Hour of the Hunter

Chapter 11

How did my daddy die?” Davy asked.

Diana Ladd was tucking her son into his bed when he asked the direct, awful question she had dreaded for years. Always before, during oblique conversations, she had skirted the issue, promising herself that if he ever asked straight out, she would be forced to respond in kind. Wanting to protect him, she had rehearsed countless carefully nonjudgmental answers, in hopes that one day Davy would grow up and form his own opinions about his father.

Diana sat down on the edge of the bed and placed one hand on Davy’s chest. In the soft glow of the night-light, his eyes were luminous dark pools gazing up at her. She swallowed hard.

“He committed suicide,” she said.

Davy frowned. “Suicide. What does that mean?”

“Your father killed himself,” Diana answered. “With a gun.”

“Why? Didn’t he love us?”

Davy’s ingenuousness wrung at Diana’s heart. She fought back tears, and bitter answers as well. “He didn’t know you,” she said gently. “You weren’t even born yet.”

“Well, why did he do it then?”

“He was scared, I guess.”

“About what?”

“About what was going to happen to him. You see, there had been a. .” She paused, losing heart, unable to say the word murder aloud. “There had been an accident,” she finished lamely. “Your father was afraid of getting into trouble.”

“Did he kill someone?”

Stunned, Diana wondered if Davy had somehow learned the truth. How else could his questions cut so close to the bones of truth? None of this was going the way she’d planned. “Is that what someone told you?” she asked.

Davy shrugged. “Not really. I just wanted to know why they called me that.”

“Called you what?”

“Me’akam Mad,” he replied.

Diana Ladd knew some Papago, but not nearly as much as Davy. This she didn’t recognize at all. “What does that mean?”

“Killer’s Child,” Davy whispered.

Instantly, Diana was outraged. “Who called you that?”

“Some of the Indian ladies. At the hospital. They thought I didn’t understand.”

Not trusting her ability to speak, Diana got up and paced to the window. She stared out at a star-studded sky over the jagged black shadow of mountain. Even with the cooler running, the house was warm, but she felt suddenly chilled.

“Is it true?” Davy insisted. “Did my father kill somebody?”

“Yes,” Diana answered at last, abandoning all pretense. Davy had to be told.

“Who?”

“Her name was Gina, Gina Antone.”

“Rita’s granddaughter?”

Diana nodded. “Yes.”

“But Rita loves us. Why would she if. .”

Diana turned decisively from the window. “Davy, listen to me. Your father was there when Gina died, but he didn’t do it, and he didn’t remember anything that happened. He fell asleep, and when he woke up, she was dead. Another man was there with them-a friend of your father’s, a man named Andrew Carlisle. He tried to put all the blame on your father.”

“What happened to him?”

“The other man? To Carlisle?” Davy nodded. “He went to jail, finally. The state prison. Rita and I saw to it.”

“But he didn’t die?”

“No.”

“People still think my father did it.”

“Probably. He wasn’t alive to defend himself.”

“And the other man was?”

“Yes, and he hired expensive lawyers. He was an Anglo, a well-known one, a teacher from the university, and the dead girl was only an Indian. Everybody acted as though it didn’t matter if an Indian got killed, as though she weren’t important. With your father dead, it was a terrible time for me, but it was worse for Rita. She didn’t have anyone to help her, so I did-with the police, with Detective Walker and the prosecutor. If I hadn’t been there, Carlisle never would have gone to jail.”

Most of Diana Ladd’s impassioned explanation fell on deaf ears. Davy plucked out only one solid fact from the raging torrent of words. “Detective Walker? The man who was here this morning? The one who took me for my stitches?”

“Yes.”

“He knew about my father, too?”

“Yes.”

Abruptly, Davy flopped over on his side, turning away from her and facing the wall. “I don’t want to talk anymore.”

“But, Davy. .”

“I’m going to sleep.”

