Skorpio Page 15

"We're on our way."

  Earl sounded excited. She hoped that the sight of four big bikers would discourage Vince. Maybe hand him a beating.

  Maybe he wouldn't find her. After all, hotel policy forbade giving out information to strangers. Vince could be very persuasive when he wanted. Even charming. She'd seen him turn it on. He'd turned it on her once.

  Shaken, she returned to her table. An inch remained of her martini. She badly wanted a smoke but she'd given it up a year ago and hadn't had a butt since. She thought about bumming one--she'd noticed a pack of Marlboros behind the entry dais, but then she'd have to go outside to smoke it. If she didn't want to be seen she'd have to go around back where she couldn't keep an eye on the hotel. She decided to stay where she was. He had no way of knowing.

  She couldn't go to the cops, not after what she'd done. There was no stolen car report. But they'd pick her up on the rufie charge. She had a record. She'd been arrested for soliciting. It was all a misunderstanding. She was still paying off the lawyer.

  She lingered. She couldn't stop herself from staring across the street willing Vince to get back in his Humvee and move on. Move on! The motel wouldn't give him any information. That was against policy. But what if he charmed the desk clerk? What if she were a young woman? Vince was an experienced pimp which meant he had a black belt in seduction. He could meet a woman and have her in bed an hour later. He'd told her so many times.

  The waitress saw her change in mood and stayed away except to deliver her bill. The dining room peaked around seven-thirty and then began to thin. Still Summer sat with her half-finished martini staring across the street.

  Oh please, she prayed. Please Earl and your mighty Big Wheels, get here! Get here now! She stared at her watch like a kid in junior high willing the seconds to pass faster. She gulped water, went to the ladies' room.

  By eight there was only one other family in the restaurant.

  What was he doing over there?

  The waitress came by. "Are you all right?"

  Oh my God, Summer realized. She thinks I can't pay the bill.

  Summer opened her backpack, took out her wallet and laid a twenty in the black bill folder.

  "I'll be right back."

  Summer thought about fleeing into the desert out the back. But what good would that do? Vince would discover soon enough she'd been there.

  The waitress returned with her change. Summer left twenty percent and looked out the window. The tall, broad-shouldered man in a cowboy hat walked across the highway toward the restaurant. Summer froze like a seized piston, torn between fleeing and pleaing. Tell the management it was a jealous boyfriend. Call the cops. But those were short-term solutions at best.

  He would be at the door in seconds. Summer grabbed her backpack and hurried down the little corridor to the ladies' room. She went inside, went into a booth and locked the door. She sat on the toilet rim shaking.

  Stupid, she thought. She'd trapped herself. Summer never was any good at sneaking around. She should have fled into the desert, or at least hidden in the parking lot until the Big Wheels got there. The door opened. Summer's heart stuttered. She waited breathlessly her knees pulled up. A woman entered the other stall and relieved herself. Summer bent down and saw her Crocs. The woman washed her hands and left.

  Please go away please go away please go away.

  The lavatory door slammed open as no woman had ever pushed it. Summer trembled, awkwardly balanced on the porcelain doughnut. She willed herself to shrink to an infinitesimal size. She was a black hole disappearing into her own gravity. No air moved through her body.

  The stall door exploded inward from the impact of Vince's boot. Summer scrunched up, her extremities drawn in like a spider. Vince grinned and stuck his thumbs in his belt.

  "Well here you are, darlin'! Let's go."

  He reached in, took a fistful of her hair and dragged her out like a kitten, her backpack dangling from one shoulder. He ripped open the lavatory door, gripped her bicep and marched her down the short corridor to the main dining room gripping her arm like a chimpanzee with a banana. There were no diners. Earl and three other big hairy guys in colors and boots formed a line beween Vince and the door.

  My champion.

  "Let her go, dipshit," Earl said, fists balled. The guys behind him were just itching to get into it. Summer saw it in their eyes. The perfect way to end their vacation--heroically stomping a woman beater. Living up to their own image. Summer had never been so grateful to see someone in her life. Summer saw the waitress cowering behind the front desk next to a man she assumed to be the manager. He was a short, slight Indian with a buzz cut and glasses.

