Coyote Blue (20 page)

"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 rnouth 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."