Coyote Blue

CHAPTER 23 Pavlov's Dogs and the Rhinestone Turd

Las Vegas

The only distractions from the noise of his own mind were desert-dried roadkills, thrown retreads, and road signs reflecting desolation. Sam drove, smoked, and fought drowsiness by worrying about how he would find the girl. The trickster slept in the passenger seat.

Sam had been to Las Vegas three times before — with Aaron — to see championship boxing at Caesar's Palace. Two hundred dollars bought them seats at nosebleed altitude, closer to the moon than the ring, but Aaron insisted that there was nothing like being there. Without binoculars, following the progress of the fight was like tracking down a rumor. Sam usually watched the women and did his best to keep Aaron calmed down.

As soon as they walked into a casino Aaron started. "This is my town! The lights, the excitement, the women — I was born for this place." Then Aaron would drop a couple thousand at the tables and suck free gin and tonics until he staggered. In the morning Sam would drag Aaron out of a tangle of satin sheets and hookers, throw him in the shower, and listen to his long lament of remorse and hangover as he lay in the backseat of the car with a jacket over his head, whining the whole way home about how he would never return. Aaron never failed to fuel the greed machine and was always dumbfounded when it juiced him of his hope.

It was the machine that fascinated Sam. While Aaron ground himself through the velvet gears, Sam watched the workings of the most elaborate Skinner box on the face of the Earth. Drop the coin, hear the bell, see the lights, eat the food, see the women, hear the bell, see the lights, drop the coin again. The ostentation of the casinos did not create desire for money; it made money meaningless. There were no mortgages in a casino, no children needing food, no car needing repairs, no work, no time, no day, no night; those things — the context of money — were someplace else. A place where people returned before they realized that a turd rolled in rhinestones is a turd nonetheless.

Sam saw the glow from Las Vegas rising over the desert from thirty miles out. He poked Coyote in the leg and the trickster woke up.

"Hold the wheel," Sam said.

"Let me drive. You can sleep."

"You're not driving my car. Just hold the wheel."

Coyote held the wheel while Sam punched buttons on the console. The screen of the navigation system flickered on. Sam punched a few more buttons and a street map of Las Vegas lit up green on the screen. A blip representing the Merecedes blinked along Highway 15 toward the city.

"Okay," Sam said, taking the wheel again.

Coyote studied the screen. "How do you win?"

"It's not a game, it's a map. The blip is us."

"The car knows where it is going, like a horse?"

"It doesn't know, it just tells us where we are."

"Like looking out the window?"

"Look, I'm going to have to sleep when we get to Vegas. I don't even know where to start looking for Calliope."

"Why don't you ask the car?"

Sam ignored the question. "I'm going to get us a room." He dialed information on the cellular phone, got the number of a casino hotel, then called and reserved a room.

The exits off the highway were marked by names of casinos they led to, not by the names of streets or roads. Sam took the exit marked Camelot. He followed the signs down the surface streets lined with pawnshops, convenience stores, and low-slung cinder-block buildings under neon signs that proclaimed, CASH FOR YOUR CAR, CHECKS CASHED HERE, MARRIAGES AND DIVORCES — TWENTY-FOUR-HOUR DRIVE-THRU WINDOW.

Coyote said, "What are these places?"

Sam tried to think of a quick explanation, but was too weary from lack of sleep to tackle the concept of Las Vegas in twenty-five words or less. Finally he said, "These are places where you go if you want to fuck up your life and you don't have a lot of time to do it in."

"Are we going to stop?"

"No, I seem to be fucking up at a fine rate of speed, thank you." Sam spotted the pseudomedieval towers of Camelot rising above the strip, multi-colored pennons flying from standards tipped with aircraft warning lights. He wondered what the real King Arthur (if there was a King Arthur, and who was he to question the truth behind myth?) would have thought about the casino named after his legendary city. Would he recognize anything? Would he cower in fear at the sight of his first electric light? Flush toilet? Automobile? Would he be reduced to a pathetic Quixote attacking this place where chivalry was a quaint marketing idea? Or would the Once and Future King lay eyes on a leggy keno girl and raise another lance to lead the knights of the Round Table in a charge? The women, Sam decided, would be Arthur's touchstone, and his downfall.

He shot a glance at Coyote. "When we get there you're going to see a lot of women without a lot of clothes on. Stay away from them."

Coyote looked surprised. "I never touch a woman who does not want it-"

"Don't touch!" Sam interrupted.

Coyote slouched in his seat. "Or need it," he whispered.

Sam drove the Mercedes over a giant drawbridge and stopped at the valet parking station where a dozen young men dressed like squires were scrambling around unloading cars, filling out slips, and driving cars away.

"This is it," Sam said. He popped the trunk and got out, leaving the engine running. A warm desert wind washed over him at the same time a young man ran around the car and held out a numbered slip of paper. "Your ticket, milord."

Sam dug in his pocket for a bill to tip the kid, but found nothing. "I'm sorry," he said. "I don't have any cash on me. I'll get your name and leave a tip at the desk."

The kid tried to force a smile and failed. "Very good, milord." He jumped in the car and slammed the door. Sam cringed and tapped on the window. The window whirred down; the kid waited.

Sam leaned in and read the kid's plastic badge. "Look, uh, Squire Tom, I really will leave a tip at the desk for you. We left in a hurry and I forgot to get cash."

The kid waited, gunning the engine.

"There's an alarm remote on the keys. Could you turn it on after you park it? One chirp is armed."

Squire Tom nodded and pulled away. Sam heard him say, "The pox on you, Moorish pig," over the squeal of the tires. How authentic, Sam thought. He watched the Mercedes disappear around the corner and wondered why valet parking always made him feel as if he had seen his car for the last time.

Coyote stood across the lane waving to the car. He looked over. "Moorish pig?"

"The dark skin, I guess," said Sam. He led Coyote past a half-dozen squires and an overweight guy in a purple-and-yellow jester's outfit with a radio on his belt and a badge that read, Lord Larry, over another drawbridge, and into the casino.

Trumpets played a fanfare as they crossed the threshold under a brace of huge broadswords. A jolly electronic voice welcomed them to Camelot. Sam spotted a woman in a peasant dress by a sign reading, Ye Olde Information. The badge she wore, next to a magnificent display of cleavage, read, Lusty Wench Wendy. Sam pulled Coyote back and approached the girl.

"Excuse me, er, Wendy. I have a room reserved and I need to find a cash machine."

The girl spoke in a whining fake-English-over-true-Brooklyn accent. «Well» — she threw out a hip, struck a pose — "if milords proceed through the casino to the left to the second arch, ye will find the registration desk. There's cash machines by every arch, milord."

"Thanks," Sam said. He started to walk away, then turned back to the girl. "Excuse me, but I've been here before and I thought everyone was a lord or a lady. Lusty wench is a new one."

The English accent had overheated and failed. "Yeah. About three months ago they said it was getting sorta confusing. You know, six Lord Steves, ten Lady Debbies. They use a bunch of other medieval titles now. The bellboys are serfs. Lusty wenches, alchemists, stuff like that."

"Oh, thanks," Sam said as if he understood. He led Coyote into the chaos of the casino, looking for a cash machine while trying to move quickly. Coyote's appearance was attracting attention, and when people looked up from a slot machine or blackjack table, Sam knew they were truly distracted. As they passed a carousel of slot machines, a middle-aged woman who was pumping quarters into a machine by the handful leaned so far back to get a look at the trickster that she nearly toppled off her stool. Sam caught her and steadied her. "He works at the Frontier, up the strip," Sam said.

Coyote peeked over Sam's shoulder, winked at the woman, then licked his eyebrows. The woman's jaw dropped.

"Exotic dancer," Sam explained. The woman nodded, a little stunned, and returned her attention to the slot machine.

"I wish you wouldn't do that," Sam said to Coyote. "And don't you have any other clothes? Something a little more conservative?"

"Wool?" Coyote made an incredibly realistic sheep noise. A pit boss at the blackjack tables raised an eyebrow and two security jesters fell in behind Sam and Coyote.

"Be cool," Sam said. He turned under a hanging tapestry of a unicorn and stopped by a cash machine, checking over his shoulder for the security jesters. They waited and watched, standing a few feet away, while Sam took a deck of credit cards from his wallet and shuffled through them. When he inserted one of the cards in the machine and punched his identification number the jesters moved off.

"They're gone," Coyote said.

"Yeah, as long as it looks like you're going to spend money I guess it doesn't matter what you look like."

Coyote watched as the cash machine spit a stack of twenties into the tray. "You win," he said. "You picked the right numbers the first time."

"Yeah, I'm lucky that way."

"Try again, see if you win."

Sam grinned. "I'm very good at this game." He put a different card into the machine and punched the same PIN number while Coyote watched. The machine whirred and another stack of twenties shot into the tray.

"You won! Play again."

"No. We need to check in." Sam picked up the money and walked to a registration desk that was long enough to land planes on. At this hour of the morning there were only two people on the desk, a lusty wench named Chantel and a very tall, thin, very black man in a business suit and wraparound sunglasses who stood back from the desk and watched, unmoving.

"Hunter, Samuel," Sam said. "I have a reservation." He placed a credit card on the desk. The girl typed for a second. The computer beeped and the girl looked over her shoulder at the black man, who moved like liquid to her side. He consulted the screen for a moment. What now? Sam thought.

The black man looked down at Sam and a crescent moon of a smile appeared on the night sky of his face. He picked up Sam's credit card and handed it back. "Mr. Hunter, thank you for joining us again. The room's on Camelot, sir. And if there's anything I can get you, please don't hesitate to call down and ask."

Sam was dumbfounded. Then he remembered. The last time he had stayed here Aaron had lost almost twenty thousand dollars and billed it to their suite of rooms. The suite had been registered in Sam's name. Vegas loves a loser.

"Thank you" — Sam read the man's nameplate, which was pinned at Sam's eye level — "M.F." No Lord, no Squire, no title at all — just M.F.

"The second elevator on your left, Mr. Hunter," the lusty wench said. "Twenty-seventh floor."

"Thanks," Sam said. Coyote grinned at the girl and Sam dragged him away to the elevator, where the trickster immediately punched in four floor numbers and stood back. "This time, I will win."

"It's a fucking elevator," Sam said. "Just push twenty-seven."

"But that is not the lucky number."

Sam sighed and pushed the floor number, then waited while they stopped at all the floors Coyote had pushed on their way to twenty-seven.

Once in the room, Sam stripped to his shorts and fell onto one of the king-size beds. "Get some sleep if you can. I'll try and figure out how to find Calliope in the morning. I'm too tired to think now."

"You sleep," Coyote said. "I will think of a plan."

Sam didn't answer. He was already asleep.

Coyote Loses His Ass

Coyote and his friend Beaver had been hunting all day, but neither had found any game. After a while they sat down on some rocks and began talking.

"This is your fault," Coyote said. "I can always find game."

"I don't think so," Beaver said. "If you are such a good hunter, why is your wife so skinny?"

Coyote thought about his skinny wife and Beaver's fat little wife and he was jealous. "Well, how about a bet?" he said. "Tomorrow we will each go out hunting. If you get more rabbits, you can come to my lodge and sleep with my wife so you can see that my skinny wife is better. But if I get more rabbits, I get to sleep with your wife."

"Sounds fair," Beaver said.

The next day, after the hunt, Coyote came to Beaver's lodge carrying his one scrawny rabbit. "Oh, Mrs. Beaver," he called. "I've come to collect on my bet."

Mrs. Beaver called from inside the lodge. "Oh, Coyote, you are a great hunter. Mr. Beaver just stopped by with twenty rabbits on his way to your lodge. You better go stop him and tell him that you got more."

"Right," Coyote said. "I'll be right back." He slunk off to his lodge dragging his rabbit.

His wife was waiting outside. "Nice rabbit," she said.

"Beaver is inside. I'll see you in the morning." Coyote's wife went into the lodge and pulled down the door flap.

All night Coyote sat outside his lodge shivering and listening. At one point he heard his wife cry out.

"Beaver!" Coyote shouted. "Don't you hurt my wife."

"He's not hurting me," Mrs. Coyote said. "I like it!"

"Swell," Coyote said.

The next morning Beaver came out of Coyote's lodge singing and grinning. "No hard feelings, right?"

"A bet is a bet," Coyote said.

Mrs. Coyote peeked out and said, "Maybe this will teach you not to gamble."

"Right," Coyote said. Then he called to Beaver, "Hey, how about playing the hand game with me — double or nothing?"

"Sounds good," Beaver said. "Let's go down to the river."

