Coyote Blue (21 page)

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

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

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

"Navaho," said the medicine man.

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

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

~* * *~

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

"Stop," the shadow says.

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

"Tell him there is death where he goes."

"Tell who?"

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

"Who are you?"

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

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

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

"A shadow?"

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

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

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

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

"I am?"

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

"There was no water. Who was -"

"Go now."

~* * *~

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

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

Chapter 26 – Hang with a Horse

Theif, Wake Up Walking Las Vegas

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

"Are you all right?" she said.

"Fine, what is it?"

"God, on the phone, for you."

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

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

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

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

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

"How do you know my name?"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Is there a problem, sir?"

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

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

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

"Umbrellas and swords, lots of them."

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

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

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

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

"New shooter coming out," the stickman said.

"Is she lucky?" Coyote asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Minty dragged Coyote away from the table.

"She lied. She lied."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Where are you staying, sir?"

"The Frontier."

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

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

"Desk, please."

"Thank you."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"No."

"Ha! Mine is better."

"Pardon me?"

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

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

"I need cigarettes," Coyote said.

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

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

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

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

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

"I'll pay you back."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

~* * *~

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

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

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