“Actually you told me that too,” I said.
“Did I?”
“Several times. In dreams, or while you’re in the isolation chamber.”
“Shit. Colonel may be right about me getting old.”
“Got a lot on your mind,” I said.
“Colonel tells me each time we go out, we finish this one, he’ll go to the White House, talk to Nixon about letting her loose, sending her on to glory. But he don’t never let her go so she can go on to glory.”
“Do you know for sure she’s heading for glory?”
He took off the sunglasses, jerked his head in my direction. “What the fuck, Johnny? Course she is.”
“Not what I meant. I know she deserves it. But, man, stuff we’ve done and seen, kind of makes me think that that old gospel singing version of what’s beyond the veil might be bullshit wearing a party hat.” Elvis was goofy about his mother. By all accounts she had been one hell of a fine and nice woman, and we nearly all love our mothers, but Elvis, you’d think he was still sucking milk from her tit way he acted about her. “Don’t know anything for a fact,” Elvis said. “I mean, you ask me, I’m a Christian. Say my prayers. But maybe what we know about it isn’t all there is to know. Still, I feel certain, Colonel cuts her soul loose, she’ll go someplace nice. I just hope they have fried chicken there. She loved that stuff.” I thought, yeah, that and most everything she ate was what most likely killed her. I didn’t say that, though. I liked my job and wanted to keep it.
As for the White House and Nixon, I felt the president was less trustworthy than Colonel Parker.
Elvis had met Nixon once himself, sort of. Elvis claimed to have gone to the White House about drug enforcement, or some such, which was a hoot, because he was so high that day if you told him his dick was a pickle, he’d have sliced it up to put on a hamburger.
He was actually there to receive a citation for his work for The Hidden Agenda, as it was called. Meaning taking care of weird stuff we couldn’t talk about, sometimes receiving medals and citations we couldn’t show anyone. Elvis popped that drug medal open, and inside was another medal.
It read: For Valiant Effort, THD, the initials meaning The Hidden Agenda. Each and every president since George Washington was in on it, this knowledge of the shadow world. There had been some famous folks that worked for the shadow side of the government, as well as a bunch of not so well known folk like me.
Thing was, all they had done, all we had done up until this time, they were walks in the park compared to what we were about to go through.
3
THE COLONEL, TWO DAYS EARLIER
When Colonel Parker got the call on the Special Phone, the Colonel hit the bricks, caught a chartered jet, took that bird straight to Washington, D. C. He was picked up at the airport as he came down the jet’s lowered steps. A car was waiting and a man stood by it, opening the back door. The Colonel got in.
The car was long and black and hummed through traffic like a hummingbird through flowers. The driver was a thick-headed white guy with wide shoulders. The driver handled the car smoothly and carefully.
When the car arrived at the White House it went along the drive and around back to an entrance never used. It was a garage. When they drove inside, the driver touched a button on the dashboard, the garage door closed, and the entire floor lowered.
The driver, who had only nodded up to this point, said, “Welcome to the Bat Cave.”
The platform the car sat on went down for some time at an even pace before stopping. The driver got out and opened the car door. The front of the great elevator was open. The Colonel, no longer pretending he needed his cane, got out of the car and strolled out of the elevator.
It wasn’t like a cave at all, really. It was a big wide space and the walls were white and there were no ornaments or decorations of any kind. The driver said, “Follow me, unless you need a cart to ride in.” When he spoke he showed teeth that were thick and even. The Colonel thought, or perhaps imagined, that the driver clicked softly and gently like an expensive clock.
“The cane I don’t really need,” the Colonel said. “I can walk just fine. Lead ahead.”
The driver led him to a place in the wall that seemed to be without access. He touched the wall and it slid back silently. They stepped inside a small elevator, and went down again.
“How deep is this?” the Colonel asked.
“Deep,” said the driver.
