Dusk, and once again, the dream-like grapple with death, as high winds howled across the South Dakota desert, and black rocks twisted in a devil dance against the sky.

“Where’s your goons, Tonto?”

Greenleaf looked sharply at the girl. She stood, motionless, by the window, her arms folded.

“Relax, angel, it will all go down.”

“It doesn’t look like it.”

“They’re on their way.”

She made an impatient gesture.

Shadows filled the room, as night came on. He sat at the table and studied the layout which the girl had drawn for him, the maze of rooms and hallways and staircases, while he chain smoked cigarettes. She remained restlessly watching, her eyes fixed on the road.

“I’m not waiting.”

“That’s too bad love.”

“I’m not coming back.”

“That’s too bad too. But it will be a mistake.”

“You’re a mistake.”

“Suit yourself, Cinderella, but there’s still time.”

“Your time, Geronimo. Small time.”

Headlights swept the driveway. A dark late model car pulled in. Two shadows sat slumped in it. Greenleaf rose softly, slipping a revolver down his snakeskin belt, his gaunt Indian face expressionless.

“Your coach awaiteth.”

“Your goons are drunk.”

“They’ll deliver.”

“You’re a joke.”

“Fifty thousand dollars?” The Mexican asked again.

“Right, amigo,” Greenleaf answered impatiently, “fifty grand.”

“Fifty thousand dollars in cash?”

“Cash.”

“In that haunted house?”

The wind rocked the black sedan. They sat parked near the entrance to the roadhouse, headlights extinguished, engine idling. Greenleaf watched the girl slip out of the car and run through the night. Her cheerleader’s uniform fluttered with the gusts. Her long golden hair – something out of a fairytale – flared for an instant as she disappeared through the roadhouse doorway.

“You have seen this cash, my friend?”

It was still early. The parking lot was all but empty. There was a pickup truck parked by the roadhouse door. There was a late model station wagon next to it. Beyond the asphalt, under the waving trees, they could dimly make out the silhouette of a squad car. Inside the roadhouse, the girl was making her moves.

“This don’t look so good, my friend.”

The driver stared hard at the parked police car. His blunt fingers gripped the wheel. His partner was staring hard at it too. He shook his head and tilted his bottle.

“It looked good to you this afternoon, amigo.”

Greenleaf leaned forward in the back seat. He tried to peer past the two petrified Mexicans. The roadhouse was a relic from another time – a high gabled ghost built during the brief mining

boom which founded Black Water. Its wooden frame was warped and weatherbeaten, bordering on haunted oblivion. The gutters and drainpipes were dull with rust. Blinking neon food and drink signs stabbed through the first floor windows. The rest of the house was cloaked in darkness. Somewhere inside, the strange white girl was drifting through the rooms, cutting phone lines, unlocking doors.

“No, my friend, it sounded good to me this afternoon.”

The driver took a long drink from the tequila bottle. He wiped his mouth, hesitated, and then took another.

“How does this sound to you?”

Greenleaf shoved the barrel of his revolver into the driver’s neck. He cocked back the hammer until it clicked into place.

“It’s going down soon, Pancho,” Greenleaf whispered, “and you’re going with it. So’s your pal. In case you forgot, we’re looking at a bag stuffed with cocaine in a safe in that house. We’re looking at fifty thousand dollars on its way to claim it. We’re looking at the advantage of surprise, and we’re looking at the fact that we got someone inside to set things up.”

Greenleaf sat back in the seat and closed his eyes. He listened to the wind howling through the night – across the bluffs and rocks and boulders of the Badlands. His shiny black hair was matted with sweat. His hands were shaking. The night seemed like a dream. Everything seemed like a dream since he had met the girl.

She had appeared that morning, like an apparition, standing suddenly before him in a Black Water tavern, where Greenleaf was playing the final shot in a high stakes pool game which began the day before and continued through the night.

His dark eyes heavy with smoke and the long night, his fingers stiffly wrapped around the cue, Greenleaf leaned across the table and fixed his gaze on the last bright colored ball which seemed to float there. He looked up suddenly – a flood of sunlight was streaming through a cathedral window. As he squinted, the stained glass dazzle slowly gave way to a strange white girl. Hair like spun gold, skin so pale it was almost translucent, she stood like a chimera at the end of the table, disturbingly beautiful, her candycane cheerleader’s uniform sparkling under the light of the overhead lamp.

“Got a gun Cochise?”

She was looking down at him with undisguised disdain. Her eyes seemed to look through him, not at him, from some far away reality quite beyond him.

“I might have, princess. Why?”

Greenleaf had to gather himself together to just take a breath.

“Got a couple of these to go with it?”

She lifted the ball from the table and held it lightly in her hand.

“I might have those too, love. Cut to the chase.”

She waited tables after school, she told him, at a roadhouse in the valley. The owner had a brother who was a crooked county cop. They were both crooks. Anyway, the cop got lucky. He scored a primo bag of cocaine in a routine traffic bust. He either snuffed the delivery boy, or let him go in a trade ... he was selling the stuff back to the delivery boy’s boss ... or to someone else. She had overheard all this through a door in the storeroom and couldn’t quite get it straight. But the score was stashed in the office safe. A deal was going down that night at eight o’clock.

“Big time wampum, Hiawatha.” She made mock Indian signs with her hands. “You in or you out?”

Headlights swept across the roadhouse parking lot. A champagne colored Cadillac sped past them and parked by the neon-lit door. Two men in suede suits and Stetson hats climbed out. They looked around and went inside. One of the men was carrying a briefcase.

“It’s game time, amigos.”

Greenleaf pulled himself together and leaned forward. He jabbed the driver’s partner with his

gun.

“I’m not going to run this past you again, amigo. You know the set up. Make your way to the hall at the end of the bar and slip through that storeroom door. It will be unlocked. Inside the storeroom there’s another door, also unlocked. That door opens to the back of the roadhouse office. It’s unlocked too. Wait by the door till you hear my voice. Then bust in.”

The Mexican looked long and hard at the parked police car. He studied the Cadillac. He turned and looked at his friend. The driver nodded gravely at him. He shook his head and slipped outside.

“Let’s move.” Greenleaf jabbed the driver. They drove to the end of the parking lot and braked by the swaying trees. Greenleaf hit the asphalt running, a flashlight flickering in his hand. It was all a matter of timing – to hit them hard in the middle of the deal. He imagined the play going down, right now, in the office: the safe open and the cocaine out, the briefcase open and the cash out, the four men clustered around the office desk, sampling the product, checking the bills. He imagined himself and the Mexican, guns drawn, busting in from different doors. Five times fifty thousand dollars, the coke would take in on the street. Greenleaf calculated breathlessly as he ran. Maybe more. Plus the cash. Eighty thousand dollars would be his share. In ten more minutes he would have eighty thousand dollars. Eighty thousand dollars plus.

The cellar door was open and Greenleaf bounded down the wooden stairs. The flashlight tossed off devil shapes in the darkness, igniting black flame shadows everywhere. Eighty thousand dollars, Greenleaf repeated to himself. He beamed his way, slowly, through the mountains of roadhouse rubbish, around crates and barrels and boxes and trash. He ducked under dripping pipes and waded through puddles of stench. The old house rocked and creaked above him, while the cellar floor was alive with frightened rats.

Murder. Gunplay. Prison. Death. Black thoughts ran round and round in his head. Round and round, they raced in his mind all day, as waves of fear and panic seized him. Drug dealers, crooked cops, crooked club owners, shotgun ready Badlands bartenders – Cinderella’s castle was a booby trap. He had known that going in, but he could not stay out. Eighty thousand dollars. This was his first real crack at big-time dough. Maybe the only shot he’d ever get. This was the break he needed to blow off Black Water; to escape his dirt poor life in the South Dakota desert – shooting stick for meals and rent in Badlands dives.

Greenleaf stopped abruptly and held his breath. The long steep staircase that led up to the office suddenly loomed before him, climbing through the cobwebs and disappearing in the darkness. He lifted the light and shone its beam on the waiting door. His heartbeat raced and his legs felt wobbly. He had to grip the flashlight to keep it steady. The Mexicans were right. The play was crazy. They were pros upstairs – four armed, experienced, dangerous men. Those pros would never give up the Jack. Not without a bloodbath. Even if they gave it up to them tonight, they would get it back tomorrow. They would hunt them down, anywhere they went. The cop would see to that. How hard would it be to throw a net around Black Water? To find and break the Mexicans? to sniff him out? to get all of them? “Anything odd happen here lately, you ask? Well, yeah man, there was this high-school chick in here talking to this hustler Indian.” They didn’t have a chance. But he knew that coming in. Eighty thousand dollars. Maybe they weren’t supposed to have a chance. There was something out there he couldn’t quite see. Something crazy. He tried to see it, but the pills he popped all day to stay awake...

Greenleaf froze on the spot as the door opened suddenly and a flood of light came streaming down the staircase. Framed in the yellow haze at the top of the stairs, the silhouette of the girl appeared, standing motionless in the brightly lit doorway. Her eyes gazed down on him like holy mysteries – two huge, hypnotic, emerald-green gems. As always, her gaze went completely through him, hitting some mysterious target deep inside him, leaving him, as always, strangely stunned and spent.

Greenleaf felt himself falling as he mounted the stairs, sinking, dropping, drowning like a one- armed swimmer disappearing into some desolate unknown. Halfway up, he remembered the mask. He slipped it over his head and face. An executioner’s mask. A hit man’s black hood. Someone would die tonight, Greenleaf knew, and he somehow knew, deep down, that it would be him.

He lumbered to the top and as he moved through the door the girl swiftly retreated. He followed her figure down a hallway lined on both sides with hulking doors. She was dressed in a bridal gown, a ghostly swirl of taffeta and silk. On her head was a crown of desert flowers. There were more garlands woven in her golden hair. She turned and smiled at him and beckoned. He lurked behind, his neck glistening with sweat, squinting through the slits in the black hood. At the end of the hall, she turned again. She lifted an ivory finger to her lips, slipped through the door and signaled him to follow.

He followed her in, but what he found inside the dingy office looked more like a hophead’s hallucination than the slick doublecross he was expecting. Yes, all the players were there waiting for him. The cop was there. The owner – a big balding man – was there. The two Stetsoned drug dealers were there, as was the briefcase full of cash and the sack of coke. But everything was topsey turvey, upside down. The men were sprawled all over the tiny room – slumped in chairs, toppled over furniture, curled on the floor. No sound came from the bar. The girl stood like a dream shape in the midst of the petrified mayhem. Her emerald eyes were sparkling and there was a faint smile on her lips. She performed a little pantomime for him. She mixed an imaginary drink, tilted her head, and pretended to drink it down.

“Knock out drops.” She whispered.

She leaned over and pulled the gun from the curled up cop. As she did Greenleaf saw the body of the Mexican behind her. He was sprawled out on the floor. There was blood seeping through the top of his thick black hood.

“Happy hunting, Hiawatha.”

She smiled as she rose and extended her arms in front of her and pointed the policeman’s thirty-eight caliber special at his chest.

The explosion sent him reeling back. He slammed against the wall and sagged slowly to the office floor. A ball of fire blazed in his chest. His head was spinning as he gasped for breath.

“You won’t need this, my love.”

The girl floated over him like a white-winged angel. She pulled the gun from his snake skin belt.

Greenleaf lifted his eyes and watched her turn and fire his revolver into the unconscious cop’s chest. She fired again into the face of the sleeping owner. And then she fired into the walls, desk, woodwork until the gun was empty.

Greenleaf tried to rise but he found that he could not move. It felt as if a great weight was pressing down upon him. He looked on as the girl took one of the drug dealers guns and shot the Mexican, and then used the Mexican’s gun to shoot both the dealers. She moved around the room amidst the rustle of silk and the fragrance of desert flowers rearranging the bodies, shooting bullets into the walls and doors. He knew what she was up to but he couldn’t imagine why. She floated past him and rustled down the hallway. There was the slamming of a door and the sound of a body being dragged back toward the office. Greenleaf knew it was the body of the getaway driver. A door opened across from the office. The sound of the barroom’s jukebox filled the air. There were more explosions, more bullets ricocheting, the sound of more bodies being dragged and rearranged – the bartender, the cook, the few patrons. It was as if the roadhouse were her dollhouse. The bodies of the men her toys – all of them being arranged by the girl to create, for the police, the illusion of a robbery gone bad – and a survivor-less gunfight when it had.

A white silk suit, a diamond ring, a pocket full of money, his hair slicked back – Greenleaf was high rolling his way through the casinos of Las Vegas, a blonde on each arm. The bright lights glittered and the roulette wheel turned. He was winning big time, jackpot after jackpot, prince among the players ...

The girl sat in the dark and waited for her lover. Soon he would appear, to her, as he always did in the dark, in the antique barroom mirror. Tall, dark, handsome, elegant, he would be dressed for their wedding in that high style gold rush fashion which gentlemen wore for their ladies way back then. The roadhouse was theirs now, theirs alone. Her father was gone. Her uncle was gone. They were gone in the way they both deserved. There would be no more of that from them. There would be no more rooms with drunken men. There would be just her and her lover from now until forever.

2

“How’s Sitting Bull?”

“Sitting Bull is lying flat.”

“Lying and dying.”

“And nobody crying.”

“Hey Doc, what’s the prognosis on Big Chief here?”

Grim and drawn, the gray-haired emergency room physician moved from body to body shaking his head. The corpses lay side by side on transport stretchers in a screened off section of Black Water General’s crowded emergency ward, blue with rigor mortis and covered with blood. Men the doctor knew, had known for years, personally, professionally – Slim Clemens, Jack Stokes, Chester Owen – men he treated, joked with. He glanced angrily at the reporters clamoring in the hallway.

“We’re moving the survivor to the ICU.”

The spectacle disgusted him. It sickened and it saddened him. It brought back memories of Viet Nam – the young soldiers senselessly slaughtered.

He stood between the two tall, rangy Black Water policemen: sheriff Cole and deputy Tate. They all gazed thoughtfully at the Indian. His pallor was a ghostly gray. The slender IV’s of blood and morphine flowing into his arm, seemed all that anchored him to existence.

“He gonna make it?” The sheriff demanded.

There had been no vital punctures, no complications. The bullet had come out smoothly and cleanly. There was shock, tissue damage, and that minor.

“Probably not.” The doctor sighed. “He’s lost a lot of blood.”

“He took a lot of blood.”

The big man shook with emotion as he spoke. His cold gray eyes shifted slowly to the IV bags which hung on a stanchion above the stretcher. A wave of panic passed over the physician.

“What happened?” He asked quietly.

“Hell happened, pure and simple. Hell, fire brimstone, damnation. The work of the devil.” The sheriff’s voice trailed off. He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. Maybe he was past it? The sheriff wondered of himself. Had he lost his mettle? Like a nightmare the roadhouse massacre replayed in his mind. Room after room of bullet-riddled bodies – anywhere and everywhere. Six bodies in the office, four bodies in the bar, another body in the kitchen, and yet another which he found later in a closet in a bedroom on the second floor. All good, solid Black Water citizens; men he had known since boyhood, men he had laughed with, fought with, struggled through life with.

“And this Indian is the devil?”

“Meet the devil.” The sheriff smiled. He waved his hand at the screened off ward. “Welcome to hell.”

Like a stiff, starched, dazed white ghost, nurse Hartfelt, as pale as her uniform, staggered unsteadily toward them through the antiseptic glare of hospital neon, a stack of medical forms clutched against her body. She averted her eyes from the horror show of bodies which still lay uncovered in a gory row along the wall, friends, neighbors, familiar faces. There was more to her grief than that, the doctor suspected as he watched her shock-stricken face draw close. Nurse Hartfelt, plump , plain, devoted to her profession, had remained unmarried. Maybe one of these men had taken her as a mistress? In any event, no one in the ward could face the situation. No one in the ward could look at one another. The orderly had gotten sick. The young nurse Ms. Hartfelt was training had fainted. They were all in a daze since the caravan of corpses arrived suddenly amidst a riot of sirens brought by ambulances drawn from all over the county.

“Looks like Big Chief here,” the sheriff explained, swallowing hard as Nurse Hartfelt approached and the doctor delicately took the forms, “and Cisco and Pancho over there, tried to hold up Jake Flower’s place down in the valley. Big time money Doc. Big for Black Water: 25 grand. Looked like ol’ Jake finally decided to unload that rat trap, cash on the barrel-head. There were these two slicks laid out in his office, brand new Cadillac parked out front. Somehow, these three slime bags got wind of the deal. They busted in like Hollywood wiseguys – black hoods, gags and ropes stuffed in their pockets. Maybe someone panicked, or someone got trigger happy. You see the result.”

The doctor nodded gravely as he filled out the forms. Dead on arrival. Death by gunshot wounds. Multiple gun shot wounds. Multiple morgue meat. The only thing that had saved the Indian was a slightly abnormal breast bone construction, rare at best, but peculiar to certain southwest Indian tribes.

“Now all of this is bad, doc,” the sheriff went on flatly, “bad even for the Badlands. Of all the shootouts, holdups, bar brawls and feuds I’ve seen in my time this takes the cake. And it goes without saying that I don’t look forward much to facing the wives and children of these men. Nor do I look forward much to our ‘Black Water Bloodbath’ being hashed and rehashed in the papers and on TV for all the blood junkies and gore guzzlers out there in tabloidville and boob tube land. But what gets me most, what hits me hardest – you may think this odd, doc, given everything, but not if you’d been there – was the sight of Big Jake’s daughter trapped in the middle of that nightmare. Do you know what I mean, doc?” The sheriff asked softly.

The doctor nodded. He had forgotten about the girl, forgotten that she was connected with that old tumble- down roadhouse in the valley which housed Big Jake’s Dinner. Jake Flower, a highschool football hero. He had lost track of him. Even though Nurse Hartfelt had taken care of the girl’s mother -- a long time ago when the poor woman took a nasty fall and got so banged up she couldn’t come to town -- he, himself, had never treated the family. But everyone knew the girl. He had just examined her a few months ago. He examined all the athletes and cheerleaders for Black Water High. Even in the aseptic sanctity of the hospital examining room, even at his age, her beauty took his breath away. She was a flower in the desert; a rare and beautiful lily blossoming in a dusty wasteland.

“Was she harmed?” The doctor’s voice trembled.

“If only we had got there quicker, doc.” The sheriff shook his head. “Orville Reed, who lives in the valley, gave us a call around nine o’clock. Said he thought he might have heard some gun shots when he passed Jake’s place headin’ for town. Said he didn’t pay it much mind – figured it weren’t none of his business no how – but this barmaid at the Crystal Palace where he was hoopin’ it up started in on him when he mentioned it. She said he should of stopped and had a look see.”

“We gave Jake’s a call but it didn’t seem to go through. We tried a little later and it was the same way. We decided we better drive out there and have a look. The bar room was still heavy with the smell of gunpowder. There was still a hint of gun smoke in the air. We saw the girl sitting alone in the dark in a corner of the room by the barroom mirror. She was all gussied up in a wedding gown. Doc, she had to be the right purtiest thing I ever saw – maybe that I ever will see. Then we started to see the bodies around her in the darkness: Slim Clemens slumped in a chair. Bill Ofrey sprawled across the bar. Jack Stokes laid out on the floor. They were already beginnin’ to turn. The girl didn’t pay us no mind doc, no mind at all. Even when we crossed the room and stood behind her, she didn’t seem to know we were there with her. She was talking to herself in the mirror. Talkin’, laughing, as pretty and happy as a bride could be. Just seeing her

like that doc, seeing her alone in the dark with all those corpses turning. I dunno doc. It was like seeing...I dunno...”

“An angel in hell.” The deputy flared.

“Yeah, and hell got more hellish. She’s here now doc in the psycho ward. They said it was shock doc but I don’t know.”

“Poor kid.” The doctor shook his head.

“Fix Big Chief here up for me doc. Someone’s got to answer for this. Fix Big Chief up so’s he can stand trial. Fix him up so’s he can hang.”

“I’ll fix him Jim.” The doctor shuddered. “Don’t worry, Jim, I’ll fix him.”

“Better get the big boys down here boss, the hot shot anchors ... no I’m not exaggerating ... this is extra Extra, going electra ... didn’t you get my Fax? Well check it out. There’s this psycho Cinderella slant, blood and beauty, that’s going put this story on the map ... just go look at this girl’s picture, OK? You’ll see what I mean.”

The blurred white faces swam around him in the darkness, bloated, bloodless, bobbing like bone-gutted blobs above the pressed white collars of their black, wind snapping funeral suits, eyes bulging, mouths agape. They ran in a huddle across the lunar landscape, down the devil rock gorges and through the bottomless ravines, across the tumbleweed twirling wind-ravaged plains. The ghost hands pushed and pulled him forward while their blob-like bodies penned him in. He was trembling with fear, sucking the night air for breath. The coarse black suit he wore, with its ruffled white shirt and high buttoned vest, chaffed and scratched his sweat soaked skin. The tight starched collar choked his neck. Beyond the chasms, in the valley far below him, the roadhouse glittered in the darkness like a diaphanous dream dome – each window blazing with a blinding light, even the gables and garrets glistening with luster.

They ran through a cold rain which suddenly began to fall, dodging and turning across a parking lot crowded with hearses, while thunderclaps rumbled across the desolate wasteland and flashes of lightning lit the storm- blackened sky. The menace of the night closed in like a madness with the downpour, and, as they drew nearer to the roadhouse, the fear Greenleaf felt for the baleful white glow which blazed coldly and eerily from the half-open door began to fill him with a dread that bordered on delirium.

They tumbled across the threshold into an absolute blackness, knocking over tables and scattering chairs. The radiant white haze blazed, not in the barroom, but within the barroom inside the antique barroom mirror. They passed through the glass into its surreal luster. The room beyond was thronged with ghostly men and women crowded together in the nimbus like moon- shrouded mannequins. Dazed, shaken, shivering with cold, Greenleaf studied the ashen faces and the blank dead eyes of the hundred dead souls who stood white and silent around him dressed in their burial garments. A long black coffin lay before him. Its lid was open, its interior empty. On either side of the casket stood the two murdered Mexicans staring at him without expression. Greenleaf sensed that they were waiting for him to join them, waiting for him to take his place beside them among the dead.

“ For as much as it is the ordination of the almighty God,” intoned a strange, indistinct, figure who suddenly appeared behind the coffin, tall, pale, thin, grave, “ that flesh hath soul and thereby is empowered with a spirit, so also is the spirit possessed of the powers of the flesh, even when it leaveth the flesh and liveth as a thing apart.” Greenleaf’s heart began to pound and his legs to weaken. This could not be real, he knew, and yet he was trapped in this gruesome unreality. He felt the heavy blob hands grip him tightly. The tall ghostly preacher gazed coldly in his direction. “And so forever as a thing apart, even from all thus parted, the damned must dwell in the world of the damned, neither flesh nor spirit, neither living nor dead.”

He stifled a cry as he felt the sudden rough pull on his arms and shoulders and felt his body dragged forward through the white haze. The blob shapes wrestled him to the coffin and stuffed him inside, bending, lifting, stretching him across the satin-lined interior of the heavy lacquered box. He felt the weight of their hands on his head and throat, on his chest, wrists, legs, ankles. He fought weakly with the dead men, twisting, struggling, straining to break free. But the pale blob phantoms held him tightly and pressed him down into the soft, satin vortex of his new eternal cell.

“We surrender this soul to Satan.” He heard the preacher say.

There was a sharp pain in his chest. There was an odd sensation of physical penetration and an oozing of something from somewhere deep inside him. He listened to the far-off tumult of thunder, to his own frantic breathing. He could not move and he was afraid.

“This body is the bounty of Satan.”

They were draining him of blood. Greenleaf looked down to find a long glass funnel protruding from his chest. One by one the pallid blob shapes lapped greedily from the spout and swallowed the thickly oozing liquid.

“Damned be the body and the soul of the male bride of Satan.”

Greenleaf let out a cry of horror and turned his head. He saw, standing in the center of the large black rectangle beyond the blinding radiance, the strange white girl staring at him without expression from the other side of the mirror.

“Blessed be our savior Satan. Blessed be the damned and the powers of the dark.”

3

She stood a long time and looked down at the hospital bed where the Indian lay tied up and dying. His blue-gray body had taken on a faint flush of color since she had examined it last the night before. The flesh of his face looked less stony and ashen, and his chest moved perceptibly beneath his hospital gown.

She listened carefully to the sounds outside the door. The shift was changing. There were voices, footsteps, laughter in the distance, the sounds of a cart rolling slowly down the hall. She studied the high-tech tangle of wires and tubes, gauges and dials, which ran in a cris-cross pattern from the medical monitors to the nose, temples, arms of the Indian, enfolding his comatose figure like some alien spider.

“Tonto.” She whispered.

Behind her in the darkness, special deputy Horace Camby sat slumped in a chair. His head was bowed and his arms hung loosely at his sides. His scalp, raggedly removed from the back of his neck to the front of his forehead, hung over his face like a fury black mask. His throat was cut and the dome of his head was covered with blood.

“Tonto.”

Her hands moved swiftly and deftly over the pale sleeping figure, removing the clamps from his head, the oxygen tubes from his nostrils, the needles from his arms, and the bands from his wrists. She watched the lean muscled frame shiver and twitch, curl and recoil under the movements of her touch as the pallid face trembled and perspiration broke out across the ash-colored brow.

“Rise and shine, Tonto.”

It was like surfacing from the depths of the bottom of the sea where monsters swam through murky waters and seaweed waved like witch hair across the ocean floor. Greenleaf awoke with a start bathed in sweat. He did not know where he was: the roadhouse floor? A cell in prison? A vision in white floated wordlessly above him. A radiant, motionless woman with a halo of gold.

“Sleep well, Tonto?”

Greenleaf’s head was throbbing and he could scarcely breathe. His chest was a burning, pulsing cavity of pain. He rolled on his side and peered at the small white room, the medical monitors, the girl from the roadhouse whom he had last seen in a wedding gown now standing

before him dressed in a nurse’s uniform. He dropped his legs carefully over the side of the bed. He sat huddled in the darkness shivering with cold.

“Where’s the money, Princess?”

He was not sure whether he was awake or still dreaming. Nothing made sense. Nothing seemed real. The girl’s emerald eyes enveloped him like fathomless seas. Like the sea from which he just surfaced, filled with monsters and mysteries and treasures buried in its deeps.

“They’re going to hang you, Tonto.”

She laid a newspaper across his lap and spread its pages over his knees. ROADHOUSE MASSACRE... BADLANDS BLOODBATH ... the headlines leaped out at him in the wan window light from the rumpled pages. He saw his name mixed in with a jumble of words beneath a black and white photograph of a room crammed with corpses ... “red devil” “psychopath” “bandit leader ...”

A chill went up his spine as the girl moved across the room and the mutilated policeman suddenly appeared seated before him. Blood flowed freely from the burly man’s throat, streaming down his shirt front and forming a long dark patch. Blood beaded on the scalped man’s temples and dripped from his ears.

“They’re going to try you and convict you, Tonto.”

The girl reappeared before him in the darkness. She laid a shirt and trousers beside him on the bed.

“And then you will die.”

Greenleaf rose carefully to his feet. He needed air. His head was spinning. He was not quite sure he wasn’t still asleep – one grim nightmare followed by the next. He studied the golden haired girl with a mordant disbelief. He half expected her to disappear.

“There’s a car outside.” The girl said matter-of-factly. She glided to the window and leaned against the sill. “Its owner won’t need it. He won’t need this either.” She touched the pocket of

her starched white uniform where Greenleaf saw the pearl handled impression of an oversized gun.

“The night nurse will be here soon. It’s time for your medicine. They want to make sure that you’re fit, Tonto, for your execution. Doesn’t that kill you?”

A cold blast of air blew across the room as the girl lifted the pane of glass and slipped outside. She turned and faced him, a wraith-like presence in the uncertain alley light.

“Run, Tonto. Run.” She whispered.

The darkness rushed past them, a whirling black funnel which enfolded them like a predator in its deadening grip. Bent double, numb, and shivering with cold, Greenleaf sat huddled in the passenger seat of the unmarked squad car and stared at the road. He felt hollow inside. He had barely found the strength to get himself dressed, to climb out the window and to follow the girl. He probed the bulky medical bandage taped to his chest. The wound was tender but there was no infection. Over the dark custodian’s uniform which the girl had given him, he wore a deep-pocketed desert long coat which belonged to the deputy. The coat was heavy and warm and it wrapped around him like a tent. In its pockets, Greenleaf found a thermos of soup and a package of cigarettes. He sipped the tepid broth and smoked the stale Kents while the police radio crackled and the bleak Badlands moonscape hurtled by.

“... auto wreck on highway one ... stick up in progress, Amoco station, route 44 ...”

The girl sat rigidly beside him. Hands on the steering wheel, she stared straight ahead. Her mouth was set. Her foot was pressed against the speeding squad car’s floorboard. She seemed pale, less sure of herself, somehow troubled and confused, but even more beautiful than she had been on the night of the robbery. Greenleaf studied her uncanny features with a wary fascination. Even after everything, even after all the murders, including his own, she had a way of drawing him into her hypnotic spell, that magical, insensible, mesmerizing aura.

“Craps out, Princess?”

Greenleaf drew on the cigarette and felt the smoke cut into his lungs. Something like a flinch briefly marred her face.

“The game’s not over, Tonto.”

“But it’s a different game.”

“No, it’s a different deal.”

“And I’m a different card.”

“You’re the same card. Tonto.”

“What card, Princess?”

“Joker Tonto. You’re still the Joker.”

“Maybe the joke’s on you, love. What did you lose?

“Lose? Everything. All of it. All of it in spite of everything. Too bad, too sad. I lost the roadhouse. They’re going to tear down the roadhouse.”

“So what?”

“It was my roadhouse.”

“What happened to the take?”

“Safe and sound.”

“What’s my cut?”

“Your life, Tonto. For as long as it lasts.”

“What else, Princess?”

“That’s enough, Tonto. You won’t last long.”

“Because I’m the decoy.”

“Yes, but you won’t get far.”

“But far enough.”

“And not much farther.”

Greenleaf grabbed for the gun, reaching across the seat and groping weakly for the handle in her pocket. She snatched his waxy, corpse-like hand, bending his fingers and twisting away his useless arm. She swung the steering wheel back and forth, swerving the car across the desert road, tossing his limp body until it slammed against the dashboard and hit the floor.

“You’ll be asleep soon, Hiawatha.” The girl said softly. “By the still clear shining waters. The soup was seasoned with sleeping powder. You’ll wake up in Ringo at the railroad station. I’ll send you a postcard while you rot in prison.

“It was a lucky break, after all, that you didn’t die, with the roadhouse condemned and the way things shook out. I’m pregnant Big Chief. If I had stayed any longer in that Black Water booby hatch, Dr. Kildare and Florence Nightingale would have found that out. Especially the way that goody two-shoes nurse Hartfelt kept poking at me. That would have raised some questions; maybe suspicions, maybe even to rumors and investigations. Especially with you around shooting off your mouth. Here’s a bedtime story for you, Tonto, to sleep with in your grave. I’m the under-aged expectant mother of my father’s bastard son or daughter. Does that mean I’m my own wicked stepmother? You’re a bright boy, Tonto, you figure it out. It’s time to lose this town. Get out of this prison. Get rid of the devil’s spawn. A quarter million dollars should spring my trap.

“You killed and scalped the deputy, Tonto. You escaped and took me hostage. In the dead of the night, when you had cleared Black Water, you took me to a mining shaft. You raped me, killed me, dropped my body down a hole. Tomorrow morning the good guys will find you in the car, or not far from it if you wake up with the early light and manage to crawl out. They’ll dust out a death row cell for you if they don’t skin you alive or shoot you first.”

She swerved the car around a corner, braking and sliding and dropping off the road. Under a full-blown desert moon, Greenleaf saw the high gabled roadhouse slide past the windshield as

she whipped the car in a circle and parked in front. He tried to rise but the numbness had taken over. She was a golden ray of radiance in a curling fog of sleep.

“See you in dreamland darling.”

She leaned over him and brushed a strand of sweat soaked hair from his forehead. He breathed in her aroma as she kissed his lips.

4

“That her?”

“Bingo.”

“Alone?”

“Looks it.”

“Packing?”

“Big time.”

“Don’t make a play till she hunts the stuff out.”

“Come to Papa.”

They waited in the shadows, one on either side of the bolted barroom door, guns drawn, doused flashlights stuffed in their pockets. They listened to the scraping of the key in the lock to the click of the tumbler and to the creaking of the hinges as the door swung open.

She slipped silently past them; her lithe shadowy figure slipped quickly through the darkness and disappeared behind the bar. From the far corner of the room, they heard the clinking of bottles, the clatter of glass, the repeated crunch of ice cubes being scooped from the cooler and poured out on the floor.

Rocco had called it. Vinnie replayed the meeting in Chicago as he watched her. Rocco fingered the girl right off – not that anyone believed him – the instant he read the story in the Chicago Sun-Times and studied the girl’s highschool photograph next to the picture of the massacre.

“They go together.”

Rocco tapped the paper.

“Stake out the girl and you’ll get back the snow.”

The cops had it, the cowboys had it, the pompon girl had it, a survivor of the Indian’s gang had it. Who had it? It went around the table like that in a circle all morning, jumbled, contradictory, confusing -- which really didn’t matter to Salvatore Corso because everybody was going to get it unless somebody out there came up with the dope.

“Vinnie!” He raged. “You and Sully gonna go out there right now! I want that roadhouse torched! I want that jail bombed! I want the straight shit from that Indian and I want the same from that girl.!”

“Jesus Christ, Salvatore!” Marco exploded. “You gotta let this thing go! All you gonna do is get us in the shit! The cowboys don’t got it! I just talked to the cowboys! It was a freak thing! Either the cops got it or one of those Indians got it! You don’t really think that girl’s got it? If the cops got it it’s gone. If one of those Indians got it it’s gone. That Indian they caught ain’t gonna talk; he can’t talk. That girl ain’t gonna talk, she got nothing to say. You start shooting the cowboys all you gonna do is kill business! Besides, the place is crawling with cops! State cops, Federal cops, local cops! The place is a fucking zoo! Every junk show on TV is there with a camera! Hard Copy, Current Affair, Movie of the Week!”

“I don’t care!” Salvatore stormed. “I ain’t gonna be played for no chump! Whoever figured this heist figured it wrong! They figured it wrong because they didn’t figure in me! Everybody’s got it so nobody gets it! Nobody got it so everybody gets off! Bullshit! Nobody got it so everybody gets it! Vinnie, you and Sully start packing!”

“Just stall.” Marco took them aside. “Go out there and look around. Toss the roadhouse if it’s not a problem. I’ll go out there too in a couple days . See the guys at the ranch. It’s about 20 miles down the road. I’ll give you directions and a phone number. We’ll hook up later. Look, don’t talk to no one. Don’t do nothing. It’ll be OK. I’ll calm Salvatore down.”

Vinnie waited in the shadows, pressed against the wall, his automatic handgun pointed at the

darkness in the direction of the girl who seemed to be scooping ice invisibly in the far corner of the room. His face was shadowed by a scowl. Anger lit his eyes and a grimace twisted his features. He ought to take out Rapunzel right now, he knew. He ought to take her out before something happened, before Miss pretty freak turned the tables, got the drop on him. He ought to pull the trigger and start blasting if she was half as good as Rocco made her. And as unreal as it seemed, to his shock and his astonishment, it looked like Rocco was right and she probably was. The dope in the bar ice. Who would have looked there? He didn’t. Jesus. Vinnie never would have made the girl, not for anything, not in a million years. He thought the swart greasy racketeering relic was off his rocker when he dropped his pompon girl theory – just more idiotic old man ramblings from the senile, has-been, moth-eaten mobster.

“Don’t play with this kid, Vinnie.” Rocco warned him. “She’s smarter than you, Vinnie. Don’t let her in the game. She don’t play games, Vinnie. She got her own game going. She plays for keeps.”

“I got to listen to this crap, Mr. Corso?” Vinnie had thrown up his hands in disgust and distain. He looked around the table in a raging disbelief, trying to see if he wasn’t the only one who wasn’t crazy. “I got to hear more of this crap about the Crime Crazy Cheerleader?”

“You gotta listen to everything! Anything is something when nobody knows nothing, unless you think you know something nobody knows!”

You couldn’t argue with Corso. Not when he was over the top. First the 50 g’s ransom. Now this. Corso was raging with a personal vendetta against everyone in Black Water. Vinnie argued anyway.

“I know horseshit from bullshit! This is both! What? I’m gonna shadow some teenybopper around some tumbleweed town? I’m gonna stake out some sock hop? Look, Mr. Corso, the cowboys got it! It’s as plain as my face! Those dude ranch deadbeats double-crossed each other!”

“The cowboys don’t got it, God dammit!” Marco slammed his palm on the table. “Nobody double-crossed nobody! Give it up! What you gonna do, Sal, turn this thing into a ghetto drive-by?”

“Anybody could have double-crossed anybody.”

Sully shrugged.

“And somebody did!” Vinnie raged. “The cowboys did!”

