By L. Stevens

 I could see Jackie Carter was annoyed. Heads turned and ears pricked up in every cubicle in the office. “Larry, damn it! Go buy your own stupid cake if you want one. I’ve got better things to do. Now skedaddle!” Jackie’s workload had gotten much heavier since the recent layoffs at the Food Service company where we worked, and Larry Thigpen was wasting her time.

A while later, I stopped by her desk. “What’s that about a cake? Larry wants you to buy a cake?”

Looking exasperated, she shook her head. “I swear, does that man have a real job here, or do they pay him to walk around and pester people about Elvis Presley and UFO’s? It’s maddening. I had to shoo him away from Janice the other day. He had her all worked up—for a good twenty minutes—about the crop circles. Did he show you those pictures?”

“I have to admit, those things are fascinating,” I said. “You know, another ‘ride-with’ canceled on him this morning, so he’s got time on his hands today. We know what that means.” Larry Thigpen is the company’s sales trainer; part of his job it is to ride along with junior salespeople as they make customer calls. In theory, it’s to train them in sales skills. However, it was not uncommon for a struggling trainee to be terminated shortly after spending a day with Larry. Some think he’s the General Manager’s “hatchet man.” So, for job security, junior sales reps on his schedule often make excuses and beg off, leaving Larry with an entire day to kill.

“Most of the reps run from him. I can’t imagine why. Looks like the company would lay him off,” Jackie said, sarcasm in her voice.

“Not going to happen so long as his buddy Bill is General Manager,” I answered. When Bill Snyder was hired two years ago, he brought along his crony Larry to report directly to himself, by-passing the Sales Manager and the Training Department. The two had lunch together at least once a week.

Larry made a point of letting Jackie, the office supervisor, know. “I’m going to lunch with Bill, in case anyone is looking for me.” And Jackie would roll her eyes.

“What was the deal with the cake?” I asked, recalling why I’d stopped by to see her.

“He wants me to take up a collection in the office, like I do for employees’ birthdays, and order a cake for Elvis’s 80th, in 2015, right after New Years’. Remember he brought one in last year? He’s asking for donations this time.”

“That’s a laugh. I wonder when O.J.’s birthday is?” He’s been on that kick lately, too.”

“Tell me about it. He just eats up the attention when people argue with him. I’m too busy for his foolishness.”

Back at my desk I checked a new personal email on my phone— a ‘prompt’ for the next meeting of my fiction writers’ group. “Write 1,000 words or less about your most unforgettable character.” This will be easy. Larry is industrial strength unforgettable. The piece will write itself.

Days later Larry Thigpen stood at my desk, miffed about the story I wrote for the ‘prompt’, which I had also emailed to the folks in our department.

“Pulver, I don’t appreciate you making me sound like an idiot. You never heard me say Elvis is still alive—he could be dead by now, we don’t know. But he never died like they said—they made it to look that way.”

My tale told of a whacky Elvis Presley enthusiast. My character ‘Harry’ often visits the ‘Evidence Elvis is Alive’ Facebook page. There he ‘friends’ a man called ‘Barry’. They get on famously. In the office, the story got a lot of laughs.

The flesh and blood Larry Thigpen cherished an autographed copy of “The Elvis Conspiracy” by Meg Keller. He’d picked up that prize when he and his wife departed West Palm Beach at 1 A.M. and drove eight hours to the author’s Barnes and Noble book-signing in Atlanta. The man is dedicated.

He glowered. “And what’s the stuff about me claiming O.J. didn’t kill Nicole? What’s O.J. got do with Elvis?”

“Take it easy, man,” I said. “It’s only a story. Fiction, get it? About two guys named Harry and Barry.”

“Bullshit!” he snarled. “You changed my name from Larry to ‘Harry’ and threw in ‘Barry’. Who’s that supposed to fool? Harry can kiss my hairy butt, and that goes for Barry, too!”

“I like the name ‘Harry’,” I lied. “And O.J.? I remember you telling me, some time back…” He scowled, but I continued. “But everything about Elvis was true, wasn’t it? Things you’ve said yourself.”

“It’s still a bunch of crap,” he said. “You made me look the fool—I heard people in the office laughing.”

He wasn’t wrong. The character in my razzing satire could only be Larry. And I did make his obsession with ‘The King’ sound ridiculous.

He never stops with his insistent, overbearing, contrary nonsense. When you try not to take the bait, he keeps it up. No matter how you fight him off, he comes back for more. Jackie is right; it’s all about his being the center of attention. So, it’s hard to resist a response. And, I’ll admit, sort of fun.