At the river Coyote said, "This is for a night with your wife." Then he picked the wrong hand.

"You really shouldn't gamble," Beaver said.

"I'll bet you my best horse for a night with your wife," Coyote said.

After a while, Coyote had lost all his horses, his lodge, his wife, and his clothes. "One more time," he said.

"But you don't have anything left," Beaver said.

"I'll bet you my ass against everything else."

"I don't want your ass," Beaver said.

"I thought you were my friend."

"Okay," Beaver said. He hid the stone behind his back. Coyote picked the wrong hand.

"Can I borrow your knife?" Coyote said.

"I don't want your ass," Beaver said.

"A bet is a bet," Coyote said. He took Beaver's knife and cut off his ass. "Boy, that stings."

"I've got to go," Beaver said. "I'll tell your wife she can come and sleep in my lodge if she wants to." He picked up all of Coyote's things and went home.

When Coyote got home his wife was waiting. "Beaver took the lodge," she said.

"Yep," Coyote said.

"Where's your ass?" she asked.

"Beaver got that too."

"You know," she said, "there's a twelve-step program for gambling. You should look into it."

"Twelve steps." Coyote laughed. "I'll bet I can do it in six."

CHAPTER 24 Coyote in Trickster Town

Las Vegas

Coyote had been a long time in the Spirit World, where everyone knew him, so no one would gamble with him. Now that he was in Trickster Town, he wanted to make up for lost time. He waited for Sam to fall asleep, then he took the salesman's wallet and went down the elevator to the casino.

Coyote saw hundreds of shiny machines blinking, and ringing, and clanking big coins into hollow metal bowls. He saw green tables where people traded money for colorful chips and a woman in a cage who paid money for the chips. He saw a wheel with a ball that went around and around. When the ball stopped a man took everyone's chips. The key to that one, Coyote thought, is to grab your chips when you see the ball slowing down.

At one green table, a shaman with a stick chanted while players threw bones. There was much shouting and moaning after each throw and the shaman took many chips from the players. That is a game of magic, Coyote thought. I will be very good at that one. But first I must use Sam's cheating medicine on this machine.

The trickster stood by a machine that he had seen Sam win from two times. He took one of the gold cards from Sam's wallet and slipped it into the machine, then he pressed the number that he had seen Sam use. The machine beeped and spit the card out.

"Panther piss!" Coyote swore. "I've lost." He pounded on the machine, then stepped back and drew another card from Sam's wallet. He put it in the machine and pressed the number. The machine beeped and spit out the card. "Balls!" Coyote said. "This cheating medicine is no good."

A round woman in pink stretch pants who was standing behind Coyote cleared her throat and made an impatient humphing noise. Coyote turned to her. "Get your own machine. This one is mine."

The woman glared at the trickster and tapped her foot.

"Go, go, go," Coyote said, waving her away. "There are many machines to play on. I was here first. Go away."

He put another card into the machine and hunched over the keyboard so the woman would not steal his cheating medicine. He looked back over his shoulder. She was trying to see what he was doing. "Go away, woman. My cheating medicine will not help you. Even if you win you will still be ugly."

The woman wrapped the strap of her pocketbook around her wrist and wound up to swing it at Coyote. Coyote was going to turn into a flea and disappear into the carpet, but he would have had to drop Sam's wallet to do it, so he hesitated and the woman let fly.

Coyote ducked and covered his head, but the blow didn't come. Instead he heard a solid thud above his head and looked up to see a huge black hand holding the pocketbook in the air, the woman dangling from the strap at the other end. Coyote looked up further, craning his neck, until he saw a dazzling crescent moon of a smile in the face like night sky.

"Is there a problem?" said the crescent moon in a soft, calm, deep voice. The giant lowered the woman, who stood stunned, staring up at what looked like a living late-afternoon shadow in sunglasses. The giant was used to shocking people — white people anyway; a seven-foot black man anywhere off a basketball court nonplussed most. He squeezed the woman's shoulder gently to bring her back to her senses. "Are you all right, ma'am?" Again the smile.

"Fine. I'm fine," the woman said, and she tottered off into the casino to tell her husband that, by God, they would spend their next vacation in Hawaii where natives and giants — if they were there at all — were part of the entertainment.

The giant turned his attention to Coyote. "And you, sir, can I help you with anything?"

"You look like Raven," Coyote said. "Do you always wear sunglasses?"

"Always, sir," the giant said with a slight bow. He pointed to the brass nameplate on his black suit jacket. "I'm M.F., customer service, at your service, sir."

"What's the M.F. stand for?" Coyote asked.

"Just M.F., sir. I am the youngest of nine children. I suppose my mother was too tired to come up with a full name."

This was not entirely true, nor entirely false. The giant's mother had, indeed, been weary by the time he was born, but she had also developed an unnatural obsession with dental hygiene as a child, after she was chosen to be one of the first students ever to participate in a Crest toothpaste test. It had been her single moment of glory, her fifteen minutes of fame (and her best checkup ever). When she grew up she married a navy man named Nathan Fresh, and as she bore her children she christened them in remembrance of her day in the dental sun. The first of the Fresh children, a boy, was named Fluoristat. Then came three more boys: Tartar, Plaque, and Molar. Then two girls: Gingivitis and Flossie (the latter after the famous dental hygiene cow). After normal deliveries of two more sons, Bicuspid and Incisor, she had a long, difficult labor with her largest and last son, Minty. Later, Mother Fresh swore that had the child taken one more minute to come into the world, she would have named him Mr. Tooth Decay out of spite — a fact that gave little solace to the man named Minty Fresh.

Coyote said, "People think that it stands for motherfucker, don't they?"

"No," Minty said. "No one has ever mentioned it."

"Oh," Coyote said. "Can you fix this machine? When I give it the cheating number it just beeps."

Minty Fresh looked at the cash machine, which was still blinking the message INSTRUCTIONS IN ENGLISH, SPANISH, OR JAPANESE. CHOOSE ONE. "You'll need to choose a language, sir." He reached down and pushed the English button. "It should be fine now."

Coyote inserted a card and punched two numbers on the keyboard, then looked at Minty. "This is my secret number."

"Yes," Minty said. "If you need anything at all, please ask for me personally." He turned and walked away.

Coyote finished punching the PIN number. When the machine prompted him for an amount he punched in $9999.99, the maximum allowed by the six-figure field. The machine whirred and spit five hundred dollars into the tray, then flashed a message saying that this was the card's transaction limit. Coyote tried the card again and got another five hundred. The third time the machine refused the transaction so Coyote tried another card. After running all of Sam's cards to their limit he walked away from the machine with twenty thousand dollars in cash.

Coyote went to the roulette table and held the four-inch brick of twenties out to the croupier, a slight Oriental woman in a red-and-purple silk doublet with a name badge that read, Lady Lihn. The croupier said, "On the table." She gestured for Coyote to put the money down. She nodded to a pit boss. "Watch count, please," she said mechanically. The pit boss, a sharp-faced, slick-haired Italian man wearing a polyester suit and a ten-thousand-dollar Rolex, moved to her side and watched as she counted the bills out on the table.

"Changing twenty thousand," Lady Lihn said. "How would you like this, sir?"

"Red ones," Coyote said. The pit boss raised an eyebrow and smirked. Lady Lihn looked irritated.

"Red is five dollar. No room on table."

The pit boss addressed Coyote. "Perhaps you'd like two hundred in fives and the rest in hundreds, sir."

"What color are the hundreds?" Coyote said.

"Black," Lady Lihn said.

"Yellows," Coyote said.

"Yellows are two dollars."

"You pick," Coyote said.

Lady Lihn counted out racks of chips and pushed them in front of Coyote. The pit boss nodded to a cocktail waitress, then to the stack of chips in front of Coyote, which the cocktail waitress interpreted as "Take the order." The cocktail waitress would bring strong drinks until Coyote started to get drunk, then she would bring watered drinks until he looked tired, when she would offer coffee and disappear until the caffeine kicked in.

"Can I bring you something to drink?"

Coyote turned to the cocktail waitress and stared into her cleavage. "Yes," he said.

The waitress held a pen ready over a cocktail napkin. "What can I bring you?"

Coyote shot a glance to a woman at the table who was drinking a mai tai, resplendent with paper parasols and sword-skewered tropical fruit. He grabbed the woman's drink and downed half of it, nearly taking his eye out with the plastic broadsword. "One of these," Coyote said. He replaced the drink in front of the woman, who didn't seem to notice that it had been missing. She'd been riding the alcohol-and-caffeine roller coaster for hours and was absorbed in winning back her children's college fund.

"Bets down," Lady Lihn said. Coyote put a single red chip on black and the ball was dropped. Coyote watched the ball race around the outside of the wheel. When it slowed and dropped to the numbers he reached for his bet.

"No touch bet," Lady Lihn snapped. In an instant the pit boss, the cocktail waitress, and two security jesters in steel-toed elf shoes were at Coyote's side. The trickster pulled his hand back. It will be hard to trick these people, Coyote thought. They talk like wolves, all twitches and gestures and smells.

The ball dropped into a red slot and Lady Lihn placed another red chip next to Coyote's. "I win, I win, I win," Coyote chanted. He did a skipping dance around the table and sang a victory song.

Above the casino, in a mirrored dome, a video camera picked up Coyote's dancing image and sent it to a deck of monitors where three men watched and, in turn, watched each other watch. One pressed a button and picked up a telephone. "M.F.," he said. "This is God. Customer service on table fifty-nine. The Indian you were talking to a few minutes ago. Watch him."

"I'm on it," Minty Fresh said. He turned to the girl who was working behind the computer. "God wants me on the floor."

The girl nodded. As Minty walked by her she sang softly, "He knows when you are sleeping. He knows when you're awake…."

Minty Fresh smiled. He really didn't mind being watched. Because of his size, people had always watched him. He had never blended into any background, never entered a room unnoticed, never been able to sneak up on someone. Attracting attention was as natural to him as being. And for every original-thinking dolt who asked him how the weather was up there, there was a woman who wanted to research the wives' tale of proportional hand-foot-penis size. (A tale, Minty thought, dreamed up by the unsatisfied wives of small-footed men.)

Minty spotted the Indian at the roulette table. The two security jesters had moved off a few feet but were still watching, as was the pit boss. When Minty came to the table they nodded in acknowledgment and moved off. The croupier looked at Minty and immediately looked back to the bets on the table. Minty Fresh put her on edge. It wasn't his size that rattled her, but the fact that no one was exactly sure what his job was, only that when there was a problem, he was there. He handled things.

Lady Lihn dropped the ball into the wheel. It raced, then rattled into a slot, and she raked all the bets off the table. Coyote cursed and let out a howl. The woman playing next to him staggered back and wandered away, carrying visions of her children wearing paper hats and saying, "I was going to go to college, but my mother went to Vegas instead. Would you like fries with that?"

Coyote looked at Minty Fresh. "She was bad luck. I lost half of my chips because of her."

"Perhaps you should move to a different table," Minty said. "We can open a private table just for you."

Coyote grinned at Minty. "You think you have a table where you can trick me?"

"No, sir," Minty said, a little embarrassed. "We don't wish to trick you."

"There's nothing wrong with tricking people. They pay you to be tricked."

"We like to think of it as entertainment."

Coyote laughed. "Like movie stars and magicians? Tricksters. People want to be tricked. But you know that, don't you?" He picked up his chips and walked to a crap table.

Minty thought for a moment before following the Indian. He prided himself on being able to handle any situation with complete calm, but he found dealing with this Indian made him nervous, and a little afraid. But of what? Something in the eyes. He moved in behind Coyote, who was throwing chips on the crap table.

"You can't bet the numbers until the point has been made, sir," said the stickman, a thin, balding man in his forties. He pushed Coyote's chips back across the table. The stickman looked over Coyote's head and nodded to Minty Fresh before pushing the dice to the shooter. "Place your bets," he said, and the dealers working at either end of the table checked the bets on the felt. "New shooter coming out," the stickman said.

A blond woman in a business suit and perfect newswoman makeup picked up the dice and blew on them. "Come on, seven," she said. "Baby needs new shoes."

Coyote twisted his neck to look at Minty Fresh. "Does talking to them work?"

Minty nodded to the table as the woman let fly with the dice, rolling a two.

"Snake eyes!" the croupier said.

"Lizard dick!" Coyote shouted back.

The blond woman cursed and walked away from the table. The stickman shot a glance to Minty, then continued. "Two. Craps. No pass. No come. Place your bets. New shooter coming out." He pushed the dice to Coyote, who threw a handful of black chips on the table and picked up the dice.