“Listen to me.” Rocco rasped. “Marco, Sully, Vinnie, Mr. C. The girl did it. The girl got it. I can see it, feel it. She doped them, shot them, stashed the snow. It all adds up. It’s the only thing that adds up. She served the drinks. She was the only survivor, or should have been. It was so clean, so logical, a bullet for every body, nothing out of place.”

“So the cowboys lined everyone up and shot them with different guns! Big deal!” Vinnie stormed. “Besides, why is your ‘chief suspect’ sucking her thumb right now in a psycho ward!”

“It’s a cover, Vinnie! That shock things an act!”

“You’re an act old man. Vaudeville!”

Vinnie never would have made the girl. He could not figure out how Rocco did – what Rocco saw, how he saw it. Even after a day and a night of looking at the girl, looking at highschool photographs and homemade films of the girl – films of her cartwheeling across a gym floor with the Black Water high school cheerleading squad, photos of her sitting, smiling, with her arms raised atop the shoulders of some hayseed high school football hero in a snapshot from some local newspaper after a winning game – shown over and over again on every TV station, in every paper, in every tabloid everywhere they stopped along the long drive from Chicago to Black Water, he had seen nothing else in those films, photographs, snapshots, reports, but a drop dead movie star face with sculpted cheekbones and dewy eyes. If he saw anything else in that magnificent face, it was perhaps a certain mysterious sadness which made him feel sorry for her – sorry that Hell had thrown a party in her house one night, had killed her family, had left her damaged.

But that was before he saw with his own eyes her strange nocturnal visit to what the tabloids called this “Theater of Blood.”

Now that the girl had suddenly made herself, now that she was standing alone in the dark digging out the dope from the last place they ever would have looked ( what else could she be doing?) Vinnie knew that even after all of this was settled, after the killer was killed and the snow returned, her freak roadhouse heist would firmly and definitely unmake him. His position with the mob would never be the same. He would never again be taken into Corso’s confidence. Corso would never again confide in or consult with him. A “player” whose size-up couldn’t be trusted? Only Corso’s brother Marco could get away with that. Vinnie had been too wrong and he had made too much of it. He knew as he stood there that from now on he would be just another hired gun to Corso – another bone breaker, score settler, just another goon to be sent out to deal with the dregs of the outfit’s dirty work.

He ought to take her out right now. Vinnie brooded. His face puckered with rage. It was all that he could do not to pull the trigger. He ought to take her out instead of taking chances; blow her away in the dark just for the pleasure of blasting her. But that would be too easy. When she got it she was going to be alive to regret it. She was going to know she was getting it and who was giving it to her. She wanted to play Big Time? She was going to pay Big Time. She wanted to fuck up his life? It was going to cost. The price he would exact was going to be long, slow, brutal, satisfying.

The crunching stopped and the two men stiffened. They shifted their weight to the balls of their feet, lowered their shoulders and braced for the lunge. Vinnie’s heart beat quickly and his palms were sweating. He searched the dark with a deadly deliberation, devouring the blackness for the outline of the girl. There was no chance she could grab for her gun. Her hands would be filled with the cash and the caine. There was no chance she would see them until they made their move. When she reached for the door the fun would begin. Underworld fun. Gumba time. Just what the little bitch asked for, what she deserved. The roadhouse massacre made his flesh crawl. Twelve men, doped, shot, used as pawns by some high school princess. It was too bizarre even for him. Tossing the roadhouse had turned his stomach. It was a ramshackle relic straight from some grade Z movie, with its dust, cobwebs, groans and drafts. Bloodstains splashed the floor and there were police outlines everywhere like spastic ghosts. She was going to get what she gave in the place she had given it. She was going to get it in spades and Vinnie was going to grin while he gave it to her.

But in the back of his mind all that Vinnie really wanted from the girl was to hear from her a different plot to this roadhouse nightmare. He wanted the girl to tell him she wasn’t in it on her own. He still couldn’t believe it was only her play. It didn’t make sense. He couldn’t see it. He wanted to hear from the girl that she had been in it with the cowboys, or the cops, or the Indians, anyone. He wanted to hear anything from her that would take him off the hook, that would help him save face with Corso. Maybe she wasn’t digging out the dope after all. Maybe she dropped an earing in the ice serving drinks or something. Maybe she was in shock like the papers said, wandering around in a stupor. But then why the 45? But after what happened why not a 45? In these cowboy towns guns ... besides Marco said ...

“Where is she?” Sully hissed in his ear. Sully was suddenly next to him. They crouched together in the darkness and stared in the direction of the night blackened bar. “Where is this bitch, man?”

Vinnie’s heart began to pound and his legs to stiffen. A clammy sensation crawled across his skin. He peered dumbly at the darkness with a deadened expression, his breath stopped, his stomach sickened.

“Watch the car.” He rasped, softly. “Keep an eye on her car.”

He moved slowly through the stillness, crouched low in the shadows, his gun arm extended, pointing straight ahead – moving, yet not moving exactly, more like being moved, being propelled forward, a step at a time by some invisible force.

He could see nothing, hear nothing. No sound, no movement, no shadows shifting. For the first time in the killing game a charge of fear mingled in with the adrenalin rush he got from danger. He clenched his teeth trying to control his frenzy. The girl was hiding in the dark. The girl had heard them, sensed them. She was waiting in the shadows, ghostly, lethal.

His free hand groped blindly for the edge of the bar. Sweat gathered on the scars across his forehead.

“Don’t play with this kid, Vinnie. She’s smarter than you are, Vinnie.”

He sensed her hovering presence all around him, in every fiber of his being, in every night-blackened pocket, every deep shadowed hole. Captor, captive, the girl suddenly reigned over both men now. The first shot would be her decision. If she got off a good one, Vinnie was gone. Sully would fire at her gun flash, she at his. Sully was out in the open.

How in the fuck did he fuck this up? Vinnie seethed. How did this happen? His legs brushed soundlessly against the bottom of the bar stool. He paused and lifted the giant flashlight from the pocket of his coat. He carefully widened the radius of its extinguished beam. She was buried somewhere in the back bar, he brooded, like a sniper in a bunker. He would draw her fire, then commence blasting. Two guns to her one, they were bound to take her out. They had better take her out.

With his torch hand extended far away from his body, Vinnie aimed at the cooler and lit the beam. The back bar was empty. The isle, the cooler, the shadowy recesses under the sink, all were empty, vacant, harmless in the whitewash of the flashlight’s beam.

He dropped quickly to the floor and doused the torch. His heart was pounding and his gun hand shaking. She had hopped the bar. She was out there, somewhere, hidden amidst the tables. He clenched his teeth and edged his way slowly toward the center of the room, sliding silently on his haunches across the hardwood floor. They were both out in the open now, he and Sully. They were sitting ducks. He narrowed the beam and rolled on his stomach. He lay spread-eagled before the tables gun hand sweating. He lit the beam and swept the room: floor, tables, walls, window panes. He swept it again and doused the light. The barroom was empty. The girl was nowhere in sight. She had moved again. She could be anywhere. Behind him, next to him, back behind the bar. He looked quickly up and down the pitch black darkness. He looked over his shoulder. She was as agile as a cat, as quiet as a shadow. He recalled the gymnasium films of her running, tumbling, turning cartwheels.

Vinnie jumped to his feet and vaulted the bar. He swept the back bar wildly with the flashlight. He turned and swept the restaurant again. The walls, windows, tables, floor.

“She split man!” Sully hissed behind him. “The cunt made tracks!”

“Keep it down!” Vinnie rasped.

He crouched, panting, trying to think. He couldn’t figure out what cat and mouse game the girl was playing. He shot the beam straight ahead toward the back of the room. At the end of the bar a door stood ajar. It was the stockroom door which led to the office, which led to the hallway, which opened to the back as well as the upper floors of the house.

“She went out the back, man!” Sully hissed. “She’s getting away!”

"Shut up!” Vinnie rasped. “Go watch her fuckin’ car!”

Vinnie knew her game now and he wasn’t going to play it. She needed her car. She wanted to split them up, pick them off one at a time. She was in the stockroom, hidden, waiting.

“Move man!” Sully hissed. “You’ll never catch her!”

“Shut up!” Vinnie rasped.

Death, fear, panic, stopping his blood, shutting off his breath. Vinnie felt like a fly caught in the web of a devious spider – like those twelve other flies who had flown into her trap. His prizefighter’s face was covered with sweat as he crept cautiously toward the stockroom door.

“Don’t play with this kid Vinnie. She’s smarter than you are, Vinnie.”

He crouched on the floor and braced his back against the wall. With the barrel of his gun, he pushed the door open. The darkness was even murkier than the restaurant and bar. He tried to remember the arrangement of shelves and boxes inside the cluttered room. He tried to imagine where she might be hiding amidst that jumble. He listened intently for the sound of her breathing, for her slightest movement.

To die like some bug. To die like some discarded doll in this crazy teeniebopper’s haunted

playhouse ....

Vinnie dove through the door and rolled across the room, torching the light sporadically as he tumbled, trying to draw her gunfire at the flashing beam. He slammed against a wall and twisted around. He ignited the wide beam and swept the shelves and crates.

The stockroom was empty. It was cold, still, silent except for the panting of his breath.

Goldilocks was gone. She had skipped out the back. She was halfway now to hide out land. Vinnie ran a shaky hand through his sweat soaked hair. He shook his head and fumbled for a cigarette. He had been chasing ghosts, fighting shadows. The girl hopped the bar and took off long ago. He watched a mental replay of his commando attack. What could be more ridiculous? He could hear Rocco’s raspy laughter. He could see Salvatore’s sidelong smirk. Vinnie laughed with them at the spectacle of himself. Vinnie the enforcer, king of the goons.

A sickish sensation swept dully over him and he lit the cigarette with a clammy hand. He would have to hunt the girl down in Black Water now. Hunt her down when he could have had her here – had her, had the dope. Hunt her down in a place which was swarming with cops. Cops and cameras. Cameras and more cameras. The media was buzzing around the town like flies in a dumpster. Buzzing and feeding. Eating Black Water’s festering trash. He was part of that trash. Vinnie the ginny, Vinnie the ginny goon. Vincent Vincente, the garbage man of gangsterland.

He sat and he smoked and he reran the botched stakeout in his mind. It was so absurd he couldn’t believe it. In an hour he would have to make a call to Corso. He knew he could not possibly call Corso. He knew that he would never get the girl. Not now, now that she knew they were after her. He may get her sometime, someday, but not now, and he knew now that he could never get the dope. He knew that there was only one thing he still could do. He didn’t want to do it but he had to do it. He had to kill Sully. It was either him or Sully. If word got back to Corso about the way he blew this job ... But if he killed Sully, he would have to have a cover for Sully’s killing. He could think of no cover that would stand up, no bullet-proof story about cops, cowboys, Indians, accidents. Nothing that Rocco ...

Vinnie rose slowly to his feet and took a deep breath. His pulse quickened as he swallowed the air. Slowly and cautiously, he moved quietly across the stockroom toward the inner door of the roadhouse office. Like the other door, it had been left ajar, blown back by the drafts after the girl slipped through. He pushed it open and swept the beam inside. The office was empty, but the smell of incense was even stronger there. The odor was so strong it made him dizzy, and the eerie tape outlines there seemed to float like ghosts in the beacon’s light. He shook his head clear and moved through the room. He opened the door to the hallway and peered out cautiously.

5

Light streamed into the center of the hallway from one of the oak doors which led to the lodgings on the second floor. The smell, and even the smoke, of the incense drifted down the stairway and filled the corridor.

He moved to the door and paused at the threshold.

It was candlelight that filtered down from the room at the top of the stairs. The soft, fluttering illumination, the dense, hypnotic pall of the incense, stirred memories of the Immaculate Conception when he was an altar boy. “Death’s perfume.” Vinnie remembered, almost with a smile, recalling an old priest’s remark while making preparations for a funeral. The mysterious smell of the incense, reeking of ancient Catholic rituals and rites, made Vinnie think uneasily about the dark and impenetrable void.

The smell was overpowering as he mounted the stairs – enough incense burning to foul ten cathedrals. Torch tucked away in the pocket of his coat, automatic pistol lifted, pointed, firmly but tensely at the illuminated door, Vinnie gripped the banister to keep his feet under him.

Nuns, priests, crosses, crucifixions, angels, devils, holy ghosts, damnation ... his head was spinning as he climbed heavily to the top. His temples and forehead were beaded with sweat, his lungs were on fire, his eyes burned fiercely.

She stood with her back to him across the candle-lit room. She was staring at her own ghostly reflection in a full length, antique mirror. She was dressed in black – a gossamer black with lavish jet trimmings and lush midnight lace. Like frozen flames her golden hair fanned over her shoulders and flared down her back. She stood motionless, her arms at her sides – as rigid, straight and still as a statue.

She was talking to herself in the mirror, staring, speaking, whispering in a low almost inaudible voice like a ritual incantation or a mystic prayer. His own dark reflection appeared behind hers in the glass – a shape in the distant doorway which she somehow failed to notice.

Vinnie moved into the room and looked around. Glints of flame from dozens of candles, candelabrums, kerosene lamps, fluttered on bureaus, mantels, bed stands and dressers. Incense was burning everywhere. All the rooms were the same on the second floor. They were big, high ceilinged elaborately furnished rooms, lavishly appointed and garishly ornate. Fireplace, oval mirror, four poster bed, mock oriental carpets, plush sofas, plum colored walls and lush velvet drapes – all faded, tattered, mottled with age. They had tossed the house by torchlight focused on their work. It was a revelation to Vinnie to see one of these rooms clean, lit up, without spiders and webs.

Bawdy-house boudoirs. Vinnie brooded as he looked around. He wiped a hand across his sweat-beaded face. The smoldering fumes were blurring his vision. A mausoleum for the ghosts of Black Water’s long-dead ladies of the night.

He stepped closer to the girl. She remained motionless, staring, whispering to her own pale reflection in the mirror. She seemed hypnotized, a zombie, fixed, remote, rooted to the floor. Wacked, Vinnie thought, as he eyed the girl uneasily. He felt his scalp tighten and his throat constrict. He stared at the girl’s motionless figure with that fascinated horror one reserves for the insane. Did this roadhouse creep show ever stop?

Dolls had been heaped in a huge pile on the carpeted floor. The pyramid of dolls which rose to the height of his waist. The pile stretched across the entire room, spreading from the andirons of the fireplace to the four poster bed. Enough dolls to choke a toy shop in Disneyland. They seemed to be part of the girl’s crazy ritual, her weird black mass.

Vinnie spotted the big gun and moved quickly to it. It was lying on the top of a standing black suitcase which had been set at the foot of the four poster bed. He shoved the weapon in his pocket and grabbed the bag. It was stuffed, heavy, packed tight. Vinnie flipped it over and popped it open. He pulled out nightgowns, dresses, slips, panties. He dug through nylons, slippers, high heels, bras. He tossed the flimsy contents left and right as he dug for the bag of cocaine and the bundle of cash.

The whispering stopped and Vinnie froze in mid-motion. His scalp began to crawl as he watched the golden head turn slowly from the mirror and stare directly at him. Her eyes were the singing of sirens. They probed deep enchanted reaches where a man wander for days. She had the bearing of a goddess and the face of an angel. It seemed to shine in the candlelight with its own soft incandescence. She was the most exquisite creature he had ever seen.

“I’ve lost him.” She whispered.

She gazed at Vinnie intensely for an instant and then she dropped her eyes.

“I know.” Vinnie soothed.

“I’ve lost them all.” She said softly.

“I know, kitten.”

The suitcase was empty. Vinnie rose slowly to his feet and gazed at it dully. He felt like he was fighting a hobgoblin, struggling desperately to get out of a dream. Sticky with sweat, head spinning, he faced the girl woozily across the candle-lit room. Her head was bowed, her arms hung straight at her sides. She looked like a broken doll, a porcelain princess dressed in the world’s dark vale.

“I didn’t know he would do that.”

She stood staring at her feet, her eyes vacant, a sleepwalker in a trance.

“Do what kitten?”

“Do what he did.”

“Who kitten?”

“Bo. My boyfriend.”

“Did you do it with him?”

“I did it for him.”

“What did you do?”

“Spiked the drinks.”

“Why kitten?”

“Because he told me to. Because I love him.”

“So he could get the snow?”

“So he could get what was his.”

“Does he have what he wanted?”

“He took something with him.”

“Do you know what it was?”

“Money, I think. Something he said they owed him.”

“What were you doing downstairs, angel? The bar? The ice?”

“Cleaning. Storing. I’m going away. I’m going far away. I’m going far away and forever after I kill him.”

“I’ll kill him for you kitten, if you take me to him.”

“I’ll kill him myself. I must kill him myself. I must kill him like he killed my father, my uncle, like he killed the others. I must kill him myself and then I must kill myself. But not here. Not in Black Water.”

She was half in the room, half in a dream. She stared blankly at the floor, dazed, listless. Vinnie studied her with fascination, his back tensed, ready for motion. It was too nutty not to be real – the candles, the incense, the pyramid of dolls and the cryptic solo conversation. The girl was wacked, screwy from shock, guilt, probably a bit bolo to begin with – it really didn’t matter. None of this mattered anymore to Vinnie. Rocco didn’t matter. Getting back the dope didn’t matter. Who did it, who had it, who didn’t.

His legs were getting rubbery and his head was throbbing. He could feel the wings of fever-dream beating in his ears. He could blow the girl away right now and end it. Kill it. Stop it. He could shoot up the dude ranch. Torch a squad. That would calm down Corso, keep things even. He could get out of this rat trap before the roof fell in.

“You can forget about all that kitten.” Vinnie said softly. Her face floated like a desert moon above the black mourning dress. “You can forget about killing and forget about dying. I’ll take care of your boyfriend. Your boyfriend has something I want and you’re going to take me to him. After we settle this score you’re going to take care of yourself. I want that too. You’re going back to the asylum. You’re going to get your head together and tell your story. You’re going to tell the cops and tell the papers your version of what happened. You leave out the part about spiking the drinks and you’ll be alright.”

“I can’t tell my story!”

“You can and will kitten one way or another. If you don’t I’ll call the station and tell them for you.”

He looked down into eyes which were fearful, pleading.

“You got scammed, kid. Your boyfriend took you in. He’ll be dead in an hour. Whatever went down don’t matter. Maybe there is no boyfriend. I don’t care. Just talk up now. All I want is the dope and a certain story. You got both. Everything I’m after. I’ll get you what you want. Doctor? Priest? Revenge? Rest up kid, if you’re on the level. Get a new start. If you’re not on the level I got the same advice. You don’t need my money. More money than I’m looking for will come to you.”

“What money?”

“Tabloid money. Boob tube money. “

”I don’t understand.”

“You don’t watch TV?”

“I don’t do anything. The doctors won’t let me.”

“You’re the golden goose angel. The ‘Bride of Bloodshed.’ Cash in. With your looks it’s a cinch.”

She stared blankly at him.

“Dear Abby’s over doll . Time to get down to business. If this is a stall it ain’t worth it. I’ll rip you apart if I have to. All I want is the dope. All I want is to get out of this loony bin. Work with me and we’ll both make out.”

He was dizzy now and her face was a pool of whiteness floating in haze.

“Would you like to sit down? I think you’re sick.”

“Save it for the car, kid. Let’s get out of here and get it over. Let’s get out of here before I get to like you. Let’s get to the ranch before your boyfriend takes a powder.”

“Get to the ranch?”

“The ranch, kitten! Your boyfriend! The ranch!!”

“Oh. My boyfriend. The ranch.”

He was swaying on his feet. He needed to clear his head. He pointed his gun at the man in the mirror. The man disappeared. Vinnie ran his hand through his hair. He was really dizzy. She must be nuts, he thought, if she can suck in this stench. It was like a drug. Marco. Rocco. He’d show those assholes. The girl was wacked, just like he said. She’d tell her story right. He’d see to that. He’d stick it in their faces. Salvatore, that shrimp.

The room was filled with smoke.

He moved sluggishly through it. He yanked a tassel off the canopy of the four poster bed. He knew the cowboys were in it from the get go. Rocco, that bozo, trying to fuck with his head.

“Gotta tie you up kitten.”

His fingers felt like rubber.

“Hold out your hands. Gotta toss the room again before we go. Look by this time tomorrow the worst will be over. By this time tomorrow you’ll be rolling in dough.”It would be a long night.

“My dolls are asleep.”

“Good for them.”

“My dolls are going to heaven.”

“Beats Black Water, kid.”

“Are you going to heaven?”

“Can’t say I am.”

“Have fun in hell.”

The explosion of flames was so sudden and fierce, that Vinnie never knew what hit him. There was a black swirl, a silver flash, a great conflagration in which he became swallowed by fire. A split second later his mind sorted it out – the girl turning a cartwheel, tossing a lit cigarette lighter.

She watched the big man run from the flames. He took the flames with him, a human torch. He slammed into a wall, fell, leaped to his feet and ran through the door.

The room was an inferno. Flames leaped wildly from the pyramid of dolls which she soaked heavily in kerosene before she lit the candles and incense. She would burn the house down before they tore it down. It was her farewell ritual to its history in Black Water. Her funeral pyre.

The night stands ignited. The four poster bed went up. The dressers, tables, sofas, drapes were swirling with flames. At the apex of the pyramid plumes lit the ceiling. A vortex erupted. It raged in a widening circle over her head.

She stood and watched until the heat drove her back. The walls began to crackle as she edged toward the window. She lifted the glass and sat on the sill. Beside her in the corner lay her black velvet bag. She studied it, hesitated, and then grabbed it off the floor and looked inside. Everything was there, the dope, the money both cold from the ice bin. She pulled it over her shoulder and hugged it to her side. She swung her legs up and over the ledge as the oval mirror shattered and the ceiling caved in.

6

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole.”

“Choppers coming?”

“Coming Jim.”

“Call Ringo?”

“Stations covered.”

“Blocks set?”

“Blocks in.”

“Holler anyway.”

“That’s a ten.”

“Black Water station to all units in Kane, Corbette and Macon counties ....”

“He won’t stick to the roads.”

“He won’t stick to that car.”

“Dump ‘em and jump ‘em.”

“Least we’ll know where he’s been.”

“Not where he’s going.”

“He ain’t going nowhere.”

“Think he’ll hole up?”

“He will if he can.”

“Why’d the creep take her?”

“Don’t know Ben.”

“Hostage?”

“Suppose so.”

“Don’t make sense.”

“Maybe there’s somethin’ she knows. Maybe revenge.”

“Leave me be when we find him.”

The deputy gripped the wheel firmly and glared at the road.

“I mean that Jim.”

“No, this one’s all mine.”

The sheriff said softly.

“It’s just me and him.”

Time gap. Space gap. Crap gap – the Indian was gone. He had too big a jump. Almost an hour, in any direction. Wasteland, Badlands, cattle country. He could slip through the towns.

Hit and run. If only that night nurse hadn’t walked in the room and fainted. If she called them right off, they might have a chance.

“It’s impossible, Jim!” The doctor said sweating. “There’s no way I tell you! The man’s still half dead!”

“The dead have risen doc.” The sheriff shot back. “What I need to know now is what are we in for? What’s this psycho got in him?”

“Hell Jim, he can barely stand! He can’t have much strength! We’re still feeding him blood!”

“Guess he don’t need much! Look what he done!”

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole.”

“I want all freight trains stopped and checked what passed anywhere in or around the hundred mile net.”

“You got it sheriff.”

“Joe what’s with them Feds?”

“Nothing yet Sheriff. That’s a negative, Jim.”

The odd angle, the lucky shot. That’s all they had going. Flat tire, engine trouble, freak collision – anything that would stall the Indian until they fattened the net.

They flew through the night, hunched forward, side by side, staring straight ahead. Going nowhere, nowhere fast.

It was the reign of the devil. The sheriff clenched his fists. The world gone mad. Destruction, murder, orgies, drugs. Blood lust was spreading across the land. It was a lust which could not be sated. Movies, books, magazines, TV . Everywhere you looked, evil spreading. Haunting his mind was the “Black Trench-coat Mafia” massacre. A dozen high school students in Colorado killed or wounded by two of their schoolmates with automatic rifles and pipe bombs on Hitler’s birthday.

Headlights swept past them and he saw his face reflected briefly in the squad car windshield. Grim, haggard, angry, lost. He was past his time. It was time to get out. The reign of the devil. He couldn’t beat the devil. It was beyond his badge.

“Valley Jim.”

Cole turned his eyes slowly to the steep descent.

“There’s a fire in the valley, Jim. Looks like the roadhouse going up.”

She could hear the sounds of sirens in the distance. She saw police flashers, like fireflies, far off in the night. She gripped the rusted drainpipe tightly, hanging high atop the warped wall, bat-like in the moonlight, black dress fluttering.

A man with a gun stood directly below her. He was dark like the other man, city tough. The man gazed at the flashers and cursed to himself. He kicked at the asphalt and ran inside.

“Cops! Vinnie!”

She lowered herself, cautiously, down the pipe.

“Vinnie! Cops!”

The roof ignited. Glass shattered above her head. Flames leaped wildly from the broken windows. Smoke poured out. She felt her hands slipping. Blood beaded through the palms of her black velvet gloves.

“What the fuck, man!”

The gunman reappeared. He stood back from the burning house and glared at its blazing roof. He cursed again to himself and shoved his gun in his pocket. He walked quickly across the parking lot and disappeared behind the trees.

She dropped to the ground, arms extended, feet together, black dress billowing. Stars exploded as she hit the pavement. The dark world tilted, hurtling at her face.

She lay twisted on the asphalt, ankle broken, forehead bleeding. She fought to stay conscious, shuddering and confused. “Gotta get to that Indian.” She told herself. “Gotta get to that Indian before they get here.” She dragged herself to a drain hole below the pipe. She stuffed the velvet bag down in it. Tears welled up in her half-closed eyes, streamed down her face. She slid

around and crawled toward the car. Her body trembled with pain. She felt dazed, faint. “Gotta ...gotta...”

“Ahhh Haaa ...Hee Hee Hee Hee “

”Ahhh Haaa ... Hee Hee Hee Hee”

“Ahhh Haaa ... “

” Slimey Soul, Slimey Soul, Slimey Soul.”

“Ahhh haaa...”

“Do you know what hell is, Vincent?”

“Yes Father.”

“Do you?”

“Yes Father.”

“Did you take the money from the poor box, Vincent?”

“No Father.”

The priest sighed and lifted the candle from the candelabrum.

“Give me your hand, Vincent.”

He gripped the tiny fingers and crossed himself.

“Hell is fire, Vincent.”

“No father!”

“Hell is torment, Vincent.”

“No Father!”

“Hell is endless screaming suffering, Vincent.”

“Stop Father! Stop Father! Stop Father! Stop Father!”

“Ahhh Haaa...”

He still had eyes. As wide as saucers, they scanned the smoke filled blaze. He listened to the crackling of the roadhouse walls, to the crash of rafters.

“Sully!”

He crawled on his belly across the smoldering floor, dragging himself along by his elbows, leaving a trail of blood.

“Sully!”

Smoke ghosts drifted and circled through the choking pall. They watched and waited. Fire devils leaped and danced with the flames. They licked their chops and laughed and jabbered.

“HELP ME SULLY! HELP ME! HELP ME!”

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole.”

“We’re on highway 6 near Devil’s Gorge. We’re heading toward Big Jakes Roadhouse in the valley. The house is burning. There’s a car out front. Could be Camby’s. Stand by.”

In the rear view mirror, Sully watched the disappearing roadhouse explode in flames. The top floors were blazing. The roof was falling in. Fire lit the windows of the restaurant and bar.

Corso would kill them!

Sully cursed and slammed his palm against the steering wheel. That fuck up Vincente! Sully could see what happened. Vinnie lost the girl, got pissed, then scared, then came back and torched the house to placate Corso. Cool. The dumb motherfucker! He didn’t know you start an arson in the basement so like maybe it wouldn’t show for a while and you could get away?

His blood was boiling. He crept along the desert in the dusty Caddy with the headlights off, chain smoking cigarettes, as he maneuvered through the rocks and ruts by the light of the moon. He looked back at the burning house, at the flashers racing to the blaze. The only smart thing

they did was to come up this back way and park behind those trees. They’d be trapped rats if they messed with the highway. He searched the rocks and crevices for the out to the road. He kept a lookout for Vinnie along the lunar desolate. He kept a lookout for the girl.

Dumb mother fucker! Sully cursed to himself as he fought with the wheel. They should have blasted that bitch the second they saw her. There’d have been enough of her left to make her

squawk. “Don’t make a play until she hunts the stuff out.” Stupid, idiot, fuckhead, fuckup! It wasn’t enough they had the girl. No. The stupid fuckup wanted to pump her for a story – a story that would put him in the right and show up Rocco. Brainless bozo. Now that he fucked it up he wanted to cover it up. Fire right. He’d expect Sully to help him cover. Fuck him! Like Corso and Rocco wouldn’t see through the bullshit.

There was a spiraling rock and a break between the boulders. Sully steered the Cadillac slowly, gently, daintily through the crevice trying not to scrape the paint or dent the fenders. So what was left? How’d they get the girl now? What good would it do them? They gonna snatch her from that town with all them cops, feds and TV crews. Then what? Maybe they ought to blow up some squads shoot a few cowboy types and call it a day. Play dumb. He eased the car through the break, rising and falling and holding his breath. They couldn’t win, for Christ’s sake. The blow had blew. Face the facts.

Smooth ground ran next to a gully which separated the highway from the desert. He picked up speed and looked around. This was cool –driving at an angle off the road in the dead of night with his lights off and an arsenal of guns and bombs loaded in the trunk.

He sped ahead, afraid the car might slide down the road bank, afraid of being spotted by a car coming up the highway. He searched the gully for the sudden rise where the ground leveled off for a few rocky yards and he could wheel the Caddy off the desert. A smile split his face as he imagined Vinnie emerging from the house, finding the car gone, the cops waiting.

Good luck dickhead.

Sully slammed on the brakes and lurched forward. Far up the highway, he saw a cluster of flashers. His heart pounded as he dug through the glove compartment and pulled out a pair of old army surplus binoculars. A roadblock was set up at the crossroads just ahead.

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole.”

“We see the girl. Send an ambulance. We see Camby’s car. No sign of the subject. We got a back up and we’re going in.”

“Ten four Sheriff.”

They swung into the drive and braked by the car. Cole made a run for the girl while Tate leaped out and leveled a shotgun at the unmarked squad. Two county patrol cars rushed in after. Four officers jumped out and fanned across the lot. They covered the house, car, front grounds, trees with rifles.

“The Indian’s our’s, Cole!”

The girl lay face down in a tangle. Flames leaped at her from the burning house. The house was an inferno. The roof was falling down. The walls were caving in. Cole scorched his face as he reached down and snatched her. He bundled her in his arms and raced for the squad. He carried her low, braced for a gunshot. Her long hair spilled to the ground sweeping the asphalt.

“Gotta get that Indian.”

She twisted and moaned.

“Hush now princess.”

Glass, metal, wood chips, debris, flew like shrapnel as a series of oil barrel explosions erupted from the basement. A great ball of fire mushroomed from the shell. Cole’s back and arms stung with cuts and burns as he bent and bundled the girl into the back seat of the squad. Behind him the walls came down like a house of cards. The roadhouse staircase stood blazing in the night.

Fucking fuckhead fuckup fucker!

Sully cursed and spat and fought the wheel. He heard the fenders crunch and the bumpers buckle. In the rear view mirror, he eyed the dwindling flashers disappearing behind him in the night.

He had to get to the highway.

He had to get back to the motel.

“It is 2 A.M. ... In the top of the news ... Roadblocks have been set in place for escaped suspect Thomas Greenleaf who is believed to be responsible for at least two murders in Friday’s infamous roadhouse slayings. The fugitive was discovered missing late last night from an intensive care unit in Black Water General Hospital. Found was the mutilated body of special Black Water deputy Horace Camby assigned to guard him. Deputy Camby’s black unmarked police car is missing from the hospital parking lot.

“ The fugitive is believed to be armed and highly dangerous. He may have a white female hostage with him. The licence number of the missing vehicle is KS 106. Agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are working closely with local police. A house to house search is underway.”

Sully stopped the car and lowered the radio. His mind raced. He scanned the moonscape. He juggled Vinnie, the girl, the escaped Indian, the roadblock. He jumped from the car and popped the trunk. He took out the weapons and bombs and nervously hid them in a hole at the base of a pyramid like jumble of rocks. 2 Uzi’s, ammunition, 2 revolvers and 4 pipe bombs which they stuffed in a gunny sack in Chicago. Kiss this shit goodby. He brooded. Like he’d really find this rock heap again. He jumped out of his skin and drew his revolver. There were snakes everywhere crawling all around him in the moonlight. Long gruesome slithering shadows. Jesus Christ! He muttered. He backed toward the car and pocketed the handgun. He looked at the sky. Desert manhunt. Helicopters were bound to be coming soon.

“Back off that car, Tate!”

Cole looked out the windshield. Two of the county patrolmen moved slowly toward the unmarked squad, rifles ready. Ben walked in front of them, shot gun aimed.

“He killed one of yours, Ben, but he killed one of ours too! Mac was my friend.”

“Gotta, gotta ...”

“Lie still angel.”

Cole’s big hands trembled as he wiped the blood from her forehead. His thick fingers lingered in her soft golden hair. He gazed reverently at the face which was beyond mortal beauty. The girl was OK. Just dazed, shaken. A concussion maybe, ankle broken. Tears streamed down her delirious face. She strained to get up.

“Just lie still.” He straightened her dress and tucked her in. “You’re safe and sound princess. Sleep and dream. The devil will die, darling. The devil will die.”

Cole lunged from the squad and lumbered toward the car. His eyes were cold fires, his haggard face frozen. He plowed through the patrolman and tore his gun from its holster. He pushed back his deputy and grabbed for the door.

“It’s empty, Jim.”

Tate stood silently beside him, shotgun lowered, arms loose at his sides. Both men looked down at the empty interior of the unmarked police car where they expected to find the Indian. The county patrolmen tried to peer in the window past them. It was like trying to find a hole in the Broncos line.

“We’ll get him Jim.” Tate said, firmly. “He can’t be far.”

Cole stared blankly at the empty seats. His 45 Magnum still pointed at the window.

“We got the girl Jim.” Tate’s voice was soft, almost a whisper. “That’s what counts now. We’ll get him too. He got no way out.”

Cole turned slowly from the car and walked toward the squad. He walked gravely, doggedly. His revolver hung limply in his trembling hand, dangling at his side. He looked like a falling mountain, a human avalanche slowly caving in.

“Maybe the devil’s in hell Cole!”

One of the county cops stared keenly at the burning house. Cole glanced at the smoldering walls, the blazing staircase.

“Ask the girl Cole! Maybe he never got out!”

Cole settled down heavily inside the smoke scorched squad. The girl lay restlessly in the back seat tossing with delirium. She chattered and muttered meaningless mumblings to herself. Her dolls were going to heaven. The devil had died. Her dolls were pregnant with the ghosts of the roadhouse dead. Her dolls were delivering their souls to the afterlife.

Cole gathered himself together and heaved a sigh. Dirty red devil. I’ll skin you alive. His eyes scanned the moonlit desert night.

The odd angle. The lucky shot.

Dirty red devil.

There were no keys in the ignition of Camby’s car. The fool had lost them. He was out there on foot. It was a matter of time.

7

His ass was grass.

Sweat beaded on Sully’s forehead, dripped from his brow. It was a matter of time.

A hundred bush beating yokels out there on the desert with the first rays of light – searching,

poking through the rocky terrain.

Sully roared down the highway, chain smoking cigarettes and flipping the radio dial. Dust covered Cadillac, dented and scraped. Tire tracks back there everywhere in the dirt. Fingerprints – his, Vinnies, on the Uzis and bombs.

They better catch that stupid Indian, he brooded, before it got light.

FBI, ATF, lab checks, print checks – those fucking snakes! He should have wiped everything clean. But how was he going to wipe everything clean with those fucking snakes crawling everywhere?

Cocksucker Corso! Sully fumed as he sped. What a bunch of shit! Even if he got out of here without being hassled they’d be after his ass.

The road was clear, a shiny black ribbon shimmering in the moonlight. Marco was right. The place was a zoo. Cops, media. Dickhead spectators. The second they saw this circus, they should have bailed out.

He pushed the pedal to the floor, but something was wrong. The Caddy shook, rattled, veered to one side. Brand new car! Sully fought the wheel fuming inside. Fucking rockheap!

The day had been as crazy as the night. First, they had to wait out some idiot – some fat kike with a camera – who was prowling through the roadhouse taking pictures. The sheeny had a skeleton key and they slipped in after him. After that an endless procession of drive-through tourists jammed the roadhouse lot. They peered through the stenciled windows, took pictures, jiggled the bolted doors.

From the rat-infested basement to the bat flitting rafters, he and Vinnie crept from room to room, wondering how they would handle it if any of those jerk-offs got inside.

Now the zoo was a dragnet and like a weird slow dream he and Vinnie were getting tangled in its web.

Down the road, the white painted motel sign lit up with his headlights. Sully slowed, braked, cut off his engine and doused his lights. He coasted into the parking lot and slipped between two cars.

The motel was dark but a light burned brightly in the all night office. A bearded man with a shotgun stood watching him through the window. He was tall and gaunt with fierce cold eyes. The night clerk stood next to him, pale and gangly, a puzzled expression on his putty shaped face. They peered at Sully like two painted figures. He could see the night clerk slowly shake his head.

