CHAPTER 20

Nevermore

Santa Barbara

When Sam walked into his office Gabriella met him with a cup of coffee. "Mr. Hunter, I'd like to apologize for my behavior yesterday. I don't know what came over me."

"That's okay. I do."

"I hope you were able to resolve the difficulties at the Cliffs."

Sam wasn't prepared for civility from Gabriella; it was like encountering a polite scorpion. Life was changing before his eyes. "Everything's fine. Any calls?"

"Just Mr. Aaron." She checked her message pad. "He would like you to stop into his office if it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"Exact words?"

"Yes, sir."

"My my, has the Sugarplum Fairy been through here today?"

Gabriella checked the pad. "No message, sir."

Sam smiled and walked away. Down the hall Julia told Sam to go right in.

Aaron stood and smiled when Sam entered the office. "Sammy boy, have a seat. We need to talk."

Sam said, "Forty cents on the dollar, plus interest. You keep the office. I want out. That's it. You talk."

Aaron dismissed Sam's comment with a wave. "That's all behind us, buddy. Cochran's lawyer called. There isn't going to be any lawsuit. You and I are square."

"What happened?" Sam knew he should be elated at the news, but instead he felt dread. For a moment he had relished the idea of giving up all the pretending. Now what?

"No explanation. They just backed off. They apologized for the mistake. You'll get a formal apology in the mail tomorrow. I never doubted you, kid. Not for a minute."

"Aaron, did you talk to Spagnola today?"

"Just briefly. Just a social call. He was pretty heavily medicated. I'm not sure I trust him, Sam. You want to watch your back around that guy. He's unstable."

Sam felt his ears heat up with anger. Aaron expected him to act like the betrayal had never happened. There was a time when he would have, but not now. "Forty cents on the dollar, plus interest."

Aaron lost his friendly-guy salesman's smile. "But that's behind us."

"I don't think so. You're a shit, Aaron. That doesn't surprise me. But it does surprise me that you went after me when I was down. I thought we were friends."

"We are, Sammy."

"Good. Then you won't mind having the papers on my desk by midweek. And you can pay the attorney fees. They're tax deductible, you know. And if you're late, you will need the write-off." Sam got up and started out of the office.

Aaron called after him. "We don't have to do this now."

Without turning Sam said, "Yes we do. I do."

Sam nodded to Julia as he passed but he couldn't muster a smile. What have I done? he thought.

In his outer office Gabriella was kicked back in her chair with her skirt up around her armpits. She seemed to be hyperventilating and her eyes were rolled back in her head.

"Gabriella! Again?"

She pointed to his office door. Sam threw the door open, banging it against the wall and disturbing a raven that was perched in the brass hat rack just inside. Sam stormed over to the bird, barely resisting the urge to grab it and rip its feathers out.

"Goddammit, I told you to stay off my secretary!" Sam shook his fist at the bird. "And what kind of bullshit did you pull over at Motion Marine to get them to drop the lawsuit? Can't you just leave me alone?"

"Why are you yelling at the bird?" The voice came from behind him. Sam looked around, his fist still threatening the raven.

Coyote was standing in the opposite corner of the office by the fax machine. Sam's anger turned to confusion. He looked at the bird, then Coyote, then the bird. "Who's this?"

"A raven?" Coyote speculated. He turned back to the fax machine. "Hey, what is this button that says 'network'?"

Sam was still looking at the bird. "It sends simultaneously to the home offices of all the companies we represent."

Coyote pushed the button. "Like smoke signals."

"What?" Sam dropped his fist, ran to the fax machine, and hit the cancel button a second too late. The display showed the transmission had gone out. Sam pulled the paper from the machine and stared at it in disbelief. Coyote had obviously lain on the copy machine to get the image.

"You faxed your penis? That machine prints my name at the top of each transmission."

"The girls in the home office will think highly of you, then. Of course, they will be disappointed if they ever see you naked."

The raven squawked and Gabriella appeared at the open door. "Mr. Hunter, a gentleman is here to see you from the police department."

Coyote held the Xerox up to Gabriella. "A picture of your friend," he offered.

A sharp-featured Hispanic man in a tweed sport jacket pushed his way past Gabriella into the office. "Mr. Hunter, I'm Detective Alphonse Rivera, Santa Barbara PD, narcotics division. I'd like to ask you a few questions." He held out a business card embossed with a gold shield, but did not offer to shake hands.

"Narcotics?" Sam looked to Coyote, thinking he would have disappeared, but the trickster had stood his ground by the fax machine. On the hat rack, the raven cawed.