"You are small, but I am your friend," Coyote said to the dice. "You have beautiful spots." He pulled the rawhide pouch from his belt and poured a fine powder on the dice.

"You can't do that, sir," the stickman said.

Minty Fresh gently took the dice from Coyote and handed them to the boxman, who sat across from the stickman watching an enormous rack of chips that was the table's bank. He inspected the dice, then gave them to the stickman, who dropped them in his tray and pushed a fresh pair to the trickster.

"What is this, shade?" Coyote said. "The shaman gets to use his power stick but I can't use my cheating powder?"

"I'm afraid not," Minty said.

Coyote picked up the new dice and chucked them to the end of the table.

"Eight! Easy," the stickman said.

"Did I win?" Coyote asked Minty.

"No, now you have to roll another eight before you roll a seven or eleven."

Coyote rolled again. The dice showed a pair of fours.

"Eight. Winner. Hard way," the stickman chanted. The dealer placed a stack of black chips next to Coyote's bet.

"Ha," Coyote said, taunting Minty Fresh. "See, I am good at this game."

"Very good," Minty said with a smile. "You roll again."

Coyote placed the remainder of his chips on the table. The dealer immediately shot a glance to the boxman, who looked to Minty Fresh. Minty nodded. The boxman nodded. The dealer counted Coyote's chips and stacked them on the pass line. "Playing twenty-one thousand."

Coyote threw the dice.

"Two!" the stickman said. The dealer raked in Coyote's chips and handed them to the boxman, who stacked the racks in the table bank.

"I lost?" Coyote said incredulously.

"Sorry," Minty said. "But you didn't crap out. You can shoot again."

"I'll be back," Coyote said. He walked away and Minty followed him through the casino, into the lobby, and out the door. Coyote handed the valet ticket to a kid named Squire Jeff, then turned to Minty, who stood by the valet counter.

"I'll be back with more money."

"We'll hold a place for you, sir," Minty said, relieved that the Indian was leaving.

"I was just learning your game, shade. You didn't trick me."

"Of course not, sir."

Squire Jeff pulled up in the Mercedes, got out, and waited with his hand out. Coyote started to get into the car, then stopped and looked at the valet. He took the pouch from his belt and poured a bit of powder into the kid's hand, then got in the car and drove away.

Minty felt a wave of relief wash over him as he watched the Mercedes cross the drawbridge. Squire Jeff, still holding his palm out, turned to Minty Fresh.

"What am I supposed to do with this?"

"You could snort it."

Squire Jeff sniffed at the powder, then wrinkled his nose and brushed the powder from his hand. "Fucking Indian. You work inside, right?"

Minty nodded.

Squire Jeff looked Minty up and down. "You play any ball?"

"One year, UNLV."

"Injury?"

"Attitude," Minty said. He walked back into the casino.

CHAPTER 25 Wheels, Deals, and the Persistance of Visions

Las Vegas

Calliope sat in her car shivering and watching. She was parked up the street from a Vegas Harley-Davidson shop where she had once gone with Lonnie on a delivery for the Guild. The street was deserted, and dark except for the odd glow of neon in the window of a closed pawnshop. Litter danced in dust devils of desert wind that had grown cold through the night. Calliope curled up in the driver's seat and tried to cover herself with one of Grubb's blankets. The smell that came off the blanket, a mix of sour milk and sweet baby, made her sad, and even though she had stopped breastfeeding months ago, her breasts ached for her son.

She caught some motion out of the corner of her eye: two figures coming out of an alley onto the sidewalk: men. They were walking toward the car. Calliope slid down in the driver's seat. The mother instinct, the feeling of righteous invincibility that had filled her when she had come here, was leaking away. Right now she was not protecting her child; she was afraid for herself.

As the men approached she saw that they were young toughs, swaggering with their own willingness to violence, even as they staggered from the effect of some drink or drug. She slid farther down in the seat, and when their shadows fell across the car's hood she twisted down and covered herself with Grubb's blanket. She heard their footsteps scrape and stop at the car, heard their voices above her.

"Check out this motherfucker."

"Some tall dollars here — there's a grand in tires on this thing."

"Pop the hood."

Calliope heard someone trying to open the door.

"Locked."

"Hang on a minute, I saw a brick back a ways."

Footsteps away. The car rocked with the continued yanking at the door handle. Calliope could hear the keys swinging in the ignition. The second man was coming back. Her breath caught. She waited for the crash. Sweat trickled down her forehead and dripped onto the gearshift knob.

"No man, not the windshield. You can't drive it with a broken windshield."

"Oh, right."

Calliope braced herself for the impact of the brick, then something in her mind screamed NO! Her feet were still on the pedals. She pushed the clutch and gas to the floor, reached out from under the blanket, and turned the key.

The Z roared to life, thundered, then screamed as she kept the gas to the floor. She sat up and glanced at the two startled men, who were cowering a few feet away. Instantly their surprise turned to anger and the taller of the two raised the brick. Calliope popped the clutch and fought to keep the car straight as the tires burned off on the asphalt. She heard a loud crack behind her and felt splinters of glass hit her from behind.

She power-shifted through three gears, turning over the tires and kicking the car sideways with each slam of the shifter. By the time she backed off the gas the speedometer was threatening 110. There was a thumping coming from the engine and a high-pitched wailing coming from somewhere. She looked into the rearview mirror to see the hole in the back window and, behind it, flashing red and blue police lights.

She hesitated only long enough to throw Grubb's blanket off her shoulders, then slammed the Z into third, floored it, and said a quick prayer to Kali the Destroyer.

If Lonnie Ray Inman had ever made the connection that whenever he read the words American Standard, spelled out in cornflower blue against white porcelain, he felt a sudden urge to urinate, he might have understood why Grubb, upon seeing white plastic bundles piled haphazardly on the motel-room floor, crawled doggedly to, and whizzed gleefully on, twenty thousand dollars' worth of methamphetamine. To Grubb, the bundles looked like Pampers, a fine and private place to pee.

"Jesus Christ, Cheryl," Lonnie yelled. "He crawled out of his diaper. Can't you keep an eye on him for a fucking minute?"

"Fuck you. You watch him, stud. He's your kid." Cheryl threw a pillow at Lonnie as she stormed naked into the bathroom.

"You were the one that said you'd make a good mother. Throw me a towel."

Cheryl stood in front of the mirror working her jaw back and forth. "Get your own towel. I think you fucked up my jaw."

"I did? I didn't do shit."

"That's the problem, isn't it?"

Cheryl had been lolling Lonnie's limpness around in her mouth for an hour, trying to get a reaction out of him, when she heard a sharp crack in her right ear and felt a painful grating in the back of her jaw.

Lonnie grabbed a towel off the rack and went to where Grubb was happily splashing away on the drugs. Lonnie picked up the baby and put him on the bed, then went back to clean off the packages.

"Oh, Christ. Cheryl, clean up the kid, will you?"

"Fuck off."

Lonnie stormed into the bathroom and grabbed her by the hair, yanking her head back until she was staring up at him. He spoke to her through gritted teeth. "You clean up the kid now or I'll snap your fucking neck. You understand?" He yanked her head back further. "I've got to turn this shit early in the morning and then ride to South Dakota, and I need to get some fucking sleep. If I have to kill you to get it I will. You understand?" He relaxed his grip on her hair and she nodded. Tears welled up in her eyes.

He dragged her out of the bathroom and threw her on the bed with Grubb, then threw the towel in her face. "Now clean up the kid."

Lonnie took another towel and wiped each of the packages before packing them into Grubb's diaper bag.

Cheryl rolled Grubb over and dried his bottom. "Last time I take a vacation with you," she said. "No gambling, no shows, no fucking. I said..." She looked at him. "No fu-" The word caught in her throat.

He was aiming his pistol at her head.

Until he saw the orange 280Z rocket by him, the cop thought that the worst thing he was going to have to deal with on this shift was not smoking. He was wearing a patch on his left shoulder that was supposed to feed nicotine into his blood to keep him from craving cigarettes, but the urge to smoke was still there, so he fought it by eating donuts. He'd gained ten pounds in a week, and he was musing over the idea of inventing a donut patch when the sports car roared by him.

Out of habit, he butted a half-eaten cruller in the ashtray, hit the lights and siren, and pulled out in pursuit. The Z already had about eight blocks on him and he estimated it was doing about a hundred. He was reaching for the radio to call ahead for help when a black Mercedes pulled out from a side street in front of him. He slammed on the brakes and threw the cruiser sideways, bringing it to a stop not ten feet from impact. The Mercedes was at a dead stop, blocking both lanes. The cop watched the Z's taillights fade in the distance on the other side.

He killed the siren and switched the radio to the public address system. "Get out of the car, now!" He waited but no one got out of the car. In fact, he couldn't see a driver at all, yet the Mercedes was still running. He considered calling for backup, then decided to handle it himself. He stepped out of the cruiser with his gun drawn, careful to stay behind the car door.

"You, in the Mercedes, get out slowly." He saw something move in the car, but it didn't look like a person. Holding his revolver at ready, he shined his flashlight at the car. Movement, but no driver.

He saw three possibilities. The driver was unconscious, or was waiting to peel away when he moved away from the cruiser, or was lying in wait with a shotgun to blow his head off. He decided it would be safest to assume the last, and without further warning he crept to a spot just under the open driver's-side window. He heard a scratching sound just above his head and came up, gun first, to catch a glimpse of the back end of the skunk just as it sprayed him in the face.

As he wiped his eyes he heard laughing and the Mercedes pulling away.

Clyde, owner of Clyde's Cash for Your Car, said, "No offense, chief, but you don't see many Indians in Mercedes." He kicked a tire and bent down to look at the lines of the paint job for signs of bodywork, keeping a hand on his head to steady his toupee. "Looks clean."

"It's a good car," Coyote said.

Clyde narrowed his eyes and smiled. Clyde had seen a little too much sun in his sixty years and this sly smile, what he used to call his «gotcha» look, made him look like an old Chinese woman. "And you have the title, right, chief?"

"Title?"

"That's what I thought." Clyde stepped up to Coyote, his head about level with the trickster's sternum. "Are you a policeman, or are you working in the service of any law-enforcement agency?"

"Nope."

"Well then, let's do some business." Clyde grinned. "Now, you and I know that we could fry eggs on this car, am I right? Of course I am. And you're not from around here, or you'd have your own connections and wouldn't be here, am I right? Of course I am. And you don't want to take this car out on the interstate where the state patrol would spot it as hot in a second? No, you don't." He paused for effect, just to make sure everyone knew he was in control. "I'll give you five thousand dollars for it."

"Not enough," said Coyote. "Look, this car has a machine that tells you where you are."

Clyde glanced inside the Mercedes at the navigation system, then shrugged. "Chief, you see all these cars?" Clyde gestured to a dozen cars on his lot. Coyote looked around and nodded. "Well, all these cars got something that'll tell you where you're at. I call them windows. You look out of 'em. Now, do you want to sell a car?"

"Six thousand," Coyote said.

Clyde crossed his arms and waited, tapped his foot, smiled into the night sky.

"Five," Coyote said.

"I'll be right back with your money, chief. Can I have my boy give you a lift somewhere?"

"Sure," Coyote said.

Clyde went into his office, a mobile home whose entire side functioned as Clyde's sign. In a moment he returned with a stack of hundreds. He counted them into Coyote's hand. A greasy teenager pulled up in an old Chevy. "This is Clyde junior," Clyde said. "He'll take you wherever you need to go."

"It's a good car," Coyote said. He handed the keys to Clyde and climbed into the Chevy. As they pulled away Coyote dug into his medicine pouch and pulled out a small plastic box that had once been on Sam's key ring. He pushed the red button once, and a chirping sound came from under the hood of the Mercedes to signal that the alarm was armed.

Kiro Yashamoto stood in the corner of the treatment room watching two doctors battle for a man's life. One doctor was young, white, and wore a stethoscope around his neck. He was fighting death with electronic monitors, oxygen, a battery of injected drugs, and a degree from Michigan State. The other doctor was an old Indian man, as wrinkled and weathered as the patient, who fought with prayers, songs, and by blowing on the patient through a mouthful of charcoal. He held no degree, but had been called to healing by the trumpeting of a white elk in the Spirit World. Despite the difference in their methods, the two worked as a team. Kiro could see that they respected each other, and he wished that his children were here to see these two cultures working together not for profit, but out of a common compassion. Alas, he had left them outside in the clinic's small waiting room, and neither of the doctors would allow more people in here.

