Kill Me Tender: An Elvis Mystery

By Daniel Klein

Billy had said the word "murder". Worse, he'd said "serial murder". This was definitely not a game anymore.

Back from his tour of duty in Germany-and desperately missing his Momma-Elvis Aron Presley just isn't turned on by the music the way he used to be. Between his Machiavellian manager, the hangers-on and childhood pals crowdin

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dean Street Press
• Release date: Oct 3, 2022
• ISBN: 9781915393432

Daniel Klein

Daniel Klein is the co-author of the international bestseller Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar. He is a Harvard graduate in philosophy and an acclaimed writer of both fiction and non-fiction. When not enjoying the slow life on Greek islands, he lives in Massachusetts with his wife. He is seventy-four years old.

Book preview

Daniel Klein

Kill Me Tender

Billy had said the word murder. Worse, he’d said serial murder. This was definitely not a game anymore.

Back from his tour of duty in Germany—and desperately missing his Momma—Elvis Aron Presley just isn’t turned on by the music the way he used to be. Between his Machiavellian manager, the hangers-on and childhood pals crowding his Graceland mansion, and his own propensity for fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, the King tries desperately to get his heart back into Rock and Roll.

But how can the King sing when young girls—the presidents of his fan clubs—are dying all over Tennessee? Elvis suspects foul play; to prove it, and to find the killer, he’ll need to navigate the resentment, squareness, and bigotry that hound-dog him at every turn. Only by allying himself with a self-taught doctor in a small black community, his alluring—and forbidden—nurse, and a mysterious early Elvis impersonator, can Presley hope to Take Care of Business in time to save the next victim.

Contents

Cover

Title Page/About the Book

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

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About the Author

Titles by Daniel Klein

Copyright

For Jennifer Hershey

Acknowledgments

Many thanks to my agent and friend, Howard Morhaim, who led me to the idea for this series. And to my editor, Charlie Spicer, who thought it was a good one.

Thanks, too, to Bob Benson, of Yellow House Books in Great Barrington, who quoted me stanzas of lyrics from memory on request. And thanks again to Bev and Kim Kimball, generous proprietors of the Third Floor Art Colony over Tune Street Music Shop.

I am deeply indebted to the work of Peter Guralnick, whose two-volume biography of the King, Last Train to Memphis and Careless Love, is required reading for anyone who wants to grasp the real Elvis.

In some unfathomable way, I was also inspired by the Elvis imitations (with ukelele) of my old pal Tom Cathcart, back in 1957.

Finally, as always, my gratitude to my wife, Freke, who, overcoming formidable resistance, urges me on.

D. M. K.

1

Sorrowful Sad

Elvis was sitting at the kitchen counter in the red silk pajamas he had bought in Munich, working his way through a three-egg omelette and humming with his mouth full. It was the kind of singsong hum he often woke up with in his brain, more feeling than melody, the leftover sounds of a dream that had swum away from him before he could remember it. From the noise he was making through his omelette, he figured it must have been one hell of a melancholy dream—probably the result of reading that wretched book about devildom into the wee hours of the morning.

Cook slipped a plate of bacon and grits onto the counter and Elvis smiled up at her appreciatively. Breakfast was Elvis’s favorite meal of the day, even if he was breaking his fast this day at one in the afternoon. The only decent hours of sleep he got lately came after the sun was up. Doc Mack thought he was still adjusting to the time change from Europe, but that didn’t figure—he’d been back for months. No, it was something else that yanked him awake every time he’d start to drop off, this sudden panicky feeling that he was in free fall.

Elvis started cutting up his omelette when he heard a ruckus coming from the front hall. It sounded like Mel giving the business to Artie again. Mel took his job as gatekeeper pretty damned seriously, maybe too seriously sometimes.

What the hell’s going on out there? Elvis called. Sounds like a couple of piglets fighting over the teat.

Mel ambled up to the door to the kitchen but, respectfully, stopped just short of entering. Lately Mel had been letting his hair grow long, beatnik-like, transforming a fairly good-looking young man into what looked for all the world like a crab-faced harridan.

Didn’t know you were up, Elvis, Mel said.

What’s Artie want? Elvis said. He could see Artie lingering in the hallway with some papers in his hand. Artie was in charge of correspondence and took his job pretty seriously too, especially for a kid who was only eighteen. Elvis had hired Artie as a favor to his second cousin, Babs, but the boy had turned out just fine.