"Nice bird," Rivera said. "I understand they can be trained to talk." Rivera walked to the bird and studied it.

"Pig," the raven said.

"He's not mine," Sam said quickly. "He belongs to-" Sam looked around and Gabriella was gone from the doorway. "He belongs to this gentleman." Sam pointed to Coyote.

"And you are?" Rivera eyed Coyote suspiciously.

"Coyote."

Rivera raised an eyebrow and took a notebook from his inside jacket pocket. "Mr. Hunter, I have a few questions about what went on at Motion Marine a couple of days ago. Would you prefer to talk in private?"

"Yes." Sam looked at Coyote. "Go away. Take the bird with you."

"Nazi scum," the raven cawed.

"I'll stay," Coyote said.

Sam was on the verge of screaming. Sweat was beading on his forehead. He composed himself and turned to Rivera. "We can talk in front of Mr. Coyote."

"Just a few questions," Rivera said. "You had an appointment with James Cable at ten. Is that correct?"

"I was there for about an hour."

"I was there too," Coyote said.

Rivera turned his attention to the trickster. "Why were you there, Mr. Coyote?"

"I was raising funds for NARC."

"Narc!" the raven said.

"Narc?"

"Native American Reform Coalition."

Rivera scribbled on a pad.

Sam said, "I don't understand. What does this have to do with narcotics?"

"We think someone put hallucinogens in the coffee over at Motion Marine. Two days ago James Cable claims he was attacked by someone fitting Mr. Coyote's description. He had a heart attack."

"I just asked him if his company would make a donation," Coyote said. "He said no and I went away." He had taken the Xerox of his penis from the desk and fitted it back into the fax machine. He searched the buttons. "'Insurance commissioner, " he read as he pushed the button.

"No!" Sam dove over the desk for the cancel button. Too late. He turned to Rivera. "That document wasn't signed." He grinned and tried to move the conversation away from his panic. "You know, I was thinking  -  we've got an Indian, a policeman, and an insurance broker. We're only a construction worker away from the Village People."

Rivera ignored the comment. "Did you have any coffee while you were at Motion Marine, Mr. Hunter?"

"Coffee? No."

"And you didn't drink from the watercooler?"

"No. I don't understand."

"Today, three people at Motion Marine, including Frank Cochran, claim that they saw a polar bear in the offices."

Sam looked at Coyote. "A polar bear?"

"We think that someone slipped them some LSD. We're testing the water and the coffee now. We just wanted to talk to anyone who has been in the building in the last two days. You didn't see anyone strange hanging around while you were in the building?"

"I only saw Cable's secretary and Cable," Sam said.

Rivera flipped the notebook closed. "Well, thanks for your time. If you have any strange reactions or see anything strange, could you give me a call?" Rivera handed a card to Coyote. "And you too, if you would."

"Cabron," the raven said.

"He speaks Spanish, too," Rivera said. "Amazing." The detective left the office.

"'Santa Barbara News-Press advertising, " Coyote read as he pushed the button. The fax machine whirred.

Sam started to go for the machine, then stopped and sat down in his chair. He sat for a minute rubbing his temples. "If that cop runs a background check on me, I'm going to jail. You know that, don't you?"

"You wanted your old life back."

"But a fucking polar bear?"

"Well, you have your old life back, whether you want it or not."

"I was wrong." It felt good saying it, the honesty in it. He wanted a new life. "I just want you to go away."

"I'm gone," Coyote said. "The girl is gone too."

"What does that mean?"

The feathers on Coyote's shirt turned black and his fingers changed to flight feathers. In an instant Coyote was a raven. He flew out the office door followed by the raven from the hat rack.

CHAPTER 21

All Happy Families

Santa Barbara

Calliope stood in the driveway, holding Grubb, waiting for Lonnie to return. Nina had been right: she wasn't very good at worrying, but she was giving it a good effort. She was sure that Lonnie wouldn't hurt her or Grubb, but then again, Lonnie had never acted the way he had the night before. She wished that she could have asked Sam to stay with her and help her with a decision, but it would have been too much to ask so soon. She wished, too, that there were phones at the ashram and that she could call her mother for advice. And she couldn't just jump in the car and drive to see her mother as she always had before. She had her job, her house, and there was Sam now.

She was trying to push the dark specter of the unknown to the back of her mind when she heard the Harley approaching. She looked up to see Lonnie rounding the corner a block away, his new girlfriend clinging to him like a leech. Lonnie pulled into the driveway next to her and killed the engine.