When they stepped out of the elevator they were in a large office. It was like the office in the White House, almost an exact replica, only larger. It was an empty office and the driver left the Colonel leaning on his cane. The Colonel considered taking one of the chairs in front of the desk, which seemed as large as an aircraft carrier, but somehow he didn’t think he should, didn’t feel right about it unless invited, so he just leaned.
A clock ticked on the far wall.
Nothing changed for a long time.
After awhile the Colonel got tired of leaning, took a chair and waited, twirling his cane in his hands.
He waited a long while. President’s prerogative, he guessed, making him wait. But he didn’t like it. He always hated waiting. He felt his time was as important as anyone else’s. Bored, he looked at a large jar of something or another on the desk to his right. He didn’t get up to go inspect it, just stared across the room at it. It may have been jelly beans, or gummies, or some such shit. Whatever, sweets like that made him sick. He was thinking about that when he heard a buzz and the wall opened to his left. It was a different entrance than the one he had used to come into the office. The wall spread wide. There was a light in the gap, but it was dim, as if someone had put a sack over a burning bulb. It wasn’t an elevator. He could see the top of some wide steps.
The Colonel stood up and moved in that direction, slightly. He could see to the left, just inside the entrance, there were shelves. On one of the shelves he could see a large jar, and inside of it he could see what looked like a human brain in a yellow liquid. Next to the jar was a bag of something. There were wires hooked to the lid on top of the jar, and they dangled into the liquid. The other end went into a curious device that looked like a large car battery. A wire led away from the battery and into the wall. The inside of the jar with the brain, or whatever it was, sparked blue and made a crackling sound that he could clearly hear; the brain heaved, as if breathing.
There were all manner of things in other jars on the shelves. One jar seemed to contain a very large penis. Or maybe it was a thick, lengthy turd; hard to say.
On the right side of the entrance there was what looked like a humansized puppet, dangling on wires, its faced turned toward the Colonel. It was an empty face, no eyes, nose or mouth, but in spite of that, he had the discomforting impression that it was staring at him, sizing him up.
There were a lot of masks around it. He thought he recognized the faces on some of the masks. At least three or four of the previous presidents were represented. There was also one of Marilyn Monroe, James Dean, Buddy Holly, and a mask of Elvis. There was also a Nixon mask. There were odd devices on hooks. They could have been tools for fixing unique contraptions, sex toys, or instruments of torture. Maybe all three. No way to know.
The Colonel could hear someone coming up the steps inside the entrance, coming from some place down in the bowels of the earth, and that sudden awareness made him feel as if all the weight of the universe was slowly collapsing in on him. He listened to those slow and measured steps clumping up the stairs, growing louder, and it made his skin crawl.
There was a rise of steam, or smoke, or some such, and it smelled bad. Out of it a head rose, and then came the whole of the man.
President Richard Nixon.
Nixon’s suit was black as axle grease and shiny as a snail’s trail. His tie was black, thin and long like the tongue of some strangled beast. His shirt was an off white. It had the appearance of having been slightly bled on by a more colorful shirt in the same wash. The suit coat bunch
ed at each shoulder, as if all that was inside the shirt and suit were bony angles. The shine on Nixon’s black shoes leaped when touched by light. There appeared to be a drop of dried blood under his nose. Or perhaps it was jam. He was carrying a small flat box in his hand.
Nixon moved a corner of his mouth at the Colonel, went and sat down behind his desk, or rather collapsed in his chair.
“Now, Colonel,” Nixon said. “I have a serious job for you.”
No how’s it hanging? How’s the wife? Getting any? Or any such greeting, formal or non-formal, but instead a straight plunge into business. Then again, down there—wherever down there was—was that kind of place. All business. To mention anything else was like discussing wedding plans at a funeral.
The Colonel had only seen Nixon once before, and not here, but in the White House above. It had been a private meeting then, but to be brought here, into the Unholy of Unholies, was an unusual honor. It was the place of private-private-damn-private meetings.
“New Orleans,” Nixon said. He waved the box he had been carrying and had yet to put down. “I watched this film. It’s of your boy. But there’s more to it, more we need to know. Not sure what it is, but important business.”