Drained and rejected, Diana started to leave the room, but Davy called to her before the door closed. “Mom?”

“What?”

“How come everybody knew about my father but me?”

The hurt and betrayal in Davy’s voice squeezed her heart. “It was a terrible thing,” she told him. “You weren’t old enough to understand.”

“I’m old enough now,” he muttered fiercely into his pillow when the door clicked shut. “I am too.”

But he wasn’t. Not really. He lay awake for a long time after his mother left him, trying to understand why his father would have wanted to be dead so soon, why he hadn’t wanted to wait around long enough to meet his own son.

Davy wished he could have asked him. He really wanted to know.

Looks At Nothing was gone, leaving Rita alone with her memories of that long ago, fateful summer. Homesick, Understanding Woman had wanted to return to Ban Thak. It was too hot in Burnt Dog Village. She longed to be in Coyote Sitting where it was cool and where she would be among old friends for the coming rain dance. Hearing this, Father John generously offered a ride. They would leave one day and return the next. Surely, the nuns could spare Rita for that long.

When the big day came, Dancing Quail was excited to be going home for the first time since she had moved to Topawa earlier that spring. She wore new clothes, which she had purchased from the trading post with her own money. She looked forward to seeing other girls her age, to being included as one of them.

By now Dancing Quail had ridden in Father John’s touring car more than once. She was totally at ease. While Understanding Woman drowsed peacefully in the backseat, Rita chattered away in her much-improved English, pointing out the various sights along the way, telling Father John the Papago words for mountains and rocks, plants and animals, and reciting some of the traditional stories that went along with them.

Father John had offered a ride, but he wasn’t pleased to be going to the rain dance, and he didn’t much like the stories, either. On a professional basis, he disapproved of the annual midsummer rain dances, thinking them little more than orgies where people got so drunk on ceremonial cactus wine that they vomited into the dirt. Ancestral Papago wisdom dictated this was necessary to summon back Cloud Man and Wind Man who brought with them summer rains, the lifeblood of the desert. Father John thought otherwise.

When he first arrived on the reservation, the priest’s initial impulse had been to preach fiery sermons and forbid his parishioners’ attendance at the dances altogether, but Father Mark, his superior, had counseled otherwise. He said the church would be better served if Father John attended the various dances in person, putting in goodwill appearances at each. He advised the younger man to do what he could to keep his flock in line, but not to turn the dances into forbidden fruit. After all, Father Mark explained, forbidden or not, the Papagos would go anyway.

Dutifully, Father John attended, but he didn’t think it did any good. He was beginning to realize that the Papagos were an exceedingly stubborn lot and almost totally impervious to the influence of outsiders. They listened politely enough. As succeeding waves of Anglo missionaries washed across their austere corner of the world, the Tohono O’odham accepted and incorporated some new ideas while blithely casting off the rest.

Father John suspected that Papago acceptance of any external religion, his included, was only skin deep. The Bible with its Old and New Testaments got layered in among all the other traditional stories, ones about I’itoi and Elder Brother. In this regard, his young charge Rita was no different from the others. She listened attentively during weekly catechism sessions, answering questions dutifully and well, but he worried that just beneath the surface of Dancing Quail’s shiny Catholic veneer lurked an undisturbed bedrock of pagan beliefs.

“What are you going to do at the dance?” he asked. At sixteen, Rita seemed much too young to sit in the circle and drink the cactus wine. He worried about that as well.

She laughed and tossed her head. “I think I’ll find myself a husband. Did you know that during a rain dance the woman may choose? The rest of the time, the men do the choosing.”

“I hope you choose well,” Father John said seriously.

He had seen several instances of unwise choices. Young women with their newfound jobs and independence were finding partners for themselves rather than following the old ways and letting their families do the negotiating. As a result, there was a growing problem with out-of-wedlock pregnancies. In addition, there were more and more cases where young fathers simply walked away from familial responsibilities.

“Maybe I’ll choose you,” Rita said with a mischievous smile.

