Tails of Wonder and Imagination

Chapter 1 Head Honcho

A lot of folks don’t realize that Las Vegas is the world’s biggest Cubic Zirconia set in a vast bezel of sand and sagebrush. Glitz in the Gobi, so to speak.

Sure, most everybody knows that the old town twinkles, but that is all they see, the high-wattage Las Vegas Strip and Glitter Gulch downtown. Millions of annual visitors fly in and out on the big silver Thunderbirds, commercial or chartered jets, like migratory flocks of junketing gooney birds equipped with cameras and cash.

They land at McCarran Airport, now as glittering a monument to the Vegas mystique as any Strip Hotel, with shining rows of slot machines chiming in its metal-mirrored vastness.

Most stick to Las Vegas’s advertised attractions and distractions: they soak up sun, stage shows, shady doings of a sexual nature and the comparatively good clean fun in the casinos that pave the place. To them, Las Vegas is the holodeck of the Good Space Ship Enterprise in the twentieth century. You go there; it is like no place on earth; you leave and you’re right back where you were, maybe poorer but at least dazzled for your dough.

Nobody thinks of Las Vegas as a huge, artificial oasis stuck smack wattle-and-daub in the middle of the Wild West wilderness like a diamond in the navel of a desert dancing girl. Nobody sees its gaudy glory as squatting on the one-time ghost-dancing grounds of the southern Paiute Indians. Hardly anyone ever harks back to the area’s hairy mining boom days, which are only evoked now by hokey casino names like the Golden Nugget.

Nobody ever figures that the sea of desert all around the pleasure island of Las Vegas is good for anything but ignoring.

I must admit that I agree. I know Las Vegas from the bottom up, and some in this urban jukebox know me: Midnight Louie, dude-about-town and undercover expert. The only sand I like to feel between my toes is in a litter box, and I am not too fond of artificial indoor facilities at that. I prefer open air and good, clean dirt.

I prefer other amenities, such as the gilded carp that school in the decorative pond behind the Crystal Phoenix Hotel and Casino, the classiest hostelry on the Strip, hence carp so pricey that they are called koi. I call them dinner.

For a time I was unofficial house detective at the Crystal Phoenix and the carp pond was my prime-time hangout. It is always handy to locate an office near a good diner. Location, location, location, say the real estate agents, and I am always open to an apt suggestion from an expert.

I hang out my shingle near the canna lilies that border the carp pond. I do not literally hang out a shingle, you understand. The word simply gets around where Midnight Louie is to be found, and the word on the street is clear on two subjects. One is that Midnight Louie will not look with favor upon any individual messing with his friends at the Crystal Phoenix, whether two- or four-footed. The other is that Midnight Louie is not averse to handling problems of a delicate nature now and again, provided payment is prompt and sufficient.

I am no lightweight, topping twenty pounds soaking wet, and I didn’t weigh onto the scales just yesterday either. Yet my hair is still a glossy raven black, my tourmaline-green eyes can see 20/20, and my ears know when to perk up and when to lie back and broadcast a warning. (Some claim my kind have no color sense, but they have never asked us straight out.) I keep my coat in impeccable sheen and my hidden shivs as sharp as the crease in Macho Mario Fontana’s bodyguard’s pants.

Despite my awesome physical presence, I am a modest dude who gets along well with everyone—especially if every one of them is female—except for those of the canine persuasion.

This is a family failing. Something about the canine personality invariably raises the hair on the back of our necks, not to mention our spines, and makes our second-most-valuable members stand up and salute.

So you can understand how I feel one day when I am drowsing in my office, due both to a lack of cases and a surfeit of something fishy for lunch, and I spot a suspicious shadow on the nearest sun-rinsed wall.

The hour is past six p.m., when Las Vegas hotel pools close faster than a shark’s mouth, the better to hustle tourists into the casinos to gamble the night and their grubstakes away. Nobody much of any species is around. Even the carp are keeping low, for reasons which may have something to do with not-so-little me.

So my eyes are slit to half-mast, the sinking sun is sifting through the canna lilies and life is not too tacky… and then, there it is, that unwelcome shadow.

Who could mistake the long, sharp snout, ajar enough to flaunt a nasty serrated edge of fangs, or the huge, long, sharp ears? No doubt about it, this angular silhouette has the avid, hungry outlines of that jackal-headed Egyptian god of the dead, Anubis. (I know something about Egyptian gods, seeing as how a forebear was one of them: Bast. You may have heard of this dude. Or dudette. And you may call me Louie anyway; I do not ride on family connections.)

Right then and there Midnight Louie has a bad hair day, let me tell you, as I make like a croquet hoop and rise to my feet and the occasion. From the size of the shadow, this is not the largest canine I have ever seen, but it is one serious customer, and it does not take a house detective to figure that out.

“At ease!” the shadow jaws bark out, looking even more lethal. “I am just here on business.”

I know better than to relax when told to, but I am not one to turn tail and run, either. So I wait.

“You this Midnight Louie?” my sun-shy visitor demands in the same sharp yet gruff voice.

“Who wishes to know?”

“Never mind.”

So much for the direct route. I pretend to settle back onto my haunches, but my restless shivs slide silently in and out of my mitts. Unlike the average mutt, I know how to keep quiet.

Above me, a lazy bee buzzes the big yellow canna lily blossoms. I hiccough.

“You do not look like much,” my rude visitor says after a bit.

“The opinion may be mutual,” I growl back. “Step into the open and we will see.”

He does, and I am sorry I asked.

There is no fooling myself. I eye narrow legs with long, curved nails like a mandarin’s. I take in eyes as yellow and hard as a bladder stone. The head is even more predatory than I suspected. The body is lean, but hard. The terminal member is as scrawny as a foot-long hot dog and carried low, like a whip.

This dude is a dog, all right, but just barely; no mere domesticated dog, but a dingo from the desert. I begin to appreciate how Little Red Riding Hood felt, and I do not even have a grandmother (that I know of) to worry about.

“What can I do for you?” I ask, hoping that the answer is not “Lunch.” I do not do lunch with literal predators.

The dude sidles into the shade alongside me. My sniffer almost overdoses on the odor; this bozo has not taken a bath in at least a week, perhaps another reason I dislike the canine type.

He sits beside me under the canna leaves, his yellow eyes searching the vicinity for any sign of life.

“I need a favor,” he says.

Well, knock me over with a wolverine. I am all too aware that the dude I am dealing with is normally a breed apart. He and his kind operate on the fringes of civilized Las Vegas, out in the lawless open desert. Some call them cowardly; others, clever. Certainly they are hated, and hunted. Many are killed. All kill. Among other things.

“I do not do favors for those who practice certain unnatural acts.”

“Such as?”

“I hear you and your kin will eat… bugs.”

“So will humans,” the dude notes calmly.

“That is not all. I also hear that your kind will dine on—” I swallow and try not to let my whiskers quiver—“the dead.” Why else was Anubis head jackal of the Underground in ancient Egypt? My visitor looks like a lineal descendant.

