Skorpio Page 12

  "I said it once. I want you to know. But it's bad luck to name the dead. You know that."

  "I was hoping you could give me some advice."

  "Well now it ain't all bad. See here?" He pointed to a coyote's tarsal lying inside a section of rattlesnake ribs. "You can defeat the ghost who walks in the sun if you're in the Shipapu."

  "How do I find this Shipapu?"

  Grampa shrugged. "It will find you. You can run but you cannot hide."

  Summer suddenly remembered the map. She got up. "I want to show you something."

  She retrieved the map from the truck and spread it out on the baking sand in front of Grampa/'s boots. He placed his hands on his knees and bent forward fighting his belly. He grunted and stared at the map. His finger traced lines in the air.

  "Where you get this?"

  "It was in the trunk of Vince's car. Probably something he stole."

  "This is a map of that nameless land." He pointed to the odd looking rock formation in the center. "Here is where you want to go."

  "Where is that, Grampa? I looked at my Rand McNally and I can't find anyplace like this map in it."

  "You get the Arizona Atlas and Gazeteer. That's a better book. You'll be able to find it then. See these landmarks?" He pointed at a mitten-shaped butte. "This here's Monument Valley."

  "But why has no one found anything? They must have flown over it a thousand times. Mapped it from space, I don't know."

  "They weren't looking. From space it just looks like the surrounding desert. This is where you have to go. Take plenty of water."

  "Well shit. Why don't we drink hemlock."

  Grampa Ned patted her knee. "Don't fret little sister. See this here?" He pointed to the bones. "Says here you will find a champion."

  Summer laughed. "I've been waiting all my life. I always manage to pick the loser. God I have made terrible choices with men."

  "The Lord helps those who help themselves. You packin'?"

  Summer reached into her pocket and withdrew the Beretta. She handed it to Grampa who turned it over in his hands and handed it back.

  "Mm-hm. That's a real peashooter. I can loan you my .45 if you like."

  "Will it fit in my pants pocket?"

  "Might cause a lump."

  "No thanks, Grampa. Is a bullet gonna stop this ghost?"

  Grampa shrugged. "Don't think so. It's for the boyfriend. That little peashooter ain't gonna get it done."

  Maybe Ned Lead was right. Maybe she needed a gun with stopping power. She'd heard Vince go off with his druggie pals on what was the best hand weapon. Strictly for personal defense you understand. Stupid conversations about calibers and muzzle velocities.

  An old boyfriend had taken her shooting. "Always aim for the greatest body mass and keep firing until you're out."

  If eight .25 caliber bullets couldn't stop him fuck it. Besides. Grampa said she would find a champion.

  "I'd just dislocate my shoulder. I don't know where to go."

  "You can stay here," Grampa said.

  She thought about it. Maria knew where she was. Vince was bound to track down Maria who couldn't keep her mouth shut to save her own daughter if Vince bought her a bottle.

  "I appreciate that, Grampa. But I got to keep moving. You're not my champion."

  The old man shook his head sadly. "No I ain't. But wait a minute. I want to give you something." He heaved himself up out of the chair and went in the house. She heard him moving things around and grunting. He came out holding a leather thong from which hung a hammered silver disc with turquoise in the center. He put it around her neck.

  "Wear this. Might bring you some luck."

  Summer turned the disc up in her hand. A series of squiggly lines radiated from a turquoise in the center. "What is it?"

  "Been in the family many years. My great great Grampa Orrin said it was the mark of the lost tribe and no harm would come to him who wore it. That's true because my brother Carl wore it all throughout World War II and no harm come to him. And he was in the Pacific."

  Summer stood and kissed the old man on the forehead. "Thanks, Grampa."

  "De nada," he said.

  ***

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  "Ute Must Be Served"

  Beadles arrived Durango Friday June 16 shortly before noon. He took a room at the Morrison Motel a half mile north of the city on 550. It was ninety-two when he took up residence with his laptop and a bottled water in Brookside Park, across Main Street from the Post Office. Durango was a small city of 17,000 nestled among the San Juan Mountains. The scenery blew Beadles away. The way the mountains towered over the town instead of vice versa, like Chicago, where the city towered over the lake.

