too.”
“There’s a cheery thought.”
“I said
“Amen.”
They hauled Tony Katt’s corpse from the truck bed. The heels of his boots dug trenches in the dirt as they dragged him to the grave and dropped him in. Nobody was going to find Tony out here. He would always be the heavyweight champion of the world who disappeared without a trace.
“You want to say anything?” Angel asked.
“Are you kidding?”
“Let me do it then.” She took the shovel from Jack.
Angel looked down, into the grave.
She said, “See you later, Mr. Coyote.”
Then she heaped the shovel with loose dirt and flung it into Tony Katt’s tattered face. Angel worked hard, and soon sweat poured off her the way it had poured off Jack, and the scent of Calvin Klein’s Obsession was gone gone gone. .
Angel Gemignani was doing what she needed to do, and she didn’t need any help from Jack Baddalach. He wandered along the arroyo. Once in a while he’d turn and look at his footprints. It didn’t matter how many times he looked; he was always surprised to see them there, following along behind him.
The sky was way past blue, the flip side of the indigo night. A lone jet trail split the heavens. Another load of tourists headed for the land of the dollar slot.
Jack walked among the yucca trees, looping back toward Angel. He kept expecting to come upon Pack O’ Weenies, wired to a tree.
He didn’t, of course. Who knew what had become of Harold Ticks? Jack wondered why he should even care.
Still, he thought about the bald-headed son of a bitch. Harold Ticks, bound with barbed wire, watching the sun rise, feeling the heat.
Pack O’ Weenies, roasting in the Mojave Desert.
All alone.
But Harold wasn’t roasting. Not at all.
He lay at the bottom of a mine shaft, the one that began in the Hell’s Half Acre Church of Satan.
After stabbing Harold in the back and hacking off his left thumb, Eden lit a kerosene lantern and pushed Harold down the tunnel in an old mining cart. Harold wasn’t stupid. He saw the handwriting on the wall. He tried to talk Eden out of it. He tried to figure out what was wrong with her. But Eden dumped him down a deep shaft before he even had a chance to say that he was sorry.
What he could possibly be sorry for, he didn’t know. After all, Eden was the one who had fucked everything up and cost them half a million bucks. She was the goddamn tater queen in a family full of goddamn spuds. But, hell, Harold couldn’t tell her that when she was about to dump him down a mine shaft. He was a little bit smarter than that. He would have apologized for anything if only Eden would let him remain above ground.
Creak! Dump! Wham! Not a chance, Harold.
Harold was cold. He’d lost a lot of blood. He knew that. And his back was busted. At least he thought it was. He couldn’t move his legs at all.
He couldn’t see anything in the dark, but he knew that he wasn’t alone. Sometimes he heard a whispering hiss that seemed very near his ear. And now and then he heard a stuttering rattle.
Harold didn’t like those sounds.
He tried not to think about them, but that was pretty hard. Because he had to think of something. He couldn’t just. . well, wait to
So he lay there at the bottom of a mine shaft, and he tried to think.
But only one thought entered his head, over and over, again and again.
EPILOGUE
A Week Later, Jack woke up at four in the morning.
Wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Visions of Tony Katt and piranha and suckling pigs dancing in his head.
Many moons had passed since he’d done that. These days he never ran unless someone was chasing him.
But in the old days he could really run. Man, he loved the bum. Notch four or five miles and he was floating in the rhythm. He always did his running early in the morning, before the rest of the world was awake. The light- heavyweight champion of the world, putting in the time.
Jack pulled on some old jeans and a sweatshirt, filled Frankenstein’s bowl with dog food, and headed for the golf course. The one by Tony Katt’s mansion.
He checked in with the guard at the gate. A fighter running on a golf course in the predawn hours was not an unusual thing. In Vegas, the boxing capital of the world, it happened all the time.
The guard wasn’t about to turn away Jack the Giant Killer. Besides, he wanted to know if there was anything new with Tony Katt.
“Still missing,” Jack said.
“I guess you scared him but good,” the guard said.
“Yeah.”
The guard flashed Jack the old thumbs up. “I know you’ll beat him in the ring. I’m lookin’ at the next heavyweight champ. I’ll bet green money on that.”
Jack only grinned at that last part. He parked the Celica and started across the green. It wasn’t even five a.m. Not a soul in sight.
The air was still a little crisp, but Jack could tell that it was going to be a hot one. He threw punches in the air as he ran, short hooks and uppercuts that bunched his shoulders. His breathing hit a ragged rhythm, but he loved it. His lungs hadn’t felt this kind of burn in a long, long time.
The grass was wet, and soon Jack’s shoes were soaked through. He headed toward a little grove of fruit trees about a mile distant.
He picked a couple of oranges and ate them in silence. The sugar hit his empty belly and it was heaven. The black sky smeared gray as he ate, and then the dawn came on.
Jack grabbed another orange for the road. He ran another mile, and suddenly he felt like walking.
He passed the Skull Island corporate mansion where he had danced his dance with Tony Katt. Porschia Keyes was recuperating there after her accident. At least that’s what Jack had heard. Skull Island management was being especially nice to Porschia. They didn’t want to get sued.
So Porschia was sitting pretty. But Tony Katt would never walk through those mansion doors again.
And Jack would never meet the heavyweight champion in the ring.
He would never get up at four in the morning and run because he was set to face Tony Katt in a month, or three weeks, or six days. .
He would never sit under a tree and eat an orange while he planned the traps he’d set for Katt with his quick jab. . how he’d stick and move, bip bip bip, in and out. .
And he would never buckle that heavyweight championship belt around his waist.
