The Desert Waits

by J. Carson Black

  He drifted into his favorite fantasy.

  Premiere: Not to take anything away from Caroline, who was a fine actress in her own right, but you were always the innovator as far as films went. Is that a correct assessment?

  Ted Lang: Well, I like to think we were a team. She had this incredible persona. I just gave her a little help, that’s all.

  Premiere: You did a lot more than just help. It was your vision, your creativity, your unerring instincts that made her the star she was.

  Ted Lang: Well, if you say so.

  Premiere: Why do you think you’ve been underestimated as a producer until now—

  For some reason, it wasn’t working the way it usually did. Usually the Premiere fantasy gave him an almost sexual jolt, but this time the words seemed stilted.

  Damn, if Alex Cafarelli wasn’t a thorn in his side! It wasn’t that she was smart—she was probably even stupider than Caroline, if that was possible—but she didn’t react the way other people did.

  Angel had been greedy, a low-life blackmailer. Pay me or I’ll tell your wife you’re here in the desert spying on her when you should be in Italy. He had been easy enough to fix. Lure him out to the desert with a promise of drugs. A big guy like Angel wasn’t afraid of someone like Ted.

  It had been chance that Angel, out riding his Harley, had seen Ted at all. But in the end, it had all worked out just fine. Better than fine, as a matter of fact.

  Angel, sitting by the fire ring, drinking beer. Hey, man, where you going?

  Ted walks down the arroyo into the darkness. Nature calls, he says over his shoulder.

  Angel flicks the tab on another beer, shouting into the void. You said you had some meth.

  Ted, standing behind him. With exquisite subtlety, he presses the gun barrel against the base of Angel’s skull. Angel’s shoulders stiffen at the sound of the hammer click, dry in the night air. He looks like a buffalo, Ted thinks. Blinking stupidly, unable to comprehend his predicament.

  No wonder they‘re extinct, Ted says sadly as he pulls the trigger, blowing Angel’s scalp into the next county.

  After that, there was no stopping him. He was surprised at the ease with which he moved through the herd of zebras, taking them out at his pleasure.

  Booker wanted to be a movie star. Of course he let Ted into his trailer; he thought he was getting a part in Ted’s next picture. And Caroline—she was so screwed up by Uncle Wiggly, she didn’t know which end was up. All she wanted was security. That was why she stayed with him so long, even though she knew, deep down, he was using her.

  It was a shame really that she never knew that Uncle Wiggly had gone to his reward years ago.

  Caroline had only herself to blame.

  She could have saved herself a lot of grief if she hadn’t chickened out. Although it turned out a lot better for him; a superstar tragically cut down in her prime by a deranged fan beat a suicide any way you sliced it. And ol ‘Uncle Wiggly had come in handy—scaring the bitch out of her wits when he started sending those cards. God, he was smart!

  Ted wasn’t usually so reflective. Reflection wasted time and it never solved anything. But occasionally it was good to rev the engine, clean out the exhaust pipes, philosophically speaking.

  What bothered him about Alex was, she didn’t seem to want anything. At least not from him. He’d been charming, too, giving her plenty of time. He’d thought she’d be impressed by old-fashioned courtship, considering her middle-class values. But it had gone wrong, and he could either get all worked up about it or just let it go.

  There were plenty of nice-looking women back in LA. The boardwalk was full of them, all parading around in their string bikinis, waggling their fare for everyone to see.

  Her skin didn’t glow with the smooth perfection of a great wax job; her thighs hadn’t been lipoed; her boobs hadn’t been done; she didn’t have the perfect airbrushed face or Jose Ebert hair, but she was still attractive to him. Maybe because he couldn’t have her. It rankled.

  He would have liked to show her the way it was done, just once. Would have liked to choke the smug, independent life out of her and see the surprise in her eyes before they burned out like a lightbulb. Would have liked her to realize, in that last moment, that there was something he could give her. Something worth begging for.

  Oh well. He was nothing if not pragmatic. And he was tired of thinking. His head hurt.

