Saguaro Riptide, page 11
***
Baddalach stared at the phone. Damn. This was getting complicated.
There wasn’t anything much he could do about it right this minute, though.
So he sat there, stewing in his juices.
Jack thought about Vincent Komoko, and then he thought about the Muslim hitman. When Jack was tired of thinking about him, he thought about the address Freddy G had given him when they’d talked earlier in the evening.
Freddy’s lackeys had checked out the Pipeline Beach phone number that turned up so often in Vincent Komoko’s phone records. Just yesterday, Jack had called that number from Komoko’s place, rattling the cage of a young woman who, in Jack’s estimation, had some kind of connection to Komoko that deserved further investigation.
Their first conversation hadn’t done Jack much good. The woman had hung up on him before he had a chance to learn anything.
But now he had her address.
Now they’d have a real heart-to-heart.
Jack picked up the receiver and dialed the girl’s number.
She answered on the third ring.
Jack started talking.
The girl didn’t say much.
Outside, in the junkyard next to the Saguaro Riptide, Sandy Kapalua-Dayton’s pit bull was barking like crazy.
PRISCILLA STOOD IN THE SHADOW OF GRACELAND, THE DESERT WIND AT HER BACK strong enough to muss her heavily sprayed bouffant. It was a hot wind, and dry, like everything else in Arizona.
Everything but the lonely teardrops spilling from her eyes.
Ellis didn’t like her coming out here alone. A lot of time there was no use arguing with him about where she could go and when she could go there—the bruise on her ankle proved that—but tonight he had really surprised her by not kicking up a fuss when she said she was going for a walk. He’d said sure, go ahead . . . I’ll play with the cats . . . watch some TV . . .
Sometimes she could handle him just fine. Mostly he just sat in front of the TV with a cat or two curled up on his lap. But other times . . .
Priscilla’s ankle began to ache. She didn’t want to think about those other times. She didn’t want to think about Ellis. He was back there in the trailer watching a letter-boxed video of Viva Las Vegas. Priscilla had hurried outside as soon as he shoved that one in the VCR. She couldn’t watch it. Not for a minute. Not tonight. If she did she’d start crying for sure. And it wouldn’t have had anything to do with Ellis.
Her tears would have been for Vince.
Priscilla had met Vince in Las Vegas two years ago. It was one of the few times in her married life that Ellis let her do something without him, and the only reason he’d let her go was that she made the trip with her big sister.
Just a quick weekend to celebrate Rorie hiring on as a deputy with the Pipeline Beach Sheriff’s Department. Rorie used to love to do crazy stuff like that—take road trips on the spur of the moment. But now Rorie had Wyetta, just the way Priscilla had Ellis. They were still sisters but they hardly ever saw each other, even though they lived in the same small town.
Sometimes Priscilla wished she could talk to Rorie about Ellis. She wondered if Rorie felt the same way about Wyetta, because things didn’t seem to be too great between the two of them. But Priscilla didn’t seem to know how to start that kind of conversation, and neither did Rorie. They always found stuff to talk about, only none of it seemed very important.
Priscilla thought about it. Things seemed to happen so fast. Slip a ring on your finger . . . let a stranger share your bed . . . and your life changed forever. Priscilla didn’t think that was fair.
She also knew that she couldn’t do one little thing about it.
But she didn’t want to think about that. Not tonight. Tonight she wanted to think about Vince, and how wonderful he’d been on that first night in Vegas.
Vincent Komoko had spotted Priscilla and Rorie in the casino at the Casbah. He had some kind of job there. First thing, he asked Priscilla where the King was. That kind of threw her off guard. For a second she thought Vince must have been a friend of Ellis’s from his days in Vegas. She only thought that for a second, though, because it was plain that Vince was too young to have been around when Ellis was shaking things up as the hottest Elvis impersonator on the Strip. Then Vince gave her that big wink she’d come to know so well, and she realized that her first guess had been wrong—he was only complimenting her because she really did look like the real Priscilla. The way the real Priscilla had looked when she was married to Elvis, before she ran out on him and went Hollywood.