Father John flushed. Dancing Quail always laughed at him when his ears turned red like that.

“I’ve already explained that to you,” he said seriously. “Priests don’t marry.”

“But what about that new priest, the Pre. . pre. .” She stumbled over the long, unfamiliar word.

“Presbyterian?” Father John supplied.

“Yes. What about that new Reverend Hobson? He’s a priest with a wife and three children.”

“He’s not a priest,” Father John explained. “He’s a pastor-a Protestant, not a Catholic. Pastors marry. Priests don’t.”

“I don’t understand,” Rita said with a frown. “You’re all from the same tribe, aren’t you?”

Father John had never before considered the issue in quite those terms. “Yes,” he answered. “Yes and no.”

The first giant cactus, Hahshani, was a very strange thing. Growing up over the spot where Coyote had buried the little boy’s bones, he was tall and thick and soft, shooting straight up out of the ground until he finally sprouted arms.

The people and animals were curious, and they all came to look at him. The children played around Hahshani and stuck sticks into him. This hurt Giant Cactus, so he put out long, sharp needles to keep them away. Then the children shot arrows into him. This made Hahshani very angry, so he sank into the ground and went away to a place where no one could find him.

After Giant Cactus disappeared, the people were sorry and began looking for him. Finally Crow, who was flying over Giwho Tho’ag or Burden Basket Mountain, came back and told the people he had found the cactus hiding in a place where no animals ever went and where no people hunted.

The people called a council. Afterward, the chief told the people to prepare four large baskets, then he told Crow to take the baskets and fly back to Hahshani. When Crow reached Giant Cactus, Hahshani was covered with red, juicy fruit. As the chief had directed, Crow loaded the fruit into the baskets and took it back to the people. Crow placed the fruit in ollas that were filled with water, and then the ollas were set on the fire, where they were kept boiling from sunrise to sunset.

For four days, they cooked the fruit, and when it was finished, the chief told the people to prepare for a great wine feast. The people were puzzled because they had never tasted wine before. So all the people-Indians, animals, and birds-gathered around to drink the wine.

At the feast, everyone drank so much that they began to do silly things. Grasshopper pulled off one of his legs and wore it as a headdress. Nighthawk saw this and laughed so hard that his mouth split wide open. Since then, Nighthawk is so embarrassed by his big mouth that he only flies at night. Some of the other birds were so drunk that they began fighting and pulling out each other’s feathers. That is why some of them still have bloody heads to this day.

When the chief saw all this fighting, he decided that there would be no more wine feasts, so he carefully gathered up all the Giant Cactus seeds and gave them to a messenger to take far away. The people didn’t like this, so they sent Coyote after Messenger.

Coyote asked Messenger to show him what was in his hand. Messenger said no, but Coyote begged for one little peck, and finally, after much coaxing, Messenger gave in. He opened his hand, just the slightest bit. As soon as he did, Coyote struck his hand, and the seeds of Hahshani flew far into the air.

The wind was coming from the north. Wind caught Hahshani’s seeds and carried them up over the mountaintops, scattering them on the south sides of the mountains.

And that is why, to this day, Giant Cactus grows only on the south sides of the mountains. And since then, every year, the people have held the feast of the cactus wine.

The night was cooling fast. In the desert outside Sells, a coyote howled and was answered by a chorus of village dogs. It was a pleasant, peaceful sound that made both Papago men feel relaxed and at home.

For some time, Looks At Nothing sat smoking the wiw, the wild tobacco, and saying nothing. Fat Crack admired the old man’s concentration and stubbornness. He had heard stories about how the injured Looks At Nothing, returning to the reservation from Ajo, had shunned the white mans’ ways, including alcohol and store-bought tobacco and cigarettes. The only alcohol the medicine man consumed was the cactus wine made once a year from fruit of the giant cactus. He smoked only the native tobacco, gathered from plants growing wild in the sandy washes. The single exception, his post-World War II Zippo lighter, was more a concession to old age than it was to the Mil-gahn.