“We will, when there is nothing living to eat,” he concedes with chilling calm. “In the city, such as we are called refuse managers.”

I say nothing, unconvinced.

When sitting this dude looks exactly like an Egyptian statue, and he gazes idly on the lush, landscaped surroundings so different from his usual arid turf. I realize that it has taken some nerve and a good deal of courage for this popular pariah to venture into the very heart of Vegas. Just to see me. Well, Midnight Louie is a teensy bit flattered, come to think of it.

“When did you last,” he asks, “partake of a bit of mislaid Big-o-Burger from down the street?”

“That is different,” I begin.

“Dead meat,” he intones relentlessly. “Someone else killed it, and you ate it.” The yellow eyes slide my way. I detect a malicious twinkle. “What about the contents of the cans so feverishly hawked at your kind?”

I am not misled; this dude is about as twinkly as the mother-of-pearl handle on a derringer.

“I do my own fishing.” I nod at the silent pond. “So what is your problem?”

“Murder.” His answer sends a petite shudder through my considerable frame. I was hoping for something minor, like roadrunner attack.

“Who is the victim?”

“Victims.”

“How many?

“Six, so far.”

“And the method?”

“Always the same.”

“You are talking serial killer here, pal.”

“Oh, are we friends?” Another shrewd golden glint. This dude has Bette Davis eyes… when she played the homicidal Baby Jane.

“Business associates,” I say firmly. No dude in his right mind would turn down this character.

“Who are the victims?”

“My brothers and sisters.”

“Oh.”

I do not know how to put it that one—or six—dead coyotes are hardly considered murder victims by the majority of the human population, and, face it, humans run this planet.

For now I know this dude, by type if not name: Don Coyote himself, one of an accursed species, with bounty hunters everywhere ready to clip their ears and tails for a few bucks or just the principal of the thing. It does not take a genius to figure out that any suspects for the so-called crime of killing coyotes are legion.

“If you are so smart,” I note diplomatically, “you know that it would be easier to find those who did not kill coyotes than otherwise.”

“This case is different,” he says sharply. “We are used to the hunters. We have outwitted them more often than not. We survive, if not thrive, and we spread, even while our cousin Gray Wolf clan has been driven to near extinction. We have evaded steel trap and strychnine poison. We are legendary for defying odds. What kills us now is new and insidious. Not just our green young succumb, but those who should know better. This is not the eternal war we wage with both prey and hunter; this is what I said… murder.”

“That is no surprise, either. You are not exactly Mr. Popularity around here.”

His lips peel back from spectacular sharp white teeth much improved, no doubt, by grinding such roughage as beetle shells and bones. “That is why I seek an emissary.”

“Why not try a police dog?”

“Frankly, your kind is more successful at undercover work. Even a domesticated dog”—his tone is more than condescending, it is majestically indifferent; on this subject we agree—“is handicapped. He is assumed to belong to some human, which attracts notice and sometimes misguided attempts at rescue. Your breed, on the other hand, although equally commonplace in human haunts, is known to walk alone by sly and secret ways and is more often ignored.”

I shrug and adjust one of my sharp-looking black leather gloves. “Say I was to accept this commission of yours. What would I get?”

His long red tongue lolls out. I cannot tell if he is grinning or scanning the ground for a Conga-line of ants. Antipasto in his book, so to speak.

“I am head honcho around this turf,” the coyote ruminates with a certain reluctance, like he is giving away the combination to the family safe. “I keep caches of hidden treasure here and there. If you successfully find—or simply stop—the coyote-killer, I will tell you the whereabouts of one. That would be your payoff.”

“How much is it worth?” I demand.

The yellow eyes look right through me. “Beyond price.”

“How do I know that?”

“I can only say that humans highly prize these objects.”

Hmmm. Coyotes are scavengers of the desert. I speculate on the array of inedible goodies they might run across in the wide Mojave, but silver comes first to mind, perhaps because Jersey Joe Jackson, the high-roller who helped build and bilk Vegas in the Forties, also hid huge caches of stolen silver dollars both in town and out on the sandy lonesome.

Then there are plain old silver nuggets left over from mining days. I am not fussy. Or… maybe jewels. Stolen jewels. I do not doubt for a minute that this wily old dude knows secrets even the wind-singing sands do not whisper about.

I stand and stretch nonchalantly. “Where do I begin?” For a moment I am eye to eye with those ancient, ocher orbs.

Then the dude also rises, and vanishes into the dark at the back of the canna lilies. “Follow me to the scene of the crimes.”

Chapter 2 Hot to Trot

It is night by the time we get there. I have forgotten that dudes of this type are always hot to trot and can keep it up for miles. After I showed him a quick exit from the city, we were off through the boonies.

Miles of surly sagebrush have passed under my tender tootsie pads when we finally stop for good. I huff and puff and could not blow down a mouse house at the moment, but I was loath to let this dancing dog outpace me.

Although I pride myself on my night vision, all I can spy are a skyful of stars the wizards of the Strip might do well to emulate for sparse good taste, towering Joshua trees with their thick limbs frozen into traffic-cop positions, and a lot of low scrub, much of it barbed like wire. Oh, yes, and the full moon floating overhead like a bowl of warm milk seen from a kitchen countertop, and, occasionally, the moon-sheen in the coyote’s sun-yellow eyes as he gives me mocking glances.

“I forget,” he says, “that the city-bred are easily tired.”

“Not in the slightest,” I pant, hissing between my teeth. “But how can I study the crime scene in the dark?”

“I thought your breed could see despite the night.”

“Not enough for a thorough investigation. Where are we anyway?”

“At an enclave of humans away from the city. My unfortunate brothers and sisters ventured near to snag the errant morsel and were cut down one by one.”

“Listen, my kind are not noted for longevity either, so I dig the problem. Still, what can I do about it?”

“Perhaps you can interview the survivors.”

With that he steps back, braces his long legs, and lifts his head until his snout points at the moon. An unearthly howl punctuated by a series of yips emerges from between those awesome teeth.

So it is that in a few moments I am making house calls on a series of coyote families. While my guide has not stuck around for the painstaking interviews, soon an unsavory picture is emerging: the victims were indeed primo survivors, too savvy to be silently slain in the current manner.

I speak to Sings-with-Soul, the winsome widow of Yellow Foot-Feathers, the first to be found dead.

I no more advocate cross-species hanky-panky than I do bug-biting, but I must admit that Sings-with-Soul has particularly luminous amber eyes and a dainty turn of foreleg, from what I can tell in the dark.

After several interviews, I remain in the dark myself. Unfortunately, although they sometimes run in impressive packs, coyotes mostly hunt alone. The stories are depressingly similar.

Yellow Foot-Feathers did not return to the den after a night’s prowl. When Sings-with-Soul left her kits with a friend to go searching, she followed his scent to find him dead, unmarked by any weapon, beside a stunted Joshua tree.

Sand Stalker was out rounding up a delicacy or two for his mate, Moonfinder, and their two helpless kits. In the morning, his body was found a three-minute trot toward the setting sun from Yellow Foot-Feathers’.

