Coyote Ugly

by Pati Nagle

  “What is it?” he said.

  Sonja worked her keypad again, then took the fresh chip her desk spat out and handed it to him. “You’re to track down a lost colony. Here are the specs.”

  “Last known location?”

  “All in there, along with projections of the most likely trajectories. It won’t be easy; last contact was over a century ago.”

  He whistled. “Talk about cold.”

  Sonja shrugged. “It’s an inheritance claim, and the courts are demanding proof of demise. Give it your best shot. You’ll be paid for your time, with a nice bonus if you find them.”

  He slid the chip into his cuffband. “Okay if I start tomorrow?”

  Sonja raised an eyebrow, as if surprised he would need any down-time. “Fine with me. Maeve is off with the client, discussing strategies for bringing the colony in once you find them.”

  “Assuming they want to come in.”

  “That’s outside our scope.”

  “If they’re not in default, they’re not obligated.”

  She shrugged. “We’ll deal with that when we get there.”

  He nodded, watching the gentle ancillary waves the gesture had raised in her flesh. He had to swallow a sudden mouthful of saliva.

  Sonja had turned her attention back to her work, but when he didn’t move to go she glanced up at him after a moment. “Something else?”

  Took him a couple of seconds to work up the nerve. “Yeah. How about dinner? My treat.”

  That pale eyebrow rose just a fraction. How could a woman be hotter than Sol and colder than a comet’s tail all at once?

  “Thanks, but I never mix business with pleasure.”

  “What if I turn down the lost colony? Then it’s not business.”

  A tiny frown creased her brow. “But that would hardly put me in a mood for pleasure.”

  He sighed. “Right. Seeya,” he said, turning to go.

  “Joe.”

  He stopped. Turned. “It’s Joseph.”

  She nodded. “Sorry. Joseph.”

  She didn’t say anything more. Her gaze traveled his body, with more curiosity now. A slow smile widened her pink-frosted lips.

  “Maybe after you’re done with this contract, and before the next.”

  Oh, mama. He grinned, tossing off a salute as he turned and headed out.

  “You’re on.”

  Recipe: Cheater’s Chicken Chile Soup

  In New Mexico, chicken chile soup is a staple of comfort. After a long, hard day, or if the weather is cold and nasty, there’s nothing like a hot bowl of spicy chicken soup to warm up the body and soul. This recipe is a way to make chicken chile soup as fast as possible.

  Ingredients (per serving):

  1 medium onion, chopped

  2 T vegetable or olive oil

  1 lb cooked chicken

  6 c chicken stock (or canned broth)

  1 16-oz jar of your favorite salsa

  1/2 c tortilla chips, crumbled (optional)

  Preparation:

  In soup pot, saute onion in oil. Cut chicken into bite-sized pieces. When onions are translucent, add chicken and stock. Bring to a boil. Add salsa and, if desired, tortilla chips. (The chips will make a thicker soup.) Heat to boiling, then serve with warmed soft flour tortillas.

  Arroyo de Oro

  He was beautiful. An angel’s face—soft brown hair framing chiseled cheeks, skin so fair it seemed never to have seen the sun, and the sweetest almost-smile on his lips—that was my first deader.

  He was found at 10:47 am in one of the less-frequented hallways of the Rainbow Man Hotel and Casino, right near the hologram of the Blue Corn Maiden. See, every morning at 11:00 the Maiden speaks—a recorded blurb about her role in pueblo religion—which is what the tourists who found him came to hear. But I doubt they caught a word.

  By time I got there it was almost 11:30. I left the field office as soon as the call came in, but downtown Albuquerque is a long way from “Arroyo del Oro.” That’s what they call the strip. It runs right up the Sandia Reservation on the north edge of town, and it rivals Las Vegas for glitz.

  I got on the freeway and headed north, feeling pretty unhappy about the assignment. I am not a cloak and dagger kind of girl. Numbers I can do; my background is in accounting, and I naturally expected my job with the FBI would entail investigating bank fraud and money laundering and that sort of thing.

