Saguaro Riptide, page 20
Then she straddled the cycle and started it up. The roar of the engine rode a series of quick close-ups. The pilot wore heavy red lipstick, and her eyes were green, and man oh man did that leather outfit fit her like a glove, and . . .
It hit Rorie like a ton of bricks. The actress in the movie ... she was a dead ringer for that chicklet at the Saguaro Riptide—Kate Benteen. Of course, Rorie hadn’t seen Kate Benteen without her sunglasses, so it could be that the resemblance was coincidental, but still—
No way. This couldn’t be Kate Benteen. That girl, in the movies? The way she talked about Cosmopolitan? No way, it didn’t make sense.
Still, Rorie was real eager to see the credits at the end of the flick.
The chopper chick raced through the desert on her black cycle.
Cut to—a tank with a bunch of real grody-looking Arabs heading her way.
Rorie settled back on the couch. Man, things were going to get good now.
The phone rang.
Rorie answered it.
Wyetta didn’t even say hello.
What she said was, “Get your ass in the saddle, cowgirl.”
***
They rode together in the sheriff’s Jeep Cherokee.
Wyetta was driving.
Rorie could smell JD on her breath.
She kept her lip buttoned about it, but she didn’t want to. What she wanted to do was say, Jesus Christ, Wyetta. Wasn’t the other night enough?
She didn’t say anything, though. Not that she had a chance. Wyetta was rattling on like a holy roller caught up in the spirit. In a way, that’s exactly what she was. Only the spirit that had her by the short and curlies wasn’t Jesus Christ. No, Wyetta was caught up by the spirit of her own personal Lord and Savior, Wyatt Berry Stapp Earp.
She’d been talking to him through that damn Ouija board again. Or so she claimed.
She also claimed that Wyatt had told her where Komoko had hidden the money.
And she couldn’t shut up about it.
But that didn’t mean Rorie had to listen. No siree. She stared out the window as mile after mile of nothing whipped by. All that nothing had been out there the other night, but she’d seen a lot less of it then.
A duster had blown down from the north. Not that Wyetta was bothered by the storm. In pigheaded Earp fashion, she had ignored it.
She kept the pedal to the metal. Damn the torpedoes. Balls to the wall law enforcement and all like that.
Only Wyetta and Rorie weren’t going to enforce any laws on that particular night. They were going to break some. They were going to steal some money. Maybe murder someone.
Not that Wyetta saw it that way. Hey, they were stealing money from the mob. So that wasn’t really stealing, was it? And the only guy they might have to kill was a mobster. So that wasn’t really murder was it?
Wyetta made the whole thing sound like a public service. And she wouldn’t shut up about it. Talking and talking, like she was trying to convince herself.
And Rorie could tell that Wyetta had been trying to convince herself another way, too, because she could smell Jack Daniels on the sheriff’s breath.
Riding through that duster, Rorie wished she’d kept her mouth shut. She wished she’d never told Wyetta about her sister’s asshole lover. That was the conversation that had planted the seed. Once it took root, there was no getting away from it. Wyetta had insisted that Rorie bring her sister out to the rancho for a little dinner party.
They’d talked it out over margaritas and nachos. Wyetta made it sound like a joke at first—“Hey, ’Cilia, the guy deserves to lose some money,” she said. “He treated you like shit, didn’t he? This’ll bring him down a few notches. We’ll show him you can’t treat us Arizona girls like cow dumplings.”
Priscilla went along with it, of course. Hell, she’d fallen for Komoko’s line, and he was a minor-league shit-shoveler. What could stop her from falling for Wyetta’s world-class bullshit?
Nothing. So, Wyetta came up with a plan to get Komoko, and ’Cilia set him up. The next time he phoned, she told him that Ellis was out of town on one of his flea market trips. Said Komoko should meet her out at Graceland, because he’d never seen the place and was always asking her about it.
But the way Wyetta planned it, Priscilla wouldn’t be anywhere near Graceland when Komoko arrived. Instead, Wyetta and Rorie would be waiting for him. They’d have his money before he even had a chance to figure out that he’d been set up.
Only it didn’t work out that way. There was the duster, of course. It slowed Wyetta down. But what slowed her down more was the bottle.
