Clarke County, Space

by Allen Steele

  Of course, the Strip wasn’t exactly like other tourist sites on Earth. The differences were subtle, yet obvious to even the slowest visitor. “No Smoking” signs were everywhere except the hash dens. The rafters high overhead held candy-striped, folded emergency evac balloons. The toilets flushed funny. In the bars, tourists stared increduously at their drinks as the Coriolis effect made the liquor tilt sideways in their glasses. In the brothels, the hookers had to gently teach their patrons that sex in a rotating environment required a few different moves (trying hard not to crack up when their overeager tricks fell out of bed). As the night wore on, the drunks who walked too fast spinwards would be falling all over the concourse, the wives who tried to slap their cheating husbands would find that their hands didn’t always find their targets, and by midnight Bigthorn’s deputies would be hauling the more unruly ones away, either to the holding cells at the cop shop or to the emergency room at Clarke County General for various welts, cuts, and bruises.

  “What’s shaking, John?”

  Marianne was leaning against the doorway of Chateau L’Amour, her pink teddy exposing more tanned flesh than it covered. She ignored Bigthorn’s routine glance at her prostitute’s license, gracefully pinned to a shoulder strap just above her right breast (the date showed that it had not yet expired, and she had received her latest VD, herpes, and AIDS boosters). “Nothing much, babe,” he replied. “Slow night?”

  She shrugged. “Got some weird tourista who keeps cruising by to check me out, but he hasn’t said anything yet. He’s either trying to work up his nerve, or he’s trouble.”

  Bigthorn understood. On occasion the girls had to deal with dangerous types, the ones who figured that prostitutes were fair game for their more violent fantasies. Of course, some of Chateau L’Amour’s ladies were experts at hand-to-hand combat. Sissy, for instance, held a second-degree Karate black belt; three weeks ago she had broken a drunk’s collarbone. But Marianne had never learned any martial arts.

  “I’ll keep an eye out, love. Hey, have you seen this girl?” Bigthorn pulled out the picture of Macy Westmoreland. Marianne glanced at it and was shaking her head when Bigthorn’s phone chirped. He slipped it off his belt. “See you later. Holler if he’s a Jack.”

  Marianne nodded slightly; she was busy throwing a grounder to a paunchy male tourist who was gazing uncertainly in her direction. The sheriff stepped into a breezeway between the brothel and the adjacent German beer garden and held the phone to his face. “Station Twelve,” he said.

  Station Ten checking in, John. It was Lou Bellevedere. Anything yet?

  “Not a thing,” Bigthorn replied. “Where are you located?”

  I’m on the Strip. I’m outside El Mexicali. Haven’t seen a damn thing, and no one else has, either.

  Bigthorn knew the café; it was located on the opposite side of the Strip. “Okay, keep looking, but I got the feeling that she hasn’t made it to the Strip. I’ve been checking with the business people and no one has seen her, and they’ve got good eyes.”

  Maybe so, but her MO is that she’s been staying where there’s a lot of people, trying to lose herself in the … shit.

  It was an unintentional pun, but Bigthorn didn’t follow through. “Ten-four?” he said.

  Your buddy Ostrow just walked in, the officer quietly responded. There was a pause. He’s taking a table on the patio where he can watch the crowd. I think he’s on the prowl, Chief.

  Bigthorn’s eyes narrowed. “Do you want backup?”

  Negatory, Bellevedere tersely replied. I’ll keep an eye on him, John. Don’t worry about it.

  The sheriff thought it over for a moment. Bellevedere was a competent cop when it came to the usual Strip work of busting drunks and checking the licenses of the whores, but he was way out of his depth when it came to handling mob torpedoes. This was one matter Bigthorn was unwilling to delegate: he didn’t want Ostrow to feel comfortable for even a minute.

  “Negatory,” he replied. “Walk off like nothing’s going on. Don’t even look at him. I’m on my way over. Station Twelve out.”

  There were three sharp clicks, an affirmative response; Bigthorn put the phone back on his belt and began striding down the Concourse. Perhaps Ostrow hadn’t been listening during their last conversation; it was time to make sure that he wasn’t deaf.