Windswift, a two-year-old female, died a four-minute trot away two days later. The same distance further on lay Weatherworn, an elder of the tribe and by far its wiliest member.

“We are used to the high death toll of our kind,” Sings-with-Soul tells me with mournful anger, “but these deaths are systematic beyond the bounty hunters’ traps and poison, or the so-called sportsmen with guns, or even the angry ranchers who accuse us of raiding their livestock.”

I nod. It is not a pretty picture, and I am used to the statistics of my own kind who share the supposed shelter of civilization. Four out of five cuddly kittens born die within a year, often within the environs of a death compound. Still, there is something demonic about these serial slayings. Even in the dark I sense a pattern.

By the wee hours I have settled beside a Prickly Poppy, counting on my choice of plant companion to keep away such night-roving characters as skunks, large furry spiders who are older than Whistler’s mother, lizards and snakes, although I would not mind meeting a passing mouse or two, for it has been some time since my last snack.

The coyotes have vanished back into the brush. From time to time they break into heartbroken howls that some might take for the usual coyote chorus, but which I know express rage and sorrow at their helplessness to stop the slaughter.

I wait for daylight, eager to begin investigating for real. My curiosity has been roused, despite myself. As long as I am all the way out here in this desolate wilderness, I might as well earn my tempting coyote cache and maybe keep the young Foot-Feathers kits from the same fate as their father.

Despite the desert chill and forbidding terrain, I manage to doze off. I awake to feel the sun pouring down on me like hot, melted butter, softening my night-stiff bones.

I hear an odd tapping sound, as of someone gently rapping, rapping on a door to rouse me. Confused, I force my eyelids open, preparing for an onslaught of bright light.

In the sudden slit of my pupils I see a sight to curl the hair on a bronze cat—a whole city, a settlement, of buildings against the blatant blue morning sky. I sniff sawdust and stucco. I see pale pine skeletons rising into the sky.

I turn so fast I snag my rear member on a Prickly Poppy. Behind me extends the endless desert I imagined in the dark of last night when I interviewed the coyote crew. Did not their lost ones fall near where we stood, where I stand now?

I turn back to the hub of activity. A banshee saw whines while men with bandannas around their foreheads and sleeveless t-shirts or bare muscled chests as tan as a Doberman move their blue-jeaned legs hither and yon, climbing, pounding, clamoring.

Stunned, I stick to basics. A three-minute trot toward the setting sun. I turn westward and start trotting, allowing for a difference in speed and stride. Indeed, I am soon sniffing a patch of sweet-smelling desert alyssum on which a stronger, sweeter, sicklier scent has settled recently.

The body is gone, no doubt removed by human pallbearers, but the land remembers. Sand Stalker’s last stand.

I move on, tracing the path of death and finding the lingering scent where I expect. At no time does my route veer away from the huge clot of buildings under construction. The dead coyotes begin to form a ritual circle around the project, like guardian spirits slaughtered to protect the site.

The head coyote is right. Something stinks in this sequence of events, and it is not merely death.

Chapter 3 Peyote Skies

I dust off my topcoat, quell my protesting empty stomach, and stalk casually toward the humans and their works.

Soon I am treading dusty asphalt, walking on roads, however primitive. Beyond the construction site I discover curving vistas of completed edifices—sprawling, two-story buildings big enough to be strip shopping centers, sitting amid fresh-sodded grass. Sprinkler systems spray droplets on the turf like a holy water blessing. After a while I realize that these erections are each single-family homes.

In an hour’s stroll I have mastered the place. I am in the midst of Henderson, Nevada, touring its vaunted housing boom. I have heard that this bedroom community just a hop, skip and a commute southeast of Las Vegas was jumping, but never had occasion to see for myself before.

No wonder the coyotes are goners. They were trespassing on some high-end new real estate of the first water. I sit under one of the paired yucca trees that mark the development’s entrance to read the billboard, which features colors like trendy turquoise, orange and lavender bordered in a chorus line of alternating jalapeño peppers and howling coyotes.

“Peyote Skies: A Jimmy Ray Ruggles Planned Community” announces angular lettering meant to resemble the zigzags on a Native American blanket. Jimmy Ray’s smiling photo discreetly anchors one corner of the sign. Although it is a well-kept secret that I can read, I am having no trouble in looking illiterate as I squint to decipher the tortured script. This is real detective work!

After much study, I know that Peyote Skies is an ecologically engineered environment that imposes no artificial barriers like fences between nature and the community. The words “Sante Fe-like serenity,” “untrammeled nature” and “all the amenities” are invoked. No wonder. I have heard that refugees from the Quaker State of California are flocking to places north, south and west of their unhappy home. Apparently, Henderson is providing a haven for escaping excesses.

I stroll the streets of Peyote Skies unquestioned, even unremarked, just as the coyote predicted. Perhaps my dramatic dark good looks seem right at home with the plethora of pastel colors painting every visible surface. Despite my empty stomach, I am soon ready to puke at the amount of dusty orange, lavender and Peyote-Skies turquoise I am forced to digest.

Earlier I had remarked that I was not born yesterday. I am also pretty streetwise, so I know that “peyote” names a blue-green cactus whose flowers produce beads that dry into little buttons of “mescal.” Bite into one of these babies and you are soon seeing visions as hallucinatory as the after-dinner mint-colored development before me.

Mescaline’s mind-tripping properties were, and are, used for Native American religious rites, but otherwise are strictly illegal. I do not know if the Paiutes around here were, or are, into mescaline, but I do know that less Native Americans definitely are.

As for myself, I take a little nip now and again, but keep off the hard stuff in any form. Obviously, the designer of this mishmash was not so restrained.

The completed houses are occupied but mostly deserted, looking like pages from decorating magazines. Kids are at school, husbands and wives are at work or at play.

I find it macabre that while dead coyotes litter the back fringes of this theme-park development, the front doors and mailboxes bear the colorful image of the howling coyote made ad nauseam familiar of late on jewelry, coffee mugs and fabrics.

Perhaps the surrounding color scheme accounts for the en masse howling, but, like the desert itself, these coyotes are silent, despite their posture. I do not blame them for complaining; my own kind’s image has been appropriated for a panoply of merchandise we would not scrape kitty litter over. Humans are especially sentimental about creatures they kill.

Because of the lack of “artificial barriers,” I can stroll around these palatial joints unimpeded, although I spot a ton of security service signs and even more discreet warning labels on windows.

The back yards are as manicured as the front, then end abruptly where the desert begins. I move to the verge between green and griege, my sand-blasted pads relishing the cushy carpet of grass. Then a door cracks behind me. I turn to stare. Something small, blond and fluffy is flouncing toward me over the green, barking. I glance to the house across sixty yards of crew-cut Bermuda. It is so distant that Fideaux’s high, affected yips are beyond earshot, but I believe I hear a frantic human voice fruitlessly urging the little escapee homeward.

