Harley Jean Davidson 03 - Evil Elvis Read Online Free PDF Page B

Harley—what’s going on?”
     
    “I don’t know. Maybe it’s just time for us to be over. We had a pretty good run, I guess. May until July isn’t too bad.”
     
    Tootsie rolled his eyes. “And they say men aren’t monogamous. What are you going to do now?”
     
    “Figure out which of these guys wasn’t supposed to be on that van, and then call Bobby. After that, I’ve got a run to Graceland, right?”
     
    “Right. But if you aren’t up to it—”
     
    “I’m fine. It’s not the end of the world, just a guy.” She left it like that, and after a minute Tootsie went back to work at the computer and answering the phone. Good thing. She wasn’t at all sure she felt that way this time. Dammit.
     
    The best antidote for uncertainty was work. Or so she’d heard.
     
    It was harder than she’d thought matching the names to faces, especially when she hadn’t really looked at them. They all looked the same, some taller, shorter, thinner, fatter, but basically all alike. And photos on driver’s licenses were notoriously bad anyway. Her photo looked like a demented David Bowie, for instance, her lip curled in a sneer that she’d meant as a smile, and hair standing up atop her head like she’d stuck her finger into an electrical socket. It was the only picture of her where the resemblance to her brother could be seen. Except Eric’s eyes were blue, hers were green, and he had chameleon-color hair while hers usually stayed light blond with a few darker streaks.
     
    By the time she had to leave to pick up the van for her run to Graceland, she still hadn’t figured out who was who. She’d only matched four names with Elvis faces, and that was because she figured out the tallest, shortest, fattest, thinnest. Maybe she couldn’t help out after all. Not a bad thing. Her efforts at help in the past had only led to disaster anyway. This had to be a karmic sign. She needed to think about something else for a change, so she picked up her van and headed out.
     
    One good thing about driving in Memphis—it required the concentration of a NASCAR driver to get to a destination without playing bumper cars. An excellent distraction.
     
    Poplar Avenue traffic was always heavy. Today, as always, there were Memphis drivers who celebrated sunshine with their usual disregard for courtesy or traffic lights. A driver with Tennessee plates on his rusty El Camino leaned on his horn and yelled “Mississippi driver!” at a transgressor, and the driver in the shiny new SUV from DeSoto County, just across the Mississippi state line only a few miles south of Memphis, returned the welcome greeting with a snappy one-finger salute. Tourism at its best. West Tennessee, North Mississippi, and a wide strip of eastern Arkansas formed the Mid-South, or Tri-State area. Memphis was the crossroads for trucks, trains, and planes delivering merchandise in the Southeast and up the Eastern Seaboard. Home of Federal Express, Nike, a Northwest Airlines hub, Elvis Presley, BB King, and the Grizzlies basketball team—all lucrative enterprises—Memphis was the last stop before I-55 dipped into the Deep South. It also made quite a handy route for drug traffickers transporting their products out of Mexico to customers up north.
     
    Changes in the past three decades included a lot more than integrated schools and a black mayor. Martin Luther King had died in a shabby motel downtown, bringing Memphis infamy back in the sixties, but Elvis had already integrated music with his love of gospel and the blues. Once known as just a “big country town,” Memphis had imported more than its share of residents from as far away as China, and quite a few from places like New Jersey and Michigan. Chinese restaurants and Sharp manufacturing employees were welcomed, and longtime residents greeted them with friendly curiosity.
     
    For all its veneer of recent sophistication, many old-time Memphians had never forgotten Union occupation during the Civil War and