Saguaro Riptide

THREE

JACK CHECKED OUT OF THE MOTEL. The front desk arranged a rental car, and someone brought it around. Jack wondered if he could use his corporate plastic for tips, but it seemed like that might get kind of complicated. Still, he was feeling kind of generous-he traded the kid two bucks for the keys.

The rental was a Range Rover. It didn’t make any of the noises Jack’s Celica made, and the plastic interior smelled like a brand new rubber duck that had just paddled off the production line, and the dash was lined with a mystifying array of gauges that Jack blissfully ignored.

He stopped off and grabbed a couple Sourdough Breakfast Sandwiches and two large coffees at the local Jack in the Box restaurant. Figured he might as well have a couple hash browns, too. Breakfast of champions, as far as Jack Baddalach was concerned. Then he hit the highway, taking 10 east.

Pedal to the metal. The Rover moved, all right, and the gauges hung firm. Nothing smoked and nothing rattled.

Jack ate and drove. Along the way he saw plenty of sand, plenty of saguaro cacti.

He took a cutoff and headed south. Saw more of the same. Looked for something mellow on the radio, but all he could find was Johnny Rivers singing “Secret Agent Man” on an oldies station out of Tucson.

Jack turned off the radio just as Johnny got to the part about dying in a Bombay alley.

He started to feel a little uncomfortable.

Mostly, he wished he hadn’t had that second cup of coffee. He pulled over and pissed behind a towering cactus, wondering what the blue-rinsed lady at the motel gift shop would make of that.

About thirty minutes later, he hit Pipeline Beach.

First impression? Plenty of beach, all right.

The first store Jack spotted was actually called the Pipeline Beach Five-and-Dime. He pulled into the parking lot thinking, Welcome to Mayberry West, champ.

That assessment wasn’t far off the mark. As Jack entered the store, he came face to face with a portly man who hovered over the shopping carts. The guy’s ID badge said:

OF COURSE YOU CAN ASK ME!

JERRY CALDWELL

MANAGER

Caldwell grinned. “Help you find anything?”

“I’ll make out,” Jack said.

The guy didn’t give up so easily. “Get you a cart?”

“Nope.”

The fat man seemed to deflate, but his smile hung tough. Jack figured Jerry Caldwell had probably been to a sales seminar that emphasized cheeriness or something. Either that, or there was an empty pod under his bed a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers.

Jack moved down the aisles, searching for socks and underwear. There was only one other customer in the store, and Jack felt like he was on display. Especially when he glanced back at Jerry Caldwell. The manager stood whispering to the lone clerk-a geriatric desert rat dripping turquoise-and-silver jewelry. Caldwell didn’t take his eyes off of Jack. His piggy lips held onto that sales seminar grin like it was a pet snake that had taken up residence on his face.

The menswear section amounted to half an aisle. Mostly, the selection consisted of T-shirts featuring slogans that might seem witty after the third six-pack of Bud. Jack avoided these. Instead, he grabbed a 3-pack of white T-shirts. To this he added a three-pack of jockey shorts and a four-pack of white athletic socks.

You never could come out even in such matters. Jack figured some corporate jockey had conducted a marketing survey, figured out just how many shirts and jockeys and socks to put in a pack so people would buy two instead of one. Jack was tempted to take an extra pack of each, but he didn’t like the idea of some marketing exec getting one up on him. Hopefully three days would cover it. Maybe he’d get lucky-find Komoko right off, today, and get out of town tomorrow.

Yeah. Maybe not.

You’re getting just a little bit ahead of yourself, son.

The liquor case stood against the back wall. Jack grabbed a six-pack of Molson. He was headed for the check-stand when he took a deep breath and caught that sour, limey Old Spice scent.

One more detour. Jack went in search of the pit-stick aisle.

The store’s other customer was there, too. He guessed that she was in her late twenties, and though she was definitely on the small side, she wasn’t what you’d call delicate. At least that was the impression Jack got, but he realized that the desert-fatigue pants and combat boots the woman was wearing might have had something to do with that. As did the Ray Charles-dark sunglasses that hid her eyes, and the black T-shirt that hugged her body just a little too tightly-DEATH FROM ABOVE, it said, over the leering face of a skull.

She reached for a stick of unscented deodorant, and Jack did the same. He glanced at her basket and saw that she was buying some of the same things he’d purchased in Tucson-a toothbrush and toothpaste, to which she’d added a few feminine items including some lipstick. She caught him looking and reciprocated, checking out the items he was buying, and though he couldn’t see her eyes behind the glasses, he noticed that her eyebrows made a curious little trip from the top of her shades to the bottom of the dark auburn bangs that covered her forehead like a curtain.