So I show my teeth and hold my place until Fideaux is within pouncing distance. It stops to tilt a head as adorably curly-topped as Shirley Temple’s. It sits on its little hind end. It drops its tiny jaw. The big, bad, black pussycat is supposed to be scrambling up a tree or over a fence, but there are only Joshua trees here and they sting like hell, and there is no fence, just desert and the Great Sandy Beyond.

Fideaux’s irritating yaps become a whimper.

“You,” I tell it savagely, “are coyote meat.”

I turn and stroll onto the sand—ouch! Still, it is a dramatic exit. I glance back to see Blondie barreling back to the rambling deck, whimpering for Mommy.

Then I ramble myself, out front to civilization, where I finally hitch a ride on a landscaping truck back to Vegas proper. (Or improper.)

I cannot decide which I am happier to escape: the sere, sharp-fanged desert of cactus and coyote, or the rotted-fruit shades of the faux-Southwest landscape at Peyote Skies.

Chapter 4 Ghost Suite

After taking a dip in the carp pool, I avoid the vicinity and any new visits by strange dudes with odd-colored eyes by heading for a secret retreat of mine. Now that I have scouted the situation, I am ready to do some deep thinking.

Luckily, I know just the place: the ghost suite at the Crystal Phoenix. This is room 711, which used to be a permanent residence for Jersey Joe Jackson back in the Forties, when the Crystal Phoenix was called the Joshua Tree Hotel. Jersey Joe didn’t die until the seventies, by which time he was reputed to be a broke and broken man—and worse, completely forgotten.

The empty suite stands furnished as when he died, partly because the current management recognized it as a snapshot of an earlier era that should not be destroyed, partly because certain parties claim to have seen a thin, silver-haired dude dancing through the crack in the door now and again.

I have spent many unmolested hours here in recent years. While I may have glimpsed an odd slash of light through the wooden blinds, I cannot say yea or nay to the notion of a ghost. No one bothers me here, but I have never found the door locked to my velvet touch.

I settle on my favorite seat, a chartreuse-green satin chair that happens to make a stunning backdrop for one of my coloring. I do my best thinking when I look particularly impressive, although I am often accused of simply sleeping at such times.

The silence is as potent as Napoleonic brandy (not that I have ever sampled such a delicacy, but I do have imagination). While I lap it up, my eyes closed and my claws kneading the chartreuse satin, certain surly facts darken my mind.

First, how. The lack of marks upon the bodies suggests poison. The victims’ wary familiarly with strychnine, the poison of choice for coyote hunters, suggests another toxin. I do not rule out snakebite. It is possible that the hustle and bustle of Peyote Skies has disturbed nests of venomous critters and driven them to the boundaries of the development, which would explain the neat alignment of the bodies.

Snake bite, however, usually results in swollen limbs, and the survivors detected nothing of the sort.

All right. Say the perpetrator is the usual snake of the human sort. Say some other poison was used that would take in the wiliest coyote.

Why? What is the motive? It cannot be for pelts, because the animals were left where they fell. It cannot be the ancient antipathy of sheep ranchers toward the ignoble coyote, because you can bet that the surrounding land, however vacant at the moment, is all owned by developers like the creators of Peyote Skies. Developments multiply around each other like fire ant mounds, gulping up huge tracts of land.

Round and round I go, mentally retracing the semi-circular path of the coyote corpses, my eyes always upon the grotesque hub of housing hubris and hullabaloo whose boundaries are marked with death.

My contact coyote, who was oddly shy about giving his name, no doubt due to a criminal past, said that nearby families have been warned to avoid the area. However, no number of nightly howls will warn off passers-by, given the wide range of the average desert dog.

More coyotes could die, not that anybody much would notice, any more than anyone has much noted the current crop of dead coyotes. But I have no personal grudge against Don Coyote, and I do have a deep desire to get a piece of a coyote cache.

Odious as the notion is, I must return to the crime scene—and Peyote Skies—and set up a stakeout. Maybe I can talk Sings-with-Soul into leaving her kits with a sitter and keeping me some feminine company. An ace detective can always use a leggy secretary for dramatic effect.

Chapter 5 Puppy Business

It is no dice on the dame, but I do get the loan of Happy Hocks, a half-grown pup with time on his tail. The head coyote himself is nowhere to be seen. I hope he does not pull this vanishing act when it is time to reward Midnight Louie for successfully concluding the investigation. After being forced to hop a ride on a gravel truck to get to the site, I am not in a good mood.

“Keep down and out of sight when I say so,” I instruct the gangly youngster.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Midnight. I want to be a famous crime solver like you when I grow up. I will be as quiet as a cactus.”

I doubt it. There is too much vinegaroon in this punk.

We work our way closer to the settlement, Happy Hocks bounding hither and thither among the brush and occasionally running out whimpering to rub his snout in the sand.

“Cat Claw,” I diagnose as I survey the particular cactus patch he has just learned to leave alone. “Did not some elder tell you about those spines?”

“Naw, we have to learn some things on our own, Mr. Midnight.” Happy sneezes and then grins idiotically.

“Well, stay out of the flora and stick close to me. You might learn something really useful.”

He bounds over and keeps me pretty tight company, close enough so I can see him lower his nosy snout to the sand again, snuffle and come up smacking an unidentified insect. It is a good thing I skipped breakfast or I might have lost it right there. I am far from squeamish about the unadorned facts of life, since I have eaten a lot of meals raw in my time, but I draw the line at insects.

I can see that it will be a long day, but as we creep on our bellies toward the completed houses, plain awe quashes a lot of Happy Hocks’s more annoying qualities.

“What are these painted canyons, Mr. Midnight?” he asks.

I appreciate a suitably humble tone of address. “Houses, Happy. Modernistic mansions for idle humans with tons of money and a soup’s-on of social conscience.” (I like to expose the young to a little French.)

“Dens, Mr. Midnight?”

“Right. Dens… and exercise rooms and wet bars and state-of-the-art kitchens.”

Happy frowns at my laundry list of amenities, being a country boy, but grins again. “Dens. Are there kits inside?”

“Sure. Little kits and big kits.”

He frowns again. “Is that green that surrounds the dens some fancy water, for safety?”

“No, my lad. That is a moat of the finest Bermuda grass imported to cushion the humans’ bare feet and clipped to permit a few practice golf balls.”

“It grows, and they cut it?”

“Strange behavior, I know.”

“Can I walk on it?”

I eye the house before us, which is not the one that hosts the obnoxious Fideaux. “I guess it is okay, kid. Just here at the edge, though.”

So he trots along the sharp demarcation line between desert and cushy carpet of grass, his long legs pumping on the Bermuda.

“It is cool and soft,” he says with another grin.

“But not for you.” I gesture him back on the sand with me. If anyone is going to patrol on the emerald plush, it will be the senior member of this team.

Happy Hocks gives a yip only slightly less annoying than Fideaux’s and forgets himself enough to bound over to a clump of beaver-tail cactus.

“Watch those spines!” I warn again, beginning to sound like a nanny.

“Look, Mr. Midnight, bonanza!”

I trot over, hoping for a clue. Is it possible the amiable idiot could have stumbled across something important?

