Norman Partridge - Saguaro Riptide

Big Titties said, “Scratch a Saad Muhammad, find a Jefferson.”

Woody wanted to laugh so bad he almost pissed himself. These bitches were sure enough his kind of folks.

But he had to keep a straight face so he could get this shit over with. “Mostly I use my old name for business,” he explained. “Sometimes it makes things easier. Especially when I’m on the road. You’d be surprised-ain’t everybody as enlightened as y’all.”

The Valkyrie sat down on the bed, picked up the shoulder holster. “By the way. Woody, just what is your business?”

“I’m in ladies’ gun belts.” Woody laughed. “I’d give you gals a free sample, but the motherfucker who robbed me stole my sample case.”

The women laughed and shook their heads.

“Looks like we’ve got us a real comedian on our hands,” the Valkyrie said.

“Looks like,” Big Titties put in.

Woody kept quiet.

“What can you tell us about the man who beat you up?” the Valkyrie asked.

Woody stared at her tits, at the long blond braid draped over her right shoulder like a whip. If the opportunity arose, and he kind of hoped it might, he was really going to enjoy chilling this bitch.

Shit. Down in his pants, Little Woody was getting real hard.

He hoped the Valkyrie could see that.

If only he had the monk’s pistol. .

A grin twitched at the comers of the woman’s painted mouth. A lipstick grin the color of blood.

“Answer my goddamned question,” the Valkyrie said. “What can you tell us about the guy who kicked your ass?”

Woody tried to stare her down.

He blinked first.

Shit.

“Don’t you get it?” Big Titties said. “We’re way past done fucking around with you.”

“It’s like this,” the Valkyrie explained, “if you don’t give us an answer right now, we’ll hurt you so bad your relatives in Africa will feel the pain.”

Woody’s anger boiled. No bitch was going to talk to him like that. “I’ll tell you this much about the bastard who jumped me-he’s a dead man.”

“You don’t have to tell me a goddamned thing,” the Valkyrie said. “Whatever scam you’re trying to run, you might as well drop it here and now, because you aren’t half as smart as you think you are. Calling us up and telling us Vince Komoko robbed you, when I know the son of a bitch is dead. That isn’t news to me, idiot. I know he’s dead because I killed his ass. And if you don’t want to end up the same way, I suggest you get the hell out of my town.”

Big Titties said, “We don’t mean tomorrow or the next day.”

“We mean before sundown,” the Valkyrie said.

Baddalach stared at the directions he’d scrawled on a piece of motel stationery. Komoko’s woman had said she’d meet him at eight A.M. sharp. He was supposed to look for a double-wide trailer with a pink Caddy parked out front on the west side of the highway, then take the next dirt road heading east.

As it turned out, one was right on top of the other. Jack hit the brakes and swung the wheel hard to avoid missing the turn. The Saturn lurched through it like a man having a heart attack, and then Jack was on the dirt road.

Which was not in what you’d call good repair. There were potholes aplenty. Jack hit damn near every one of them, and about a quarter mile down the road he hit the granddaddy of them all.

The steering wheel seemed to explode. A giant marshmallow appeared out of nowhere and attempted to smother him.

A goddamn air bag. It didn’t do much to protect him-the only purpose it served was to muffle his curses.

And blind him. Jack couldn’t see a thing.

But he didn’t need to see to slam the brake pedal to the floor.

Once more, the Saturn had a heart attack.

This time, it died.

The air bag deflated like a whoopee cushion that had done its duty and done it well.

The car had come to a stop sideways on the road. Jack stared through the windshield. Nothing but saguaro and rocks and brush, all under a morning sky the color of deep water.

There wasn’t one cloud in the sky.

But thunder boomed in the distance.

A bloody vulture landed hard on the Saturn’s hood, flapped around for a second or two, then squawked its last.

Jack rolled down the driver’s door window.

The road stretched for another quarter mile.

A big old southern plantation-style mansion loomed at the end of it.

Elvis Presley was halfway between the mansion and the Saturn. He held a smoking shotgun in his hands, and he was coming in Jack’s direction.

His pace was brisk.

Jack Baddalach didn’t know much about shotguns.

He knew something about Elvis, though. And the faux Elvis who was coming toward him with shotgun in hand represented the King at his peak as far as Baddalach was concerned. Not the Hillbilly Cat who’d shaken things up in the fifties, not the doughboy who’d given jumpsuits a bad name in the seventies, and certainly not the guy who’d staggered through all those bad movies in the sixties-the incarnation Jack always thought of as Elvis Lite.

No, the man with the shotgun was Elvis starved to perfection and tanned like a god who had stepped down from Mount Olympus, sheathed in black leather, motorcycle boots kicking up pale dust devils that swirled in the morning breeze. Pure ’68 Comeback Special. Jack almost expected the guy to snatch up a microphone and start singing “Guitar Man” or something.

But the man with the shotgun didn’t start singing. He jacked a fresh shell into the chamber and advanced on the Saturn. Not too fast, not too slow, with a little Jailhouse Rock smirk simmering on his face and just enough glide in his stride to let Jack know that he was way past frosty.

It was a picture, all right. Jack couldn’t blink, let alone look away. The scene was so hideously unreal that Jack was strangely mesmerized, as if he were staring down an exotic and particularly deadly snake.

Jack knew how you ended up if you tried to do something as stupid as that. With some difficulty, he forced himself to look away.

At the passenger seat. At the hit man’s pistol.

Jack reached for it, then realized that the damn thing was useless to him. He had never fired a pistol in his life. He didn’t know how to chamber a round, or how to cock the thing, or even if you had to cock it.

Maybe all you had to do was pull the trigger. .

But maybes could get you killed.

The shotgun thundered. Jack hit the deck just as the windshield shattered, and a heavy blanket of safety glass slapped his backside.

The peppery scent of gunpowder drifted through the air. Lying sideways on the seat. Jack reached up and keyed the engine. It cranked, almost caught. Then the shotgun barked again, and the sound of the front tire exploding rode the gun’s report like an echo.

Jack experienced a sinking feeling both literal and metaphorical. He took his hand off the key just that quick and came up off the seat real slow, hands up.

Elvis’s smirk was riding a little higher now, just on one side of his mouth, revealing teeth that gleamed in the morning sun. So white they had to be capped, with an incisor that was just this side of feral.

One-handed, Elvis eased the shotgun over his shoulder. For a second Jack thought that the King was going to switch gears and recreate the unforgettable James Dean Christ-on-a-cross-with-Winchester pose from Giant.

But no. That wasn’t Elvis’s plan at all. His eyes narrowed, and his free hand drifted into his pocket.

Emerging a moment later with a gleaming silver microphone.

Jesus. Jack almost laughed but ultimately didn’t, because just moments ago he’d come face-to-face with his ignorance concerning firearms. Maybe this was some crazy kind of pistol with a silencer-spy stuff-like something out of a James Bond movie.