  Beadles' plan was to watch PO visitors and wait for Anatole to show. He planned to follow Anatole at a discreet distance until he followed him home. He was prepared to do whatever was necessary to get the janitor to recant his testimony. More importantly he wanted to know why.

  Why did Anatole stick his neck out on such a controversial matter? Why did he quit and take early retirement?

  First day: zipco. The PO closed at five-thirty. Beadles grabbed a sandwich from the San Juan Cafe, holed up in his hotel room and watched Return of a Man Called Horse on cable. He was at his station by eight Saturday morning in time to see the local postmaster unlock the red brick building. At least it would only be a half day. Anatole might not come to town for a week. Beadles was prepared for that. Anatole had to come sometime to pick up his check. The university. Social Security. Maybe a check from the Ute Nation, residuals from their casinos.

  There was no internet service in the park. Beadles tentatively began to write a monograph on the Azuma intertwined with his personal history. He pissed in the bushes, afraid to leave his spot. They could add public indecency to his jacket.

  Shortly after eleven a battered, sand-colored Chevy pick-up pulled up in front of the Post Office and parked diagonally to the curb. An Indian kid with a shock of crow black hair got out and bounded into the PO holding his keys in his hand.

  Rory? Beadles had only seen his picture once. Boy on a pony. A wave of recognition flowed through. Beadles hustled to his Jeep which was parked around the corner on 2nd, and had barely pulled up to the stop sign when Rory bounded down the steps, got in his truck and headed south out of town. Beadles saw boxes and grocery bags jouncing in the bed. The PO must have been the kid's last stop.

  Beadles waited until the truck was two blocks ahead before pulling out. Traffic was light. Twelve miles south of town on 550 they entered the Southern Ute Reservation. A brown Toyota separated the pick-up from Beadles. The Toyota turned east on 160 and now it was just the two of them. There was no place to hide on the twisting mountain highway. The curves prevented Beadles from being seen in Rory's rear-view but sooner or later the road would straighten out. Beadles' luck would end when the boy turned off the highway.

  If he hung back out of sight he might get lost. Who knew how many homesteads there were up those winding dirt roads? Two miles before the New Mexico border the truck turned west onto Deer Canyon Road. Beadles drove on a half mile before turning around in the middle of the highway and following Rory up the canyon.

  Dust from the Chevy hovered over the rutted path. Beadles switched to four-wheel-drive and wallowed up the rutted road passing turn-offs sporting clusters of mailboxes affixed to four-by-six planks. There was a name affixed to each mailbox. No Cerveros. Six miles from the highway there were no more mailboxes.

  Sage and Spanish bayonet dotted the arid landscape. A big buck bound across the trail in front of him. The road dipped and staggered between the hills until it finally dead-ended at a ranch carved out of a little plateau, one story ranch house in need of paint with a satellite dish, three horses in a corral, a horse barn, and the Chevy pick-up ticking in the front yard.

  Rory leaned against the pick-up's tailgate arms crossed as if he were expecting someone. Beadles parked the Jeep and got out. An old border collie ran up to him, sniffed
his pants and retreated to under the pick-up.

  "Rory?" he said, "I'm…"

  "I've been expecting you, Professor Beadles."

  The kid came away from the truck and stuck out his hand. He looked impossibly young although he had to be eighteen. His grip was firm and strong.

  "Your father home?" Beadles said.

  "You're too late. My father killed himself two days ago."

  ***

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  "The Past"

  Beadles felt the color drain from his face. The kid looked at him as if he were a scientific specimen.

  "Come in the house and have some iced tea." Rory headed for the house not looking to see if Beadles followed. The interior was cool and dark and neat. Rory went into the kitchen.

  "Have a seat," he said. "I'll be right there."

  Beadles sat on the cloth sofa beneath the picture window looking out on the yard facing a big flat screen TV. A stack of video games and DVDs sat on the low coffee table along with the game yoke. The stacks were neatly divided. Games on the left, movies on the right. The movies included The Dark Knight Rises and Watchmen. The games included Grand Theft Auto Palm Springs and Assassin's Creed 1776.