As the burning sticks of rolled tobacco moved back and forth between them, and as the smoke eddied away from them into the dark sky, Fat Crack could see why this particular tobacco smoke might still retain some of its ancient power.

“What do you believe caused the accident?” Looks At Nothing asked at last.

“A steer ran across the road in front of the truck,” Fat Crack answered. “When she tried to miss it, the tire caught on the shoulder and the truck rolled. That’s what Law and Order told me.”

“That may be how the accident happened,” Looks At Nothing said, “but it’s not what caused it. Do you know this Anglo child Hejel Wi’ithag lives with, the one she calls Olhoni?”

Fat Crack nodded. “Davy Ladd. His mother is a widow. Rita lives with them and looks after the boy. What about him?”

“The boy is the real cause of your aunt’s accident.”

“Davy Ladd? How? He’s only six. He was at the hospital. He sure wouldn’t hurt her. They say he saved her life.”

Looks At Nothing’s cigarette glowed softly in the night. He passed it back to Fat Crack. “The boy is unbaptized. His mother was born a Catholic, but he himself has never been inside a church. Do you know the old priest from San Xavier?”

It took a moment for Fat Crack to follow what seemed like an abrupt change of subject, but finally he nodded and smiled. Looks At Nothing and Father John were contemporaries, but the medicine man thought the Anglo was old.

“Yes. My mother told me about him. He’s retired now, but he still helps out sometimes.”

“He was once a special friend of your aunt’s. We must go to him tomorrow, in Tucson. We will tell him about this problem and ask his advice. I will call for singers to treat the boy in the traditional way, but Father John must do the other.”

This is crazy, Fat Crack thought. He was familiar with the old superstition that claimed being around unbaptized babies was dangerous and caused accidents, but supposedly only Indian babies were hazardous in this fashion. That’s what he’d been told.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked. “Why bother with two kinds of baptism when the boy isn’t even Indian? Besides, the accident already happened.”

“The boy is a child of your aunt’s heart,” Looks At Nothing said softly. “It doesn’t matter if he’s O’odham or not, and the accident isn’t the only danger.”

“It isn’t?”

“While she was in the ambulance, Hejel Wi’ithag saw buzzards, three of them, sitting sunning themselves in the middle of the afternoon, not in the morning like they usually do. It is bad luck to see animals doing strange things. It means something bad is coming, something evil. Not only is it dangerous for your aunt, but for two other people as well.”

The old man paused to smoke, and Fat Crack waited. “There is something very puzzling in all this,” Looks At Nothing continued finally. “The evil seems to be Ohb, and not Ohb, Apache and not Apache.”

Fat Crack was struck by the medicine man’s use of the old-fashioned word that means, interchangeably, both Apache and enemy.

“Yes,” Fat Crack murmured under his breath, agreeing without knowing exactly why. “You’re right. It is Ohb or at least Ohbsgam, Apachelike.”

“You believe this to be true?” Looks At Nothing demanded.

Fat Crack stared up at the sky. Here was an undeniable answer to his earlier prayer for help. He hadn’t expected it to come this soon, and certainly not in the guise of an old, blind medicine man, but surely the connection he had felt that afternoon was here again and stronger than ever.

“Do you remember my cousin, Gina, Rita’s granddaughter?”

Looks At Nothing nodded. “The one who was murdered?”

“Yes, near the charco of old Rattlesnake Skull Village.”

“I remember.”

“There were two men involved, two Mil-gahn. One of them was the little boy’s father, Olhoni’s father. He committed suicide afterward. The other man went to jail.” Fat Crack paused briefly.

“Go on,” Looks At Nothing urged.

“One of the men bit off Gina’s wipih, her nipple. At the time it was said the dead man did it, that he was the one who bit her, but now I don’t believe it. The same thing has happened again, just yesterday, to another woman at the base of Cloud-Stopper Mountain.”