She smiled wryly, nodding toward Jerry Caldwell. “Real helpful, isn’t he?”

“You got that right.”

They stood like that for a second, as if they were both waiting for more. Then she kind of shrugged, turning away, and Jack did the same.

The geriatric checkout girl was waiting for him, her wrists weighed down with enough turquoise-and-silver bracelets to keep the Navajo nation in groceries for a month.

Jerry Caldwell was waiting, too. “Find everything okay, Mr. Baddalach?”

“Sure,” Jack said, and then he came up short, instantly realizing that he’d made a mistake.

The snaky smile coiled on Jerry’s fat face, ready to strike. Jack hated himself. He should have seen the whole thing coming, because Caldwell had a pen in one hand and a stack of magazines in the other.

Sports III from the previous week. The manager had probably been ready to toss them when Jack came waltzing in, but now he figured he’d found a way to turn garbage into profit.

Jack stared down at the cover photo. His own face, puffed and purple, blood oozing from steak tartare gashes over both eyes.

The cover blurb: BATTLE-AXED.

“How about some autographs?” Caldwell’s lips didn’t move, just stuck with the grin.

“You should have been a ventriloquist.”

“Huh?”

Jack sighed, staring at the magazine covers. “Look. . that wasn’t my proudest moment. Hope you don’t mind if I pass.”

Caldwell’s smile faltered, but then it took on a conspiratorial twist. He set one hand on the three-pack of jockey shorts. “Maybe we could work something out?”

Jack glared at him.

“Oh, nothing untoward,” the manager explained with a chuckle. “A trade, I mean.”

Explanation aside. Jack wished the guy would take his hand off the jockey shorts. He didn’t especially want to think of Jerry Caldwell’s plump little fingers when he slid into them.

Temper, temper, he warned himself, working up a sales manager grin of his own. “I know what the deal is,” he said. “You get me to sign these magazines, you’re gonna go out and sell them for ten, fifteen bucks each.” He shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think anyone should pay that much to look at my beat-to-shit face.”

The geriatric checkout girl gasped. Her jewelry tinkled unpleasantly.

Jack blushed. “Sorry, ma’am.” He pushed the underwear and the pit-stick and the beer and the rest of the stuff her way.

What the hell. He reached for the magazines and pushed those her way, too.

“Ring me up,” he said.

He reached for his corporate plastic.

Jack exited the store and dropped the magazines into a garbage can near the door. He figured that his behavior hadn’t been covered in any management seminar Jerry Caldwell had ever attended, because he’d left the little fat man speechless.

Chuckling, he climbed into the Range Rover. He set the six-pack on the passenger seat and tossed his other purchases into the back. Then he keyed the ignition and dropped the stick into gear.

That was when he looked up and saw Caldwell digging through the garbage.

Jack was out of the Range Rover in a second.

He slammed the door.

He didn’t see the sheriff’s Jeep Cherokee pulling in behind him.

Jack’s voice had more than a little edge to it. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Caldwell whirled, clutching the magazines to his chest. His reptilian smile had slithered south in a big way, and he stuttered, and he started to shake.

Jack nodded toward the garbage can. “Put them back.”

“N-no,” the manager said, and then his eyeballs did a wild cha-cha-cha as if he were searching the air in front of him, hoping to spot the word floating there so he could grab it and shove it back into his mouth.

“Is there a problem, Jerry?”

Jack stopped dead in his tracks. The voice that had come from behind held an unmistakable air of authority. One look at Jerry Caldwell confirmed his suspicion, because Jerry was grinning like Francis the Talking Mule.

Jack turned. Two women stood between him and a Jeep Cherokee. The driver’s side of the Jeep was kind of bashed up, the paint scratched, but the sheriff’s department insignia on the door was still plainly visible.

Jack eyed the women. Call it male intuition, but he was sure he knew which one had spoken.

First impression? She was tall, and her blond hair was pulled tight against her skull, ending in a long braid that she wore over one shoulder. Maybe under other circumstances the hairstyle might not have appeared so severe, but the standard cop-issue mirrored sunglasses she wore tilted the scales in that direction.

Her polished badge flashed in the morning light. The effect was kind of hypnotic. Jack squinted behind his sunglasses. Then he noticed a pencil sticking out of the pocket flap on one side of the badge, and the spell was broken-the words SAGUARO RIPTIDE MOTEL were stenciled just below the eraser.

The same name that was stenciled on the ashtray at Vince Komoko’s house. Jack took a deep breath. This was the place, all right.

