Saguaro Riptide, page 4
People of earth, look to your skies for a warning . . . People of earth, look to your skies for a warning.
Woodrow took a deep breath and held it, thinking, If the fools only knew.
Woodrow knew what waited above, in the heavens, because he had studied the teachings of Master Wallace Fard.
Far above the bloodstained towers of compacted sand, somewhere out there in the black silence of space, was a space platform one-half mile wide, designed by Allah himself and built by Master Fard. Known as the Mother of All Planes, it was armed with bombs that would be dropped a mile deep into the earth when Armageddon came. The platform was capable of speeds up to 18,000 miles per hour, but it could stop on a speck of cosmic dust.
Such was its magnificence.
Such was the genius of Allah.
Aboard were a crew of men who never smiled. They traveled the universe—passing over earth twice a week— waiting for the moment when mankind’s guilt reached the ultimate crescendo.
That was when the bombs would rain down. It was written that 154,000 Muslims would survive the explosions. They would be warned of the coming holocaust eight to ten days before the bombs were launched. The men who did not smile would drop pamphlets written in Arabic from the platform, instructing the faithful where to find safe haven from the bombs.
The story fascinated Woodrow from the first time he heard it. On the strength of it, he learned to read Arabic in prison, so that he could decipher the warning of the men who did not smile when it came. It was one of many self-improvement projects he undertook and mastered. As the old cons said, He didn’t serve his time; he made his time serve him.
And now he watched the sky. He had never seen the Mother of All Planes, but that simple fact did not prevent him looking for it.
Tonight the heavens seemed dead. No comets appeared. No meteor showers rained down from on high. Not even a falling star.
And no space platform. Not tonight.
Still, Woodrow looked to the sky for a warning, patience his watchword.
He searched for a great light moving through the sky.
Or a pamphlet written in Arabic, drifting through the cold silence of space, born to earth by a warm desert breeze.
Woodrow Saad Muhammad knew that he would not have to reach for the pamphlet when it came. It would tumble, ever so gently, into his waiting fingers.
Woodrow was certain of this, for he understood the men on Master Fard’s platform, the men who never smiled.
And he knew that those men understood him, as well.
***
Three minutes past the appointed time, the phone rang.
Woodrow lifted the receiver. “Yes?”
“Ith thith Wood-woe?"
Woodrow hesitated for a moment. Then he remembered the injury suffered by the man to whom he was speaking. The explanation was obvious—losing a quarter-inch of tongue would certainly impair one’s speech.
“Wood-woe?" the boxing promoter repeated. “You heaw me?”
“Yes.”
“I would wike you to go ahead. The thon-of-a bitthis' name ith Baddawack.”
“I’m familiar with the man.”
“Wemember thith, Wood-woe—make the bathtard thuffer."
“It will be done.”
Woodrow cradled the receiver.
He was annoyed to find that a smile had crossed his face.
A smile not unlike the one once worn by Woody Jefferson.
Woodrow slapped himself, very hard, and only once.
And then he wasn’t smiling anymore.
WHEN JACK AWOKE THE NEXT MORNING, HE COULDN’T QUITE REMEMBER WHERE HE WAS. He knew he was in a motel room in Tucson and that the coroner’s slab of a bed he’d slept on had made him dream about Magic Fingers machines, but he decided pretty directly that he really didn’t need to know a hell of a lot beyond that because he wasn’t long for this bed, this motel, or Tucson itself.
He opened the little refrigerator by the TV, pawing through the expensive goods therein until he found a beer. He rolled the bottle back and forth between his hands until his knuckles loosened up.
When he returned the beer to the fridge, he noticed that the message light was flashing on the telephone. Deciphering the instructions printed on the face of the phone was kind of like getting through something by Camus, but Jack managed to figure it out. He punched three digits and was connected with the front desk. A woman with an impossibly pleasant voice informed him that a FedEx Letter had arrived from Vegas. Jack said send it up.
Minutes later, the bellman arrived with an envelope. This he gave to Jack, and then he hovered. Jack handed over a dollar and closed the door before the guy had a chance to ask for his autograph or tell him that he looked bigger on television.