Rorie didn’t say a word about the bottle that night, either. She just sat there in the shotgun position, waiting to get the whole thing over with, hoping Komoko wouldn’t see them coming.
With the duster, there was a good chance of that.
But with the duster, there was also a good chance that Komoko might bag the whole thing. Stop at a motel a hundred miles up the road. Not show up at all.
Either way, it was okay with Rorie.
That was what she was thinking as they neared the little dirt road that cut from the highway to Ellis Aaron Perkins’s personal Graceland. Rorie was thinking so hard that she didn’t notice until the last minute how fast Wyetta was going, or how close the turnoff was—
“Look out!”
Wyetta cut the wheel too sharply. The Jeep’s big wheels dug into the desert, kicking up sand and rocks and then the cab leaned over—it all seemed to happen so slowly in a crazy kind of way. The Jeep rolled, slammed down onto the driver’s side and kept on moving, body screaming over sand and rocks, headlights illuminating a stand of saguaros, the Jeep still moving forward, plowing through the sand, long cactus fingers bending toward the windshield like fingers closing into a fist and then Rorie couldn’t see a damn thing because she had a faceful of air bag and the Jeep suddenly skidded to a stop.
Wyetta was swearing. Loudly. But the wailing siren was louder and they couldn’t turn it off because the air bags were in the way and neither one of them could see the dashboard. Wyetta was cussing a blue streak, but Rorie didn’t dare say a word. The truth was that she was almost too scared to breathe.
The air bags deflated. Waves of gravestone-colored sand blasted the Jeep. A suicidal tumbleweed raced through the storm and exploded against the windshield, little stick shards making spidery scratching sounds.
The sticks scratching, Wyetta’s cussing, the siren—every sound was muffled by the ringing in Rorie’s head. The sheriff squirmed in her seat and flicked off the siren. The deputy hung sideways in the cab, suspended by her seat belt. Rorie turned with some effort, saw steel-colored clouds boiling overhead through the passenger window.
“Can you get the door open?” Wyetta asked.
Rorie didn’t answer. But she wanted out. She didn’t care how hard the damn wind was blowing. The seat belt was cutting into her belly like a backstreet abortionist’s scalpel. The shoulder strap had wrenched her shoulder and chafed her neck. She felt like a crash-test dummy strung up by some automotive lynch mob.
The cab closed in on her. She could sense it getting smaller as the storm grew stronger.
Rorie kept her eye on the window, on the sky above. Those steel clouds were going to fall out of the sky and crush the Ranger flatter than flat. She was sure of it.
Panic knotted her chest. She had to start moving.
She managed to open the door. She couldn’t unfasten her seatbelt and ended up cutting it with her pocket knife, at which point she dropped on top of Wyetta, who unleashed a fresh torrent of expletives.
Rorie didn’t give a shit anymore. Wyetta’s words couldn’t hurt her. Not the words themselves. But she could smell the drunken breath that carried those words, and that breath burned in her lungs like hellfire as she gasped for fresh air.
The two women scrambled out of the Jeep. Both of them were okay. Nothing more than a few bumps and bruises. Wyetta jumped off the passenger side of the Jeep and started jogging up the road. She didn’t even break stride. The only thing Rorie could do was follow.
The wind lashed her, and the blowing sand slapped her with callused intensity. Rorie squinted into the storm. She could hardly see Graceland at all. And Wyetta stood next to her, but she looked like a ghost. Suddenly, Rorie worried that the storm would tear Wyetta apart and the wind would steal her away.
“You see Komoko’s car?” Wyetta yelled.
“No.” Rorie answered. “You think he saw us? You think he heard the siren?”
“I don’t think he could have seen anything in this goddamn bliz—”
Wyetta’s words died in her throat. Just ahead, twin fireballs raced through the storm—a pair of headlights coming straight for them.
Rorie hit the dirt and rolled through a tangle of stunted mesquite. Wyetta held her ground, opening fire with her .44 American.
One of the fireballs died. The other stopped moving as Wyetta squeezed off her last shot.
Rorie couldn’t believe that Wyetta had actually hit the driver, not in this concrete wind. But the surviving headlight remained motionless, and there was no arguing with that.
Rorie stood and drew her pistol. Wyetta was suddenly at her side, reloading her .44.
The wind tore at them.
They both knew what they had to do.
