Police say Elvis paused in his escape from bank robbery to pay his hotel bill

A Boston man charged with holding up a Beacon Hill bank yesterday had two getaway cars at the ready for his escape - which he interrupted to pay off his bill at a Back Bay hotel, the Suffolk County District Attorney's office reports.

Patrick Cannon, 54, who was out on parole for bank robbery, was arraigned today in Boston Municipal Court on a charge of masked and armed robbery. Municipal Court Judge Edward Redd imposed bail of $750,000.

Prosecutors allege that Cannon checked into the Colonnade Hotel, using his real name, on Tuesday. According to the DA's office, after Cannon held up the Cambridge Trust branch at Beacon and Charles - while dressed in a white graduation gown and a black mask - he got into a Cadillac Escalade reported stolen on Tuesday. He ditched that at Berkeley and Marlborough, the DA's office says.

Then he hoofed it over to a parking garage on Symphony Road, where he ditched his getup - and the tracking device the bank had slipped in his loot bag. Then, prosecutors say, he stopped in at the Colonnade to pay his $400 bill - in cash.

Prosecutors say he returned to the garage later in the evening, only to discover his Plymouth Breeze missing - police had towed it. Security guards alerted police; officers on patrol at Yawkey and Van Ness spotted him around 11 p.m. and arrested him. The DA's office says Cannon admitted to two other bank robberies.

In 1990, Cannon asked a federal appeals court to overturn his conviction for armed bank robbery for a 1988 heist at a Haymarket Cooperative Bank branch on Atlantic Avenue because he used a plastic replica gun, not an actual gun. The court said tough, conviction stands; the Supreme Court declined to hear his appeal.

Innocent, etc.