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but Crawford's roped Quincey into playing a 'role' at the opening, and I'm afraid it
could be ... dangerous."
    “ Wait.
What new hotel-casino? There are so many right now, the
Belladonna, otherwise known as the Be luga, for one."
    “Oh, the really big
one."
    “ There are so many
really big ones, as the late Ed Sullivan would point out."
    “ Huh? Oh, the `reeely big shew' man from early TV. But
haven't you seen the signs?"
    “ In the heavens?"
    “ No. On the streets.
They're all over town: The King- dome is Coming. The Kingdome is
Coming."
    “ Oh,
those! I thought they were religious billboards." "Not 'Kingdom.' Kingdome."
    “ A new sports stadium?
At a hotel-casino? Makes sense. The town hasn't fully tapped the sports
theme."
    “ A new arena, all right. But for the King."
When
Temple
looked blank, Merle added, a bit testily, "Elvis."
    “ Elvis?" That name kept turning up in her life
with uneasy frequency.
    “ Yes. Everybody's been going
on about it."
    “ Well, I was a little distracted, by some other things." Like a few murders and a private life. "So
it's an Elvis hotel. High time, sounds like."
    “ Anyway, Crawford is
emceeing the Elvis imitator contest.”
    Temple
nodded. She could picture
that. She could hardly picture it without
laughing, but she could pic ture it.
    “ And he's talked Quincey into dressing up like Priscilla Presley back in the sixties. The winner
of the contest gets a championship
belt from the hands of `Priscilla' and gets a date with her. Except it's
Quincey.”
    Temple
kept nodding, although the
gesture had started feeling mechanical. She
could picture Quincey with Young
Priscilla's sky-high-teased dark tresses, wearing enough eye makeup to weigh a
Las Vegas
hooker down to her knees. Actually, Quincey was a natural for
the role.
    “And they want to kill
her," Merle added.
    “What? Kill Quincey?"
    “No, Priscilla!"
    “But she lives in a
Los Angeles
suburb,
doesn't she?"
    “ Maybe. I don't know where she lives! And they don't want to kill that Priscilla anyway. Maybe just
mutilate her a little."
    “But—"
    “ They want to kill the Priscilla who married Elvis in 1967 and divorced
him in 1973. I guess they've always wanted to kill her."
    “ Wait a minute! I don't know much about Elvis, but who wants to
kill her?"
    “ Everybody who loved Elvis hated Priscilla, Quincey says. Either because they envied her when she
married him, or they blamed her for
his downfall and death after she left him."
    “ Talk about a no-win situation. Then female fans are the
threat?"
    “ Sure. And some of the men, too. There was always a power struggle
between Priscilla and the Mafia, you know."
    “The Mafia's involved in
this?"
    “ Not the plain Mafia. The Memphis Mafia, the guys who were Elvis's bodyguards and gofers, who
Priscilla was fighting for Elvis's time and attention."
    “ You talk like all this was just yesterday, Merle. It was over
thirty years ago.”
    Merle picked up the cooling tea and drank deeply. "I've been listening to Quincey chatter about it
night and day. She's gone
ga-ga over the whole Elvis mania. She calls it digging deeply into her role. I call it
obsession." "Well, Elvis
was an obsessive kind of guy, to hear tell.
It's only fitting his fans should follow suit."
    “ Suit! And that's another thing. This is a very
costly show. Those stupid jumpsuits
all the imitators wear cost a small fortune. And then the hotel invited
all sorts of internationally famous designers to design new fantasy jumpsuits for Elvis, some with real gems on them,
and those are on exhibit. I tell you,
Miss Barr, the whole Kingdome is a festering circus of the seven deadly
sins: avarice and gluttony and pride and envy
and lust and— what else was there?"
    “Sloth,"
Temple answered absently.
    “ That's why I thought of you," Merle said,
punctu ating this interesting statement
with a last swallow of cold peppermint tea.
    “ Just
how concrete are these seven deadly sins get ting?”
    Merle leaned back to