  Ted Lang, the lion, was a man action, not reaction. It ran through his head in a pleasant chant: act, don’t react, and he found himself saying it aloud because the sound of it pleased him.

  So when he saw the movement in the trees and realized he was not alone, a momentary thrill of panic flashed through him at the thought of losing his motorcycle, but he calmed himself by saying, “Act, don’t react.”

  Nothing was irrevocable, even if someone had seen his motorcycle. If he smoothly took charge, if he acted, not reacted, he just might be able to add another piece to his collection.

  It was Maybelle Deering, that shriveled-up old bag, and she’d just found Angel.

  Nick McCutcheon saw the script on his desk early in the morning. No note attached to it. He assumed Doug Childers had put it there. He looked at the credits. Ted Lang was listed as the producer.

  He flicked through, saw the name Elvis. Turned back to the list of characters. Elvis Bardeaux, the husband.

  The owner of the truck on the Tucson road. Delbert’s trespasser. The guy with the cell phone. Calling his wife every evening to see how her film was going?

  He started at the beginning. By page nine, he was out the door and on his way to the Hotel Sonora.

  Ted, hidden in the mesquite trees, was debating whether to go down there and kill Maybelle right now when he heard the drone of an engine.

  He watched as Maybelle rose from all fours and wiped her lips with her forearm. She staggered over to the arm protruding out of the talus slope and stared at it for a moment. Then she glanced up past the bunkhouse to the road, picked up her cowboy hat, slapped it against her jeans, and started up the incline.

  The truck slowed to a halt and idled as she reached the dirt road. The guy’s elbow poked out the open cab as he and Maybelle talked.

  That was it. She must be telling him about the body in the shallow grave and the motorcycle.

  The guy turned off the engine. To Ted’s surprise, he got out and went to the back of the truck, let down the tailgate, and pulled a cage holding a dark brown cat over to the edge. His movements were casual. Maybelle came around to look, still talking. She didn’t seem to be interested in showing him her discovery at all. She stopped before the back of the truck, hands clasped in front of her, for all the world looking as if she were waiting to take communion.

  Maybelle Deering continued the metaphor by crossing herself like a Catholic before looking into the cage. From here it seemed as if the old bag were about to swoon. She stepped back, shook her head, as if she didn’t believe what she was seeing. Walked aimlessly around the truck, went back, looked again. And then she let out a war whoop, punching one fist in the air.

  Ted felt the smile build inside. Damn, if he wasn’t a lucky son-of-a-gun! He’d been lucky all along. No one—except Angel—had seen through his disguise when he’d played an extra on the set of Jagged Impact; they were all too self-absorbed. Even his own wife, and he’d said hello to her twice. The magazine switch had been easy. He’d made reservations from Italy to New York without ever leaving his cellular phone, and nobody at the sheriff’s office had bothered to find out if he had been on those flights—if they could find out that kind of thing. Booker Purlie had been all alone the night he’d gone to his trailer; not a soul had seen him. And now it looked like Maybelle Deering wasn’t interested in his motorcycle or Angel’s body at all because she’d gone apeshit over a plain brown kitty-cat.

  He’d played it by ear all along, taking risks, and fooled them every step of the way! He was invincible!

  Ted watched as Maybelle Deering took the cage an
d hiked down to her banged-up old truck. The guy in the other truck backed up and forward a few times, turning around and driving away. Maybelle hadn’t told him about the body.

  She set the cat cage gently into the bed of her truck, speaking to it, her expression fawning. Then she scurried back down the slope toward the bunkhouse.

  Here it comes.

  He saw her standing over the final resting place of Angel the biker. She took her snake stick, which she’d dropped earlier, and gingerly touched the corpse with it. Dirt rattled down the slope as she stood, legs splayed, and dug into the dirt. Ted was too far away to see much, but he thought she’d managed to unearth Angel’s head. Black ropes of hair, matted with dirt, swirled around what had to be his skull.

  Maybelle threw the stick down and regarded the corpse, hands on hips.

