OF COURSE YOU CAN ASK ME!
JERRY CALDWELL
MANAGER
Caldwell grinned. “Help you find anything?”
“I’ll make out,” Jack said.
The guy didn’t give up so easily. “Get you a cart?”
“Nope.”
The fat man seemed to deflate, but his smile hung tough. Jack figured Jerry Caldwell had probably been to a sales seminar that emphasized cheeriness or something. Either that, or there was an empty pod under his bed a la Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
Jack moved down the aisles, searching for socks and underwear. There was only one other customer in the store, and Jack felt like he was on display. Especially when he glanced back at Jerry Caldwell. The manager stood whispering to the lone clerk-a geriatric desert rat dripping turquoise-and-silver jewelry. Caldwell didn’t take his eyes off of Jack. His piggy lips held onto that sales seminar grin like it was a pet snake that had taken up residence on his face.
The menswear section amounted to half an aisle. Mostly, the selection consisted of T-shirts featuring slogans that might seem witty after the third six-pack of Bud. Jack avoided these. Instead, he grabbed a 3-pack of white T-shirts. To this he added a three-pack of jockey shorts and a four-pack of white athletic socks.
You never could come out even in such matters. Jack figured some corporate jockey had conducted a marketing survey, figured out just how many shirts and jockeys and socks to put in a pack so people would buy two instead of one. Jack was tempted to take an extra pack of each, but he didn’t like the idea of some marketing exec getting one up on him. Hopefully three days would cover it. Maybe he’d get lucky-find Komoko right off, today, and get out of town tomorrow.
Yeah. Maybe not.
You’re getting just a little bit ahead of yourself, son.
The liquor case stood against the back wall. Jack grabbed a six-pack of Molson. He was headed for the check-stand when he took a deep breath and caught that sour, limey Old Spice scent.
One more detour. Jack went in search of the pit-stick aisle.
The store’s other customer was there, too. He guessed that she was in her late twenties, and though she was definitely on the small side, she wasn’t what you’d call delicate. At least that was the impression Jack got, but he realized that the desert-fatigue pants and combat boots the woman was wearing might have had something to do with that. As did the Ray Charles-dark sunglasses that hid her eyes, and the black T-shirt that hugged her body just a little too tightly-DEATH FROM ABOVE, it said, over the leering face of a skull.
She reached for a stick of unscented deodorant, and Jack did the same. He glanced at her basket and saw that she was buying some of the same things he’d purchased in Tucson-a toothbrush and toothpaste, to which she’d added a few feminine items including some lipstick. She caught him looking and reciprocated, checking out the items he was buying, and though he couldn’t see her eyes behind the glasses, he noticed that her eyebrows made a curious little trip from the top of her shades to the bottom of the dark auburn bangs that covered her forehead like a curtain.
She smiled wryly, nodding toward Jerry Caldwell. “Real helpful, isn’t he?”
“You got that right.”
They stood like that for a second, as if they were both waiting for more. Then she kind of shrugged, turning away, and Jack did the same.
The geriatric checkout girl was waiting for him, her wrists weighed down with enough turquoise-and-silver bracelets to keep the Navajo nation in groceries for a month.
Jerry Caldwell was waiting, too. “Find everything okay, Mr. Baddalach?”
“Sure,” Jack said, and then he came up short, instantly realizing that he’d made a mistake.
The snaky smile coiled on Jerry’s fat face, ready to strike. Jack hated himself. He should have seen the whole thing coming, because Caldwell had a pen in one hand and a stack of magazines in the other.
Sports III from the previous week. The manager had probably been ready to toss them when Jack came waltzing in, but now he figured he’d found a way to turn garbage into profit.
Jack stared down at the cover photo. His own face, puffed and purple, blood oozing from steak tartare gashes over both eyes.
The cover blurb: BATTLE-AXED.
“How about some autographs?” Caldwell’s lips didn’t move, just stuck with the grin.
“You should have been a ventriloquist.”
“Huh?”
Jack sighed, staring at the magazine covers. “Look. . that wasn’t my proudest moment. Hope you don’t mind if I pass.”
Caldwell’s smile faltered, but then it took on a conspiratorial twist. He set one hand on the three-pack of jockey shorts. “Maybe we could work something out?”
Jack glared at him.
“Oh, nothing untoward,” the manager explained with a chuckle. “A trade, I mean.”
Explanation aside. Jack wished the guy would take his hand off the jockey shorts. He didn’t especially want to think of Jerry Caldwell’s plump little fingers when he slid into them.
Temper, temper, he warned himself, working up a sales manager grin of his own. “I know what the deal is,” he said. “You get me to sign these magazines, you’re gonna go out and sell them for ten, fifteen bucks each.” He shook his head. “To tell you the truth, I don’t think anyone should pay that much to look at my beat-to-shit face.”
The geriatric checkout girl gasped. Her jewelry tinkled unpleasantly.
Jack blushed. “Sorry, ma’am.” He pushed the underwear and the pit-stick and the beer and the rest of the stuff her way.
What the hell. He reached for the magazines and pushed those her way, too.
“Ring me up,” he said.
He reached for his corporate plastic.
Jack exited the store and dropped the magazines into a garbage can near the door. He figured that his behavior hadn’t been covered in any management seminar Jerry Caldwell had ever attended, because he’d left the little fat man speechless.
Chuckling, he climbed into the Range Rover. He set the six-pack on the passenger seat and tossed his other purchases into the back. Then he keyed the ignition and dropped the stick into gear.
That was when he looked up and saw Caldwell digging through the garbage.
Jack was out of the Range Rover in a second.
He slammed the door.
He didn’t see the sheriff’s Jeep Cherokee pulling in behind him.
Jack’s voice had more than a little edge to it. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Caldwell whirled, clutching the magazines to his chest. His reptilian smile had slithered south in a big way, and he stuttered, and he started to shake.
Jack nodded toward the garbage can. “Put them back.”
“N-no,” the manager said, and then his eyeballs did a wild cha-cha-cha as if he were searching the air in front of him, hoping to spot the word floating there so he could grab it and shove it back into his mouth.
“Is there a problem, Jerry?”
Jack stopped dead in his tracks. The voice that had come from behind held an unmistakable air of authority. One look at Jerry Caldwell confirmed his suspicion, because Jerry was grinning like Francis the Talking Mule.
Jack turned. Two women stood between him and a Jeep Cherokee. The driver’s side of the Jeep was kind of bashed up, the paint scratched, but the sheriff’s department insignia on the door was still plainly visible.
Jack eyed the women. Call it male intuition, but he was sure he knew which one had spoken.
First impression? She was tall, and her blond hair was pulled tight against her skull, ending in a long braid that she wore over one shoulder. Maybe under other circumstances the hairstyle might not have appeared so severe, but the standard cop-issue mirrored sunglasses she wore tilted the scales in that direction.
Her polished badge flashed in the morning light. The effect was kind of hypnotic. Jack squinted behind his sunglasses. Then he noticed a pencil sticking out of the pocket flap on one side of the badge, and the spell was broken-the words SAGUARO RIPTIDE MOTEL were stenciled just below the eraser.