A tall, lanky Indian man dressed in denim stood in the corner opposite Kiro. His hair was cut short and shot with gray. Kiro guessed he was in his sixties, but it was hard to tell with these people. He saw Kiro watching and quietly crossed the room.

"My name is Harlan Hunts Alone," he said, extending his hand.

"How do you do," Kiro said. He took Harlan's hand and bowed slightly, then caught himself in the inappropriate gesture and felt embarrassed.

Harlan patted Kiro's shoulder. "Pokey is my brother. I wanted to thank you for bringing him here. The doctor said he would have died without your help."

"It was nothing," Kiro said.

"Just the same," Harlan smiled. The medicine man stopped singing and Harlan quickly turned to him.

"He's gone," the medicine man said.

The white doctor looked at the monitor. A steady blip played across the screen. "He's fine. His blood pressure's coming up."

"Not dead," said the medicine man. "Gone."

Pokey began mumbling, then speaking. Kiro could not hear what he was saying through the oxygen mask.

"That's not Crow. What is that?" asked the white doctor.

"Navaho," said the medicine man.

"He doesn't speak Navaho," Harlan said. "He doesn't even speak Crow."

"He doesn't here," the medicine man said. "He's not here."

On a stone wall: carvings of dead gods and the shadow of a man with the head of a dog. Pokey looks, but there is no figure casting the shadow. He turns to run.

"Stop," the shadow says.

Pokey stops but does not look back. "Who are you?"

"Tell him there is death where he goes."

"Tell who?"

"The trickster. Tell him. And tell him I am coming back."

"Who are you?"

The shade and the wall are gone. Ahead lie prairies. Pokey runs, calls, "Old Man Coyote!"

"What? I'm busy. Twice in a few days is too much. Don't talk to me for another forty years."

"A shadow said to tell you that there is death where you are going."

"A shadow?"

"A man with the head of a dog. I thought it was you playing a trick on me."

"Nope. So he said that there is death where I am going. He ought to know. Anything else?"

"He said to tell you that he is coming back."

"Well, no shit. You have to go, old man. You're dying again."

"I am?"

"Yeah. Didn't you drink that Kool-Aid I left you?"

"There was no water. Who was-"

"Go now."

The green line went flat. The monitor screeched out an alarm.

"We're losing him," the doctor said. He grabbed a syringe, filled it with epinephrine, and drove it into Pokey's chest. The medicine man began to sing a death song.

CHAPTER 26 Hang with a Horse Thief, Wake Up Walking

Las Vegas

Minty Fresh was staring at nothing and thinking «Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah» when the girl behind the desk grabbed his arm, startling him.

"Are you all right?" she said.

"Fine, what is it?"

"God, on the phone, for you."

"Thank you." Minty picked up the phone and tried to drive «Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah» out of his head. "M.F. here," he said.

"Your Indian is back in the building, main entrance. Keep an eye on him."

"Right." Minty hung up. He checked his watch and realized that he must have been staring for ten minutes before the call. Why couldn't he shake that song? He hadn't heard it since his grandmother had taken him to see Song of the South when he was a child. Grandma had heard the Uncle Remus stories of Br'er Fox and Br'er Rabbit from her own grandmother, who had been a slave. She said that the stories came with the slaves from West Africa. There, Br'er Rabbit was known as Esau, the trickster. Maybe it was the Indian talking about tricking people that had set it off.

Since the Indian had come into the casino, Minty had felt uneasy. It was as if the Indian could look into his soul and see secrets that he himself did not know. He looked up to see the Indian coming through the lobby.

Minty smiled. "Mr. Coyote, you're back."

"How do you know my name?"

Minty was spun by the question. He felt his shell of cool detachment cracking and dropping off like old paint. "I… I don't know…."

"It's okay," Coyote said. "I want everyone to know my name. Not like you. You carry your name like a man with a knife hidden in his boot. You should wear your name like a red bow tie."

"I'll try to remember that," Minty said, trying to sound patronizing. If the casino knew his real name they'd have him greeting people in clown shoes and a purple wig within the hour. A red bow tie indeed.

Coyote fanned a handful of hundreds and waved them under Minty's nose. "Did you save my place at the table?"

"I'm sure we can find you a suitable place. Follow me."

Minty led Coyote to an out-of-the-way crap table where only a few players were gathered. One of them, a lanky middle-aged man in a cowboy hat and jeans, turned and looked Coyote up and down, then scoffed and turned to the stickman, shaking his head in disgust. "Prairie niggers," he said under his breath.

Minty moved up behind the cowboy and bent over until his mouth was even with the cowboy's ear. "I beg your pardon?"

The cowboy spun around and stumbled back against the table, his eyes wide. "Nothin'," he said. Minty remained crouched over, his face almost touching the cowboy's.

"Is there a problem, sir?"

"No. No problem," the cowboy said. He turned and scraped his chips off the table and quickly walked away.

Minty stood slowly and caught the stickman glaring at him. A wave of embarrassment burned over him. That sort of direct intimidation was completely out of line: bad form, bad judgment. He imagined that there would be a call from God waiting for him when he returned to the desk. He turned to Coyote, who was staring down the front of a cocktail waitress's dress.

Minty said, "Can we get you something to drink?"

"Umbrellas and swords, lots of them."

"Very good." Minty nodded to the cocktail waitress. "Mai tai, extra fruit."

Coyote handed his cash to the dealer. "Black ones."

The dealer counted the money and handed it to the supervisor. "Changing five thousand." The other players looked up at Coyote, then Minty, then quickly looked down to avoid eye contact.

A pair of fresh-faced newlyweds stood at the head of the table, exchanging kisses and whispers. The stickman pushed the dice to the woman, who giggled as she picked them up. "That's my lucky girl," her husband said, kissing her ear.

"New shooter coming out," the stickman said.

"Is she lucky?" Coyote asked.

"She's made me the luckiest man in the world," the young husband said. The girl blushed and buried her face in her husband's shoulder.

Minty found that he was irritated by the couple's fawning and wondered why. He saw it ten times a day: newlyweds at the tables acting like they were the first to discover love, glued together for a few days of starry-eyed public foreplay between bouts in a hotel bed. And they'd be back in twenty years, separating when they hit the door, her locking onto a slot machine while he played blackjack and dreamed of sneaking off to a jiggle show. Minty wanted to warn them that time would make hypocrites of them. One day you'll wake up and find that you're married to a husband and a father, a wife and a mother, and you'll wonder whatever happened to the lover that you swapped spit and sweetness with over a crap table. But why did it matter? It never had before. It's this Indian, Minty thought. He's making me lose it.

Coyote placed all his chips on the pass line. "Are you lucky?" he said to the bride.

She smiled and nodded. Her husband placed a two-dollar chip on the pass line. "Go ahead, honey." He held her shoulders, bracing her against the weight of the dice, and the girl let fly.

"Two! Snake eyes! No pass!" The stickman raked in the bets. Coyote dove over the table and caught the woman by the throat, riding her to the floor. The husband stepped aside as the light of his life went down.

"You are not lucky!" Coyote screeched. "You lost all my money! You are not lucky!" The girl clawed at his face with lace-gloved hands.

Minty Fresh caught Coyote by the back of the neck and pulled him off the girl with one hand, waving away the security jesters who had appeared with the other. "I've got this handled." He nodded to the girl on the floor and the jesters helped her to her feet.

Minty dragged Coyote away from the table.

"She lied. She lied."

"Perhaps you'd like to rest for a while," Minty said, as if he was taking Coyote's hat rather than dragging him across the floor. "Can we get you something to eat? The dining room is closed, but our snack bar is open." Minty was acutely aware that he was in the process of losing his job. He should have turned the Indian over to security. After years as the officer of order, he was falling apart.

"I need to get more money," Coyote said, calming down now.

Minty set Coyote on his feet, keeping a restraining hand on the trickster's neck. "You're sharing a room with Mr. Hunter, aren't you? I'll have the bellman take you up to the room."

Coyote thought for a moment. "No, my money is at another hotel and I don't have a car."

"That's not a problem, sir. I'll call around a limo and drive you myself."

Minty steered Coyote out a side exit of the casino and walked him to the valet booth, where he ordered a limo from the attendant. In a moment a stretch Lincoln pulled up to the curb and an eager squire held the door while Coyote climbed in.

Minty adjusted the seat before climbing in; still, his knees were up around the wheel. As he drove he tried to form some sort of rationalization for his mistakes — something to wash him clean with the management. Perhaps the Indian would lose enough money to justify the lapses of judgment.

"Where are you staying, sir?"

"The Frontier."

Minty nodded and pulled out onto the strip. "Call Camelot," he said.

A series of beeps sounded in the car and a woman's voice came on the speaker. "Camelot."

"Desk, please."

"Thank you."

A series of clicks and a different voice. "Camelot, reservations."

"This is M.F.," Minty said. "I'm taking a customer to the Frontier. I'll return in a few minutes."

"Very good, sir. There's a message for you from upstairs. Do you want me to put you through?"

"No. Thank you." There was no sense in rushing to the mailbox if you knew there was a letter bomb waiting for you. "Off," Minty said. There was a click.

Coyote was hanging on the back of the seat, looking down at the cellular phone. "You can talk to machines?"

"Just this one. Voice activated so you can keep your hands on the wheel."

"I can talk to animals. Can you take other forms?"

Minty smiled. The Indian was a nut case, but at least he was an amusing nut case. "Actually," he said. "This is another form. In real life I'm a short Jewish woman."

"I wouldn't have known," Coyote said. "It must be the sunglasses." He looked at the dashboard. "Does this car tell you where you are?"

"No."

"Ha! Mine is better."

"Pardon me?"

"Follow that car," Coyote said, pointing ahead to a 280Z with a shattered back window turning off the strip.

For a second, Minty was tempted to follow the car, then he caught himself. "I can't do that, sir." What was it about this Indian that he could twist the world? If he wasn't fired when he got back to the casino, Minty decided he would hire a hooker to rub his temples and tell him that everything was okay until he believed it or ran out of money, whichever came first. Maybe the Indian was right about people wanting to be tricked.

"I need cigarettes," Coyote said.

"We have complimentary cigarettes at the casino, sir."

"No. I need some now. At that store." Coyote pointed to a minimart across the strip.

"As you wish," Minty said. He pulled the limo into the minimart and turned off the engine.

Coyote said, "I'm out of money until we go to my motel."

"Allow me, sir," Minty opened the car door and unfolded himself onto the curb.

"I'll pay you back."

"Not necessary, sir. Camelot will take care of it."

"Salems," Coyote said. "A carton."

Minty closed the door and walked into the minimart. He found the cigarettes, then grabbed a package of Twinkies off the shelf for himself. He checked the date on the Twinkies: July 1956. Good. They had another thirty years of guaranteed freshness.

He fell in line behind a drunk man who was waving a gas card at the clerk. "Look, man, it's this simple. You charge my card for forty bucks' worth of gas and give me twenty in cash. You get a hundred-percent profit."

Minty listened to the clerk try to explain why this couldn't be done and smiled in sympathy, as if to say, "They lose their money, then they lose their minds." The clerk rolled his eyes as if to say, "This might take a while."

Minty looked outside to check on his passenger and saw the limo backing away from the curb. He tossed the cigarettes and Twinkies on the counter and ran out, losing his glasses as he ducked to get through the doors. He reached the street as the limo accelerated out of reach, then stopped and stared down the strip, watching the Lincoln's taillights until they blended into a million other lights. Acid panic rose in his throat, then subsided, replaced by the resolved calm of the doomed.

He turned and walked slowly back to the minimart to find his glasses. As he reached the door, the drunk, his gas card still in hand, stumbled through and Minty caught him by the shoulders to avoid a collision. The drunk looked up, then tore himself away and stepped back. "Jesus Christ, boy! What happened to your eyes? You been sittin' too close to the TV?"

Minty raised his hand to cover his golden eyes, then dropped it and shrugged. "Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah," he said with a grin.

Dawn was starting to break and the sky was turning from red to blue. Coyote sat in the limo, which was parked a block behind Calliope's orange Z, which was parked a block away from Nardonne's Harley-Davidson Shop. Lonnie's bike was parked outside.

"Call Sam," Coyote said. Nothing happened. He pounded on the car phone. "I said, call Sam." Nothing happened.

"Call Sam's room," Coyote said to the phone. Nothing happened and the trickster yipped with anger. "Call Sam's room or I'll rip your cord off." He picked up the receiver and beat it on the dashboard, then he saw a sticker with the casino's logo stuck to the receiver. "Call Camelot," he said. The phone lit up and beeped through some numbers.

The phone rang once and a woman answered. "Camelot."

"I want to talk to Sam."

