Whitehorse (18 page)

"I don't want your fucking charity," Johnny snapped, and dragged his wallet out of his back jeans pocket, fingered out a stack of hundred-dollar bills and tossed them on the table.

He needed air. Desperately.

Where the hell was Dolores?

Turning his back on Leah, Johnny made his way out of the restaurant and stood for a moment on the front porch, allowing the night air to chill the heat from his face.

A group of eight young Native American boys, barely into their teens, gathered in the parking lot beneath a vapor streetlight, dancing in a circle while another pounded on a drum and chanted. Their young faces were painted in stripes of colors. They wore cloaks of eagle feathers over their shoulders and down their arms, which did little to conceal their tee shirts, jeans, and Nikes.

Around them gathered smiling tourists, cameras popping with light and whirring videocams zooming in on the children's faces, which looked older than they should.

The dance ended. The boys bowed, heads down, eyes down, shoulders bent, and fists hidden beneath their feathers as the onlookers tossed coins at their feet. The boys fell to their knees, scrambling to grab the glittering nickels and dimes and quarters, causing the tourists to laugh louder.

"Hey, Mr. Whitehorse." The valet moved out of the shadows, his hands in his pockets. "If you're looking for Ms. Rainwater, she's out in her car."

Johnny moved down the steps, shoved his way through the tourists, and grabbed a boy by the scruff of the neck, jerking him to his feet so hard the coins in the boy's hands sprayed across the asphalt.

"What the fu—"

"Shut up and listen to me." Johnny shook the boy and looked around at the others, all frozen in the process of stuffing their pockets with change. "Don't ever go on your knees for a nickel or a dime or a quarter. Don't ever go on your knees for nothing or no one. Remember who you are and what you stand for."

The boy twisted away and stumbled back, his look of anger exaggerated by the paint on his cheeks and brow. "Look who's talking.
Johnny Whitehorse.
Big man who lives in big houses away from his people. You're nothing but an apple. Red man on the outside, white man on the inside. What do
you
stand for? What
are
you? No Apache, that's for sure. You walk in the white man's world now.
Tu no vale nada
—you are good for nothing." He spat on the ground, then motioned to the others. Silently, they turned their backs on Johnny and walked off into the dark.

The tourists filed into the restaurant, leaving Johnny standing alone beneath the buzzing vapor light, coins shimmering around his feet.

NINE

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^
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D
olores sat in the passenger seat of the Mercedes, the car door open as Johnny moved across the parking lot, focusing more on the sick feeling of disgust in his stomach than the fact that a man was swiftly walking away from the car, dissolving into the shadows beyond the deserted highway.

Music from the band drifted along the parked cars, the bass drum like a heartbeat tapping at the night as Johnny moved up to the SL where Dolores was hunkered over, so intent on what she was doing she did not hear him.

A mirror compact lay open on her lap, several threads of white powder lined up side by side on the glass. With a clear glass straw she snorted the cocaine up one nostril, then the other, her groan of pleasure like a sigh of sexual gratification.

Johnny closed his eyes. No, no, he wasn't going to jump to any conclusions here. He was not seeing Dolores Rainwater snorting powder into her brain—

"What the hell are you doing?" he heard himself ask.

Her head flew around and she stared up at him, her nose dusted with powder and her eyes like glass reflecting the distant streetlight. "Oh.
This …
this isn't what it looks like—"

"You idiot. You stupid—" He grabbed the straw from her hand and knocked the compact from her lap. It landed on the asphalt, scattering the remainder of powder over the mirror. He ground his boot heel into the glass, pulverizing it as he crushed the straw in his hand, slivers of glass biting into his flesh like stinging ants.

Dolores stared at the scattering of white powder and glass on the ground. "Look what you've done. How dare you. Do you know how much that cost?"

Grabbing her purse, open by her legs, Johnny dumped it on the ground, spilling makeup, credit cards, chewing gum, and a tiny plastic bag of more powder. Dolores flung herself onto it, snatching it up and clutching it to her stomach as she turned on him, face twisted, teeth showing behind her smeared lipstick.

"You self-righteous son of a bitch. How dare you come strutting out here and proceed to demean me when I just left you in there wrapped up with Miss Goody Two-shoes like you were a couple of teenagers with the hots for one another. You're a hypocrite,
Whitehorse
. A two-timing egomaniac who thinks he was put on this earth to save the whole Indian nation. Well I've got news for you. You're nothing. You're not an Indian and you're not a white man. You're
an …
it
with a dick between your legs."

"Keep your voice down, dammit, and get in the car."