Ma rone! Sully looked at them and cursed.

He pushed at the car door but it wouldn’t budge. He slammed his shoulder against it and slammed it again. The gaunt man moved from the window and the office door opened. Shotgun raised he stepped out into the night.

“Night ridin’ the desert Rocky?”

The gaunt man studied the dusty car, the dents and scrapes.

“Blow out.” Sully rolled down the window. “Hell of a time getting back on the road.”

The night clerk appeared with a folded newspaper. The two men looked from the paper to Sully. They talked in harsh whispers.

“Lookin’ for a room Buddy?”

The gaunt man bent toward him. The night clerk hurried back inside.

“I got a room, Buddy.” Sully held up his key. “I got room five.”

Through the office window Sully could see the clerk grab the phone.

“My brother don’t recollect you, Buddy.” The gaunt man smiled. “Funny ‘bout that key.”

“My partner signed us in.”

Sully slammed the car door open and stepped outside. The gaunt man’s fierce eyes flickered

but he stepped aside.

“Looking for that Indian, Buddy?”

“We’re looking for an Indian, Buddy.”

“I look like an Indian, Buddy?”

“Maybe. Just might.”

“A Cleveland Indian, Buddy?”

“Say what, Buddy?”

“An Atlanta Brave?”

“Steady now, boy.”

“It’s been a long day, Buddy.”

Sully pushed his revolver against the lining of his coat pocket.

“I think I’ll hit the hay.”

He edged toward the door.

“That what you cowpokes do around these parts, Buddy?

Sully grinned as he sidled by.

“You hit the hay? Or do you eat the hay?”

The two men glared at one another.

“Keep an eye peeled for my partner, Buddy.”

Sully backed past him toward the door.

“He’s a Chicago Blackhawk, Buddy. Shoot him on sight.”

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole.”

“I need a hundred men out on the desert by morning.”

“Got them, sheriff.”

“I need a dozen good dogs.”

“Got them too.”

“Cord’s bloods?”

“Cord’s bloods.”

“Good work Cannon. Over and out.”

Cole stood outside the squad car and looked up at the sky. The two Ringo helicopters circled overhead. They circled and counter-circled, fanning out across the desert in opposite directions. Their infra-red sensors combed the desert floor. They could see jackrabbits in the dark, wild dogs, toads.

“He’s sittin’ in a hole.”

Tate settled down beside him.

“Sittin’ and shittin’.”

“The dogs will get him in the morning.”

“Ain’t soon enough.”

The parking lot was a three ring-circus jammed with media vans, state and county squad cars, paramedic units, spectators, reporters, canteen trucks selling coffee, pie, scrambled egg sandwiches, candy bars and soda pop. Cole looked around wearily at the flasher-lit mayhem. The fire was burning out. He needed sleep. He needed a good drunk. He needed a three week stay in another town where no one knew him and he was someone else.

“Tube time.”

Cole wiped the sweat from his face with a smoke smudged bandana.

Tate followed his gaze to the cadre of cameras and reporters clustered around the barely conscious girl’s stretcher which was being rolled toward the ambulance. The girl moaned and twisted and tossed her long golden hair. The camera crews leaned over her. Several microphones poked at her pain distorted features.

“Did he rape you, sweetie?”

She opened her eyes. Flash cameras popped into life, exploding in her face like the Forth of July.

“Were you molested?”

“Were you scared?”

“How did you get away?”

Her head was throbbing. She tried to sit up. She squinted at the figures. Their faces were a blur, blob shapes floating before her amidst huge white spots.

“You mean Tonto?” She tired to focus. She heard herself laugh. “That loser?”

“That’s the right spirit.”

Someone patted her arm.

“The little lady has spunk.”

Her eyelids fluttered. Her head began to spin. What was she saying? Things began to grow dark. A microphone poked her. She jerked up her head.

“What is this?” She struggled to prop her self up. “What do you all want?”

“We’re reporters Desert. The world is worried about you. We want to know how you are.”

“How I am?” She hesitated. “ I don’t know. Things aren’t right. Those gunmen. The police. Is that Indian dead yet?”

“Do you want the Indian to die, honey?”

“Did he rape you, dear?”

She held her head in her hands. They kept badgering her. Why didn’t they stop?

“You’re the golden goose kitten. The bride of bloodshed. You can make your own ticket. Name your own price.”

“You’re going to have to stand back folks.”

The paramedics were getting edgy. The reporters were blocking their path. A sudden pain in her stomach doubled her up. Her eyes swept the parking lot. They stopped at the hole. She tried to get off the stretcher. The paramedic pushed her down.

“The money!”

She panicked. A fine sheen of perspiration glistened on her brow.

They were sliding her back.

“He’ll take it! Don’t trust him! Kill the Indian! He’s bad!”

Tate watched the media vultures and shook his head. They didn’t let up until the ambulance doors were closed.

“I’ll let them know Jim.” He sighed. “Black good with you?”

“Black’s fine Ben. Make it big and as strong as it gets.”

Cole watched the rangy deputy shove through the mayhem. The county police were removing spectators from the lot. The reporters were massing toward him. The ambulance maneuvered slowly through the cris-crossing throngs. Cole nodded at the reporter who approached him with a mike. Other reporters quickly gathered.

“Let me tell you where we stand right now.”

Cole squinted at the shadowy cluster amassed amidst the camera lights.

“We got the girl, thank god, as you just saw and she seems unharmed. We’re hot on the heels of the escaped suspect and we expect to get him before the day is out.”

Cole’s voice trailed off and the reporter told him to speak up.

“The fugitive ain’t far. He can’t get no farther. He’s boxed in. Soon’s it’s light we’ll flush him out.”

“Speak up!” Someone shouted.

“I got a hundred men arriving in an hour to comb the desert. Most of them’s off duty officers from all over the county. I got bloodhounds coming. The best in the state. I got helicopters, roadblocks. I got a hard target search already underway.”

“Quit mumbling!”

“The fugitive can’t be more then a few miles from this spot. He’s on foot. He’s runnin’ scared.”

“How do you know he’s on foot?”

“Scared you might hold him this time Cole?”

“If you catch him.”

“We’ll catch him. We’ll keep him. On foot or not it don’t matter.”

“You mean you don’t know?”

“Everything’s sealed off, shut tight, like a lid on a drum.”

“Like the hospital sheriff?”

Cole spotted Tate moving through crowd with the containers of coffee.

“If any citizen sees anything,” Cole concluded, “anything at all that don’t look right call the station.”

“One second sheriff!

A voice barked sharply from the cluster of men and women.

“Not so fast! Will Hobbs, Rapid City Sentinel. What we don’t understand is how this homicidal maniac escaped police custody in the first place. Why don’t you tell us how you let that happen.”

“Marco! Jesus Christ! It’s Sully man! Yeah, I know what time it is. Look it can’t be helped! Sorry man! I tried to call the Capo, he ain’t around. Yeah I know he’s pissed. Yeah I know that shit. Let him know I called. Hey you were right about this place, it’s a fucking zoo! I’ll call you back. You wanna know what’s up, watch the news!”

Sully sat on the bed and looked at his watch. It would be light in a hour. He couldn’t wait for

Vinnie. There was too much shit going on out there and all of it was nuts. Through the room’s shaded window he saw a shadow move about. Snake-eyed hayseed. Sully cursed to himself. He should have whacked that bearded rube.

He rose and paced and sat back on the bed. He’d have to locate that dude ranch, wait for Marco, sit it out. Make friends with the boys. No arsenal now. Corso’s hit was out. Too bad. He was looking forward to a shoot out with the Marlboro men. He checked his watch. He eyed the window. The shadow came and went. He thought about the roadblocks. Maybe he should ditch his gun. It was like the Twilight Zone. Sully brooded. The whole fucking gig. X Files. The Outer Limits. Fucking Vincente! If he didn’t call or show in the next ten minutes he was out of luck.

There was a snack fridge in the corner and Sully rose and checked it out. Candy bars, cheese whiz, peanuts and pops. He grabbed a beer and a Slim Jim sausage and flopped back on the bed. He hit the remote and surfed the stations – Farm Reports, Cattle Reports, reruns of old sitcoms. Some guy yodeling in a cowboy outfit and playing a guitar. Wow! Hillbilly Heaven! Sully chewed the greasy stick. I dreamed I was there.

He needed a shower and a shave. He needed to have breakfast in some civilized place. Some place in Chicago. Crickets or the Ritz. He watched the window and fingered his gun. He wasn’t going to be hung up in some jail cell in this one horse town.

He squeezed the remote and semi-naked warrior midgets popped up on the tube. The little helmeted men carried tiny tritons and tiny torches. Amazon women fought them with slanted swords in an arena in ancient Rome. The battle went back and forth. The midget men got their heads chopped off. The Amazon women got stabbed and burned.

It was a black and white flick. Sully had seen it before. Long ago when he was a kid. Something about Christians and Romans. Cecil B De Mille. The movie was wild. It was pretty cool. His favorite place was the arena part.

Suddenly, a giant gorilla charged across the screen galloping on his knuckles. He raced toward a naked blonde who was tied to a stake. The woman’s eyes popped open. She screamed with terror. The gorilla studied her, fondled her, then tore her up.

A man with a lot of muscles fought a fat black bear. The bear ate his face.

Another man fought a Bengal Tiger. There was a similar result.

Then came lots of audience reaction shots and the camera panned the colosseum. The colosseum was colossal. Statues, columns, wreaths and garlands. It was a humungous place and it was packed tight. Jammed to the rafters with partying Romans. Everyone was pigging out, drinking wine, having a blast.

Sully wolfed down the Slim Jim and sipped at the Bud.

Some kind of creepy dungeon. Hundreds of Christian martyrs being led through this giant gate. Stone stairs and arches all over the place. The Christians moved in a mass to the center of the arena, heads bowed, singing and praying. Lions were let loose from cages at the other end of the amphitheater. The lions swarmed all over the praying martyrs, ripped them to shreds.

Mother fucker! Sully sipped the beer. Ancient Rome! The place was tripping. Amphitheaters, gladiators, knock out babes all hot to trot. Vino, orgies, villas, games. Greek slaves. Man, that was a happening scene. The place was buzz.

For some reason Sully started remembering the synagogue they hit when he was a kid. Breaking windows, painting the walls with swastikas. They had nothing against the fucking Hebes. Nothing at all. They were OK. It was just something to do.

Them fucking Nazis. Sully brooded. The lions were still chasing the Christians around. Man there was a scene. Everyone heiling and smiling and clicking their heels. Fucking Gestapos were the big guns then. Cool and quiet they would drift through the nightclubs and dance halls making everyone around them shit in their shoes.

Sully leaped to his feet and looked at his watch. He was falling asleep. It was time to get out.

He went to the bathroom and splashed water on his face. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. He’d fall asleep at the wheel. He studied his dark swarthy reflection in the mirror. He had a Roman nose. Roman features. Not a Sicilian face even with the jet black hair. He had the face of an aristocrat. A Julius Caesar.

He spun around and glared at the door. He could hear that fucking rube again nosing around outside. Snake-eyed, bucktoothed, big eared bearded yokel. Sully fumed. He wanted trouble he’d have all he wanted. He’d shove that shotgun up his hayseed ass.

8

The Big Dream Score.

The Top Bop Jackpot.

Dead. Dead as the roadhouse ghosts.

Dead as the rocks which twisted in the desert night.

Grand Prize Death

Within the Derby of Death

Because all bets were off,

And the Joker was ...wild?

In the hurtling riot of flight and panic, Greenleaf plummeted headlong through his memories like a drowning man his dreams. Bear Butte, The Holy Mountain, where Greenleaf would stand as a boy and look out across the forests over sixty miles of sacred Indian ground. The Black Hills of South Dakota – lush rolling fur covered slopes of such a rich deep green that they appeared like black shadows against the pale blue sky. The Pine Ridge Reservation, where his family still lived. The hunting, fishing, trapping he did with his father and his brothers. The silence of the forests. The starry night skies. And then the trouble, the turning when he was a

teenager and everything went bad. Like fever dreams the memory shapes shifted through his mind. He was fleeing through a dream, an evil demon’s nightmare, his blood-drained body as cold as ice ...

“You’re the Bride of Bloodshed kitten. The bride, the bride ...”

“Jake.”

“Shut up!”

“Jesus Jake ...”

“I said shut the fuck up!”

“Jake, you can’t Jake!”

“Fucking bitch! I’ll kick your butt! You better run! You better get in that cellar! You better not come up!”

In her Cinderella dress, her golden hair in curls, a tiara atop her sleepy head, she sat silently on the bar stool, her small legs dangling, and watched her mother run from the room. Her mother was crying and screaming and wringing her hands. She ran into the cellar and bolted the door.

“Angel.”

Her father stood over her, breathless, sweating. He held a life size doll before him, gently in his trembling hands. The doll had wide eyes as green as her own. It wore a white ruffled dress. It had long golden hair.

“Little princess.”

His bald head was glistening. His eyes looked like glass. He spoke softly, hoarsely, from somewhere deep in his throat.

“Little lady.”

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole.”

“Cannon, where in the hell is that god damned jeep?”

“Coming Cole.”

“Been coming. We’re going. Should a been here. Over and out.”

Cole blew on his frozen hands and rubbed them together. Pre-dawn light filtered through the Badlands. The jagged rocks, the twisted peaks, loomed like predatory monsters in the shadow-less terrain. Hungry, cold, tired, stiff, he stood with his arms folded staring at the morning mist. No word from the choppers. No word from the roads. The dirty red devil was hiding in some hole.

Twenty yards ahead, near the dawn blurred bank of trees, Sam Peckins, the US Marshall, paced and barked at a hundred phantom men. The Marshall had arrived with an entourage minutes before. He shook Cole’s hand, smiled curtly, and then took charge. Cole knew the score. Cole had lost the Indian. A policeman had died. By nightfall the Marshall wanted that Indian back dead or alive. If that didn’t happen Cole could hand in his badge.

“Shoot on sight!” The Marshall shouted. “Aim to kill! We got a demon on the loose men, straight from hell!”

The Marshall was a thick set, short-necked, broad-shouldered man, with short cropped hair and keen blue eyes. He paced back and forth with a military stride, his square jaw jutting, his chest thrust out.

“Don’t warn him, don’t wound him, don’t give him a chance! That happened once men! It won’t happen again! This creep’s not for real! He can fake death! You find him lying on the ground put a bullet in his head!”

The dogs were yelping, yanking at their chains. They had the scent. They were struggling to go. The men stood in a stony silence, angry and grave. They would not look at Cole. He could not look at them. One of their own had been mutilated, scalped. Cole was in charge. That death was his fault.

“Spread out! Stay sharp! Check every hole! This is search and destroy men! Kill or be killed! We’ve already had a dose of this mad dog’s medicine. Don’t play with this psycho! He’ll do it to you!”

The dogs were let loose. They charged through the trees, their snouts to the ground, a brown jostling blur. The men moved in a mass across the dark desert floor. The jeeps wheeled carefully around them carrying the Marshall, the Feds, sheriffs, the Marshall’s sharp-shooter corps. Cole moved toward his own jeep which had finally arrived.

“God let me get him!”

Cole prayed to the Lord.

Greenleaf followed her floating figure down a hallway which was lined on either side with heavy doors. She turned and smiled and beckoned to him. He stalked after, sticky with sweat, squinting through the slits cut out for his eyes in the thick black hood. She was dressed in a bridal gown, a ghostly swirl of antique silk. On her head was a crown of desert flowers. There were garlands of flowers in her golden hair. She turned and smiled and beckoned to him. He stalked after ...

Greenleaf awoke with a start, trembling.

Trout leaped magically in silver streams, the waters of which were so pure and clear that the pebbles in the streambed sparkled in the summer sun like Indian beads.

Rainbow trout flying through the air ...

It was black as death. No sound. No wind. He did not know where he was. He lay flat on

his stomach grimacing with pain. He sensed rodents, reptiles, spiders in the dark. He was shivering, cold, his mind a blank.

The stream cascaded from the golden bluffs above, crashing down the dappled rocks and careening around the tree lined banks. He leaped from rock to rock, shirtless, bare foot chasing the flying trout with his hand carved spear.

“Be careful, Tommy!”

Below him, he could see his father and his mother. They were wading into the sparkling water, snaring the glittering trout with fishing nets. Both his brothers were seated on the bank. One was stringing the catch of fish. The other was carefully building a fire.

“Don’t slip darling!”

He heard his mother call.

The trout flew past him. He aimed and threw his spear. It shimmered through the deep blue sky and struck. He raced down the rocks toward the flapping fish. The spear had transformed into a billiard stick sharpened at the point. The giant trout was miraculous, a technicolor dream.

“Let’s see Tommy Hawk!”

He heard his father’s voice.

He lifted the billiard spear and waved the great fish in the air.

His parents smiled. His brothers laughed.

A rainbow arched across the sky...

He was awake. His heart was pounding. Furtive snakes wound around him in the dark. He was deaf, blind. There was the smell of rotting vermin all around him, the feel of cavernous rock.

“Lunch time Tommy! Tom Tom Tommy! Tommy the brave one! Tommy the Hawk!”

Like a drunken dream of living death the roadhouse robbery careened through his mind. The explosions in the night, the explosion in his chest, the dead Mexicans, the murdered men, the

mutilated cop and the long dark drive. With a shock it all came back to him seeming more like a hophead’s hallucination than something that could actually have happened. Floating through this nightmare madness, the golden haired girl drifted like a ghost; her eyes like holy mysteries, her skin as white as fallen snow.

“A rainbow darling and a rainbow trout. A blessing from the Gods. A sign of luck.”

He could not move. It was impossible to breathe. A snake crawled up to his face. He could feel one slip between his legs. He edged, rolled, rocked to his side. He felt an opening by his feet, an out into the night.

“Dead?”

“Reckon.”

“Ain’t too smart.”

The night clerk knelt beside the bloody body which lay face down on the gravel in the motel lot. Behind him his brother was breathing erratically. He stood with the shotgun by the office door. The barrel was elevated. He gripped the weapon tightly in his gnarled hands.

“This is murder Chester.”

The clerk eased a sigh.

There was a fist-size hole in the dead man’s back. Blood pooled from it blackening the clothes. Both barrels, point blank. The chest blown out where the bullets went through. A package of pulp beneath the dark leather coat.

“He went for his gun Clem. It was self defense.”

The clerk glanced at his brother and shook his head. Shot in the back, an overnight traveling bag in either hand.

“Hope the law sees it your way Chester. “ He sighed again. “Hope they don’t look too closely. Hope this don’t get you hung.”

The clerk teased the dead man’s wallet from the pocket of his jeans. Chicago driver’s licence, photo ID. Sylvester De something. Age 25. The names for room 5 in the ledger said J. Smith and J. Doe. The wallet was fat. Fat with hundred dollar bills.

“He was part of that gang, Clem.” Chester’s breath came staccato like. “He was packin’ that gun. I said ‘Wait for the law, boy! ‘ I said ‘Boy don’t you run!’”

He glared at the body, his fierce eyes aflame. Big city hot shot. That shit-eatin’ grin. The way he spat on the gravel, laughin’ at him.

“Maybe he was, Chester, and maybe he weren’t.”

The clerk counted the money. Well over two grand.

“The laws coming soon. We called them ourselves. Seems you’d remember. “ He put the money in his pocket. “Chester, if I was you, I’d drive that boy out on the desert. I’d drop him in a hole. I’d bury that gun.”

The brothers stared at one another. Chester pulled on his beard. Finally he nodded and sidled over to Clem. They lifted Sully’s corpse and carried it to his car. They sat him in the front seat passenger side.

“That’s a mighty fine new Cadillac Clem. It seems a shame.”

Top of the line. Lush leather seats.

“Don’t you come back with that car now. You walk back home. You bury them license plates. You drop a lighter down that gas tank and blow it to hell!”

“Beg.”

“Please.”

“On your knees.”

“Please princess.”

“Say pretty please.”

“Hey, I paid your father! You little bitch!”

“You paid my father? So go fuck him.”

“Easy angel.”

The paramedic leaned over her and wiped her forehead with an alcohol swab. The ambulance hurtled through the night, its flasher circling, its sirens wailing. The interior lights flickered with each bump on the road. The medicine trays rattled in the cabinets. A police car raced ahead of them, another followed.

“Easy does it beautiful. We’re almost there.”

He loosened her collar and opened the buttons down the front of her dress. She lay tossing in delirium. Her pale face twitched and her eyelashes fluttered. She muttered meaningless mumbles to herself, as he took her vital signs and examined her carefully.

“The castle approacheth.” The paramedic said soothingly. “Your attendants await. We’ll pull up the draw bridge, post guards at the gate. That Indian can’t get you now. With me you’re safe.”

So far, so good. He breathed a sigh of relief. Everything was OK. He whistled Jim Dandy to the Rescue followed by Dream Baby. There were no broken bones, no torn ligaments, no lacerations. There were just bruises and scrapes. A minor concussion no doubt. Her ankle was sprained and he wrapped it in tape. He pulled off her black velvet gloves, treated the palms of her hands. He fixed the IV to her slender white wrist to ease off her shock.

“Breakfast in bed. TV all day. Can’t be all bad. You’ll be right as rain in a couple of days.”

He sat back in the seat and stared at the girl. His own pulse was racing. He felt light in the head. The biggest story going and there he was. He was suddenly part of a drama which captured the world. He ran a shaky hand through his scruffy brown hair. Slid it over his blunt boyish features, his smooth chinless face. Reporters would be waiting at the hospital. He would

appear on TV. The news, the newspapers. God knew what else. There was talk of a movie. Maybe this was a scene? He imagined two actors in an ambulance recreating what went on: the concerned paramedic, the delirious star. He looked down at his patient, tossing on the stretcher. The snow white skin, the thick golden hair, the sumptuous black dress and the curves which filled it out. He knew that no one could play her. She was beyond movie star. She was like some painting in some museum. Some queen in a poem. His palms began to sweat. Under the blazing lights of the ambulance the girl seemed unreal. This was even bigger than a movie. He was feeling uneasy. A touch of stage fright. Maybe something would go wrong. There was too much at stake. The whole world was watching. He was in a spotlight. He looked through the portal at Black Water emerging in the dawn. He whistled Jim Dandy to the Rescue. The notes went all wrong. He looked back at the girl and sat up with a start. Her huge eyes were open. She was staring at him. Her hands groped for her stomach. Fear filled her face. Her eyes were in a panic. There was frenzy in her gaze. She tried to sit up. The IV ripped from her wrist. She was talking to him. It didn’t make sense.

“They’re after me!”

She grabbed him.

“They figured it out! The money! Turn around! I’ve got to get back!”

He eased her back down. There was a lump in his throat. His blunt hands were shaking. He murmured: “There there, there there.” He reattached the IV to her wrist. He was damp with sweat. He rechecked her signs. She clutched at her stomach. He lifted her dress. His heart almost stopped. Through the black satin panties blood welled between her legs.

9

“Cole to Peckins.”

“Go Cole.”

“Marshall we found some tire tracks riding the lands. Picked them up right from the roadhouse. Maybe a Caddy or Olds. Ain’t no desert buggy. No reason to be out here. Since it come from the roadhouse thought you might want to know.”

“Ten-four sheriff, you stay with them tracks, see where they go. Maybe some dumbass reporter trying to get in on the show. Or maybe Geronimo beat them choppers with a ride of his own.”

“Dogs is hot Cole. Got hell in their nose. They howlin’ bout something, something real close.”

Earth, wind, sky, the morning stars shining like fairy lights in the vast blue expanse. The sun and moon crossing in a dream.

He was awake. His eyes were open. He sat hunched beneath the twisted rock he’d just crawled from. He gazed numbly at the rising sun, at the weird fearsome outlines which loomed around him in the dawn. He was shivering with cold. He could not think. The Badlands looked eerie, surreal.

He remembered crawling from the unmarked squad. There were sirens, flashers. The roadhouse was on fire, burning to the ground. He remembered staggering, stumbling across the moonlit desert, falling, running. Then everything went blank.

He pulled the greatcoat around his pain-racked body. His fingers fumbled in the pocket for the package of stale Kents. He managed to light a crumpled cigarette with trembling fingers. The smoke burned in his wounded chest.

Helicopters, searchlights, running from hole to hole. Greenleaf did not know whether that was real or not. Maybe something he had dreamed? Maybe none of this was real? Maybe he was dead? Maybe this was Hell? The endless torment of the white man’s devil – an Indian manhunt which had no end.

A snake slithered between his feet, slipping silently over the frost glazed stones. Greenleaf watched it wriggle past him in a daze. He was starving, beat up, half dead. Aside from the doped up soup he drank in the car, he hadn’t eaten for days. He imagined himself rising from the rock and stalking the snake. He imagined killing the snake with a sharp edged rock and eating the raw bloody meat. But the hunt was all in his head. In reality he could not move. He didn’t have the strength. He sat and shivered and watched the snake slip away, even though he knew he had to eat to stay alive.”The night nurse is coming with your medicine, Tonto. They want to make sure that you’re fit for your execution. Doesn’t that kill you? Kill you, kill you, kill you? “ Greenleaf struggled to his feet and staggered toward his prey. Or did he? His heart was pounding and his head was in a whirl. Everything killed him. His life killed him. The girl and her set up killed him. He had died long ago. He was born dead and didn’t know it. Last meal. He chattered to himself. Dead man walking. Or was this still a dream? He would go like a warrior to the white man’s grave. He dropped to his knees and grabbed the snake by the tail. It whirled like a whip and struck at his face. He grabbed it in flight and held its neck in his grip. It’s devil’s eyes devoured him. It’s fangs glistened with venom. He barely had the sense that he held the snake at all. His hand seemed numb. Maybe the snake had bitten him? Could anyone catch a striking snake? His head was spinning and sweat trickled down his back. Even as he pinned it and struck it with a rock and struggled to cut into the leathery skin, he wondered if he really held the snake or if some demon were playing tricks on him.

“What’s this, Rocco?”

“Wait.”

“Wait what? This can’t wait? It’s six in the morning. I just got up.”

“Watch Sal. Wait, you’ll see.”

“See what? I gotta pee!”

Night. Silence. A staircase on fire, blazing against a starlit sky. Shadows. Figures. Flashing

lights. A scene from Hell? MTV?

“Rocco?”

The camera panned the hellish dream. More lights, figures. A man in a trench coat appeared with a mike. He gazed gravely at the television screen. One of those anchor guys from channel 5.

“A bizarre new turn in the South Dakota roadhouse robbery took place last night when alleged robbery ringleader Thomas Greenleaf escaped custody ...”

Corso gripped the arms of his chair and clenched his teeth. Escape, murder, kidnapping, arson, roadblocks, dragnets. His dark furrowed face was frozen as he watched. His temples were throbbing. The blow was gone. So was the cash. 300 g’s just like that. He was into the Columbians for their part in the deal. The Godfather was expecting his usual cut. Payoffs to this one, that one. The plush room closed in. Fireplace, pop art, black baby grand.

What the fuck happened to Vinnie and Sully? Shark mother fuckers! They probably shook down the Indian and took the shit for themselves! You couldn’t trust no one. He’d kill them all.

“See Sal?”

“See what? I see what I saw! Marco was right. You were wrong! The dopes in a hole under a cactus plant! So’s the cash! The whole things fucked up because of some crazy Indian!”

Corso rose and paced and glared at the screen. Sunlight was streaming into the North Side apartment. His mistress’s place. A view of the lake. He tightened the belt of his bathrobe around his bulging waist. This new bimbo was cleaning him out. Gimme this! Gimme that! So was his wife! Two kids in college. Gambling debts.

“You gotta let this thing go, Sal!” He remembered Marco insisting. “This heist is too hot! All you gonna do is fuck things up!”

Marco’s Dude Ranch. An expensive flop. 20 miles west of that roadhouse which fucked everything up. Did any of this make sense? That kid, Guido, whatever, Plugger Marzulo’s kid, who gave him the job? Marco that’s who. The kid couldn’t make it another 20 miles? Driving dope from Chicago to South Dakota. Was that so hard?

Marco. The cowboys. Something was going on. Babes, horses, booze, blow. Great, sure, I’ll buy into that. But how did he know anything was there? He never checked out that dude ranch. He just shelled out the dough. Bribes, payoffs, set up, start up...Maybe he was the set up? Maybe his own fucking brother ...

“Look Sal, there’s more to see!”

“I saw! I’m blind! I got spots in my eyes! All the little spots got dollar signs!”

Water was running: the bimbo at bath. Six in the morning. Corso glared at the door. Where was she going? Another tennis lesson? Some beach boy she met? If she thought she could get away with two timing him ...

“It’s still there, Sal. The 300 g’s. It’s all there to take. Listen to me. They were in it together. The Indian, that girl. She was there in that hospital. He couldn’t a got out alone. See what I mean? When she goes for the gold, Sal, we take back what was ours!”

Corso glanced at the old man – a frail construction so shriveled he was almost swallowed by the sofa on which he sat, his tiny legs dangling. He plopped in his own chair and crossed his legs. Only one bathroom, he’d have to hold it and wait.

“What gold? Go where Rocco? You’re driving me nuts!”

He’d have the bitch shadowed. He’d rip out her guts!

“Tinseltown gold Sal. Movies. TV. She’s cashing in big time. Wait. You’ll see. You can’t get a paper without seeing her face. She’s everywhere, anywhere, all over the place. When she thinks she’s all set we straighten her out. We want what she took or we’re shutting her down. If we don’t get what’s ours we’re taking her out.”

Maybe the old bird was crazy? Senile like Vinnie said. Six in the morning, impeccably dressed. Black suit, silk shirt, silk tie. He looked like a goddamn ventriloquist’s dummy. Even his hair, dyed, slicked back with pomade, looked painted on. But he wasn’t no dummy. He was sharp as a tack. He bootlegged in the ‘20s and he was still going strong.

“Rocco, you’re talking extortion. You’re talking the Feds. You harp on this pompon girl, maybe it’s all in your head. I just saw the news. They took her away on a stretcher. The dope wasn’t there. You hear what you’re saying? It don’t make no sense. What movies? What money? The girl is half cracked. So maybe she ain’t. Maybe you’re right. What makes you think she can act? She’s a looker. She’s got hype. Rocco how far can that go? How long can that last?”

The bathroom door opened. The bimbo slipped out. Corso glared down the hallway. A swirl of raven-black hair, long dancers legs. He’d watch those legs dance if she didn’t watch out – in a cellar in Cicero at the end of a rope. Or maybe a face full of acid would cool her hot cunt.

“She got the dope Sal. We can get it back. She’s a moneymaker Sal. She’s putting on an act. She’ll do what we want. We can make her pay. I know what went down Sal. I know every move. We dig into those bodies we find dope in the brain. She was serving the drinks. She knew the layout, the caper. She was the only one left. Those sheriffs you bought off for that dude ranch of Marco’s can get that stuff done. She knows the tabloids will back us. They’ll eat this shit up. I know she’s guilty. We got a good case. She ain’t going to chance it. She’ll play it our way. So she can’t act on the big screen. She can act in a bed. Big money in porno Sal. We can shoot that stuff ourselves. The girl from the roadhouse giving super stud some head.

We couldn’t make enough copies to supply the demand.”

Corso rose from his chair and straightened his robe. He looked down at the little man. This stuff almost made sense. Rocco finally said something he could actually understand.

“If you’re right about this Rocco, we do it that way. That’s the way I want to use her. That’s

the way I’ll make her pay. She tried to fuck me over now I’m going to fuck her out. When she’s too useless to trick up big money ...”

“What else? The bitch turns up dead.”

They were closing in. Greenleaf could feel it. Death coming, haunting the stillness. He sat huddled against the rock and stared straight ahead. It was like being awake when asleep or asleep when awake.

The sun peeked blindly over the bluffs. Far off in the dawn, a helicopter circled, turned and flew off. An army of men mobilized somewhere beyond the rocks. White men with rifles, hunting the Badlands for him. Men coming on strong from every direction.

Now that he had eaten he felt stronger but more depressed. He knew he couldn’t cut it. Fight them. Get away.

He felt lost, alone. There was no where to run.

The girl had been right. Greenleaf hung his sweat-beaded head and remembered her words. He was strictly small time. Small time Tommy chasing nickels and dimes.

His mind drifted back to the roadhouse. The girl moving the bodies of the dead men around like toys. He was one of those toys. He remembered her face in the moonlight, the lingering kiss, a mix of wonder and death.

He lit another cigarette. The snake made him sick.

The game was over. He had played out his rack.

His mind wandered back to his boyhood. He was a champion then. He could hunt like a warrior with any kind of weapon. Swim, track, run like the wind. He remembered his family and friends, life on the reservation, the mission school, his crazy uncle Silvertree, who taught him to shoot pool.

“Check this out kid.” His uncle handed him a pool stick. “Big city spear. Pay attention and I’ll teach you to fish.”

Hustling pool with his uncle – that was the best. Greenleaf learned the game like magic. He had magic hands. By the time he was twelve, he couldn’t miss. They traveled from city to city, town to town, the “Drunken Indian,” the “Bumbling Boy,” setting up the “suckers” in the taverns and poolrooms for the “Lucky Shot.”

“I don’t want this money, Tommy!” His mother would cry out when they got back to Pine. “You cheat and you gamble like you wasn’t raised right! How can you do this?” She shouted at her brother. “Teach him these things?”

“We only cheat white men.”

His uncle was placid.

“That don’t count. They only get cheated because they’re trying to cheat us.”

His uncle was a gaunt, hawk-nosed, sinuous man, with silver gray hair and sharp, close-set eyes. He wore shabby clothes and wore a shapeless feathered hat. For the con, he could make his hawk face expressionless, his keen eyes look blank.

“They never cheated us? They never slaughtered our people? They never stole our land?”

His eyes had a hard, tight focused glint when he talked. He disdained all white men, their world, their rule. He loathed life on the reservation, “A ghetto in the woods.” He stayed away from the radicals, the malcontents in Pine Ridge.

Shadow Man. The reservation called him. He kept to himself, came and went.

“Anyone who has an advantage, nephew, will take advantage of anyone who is at a disadvantage to them.”

Wooden-faced his uncle told him the law of the land.

“It’s the way of the world. You’ll learn that fast. Look what the white man did to us. No ace up your sleeve? Leave the world alone. The world is a pack of buzzards eyeballing the meat on your bones.”

Rapid City, Sioux Falls, Ringo, Tremont, his uncle showed him the cities, their streets and back streets. He showed him a different quarry to stalk, another way to hunt.

“Stay low, nephew, walk light, keep out of sight.”

The money bulged in their pockets. They lived like chiefs. Where else could a reservation Indian get money like this? The con, the game, the bright lights and big cities, got under Greenleaf’s skin. They traveled around the territory, mixed set ups, played it close to the vest.

But word got around. In a tavern in Texas the hustlers were waiting for them. They watched in silence while Greenleaf played the “impossible shot.” He was fourteen then. They jumped him, worked him over, broke his fingers and thumbs.

His uncle stabbed a man in the scuffle. They sent him to prison. They sent Greenleaf to reform school. When he got out four years later, he wasn’t the same.

It was bright daylight now. Greenleaf looked at his hands. The magic was gone, his fingers were too lame. Heists, dope, gambling, fights, in and out of jail, nothing going right, for years now that was his life. Far off against the sky, beyond the black ragged bluffs, Greenleaf could see the sacred mountain and the forests of Pine Ridge. He stared at the top where he stood as a boy. Thirty miles from home. He would never get back.

Greenleaf leaped to his feet and dropped the smoked-out cigarette. Motors were moving toward him, he saw wispy clouds of dust. Beyond the jagged rocks, he heard the voices of men. It was like the rumbling of an army. He heard the yelping of dogs.

“Cole to Peckins.”

“Go Cole.”

“Dust trail kicking up by Devil’s Gorge, Marshall. Big car hauling ass about a mile off. We can head it off at Widow’s Pass. Call later for a back up if it don’t respond.”

“Hold tight Cole. You copy Chopper 2? Devils Gorge, stop that car. We need you at our 20 Chopper 1. All points be alerted, this dragnet’s over, done.”

“Get back here, Cole, PDQ –and save your lead. Got the Indian in our sites, Pal. His ass will soon be dead!”

Reporters swarmed around them as they pulled the girl from the ambulance and wheeled her toward the emergency ward. Flash cameras exploded from every direction. Security guards pushed into the mob and tried to clear a path. He ducked his head into the collar of his coat. Microphones jabbed at his face. He pushed frantically at the stretcher. He couldn’t get through.

“Was she raped?”

“Is she hurt?”

“Are you OK, Desert?”

“What’s the matter with the girl?”

His head was spinning. His heart was thumping in his chest. He looked anxiously at the girl tossing on the stretcher. Hemorrhage? Rape wounds? Miscarriage? Just her period maybe?

“Gang way! Stand back! Medical emergency! Step aside!”

His voice was strained. Hands grabbed at his arms. He fought to get through.

“What emergency?”

“What’s wrong?”

“What are you hiding?”

“Speak up!”

“Was she raped?”

“I don’t know! “ He stammered. “I don’t know! Maybe! She’s bleeding! Let us through! Medical emergency! She’s losing blood!”