  Ted thought about coming up behind her and killing her while she was thus engaged, but a voice inside him kept him from following through.

  Amazingly, Maybelle Deering turned and walked back up the slope, got into her truck, and drove away.

  Ted waited a few minutes, then went down to retrieve his motorcycle.

  Twenty-five

  If you ask Ted Lang how he is coping with the loss of his wife, you can see the anguish on his face. You begin to see that Caroline Arnet wasn’t just a movie star, she was also a wife.

  —Stone Phillips’ introduction to his piece on Ted Lang for Dateline NBC, which aired a week after Caroline’s death.

  Maybelle refused to think about the dead biker. It was probably a drug deal gone bad anyway, nothing to do with her. She drove around to the back entrance to her property and unlocked the padlock to the gate of the chainlink fence. She drove through and carefully secured the lock again.

  It was a shame the desert had been torn up like this, although it couldn’t be helped. The area around the new building was a regular dust bowl, but Maybelle could see what it would look like in a few years. With a satisfied eye, she noted the areas that had already been xeriscaped. The jumble of red rocks and desert foliage created an interesting rock-and-cactus garden, camouflaging their true purpose.

  The pueblo-style building Nick McCutcheon had mistaken for her new house stood alone in the clearing of graded dirt. Maybelle’s needs were simple; she was perfectly happy with the house she had. No, this building would house her collection of reptiles and insects and her aquariums.

  She parked near a rise of mounded earth and red rocks, where several fledgling desert plants had been placed at intervals in the soil, fed by drip irrigation. Set into the mound was an artful tumble of boulders forming a pie-shaped doorway set into the hill. Actually, they weren’t real boulders at all, but realistic fakes made of fiberglass-reinforced concrete. She carried the cage in through the doorway and followed the flagstone floor of the tunnel, which sloped down under the earth. It was dark and cool here.

  The tunnel was the exact replica of the one she’d seen at the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum’s cat enclosures, down to the burrows nestled in more fake rock (she could watch the cats close up as they slept!), and the viewing area. The open-air windows were protected by strands of thin wire set less than an inch apart. The enclosure had been cored out of the hill. This steep canyon would be the jaguarundi’s new home.

  The habitat had all the amenities of home. A tiny stream was fed by a state-of-the-art irrigation system. The enclosure was modeled on a riparian habitat: grasses, willow, oak, and mesquite. There were rocks for sunning. Her enclosure was three times as big as the one containing the jaguarundi at the Desert Museum. A honeycomb of other enclosures was hidden from view by the hills of fake rocks; open-air habitats with walls high enough to keep any cat from escaping.

  The project had taken nearly two years. The last section of tunnel had been laid a week ago—the section sloping up to the old reptile room in her house.

  Her desert zoo was almost complete. She’d had the jaguar for six months; he was kept in the biggest canyon of all. The margay cat she’d had for a year or more. She’d expected to have the mating pair of ocelots by now, but Kyle had really messed up that one. It was a terrible disappointment, but she had the jaguarundi, the crown jewel of her collection, the piece de resistance.

  No one else in the world had anything like this creature: a jaguarundi from the United States.

  She was seized by a thrill of pleasure so acute that it actually ached.

  I’ve died and gone to Heaven.

  Of course, it wasn’t perfect. Not yet. Rollie’s photographs had to be processed, and then she’d have to send them to that girl who did the dioramas. The diorama would be the background to the enclosure, appearing through the cleft in the cliff wall straight ahead. It would show the specific canyon where the cat had been found, down to detailed landmarks. A few of the photos, blown up to eight-by-tens, would be set into slots at intervals on the wall beside the viewing area and could be illuminated by the flick of a switch. There would also be a topo map in the exhibit, with the exact spot of the capture marked.

  An unpleasant thought strayed into her head. She doubted Rollie would be able to keep this find to himself. He was already talking about calling the area Watkins Canyon.

  She’d have to give him a good deal of money and send him back to Alabama. That was the only way to make sure he didn’t run off his mouth.