Both men were silent for some time, listening while the coyotes and dogs passed another series of greetings back and forth, sharing the night in a way not unlike the two men sharing their wild tobacco.

“Is it possible that the spirits of the dead Apaches invaded this Mil-gahn’s spirit, making him Ohbsgam, so he is Apachelike without being Apache?”

“Yes,” Looks At Nothing agreed, impressed by Fat Crack’s intuition. “Is it possible that this other man is out of jail?”

“After six years,” Fat Crack replied, “it’s possible.”

“We must find out.”

“I know the detective,” Fat Crack said. “I met him. He was with the boy’s mother when she came to the hospital last night. Perhaps he will help us.”

“You will speak to him at once,” Looks At Nothing ordered.

“All right,” Fat Crack nodded. “Tomorrow. When we go to see the priest, I will also speak to the detective.”

“Good,” the medicine man said. “That’s good.”

Evidently, the council was finished, because Looks At Nothing snuffed out his cigarette and stood up. “It is late. We should get some rest. Come for me at my camp beside the trees in the morning. We will go together to Chuk Shon.”

Fat Crack stood up as well. One of his feet had fallen asleep. He almost fell.

“Wait, old man. I’ll go get the truck and give you a ride.”

“No,” Looks At Nothing said. “Show me where the road is. I can find my way from there.”

They flew Toby Walker to Tucson Medical Center in a helicopter. Meanwhile, Hank Maddern and Brandon Walker tried to deal with the problem of the Pima County sheriff’s car. Initially, the Cochise County detectives were determined to impound it. Eventually, though, after a late-night sheriff-to-sheriff call, it was decided to let Brandon take it back to Tucson. Even when committed by an elderly father, joy-riding was, after all, nothing but a misdemeanor.

“This isn’t the last we’re going to hear about this,” Maddern warned as he helped siphon gas into the bone-dry Galaxy. “DuShane’s going to be pissed as hell about this, and he’ll make your life miserable. You’ll wind up directing traffic at the Pima County Fairgrounds before he’s through.”

Brandon thought about his unconscious father, helpless and strapped to the stretcher, being loaded into the waiting helicopter. The medics said it looked like a massive stroke.

“Let him do his worst,” Brandon said. “Who gives a shit?”

“Good boy,” Maddern told him. “Don’t let the turkeys get you down.”

Using siphoned gas, they got as far as Benson, where they filled up both vehicles. “You turn on your lights and get your ass to the hospital,” Maddern ordered. “I’ll pick up your mother on the way and meet you there as soon as we can.”

“Thanks,” Brandon said.

He appreciated having a little extra time before facing his mother. No doubt Louella Walker would take the position that her son had failed again, as usual. Regardless of what happened, Louella could always twist it into being his fault.

Brandon found Toby Walker in the intensive-care unit hooked up to a bank of machines. The doctor he spoke to was grave.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” he said. “The next twenty-four hours are critical. We’re dealing with not only a severe stroke, but also a severe sunburn. He’s badly dehydrated. What was your father doing out in the desert alone like that?”

“He was going to Duluth,” Brandon said.

“Duluth? That’s in Minnesota.”

“I know,” Brandon replied, “but that’s where he told the gas-station attendant he was going in nothing but a pair of pajamas.”

“Your father was senile then?” the doctor asked.

“How could he be? He’s not that old.”

“You’d be surprised,” the doctor said. “We’re seeing more and more cases like this all the time. They seem to be getting younger instead of older. Even without the stroke, you’d soon find he wouldn’t be able to care for himself.”

“And with it?”

“It’s not good,” the doctor said, shaking his head. “Not good at all.”

He walked away just as Louella surged into the room on Hank Maddern’s arm and rushed up to Brandon. “How is he?” she demanded. “Can I see him?”

Brandon nodded. “You can see him once every hour for five minutes at a time.”

“Tell me. Is he going to be all right?”

