Zia Summer, Rio Grande Fall, Shaman Winter, and Jemez Spring

  Somewhere Sonny heard a door open and shut. He had wanted to find the dope before meeting Stammer, but now he had been found.

  “Stammer,” Sonny called in the pitch dark.

  He waited, but there was no response. Maybe not, he thought, glancing back at the door he had entered. Maybe Madge had decided to come in.

  He moved forward, feeling the cages for direction. At the end of the aisle, he felt someone grab his arm and he jerked away. He realized too late that it was a baboon that had grabbed him, and when Sonny pulled away, he brought the cage down on top of himself.

  “Pinche chango,” he cursed as he pushed the cage away, its occupant shrieking. Because of the screeching baboons, he couldn’t sense the presence behind him until it was too late.

  As he was getting up, something hard and heavy crashed into the back of his skull, and he went down.

  Shooting stars went off like an explosion, then a curtain of darkness descended. He saw images of baboons, not the starving crazed creatures of the cages, but well-fed, powerful animals roaming the floor of the sunlit jungle. As Coyote, he sat on the perimeter and watched. For a long time there were only the images of the beautiful creatures moving softly along the grassy floor of the jungle, pausing to pick berries, sitting in the brilliant sunlight and grooming each other. Coyote sat watching over the family.

  When the light of consciousness filtered through the cobwebs, he blinked his eyes. His head pounded. A bright light glowed directly over him, making his head throb when he opened his eyes.

  He tried to move his arms and found he was strapped tightly to a table. An operating table. The bright light overhead was the kind used in operating rooms! A chill coursed through him. He had been stripped bare and strapped to the table.

  A scintillating glaze of gold swung in the light. Sonny blinked, tried to clear the cobwebs, then recognized the Zia medallion. Whoever had strapped him to the table had hung the Zia medallion from the operating lamp. Now it swung softly back and forth, the gold shining in the bright light.

  He looked sideways, blinking to adjust to the darkness around the table. Madge sat in a chair by a desk. She stared blankly at Sonny, then at the broad-shouldered man at the desk. Sonny watched the man lean over the desk; he recognized the sound of someone snorting a line of coke. The man coughed, then snorted the second line.

  When a smiling, glazed-eyed Jerry Stammer turned around, Sonny knew he had been right. Somewhere in the warehouse sat the cocaine and the heroin. Stammer was sitting on the sugar that fed his own addiction. He was so desperate he’d taken his biggest risk and brought it right into his lab.

  Stammer looked at Madge, then rose slowly and went to Sonny’s side.

  “Well, Mr. Sonny Baca, looks like you’re ready for surgery. Time to prep you. I hear you have a heart problem.” He chuckled, and turned to wink at Madge. “Doesn’t he have heart problems?”

  Madge shrugged. “Nothing wrong with his heart,” she said coldly, and lit a cigarette.

  Stammer frowned. “Oh, but he does have a serious heart problem! It runs in the family! His mother just had a bypass. And today I have to operate on the son.”

  He put the stethoscope to Sonny’s heart. “Just as I thought, it’s barely beating. He needs a new heart. A baboon heart.” He laughed.

  Sonny spotted a bottle of scotch on the desk. On top of the coke, the man had been drinking. He was really wired.

  “Fix me like you fixed Gilroy?” Sonny responded.

  “Ah, there’s a little life left in the patient,” Stammer said. “Yes, like I fixed Gilroy. So,” he said, turning to Madge, “our homegrown detective figured it out.”

  “He’s not dumb,” Madge mumbled.

  “No, he’s not dumb at all. That’s why he finds himself strapped to my table! Tell me, Sherlock, how did you figure it out?”

  “It had to be a big man to take Gilroy,” Sonny replied.

  “Very good.” Stammer grinned. “I like that. Next?”

  “The cut was surgical,” Sonny said.

  Stammer burst out in a fit of laughter. “The cut was surgical! I love it!” He chortled crazily.

  Then as quickly as the paroxysm of laughter overtook him, he grew somber. His face grew livid; red veins mottled the pasty skin; his light blue eyes shone with hate.

  “My cuts have always been precise,” he whispered, and lifted his hands. “The best hands in the industry. And my colleagues dare to insinuate that I’ve lost the touch! I haven’t lost the touch! Look!”

  He held his trembling hands in front of Sonny’s face. “I haven’t lost the touch,” he muttered, and moved to the corner of the room, to the cage in which sat a large male baboon.

  “Meet your heart donor,” Stammer said, swinging open the cage door.

  The large baboon was instantly out, baring its fangs as if for attack. It rushed around the operating table, its hair bristling. The big animal stopped to pound its chest and let out a shrill scream.

  Stammer laughed. “Ah, a strong heart, a real macho! Nothing but the best for Mr. Sonny Baca.”

  “Jerry!” Madge screamed. “Don’t!”