  When they sent me to New Mexico after graduation I figured I might also have to handle some shady across-the-border deals, but murder investigations I was not expecting. This murder, however, had taken place on the reservation and was therefore under Federal jurisdiction, so I got tapped to help check it out.

  The directions said to take the Tramway Exit and turn toward the mountains. Serious mountains, too—bare granite jutting up over the city—pretty stark for a girl used to wheat fields and rolling green hills. There was not much green here to speak of at all, and as if it wasn’t enough that the land was brown, these people had to make most of their buildings brown, too. I had been in town all of two days, and was already wondering how soon I could transfer back east.

  I reached the exit, turned toward this gigantic arch, all neon, that said “Welcome to Arroyo de Sandia,” and drove under it. It was like entering another world.

  Hotels lined the street, neon-traced towers crowding right up to the sidewalks, flashing and glittering even in midday. Hotel Sandia, Hotel Bien-Mur, Hotel Kokopelli, each with its own casino.

  Traffic crawled, blocked by herds of tourists on foot walking up and down in sneakers and shorts with big plastic cups in their hands. More tourists in rented cars sat gawking at the glitz and OK, I did a little gawking myself, especially when I got to the Rainbow Man. Big, flashy entrance with a gigantic neon figure on the hotel tower above it. It was a kachina; I had learned that much, having seen bunches of kachina dolls in the airport.

  Kachinas are sort of minor deities, only not exactly. This one’s head was a mask, with black rectangles for eyes and some feathers and horns and things. The feet were pretty normal, but the body between them arced in an enormous rainbow that put head and feet on the same level. Gorgeous.

  I stared at it too long. The red Camaro behind me had to lean on his horn before I realized the light had changed.

  I parked on a side street that was a box canyon of slab-sided casinos. All the glitz was out front on the Arroyo. I hurried back toward Rainbow Man’s entrance and went into what I thought was the lobby, but it turned out to be the casino, and I immediately got lost.

  The place was a labyrinth; big rooms full of light and color and this incessant circus music. Took me a few minutes to realize it was the slot machines. Man, I don’t know how anybody can stand that sound all day long.

  I wandered around a while, thinking I had to be getting close, but every time I thought the crime scene should be around the next corner there was a restaurant instead, or a bank of elevators. I never saw so many little hallways and fountains and things.

  And everywhere—in corners and crannies, and odd little coves—were these holograms of kachinas. Life-sized, so life-like they were scary. They bothered me, mostly because I knew that kachinas had some kind of religious meanings of which I was entirely ignorant.

  Well, I broke down and asked for directions. Twice. By the time I finally found the crime scene I had lost a significant measure of my professional cool, and a crowd was already gathering.

  I had my hand clamped around my badge, and flashed it to the first cop-looking guy I saw—a huge man—Hispanic or Native American, I wasn’t sure. He was wearing a gray wool suit, mildly rumpled, that looked pretty nice even on his bulk.

  He took one look at me and said “More feds? We got Chase here already.”

  “I’m Agent Sandra Marsh,” I said, pocketing my badge. “I’m here to assist Special Agent Chase.”

  “Armando Mora, BIA PD,” he said, sounding bored. His face was a mask of stone. He glanced away and shouted “Arnold, get the damned
spectators out of here, will you?”

  Some men in brown Tribal Police uniforms started shepherding the crowd away, and the big guy went to help while I was still trying to remember what “BIA” stood for. That’s when I spotted the yellow tape and the deader lying behind it on his back, his blood pooled around him like a mantle.

  A woman was kneeling beside him, black “FBI” windbreaker proclaiming her an evidence tech. Standing over him was a hologram; the Blue Corn Maiden. She was wearing a black dress and moccasins, and a shawl, and a mask painted blue with black rectangles for the eyes. Her hair was black too, done up in a kind of Princess Leia do on the sides of her head, and she was holding a basket filled with ears of corn.

  I ducked under the tape, and got up close to the deader. Man, he was gorgeous! Late 20‘s, very slender, dressed in silk trousers and a shirt that had to have been tailored: the model/actor type. His eyes were closed; unusual, perhaps done by the killer. I knelt beside him, and the tech glanced at me.