"Do you have a last name, sir?"

"No, just Coyote."

"I'm sorry, sir, we have no guest listed under Coyote."

"Not me, I'm here. His name is Hunter."

"We have no Coyote Hunter. There's a Samuel Hunter."

"That's him."

"One minute while I connect you."

"I'll bet you're ugly in person."

"What?" Sam's sleepy voice came over the phone.

"Sam, I found the girl."

"Where? Where are you? What time is it? Who's ugly?"

"Morning. You have to come here. I'm at a place called Nardonne's Harley-Davidson Shop. The girl is here, and the motorcycle with her picture on it is parked outside."

"Give me directions. I'll be there in a few minutes. Keep Calliope there. I have to check out and get the car."

"Take a cab."

"You didn't take my car?"

"No, this car is better. You can talk to the phone. Your car is gone. I sold it."

"You what?"

"Take a cab. I'm in a big black car. Off."

The phone clicked, cutting Sam off in the middle of a tirade. Coyote didn't know whether the girl had a phone in her car, but he decided to try. "Call the girl," he said to the phone.

The phone beeped through the numbers. "This is Carla," a sexy woman's voice said. "Would you like this on your phone bill or your credit card?"

"Phone bill," Coyote said.

"If you like leather, press one," Carla said. "Twins, press two. For California blondes, press three. Big bottoms, press-" Coyote picked up the handset and pressed three.

Another sexy voice came on, "Hi, I'm Brandy, who are you?"

"Coyote."

"Would you like to know what I'm wearing, Coyote?"

"No, I have to tell the girl to stay here until Sam comes."

"We'll take as long as Sam needs. Is Sam getting hard?"

"No, he's pissed off about his car."

There was a pause and the sound of her lighting a cigarette. Brandy said, "Okay. Let's start over."

Minty waited for the second limo at the pay phone outside the minimart. He flipped through his address book until he found the detective's number, then dialed.

The phone rang twice, then there was the sound of the receiver rattling and falling. Finally a sleepy, hostile man's voice said, "What?"

Minty said, "Jake, this is M.F., at Camelot."

"Fuck that. This is harassment. It's… it's five thirty in the morning. You said I could have all the time I needed to pay."

"I'm not calling about that, Jake. I need a favor. One of the limos has been stolen."

"Why call me at home? You guys have Lo-Jack beacons in those limos, don't you? Call the station. They'll track it and have it back in half an hour."

"I can't call the station, Jake. This is delicate. I need to get it back without bringing the police into it."

"You're fucked. The Lo-Jack trackers are installed in the cruisers."

"Can you put one in one of our limos? Just until I find the stolen one."

"No way. The tracking system takes hours to install."

"Jake, I need a favor. Just a favor. I haven't mentioned what you owe us."

"This strong-arm shit isn't your style, M.F."

"But you can get use of a unit with the Lo-Jack tracker in it?"

"Meet me at the station in a half hour."

"What's the range on the tracker?"

"About a mile, depending on the terrain. Farther in the desert. You're not going to be able to cover much area with only one car."

"Then make it fifteen minutes. And Jake-"

"What?"

"Thank you." Minty hung up. So much for the police, he thought. Now if I can get it back before the casino finds out. If not, I guess it's time to go shopping for a red bow tie.

Calliope was sure she could do it: if Grubb was trapped under a Chrysler she could lift the car and pull him out. You heard about it all the time: Hundred-Pound Mom Lifts Two-Ton Car to Save Trapped Tot. It seemed to happen often enough that it should be part of Lamaze training. "Okay, now breathe, focus, grab the bumper… now lift!" Yep, she could do it — a Chrysler on each arm if she had to. She wasn't so sure about getting Grubb back from Lonnie. Maybe if that other woman wasn't with him, being so hostile and negative.

She was feeling a little better now that the sun was coming up. She'd been shivering since the punks had broken her back window, from nerves and the cold. And she didn't have enough gas money to leave the Z running with the heater on while she waited for Lonnie to come out of the Harley shop. She might not have enough to make it home as it was. Besides, something was wrong with the car; she'd tached it too high while running from the police and something had given way in clatter and smoke.

As she watched, Lonnie came through the front door of the shop carrying Grubb's diaper bag. Calliope swallowed hard, trying to push down her fear — fear of failure. She got out of the Z. The woman followed Lonnie holding Grubb in her arms. Calliope ran toward them, then stopped when she saw the woman's face. It was like one painful purple bruise with eyes.

"Lonnie," Calliope called.

Lonnie and the woman turned. Grubb saw his mother and reached out. Lonnie pushed down Grubb's hand. "What are you doing here?"

"I came to get Grubb. You shouldn't have taken him."

"Talk to the judge. He's mine half the time."

He was right. Calliope had gone to Social Services once before when Lonnie took Grubb on a road trip. Her caseworker told her that the law couldn't do anything to help.

"You don't want him. You just want to hurt me."

Lonnie laughed, threw his head back, and shook with laughter. For all the times he had postured and threatened and screamed and pounded, he had never really scared her. She was scared now.

"You shouldn't take him on a run like this, Lonnie. What if you get busted?"

"Run? What run? We're just on a little family camping trip, aren't we, Cheryl?" The woman tucked her face behind Grubb.

"Give him to me, please," Calliope pleaded.

Lonnie climbed onto his bike grinning and hit the starter. The bike fired up and Lonnie shouted over the engine, "Go home. I'll bring him back in a few days." Cheryl climbed on behind him and he dropped the bike into gear.

"No!" Calliope started to run after them. Lonnie gunned the bike and roared off.

She shuffled to a stop and saw Grubb reaching out over Cheryl's shoulder. Her eyes blurred with tears. She turned and ran to her car, wiped her eyes, and saw the limo parked down the street. Someone was sitting in it, just watching her. "What are you looking at?" she screamed.

Sam made the chambermaid help him search the hotel room for his wallet for fifteen minutes before giving up and leaving her with a promise of a tip on the credit card. He was thinking This is like being stuck in some Kafkaesque Roadrunner cartoon when the taxi from the Acme Cab Company pulled up, the driver wearing a fez. Animated by Hieronymus Bosch, Sam thought.

In the cab, he said, "Do you know a Harley-Davidson shop called Nardonne's?"

"Bad part of town. Cost you double."

"It's broad daylight."

"Oh, it is. My shift is over. Sorry."

"Okay, double," Sam said. Why quibble? He couldn't pay the guy anyway.

When they pulled in behind the limo, Sam said, "Wait here, I'll get your money." He got out and looked down the street to the Harley shop, then went up to the limo and pounded on the blacked-out window. The window whirred down. Coyote grinned.

"Where is she?"

"Took off. Just now."

"Why didn't you stop her?"

"She didn't want to be stopped. We'll find her — she's following the biker, and we know where he's going."

The cabdriver beeped his horn. "Give me my wallet," Sam said. Coyote handed the wallet out the window. Sam rifled through it and came up empty. "There's no money left."

"Nope," Coyote said.

The cabdriver leaned on the horn. Sam signaled for him to wait, ran around to the other side of the limo, and got in.

"Go," Sam said.

"What about the cabdriver?"

"Fuck him."

"That's the spirit." Coyote started the limo and peeled away. He checked the rearview mirror. "He's not following."

"Good."

"He's talking to his radio. Got a smoke?"

Sam dug a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. "Where's my car?"

"I sold it."

"You can't sell it without the title."

"I got a good deal, five thousand."

"Are you nuts? Five thousand wouldn't buy the stereo."

"I needed to win my money back. I won a lot of money on the machine you put the cards in, but a shaman with a stick won it back from me."

Sam butted his cigarette in the ashtray and hung his head in his hands, trying to let it all sink in. "So you sold my car for five grand?"

"Yep." Coyote snatched the mashed cigarette and relit it.

"And where is that money?"

"The shaman had strong cheating medicine."

"That's the kind of thinking that got Manhattan sold for a box of beads."

"So they still tell that story? It was one of my best tricks. They gave us many beads for that island. They didn't know that you can't own land."

Sam sighed and slouched in his seat, thinking he should be angry, or worried about his car, but strangely he was more concerned with catching Calliope. They were on the highway now. Sam glanced at the speedometer. "Slow down to the speed limit. We don't need cop trouble. I'm assuming you stole this car."

"I counted coup: stealing a tethered horse."

"Tell me," Sam said.

Coyote told the story of Minty and the limo, turning it into a fable full of danger and magic, making himself the hero. He was coming to the part about the car phone when it rang.

Sam reached for the answer button and pulled back his hand in disgust. "What's this gunk all over the phone? It looks like-"

"I'm not to that part of the story yet."

"Then you answer it."

"Speak," Coyote said, and the phone lit up and clicked. "Is that you, Brandy?"

A very deep, calm voice came over the speakerphone, "I want the car back, now. Pull over and stop. I'm a couple of minutes behind you. The police are-"

"Off," Coyote said. The phone hung up. Coyote turned to Sam. "This is a good car. You can talk to the phone. Her name is Brandy. She's very friendly."

"Uh-huh," Sam said.

"That wasn't her."

"Pull off at the next exit."

CHAPTER 27 Food, Gas, Enlightenment, Next Right

King's Lake, Nevada

The exit sign said, King's Lake, but when they pulled off and followed the ramp around the base of a mesa, there was no lake, no life at all, just a dirt road and a strip of gray wooden buildings with faded facades. A weathered wooden sign read, Emergency, Nevada. The population had been crossed out and repainted a dozen times until, finally, someone had painted a big zero at the bottom and the words We gived up. Coyote stopped the car.

"What do you want to do here?"

"I don't know, but we had to get off the highway before they caught up with us." Sam got out of the car and peered down the empty dirt street, shielding his eyes against the sun with his hand. A prairie dog scampered across the road and under the wooden sidewalk. "This road continues out of town. Maybe it joins up with another major road somewhere else. We need a map."

"No map in the car," Coyote said. "We can ask someone."

Sam looked around at the empty buildings. "Right, let's just stop in at the chamber of commerce and ask someone that's been dead for a hundred years."

"Can we do that?" Coyote asked, with complete sincerity.

"No, we can't do that! It's a ghost town. There's no one here."

"I was going to ask that prairie dog." Coyote walked to where the prairie dog had disappeared under the walkway. "Hey, little one, come out."

Sam stood behind the trickster, shaking his head. He heard a squeak from under the walk.

Coyote looked to Sam. "He doesn't trust you. He won't come out unless you go away."

"Tell him we're in a hurry." Sam couldn't believe he was being snubbed by a rodent.

"He knows that, but he says you have shifty eyes. Go over there and wait." Coyote pointed down the sidewalk.

Sam walked past a hitching post and sat on a bench in front of the abandoned saloon. He watched the road leading to the highway, waiting for the dust cloud from pursuing police cars. The road remained empty. He watched the prairie dog scamper out from under the sidewalk and stand on his hind legs as Coyote talked to him. Maybe he had been a little hasty in thinking Calliope nuts for talking to her kitchen pals. They probably thought he had shifty eyes as well.

After a few moments of talking and chattering Coyote threw his head back and laughed, then left the prairie dog in the street and came to where Sam was sitting.

"You've got to hear this one," Coyote said. "This farmer has a pig with a wooden leg-"

"Hey," Sam interrupted. "Does he know where the road goes?"

"Oh, yeah. But this is a really good joke. You see-"

"Coyote!" Sam shouted.

Coyote looked hurt. "You're nasty. No wonder he doesn't trust you. He says that he saw an orange sports car go by a while ago. He says that there's a repair place down the road."

"Tell him thanks," Sam said. Coyote headed back toward the prairie dog. Sam dug into his windbreaker for his cigarettes and found a chocolate mint he had taken from the hotel room pillow the night before. "Wait," Sam called. He ran to Coyote's side. The prairie dog bolted under the sidewalk. "Let me talk to him."

Sam bent down and placed the mint in the dirt by the sidewalk. "Look, we really appreciate your help."

The prairie dog didn't answer. "I'm not a bad guy once you get to know me," Sam said. He waited, wondering what exactly he was waiting for. After a minute he started feeling really stupid. "Okay then, have a nice day."

He went back to where Coyote stood looking at a sign on the saloon door. No Indians or Dogs Allowed.

Coyote said, "What do they have against dogs?"

"What about the Indians part?"

Coyote shrugged.

"It pisses me off." Sam yanked the sign off the door and threw it into the street.

"Good, you're still alive. Let's go." Coyote turned and headed for the car.

"I'll drive," Sam said.

Coyote threw the keys over his shoulder. Sam snatched them out of the air. As they pulled away the prairie dog dashed into the street and grabbed the mint thinking, That pig joke works every time.

