’em to address the royal member as Little Elvis.”
“Cute.”
“It gets better. After the cancer ended his career, he disappeared for a couple years. Drove around the country in that pink Caddy of his. Then, about five years ago, he moved here and settled down with the lovely Priscilla. She was the daughter of some fan club queen from Tucson-he’d known her since she was a little girl. Anyway, he bought himself a bigga bigga hunka desert in Pipeline Beach. Planned to build The Elvis Presley Museum and Memorial Miniature Golf Course.
“It would have been something, too. Ellis planned to create a copy of Graceland with a different miniature golf hole in each room. Paradise, tourist-trap style. He actually started construction, but the Presley estate found out about the deal and came down hard. Pretty soon our buddy Little Elvis had eight or ten lawyers jerking his balls. Ellis dropped some serious change on lawyers of his own, even tried to compromise, but the Presley people wouldn’t have any of it.”
“He should have put in windmills.”
“Huh?”
“Windmills,” Jack repeated. “For the miniature golf course. You want to be a success, you’ve gotta have windmills.”
Benteen nodded. “Yeah, windmills probably would have swung the deal. He had a pretty good eighteenth hole designed, though.”
“Yeah? What?”
‘The last hole was supposed to be in the master bathroom. There’d be a horizontal Elvis statue on the floor, mouth open. You’d putt your ball right through the King’s sneer. Game over.”
“It didn’t roll out his asshole or anything?”
She shook her head. “Nope. That would have been sacrilegious. Besides, if the first rule of miniature golf is that you’ve got to have windmills, the second rule is that you’ve got to get the ball back at the end of the game.”
Jack shook his head. “How’d you find out about Ellis, anyway?”
“Sandy Kapalua-Dayton. The woman who runs the Saguaro Riptide. Seems like she knows every story in town.”
Jack grinned. Talk about scouting your opponent. Kate Benteen was turning out to be one amazing woman. “So what’s Ellis do these days? I mean, besides shooting at strangers with his shotgun.”
“He’s an electronics wiz. You must have seen that battery-powered rig he’s got for talking-that didn’t come out of any medical supply catalog. He custom-designed it himself, wanted it to look like one of the big ol’ stage mikes Elvis used in Vegas.”
She brushed a stray strand of hair away from her face.
Her hair was auburn. And then it caught the light, turned the darkest red. .
Benteen hadn’t noticed. “Anyway, Ellis has a little electronics business. You know those emergency phones they’ve got along the highways these days?”
“You mean those solar-powered cellular things?”
“Yeah. The ones you use if you break down in the middle of nowhere.”
“Okay.”
“Well, our friend Ellis steals those phones. Guts them. Transplants the circuitry and programs the codes in another cell phone. He sells the finished product at flea markets around the state. Whoever buys one gets a couple of months free long distance courtesy of the great state of Arizona. After that, the phone company catches on and cuts things off. But, hey, in the meantime it’s a pretty good scam.”
“A real character.”
“A real psycho character. Sandy thinks he beats up his wife. He’s just around the bend from pathologically jealous, as you found out this morning.” Benteen took a deep breath, and suddenly her voice went cold. “I think that maybe Ellis killed Vince Komoko. Or if he didn’t, he knows who did.”
Jack shook his head. There it was, right in front of him. Kate Benteen was definitely dishing it up and putting it right on his plate.
He wondered why. He could think of a half-dozen reasons right off. Some good. Some not so good.
Maybe he could trust her. Maybe they could work together- get to the end of this thing without anybody getting hurt.
Maybe he should tell her what Ellis had said about Komoko- that Ellis claimed to know the people who had chopped Vince down.
She said, “Let me ask you a question, champ.”
“Shoot.”
“Did you know Vince?”
“No.”
'Then you’re just after the money, nothing else? This whole thing isn’t personal to you?”
He looked at her. A long hard look. She stared straight ahead, at the road, waiting for an answer.
He wanted to tell her about his last night in the ring and how he knew he could never climb through the ropes again, and his worries about the new career Freddy had in mind for him. And he wanted to tell her about the hit man who was on his tail, and what the guy had done to his dog, and what the guy might have done to Johnny Da Nang, and how just the idea of putting someone so completely innocent as Johnny in danger was driving him nuts.
But most of all Jack wanted to give Kate Benteen the right answer, the one that she wanted to hear. He didn’t know why. But it occurred to him that maybe if this whole thing was something personal to Kate Benteen, it might become something personal to him, as well.
He sucked a deep breath. That was crazy. Man, he didn’t know anything about this woman. She could be anybody. Sure she could dive into a swimming pool as smooth as Esther-fucking-Williams, but that didn’t make her an Olympic medalist. And sure she could ride a horse, but that didn’t prove she was a rodeo queen.
Let alone all the other stuff she claimed to be.
And she claimed to be one hell of a lot.
Man oh man. .
“I’m waiting, champ,” she said. “One more time: is it personal?”
“I’ve got to think about that,” Jack said, and the words were barely out of his mouth when she whispered, “Don’t think too long.”
They pulled into town.
“You still hungry?” she asked. “Want me to look for a Jack in the Box?”
“No,” he said. “I think I’ll take your advice.”
She raised an eyebrow.
Jack raised an eyebrow as well. “You can drop me off at the public library, Major Benteen.”
SIX
Kate swore under her breath. The former light-heavyweight champion of the world had certainly romped and stomped ail over her first impressions. Jack Baddalach was definitely smarter than she’d guessed. And that played serious hell with her ego, because she had always thought of herself as a crackerjack judge of character.
Barring Vince Komoko, of course.
She swung the Dodge Dakota into a parking space in front of the Saguaro Riptide. Sandy Kapalua-Dayton was over by the swimming pool, busy with one of those little chlorine test kits. She waved as Kate slammed the door of the truck, and Kate waved back as she headed up the stairs.
Kate entered her room and closed the door, relieved to have escaped even the most minimal human contact. She stood stock-still for a second in the dark, appreciating the silence.
The simple truth was that she loved it. She was glad to be alone, glad to be out of sight.