Together, they raced toward the light, firing their weapons but hearing nothing more than the angry scream of the concrete blizzard.
The car was empty.
Wyetta dipped her head inside.
“He took the keys,” she yelled.
“No he didn’t.” Rorie stood at the rear of the car. The keys were in the trunk. And the trunk was open.
Wyetta swore. “He’s got the money. He’s rabbiting.”
Once more, they reloaded their guns. Rorie’s fingers wouldn’t move right. She gave up with only five shells in the clip, jammed it into the butt of her automatic. The crash, the storm, the gunshots . . . she was numb. Colder than she’d ever been in her life. She felt dead, and the wind was shoveling dirt over her, a boot hill of dirt blowing out of the night sky.
She didn’t want to go anywhere. She just wanted to stand there in the storm, and take it, and wait for it to finish her off.
But Wyetta was moving. “This way,” she yelled. “He’s gotta be heading back to Graceland. It’s the only shelter for miles.”
Rorie sucked a deep breath and tasted that boot hill dirt on her tongue.
She swallowed hard.
If she didn’t move, she’d lose Wyetta in the concrete night.
She moved.
***
They stood by the grave. A warm breath of wind washed Rorie’s forehead. Tonight it was so very quiet. Almost peaceful.
“It has to be here,” Wyetta said. God, but she couldn’t seem to shut up. “Wyatt spelled it out on the Ouija board. EAP . . . TCB.”
She pointed at the big bronze marker. Rorie stared at it. The grave of Elvis Aron Presley. EAP. His personal motto stood out in stark relief at the bottom. TCB, with a lightning bolt sprouting from the C. And any fool knew that TCB stood for takin’ care of business.
EAP . . . TCB. Rorie wondered if the Ouija board had really spelled out those letters for Wyetta. She decided that it really didn’t matter. Even if the board had spelled out the message, the fingers on the heart-shaped cedar planchette belonged to Wyetta, and Wyetta already knew about the grave marker, which was a twin to the marker at the real Graceland. The message could be nothing more than a trick of the sheriff’s subconscious mind.
“Damn!” Wyetta said. “Check this out, cowgirl!”
Wyetta was kneeling at the bottom corner of the marker. She slipped one Annie Oakley-gloved hand into a hole. Elbow deep, then further.
“Maybe it’s only some jackrabbit’s burrow.”
“Looks a little bit wide for that.” Wyetta grunted. “But it doesn’t matter if it is. Komoko could have jammed the money into it during the storm. Damn hole probably filled up with sand that night, anyway. Maybe the storm buried his loot for him.”
Rorie could see that Wyetta was probably right about that last part. Fresh sand was heaped around the edge of the hole. Maybe the storm had filled it up.
If that was true, someone else had already emptied it.
Or some thing. Rorie wondered if a Gila monster waited in the rabbit hole. Those nasty suckers sometimes took over other animal’s burrows, and they were dangerous, venomous . . .
“Be careful,” Rorie warned. “You don’t know what the hell’s down there.”
Wyetta’s eyes gleamed. “Yes I do.”
Her arm traveled deeper. Almost up to the shoulder. “Whatever made this hole did a damn good job—practically hollowed out the area under the marker. Damn. I wish my arm was longer . . .”
Rorie stared at the fresh dirt heaped around the hole. She spotted a boot print pressed in the soft sand. The pattern wasn’t anything like Wyetta’s Noconas, or the Tony Lamas Rorie was wearing. The print didn’t look like one of Ellis’s motorcycle boots, either.
“The money isn’t here, Wyetta.”
“Hold your horses, cowgirl. It’s got to be here. Maybe Komoko shoved it in real good with a branch or something. Maybe what we need to do is get a truck with a winch on it. Haul this goddamn hunk of bronze out of the way and—”
Rumbling thunder slapped the sheriff’s words.
Rorie looked to the heavens.
Nothing there but blue sky.
Again the thunder. Only this time she recognized it as a shotgun blast.
Maybe a mile away. Maybe not that far.
Maybe as close as Priscilla’s trailer.
***
Wyetta pulled to a stop in a tangle of brush surrounded by cottonwoods. She drew her pistol and stepped out of the Jeep. Rorie did the same.
