“Nope.”
“If you don’t want to wear the bracelets, you’d better not be. I want to keep this as quiet and clean as I can.”
Dan had wondered why Murtaugh was doing his best to hold the gun out of sight, and why he hadn’t told the bartender who he was. “You afraid somebody else’ll snatch me away from you if they find out about the money?”
“People hear what I do for a livin’, they don’t usually welcome me with hearts and flowers.”
“Listen, I didn’t mean to kill Blanchard,” Dan said. “He drew a gun on me. I had the guard’s pistol in my hand, and I —”
“Do us both a favor,” Flint interrupted. “Save it for the judge.”
Pelvis finished the song with a wail and a series of chords that threatened to demolish the piano. As the last notes were dying, another thunderous noise rose up: the whooping and applause of his audience. Pelvis blinked out at them, stunned by the response. Though he used to play piano in a blues band when he was a lanky boy with a headful of wavy hair and big ideas, he was accustomed to standing behind an electric guitar, which he couldn’t play very well but after all it was the King’s instrument. He was used to hearing club managers telling him he needed to rein his voice in and keep it snarly because those high tenor notes didn’t sound like Elvis at all, that’s what the customers were paying for, and if he wanted to be a decent Elvis impersonator, he was way off the mark.
Here, though, it was obvious they were starved for entertainment and they didn’t care that he wasn’t twanging an electric guitar or that his voice wasn’t as earthy as the King’s. They started shouting for another song, some of them beating on their tables with their fists and beer mugs. “Thank you, thank you kindly!” Pelvis said. “Well, I’ll do you another one, then. This here’s ‘It’s Your Baby, You Rock It’.” He launched off on another display of honky-tonkin’ fireworks, and though his hands were stiff and he knew he was hitting a lot of clams, all his training was coming back to him. The fiddler picked up the chords and began sewing them together, and then the accordion player added a jumpy squeal and squawk.
“Hey!” Burt shouted at Flint over the music. “He done any records?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Well, he ought to! He don’t sound much like Elvis, but a fella plays a piano and sings like that, he oughta be doin’ some records! Make hisself a lotta money that way!”
“Tell me,” Flint said, “how do we get out of here? Back to a road, I mean?”
“Like I told him” — Burt nodded at Dan —” supply boat from Grand Isle’ll be here tomorrow afternoon. That’s the only way out.”
“Tomorrow afternoon? I’ve got to get this man to —” He paused and tried it again. “We need to get to Shreveport as soon as we can.”
“You’ll have to wait for the supply boat. They’ll take you to Grand Isle, but that’s still a hell of a long way from Shreveport. See, there ain’t no roads ’round here for miles.”
“I can’t stay here all night! Christ almighty! We’ve got to get back to —” Civilization, he almost said, but he decided it wouldn’t be wise. “Shreveport,” he finished.
“Sorry. I’ve got a radio-telephone in the back, if you need to let anybody know where you are.”
Smoates needed to know, Flint thought. Smoates needed to hear that the skin was caught and on his way back. Smoates would be asleep right now, but he wouldn’t mind being awakened to hear —
Hold it, he told himself. Just one damn minute. Why should he be in such a rush to call that freak-lovin’ bastard? Right now he, Flint, was in control. He didn’t have to run and call Smoates like some teenager afraid of his father’s paddle. Anyway, if Smoates hadn’t weighed him down with Eisley, he would have finished this thing yesterday. So to hell with him.
Flint said, “No, I don’t need to call anybody. But what are we supposed to do? Stay here until the boat comes?” He didn’t know if he could stand smelling his own body odor that long, and Lambert wasn’t a sweet peach either. “Isn’t there someplace I can get a shower and some sleep?”
“Well, this ain’t exactly a tropical resort.” Burt’s cigar stub had gone cold, but he still kept it gripped between his teeth. Now he took it out and looked at the ashy tip, trying to decide if it was worth another match. “You talkin’ about one place for all of you? Or you want somethin’ separate for the lady?”
“I’m not sleepin’ in a room with them!” Arden was still dazed and heartsick by what she’d heard about the Bright Girl. In her arms the little bulldog longingly watched Pelvis. “I’d rather sit in here all night!”