  “Shot, or stabbed?” I asked.

  “Stabbed, I think. Nobody reported a shot.”

  She picked up his hand—long delicate fingers—and began slipping a plastic bag over it. I looked at that serene face again, wondering who had destroyed such beauty, and why. I’m not ashamed to admit wishing I’d met him alive.

  “Do we have an ID?” I asked.

  “Alan Malone,” said a rich, deep voice to my right.

  I glanced up and found myself staring at the Blue Corn Maiden, but she couldn’t have spoken in that masculine voice. Just past her a tall man in a worn leather jacket was leaning against the wall, taking an unhurried drag on a pipe.

  The coal glowed angry-hot as he pulled on it, at odds with the calm blue of his eyes. High forehead, big crooked nose, looked vaguely northern-European. He was staring kind of absently at the body, jaw cocked a little to one side and a muscle or a vein pulsing on his temple underneath the thinning hair.

  I stood up. “Special Agent Chase?”

  He unfolded a lanky arm to shake my hand, then took the pipe from his mouth. “Welcome to New Mexico,” he said. “I hear you’ve just arrived.”

  “Yes,” I said, straightening my shoulders a little. Yeah, I was defensive. Every cop I met was giving me the cool treatment, and this guy was no different.

  “You’ll find Albuquerque is very different from Quantico. He’s a singer,” he said, gesturing toward the deader with the pipe. “Was, I mean. Worked here, in the Kachina theater. Two shows a night, dark Tuesdays.”

  “Dark?”

  “No show. It’s their only day off.”

  It was Wednesday. “So he was killed coming in this morning?” I said.

  “Probably. Except that this hallway is nowhere near the theater entrance.”

  “Between it and the parking lot?”

  “Not really,” said Chase. “There’s an exit nearby, but there are closer ones to the theater.”

  The BIA guy came back from shooing off the gawkers, and walked up to Chase. “How soon can we get him out of here?” he said.

  “Easy, Mondo,” said Chase. “Did any of the staff see him alive?”

  “Not so far. We’re still talking to the buffet people. The manager’s bitching—it’s almost time for lunch to open.”

  Chase glanced past the Corn Maiden. “The line forms out there?”

  “Right there,” said the big cop, nodding his head. He got an extra chin with each downward thrust of his jaw.

  Chase looked down the hallway, then back at Mondo, and got this gentle little smile. “Maybe you should find a screen, then,” he said. He turned to me. “Shall we go look at the theater?”

  “Sure,” I said. I followed him back the way I’d come, walking fast to keep with his long stride, knowing I would most likely get lost again trying to find my way through the casino alone.

  “Um, Special Agent—"

  “Call me Chase,” he said.

  “OK. Do you happen to know where there’s a restroom?”

  “Should be one right over here.” He led me past some craps tables to a bank of restrooms tucked in a corner, and said “Meet you back here.”

  He was nowhere in sight, however, when I came out. I waited, looking across the casino, watching the tourists gamble, listening to the clatter of slots paying off.

  “I am Buffalo,” boomed a voice beside me.

  “Jesus!” I said, jumping.

  A hologram set off in a little alcove near the restrooms had come to life: a big guy in a huge furry headdress-robe thing that went all the way down his back. In one hand he held a rattle which he started to shake. Distant drums throbbed.

  “I am the gift of the Great Spirit,” he said. “I give the blessings of my body to the people....”

  “All set?” said a voice behind me, and I jumped again.

  Chase had come out of nowhere. He hadn’t been in the men’s room, and he hadn’t come across the casino, and the only thing behind me was a wall.

  “Shit,” I muttered. My heart was pounding.

  “Sorry,” said Chase. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

  He sucked on his pipe, and glanced at the hologram giving its spiel. Then, just as I was really beginning to wish I was back in Quantico, he turned those blue eyes on me and smiled.