  Henry Ostrow was sitting on the patio of the Mexican café, a bottle of Superior beer and a shot of tequila resting on the table in front of him. He looked up at Bigthorn without a trace of animosity or fear, as if the sheriff had not tranked him with a Crowdmaster rifle dart earlier in the day.

  “Well, well, if it isn’t the sheriff of Clarke County,” he said grandly as Bigthorn walked onto the patio. He gestured courteously at the adjacent seat. “May I buy you a beer, officer?”

  “I don’t drink,” Bigthorn replied automatically.

  Ostrow cocked his head disbelievingly. “An Indian who doesn’t drink? Surely you must. You have your racial reputation to uphold.”

  “Don’t give me any shit, Ostrow,” Bigthorn said, feeling his face grow warm. “You’re in enough trouble with me as it is.”

  “Umm.” Ostrow looked away with languid eyes. “I forgot. You barged into my room this afternoon and shot me. You know, I can hardly wait until I get home and have my attorney press charges. I hope you’ll enjoy returning to life on the reservation, constable. You’ll have heap big fun humping the squaws back there, won’t you?” Then he winked. “Or do you prefer the little papooses instead?”

  Bigthorn impulsively took a step forward, and Ostrow’s eyes shot back … not to meet his own, it seemed, but to watch his hands. His voice dropped to a near whisper, inaudible to anyone else on the crowded veranda. “Please,” Ostrow said softly, almost begging. “Try it …”

  The sheriff stopped. The moment was frozen, caught in an arc of static electricity between two poles. Around him, Bigthorn could hear the clatter of tableware, the chatter of patrons, the soft electronic beeping of one of the waitresses slipping a bankcard into her tray and ringing up a tab, an old Doug Sahm number on the restored Wurlitzer jukebox in the corner. Background noise for a prelude to violence. No one knew that two men were about to attempt to kill each other.

  Fighting his instincts the sheriff took one small step backwards.

  Ostrow simultaneously relaxed. Carefully, he picked up a wedge of lime and squeezed it into his beer, letting bits of green pulp run down the neck of the bottle. “Actually, I’ve been down to Mexico a couple of times,” he commented in an offhand way. “It’s a little like this, but the climate’s all wrong. This is warm, but Mexico’s hot. The heat lingers there, even in the middle of the night. You think you’ll stop breathing if it gets any worse. But the coast … ah, the beaches are so beautiful, you …”

  “You want to get to the point?”

  “Didn’t I use that line on you earlier today?” Ostrow stopped briefly, as if to concentrate, resting his forefinger against his lips. “I can’t remember.…”

  “If you’re hunting the girl,” Bigthorn said, “drop it. Get drunk. Gamble and screw some whores, or buy a piece of an Apollo moonship to put in your living room. But don’t even think about going after the girl, pal. I’ve told you twice, and that’s too many times already.”

  Ostrow’s dark eyes looked up and met Bigthorn’s gaze. “Stay out of this, Sheriff,” he said, his voice dropping back to almost a whisper. The bullshit of the urbane traveler was gone. “It’s more than anything you should ever get mixed up in. I don’t usually give warnings, but I’ll give you one, just this once. Stay out of my way.”

  “You’ve already got my warning,” Bigthorn replied.

  Ostrow looked away, then slowly nodded his head. “So I have …”

  He pushed back his chair and stood up, killed his shot of tequila in one gulp, and hissed between his teeth. “Hasta mañana,” he said as he stepped away from the table.

  “Hasta luego,” Bigthorn answered.

  Ostrow stopped, glanced
back and grinned. “Sí, señor,” he added. “Perhaps we shall.” Then he left the café.

  11

  Elvis in Space

  (Saturday: 10:05 P.M.)

  When he was ten years old, Oliver Sperber found his role model in life. Twenty-eight years later, his role model had become his doppelganger, his icon, and his meal ticket. Only seldom did he feel guilty about stealing the face of the King of Rock and Roll. It’s a tough world; we all have to eat.

