Hey there, I wanted to give you a taste of my upcoming book, Cloning Elvis.
Here’s three chapters from the first part of the book.
Elvis wasn’t dead.
At least, he didn’t think he was.
He opened his eyes with great effort. He always had a rough time waking up. There wasn’t anything unusual about that. But bright white light hanging over his face forcing him to squint was out of place.
Elvis sat up in the narrow bed his overweight body occupied and looked around. He was in a white room with only two straight-backed chairs and a table as furniture. He glanced down to find his body covered only by a sheet.
Where the heck was he? Was this a hospital? Had he gotten sick on tour?
“Good morning, Mr. Presley,” a woman said. He hadn’t noticed anyone else in the room.
Elvis turned his head to the left. A pretty woman wearing a white lab coat came toward him. She looked a lot like Priscilla, but it wasn’t her. Behind her stood a smiling man with a hairline that had long ago retreated to the top of his head.
“How are you feeling?” she asked.
“Like I got hit head-on by a Mack truck,” Elvis said. His head hurt, and he laid it back down on the pillow. “What happened to me? Where the heck am I?”
“That’s a bit of the story,” she said. “Perhaps the best place for us to start is if you’ll tell me what the last thing you remember was.”
“Uh yeah,” Elvis said. He took a few seconds to run through his memories. “I’d just finished my show in Springfield.”
******************
June 17, 1977 — Springfield, Missouri
By the time Al Dvorin announced, “Elvis has left the building,” Elvis and his entourage, the so-called Memphis Mafia, were in their convoy of limousines headed back to the hotel.
Elvis had always hated the name Memphis Mafia. It made his entourage sound like criminals and leg-breakers. They were his friends. Some even family. Yes, he paid them, but who else could he really trust?
Maybe he couldn’t trust any of them. After how Red, Sonny, and Dave had backstabbed him writing that damned trashy book, he wasn’t sure who was really on his side. They’d all sell him out and splash his secrets everywhere for the right price. Wouldn’t they?
The three limos pulled up to the rear entrance of the hotel. The hotel’s manager waited for them there. He escorted Elvis and the fellas inside to a waiting elevator, up to the top floor, and into the hotel’s largest suite.
Things got off to a bad start when Elvis saw his dinner wasn’t waiting for him there, as he always expected it to be.
“Where the heck’s the room service?” Elvis asked of no one in particular.
“It should be here,” Joe said. “I’ll check on it.”
Joe Esposito picked up a phone on the table. Joe was Elvis’s road manager, but also one of his closest friends. They’d met when the Army had stationed them both in Germany. Elvis had hit it off with Joe and Charlie Hodge when the three were serving there, even though Elvis had known Charlie from well before getting drafted. The three had remained friends all of these years. Joe knew him better than anyone, and Elvis believed he really could trust him.
“And what about the cinema?” Elvis asked. “I really wanna get out and see a movie tonight.”
“Their last show lets out at eleven,” Elvis’s stepbrother David said. “After that, the theater’s all yours.”
“They got that Star Wars picture playing?” Elvis asked.
“Sorry, E, not yet. But they do got Smokey and the Bandit.”
“Dammit. Can’t they get anything right here in Missouri?”
Elvis grabbed the ashtray from the coffee table and hurled it across the room. Lamar Fike and Charlie Hodge jumped out of the way to dodge it. The ashtray hit the wall behind them, but didn’t break. But the impact did leave a good dent. As usual, the hotel would bill Elvis for the damage.
The suite’s doorbell rang. David opened it and a bellboy pulled through two wheeled carts carrying the group’s luggage.
“Well, at least the suitcases found their way up here,” Elvis said. “Where the heck’s my damn dinner?”
“Right here, Mr. Presley,” a woman softly said from the doorway.
An attractive woman in her early twenties with her hair up pushed a cart of covered food into the suite. Elvis was about to give her a piece of his mind when he noticed she was in the last months of a pregnancy.
“I’m sorry for the delay, Mr. Presley,” she said as she wheeled in the cart. “I noticed the mashed potatoes were cold and I had them cook you up some new ones.”
“Well, that’s mighty thoughtful of you,” Elvis said, his temper already lowered. “But my name’s Elvis. Call me Elvis. You look like you should be home resting, not slaving away here.”
“Oh, I’m fine, Mr. Presley…I mean, Elvis,” she said. “I’m still a couple of months from my due date, and this work isn’t too hard.”
Elvis noticed the bellboy had finished offloading the luggage. He motioned to Lamar, who brought him his wallet. Elvis pulled a hundred-dollar bill from it and handed it to the bellboy.
“Thanks for bringing the bags up,” Elvis said.
“You’re welcome,” the bellboy said. “If there’s anything else you need, please let me know.”
“We’re going out to catch a movie in a little while,” Joe said. “If you could come in and turn down the room and bring some extra towels, we’d appreciate it.”
“I certainly will,” the bellboy said, then hustled out of the suite.
Elvis returned his attention to the pregnant woman removing stainless steel lids from his dinner.
“That all looks and smells delicious,” he said.
“I hope it is. If you need anything else, please let me know.”
“Actually, you’re the one who should be letting me know if there’s anything else I can do for you.”
“Oh, I’m fine, Mr. Presley.”
“Elvis,” he reminded her.
“Yes, I really don’t need anything, Elvis.”
“That may be, but is there anything you might want?”
She blushed a little and looked away from him.
“I’m not supposed to bother our guests, especially ones like you. But if there was any way I could get your autograph, it would mean the world to me.”
Lamar was already handing Elvis a pad of paper and a pen.