  "The police are on their way!" he said in a squeaky voice.

  "You want to let her go now?" Earl repeated stepping forward.

  Vince grinned, released his grip on Summer's arm, took two steps forward arms flying up to seize the back of Earl's neck pulling him into a vicious head butt that sounded like someone whacking a steer with a sledge. Earl let out a muffled cry and tottered back, flood erupting from his nose. Vince grabbed Earl again, this time by his black leather lapels and swung him into the path of the dude on the left, a linebacker sort with a G.I. Joe beard.

  Two Big Wheels on the right closed in. Vince flicked his leg up and sidekicked one in the chest so hard he flew back and smashed into a table. Without pause, Vince turned the sidekick into a reverse spinning back kick and tagged the second guy in the crotch. The only Big Wheel still on his feet was G.I. Joe, suddenly reluctant. Vince grinned and closed in on him.

  That's the last thing Summer saw before she fled the dining room out the front door racing blindly across the highway. A semi laid down the air horn as she sprinted in front of him, ten feet from the massive chrome grill. Tears filling her eyes Summer ran to her truck, got in, started the engine and pulled out onto the highway heading west. As she accelerated up through the gears a Sheriff's Deputy passed her going into town, lights flashing, siren blaring.

  It wasn't until Kayenta was a faint glow in her rear view that she remembered the pistol she carried in her pocket.

  ***

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  "Into the Gap"

  Beadles left Springfield alone. Ninja had offered him a gun but he declined. Beadles had always thought himself civilized and scoffed when friends told him they kept guns for personal protection. Not once in his life had Beadles ever felt he needed a gun and he guessed the same about most of the people he knew.

  The news was full of lurid tales designed to convince people that guns only caused trouble, lingering on every school or workplace shooting. The media pumped this shit all the time. No wonder foreigners regarded the United States as an untamed frontier wilderness where anybody could gun down anybody at a moment's notice.

  The drive back through Colorado seemed shorter as drive backs always did. This time Beadles stopped in Colorado Springs after driving fourteen hours. He started out fresh in the morning for the drive through the mountains. He was through the San Juans by noon. Snow still gleamed from the fourteeners like a diamond necklace around the earth's neck.

  Lunch in Durango and then through the mountains again, cutting across the SE corner of Utah and into Arizona by mid-afternoon. The land spoke to him. Even as a child growing up in Illinois, he'd been fascinated by the desert and tales of the southwest, devouring Westerns, books and magazines. He'd subscribed to Old West and Treasure Hunter, the back pages filled with ads for metal detectors and back country excursions. He'd dreamed of prospecting for gold himself, finding the Lost Dutchman Mine or traces of a previously unknown civilization.

  Beadles devoured Edgar Rice Burroughs, Jules Verne and Arthur Conan Doyle filling his head with dreams of adventure and exploration. He became fixated with Henry Morton Stanley and Sir Richard Burton, the explorer, and read all there was to find on the subjects. Even as a kid Beadles lamented the closing of the frontier, the spread of civilization and the loss of wilderness. He contributed to the Sierra Club and th
e Nature Conservancy and longed to explore his own wilderness before it was too late. Before the comsats mapped and charted every square centimeter on earth. But wilderness persisted in Alaska, Canada, the terrible frozen places, parts of the Amazon, and even in the American southwest.

  There were places no one went because there was nothing there. The mountains and deserts took their toll. Death by dehydration, falls from cliffs, even the occasional mountain lion mauling. Beadles had been on a couple of digs so he knew what to expect. He'd outfitted the old Jeep with four five-gallon water jugs, the kind with spouts near the bottom. An old five gallon jerry can filled with regular was attached to the rear gate. The air conditoning either froze him or produced nothing. He turned it off, cracking all four windows, feeling the dry heat suck the moisture from his body.

  It was eight-thirty when he entered Kayenta looking for a place to eat and catch his bearings. The Garmin GPS velcroed to the dash indicated he was within seventy miles of the epicenter of the Azuma civilization.

  A county mounty talked to a short bald man outside the Copper Kettle, his car at the curb strobing blue and red. Beadles drove two blocks west to the John Ford, an adobe-style bar and grill, parking lot near to capacity with old pick-ups, choppers and badly aging cars. The type of spot where you could pick up scuttlebutt if you were clever.