“Of course, Mom,” Brandon told her. “He’s going to be fine.”

But with any kind of luck, Brandon thought, by morning Toby Walker wouldn’t be alive.

Diana couldn’t sleep. The rooms of her house were too small, too confining. With Bone at her side, she left the house and paced the yard, remembering how it had been that morning when Gary came home. He had been out all night, and she had spent the night consumed with alternating bouts of rage and worry, sure at times that he was dead in his truck somewhere, and convinced at others that he was out with another woman, just like before.

Why had she believed him when he said all that was behind him? She had trusted him enough, had enough faith in the future of their marriage, to stop taking the pill at last, to start trying to get pregnant. How could she have been so stupid?

All that long night Diana had sat in the living room, an unread book open on her lap, listening for Gary’s truck, watching for his headlights. By morning she found herself hoping that there had been an accident, that he’d wrapped himself around a telephone pole somewhere, so she wouldn’t have to face what her woman’s intuition warned her had happened, so she wouldn’t have to do anything about it, so she wouldn’t have to make a decision.

It was long after sunrise before he came home. Her heart pounded in her throat when she heard his inept fumbling at the lock. She didn’t wait long enough for him to come inside and close the door. She didn’t care if she woke up the neighbors, if all the other teachers in the compound heard every word.

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

“Damn you. Where?”

“The dance. At San Pedro. I told you I was going there.”

A cloud of alcohol-laden breath surrounded him, filling her nostrils and wrenching her gut, reminding her of her father.

“I thought they drank wine at the dances, cactus wine. I didn’t know they served beer.”

Not looking at her, he started toward the bedroom. “Please, Diana. Drop it. I’ve got to get some sleep.”

“Sleep!” she screeched, heaving the book across the room at him. Her aim was bad. The book hit the wall three feet behind his head and fell to the floor with an angry thud.

“You need sleep?” she raged, getting up and coming across the room after him. “What about me? I’ve been up all night, too, up and worried sick!”

He turned to face her, and the ravaged, stricken look on his face brought her up short. Something was terribly wrong, and she couldn’t imagine what it was.

“I said drop it!”

The quiet menace in his words took her breath away. She had heard those very same words countless times before, spoken in just that tone of voice and with just that shade of meaning, but always before they had come from her father, always from Max Cooper. Never from her husband, never from Gary.

Without another word, he disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door behind him. For minutes afterward, she stood in the middle of the room staring at the door, too frightened to move, too sick to cry.

Room 831 in the Santa Rita Hotel was a reasonably plush two-room suite. The bottle of champagne was on ice, and Johnny Rivkin had donned a blue silk smoking jacket by the time his expected guest turned the key in the lock. The blonde came in looking even more bedraggled than Johnny remembered. The dim light in the bar of the Reardon had been very kind.

“Welcome,” Johnny said with a smile. “I’m glad you decided to come.”

“I almost didn’t,” the blonde returned. “I don’t remember how to do this anymore.”

“Come on.” Johnny did his best to sound cheerful and encouraging. “It’ll all come back to you. The two of us will have some fun. If you like dressing up, you might check out the closet in the other room. I work in the movies, you see. I always keep a few nice things on hand just in case.”

The blonde disappeared into the other room while Johnny busied himself with opening and pouring champagne. His hands shook some. He didn’t know if it was nervousness or anticipation, maybe both. An unknown assignation was a lot like diving into an ice-cold swimming pool. Once you were in, everything was fine, but getting in required nerve.

The blonde came back out wearing a long silk robe with nothing on underneath, walking with shoulders slouched, hands jammed deep in the pockets. His obvious nervousness made Johnny feel that much better.

“Here,” he said, passing a glass. “Try this. It’ll be good for what ails you.”

The blonde settled in the other chair, primly crossing his ankles, pulling the robe shut over his knees.

“Take off the wig,” Johnny ordered. “It’s dreadful, you know. I’d like to see you as you really are.”

