Moonbird Boy (19 page)

"The white man hurts everything he touches," John Crooked Owl told his son years in the past. "He hurts the earth. He hurts the sky. Even the rocks he smashes for his tunnels and roads. The white man enslaves the mother of his children as he wants to enslave the spirit of life. The white man will hurt us if we are not careful. He will devour the soul of the Neji and all the Kumeyaay if we are not always careful."

Zach could hear Dura and the other women serving food in the dining hall. A balanced diet as determined by the County of San Diego. Dura had gone to classes at a community college to learn what foods the Neji must serve their guests, and had come home laughing.

"They teach that grains, leaves, stems, roots, and berries are the healthy things for people to eat," she told her husband. "What do they think Indians have been eating for a thousand years? Why didn't they just ask us?"

"We don't exist in their minds," he answered. "They only see Indians at the movies. They can't see real people."

That was still true, Zach thought as he walked slowly beneath his father's painted gaze. It would always be true. But white men and other men who adopted their ways could see money, even if they couldn't see anything else. Indian money, any kind of money. Money made them happy, and they would find ways to take it for themselves. They had found a way to take it from the Neji. And that was Zachary Crooked Owl's fault.

"Zach, come and eat," Dura called from the dining hall door. "It's a brown rice casserole with cheese. Fruit salad. Brownies." Her voice was flat with worry. "You like brownies, Zach."

"I have to think, Dura," he told her. "I'm not hungry right now."

Smoothing her apron, Dura moved to stand on the hearth under John Crooked Owl's picture. She held a brown-checked dish towel in one hand like a proclamation extended toward her husband. "We'll go on living here," she pronounced slowly. "The Neji will stay at Ghost Flower Lodge, stay on the land. This is reservation land. They can't take it, they can't come here. It's ours. You know this, Zach. They can't take Neji land or anything that's on Neji land. You have to stop worrying."

"They will steal our story, which is our spirit," he said, sitting heavily on a carved chair. "Steal it and sell it. They will take the money we earn because they will own the work that we do. You don't understand, Dura. We can stay here, but we will have nothing. The Neji were the only band of Kumeyaay they couldn't buy. Now they have. And I allowed this to happen.

Dura let the dish towel fall to her side and then sat next to him, biting her lip. He could see the pale knuckles like stones beneath the skin of her hands. A woman's hands, tied to time through the births and deaths that they cradled. Different

from a man's hands, which were meant to build and to fight for his people. Dura didn't contradict what he'd said. She merely took his hand and held it between both of hers. The gesture was like a ghost of his mother.

"What are you thinking about, Zach?" she said. "What is it that you're thinking about doing?"

"I don't know," he answered. "I'm going to walk outside."

He couldn't tell her. He wasn't sure.

Standing, he jammed his hands into his pockets and strode into the sun. In his right pocket was the spent shell, the bright copper casing of the bullet that had killed Mort Wagman. He'd fasted and danced to find it. He'd stripped off his shirt and let the sun sink into his dark skin until he was dizzy and blind. And the spirit of the canyon, or of his father, or of the raven whose namesake had died there, had showed him the orange glint of copper filmed in pale brown dust. But now he was afraid.

It had to be Henderson, he thought for the thousandth time. Henderson said he was going to become the head of this corporation, MedNet. He had plans, this Henderson. Zach had seen these plans in his face when he looked right through the patients, and through the Neji. When he looked at the lodge with its walls that would last forever, and didn't see their beauty. He saw money.

Henderson had written a letter to Mort Wagman offering Mort even more money than the SnakeEye athletic shoe company had given him, if Mort would star in a commercial about psychiatric treatment at Ghost Flower Lodge. The commercial would be on television. Henderson wanted to show Mort crazy in a breechcloth, sweating in a Yurok sweathouse, doing a Navajo sand painting, wearing Zuni jewelry. Then he wanted to show Zach afterward sitting in a bar with pretty women.

Mort had handed the letter to Zach and said, "Flush it." Then he'd written back to Henderson telling him he'd "place his personal resources at the disposal of the Neji" if MedNet continued its attempts to buy the Ghost Flower program. But that was before Hopper Mead died. Before the ignorance of Zachary Crooked Owl handed Ghost Flower and the Neji legacy straight into the hands of the enemy.

