Norman Partridge - Saguaro Riptide

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 amp; 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.