They drove for twenty minutes, bouncing the big Lincoln over ruts and rocks, and pushing it through washed-out, wind-eroded terrain where the road was reduced to the mere suggestion of tire tracks. The cellular phone rang twice more, but they did not answer it. Sam was suspecting that, once again, Coyote was playing some sort of trick when he spotted the corrugated steel building sticking up out of the desert. The building consisted of one story, roughly the size of a two-car garage. The steel walls were striped with rust and pulling away from the frame in places. The area around the building was littered with abandoned vehicles, some dating back fifty years. Above the doorway, a ragged hole that had been cut with a torch, hung an elegantly hand-lettered sign that read, Satori Japanese Auto Repair. In the doorway stood a slightly built Oriental man in saffron robes, grinning as they pulled up. Calliope's Z was parked in front.

Sam stopped the car and got out. The Oriental man folded his hands and bowed. Sam nodded in return and approached the man. "Do you know where the girl is that was driving that car?"

"What is the sound of one hand clapping?" the monk said.

Sam said, "Excuse me?"

The monk ran to Sam and jumped up, screaming in Sam's face, "Don't think. Act!"

Thinking he was being attacked, Sam raised his arms to cover his face and inadvertently hit the monk in the mouth with his elbow, knocking the little man to the ground.

The monk looked up at Sam and smiled. "That was the right answer." His teeth were red with blood.

"I'm sorry," Sam said, offering his hand to help the monk up. "I didn't know what you were doing."

The monk waved Sam away, climbed to his feet, and began to dust himself off. "The first step to knowledge is not knowing. The girl is inside with the Master."

"Thanks," Sam said. He motioned for Coyote to follow and went into the building. It was one room, dimly lit from the doorway and by sunlight filtering through the gaps in the walls. Around the edges, workbenches were stacked with greasy car parts and tools. In the center of the room, on a grass mat, Calliope sat with another monk, this one ancient, drinking tea from tiny cups. She looked up and saw Sam, then without a word ran into his arms.

"I lost him, Sam. The car started making this horrible noise and I had to pull off the highway. Lonnie took Grubb and he's gone."

Sam held her and patted her head, telling her it would be okay, not really believing it, but knowing that was what you were supposed to say. She was soft and warm against him and a musky smell of girl sweat and jasmine was coming off her hair. He felt himself getting aroused and hated himself for the inappropriateness of the feeling, thinking, You sick bastard.

Almost as in answer, Calliope said, "You feel too good," and buried her face in his chest. She was crying.

Behind them, still standing in the doorway, Coyote said, "Let's go."

Calliope looked around at him, then to Sam. Sam said, "A friend. Calliope, this is Coyote. Coyote, Calliope."

"Howdy," Coyote said. Calliope smiled.

"The Master will now fix the car," the younger monk said. Sam looked to the tatami mat; the old monk was gone. The young monk turned and went out into the sun.

Outside, the Z's hood was open and the old monk was bent over the engine, running his hands over the hoses and wires, but staring off into the distance. Sam realized that he was blind, and noticed that there were fingers missing from each of his hands.

"What's he doing?" Coyote asked.

"Quiet," the young monk said. "He is finding the problem."

"We really have to get going," Sam said. "Can we leave the car here and pick it up later?"

The monk said, "Does a dog have a Buddha nature?"

"Does a fish have a watertight asshole?" said Coyote.

The young monk turned to the trickster and bowed. "You are wise," he said.

"This is nuts," Sam said. "We've got another car. Let's go."

"We've lost them," Calliope said.

"No, we haven't. We know where they're going, Cal."

"How do you know?"

"It's a long story. Coyote helped."

"Not enough," Coyote said. He pointed to the police cruiser that was bouncing across the desert toward them. Sam looked to the limo and realized that they had run out of time, and, more important, places to run. The cruiser slid to a stop by the limo and they were all engulfed by a cloud of dust. When it cleared, a seven-foot black man stood beside the limo. A bald man in a sport coat was leveling a riot shotgun over the hood at them.

"I'd like the keys to the limousine, please," Minty said.

Calliope looked at Sam. "Are we in trouble?"

"This is not good," Sam said.

The monk said, "Life is suffering."

"You need to get laid," Coyote said.

Sam dug into his pocket for the keys. "Careful," said the man with the gun.

Minty Fresh approached Sam. "Relax, Jake," he said. Then to Sam, "Mr. Hunter, the police are not really involved in this. I just want two things. I want the keys to the car, and I want to know what the hell is going on here."

"Quiet!" the monk said. "The Master is finished." They looked to the Z, where the old monk was staring blankly in their direction.

"Disharmony in the cam chakra," he announced. The young monk bowed. Sam wondered about the Master's missing fingers.

"Well?" Minty said.

Sam said, "Do you have a little time?"

Minty Fresh sat on the tatami mat with Sam while the young monk, who they had found out was named Steve, served them tea. He'd sent Jake back to town and the others were outside fiddling with the broken sports car. Minty wanted some answers.

"Mr. Hunter," he began. "There is something very strange about your friend."

"Really? He seems fine to me. Tell me, though. Do you think I have shifty eyes?" Sam affected his best innocent look.

Oh, no, two of them, Minty thought. "They look normal to me." They didn't look normal at all — they were golden. Minty hadn't noticed before.

Sam said, "I mean, do I look untrustworthy to you?"

"Mr. Hunter, you stole my employer's car."

"I'm really sorry about that. Besides that, though. Do I look shifty?"

Minty sighed. "No, not particularly."

"How about if you were shorter, say, eight inches tall."

"Mr. Hunter, what is this all about?"

"We really needed the car. It doesn't justify taking it, but we would have brought it back."

"Look, I'm not going to involve the police in this. Just tell me."

Sam took Minty through the story of Lonnie taking Grubb and the chase, leaving out as many details about Coyote as he could, making their destination in South Dakota seem close, easy. The story was slanted, however; Sam told it with a purpose in mind, thinking as he spoke, You can't sell if you don't pitch.

Sam closed, "If we don't have the limo we won't be able to find Lonnie and get Calliope's baby back. You have a mother, don't you?" Sam waited.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Hunter, I can't let you have it. It's not mine. I'd lose my job."

"We'll bring it back after we get Grubb."

"I'm sorry," Minty said. He climbed to his feet and walked to the door, then turned. "I'm really sorry." He pushed his sunglasses up on his face and ducked through the hole in the steel. Sam followed him out.

"Mr. F.," Sam called.

Minty looked up as he reached the car. "Yes?"

"Thanks for not going to the cops. I understand your position."

Minty nodded and got in the Lincoln.

Calliope came up beside Sam and stood with him watching Minty drive away. She said, "Grubb is all I have."

Sam reached out and took her hand, not knowing what to say, having failed at the only thing he was really good at, talking people into doing things they didn't want to do.

The young monk came out of the door behind them. "The Master is fixing your car," he said. He was stirring some green tea into an earthenware bowl with a bamboo whisk. "More tea?"

They stood together in the sun, watching the old man work. He fingered each bolt carefully before fitting a wrench to it, then removed the bolt so quickly that his hands blurred with the movement.

Sam said, "How long…"

"Don't talk to him when he works," Steve cautioned. "He will finish when he finishes. But don't talk to him. When you work, work. When you talk, talk."

"Do you get many customers? I mean, you are pretty far out here."

"Three," Steve said. He was wearing a straw hat to protect his shaved head.

"Three today?"

"No, just three."

"Then what do you do in the meantime?"

"We wait."

"That's all?"

Steve said, "Is that all the patriarch Daruma did at the wall for nine years?" There was no anger in his voice. "We wait."

"But how do you pay your rent, buy food?"

"There is no rent. The owner of King's Lake, Augustus Brine, brings us food. He is a fisherman."

"King's Lake is up the road, right? What is it, a resort?"

"A house of pleasure."

"A whorehouse that supports Buddhist monks?"

"How sweet," Calliope said.

"He's got it," Coyote said, pointing to the Master, who was holding up a rod of polished metal.

"A bent push rod," Steve said. The master carried the push rod into the shop. They all followed and watched as the old man tightened the rod into a vise. He picked up a hammer and stood over the vise, his free hand feeling the rod. Without warning the old man screamed and delivered a clanging blow to the push rod, then bowed and set the hammer on the bench.

"Fixed," Steve said, bowing.

"Is that how he lost his fingers?"

"To achieve enlightenment, one must give up the things of this world."

"Like piano lessons," Coyote said.

CHAPTER 28 Hope Is Bulletproof, Truth Just Hard to Hit

As Minty Fresh drove back to Las Vegas he thought about what Sam had said: "You have a mother, don't you?" And the question set Minty Fresh to thinking about a phone call from his mother that had changed his life.

"You're the only one left can do something, baby. The others are too far or too far gone. Please come home, baby, I need you." (Even when he had to duck to pass through her front door she still called him "baby.") That tone: he'd heard it in her voice before, when she was tugging at her husband to get him to stop strapping her youngest. But he hadn't gone back for her, had he? It was a call deep with duty and silent pride that brought him home. He went back for Nathan.

Nathan Fresh had never been home when any of his nine children were born. He was a sailor, and as far as he knew, when you came home from sea a new child would be waiting for you. The others grew an inch or two at a time, and the shoes that one was wearing when you left would be on the next one down when you got home. He loved his children, foreign creatures that they were, and trusted his wife to raise them — as long as they could line up, snap to, and pass inspection when he came home. And although he was gone most of the time, making the high seas safe for democracy, he was a presence in the house: photographs in crisp dress whites and blues stared down from the walls; commendations and medals; a letter once a week, read out loud at the supper table; and a thousand warnings of what Papa would do to a doomed misbehaver when he got home. To the Fresh children, Papa was only a little bit more real than Santa Claus, and only a bit more conspicuous.

On the ship, Chief Petty Officer Nathan Fresh was known only as the Chief: feared and respected, tough and fair, starched, razor creased, and polished, always in trim and intolerant of anyone who wasn't. The Chief: did you notice that he was black? only five foot five? barely 130 pounds? No, but did you see his eyes, like smiles, when he was showing the pictures of his kids — when he was telling tales of lobbing shells the size of refrigerators into the hills of Korea? Did you ever mention retirement to him? That's a frost, that's a chill.

Minty Fresh, the youngest of nine, the one born with golden eyes, knew the chill. "He's not mine," Papa said — said it only once. Minty stayed out of Papa's way when he could, wore dark glasses when he couldn't. At age ten he stood six feet tall and no amount of slouching would roll Papa's resentment off his back. His place in the family was a single line at the bottom of a letter — "Baby's fine too" — far enough from "Love, Momma" to deny the association. At night, by flashlight, he wrote his own letters: "My team is going to the state championships. I was voted all-conference. The press calls me M. F. Cool, because I wear tinted goggles when I play, and sunglasses during interviews. The colleges are calling already and sending recruiters to the games. You'd be proud. Momma swears you're wrong." In the bathroom he watched the letters go, in tiny pieces, around the bowl, down, and out to sea.

Minty Fresh left for the University of Nevada at Las Vegas the week after high school graduation, the same week that Nathan Fresh took his mandatory retirement from the navy and came home, to San Diego, for good. The coach at UNLV wanted Minty to lift weights all summer, beef up for the big boys. The coach gave Momma Fresh a new washer and dryer. Nathan Fresh put them out on the porch.

The day before the first game, when UNLV was going to unleash its secret weapon on the unsuspecting NCAA — a seven-foot center with a three-foot vertical leap who could bench-press four hundred pounds and shoot ninety percent from the free-throw line — M. F. Cool got the call. "I'm on my way, Momma," he said.

"My father needs me," he said to the coach.

"When we brought you up from nothing, gave you a full scholarship, put up with the goggles and the shades and the silly name? Gave your mother a washer and dryer? No. You won't miss the season opener. You're mine."

"How touching," Minty said. "No one has ever said that to me before." Perhaps, he thought later, stuffing the coach in that locker had been a mistake, but at the time a few hours in seclusion, among socks and jocks, seemed just what the coach needed to gain some perspective. He broke the key off in the padlock, tore the M. F. Cool label off the locker, and went home.

"He's been gone four days now," Momma said. "He drinks and gambles, hangs out at the pool hall 'til all hours. But he always came home before. Since he retired, he's changed. I don't know him."

"Neither do I."

"Bring him home, baby."

Minty took a cab to the waterfront and ducked in and out of a dozen bars and pool halls before he realized that Nathan would go anywhere but the waterfront. There were sailors there, reminders. After two days of searching he found Nathan, barely able to stand, shooting pool with a fat Mexican in a cantina outside of Tijuana.