Zach kicked pebbles at a young banded gecko peeking out from the deep shadow of a rock, and immediately cursed himself. The supple little creature with its pinkish legs nearly transparent in the bright sunlight looked like a human fetus. "What kind of man kicks a baby?" Zach said aloud. He knew he was going to have to do something before his self-hatred made him a monster.

Old John had wanted him to go to school, he remembered again. Had said that a business course at the community college would help in running the Neji's board-and-care business. And Zach had gone for a semester. But he was young then, and shy among the white students who called him Black Tonto and the black students whose jargon and hostility he couldn't understand, and even the Latino students, who just ignored him. There were no other Indians there. He didn't fit in, and he'd stopped attending classes.

If he'd finished, Zach thought bitterly, he might have seen the flaw in Hopper Mead's offer. He might have remembered that even young people can die, and hired a lawyer to handle the loan she offered. But he hadn't done any of those things. And now the greed of white men would destroy everything they'd worked for. The sullen finality of it made his head pound. Somebody should have to pay, he thought. One of them should die as Mort Wagman had died. He should kill one of them.

The copper shell in his pocket pressed against his thigh as he walked. He could give it to the authorities, could have done that from the beginning. They could run tests, determine the type of gun it was shot from, check records. They could see who owned guns like that from records all over the country. Maybe it would be Henderson's gun.

Zach pushed himself against the hot desert air as if it were an obstacle. Even walking felt like a battle. He'd searched for the shell and then kept it because it was the only thing he could use against Henderson. He hadn't really thought he'd need to.

When he found the shell he still thought he could get enough money from the mob to pay off Mead's loan, now held by MedNet. He'd agreed to let a gambling syndicate build a casino on the Neji Reservation, even agreed that some of the Neji would run it. It had to be owned and run by Indians on reservation land to avoid federal and state gambling laws. Indian reservations, he'd learned, were like sovereign nations in some ways, not always subject to the laws of the conquering culture. Zach hated the idea of a Neji casino, but it was better than losing the dream his father had created from nothing. That dream was Ghost Flower Lodge and its program, a legend of kindness begun when one man did not abandon his ill brother.

But Zach hadn't understood the game. He'd gone to St. Louis for a meeting with the syndicate, but they'd already said MedNet would pay them even more money than the four hundred thousand he needed if they'd forget building a Neji casino. MedNet wanted the Neji for its own purposes and would pay the syndicate to back off. There was only one way to cinch the deal for the Neji, his connection had told Zach. And that way involved a woman. She was Mort Wagman's mother.

She was a member of MedNet's board, the man told Zach. And she wanted to take Mort's little boy away from him. That's why Mort had changed his name, why he had no history. He'd been hiding. But she'd found him. And MedNet had arranged to have him killed at her request.

But she could stop the MedNet drive to gain control of Ghost Flower, the man went on, if she thought her grandson's life lay in the balance. If she thought the child had been kidnapped, she could stall the move long enough for Zach to nail the casino deal, get the money, pay off Mead's loan. But it all had to go down over the weekend, when she wouldn't be able to contact anybody at the agency holding the boy. When she would believe he'd been kidnapped.

Zach's hands knotted into fists when he remembered his stupidity. It all happened so fast. And the man talked so fast. But it was all a lie. A lie to get Zachary Crooked Owl's handwriting on a threatening note that would divert attention from both the mob and MedNet if there were further violence as the two jockeyed for control of the Indians. It was a joke, Zach thought bitterly. For a hundred years the Kumeyaay had survived like lizards in a barren landscape nobody wanted. Unworthy of attention, much less help. Invisible. Now powerful men offered powerful amounts of money for a chance to use that land and its lizards. Powerful men were willing to kill for that chance.

But he could fight back, Zach mused. If Henderson had murdered Mort, the shell casing would give the Neji leverage. There were countless reasons for murder, and Mort Wagman had been wealthy. Zach had stopped trying to understand the connections between Mort and MedNet. There was no source from which he could learn the truth, put the pieces together. But there had to be a connection because Mort Wagman was dead. And Henderson had been in town.

