Then he is gone and Mr. Phelps is staring at me through the spiky oleander leaves with as much hatred as I have ever seen.
“Black devil!” he says like a curse.
I am not sorry that I am such a scary dude after all.
I wait again. I want to know.
But the house is empty and the hours pass. I am hungry, but I wait. When I am thirsty, I slink out to lap up some sprinkler water. Then I return to my post.
The odds are that I will never know, just as they are one hundred percent that I will never tell. But I wait.
I am rewarded at dusk, when the desert sky bleeds a Southwest palette of lavender and peach… and orange… that developers can only dream of.
Two men on the lawn. Lights in the house.
“Tell me,” Mr. Jim Ray Ruggles is saying, and I think the iron tone in his voice could force even me to talk.
“Tell you what?” A nervous laugh.
“The dead coyotes. You said you were handling it. How? Phil, how!”
“Jim—”
“It was with poisoned food, wasn’t it? And somehow Caitie got into it. Listen, you can tell me now. Caitie will be fine, thank God. She’s still unconscious, but the doctors say she didn’t get enough poison to cause permanent damage. They hope not, anyway. Listen, I won’t blame you. I know you’re devoted to Peyote Skies, like I am. Maybe too much. Tell me.”
“All right.” Mr. Phelps sounds empty. The men walk toward the oleanders, toward me. “I never dreamed, Jimmy Ray—I just wanted to discourage the damn coyotes, and it was working. We haven’t found any dead ones since a week ago. I salted the Big-o-Burgers. Somehow, one of the… traps… fell out of my pocket yesterday and I never knew. Caitie swooped it up, and I never saw—”
“Don’t you remember? She’s always loved Big-o-Burgers,” Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles says softly.
Mr. Phelps’ voice is breaking now, but this theatrical touch does not break Midnight’s Louie’s heart. “I was going to stop soon.”
“But… thallium, Phil, an outlawed poison! With no taste, no smell, a poison that never degrades even though it’s been illegal for decades. Didn’t you realize it could kill more than coyotes—pets, children? Where on earth did you get it?”
“I own some old houses in town. The carpenters back then used it as rat poison, inside the walls. It was still there. I figured it would fool the coyotes; they’re too smart for anything else. I swear to God, Jimmy Ray, if I had known it would hurt Caitie I would have cut off my right arm—”
“I know. I know.”
Mr. Jimmy Ray Ruggles has stopped directly in front of me. “I suppose that big ole black cat is dead from it by now, but thank God he fought Caitie for it. Thank God we found him and a sample of the poison so they could treat her.”
His shoes turn, then go. Mr. Phelps’s do not.
“Black devil,” he whispers to the twilight air.
I accept my plaudits with silent good grace and finally depart.
Chapter 9
Trickster God
It takes me a full day to recover my strength, and placate my defrauded appetite. I am satisfied that no more coyotes will be sacrificed on the altar of Peyote Skies, and that the developer’s daughter will be well, but I do wish that Mr. Phelps would find the fate he deserves. I fear that the scandal would hurt Peyote Skies too much for even a fond father to pursue the matter.
Then I begin to worry about my payoff. I am, after all, not doing charity work. I dash out to the desert on the nearest gravel truck to find that Happy Hocks is as peppy as ever (alas!) and that these coyote clan types have never heard of the strange old dude who commissioned me.
So I am soon languishing beside the carp pond at the Crystal Phoenix again, feeling that I have been taken in a shell game, when I spot a familiar profile on the sun-rinsed wall.
“I thought you had headed for the hills.”
“Foolish feline,” the big-eared coyote silhouette answers. “I always keep my bargains. I merely had to insure that you had done as agreed.”
“And then some. Where is my reward?”
I watch the shadow jaws move and hear the harsh desert voice describe a site that, to my delight, is on the Crystal Phoenix grounds.
“Once all of Las Vegas was desert,” the coyote says, “and my ancestors had many secret places. You will find my cache behind the third palm on the east side of the pool.”
“Where?”
“In the ground. You will have to dig for it. You can dig?”
“I do so daily,” I retort.
“Deep.”
“What I can do shallow, I can do deep.”
“Good. Goodbye.”
With that terse farewell, me and the coyote call it quits.
I spring for the pool area. I dodge stinking tourists basting on lounges, dripping coconut oil between the plastic strips.
I count off palms. I retire discreetly behind one and dig. And dig. And dig.
About a half-foot down, I hit pay dirt. Coyote pay dirt. Excavating further, I uncover my treasure. Then I sit back to study it.
I regard a deposit of small brown nubs. Of pods, so to speak. Of coyote dung intermixed with a foreign substance: the button of the Mescal cactus, called peyote by the Indians. I have been paid off, all right. In Coyote peyote, both forms. Apparently this big-eared dude thinks that his leavings are caramel. The worst part is feeling that it serves me right for trusting a coyote.
By nightfall I have retreated to the ghost suite of the Crystal Phoenix to salve my wounded psyche. It does not soothe the savage soul to have been taken to the cleaners by a dirty dog. A yellow dog. By Don Coyote. Maybe the mescaline is worth something, but not in my circles. I do not do drugs, and my only vice, catnip, is a legally available substance. As for coyote dung, it does not even have a souvenir value.
As I muse in the antique air of suite 711, I recall that there is coyote, and then there is Coyote. Coyote of Native American legend is also called the Old Man, the Trickster, the Dirty Old Man who is at times advised by his own droppings. It is said that Coyote takes many forms and that to deal with him is always dicey, for he embodies the worst and the best of humankind.
I contemplate that though I have saved coyote clan from an underhanded attack, I have also saved humankind from the ricochet of that attack upon itself, that I have suffered hunger and thorns in my feet, not to mention threats to body and soul, and I have nothing to show for it but coyote peyote.
My self-esteem is so low that I could win a limbo contest dancing under it.
And then I notice that a console across the room has flipped its lid. I have seen that ash-blonde oblong of furniture for many years, and never knew that it had a lid to flip.
By the way the light dances inside the lid, like an aurora borealis, the lid interior is mirrored, and in that mirror is reflected an oval image.
The image flickers eerily, then resolves. Sound issues from the bowels of the cabinet. I sit mesmerized, even when I realize that I am watching a late-Forties-vintage TV set display a perfectly ordinary contemporary television show I do not normally deign to watch—that exercise in tabloid journalism known as “the Daily Scoop,” but which I call the Daily Pooper Scooper in my septic moments. Or do I mean skeptic?
Whatever, what to my wandering eyes should appear but a camera-pan across the entry sign to Peyote Skies. An offscreen voice begins saying what a tony development this is, and discusses the rash of coyote poisonings culminating in the tragic poisoning of the developer’s daughter. Caitlyn’s image flashes across the screen, smiling and happy.
Next I see an image of Mr. Phelps being led away in handcuffs by grim-looking men. Hallelujah!