"Chief, let's go. Momma's waiting."

"I ain't no chief. Go away. I got a game going."

Minty put his hand on his father's shoulder, cringing at the smell of tequila and vomit coming off him. "Papa, she's worried."

The fat Mexican moved around the table to where Minty stood and pushed him away with a cue stick. "My friend, this one goes nowhere until we get what he owes us." Two other Mexicans moved off their barstools. "Now you go." He poked Minty in the chest with the cue stick and Nathan Fresh wheeled on him and bellowed in finest chief petty officer form.

"Don't you touch my son, you fucking greaseball."

The Mexican's cue caught Nathan on the bridge of the nose and Nathan went down, limp. Minty palmed the Mexican's head and slammed his face into the pool table, then turned in time to catch each of the two coming off the bar with a fist in the throat. Another with a knife went airborne into a Corona mirror, which broke louder than his neck. Two more went down, one with a skull fractured by a billiard ball; one, his shoulder wrenched from its socket, went into shock. There were seven in all, broken or unconscious, before the cantina cleared and Minty, dripping blood from a cut on his arm, carried his father out.

Momma met them at the hospital and stood with Minty as Nathan came around. "What are you doing here, you yellow-eyed freak?" Minty walked out of the room. Momma followed.

"He don't mean it, baby. He really don't."

"I know, Momma."

"Where you going?"

"Back to Vegas."

"You call when he sobers up. He'll want to talk to you."

"Call me if you need me, Momma," he said. He kissed her on the forehead and walked out.

She called him every week, and he could tell by her whisper that Nathan was home, was fine. It made him fine too — not M. F. Cool, just M.F., the one who handled things. All that was missing was the feeling of being needed, essential, bound to duty.

Sam had said, "You have a mother, don't you?"

Minty steered the limo off the next exit, across the overpass, and back on the highway, headed back to King's Lake.

It had taken Steve, the Buddhist monk, only a half hour to put the car back together. When Sam tried to figure out a way to pay for the repairs, Steve said, "All misery comes from desire and connection to the material. Go." Sam said thanks.

Now he was driving the Z into Utah. Calliope was asleep on Coyote's lap. Coyote snored. Sam passed the time trying to figure out how long it would take to get to Sturgis, South Dakota, the location of the rally that the Guild was going to. About twenty hours, he thought, if the car held together. From time to time he looked over at Calliope and felt a twinge of jealousy toward Coyote. She looked like a child when she slept. He wanted to protect her, hold her. But it was that childlike quality that frightened him as well. Her ability to dismiss facts, deny the negative, to see things so clearly, but so clearly wrong. It was as if she refused to accept what any reasonable adult knew: the world was a dangerous, hostile place.

He brushed a strand of hair out of her face before looking back to the road. She murmured, and came awake with a yawn. "I was dreaming about sea turtles — that they were really dinosaur angels."

"And?"

"That's all. It was a dream."

Sam had been thinking about it too long, so there was anger in his voice when he asked her, "Why didn't you call me before you went after Lonnie?"

"I don't know."

"I was worried. If it weren't for Coyote, I would have never found you."

"Are you two related?" She seemed to be ignoring his anger. "You look a lot alike. He has the same eyes and skin."

"No, I just know him." Sam didn't want to explain, he wanted an answer. "Why didn't you call me?"

Calliope recoiled at his harshness. "I had to go get Grubb."

"I could have gone with you."

"Would you have? Is that what you wanted?"

"I'm here, aren't I? It would have been a hell of a lot easier if I didn't have to chase you across two states."

"And maybe you wouldn't have done it if it was a hell of a lot easier. Would you?"

The question, and her tone, threw him. He thought for a minute, looking at the road. "I don't know."

"I know," she said softly. "I don't know much, but I know about that. You're not the only man that ever wanted me or wanted to rescue me. They all do, Sam. Men are addicted to the wanting. You like the idea of having me, and the idea of rescuing me. That's what attracted you to me in the first place, remember."

"That's not true."

"It is true. That's why I had sex with you so soon."

"I don't get it." This was not at all how Sam had expected her to react. His brief moment of self-righteousness had degraded into self-doubt.

"I did it to see if you could get past the fantasy of wanting me and rescuing me, to the reality of me. Me, with a baby, and no education, and a lousy job. Me, with no idea what I'm going to do next. I can't stand the wanting coming at me all the time. I have to get past it, like I did with you, or ignore it."

"So you were testing me?" Sam said. "That's why you took off without telling me?"

"No, it wasn't a test. I liked you, but I have Grubb to take care of now. I can't afford to hope." She was starting to tear up. Sam felt as if he'd just been caught stomping a litter of kittens. She took Grubb's blanket from behind the seat and wiped her eyes.

"You okay?" Sam asked.

She nodded. "Sometimes I want to be touched and I pretend that I'm in love — and that someone loves me. I just take my moments and forget about hope. You were going to be a moment, Sam. But I started to have hope. If I'd called you and you had said no, then I would have lost my hope again."

"That's not how I am," Sam said.

"How are you, then?"

Sam drove in silence for a while, trying to think of something to say — the right thing to say. But that wasn't the answer either. He always knew the right thing to say to get what he wanted, or had until Coyote showed up. But now, he didn't know what he wanted. Calliope had declared wanting a mortal sin. Talking to a woman, to anyone, without having an agenda was completely foreign to him. Where was he supposed to speak from? What point of view? Who was he supposed to be?

He was afraid to look at her, felt heat rise in his face when he thought about her looking at him, waiting. Maybe the truth? Where do you go to find the truth? She had found it, let it go at him. She had laid her hope in his hands and she was waiting to see what he would do with it.

Finally he said, "I'm a full-blooded Crow Indian. I was raised on a reservation in Montana. When I was fifteen I killed a man and I ran away and I've spent my life pretending to be someone I'm not. I've never been married and I've never been in love and that's not something I know how to pretend. I'm not even sure why I'm here, except that you woke something up in me and it seemed to make sense to run after something instead of away for a change. If that's the horrible act of wanting, then so be it. And by the way, you are sitting on the lap of an ancient Indian god."

Now he looked at her. He was a little out of breath and his mind was racing, but he felt incredibly relieved. He felt like he needed a cigarette and a towel — and maybe a shower and breakfast.

Calliope looked from Sam to Coyote, and then to Sam again. Her eyes were wider each time she looked back. Coyote stopped his snoring and languidly opened one eye. "Hi," he said. He closed his eye and resumed snoring.

Calliope bent over and kissed Sam's cheek. "I think that went well, don't you?"

Sam laughed and grabbed her knee. "Look, we've still got twenty hours on the road and I'm going to need you to drive. So get some sleep, okay? I don't trust him at the wheel." Sam nodded toward Coyote.

"But he's a god," Calliope said.

"'As flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods;/They kill us for their sport. "

"What an icky thing to say."

"Sorry. Shakespeare wrote it. I can't get it out of my mind this week. It's like an old song that gets stuck."

"That happened to me once with 'Rocky Raccoon. "

"Right," Sam said. "It's exactly like that."

CHAPTER 29 Shifting

Sam drove through the day and into the night and finally stopped at a truck stop outside of Salt Lake City. Calliope and Coyote had been awake for the last few hours, but neither had spoken very much. Calliope seemed embarrassed about talking to the trickster, now that she knew he was a god, and Coyote just stared out the window, either lost in his own thoughts or (Sam thought this more likely) absorbed in some new scheme to throw people's lives into chaos. From time to time someone would break the silence by saying, "Pretty rock" — a statement which covered the complete observational spectrum for Utah's landscape — then they would lapse into silence for a half hour or so.

Sam led them into the truck stop and they all took stools at a carousel counter among truckers and a couple of grungy hitchhikers who were hoping to cadge a ride. A barrel-shaped woman in an orange polyester uniform approached and poured them coffee without asking if they wanted it. Her name tag read, Arlene. "You want something to eat, honey?" she asked Calliope with an accent warm with Southern hospitality. Sam wondered about this: no matter where you go, truck-stop waitresses have a Southern accent.

"Do you have oatmeal?" Calliope asked.

"How 'bout a little brown sugar on that?" Arlene asked. She looked over rhinestone-framed reading glasses.

Calliope smiled. "That would be nice."

"How 'bout you, darlin'?" she said to Coyote.

"Drinks. Umbrellas and swords."

"Now you know better'n that — come into Mormon country and order drinks." She shamed him with a wave of her finger.

Coyote turned to Sam. "Mormon country?"

"They settled in this area. They believe that Jesus visited the Indian people after he rose from the dead."

"Oh him. I remember him. Hairy face, made a big deal about dying and coming back to life — one time. Ha. He was funny. He tried to teach me how to walk on water. I can do it pretty good in the wintertime."

Arlene giggled girlishly. "I don't think you need any more to drink, hon. How 'bout some ham and eggs?"

Sam said, "That'll be fine, two of those, over easy."

Sam watched Arlene move around the counter, flirting with some of the truckers like a saloon girl, clucking over others like a mother hen. She snuck a cinnamon roll to a scruffy teenage hitchhiker with no money and asked after him like an older sister, then moved across the counter and found the kid a ride with a gruff cowboy trucker. One minute she was swearing like a sailor, the next she was blushing like a virgin, and all the customers who sat at her counter got what they needed. Sam realized that he was watching a shape-shifter: a kind and giving creature. Perhaps he was meant to notice. Perhaps that was what he needed. She was good. Maybe he was too.

He turned to Calliope and caught her in the middle of losing a bite of oatmeal down her chin. "We can do this," he said. "We'll get him back."

"I know," she said.

"You do?"

She nodded, wiping oatmeal off her chin with a napkin.

"That's the scary thing about hope," she said. "If you let it go too long it turns into faith." She scooped another bite of cereal.

Sam smiled. He wished that he shared her confidence. "Did you ever go to South Dakota with Lonnie? Will we be able to find them?"

"I went to the big summer rally, not this time of year. They don't camp with the other bikers. They rent land from a farmer in the hills. All the Guild chapters stay together there."

"Could you find it again?"

"I think so. But there's only one dirt road leading in there. How will we get Grubb out?"

"Well, I guess just walking in and asking for him isn't going to work."

"They usually have guns. They get drunk and play shooting games."

Coyote said, "Wait for them to go to sleep, then sneak in and count coup."

"They don't really sleep," Calliope said. "They do crank and drink all weekend."

"Then we will have to trick them."

"I was afraid you'd say that," Sam said. He spun on his stool and looked out the windows of the truck stop to the gas pumps, where a black stretch Lincoln was just pulling away.

Sam woke up in the passenger seat. The Z was parked sideways on the side of the road, the headlights trained over a pasture. The driver's seat was empty. Coyote, who was curled up in the tiny space behind the seat, growled and popped his head out between the seat.

"What's going on?"

"I don't know." Sam looked around for Calliope. It was raining out. "Maybe she stopped to take a leak."

"There she is." Coyote pointed to a spot by the barbed-wire fence where Calliope was standing by a young calf, working furiously on something at the fence. A mother cow stood by watching.

"The calf's tail is stuck on the barbed wire," Coyote said.

Sam opened the car door and stepped out into the rain just as Calliope finished untangling the calf, which scampered to its mother.

"It's okay," she called. "I got him." She waved for him to get back into the car. She ran to the car and got in.

"Sorry, I had to stop. He looked so sad."

"It's okay. Pasture pals, right?" Sam said.

She grinned as she started the car. "I thought we could use the karma balance."

Sam looked for a road sign. "Where are we?"

"Almost there. We have to get going. There's been a car behind us for a while. I got way ahead of it, but I felt like it was following us."

She pulled onto the road, ramming through the gears like a grand prix driver. Sam was peeking at the speedometer when he saw a colored light blow by in the corner of his eye. "What was that?"

"The only stoplight in Sturgis," Calliope said. "I'm sorry, guys, it sort of snuck up on me. The Z goes better than it stops."

"We're here already?" Sam said. "But it's still dark out."

"It's a few more miles to the farm," Calliope said. "Sam, if a cop saw me go through that light can you take the wheel? My license is suspended."

Sam checked his watch, amazed at their progress. "You must have averaged ninety the whole way."

"I had to go to jail the last time they caught me. Three months. They taught me to do nails for vocational training."

"You did three months for a traffic violation?"

"There were a few of them," Calliope said. "It wasn't bad; I got a degree. I'm a certified nail technician now. In jail it was mostly LOVE/HATE nails, but I was good at it. I would have had a career except the polish fumes give me a headache."