They shot from their seats, rifles raised to their shoulders. Six sharp staccato explosions which echoed like fireworks off the rock formations.

A football field away they watched the Indian fall. He dropped like a rag doll and tumbled down the hill.

“Hold them dogs!”

Peckins shouted from his jeep. His barrel chest ballooned. His face was red with rage.

“Hold your fire! Get down you asshole! Didn’t I tell you the maniac’s got a revolver?”

There was a shuffling, a hesitation, men scrambled for the rocks. Peckins scanned the distant ravine with his field binoculars. Amidst the terraces of granite, the twisted tiers, the short scrub bushes, nothing could be seen. There was a salmon colored curl which may have been a shoeless foot. But it could have been anything, a reddish jutting rock.

“I got him clean, Sam.”

The shooters eased their jeep beside the Marshall’s.

“Not at this range. Not shooting from a rolling seat.”

Peckins scanned the slope again. A smile traced his wind chapped lips.

“Three went home, Marshall.”

“Three kicked dust.”

“He went down hard.”

“He’s hard to nail.”

The shooters shrugged and reloaded. They searched the dead terrain. They wanted to finish off the shooting before the Indian made a play.

“You fixin’ to call him out Sam?”

They began to see the Marshall’s game.

“Not right away. We’ll ring him first. Get a chopper overhead. Get everyone in place. Then we’re going in.” A smile crossed the Marshall’s mouth. “I’ll make sure, myself, that Indian stays dead.”

“Seems to be that sort of day.”

“Seems.”

“Sorry Jim.”

Cole shrugged.

The phantom car was their only chance. They hoped the Indian was in it. That washed out.

“Least it’s over.”

“Over and done.”

“Don’t let it get you.”

“I’ll be OK.”

Cole’s folly. Peckin’s fame. Marshall Sam Peckins saves the day. Marshall Peckins came to the Badlands with his big cock in his gun hand. The highway hurtled past. They’d never get there on time. Cole looked angrily at the speedometer, as if by an act of will he could make the

old jeep fly. Nothing made sense. This manhunt was insane. Cole had a law officer in the hospital room. He had one in the lobby. He had another in the parking lot. The Indian was in a coma. He was tied down by his wrists. The doctors had done that themselves so he wouldn’t pull out his needles and hurt himself. Shit! The Indian was half dead anyway! It made no sense that he escaped!

“No news is good news.”

The radio was silent.

“No. It’s over Ben. Like you said. What’s over is over.”

Twenty years of service down the drain.

“Move your lines men!”

The radio transmitter felt supercharged in Peckin’s hand.

“Close them flanks! Chopper 1 you sittin’ on your hands? How come I don’t see you overhead?”

His blue eyes danced as he watched the team respond. They were spread out like a bull’s horns centered by the jostling hounds. Since the break of dawn, they’d moved methodically along, poking through the nooks and crannies, dropping canisters of tear gas down the wasteland’s interlacing holes. They ran now in a ragged frenzy, forming a close knit circle around the rocky bluff.

“Custer’s last stand.”

Peckin’s watched the running men.

“ ‘Cept the other way around. And our one little Indian out there ain’t gonna stand that ground for long.”

“He ain’t standin’ now.”

One of the shooters chuckled.

Peckins checked his rifle and pulled on a bullet proof vest. The shooters shrugged and pulled on theirs. They shifted in their jeeps. In the distance, Chopper 1 appeared. It dove in circled and hovered directly above the rocky knoll.

“Brief me 1. What’s going on?”

Hat brim low, Peckins scanned the slope again.

“He’s face down in the dirt, Marshall, at the bottom of the rock. Hidin’, wounded, lying dead? Ain’t seen him move a muscle yet.”

“Ten–four Chopper 1. Let’s call him out. Time to get this mission done.”

The two jeeps eased forward. Peckins laid his shotgun on the dash. In their own jeep, the shooters held their rifles on their laps. Hard Copy. Current Affair. Movie of the week. Magazines. Press conferences. Tabloid talks. These media inevitabilities ran through Peckins’ thoughts. Sam Peckins. Marshall Sam. In the Badlands, killed the bad man. Hell, he’d run for office. Governor maybe. Marshall Sam, he’s our man. He wondered who would play him on the screen.

Chester fought the wheel. He fought Sully’s corpse.

The Caddy rocked. The body lurched.

Through the rear view mirror, he watched Helicopter 2 close in. He and Clem should have buried the body on the motel grounds. His hair and beard were dark with sweat.

“YOU ARE COMPLETELY SURROUNDED!”

Beating the air above the bluff, Helicopter 1 hovered above the Indian over a cloud of dust.

“THERE IS NO ESCAPE! COME OUT NOW WITH YOUR HANDS UP!”

Stunned, dazed, missing half an ear, Greenleaf lay flat of the frozen ground paralyzed with fear. There was a fire in his leg. Blood trickled down his neck. Through a break in the rock, he watched the armored jeep approach. Fight, flight. Both were out. His mind flashed again to the mutilated man, to the newspaper headlines, to the words of the girl on the long dark drive. “They’re going to hang you, Tonto. Gas you. Burn you. If they don’t skin you alive or shoot you first.”

Greenleaf groaned, stood, put his hands in the air. An explosion burned his fingers.. Another explosion raked his skull. Bullets beat like rain against the twisted rocks. He dove, scrambled, crawled into a hole.

“Talk to me...shoot pal ... you’re at the hospital and the girl’s OK? Medicated, delirious, but nothing serious? That’s good news Maury, the ratings would suck without a happy ending. What about what that paramedic on the news said? Rapes not confirmed? Well either way. Rape’s not a bad development ...let me know. Yeah, things are going fine here. Script’s half written. Right, right, formula schmaltz. Small town Americana. Widower father, doting uncle. Sleeping beauty and her rude awakening. Sign her? Sure, as soon as we can. Look, my tongue’s hanging out. Everyone wants to sign her. She’s a knock-out. The whole world knows her face. The whole world wants to see the rest. We’ll let things cool down. Could back fire. Bad PR. The press will say we’re pushing her. Right, like they aren’t. I can see the smary TAB headlines if this rape’s confirmed. DESERT DEFLOWERED or some such shit. Screen test? Oh, sure just for show. Like it’s important she can act or something. Yeah, I got the roadhouse photos. Good work. Right, a haunted house. No sweat, it will look like the Partridge family estate when we build the set. Hey, I know it ain’t Top Cops out there, Maury, but what’s the odds they’ll take that Indian alive? You don’t think they want to. Too bad. A splashy trial

would really keep the story hot. Look pal, I gotta go. I’m going to send Blackford out there to talk to the girl. Sure he’ll behave himself. Talk to you babe.”

He was dead. Greenleaf ran a hand through his matted hair. This was the Devil’s game. He had died in the roadhouse with the other men. He was dead, delirious, dreaming or insane.

His fingers felt numb. The pads were burned and scratched with streaks of blood..

He reached, hesitated, reached again.

What he saw in the hole could not be there.

He was as startled by the weapons under the rocks as Sully was by the snakes when he hid them there.

Two semi-automatic Uzi style rifles. Hand guns, bullets. Four pipe bombs.

“STOP THAT CAR!”

The blunt blades beat the air above the Cadillac. Through the sun roof Chester could see the belly of Chopper 2 almost resting on the rocking car. His brain pounded. He was drenched with sweat. Sully’s corpse rocked and pitched off the leather padded dash.

“He was part of that gang, Clem. He was fixin’ to run.”

“Hope the law see’s it your way Chester. Hope this don’t get you hung.”

Chester shoved the barrel of the shotgun through the window on the roof. The explosion bent his arm in half.

It was as quiet as a crypt along the ridge.

“Careful Sam.”

Peckins drew a long deep breath. His palms were sweating. He studied the pyramid-shaped hill. The Indian could be anywhere. It was hide and seek. Cat and mouse.

They stood huddled by the Marshall’s jeep.

“Just keep me covered.”

He scanned the rocky ridge. It was a long steep climb. If he wanted what there was to get, he’d have to do it, take the risk. Chopper 1 hovered overhead. They’d take care of the Indian if things went bad.

“We can smoke him out.”

The shooter pulled a canister of teargas from the idling jeeps back seat.

“Can you clear that ledge?”

“Clear it easy, Marshall, if I move up some.”

The bomb blast blew them off the rock, each man flying helter skelter down the ragged bluff. The Marshall’s driver was split in half. The pipe bomb spiraled through the sky and landed in his lap. The two shooters were mangled flesh. The Marshall sat beside the burning jeep, a load of shrapnel in his heaving chest.

10

There were dark clouds gathered at the top of the mountain, which puzzled Moses, because one would think there would be a haze of light around the presence of God and Moses was meeting with God who was the symbol of light.

But God is a dark cloud. God is truth. Truth and reality are rarely sunshine and light.

The Indian appeared like a dark cloud at the top of the rock. His great drab coat billowed and ballooned bat like in the whirlwind of the choppers beating blades. Blood ran like war paint

down his ravaged face. His hair was wild. Arms outstretched, he leaped barefoot from rock to rock, a pipe bomb clutched in his mangled hand, a bag of rifles belt bound to his back.

The big guns boomed and the rifles crackled. Bullets beat the bluff like monsoon rain, tearing

up the short scrub bushes, ricocheting off the twisted rocks. Phantom–like, the Indian descended the hill. His eyes were vacant hell shocked dreams.

Peckins thought of the mountain and watched in a daze. He could not move. Bullets whizzed above his bomb stunned head. The deafening barrage intensified his pain. The nails, shards, shafts of metal imbedded in his heaving chest, vibrated with the thundering explosions and twisted deeper into his punctured flesh.

Above him, the helicopter dipped and turned. Rapid fire eruptions shot out from the cockpit door. Peckins watched the Indian leap, spin, and swing his arm across the air. A storm of glass, metal, and bloody limbs rained down as Helicopter 1 exploded in a ball of fire.

“Cole to Peckins.”

His heart was pounding.

“Cole to Hawkins, to Nesbit.”

His big hands trembled.

“Cole to Hendon, Wilson. To anyone in the posse.”

Nam was the last time he heard anything like this gunfire. Heard or saw, for the two fireball explosions blackened the sky a dozen miles off.

“What’s going on?”

“Don’t know Jim.”

Tate clutched the wheel and shook his head.

“The chopper’s down, Ben. That last big blast. What’s going on?”

Tate shook his head.

“STOP THAT CAR!”

Sully’s corpse now lay across Chester’s hunched down shoulders. Its goggle eyed face was pressed against the driver’s window. Its blown out chest was a dead weight on his stooping back. Somehow Chester managed to drag the dead weight over him, even though his arm was broken from the shotgun kick back and he was quivering with pain.

He fought the wheel. Head bent forward, he squinted at the bowed black rock, at its billowy granite bonnet looming past the ridge; while bullets from the relentless helicopter exploded through the Caddy roof, thumped into the dead man’s back, thudded in its brain blown skull.

“Chopper 2 to Marshall Peckins! Come in Peckins!”

“Go for Peckins, Chopper 2. This is sheriff Cole. Over.”

“We’re going down, Cole! Fuel tanks blasted! Widow’s Pass! Send a back up!”

“You copy Dry Gulch? Back up Ringo. Widow’s Pass. On the double ...”

The road rushed past. The gunfire deepened. Cole swallowed hard. His heart was racing. Indian gang? Some mad bucks from the reservation? They were out there with him? On foot? A car? How could they have hid from the helicopter’s surveillance?

“Cole to Peckins ... Cole to Nesbit, Hawkins ...”

Anything is possible when nothing is real, and if this was real than God was the Devil, Heaven was Hell, Beauty Horror and Death an Angel.

An army came running, running across the badlands from every direction, running, shooting, shouting, cursing. Fifty yards away, forty, closing. They were aiming wildly, tripping, falling.

Greenleaf climbed behind the wheel of the shooter’s bomb scorched jeep. Bullets beat like hail against it, shattering the windshield, shooting out the head and tail lights, puncturing the tires and knocking off the mirrors. Unharmed the undead inhabit Hell unscathed. Greenleaf knew. Their mutilated immortality lives on to receive the Devil’s pain.

Greenleaf hung the short haired scalp across the broken rear view mirror. Blood dripped from it. There was not much meat. With his hands sore, he could only slice the skull skin deep.

Peckins sat and stared and tried to breath. His bald head bled. He was chattering with pain. The Indian stared starkly at him from the shooters jeep. He tossed a flat sharp rock at the Marshall’s feet. It was covered with blood and the skin of a snake.

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole.”

“Cannon lift that ban. I need airborne reconnaissance quick as you can. Weather station, news, crop duster, buzzard. The first thing you get. I need the roadblocks in place. I need driving patrols. I need you to contact the Pine Reservation. Get them to assign their police to the borders, tell them I need them to close their main roads. I need ...”

“Calm down Cole, I’ll do what I can. I’m just back on duty. My brain ain’t no bigger. I still got two hands.”

Guns and adrenalin, frenzy and fear, rage, outrage, the army swarmed around him firing in a panic as they ran, stumbling, falling, killing one another with their own cross-fire.

Greenleaf stood atop the jeep with his arms extended cross-like at his sides. He held a rapid firing Uzi automatic in each mangled hand. His great dark coat fluttered like a phantom in the wind. His eyes were closed. He turned slowly from left to right and back again. He felt free. As though he were flying. His stretched out arms like wings. He felt like an eagle soaring. He was perched on top of the Sacred Mountain. He rose above the misery of his life. The poverty, the prison, the beatings, the set up. The staccato shots streamed like lightning from his lifted hands. He listened to the death cries of the screaming men.

“Hawkins to Cole ... Hawkins to Cannon ... Hawkins to Dry Gulch, Macon, to anyone at the station ... Hawkins to ...”

“LAST CALL CADDY”

Chopper 2 whirled ahead, spun, and dropped. An explosion blew the Caddy’s windshield out. Chester ducked behind the padded dash. Bullets blasted through the cabin space. He fired the dead man’s gun at the cockpit door. He saw the pilot slump. There was a grinding crash. Through the smoke of the explosion, above his hunched down head, he saw the widow’s granite bonnet hurtling at the car.

“How many Jeb?”

It was as dark as dusk across the battle ground. Cole stood with Hawkins near the Marshall’s burning jeep. Peckins sat and chattered. His broad chest heaved. Bodies lay everywhere – the dead and the dying, the wounded and the maimed. They were all enfolded in a toxic shroud as dreary as a dead man’s dream of smoke and tear gas and blazing gasoline.

“Don’t know Jim. Don’t want to neither.”

Hawkins stared the ground. His voice was strange. His body shuddered and his face seemed aged.

“You get the Indian?”

Cole looked past him at the slaughtered men. His heart beat wildly. His fists were clenched.

“He’s the Devil Jim.”

Hawkins closed his eyes.

“You didn’t get the Indian?”

“He’s Evil Cole. That’s all I’ll say.”

Sirens howled like strangled ghosts beyond the battle fogged ridge. The flashing lights were tripped out dreams. Cole descended the knoll on shaky legs. Paramedics struggled past him

dragging a transport stretcher. They lifted Peckins by his armpits and sat him down. They wheeled him seated to the medical van.

“Bad as it looks?”

“It’s a horror Jim.”

Ghostlike his deputy met him in the fog.

“How many Ben?”

Tate shook his head. A bandana covered his nose and mouth. He took a breath and pulled it down.

“He’s headed for Pine in a shooter’s jeep. Weren’t no gang Jim. Only him. He’s got bombs, Uzis. God knows how. Nesbit tried to follow him but lost him in the fog. He’s tossing tear gas left and right as he goes along.”

They moved down wind. Cole was walking in a trance. Tate’s eyes and face were blank with shock. This could not be real. It was too insane. More would die. They would choke to death.

“We’ll cut him off, Jim. Get more men. Ring him. Pin him. Hold him down.”

“He’s heavy armed.”

“We’ll wait him out.”

“Night comes quick.”

“We’ll light it up.”

“He’ll use the shadows and the holes.”

“We’ll get generators and volunteers from every town. More Feds if we can. The militia if we have to. Whatever it takes to take him down.”

“There’s a plane coming Ben.”

Cole’s gray eyes froze. The lawmen stopped beside a dead blood hound.

“Guy I knew in Vietnam. Survivalist. Supremacist. Outlaw plane, Ben, custom made and coming on its own.”

Cole looked across the smoke smothered ground.

“He’ll bomb that psychopath to kingdom come.”

11

“You’re dead! You’re dead, Tonto! Now get off my bed! I ain’t your lay! You ain’t stickin’ that ugly thing between my legs!”

Through half closed eyes, she saw ghost shapes gathered around her bed – stiff white shadows that came and went. The Indian crawled on top of her. His black eyes were ablaze. He had a tomahawk penis. He held her down by her wrists.

“Get off of me you mangy dog!” She hissed in the depths of her delirium. “Get off me now! I’d rather eat flies out of a garbage can than feel your dong.”

She tossed and turned with disgust and rage. She felt the Indian push himself inside her. Something oozed between her thighs. His breath smelled of snake. His hair was a tangle of blood. It ran down his face like war paint. His hands were scarred and burned. He was even more disgusting dead than he was when he was alive.

“Die goddamn it! Stay in Hell!” She cursed in her dream. “Take those gangsters with you! I hope the Devil gets you all!”

“Why are her wrists bound, Nurse Hartfelt?”

Doctor Laster stood flushed with anger in the doorway. His face was grave, but his eyes were aghast. They moved from nurse Hartfelt to the cluster of staffers who stood with her and then to the girl they surrounded on the elevated bed. She lay spreadeagled under a sheet which was pulled to her chin. Her wrists were tied to the side bars, her legs were spread apart. She was twisting in torment and muttering to herself. Her hair was a tangle of flames. Her pale face glistened with sweat.

“My god, are her ankles bound too?”

The doctor moved doggedly into the room. His eyes were puffy and red. His gray hair was disheveled. His grim features were drawn. His thoughts were cluttered with cobwebs. He was up all night with an emergency operation. A farmer near Dead Wood who got crushed by a plow.

“Certainly not, doctor!” Nurse Hartfelt turned white as a ghost. Her plump figure froze in mid motion. She looked like she was about to faint. “Untie her Nurse Manning!” She shrieked at her assistant. “I think she’s stable now. She was scratching at my face. “ She turned to the doctor. “You can see she’s delirious. I had to clean her up. I think she was over medicated in the ambulance.”

The doctor leaned over the bed and with the gentlest of touches took the girl’s pulse. He tested her forehead with the back of his hand. His examination was done so lovingly that he even noticed the affection himself. He was aware the staff was watching him and he quickly pulled back his hand.

“Poor kid. What a nightmare.”

The doctor shook his gray uncombed head. The girl’s skin had the luster of porcelain. She was like some china doll come to life. He felt somehow responsible for the state she was in. She could have lost her life. Had he put her in harm’s way? Was it his fault the Indian escaped? Was the restraint they put on the Indian too loose? Was he wrong about his medical condition? Of course much of the Indian’s blood had been replaced by transfusions, but still, he would be too weak to kill a policeman, and a big one at that and pull off such a daring escape. Wouldn’t he? This played on his mind all night, even through surgery. Maybe he should have been more careful. He had seen half dead soldiers perform miraculous feats of heroism in Viet Nam. The human will was extraordinary. The superhuman efforts men made when it was a matter of life and death was well known to him. Maybe he should have kept that in mind. But then that was Cole’s job. Cole was the Sheriff not him. He had his own job to do. He worked from morning till night. His secret regret was that when they brought the Indian into the emergency ward they simply didn’t let him die.

“There was some bleeding , Nurse Hartfelt?” The doctor hesitated and then turned to the flustered nurse. “ I ran into a paramedic on the way to the ward. He was with her in the ambulance. He’s worried about the girl. He thinks he messed up somehow?”

“She had her period.” Nurse Hartfelt said nervously. There was something evasive in her glance. The doctor wondered why the head nurse was so jumpy. But then they were all coming

apart at the seams. “You’d think the poor boy would know the difference between that and anything else.” She laughed nervously. “I suppose we’re lucky he didn’t give her plasma. I’ll have to take him under my wing?”

“Sometimes it hard to tell.” The doctor muttered. “When things happen fast.” He was asleep on his feet. There was something odd going on. He was too tired to figure it out. He started to lift the girl’s bed sheet but a strange sensation shot through him and he stopped. The soft white shape below him, suspended in its sleeping beauty stillness, suddenly seemed like an angel in a cloud. Had something voyeuristic stolen into his glance? He let the bed sheet drop.

“I’ll leave her in your capable hands, nurse Hartfelt.

Doctor Laster bowed to the wounded head nurse with deference trying to patch things up.

“I have to get some sleep. I’ve been up all night. Forgive me, I’m not myself.”

Nurse Hartfelt looked at him icily. She managed a pained smile.

“I hope we can manage without you doctor. We may be inept but we try. I’ll stay with the girl while she sleeps. I’ll be here when she awakes. You’re not the only one who puts in long hours. We all try to do our best.”

The doctor winced and smiled, bowed and turned away. He moved toward the door feeling guilty. He had put his foot in his mouth. They were all upside down since the holdup. There had never been anything like it. Black Water General was the focus of the world. He would send some flowers to the nurses station. It occurred to him as he moved slowly down the hall. Maybe that would bolster morale. He would talk to security and get some guards on the floor. Why hadn’t that been done before? Did he have to think of everything? The doctor brooded. Reporters were all over the hallways. They were stopping everyone. He felt the weight of the drama crushing him. It didn’t seem like the town could survive all this madness. They were under the invasion of the globe. Everyone was stressed to the limit -- what with the tragedy, the manhunt, the media camped everywhere. He began to notice a flurry of commotion. Staffers were running through the halls. Doctors and nurses were moving rapidly. Phones were ringing at the nurses stations. Doctor Steinmetz, panicky and upset, came hurrying down the hall. When he saw Laster his eyes lit up. He grabbed him by the arm. “All hell’s broken loose John.” He said breathlessly. “Get a shower, get a shave, get some coffee. I need every physician I can get.”

“What’s going on out there Nurse Winter?”

Nurse Hartfelt looked out the door at the commotion in the hallway.

“I’m not sure. “ Nurse Winter hesitated. She was pushing a medicine cart through the ward. “A shootout, I think. Someone said bodies coming in.”

“Finish in here.” Nurse Hartful said anxiously to her staff. “Find doctor Steinmetz. See if you can be any help. You may leave that bundle, William, I’ll dispose of it myself. Mind what you say to the reporters!” She chided nervously. “They’ll be pestering you for news. They’re going to try to bribe you for photos of the girl. Of course you all know that’s strictly against hospital regulations.”

The flustered nurse closed the door behind them. She turned and looked at the girl. Nurse Harfelt’s small plump hands were trembling. Her head was in a whirl. She had lied to the doctor. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She committed medical fraud. The girl had a miscarriage that morning. Nurse Hartfelt had covered it up. Just now there were complications. Everything was OK but she covered that up too. She could loose her license if the truth got out. She moved in a daze across the room and sat down near the bed. She looked desperately at the girl. Nurse Hartfelt wondered if she had gone crazy, risking her career in that way. But what else was she to do? If the story got out that the girl was an unwed mother the tabloids would be after the poor thing like a pack of wolves. Wolves after a lamb, and after all the girl had been through. My god she was just 17. There would be shame, snickers, she knew how people turned on one another. All they needed was an excuse. Besides what would that do to the town? Hadn’t Black Water suffered enough already? The only thing that was keeping anything together was their admiration and love for the girl. Their own home-grown beauty. Did they need to know she was flawed? She turned from her pleasant but homely reflection in the dresser mirror which she had been absently gazing at to the dazzling creature lying asleep beside her in the glass. Suddenly a tremor of longing went through her for a beauty she never could have. To be beautiful like that, like a living dream, to be beautiful and beautifully loved. Everyone fell in love with a beauty, it was the stuff of movies and books. Her misty eyes moved from the mirror to the flowers which filled the room. Flowers and candy and boxes with satin ribbons, hats and dresses and cards and letters. They filled the room. Not just this room but a storage closet too. Over a hundred thousand dollars in donations had been sent to the hospital for the girl. Money for her college, medical care, money from everyone everywhere. And, like the gifts and cards, it just kept coming in. There were book offers, movie offers, marriage proposals. Quite frankly, she thought bitterly, if the girl were plainer or fatter none of this would be happening. She’d be out in the cold. People knew that deep down and were jealous. They would be all too eager to attack. Could she risk ruining a new life for the girl with some information which meant nothing to anyone?

It was all such a nightmare. Nurse Hartfelt wrung her hands. It was all so confusing. One didn’t know what to do. She remembered the bodies coming in, the shock of seeing lifelong friends dead on stretchers. She remembered the girl being led by Sheriff Cole to the psycho ward. Well that, in its own way, made sense now too, if you worked in a mental ward. The unwed mother in the wedding gown, surrounded by the bodies of the dead. A chill ran over her. When would it ever end? Would Black Water ever get back to normal? Would the vultures leave the girl alone? Would they drive the girl into madness ? She looked desperately at the girl again. Now the FBI seemed to be bothering the helpless thing. They kept asking the strangest questions. Did the girl know the Indian? Was the girl rebellious? What did the FBI want? What did they mean? They kept asking nurse Hartfelt to demonstrate the wrist restraints. They kept going over the Indians escape from the ward. How could he get to the girl’s room without being seen? How could he have slipped in and out past the nurses desk with a hostage? Wasn’t the mental ward sealed off? They even asked her for the girl’s personal items. She gave them a compact and a brush. Why did the FBI agents ask her for those objects? Did they want the girl’s fingerprints? They couldn’t suspect her of being involved with the robbery, could they? Who would think of such a thing? Why didn’t they go catch the Indian! Do something useful! Leave the poor girl alone!

In the dark, in bed, lying alone and naked, Guido Marzullo stared at the television screen and waited for his death.

The transient room was a lockup in a no man’s land, cramped, dingy, crawling with bugs. Uptown Chicago, the penthouse of the damned. Nevermen, losers, juicers and ghosts, druggies, degenerates, a dead end for the city’s refuse. But uptown, downtown, in town or out, Guido knew it didn’t matter, they’d find him anywhere.

“Black Water South Dakota: CBS has learned that the bloodbath that began earlier this week continued its rampage in the desert late this afternoon. In a bizarre turn of events, a manhunt became a massacre when...”

Guido was sweating with fear. Purgatory flared in his pores. His sodden clothes lay rumpled on the floor. Contract out. The hit begins. His execution over a bag of blow and fifty grand.

“Lay low Guido.

His father told him on the phone. Guido called home from South Dakota after the smokie took the dope and let him go.

“You got stopped, searched. That shit happens all the time. A different cop you’d be in jail right now. Corso’d have to make your bail, pay your trial. Have something for you when you did your time. And there’d be no blow in hock. No blow at all. Forget about it Guido. They’ll do the deal. It’ll be over and done. So maybe they don’t let you drive for a while. Ain’t your fault. You’re a kid. It’s your first big job. Wait a little while, you’ll be back on the run.”

Guido fingered the gun that lay beside him on the bed. The blow disappeared. The money was gone. Corso had no other choice but to rub him out.

He stared at the newscast. Smoke billowed on the screen. Fire, gas, what looked like the skeleton of a blazing helicopter in the long range camera shot. He’d call his father, get some cash. Get out of Chicago. They’d hunt there first. He had fucked up big time. It was all his fault. Marco’s dude ranch. Racing through the night. Popping pills and smoking grass. Those six foot blondes in the cowgirl hats and high spiked boots, spurs, lassos,

riding crops.

Bag man coming, coming with the cane...

Marco’s dude ranch ...cunt, dope, high stake games...

“Gueeedooo ...”

There were footsteps on the landing. He heard movement in the hall. Guido’s heart was pounding. He broke out in a sweat. He tried to move. He was paralyzed with fear. Through the rotting wooden door, he heard the murmuring of men.

“We know you’re in there, Gueedooo.”

“Ben.”

The crop duster clattered across the sky. A barnstorming relic from an era gone by.

Tate glanced at Cole. They watched the old plane roar by. Ebenezer Motley, an old racist crank. Lived in a shack on a spread alone in the wasteland with his arsenal of hate books and guns.

“Devil kills Devil.”

Cole’s tired eyes turned cold. The law couldn’t cut it. They were out of their league. It was the Reign of the Devil. The law was a joke.

“Maybe Evil gets Evil.” Tate’s slender lips curled. “Maybe Evil crawls in a hole.”

“Long as he holds him so we can move in the circle.”

“Maybe the Indian will down him. He’s got enough fire power.”

“No skin off my nose.”

Cole hung his head. He couldn’t remember when he felt so tired. Help from Nazi. They were really hard up.

12

“I look like her.”

The red tip of her cigarette fired the highlights in her golden hair which flowed like molten flames across her ghost white shoulders. The smoke formed a veil for her stunning new face.

“The illusion is uncanny Ms Strand.

Blackford studied the transformed megastar by the indirect lighting above the circular bar. At 25 she looked 18. Alluring, innocent: Ms MTV. Even her eyes looked altered. Huge and green.

“But you must have some sense of our budget Ms Strand. This is a production for television. A movie of the week. We simply can’t afford you. You know you don’t come cheap.”

The waiter brought them fresh martinis on a silver tray with Spanish olives. Over the rim of her raised cocktail glass, she glared at Blackford from some frenzied, hostile deep. Her eyes were dangerous. Both tense and fierce. It was a look the seasoned casting director had never seen.

“I look like her. It wasn’t easy. It wasn’t cheap. It wasn’t pretty. Fuck your budget. I’ll work for free.”

A combo was playing Stardust in the corner. Under the immense arched windows, the huge cross beams, the club was quietly crowded with the world’s elite. Lake Strand. This made no sense. Golden Globe. Best Supporting Actress. Multi-million dollar Movie Goddess. Tinsel

Town was tumbling down. The Dream Machine was in overdrive – everything set spinning by a golden-haired girl in a wedding gown, a roadhouse slaughter, and a psychopathic killer whose bloodlust knew no bounds.

“A magnificent gesture Ms Strand.

Blackford stifled a yawn. Heavy with gin his pomaded black head began to nod.

“You would immortalize the part. But aren’t you under contract at present? That new Scorsese film?”

Blackford sipped his drink and closed his eyes. The melody of Star Dust fluttered through the club like diamond butterflies. Lake Strand. What was next? Since the murder story broke, his life had become a surrealistic dream: a blur of snow white skin and huge green eyes, long golden hair and ripe young thighs. Under him, over him, all around him on the casting couch – threadbare from vigorous years of “Leading Lady” interviews. But nothing like what was transpiring now. Starlets swarmed his back lot office. Designer clones of the haunting Badlands girl. What was her name? Desert Flower? Even the name was outrageous. She was the most sensational tabloid miracle since Princess Di. Breathtaking body doubles, magically remade. They even managed to project a modicum of the stark girl’s mesmerizing gaze. All of them were dressed in identical wedding gowns. That ghostly swirl of antique silk the girl was photographed wearing when they led her into the psycho ward. It would be THE LOOK after the movie came out: the romantic dress, the golden hair. Millions of “Desert Flowers” would roam the world. Another Hollywood hallucination to bring home Never Never land to all the cubical people in their sitcom worlds.

Bradford Blackford, clone master.

Bradford Blackford, master of the dream.

Even the ravishing megastar seated tensely before him near the circular bar, wore her own

clubby version of the dress. Sensuous, surreal, beauty under, over, through and through. The feminine deception was like some Hitchcock film.

“Let them sue me.

The actresses’ eyes were luminous.

“Let them try. They’ll back off if your studio backs me up. This is my role, no one else’s. I have to play this part.”

She dug her fingers into Blackford. There was no muscle in the scrawny arm to cushion the

painful claws. He was going to seed. Blackford noted with a sigh. He cut a fine figure once, now he was just another drunk. Those long pointed nails raking down his spine. Her passion was explosive. She’d eat him alive.

“I’ll do my very best, Ms Strand.”

Blackford placed a sympathetic hand on the fiercely working claws.

“I’ll back you to the hilt. You’d make this brutal tragedy a work of art.”

An ice dancer from Russia had already been given the title role. Blackford contacted the teenager’s trainer the day the story hit the news. Blonde, beautiful, skin as white as a snow leopard. She was the darling of the international ice skating rink. She won all the competitions, stole the hearts of the world.

Lake Strand. The night of nights. Moonlight. Champagne. Her milky thighs.

Moon Shadow was spiritual in the ancient Sioux way. She spoke to the wind, the moon and the stars. She married Night Walker on the top of Bear Butte. It was a ceremony the Sacred Mountain waited centuries for. That night, wild game crackled on spits. There were drums, dancers, holy chants. Night Walker was a descendant of Medicine Men. High Chiefs traveled to Pine Ridge from faraway lands.

Greenleaf drove in a daze. The mountain drew nearer. If he could make it to the mountain, his soul would return. Moon Shadow, his sister –like some far away dream. The night of the wedding, he was wide-eyed, just ten.

The jeep rocked on its wheel rims, its tires blown out. He could walk to Pine faster if he was able to walk. He could swim the white rivers, leap the quick streams, race through the forests like a fresh gust of wind.

A mushroom cloud erupted from a furnace of fire. The crop duster lifted and arched for the sky. The pilot glanced down from the cockpit at the hurtling jeep. He watched the Indian fly over the hood and land on the rocks. The jeep dropped into a gully and turned on its side. He took another stick of dynamite from the box at his side.

The ridges and gorges and ravines flew wildly past. He nosed the old plane into a Ferris wheel turn. Below him, small armies were crossing the lands. An hour away. Coming on strong from every direction. They descended the mountain, rode the wasteland in jeeps. They’d find a hole in the ground when they got here, some chunks of burnt meat. He’d circle the crater when the second cloud cleared, drop calling cards for the media to let them know who was there. White power pamphlets with the sign they all feared.

WHITE MIGHT. WHITE JUSTICE. The wind blew in his face and he felt the dark rush. Ebenezer Motley, the killer of killers. Just an ant on the ground. The world would soon learn what the white race could do. All the subhuman blood scum could quake in their boots.

He swept through the turn and roared for the rocks. The Indian stood slumped with an Uzi – a scarecrow in shock. He banked the barnstormer smoothly and circled the ridge. A duel with Red Devil. He couldn’t resist. He’d shoot off his legs with the machine gun he installed in the propeller, circle again, drop a ton of insecticide on the rock ridge and watch the crippled bug squirm.

He flew close to the ground. The tiny shape grew. He sighted the machine gun at the target. The scarecrow’s Uzi was useless. The barnstormer’s nose was armored, the bullets wouldn’t get through. He pushed the button and watched the spitfire shoot out. The Indian dropped to the ground amidst a barrage of bullets and dust. The pilot’s toothless mouth split as he grabbed the bug bomb release. He’d lay down a cloud to drive the Indian out. Maybe he’d drop another stick of dynamite, maybe not. Might be more fun to buzz him for a while, watch him scurry about. As he roared toward the rocks the Indian surfaced again. He stood on the ridge and threw something at the plane. Two silvery glints sparkled in the sunlight for a second. There was a clatter of steel hitting metal. Two sharp clanging thumps.

13

“You’re the Bride of Bloodshed, kitten, the bride, the bride...”

“Come to Daddy little princess! Come to Daddy’s big dark bed!”

The faceless strangers come and go.

Shadows sweep across the land.

Mists envelope each pale ghost.

She drifts like a phantom beneath the moon’s dim glow.

It was dark in the room.

The curtains were drawn.

She sensed Evil in the shadows,

an Evil more relentless than her own.

There were bars on the windows.

Restraints dangled from the bed.

She was back in the psycho ward.

She sensed from the Evil, she might never get out.

The gunmen, the fire, crawling for the car, she remembered trying to get to the Indian before the Indian could talk. The room spun around her. She lay flat on her back. She stared at the ceiling, trying to make sense of it all. It was like some madwoman’s dream, what she saw in her mind – a carnival of flames, and flashers, and wailing sirens. She remembered falling from the pipe, crashing to the ground, she remembered hiding the money in a hole and covering it with a rock. She remembered the police cars coming out of nowhere, the ambulance, the swarm of reporters badgering her, flashbulbs, cameras, microphones shoved in her face. There was a chinless boy in a frenzy of light. The boy was whistling songs and feeling her up. She remembered the Indian raping her. Or was that a dream? She remembered blood between her legs. She wondered if they captured the Indian, if he was dead or alive.

She sighed, shifted, tried to sit up. They must have medicated her with tranquilizers. She didn’t have the strength. Her head was splitting. Her ankle throbbed. She felt sleep pulling her under – if she went under she was lost. She struggled again. Her silken flesh strained beneath the sheets trying to push off some invisible weight that was holding her down. She rose, turned, dropped her legs over the bed. Her body felt shapeless. She stood swaying in the dark.

Everything was caving in, falling apart. Her thoughts were all tangled. She tried to push through the webs. The gunmen were after her. They had figured it out. The big city gangsters looking for their dope. They knew she set up the robbery and double crossed everyone. Or, at least, they knew she was in on it and was the only one left.

She groped her way slowly across the small cluttered room, using the chair, sink, dresser for support. Everything was like a dream. Her secret was out. She would have thought it all a dream but for the throbbing in her ankle and the pain in her head. She leaned over the dresser holding its surface for support. She peered at her own spectral silhouette in the mirror shimmering in the dark. The Evil in the room watched her as she stared. The Evil was like some deadly frost hovering in the air. The Evil was the menace of the gangsters looking for revenge.