  Beadles prided himself on ignoring class barriers. He'd always been able to relate to blue collar guys. He'd worked construction all four summers while going through college. He spoke their language and wasn't afraid of hard. Beadles found a place at the curb and left it there without locking the doors. He went into the bar where the air conditioning immediately sent a chill through his sweat-stained shirt.

  He wore faded blue jeans, a blue work shirt and had three days' stubble on his face. He found an empty stool near the end of the bar next to three Navajo bikers in blue jean vests sporting the Kemosabes patch. Beadles guessed they were being ironic. He ordered a shot and a beer. The TV screen in a corner above the bar broadcast a basketball game. The bar was dark and smoky, although no one was smoking. Old burnished wood and twinkly lights.

  He did the shot and beer and turned to the grizzled homunculus on his right wearing a Vietnam Veteran ball cap. "Can I buy you a shot? For your service to our country."

  The old guy, who looked like Mr. Heartburn in old antacid commercials, grinned displaying a gold tooth. "Mighty kindly of ya. I'm drinking Buffalo Trace."

  Beadles caught the bartender's attention and signaled for two more. The old guy stuck out a shovel-shaped hand. "Norm Hester."

  "Vaughan Beadles. You from around here?"

  "Born and bred in Flagstaff. You?"

  "Illinois. I'm an anthropologist. Mostly southwest Indians, some Central American."

  "You here to see the ruins?"

  "In a way. I'm looking for some evidence of an ancient Anasazi culture. Is there anything northwest of here? Between here and the canyon"

  "Keet Seel and Betatakin," the vet said tossing his shot. "They're pretty well known."

  "No," Beadles said. "I mean are there any settlements? Is there anything out there?"

  Norm shrugged. "Gap, population 118. The Last Chance Bar and Grill," he added wistfully. "Used to be a bauxite mine but that closed when I was a boy. I guess it's a jumping off place for people looking for a desert exerience. I don't know why they want a desert experience. I sure as hell don't. Our boys fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan? They don't want a desert experience either but they got no choice."

  Beadles pulled out a map of Arizona and worked it so it showed Kayenta. "Where's Gap?"

  Norm put his finger on a blank spot.

  "Why isn't it on the map?"

  Norm shrugged. "Beats me. Never was incorporated. Wouldn't even be there if fool hippies didn't go out there to trip in the desert. You head west and take Keet Seel Road, and when you get to Keet Seel just keep on goin'. You can't miss it."

  Beadles thanked the man, looked at his watch and stood. "They got a motel?"

  "'S what I hear. And they always got a vacancy."

  "Thanks, Norm."

  The desert was bright beneath a globus moon. Beadles almost missed the turn off because some kids had knocked over the sign. He stopped, turned around, went back, pulled onto the dirt road, got out and turned the sign over.

  GAP--25 MILES.

  Forty five minutes later he pulled up to the Last Chance hitching post and parked next to an old Ford 150.

  ***

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  "The Drawing"

  It was a little after ten. An old guy sat at the end of the bar staring into a shot glass. The bartender was an old Apache woman, gray hair gathered in a ponytail, wearing a seersucker shirt with Muriel stitched on the breast. Beadles sat at the bar and looked the room over through the mirror behind the bottles. Four booths. At one end two middle-aged guys sat playing checkers. At the other all Beadles could see was a woman's ankles in sandals, her back to the rest of the room.

  "What'll it be, honey?" Muriel said in a whiskey-soaked contralto.

  Beadles felt nothing from the two shots earlier. "Shot of tequila and a beer. How's that motel down the street?"

  "The linens are clean. They got vacancies. There's the owner sitting down at the bar." She gave him a funny look. What was he doing there at ten-thirty on a weekday?

  She returned a minute later with the drinks. "You here for the eclipse? You know not to look at the sun, right?" she said. "Last time we had an eclipse…"

  "I'm an anthropologist. I'm searching for evidence of a previously unknown Anasazi tribe. I think there might be something out there." He gestured vaguely toward the desert.