“How much money you got?” Burt asked Flint, and raised his eyebrows.
“Not much.”
“You got a hundred dollars?”
“Maybe.”
“Okay, here’s the deal,” Burt said. “The big boys — the execs — keep a couple of cabins to stay in when they come visit down here. They don’t want to get dirty stayin’ in the barracks with the workin’ crews, see. I know who can pick the locks. Fifty dollars apiece, you can have ’em for the night. They ain’t much, but they’ve got clean cots and they’re private.”
“There’s fifty dollars in my wallet,” Dan offered. Sleep on a cot — clean or dirty, he didn’t care — sounded fine to him. It occurred to him that this was the last night he’d sleep without bars next to his mattress. “I’ll pay for her cabin.”
“Yeah, it’s a deal.” Flint brought out Dan’s wallet and his own and paid the money.
“Fine. Wait a minute, lemme listen to this here song.” Pelvis had started a slow country-western tearjerker called “Anything That’s Part of You.” His audience sat in rapt, respectful silence as the broody piano chords thumped and Pelvis’s voice soared up in a lament that was painful enough to wet the eyes of hardcase roughnecks and bayou trash prostitutes. “I swear,” Burt said, “that fella don’t need to try to be Elvis. You his manager?” He looked at Flint.
“No.”
“Hell, I’ll be his manager, then. Get out of this damn swamp and get rich, I won’t never look back.”
“Arden?” Dan had seen the corners of her mouth quivering, her eyes glassy with shock. It was going to be tough on her, he knew. She’d put so much blind faith into finding the Bright Girl, she’d sacrificed everything, and now it was over. “You all right?”
She didn’t answer. She couldn’t.
“You mind steppin’ aside?” he asked Flint, and the bounty hunter saw Arden’s obvious distress and moved from between them. Dan stood close to her. His heart ached for her, and he started to put his arm around her shoulders but he didn’t know what comfort he could give. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I wish you could’ve found what you wanted.”
“I — I can’t believe she’s dead. I just can’t.” Her eyes suddenly glistened with tears, but just as quickly she blinked them away. The bulldog licked her chin. “I can’t believe it. Jupiter wouldn’t have told me wrong.”
“Listen to me,” Dan said firmly. “Startin’ from this minute, here and now, you’re gonna have to go back to reality. That means back to Fort Worth and gettin’ on with your life. However bad things look, they’ve got to get better.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You don’t know what tomorrow’s gonna bring. Or next week, or next month. You’ve gotta go day by day, and that’s how you get through the rough spots. Believe me, I’ve been there.”
Arden nodded, but the Bright Girl was a candle she could not bear to extinguish. It struck her how selfish she’d been, consumed by her own wishes. From the moment the man in the dark suit had set foot into this cafe, Dan had been on his way to prison. “Are you all right?” she asked.
“I believe I am.” He offered her a faint, brave smile when inside he felt as if he’d been hit by a tractor-trailer truck. “Yeah, I’m all right. This was gonna happen sooner or later.” His smile faded. “I saw my son, I said what I needed to say without bars between us. That’s the important thing.” H
e shrugged. “At least where I’m goin’ I’ll have a roof over my head and hot food. Won’t be much worse than the V.A. hospital, I guess. Anyhow —” His voice cracked, and he had to pause to summon the strength to continue. “Like I said, you go day by day. That’s how you get through the rough spots.”
“Miss?” Burt put his elbows on the bar and leaned toward her. Pelvis had finished the slow, sad number and was getting up from the piano to take his bows, sweat dripping from his chins. “I know who could tell you if there was ever anybody livin’ on Goat Island or not. Cajun fella they call Little Train. He was born ’round here. Sometimes he takes the execs huntin’ and fishin’. Sells us fish and game for the cafe, too, so he gets all ’round the swamp. If anybody would know, it’d be him.”
“Arden?” Dan’s voice was quiet. “Give it up. Please.”
She wanted to. She really did. But she was desperate and afraid. This would be her final chance, and she would never come this way again. Even finding the Bright Girl’s grave would be an answer, though not the one she wished for. She said, “Where is he?”