  She touched the cool wall lovingly, picturing the exhibit when it was finished. It would be something to reminisce about, like photos in an album. And if there was ever a person with whom she could share her rare find ...

  The proof was there.

  The cat would be safe here. No natural predators to cut its life short, no hunters, no difficulties in finding food or water. Best of all, no droves of well-meaning hikers coming from all over to get a glimpse of the jaguarundi.

  The cat was hers alone. Free of anxiety, free of prying eyes. It would be happy and healthy and live far beyond its projected life span in the wild.

  Maybelle set the cage down and opened the door to the viewing area. The jaguarundi huddled at the back of the cage, mewling way back in its throat, a half-growl. When Maybelle accidentally jostled the cage with her leg, the cat hissed, its ears flat out to the side of its head, whiskers hugging its cheeks.

  Wild. A predator whose instincts to kill were honed to a knife’s edge. Gently, she turned the door of the cage so that it faced the center of the enclosure and slid it up. “Hope you like your new home, Sweetie. I spent a lot of—”

  A gritty, scraping sound, like a shoe on dirt. She froze.

  Agitated, the cat rose to all fours and slunk away from the cage door, and just a split second before it huddled down again, Maybelle saw something that disturbed her, something her mind couldn’t grasp even as her ears registered the footsteps ringing hollowly in the tunnel.

  Before turning to face the enemy, she shoved the cage all the way through, closed and locked the door to the habitat. Then, heart hammering, she swiveled in the direction of the tunnel entrance.

  She blinked. Sun spilled down the rust-colored rocks of the empty ocelot habitat just ahead, and a scythe of amber light sliced into the tunnel right before her. It was almost impossible to see anything in the darkness beyond. Just dust motes snowing down, as bright as sparks.

  “Who’s there?” she demanded, shielding her eyes against the throbbing light and shadow. It was essential that she show no fear. She stepped forward, past the bar of light, and saw a darker shape against the darkness of the tunnel.

  The sight chilled her to the bone. But even as she faced this new danger, something else yammered at the back of her skull, giving her a splitting headache.

  This couldn’t be happening on the greatest day of her life. She reached for the .38 she always kept on her belt and realized that, in her excitement over the cat, she’d left it in the truck—

  Teats.

  The voice screamed inside her head. Teats. That one quick glimpse, that terrible feeling that something had gone wrong. The teats, pendulous, full
of milk—

  The jaguarundi had kittens somewhere.

  Suddenly her fear evaporated. She had to fight, had to save herself so she could return the cat to her kittens. Or they would die.

  Feeling like a cornered cat herself, Maybelle chose fight, not flight. She was a strong woman. She could benchpress one-hundred-and-fifty pounds. Most people led soft lives, particularly city people, and she could tell from the outline of this guy that he was pure city. She’d show him a country welcome all right. She grinned, the avid, hungry grin of a predator. The same happy grimace that helped her push the bar up for that one last rep. Adopting a fighter’s stance, she whipped the heavy concho belt from around her waist and snapped it like a whip. “Come on, shitface,” she muttered, motioning him to come at her.

  Maybelle Deering felt the mystical Indian part of her settle around her shoulders like the feathers of a warbonnet, felt the warrior—the predator—stir and quicken, shoot through her bloodstream on a muscular river of adrenaline. All she had was the belt, heavy Navajo silver, and her pointed-toed cowboy boots, but that would be enough. It would have to be, if those jaguarundi kittens were ever to have a chance at life. “Come on, you yellow son-of-a-bitch!” she yelled, feeling the power build in her chest, her arms, her fists.

  He stepped forward again. Was there something hesitant in his movement? He’d damn better hesitate if he knew what was good for him. If he knew—

  That was when she saw the gun pointed at her chest.

  Navajo silver and pointed-toed boots were not going to be enough.

  She was going to die.

  He took another step, still in shadow, and his way of moving seemed familiar.

  “Don’t I know you?” she demanded, trying to shout down the panicky shrieking in her brain.

  He tilted his head, regarding her quizzically. “I don’t think so. The name’s Elvis. Elvis Bardeaux.”