I spot a bright patch of tissue-paper on the ground. Orange. Then my less lengthy nose finally catches a whiff of what roped Happy’s attention. The paper is a Big-o-Burger wrapper. Nestled at its center is a nice bit of bun, burger and exclusive Big-o-Burger Better Barbe-Q Sauce, which I have been known to sample myself.

Happy politely steps back from his find. “You can have it, Mr. Midnight.”

Do I detect a glint of hero-worship in those bright yellow eyes? Certainly it is unheard of for a coyote to share with a dude of another species, and usually even with his own.

My nose tells me that the Better Barbe-Q Sauce is permeating a thick slab of meat, which is cooked but is also indubitably dead. I am about to partake when I recall my conversation with the head coyote about superior species spurning dead meat. I cannot go back on my avowed position, at least not within witnessing distance by any of the coyote clan, so I shake a mitt and mince back from the find.

“Go ahead, kid. I prefer sushi.”

“Fish!” he says in disgust, wrinkling his long nose. Happy Hocks nails the remaining Big-o-Burger with one bite.

We continue our rounds, observing the activity. Happy Hocks is full of wonder at the ways of humans. I know their ways and am watching for any that are out-of-the-ordinary.

Not much happens here. Any kids too young to be in school are kept in from the heat and nearby construction dangers. I see faces of my kind peering out from windows, never looking as downcast as I would expect at their imprisoned lot.

Except for the escaping Fideaux, I do not spy any dogs, no loss to me personally, except that this breed must go out, whether free or on lines, to do their disgusting duty. Imagine, leaving such unwanted items in plain view for someone else to pick up and bury! Such vile habits explain why the canine family occupies a lower rung of the evolutionary ladder than the feline.

I express my disdain to Happy, who frowns again.

“But Mr. Midnight, if we of coyote clan were to bury our water and dung we would not know where we had been, or who had been there first. We would have no way to mark territory.”

“Who would want such tainted territory?” I mutter.

Chapter 6 Desert Asylum

But I get to thinking. Maybe this whole case is a matter of marking territory.

In a couple of hours I have toured as much of Peyote Skies as I can stand. I have also had enough of Happy Hocks’ prattle. I send the kid home, watching his yellow coat blend instantly with the dung-shaded desert. Our discussion of bathroom habits has definitely colored my outlook.

With relief, I take up a lone outpost under a newly planted oleander bush—no seedlings for these Peyote Skies folks, only expensive full-grown plantings.

Three houses down, workmen hammer, saw and shout. Here all is peaceful. Too peaceful. Although I welcome a world without dogs, I am uneasy at the absence of these popular house pets in this development. The entire outdoors is dogless, except for the undomesticated coyotes, and any of those that came within howling distance of here are dead.

Is Peyote Skies too pristine for dogs? I know some housing developments rule against many things.

Human voices disturb my reverie. I cringe deeper into the oleander shade. A woman exits the house, wearing slacks and sweater in the same putrid shades that saturate the development. Sure enough, a turquoise coyote is howling on her chest.

The man wears a suit, but the color is pale and the jacket is open. “Which sprinkler isn’t working, Mrs. Ebert?”

“More than one, a whole line, down by the oleanders.”

“Oh, at the edge of the lot.”

He walks my way, but he does not see me, because I am dark as dirt and I shut my eyes to thin green slits. His foot kicks at the small silver spikes poking up like lethal flowers through the expensive grass.

“Looks like a line’s out, Mrs. Ebert.” He bends down to fiddle with a sprinkler, but his eyes are skipping over the edge of the desert so close you can smell the sweet alyssum on the hot, dry breeze. At least coyotes use room deodorizers.

He is big, overweight like a middle-aged busy man will get, with a fleshy face too tan for an office-bound dude. He has thinning brown hair and dirt-brown eyes, sneaky brown eyes. The short hairs on my shoulder blades begin to rise. He acts like he knows someone is watching, but he never notices me, and I am even gladder of that fact now.

His back still to the woman, he reaches into his pocket to pull out something, maybe a handkerchief. Sweat beads on the hairless patches atop his head. His mouth quirks into what would be a grin if he were happy. He looks nervous, intent.

He throws the handkerchief past the oleanders, out toward the desert, as he stands. A good hard throw. Even I know that cloth is too flimsy to carry for a distance like that.

“Just a bum line, Mrs. Ebert. The company will replace it free of charge.”

“That’s great, Mr. Phelps.” The woman expected this, but she makes gratified noises anyway.

“Peyote Skies wants its residents happy with everything.” Mr. Phelps is donning a genial face and moving over the thick grass toward the woman. “Jimmy Ray Ruggles didn’t develop this concept from the ground up to let a broken water line turn a band of your Bermuda brown.”

“Plus, a broken line could be wasting water,” she reminds him.

“Right.” I hear his smirk though his broad polyester-blend back is turned to me. “No water wasted here,” he says, standing on an ocean of emerald-green grass. “Peyote Skies is a Jimmy Ray Ruggles baby, down to the last leaf of landscaping. It’s gotta be perfect.”

They smile at each other and amble toward the pale yellow house together. I do not wait to see them enter. I have turned and streaked into the desert.

Not far away I find the orange handkerchief. A stone the size of a catnip mouse lies near it, but it is not really a handkerchief. I take one look and go bounding into the deeper desert at a coyote pace, thinking furiously. I do not like the idea of a new victim dying while I am on the job.

It is easiest to find Sings-with-Soul’s den, next to the big stand of coyote cactus, whose gourds are catnip to the clan. With the kits yipping serially in the background, I tell her my problem. Her yellow eyes show their whites.

“I can call, but then what?” she asks me.

“Just get him here. I will think of something.”

She assumes a position that uncannily mimics the image on the homeowner’s sweater, lifts her head until her yellow throat aims at high noon, and lets loose an ungodly series of yowls.

Sings-with-Soul has Janis Joplin beat by a Clark County mile. My own ears flatten as much as hers, in self-defense. Even the kits quit yipping and join in with falsetto mini-howls. Ouch!

Daylight howls seem out of place but I figure they will attract attention. Sure enough, soon coyotes spring out of the drab desert floor as if they were made of animated dust. Frankly, they all look alike to me, so I do not recognize any I met the night before.

One comes slowly. My gut tightens as I recognize my quarry, Happy Hocks. The old dude who commissioned me is nowhere to be seen, and I am not unhappy. I do not have good news.

Once I am the center of a circle of quizzical coyotes (it is a good thing I am not the nervous type), I explain.

“I have discovered who is killing your kin—and how. Unfortunately, Happy Hocks ate some poisoned food.”

Heads snap toward Happy, whose own head is hanging a trifle low. His big ears are not as erect as before, and I notice his eye whites are turning yellow.

“I was feeling… tired, Mr. Midnight,” he whimpers. “What can I do?”

“Is there anything you do not eat around here?” I ask the others.

“There is little coyote clan will not eat, if they have to,” a gray-muzzle answers.