Fifty feet of scrub separated them from the trailer. Ellis’s scab-colored Caddy was parked in front, but Rorie didn’t see any other cars. Of course, it would be easy enough to hide one in the brush. She kept her eyes peeled for Baddalach’s Range Rover or Benteen’s Dodge Dakota. The Range Rover was new, metallic blue. It would be easy to spot. Benteen’s truck would be tougher—painted a dry-twig beige, with rust spots, it could blend in pretty easy.
Wyetta flashed a hand-signal. The two women parted, advancing on the trailer from different angles.
They were getting real close now.
Rorie stepped over a net of twigs. Middle-of-nowhere quiet out here. The least little sound was magnified a hundred times. The way the shotgun blast had been. The way—
A loud voice came from the trailer, “I'LL TELL YOU ANYTHING YOU WANT . . . BUT YOU HAVE TO GET ME OUT OF HERE.”
Rorie stopped dead in her tracks. She glanced to the right and saw Wyetta frozen the same way. Because it was Priscilla’s voice they’d heard. And it was so loud. And Priscilla never raised her voice at all, not even when—
"I'LL DO MY BEST. THAT’S ALL I CAN PROMISE.”
Rorie had only talked to Jack Baddalach twice. Still, she was sure that the second voice belonged to him.
But why was he yelling?
"THAT'S NOT GOOD ENOUGH,” Priscilla said, “I CAN'T STAND IT HERE. NOT ANOTHER MINUTE. NOT WITH THAT SON OF A BITCH I'M MARRIED TO. IF YOU WANT TO KNOW WHAT HAPPENED TO KOMOKO, YOU HAVE TO GET ME OUT OF HERE. EITHER THAT, OR YOU’VE GOT TO KILL HIM FOR ME.”
Rorie was shaking. Priscilla’s voice was so cold. And it sounded like a whisper. But it was the loudest whisper she had ever heard.
Something square and black ripped through the trailer’s screen door. Rorie brought her pistol up. Out of the comer of her eye she saw Wyetta mimic the action.
The black thing kicked up dust as it landed between them.
It was a boom box. And it was notched to full volume.
“I DIDN'T COME HERE TO KILL ANYONE,” Baddalach said.
“THEN YOU'LL NEVER FIND OUT WHAT HAPPENED TO VINCE KOMOKO,” Priscilla replied.
Rorie aimed her pistol at the boom box. She knew it was crazy. She knew the stereo couldn’t hurt her, but she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off of it.
Baddalach said, “OKAY . . . MAYBE I CAN HELP YOU GET OUT OF PIPELINE BEACH. I’VE GOT FRIENDS IN VEGAS, AND IF YOU HELP US OUT . . .”
The screen door exploded off its hinges. Ellis came down the stairs, running for all he was worth, and there was a shotgun in his hands, and he pulled the trigger and pumped, pulled the trigger and pumped, until there wasn’t enough boom box left to make a transistor radio.
He dropped the gun in the dust and stared at the stereo’s guts. That patented Presley sneer crept across his face, and he swaggered up to the wrecked boom box and gave it a kick.
He was wearing black leather pants and that black leather jacket he was so proud of. But Rorie could see that something was wrong with the jacket. It was wet. Slick and shiny.
It was . . . spattered with blood.
Fresh blood.
For a second, Rorie thought that Ellis had been shot.
Only for a second, though.
Ellis finally noticed her. He glanced at Wyetta and his sneer disappeared. But the big artery on the left side of his neck thudded away, pumping blood beneath a blanket of scar tissue.
To Rorie, that artery looked like the devil’s own tail.
Ellis’s eyes burned a hole straight through her, because he could see well enough what she was looking at. He slapped that thing that looked like a microphone against his throat, "YOUR BITCH OF A . . . SISTER IS INSIDE . . . YOU CAN HAVE WHAT’S LEFT OF . . . HER I BLEW THE CUNT RIGHT OUT OF HER PANTS BUT SHE DESERVED WHAT SHE . . . GOT AND--"
***
It was getting darker now. Rorie knew they shouldn’t just stand around. But she didn’t know what else to do.
Rorie hadn’t looked in the trailer. Wyetta had checked for her. And Wyetta said that Priscilla was dead and there wasn’t a chance in hell that she could have felt any pain, so Rorie knew it must have come quick, and it must have been bad. Her sister was dead.
