maybe it was the heat. Or the fact that he’d missed breakfast. Anyway, he figured he’d better sidestep the whole thing, especially since Benteen was driving. He didn’t want to walk the two miles he’d already walked all over again.
Jack grabbed a raw Pop Tart from the box and peeled the wrapper. “So where are we going?”
Again, the grin. “Champ, I’ve got to see a man about a horse.”
The hell of it was, she wasn’t kidding. They drove past the trailer house with the pink Caddy parked out front-seeing it a second time. Jack knew it had to be Elvis’s place. About ten miles past the trailer they passed a sign advertising a horse ranch. Kate Benteen swung into a long driveway and followed a leaning fence line until she came to a corral where a guy dressed head to toe in denim that hadn’t been blue since the days of Eisenhower was waiting for her.
“This’ll only take a minute,” she said, pulling to a stop and ratcheting the emergency brake.
“You’re really gonna buy a horse?”
“Appaloosa.”
“Why?”
She lowered her sunglasses, gave him another little taste of her green eyes. “Sometimes it pays to have a back door, champ.”
Jack knew even less about horses than he knew about shotguns, but any fool could see that Kate Benteen had some serious knowledge of equestrian pursuits.
Which meant that she knew enough to steer clear of the horse hockey if she wanted to keep her combat boots clean, and then some. Which was another way of saying that she handled that little pony, all right.
Jack overheard the old-timer telling Kate that she should watch herself because the devil’s own fire burned in the Appaloosa’s belly, but the warning didn’t seem to slow Benteen down one bit. First she made a few turns, tugging the reins gently but firmly, the horse whinnying and snorting until it figured out who was boss. That done, she didn’t waste any time-she spun the sleek animal around, jumped the corral fence, and took off into the brush without so much as a hearty hiho Silver.
Horse and rider were gone about ten minutes. On the return they jumped the fence again and Benteen was off the animal before it even broke stride.
She handed the reins to the old-timer, who couldn’t do more than take off his busted Stetson and shake his head. Benteen pulled a wallet from the back pocket of her jeans. Money changed hands. She climbed the corral fence and came down walking, dusty combat boots making purposeful strides. Over her shoulder she said, “Fatten him up some. Give him some dog biscuits. And Frosted Mini-Wheats, if he wants ’em.”
“You goddamn right,” the old-timer said.
Jack watched Benteen come. There was a glow to her face now, a little sheen of sweat. It looked good on her.
Her T-shirt worried him, though. It was canary yellow and featured a rattlesnake coiled and ready to strike. The legend beneath the snake was a familiar one: don’t tread on me.
Jack Baddalach was beginning to think that was pretty solid advice. He poured himself a cup of coffee and helped himself to another Pop Tart as Benteen slid behind the wheel.
“Don’t push your luck, champ,” she said, and she grabbed the Pop Tarts box and shoved it under the seat.
They were back on the highway, heading toward Pipeline Beach.
Jack asked, “Where’d you learn about horses?”
“I’m a Montana girl. My daddy was a cavalry officer-Air Cav-Vietnam, of course. Helicopters. But Daddy was the kind of man who wanted to live in another era. Wanted to charge up San Juan Hill with Teddy Roosevelt. Anyway, he got me started with my first little Paint when I was just four. I got serious about it later-from 1980 to ’83 I won my age division in barrel racing events from San Francisco to Calgary. Took a couple years off, came back and won the Grand Nationals in ’89.”
“What happened between ’83 and ’89?”
“College. Plus I got interested in platform diving. I won a silver at Seoul in ’88.”
Jack laughed. “Yeah. You mentioned that yesterday. I guess I can’t quite keep up.”
“You said it, not me,” she whispered, then fell silent.
Jack didn’t let it go. “’83 to ’88, huh?” he said. “What were you. . maybe twelve years old when you went to college?”
“I was fifteen. You’re a smart guy. You can figure it out. Home schooling. Child prodigy. All that kind of stuff. Hey, I can even play the piano. Anyway, I started college at fifteen. Graduated med school just shy of twenty and finished my residency at twenty-one.”
“A real-life doctor, huh? And here I was just getting used to the idea of you being a rodeo rider and an Olympic champion. Oh. . and a movie star, too. Not to mention the fact that you used to be an officer and a gentlewoman.”
“To put it all together for you, there aren’t too many patients who’ll accept a twenty-one-year-old doctor. So I joined the army. They were happy to have me. I was a flight surgeon-it wasn’t like I came up through the ranks. Major Kate Benteen. Like I said, you can look it up.”
“So what do you want me to call you-Major, Doc … or maybe you’re a lawyer and an Indian chief, too?”
She kept her eyes on the road. “For starters, why don’t you try
“Good.” Baddalach finished off his Pop Tart. “You can call me
“Sure thing, champ.”
Once again, they passed the trailer with the pink Caddy parked out front.
“So,” she said, “how’s the Mike Hammer biz going so far? Any beautiful babes ask you to
Jack closed his eyes. The way she put things. Like she was playing with him. Like she already had everything figured out and was enjoying watching him stumble around.
“I can almost hear the wheels grinding up there in cranial central command. Don’t hurt yourself, champ.”
Jack opened his eyes. “Okay. You win. Fact is, the Mike Hammer biz could be a whole lot better. No one’s tried to kiss me. And this morning a guy took a couple of shots at me with a shotgun.”
“Ah … so you’ve met Pipeline Beach’s own King of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
“You know him?”
“I wouldn’t say that. I know a little bit about him. For instance, I know he uses a Winchester shotgun to enforce a strict vulture no-fly zone over his property.”
“He likes other men even less than he likes vultures. I think he worries about his wife’s extracurricular activities.”
“Yeah … but a guy like that, he’s not too hard to figure. I mean, think about it. Elvis impersonator loses his voice to larynx cancer, the old confidence meter has gotta clock dangerously low. I bet he would have rather lost his nuts.” Jack remembered the Elvis impersonator’s comment concerning cactus and castration. He didn’t share it with Benteen, but he figured her appraisal was dead-on.
And the part about larynx cancer-that explained the scars on the guy’s neck, the gizmo that looked like a microphone, and the guy’s robotic voice. His vocal cords had been surgically removed.
“What else do you know about him?” Jack asked.
“Ellis Aaron Perkins. Born Ed Klausthauser. He moved to Vegas shortly after the King’s death and became the first Elvis impersonator to hit it big. Had a five-year contract with one of the major hotels and was a big hit with all those fan club queenies, at least the ones who could still fit into their high school prom dresses. Apparently the guy was a sexually voracious predator, if you want it in Gold Medal paperbackese. He really got into some serious
“You mean he liked the women to pretend he was the real deal?”
Benteen nodded. “If they were talking to his face. Carry on that conversation a couple feet lower, he liked
