Free Sammy Keyes and the Showdown in Sin City by Wendelin Van Draanen

actually thinking, Are you
my
Elvis? when he says, “Sammy, you should probably not be cruising the Strip alone on a Friday night. I wouldn’t even suggest it on a Sunday morning, ’cause some of these cats prowl clear through to dawn.” He liftsone of his Elvis eyebrows. “I don’t care how tough you
think
you are, nobody your size is tough enough.”
    “I’m only here because …” And all of a sudden I feel really stupid.
    Why did I think an Elvis impersonator could help me?
    “Because …?” he asks.
    I shake my head and look down. “It’s a long story.”
    “Sammy, I don’t have
time
for a long story. But … tell me you’re not in Vegas alone. How’d you get here?”
    I give a little shrug. “Part of the long story.”
    “But … 
why
are you here? Can’t you give me the CliffsNotes?”
    I take a deep breath and say, “My mom’s getting married to my boyfriend’s father in Vegas this weekend.”
    “Ouch,” he says, pulling a face. Then he raises that Elvis eyebrow again and says, “Who knew who first?”
    “I knew my boyfriend
way
first.”
    “Dirty pool,” he says with a tisk.
    “
And
she won’t tell me who my dad is.”
    This sinks in a minute, then he says, “You have no idea? Why won’t she tell you?”
    I shake my head. “She won’t tell me that, either.” Then I add, “She’s a diva.” I swing off my pack and pull out the big card with her pictures on it. “Her name’s Lana Keyes, and she plays Jewel in
The Lords of Willow Heights
.”
    “That’s your
mama
?” he gasps, taking the card.
    “Yeah,” I grumble. “A little-known fact that she’s mostly embarrassed about.”
    “Whoa,” he says, and now both his Elvis eyebrows are reaching for his big black pouf of hair.
    “Please don’t tell me you watch
Lords
.”
    “As long as you don’t tell anyone I do!” he says with a laugh.
    I shake my head. “Unbelievable.”
    “But addicting!” Now I see a little mental shift happen under his pouffy ’do as he checks out both sides of the photo card. “If ambition’s a dream with a V-8 engine, she sure is revvin’ hers.”
    “Huh?”
    He zooms in on me. “She has you sneakin’ in and out of the Highrise while she’s livin’ large as Jewel?” He snorts. “That’s just wrong.”
    And now I’m seeing that this was a bad idea.
    A
very
bad idea.
    “Uh … who told you that?”
    “Nobody. I just pieced it together.” He eyes me through his shades. “And don’t worry. Elvis always plays it close to the vest.”
    That didn’t make me feel a whole lot better.
    Actually, I felt worse.
    All this time I thought I’d been so stealthy, and
Elvis
had figured it out?
    “Look, Sammy,” he says. “Don’t worry about that. The more I think about this, the more I don’t like your situation. Or that you’re here. Especially that you’re here alone.” He studies me. “So how can I help you?”
    “I don’t know,” I tell him, taking the card back. “It was probably stupid. I thought maybe you had some kind of connection with the wedding chapels. You know—since Elvises marry people around here? And I thought youmight be able to contact them for me to see if my mom’s getting married at any of them. There’s a hundred chapels in this stupid city, and I called, like, a third of them tonight and got nowhere.”
    “So the mission is to stop the wedding?”
    I nod, then kind of take it back. “Mostly I’m here to find out who my dad is. And if she won’t tell me, then, yeah, I’m gonna be a major monkey wrench in her wedding party.”
    He thinks a minute, then says, “Her name’s Lana Keyes and his is …?”
    “Warren Acosta.”
    “Acosta?”
    “Right.”
    He takes a picture of the picture of my mom with his phone and says, “Since she’s a diva, she won’t be tyin’ the knot in some second-class chapel, right?”
    I nod ’cause that sure seems right to me. “But I couldn’t really tell the difference from the phone book. Some have big