Saguaro Riptide

Riptide, have some real laughs. Vince told me all about it.”

“Uh. . well. .”

“Sure, you know Vince. I’m his buddy. I’m supposed to meet him down there. Why don’t you give me your address and I’ll drive on down from Vegas. I’ve got something for Vince. Something he forgot-”

“No,” she said. “You’re wrong. I don’t know any Vince. And don’t come near me.”

She hung up.

Jack dialed Freddy G’s private number. Freddy’s niece picked up-at least she said she was Freddy’s niece. Her tone of voice said something else entirely.

A second later, Freddy came on the line. “Jack, how you makin’ out?”

“Good. Look, I’m gonna need to make a drive down to Arizona. Little town called Pipeline Beach.”

“Never heard of it.”

“That makes two of us. But I think our friend Vince has.”

“That’s good enough for me.”

“The thing is, my car’s in the shop. I probably can’t get started until tomorrow.”

“Forget that.” Freddy chuckled. “You get a cab and get your ass out to McCarran. Catch a plane. You need Tucson or Phoenix?”

'Tucson.”

“Okay then. The tickets will be waiting for you. We’ll make reservations for tonight at a motel in Tucson, and tomorrow you can drive down to Pipeline Beach.”

“Sounds good. But I’m kind of tapped out right now, what with the boxing commission holding up my purse and all-”

“Forget about that,” Freddy interrupted. “Soon as I get off the phone with you. I’ll call the Casbah manager and have him fix you up with some corporate plastic.”

“Hey, that’s great news.”

“Glad to oblige. ’Cause right now, you could use some great news.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, the word on the street is that your pal the promoter dropped the assault charges.”

“Hey, that is great news!”

“Wrong-o, Jack.” Freddy sighed. “I’m afraid your tongue-tied pal has called in the Muslims.”

“Christ on a cross,” Jack said.

FOUR

The man in the african hat stood in the desert, waiting, surrounded by towering sandstone monuments the color of blood. The sky, too, was bloody, but the blood in the sky was drying, cottonlike clouds daubing the wound, the hot wind smearing clotting rivulets across a canvas the color of gutted salmon. But the man who waited in the desert realized that these colors-and, in fact, his impression of same-were impermanence personified. Soon other colors would come, triggering other impressions. Perhaps the wound would begin to heal. Perhaps a rusty brown horizon would scab the injured flesh of the heavens. Or perhaps the sunset would fade gently, less violently, to the color of an insignificant bruise-a magnificent, plum-ripened purple.

And then would come the night. The night was black, the same color as the man in the African hat. And, like the man, the night was a single color through and through, never giving way to another.

The coming of night was what the man in the African hat was waiting for. In truth, he did not mind waiting. Patience was one of many virtues he had forced upon himself long ago.

So he stood in the desert, and he waited among the sandstone towers. His Saturn automobile was parked twenty feet away, but he did not move toward it or seek an alternate shelter. Not even when the wind kicked up, powdering his black suit with fine red dust. Instead he stood near a lone pay phone which hung on a pole that a man with a whimsical turn of mind might have viewed as some form of mechanical cactus.

But the man who waited in the desert did not possess a whimsical turn of mind. It was his belief that laughter was an incalculable weakness. Even the slightest hint of a smile was unmasculine, in his opinion. When he looked at the phone, he saw it first as an instrument which facilitated communication.

Secondly, he saw it as a weapon. Telephone cords made dependable garrotes. With one, an adversary could be strangled in well under a minute.

The man’s left hand moved from his side, reflexively reaching to loosen his black bow tie, but this movement was terminated as soon as the man’s brain recognized it for what it was.

There was no place in his body for even a millimeter of unease. Of this the man was certain.

The offending hand became a fist. The man flexed it. Knuckles popped like dull firecrackers. His grip tightened, neatly trimmed fingernails digging trenches in callused palms. The muscles in his forearm danced, as did his well-developed triceps, and he waited for the telephone to ring, and he continued to flex his fist and the muscles which connected it to his torso.

The phone would most probably not ring for another hour. The man in the African hat had arrived at this place early because he would no more be late for an appointment than he would be anxious about arriving early for same. He always allowed adequate time for the incalculable interruptions of everyday life-flat tires, traffic cops, automotive collisions- though he was a careful man, and, as such, he was seldom troubled by incidents of this nature.

But the man in the African hat did not mind waiting in a place like this. This particular section of desert was the only area close to Las Vegas where the man felt comfortable. He truly enjoyed standing among the bloody sandstone monuments beneath a wounded sky. In this place a peaceful ease charged his soul, the same way pumping blood charges a flexing muscle.

The name of this place was the Valley of Fire. The man in the African hat liked that, as well. Names were very important to him. He felt that they should be chosen with great care.

Strange, in fact, to consider that most names were selected without an ounce of that particular commodity. The man in the African hat had been born with one name-Woody Jefferson-a name chosen by a father who was enamored of heroin, a name the man had been forced to wear for twenty long years. But it had been the wrong name-a name born of junkie imagination-and so the man had discarded it many years ago in a New Jersey prison.

Only when he found his true name did he truly find himself.

That name was Woodrow Saad Muhammad.

The man wore it proudly. His name was a gift from Allah, and it was sacred. He treated it with reverence. He expected others to do the same.

For example, he never allowed anyone to call him Woody.

In his mind, that familiarity was a particularly vile abomination.

Woodrow was a man.

Woody was an erect penis.

The last two men who had dared to call him Woody were dead.

Rahway was the name of the New Jersey prison where Woodrow lost five years of his life. He recognized now that he had deserved to spend time in such a place. He certainly was not proud of the crimes he had committed as a callow youth.

Those crimes belonged to Woody Jefferson, the terror of Camden, New Jersey, a boy who had not minded in the least if his name was twin to an unfortunate bit of slang. Moreover, that boy had actually preferred to be called Woody.

But Woody Jefferson was an ignorant youth, with ignorant ways. A second conviction for armed robbery earned him a stretch in Rahway, but robbery was actually the least of his crimes. Before the age of eighteen. Woody had murdered two men, one woman, three dogs, and an evangelist.

Woodrow thought that Woody had been a fool. The murders were a good example-each one had been