“Help me out here, Larry. The part in the story I wrote, where the Mafia guys think he’s a government mole, that Elvis is working with the FBI in Las Vegas? You saying that’s B.S.?”

“No, no, that’s true,” Larry insisted. “It’s proven fact Elvis went to the White House and volunteered in the war on drugs, and President Nixon gave him an honorary badge. In Vegas, some mob guys figured Elvis was a stool pigeon.”

We’d had this conversation more than once, but when Larry gets going about Elvis, he doesn’t mind repeating himself. “Was he?” I prodded. “Working undercover for the Feds, I mean?”

 

“Well, somebody sure must have thought so.” He raised an eyebrow, looking pleased with himself, as if he’d dispensed some indisputable logic.

I persisted. “So, to keep Elvis from getting rubbed out by the mob, the FBI faked his death and put him in the Witness Protection Program?”

“Exactly. That’s why the family spelled his middle name wrong on the
tombstone—with two” A”’s. His birth certificate spells Aron with one “A”. They knew they wasn’t burying Elvis.” The way he said it, it sounded obvious. 

“I mentioned that in the story. And the million-dollar insurance policy on his life they never cashed—is that the truth?”

 “Absolutely,” he said. “Would have been a crime to collect it when they knew he wasn’t dead.” Larry had simmered down, happy for the opportunity to go on about ‘The King’.

 “Can I ask you something, Larry? If people in the office are laughing— like you say—what does that tell you?”

 He ignored that with the grace of a matador, and stayed on the offense.

 “How come you didn’t talk about the picture I showed you in the ‘Conspiracy’ book, the one of Elvis with Muhammed Ali, seven years after he was supposed to be dead?”

 “The photo was fuzzy. It could have been Engelbert Humperdinck for all I could tell.”

“It’s Elvis. Come on, man. Humperdinck would’a sued the pants off the writer and the book publisher. That’s misidentification. Premeditated.”

 ‘Premeditated misrepresentation’? I choked on my Snickers bar. “Sweet Jesus, Larry! Nobody said it was Engelbert…ahh, never mind. The thing is, my story could only be a thousand words. I couldn’t put in everything.”

Larry jumped all over my lame excuse. “Man, you lie like a dog! How come you mixed in O.J., if you were running out of words?”

“You don’t understand fiction—I used that to make it colorful.”

“Colorful, my ass!”

“But I’m curious, Larry. Do you honestly believe O.J. wasn’t the actual killer?”

“Let me just say this: O.J. was a world-class athlete. A millionaire movie star. Everybody said he was a stand-up guy.”

“He was great in ‘The Naked Gun’.” I admitted.

“And you believe those lying bums on the LAPD over somebody like O.J. Simpson? Shee-it!” He was warmed up now. “No way he did it, and I can pretty well prove it to anybody with common sense.”

“You can prove it?”

“Sure. When they brought in the bloody glove, it was a dead giveaway. There was no way those detectives didn’t plant it for fake evidence.”

“The glove didn’t fit, you’re saying. But did you ever think that probably the leather glove dried up and shrunk?” I asked.

“Shrunk’s not the point. Here’s the deal. O.J. was a professional football running back, right?”

“Obviously.”

 “So, the guy who hardly ever fumbled the football when he was playing is going to let a glove slip off his hand— and leave it laying there? No way! The first thing a football player does when he drops the ball is, he jumps on it to recover it, from pure instinct, like second nature. If O.J. fumbled that glove, he’d a snatched it up in a heartbeat. Right there’s the dead give-away. But I guess the cops was too dumb to think of that angle. I’m surprised Johnny Cochrane didn’t point it out. I damned sure would have.”

 “You’d have made one hell of a criminal attorney, Larry. You should have been on the defense team.” The image of Larry, sitting alongside Johnny Cochrane and Robert Shapiro in the televised courtroom broke me up. I laughed, and couldn’t control myself; tears ran down my face.

 “I’m glad you think it’s funny. Interesting how you’ve got time to write cute stories to pass around the office—at a time like this, people being let go. Did you send a copy to Bill? I imagine he’d get a real kick out of it. Maybe I’ll do that.”

 The snake! Is that a threat? It feels more like a challenge, to me.

 The next day Jackie Carter called out as I walked into the lunch room. “Pulver, come here. You gotta’ hear this.” Mischief danced in her eyes. I took a seat at her table.