Well, that broke the ice. They got to talking. Vince was easy to talk to, and Priscilla was hungry for that because Ellis didn’t talk much. And then talking led to drinks, and drinks led to dinner, and then . . .
Rorie was a good sport about the whole thing. She didn’t even bat an eye when Vince moved in on Priscilla. Certainly, she wasn’t jealous—Rorie wasn’t much interested in male affection. And Priscilla linking up with Vince kind of left Rorie free to cut a path of her own, though she wasn’t the kind to say so in so many words. Besides, Rorie didn’t much like Priscilla’s husband. She said that Ellis was too old for her sister, too set in his ways, said that he might as well have traded his dick for a TV remote a long time ago. It was Rorie’s sisterly opinion that Priscilla should do a Tammy Wynette on the fat old hound dawg and get a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.
And maybe that was what Priscilla should have done. Maybe she should have made a clean break. Instead of sneaking around with Vince, waiting for him to make those little side trips down to Pipeline Beach when he ran the mob’s money into Texas. Satisfying herself with a couple stolen hours at the Saguaro Riptide every month.
Ellis never caught on. Priscilla was sure of that. Because if Ellis had had the least little inkling of what was going on, Priscilla would have never set foot outside their trailer again. If Ellis had even been suspicious, he would have fixed it so she couldn’t do anything while he was away on those weekend road trips of his.
Priscilla shivered. If Ellis had known about Vincent Komoko . . . well, forget about bruises on the ankle, he would have killed her. No question about it.
Vince, too.
God, but she’d loved that man. Every minute with Vince had been something special. All those times together at the Saguaro Riptide, and she’d never once gotten her fill of him.
She knew she never would, no matter how much time they had together.
Priscilla would have left Ellis if Vince had asked her to. She’d known that from the start.
But Vince never asked.
After a while Priscilla figured out that Vince was never going to ask. They were never going to run off together and start a new life. Things weren’t going to happen fast this time. Her life wasn’t going to change.
Not ever. That had already happened once.
It looked like once was all you got.
Priscilla didn’t think that was fair, your life changing just once and then you were stuck with it the rest of your days.
That was when she started hating Vince.
The hate built up inside her. When she couldn’t stand it anymore she asked Rorie if she remembered the guy they’d met in Vegas. Of course Rorie remembered. So Priscilla told her all about him, being sure to mention that he ran mob money from Vegas to Texas.
Rorie told Wyetta.
Wyetta liked the idea of that mob money.
Split three ways.
***
And now Vince was dead.
And her husband wanted her to make a couple of deep-fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, sit down and watch Viva Las Vegas with him and his cats like everything was okey- dokey.
And some stranger was calling her on the phone, asking about the time she’d spent with Vince at the Saguaro Riptide Motel.
And the caller didn’t sound like anyone to mess with. And he knew where she lived. And he wanted to talk to her, face-to-face.
She couldn’t stay home with all that going on. So she’d come here, to the ruins of Graceland.
Only she wondered if you could really call a place a ruin if it had never been finished. Ellis had run out of money when the house was about halfway done. Lost his enthusiasm for it, like he did with everything else. To this day there wasn’t a single pane of glass in the windows. There wasn’t even a front door in the gaping entranceway behind the unfinished Georgian columns. What there was was a sand dune in the front hallway, and a nest of scorpions in what should have been the Jungle Room, and a family of kangaroo rats in the kitchen, and a whole lot of nothing everywhere else.
Except for that statue of Elvis up in the bathroom. And now even it was busted, missing its head, stained with Vincent Komoko’s blood.
Now it was a ruin, too.
Priscilla sat down on a rock. She rubbed her sore ankle. The dusky purple color might fade, but the bruise never went away anymore. Not really. Neither did the ache. Sometimes she could ignore it, but not tonight.
Quiet surrounded her. Her gaze wandered to the big bronze marker at the side of the house. In Memphis the area was called the Meditation Garden. Here it was just another patch of sand and scrub, though the grave marker was a twin to the one that covered Elvis Presley’s grave in Memphis.