He sat down on the concrete bed and tore open the envelope.
A little hunk of plastic fell out.
Corporate plastic.
***
Jack hadn’t had time to pack before leaving Vegas. He bought the essentials in the hotel gift shop. A disposable razor, some shaving cream, a toothbrush, and toothpaste. Old Spice was the only pit-stick available. Jack knew that it would make him smell like someone’s grandpa, but it was better than nothing.
A couple of things he couldn’t find. He asked the little blue-rinsed lady behind the counter if she stocked jockey shorts and socks, and she informed him that she did not in a tone that made him feel like he’d better run right out and perform an act of contrition or something.
He needed a clean shirt, too, and he could see without asking that the little lady stocked a somewhat limited assortment. The shirts on display were silk, kind of classy. The material anyway. As for patterns, Jack had his choice of horseshoes, bucking broncos, mesas, or cacti. He chose the latter, figuring that subliminally it would make him seem more intimidating once he caught up with Vince Komoko.
If he caught up with Vince Komoko.
If Vince Komoko was still alive.
And if Vince Komoko could be intimidated by a guy whose face had quite recently looked like several pounds of raw hamburger.
Jack shook his head. Those and many more ifs were out there in front of him somewhere, but there was no sense thinking about them right now.
He piled the merchandise on the counter. The blue-rinsed lady sniffed over said merchandise as she rang it up.
At the last moment Jack noticed a pair of tweezers on a little display rack and added them to the pile.
He glanced at the price tag. Eight ninety-five for a pair of fucking tweezers.
Jesus, that was crazy.
Jack handed over his corporate plastic.
***
Back in the room. Jack checked his shorts and was heartened to find that they were free of skid marks. Then he got cleaned up, after which he dressed and stowed everything except the tweezers in one of the plastic bags that the motel provided for wet swimming trunks. Not the most elegant luggage. But, then again. Jack was a guy going off to face the world in dirty underwear and soiled socks.
In the mellow glow of the bathroom light, the Elephant Man could have convinced himself that he was Brad Pitt’s twin brother. Translation: the light was unsuitable for Jack’s purposes. He unplugged the nightstand lamp, removed the shade, and plugged it in next to the bathroom mirror. He still felt like he was in a cave, but there wasn’t much else he could do about it.
Jack looked himself over. His face was pretty much free of swelling, and the bruises had faded. But there were those goddamn stitches, jutting under his eyebrows like the thick hairs on a sewer rat’s tail.
Jack’s fingers traveled his forehead, kind of sneaking up on his eyebrows. Then they blitzkrieged, squeezing the stitched flesh tentatively at first, and then not so gently.
Nothing busted open. The new scar tissue held tough.
Jack chuckled. “And Freddy G said your skin was shot. Said you were all washed up. You’re in your prime, laddie. They’ll need a silver bullet to stop you.”
He grabbed the tweezers and went to work.
That was when Jack remembered that he’d left Frankenstein all alone in his condo back in Vegas.
Damn. More unfinished business. He’d have to find someone to feed the monster while he was gone.
JOHNNY DA NANG LIKED ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE, BUT HE ESPECIALLY LIKED BIG BLONDS WHO COULD SUCK THE CHROME OFF A TRAILER HITCH.
He had one of ’em right now. Down there between his legs, every bit of her mojo workin’ over every inch of his. Johnny leaned back in the Corvette bucket that fit all five foot flat of him like a glove. He stared across the parking lot, through the palm trees, at the rising sun beyond the Luxor pyramid. Sly Stone let loose a screech on the ’vette’s primo sound system. Johnny matched it and the blond’s beaucoup backside shimmied in delight.
Viva Las Vegas. Can you dig it?
Johnny certainly could. He and the blond had left the Casbah Hotel & Casino just past six in the a.m. Johnny’s band had a gig there playing soul sounds from the sixties and seventies, which in Johnny Da Nang’s opinion just happened to be the finest sounds on the planet. Well, if you excluded The Fifth Dimension. There was way too much vanilla in that band’s sound for Johnny’s taste, thank you very much.