 She lowered her voice. “So, you know that Larry Thigpen brags to the new sales trainees about what a good golfer he is, right? Well, this morning it bit him in the butt. What a hoot!”

“Yeah. It beats me why he does that. What happened?”

Jackie explained what she’d heard from the grapevine. Mr. Jenkins, the owner of our company, needed a decent golfer to host the execs of a large account at his country club’s course on the weekend. Tom Boyd, our sales manager, is a low-handicap player. He usually does those honors. But Tom was out of town.

It seems my buddy Mark Shapiro overheard Mr. Jenkins’ secretary talking about it, and he suggested Larry could do it. As Jackie got it, when they told Larry that Mr. Jenkins wanted him to play, he turned green.

“Hah! I’ll bet his sphincter muscle puckered. He can’t break 100. He stinks.”

“So I’ve heard. Can you imagine? Mercy!” she howled.

“That must have been something to watch. Last thing he’d want is to embarrass himself for eighteen holes. In front of important customers, to boot. At that ritzy private club?  No way…”

“Isn’t that too funny? So, I guess he talked his way out of it. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall.” Jackie raised her hand in a ‘high-five’ move.

Just then Mark Shapiro come through the door, heading for the coffee pot. I yelled, “Hey, Mark, I salute you, Sir. Good one!” I was sure he’d set Larry up, had called his bluff.

He filled his cup and walked over to us. “Not as good as you’d think. He weaseled out. Told Ellen he never claimed to be a good golfer. But, shoot, I’ve heard him say exactly that. More than once.” 

“That would be Larry,” I said. So, Larry Thigpen got a comeuppance. Good.

Mark looked uncomfortable. “I’m not so sure you’ll appreciate how it went, Pulver. He threw you under the bus.”

“Me?” My pulse quickened. “How?”

“Well…Ellen called me to her office, wanted to know why I’d recommended Larry, when he said he’d never played golf. I said I was sorry. I understood otherwise, my mistake.”

He hesitated, then added, “And he also told her, ‘No doubt that’s something Arthur Pulver dreamed up for his ‘fiction writing’ club, and spread around the office.’ Then Bill walked in and asked her what was going on. I got the hell out of there, so that’s as much as I know.”