"I'm late for work," Calliope said, wiping a trail of drool from Grubb's face with her finger.

The woman behind Lonnie glared at her and Calliope nodded to her and said, "Hi."

Lonnie reached for Grubb without getting off the bike. Calliope hugged Grubb close. She said, "I don't want him riding on the bike with you."

Lonnie laughed. "The way you drive? He's a hell of a lot safer on the bike."

"Please, Lonnie."

The woman reached out and took Grubb from Calliope. The baby began to cry. "He'll be fine," Cheryl hissed.

"Why can't you just stay at home with him?" Calliope asked.

"Places to go, people to meet," Lonnie said.

"I could get Yiffer to watch him." Calliope felt her breath coming hard. She didn't like the look of this hard woman holding her Grubb.

Lonnie said, "You tell Yiffer to watch his ass or I'll shoot it off."

"Lonnie, I have to go. Can't you just stay here? I'm only working the lunch shift today."

Lonnie grinned. "Aren't you going to stop by the hospital on your way home?"

"Hospital? No. Why?"

Lonnie fired up the Harley. "No reason." He laughed and coaxed the big bike around in the driveway.

As he gunned the engine and pulled into the street Cheryl shouted, "Don't worry, bitch, we'll put a dollar on black for you."

Over the roar of the Harley, Calliope could hear the woman grunt as Lonnie elbowed her in the ribs.

Calliope saw Grubb looking at her as they rounded the corner. Panic tore at her chest as what the woman had said sunk in. She turned and ran back up the steps.

-=*=-
By late afternoon the contractors had replaced Sam's sliding glass door and patched the bullet holes in the walls. Sam canceled the week's appointments, which gave him time alone with his thoughts. He soon found, however, that his thoughts, like monkeys in church, were bad company.

He tried reading to distract himself, but he found that he was simply looking at the pages. He tried napping, but as soon as he closed his eyes, images of Coyote and the police filled his head. When the worry became too much for him he thought of Calliope, which set off a whole new set of worries. What had Coyote meant, "The girl is gone"? Did it matter?

She was trouble. Too young, too goofy, probably too attractive. And the kid  -  he didn't need a kid in his life either. Trouble. If she had gone somewhere he probably was better off. He didn't need the hassles. That thought still bouncing through his mind, he grabbed the phone and dialed her number. No answer. He called information and got the number for the Tangerine Tree Cafe. She hadn't shown up for work today.

Where in the hell is she? Where in the hell is Coyote? The fucker knew where she went and he wouldn't tell. What had started as a niggling irritation turned to dread. Why in the hell does it matter? he thought.

Terrifying and black, a word rose in his mind that matched his feeling. He recoiled from it, but it struck him again and again like an angry viper. Love: the sickest of Irony's sick jokes. The place where logic and order go to die. Then again, maybe not. It was only bad if you were hiding, pretending to be something that you were not. Maybe the hiding could end.

Sam got up and headed out the door in what he knew was a ridiculous effort to find Calliope. He drove to the cafe and confirmed what they had told him on the phone. Then he drove to Calliope's house and found Yiffer and Nina getting out of the van as he pulled up.

Nina said, "I don't know where she is, Sam. She left a note saying that Lonnie had taken Grubb and she was going after him."

"Nothing about where she was going?"

"Any note at all is a big step for her. She used to disappear for days at a time with no note at all."

"Fuck." Sam started to get back in the car.

"Sam," Nina called. He paused. "The note said to tell you she was sorry."

"For what?"

"That's all it said."

"Thanks, Nina. Call me if she shows up." Sam gunned the Mercedes out of the driveway, having no idea where he was going.

He needed help. All his machines and access to information wouldn't help. He needed a place to start. Twenty-four hours ago he would have given anything to get rid of Coyote. Now he would welcome the trickster's cryptic, smart-assed answers  -  at least they were answers.

He drove around town, looking for Calliope's Z, feeling hope rise each time he spotted an orange car, and feeling it fall when it turned out not to be Calliope's. After an hour he returned home, where he sat on his sofa, smoking and thinking. Everything had changed and nothing had changed. His life was back to normal, and normal wasn't enough anymore. He wanted real.

-=*=-
At the Guild's clubhouse Tinker was digging at a flea bite on his leg, trying to pull his grimy jeans up over heavy boots to get at the tiny invader. "Fucking fleas," he said.