“Are you sure?” the blonde asked.

“I’m sure.”

When the wig came off, Johnny found himself faced with a totally bald fifty-year-old man still wearing the garishly madeup features of an aging woman. The effect was disconcerting, like looking at your own distorted face in a fun-house mirror.

“What’s your name?” Johnny asked.

“Art.”

“Art what?”

“Does it matter?”

“Only if I want to call you again.”

“Art Rains.”

“And what do you do, Art Rains? For a living, I mean.”

Johnny was beginning to enjoy himself. Here was someone who hated small talk almost as much as he did, someone else who wasn’t any good at it. Knowing that made Johnny feel in control for a change, something that didn’t happen to him very often.

“Believe it or not, for the past six years, I’ve been a housewife.” Art ducked his head as he made this admission, as though it were something he was ashamed of.

“I believe it all right.” Johnny got up and poured two more glasses of champagne. “Here. Have another. It’ll take your mind off your troubles, Art. You need to relax, lighten up, have some fun.”

“What did you have in mind?”

Johnny shrugged. He was enjoying the tete-a-tete. It was a shame to rush into it. “I don’t know. Not something terribly energetic. We’re both a bit old for that sort of thing. Maybe start out with a nice massage. I have some lovely oils in the other room. Larry always said that I’m very good with my hands.”

Art smiled sadly. “That’s something else we have in common.”

“Well, come on, then. Shall we flip a coin to see who goes first? Although my mother always said company got to choose.”

“I’ll do you first,” Art said, “unless you’d rather. .”

“Oh, no, by all means. Suit yourself.”

Trembling with anticipation, Johnny took his glass and the almost-empty bottle of champagne and led the way into the bedroom. He set the bottle and his glass on the bedside table and stripped off his jacket and trousers. If Art had been much younger, Johnny might have worried more about how his body looked, but Art Rains wasn’t any spring chicken, either.

Before Art had arrived at the hotel, Johnny had turned down the covers on the bed. Now, he lay facedown on the cool, smooth sheets and waited. He sighed and closed his eyes. This was going to be delightful.

“Mind if I turn on the radio?” Art asked.

“Not at all.”

Soon KHOS blared in his ear. Johnny didn’t much like country-western, but it was a good idea to have some background music. After all, if this was very good, there might be a few inadvertent noises. A Holy Roller family might be next door.

A moment later, Johnny was surprised when, instead of a pair of well-oiled caressing hands touching his back or shoulders, he felt the weight of a naked male body settle heavily astride his buttocks. He didn’t worry too much about that, though. There was certainly more than one way to do a massage. Johnny had heard the Japanese actually walked on people’s backs.

Suddenly, a rough hand grabbed a fistful of hair and jerked his face off the pillow.

“Hey,” Johnny said. “What’s this. .?”

The sentence died in the air. Johnny Rivkin never saw the hunting knife that cut him. In fact, he hardly felt it at first. He tried to cry out for help, but he couldn’t, nor could he free his flailing arms from the powerful hands that held him fast.

Rivkin’s body leaped in the air, jerking like a headless chicken while Glen Campbell’s plaintive “Wichita Lineman” lingered in the air and the almost-empty champagne bottle and glass fell to the carpeted floor but didn’t break.

Johnny Rivkin’s death was much bloodier than Margie Danielson’s had been. Andrew Carlisle was glad he’d taken off all his clothes, glad he’d be able to shower and clean himself up before he left the room.

He had planned to let things go a little further, indulge in a little more foreplay, but buggering an aging queer didn’t have much appeal. Besides, Carlisle was impatient. He wanted to get on with it.

He waited out the ride, which wasn’t that different from the other, although it seemed to take quite a while longer before Johnny Rivkin’s gurgling struggles ceased. Fortunately, the hotel mattress was easy on Andrew Carlisle’s sore knees. They still hurt from the scorching rocks at Picacho Peak.