Read Officer Elvis for Free Online Page B

T-shirt.
Miami Vice
about twenty years too late. He reached for a cigarette when he saw Darla walking toward him.
    “Hey, Slim,” he said. “Haven’t seen you since you left the sheriff’s department. I heard you’re a high-level statie now. Didn’t know they got involved in vice.”
    “You know why I’m here, Conway.”
    Conway held the cigarette in his mouth, pulled a Zippo lighter from his breast pocket, popped it open with one hand the way kids used to do in high school, lit the cigarette, inhaled, and blew the smoke out of both nostrils, all before he spoke. “A terrible thing,” he said, flashing his trademark smirk.
    “I can see how broken up you are over Tommy’s death.”
    “Officer Elvis’s departure?” he said. “I could care less. The terrible thing I’m talking about…I can’t smoke in my own club. Some dumb-ass city of Jackson ordinance. Let me tell you, if tobacco were a cash crop in this state it would be a different story. I’m thinking about getting a lobbyist, somebody who has some influence with the city hall crowd. Somebody who could get the ordinance killed. How much do you think that would run?” Conway inhaled down to his toes and took a shot at blowing a procession of smoke rings. A slight breeze kept him from succeeding. “We can go inside when I’m finished if you want,” he said, “but it can get kind of loud, even at this hour.”
    “Here is fine.” Darla removed the recorder from her purse. “It’s voice activated. You remember. You got an alibi for last night?”
    Conway didn’t look surprised at the question. “I was at Continental Conway’s. It was senior night. Runaround Sue was headlining.”
    “I hear Tommy forced you to shut down the Adonis Club,” she said.
    “Who told you that? His girlfriend?” Conway kicked at the parking lot gravel, and then wiped away the dust on his shoe tops with the back of his white pants.
    “So you know Ms. Nothauzer?”
    Conway coughed. He looked at his cigarette and frowned. “Every pleasure has its price,” he said. “To answer your question, she came to see me for an audition about three months ago. Her idea was to come out in a miniskirt from the sixties and helmet hair to make her look like Priscilla Presley. She has the body for it. Plus, when she stripped down to the string, she had Elvis’s face tattooed on her butt. It took up one whole cheek. Not a tattoo of fat Reylander pretending to be Elvis, but the real deal. The person that inked her knew what he was doing. And she could dance okay. But I wasn’t a buyer. I thought her act was in bad taste, if you want to know the truth.”
    “Really? Bad taste? You?”
    “I turned down a woman once who was a Jackie Kennedy look-alike. Hey, sleaze I have no problem with, but Conway is not into creepy.”
    “Did Tommy have something to do with closing the Adonis Club or didn’t he?”
    Another question that didn’t bother him. “It wasn’t a police situation,” he said. “So I’m wondering why this is any of your business.”
    “Tommy Reylander is dead and I’m investigating the homicide.”
    “And?” Conway knocked the ash from his cigarette with his free hand.
    “Keep up with the attitude and we’ll go downtown, where you can answer my questions in the interview room,” said Darla. “But, I have to warn you, it’s also a smoke-free environment.”
    Conway took another puff. “Okay, to save everybody the time. This is the story you’re looking for.” He ran his hand through what was left of his thinning bleach blond hair. “Look, you’ve lived in Mississippi long enough. You know how people feel here about gays and lesbians. They’re fine with them as long as they stay in the closet. Every family has a bachelor uncle or an old maid aunt. All they got to do is act like they’re not interested in sex. And everybody is cool.”
    “But you opened a club that catered to gay men,” said Darla.
    “An untapped market. Bigger than most people would