  Ollie Sperber had grown up as dirt-poor white trash in Greenville, Tennessee, a small farm town within sight of the Great Smoky Mountains. His childhood had been tough; when his mother and father had been killed in a car crash on I-65 outside of Knoxville, the probate court had awarded custody of the five-year-old to Ollie’s only living relatives, Uncle Bo and Aunt Ridley. Aunt Ridley was a born-again Baptist fundamentalist who seemed to believe that the world outside Greenville was one great Satanic plot. Uncle Bo was an alcoholic who, when he bothered to work, seldom held a job for longer than a month. On the day that Ollie moved into Bo and Ridley Whitney’s beat-to-shit mobile home on the outskirts of town, he promised himself that he would rise above the intellectual and financial poverty of his world.

  To this goal, the boy committed every day of his adolescence. Between suffering through daily Bible sessions with Aunt Ridley (with heavy emphasis on the Book of Revelations) and running down to Duddy’s Store to get another bottle for Uncle Bo, Ollie Sperber spent his time in two pursuits: finding ways to make a quick buck, and attempting to satisfy his natural curiosity.

  The latter was easier to accomplish. Ollie was very intelligent; by the fourth grade he was reading at college level and had read most of the reference books in the school library (the only place he could read, in fact, since the single book his aunt allowed at home was the Bible). He also spent time exploring the neighborhood, seeking out mysteries in backyards, farm fields, and woods.

  The first objective—making money—was more difficult. The economic depression of the early twenty-first century had left money a scarce resource, but it was not impossible to make a dollar here and there. Most of the time it involved honest work, like doing odd jobs for the neighbors. But Ollie was also interested in the easy buck, and it didn’t bother him if it was dishonestly earned. He learned early how to lie, steal, and cheat without getting caught or allowing his conscience to disturb him very much. He wasn’t necessarily a bad kid. He had simply come to the conclusion early in life that the end always justified the means. He would have sold the Whitneys’ trailer, with his crazy aunt and his deadbeat uncle in it, for fifty bucks if he could have found a buyer.

  But he hadn’t come across anything completely fascinating to him, or a clear way to make more than a few dollars at a time, until the day he met Angus “Angelfood” Chapple. It was on that summer afternoon in 2022 that Ollie Sperber’s life was changed forever.

  Angelfood Chapple had been the lead singer for a heavy-metal rock band, Snake Meat, whose albums had topped the charts before the group broke up in 1992. Chapple had left the group as a rich man, but over the next three decades he had pissed away his fortune until, thirty years later, he was living in an old house down the road from Ollie’s trailer, getting by on food stamps and an occasional royalty check from his former record label. A techno-rock band had revived an old Snake Meat number, “Kick Her Ass (If She Don’t Give Head)” in 2020 and it had become a minor hit, so Angelfood had been reliving his glory years when Ollie Sperber started coming over every other week to mow Chapple’s yard.

  Chapple envisioned himself as a retired archduke of rock; Sperber thought he was a weird old dink who wore black T-shirts and frayed leather armbands and took too many pills, but he never said anything. The old guy was not nearly as bizarre as Ollie’s aunt, and he was always good for a few bucks.

  One day, while visiting Angelfood’s crusty kitchen for a drink of water, Ollie happened to glance into the adjacent den. Curious, and wondering if there was anything in there he could swipe, he wandered in and discovered one of the last remaining private shrines to the King of Rock and Roll.

  Angelfood found him in the windowless, dark room, turning around and around, staring at the pictures which covered every single inch of the walls and ceiling. Pictures of Elvis Aron Presley, from every phase of the singer’s career: from the Elvis who, as a sleek young turk with smoldering eyes and forthright sexuality, had galvanized the 1950s, to the Elvis who—obese, overdressed, drug-addled and paranoid—had become a parody of himself on the concert circuit by the time he died in 1977. The pictures and posters and magazine cutouts were pasted in no particular order: Elvis 1955 (hair mussed, staring out of the camera with haunting eyes) juxtaposed with Elvis 1969 (wearing a white Nudie suit, kneeling on a stage, giving a scarf to a fan while singing to her), overlapping a still of Elvis in a cowboy outfit from one of his movies.

  The shelves were filled with Elvis records, Elvis biographies, videos of Elvis films. The only light in the room came from an Elvis stand-up lamp in the corner and the glow from an ancient Sony TV set, which was tuned in to a game show when he walked in. On top of the set was a chintzy porcelain Elvis doll.

  “The King of Rock and Roll,” Angelfood said from the doorway, following Ollie’s fascinated gaze. “Hardly anybody gives a fuck about him today, but he was the greatest. The first and the best of the big-time rockers. You must know.”