That lying bastard! He lies, then blames me! This can’t go unanswered… 

~~~~~

Office chatter on Monday morning, the 29th of December 2014, was of Christmas gifts and plans for New Year’s Eve. I was excited about something else altogether.

In the days since Christmas, I’d researched Elvis Presley history and hatched my plan for payback. And was it a dandy! Pulver, old man, if this works, you will have outdone yourself!

I headed for Jackie’s desk and handed her a note. “Check out this webpage, and make sure Larry gets an eyeful. This should interest him.” In a minute the page was loaded on her monitor.

____________________ 

Palms News Service

DOES ELVIS HAUNT THE WEST PALM SHERATON?

by Edward Glenn

December 19, 2014

The appearance by Elvis Presley in our town on February 13, 1977 would sadly be part of his final tour. That night, the entire fourth and fifth floors of the West Palm Sheraton served as headquarters for the 42-year-old King of Rock n’ Roll and his entourage. The motor lodge on Palm Beach Lakes Boulevard was a stone’s throw from the West Palm Beach Auditorium, the site of the concert. Six months later he was gone.

Until about five years ago — according to some recent reports in West Palm Beach, when guests at the historic Sheraton reported seeing apparitions they describe as “Elvis’s ghost.”

Your correspondent met this week with Jack Bartleson, General Manager of the Sheraton property. “People tell similar stories as the first time, five years ago,” he informed me. “At least ten guests claim to have seen Elvis’s ghost.”

The ‘appearances’ began in January, 2010, according to the manager. He had organized a “75th Birthday Party” for Elvis. “It was a publicity thing. We invited local musicians, Channel 5 TV, and a writer from the paper. We decorated the lobby and the banquet room with photos and memorabilia, and I hired an Elvis impersonator as the ‘guest of honor.’ He wore a white jumpsuit like the one Presley wore at the Auditorium.

“The party was a success and ran late that night; the media was long gone. As we wrapped things up, a middle-aged couple came from the elevator. They rushed up to the Elvis impersonator in the lobby, who was saying his goodbyes. The gent says: ‘How in the world did you do that?’ He thought the fellow had tricked them somehow.”

“The Elvis guy asked what he’d done,” Mr. Bartleson continued. “The couple described coming back to the hotel shortly after midnight. They got on the elevator, and when the door closed, they claimed to see another ‘Elvis’ at the rear of the lift. They hadn’t seen him at first, but there he was, dressed in black, not white. Naturally, they took him as part of the festivities. When they got to their floor, and the door opened, they turned to say goodnight to him. But whoever, whatever, had disappeared– they were alone. That’s what they said.”

The manager went on, “The couple came back down to investigate. When they got on the elevator, according to them, no sooner had the door closed, than ‘Elvis’ was back.

“It petrified them. But when the door opened at the lobby, just as before, he was gone. “

Bartleson stressed: “I can verify, the couple was sober, and not crazy. But very frightened.”

Concerning later sightings, the manager was equally definite. 

“The same thing happens, always after midnight, on the 8th of January, his birthday. People say he never speaks, just looks sad.”

Until recently the hotel had not gone public about the phenomena. ”It would disturb some folks, obviously. We kept it quiet. 

“But two weeks ago, a guest went to the newspaper. After that, others confirmed the same thing. At this point, we might as well enjoy the free publicity.”

However, Bartleson had a disclaimer about the upcoming 8th of January, Presley’s 8oth birthday.

“Only registered guests for that night will have access to the elevators, until the following morning. If it takes a security guard to enforce it, I’ll hire one.”

________________________________

Jackie sounded doubtful. “Well, yeah, this will definitely get his attention. But why show it to him? It’s all we’ll hear about.”

“Hopefully, he’ll want to go check it out for himself.” I was certain he would. 

When Larry got to the office that morning, I watched and listened from my nearby cubicle, as Jackie pointed to her monitor. “Take a look, Larry.” The screen displayed the article by Edward Glenn of the Palms News Service. He read it once, and then again. Minutes later, we heard his eager-sounding voice, as he walked toward the front exit, cell phone to his ear. “Can you stick my name on standby? If you get a cancellation, call me.”

“Hear him? He’s trying to reserve a room for January 8. He’s taken the bait,” I told her. 

“What bait?” Jackie asked.

“There’s no Mr. Bartleson, or Palms News, or Edward Glenn. I made it all up and posted it on a WordPress blog. I’m a fiction writer—that’s what we do.”

“Seriously?” she cried out, as she slapped my hand. “You’re wicked—I fell for it, too. How funny!”

There was no birthday cake for Elvis on January 8. As the office closed, I heard Jackie ask: “Larry, are you going over to the Sheraton tonight? I’m curious to know if the ghost shows up.”

He grunted. “See you.” Then he was out the door.

Early the next morning, Larry was at Jackie’s desk.  I watched and listened in. “Show me that ‘ghost’ article again, will you?” he barked. “Something is very screwed up.”

“I don’t know that I can find it.” She looked him over. “What’s the problem? You look awful.”

“No shit? If you’d been in and out of an elevator ‘til three in the morning, you would too.”

“Oh, my lord! You went there? So, did he show up? The ghost?”

He ignored her questions. “Get me that article. I want to read it again. See this?” He placed a business card on her desk. “John Richards is the manager of the Sheraton. The night clerk never heard of… what’s his name…” He pulled a note from his pocket. “Jack Bartleson. Stupid kid didn’t know anything about the Elvis party, either. I gotta see that article.”

“Larry, I’m busy right now. Maybe later. I’ll let you know what I come up with,” Jackie said. I’d taken the article down, but there was more ammunition coming.

In an hour, she called him to her desk. I listened in and situated myself to watch the proceedings. “I didn’t find it. Maybe you should call the newspaper. But—I found two things on Jack Bartleson.” She brightened. “One, his obituary. And, there’s a small article, ‘Jack Bartleson, manager of the West Palm Sheraton, found dead of heart failure,’ says he died on August 16, 1977.” She waved the fake printouts I’d given her earlier.

“August 16, 1977?”  Larry had turned pale. “That’s nuts! That’s the day they claimed Elvis died…”

“How odd,” Jackie said. I could see her struggling to keep a deadpan expression.

He sputtered, “But they wrote the first article now, not 1977—about Elvis’ 80th birthday. This here says the hotel guy’s been dead almost forty years. How… did they… interview him… this week?” He looked disoriented and a bit wobbly as he found a chair a few feet away and sat down.

Jackie was magnificent. She was a fine actress; I’d had no idea. “Good Lord…you’re right!” She cried out. “Amazing! It looks like… Mr. Bartleson died the same day Elvis went into Witness Protection.”

Then she put the cherry on top. “Weird, isn’t it, Larry? I mean—you couldn’t make this stuff up if you tried.”

The End