“Lives on a houseboat, anchored ’bout a mile south of here. Keeps to himself, mostly.” He stared at her birthmark, his gaze following its ragged edges. “I’ve got a motorboat, and I’m off shift at six A.M. I need to run down there to see him anyhow, put in an order for some catfish and turtle meat. If you want to go, you’re welcome. And I can carry two people, if you want to go along.” He was speaking to Dan.
Dan saw the need in Arden’s eyes; it was a painful thing to witness, because he knew she stood at the very edge of sanity. He had to turn away from her, and when he heard her say “I’ll go alone,” it was clear to him that she’d placed one foot over the precipice.
“Okay, then. Whatever suits you. Hey, fella!” He grinned at Pelvis, who was making his way to the bar through a knot of backslappers. “You ’bout knocked hell outta that piano, didn’t you?”
Pelvis said, “Thank you, ma’am” as he took Mama back into his arms, and Mama trembled with love and attacked his face with her tongue. He was breathing hard, and he felt a little dizzy, but otherwise he was okay. Sweat was pouring off him in rivers. “Can I have some water, please?”
“Comin’ right up!”
“Mr. Murtaugh?” Pelvis smiled broadly. “I think they like me.”
“You were all right. If you care for that kind of music. Here, wipe your face.” He pulled a handful of paper napkins out of a dispenser and gave it to him. “You’re not gonna pass out on me again, are you?”
“Nosir. I’m just a bit winded.” Pelvis took the bottle of water Burt gave him and guzzled it, then he poured some in his hand and let Mama lap it up. “Did’ja hear the way they were hollerin’?”
“Uh-huh. Well, step down off your pedestal and listen: we can’t get out of here till tomorrow afternoon. We have to wait for a supply boat from Grand Isle. How the hell we’re supposed to get back to the car I don’t know, but that’s how things are.”
“At least we got him, didn’t we?” Pelvis nodded toward Dan, who’d gone back to eating his gumbo.
We, my ass, Flint was about to say, but Burt stuck his bearded face over the bar again. “You play better’n you look, if you don’t mind me sayin’.”
“Sir?”
“You know. The Elvis thing, with the judo moves and all. That’s what I expected.”
“Well, all them songs I sang were ones Elvis done,” Pelvis explained. “And I do them moves in my show, but I couldn’t ’cause I was sittin’ at the piana. Like I said, I usually play the git-tar.”
“You want my advice? I’m gonna give it to you anyway. Don’t hide behind Elvis. You don’t need it, a fella can pound them keys and sing like you do. Hell, you oughta go to Nashville and show ’em what you can do.”
“I been there. They told me I didn’t sound enough like Elvis. Told me I couldn’t play git-tar as good as him, neither.”
“Well, hell! Don’t try to sound like him! Don’t try to look like him, or talk like him, or nothin’! Seems to me there was just one Elvis, and he’s dead. Can’t be another one. If I was you, I wouldn’t touch a guitar again so long as I lived. I wouldn’t wear my hair like that, either, and you oughta lose fifty or sixty pounds. Get yourself lean and mean, then go see them Nashville cats. You play for them like you did here, you’re gonna be makin’ yourself some money! Hey, do me a favor!” Burt reached for a napkin and pulled a pen out from beside the cash register. “Here. Sign me an autograph, just so I can say I spotted you first. Sign it To My Friend Burt Dunbro.”
“You … want my autograph?” Pelvis asked, his cheeks reddening with embarrassment.
“Yep. Right there. To My Friend Burt Dunbro.”
He put the pen to napkin and wrote what the man asked. Then he started Pelv—
He stopped.
“What’s wrong? Pen jammed up?”
There was just one Elvis, he was thinking, and he’s dead. Can’t be another one.
Maybe there shouldn’t be.
It had been fifteen years since he’d played piano in front of an audience. And that was before he’d dressed himself up as the King, studied the records and movies and hip thrusts, bought the wig, the blue suede shoes, the regalia. It was before he’d let himself get fat on the Twinkies and peanut butter cookies and cornbread sopped in buttermilk. It was before he’d decided that who he was wasn’t good enough, and that he needed something much larger to cling to and hide inside.
But what if … what if …
What if he’d given up on his own talent too early? What if he’d let it go in favor of the Elvis disguise because he wasn’t sure he was worth a damn? What if … what if … ?