Mel motioned with his chin for Artie to come forward and state his case, a slight gesture but enough to cause a lank of Mel’s sandy hair to fall across one eye. One of these days Elvis was going to have to say something to him about his hair, if he could only figure out a way of doing it without hurting Mel’s feelings.

It’s . . . it’s a condolence note, Mr. Presley, Arthur stammered, the S in Presley lingering in a little whistle.

Jesus, you can’t be bothering Elvis with shit like that! Mel barked.

He surely can, Elvis said, setting his fork onto the plate. This here is protocol—I sign condolence notes myself.

The boy crossed in front of Mel, holding a sheet of paper straight out in front of him, and set it on the counter facing Elvis. Arthur responded to all of Elvis’s fan mail, usually with the standard, I very much appreciated hearing from you letter that Arthur then signed himself with a remarkable facsimile of Elvis’s own signature. But there were certain letters that Elvis insisted on seeing before they were sent out and that he signed personally—it was just human decency: responses to folks who had named a child after him, to young people who had confided in their messages about difficulties with their parents, and to bereavement notices, almost always to fans whose parents or grandparents had passed away and who were reaching out for some kind of consolation from their idol. But this condolence letter was to a Melba Watkins of Maury City, just north of Memphis in Crockett County, and Melba was the mother of Lucybeth Watkins who had died just a day before at the age of fourteen. Lucybeth, it was noted in Arthur’s response, had been president of the Maury City Elvis Presley Fan Club.

Jesus God, fourteen years old, Elvis murmured, shaking his head back and forth. "So young. Too young. Did they say what she died of?"

Arthur wagged his head, No.

It breaks my heart, Elvis murmured. Arthur handed him a pen, and Elvis wrote at the bottom of the page: I cannot imagine anything worse than the loss you have endured, and I wish there was something I could do to ease the pain. God bless you, Elvis Presley. He started to hand the letter back to Arthur when he said, Didn’t we have another young one not too long ago?

Week before last, Arthur said. Seventeen years old. Out near Chattanooga.

Sorrowful sad, Elvis whispered.

She . . . she was a big fan too, Arthur said, keeping his eyes down.

How do you mean?

You know, president of your fan club down there, Arthur replied.

Jesus! Elvis drew in his breath in a big gulp and stood up, banging the counter so hard some coffee bounced out of his mug.

Hey, everybody’s a big fan, man, Mel blurted. Pick a man walking down the street and ask him? He’s a big fan. He’s just alive, that’s all.

What the hell is that supposed to mean? Elvis snapped.

Nothing, Mel said. Just, you know—nothing.

Mel saw it as part of his job to keep Elvis on an even keel, to sandbag any subject with the potential to rile him. No doubt the Colonel had charged him with this particular duty, but Mel didn’t have the talent for it. In fact, whenever Mel blurted out something like that, it made Elvis wonder if there wasn’t some stick of dynamite he’d missed.

Damn, it’s probably drugs that did them in, poor kids, Elvis said.

Yup, drugs, Mel chimed, just quick enough to make Elvis consider that it might not be drugs at all.

What did that Chattanooga kid die of? You know? Elvis asked.

Heart, Arthur replied. Cardiac arrest.

Lord, God! Elvis put a hand across his eyes. He could feel tears suddenly welling up for this poor child who probably did nothing worse in her life than listen to rock and roll after school with her friends. Those sneak-up tears were starting to become a problem too, just like the sleeplessness. Sometimes it felt like a whole lifetime of choking back tears was starting to catch up with him.

That’s the way drugs get you, right in the heart, Mel said.

Elvis swallowed hard and opened his eyes again. Did we send them anything, Artie?

Just the note, Arthur replied.

We should have sent flowers at the very least, you know? Elvis said. Let’s do that now, okay?

Okay, Arthur said.

Not just a bouquet either. Send them a whole bushel of flowers. Lilies. My mama loved lilies. Found a whole lot of comfort in them.

Okay, Arthur said. Want me to do that for the folks up in Maury City too?

Yes, you do that, Elvis said somberly, sitting down to his breakfast again. Arthur took the letter Elvis had signed and started to leave when Elvis called after him, You know when that funeral is, up there in Maury?

Today, Arthur replied. About now, actually.

Elvis had started mopping up the coffee he had spilled when he abruptly stood up again.

I think we should pay our respects, he said.