The Guild's president, Bonner Newton, let out a raucous snort. "You know what they say, bro," Newton said. "Lie down with dogs..." A din of harsh laughter rose in the room from the other Guild members.

"Fuck you guys," Tinker said, feigning anger while enjoying the attention. It wasn't that he liked ugly chicks, but who else would have him?

Nineteen of the twenty full members of the Guild were draped over furniture and sprawled on the floor, smoking joints and cigarettes, drinking beers and feeling at the few old ladies present. Outside, two strikers, members who had not earned their full colors, sat on the front porch watching for the law.

The house was a ramshackle stucco bungalow that had been built in the 1930s as part of a housing tract, before the term housing tract was part of the language. The walls were stained with blood, beer, and vomit. The carpet was matted with motor oil; the furniture was minimal and distressed. Only Tinker actually lived at the clubhouse. The rest of the club used it for meeting and partying.

The Guild had paid a hundred thousand dollars in cash for the house. The deed was registered under Newton's married sister's name, as was the ranch house the Guild owned in the Santa Lucia Mountains above Santa Barbara, which housed the lab that provided their income. Ironically, the ranch's nearest neighbor was a wobbly-headed ex-president who had declared a war on drugs, and who, from time to time, would stand on the veranda of his palatial ranch house sniffing the odor of cooking crank and calling, "Mommy, there's a funny smell trickling down out here."

The lab produced enough income to support all of the Guild's members and ensure that none of them had to work except to man the counter of the Harley-Davidson shop that Bonner Newton used to launder drug money.

Newton held an M.B.A. from Stanford. In an earlier time, before he fell from grace for smuggling cocaine, he had stalked the glass-cube buildings of Silicon Valley, wearing Italian suits and commanding crews of brilliant computer designers who could define the universe in terms of two digits, explain the chaos theory in twenty-five words or less, and build machines that emulated human intelligence  -  but who thought a vulva was a Swedish automobile. Newton's experience in coddling these genius misfits served him well as president of the Guild, for the members of the Guild were nothing more than nerds without brains: fat, ugly, or awkward men who found no acceptance in the outside world and so escaped into the security and belonging of an outlaw biker club. A Harley-Davidson and blind loyalty were the only requirements for membership.

"Listen up, you fucks," Newton said, calling the meeting to order. "Bitches outside." He paused and lit a cigarette while the women filed out the door, glaring at him over their shoulders. He was not a large or imposing man compared to the other members, but his authority was not to be questioned.

"Lonnie's not here yet," Tinker said.

"Lonnie's running an errand for us," Newton said. "We're going to take an impromptu road trip. A little business and a little pleasure."

"Fuckin' A," someone yelled. Newton gestured for quiet.

"Seems like someone forgot to tell me that we were running low on ether up at the facility." Newton always referred to the crank lab as "the facility." Tinker stopped scratching his leg and hung his head.

"Tink, you fucking idiot," someone said.

"Anyway," Newton continued, "I wasn't able to arrange a delivery, so we have to go get it. There's a rally in South Dakota in a couple of days. At Sturgis. The Chicago chapter is going to meet us there with a couple of barrels. I want three fifty-five-gallon drums rigged with false tops so if we get stopped by the law it looks like we're hauling motor oil. Tinker, you'll drive the pickup."

"Aw, come on, Newt," Tinker whined.

"Warren," Newton said. A thin biker with curly red hair looked up. "You fix one of the barrels for weapons, and make sure no one is packing. I don't want any weapons on anyone while we're riding."

A series of snorts, moans, and "Oh, fucks" passed around the room. Newton dismissed them with a wave. "Advice from the Gator," he said. Gator was short for the litigator, the Guild's attorney, Melvin Gold, who handled all their criminal cases free of charge in exchange for the assurance that he could also handle their personal injury suits. Bikers got run over a lot.

"Look," Newton insisted, "half of you are on probation. We don't need some rookie pig looking for glory to fuck us on a concealed-weapons charge. Are we clear?" Newton paused until someone answered, "We're clear."

"All right, then. Lonnie's making a run to Vegas with his old lady to get the money to pay for the ether. He'll meet us in South D. We're out of here at nine tomorrow morning, so don't get too fucked up tonight. Bring your camping shit. Let your bitches carry your stash." Newton dropped his cigarette and ground it out on the carpet. "That's all," he said.

The room filled with conversations about the trip. A few of the members got up to leave. When they opened the door a single flea hopped out with them. Once past the steps the flea changed into a horsefly and took flight. A block away the horsefly changed into a raven and headed toward the mesa and the Cliffs condominium complex.