Coyote Blue (18 page)

Samson squatted by the base of the monument and managed to stream urine down both pant legs before he got himself reaimed. Billy dove for cover next to Samson.

"Did you say 'Duck'?" Samson whispered.

"Shut up," Billy snapped.

Despite his fear, the adrenaline had made Samson giddy. He grinned at Billy. "I thought you were saying 'Truck,' which would have made more sense, but -"

"Would you shut up?" Billy risked a peek at the road. The jeep was coming toward them, rather than returning to the visitor center where it had started. As the jeep approached the monument, they worked their way around its base, keeping the obelisk between themselves and the guard. "He won't stop, will he?" Billy said.

Samson could hear the jeep slowing as it passed the monument on the other side of them, not twenty feet away. They held their crouch until the jeep descended the hill and stopped halfway to the gate.

"He sees footprints," Billy said.

"On asphalt?"

"He saw us. I'm going to end up in jail like my brother."

"No, look, it's the fucking snake. He's waiting for it to get out of the road."

Indeed, the guard was inching the jeep forward slowly enough for the rattler to slither off into the grass. When the snake was gone the jeep revved up and continued down the hill, by the iron gate, and back around to the back of the visitor center.

"Let's go," Billy said. They ran down the road, Samson almost falling while trying to zip his pants and run at the same time. As they reached the gate Samson grabbed Billy's shoulder and pulled him back.

"What the fuck?" Billy said. Samson pointed to the chain. Billy nodded in understanding. The clanging.

Samson went to the center of the gate and grasped it. "Go," he said. "When you get over, hold it for me."

Without hesitation Billy leapt to the gate and climbed over, sliding down the opposite side instead of dropping as before. He held the gate and Samson started over.

As Samson reached the top of the gate and was working his feet between the spearpoints, he heard Eli's laughing from down the road and he looked up. A second later he heard a metal fire door slam at the visitor center. The quick turn took his balance and he tried to jump, but one of the spearpoints caught his jeans leg and he was slammed upside down into the gate. Billy held the chain, but there was a dull clank as Samson's forehead hit the bars.

It took Samson a second to realize that he was still hanging from the gate, his head still eight feet off the ground. "Unhook your leg," Billy said. "I'll catch you."

In this position Samson was facing the visitor center. He could see some lights going on inside. He struggled to push himself up on the bar, but the spearpoint was barbed. "I can't get it."

"Shit," Billy said. He held the gate with one hand and drew a flick knife from his back pocket with the other. "I'll come up and cut you down."

"No, don't let go of the gate," Samson said.

"Fuck it," Billy said. He let go of the gate and it clanged with Samson's swinging weight. Billy jumped on the bars and as he climbed Samson could hear the fire door open and slam again, then footsteps. Billy stood at the top of the stone pillar and put the knife to Samson's pant leg. "When I cut, keep hold of the bars."

Billy pulled the knife blade through the denim and Samson flipped over and slammed the bars again, this time right side up. The gate clanged again. Samson heard the jeep starting and saw the beams of the headlights come out from behind the visitor center. He looked to Billy. "Jump!"

Billy leapt from the fifteen-foot pillar. As he hit the pavement he yowled and crumpled. "My ankle."

Samson looked to the visitor center, where the jeep was pulling out. He grabbed Billy under the armpits and dragged him down into the ditch. They waited, breathlessly, as the jeep stopped and the guard, gun drawn, checked the lock and chain once again.

After the guard left they crawled down the ditch toward Eli. When he came into view, Samson helped Billy to his feet and supported him while he limped up to the big Cheyenne, who was taking a deep hit on a joint.

"Want a hit?" he croaked, holding the joint out to Billy.

Billy took the joint, sat down in the grass, and took a hit.

Eli let out a cloud of smoke and laughed. "That was the funniest fucking thing I've ever seen in my life." Then he spotted the wet streaks on Samson's pants. "What happened, Hunts Alone? I thought you were going to piss on Custer's grave. You get so scared you wet yourself?" He threw back his head to laugh and Samson wound up and tagged him on the jaw with a vicious roundhouse punch. Eli dropped to the ground and didn't move. Samson looked at his damaged fist, then at Eli, then at Billy Two Irons. He grinned.

Billy said, "You couldn't have done that twenty minutes ago and saved us all this trouble, could you?"

"You're right," Samson said. "I couldn't have done that twenty minutes ago. Let's get out of here before he comes to."

Samson helped Billy to his feet, then out of the ditch onto the road. As they headed toward Crow Agency it seemed to get darker as they walked, then darker still, until there was no light at all and Sam was in his bedroom staring at the back of a black buckskin shirt trimmed with red woodpecker feathers.

"It was a stupid thing to do," Sam said.

"It was brave," Coyote said. "It would have been stupid if you had failed."

"We found out later that Custer wasn't even buried there. His body was taken to West Point, so it was all for nothing."

"And what about the night on the dam? Was that all for nothing?"

"How do you know about that?"

Coyote turned and stared at Sam with his arms crossed, his golden eyes shining with delight.

"That was nothing but trouble," Sam said finally.

"Would you do it again?"

"Yes," Sam said without thinking.

"And the girl is nothing but trouble?" Coyote said.

Sam heard the words echoing in his mind. Going after the girl was the right thing to do. After all the years of doing the safe thing, it was time to do the right thing. He said, "You really piss me off sometimes, you know that?"

"Anger is the gods' way of letting you know you are alive."

Sam got up and stood face-to-face with the trickster, trying to read something in his eyes. He moved forward until their noses almost touched. "All you know is that she's going to Las Vegas? No address or anything?"

"Not so far. But if she misses them there, the biker is going on to South Dakota. She'll follow. I'll tell you the rest on the way."

"I don't suppose you could change into a Learjet or something practical."

Coyote shook his head. "Just living things: animals, bugs, rocks."

Sam reached into his shirt pocket, pulled out the box of breath mints, and handed them to Coyote. The trickster raised his eyebrows in query.

Sam said, "Eat those. I can't handle dog breath through an eight-hour drive."

Part 3 – Quest

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, multicolored 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.