  It transformed him. Suddenly he wasn’t just another tired cop, but a human being full of love and joy, sharing something fun with me, simply because I was a fellow human. Swear to god, his eyes actually twinkled.

  He grinned at me, and said “They give me the willies, too!”

  I managed a smile in return. Chase took off toward the casino again.

  We passed more slots, poker tables, holograms of course, some kind of big wheel-of-fortune thingie, and still more slots. I followed Chase through an acre of blackjack and up a half-dozen steps to some closed banks of doors labeled “Kachina theater” in orange and green neon. Two big holograms with antlers and bits of pine branches hanging off them stood on either side. Chase knocked at the center doors, knocked again, then pushed them open and we went in.

  Dark. After all the noise and light of the casino, I felt like I’d stepped into some underground cavern. The doors fell shut with a muffled whump, sealing us off from light and life. I peered hard at nothing, trying to adjust my eyes.

  A gust of wind hit my face with an audible “whoosh.” In the distance something pale moved.

  My neck hairs prickled; I stared at it until I discerned a bird flying, flapping great, lazy wings, glowing white against the darkness, growing closer, larger. An eagle; no, an eagle kachina with long, feathered wings strapped to arms that filled the width of the room as it rose toward us, enormous, majestic and terrible.

  I could hear the flap of the great wings, feel their wind wash over me. It flew overhead and vanished, leaving me drenched in silence.

  “Sorry to interrupt,” said Chase pleasantly beside me, “but we need to talk to someone connected to the show.”

  “Tickets at the concierge desk,” an irritated voice returned from the darkness. “Sorry, no visitors. You’ll have to leave the theater.”

  I noticed a dim row of aisle markers on the floor. My eyes were adjusting. Chase was now a shadow nearby.

  “We’re not visitors,” he said. “We’re with the FBI. If you’ll bring up some lights and talk with us, we’ll try not to take up too much of your time.”

  Mutterings, indistinguishable. I glanced over my shoulder at the doors.

  The faint seam of light between them flickered; a silent shadow passing. My skin prickled with the sense of someone unexpectedly near, and I was still peering after the shadow when the lights came up hard, making me blink. There was no one there.

  “Thank you,” said Chase.

  I followed him down the steps to where three men were sitting in a booth; two Native Americans and one Anglo. The natives both had that ageless, flat, round face that looked like it hid centuries of secrets; they stared at Chase with dark, watchful eyes. The white guy wa
s around forty, with frizzy, graying hair in a ponytail and a pair of headphones around his neck. He looked pissed.

  Chase flashed his badge. “Any of you know Alan Malone?”

  “Yeah,” said the white guy. “The little shit’s late.”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact,” said Chase gently.

  He was halfway through explaining before I noticed the pun. Cop humor. I gave him a look but he seemed not to notice, except that a corner of his mouth twitched a little. The others didn’t have a clue.

  “Oh, man!” said the Anglo, his eyebrows going up. “Oh, shit! Joe, call Ben and tell him to get down here!”

  One of the natives nodded and started up the aisle at a jog. “Joe,” I wrote in my pocket notebook, starting a list of people to interview.

  “Can I have your name, sir?” I said.

  “Huh? Oh, sure. Stauffer. Daniel. Jesus, when did he die?”

  “We’re not sure yet,” said Chase. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  “Monday night. Final performance of ‘The Wild West’.”

  Stauffer turned out to be the director for the Kachina theater. He alternated between puzzlement over Malone’s death and dismay at its impact on the upcoming premiere, and some kind of excitement that I didn’t fully understand.

  A few other people connected with the show emerged from various parts of the theater. Most of them, to my surprise, were white, not Native American. A couple were Hispanic.

  I took down names while Chase encouraged Stauffer to chat about Malone and the show. It sounded spectacular; from the way he was talking the eagle we’d seen was nothing. Live performers interacting with holographic gods, acting out the legend of creation. State of the art physical simulation effects. When Stauffer offered Chase a pair of tickets, I felt a stab of envy.

  Stauffer glanced past me, and I turned to see Joe coming back. I suppressed a shiver; hadn’t heard the door.