Saguaro Riptide

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.

FOUR

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.

No. It wasn’t a weapon. Jack could see that now. But it wasn’t a microphone, either.

Because Elvis didn’t hold it to his mouth. He raised his chin just a notch and lay the thing against a section of throat crisscrossed with scars that were as thick as pencils, as angry-pink and blood-purple as the heart of a rare steak.

The scars wriggled into a knot, and a reptilian smirk squirmed molasses-slow on Elvis’s perfect face. But his eyes were as cold as graveyard dirt as he opened his mouth and thumbed a button on the side of the silver rod.

Jack shivered. Elvis’s voice sounded like a cross between the Robot from Lost in Space and a can opener with stripped gears.

He said, “If. . you’re looking for. . trouble. . you came. . to the right. . place. .”

Jack didn’t move quickly, but he did move. No way was he going to touch the hit man’s gun, but he did manage to pocket Woodrow Saad Muhammad’s wallet as he eased out of the Saturn.

Jack closed the car door and Elvis backed up a couple of steps, maintaining a distance of six or seven feet. Even if Jack Baddalach had had moves like Sugar Ray Sattler, there was no way he could close a gap like that and not come out looking like a butchered side of beef.

So he held up his hands and shrugged. “Man, you got me shakin’ like a leaf on a fuzzy tree.”

Elvis’s smirk slithered higher, “What. . brings you ‘round. . here boy?”

Jack didn’t answer. Elvis brought the shotgun off his shoulder. Aimed it one-handed, still holding the microphone thing to his throat with the other. If Jack could get to him, it wouldn’t take much to knock the gun aside.

Jack took a step forward.

Elvis took a step back.

'You. . stay offa my blue. . suede shoes boy. . and answer my God. . damned question what. . are you doing. . 'round here?'

Jack pointed at a weather-beaten sign posted near the highway. The one that went some distance toward explaining the situation. The one that read:

FUTURE HOME OF ELVIS PRESLEY MUSEUM AND MEMORIAL MINIATURE GOLF COURSE

“I’m a miniature golfer from way back,” Jack said. “Never miss a chance to get in eighteen holes before breakfast. I’m hell on those windmills, especially.” He shaded his eyes, glancing over Elvis’s shoulder. “I don’t see any windmill here, though. You do have windmills, don’t you?”

“We don't got. . no stinking windmills and. . don't you fuck with me boy. . I know why. . you’re here you're here to chop. . my beef you’re here to. . put the pork to my woman. . and I'm. . here to fix your God. . damned wagon for you you’ll be. . picking your bloody balls off a. . cactus spike if you cross me. . boy. .”

Jack backed up. The scars on Elvis’s neck wriggled like a fistful of bloodworms. His upper lip twitched uncontrollably, transforming from smirk to snarl with near-lycanthropic intensity, as if he were about to sprout fangs and claws, do the whole Michael Landon teenage werewolf bit for an encore.