“And what’s your name, little lady?” Elvis asked.
“Jennie. But I spell it with IE, not a Y.”
Elvis scribbled her name on the paper then his own. He ripped the page from the pad and handed it to Jennie.
“Thanks for bringing up my supper,” he said.
“I hope everything tastes good.”
“I’m sure it will. But wait a minute here. You can’t leave without me tipping you.”
Elvis pulled a wad of hundred-dollar bills from his wallet, peeled off ten, and handed them to her.
Jennie gasped. “Oh, Mr. Presley…I can’t accept this much.”
Elvis had seen both genuine and fake modesty from countless people over the years when he had given gifts. He always felt great when he encountered the real thing, like he was now with Jennie.
Elvis took her hand in his and put the cash in her palm. With his other hand, he closed her fingers around the thousand dollars.
“Consider it a gift for your baby,” he said.
Jennie struggled to find words, then spoke after a few seconds. “I really don’t know what to say.”
“Ain’t nothing to say. Thanks again for bringing up my supper.”
“Thank you! Thank you, Elvis!”
Jennie threw her arms around him, giving him a big hug. Elvis smiled and led her to the door.
“You’re very welcome, Jennie who spells it with an IE and not a Y.”
Joe opened the suite’s double doors to let Jennie out. She backed out of the room smiling with pure happiness and joy. Elvis had made her night. And she had made his.
As Joe shut the doors, Elvis turned his attention to the food before him. He plunged a fork into the mashed potatoes, collected a big scoop, and shoved it into his mouth. They weren’t as good as the ones Mama used to make. Nobody’s were, even though Dodger’s came close. But these were good.
“Ain’t Jerry Reed in Smokey and the Bandit?” Elvis asked whoever might answer.
It was Joe who did. “Yeah. So are Burt Reynolds and Jackie Gleason.”
Good old Jackie Gleason. He’d hosted Elvis on his first television appearance in ‘56 with the Dorsey Brothers. After the show, Jackie had advised Elvis to never stop going out in the public. He’d warned Elvis that he’d be building himself a prison and would be the loneliest guy on the planet.
Elvis knew he should have listened. The thought started to depress him, and he shook it off.
“If it’s got all them in it, it’s gotta be a good picture,” Elvis said. “We’ll see Star Wars when Lisa Marie comes to visit me.”
Elvis moved into the master bedroom to take off the damp jumpsuit and change into something more comfortable for the rest of the night.
********************
Jennie called her husband from one of the four pay phones in the hotel’s lobby to tell him about the thousand-dollar tip from Elvis. The money would go a long way in easing their financial pressures as a child was added to their family. Tears of joy fell from her eyes as she told him of their good fortune and Elvis’s amazing generosity.
After hanging up with him, Jennie shared the story with everyone else also working the night shift. All of her coworkers were excited for her. They all considered Jennie one of the kindest and hardest-working people they knew. If anyone deserved such a generous tip, it was Jennie. They were all genuinely happy for the expectant mother.
All except one, a bellboy named Randall Briggs.
Her story pissed him off like nothing else.
Elvis had only handed Randall a single hundred-dollar bill for all the baggage he’d hauled up to the suite.
A one-hundred-dollar tip was the biggest Randall had ever received as a bellboy. At the time, he couldn’t believe Elvis had given him that much. But then he heard Jennie talking about the thousand dollars he’d handed her for simply bringing up some food. She’d probably played up her pregnancy to get the extra cash.
Randall had put in more work than she had. He deserved at least the same amount as a tip. And if Elvis wasn’t handing it out, then Randall would find another way to get it.
Thirty minutes later, Randall made his move.
After Elvis and his hanger-on-ers had left for the movies, Randall headed back up to the suite as he’d promised. He first turned down the king-sized bed and put clean towels in the large bathroom. Then he rummaged through Elvis’s luggage. He searched through the pockets of all his clothes. He opened and closed every drawer, yet was careful to ensure that nothing appeared disturbed.
Randall found a shaving kit containing packets of pills in the bathroom. He wasn’t sure exactly what they were, but he suspected they were illegal. All of the singers these days were stoned all the time. Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison had all ODed and died.
Maybe this stingy lard-ass Elvis would suffer the same fate.
Good. The cheapskate deserved it, Randall thought as he continued his search for cash.
But there wasn’t any money for him to find. Elvis may have been rich and handed out hundred-dollar bills like they were licorice, but he didn’t leave his bankroll lying around. Coming up empty-handed infuriated Randall even more. One way or the other, he was going to get what Elvis rightfully owed him.
He thought of taking the drugs. He could probably find some people to sell them to, but he wasn’t sure what the pills were. But he also didn’t have the first clue about finding out what they were and what they did. There had to be something else here he could take and sell for a nice little profit.
Randall went back into the walk-in closet. Before him hung the sweaty rhinestone-studded white jumpsuit Elvis had worn into the hotel from his earlier concert. Now that thing had to be worth at least a thousand dollars. No, it would go for more than that to one of Elvis’s stupid, obsessed fans.
Randall pulled the jumpsuit from its hanger, folded it up as small as possible, and sandwiched it between the dirty towels. He picked the bundle up and stood in front of the wall-length mirror. No one would be able to tell he carried anything but a mass of soiled towels headed for the laundry. Randall smiled at his cleverness.
How he would make money from it, he wasn’t exactly sure, but he knew someone somewhere would pay top dollar for a gaudy jumpsuit that had been worn by the so-called King of Rock and Roll.
Want to know what happens next?
Then click here to get your copy of Cloning Elvis!