Coyote pulled Grubb's blanket out of the hole in the back window and looked through. "It's clear. There's a car behind us but it's not a cop."

The sleeping town was only a block long — a stoplight with accessories. Calliope drove them through town and turned south on a county road that wound into the Black Hills. "It's a couple of minutes up this road to the turnoff, then about a mile in on a dirt road."

Sam said, "Turn off the lights when you make the turn. We'll drive halfway in and walk the rest of the way."

Calliope made the turn onto a single-lane dirt road that led through a thick stand of lodgepole pines. The road was deeply rutted, the ruts filled with water. The Z bucked and bottomed out in several places.

"Keep it moving steady," Sam said. "Don't hit the gas or the wheels will dig into the mud. Christ, it's dark."

"It's the trees," Calliope said. "There's a clearing ahead where they camp."

Sam was trying to peer into the darkness. To his right he thought he saw something. "Stop." Calliope let the Z roll to a stop. "Okay," Sam said. "Hit the parking lights, just for a second." Calliope clicked the parking lights on and off.

"That's what I thought," Sam said. "There's a cattle gate back there to the right. Back the Z in there so we can turn it around."

"Giving up?" Coyote said.

"If we have to get out of here fast I don't want to have to back down this road." He got out of the car and directed Calliope as she backed the Z in and turned it off. "We walk from here."

They got out of the car and started down the road, stepping between the puddles. The air was damp and cold, and smelled faintly of wood smoke and pine. When the moonlight broke through the trees they could see their breath.

Calliope said, "Wait." She turned and ran back to the car, then returned in a moment with Grubb's blanket in hand. "He'll want his wubby."

Sam smiled in spite of himself, knowing the girl couldn't see his face in the dark. Never face heavily armed bikers without your wubby.

Coyote and Cottontail

It's an old story. Coyote and his friend Cottontail were hiding on a wooded hill above a camp, watching some girls dance around the fire.

Coyote said, "I'd sure like to get close to some of them."

"You won't get near them," Cottontail said. "They know who you are."

"Maybe not, little one. Maybe not," Coyote said. "I'll go down there in disguise."

"They won't let any man get close to them," Cottontail said.

"I won't be a man," Coyote said. "Here, hold this." Coyote took off his penis and handed it to Cottontail. "Now, when I come back into the woods I will call to you and you can bring me my penis." Then Coyote changed into an old woman and went down to the camp.

He danced with the girls and pinched them and slapped their bottoms. "Oh, Grandmother," the girls said, "you are wicked. You must be that old trickster Coyote."

"I'm just an old woman," Coyote said. "Here, feel under my dress."

One of the girls felt under Coyote's dress and said, "She is just an old woman."

Coyote pointed to two of the prettiest girls. "Let's dance in the trees," he said. He danced with the girls into the woods and tickled them and made them roll around with him laughing. He touched them under their dresses until they said, "Oh, Grandmother, you are wicked."

"Cottontail, come here!" Coyote called. But there was no answer. "Wait here for your old grandmother to return," Coyote told the girls. He ran all over the woods calling for Cottontail, but could not find him. He went over that hill to the next one and still no Cottontail. He was excited and wanted very much to have sex with the girls, but alas, he could not find his penis.

Finally the sun started coming up and the girls called, "Old Grandmother, we can't wait for you any longer. We have to go home."

Coyote stalked the hills cursing. "That Cottontail, I will kill him for stealing my penis."

As he walked he passed three other girls coming out of the woods. They were giggling and one of them was saying, "He was so little, but he had such a big thing I thought I would split."

Coyote ran in the direction the girls had come from and found Cottontail sitting under a tree having a smoke "I'll kill you, you little thief," Coyote cried.

"But Coyote, I pleasured the three many times and four times I made each of them cry out."

Coyote was too tired from tickling and dancing all night to stay mad. "Really, four times each?"

"Yep," Cottontail said, handing Coyote his member.

"I feel like I was there," Coyote said. "You got a smoke?"

"Sure," said Cottontail. "Are you going to need your penis tonight?" Coyote laughed and smoked with Cottontail while his little friend told the story of his long night of pleasuring.

CHAPTER 30 Like Flies

They heard the bikers before they saw them: raucous laughter and Lynyrd Skynyrd from a boom box. They followed the road around a long, gradual curve that descended into a valley, stepping carefully to avoid the deep puddles. The trees were thinning out now and Sam could make out the light of a huge bonfire below them in the valley, and figures moving around the fire, a lot of them. Someone fired a pistol into the air and the report echoed around the valley.

"Do they have sentries or something?" Sam whispered to Calliope.

"I don't remember. I was pretty drunk when I was here before."

"Well, we can't just walk in."

"This way," Coyote said, pointing to a path that led away from the road. They followed the trickster up the path, through thick undergrowth, and up onto a ridge that looked down on the clearing.

From the top of the ridge they could see the entire camp. The fire was burning in the center of the camp with perhaps a hundred bikers and women gathered around it, drinking and dancing. The bikes were parked by the road leading in. There was a stand of tents and smaller campfires on the opposite side of the camp, with two pickup trucks parked nearby. Lynyrd Skynyrd sang "Gimme Back My Bullets."

"I don't see Grubb," Calliope said.

"Or the woman," Coyote said.

"Wait," Calliope said. "Listen." Amid the din of rock and roll, laughter, shouts, screams, and gunfire, they heard the sound of a baby crying.

"It's coming from the tents," Coyote said. "Follow me."

Coyote led them further down the ridge until they were about fifty yards from the tents and could see four women sitting around a campfire drinking and talking. One of them was holding Grubb.

"There he is," Calliope said. She started down the ridge and Sam caught her arm.

"If you go down there that woman will call for Lonnie and the others."

"What can I do? We have to get him."

"Take off your clothes," Coyote said.

Sam sneered at the trickster, "I don't think so."

"Here, take this," Coyote said, handing something to Sam. Sam couldn't make out what it was in the dark, but it felt warm and soft. He recoiled and dropped it.

"Ouch," Coyote said, his voice soft now, feminine. "Is that any way to treat a lady?"

Sam looked, moved closer to the trickster, and saw that he was no longer a he. Still in his black buckskins, he had changed into a woman.

"I don't believe it," Sam said.

"You're lovely," Calliope said.

"Thanks," Coyote said. "Give me your clothes. These don't fit me now." He started undressing.

In the dim moonlight that filtered through the trees, Sam watched the women undress. Calliope was right, the trickster was gorgeous, a perfect female mirror of the male Coyote, an Indian goddess. Sam felt a little sick at the thought and looked away.

Coyote said, "I'll go down and get the child. Be ready to run. And pick that up, I'll need it." He pointed to the ground where Sam had dropped his penis. Sam picked up the member in two fingers and held it out as if it would bite him.

"I'm not comfortable with this."

"I'll hold it," Calliope said, now dressed in the black buckskins.

"No you won't!" Sam said.

"Well." She cocked a hip and waited for him to make a decision.

Sam put the penis in his jacket pocket. "I'm not comfortable with this, I want you to know."

"Men are such babies," Coyote said. He hugged Calliope, girl to girl, and made his way down the hill.

Sam watched the trickster move away from them toward the fire. Unable to look away, he became nervous with his own thoughts. Calliope patted his shoulder. "It's okay," she said. "In my jeans he really does have a great ass."

Tinker lay in the bed of the pickup sulking, listening to the nearby women going on about how badly they were treated by their men and how cute the baby was. The little bastard had been crying for an hour. What the fuck had Lonnie been thinking, bringing a crumb-snatcher to a rally? From time to time Tinker sat up and looked over the edge of the pickup to pick out which of the women he would fantasize about getting a blow job from. Fat chance, stuck here in the truck. Fucking Bonner and his military discipline.

"This is a business trip," Bonner had said. "A business trip we wouldn't be taking if Tinker would have taken care of business. So Tink, you guard the truck. No partying."

What was the point rallying with your bros if you couldn't get fucked up and start a few fights? Fuck this action. At least it had stopped raining.

Tinker peeked over the edge of the truck to see a new chick coming up to the fire. What a piece she was! Right out of Penthouse or something. She looked Indian, long blue-black hair. What a fucking body. He watched her fawn over the baby and touch Cheryl's face. Lonnie had fucked her up, bad. Tink wondered what it was like to hit a chick. He was getting hard thinking about it.

The Indian chick was holding the baby now, walking around the fire rocking it. She walked behind one of the tents, then ducked down. Tinker saw her shoot out the other side in a crouch, headed up the hill with the baby. Two people were coming down to meet her.

"Hey, bitch!" Cheryl yelled. The other women were on their feet, yelling — going after the Indian chick. Tinker jumped out of the truck and started to circle around and up the hill to head off the Indian chick. As he ran he drew his Magnum from his shoulder holster. He slipped, fell to one knee, and drew down on the Indian chick. No, fuck it. If he hit the rug-rat Bonner would have his ass.

He climbed to his feet and lumbered across the hill, watching the Indian chick hand the rug-rat to a blond chick. They were on the path at the top of the ridge. Gotcha! He'd take the lower path and be waiting for them. They had to come out at the road.

As Tinker made his way up the dark path he heard scooters firing up below him. Good. Bonner would get there and he would already have it handled. He'd be out of the doghouse. He reached the spot where the two paths intersected and stopped. He could hear them coming up the path, the baby still crying. He leveled his Magnum down the path and waited. If the dude showed first he'd waste him without a word.

He saw a shadow, then a foot. Tinker cocked the Magnum, put the sight where the chest would appear. A rush went through him, waiting, waiting. Now!

A vise clamped down over the gun and he felt it wrenched out of his hand, taking skin with it. Another clamp locked down on his neck and he looked up into the eyes of his deepest fear. He felt his face come down on something hard and the bones of his nose crush. His head was wrenched back and slammed down again, then it went dark.

"Shade!" Coyote said.

Minty Fresh threw Tinker's unconscious body aside and looked up at the Indian woman. "Who are you?"

Sam said, "M.F., what are you doing here?"

"The name is Minty Fresh." He held Tinker's Magnum out to Sam, then let it drop. "I'm learning how to sneak up on people." He saw the baby and smiled. "You got him."

"It was a fine trick," Coyote said.

"Who are you?" Minty insisted.

"It's your old buddy Coyote." Coyote cupped his breasts.

Minty stepped back from the woman to get a better look. "Something's different, right? Haircut?"

"We have to go," Calliope said.

"To where?" Minty said.

Calliope looked at Sam, panicked, confused. Sam had no answer.

Coyote said, "Montana. The Crow res. Come with us, shade. It'll be fun."

Minty turned to the roar of bikes behind him. "They're coming up the road," he said. "I'll block them as long as I can with the limo."

They made their way down the path to where the Z was parked. The limo was parked in front.

"I'll drive," Sam instructed. "Cal, you and Grubb in the back." They got in the car as lights from the Harleys broke through the woods. Minty got in the limo, started it, and pulled it forward to make way for the Z.

Sam pulled the Z into the road, careful not to spin the wheels in the mud. You guys okay?" he said to Calliope, who had curled herself around Grubb.

"Go," she said.

The bikers broke into view, Lonnie Ray in front. Minty hit the brights on the limo, hoping to blind them. He checked the mirror to see the Z pulling away, then started to back the limo up, careful to keep it in the middle of the road to block the bikes.

As Lonnie approached the limo he drew a pistol from his jacket and leveled it at Minty through the windshield. Minty ducked and hit the gas. The limo revved and stopped, the back wheels of the heavy car buried in the mud. Lonnie jumped off his bike onto the hood of the limo and braced himself on the roof as he aimed and fired at the Z.

At the sound of the shot Minty looked up to see the barrel of Lonnie's pistol pointing at him through the windshield. The other bikers, unable to get past, moved up around the limo.

"You're finished, spook," Lonnie hissed. He cocked the pistol. "Move the car out of the road."

"I don't think so," Minty said.

Lonnie jumped off the hood of the Lincoln and stuck the pistol through the window into Minty's temple. "I said move it."

"You move it," Minty said. He pushed the limo door open, knocking Lonnie to the ground. Two bikers yanked him from the car and rode him to the ground. Minty felt a boot in his kidney, then a fist in the stomach, then the blows fell on him like rain.

He heard Calliope's Z downshifting in the distance and smiled.

Sam pulled the Z back onto the pavement and floored it. "Everyone okay?" Grubb was still crying. Sam shouted, "Calliope, are you okay?"

Coyote turned in the passenger seat and reached back. "She's hit. There's blood."

"Oh fuck, is she-"

"She's dead, Sam," Coyote said.