Saguaro Riptide

'The Man From U.N.C.L.E. Goes Ape.”

'That’s right.” Kate snapped her fingers. “Hey, wait a minute. Now that I think about it. Pipeline ’64 opens with a cut called ‘Saguaro Riptide.’”

'Give the girl a prize.” Sandy smiled, deep in memory. “We were going to make a home here, a place all our own. Build an oasis.”

'And something got in the way of that.”

Sandy nodded. “You’ve got a real way with understatement, girl.”

“So … are you going to tell me about it?”

“No,” Sandy said. “I don’t give that up easy. But what I will tell you is that Dale Dayton is dead and gone and I’m still here in a place I never wanted to be. I’m here in a busted-down motel, with a junkyard in the spot where an oasis was supposed to be and a junkyard dog standing in for the man I loved. But I have to tell you-if anything ever happened to that dog. . well, that would be it. Bad enough to be stranded, bad enough to be chained to the ground by a goddamned ghost. But to be all alone. .” She shook her head. “Jesus. Listen to me. I never talk about this. I don’t even think about it. And now I know why.” She glanced over at the motel office and the junkyard beyond. “He’s a dog, for Christ sakes. But if anything ever happened to him, it would be like losing Dale all over again. Like. .”

Kate wanted to reach out and touch Sandy’s arm, but she knew that would be a mistake. Still, she had to do something, so she said, “I’ve still got Vince in my head. And the sickest part of it is that I’m sure he’s dead. There’s no doubt about that. But he’s got a hold on me. A real death grip. And I can’t seem lo break it. I feel just like one of those no-hopes on the talk shows.” Her voice was rich with mockery that did nothing to hide her pain. “Help me, Oprah. I’m looking for closure.”

“Closure’s a bitch,” Sandy said.

“You’re right about that.” Kate filled her lungs with dry desert air. “Vincent Komoko, the love of my life. A guy who ended up taking fashion tips from a purple dinosaur.”

“Sometimes it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference what a man is-it’s what you see in him that’s important. And sometimes a woman sees that one thing she wants to see and focuses on it until she can’t see anything else. She’s like a carousel horse, and she’s running after that one thing, and she’s sure she’s gonna catch it if she just stays the course. But she’s only going ’round and ’round-she’s not getting anywhere. She keeps on running, though. And pretty soon the paint peels off her flanks, and her mane gets chipped, and she still hasn’t caught up to that thing she wanted. And maybe some kid with a penknife blinds her just for fun. . but she keeps on running, because she knows that’s what carousel horses do. And she tells herself. I'm not tired yet. I’m almost there. Almost. Another day, another week, another month and I’ll be there. . And then one day it doesn’t matter that she’s blind, because she never once knew where she was going, anyway. It occurs to her that the running is the important thing. It’s all she’s ever done, all she’ll ever do. She fills her days with it. She doesn’t think about anything else but the running. It’s comfortable. It’s what she knows.”

Neither of them said anything for a while. Over in the junkyard Dale the dog started barking, but Sandy didn’t move.

Finally, Kate said, “You think I should leave?”

Sandy’s answer came fast. “Not until you decide where you want to run to. Then leave, and never look back.”

Kate smiled. “The old rearview mirror trick.”

“Hey. . men know all the best tricks. Wouldn’t hurt us to learn a few of ’em.”

Safe behind her sunglasses, Kate nodded. “I don’t know about you, but talking makes me thirsty. Buy you a Coke?”

“No. You’re not the only guest here at the Saguaro Riptide who’s got problems, y’know.” Sandy pointed to the room of the man who’d gotten a dozen roses. “I’d better make the rounds.”

The two women watched Baddalach cross the street and enter Floyd Riley’s barber shop.

“What do you think he’s doing?” Rorie asked.

Wyetta looked at her long and hard. “Jesus, Rorie. I may not be the sharpest pencil in the box, but I think maybe it’s safe to assume that the pug’s going to the barber shop because he wants his ears lowered.”

“Well sure,” Rorie said. “He’s getting a haircut. That’s obvious. But why now?”

“Who knows? Maybe he always retreats to bastions of masculinity when women with badges whittle his dick down to size. Maybe he didn’t see a bar nearby. Who cares?”

“Well, what do we do now?”

Wyetta stared at the name Marge had written on a scrap of paper. 'Kate Benteen,” she read. “Yesterday she’s standing up for the pug at the five-and-dime like they’re sharing the same sheets. But today she’s his research topic at the library. Kinda makes you wonder about the parameters of their relationship, doesn’t it?”

“You think maybe we should look her up on Marge’s computer? See what the pug found out?”

The sheriff’s eyes narrowed. “Wyatt Earp didn’t rely on computer databases, Rorie. He went straight to the horse’s mouth.”

“Yeah, but Wyatt had his brothers to back him up. And Doc Holliday, too.”

“Cowgirl, I’ll take you over a tubercular dentist any day of the week,” Wyetta said.

And then she started walking.

SEVEN

Woody sneezed. Shit. It fuckin’ figured that he’d turn out to be allergic to roses.

A card had accompanied the flowers. Woody had read the damn thing at least twenty times, his lips barely moving. Didn’t matter how many times he read it, though. It set his blood to boiling each and every time.

The card said:

LOVE AND KISSES YOU DOG-BEATING BASTARD.

FROM HERE ON OUT IT GETS WORSE.

The card wasn’t signed, but Woody figured it had to be from Jack Baddalach, which meant that Baddalach had learned about the monk’s run-in with his dog and had been waiting for payback when the monk pulled into the parking lot at the Saguaro Riptide.

The Vietnamese kid had practically predicted the whole thing. Shit. Woody couldn’t figure why the monk hadn’t popped a cap on that little motherfucker. Boy had a real mouth on him. Letting him live had been a big mistake.

Just one of many. Woody looked in the mirror. Shit. He looked like something that had been scraped off the highway. His eyes were red as Ripple, and his hair was as scraggly-looking as an Airedale’s butt, and his Sunday- go-to-meetin’ lame-ass monk clothes were dirty, and his left hand was fucked up from a dog bite.

That was the hand he jacked off with, too. Shit. He couldn’t even get the least little bit of a break.

Woody tossed Baddalach’s message into the garbage can. Half this shit wouldn’t have happened if the monk had used the balls God gave him. Not that Woody cared about the monk, but, shit, a man had to look out for himself.

’Cause if the monk got his ass chilled, it meant that Woody would get his ass chilled, too.

That wasn’t going to happen. Now that Woody was in charge again, the monk was going to stay locked up in the Rahway of his mind.

A life-fuckin’-sentence. No possibility of parole, neither.

Woody was the man, now. And there were just a couple of three things he had to deal with.

First off, he had to get himself a weapon.

Second, he had to get himself a car and get the hell out of this town before those crazy bitch cops came after