Remote controls and answering machines are as much as I care to deal with. So although she is invoking my name—along with those of others often employed in such circumstances, such as "for Pete's sake, for the love of Mike" etc.—I know that she expectsno more help from my quarter than she does from the ever-absent Pete and Mike.

“Two stars in the building is one too many," she grumbles, punching buttons that punch right back by refusing to stay depressed. "The Mystifying Max's greatest sleight-of-hand trick on or off stage was making this zippety-doodah machine work! Where is the man of the house when you really need him?”

I am right here, where I always am—when I am not off on my investigations—ready to absorb all gripes. But operating VCRs is not in my contract, not even when I am the partial reason for the technological trials I see unfolding before me.

`There!" MissTemple sits back on the parquet floor with a satisfied sigh. "Better watch, Louie. You are up first!”

That is only the natural order of things, so I stretch, yawn, manicure my nails, and scratch behind my ears.

“Do not turn your head away," she beseeches. "Your segment is coming up.”

Yes, I see that my rear appendage is lofting to great advantage. . . .