2

Rest for the Weary

Somehow they managed to get out of the house in ten minutes flat, Elvis hollering out instructions as he donned his black, double-breasted church suit with satin lapels and his snakeskin boots. He wanted some roses cut from the garden and fashioned into a bouquet; he wanted Cook to make up some sandwiches for the road—peanut butter and banana would be just fine—and he wanted his black-and-tan De Ville gassed up and waiting under the portico. When Cook handed over the bag of sandwiches, she clasped Elvis’s sleeve and leaned her round, black face up to his ear. I been to Maury, she said softly. You be real watchful up there, Mr. Elvis.

Don’t you worry, ma’am, Elvis replied.

Maury City is no more than sixty miles from Graceland, but there is not a straight line of road between them so it ends up being more like a hundred. It was half-past three before they crossed the Crockett County line, Elvis, Mel, and Bobby, Elvis’s old high school pal, sitting shoulder to shoulder in the back, the new kid, Larry, driving. Mel clearly had not approved of this outing, but once he saw there was no use trying to dissuade Elvis from it, he had treated it like any other impulsive road trip, cracking wise nonstop about things that caught his eye as they whizzed by—a wheelchair with a for sale sign on it in front of a tar paper shack, a fat woman in a baggy nightgown leaning over her front fence, a black boy fishing from a bridge with a broomstick pole.

For a while, Elvis had been amused by Mel’s chatter, but now that they were getting close to their destination, he lapsed back into his somber mood. All his life he had held a special ache in his heart for children who perished in the full bloom of life. His mother had always worried about this fervid tenderness in her boy; she had believed that in some way Elvis would be in mourning his whole life for Jesse Garon, his twin who never drew a breath of air. And in a way it was true: if Jesse had lived, there would have been two of them, yet with Jesse dead Elvis often felt like half of him was missing. It was just as this blue mood was settling over Elvis again that Larry chose to pipe up from the front seat, Say, Elvis, your daddy says you are always on the lookout for new songs.

Larry was the son of an old friend of Vernon, Elvis’s dad, and it had been on the strength of Vernon’s recommendation that the kid had been hired for car chores. In addition to chauffeuring skills, the boy supposedly knew a thing or two about automobile maintenance, being a product of West Memphis Vocational High. This was only the second time he had been assigned driving duty and the first time he had ever spoken directly to Elvis.

Elvis’s reply was a barely audible, Uh-huh.

Well, it happens that in my spare time I am a song writer, Larry went on, giving Elvis a cheesy grin in the rearview mirror.

Eyes on the road, boy, Mel growled.

Matter of fact, I got one heck of a song for you, Larry continued blithely.

Hey, you are out of line, Larry, Mel snapped. We’re on our way to a funeral, for godssake.

Elvis saw the boy blanche in the mirror, and he felt for him. Mel was right, of course. This was no time to be talking about business, but then again neither was it time to be joking that a fat woman leaning over a fence in her nightie looked like a billboard for ripe watermelons.

What kind of a song is it? Elvis asked softly.

Love, Larry replied, all smiles again. A real heartbreaker.

What do you call it then?

‘My Pillow Girl,’ the kid replied.

Both Mel and Bobby burst out laughing.

So what’s it about? Some guy who’s not getting any, so he gets it on with his pillow? Mel guffawed.

Not exactly, Larry responded in a hurt voice.

Not exactly, Mel echoed sarcastically, and that was the end of it because they were just riding past a road sign that read, Maury City, pop. 813, God’s Home Away From Home.

By the time they pulled in front of the Refreshing Springs Baptist Cathedral it was abundantly clear that the four men in the black-and-tan Cadillac were the only white people in Maury City. With as much circumspection as he could muster, Mel suggested that they just leave the roses with a nice note on the church steps and turn around and get the heck out of there. But Elvis would hear none of it. As far as he was concerned, he had spent the most profound and moving moments of his young life in black churches, and he was not going to let something as arbitrary in God’s eyes as skin color keep him from paying his respects. If there was any difference between white and black in a situation like this one, it was that the latter felt the pain of loss more deeply than white folks did. And more bravely too. But then Bobby brought up a point that Elvis had not considered.

It might put them off, Bobby said as they sat in front of the church, the engine running. They come here in sorrow and then they see these white old boys marching in, and it probably won’t feel right, see what I’m saying? Like we’re trespassing on their grief.