  "Only thing out there are snakes and scorpions and a whole lotta sand," Muriel said. "Back in the seventies, we got a lotta college kids thought it would be a good idea to go trip in the desert. Some of 'em never came back. That desert's been so picked over and prospected ain't nothin' left to discover."

  "That ain't exactly true, Muriel" said the old guy at the end of the bar. "That wind picks up you never know what it'll uncover."

  Muriel looked at the old man. "That's true enough, Vern." She turned back to Beadles. "Vern Weatherill. Owns the gas station/general store and the motel."

  Beadles picked up his beer and sat next to Weatherill. "Vaughan Beadles."

  They shook.

  "You ever been out there, Vern?"

  The old guy turned toward him. He had a ruddy, lined rancher's face, straight white hair and a mustache. "We used to ride dirt bikes out there when I was a kid. Hit a rock once broke my leg. Lord I thought I was gonna die of thirst before my friends come back with a truck to pick me up."

  "Ever see any ruins or petroglyphs, anything like that?"

  "Yeah, seen a few on them rock nobs across the canyon back when they had a bridge. County declared the bridge unsafe in '89. One night some kids got out there and burned what was left down. Now there ain't no way to get across the canyons. That wind starts up, it'll move half the landscape."

  "What's this canyon?"

  "Don't got a name. Runs northeast bout twenty mile from here. Whart're you lookin' for?"

  Beadles repeated his spiel.

  "I heard that before," Vern said. "Used to get some prospectors. There's an old story that there's a mess of gold out there somewhere that the Spaniards put together from the indigenous peoples they slaughtered. We used to look for it when I was a kid. Back before they burned the bridge."

  "Why was there a bridge across the canyon in the first place?" Beadles said. "What's over there?"

  "Good question. Prob'ly built by prospectors. Ain't nothin' there. We would have heard about it by now. The oil companies don't prospect on the ground any more. They use satellites to look for likely reserves. Nobody out here bidding for mineral rights and things are gettin' scarce."

  "What other rumors have you heard about that place?" Beadles nodded toward the void beyond the walls.

  "Oh there's the one about th
e blood-thirsty Indian warrior seeking revenge on the Spanish who killed him. Old Indian legend."

  "Anything to it?"

  Vern regarded him with wry humor. "Enough liquor in ya you'll start to believe it. Well listen. I got to get back and spell May who's been mindin' both the store and the motel. Nice meetin' you, Vaughan. Stop on over you need a place to stay."

  The old man left. Vaughan faced the mirror, eyes straying to the stuffed coyote and coiled rattlesnake mounted on a shelf above the bar. Brown liquor gleamed seductively in the soft yellow light. Behind it someone had taped photos and news articles to the big mirror forming a patchy frame. Cartoons. Post cards.

  Beadles' eyes stopped on a drawing. It showed the outline of a butte on an eight and a half by eleven inch sheet of white bristol board. Whoever had drawn it had made the rock come alive so that there was no question that it was a real place, if only in the artist's imagination.

  "Say Muriel," Beadles said pointing at the drawing. "What is that? Can I see it?"

  Muriel followed his finger. "That old drawing? Funny you should mention that. A college kid gave that to me back in 1985. Said he kept seeing it in his dreams. He and his buddy went out to look for it and neither was seen again. It was a terrible tragedy. I remember his father coming down here, staying for a week tramping through the wilderness when everybody knew his boy was a goner."

  "They never found the body?"

  Muriel shook her head. "That night we had a big blow-up. Sand just gets up and walks all over us, burying some places ten feet deep, digging up other places. Never did find their bodies."

  Beadles held out his hand. "May I see it?"

  Muriel shrugged. She carefully unpeeled the drawing from the mirror and handed it to the professor, using a fresh towel to make sure there was no moisture on the bar before she set it down. The drawing drew him like gravity. You could practically reach out and touch it. It had been rendered in colored pencil and black ball-point. You could feel the texture of the stone and the Spanish bayonet and saguaro around the base. A chimney ran to the top disappearing occasionally behind rock outcroppings. The drawing had an almost hallucinatory quality, the way the artist had edged it in yellow and orange, bathed in a divine light.