The Colonel had no idea what Nixon was talking about.
“Excuse me, President Nixon,” the Colonel said, “but how do you know it’s important if you don’t know what it is?”
“I prefer Mr. President,” Nixon said.
“Yes sir, Mr. President.”
“This movie your boy was making. What the hell? I don’t get this bebop-a-lulu shit at all. But I was told to watch it. One of the women on the grid saw something in it that disturbed her. She had on sunglasses. Eye operation. Had to wear them to keep out too much light, but she still wanted to work. Owed a bit of time on her soul, you might say. Anyway, she’s going through this and that, and finally she has the piece of film to look at, and she saw it.”
“It, sir?”
Nixon placed the box on his desk.
“Oh yeah. I’ve seen it too, Colonel. Peculiar business, but it doesn’t mean wheely-dealing horseshit to me. But it’s something, and it has to do with your boy, so I think you and your boy should check it out.”
“Yes sir, Mr. President.”
“Have you got gum in your mouth, Colonel?”
“No, sir.”
“That’s just how you talk?”
“Yes, sir.”
“You got a bitch of a mumble there. I meant to say something about it last time.”
“Mumble, sir?”
“For heaven’s sake man, can’t you hear yourself? Sounds like you’re talking around a dick. Ha. Ha. I made a joke. My name is Dick. Ha.”
“Yes, sir. A joke.”
“Damn funny now that I think about it. Pat doesn’t like dick jokes, so I don’t make many of them. Just us men here though. Right?”
“Right, sir.”
Now that Nixon had actually become informal, the Colonel discovered he didn’t like it. It was like watching a horse do something unnatural with a squirrel.
“Don’t mention it to her,” Nixon said.
“I never see her, sir.”
“Well, if you do.”
“I would never mention it.”
“Damn. Colonel. You ought to do something to get that fixed. Have you thought about speech therapy?”
“Sir?”
“To get that mumble out. You sound a little like…I can’t put my finger on it. Porky Pig. No. Not that one. Shit, I know it’s some goddamn cartoon. Droopy the dog with a speech impediment. That’s closer. Still, not the one I have in mind. Can’t quite grab it. Older you get, the more names and words hide from you, like birds in the bushes. You can hear them rustling around in there, see the bush move, but you can’t see or find the bird. Like looking for your wiener on a cold morning. Ha. Another one.”
The Colonel nursed the offense, because there was little else he could do. He knew he had a bit of trouble with words, but really, a speech therapist? And he didn’t like dick jokes. Well, not these. A good one now and then was just fine. Like a good fart joke. You had to know how to tell them. Elvis could tell a good dick joke. Southern boys in general knew a good dick joke when they heard it, and they could tell it in turn.
Bottom line, the Colonel felt he had to float his boat in this crapfilled lake because he was not only in the presence of the president, he was in the presence of the current director of The Hidden Agenda. Lot of crossed up stuff there. Good and Evil holding hands. Secret Rulers of the Universe, gods and devils, demons and angels, all that flying monkey shit. All he knew was he was in the bag with them and couldn’t get out. Damn the day he wrote his name in blood with a chicken bone. Good as he was at contracts, he’d have thought he would have given that one a better read. Hell, he did read it. The fine print had a way of showing up later. He was sure of it.
Nixon studied the Colonel.
“Say Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers. If Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers, how many peckers… Did I say peckers? Damn. Let’s start over.”
This went on for about fifteen minutes, Nixon sing-songing the rhyme, and him having the Colonel repeat it. The Colonel had a hard enough time remembering the rhyme, let alone repeating it to Nixon’s satisfaction.
“Damn it, Colonel. There’s no ‘d’ in Peter. Peter. Not Peder. Shit, you listening?”
“Yes sir, Mr. President. I just can’t help it.”
“Ah the hell with it. But you work on it, Colonel. I mean it. Next time I see you I expect for you to be able to say Peter without a goddamn ‘d’ in it.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now. What the hell are we here for?”