“I don’t like to be stared at, Mister. .?”

“Baddalach.”

The woman with the braid almost smiled. “I’ve heard the name.”

“And yours is?”

Her lips quivered, but just for an instant. When she spoke, her voice had dipped into a lower range. “Wyetta Earp.”

“Wyetta. . Earp?"

Instantly, Jack realized that it was the wrong thing to say and the wrong way to say it, because the sheriff’s backbone turned to iron.

“You can call me Sheriff.”

“Look,” Jack began, “I don’t want any trouble. And I’ve got a receipt for the magazines.”

Jerry Caldwell put in his two cents worth. “He threatened me, Wyetta!”

“No I didn’t. Here’s how it was … the guy wanted my autograph. I didn’t want to give it to him. I bought the magazines, though, and I threw them in the garbage can. Then he went and fished them out.”

Jack glanced past the sheriff. The woman in the black T-shirt was standing next to a battered Dodge Dakota, trying to decide whether to take off or stick around and enjoy the show.

“I own the garbage can!” Caldwell said. “So anything in it is mine!”

Jack ignored him. “I bought the magazines.”

The woman in the black T-shirt joined the fray. “He’s telling the truth. I was behind him in the checkout line. I saw him buy the magazines. I saw the whole thing.”

The sheriff glanced at the deputy. They traded imperceptible grins. “Gosh,” the sheriff said. “This is all really complicated. I don’t know if us girls can figure it out. . but I guess we’ll just have to do our darndest.”

She nodded at the deputy, who moved to the dented Jeep Cherokee with Jerry Caldwell in tow. The woman in the black T-shirt tagged along.

After a long moment. Jack said, “Nice day.”

“Just another day in paradise,” the sheriff said.

“So what’s the deal?”

“We’ll wait and see.”

Jack glanced at the Cherokee. The deputy was on the radio. Jerry Caldwell was gabbing in her ear, as was the woman in the black T-shirt, and the deputy was busy trying to wave them off and talk at the same time.

“I saw your last fight,” the sheriff said.

“Yeah? I wish I could have seen it. But my eyes were pretty busted up.”

“You never should have tangled with Sattler. You didn’t have a chance.”

Jack snorted. “Oh?”

Wyetta Earp smiled. “Yeah. You’re a natural middleweight, Mr. Baddalach. Sattler’s a cruiserweight who can sweat down to light heavyweight if he puts his mind to it, and you were stupid enough to meet him at 175. You shouldn’t have been carrying those extra fifteen pounds. Now, if you’d stop eating cheeseburgers and trim down, you might at least look good losing. Do some roadwork, you might even stand a chance with one of those young guns. You’ve still got a halfway decent left hook.”

“Gosh.” Jack laughed. “You must read Ring Magazine or something.”

“I get around, Mr. Baddalach. You might be surprised.”

Jack thought about that for a second. Deep down, he knew things were spinning away, heading somewhere he didn’t want them to go. Another second and they’d be dropping their flies, seeing whose dick was bigger.

If Wyetta Earp had had a dick, that is.

Jesus, this was dangerous. Jack knew it. But he couldn’t help himself. He felt like he was headed for a quick ten-count, and it was time to go for the long shot, the sweeping left hook that came from the canvas.

His mouth slipped open, and the few words that came out were spoken with casual ease. “So, you know quite a bit. I’m wondering if you know about a guy named Vincent Komoko?”

The sheriff tried to dodge the bullet. She failed, jerking in her snakeskin boots as if someone had pounded her iron backbone with a sledgehammer.

She opened her mouth, but the deputy returned before any words came out. “Range Rover’s a rental out of Tucson,” the deputy said. “No wants, no warrants.”

The sheriff nodded. “Anything else?”

“Yeah. The dispatcher wasn’t sure, but she thought the newspaper said that our friend here was out on bail in Nevada. And I think I read the same thing.”

Grinning, Wyetta Earp turned to Jack. “That’s right. I almost forgot. You beat up a poor defenseless boxing promoter, you naughty boy. And you’re a pro. Your fists are considered lethal weapons. That makes it felony assault. Whatever are you doing in our fair state of Arizona? You wouldn’t be jumping bail, would you?”

Jack said, “I suppose it wouldn’t help if I told you that the guy dropped the charges.”

“I don’t know. We have to be careful. We just can’t go running around half-cocked." Wyetta shrugged. “We’ll just have to make some phone calls, won’t we?”

Jack figured there wasn’t anything else to say.

The sheriff reached for her handcuffs.

Jack held out his hands.

Knuckle to nail, they ached like hell.