Johnny was the lead singer and hence the busiest fuck in the group. Damn but the women seemed to go for a Vietnamese boy who could sound like Al Green one minute and Smokey Robinson the next.
Even if he was five foot flat.
In dollars it wasn’t the greatest gig. No cakewalk either— one set after a fuckin’ ’nother, maybe a ten-minute break in between if he was lucky, just time enough for a thimble-sized Stoli over ice at the bar, then back at it, singin’ “ABC” and moonwalkin’ like Michael when he used to be black. Sure it was a tough gig. But a band had to start somewhere, didn’t it?
Johnny Da Nang and the Napalms were starting in the land of the five-dollar slot. The Napalms were Johnny’s brothers and there were four of them, all older than Johnny. Together they worked a small room with a two-drink minimum, and they put the butts in the buckets. Hired ostensibly to lubricate the plentiful but notoriously penny-ante Asian gamblers from LA, Johnny and his boys also drew a sizable crowd of brothers who’d survived the bottomside of the ’Nam experience and wanted to get all nostalgic about their last R&R in Saigon. Wow, they’d get drunk and collar Johnny at the bar while he was sucking down a Stoli, buy him drinks he could have gotten for free and tell him how much they missed that mama-san who gave them their very first case of the clap.
Roger that. Show business surely had its downside. Johnny had heard it all before, but he always listened because . . . wow, you never knew, you know? Maybe one of the brothers would turn out to be Quincy Jones’s cousin or something, and Johnny and his boys would put the move to the groove, end up with Quincy as their producer, tunes in heavy rotation on MTV, the whole enchilada.
Hey, it could happen, couldn’t it?
Still, it took some serious patience to listen to the brothers go on about the ’Nam. Hey, Johnny had been born in Saigon. And he had to admit that the brothers weren’t really his favorite people, because he’d spent most of his youth in South Central LA, and a good bit of that time he’d been the designated neighborhood punching bag. Johnny much preferred spending time with blonds. The big ones. The ones with two-seat buckets and mouths that put the baddest Dirt Devil to shame.
Hey, it wasn’t that he was racist or sexist. It was just his own personal voice of experience talking. And that voice said, Johnny, not one blond—no matter how big—has ever beat you up.
Can you dig it?
Johnny could and currently was. He and the blond had been heading for his condo, but she just couldn’t seem to wait and neither could he. Wow, it happened every time he closed the show with “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” The way Johnny dug down into that one, the ladies just ate it up. Nail it, not a dry pair of panties in the house. Outta sight and all right.
He’d sure ’nough come a long, long way from South Central. Wow, he could remember his first days in America, six years old in a schoolhouse full of black faces, trying to string those damn vowels and consonants together in the right way so he’d sound like everyone else. No one at home to help him because his old man, an ARVN colonel, was trying to put the muscle to the hustle on the streets of LA and didn’t give a damn how anyone talked.
When it came to conversation, the colonel was concerned with only two things—volume and intensity.
Johnny had to hand it to the old man. The colonel had left Saigon with his family and an entire division’s monthly payroll. He’d used the money to buy several neighborhood markets in South Central and put a kickass corps of transplanted Montagnard scouts in charge.
He made a half-assed living doing that. With the invention of the VCR the colonel moved into the electronics business, renting players and TV sets by the month. By that time he’d done some recruiting of his own “in country,” appreciating the fact that he was drawing on the native population of South Central the same way the Americans had drawn on the South Vietnamese. Most of the guys he hired were at loose ends since coming home to the ’hood—they needed that military discipline in their lives, and the colonel gave it to them.
The colonel forged an elite corps of repo men from former badasses who’d done tours as LURPs and worse in ’Nam. Get behind on your payments to the colonel, those bastards showed no mercy. They’d repossess the TV, the VCR, and take any damn thing that wasn’t nailed down to sweeten the pot. You complain, suddenly your dog’s dead and the repo men are out back cookin’ it up on the barbecue. You call your brother in the Crips, your cousin in the Bloods, suddenly you’ve got a telephone cord wrapped around your neck and that percussive sound you hear is fists rat-tat-tatting on your face while your white and pearlies rain down on the floor.