Oh, Lord, it would be so hard to give it up now and try to go back. It would be impossible to strike out on his own, without the King to help him. Wouldn’t it?
But Elvis was dead. There couldn’t be another one.
“Hold on, I’ll find a pen that writes,” Burt offered.
“No,” Pelvis said. “This one’s fine.”
He was terrified.
But he got the pen moving, and with a hammering heart and a dry throat he scratched out Pelv and beneath it wrote Cecil Eisley.
It was one of the hardest things he’d ever done in his life, but when he was finished he felt something inside him start to unlock, just the slightest bit. Maybe in an hour he would regret signing his own name. Maybe tomorrow he would deny that he had. But right now — this strange and wonderful moment — he felt ten feet tall.
“Griff, come over here!” Burt called. The mean-faced man who didn’t care for the classics came to the bar. Burt gave him twenty dollars and quietly told him what he wanted done. “Ya’ll go on with Griff, he’ll take care of you,” Burt said to Flint, and to Arden he added, “Six o’clock. I’ll see you here.”
“Let’s go, Lambert.” Flint pushed the gun into Dan’s side again. “Take it nice and easy.”
The two cabins Griff led them to were about a hundred yards from the other structures of St. Nasty, up on a platform facing a cove of smooth black water. Griff produced a large penknife and pulled up its thin blade to slide into the first cabin’s door lock. It took four seconds to open the door. “I better check for snakes,” he said before he disappeared into the darkness within. Two minutes later a generator rumbled to life around back and then electric lights flickered on. “No snakes,” he announced when he returned to the door. “Just a skin.” He held the long gossamer thing up to show them. “Who’s sleepin’ in this one?”
When neither of the bounty hunters responded, Arden screwed up her courage and said, “I guess I am.” She crossed the threshold. The pine-paneled interior was hot, humid, and smelled of mold. There was a broken-down plaid sofa, a couple of standing lamps that appeared to have been purchased from a garage sale sometime in 1967, and a kitchen area with a rusty stove and sink. A hallway went back to what must be the sleeping area and — hopefully — an indoor bathroom. It would do for a few hours, until
six o’clock.
“Shower and toilet’s between the cabins,” Griff said. “Pipes are hooked to a cistern, but I wouldn’t drink the water. And you’d best keep the front and back doors locked. Lots of fellas ’round here can’t be trusted.”
Arden closed the door and locked it, then she pulled the sofa over in front of it. She found a switch that operated a ceiling fan, and turning it on helped cool the room some.
When the lights were on in the second cabin, Griff came out grinning. “Looky here!” He raised his right arm to show Dan, Flint, and Pelvis the thick brown snake his hand had seized, the head squeezed between his fingers and the coils twined around his wrist. “Big ol’ sumbitch moccasin. Found him sleepin’ under a cot. Ya’ll step aside.” He reared his arm back and flung the reptile past them into the water. It made a heavy splash. “Okay, you can go on in.”
Flint guided Dan through the door first. The place was basically the same as the first cabin, a moldy-smelling assemblage of cheap furniture, pine-paneled walls, and a floor of rough planks. Pelvis entered last, his eyes peeled for creepy-crawlies. “Thing ’bout moccasins,” Griff said, “is that for every one you see, there’re three or four you don’t. They’ll keep to themselves if you don’t step on ’em, but I wouldn’t let that dog go nosin’ ’round, hear?”
“I hear,” Pelvis answered.
“Tough luck for that girl, huh? I mean, the way her face is. Awful hard to look at, but hard not to look at, too.”
“Thanks for lettin’ us in,” Flint told him. “Good night.”
“Allrighty. Don’t let the bedbugs bite. Nor nothin’ else.” Griff chuckled a little to himself, slid his hands into the pockets of his blue jeans, and started walking back in the direction they’d come.
Flint closed the door and latched it. “Here, keep this on him.” He gave Pelvis the derringer, then he took the cuffs and their key from his pocket and unlocked them. “Hands behind you.”
“I’m gonna have to go pee in a minute,” Dan said.
“Hands in front of you,” Flint corrected him. “Grip ’em together.”