“I don’t care what went down here, kitten.” She remembered the words of the gunman she torched. “I ain’t no cop. All I want is the dope and a certain story. If this is a stall, I’ll rip you apart. I want what’s ours. You better give it up.”

She switched on the lamp. Her own reflection was a shock. A ghost version of herself faced her across the glass. Her alabaster skin looked like a crude pastel drawing done with coarse grainy chalk. Her golden hair was witchy, a terrified tangle of wildfire. There were dark circles ringing her eyes. Her eyes looked sodden, drugged. There was a bruise on her forehead, scrapes on her face, black and blue marks on her arms and legs. She had to get the money and get out of town. Get lost in some big city until things settled down. She had slipped up somewhere. Something had tipped them off. Her mind was filled with cobwebs. She couldn’t figure it out. She wanly studied her image as if it held the answer to a problem she couldn’t solve. Her mind raced in all directions. Her heart felt stopped. The gunman was an enforcer for some big city mob. A hired goon, expendable, replaceable. There were a million more like him wherever he came from. They would keep coming to Black Water until they got what was theirs. Even after they got it they would have to settle the score. She could change her hair, color her skin, but her eyes, cheekbones, the shape of her mouth, would give her away no matter what she tried. The whole world knew her face. Even the gunman told her that. If the girl from the roadhouse disappeared, the whole world would be looking for her. The police, the reporters, the man on the street. A global hunt would be underway. There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. She was between Hell and the Devil and she couldn’t get out.

She turned abruptly, lifted her eyes, and took a deep breath, startled by what she noticed reflected behind her in the mirror. She braced her ghost stricken figure against the bulk of the dresser. She looked stupefied around the room, not comprehending what she saw. The room was filled with flowers. There were bouquets of flowers everywhere: bright splashes of gold and amber and violet and crimson, as fragrant as perfume. They suddenly flared through the fog of her senses in full blazing color, so many flowers that they suggested some enchanted garden in a fairy tale dream. Lining the walls between the dazzling flowers, piled in festive stacks which reached from the floor to the ceiling, rose gayly wrapped boxes tied with bright bows and ribbons. Lavish, lush colored, helium filled Love Hearts floated like magic around her in the room, many with frilly lace boarders.

She might have been standing in a fancy boutique decked out for Valentine’s day.

She moved trance-like across the psycho ward room grabbing a Love Heart from the air and clutching it to her breast. She gazed at the mountain of gifts with mesmeric wonder as she limped along in her disheveled hospital gown trying to guess what each contained by its size and shape and wrapping paper. There were hat boxes, shoe boxes, slender bracelet boxes, perfume boxes, great garment bags, small boxes, big boxes, tall boxes, fat boxes. Never at any time anywhere for anyone had there ever been anything like this, she was sure. Her thoughts drifted back to Christmas at the roadhouse, to her birthdays, to past Valentine days. The men at the roadhouse gave her dolls. Her father gave her dolls. Dolls for the doll girl, toys for the toy. The men would doll her up in antique dresses from the cedar chests in the attic. She would play act for the men in a world of purulent pretend. Was this any different? Another fairy tale written on pretty paper by a dark dream master with a poisoned pen. What else was there? Did it matter?

Her hand reached hesitantly for the nearest garment bag which was so plump with promise that she couldn’t resist. Slowly and gingerly she drew the zipper down. “Mink.” She murmured to herself, gazing at the lavish coat. “Full length Mink.” She let the heart float to the ceiling. She ran her fingers softly through the lush dark fur. It was smoother than silk. It took her breath. A card dangled from the enfolding bag. She turned it over and read. “Lucky Mink! What creature wouldn’t give its life to wrap itself in your splendor!” It was signed Bradford Blackford, Paramour Pictures. She moved hastily to the next bag. It was from a store in Beverly Hills. Inside was a stunning dress aglitter with sequins, a concoction one would only see in a Hollywood film. The proprietor wished her well and invited her to pick out a hat when she came to town. Next was a richly woven shawl from a monastery in Brazil. They sent her their payers, blessings, wished her good health. After that she picked out a diamond bracelet from a Black Water jeweler. It shown like a rainbow in its black velvet box. She could feel her pale face flush as she opened each parcel. Her hands were shaking. Her head was in a whirl. Everything she touched sent an electrical shock right through her. It went straight from her hands, through her heart, into her haunted soul. She was getting light in the head. She tore herself away unwillingly but wondering what else was there for her in the room. Her dazzled eyes fell on a bouquet of desert flowers aflame on the bureau near her . It was the most beautiful arrangement in the room. Some of the blooms were local, she had used them for her wedding crown, wove them into the garland she wore that night in her hair. Others were exotic. They looked like they came from another planet. The card read: “God saves his best blooms for himself. He hides them in the desert. Let me show you to the world.” It was signed, Bradford Blackford, Paramour Pictures. A smile curled her lips. The dream master strikes again. This fellow was as smooth as snake oil. He was slowly sliding in. Below the bureau on an incongruous night stand lay a huge wicker basket filled with cards and letters. Bending she nervously picked one from the pile attracted to its strange letter head: a tall steel tower with an eye at the top. Waves of energy radiated from the structure. Below it were the names of all the important cities in the world : London, Paris, Rome, New York, Los Angeles, Sidney, and others. She pulled out the letter and peered at it bewildered. It’s author wanted to publish the story of her life. He wanted her to agree to an exclusive interview on one of his television stations. For both, he would pay her two million dollars. He also wanted options on a second book if things went right. This would describe her first year in Hollywood. He would pay her a similar amount. She tore open another letter. It was from a cosmetic company: Natural Beauty Make Up. The company wanted her to be the Natural Beauty girl. They would pay her a million dollars to assume that part. They would double that amount the next year if, as they assumed, her celebrity grew. Her heart raced as she reached for more. Her arms transformed into delving divining rods as she drew out one miracle after another. Money for endorsements, money for films, money from recording companies. The amount of money at her fingertips was too complicated to count. Intermingled with the offers of money and fame, were get well cards from movie stars, rock stars, every celebrity in the world. She felt faint. The letters swam before her. She turned with the basket and staggered to the bed. She sat down in a daze and tried to catch her breath. Her mind was spinning. She wondered if she were still delirious. She ran a hand over her forehead and felt a jolt of pain from the bruise. A shudder ran through her body. None of this would do her any good. All of this was meaningless. The magic potion was laced with poison. To drink it was to die. The road out of Black Water led to a cemetery. She felt like a genie imprisoned in a bottle. The mob was peering in at her through its rose colored glass.

14

An explosion split the propeller. Another cracked the wing. The old plane hurtled past the rock ridge, bucking through the air. Ebenezer Motley fought frantically with the levers. The crop duster began to spin. The ground flew at the cockpit. His mouth opened in a scream.

Greenleaf watched the plane nose dive into the rocks nearby. It crumpled like an accordion. The fuel tank burst into flames. He could see the piolet kick and claw at the window of the caved in cockpit trying to get out. Fire danced around him. He looked like a squirming bug.

Greenleaf’s chest rose and fell. His gaunt frame shook. Scorched air drifted to him with the wind. He waited for the explosion to erupt. There must be more dynamite in the burning plane. Greenleaf might go up with it. He was too weak to move. The earth rocked. He hurtled into a wall. A cloud of dust exploded. Rocks rained down like a storm of hail. Wooden and unmoving, he sat and stared at the mushroom as the storm came down. A mammoth crater emerged in its wake. A ball of fire blazed inside.

Slanting forward, he slid precariously from the ridge. The ridge seemed to drop like a bottomless chasm. He reached the ground below on shaky legs. Below him the jeep lay turned on its side. He moved like a sleepwalker toward it, stiff in every joint. He stared with hard eyes at the desolate desert landscape. They were closing in around him. He could see the dust trails kicking up on every side. He knew they were winding down the roads through the forests of the

mountain behind him: troop transports, squad cars, armored jeeps, an army of men, machinery, guns and dogs. He sat down heavily on a flat cold rock. He ran his hands through his blood tangled hair, his dark eyes were closed, his head was bowed. Dead men howled like banshees in the black fog of his brain, bodies mangled and bleeding on a battlefield of blood. Men he killed in a rampage of fear and rage. He shuddered as he pictured them: the grotesque tangle of

mangled men lying trampled on the desert floor as they swarmed the jeep. Greenleaf had left something of himself back there with them on the battlefield. It would haunt a common grave with the men who died by his hand. What he felt was the hollowness of living death. He was a monster now, no longer a man. He had lost his soul to save his skin.

He could hear motors in the distance. Or was that in his mind? They must be close. Minutes away.

Half man, half shadow, he rose ghost-like from the rock. He staggered toward the toppled jeep a phantom in a nightmare which would not stop. He wanted only one more thing to do with life. He wanted to kill the girl . He wanted her scalp. She was responsible for all of this. Her greed and her betrayal had broken all their lives.

He pulled off his greatcoat and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. He took a crowbar from the back of the jeep and set it atop the upturned wheel. The sun was setting in a final hellish glow. Night was coming on. The winds were raw and wild.

With a strength beyond the strength of his body, for he had no strength left now, Greenleaf began to pull with the crowbar at each lug nut on the wheel rim straining to yank each off in turn. His back was bowed and his arms were trembling. Pain shot from the pads of his hands to his shoulder blades. His heart was pounding. His eyes were black with fury. He gripped the frost cold crow bar tightly. It was like wrestling the devil for the staff of life. The first broke free.

He moved to the others, stunned, spent, stupefied. He was soaked with sweat, his breathing was heated with fury. The battle continued. He’d win it or he’d die. Each nut was as bad as the last. The cords of his wrists and forearms felt like they would snap. His back was breaking.

Finally he was finished. He stood swaying in the dark. He could see the headlights of the armies coming at him. Bright dots in the distance moving through the desert and down the mountain. They made him dizzy. With his last agonized effort he slowly stripped off all his

clothes. Breathless and sweating he stood naked in the night.

The door flew open. Clem watched his brother Chester stagger into the room. Half asleep, Clem was seated loosely on a tall metal stool behind the cluttered motel office counter, arms hanging at his sides. Under the hawkish yellow lights, his brother looked like nothing so much as a wayward desert ghoul. Chester’s hair and jacket, even his black tangled beard, were caked with blood. There were burn marks on his face and hands. His clothes were blackened by smoke. His arm was broken. It dangled and swung as he lurched toward him and fell forward.

“Help me Clem!

Chester clung to the counter like a downing man a raft’s edge. His head was bowed and his body trembled. There were tears in his eyes. His crusted mouth was drooling.

“I’m hurt bad Clem! They durn near killed me!”

The pale clerk rose slowly , adjusting his glasses. His brother’s eyes were wild, filled with

fear and panic. He saw no open wounds or lacerations.

Outside in the crowded hall Castle tried to stop an intern who was passing. The intern waved him off. He stopped a nurse and asked if there was a space set off for the less severely wounded. She shrugged and told him to ask the lobby desk. Lost in a maze they looked up and down the hall. The throngs pressed around them. They looked for a lobby sign. Taller and more observant, Blade spotted Stragger over the crush of rushing men and women. Mean-faced, menacing in his bandit moustache, Stragger stood at the end of the hall waving his arm at them over the bobbing heads. Stragger’s hand made a fish-like diving motion. Blade gave him a high thumbs up. Castle came out of his reverie. He studied Blade’s vertically extended arm. Blade told him Stragger would meet them in the basement. Castle made no response.

The lobby was jammed– the crush even greater than it was in the halls. Police, reporters, families, lawyers, priests and politicians were packed in the drably painted and carpeted entrance hall. Security was turning hordes away at the doors. Security radios squawked everywhere in the din. Castle told Blade to wait by the stairs. He slipped away like a shadow. Blade watched his ghost head disappear in the crowds. He spotted Castle phoning from the lobby desk. Castle talked briefly to the receptionist. He was writing something down. Blade looked at his watch. It was five o’clock. He hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He hadn’t slept for days. He wanted to get away for a few hours, have a drink, call his wife. He wondered what Stragger wanted. The frantic way he waved at them meant something was going on. He hoped the meeting wouldn’t last all night.

Black winds blew across the Badlands as the red Dodge roared down the road, howling across the darkness like tormented ghosts. The chinless boy sat slumped beside her in the passenger seat. Blood flowed from his throat, covering his shirt. His body swayed with the pitch of the car. His dead eyes stared blankly into space.

There was blood on the steering wheel, blood on the inside windshield, spots of blood on her coat. The handle of the plastic knife stuck out from his neck at a crazy angle. When she climbed in the car, she sprayed his eyes with the canister of pepper spray she lifted from the belt of the guard. When the boy’s hands went to his face, she broke the tip off the brittle knife and plunged the shard into his throat.

Her heart was racing, she held the pedal to the floor. The clock on the dash read 5:02. The speedometer 110. She steered with one hand, ate the old woman’s sandwich with the other. The car snaked back and forth. She felt like a ghost in a dream. A shadow on the loose with no one to cast it. Her life was snatched away. She no longer controlled it. What she faced now was even worse than before. The funeral pyre she made was for herself no other. She was as dead as the roadhouse ashes. Her dreams were dead. Her escape from Black Water ended. There was no way out. There was hell, forever. Don’t freak! She told herself. Don’t lose it! Suddenly she knew. She remembered the chinless boy beside her in the ambulance., the blood between her legs. The devil’s spawn was dead. She had a miscarriage. She was free from that curse at least. There were no tears of relief in her eyes, although she felt like crying for the first time in years. Children cried. She had never been a child. Her father made her a woman when she was seven. The roadhouse men made her ancient, seasoned beyond all earthly years with the practice and knowledge of sin. There was nothing she hadn’t done with them. Nothing they hadn’t made her do. There was no role she hadn’t played, no costume she had not worn, no fantasy she hadn’t assumed. She was a sphinx in the riddles of her secret knowledge about men and life and the dark side of the moon.

She slammed on the brakes and turned the wheel. The Dodge spun and swerved and fishtailed in the driveway. It slid to a stop next to a yawning pit, an open grave in the valley hazed with fog. She pushed the boy away and reached for the glove compartment. Her hand was shaking as she found a flashlight. She slipped from the car and limped through the cold.

Mists shrouded the deepening shadows of the gusty wind torn night. The desert air was heavy with the smells of dampened earth and rock. The gusts cut through her body like sharpened blades of ice. She tried to bundle the coat around her but it fluttered from her hands. She shined the beam on the pit of rubble which had once been her home. The empty space was eerie, a black-hole in the night.

She searched the ground for the drainage hole. Without the house to mark it off it was hard to find. Fire, flashers, wailing sirens was what remained in her mind. She recalled the gunman she saw below her in the parking lot cursing and kicking the ground and calling for his friend.

The Indian was out there with him in the car. Maybe Tonto killed the gunman and took his weapons? She found the hole and dropped to her knees. The wind almost knocked her down. She removed the rock and pulled out the black velvet bag. Her hair tossed with the gusts as she seated herself at the pit edge, bare legs dangling over the side.

It was her grandmother’s bag. She should never have taken it, but a girl with a gunny sack would have drawn attention on a train. She was going to drop Tonto off at the Ringo station, get a ticket to Saint Louis or Chicago, never to be seen or heard of again. They would have blamed her disappearance on the Indian, assumed he killed her and dropped her body down a hole. The brass buckles and trim were filled with her fingerprints. The bag held momentums of her past. She pulled out her grandmother’s locket and a photograph of her mother in an oval frame. She shined the light on the faces, her hand shaking as she shivered in the cold. She didn’t have time to pack them. She was surprised by the gunman she torched. They were the last things she grabbed before she jumped to the window. She couldn’t leave them behind.

She looked like the woman in the pictures, both great beauties in their time. The roadhouse was handed down through these women. It was built in the gold mining days. It was a place locked into the past. It was a grand house before her father married her mother and let it fall to decay. He sold the land piecemeal, sold the antiques, lived his drunken useless life. He probably would have sold her too, eventually, if she didn’t beat him to it and started selling herself. She protected herself with her clients. She couldn’t with her father. He would grab her suddenly and throw her down. She lifted her eyes from the pictures to the rubble and remembered her life, a life she hoped to bury in ashes, the toppled stairways piled in half burned heaps like the ruins of a nightmare she had somehow survived. In that nightmare she lived a ghost’s dream life. Her world was a make believe with the roadhouse past, the ghosts of the gamblers and the painted women, the gold men and the con men who had struck it rich, many of whom built Black Water. Their descendants were the town’s ruling class. She found them in albums and photographs in the chests in the attic stored with the antique clothes. She had a make believe lover, handsome and dashing, a rogue who fought duels and turned the ladies’ heads. Someday he would come to her rescue, she pretended, like magic he would emerge from the mirror. He would take her away from the roadhouse. Sometimes she really saw him, she wished him so bad. She had no friends, no playmates, no one to be with, nowhere to turn. Her father dressed her in rags after her mother died, old clothes found in the chests. He didn’t have to, he just wanted to keep her to himself, mess with her head. Scrawny and disheveled, she was a misfit at school with her outlandish dresses. Everyone made fun of her. Her schoolmates called her Ditzy Foul instead of Desert Flower, and then finally just FREAK. “ FREAKY’S coming! Here comes FREAK!” That was their nickname for her. The teachers were no better. They thought her clumsy and retarded, they treated her like trash. Didn’t they notice her bruises? The fear in her eyes? The loneliness she always felt? This was all through grade school. Everything changed in highschool, however. She began to blossom. She became a beauty. She had money for clothes. She was selling herself. She got it off the men. Her schoolmates treated her like a treasure. But she had their number. She knew the lowdown by then, she recorded her rap sheet on the world. They forgot about their cruelty, she didn’t. At the drop of a hat it could come back again.

She put the locket and photograph in her pocket. She tossed the bag on the pile of ash. Her mother was buried in the floor of the cellar. Her mother hung herself when she was ten. Seven years, she was a skeleton by now. She found the body dangling from a beam in the basement and showed her father. Her father told the town she ran off with a salesman. That was his explanation for why she disappeared.

She rose and braced herself. The wind tried to push her down. She pulled the shawl from her pocket and tied her hair in a tumble on her head. She pulled the raincoat around her. The icy cold whipped at her shivering bare legs. It stung like her father’s strap. She picked up the gunny sack and moved to the edge of the pit. She gazed for the last time at the black hole of her life.

17

Blade looked at his watch. He searched the lobby for Castle. The white haired agent emerged from the crowd studying a slip of paper. Blade’s stomach was growling. He asked Castle what was up.

“I have a list of the wounded who were treated and released.” Castle said, grimly. “I’ll call them later for the report.”

“Try the nearest bar.” Blade offered. “That’s where I’d be if I were them.”

Or between the sheets with my wife, he mused, with a blanket over my head.

Throngs were struggling up the staircase. It was empty going down. Castle and Blade descended. Both men balked at the waiting cellar door. Castle keyed them in. They moved reluctantly through the dank and dingy halls, bracing themselves as they turned this way and that around barrels, and boxes and bins filled with trash. They emerged in an open graveyard. Corpses lined the dripping walls. Thirty sheet covered bodies floated ghost-like on transport stretchers outside the hospital’s tiny morgue. Ten more lay in drawers within, all the morgue could hold. Teams of undertakers drifted in and out to meet with the families and take the remains away. New bodies took their place brought down from the wards upstairs.

A hallway spit off to a service elevator, another to the laundry room. The agents ducked under a dripping water pipe and entered a boiler room. Stragger was waiting for them. He sat slumped in a folding chair, a cigarette dangled from his mouth. His feet were stretched out on the table. He didn’t bother to look up.

“What’s that?”

Castle looked down at the guns. They were lying atop a pile of papers between an ash tray, cups, a coffee pot. The two hands guns were scorched by fire. There was a tiny crucifix lying next to them, twisted and dark.

“Burnt offerings.”

Stragger snarled. His arms were folded. His bandit mustache formed a scowl, smoke streamed from his nostrils. He stared starkly at his boots.

“Clues from the crypt. Tips from the tomb. Big blows from the beyond.”

Castle and Blade sat across from him, lifting and adjusting the metal chairs. Blade fanned at the smoke and eyed the obnoxious boots. Stragger glanced indifferently at him. There was an edgy expression on his sallow countenance.

“That one,” Stragger kicked at the big gun, a 45. “Belonged to the scalped deputy Camby. I checked it out. The automatic we can’t identify, yet. But you can bet that it’s been around.”

Stragger looked beat. But they were all burnt out by their short time in Black Water. No sleep. No stop. Calamity after catastrophe. Three agents dead. Nothing making sense. Stragger’s field jacket, jeans, his black curly hair, even his scuffed up boots were covered with ash.

“I took those off a charcoal broiled corpse this morning buried in the rubble of the roadhouse cellar.” Stragger continued. “ The automatic I had to pry from the crispy creature’s hand. There was a hole in his head the same size as a slug. Looks like he blew his brains out when he got trapped by the fire.”

They sat huddled around a paper cluttered card table in a mechanical room in a remote wing of the basement. The offices upstairs were being used for patients. Tanks with gauges and dials loomed around them in the dreary light which flickered from oversized ceiling bulbs switched on and off by hanging chains. Oil stains and cigarette butts covered the cracked cement floor.

“Maybe the man you found helped the Indian escape?” Castle pondered. A problem yet to be solved. He sat slumped forward, his elbows on the table, his slender hands folded together, fingers cradled in his frozen face. “Or maybe the Indian called him from the road and arranged a meet.”

“Maybe he was in on the heist.” Blade shifted his bulk, too big for the chair. “Maybe they got into it, fought over the gun.”

“Lot of maybe’s.” Stragger snorted. “I think our barbequed buddy copped a Kevorkian, whoever he was. Check the face when you get a chance. A blackened blob with flying saucer eyes. A frozen howl for a mouth.” Stragger pulled his feet off the table angrily, leaned forward and stubbed out his cigarette. He poured himself a cup of coffee from the pot.

“I’ll pass on that momentarily.” Castle ran his fingers through his ghost white hair. He spoke mechanically, his mind a blank. There was something beyond the pale about all this. He needed a good night’s sleep. He couldn’t sort it out. He confronted a mystery much larger than the crime. A whole bigger than the sum of its parts. “Blade and I have seen enough bodies today.” He said, woodenly. He recalled the stark staring eyes, faces blue with asphyxiation, purple tongues hanging out.

“Maybe the girl called a meet?” Stragger tightened his jaw and said gruffly. His movements were agitated. “ Maybe the girl was in on the heist? Maybe the girl sprang the Indian? The girl seems to be everywhere and anywhere, a part of everything and a part of nothing.” Stragger glared at his cup. The girl was eating away at the back of his mind. “What else we got on her?”

Castle and Blade glanced at one another. The girl was a problem. She kept popping up like Stragger said. Somehow this bothered all of them, why they couldn’t say.

“We found her finger prints in the Indian’s hide out, an old shack near the woods. Cardinelli matched them off the window sill with the compact we got from the nurse. The tools Cole found on the Mexican’s bodies were traced to a hardware store in Black Water. These tools were charged to the roadhouse account. Two people swear they saw the girl and the Indian together in a bar in Black Water on the morning of the crime. A couple of dubious witnesses, but not when you start to add everything up. On top of that there’s gossip, the girl and the roadhouse men. The paramedic and at least one of the nurses thinks the girl had a miscarriage when they brought her in. There’s nothing official about that on the medical report. The tools weren’t used incidently. They were still in mint condition. Someone had to unlock those roadhouse doors. Add to that the mystery of the Indian’s Houdini escape. Why would he go back to the roadhouse? Why would he take the girl?”

Castle ticked these off mechanically staring into space. Maybe the Indian and the girl were an item. They were all thinking that. It wouldn’t be the first time. Good girl, bad boy. They’d all seen it enough times before. They had enough to link her up with the robbery. But the robbery didn’t begin to explain everything.

“I smell mob.”

Stragger lit another cigarette. His eyes flicked in Blade’s direction. Blade smiled. His big hand began to fan the smoke away.

“That roadhouse robbery was a hit.”

Stragger was an assassin, now a bit too old for the game. He made an indifferent investigator. His hunches were never wrong.

“Maybe.” Blade conceded. “ I was kinda thinking the same. There was always something jive about that robbery, something funky about the scene.”

The business men who got killed in the robbery got them wondering from the start. They didn’t have criminal records but they were involved in shady things.

“It’s not that simple.” Castle rubbed his forehead. “Although my thoughts were going that way. We all agree the robbery is the tip of some iceberg. But who, and why, for what?”

“Drugs, money, territory, payback.” Stragger shrugged. “That arsenal the Indian came up with ... these bodies turning up ... the shootout at Widow’s Pass between the Caddy and the chopper ... something’s going on ... Look, the Caddy had Chicago plates, untraceable plates, what’s to make of that?”

“Too bad the body went when the car caught fire.”

“Too bad the driver got away.”

“Dental records take forever. If there’s a war going on we’re pressed for time.”

“We may have got lucky.” Stragger scowled. He stared at his empty cup. “I’ve got these motel yokels on ice at the station. They’re making sketches of some shady tenants stayed there the night of the fire. We’re dusting the room they rented for prints. I scraped some blood off this one yahoo’s jacket. This is a long shot, a hail Mary hunch, I want to see if I can match it with the Caddy corpse through DNA.”

“Interesting.” Castle whistled.

“We’ll see about that soon enough.”

“Did you hear about the plane?” Blade turned to Stragger.

“Been digging through the ashes of a cellar all day.”

“Some Nazi nuthead tried to bomb the Indian. Crashed into the rocks below Pine Ridge. Barnstorming crop duster. Local looney. Swastika’s painted all over the wings.”

“I know where that takes us,” Stragger spat out more smoke, “another maybe. Maybe we’re looking paramilitary? Maybe the roadhouse was a meeting place for white supremacists? Maybe there was retaliation by Pine Ridge Indian radicals? Maybe these business men were supplying funds?”

“We can’t rule any of that out.” Castle shook his head. His voice was a weary complaint. “Not around here.

Not at this stage. Pine Ridge has a reputation as a hotbed. There’s plenty of kooks in the hills. The men you took in could fit that play.”

“I still go mob.” Stragger narrowed his snipers eyes. “Gambling, drugs.”

Castle shuffled through the pile of papers on the table. He pulled out a map. Circles were drawn around South Dakota casino sites. Gambling was legal in Deadwood and on numerous Indian reservations, including Pine ridge. These were casinos for the tourists. The tables had a five dollar maximum bet limit. This was not Las Vegas. The stakes and the take were never high.

“The Black Hills have casinos but its small money play. These are resorts for tourists. Snowmobilers, horseback riders, middle class vacationers buying Indian beads. There’s illegal

gambling all over the Badlands. But it’s nickel and dime. We’ve never had a problem with any of this before.”

“Maybe someone’s trying to up the ante?” Blade speculated. “High stakes games Las Vegas style. Hookers, drugs. Big time play.”

“Any machines at that roadhouse?’ Castle asked Stragger.

“Nothing like that.”

“Card tables and fortune wheels would have gone up in smoke.”

“Casino wars? Drug wars? Race wars? What are we left with?” Blade looked at his colleagues.

“Any of the above, or a combination thereof.” Castle shuddered. “We need more funds, more men. I have to get this report done.”

“Any word from the Eye? Be nice to talk to that Indian.”

“It’s set up, that’s all. A closed circle with a ring of lights. The Indian’s in it somewhere. The troops are moving in.”

“They’ll kill the Indian, or he’ll kill himself. We won’t get anything from him.”

“Then we better talk to that girl.”

“Talk to her tonight.”

“Let me make these calls first.”

Castle pulled out his list.

“I’ll eat and change.” Stragger stubbed out his cigarette. “ Formal attire?”

“Wear what you like.”

“That snazzy purple polyester ensemble should do.”

“It’s lavender.” Stragger stared at Blade. “And it’s silk.”

“The girl is in on it?” Castle interrupted impatiently. “Or at least the evidence is provocative?”

“The evidence speaks for itself.”

“We can charge her now.”

“We’re going to catch a lot of flack from the media.”

Stragger shook his scowling face.

“We’re going to be the bad guys, that’s for sure.” Blade conceded. “ She’s the darling of the world.”

“We can’t let any of that bother us.” Castle’s stark eyes stared at them coldly. “We have sixty dead men since this whole thing started. Dozens wounded. More dying. We have get to the bottom of this. I don’t care what comes up or out in the process. We have to go where this takes us. Wherever that is.”

18

“Blood.”

The demon whispered.

Cole’s heart began to pound.

“Who’s blood?”

“Yours.”

“When?

“Now.”

“Who are you?”

The demon pushed him. Cole fell through the sky, hurtling headlong from the top of the Sacred Mountain, dropping toward the ring of lights which formed the outline of the Eye. The Nazi plane burned below him in the darkness – its flames were the fires of Hell. Ghost shapes shifted between the rocks around the flickering flame shadows. They were the souls of the massacred men Cole caused to die.

Cole awoke with a start covered with sweat. Mists shrouded the idling jeep. Fog covered the jutting rocks. The mile wide ring of lights circled round them like a ghost snake. The blazing plane flared in the center of the dragnet flickering at the cosmos through the hazy nimbus. The Devils Eye, the eye of the demon, Cole gazed at the Indian mantrap and shuddered. He felt sick, feverish. Was he awake? He wondered. Or was this another nightmare?

He leaned forward with a grunt and threw the heater on high. The winds howled across the rocks like souls in torment. Tate sat beside him twitching in his sleep. His long legs were cramped beneath the steering wheel, his hand reached spasmodically toward the revolver in his holster. Tate was trapped in bad dreams too. An hour ago, they ate, washed, changed clothes in an army truck. The cook slipped them a pint of whiskey. They slept like two men struck dead. They dreamed of devils and phantom Indians. Cole felt the blade of a knife at his scalp more than once. He sensed the Indian sneaking up behind them in his dreams, slipping through the darkness.

He turned with a shudder and looked nervously in the back seat. He was too old for this. He

brooded, feeling foolish. He was just a shaky old man. The last few days had aged him. The burning plane fuel, the blazing insecticide, filled the Eye with poison. It gave him a headache -- venom from the ghost snake inflaming his lungs, fogging his senses. There was a drink left in the bottle. Cole swallowed in down. He grabbed the night binoculars the army gave them off the dash. He adjusted the lenses and peered into the blackness. Suddenly the foothills were filled with ghosts. Hundreds of phantom creatures prowled the staggered ridges. They looked like dream walkers on an alien planet, each shrouded in a greenish glow. The military moon-men wore full combat gear. Bloodhounds ran between the freakish figures, demon ciphers spiriting up and down the hills. Cole hadn’t used such lenses since Vietnam. Tonight the vistas they revealed seemed particularly ghoulish. The Sacred Mountain, The Devil’s Eye, the ghost men and the phantom Indian, the swirling mists, chilled his soul. He thought about the ghost dance at Wounded Knee, the Indians calling on the spirits to ward off the white men. This was Indian territory, sacred ground. He shuddered with guilt over the way his forefathers had treated the Indians, murdered them like dogs. There was always slaughter, the unleashed savage lurking deep inside everyone. The strong preying on the weak. Was that what scared him? Was that why he became a peace officer? To control himself? Did he feel it in him, the blood lust deep within? Vietnam, Cole brooded. War and law enforcement had been his life. Somehow despite them he raised a family. Had he won for his family a better life? Hardly, Cole brooded. Things were worse. Crime, murder, decay were everywhere, moral, social, spiritual. It was like the fall of Rome, the collapse of the country, you could see the signs. Halfway across the world 2 million people had been driven from their homes, killed, tortured, put in camps. “Ethic cleansing,” in a modern society in this day and age, just like the Nazis done to the Jews in the year he was born. Nothing had changed, nobody cared. The world was a cesspool, getting dirtier by the day. Cole wished he were home with his wife. He wished he were in a church, safe, clean, quiet, at peace.

“How’s the death watch going?”

Tate was awake. He untangled his long body and sat up.

“Something’s out there, Ben.”

Cole spotted a greenish apparition beneath a rock.

“Might be a snake. Might be a man’s leg.”

Tate reached for his field glasses and studied the dreamworld.

“To the right of the bonfire, Ben, just up the ridge.”

Suddenly there was gunfire. The ghost men were running. The spirit dogs were chasing something up and down the hills.

The red Dodge raced like a demon through the darkness.

The dead boy rocked and the raw winds wailed.

The reservation road was shrouded in fog.

Wild grass waved like a stormy sea on either side.

She gripped the wheel and fought the ruts.

The clock on the dash showed half past five.

Scattered through the hills, the long oblong Indian bungalows emerged in the mist, their dim lights ghostly amidst the cover of fog.

The narrow row ended.

She killed the headlights and coasted into the drive.

The tumble down structure was crowded with pickup trucks and cars.

BAD BRAVES BAR was ablaze with lights.

She slipped from the car and ran toward the tavern. Her heart pounded. Her eyes were glazed with fright.

Bits of broken glass littered the gravel, bottles, bags, scraps of debris. Beyond the shack, the claptrap reservation houses lay sprawled in a junk-heap of rusted cars, appliances, and discarded TVs.

Not a soul was in sight. She peered through the window. Inside the shack, Indian men dressed in jeans and flannel shirts drank and gambled and played the jukebox. Indian women in gaudy dresses, costume jewelry, painted up like party hookers, danced and flirted and reeled around the room. She dropped to her knees and pulled the jimmy from her coat – a crowbar she took from the trunk of the old red Dodge. She pried loose a board from the base of the tavern. She squirmed along the ground and slipped inside. The floor shuddered above her as she crawled on her belly through the cubbyhole. She heard shouts, laughter, feet pounding over her head. Rats scurried across the moist earth as she waved the flashlight beam. She pulled herself along toward the piling in the center of the crawlspace, one elbow at a time. Pain shot through her ankle as she pushed her body forward. Her head was throbbing. The crawlspace smelled of sewage, rodents, urine, beer.

19

“Watch the road! God Damn it!” Corso rocked and cursed. The limousine bounced and swerved and straightened with a jolt. “I got a blind driver, Rocco, playing pooch and pal on a dead man’s road! Quit fucking around with that dog, Big Hands, you’re getting on my nerves!”

“Rambo’s hungry boss.” Big Hands patted the monster dog riding shotgun next to him in the stretched Cadillac. “Rambo needs his food. Rambo’s a big boy. He got a big job to do.” Big Hands fed the monster

Shepard pieces of steak from a paper bag, steering with his elbow as he reached inside. “Rambo’s my new buddy. We get along real good.”

“Rambo’s gonna eat a bullet, he barfs in my car.” Corso straightened his tie and tried to smooth out his suit which was getting creased and rumpled from the endless drive. He found a stain on his shirt from the drink he spilled. He laid his scotch on the bar and soaked a napkin in soda water.

“Rambo don’t barf boss.” Big Hands smiled back at Corso through the rear view mirror. “Rambo’s a cop. Rambo’s the most decorated dope sniffer they got on the force.”

“Rambo can sniff his ass.” Corso fumed, as he rubbed the stain. “Or sniff your head. That’s dopey enough. Smells the same.” He was going crazy. This was worse than Stir, the endless miles of endless nothing, flat-lands, farmlands, pasture-lands, no man’s lands, when they reached the Badlands the scenery went berserk.

“Like cops don’t barf.” Corso muttered. “Like cops ain’t slobs. Like they don’t call them pigs. Like they don’t eat donuts all day and puke up the town.”

The moonscape hurtled past, ridges and gorges and craters and spires, prehistoric rock mounds which went on forever, shrouded in fog. His brother must be crazy. Corso brooded. A casino out here? For who? Vampires? Were they still on the planet earth? Something didn’t jive. This was a dummy set up, that’s all. Marco was ripping him off. Or it was a set up by a dummy. Marco flying back and forth from Chicago to South Dakota in his piper jet. This dude ranch shit was going to stop. He’d take care of that DUD ranch. He’d take care of them all.

“Put on the radio for Christ’s sake! It’s like the last ride in here!”

“Nothin’ but static boss. You want a CD?”

“No I want you to sing! You and the dog! I want a duet from you two. Things aren’t gruesome enough.”

“Tony? Frankie? Deano? Marilyn Manson?

“Who?”

“It’s right here boss.”

“Give me that fucking thing! What the fuck is this? Who’s this freak? It’s a guy in drag! The punk who parks my car! I’ll bet its his! He’s in for it now! Probably screws his bimbo in here! Parties off my bar! Put that back Big Hands. That’s punk’s gonna eat that for lunch. Punk kids! They’re everywhere! Fucking up my life!”

“Kids ain’t what we was when we was coming up boss.”

“Shut the fuck up. What are you reading Rocco?”

Corso eyed the little man sitting bolt upright across from him, a newspaper spread out on his lap.

“Obituaries Sal.”

“Read something else.”

“Sure one sec. Vito Marzullo’s kid, Guido, it’s in here. I hear they Waked him real nice.”

“How sweet. My heart is melting. Fucking punk! May he rest in hell! Putting me through this shit. I’d like to dig him up and kill him again! Wait till I get my hands on his roadhouse girlfriend, that little bitch! They probably rigged the whole thing up together, only he ain’t cashing in! She ain’t either! When I get done with that bitch she’ll wish she was dead.”