  “No, I don’t,” Ollie said. Aunt Ridley outlawed music as well as books. “Who was this guy?”

  Angelfood stared disbelievingly at him. Then he smiled. “Forget the grass, kid,” he said, “and sit yourself down in front of that TV. You’re about to meet the King of Rock and Roll.”

  Then he pulled a videotape off the shelf, marked with a strip of refrigerator tape: “1st TV, Dorsey show, 1956.” He slipped it into a battered old Emerson VCR, whapped the machine with his palm to make it work, and Ollie Sperber began to watch a sixty-six-year-old performance which had changed American cultural history.

  This was the beginning Ollie’s fixation on Elvis Presley, an obsession that Angelfood eagerly fed for the next several years. Every chance Ollie got to slip away from Aunt Ridley’s morbid world of prophets and apocalypses, he was in the old rocker’s den, listening to both the scratched records in his collection and the infinitely smoother re-mixed C.D.’s, reading the tattered binders of newspaper and magazine clippings, studying G.I. Blues, Love Me Tender, and King Creole, absorbing every detail of Elvis Presley’s life, his style and music.

  Angelfood thought that he was midwifing a new rock star, and he even taught Ollie how to play guitar, but it wasn’t Elvis’s music that fascinated Ollie Sperber. He didn’t tell Angel-food, but with the exception of a few of Presley’s early hits—“Heartbreak Hotel,” “Blue Suede Shoes,” and “Hound Dog” among them—he didn’t really like the music. He thought Elvis’s stage performance was absurd and his voice like a sick bullfrog’s. And most of the movies, with the notable exception of Jailhouse Rock, were pure crap.

  What interested the poor kid from Greenville, Tennessee, was how a poor kid from Tupelo, Mississippi, had come into incredible wealth, power, and fame, seemingly by doing little more than pumping his pelvis and honking into a microphone. Here was a guy with a nasty violent streak, who believed he could heal with a touch of his hands and move clouds at will, who visited funeral homes for macabre kicks, and yet was still able to buy several Cadillacs at once for his friends, on sheer impulse. A man who, in the end, was as crazy as a lab rat, yet at the same time was ridiculously rich.

  Most fascinating of all was the fact that about ten years after he was dead and buried, there had been a brief, frenetic period during which many people believed that Elvis Presley was not dead after all. Hundreds of thousands of mourners had seen his corpse lying in a casket. And yet, only a decade later, he had been spotted in grocery checkout lines and in ice cream parlors. Photos of Elvis Presley in a parking lot had been taken, and a tape of an alleged phone conversation had b
een produced. The man was undeniably in the grave, but suddenly he had been brought back from the dead, only because so many people wanted to believe that the King was still alive.

  There had to be something useful he could learn from all this.

  In time, he did.

  Twenty-eight years later, his name was Oliver Parker—the last name was borrowed from both Colonel Tom Parker, Elvis’s manager, and from Presley’s karate instructor—and he was the closest physical duplicate of the King of Rock and Roll which twenty-first century cosmetic surgery could produce. Oliver Parker had been transformed into Elvis Presley as Elvis had been in his mid-thirties, after his emergence from reclusion in the late sixties, before he began his terminal slide into self-indulgence. Oliver Parker was thirty-eight, but the slight age difference was as invisible as the scars from the laser surgery that had raised his cheekbones, widened his jaws, and lifted his hairline.

  There had been Elvis impersonators before, but Parker’s transformation went far beyond hairpieces and makeup. He had assumed the face, the voice, and the persona of the King. Now he was working on the money part.

  He strode down the concourse of the Strip the way a king walks—buffered on either side by his two bodyguards, trailed by his followers, noticed by pedestrians. He wore a dark blue suit with studs running down the legs of the flared pants, a wide-collared white shirt open at the sternum to show gold chains on his chest, rings on his fingers, snakeskin cowboy boots. The costume was archaic, but right for the impression he sought to make. Through rose-tinted sunglasses he studied the crowd. The effect was as he desired. Some people were openly laughing—that was to be expected—but most were staring with amazement at him and his entourage. No one was ignoring him, which was what he wanted. He didn’t wear this absurd getup to blend into the background.