  She clutched at the arms of her chair, and the baboon, smelling her fear, raced at her, fangs bared, screeching a challenge.

  “Oh, God!” She cringed in terror.

  But the baboon didn’t attack her; it turned and jumped on the operating table. The gold medallion had caught its eye. It reached up and struck the medal, making it swing back and forth; then it looked down on Sonny and bared its teeth. For a moment Sonny thought it was going to slash at him, but the animal had satisfied its curiosity. It hopped off the table and headed back to its cage.

  “What a show!” Stammer shouted. “He’s inquisitive, but he knows when to pull back. Unlike you, Baca,” Stammer said, and again drew close to the table. “You should have stopped when you found your girl.”

  “I wanted to see how much dope buys a soul,” Sonny said, looking at Madge.

  “You knew all along,” she whispered.

  “Yes,” Stammer interjected, “our precious cargo is here. So what? Note the UPS boxes lining the room. There’s enough money in here to set me up in Aruba. Yes, there, there are research laboratories that respect my genius. With a few million a man can set up a state-of-the-art lab. You see, I still plan to perfect baboon heart transplants. I am dedicated to my work.”

  “You’re a murderer,” Sonny said.

  “People got in my way,” Stammer said coldly. “And when people get in the way, they have to be axed, as my friend Billy would say.”

  “Stone.”

  “Yes, Stone. I heard you two had a run-in. He, too, will retire to Aruba. I to do my transplants, he to do his political thing. Latin America is a perfect laboratory for both of us. Governments ruled by cartels are so much easier to control. That’s Mr. Stone’s goal, a nice little banana republic to call his own.”

  He laughed and leaned over to lift something from the machine beside the table. Two round paddles attached to thick electrical wires. A defibrillator.

  Sonny strained at the straps holding him on the table, but it was useless.

  “But why kill Mario Secco?” he asked, trying to buy time.

  “He was in the way,” Stammer replied as he threw a switch on the machine. Buttons glowed red. “But I thought you knew everything?”

  “Will I still know when I have a baboon heart in me?” Sonny asked.

  Stammer laughed. “He’s got a sense of humor,” he said to Madge. “That’s part of my research, Sonny boy. Will you dream Sonny Baca dreams? Or jungle dreams? This is a first. A medical first.”

  “You’re crazy,” Madge interrupted, but Stammer paid no attention.

  “What about Raven?” Sonny asked.

  Stammer paused. “Raven? Now there’s a dangerous man. He’s capable of anything.”

  “This is part of his plan?”

  Stammer frowned. “We made a deal. Raven says you like animal spirits. He hired me to fix you up with a bab
oon heart.”

  “If you do it, he leaves you alone?”

  “Raven’s an evil creature. I don’t want him as my enemy.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Headed for the Ukraine. Said he was going to buy one of those nuclear bombs the Russians are dismantling. You know what? I believe him.”

  Buy a bomb, Sonny thought. Play with fire, the radioactivity of a nuclear core? So that was Raven’s next move. Raven would return to plague the earth, as he had returned throughout the millennia. He would not rest until he found a way to utter chaos.

  “Raven is evil. You have to believe him,” Sonny said. “He’ll destroy a lot of people.”

  “Tough.” Stammer shrugged. “I won’t be here when he returns.”

  Sonny looked around the room. His head was clear now, but he couldn’t move. He tried to rock the operating table, but it was solid. He was completely immobile.

  “Madge and I will be long gone,” Stammer said. “She in her hot-air balloons floating above the Caribbean, high as a kite, and me perfecting the transplant that will make medical history. I vowed that long ago. I will be somebody!”

  “Then get it over with,” Madge whispered.

  Stammer laughed. “Looks like you have no friends in high places, Mr. Baca. Too bad. You just never knew how big the shipment was, did you?”

  “Enough to pay Stone.”

  Stammer nodded. “Everybody gets paid. That’s the beauty of a shipment this big, there’s enough for everyone.”

  “And Garcia?” Sonny asked, hating himself for asking.

  “Garcia can’t be bought,” Stammer replied. “We tried. You’d think a small-town chief of police would be the first to get in line for a little fast money, but he wouldn’t deal. Which is all right, because he knows nothing.”

  “Just get on with it!” Madge shouted.

  “Sonny boy, it’s the women in your life that are going to kill you.” Stammer clicked his tongue and then turned to address Madge. “Do you know what’ll happen when eight thousand volts hit his brain? It’ll be fried. There will be no trace of a murder weapon, only a very dead Sonny Baca.”

  The brain, Sonny thought. He’s not going to cut me open and put a baboon heart in me. He’s going to put the paddles to my head and electrocute me!

  “Just get it over with!” she shouted back, and started for the door.

  “Where are you going?” Stammer exclaimed.

  Madge opened the door then turned.

  “I’m not going to do it alone!”