“Says here, she got a lot of movie offers, Sal. Ad stuff too. Hollywood’s real hot for her. She can pick and choose.”

“We’re all hot for her, only my heats hotter . I got a film for her to star in. This role she can’t refuse. I wrote it myself. It was inspired by this drive. We’ll see if she finds the part I wrote for her something to cheer about. The movie is Goldilocks and the Chicago Bears. It’s all about a pompon girl who loses her bet with a football team and how the boys collect. We’ll shoot it at Marco’s Dud ranch. It ought to make a nice porno set. We’ll get Marco’s bimbos and bouncers to fill in the cast. I got to make sure my little cheerleader gets to use all her talents for shouting and screaming and hopping around. Since I’m the director you can bet that happens. They’ll be spankings and beatings and orgies and gang-bangs. We’ll even use Rambo in a sequence as the leading man. Hear that big fella? Got a treat for you! As soon as we’re finished we’ll start on the sequel.”

“I think we’re here boss.”

The cyclone fence broke for a wide timber-rail gate. Big Hands slowed the black limo and eased into the drive. An arch of wrought iron letters curved over the entrance. MARCO’S was stenciled in the fog. Two cowboys with side-guns appeared from the mist. One faced them, arms folded, feet spread apart. The second held his hand over his holster and walked to the car. Big Hands rolled down the window. Rambo let out a growl.

“Evening, gents.” The cowboy leaned forward and tipped his ten-gallon hat. “One hell of a bad night. May I see your invitations. Some dog you got there friend. Hope he don’t bite.”

“No trouble at all.” Big Hands smiled. “Don’t worry about Rambo, he just et a snack. Got my invite right here, Cowboy. It’s pointed at your gut.”

“False alarm, Ben.”

“ Now you see him now you don’t.”

“I see that devil in my nightmares.”

“Those boys do too.”

“They better. They know it. It’s kill or be killed.”

“They’ll kill him. They’re ready.”

“Bobcat?”

“Looks like.”

“Must be four feet long.”

Death’s coming. Cole brooded as he watched the ghost soldiers in the distance discard the riddled cat. Death’s coming Indian.

Greenleaf waited in the dark for more gunfire to erupt. His heart was pounding. He was shivering with cold. The shots hit close to his hiding place, as if the soldiers spotted him and were trying to flush him out. But silence followed. There was stillness, just the howling of the night.

He lay flat on his stomach under a crack in a rock. He listened to the movements all around him of the searchers in the night. The bloodhounds sniffed and snorted as they panted passed the hole, their snouts rooting along the ground. Now and then, some soldier’s boots would appear in the mist beyond the opening. The boots would pause, hesitate, and then move on. Greenleaf bit down hard on the leather sling he removed from his empty repeater gun -- to keep from chattering, breathing, choking on the toxic smells and attracting the keen ears of the hounds. His bare battered body was blackened with axle grease from head to foot. The thick oily gel encased him like a cocoon. If he gave off any odor for the hounds to scent, it was a gaseous petroleum smell indistinguishable from the plane’s burning gasoline and the blazing insecticide. Fear, frenzy, swirled inside his mind. It was blindman’s bluff inside the shallow crack. He could see nothing. He was a crouching, crawling bug. His other senses came alive. He heard shifting in the silence, sensed stirring in the fog. Night vision was a composite of sensory stimuli which he formed and reformed as he absorbed it in his mind. Like an imaginary spirit, a still shape hovered before the hole. Greenleaf flexed his crippled fingers. He heard a zipping sound, a spray. Beyond the opening a soldier stopped along the bluff to relieve himself. Greenleaf slid forward silently holding his breath. His wounded hands went out like tentacles into the cold night air. Greenleaf gripped the startled soldier’s legs and toppled him to the ground. He pulled and dragged the big youth underground, tugging him back by his ankles. He wrapped the sling around the soldier’s neck, pressing down with his blackened body as he fought to tighten the cord and climb across the pitching back.

It was like riding a bull. He was slammed against the enclosure sides. The blow knocked out his breath. He couldn’t hold the soldier down. He was losing his grip. He pulled at the cord. He pressed his knees into the youth’s broad back. He felt trapped inside the tight rock walls. The youth was as strong as an ox. Greenleaf pushed down hard with his knees and pulled, using the ceiling of the hole for leverage. The chord cut through his fingers. The crush was breaking his back. Strong hands reached back. His wrists were grabbed. His arms were giving out. Greenleaf clenched his teeth and strained with desperation. The powerful grip slackened. The struggling soldier was dead. Greenleaf lay panting across the youth’s broad back. The toxic insecticide filled his lungs. His heart was pounding. He struggled to control his breathing. He tried not to gag. He felt dazed and spent.

The black winds howled like desert ghouls beyond the hole. The dogs yelped in the distance. There were men’s murmurs in the night. The clatter of a helicopter. Slowly and breathlessly, he stripped the soldier of his combat gear. He lay next to the body and pulled the uniform on. His hands trembled as he opened bullet casings. He gathered the gun powder, more bullets and wrapped them in a handkerchief. There was a book of matches in the jacket pocket.

Ghost men filled the foothills. With the soldier’s night glasses, Greenleaf scanned the ragged bluffs. A Christmas tree with moving lights. He moved slowly down the jagged rocks toward the plane fire at the bottom of the hill. Trucks, jeeps, military motorcycles, and military medical vans were clustered or scattered throughout the dark. The ring of lights glittered in the distance like a necklace. The bullets he wrapped and lit began to pop. Volley fire crackled from every direction. Ghost men were running. Greenleaf stumbled past them through the mists. The soldier’s boots were too big. He faltered down the hill. A solitary figure emerged along the ridge, a big man with stripes on his jacket.

“Where you going soldier? Gunfire’s over there.”

“Not too shabby.”

“Better than what I feared. Maybe I can sell this DUD RAUNCH and get back some of my bread.”

“I’d buy it. I like it. Look boss you got stables too.”

“I’m feeding horses Rocco. The horses are shitting on the ground. I’m paying some guy with a broom to sweep the horseshit up.”

“Maybe they’re race horses boss?”

“Maybe they’re dog food. Maybe they’re glue. Maybe we give Rambo a taste. See if the cop dog approves.”

“I think Rambo likes the Cowboy boss. Look at him drool.”

The gate guard sat petrified in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. Rambo leaned over him growling in his ear.

“Forget it. No Cowboys. It’ll ruin the monster’s bark. All I need is a dope sniffer howling Yippee Ca-yoh, Ca-yay.”

“Hey Cowboy, I don’t get it. Is a dogie a cow? I never understood that.”

The limousine glided down the fog shrouded lane. The three men peered out the window. There were stables, corrals, a bunk house and a barn. The ranch house sprawled beyond these structures brilliantly lit up. It was a rambling western style home with Spanish appointments, hacienda windows and doors. Marco emerged from the mist, arms folded, feet spread apart. He glared at the limousine as it parked in front of the house. His jaw was set, his face locked in a scowl.

“Marco looks pissed.”

“Maybe his horse ain’t well. Happy trails, Sundance. Get your bow legs out of my car. Next time you see me you’ll know me and you’ll know how to act. You better mosey a little faster, I think the monster wants a chunk of your ass.”

The Cowboy leaped out. Rambo lunged at his back. Big Hands grabbed the dog’s collar and wrestled him back. The big man raced for the gate without looking back. Marco leaned over, his face was twisted with rage. He looked into the car. His dark eyes fluttered and bulged.

“What are you doing with my men! Are you out of your mind! What are you doing here? In this Mob-mobile? The county’s crawling with Feds! The whole state is on fire! Don’t you watch the news? You can’t figure things out?”

“You’re scaring the dog for Christ’s sake!” Corso shouted and slid out. “You want him to pee on my seat? We happened to be in the neighborhood! Thought we’d drop in! You talking about the gate guy? Marshall Dillon? Just getting to know the staff! Look, you got these guys so work wrangled, Marco, the poor fellow dropped his hat. Fetch the hat Rambo.”

“Forget the hat! I’ll take care of the hat! Leave the hat alone! Big Hands keep that monster in the car, I don’t want him near my guests! What the hell you bringing something like that around here anyway? What the hell are you doing here? The media is everywhere. You don’t think three black suited Italians in a limousine won’t catch someone’s eye?”

“Rambo sniffs dope.” Big Hands smiled. “He’s the best on the force.”

“He don’t bother no one Marco.” Rocco stood and straightened his stiff creaking joints. “The dog’s trained real nice. We’re movie people Marco, anyone asks. We got everything covered. No problems. Take my word.”

“Art films little brother.” Corso smiled. “Check it out. We got enough cameras in the trunk to make a new Godfather film.”

“Cop dog? Are you crazy? You brought a dope sniffer here? Are you serious? Are you nuts? I thought we settled this shit in Chicago for Christ’s sake! The Indian got the dope! His gang! The cops! There ain’t no dope on this ranch! You’re wasting your time!”

“I’m crazy all right!” Corso snorted. “Crazy for backing you with dough! Don’t worry about your Dud Raunch Marco! The only dope here is you! We know who took the blow. We know where it’s hid. I’m here to take care of business! You don’t know how!”

“You’re talking about the cheerleader!” Marco threw up his hands. “You’re still talking about that girl! This is insane! I can’t take it! We got to go inside! Pull that hearse around the back Big Hands. Keep that dog locked up! You’re gonna fuck up everything Sal. We got to sit down and talk.”

“Money talks little brother. From you I ain’t heard. Money talks, bullshit walks. From you,

I’m up to my neck! A casino in the middle of no man’s land! You had your chance. It’s over! I’m sick of this shit! I’m gonna cash in on this Dud Raunch and then I’m closing it down!”

White rage warped Marco’s face as he led them inside. Corso glared at his brother’s clothes. Suede suit, high heeled boots. Cowboy garb. He even wore a ruffled shirt, horseshoe cufflinks, a string bow tie. It got on his nerves. He wanted to kick him in the ass. Phony mother fucker. Glitz meets West. Bad mouthing his limo. He was supposed to take a Trailways bus? The two brothers looked nothing alike. Salvatore was short, burly, brute-like in his build. Marco took after his mother. He was tall, slender. He had handsome features, almost delicate. Twenty years separated them. Marco was a late born fawned over child.

“Mama mia!”

Rocco murmured.

They followed Marco into a huge glittering room resplendent with light. The ceiling had been removed. The rafters were exposed. They walked under beams and cross beams stained a lush burgundy color. The walls were white stucco. The floor was a mosaic of brightly colored porcelain tiles. Between the gaming tables and the gambling machines, Indian-blanketed lounge chairs surrounded totem-legged mosaic tables creating exotic cocktail areas. There was a huge stone tee pee shaped fireplace in the center of the casino showing a robust blaze on two sides. The tee pee was surrounded by plush curved couches, smoke drifted out from the top of the tee pee swallowed by an all but invisible ventilating fan. The walls were filled with paintings: cowboys, Indians, scenes from the west. The windows were stained glass -- fantastically patterned tribal designs copied from some visionary medicine man. The layout was dazzling. It was a church, casino, art gallery, chalet. Corso knew from the museums, galleries, auction houses, his mistress dragged him to that what he saw hanging on the walls was the real McCoy. Long horns, Indian hangings, white buffalo heads completed the extravagant

Casino’s dream of the west.

“Is that a Remington?”

Corso glared at a black wrought iron sculpture on a pedestal depicting a cowboy on a bucking horse.

“You know Remington?”

Marco frowned. He led them past the roulette tables to a posh bar in the corner.

“Yeah I know Remington. I know a lot of useless shit. Is there a lecture? Are we tardy? Gee, I hope we didn’t miss it!”

“Ufer, Bauman, Proctor, Berninghaus, we got all the great western artists here. Most of it’s on consignment,

just like they do now in Vegas.”

“Most of it? You mean you bought some of this crap? You paid my seed money to hang up this shit? Rocco I’m breeding horses ! I’m buying art! I’m a country gentleman! I’m Ralph Lauren!”

They sat at a table in a corner across from the bar, a shrine to High Western opulence, sparkling crystal, Spanish mirrors. Marco signaled a statuesque waitress, a Nordic looking blonde dressed in stripper cowgirl attire. Her spiked boots clicked along the tiles, sensuous flesh shimmering in brilliant light. The room was filled with these stunning beauties. At least Marco got that right. Ride ‘em cowboy. Saddle up. Corso thought about his artsy dancer mistress. Those long powerful legs wrapped around his back. God could she fuck. He glared around the room at the empty gaming tables, quiet machines, the loafing staff. There were no more than a dozen customers in the dazzling house. Cowboy bouncers played poker in a corner. The dealers and the hookers sipped drinks at a bar. Show time gang. Corso fumed as he watched. Get ready for one no holds barred porn movie. You clowns have been rehearsing together on my money long enough.

“What’s your pleasure gentlemen?

Hat pushed back, the cowgirl leaned her bountiful breasts between them, elbows on the table, order pad in hand. A fantasy of flesh and perfume who didn’t have to ask.

“A little ammo for your guns, guys?”

“Just bring us a bottle of Scotch.” Marco waved her away. “Glasses and ice.”

“ Yeah, save the sex talk for the script blondie. We can use it in the shoot.”

Rocco watched the curvy cowgirl wiggle away in her spiked spurred boots.

“You can’t stay here, Sal.” Marco’s face was a fury of frustration. “You shouldn’t have come. The whole state is up for grabs. There’ s reporters everywhere. Feds, law, media. “Someone’s gonna spot you, follow you, start poking around. This place is secret, protected. That can only go so far.”

“I can see that it’s secret.” Corso sneered as he looked around. “ Maybe you ought to tell someone. Maybe you could make a little money. Maybe you could pay me something back. I got a million dollars tied in this place. I walk in and find it empty, like my pockets. That ain’t the way I’m walking out.”

“Don’t worry about your money, for Christ’s sake. You’ll get it back in spades. We got bankers, cattlemen, businessmen, their clients, politicians, high rollers, more customers each day. Everyone’s laying low because of this Indian thing. They’ll be back when its over and the Feds are gone. It’s an exclusive establishment, Sal. A gaming place for the high and mighty. You’re gonna kill it if you fuck around.”

“It looks pretty dead now, little brother. Maybe it’s too exclusive. Maybe it ain’t ever gonna

work. Maybe pony rides and cowboy art ain’t the biggest draw in town. Maybe I don’t think it’s worth the trouble to find out. You got a lavish joint here Marco, but that ain’t what draws a crowd. If I knew this was the set up, I would have stopped it long ago. Quick and dirty little brother, nickel and dime, anyone with anything resembling money anytime. You move the junkies, juicers, addicts, johns, in and out through a revolving door. You keep it cheap, and you keep it portable. I know that sounds South Side, but there ain’t no other way to run an illegal gambling house. You can’t trust no one in a set up like this. Anyone can sell you out. I don’t know who else put a bundle in this joint, but it looks like you borrowed plenty and probably on my name. All that tells me is if you manage to pay me back it’s on a forever maybe never cash flow basis.”

“This ain’t no trash joint, Sal.” Marco’s face was tight. “Like fine wine its gotta age. A deal like this takes time, finesse.”

“Oh, fine ass!” Corso looked at Rocco. “My ass ain’t fine enough! Excuse me for soiling this chair! Things gotta age! I missed the point! Whose age? What age? His age?” Corso waved at Rocco. “I’m waiting for my fine ass to be tucked by one of your blondes into a pair mink Depends? You think you got class, little brother, and I ain’t, so I don’t know what I’m talking about! Excuse me, but I carved out a neighborhood in gangland Chicago. The toughest town on earth. I didn’t do it with class. I did it through fear, and brains. If you ain’t got no brains little brother school is out. In other words class is over. Pay attention. We’re going to graduate to something else. I’m going to cash in on this joint my way and big time. You and your crew are in on it whether you like it or not. We’re going to make a movie here with the hottest little star around. We’re producing a million copies at forty dollars a pop. If the bitch survives the role we’ll shoot a sequel. After that it’s the promenade for our little movie queen, the catcalls and whistles. She’ll be a star all right, in my strip joint in Cicero.”

20

The town dropped into night. Black Water, the world, her mind, her soul were all buried in a bottomless night. She eased the red Dodge into the hospital lot. Dark figures stood clustered in the mist around the lamp- lit loading dock: reporters, police, the families of the dead – the same congregation she slipped through an hour before. She pulled the chinless boy’s blue parka around her as she ran. The hood covered her golden hair, the long coat fluttered around her legs. The boy’s blood stains were smeared over with dirt and mud. The old brick building was shrouded in fog.

It had been half past six by the clock on the dash. She slipped into the huddle. The crowds parted for the procession. The family followed the undertaker. She walked solemnly with them. Her heart raced as they crowded together in the elevator and descended to the basement. Another family met them, mirrored them, as they stepped into the hall. Black suits, bowed heads, a corpse going up on a transport stretcher. As they jostled and shuffled she slipped away. She limped quickly down the hallway. She passed the morgue with its row of dead. The basement seemed a labyrinth, lost lanes, signs everywhere. Three men emerged from a room. One wore an FBI jacket. She ducked behind a dripping pipe and watched them as they walked slowly past. They talked in whispers. She held her breath. The investigators unnerved her as they shuffled past.

“Eight o’clock. Get there on time.”

“Do we have enough to charge her?”

“As a material witness, yes.”

“That’s just for starters.”

“We’ll break her down.”

“They’ll try to block us.”

“They can’t block a court order.”

“We should have a warrant.”

“We’ll have one tomorrow. That won’t be a problem.”

“Aiding and abetting. That won’t be too bad. Given the results. She’d be smart to confess. Twenty years at most. The judge will be sympathetic. Her youth, her looks.”

“Unless they give her the gas.”

She edged down the hall as the three men turned the corner. She studied a staircase, hesitated, and then moved to another. She had the dead boy’s key card which she took from his wallet. She dumped his body in a hole on her way back through the desert. She slipped out of the parka and stuffed the coat in the trash. She covered it with garbage which she lifted from another bin. She found her door. She climbed the stairs. She peeked through the crack. It was the psycho ward hall. Her room was directly across. The nurses at the desk had their backs to her. The security guard was talking on the phone. His hand was bandaged.

She slipped across the hall, a flash darting through the door. Her heart stopped as she raced inside. Her knees buckled. A gangster in a black mask was waiting in the room. The gangster

looked at her and smiled. She clutched dizzily at the dresser.

“You’re in trouble sleeping beauty.”

Her head reeled. She stood in a swoon. It was like the reporters with their flashbulbs. White light, popping.

“Where you been? Food’s cold. You ain’t gonna tell anyone, ‘bout me trying on your clothes? I couldn’t stop myself!”

A young black girl faced her with a giggly grin. She stood in front of the bureau mirror, tall and wobbly in spiked heeled shoes. She wore the full length mink coat from the furrier’s garment bag. She wore a rakish fedora hat lifted from some box. Jewelry glittered on her wrists and ears. Love Hearts sailed around her. She had a pretty pleasant face. There were opened boxes on the bed and floor. Wrapping paper was scattered all around. There were piles of tissue paper.

“I’m Otherly Love!” The black girl smiled. “That’s my real name! Otherly Love Jackson! I work in the kitchen! I brought you your food! But the devil got in me! I had to try things on! Everything’s so wonderful! Your name’s Desert Flower! You got a pretty name too! When I was born my daddy said ‘That’s my Otherly Love! I got two love’s now!’ Bet your daddy said the same to your momma when he first saw you! There’s my Desert Flower! “

“Something like that.”

Shaken and dazed she used the dresser for support to move across the room. She sat limply in the chair by the window. Her heart was pounding. She glistened with sweat. The big fear gripped her. It was a mistake to come back. She should have run, run blindly while she had the chance. She was dead. She played it wrong. She didn’t have a chance.

“I was next door.” She whispered. “I was lonely. I needed company. Anyone.”

“That crazy woman!” Otherly slanted the hat and made a frown. “Best stay away from her! She don’t say nothin’ anyway! Just sits and stares! Nurse Hartfelt was here! She gave me this letter for you! She said I don’t read it! Like I read other folk’s mail!”

The pretty girl wobbled over and handed her the letter. Desert read it in a daze. It was all about her miscarriage. The nurse wrote that she was keeping it a secret. She told her not to tell anyone. People are cruel. The letter said. Keep it to yourself. The nurse wrote that they would talk soon. With all the wounded she couldn’t get away. The FBI is coming to see you tonight! The letter went on. Don’t talk to them! Don’t trust them! They’re up to something bad!”

“This came too!”

The girl set a bouquet of black orchids on the lamp table near the chair. The black flowers fanned gruesomely out of an ebony vase like the wings of the angel of death.

“Kind of spooky!”

Otherly laughed.

There was a dark gray card tucked in with the flowers. Two black crosses were embossed on the card’s dark face. Desert shuddered as she plucked it from the bouquet. Double Cross. She knew instantly who the bouquet came from. Her hands trembled as she read the back.

Dear Miss Flower,

Our thoughts are with you. We recently lost members of our family too. They died in their sleep. Country cousins perhaps but their loss was great. Dead before their time. It was quite a shock. Some members of our family wanted a post mortem. It was all so odd. But I say let the

dead rest in peace. They’re lucky they didn’t suffer. Some die in such pain. You’re an orphan now. We want to take care of you. We want you in our family. You will see us soon.

Sheet lightening flared above the fog smothered night.

Greenleaf studied the military shadow facing him in the dark.

“I twisted my ankle, Sarge, thought I’d go down and get it wrapped.”

“Looks like you’re walking pretty good to me.”

“Hurts real bad.”

“So will your ass when I put my boot up it soldier. I think you best get some spine in that yellow back and get back to your post.”

Greenleaf shoved his bayonet into the big man’s gut. He walked the Sargent to a rock and sat him down. The startled soldier gaped at him mouth open, drooling. Blood gushed from his stomach.

The bullets from the second handkerchief began popping up the bluff. Gunfire crackled from every direction. Greenleaf struggled down the rocks. He moved slowly through the line of military vehicles – trucks, jeeps, motorcycles, vans. The vehicles were occupied. Men sat and watched the gunfire through their night vision glasses. He mounted a motorcycle, jump started it, and raced for the floodlit ring. Thunder rumbled in the pall. The mist was freezing. Snow-showers began to fall.

“Perimeter check!”

Greenleaf called, as he raced at the lights.

“Slow down soldier.”

Perimeter guards moved out of the shadows blocking his path. Their rifles were raised.

“Let’s see your face.”

Spitfire flashed from his hands, as Greenleaf raised his automatic rifle and mowed them down.

“Stop! You’re hurting me!”

“Hurting’s fun.”

“Jesus! Not so rough!”

“I like rough stuff.”

“I’m telling Marco!”

“Poor Marco. His horse ain’t well.”

“You’re crushing my ribs!”

“I like when you yell.”

Arms pinned, twisting with pain, the cowgirl lay flat on her back kicking her boots in the air. She slashed the spurs down into the monster’s hairy thighs. Her lips, ears, neck, breasts, were blotted with blood. Tears filled her eyes, terror her face. Big Hands lay sprawled out across her on the giant bed, pumping his body and biting her flesh.

“You fuck real good. Cowgirls is fun. I’m gonna turn you over. We do it doggie style now.”

“You look like an angel!”

The black girl beamed. Desert emerged from the psycho-ward bathroom. She moved in a daze. She showered, washed her hair, put on perfume. She wore the dazzling white nightgown Otherly found in a Paris labeled box. The gown had a silvery shimmer. It was soft as a cloud. The black orchids flared on the table. Her head was in a fog. Outside it was snowing. White flakes falling beyond the black barred window. Maybe the gangsters were out there hiding in the dark. Maybe they were watching her room from the alley, marking their time. One way or another, it would be over tonight.

“Otherly.”

Nurse Hartfelt rushed into the room, hair akimbo. Desert remembered her from a dream, the plump little nurse who kept poking at her. She had a matronly bosom, a plain kindly face.

“Otherly it’s time to go. Desert has visitors. The fashion show is over.”

“You say eight o’clock.”

Otherly faced the dresser mirror puzzling out the slant of a wide brimmed hat.

“The gentlemen are here now dear. Besides, I’m sure Ms Mirats needs you in the kitchen. You know we’re short staffed. You poor child!” Nurse Hartfelt turned fitfully to Desert and gave her a hug. “You don’t look well. You better lie down. God what do these men want! It’s all so insane!”

“They want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” Desert’s heartbeat was racing as she sat back on the bed. Nurse Hartfelt plumped up the pillows for her. “They’re only doing their job. You can’t blame them. It’s my duty to help out. I’m not sure I can. My memory is blank.”

“My life is a blank.” Otherly smiled as she turned from the garment bag. “Except for my wrist. The bracelet is mine. Desert say so. She say it suits me more than her and I can wear it home.”

She stood in her kitchen uniform gazing at the diamonds on her wrist.

“We don’t take gifts like that Otherly.” Nurse Hartfelt shook her head. “I can’t allow it. Put it back.”

“No. I want her to have it.” Desert said softly. “ She’s my only friend. I want her to have something to remember me by.”

“ We’ll talk about it later. We’re all your friends dear. Otherly, we have to go. Please be careful what you say, child. You should have a lawyer. Don’t you see? They’re trying to trap you. They’re desperate. They’re trying to fake a case. They don’t care who they frame.”

Nurse Hartfelt turned with a start. There were figures in the door. She walked quickly past them. Otherly followed her out. Desert gripped the sheet tightly as the men came in the room. Her heart pounded. She couldn’t swallow. It was the beginning of the end, the end of a long dark dream.

21

“I’m agent Castle.”

The ghost man bowed. His eyes were scary. They looked like tiny crystal balls.

“Allow me to introduce agents Stragger and Blade.

Her hand went to her throat as the men gazed down at her. Gas Chamber. Prison. Twenty years. She remembered their conversation in the basement. They had something on her. She could see it in their faces. They stood like executioners at the foot of her bed.

“We extend our deepest sympathies, Miss Flower.”

“ We thank you for your time.”

“We have a few questions to ask you about the robbery and the Indian.”

“His comings and goings.”

“As well as yours.”

“We’d like to close out your part of our book.”

“We’d like to finish tonight.”

“Put a period at the end of your sentence, if you know what we mean.”

An orderly came in with folding chairs. The agents seated themselves and took out notebooks and tape recorders.

The mean agent with the moustache scowled at her and smiled. He wore a shiny purple suit and a wide flowered tie. He looked like a gangster. He had dark killers eyes. The black man gazed at her disconcertingly. His smile was disturbing, a string of stars in a mountain of night. He closed an eye in an intimate wink, as though to tell her he could see right through her jive.

“The Indian escaped our manhunt tonight, Miss Flower.”

“He killed a patrol of men.”

“You can understand our concern.”

“We have to act fast.”

“Time’s running out.”

“We thought since you knew him, you could help us track him down.”

“Perhaps you know his plans?”

“Where he might hide?”

“Who might hide him?”

“If he has any more weapons?”

“Things like that.”

Castle watched her reaction closely. He expected a show of innocence, or defiance, perhaps a flicker of relief that her partner got away. Instead, terror swept over the girl. She looked like she might faint. She laughed and her eyes looked feverish. She seemed in a state of shock.

“He’s dead you know.” The girl seemed dazed. “He’s just a ghost. The devil maybe.”

Castle looked at Stragger. The moustache curled in a smile. Stragger predicted the psycho act. As usual his instincts were right.

“I’m afraid he’s very much alive, Miss Flower.” Castle said dryly. “ Alive and dangerous. He must be stopped. You must help us. If you don’t, more will die.”

If it was an act it was a good one. Academy award. The girl seemed genuinely terrified. Her golden hair flooded the pillow. A faint smile twisted her face. She suddenly seemed as spectral as an apparition, a princess in a tortured dream. Castle could see why she caused such commotion. She was as beautiful as she could possibly be. He found himself searching for a line from Pushkin. My sadness is luminous. She had a luminous sadness about her. This sorrow made her radiant, almost saintly.

“Are you alright, Miss Flower? Do you need a nurse?”

He watched the sorrowful luminous shudder. The fever flared and died.

“I’m sorry. Forgive me. I’m fine. Let’s go on. It’s like a nightmare, all of it. I apologize. I don’t know what’s real or what’s dream anymore. I’m glad you came. I want to tell what happened. The truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Is it Ok if I start at the beginning? I don’t want to get mixed up.”

“Please do. Tell us any way you like.”

“I’m all ears.”

“As am I.”

“Kit planned the robbery. Kit’s the killer. Kit drugged everyone. Kit’s the reason my father, uncle, and everyone died. It’s horrible to say this, but I’m glad Kit’s dead.”

“Kit, the bartender?”

“ He was a jail bird you know.”

“We’re aware of his record.”

“Minor stuff, long ago.”

“Nothing like murder.”

“Nothing close.”

“I guess it was the money. He couldn’t resist. My father didn’t pay Kit much, room, board, something for his pocket. Maybe he resented it, but we weren’t rich. On the morning of the robbery, Kit gave me a ride to school. We were both excited because these rich ranchers were coming that night to buy some antiques from the house. Our house was filled with old furniture. It was worth quite a bit. The ranchers were bringing fifty thousand dollars. We never had a buy like that. On the way to town, Kit stopped at a shack. He had to see someone. We went inside but there was no one there. Kit seemed upset. We waited but I had to get to school. Kit said he knew where his friend was. We drove to town and parked by a tavern. Kit looked in the window. There was an Indian shooting pool. Kit asked me to give him a note. He said he couldn’t go in himself. When I gave the Indian the note, he said something creepy. It was the way he said it. See you in dreamland, beautiful. It came out scary. That night the Indian’s words came back to haunt me. The men seemed to be falling asleep in the barroom, and only after a couple of drinks. It was kind of queer. All except one, a big Indian who sat in a corner. He wore a wide brimmed hat. He wore his collar up. He sat by himself and nursed his drink. I remembered the Indian in the poolroom that morning. We never get Indian customers. There was something scary about the coincidence. It was a strange night. Kit was away from the bar a lot. In the office, my father, uncle, the ranchers seemed to be falling asleep too. My uncle kept closing his eyes. The ranchers were yawning. My father was nodding off. Suddenly the bandits broke in. My father and the ranchers pulled their guns. My uncle woke up. Gunfire exploded. Bullets flew from every direction. My father was hit. A masked robber fell backward. Blood splattered everywhere. Everything went black and I fell to the floor in a faint. When I woke up it was over. Everyone was dead. Kit and the big Indian stood over me. Kit said they agreed on no murders. The Indian said too late now. Kit ran around the office in a panic. The Indian said they’d have to finish the job. He went back in the barroom and more shots were fired. I heard someone run upstairs, heavy steps followed. One of the ranchers sat up. He begged Kit not to kill him. He gave Kit the keys to his car. He said he could take everything, anything, just get him to the ranch. There was more of everything at the ranch. The big Indian came in and shot the rancher dead. I fainted again. It was all such a nightmare. When I woke up Kit and the Indian were looking through a bag. Kit said he never saw anything like it. He said there must be a quarter million dollars of cane. The Indian said it looked like more. A Mexican man ran in from the back hall. He shouted and cursed. The big Indian shot him. Then he turned on Kit and shot him too. I lay petrified on the floor. The big Indian was dragging the bodies around. I saw that one of masked bandits was still alive. I was afraid he’d make a noise and start the big man checking everyone. Luckily he fainted. The Indian came back and moved things around some more. He took the bag and left. I got up then. My head was spinning. Kit was still alive. He was moaning in a corner. He begged me to help him. He was moaning with pain. He begged me to get him a drink. I handed him a glass of whiskey. He took a sip and died.”

The agents stared at Desert. They were leaning forward in their chairs. They looked at one another. Whether they bought the story or not, things were falling into place.

“There was a quarter million dollars worth of Cocain tied up with the robbery?”

Stragger looked at her hard.

“Of something. I didn’t see it. They called it snow and blow.”

“And it belonged to the guy from the ranch?”

“I guess so. The big Indian took it. I guess he got it from the car. That’s why the other Indian kidnaped me from the hospital. He thought it was still at the house. He seemed a little crazy. He thought I knew where it was.”

“How did he get you out of the hospital?”

Castle sat poised with his pen. A sudden realization came over him. The girl was the roadhouse killer. She drugged them, shot them, moved the bodies around. She set up the Indian, pulled a double cross. The realization stunned him. He stared shocked at the dazzling girl.

“In a janitor’s cart. He was dressed as a janitor. He tied me, gagged me and stuffed me in. When we got to the roadhouse the gangsters were waiting. They were looking for the bag. The Indian fought them and I slipped away.”

“Gangsters were waiting for you at the roadhouse?”

“They looked like gangsters. Like those killers on TV. I could help you draw their pictures. I have a good memory for faces.”

Stragger glanced at Castle and Blade. He dug into his pocket. He pulled out the drawings of the motel suspects. He rose and handed them to the girl.

“Yes, that’s them. This one’s Vinnie. That’s what his partner called him. I don’t know the other’s name.”

“Vincent Vincente,” Stragger turned to Castle. “ an enforcer for some Chicago hoods. The Corso brothers. We got a possible make from our bureau there. This all but confirms it. We’ll know for sure when the prints check out.”

“This big Indian.” Blade studied the girl. “He could be you.”

“So could Kit.” Stragger took the drawings back.

“I don’t understand.”

Desert shook her head.

“What they mean Miss Flower,” Castle’s voice was shaking, “is things can be checked, if there’s a hint of doubt.”

“Grounds can be dug up. Dope can be found.”

“The big Indian took the bag.”

There was a knock on the door. A nurse peeked in and signaled to Castle. He excused himself and followed her out. When he came back his face was ashen.

“We’re finished here.” Castle looked at them dazed. “We have to go to Pine Ridge Reservation. That was the reservation police on the phone. They got a tip earlier from an anonymous woman. A bag of cocain worth a quarter million dollars hidden in a crawl space under a bar called Bad Braves. The tip checked out.”

Mist, sleet, fog, snow. Badlands black magic. The world was erased. He could see nothing. He rode blindly through the whirlwind. An invisible man lost in the dream of a ghost. The roads glistened with ice. Snow flew in his face. Greenleaf pulled into a gas station and killed the attendant. He stripped him, dumped his body in a trash bin, grabbed his clothes. He washed and changed in the station restroom. He faced a monster in the mirror, a mutilated madman with murder in his eyes.

The white pall was a prison. There was no where to run. The desert disappeared. The highways were blocked. He ate, drank, from the station’s vending machines, feeding them coins from the cash register and laying out a feast atop the station’s metal counter, sandwiches, donuts, cans of soup heated up in a microwave, coffee, cakes. He ate his fill and began falling asleep. He had been asleep more than awake since his escape from the hospital, running through battles on adrenalin and then crashing into oblivion. He slept in the car in the parking lot of the roadhouse and then awoke to the fire and the sirens. He slept with the snakes in the desert hollow and awoke to fight the posse. He slept again in the foothills after he pulled the wheel off the jeep. He slept now, deeply, desperately. He dreamed of the church, the spider, death, the girl. It was a high white church this time and it sparkled with stained glass. A car pulled up and honked its horn. A man got out and looked at Greenleaf asleep in the mechanic’s uniform, his head on the counter. The man pumped his own gas, smiled, and drove away. Finally he awakened. He gazed dully at the falling snow. It was the beginning of the end. For Greenleaf the end was clear. Ritual death. A golden scalp. The sacrificial beauty and the tribal fiend. It was the dream of the devil, souls in hell.

The roads were deserted. The pickup truck spluttered toward town, a rusted junker with the station’s logo on the doors. Black Water was a ghost-land veiled by snow. The streets were empty, the buildings closed. He circled the hospital and parked in the back. Across the blizzard he saw flashers, figures, hearses, vans. Black shapes scurried through the dazzle, braced against the storm. He watched them move in and out in bunches through a haze bound loading door. He grabbed the bayonet and the revolver and slipped them in his belt. He got out of the truck and struggled toward the cluster, hunched, hooded, hand gripping the gun.

“I have a visitor?”

Desert looked up. She sat in bed with the basket of letters at her side. The cards and letters were spread out around her. She was holding a photograph of Madonna when Nurse Hartfelt looked in. Madonna wrote her a letter. Madonna was her favorite star.

“You have two visitors angel.” Nurse Hartfelt stood in the doorway and smiled. “They came to see you all the way from Hollywood. A very special couple. Dr. Laster said to let them in. He said you deserve a visit after all you’ve been through, although they must not stay long, you’re still too delicate. Those horrible men.” Nurse Hartfelt turned red. “ Bullies with badges. I wish we could sue them. Imagine badgering someone who had been through so much! You should have seen the look on their faces when they left your room. They failed in whatever nonsense they were trying to pull!” Otherly stood behind the nurse. She waved at Desert and smiled. The bracelet sparkled like fireworks on her wrist. Desert heard a smooth man’s voice in the hall. The man was talking to Otherly. “The diamonds match your smile pretty one and the sparkle in your eyes. Black Water must be a solarium for beauties. Perhaps we should move Hollywood here. Beauty seems to flourish in the Badlands.” They stepped back to let the visitors enter. Otherly stared wide eyed at the dashing man. The room lit up with film world glamor as the couple came through the door.