“There must be something that you would not touch on a bet, some cactus, some plant, that makes you sick.”

Sings-with-Soul’s head lifts. “Of course. We were too shocked to think. An antidote.”

“No sure bet,” I warn, eyeing the listless Happy Hocks. “I have already thought of oleander, but that is so poisonous the cure could kill as well. Whatever this unknown poison, if we act quickly enough—”

“Alyssum leaves,” says the unnamed grizzle-muzzle, “taste hot and harsh.”

“Prince’s Plume,” another coyote offers. “Worse taste!”

“Desert Tobacco,” the oldster suggests again. “Paiutes smoked it. Such stinkweed should make this youngster plenty sick.”

“I know!” Sings-with-Soul edges away from the big-eyed, big-eared kits watching our powwow. “Brushtail was sick only a week ago after I nipped her home from that plant, there.”

We turn as one to regard a modest, foot-high growth covered with tiny dull-green leaves. Small leafless stalks are crowned with seed-beads.

Happy Hocks is nosed over to the plant and watched until he bites off several tiny pods. Meanwhile, grizzle-muzzle trots off, returning with a fragrant bouquet of desert alyssum.

Happy Hocks’s muzzle develops a perpetual wrinkle as he downs these desert delights, but his eye-whites gleam with fear.

“Sharp,” he comments with a short bark. “Hot. Burning.”

I say nothing. The hot burning, I fear, could be the poison working. I have no love for vegetables, but in the interests of science, I nibble a pod. I am not an expert, either, but I have nicked the occasional burger-fragment and I recognize this plant’s terrible taste. Ironically, Happy Hocks is having lots of fresh mustard on his death-o-burger.

We watch the poor pup gum down these tough little taste-bombs. Finally his skinny sides begin to heave. I am surprised to see the gathered coyotes politely turn their heads from this unpleasant sight.

When it is over, the dirty work is left to Midnight Louie.

I amble over to examine the remains. In a pile of regurgitated greens lies the fatal lump of meat. It looks fairly undigested. With one sharp nail I paw the meat. After a few prods it falls open along the fault line. Inside lies a metallic powder.

“Bury it,” I growl at the assembled coyote clan.

Happy Hocks’s hang-dog look lifts. “I think I feel better, Mr. Midnight.”

“Keep it that way and, ah, drink lots of liquids and get plenty of rest.” What can it hurt?

Amid a chorus of coyote thanks, I flatten my ears and head back to the dangerous turf of Peyote Skies.

I now know the means (if not the brand of poison) and I know the motive. I even know the perpetrator. What I don’t know is how to stop him.

Chapter 7 Secret Shadow

So I shadow him.

This is no big deal. For one thing, my coloration makes me a born shadow, and I have always been good at tailing. For another, Mr. Phelps is all over this development.

Apparently, he is a trouble-shooter for this Jimmy Ray Ruggles. Mr. Phelps inspects deck planking that gapes too much for an owner’s aesthetic sense. He orders shriveling bushes replaced. He keeps everybody happy.

And he obligingly confesses to the crime. So to speak.

“My kids are real upset about having to keep Rocky inside,” a harried householder in a thousand-dollar suit complains when he buttonholes a passing Mr. Phelps in his aggregate driveway. “We never thought about coyotes running off with our pets. What about stockade fences—?”

“Jimmy Ray wants the development open to the desert; that’s the whole point. We’re working on the coyote problem. Maybe electric fences.”

“What about those dead coyotes on the perimeter? That’s not healthy, dead animals so close to the houses.”

“We clean up the area as soon as they’re found.”

“What’s killing them? They’re not rabid?”

“No, no,” Mr. Phelps says quickly. You can see the word “rabid” conjuring visions of damage suits and buyer panic. “Just varmints. Pests. Coyotes die all the time. Old age. Gunshot wounds. Don’t worry, sir. As soon as the coyotes catch on that this area is populated now, they’ll keep their distance.”

The busy man in the suit hops into a red BMW convertible and takes off, looking unconvinced.

Mr. Phelps heads on to the biggest house in the completed section, a white stucco job with a high, red tile roof the size of a circus tent.

I follow, the only free-roaming critter in the complex. The feeling is spooky. At the back of the big house is a circular sun room with floor-to-ceiling windows surrounded by a bleached redwood deck.

Mr. Phelps soon comes out with a man and a woman carrying a kid. These Peyote Skies people sure like their backyards and their desert view.

I stay low in the landscaping and edge close enough to hear every word.

“It’s going great, Jimmy Ray.” Mr. Phelps’ hearty, adman voice gives “phony” a gold-plating.

“What about the pet-killing problem?” the top man asks.

“We’ll be rid of all coyotes, dead or alive, any day now. We’re trying low-profile electric fences.”

The boss-man’s face darkens. “That’ll ruin the view.”

Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles is as nice-looking as his picture. Though he is only in his mid-thirties, he even smells rich, thanks to some Frenchy men’s cologne. Mrs. Jimmy Ray Ruggles, a slender woman with sun-streaked blond hair, wears Chanel No. 5 with her tennis whites.

She puts down the small girl, whose dark hair suggests that Momma’s been in the bleach bottle. The kid is a little doll of maybe four in a pink dress. She grabs onto her mother’s shorts and hides behind her.

Mr. Phelps looks nervous again. He glances down the green expanse of lawn to the broad brown swath of desert. Between here and there stands the bright Tinker-Toy construction of a kiddie play set that sports enough swings, slides and monkey bars to outfit a whole playground.

“We’re putting the wires real low,” Mr. Phelps says.

“The coyotes will jump ’em if they want to come in bad enough.”

“Maybe not,” Mr. Phelps adds lamely.

I can smell what he’s thinking: not if enough of them die. So the boss does not know about this guy’s one-man pest-control plan.

Mr. Phelps suddenly bends down and smiles at the little girl. “How are you, Caitlyn? Want Uncle Phil to take you for a swingsy?”

Caitlyn doesn’t look too good. In fact, she looks as down in the mouth as Happy Hocks did not long ago. Her dark eyes are as round as two moons in eclipse, and her precious opposable thumb is stuck in her mouth like a lollipop, where it can do no good whatsoever. What I would give for one of those! Preferably two; I am a balanced kind of dude.

“What do you say, Caitlyn?” her mother prods. “Uncle Phil was awful nice to get you that recreation set.” Mrs. Jimmy Ray looks apologetically at Mr. Phelps. “She’s so shy for her age.”

“That’s okay.” Mr. Phelps is really turning on the hard sell now. “She knows her Uncle Phil is her best friend. Come on, Caitie, upsy daisy.”

He swoops the little girl up on one arm, and I can see the fear in her eyes. I myself do not care to be swooped up. As for being forced to swish to and fro at a height in the name of fun… please!

The fond parents smile as Uncle Phil leads little Caitie to the swing set.

I slink under the oleanders until I am level with the gaudy swing set, most unhappy. I will not overhear anything good way down here, but I must follow Mr. Phelps until I get something on him that will stick. At least I now know that his dirty deeds are a solo act.