He would tell Henderson he had the shell. He would insist on a renegotiation of the loan in exchange for it. And that was blackmail. Henderson might try to kill him, but he was ready. If it would save the dream, he was completely ready.

Henderson was coming to the lodge on Wednesday. The Neji didn't have to permit him on their land, but Zach had told him to come. And now he was uneasy. He'd been in the army, seen action in Vietnam. He'd shot thousands of rounds into steaming jungles where tiny people were hiding. He might have killed them, but if he did he didn't know it. This would be different. The thought of it made him sick.

Looking up, he saw the edge of Yucca Canyon. He couldn't seem to stay away. Something was going to happen here, he could feel it. Someone was going to die. Throwing his head back, he screamed into the dry air, silent except for a ticking sound that might have been insects and might have been time running out. The echo bounced off the canyon's wall and bathed him in vibrating light.

At the office Bo found messages from Andrew, Mindy at the dogwash, and Ann Lee Keith, each carefully abbreviated by the message center worker.

"Dr. LaMarche has important news. Call at home," said the first. Then, "Dog Beach Dogwash, call back." The final one was cryptic. "Urgent—phone Dr. Ann Lee Keith anytime day or night." Both Keith's work and unlisted home numbers were given.

Bo dialed Keith's home number immediately, and got a busy signal. Then she phoned the dogwash. Jane and Mindy were out, and the young employee who answered knew nothing of a package for Bo.

"Maybe it's this shipment of the new anti-matting coat conditioner," she suggested. "It comes in sage, peppermint, and unscented."

Bo ran a hand through her short curls and found no mats. "I have plenty of conditioner," she said. "Just tell Jane and Mindy I called."

Andrew LaMarche answered his phone on the first ring and sounded strangely exuberant. "Bo," he began, "I had no idea how much fun it could be not going to work. That harpsichord kit I ordered finally arrived, and—"

"Andy, where are you going to put a harpsichord? Your condo's not much bigger than my apartment, and a harpsichord's as long as a grand piano."

"Indeed," he went on as if the dimensions of a stringed keyboard first seen in the sixteenth century were deeply exciting. "And I'm going to make the plectra out of crow quill the way they did in the beginning, not out of the plastic that came in the kit. And where to put it, well, J'ai l'idée que—"

"My guess is that means you've got an idea," Bo interrupted, "and I'd love to hear it, in English. Also, I'm concerned about how you plan to entertain a flock of naked, angry crows until their quills grow back. But I need to call Ann Lee Keith. When can I see the harpsichord?"

"In about three months," he laughed. "But there's something else I want you to see tonight."

"What?" Bo took the bait, resisting an urge to point out that she'd already seen it. A bawdy remark at this point would only drive him further into the Cajun French he sputtered at the slightest hint of emotional stress. She'd never get off the phone.

"A surprise."

"What kind of surprise?"

"Wait and see," he teased, filling Bo's ear with a baritone vibrato that made her think of windblown cypress trees. In Greece. "And by the way," the cypress-voice continued, "I remembered seeing this Dr. Keith's name before, in medical journals. She was a rising star in experimental neurophysiology until a few years ago, the name in early fetal-cell implant technology. Then she just vanished from the scene, quit publishing, dropped off the face of the earth, as they say. I seem to recall there was some kind of professional scandal, but I never knew what it was. Not surprising, though. It's a controversial field."

"Scandal, huh?" Bo mused. "Maybe you'll remember what it was by tonight. I'll call you later."

Without replacing the receiver Bo dialed Ann Lee Keith's number again. This time it rang.

"This is Dr. Keith," a well-modulated, feminine voice answered. The words were almost whispered.

"This is Ms. Bradley, calling from Child Protective Services in San Diego." Bo matched the woman's polite tone. "If you have a few moments, Dr. Keith, I'd like to ask—"

"Do you have my grandson?" Ann Lee Keith broke in. "There have been threats, you see. I've been trying to find him. Surely that's the reason you've called?"

In the interrogative statement Bo heard panic, the beginning of tears. "Who is your grandson?" she asked gently.