“I’m Bradford Blackford.” The debonair man smiled and bowed. A ravishing blonde in a sable coat stood stunningly at his side. “We extend our condolences Ms Flower. Our hearts go out to you in every possible way. We feel your loss, your pain. We offer you our sympathy and assistance in this dark winter of your despair.”

The mink man was dark and roguish. He wore a camel hair coat and a cashmere scarf. He was just as Desert pictured him, a handsome and charming charlatan. His thick black hair was greying at the temples. He had a rakish smile and brash dark eyes. She knew him from the dreamworld of her childhood. He looked like a gambler or swindler from the gold mining photos. He was a roadhouse ghost come to life.

“Let me present Ms Svetlana Asonova.” He turned to the beauty at his side with a theatrical flourish. “Ms Asonova was very anxious to meet you Ms Flower. So much so that we flew my plane here through the storm.”

Desert recognized the blonde from television. She was the ice dancer from Russia. The gold medal winner who stole every ones heart. Her skin was as white as alabaster. Her hair was a splash of the sun. She looked down at Desert gravely, sadly shaking her head.

“We should have stayed in the storm,” the ice dancer sighed, “ lost in the sky, fighting the wind. I see you and my heart is filled with sorrow. I feel so foolish, guilty.” There were tears in her deep blue eyes. “I agreed to portray you in a movie Ms Flower. My first acting part. I know now I cannot match your beauty. I know now I can never know your heart. I cannot fathom the tragedy you suffered, the fear you must have felt. How presumptuous of me to think that I could. What do I know of these things?” She lowered her head and sobbed.

“Isn’t she wonderful?” Blackford put his arm around the girl. “She feels so deeply, honestly, as only a Russian could. She’s much too sensitive for this world. You would never suspect it by her mastery on the ice. Alas, a movie must be made, Ms Flower, we all know that. Your story must be told. Svetlana is the only one who could do it justice. So innocent and beautiful, so emotional and shy. I believe she feels she needs your blessing Ms Flower, your approval and your help.”

They were afraid of a lawsuit. Desert figured. Or some protest on her part. They wanted to cover every angle. They didn’t want to risk some flack. They were angling for something. She fit into a plan. Why else the sappy soap opera performance, the corny sob sister act?

“You skate like a dream Ms Askonova.” Desert looked up starry eyed. “ You’re far more beautiful than I. I feel so humble by your visit. I’ll help you all I can. Please take a chair. We can talk a while. Once you get to know me, you’ll see we’re a lot alike.”

She saw the rogue wink as they seated themselves in the folding chairs vacated by the FBI. Blackford gallantly helped the ice dancer with her coat, gently withdrawing it from her shoulders and draping it back. They were drunk. Desert could see. Vodka no doubt, since there wasn’t any smell of alcohol on their breath. They were seasoned souses, there were hardly any signs. Desert wondered about the sable, if Blackford had bought it for her. She wondered why Blackford had only bought her a mink. But maybe the ice dancer got it for herself. She was in a lot of commercials and they always flashed her name. Soup. Toothpaste. Underarm deodorant. She would skate like a dervish around the rink, then glide to the camera and smile. Eat soup. Or brush her teeth. Or talk about how good she smelled. She was probably a multi-millionaire. Desert knew now what endorsements paid.

“I want to thank you for the flowers, Mr. Blackford. Desert flowers are my favorite kind. The cards you wrote were real lovely. You sure can write a pretty lie. The coat is fabulous. It’s a real humdinger and I’m much obliged. I’m afraid I can’t accept it though. It just wouldn’t be right.”

“The coat is yours Desert.” The movie man spread his hands and smiled. “ May I call you that? I want us to be friends. Please keep it. It’s from the studio. It’s not a gift. It’s an inducement, or a down-payment, or to be quite frank a bribe. The studio would like to sign you.

As a consultant for your story, first, and then to be a star for us. I can assure you, now that I’ve met you, we will go to any lengths to have you in our family, double any offer anyone makes. It was worth the storm and the risk of death to be first to seek you out.”

Her father’s eyes were staring at her, the same glazed gaze as if mesmerized. Blackford was dazzled by the girl. He leaned forward in his chair. His voice trembled. His dark eyes shined. She was the find of a lifetime, he suddenly realized. A movie maker’s dream. She was the Marilyn Monroe of the new millennium. Not a sex goddess but a soul siren. Her looks were devastating ... with the right makeup. There hadn’t been such a face since the silent movies. She would devour the camera. There was a mystery about her. There was love and death in her eyes. A man would plunge into hell for a night with this beauty. Women would sell their souls to be like her for a night.

“I have a script.” Blackford pulled a folder from his coat. The ice dancer looked keenly at him. She had a startled look on her face. “It’s the role of a lifetime. You were born to play it. It will make you a star.”

“I thought that role was for Lake Strand.” The Russian blurted. “I thought you made a trade. I play Desert, she the nun. I thought that was the arrangement so you could keep Strand with Paramour.”

“Desert will play the nun.” Blackford laid the script beside the basket on the bed. His hand was shaking, his face pale. “Only Desert. I’d rather burn it than see someone else.”

Desert stared at the script as if it were something lethal. She sat petrified, palms sweating.

“I can’t do it. I don’t know how. I can’t act. Maybe something else, model, endorsements.”

“You don’t have to act. You simply have to be. It will come to you. You’ll find it in your soul.”

The roadhouse ghost was shaken. His swindler’s face seemed aged. This was no con game.

He was serious. She sat frightened by his fierce cold gaze.”

“The world is a wasteland, Desert.” Blackford said solemnly. “We hide from the horror in dreams. Hollywood means Holy-land. That temple for those hallowed hallucinations that keep us sane. We’re shaman Desert. Magicians, priests. Every now and then we find a real flower, like you. It’s elixir gives us life.”

“You must play the part Desert.” The Russian whispered.

“You will play the part.” Blackford flared.

“I’ll try. It’s scary. I’ll try Mr. Blackford.”

“A star is born.” Blackford sighed.

“Wake up! We’re dead! We’re dead! Get up!”

Corso grabbed his gun. He sat up with a start. Marco was kicking the door, shouting like a madman in the hallway at the top of his lungs. The cowgirl sat up with him, eyes wide with fright. She clutched the bed sheet to her breasts. Her body shook.

“Fire?”

She whispered.

“I’ll fire alright.”

Corso eyed the darkened door. His chest was tight. Baby brother or not, you fuck around you die.

The shouts faded away. There was pounding down the hall. Corso slipped out of bed, found his slippers and robe. It was just past nine. They had argued for hours, about money, the casino. Marco drank heavily, smoked joints, snorted coke. He begged, threatened, cursed, cried, finally he passed out. The cowboys carried him to his room. Corso cleared the casino, the few patrons who hadn’t bolted to avoid the storm. They were getting on his nerves, poking around. He grabbed a cowgirl and went to bed. They were just getting into it when the pounding started. Maybe the idiot OD’d? Corso wondered. Maybe he was flipped out and armed? Marco was beginning to be a drag to have around.

“I’ll giddy up that giddy yuppie.”

Corso fumed. He approached the door cautiously and peeked outside. Big Hands stood blinking in the hallway a bed sheet wrapped around his waist. His hairy chest heaved. He studied the hall in a daze. The sheet was spotted with blood. His mouth was red. A gun dangled in his hand. Rocco emerged peeping from a side room in a silk dressing gown. Marco was running helter shelter in his under ware from one door to the next.

“Who’s dead?” Rocco rasped.

“Marco’s brain.”

“Something happen to his horse?”

“Shut the fuck up.”

They followed Marco to a room at the end of the hall. Guns pointed, they peered inside. The Nordic blonde sat on the edge off the bed watching a giant TV. She had a bed sheet clutched around her. Her Viking face looked strained. Marco stood at a table on which an open suitcase lay packed. Face still ravaged from the blow and booze, he screamed into a phone.

“Get everyone out of the bunkhouse! Get them over here right now! Get the truck out of the barn! Pull it in front! We’re moving the machines! I want them out of here tonight!”

Two giant photographs appeared next to the life size anchorman on the enormous television screen. Mug shots of Vinnie and Sully viewed front and side. Next came a video of a burned out car, after that what had to be the roadhouse cellar and its toppled staircase, there was a motel shown where the two Chicago hoods were staying, pictures of the motel owners implicated in the crimes. Corso staggered into the room and sat down on the bed. His own face appeared on the tube. Mug shots from long ago, that racketeering thing. The anchorman was telling the story of the roadhouse robbery. Kit the bartender, the mystery Indian, the cocaine found under Bad Braves Bar. The FBI was searching area ranches for an illegal gambling house, drugs and prostitution linked to members of the Chicago mob. They wanted to question the Corso brothers, well known South Side hoodlums.

“We’re dead you bastard!” Marco shouted in his face. “Mr. Big Shot! Mr. Brains! With your dope sniffing dog and your cheerleader theory!” He was tossing clothes into the open suitcase running back and forth. “We’re finished! Done! I told you to keep the hell out of it! I told you the heat was on! You’re a dinosaur Sal! A relic from the past! Now we’re both extinct! I owe every gangster in Chicago for this place. They’re gonna knock us off!”

“She outsmarted us, Sal.” Rocco was standing next to him. The old mobster was stunned. “She outsmarted everyone. She’s in the clear, Sal. She slipped across the boarder. She turned everything around. We can’t even hit her. The Feds will know who done it.”

“She ain’t outsmarted nobody.” Corso glared at the screen. “Maybe herself. No body means nobody. Her body won’t be found.”

22

“She slipped out of the hospital and planted the bag under the bar.”

Castle fumbled for his key as they passed the morgue. They were covered with snow, just from their run from the chopper. The helicopter ride was rocky, but they made it back and forth to the reservation in less than an hour. Castle carried the bag of cocain by its strap over his shoulder.

“Try to convince a jury of that.”

Stragger took a drag off his cigarette. His nostrils fumed with smoke.

“Maybe we can pick her up on a security camera tape.”

Blade looked around the basement. Cameras covered both hospital entrances as well as the loading dock.

“All that proves is she left her room.”

“It’s a start. Combined with the rest. Her story’s a high-wire act. A good cross-examination will knock her off.”

“ Her story’s strong. Even if we pick it apart, the jury will back her. She’s a super star now.”

“Her story’s as phony as a Hollywood film.”

“So’s the jury. They’ll have Hollywood brains.”

“She’s a killer.” Castle found the key. They stopped at the mechanical room door. “ We can’t drop it. We have to make a case.” Castle was still stunned by the mental cartwheel the girl had performed.

“This basement is a black hole.” Blade looked around. “These processions going in and out. She must have slipped out here.”

“We better plug it.” Stragger stepped on his cigarette. Blade winced as he lit another. “Post guards from the Eye. We still don’t know what’s going on. The mob. Pine Ridge. The Indian. I saw Fleming in the lobby. I’ll sit him by her door.”

“No sleep tonight.” Castle fumbled with the lock. “I’ll check the phone for messages. Update our report. Someone will blow the whistle on that ranch. Get even for a bad run at the wheel.”

“I’ll check the camera tapes, see if I can spot her.”

“Something happened in her ward around five, something to do with reporters.”

“I’ll check that too. The nurse’s desk, the guards. Maybe someone snapped a picture. I’ll read the incident reports.”

“I’ll go over the staff again.”

“Back here in an hour?”

“Better make it two.”

“I’ll hold the bag. We’ll lock it in the jail later. Turn it over to the bureau in the morning.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky. Get a call that the Indian’s caught.”

“He’s as paralyzed by the storm as we are.”

“Citizens don’t open your doors.”

Greenleaf sat crouched in a corner behind a rubbish bin. His revolver was aimed at the three men in snow covered trenchcoats. Federal agents. He had met their sort before. Lost in the labyrinths of the basement, he almost walked into them. He ducked in the shadows. It was a miracle they didn’t see him. But it was all a miracle, black magic. It was all the devil’s dream. Satanic slaughter preordained. His head was spinning as he realized his part, the end of the fated horror he was destined to perform. Why? Only the gods knew. The ages were filled with purges, myths and mystic murders of all sorts. His finger trembled on the trigger. It was an effort not to fire. He eyed the gunnysack hanging from the ghost-man’s shoulder. It was the roadhouse dope. He remembered it setting on the desk in the office. The dream was almost over. The final nightmare was in place. The corpses in the basement. The blood score. The golden scalp. The sacrificial beauty upstairs in the psycho ward. They would die together in a bed of blood.

The big men walked away, the black one down the hall, the other toward the loading door. Greenleaf drew the bayonet from his belt. He tucked the gun in his pocket. He held his breath

and slipped silently forward. The ghost-man had his back to him, turning the key in the locked steel door. The whiteness of the ghost man’s hair. The whiteness of the score. The blizzard and the white white ghost man.

Castle sensed something behind him. He hesitated, turned, looked over his shoulder. He felt the tumbler click with the key and pushed wearily at the door. It swung open with a creak. The bright bulbs made him blink. He laid the bag on the cluttered table. The smoke from Stragger’s cigarettes hung heavily in the air, a ghastly veil in the cold grim room. He shook his head. He felt drawn and spent. He pictured the girl in bed upstairs in her shimmering silk gown, her golden hair flooding the pillow. It made him shudder. It made no sense. The horror and the beauty. They had to break her story. They had to prove the truth. If they searched the basement maybe they would pick up a clue, a trail that would link her to the coke at least. He hit the message machine and listened to the tape recorded voice. It was about the ranch. A man was giving names and directions.

Castle felt it now, the presence in the room. His flesh began to crawl. He turned slowly toward the door. A hooded man stood behind him like a shadow. An Indian. His face was ravaged. His eyes mad. The shadow figure held a bayonet in his hand.

Big Hands wheeled the limo through the falling snow fighting the white out which wrapped Black Water in a veil. Trucks with flashers cruised the streets. The town was deserted, not a soul in sight. They parked near the hospital. Corso peered through the pall. The building lights flickered like lanterns in the wind tossed veils.

“Don’t fuck it up. I want Cinderella at the ball. This is our last best shot. I want the payback now.”

“The plan is fool proof Sal.” Rocco peered with him through the storm. “They won’t see it coming. Ten minutes tops. It’s in the bag. I guarantee it.”

“Easy Rambo.” Big Hands patted the monster dog. Rambo sensed action. His hair stood up. “Stay here boy. You get to play with Sleeping Beauty when all the Papa bear’s is done. You’re the big bad wolf. You gonna eat Goldilocks.” Big Hands slipped out of the car. He moved around the snow banked limo and opened the passenger door. Long, shapely legs in white sheer nylons legs slipped out of the stretched black car.

“We know what happened.”

“It’s too late now.”

“We know she’s the roadhouse killer.”

“We’re all doomed ghost.”

“I can get you life.”

“I’m dead. No play.”

“We can make her pay.”

“She’ll pay my way.”

Castle reached for his gun. Greenleaf lunged at him with the blade. The ghost man fell backwards. Greenleaf followed him down. Castle felt the blood gush from his stomach, bubble in his mouth. Greenleaf grabbed the ghostman’s head and began to carve.

“We meet in space without Time, Time without end. Our love is everlasting, our souls forever one.”

Desert read the nun’s story and wiped the tears from her eyes. The fragile girl was so lonely. Her life was so hard. Everyone was mean to her. She had nothing but her love for God. The monastery reminded her of the roadhouse. Old, dark, cold, like a prison. The girl reminded her of herself, talking to the roadhouse ghosts. She understood everything the girl felt. She felt it all herself. And then the girl went mad. Just as she had. God became the devil. She became the devil’s servant.

“Blind Eye, Jim. Not the Devil’s. We blinked. A thousand men hunting and we couldn’t find him.”

“The devil changes shapes. He disappeared in the fog. You can’t beat the devil, least I can’t.”

Cole tilted a tall new whiskey bottle he got from the cook in the truck. And took another dozen lives and it was all my fault. Cole thought. They sat in the jeep and watched the troops pull out. He handed the bottle to Tate. Tate waved it off.

“Lets pack it in and head for town. Nothin’s doing till this blizzard stops.”

“I’m done Ben. Get another ride. I’m staying here till that Nazi plane burns out. They’ll take my badge when we get back, take my gun. May as well take it off myself.” Cole pulled the badge off his shirt and held it in his palm. He remembered that day twenty years ago when the mayor pinned it on. “You go with the others. You’re the sheriff now. You chase the devil. I’m too tired.”

“The devil’s chasing you. It’s in that bottle. Let’s get some sleep, Jim. We’ll get the Indian in the morning.”

“I been asleep. I’m woke up now. I can’t face myself. I can’t face the town. I want to sit here and drink. Look at the mountain. Maybe the spirits will get me. Maybe I got it coming.”

Greenleaf stepped aside as the laundry cart clattered past. He left the ghost man lying in his blood. He stuffed the white scalp in the bag. He took the ghost man’s wallet, keys, gun, access

card. He wore an FBI jacket and cap which he found folded on a chair. The corridor was empty. He studied the signs and the stairs. He adjusted the bag on his shoulder. It was stained with blood. He climbed a staircase and keyed the door. An agent sat across the psycho ward hall, a newspaper on his lap. Greenleaf pulled out Castle’s wallet and held the badge in the air. He nodded to the agent. He looked furtively at the guarded door.

“Agent Moore.” Greenleaf forced a smile. “Castle told me to check on the girl. He’s worried about her window. Sniper fire. Thinks maybe we should move her. Wants me to take a look.”

“Help yourself to the room.” Fleming looked up at Greenleaf and smiled. “The girl left with a nurse. X ray, she said. Should be back in a while. You got to see this pulse taker, Moore. She made my pulse stop. Blonde, leggy, body like a Viking. Must be six feet tall. She can wheel me to X ray any time she wants.”

“Where’s X ray?”

Greenleaf looked around in a panic.

“To the right down the hall. What’s the rush? Castle hear those little voices again?”

Greenleaf whirled in a frenzy and stalked down the hall. His brain was exploding. His heart pounded.He’d have to break into X ray, do the ritual there. It was risky and crazy. More lives would be lost. More blood, more slaughter.

Castle coughed up blood. He rolled over in a daze. His head was on fire, blood covered his face. He was gutted and dying. He shuddered with pain. He had to get to the phone. Blood flowed from his belly. The Indian was unstoppable. A wild blur in a whirl. Castle still felt the blade slicing through his forehead, scraping the bone and hair off his skull. He tried to crawl to the table. He could barely push himself forward. His life reeled before him. His childhood in New England. The chess club at Harvard. The summers on the Cape. Celeste, the woman he was to marry but who changed her mind because his job too dangerous.

“I want ID.”

Stragger stood on the loading dock and watched the figures fight through the storm. He pulled a cop from the lobby and posted him by the door.

“Check everyone, closely, going in or out. Check the bodies. Deliveries. No exceptions. Frisk the doctors. Nurses. I don’t care. No one gets passed you unless you’re sure who they are.”

Stragger studied the faces of the families, the widows and the orphans, the undertakers, funeral parlor vans, the sheeted corpses going out. His hand shook as he lit a cigarette. He stared grimly at the storm.

“I thought X ray was down that hall?”

“We need your records first, hon.”

“But didn’t that sign say medical records?”

“We have to stop at the lobby first, sweetie. Something nursey forgot.”

“I don’t feel well.” Desert said sickishly. “I feel dizzy. Weak.”

“It’s the medication I gave you, angel. You just relax. Let nursey do her job.”

Something was wrong. Desert couldn’t hold up her head. She sat limply in the wheelchair as the nurse rolled her down the hall. The nurse came into the room and gave her pills. She told her they had to go to X ray.

The nurse was a voluptuous Amazon. Her uniform was odd. The skirt was too short, the hat too small. Crowds parted before them. Men smiled. Their faces were a blur. Desert sat in a stupor. The corridor seemed to spin.

“I want to go back to my room.”

She tried to get up. The nurse pushed her down.

“Sit still sugar. We’re almost there.”

The lobby was a jumble. Shapes in a whirl. The nurse wheeled her to the entrance doors. Security guards blocked their path.

“Check out time boys.” The nurse’s smokey voice purred. The guards wouldn’t move. Their faces were distorted to Desert. Two skulls grinning from ear to ear.

“We checked you out when you came in, doll.”

“Bottom to top.”

“Gonna make a copy of you walking through them security camera tapes. Play it for my friends.”

“Don’t be naughty with nursey.” The throaty voice warned. “ You won’t like your medicine.”

“Where do I sign up for treatment?”

“You got to pass the physical first.”

The glass doors opened. Cold air blasted in. The Nordic blonde wheeled Desert out into the blizzard and hurried to the car. The wind whipped at her long legs, fluttered her hair. She was

freezing in the flimsy nurse-fantasy costume that they pulled from the closet. The limo door opened. Big Hands lumbered out. He grabbed Desert by the hair. He dragged her from the wheelchair, tossed her in the car. Desert’s head was reeling. She looked around in a daze. A burly man sat across from her. He had a monster dog at his side. The dog stood up and growled. The burly man slapped her face. Her head rocked back. She saw stars. She thought of the black orchids. The double cross card. She tried to scream. The burly man hit her again..

Blade narrowed his eyes and peered down the psycho ward hall. He couldn’t place the agent who was talking to Fleming. The strange agent looked Indian. Blade thought he knew all the Native American personnel in the area. He moved away from the nurse’s desk. The ward guard had been showing Blade his hand, the bite marks under the bandages. They were all describing the woman reporter to him. The commotion she caused earlier. Blade studied the bag dangling from the dark agent’s shoulder. There were red splatters on it. What was going through his mind could not be possible. But then anything is possible when nothing is real, and nothing was real about their assignment in Black Water. The bag looked like the roadhouse gunnysack. His pulse began to race as he moved slowly down the hall. He had his hand on his gun. The agent turned, suddenly, took a few steps and stopped. Blade glimpsed the tip of a bayonet beneath the FBI jacket. Their eyes met. Blade drew his gun.

Greenleaf dove to the floor as the bullet screamed passed him. He rolled, turned, grabbed his guns and sat up shooting, a revolver in each hand. The black man dodged and fired. Greenleaf shot the seated agent who reached for his gun. He fired at the black man and scrambled for the door.

“Help him!” Blade shouted to a nurse. She stood frozen in the hallway. The guard rushed passed her and ripped off Fleming’s shirt. Blood was running from the hole in Fleming’s chest. Bullets beat the walls around him, as Greenleaf quick crawled to the stairs. He grabbed the railing and dropped to the basement. He landed with a crash on the trash bins. Blade barreled through the door and fired at the falling figure. He jammed a new clip in his automatic as Greenleaf tumbled to his feet and took off in a run.

“What’s that?”

Stragger turned to the cop. His moustache scowled as he flipped his cigarette and listened.

“Sounds like gunfire in the basement.” The cop tilted his head.

They stood still for a second and then they heard it again. They pushed through the mortician’s procession and raced down the stairs. Stragger pulled his gun and jumped the last steps in a bound. Gunfire exploded in the hallway as he pushed through the basement door. Down the hall, he saw a man crouched by the morgue next to the row of corpses. Farther down, he saw Blade standing on the psycho ward staircase and firing at the crouching man.

Bullets thumped into the bodies as Greenleaf exchanged fire with the bulky black agent. He heard footsteps and turned. Two figures ran at him from the loading dock elevator, a cop and the agent he saw in the basement before. He fired in both directions and watched the three men hit the floor. He leaped to his feet and ran down the corridor marked kitchen. A food cart blocked his path. A black girl stood stunned by the wall. A bracelet sparkled on her wrist. “Get down!” Greenleaf shouted. He shoved the girl to the ground. A bullet thumped into the gunnysack. Another whizzed by his ear. He knocked over a cook as he raced through the kitchen. The kitchen was a dead end, no doors or windows. He raced around kettles, past freezers. Near the stoves in the back he saw a fire door.

Blade aimed and fired. An alarm was blaring. The fire door stood open. Snow flew in. Stragger panted to a stop behind him. The cop stumbled after, blood flowed from his arm. Blade shot at the shadow racing through the blizzard. Stragger raised his gun but the shadow was gone.

“Thought you played football.”

“ Not punt return.”

It didn’t matter. The Indian ran like Jim Thorpe.

“I’ll check Castle.” Stragger panted. “You get the town surrounded.” He turned to the wounded cop. “Tell the station what’s up. Get that patched before you bleed to death.”

“I’ll follow the footprints.”

Blade moved out into the snow. He couldn’t catch the Indian, not on foot. Maybe he could track him, slow him down with exchanges. Hold him till he got some help.

“Tonto!”

Desert whispered. Her head rocked as the limousine braked and swerved.

“Help me, Tonto!”

Big hands fought the wheel. The running man slammed into the hood. The big car swerved and fish-tailed and slid to a stop. The running man caught his balance and limped away.

“She’s babbling again.” Corso slapped her face. “It’s getting on my nerves. How dopey you get her?”

“She’ll shake it off soon.”

The Nordic blonde lit a cigarette.

“Sal, I think that was the Indian.”

Rocco peered at the hobbling figure as he struggled through the storm.

“I think I need a drink.” Corso poured Scotch in a glass and drank it neat. He smiled at the girl and cracked her again. Hard this time. Blood flowed from her mouth.

“No shit, Sal. You hear the girl. That guy looked like the killer. Like the pictures in the papers.”

“He’s wearing a Fed jacket boss.”

Big Hands eased the limo across the snow.

“And blondie’s dressed like a nurse. So what? Maybe he killed a Fed and copped the clothes.”

“ Tag him Big Hands. Let’s check it out.”

Greenleaf saw the headlights sweep behind him in the dazzle. He stumbled to the sidewalk out of breath. His guns were empty. He hobbled at a trot. A black limousine with tinted windows shadowed him down the street.

“That your boyfriend bitch?”

Corso grabbed Desert by the hair and shoved her face against the darkened glass.

“Help me Tonto.” Her head rolled forward. “Someone help.”

Greenleaf eyed the shadowing limo. He watched the center window slide down. He pulled out his bayonet. A big black blur flew out into the night. A giant dog hit the drifts running.

Suddenly the monster was on top of him ripping at his throat.

23

“Death.”

The demon whispered.

“My death?”

“Yours.”

“Soon?”

“Now.”

Cole sat up with a jolt, shuddering with fear. Ghost shapes swirled beyond the idling jeep’s windshield. The wind howled. The Nazi blaze was burning out. With a shaky hand, he grabbed the bottle. The whiskey scorched his throat, fogged his brain. He was dreaming of the Black Water courthouse. He was on trial. Skeletons filled the spectator’s seats. Corpses crowded the witness box. He sat stunned on the stand. The citizens of the town sat in his judgement. They found him guilty of murder. He was condemned to death. He slipped the gun from his holster and held it limply in his hand. His kids were grown. His wife was getting on, like him. He was heavily insured. You had to be on this job. He closed his eyes and put the barrel in his mouth. He listened to the winds howl, the demon laugh.

“Geronimo!” Corso bellowed. He shoved through the casino doors and plowed through the crowd of cowboys clustered around the Spanish entrance. Crates lined the stucco walls. Boxes blocked the tiled foyer. The cowboys were hoisting, packing, hammering the lids shut on the crated gaming machines, wheeling them out on dollies to the big truck idling in the blizzard. “It’s gumba time, wranglers, at the OK Corral.” Corso hollered as he shoved through the commotion. It’s Rawhide at the Raunch. High Noon at the Homestead. What are you looking at Wyatt?” He glared at one of the startled hands who looked up from his packing. “Let’s keep them doggies rolling, shall we? I want you sidewinders outta my life.” Corso carried the bloodstained gunnysack on his shoulder. He waved the bayonet like a machete clearing a path for himself. Big Hands lumbered in after him. Arms lifted, Big Hands carried Desert and Greenleaf in each fist by their hair, feet dangling off the mosaic floor. Rocco, Rambo, and the Nordic blonde followed. The blonde ran ahead, shivering in the skimpy nurses costume, and made a rush for her room.

“Wagons ho! Bimbos!”

Corso scowled.

The cowgirls and Marco sat drinking in a cluster by the fireplace. Suitcases and traveling bags lay scattered around them. Their mouths dropped as the procession came at them. Corso looked maniacal. The dangling bodies looked dead.

“Ho your ho wagons to the truck ladies. Me and my brother got to talk. We got business to do of a private nature. We don’t need a peanut gallery of sluts.”

Marco was dressed in his cowboy garb. He was feeding casino papers to the fire. His face went white when he saw the two dangling figures -- the roadhouse girl and an FBI agent.

“Fine ass this baby brother.”

Corso dropped the gunnysack on the totem-legged cocktail table. He laid the bayonet next to it and sat down on the table top.

Big Hands dumped Greenleaf and Desert on the curved leather couch. The cowgirls grabbed their bags and ran for the door. Rambo sat guarding Greenleaf, fierce eyed, snarling.

“You’re nuts, Sal.” Marco looked at the bag, he knew it was the roadhouse dope, at the two slumped figures. “You’re certifiably nuts.”

“Yeah, I’m nuts little brother.” Corso laughed. “You gotta be nuts and have nuts in this racket.” Corso grabbed his crotch. “Brains and balls. That bitch got more of those then you.”

“You kidnaped a media star and an FBI agent to get back a bag of blow? That’s brains? I don’t want any part of this, Sal. I’m getting out of here. We’re frying in the heat and you make it hotter? Get that shit in the truck!” He shouted to his crew. “This can’t be happening.” Marco held his head in his hands. “ I had a good thing going. This is the Twilight Zone!”

“Marco in Wonderland.” Corso sneered. “What’s the matter baby brother, you lost in the Looking Glass? Least I brought back a bag of blow and not a bag of beans, which is all this Dud Raunch is worth. That ain’t no FBI agent. That’s the killer Indian. What’s the reward on this crazy fucker, Rocco?”

“Two hundred g’s, Sal, last I read in the paper.”

“Two hundred g’s? That’s it? For this psycho killing machine? Hey wake up Tonto, you ain’t worth shit! That’s what you get for knocking off yokels! Don’t worry I’m going to promote your career. You’ll be worth twice that before I’m through. 400g’s for Crazy Horse. 300 g’s for the blow. Another couple hundred for this end of the earth Dud Raunch and all the shit that goes with it. Berninghaus and whositsface and whatever other dabbler you wasted my money on. How much you out Marco? About five mil counting mine?” Marco nodded. He was looking warily at Greenleaf. “You’re gonna get your head out of the biosphere, baby brother, and your feet on the ground. You can sell that plane you bought to ranch hop in and that boat you got docked in Chicago. Dud Raunch expenses to pay off my part. My little brother’s got a plane and a boat, Rocco. He planes to Ringo and one of his cowboys picks him up. He should have done the dope runs himself but he’s afraid of getting stopped and doing time. He thinks he’s too big for courier jobs. He thinks he’s Donald Trump. Pay attention Mr. Art of no Deal. It’s gumba time in gangland. I’m going to teach you the Art of the Steal, pull my Trump card, show you how us old relics rock.” There was a silver bucket with iced champagne on the table. Corso pulled out the bottle and pushed the bucket at Big Hands. “Wake up Sleeping Beauty. I want to brief her on her part. Get Tonto’s attention too.” Big Hands threw the ice water in Desert’s face. He clanked on Greenleaf’s head with the bucket until his hands went up and his eyes rolled open. Desert looked around in a daze, shivering and wet. She wiped the ice cubes off the nightgown and tried to clear her head. “Before we ace the odd couple here,” Corso smiled at Desert, enjoying the wet nightgown show, the soft white breasts showing through the water soaked silk, “ we’re going to star Cinderella in her long awaited film debut. Rare footage. It’s the last she’ll do. She’ll sit tied to a chair. They’ll be a gag over her mouth. She’s gonna have a couple of black eyes, a swollen mouth, black and blue bruises on her body, those shapely legs showing bright red welts, those big green eyes screaming with fear and pain. Tonto stands behind her in his killer FBI outfit, that bayonet pressed against our heroine’s golden scalp. It’s a ransom video. Tonto wants five million dollars in unmarked bills. He wants it dropped from a plane over the desert. If it don’t go right, Cinderella disappears. Which is going to happen anyway.” Corso smiled. “Then its time for the sequel. A collectors item for a limited high paying few. A vintage little reel of Slasher

Snuff. Big Hands in a black mask, holding a butcher knife. Bondage, beatings, slam and ram. Then here comes Big Hands the Chopper to chop off Cinderella’s head.”

“I like it boss. I look good in a mask.”

Greenleaf felt his swollen jaw. The big man came out of the limo, pushed the dog away and knocked him out. He looked around the dazzling room, at the tiled floor, the wine colored rafters, the stained glass windows with their mystical signs. It was the Dream of the Spider. The church. The girl. Death’s shadow looming everywhere. But it was the Indian gods who were watching, speaking from the great beyond. The totem legged tables. The medicine man’s messages. The beaded hangings and the buffalo heads. He glanced at Desert. She looked jolted and wrecked. He tried to read the mystic signs.

“You got lucky.” Marco muttered. His face was pale.

“You don’t get luck, you make luck.” Corso sneered. “You bluff, cheat, force the hand. You gotta know how to play the game. You gotta be the game to win the game. Goldilocks knows the game. She played a good hand. Not good enough to beat me. She ain’t that smart. She’s smarter than you baby brother. But that ain’t saying much.”

“You ain’t pulled it off yet.” Marco grumbled.

“We’ll pull it off, that’s book, but we gotta move before the feds get here. Rocco get some cuffs from the fantasy closet, grab a leather mask, paddles, whips, whatever else we need. Get some more dope from the blonde. We’re moving Tonto and Cinderella to that motel we saw on the news. We checked it out on the way back from the hospital, baby brother. It’s locked up and bolted by order of the FBI. We’re going to shoot our little movie there. After that it’s the party for the cast. Unfortunately, Tonto won’t get to stay very long. But our little movie queen’s gonna party all night. It’s gonna be a real scream, ain’t it beautiful? And you can make as much noise as you want. There ain’t no neighbors. There ain’t nothing but us.”

“I’ll pay the ransom.” Desert looked up stunned. She sat shivering with her arms folded over her breasts. She thought of the black orchids. The gorilla man stood over her smiling. He made her flesh crawl. “I’ll double the money. I have millions in contracts, and I’ll have millions more.”

“Cinderella looks scared.” Corso chortled. “She didn’t know that Big Hands was going to be her leading man. It’s too late bitch. I got nothing on you. I can’t collect. There’s no way I can squeeze anything out of you now. Not the way you covered your tracks. You overplayed your hand Princess. You got no cards left.”

“I hold her last card.”

Greenleaf said woodenly. He looked at Desert with disgust.

“You do Tonto?” Corso lifted his eyebrows. “Pray tell Crazy Horse what card is that?”

“The Joker. You remember when you called me the Joker?” Greenleaf turned to Desert but she looked away.

“You’re both Jokers Indian. Spit it out.”

“She drew a map of the roadhouse and wrote the names of the rooms. Cellar, staircase, office, bar, like that. Her handwriting. Her fingerprints. It connects her to the crime. The map is at the police station in an evidence basket along with the masks and tools and guns and clothes. Before the robbery, I folded the map and slipped it in a slit I have cut in the skin of my rattlesnake belt. I always keep a hundred dollar bill in the slit. Backup for gambling. You can’t see it, feel it, the skin’s too thick. The Feds don’t know its there. They would have used it by now. Its just an old worn out belt. They’ll never check it. They have no reason to look.”

“You stupid looser!” Desert looked at him and laughed. Her eyes were feverish. Her voice shook. “So there was evidence around all the time. I knew you were a fuck up.”

“You’re smarter than I thought Tonto.” Corso studied him. “Blackmail in case she cut you out. Which is exactly what she did.”

“No. I didn’t want to blow the layout, that’s all. I hadn’t slept for days. I was popping pills.”

“Imbecile.” Desert shook her head.

“Nice try Tonto, but close don’t count. Number one you might be hustling me. I don’t know if the map is there.”

“It’s there.”

“Even if it is, the Princess can squirm out of it, blame it on her buddy Kit. Tell a jury he told her to draw the roadhouse. The jury will believe anything the Princess says.”

“She wrote a note on the bottom. She wrote: ‘Burn this asshole!’ That would be hard to explain. Unless this Kit guy wanted to burn down the house. That makes no sense. The Feds are on to her. The ghost man wanted to make a deal with me. He’d get me Life if I backed them in their case against her. I could have laid the map on him then. With the map, even if she beat the Fed’s case, there’d be wrongful death suits from the families of the victims. They’d want to cash in. The civil suits would beat her in the end. The press would hound her. You know how they turn. Once the map is out, she can’t win. That wasn’t good enough for me. I wanted to kill her myself. I fought the ghost man. You got there first. And now as much as I want to see her die, and die hard like I died inside, it’s not the same. Now it’s not my say. Now the map is another card dealt by her destiny. It’s her card not mine. It’s not my place to hold it from the play. I can see that in the signs.” Greenleaf looked around the room. “In the carvings, the painted glass, the meanings of the beads. She knows the map is there. She won’t risk prison. She wouldn’t risk money and stardom. Whatever deal you give her will be the best choice she can take.”

“What’s he talking about boss?”

“Beats me. But it’s getting on my nerves. You had your pow wow Tonto. I ain’t giving her no deal, I ain’t playing no destiny card. The games over and I’m folding my hand. I got the dope, the reward, the ransom and the snuff film. That’s seven or eight million dollars. I’m going to quit while I’m ahead.”