  Rory reentered the living room carrying two tall plastic glasses filled with iced tea. He handed one to Beadles and sat on a Barcalounger facing him. It creaked when the kid leaned back.

  "My father said you'd come. He wanted you to know he was sorry for what he did."

  "Did he say he saw me take something?"

  Rory stared straight into his eyes, an unusually forward and confident young man. "No he never did. He never told me what it was but Liggett held something over him. I think it was a sexual assault charge from his early days there. Dad had a problem with the ladies. Or girls I should say."

  The kid had a punctilious way of speaking.

  Beadles' mind churned. Here was his accuser's kid telling him it was a put-up job. Blackmail. But it was just hearsay, not admissable in a court of law. Maybe in a civil suit. He could hire Panny. He could seek proof of Liggett's collusion. He could depose Rory. It would all cost a fortune and get kicked down the road for years to come. The university would muster public opinion against him claiming he was bitter and vengeful.

  Something about it didn't make sense.

  "Rory. Why would he kill himself because he cost me my job? Why not just come clean? Did he not want to hurt your mother?"

  "Mom died two years ago. Drunk crossed the center-line and hit her head on,"

  he said with no discernible emotion.

  "I'm sorry. You mean you're living here alone?"

  "That's right. Pop signed his power of attorney over to me so I can cash the checks."

  "Was there a funeral?"

  "No. I just buried him out back next to the dogs."

  "I wish I'd got to know him better," Beadles said. "Was he a religious man?"

  "My father was very old-fashioned. Although he was raised Baptist it didn't take and he always fell back on the old ways."

  "Do you mean shamanism and Native American religion?"

  "Yes," Rory said. He seemed poised, ready and intense. Beadles thought he might have a touch of Asperger's. "In other ways not so much. He understood I had to have a computer and internet access and spent a small fortune to bring it. But he never learned to use a computer."

  "Are you his only child?"

  Rory shook his head. "No. I have an older brother who's an attorney in Chicago. Brad got him the job with the university. It was far from home but he needed the money. My older sister Janet was here until yesterday. She works for a Kia dealership in Phoenix."

  Rory looked at Beadles with an unsettling intensity, as if he were examining some rare artifact. "My father left a message for you."

  Beadles felt his blood accelerate. "May I see it?"

  "Like I said, Dad was old-fashioned. He didn't write things down. He told it to me so I could tell it to you."

  Beadles pulled a spiral pad and a pen from his pants. "Go ahead."

  "In the beginning there was the sun and the moon. There was no earth. Then the sun said I am lonely so he created the earth and all its peoples and animals. All the people were Indians. There were thirteen tribes. Twelve of them were good but one was bad. They made war for no reason and ate the flesh of their enemies. Their leader was a great warrior. The sun warned him not to eat the flesh of his enemies but he wouldn't listen. To punish him the sun took his wife. This made the warrior angry. He vowed to do everything in his power to affront the sun. He savagely attacked other tribes, often enduring great hardship to do so. He killed animals and left them to rot in the sun.

  "Then the Spaniards came. The leader believed the sun sent them to crush his tribe. The leader attacked them but a traitor spoke to the Spaniards and told them how to trick the leader. The Spaniards said they could bring back the leader's wife, and because the Spaniards appeared to be gods--no one had ever seen a horse before--the leader believed them. The Spaniards found a young woman who resembled the leader's wife from a distance. When the leader went to meet her they seized him, gouged out his eyes, tied him to a wagon wheel and left him to die in the sun.

  "But the leader had made a deal with the moon. The moon covered the face of the sun and in darkness the leader escaped. This made the sun mad. The sun caused the 13th tribe to scatter and die out and he cursed the leader to walk the earth for all eternity beneath a blazing sun accompanied by the lowliest of creatures, the scorpion and the snake. If any were to discover this tribe and seek to restore them to their rightful place in history, a scorpion would strike them down and the leader would walk again."

  Beadles looked up from his pad in distress. "But I'm the one who sought to restore the Azuma! Why did the scorpion sting Rob?"