She rose and walked past the grave, which was, of course, empty. She didn’t notice the burrow at one corner of the marker or the fresh earth heaped around the opening or the lone footprint in the fresh sand. She walked past those things as if they did not exist. She walked into the desert, moving slowly, searching for a spot where the earth had been disturbed.
The spot she was looking for had to be nearby. Rorie and Wyetta wouldn’t have dragged the body far. Not with a storm blowing all around them.
She walked for five minutes, then ten. Her ankle hurt and she began to limp, but she knew that the spot she was looking for had to be here somewhere just as surely as she knew that Rorie and Wyetta wouldn’t want her looking for it.
Just as surely as she knew that she had to look.
And if she found it . . . why, if she found the spot she’d stand over it with her eyes closed. She’d let tears stream down her cheeks without shame, let them fall on churned earth out here where there was no one to see.
And next time she’d bring flowers. If she could find the right place. And she’d sit with Vince, and she’d tell him how pretty the flowers were. And she’d tell him about all the secret hopes and dreams she’d had for them that she’d never shared, and all the things she’d left unsaid because she was so afraid of the things he’d say in reply.
But now she’d tell him, and she wouldn’t be afraid.
Tumbleweeds, golden brittlebrush, teddy bear cholla, and rusty tangles of barbed wire at the property line—but she kept walking. The sun sank slow and easy into the west, guiding her progress like a friend who kept all her secrets, and she followed its path until it was gone and she was alone in the still shadow of twilight.
WOODROW POPPED FOUR EXCEDRIN, CHEWED, AND DRY-SWALLOWED.
Having exhausted the supply of aspirin he kept in the Saturn, he had purchased the Excedrin in Tempe. But he had neglected to purchase a beverage. Hence the chewing and dry-swallowing.
It was odd. Just a few hours ago he’d felt tip-top. Leaving the dead cracker at the gas station, he’d donned a pair of sunglasses to ward off the afternoon glare as he headed south. Things had been just fine. He had enjoyed the drive, amusing himself with thoughts of the dead cracker locked in the trunk of his Camaro, cooking under the Arizona sun.
In spite of the sunglasses, the glare began to annoy Woodrow. It seemed particularly unforgiving in the desert—slicing the Saturn’s windshield into angry diamond patterns, riding the black freeway in shimmering waves, ricocheting off other cars with such lethal intensity that Woodrow felt he would rather meet a Medusa’s gaze than stare at the tinted window of one more Mercedes.
A Mack truck roared toward him in the northbound lane, its grille a blinding chrome nightmare.
Woodrow found himself squinting. Tears filled his eyes . . .
And the taffy-pulling machine went to work on his brain, grinding . . . twisting . . . tearing . . .
The Mack might as well have slammed him head-on.
The pain was supersonic.
It was ten miles to Tempe.
He barely made it.
He bought the Excedrin at a minimart. He swallowed two tablets in the parking lot and tried to sleep, but each time a car door slammed fresh needles of agony hammered his skull.
So, squinting, his jaws clamped together vise-tight, he drove out of Tempe and turned off on the first dirt road he found. He followed that road, and then turned off another. The second road was in miserable repair. That made him happy, for the likelihood of hearing car doors slamming on a rarely traveled road seemed exceedingly remote.
As twilight fell, Woodrow pulled to a stop and turned off the engine. The only sound he heard was a feeble whine rising from his chest. He blocked the front window with a sunscreen provided by the Saturn dealership in Las Vegas. Next he rolled down the side windows, took clothes from his garment bag, hung them over the glass like makeshift curtains, and rolled the windows up again. He then jammed the garment bag in the hollow behind the back seat, closing off the rear window.
He sat in the milky shadows and chewed two more Excedrin, waiting for true darkness, waiting for his headache to disappear.
And now he was chewing four more Excedrin.
And it was dark outside.
Woodrow removed his clothes from the side windows. Folded them and replaced them in the garment bag. Then he rolled up the sunscreen and tossed it in the back seat.