"Get your hands off of me." She kicked at his shins and struck at his face as he shoved her back into the car and threw her purse in her lap. Slamming the door, Johnny dug the keys from his pocket and moved around the car, glancing at the restaurant where the valet was still standing, hands in his pockets, looking out at them as if not knowing, exactly, how to deal with the fact that Dolores Rainwater was screaming profanities like a drunken sailor.

Johnny gunned the accelerator and the Mercedes jumped like a cat onto the highway, spitting gravel, tires squealing, back end fishtailing onto the opposite lane, causing a trucker to swerve onto the shoulder and blow his horn. The cold night wind hit them with a blast that made Johnny catch his breath, but no way was he going to stop and put up the ragtop, not now.

Dolores crawled onto her knees, face in the wind. He grabbed at her arm. "Sit down, Dolores, and put on your seatbelt."

She stared at him, her hair plastered against one side of her face. "You're still in love with her, aren't you?" she yelled.

"Sit down—"

"I knew it the moment you saw her tonight. It was written all over your face. You want her. You want to be with her. Despite the fact that you intend to destroy her father." She threw back her head in laughter. "I hope
I'm
around to see her face when you prove that her father is up to his ass in casino corruption. I wonder how eager she'll be
then
to dance with you, much less fuck you."

He grabbed for her arm; the car swerved, right tires slithering off the shoulder then back on again.

Dolores reached under the seat and withdrew an envelope. She waved it at him. "Just how badly do you want to prove that Senator Foster is corrupt, Johnny, honey? What's it worth to you?"

"What's that?"

"Information from my source. Proof that Foster is linked to Formation Media."

He stared at the envelope, forgetting, momentarily, the winding road ahead. Was this some sort of perverted joke?

Dolores slid down into the seat, her smile turning smug. "Well? What's it worth to you, Johnny?"

"That depends on the price," he shouted.

"That you never see or speak to Leah again. That you announce to the papers tomorrow that you and I are going to get married. And then you're going to call your agent and ask that he take me on as a client—as a personal favor to you, of course."

The car came out of nowhere, its bright lights suddenly reflecting off the rearview mirror, into Johnny's eyes. He hit the mirror with the butt of his palm, a sign to the inconsiderate driver to dim his lights. No chance. The car moved up behind him, inches from his bumper.

Both hands on the wheel, Johnny glanced at Dolores. She had turned to look back at the car, her expression less dazed and angry now than suspicious.

"Put on your seatbelt," he yelled. "Now."

"What the hell do they think they're doing?"

"Put it on!"

She fumbled with the belt, yanking on it as it locked at her shoulder.

The car rammed them, slamming Dolores against the passenger door. Johnny fought with the wheel, keeping the car from weaving into oncoming traffic.

He checked his speed. Sixty. Sixty-five—

He knew every bend in the road, how fast he could take the curves—lots of practice in his father's old truck, pushing it to its endurance until it shuddered so hard he thought it would fall apart around him.

Seventy—couldn't push it much more than that, not with the sharp bend coming up—no way he could make it at seventy—the lights flooded the SL as the car roared up behind them again, slamming into them, filling the night and the close forest with the sounds of crunching metal—no warning this time, the son-of-a-bitch meant business—Dolores still fighting with the goddamn seatbelt—

The car moved up beside him—a bulky, black thing with black windows—it careened against him, bouncing the Mercedes sideways, toward the shoulder that dropped off into nothingness.

He hit the brakes just as the demon car slammed him again, metal grating against metal with a shriek like fingernails on a blackboard, whining like an animal in pain. Then it hit him, the reality, that they were going over the side, airborne, floating momentarily like an eagle, car slowly rotating, rolling like a lazy old cat that might have tumbled from a tree limb while napping. Dolores screamed, her hands outstretched toward him—

The night gyrated with firelight and shadows, flames sluicing along trails of gasoline, shimming up the trunks of trees, lapping hungrily at the thick brown pine needles carpeting the ground.

Horn blaring, the Mercedes lay like some dead armored armadillo on its back, burning wheels resembling bonfires sending up acrid black smoke that formed a cloud close to the ground. The crumpled metal groaned and popped with the escalating heat. There came a hissing, like a snake, as if the machine were breathing its last—

The explosion shook the ground.
Sparks
streaked into the sky and trees, drifting like dandelion fluff over the thatches of weeds and thistle before dying out. Hot waves radiated across the ground in a rush like heat from a suddenly opened oven.

Shamika had left the front door of the house open. Light and music from a
Sesame Street
CD spilled through the old screen door, forming a dim yellow box on the orange front porch where Leah and Sam stood, thanking each other for a wonderful evening.