Yeah. Colonel Da Nang was one bad-mother-shut-your-mouth. Isaac Hayes would have said so himself.
It was funny how the whole music thing happened. One day Alonzo the LURP—a big bald Earnie Shavers lookin’ bro who’d lost an ear to some honkies at Fort Bragg but hadn’t received one scratch in ’Nam—anyway, Alonzo goes after a cokehead musician who’s three months behind on a big-screen TV. Turns out that the cokehead had shot out the TV, which didn’t make Alonzo very happy. So to smooth things out the cokehead offers Alonzo his guitar. Pretty good for openers, but Alonzo, he’s a born negotiator.
That night Alonzo shows up on the colonel’s doorstep with a truckload of amps and guitars and drums. The colonel says. We sell this stuff easy. But Johnny’s mama, she says. We keep it. Why the fuck we do that? the Colonel wants to know. You got five sons, his wife says. Jackson Five make big money.
So, in the tradition of Joe Jackson (the psycho paterfamilias of the Jackson clan). Colonel Da Nang locked his boys in the garage until they could play. Well, that wasn’t exactly right. He did let them out to eat and piss and shit, but that was about it. And while they hadn’t gotten anywhere close to that Jackson Five money in the seven years they’d been playing professionally, they were doing all right for a pack of twenty-somethings. Living in Vegas . . . making good money . . . gauging what exactly was what on life’s experience-o-meter, if you wanted to get philosophical about it.
And they were making music, too. You could bet your last money it’d be a stone gas honey, and it was. The music was the heart of it as far as Johnny was concerned. Because when push came to shove Johnny didn’t really care about the money. Only the colonel cared about that. Johnny cared about The Temptations and The Four Tops and Otis Redding and Little Milton. He didn’t want to end up like the old man, owning a repo man empire and telling stories about how his troops had busted the kneecaps of half the Lakers’ retired players and shit like that. Who needed it?
All Johnny needed was his music and a big blond now and then.
And friends. Friends were good. You helped them and they helped you and you never had to beat anyone up or break any arms to get what you wanted. Hell, the more people you knew, the more people who’d buy your CD when you finally got a recording contract. And Johnny Da Nang knew a hell of a lot of people. He had made good friends in Vegas. He knew most of the tenants in the condo complex where he lived. Some of them were crooks, sure, but what the hell. Johnny’s old man was a crook. And there wasn’t any law against crooks buying CDs or concert tickets. Johnny didn’t walk around with his nose in the air. He was a people person. Wow, what was the use of being alone?
Johnny leaned back and settled in, enjoying life, celebrating the fact that he was hardly ever alone. He watched the morning sun tip the point of the Luxor pyramid. Ran his fingers through the big blond’s long hair, let his hands settle down around that big caboose and gave it a good squeeze.
“Un-guh,” said the blond.
“Baby,” Johnny said, “I second that emotion.”
***
Afterward the only classy thing to do was buy the blonde breakfast at the Luxor. Most guys wouldn’t bother with that, especially when they found out that the blonde was in town for a three-day dental hygienists’ convention and had a flight out later in the afternoon. But Johnny didn’t like to hurt anyone’s feelings, especially when that anyone was a blond who gave good head. Besides, his oldest brother’s girlfriend was a waitress at the Luxor. If she was on duty (which she was), Johnny wouldn’t even see the bill.
Hey. That’s what friends were for, right?
So they were eating lox and bagels in Cleopatra’s Barge, which was a little restaurant next to a faux Nile, and Johnny was sure that the whole experience made the blond feel very continental because she was from Iowa and Johnny figured that, forget the Nile, lox and bagels were probably a pretty rare commodity in the land of Ma & Pa Corncob. But he didn’t say anything about it because he wasn’t sure about the blond’s sense of humor and didn’t want her to get the idea that he was being mean.