The night was mellow purple, going black.
Woodrow massaged his eyelids. His muscles relaxed.
For the first time in hours, he opened his eyes.
Fully. Not a rumor of a squint this time.
He gazed into the distance. His only wish was to relax. But a terrible frustration welled within him. He was wasting so much time. He had a job to do. He should have been in Pipeline Beach by now. Baddalach should have been dead hours ago.
If the dog hadn’t attacked him ... If he hadn’t cracked his head on the floor of Baddalach’s condo . . .
Things started to blur. Woodrow blinked several times, rubbed his eyes.
And then he noticed the light. Far off on the horizon, a pinprick rising over the low hills. Perhaps it was only an aircraft heading for Tucson . . . but it was so bright . . . perhaps a low-flying private plane . . . a helicopter . . . but it moved so fast . . . and it was coming closer . . . swelling, streaming across the wounded night sky like the blood of a cloudless afternoon . . .
It was coming . . . at great speed . . .
Getting brighter . . . brutally bright . . .
Fresh needles of pain hammered Woodrow’s skull . . .
He tried to look away but could not. So he cried out, whimpering like a child . . . and he dropped the Excedrin bottle and pills spilled over the front seat . . . and the brutal light was everywhere and he was on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere and he was slipping . . . slipping . . .
No . . . Woodrow gasped . . . he was not slipping . . . not one inch . . . he would not allow it . . . he was chewing . . . swallowing Excedrin . . . dry . . . and he would be just fine . . . and the taste in his mouth was bitter Boraxo Death Valley days . . . and he would drive on in just a moment because the thing in the sky was nothing more than an illusion . . . but his hand could not find the ignition . . . and it was difficult to concentrate with the light incinerating layers of night . . . purple and violet and lavender layers . . . and Woodrow could not help but watch ... the light was hypnotic . . . so hypnotic that Woodrow could not string two thoughts together . . .
Two thoughts . . . but four Excedrin . . .
He had swallowed four Excedrin . . . and doing same would allow him to string two thoughts together . . .
Soon . . . Praise Allah, let it be soon . . .
Woodrow’s eyelids scoped down . . . became honed steel slivers that sliced his retinas . . . anguished tears dribbled through his squint . . . and he was in the middle of nowhere . . . and the light was everywhere . . .
Getting brighter . . .
And . . .
***
It seemed that this was the place where old furniture came to die.
Woodrow stood in front of the Saturn. Glowing headlights cast his long shadow over a broken couch that had lost half its stuffing.
A twisted bicycle lay in front of the couch. To one side of that was a wheelless baby stroller with a headless doll as passenger. To the other, a mound of plump plastic garbage bags speared by clumps of surrounding yucca. And beyond that was more crippled furniture—three-legged chairs, a television with a cracked picture tube, shapely lamps stripped of their shades . . .
And clothes were everywhere. Clothes that Woodrow recognized. Clothes from his garment bag.
His clothes, strewn about the desert like so much garbage.
Woodrow’s heart pounded. With shaking fingers, he reached to loosen his bow tie.
But it was already untied . . . and his shirt was unbuttoned . . .
He sat down on the broken couch and tried to imagine what had happened to him. He had been in another place . . . a place where there was no broken furniture . . . and the light had come . . .
And he had lost all sense of time . . .
And somehow . . . somehow he had been transported to this place . . . and his clothes had been strewn about . . . his bow tie untied . . .
He glanced at his wristwatch. It was very late.
A gentle breeze stirred in the distance, whispering through hollow knots of mesquite and ironwood, washing Woodrow’s brow. He breathed deeply, filling his lungs with the dry scent of the desert and the raw stink of the abandoned couch.
He had to calm down. He had to think this through. Logically.
Many hours ago he had fallen and injured his head severely enough to cause a brief lapse of consciousness. Severe pain, in the form of a dog bite, had brought him out of it. But for a time he had been disoriented, unable to function properly—witness his run-in with the Vietnamese kid at Baddalach’s condo.