Mr. Phelps lifts the little girl onto the swing seat. Her clinging mitts turn white-knuckled on the chains. He shoves off. She goes sailing to and fro above his head, down to the ground and up again forward and then down and back.

I shut my eyes. This is worse than watching Happy Hocks lose his Big-o-Burger.

Mr. Phelps looks up as Caitlyn swings over him, her skirt lifting in the wind. Her eyes flash by, terrified.

Then he slows the swing.

“Phil!” Mrs. Jimmy Ray Ruggles is calling from the deck.

Mr. Phelps bends down to whisper something to the little girl. Her fingers do not uncurl from the swing chains.

Mr. Phelps goes up the green lawn to the deck. I turn to follow, but something makes me look back at Caitlyn.

The swing is still. She has bent to pick up something from the grass and is setting it in her lap, gazing at it unhappily. Then, as if taking a pill that will make a bad headache go away, she lifts a hand to her mouth.

I scope the entire scenario in a nanosecond. My mind flashes back to Mr. Coyote-killer Phelps, his hands up, pushing the swing. Again I see his open suit coat swinging back, side pockets tilted at an angle. I can imagine something falling out, and down, to the grass, unnoticed.

The little girl, a shy, unhappy kid who is afraid of almost everything. A familiar package, bright orange, with a tasty piece of Big-o-Burger still in it. Maybe she thinks you can swallow fear, push it back down. Maybe some kids will eat anything, just like coyotes.

I am over in a sling-shot.

I leap up to paw the too-familiar orange paper, then to push her hand away from her mouth. She is chewing. Now her eyes grow enormous, and her fear erupts in a scream.

“Mommy, Mommy!”

She is still chewing.

I leap onto her lap (claws in), to rap her cheek.

Some half-chewed food falls to the orange wrapper covering her short pink skirt like a napkin.

She is still chewing in dazed reflex.

I pat her cheek until she coughs out something more.

But I have seen her swallow.

Then they come for me, three running figures.

“Caitlyn!” they shriek.

“Shoo!” they shout. “Get away!”

I leap down with the Big-o-Burger wrapper in my mouth, dragging it from the yard.

“Mommy, Mommy!” Caitlyn cries as she is swept into her mother’s arms, as the two men in their big shoes come after me.

I could outrun them in the snap of a maitre’d’s fingers, but I dare not leave behind the poisoned Big-o-Burger. It is evidence. Uncle Phil knows now that he has to destroy it.

I drag it into the last oleanders between me and the desert, working myself deep into the shrubbery and shadows.

“Jimmy Ray!” Caitlyn’s mother sounds annoyed. “I think she ate some of the food that filthy alley cat dragged into the yard. What was it?”

The men’s feet stop pounding beside me. “I saw the wrapper,” Jimmy Ray Ruggles shouts back. “A Big-o-Burger.”

“Can you imagine how long that was sitting around?” she demands. “Oh, Caitie—”

She retreats to the house, carrying the kid.

I see her husband’s feet swiveling to follow her.

I see Mr. Phelps’ feet moving closer along the oleanders.

I do not need to see his face to know that he looks even more nervous than ever, and angrier. At this moment, Midnight Louie is one should-be dead coyote.

“Phil!” The boss is calling. “Forget the cat. We better get Caitlyn calmed down for a nap. Come up to the house and we’ll talk later.”

The feet before me do not move and I know why. I am a hunter myself. Uncle Phil wants to destroy—evidence, and me. I do not move. If I must, I will desert my hard-won prize, but not without a fight. This time my shivs are out and my teeth are bared.

Finally, the feet turn and thump away.

I withdraw, but not far. I know what I wait for.

Chapter 8 Ole Black Devil

The moon is out again, full as a tick.

I watch the dark house.

At what must be my namesake midnight hour, a light blinks on upstairs. I edge forward to watch lights turn on through the house, down to the kitchen.

In five minutes, I can hear sirens. The wash of revolving red lights splash the sides of the big white house like gouts of blood. Soon the sirens wail away, fading, but the house stays brightly lit. Out on the dark, unseen desert, coyotes keep the siren heartfelt company.

Dawn is no surprise. I wait.

Around noon, Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles comes out onto the deck. He looks even younger in jeans and a rumpled t-shirt. He walks down the lawn, Mr. Phelps a deferential step behind. Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles’s face is more rumpled than his shirt. I glimpse in his eyes the same fear that filled his daughter’s less than a day ago. I know the swing that Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles has been riding for the past twenty hours. I want to know what has happened to Caitlyn.

“It was near here,” Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles says in a weary, angry voice.

“That cat is long gone, with his booty,” Mr. Phelps says. Hopes.

“I’ve got to look. I’ve got to know what it was, Phil.”

Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles gets down on his hands and knees to peer under the oleanders.

I am waiting, where I always was.

“By God, the damn cat’s still here!” he hisses. “I can see the wrapper too!”

“There won’t be anything left.”

“Dammit, Phil! They can analyze even little bits, molecules maybe. I’ve got to know what—” His voice breaks. “That’s all right, kitty. I just want the paper.”

He sticks his hand under the bush. I see his pale face. I see Mr. Phelps peering over his shoulder, twice as worried.

“Jimmy Ray, that’s a big cat. He could have rabies. He could scratch or bite you—”

“I don’t care! It’s for Caitie.” His hand reaches the crumpled orange paper in front of me with the two lumps of mashed food on it.

I sit very still and let him take it. He slowly draws it away, seeping fear. I am sorry that I am such a scary dude.

Then he is gone and Mr. Phelps is staring at me through the spiky oleander leaves with as much hatred as I have ever seen.

“Black devil!” he says like a curse.

I am not sorry that I am such a scary dude after all.

I wait again. I want to know.

But the house is empty and the hours pass. I am hungry, but I wait. When I am thirsty, I slink out to lap up some sprinkler water. Then I return to my post.

The odds are that I will never know, just as they are one hundred percent that I will never tell. But I wait.

I am rewarded at dusk, when the desert sky bleeds a Southwest palette of lavender and peach… and orange… that developers can only dream of.

Two men on the lawn. Lights in the house.

“Tell me,” Mr. Jim Ray Ruggles is saying, and I think the iron tone in his voice could force even me to talk.

“Tell you what?” A nervous laugh.

“The dead coyotes. You said you were handling it. How? Phil, how!”

“Jim—”

“It was with poisoned food, wasn’t it? And somehow Caitie got into it. Listen, you can tell me now. Caitie will be fine, thank God. She’s still unconscious, but the doctors say she didn’t get enough poison to cause permanent damage. They hope not, anyway. Listen, I won’t blame you. I know you’re devoted to Peyote Skies, like I am. Maybe too much. Tell me.”

“All right.” Mr. Phelps sounds empty. The men walk toward the oleanders, toward me. “I never dreamed, Jimmy Ray—I just wanted to discourage the damn coyotes, and it was working. We haven’t found any dead ones since a week ago. I salted the Big-o-Burgers. Somehow, one of the… traps… fell out of my pocket yesterday and I never knew. Caitie swooped it up, and I never saw—”

“Don’t you remember? She’s always loved Big-o-Burgers,” Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles says softly.