“You asked me to come. The film, sir.”
The Colonel pointed at the container on Nixon’s desk.
“Oh, yeah. This Elvis Presley boy. Elvis the Pelvis.”
Nixon talked as if he had just seen Elvis for the first time on Ed Sullivan. As if time stood still. And maybe for him, it did.
“Miss Overtine… Well, you wouldn’t know her. She works downstairs, where I just came from, and she’s one of many that goes through books and films, funny books even, and all manner of doodly-shit, looking for anything that might somehow lead us to Them.”
“Yes, sir. The weirdlings, you mean?”
“I was never comfortable with that word. Some Democrat came up with it, but yes. And they ran this film, and just by accident Miss Overtine, due to eye surgery and those glasses, sees something. A real champ Miss Overtine, and not a bad looker for having a crippled leg and having to wear a wig because of some kind of hair fall-out thing. I don’t know. Fungus or some such. But she’s checking this unfinished movie out, way my staff checks out everything, reads everything, watches everything, and so on, and she sees something suspicious on this film. Something not there when you watch with the naked eye. It’s odd…Fudd. That’s it. That’s who it is. Elmer Fudd. That’s who you remind me of. Damn. I knew it was some cartoon thing. Not that I watch them now, I’m a grown man. But you know, we all grew up on them. I really like the Roadrunner. Now there’s a character. Ha. Ha. But about your boy and this goddamn film…”
4
JOHNNY'S JOURNAL:
OUT IN NEW ORLEANS
New Orleans smelled of fish and beignets. Or at least it did down by the banks of the Old Mississip, the water rolling dirty-brown beyond the car window, tumbling along like mud-coated tumbleweeds. Me and Elvis were in his long blue Cadillac. We were parked near a wooden ramp that looked dilapidated and about as secure as a hair holding a sword over your head. It was a private ramp, or dock if you prefer. There were two large creosote posts poking up on either side of it near the bank. There was a chain across it, linked together with a heavy padlock.
Elvis was sitting in the backseat. I was at the wheel. We had been sitting there about two and a half hours. We tried to keep ourselves amused. We talked about this and that, anything but the job, either job, m
usic or monsters. We played eye-spy games like kids, made jokes, all of them filthy. We had done everything but drop drawers and play with one another’s balls. Eventually we had grown bored and silent and a little sullen.
It was hot but we turned off the air-conditioner and I rolled down the window on my side. Elvis, who sat in the back on the passenger’s side, rolled his down. That hot air was as still and heavy as if it were a wall.
I preferred the air-conditioner, but it seemed a shame to sit there and waste gas. Now and again even the wall-solid wind stirred, and when it did it brought that fish smell with it. Deep-fried, sugar-coated beignets from the Quarter. And lastly the stench of poverty. There is in fact a stink to it. I ought to know, and so did Elvis. We came from that. We were so poor if it had cost a nickel to shit we would have had to throw up and apologize.
“You sure this is the right spot?” I said.
“Yeah. They’ll pick us up here.”
“What about the car?”
“It’ll go on board.”
“A steamboat?”
“You haven’t done this bit before, have you?”
“Nope,” I said. “I’ve done a lot, but the steamboat, not yet.”
“This isn’t just any steamboat. It’s super fine. Love them things. Like to watch them on the river. They’re quite a sight.”
“Proud Mary keeps on rolling.”
“That’s right,” Elvis said. “Boy, that Tina Turner, good God, the legs on that woman.”
“They are long and muscular.”
“You got that right,” Elvis said. I watched in the rearview mirror as he leaned back in his seat and smiled.
“It just going to be us?” I said.
“Colonel sets this stuff up. You’re lucky I’m bringing you.”
“What’s that mean?”
“That business the other day while I was in the tank.”
I turned and looked over the seat.
“Oh, come on Elvis. I wasn’t trying to do one over on you.”
“You were close to doing just that.”