do I?”
“Honest, Johnny. Frankie’s all healed up. You can’t even see the scars anymore.”
“Okay, but-”
“Great,” Baddalach said. “Thanks a bunch, buddy. You’ve still got the key from last time, right?”
“Yeah. Sure.”
“Get my mail too?”
“Sure.”
“Great. Hey, I guess I’d better go-”
“Wait a minute. Where can I get a hold of you? In case there’s an emergency or something?”
“Hold on,” Baddalach said. “I got an ashtray here from the place I’ll be staying. It’s called the Saguaro Riptide Motel. You got a pencil? I’ll give you the phone number.”
“You’re telling me you picked your motel from an ashtray?”
“It's a long story, Johnny.”
“Most people use a travel agent.”
Baddalach laughed at that one, and Johnny felt a little better. Then the boxer gave him the specifics, and he scrawled a phone number on a note pad, along with Jack’s name and the name of the motel.
They said their good-byes. Johnny cradled the receiver, dug through a drawer that contained spare keys for nearly half the condos in the complex until he found the key to the boxer’s pad.
Johnny stared at the key.
One of these days Jack Baddalach was going to be buying a whole shitload of Johnny Da Nang and the Napalms CDs.
THREE
JACK CHECKED OUT OF THE MOTEL. The front desk arranged a rental car, and someone brought it around. Jack wondered if he could use his corporate plastic for tips, but it seemed like that might get kind of complicated. Still, he was feeling kind of generous-he traded the kid two bucks for the keys.
The rental was a Range Rover. It didn’t make any of the noises Jack’s Celica made, and the plastic interior smelled like a brand new rubber duck that had just paddled off the production line, and the dash was lined with a mystifying array of gauges that Jack blissfully ignored.
He stopped off and grabbed a couple Sourdough Breakfast Sandwiches and two large coffees at the local Jack in the Box restaurant. Figured he might as well have a couple hash browns, too. Breakfast of champions, as far as Jack Baddalach was concerned. Then he hit the highway, taking 10 east.
Pedal to the metal. The Rover moved, all right, and the gauges hung firm. Nothing smoked and nothing rattled.
Jack ate and drove. Along the way he saw plenty of sand, plenty of saguaro cacti.
He took a cutoff and headed south. Saw more of the same. Looked for something mellow on the radio, but all he could find was Johnny Rivers singing “Secret Agent Man” on an oldies station out of Tucson.
Jack turned off the radio just as Johnny got to the part about dying in a Bombay alley.
He started to feel a little uncomfortable.
Mostly, he wished he hadn’t had that second cup of coffee. He pulled over and pissed behind a towering cactus, wondering what the blue-rinsed lady at the motel gift shop would make of that.
About thirty minutes later, he hit Pipeline Beach.
First impression? Plenty of beach, all right.
The first store Jack spotted was actually called the Pipeline Beach Five-and-Dime. He pulled into the parking lot thinking,
That assessment wasn’t far off the mark. As Jack entered the store, he came face to face with a portly man who hovered over the shopping carts. The guy’s ID badge said:
OF COURSE YOU CAN ASK ME!
JERRY CALDWELL
MANAGER
Caldwell grinned. “Help you find anything?”
“I’ll make out,” Jack said.
The guy didn’t give up so easily. “Get you a cart?”
“Nope.”
The fat man seemed to deflate, but his smile hung tough. Jack figured Jerry Caldwell had probably been to a sales seminar that emphasized cheeriness or something. Either that, or there was an empty pod under his bed a la
Jack moved down the aisles, searching for socks and underwear. There was only one other customer in the store, and Jack felt like he was on display. Especially when he glanced back at Jerry Caldwell. The manager stood whispering to the lone clerk-a geriatric desert rat dripping turquoise-and-silver jewelry. Caldwell didn’t take his eyes off of Jack. His piggy lips held onto that sales seminar grin like it was a pet snake that had taken up residence on his face.
The menswear section amounted to half an aisle. Mostly, the selection consisted of T-shirts featuring slogans that might seem witty after the third six-pack of Bud. Jack avoided these. Instead, he grabbed a 3-pack of white T- shirts. To this he added a three-pack of jockey shorts and a four-pack of white athletic socks.
You never could come out even in such matters. Jack figured some corporate jockey had conducted a marketing survey, figured out just how many shirts and jockeys and socks to put in a pack so people would buy two instead of one. Jack was tempted to take an extra pack of each, but he didn’t like the idea of some marketing exec getting one up on him. Hopefully three days would cover it. Maybe he’d get lucky-find Komoko right off, today, and get out of town tomorrow.
Yeah. Maybe not.
The liquor case stood against the back wall. Jack grabbed a six-pack of Molson. He was headed for the check-stand when he took a deep breath and caught that sour, limey Old Spice scent.
One more detour. Jack went in search of the pit-stick aisle.
The store’s other customer was there, too. He guessed that she was in her late twenties, and though she was definitely on the small side, she wasn’t what you’d call
She reached for a stick of unscented deodorant, and Jack did the same. He glanced at her basket and saw that she was buying some of the same things he’d purchased in Tucson-a toothbrush and toothpaste, to which she’d added a few feminine items including some lipstick. She caught him looking and reciprocated, checking out the items he was buying, and though he couldn’t see her eyes behind the glasses, he noticed that her eyebrows made a curious little trip from the top of her shades to the bottom of the dark auburn bangs that covered her forehead like a curtain.
She smiled wryly, nodding toward Jerry Caldwell. “Real helpful, isn’t he?”
“You got that right.”
They stood like that for a second, as if they were both waiting for more. Then she kind of shrugged, turning away, and Jack did the same.
The geriatric checkout girl was waiting for him, her wrists weighed down with enough turquoise-and-silver