“Sal, I couldn’t find no mask big enough for Big Hand’s head.” Rocco came back dragging a bag. The Nordic blonde walked with him. “I cut the back on the biggest I found. We can tape it after he puts it on.”

“Jesus this is a snuff film!” Corso glared at him. “ Who are you Edith Head? What do I care how the fucking thing looks? The Feds could be here any minute. You’re screwing around playing wardrobe man?”

“Where’s my dough?”

The Nordic blonde glared down at Corso. She wore a Tiger coat with the collar up.

“It’s in the mail blondie. Get your ass in the truck.”

“I want it now. I ain’t leaving without my cut.”

“Get your girlfriend out of here.” Corso frowned at Marco.

“We’ll take care of you honey, don’t worry. We’re busy now. Do like Sal says.”

“I know you’ll take care of me. Or I’ll take care of you. I didn’t risk a kidnaping charge to be shuffled off. I want a full cut when the deal goes down. I know what you’re up to. You’ll get big time money for that little slut.”

“Big Hands pay off blondie.”

Big Hands grabbed the Amazon. He pulled her to him and snapped her neck. He sat her body on the curved couch next to Desert. The dead woman’s shoulders slumped forward, the head fell back.

“Everything’s out of here.” Corso looked around the casino. The last crate had been wheeled out. “ Lock it up Marco. You’re coming with us. It’s time you joined the gang. I want you in on the party and the clean up after. You’re going to learn the business from the bottom instead of the top.”

“I thought you had balls?” Marco sneered. His eyes moved sullenly to the broken necked blonde. “I thought you were a player, Sal, a master of the game. You’re sure the game is over? You ain’t blowing the biggest score you ever had?”

“This game’s over, little brother. It’s time to cash in. I got the only score there is to get.”

“Did you? You know how much a megastar is worth? Do you know how much they get for movies and endorsements? Millions on top of millions. Hundreds of millions. They got jets and yachts and more cars than a parking lot, houses as big as castles, estates that go on forever. They make more money than a New York Don. You sure you ain’t blowing that?”

“I told you Marco, money talks bullshit walks. I ain’t gambling a sure thing for some invisible map. You expect me to listen to that crazy Indian? He sounds like some sixties druggie Flower Child. You expect me to bank on this psycho bitch? You got your head in the clouds again and stars in your eyes. Hollywood Marco cruising Sunset Boulevard. You got to know when to fold, little brother. You’ll learn that in time.”

“Maybe when bullshit talks money walks.” Marco sneered. He picked up a phone and punched in a number. “Is this the Black Water police station? This is Marco Corso. That’s right CORSO, sure I saw that on the news. Look, you can’t believe everything you read in the papers. I just want you to know Desert Flower is visiting my ranch. We left the hospital in a hurry and forgot to tell the desk. Wait a minute she wants to talk to you.” Marco smiled and tossed Desert the phone. “Go ahead, tell them you’re kidnaped. They got a phone check, they’ll know where to come. You’re free. It’s all over. You got nothing to worry about. Tell them to come get you. File charges. Do what you want. Tell them you just saw Big Hands snuff a dame.”

Desert looked at the phone lying next to her on the couch. She reached, hesitated, picked it up.

“Black Water police station? Hey, Sargent John! Yes, this is Desert Flower. Sure we’ll inform the hospital. Sorry, we were so inexcusably thoughtless. Much obliged. Goodnight to you too.

“So what’s the deal?” She snapped the connection off. She glared at Corso, arms folded.

“That was crazy little brother.” Corso’s face was white. He stared at Marco in disbelief. “You could have finished us, buried us, that was completely nuts.”

“You got to be nuts and have nuts in this racket.” Marco smiled. “An old mob relic taught me that.”

“I need a drink.” Corso rose and paced. His hands were shaking. His face was drained. “Rocco get me a Scotch.” He glanced at Desert, Greenleaf. His burly frame shuddered.

“Can I get one too? Perrier would be refreshing.”

“Don’t push me bitch.”

Rocco brought him the drink and he gulped it down. He handed back the glass. “Get me a real one this time.” He took a deep breath and looked at Desert with a scowl.

“Here’s the deal Goldilocks, I own you now. Everything you make is mine, and you’re going to make a lot. You wash out in movies, you’ll work in porn flicks. I’d start that now, but we’ll see how this goes. What you get back depends. Get on my good side and then we’ll see. A family lawyer, agent, and accountant will handle your affairs. Starting tomorrow, you get a bodyguard to babysit you.”

“You mean tomorrow I get a jailer.” Desert sneered.

“Jail can be arranged, Goldilocks. So can a death. Whatever I feel like doing, understand?”

Her emerald eyes flashed. She stared at the floor. She looked at Greenleaf and shook her head.

“Fuck up.” She hissed. “How did you kill all those men? They must have died laughing when they saw you with a gun. My only mistake was picking you. And god, that was a big one. I should have put a bullet in your head instead of your chest. You’d be dead and buried with that stupid belt.”

“I asked you a question.” Corso flared.

“I got it. Death or jail.”

“Big Hands get a paddle out of that bag. Cinderella needs some manners.”

“I understand you Mr. Corso.”

“What else, Goldilocks?”

“You own me.”

“Get it Big Hands.”

“You own me, Mr. Corso.”

“That’s right bitch. Body and soul. I ain’t gonna let you forget it. Now get your butt up off that couch and give Big Hands some head.”

“What?”

“Get up and blow Big Hands! And answer me right or I’ll blister your ass!”

“Yes, Mr. Corso, I’d be happy to blow Mr. Hands. I hope it hurts when they kill you Tonto.” She hissed at Greenleaf as she rose. “I wish I could watch. This is as bad as the roadhouse, maybe worse.”

Big Hands grabbed her wrist and yanked her off the couch. She slid along the tiles as he tugged her along. The floor around the table still glistened with water and ice.

“Right there Big Hands, I want to watch. I want to see what I’m getting, since I’m next.”

“Right here boss?”

“What’s the matter, you shy?”

“Not me boss. On your knees Goldilocks.”

Big Hands shoved her to the floor and unzipped his fly. He clutched her hair in his fist.

“It’s real big, princess, so you gotta open wide. That’s how I got my nickname. Big dick, big hands. Get it. Like they go together. Like God made it that way so’s I could hold it up.”

“Here’s the deal with you.” Corso turned to Greenleaf. “I can see by the totems and beads and rugs that it’s time for you to die.”

“I’m ready to die.”

“Good, we’re ready to kill you.” Corso smiled. “Big Hands and Marco are going to take you to the motel. They’re going to chop you up and take your scalp. You see this baby brother?” Corso fumbled in the gunny sack and pulled out Castle’s scalp. “Cute huh?” Marco flinched. “Must be the ghost man. Bring back Tonto’s fingers and hair. I got to keep that belt on ice. It will stay in the evidence basket, if they think he’s still at large. We’ll plant prints and strands at random heists. Your legend will live on Tonto. They’ll name a rock group after you.”

“I don’t care what you do.”

“Gee, I was worried. First, we’re going to make a film, Big Chief. If it goes OK, you’ll die fast. I want the whole story on the rode house robbery in case I need a little back up to keep Goldilocks in line. And, Tonto, let’s get this straight. If your jiving me about that map, your family is dead. Moonshadow and Little Sparrow and Big Bear and whatever. I saw them on the news. You’ll all be together in the happy hunting grounds.”

“It’s there.” Greenleaf shrugged.

Rocco came back with a tall iced Scotch. He almost dropped the glass, when he saw Big Hands standing straddled legged and Desert on her knees before him, head bobbing back and forth.

“Last call Tonto.” Corso lifted the drink. “To your health, it’s been fun, honest Injun.”

The tall glass shattered in Corso’s clenched fist, as a howl which rocked the rafters echoed through the room. Rambo whirled. Marco looked up stunned. Corso spun around to see Big Hands running straddle legged in circles around the room, fists waving in the air. “AHHHHHHHH!” The girl lay below him, hanging from his penis by her teeth. Her long hair swept the floor, as Big Hands dragged her healter skelter between his legs. Her eyes were dancing. Blood flowed from her mouth. Big Hands roared in torment. Tears ran down his face. “AHHHHHH!”

Greenleaf grabbed the bayonet and slashed Marco’s throat. He turned and hurled the knife at Corso. The blade plunged into the gangster’s chest. Rambo was on top of him, ripping at his face. Greenleaf twisted, turned, tried to push the big dog off. He groped frantically at Marco’s corpse reaching for his gun. The monster overpowered him and dragged him to the floor.

Desert spat out the head of Big Hand’s penis. She rolled on the tiles and scrambled to her feet. Arms outstretched, Big Hands staggered after her. His eyes were glazed, blood ran between his legs. Corso drew his gun and fired wildly. Bullets hit the table, fireplace, whizzed past Greenleaf’s head. Rocco watched in a daze as Corso staggered by him. The mobster sucked for air. Blood ran down his shirt. An explosion rocked the ranch house. Corso toppled to his knees. The stained glass windows shattered. Colored glass flew everywhere. Rocco hurtled through the air. Gunfire erupted. The Spanish doors crashed open. Greenleaf felt his forearm snap beneath the monster’s grinding teeth. A bomb hit the room. The floor was on fire. The roof was burning. The hookers and bouncers tumbled into the casino. Bullets beat the walls around them like a blizzard. There were shouts and screams. Desert dodged and danced. Big Hands lumbered after. She turned a cartwheel from the corner.

Big Hands grabbed her hair.

“You killed my boy Corso!” A hard voice shouted from the depths of the blizzard.

The cowboys were shooting at the snowstorm through the blown out doors and windows. Automatic gunfire came back at them, ricocheting off the walls. The roof was blazing. The hookers crowded together in the foyer. Some were shot. They all were screaming. Corso staggered to his feet. His chest was on fire. He looked around in a daze. He couldn’t breath.

“You killed my Guido! You’re dead you motherfucker!”

“It’s Vito Marzullo, Sal.”

Rocco crawled to his feet. Glass shards pierced his body. He was covered with blood. The furniture was burning. Smoke was everywhere. Big Hands whirled Desert through the flames. He held her high by her hair. Her mouth was covered with blood. Her green eyes blazed.

“So like maybe they’ll call you small hands?”

Big Hands grabbed her neck. She pulled the gun from his belt and shot him in the stomach, three times in rapid succession. Big Hands doubled up and staggered back, eyes wide, mouth open. The burning roof was caving in. Flaming boards fell to the floor. The dog was on fire. Greenleaf squirmed back toward the fireplace. He grabbed Marco’s gun. He shot Rambo between the eyes. He shot Corso in the head. He scrambled to his feet.

“DROP YOUR WEAPONS! THIS IS THE FBI! YOU ARE COMPLETELY

SURROUNDED! PUT YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

Corso felt a fire in his brain. He looked down at his chest. The bayonet stuck out like a body part. He felt the steel blade in his lung. “Fucking Dud Raunch!’ He muttered. He staggered toward the window and stared at the snow. Bullets whizzed past him. He fired back. “I’ll get you Marzullo!”

Desert was gone. Arm dangling, Greenleaf grabbed the gunnysack and ran through the smoke. The rafters were falling down and the walls swirled with flames. He staggered through a crackling hallway. He heard crashing and screams behind him. Gasping for air he shouldered through a door. Snow flew in his face. He stood swaying outside. He looked around for the girl.

The stables were burning. Rifles boomed. Horses ran ghostlike in the dazzle. He exchanged gunfire with a figure crouched in the snow. The girl emerged like a burning witch in the white whirl, her golden hair wind tossed as she fired at the phantoms in the pall. A frenzied horse raced past. Greenleaf grabbed its mane. The horse reared wildly as he leaped on its back. Desert jumped on with him. She pressed her breasts to his back and held her arm around his waist. Bullets whizzed past them as they crouched low on the battle startled stallion. They emptied their guns at the shooters as they galloped away through the storm.

24

I’ll die but not in the Eye. I’ll die but not in the Eye.

Cole fought the wheel. The jeep roared down the road, blasting through the snow banks,

swerving wildly through the blinding storm. His jaw was set. His gray eyes grim. The revolver lay beside him, hammer cocked.

“Cole to Cannon.”

“Go Cole, this is Sargent John.”

“Chasing the Indian. Hot pursuit. Need backup. Send troops.”

“What’s your location, Cole?”

“Chasing Indian.”

The forests flew past, death shrouds in the storm. The jeep rocked and plunged. When Cole heard the Black Water transmission, he took the gun out of his mouth. The Indian hit the

hospital and escaped again. No one knew where the Indian was, where he might be, could be, would be. Cole drained the bottle. Double indemnity. His wife would be rich. If he died in the line of duty, she’d collect twice the insurance. He’d crash the jeep in hot pursuit. It had to be good. It had to be fatal. He remembered the dream of the demon. He remembered the plunge.

I’ll die but not in the eye.

“THE RANCH IS SURROUNDED! THIS IS THE FBI! DROP YOUR WEAPONS! YOU CAN”T GET OUT!”

Gunfire crackled in the maelstrom. The ranch house blazed. They could hear the screams of women, the shouts of men. Troops from the Eye circled through the storm. Blade and Stragger sat crouched in the bushes across the tree lined drive.

“What the fucks going on man, this is insane!”

“Looks like a gang war, and whoever the fucks out there is taking no prisoners.”

Castle was dead. His corpse lay on a stretcher in the line outside the morgue. Stragger found his mutilated body in the mechanical room. The location of the ranch was on the message machine. Castle had saved it. He lay sprawled across the desk in a puddle of blood. Hitting the button was his last official act. The gates guards lay dead at the entrance when the convoy arrived. The ranch house was burning. There were explosions, screams, the sound of automatic rifles.

“Behind those trees, Blade.”

Stragger spotted two men moving from the house to the driveway through his night vision glasses. Rifle fire crackled on the sides of the burning house as well as the back.

“Freeze assholes!” Blade shouted. “You don’t have a chance!”

Spitfire cut the bushes. They waited it out. They jumped from their cover and shot the men down.

“Picture this Maury. 80 black limos driving through the snow. 40 hearses, 40 family cars in a last ride through Black Water. The whole town is out. People fill the streets. Everyone is dressed in mourning. The snow comes down. Black and white and dead all over. I want that shot Maury. I want it bad. A funeral procession through Black Water for the massacred men. A surrealistic drive down Main Street and around the courthouse. We’ll get a couple of TV Evangelists to say a few words from the steps. You get together with that mayor and contact the families. Tell them it’s a tribute to their loved ones who died in the line of fire. What do you mean How do I know it’s gonna keep snowing? We’ll blow soap flakes from the roof tops, that’s how I know! Get on it right away. Get Blackford to help.”

Wind, sky, earth were one, a ghost dance on the desert amidst the death howls of the demons. Greenleaf could see nothing. The horse galloped blindly through the pall. Stone spires surfaced in the storm like grim ghouls, rock mounds emerged in the dead light like howling skulls. Greenleaf pulled up the horse and jumped off its back. He grabbed Desert by the waist and whirled her to the ground. The horse reared high on its hind legs kicking at the air. Greenleaf calmed him down and led him to a rock ledge out of the wind.

“Take cover!” Greenleaf shouted. There was a hollow in the stone spire. Desert scrambled for the hole. Greenleaf scoured the ground around the crevice for scrub brush, heaping what he gathered at the mouth of the furrow. Desert watched him in a daze, frozen to the bone. Her teeth were chattering. Her gown was covered with ice. She sat folded in a corner, hands tucked under her arms. She rocked on her haunches and shuddered all over. “Shove back!” Greenleaf shouted. He pushed his way in. He squatted on the ground beside her. He dug into the gunny sack and pulled out the bundle of cash. He stuffed the bills in the brambles and lit a match. The brush caught fire. Flames twisted through the heap. The tangle began to crackle. Heat flew back. He peeled more bills off the stack and fed them to the flames.

“You’re burning the money?”

“Beats freezing bitch. Money to burn.” Greenleaf grunted. He scowled at the fire.

“So what’s next Tonto?” Desert chattered. She watched him stuff the money back in the sack, study the bags of Cocain, ponder Castle’s scalp. “Rape, murder, maybe a little torture thrown in?”

“I wouldn’t touch you, Cinderella, with a totem pole.”

Greenleaf glanced at her grimly and buckled the bag.

“Wouldn’t or couldn’t Tonto? Anyway that’s a relief to hear. You ain’t exactly nobody’s dream date for sure.”

“I can be your worst nightmare, princess. Don’t push me too far.”

“That won’t take much, just sit in the light.”

“You’re lucky your negotiable.” Greenleaf grunted. “I’d solve your problem fast.”

“Your gonna turn me in? Is that your plan? Give the Feds the map. Trade me for your life?

“There’s no map princess.” Greenleaf settled back against the rock. “No slit belt. That was a stall. I wanted to go for Marco’s gun. The last thing I’d do is go back to prison.”

“I don’t understand. What’s left? You got the score. There ain’t nothing else.”

“I’m holding you ransom.” Greenleaf’s eyes were dark fires. “The blood money burns.

Maybe this heist was for a reason I’ll never understand: payback for the slaughter of a civilization outnumbered and outgunned. The score is bad medicine. It goes back to hell.”

Greenleaf closed his eyes and lowered his head. His face was as tortured as the twisting flames. Desert studied his slumped figure. She ran her hands over her shivering limbs. A sharp stone gleamed on the ground near her in the flickering light. She edged the rock toward her with her wet silk slipper.

“You want the movie money, Tonto? That can be arranged. Just like the gangsters. My money or my life?”

“I want a flower in the desert.” Greenleaf whispered. “I want a rainbow after the storm. Something good has to come from this. It can’t be all slaughter and evil, greed and blood. I want money for my reservation. A new hospital, new school. A future for my people. That’s the deal. I’m going deep in the north woods. No one can catch me there. I’ll live off the land until I’m ready to come back. I have to get away from the world, forget this nightmare we committed. You can fork over some of the take from your Hollywood medicine show. You double-crossed me once, Cinderella. Do it again and you’re dead.”

She looked like fire on snow, her golden hair flaming above the white nightgown. He shuddered as he looked at her. He was passing out. Ice princess. Cold beauty. Mystic eyes. Soul from hell.

“Do unto others Tonto, before they do it to you.” Desert glowered in the flame light. “That ain’t no double-cross. That’s survival, pure and simple. It was me or you. I’ll pay for your sins. Make your fantasy come true. I’m the fairytale princess. The roadhouse whore. You can hide in the woods while I do it and play Holy Man. Charity’s a tax write off anyway. Good PR.”

“That’s all I want.” Greenleaf grimaced. “That’s all that can be done.”

She slid the rock closer, felt its edge with her palm. The strike had to be lethal. She had to wait out the storm. She might plunge down a gorge in the dazzle, get lost in the whirl. She thought of the chinless boy she killed, the knife jab to his throat. The Indian looked wreaked, like he’d pass out any moment. His eyes were closing, his head dropping forward.

“You give me that Fed jacket, Tonto, and I’ll fix your arm. I’m freezing to death in case you haven’t noticed.”

“I didn’t know ice was bothered by the cold.”

Greenleaf peeled off the jacket and threw it in her face. She slipped it on and shuddered, wrapped its length around her legs. He was drifting off, dreaming of his uncle Silvertree, moving from town to town, shooting pool for big money.

“I ain’t ice, Tonto. I’m a human being. I got feelings too. Hold out your arm.”

She knelt before him. His cracked arm ached. She rolled up the sleeve of his mechanic’s shirt and gently felt the break. He watched her tare the hem off her nightgown, rip it into strips. She took a bundle of cash from the gunny sack and broke it into stacks.

“I should have stopped you in the poolroom princess.” The black fog of his hatred was falling away. “The minute you spelled the plan. You’re a kid. You’re disturbed. I should have seen it, steered you right.”

“You’re a dreamer Tonto.” Desert laughed. She made splints from the stacks, tying them with the strips of silk. “You couldn’t stop me. I had to do it. I know how to get around men. You’re a dreamer and a loser. But that’s OK. I’m a dreamer too. I dreamed with the ghosts in roadhouse. Maybe none of this is real.”

Her touch was tender and soothing. Her golden hair brushed his face. The rich hair was scented with perfume. Greenleaf breathed in her fragrance and felt light in the head. Her beauty was a death sentence. He felt himself dying inside. She seemed spectral in the firelight, like a spirit or a dream. He loved her more than ever.

“Hold still Tonto.”

She tugged his arm. The pain shot through him. He rocked forward in a daze. He felt them falling together, dropping through the night, swooning through a black hole locked in a phantom

embrace. He was floating through the dark with an angel in his arms, an incandescent spirit as illusive as the wind.

“You’re hurting me Tonto.”

Greenleaf pinned her to the ground.

“You betrayed me bitch.”

Her eyes were laughing. Her arm encircled his neck.

“You going to rape me Tonto?”

Greenleaf groaned in her embrace. He tried to rise. She pulled him down.

Lips of fire were fused with his. He was breathing flame. The fire raged through his being and burned in his blood. They were locked in fire. His passion blazed. Even his mind was an inferno.

She thought of the chinless boy in the ambulance as she reached for the rock. She remembered him whistling Dream Baby as he felt her up.

Greenleaf felt her fingers on his face sooth his fevered pain. They traveled to his burning neck, touched the pulsing jugular vein. Her breath was scorching. She ran her cool hands through his hair. Firestorms flared up in his soul, erupted in his heart. “Sweet dreams baby.” He heard the ghost girl whisper.

“I’ll kill you Marzullo!”

Intermittent gunfire crackled in the pall outside. Snow descended like death shrouds through the bombed out casino roof. Rafters and roof-tiles blazed in a jumble on the floor.

“COME OUT NOW! THIS IS THE FBI! THE HOUSE IS SURROUNDED! COME OUT

WITH YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR!”

Corso sat wheezing on the window sill, numbed with cold. He stared blindly at the blizzard and shot at anything that moved. The cowboys and hookers ran out long ago. They were rounded up by soldiers and taken to an army truck. Marco, Big Hands, Rocco, lay scattered in blood around the room. The Nordic blonde sat blazing on the burning leather couch.

Come out now ....Corso mimicked the bull horn in his mind...FBI...Shoot him boys, he’s carrying a knife...

He looked down at the bayonet sticking in his chest and started to laugh. The big fear gripped him and he broke out in a sweat. Death was waiting. This was the end of his life. The black hole was waiting, maybe hell.

We live in space without time, time without stop, our love is everlasting, our souls forever one.

Desert dreamed of the monastery, of the nun in the script, as she lay shivering in the hollow and the blizzard raged outside. The wind howled through her nightmares. She twisted in her sleep. The wind whispered lamentations for the living, prayers for the dead, psalms, incantations, ritual chants.

Come to Daddy little princess! Come to Daddy’s big dark bed!

She was nailed to a cross in a torch-lit church. The stone walls flickered with firelight. Candles dotted the cavernous altar . She wore a gossamer gown, a crown of stars. Incense burned. Ghost shapes sat below her in the grottos of the dark.

“For your hands are defiled with blood,”

A dark voice uttered. A phantom emerged from the shadows below.

“ And your fingers with iniquity;

“ Your lips have spoken lies,

“And your tongue muttereth wickedness.

“You live in the dark like the dead.

“And you weave a spider’s web.”

The ghost shapes rose and lifted their heads. She saw her father, uncle, and the chinless boy below her, the men from the roadhouse and the white haired investigator who was studying her with his crystal eyes. They repeated the phantom’s words line by line, looking up at her with dead eyes, bodies covered with blood. Tonto entered the sanctuary from a dark door in the back. He was robed like a monk. His head was bowed. A dark hood covered his head. He stood still in the shadows He stared blankly at the floor.

“Arise, shine, for thy light is come!”

Wide doors flew open blazing with light. Bradford Blackford appeared in grand priest’s vestments holding something in his hand. He wore golden chasubles, copes, dalmatics, adorned with orphreys. He walked solemnly down the aisle. He held the nun script devoutly before him, his head bowed to its luminous words. He anointed the congregants with holy water as he strode regally past. He shook it from the head of a hollowed out Oscar statuette which had holes in the top.

“Hollywood is Holy Land.

Blackford chanted in a tremulous voice.

“The world will bask in thy light!”

Movie stars flowed in after him. They filled the flickering pews. Madonna, Sean Penn, Cher and Tom Hanks, everyone from the fan magazines. Desert saw Otherly Love and Nurse

Hartfelt waving at her from the glamorous throng. Svetlana Asonova, dressed in the roadhouse wedding gown, skated down the aisle holding the hospital letter basket in her arms. The beautiful ice-dancer smiled and performed a pirouette at the altar. She laid the basket with reverence on the marble floor. Desert looked down from the cross at a golden haired little girl. She knew at once it was hers. The little girl in the basket had emerald eyes and Indian skin the color of sunset. Desert had never seen anything so beautiful. She felt a flood of love swell in her heart.

Desert awoke with a shudder, shivering with cold. The fire was dying. The hollow was dark. The blizzard had stopped. The bleak winds wailed outside the crevice. White veils swirled across the snow. She sat up with a quiver, clutching her breast. Her heart was pounding from the dream of the dead, the image of the half-breed baby which she knew was hers. She looked around in a daze, shaken and spent. The dark dream whirled like a dervish in the depths of her thoughts.

“Better ride Tonto.”

She shook Greenleaf by the shoulder and kicked off the mechanic’s oversized shoes. Greenleaf had taken them off and pushed them over her slippers just before they went to sleep. She couldn’t kill him. There was some otherworldly aura in the Indian’s eyes, some preternatural power in his passion, some shaman spirit in his lust. His eyes had been dark furies as he made love to her, stirring strange storms in her soul. Black spirits seemed to shift through his body, demons to howl in his heart. He wasn’t real. He was wind and night, his mouth brutal, his touch soft. Devil shapes danced in the shadows of the hollow fire, specters tore at her heart.

“Tonto wake up.”

She shook him again. Greenleaf shifted, struggled and sat up.

“I’ll make you a fire.”

He slipped out of the hollow. She saw him moving through the snow prowling through the dark. Scrub brush was piled high atop the embers. The brambles began to crackle. Heat filled the hovel.

“They’ll be coming soon.” Greenleaf shivered as he slipped back in the hole. “Riders on horses, snowmobiles. Keep the fire going. They’ll find you in the morning. You’ll be OK.”

“You’re OK too, Tonto.

Desert studied him in the firelight.

“At least with me.”

“Still, nobody’s dream date though.”

“No, but you ain’t bad in a nightmare. I’ll give that to you.”

She turned away and stared at the fire. Troubled, rueful, her goddess-like features seemed far away. Greenleaf checked his arm. The splint was holding well. When he asked her where she learned that, she told him she knew a lot of broken men. He knew he was sitting in a death trap, but he couldn’t tare himself away. In a world of shadows, he saw her as a bright, pure flame, lit by some spiritual glow. The moth and the flame. Greenleaf brooded. He had flown into the fire. They were a perfect pair. Snake eyes in a craps shoot. A losing game.

“Do you believe in dreams, Tonto?”

“Dreams are strange.”

“I dreamed I had a baby, Tonto. I guess it was yours.”

“It was just a dream.” Greenleaf laughed. “ I asked you to help the children in the reservation. That was probably in the back of your mind.”

“It wasn’t wishful thinking.” Desert shivered. “ That’s for sure. The last thing I need is another burden in life. I have to get away from Black Water, far and fast. I have to get my head together, get my feet on the ground. I’m not right Tonto. I never was. I probably never will be. It’s too late now.”

“Don’t worry. A baby couldn’t come just from last night. Should it come don’t have it. It’s not right, not now.”

“The dream was good Tonto.” Desert shuddered. “That’s the problem. When I saw that little girl.” She shook her head.

“It was just a dream,” Greenleaf studied her, “a meaningless thing. “Someday you’ll have a baby. When it’s time, with someone right.”

“If it does happen Tonto, it’ll be OK.” Desert looked at him. “I felt love in the dream. I never felt that feeling before. Maybe long ago.”

“Love will come. It’s in the cards.”

“Maybe.” She shuddered. “Maybe love and me don’t get along.”

“Everyone love’s.”

“Not everyone Tonto.”

“Less said the better.” Greenleaf felt shaken inside. He looked around the death trap. “I better ride.”

“I want a flower in the desert too Tonto.”

She shivered as she studied him.

“Don’t worry, a rainbow will come.”

“Maybe. I doubt it. I don’t trust the future. It’s a world of jackals and sharks. Men without hearts or souls. Use and abuse. Now it’ll be Hollywood style. If it does happen Tonto, the dream I mean, I want you to know you’re the father of the child if you want to be. You’re different Tonto. I feel safe with you.”

“No kid needs me for a father.”

Greenleaf’s studied his beaten hands.

“A little girl needs a father. You’d be better than most.

“We’ll leave it to fate.” Desert studied the fire. “We’re just talking visions and strange dream things. The stars will decide. They’ll do what they want.”

“Time to ride kid.” Greenleaf was trembling inside. He patted her arm, hesitated, then ran his hand through her hair. She looked deep in his eyes. She seemed troubled and torn, baffled and drained. She shrugged and turned away. He crawled out of the hollow. She slipped with him outside. The Badlands was a dreamland, drifts shifted and swirled. The winds were savage, cold and harsh. It cut through them like blades, howling in the dark.

“Take care, princess.” Greenleaf mounted the horse. She stood still by the fire. Her golden hair fluttered with the gusts.

“You take care too, Tonto. Ride fast and smart.”

She was dreaming about a little girl. Greenleaf brooded. She was just a little girl herself.

“Hold up, Tonto.” She hurried to him. “ I almost forgot.”

She dug in her jacket pocket and fished something out..

“What’s this?” Greenleaf turned the sharp stone around in his hand.

“Just a rock I guess. It’s sharp as a razor, got a good point. Thought you might use it for hunting when you get to the woods.”

It was an ancient Indian spearhead, weather worn but still sharp.

“It’s a good sign.” Greenleaf held it tightly in his hand. “It will bring me luck. Thanks princess. Now I have to get lost.”

“It’s going to happen, Tonto.” Desert whispered in the wind. “I can feel it in my soul. An Indian girl with golden hair. Hide good Tonto. Don’t get lost too far.”

White veils whirled in the predawn dark. The Badlands was a ghost-land, a wintry dream of death. He rode too late. He urged the sorrel on, a phantom on a spectral ride through a landscape lost and damned.

It’s in the stars, Tonto. I see it in my soul. A little Indian girl with golden hair.

Her lips of fire pressed to his. Greenleaf closed his eyes as he rode and recalled their passion in the hollow. His ecstacy was agony, her fever like a prelude to hell. But then her touch became tender, her kisses soft, their love making gentle, a peaceful intimacy seemed to bind them together.

Shafts of starlight sparkled through the stormy sky. The sacred mountain emerged above him, mystic in the night. Greenleaf galloped through the frozen streams and across the drifting snow-smothered groves, between bluffs and crags howling in the darkness, aglitter with starlit icicles. He climbed the twisting terraces, the jagged uphill trails. The sorrel shifted skittishly through the thickets. Shadow beasts stalked the shrouded woods. Predawn light illuminated the ledges above. Cliff crests of amber caught fire in the rising sun.

Dawn was breaking as he reached the top. Rocks like white castles rose around him on a billowing crystal cloud. There was the sweet smell of dogwood, the lush green elegance of pine, bright stones flared, birds took flight, the azure morning sparkled in the blaze of golden light.

He slipped off the sorrel and led it across the ledge. He stood solemnly on the rock shelf and studied the glittering world below, the crystaline rivulets winding down the ivory cliffs, the mountain forests, the blazing boulders, the blue shadows of the Bear Butte foothills, the silvery winding streams. There was no atonement he could make for what he’d done. There was no penance he could do. He couldn’t believe mankind could desecrate this majesty with the hell they made on earth. He joined that hell and made it worse. Warrior and Holy Man. The girl had his number, that was for sure. He was a loser. A joke. Better dead. Better never. Never othing. Never him. All around Greenleaf, white tresses, like lace garlands, adorned the bending winter’s boughs. There was splendor on top of splendor in the dazzling wonderment of life. He remembered Moonshadow’s wedding to Night Walker, the son of the Medicine Man. The crackling fires, the ritual dress, the drums, songs, holy chants. He relived his passion in the hollow, making love in the fury of the storm. The dream of their golden haired daughter. He wondered if that dream would come true. Dreams were strange. The goddess -like girl was strange. Did she hold their rainbow in her womb? He was dreaming now of the three of them together in a new life away from the world. She didn’t love him. It didn’t matter. Maybe one day she would.

Greenleaf whirled sharply and stood frozen on the ledge. Two riders were galloping at him through the forest over the dazzling ghost-white drifts. They rode bareback on snorting horses. They were bundled like trappers against the cold. Two Indians armed with rifles, one a giant, the other gaunt and leathery with eyes as fierce as a hawks. He watched them approach gravely. The only weapon he had was the stone.

“Long time no see, Thomas.”

The hawk faced Indian smiled down at him. Their horses tossed their manes as the riders reared them to a halt.

“Many moons have past, nephew, since the days we traveled the world, hustling the poolrooms for the easy money the white men were foolish to lose.”

“Uncle Silvertree!” Greenleaf shielded his eyes against the sun. The old man looked ancient. His silvery hair was as white as the snow. His gaunt face was crinkled. His sinuous body bowed. But his eyes were as sharp as ever. His uncle laughed at his astonishment and pushed back the brim of his floppy feathered hat.

“Just what’s left of him, nephew.” Silvertree shook his snow white head. “The years have been hard. This is my friend, Tribe.” He introduced the giant. “We met in prison. Tribe is good with his hands. He moves like a shadow.” The man mountain gazed blankly at Greenleaf. The biggest Indian Greenleaf had ever seen. The giant pulled something from his buckskin shirt and tossed it at Greenleaf’s feet. A gray scalp, just cut, fresh with blood.

“You weren’t alone on the sacred mountain, Thomas.” Silvertree smiled. “I found my old friend sheriff Cole down that deep glade sleeping in a jeep. He smelled of whiskey. We had old scores to even out.”

Silvertree glanced at his friend and both men pulled off their rifles which hung by straps across their shoulders. They laid them slanted across the backs of their snorting mounts.

“We’ve been trailing you Thomas. Have been for days. I have an old pickup with a police radio. When you escaped the soldiers, I guessed you would go to the hospital. I know you Thomas. I know the girl. Or at least I know of her. She’s a legend in my outlaw circles. The beautiful roadhouse whore. Of course, for an Indian a beauty too aloof to take. Knowing you both, I knew the real story, or a good facsimile there of. It was easy to guess that she took you, Thomas, and that you would seek revenge. You were dead anyway. Revenge is irresistible, even for me on an old friend like Cole.” Silvertree shrugged. “Tribe watched the hospital dock. I waited near the entrance doors. The gangsters were a surprise, a bad luck omen, but we followed them anyway and it all worked out. After the battle cleared, we caught some horses. It was tough tracking, Thomas. It was a rough ride through the storm. It took all night, but in the morning we found your fire.”

The giant grunted and plunged his massive hand between his shirt and his buckskin coat. He pulled out a long golden scalp and held it in the air. It flamed in the sunlight like mystically woven fire.

“What’s that?” Greenleaf staggered toward it. His heart beat wildly as he reached out his hand. “That’s impossible. You didn’t kill her. I don’t believe it.” His head began to reel.

“Good fun.” The giant smiled and lifted the golden scalp high out of Greenleaf’s reach. It fluttered in the wind eluding his frantic reaching grasp. “Good fuck, pretty pussy. She fight like a warrior, that girl. Then cry, beg, she say she want her baby.”

“NO!” Greenleaf grabbed at the giant. His head was whirling. The giant laughed and kicked him off. “SHE ISN’T DEAD!” Greenleaf turned to Silvertree. “THAT CAN”T BE HERS! UNCLE, YOU”RE PLAYING A JOKE!”

The rifle boomed. Greenleaf flew backward with it’s force. Silvertree shot him again, this time aiming at his head. Greenleaf’s neck snapped back. His dark eyes widened. Blood sputtered like a geyser from the bullet hole in his forehead. He lay lifeless in the snow, his bloody face a tortured mask.

“See what’s in the bag.”

Silvertree re-slung his rifle.

Tribe slid off the horse and crouched in the snow.

“Is it the dope?”

Tribe rummaged through the gunnysack.

“It’s the dope.” Tribe nodded. “The kid got money on his arm too, all tied up.” He lifted Greenleaf’s body and laid it doubled down across the sorrel’s back. He handed Silvertree the bag and lumbered atop his horse.

“We’ll keep my nephew on ice, Tribe, until the authorities find the girl.” Silvertree reached over and unwrapped the silk bindings from Greenleaf’s dangling arm. He stuffed the money in with the bags of coke. “The reward will double.” Silvertree nodded knowingly. “Her death will shock the world.”

“That dope big money?”

Tribe studied the blood stained bag.

"It’s a big score, Tribe. We’ll live like chiefs.”

Sunlight blazed atop the sacred mountain. Tribe held the golden scalp above him like a banner. They galloped toward the forests with Greenleaf slung across the sorrel horse. The snow drifted and swirled, covering their tracks.

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