Elvis nodded. It was a good point for sure, and tactfully put. This is probably what Cook had meant when she had urged him to be watchful. The last thing Elvis wanted to do was obtrude on these poor people’s sorrow; he had come here to ease their pain, not to add to it. Still, he could not bring himself to leave, not just yet. He rolled down the window. And that is when he heard the music bursting out of the little white frame church. It was the gospel hymn, Rest for the Weary, and it rang out onto this hardscrabble landscape with such heartbreaking intensity, the ascending notes soaring like angels in flight, the throbbing beats of the harmonies so achingly perfect that Elvis’s eyes flooded with tears for the second time that day. Without thinking, he opened the car door, stepped out, and began rambling like a sleepwalker toward Refreshing Springs Cathedral. Everyone in the car stayed put as Elvis walked straight up the whitewashed steps and stood directly in front of the church’s closed doors with his arms spread out at his sides, his palms turned up as if in supplication. He was singing his heart out.

On the other side of Jordan

Where the tree of life is blooming,

There is rest for the weary;

There is rest for me.

Elvis was still singing, tears streaming down his face, when a small girl in a pink taffeta dress and black patent leather shoes pushed open the door and slipped out for a breath of fresh air. The little girl took one look at the hymn-singing white man and cried out, Hallelujah! It’s Elvis!

The preacher must have seen him also, because in mid-song he, too, hollered out, Hallelujah! It’s Elvis come for Lucybeth! and to a man and woman, every black face in the congregation turned toward Elvis, all of them still singing,

There is rest for the weary.

There is rest for the weary.

There is rest for the weary.

There is rest for me.

By the third chorus, they had gathered in a semicircle around Elvis, a large woman in a flowered dress on one side of him, a thin man with a goatee on the other, the three of them forming a trio that rose above all the other voices, grasping exalted minor harmonies that embodied weariness itself. At song’s end, Elvis threw his arms around the man and woman. He could feel the tears on his cheeks slip against the tears on theirs.

Amen! the people roared. Hallelujah!

As the cheering began to subside, Elvis said to the woman in the flowered dress, Sure hope you don’t mind, ma’am. I come to pay my respects.

I am pleased, the woman responded. And Lucybeth would be mighty pleased too—I am sure of that.

Amen, Elvis said.

I am her mother, the woman went on, the tears sprouting from her eyes again.

Elvis felt his own tears come again too. I am deeply sorry, he whispered in her ear.

I can feel that, Mr. Elvis, she answered. Then, regaining her composure, she turned to the man with the goatee. This here is my cousin, Billy—Doctor Billy Jackson. He done took care of Lucybeth at the end.

Elvis took the man’s hand. My condolences, Elvis said.

Much appreciated, Billy Jackson said.

She was sick long then? Elvis asked.

Lucybeth was never sick a day of her life, the doctor replied, shaking his head sadly. Not one day except the last.

What took her then?

Her heart, Dr. Jackson said. Cardiac arrest. What we call sudden death syndrome.

Jesus God, wasn’t that the same thing that Arthur said had taken that seventeen-year-old down in Chattanooga? It wasn’t that hard to imagine a kid of seventeen in a city as big and out of control as Chattanooga overdosing on one of those godforsaken drugs that were going around these days. But up here in Maury City, a million miles from nowhere in a colored town so poor that the church was the only building Elvis had seen that had a shingle roof? It just didn’t figure.

How does a child that young die of something like that? Elvis asked.

But before Dr. Jackson could answer, an awful silence suddenly descended on the group gathered at the church door as a muscular man with a head full of wild African hair pushed through them until he stood face-to-face with Elvis. He was a good six inches taller than Elvis, and his black eyes were bulging from their sockets like a hungry crocodile’s.

What’s this honky filth doing here? The man spat the words in Elvis’s face.

Come on, now, Floyd. He just come to pay his respects, Lucybeth’s mother said. The man grabbed her by the back of her neck and pulled her to him as if she weighed a hundred pounds instead of double that.

Respects? the man bellowed. From the man who killed your daughter?

What are you talking—? Elvis began, but the man cut him short with a finger jab to his chest.

I know your so-called music, mister, the man hissed. I know all about that garbage Lucybeth and her friends done listened to night and day. Rock and roll. Degradation, that’s what it is! It’s the siren song of the white Satan!

Elvis felt his heart pounding in his chest. It was just like in that book he’d been reading—people saw the Devil’s work in everything these days.

I am a God-fearing man just like you, Elvis said evenly.

No! What you are is the anti-Christ! the man cried, raising his fist.

Elvis did not move; the hard part of turning the other cheek wasn’t taking the hit, it was not hitting back. Harder