Mr. Phelps’ voice is breaking now, but this theatrical touch does not break Midnight’s Louie’s heart. “I was going to stop soon.”

“But… thallium, Phil, an outlawed poison! With no taste, no smell, a poison that never degrades even though it’s been illegal for decades. Didn’t you realize it could kill more than coyotes—pets, children? Where on earth did you get it?”

“I own some old houses in town. The carpenters back then used it as rat poison, inside the walls. It was still there. I figured it would fool the coyotes; they’re too smart for anything else. I swear to God, Jimmy Ray, if I had known it would hurt Caitie I would have cut off my right arm—”

“I know. I know.”

Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles has stopped directly in front of me. “I suppose that big ole black cat is dead from it by now, but thank God he fought Caitie for it. Thank God we found him and a sample of the poison so they could treat her.”

His shoes turn, then go. Mr. Phelps’s do not.

“Black devil,” he whispers to the twilight air.

I accept my plaudits with silent good grace and finally depart.

Chapter 9 Trickster God

It takes me a full day to recover my strength, and placate my defrauded appetite. I am satisfied that no more coyotes will be sacrificed on the altar of Peyote Skies, and that the developer’s daughter will be well, but I do wish that Mr. Phelps would find the fate he deserves. I fear that the scandal would hurt Peyote Skies too much for even a fond father to pursue the matter.

Then I begin to worry about my payoff. I am, after all, not doing charity work. I dash out to the desert on the nearest gravel truck to find that Happy Hocks is as peppy as ever (alas!) and that these coyote clan types have never heard of the strange old dude who commissioned me.

So I am soon languishing beside the carp pond at the Crystal Phoenix again, feeling that I have been taken in a shell game, when I spot a familiar profile on the sun-rinsed wall.

“I thought you had headed for the hills.”

“Foolish feline,” the big-eared coyote silhouette answers. “I always keep my bargains. I merely had to insure that you had done as agreed.”

“And then some. Where is my reward?”

I watch the shadow jaws move and hear the harsh desert voice describe a site that, to my delight, is on the Crystal Phoenix grounds.

“Once all of Las Vegas was desert,” the coyote says, “and my ancestors had many secret places. You will find my cache behind the third palm on the east side of the pool.”

“Where?”

“In the ground. You will have to dig for it. You can dig?”

“I do so daily,” I retort.

“Deep.”

“What I can do shallow, I can do deep.”

“Good. Goodbye.”

With that terse farewell, me and the coyote call it quits.

I spring for the pool area. I dodge stinking tourists basting on lounges, dripping coconut oil between the plastic strips.

I count off palms. I retire discreetly behind one and dig. And dig. And dig.

About a half-foot down, I hit pay dirt. Coyote pay dirt. Excavating further, I uncover my treasure. Then I sit back to study it.

I regard a deposit of small brown nubs. Of pods, so to speak. Of coyote dung intermixed with a foreign substance: the button of the Mescal cactus, called peyote by the Indians. I have been paid off, all right. In Coyote peyote, both forms. Apparently this big-eared dude thinks that his leavings are caramel. The worst part is feeling that it serves me right for trusting a coyote.

By nightfall I have retreated to the ghost suite of the Crystal Phoenix to salve my wounded psyche. It does not soothe the savage soul to have been taken to the cleaners by a dirty dog. A yellow dog. By Don Coyote. Maybe the mescaline is worth something, but not in my circles. I do not do drugs, and my only vice, catnip, is a legally available substance. As for coyote dung, it does not even have a souvenir value.

As I muse in the antique air of suite 711, I recall that there is coyote, and then there is Coyote. Coyote of Native American legend is also called the Old Man, the Trickster, the Dirty Old Man who is at times advised by his own droppings. It is said that Coyote takes many forms and that to deal with him is always dicey, for he embodies the worst and the best of humankind.

I contemplate that though I have saved coyote clan from an underhanded attack, I have also saved humankind from the ricochet of that attack upon itself, that I have suffered hunger and thorns in my feet, not to mention threats to body and soul, and I have nothing to show for it but coyote peyote.

My self-esteem is so low that I could win a limbo contest dancing under it.

And then I notice that a console across the room has flipped its lid. I have seen that ash-blonde oblong of furniture for many years, and never knew that it had a lid to flip.

By the way the light dances inside the lid, like an aurora borealis, the lid interior is mirrored, and in that mirror is reflected an oval image.

The image flickers eerily, then resolves. Sound issues from the bowels of the cabinet. I sit mesmerized, even when I realize that I am watching a late-Forties-vintage TV set display a perfectly ordinary contemporary television show I do not normally deign to watch—that exercise in tabloid journalism known as “the Daily Scoop,” but which I call the Daily Pooper Scooper in my septic moments. Or do I mean skeptic?

Whatever, what to my wandering eyes should appear but a camera-pan across the entry sign to Peyote Skies. An offscreen voice begins saying what a tony development this is, and discusses the rash of coyote poisonings culminating in the tragic poisoning of the developer’s daughter. Caitlyn’s image flashes across the screen, smiling and happy.

Next I see an image of Mr. Phelps being led away in handcuffs by grim-looking men. Hallelujah!

Then Miss Ashley Ames, a most attractive anorexic bottle-blond with bony kneecaps, comes on screen with a breathless narrative.

It seems that little Caitlyn Ruggles’s poisoning was considered a tragic mistake stemming from a misguided attempt by a Peyote Skies employee to rid the development of pet-napping coyotes… until the child victim regained consciousness and began speaking of the unspeakable. “Uncle Phil” had been sexually abusing her.

Caitlyn’s shocked parents called the police. An investigation revealed that P.W. Phelps, a vice president in the Peyote Skies Company, had indeed been abusing the child, who was beginning to talk of telling.

“It is alleged,” Miss Ashley Ames says in a tone that is most delightfully dubious about the “alleged” part, “that he poisoned the half-dozen coyotes to create a pattern in which the ‘accidental’ death of young Caitlyn Ruggles would be seen as a tragic side effect.

“Had it not been,” she goes on, and I can hardly believe my ears, even though they are standing at full attention, “for the lucky chance that a starving stray black cat fought the child for the poisoned piece of a major fast-food chain hamburger, this nefarious scheme would have never been discovered.”

I am more than somewhat taken aback by my description as “starving.”

The next shot distracts me: Caitlin and her parents all smiles at the Las Vegas Humane Society, adopting a small black kitten. Even the kitten is smiling.

I am smiling. Hell, I suspect that somewhere Coyote is smiling.

In fact, as the ancient television’s image and sound fade, I believe I glimpse a silver-haired human dude with mighty big ears vanishing through a crack in the door.

I recall that Jersey Joe Jackson hid a few caches around Las Vegas in his time. And that Coyote never changes, and always does. And that he performs tricks, maybe even with vintage television sets.

The best and the worst of both beast and man himself.

Indeed.