  Rory shrugged. "I'm only telling you what Dad told me."

  "What was this leader's name?"

  Shrug. "He didn't say."

  "Was the tribe the Azuma?"

  Shrug.

  "Why did Anatole tell you this? What does he expect me to do with the knowledge?"

  "He said it would be better if you let the past stay buried."

  ***

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  "Earl"

  The room smelled of Pine-sol but it was cheap. Get your kicks on Route 66 the song said but all Summer got was a cheap motel room with a window looking out on a baking sheet parking lot. The old highway lay parallel to the Interstate a half mile away. But oh what a difference a half mile made.

  Summer had headed south from Grampa's with no particular destination in mind, looking for a place to hole up and get her bearings, try to make sense of what the old man told her. Modern Summer said Grampa was full of shit. All that Native American mumbo jumbo. Good for tourists, not good in the real world. If Ned Lead were such a great medicine man why wasn't he rich? She knew for a fact that at one time he'd been quite the ladies' man, that he liked fast cars and fine living.

  He'd lived up that box canyon as long as Summer had known him.

  OId Summer not so sure. Grampa was the only one offering advice and encouragement. She'd seen some strange things in her life, not the least of which was Grampa himself, who had to be in his nineties. She needed to sell Vince's shit, get a grubstake, and find her champion.

  She took a shower and headed across the street to Cowboy Bob's Bar and Grill, with a thirty foot Cowboy Bob out front waving to the passing traffic with his articulated forearm. It was five-thirty. A Coors sign shined neon blue in Cowboy Bob's big front window. Pick-ups and choppers in the parking lot.Ol' Waylon was on the juke as she entered.

  It was twenty degrees cooler in the bar. Behind a rustic podium a lithe Indian girl wearing a flannel cowboy shirt with the sleeves rolled up, her long black hair in a ponytail, smiled.

  "Eatin'? Follow me."

  The dining room was past the bar. Four burly bikers turned on their stools to watch them pass. The dining room was period Western with framed Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rog
ers posters, the inevitable steer horns, old branding irons and a bragging wall with photos of celebrities who'd dined there. The waitress seated Summer beneath Clark Gable.

  "My name's Fiona and I'm your waitress. Don't mind those fools at the bar. They're harmless. Want a drink?"

  "Fiona, bring me a rum and coke, heavy on the rum."

  "I hear ya, hon. One Cuba Libre coming up."

  Summer looked at the rustic menu. She was famished. Fiona returned with her drink and a glass of water. Summer ordered the barbecued pulled pork sandwich. She sank the drink and ordered a second one when her order came.

  She had almost finished her sandwich when a bulky object filled the door to the dining room. One of the bikers, hair exploding from his head, black leather vest, blue-tatted arms. He stopped a few feet away hands at sides like a repentant schoolboy.

  Summer slid her hand into her front pants pocket and fingered the Beretta.

  "Excuse me, ma'am. Weren't you dancing at Dante's last week?"

  Summer experienced relief and even happiness. "Why bless your soul, yes I was."

  Now he didn't know what to say.

  "What's your name, sweetheart?"

  "Earl." He brushed his massive beard aside to show her the word Earl stitched on the black leather in red thread. "Me and the boys are cruisinn' the southwests. Spent a week in Vegas losing money."

  "Sit down, Earl. What's your club?"

  Earl pulled out a chair and carefully lowered his 300 lbs. into it. Fiona came over. "Get you somethin', Earl?"

  "I'll take another Guinness, Fi." He turned back. "Big Wheels. Back home got my own construction company. Pour concrete."

  "Gotta card?"

  Earl grunted and reached behind him, seizing the outsized Harley wallet and hauling it in by the chain. He handed her his card. Fitzroy Concrete. Earl Fitzroy, Fernando, MO.

  "Do you have a card?" Earl said. Summer noticed his buddies craning their necks, sick with jealousy.

  Of what, boys? Talking to a pretty woman?

  "You got a boyfriend?" Earl said immediately coloring. "I mean a card! Do you have a card!"

  Summer trilled with delight. As if. "I'm fresh out."