  “Are you afraid?” Madge arched an eyebrow, then smiling she walked halfway toward the table. “The great doctor Jerry Stammer is afraid.”

  “No, not afraid, but we’re in it together, my dear. Why should I deny you the pleasure?”

  He put the two paddles to Sonny’s head. “Besides, I need you to push the button.”

  For a moment Madge hesitated. She looked at Sonny. His chest heaved as he struggled.

  “We’ll do this together.” Stammer grinned. Beads of perspiration dripped from his forehead. The rush of coke was wearing off; his hands trembled as they held the paddles tight against Sonny’s temples.

  Sonny looked at Madge and saw the hatred in her eyes.

  “Go on, push the red button,” Stammer said. “We’re only hours away from collecting on the dope and flying out of the country! Mr. Baca’s standing in our way. He’s the only one who knows. Millions, dear, millions, enough dope to buy Venezuela! Do it!”

  “What a waste,” Madge said softly, looking down at Sonny’s naked body.

  “He knows! He’s the only one who knows! Push the button!”

  Madge nodded, reached out, and pushed the red button on the heart stimulator.

  “Good-bye, Sonny,” she whispered, turning her head away as the burst of electricity became a muffled explosion in the room.

  Sonny screamed, and the baboon returned the tortured scream, responding to the cry of pain he heard from Sonny.

  Stammer was jolted backward when the explosion came, and the same surge sent Sonny into convulsions as the electricity passed through his brain. His eyes rolled back, his jaw clenched, his teeth gritted.

  “God,” Madge muttered, and stumbled to the desk. She lifted the bottle of scotch and drank quickly.

  Stammer held the plates to Sonny’s head again. “Hit him again!” he shouted. “He’s not dead! Hit him again!”

  But Madge turned away from the writhing mass on the table and didn’t respond.

  “Push the damn button!” Stammer shouted. “He’s still alive!”

  Stammer turned to the machine. He placed one paddle under Sonny’s head and held the other on the forehead. “Damn you!” he cursed. “I’ll do it myself!”

  As he struggled with the machine, a figure entered the room and appeared behind him.

  “Tamara!” Madge cried from the desk.

  Stammer turned, but it was too late.

  “Murderers!” she cried, raised her arm, and struck. The sharp stiletto entered the side of Stammer’s neck.

  “Bitch!” he cried, and stumbled backward, clutching at the dagger implanted in his throat, entangled in the paddles’ wires. Blood spurted from the severed carotid.

  “Help me,” he said, and reached for Madge, stumbling over the machine and pressing the red button as he fell. The electricity that exploded from the paddles lifted Stammer off the floor. The machine exploded again, then went dead as a circuit breaker cut off the current. The office went dark.

  Tamara turned to Sonny. He lay quivering on the table, the convulsions sporadic. She stepped forward and placed her ear to his chest. There was a faint heartbeat.

  “Sonny,” she whispered and touched his cheek.

  He tried to open his eyes, but his eyelids fluttered wildly.

  “Sonny!” Tamara cried, and shook him. “Damn them!” she cursed. “Damn them!”

  Tears filled her eyes. Slowly she reached up and took the Zia medallion from where it hung on the light.

  “Raven should have killed you,” she said softly. “You are too much the warrior to die like this. Raven would have freed your soul, and it would have returned to me. Better to die at the hands of a warrior of the sun,” she whispered. “It’s better for you to die, Sonny …”

  She looked at Madge. The woman stood frozen, her complexion ashen. Her gaze was glued on Stammer. His body had grown still, the blood still draining from the wound.

  Tamara reached down for the bloodied dagger she had used on Stammer and turned to Sonny. “Do you understand? It’s better to die.”

  Sonny’s head jerked spasmodically. He tried to mumble an answer, but his tongue was thick in his mouth. He commanded his hand to reach up to touch Tamara, but there was no response.

  Tamara placed the dagger to Sonny’s throat. “I have always loved you, Sonny, even if you didn’t believe in me. You could have been the new Raven, the new sun king. And I your queen. But the vision grew dark and clouded. I saw you a prisoner of these two, and I came. I knew the danger you were in. Oh, Sonny, I came too late. It pains me to do this. But death will be kinder than what they have done to you. I will free your soul …”

  She was about to push the dagger into his jugular when a noise startled her. In the warehouse the loud banging and screeching of the baboons had exploded, responding to a police siren in the parking lot outside, doors crashing open, loud shouts.

  She looked at Sonny and bent to kiss his lips. “I’m sorry I have to go. Perhaps it’s not time for you to die,” she whispered. She placed the Zia medallion on his chest, then turned quickly and disappeared out the door.

  30

  Sonny’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked at the blurred shape in front of him. Death was in the room; he could feel it. Not the death of the old penitentes of New Mexico, not la Muerte, the friendly doña Sebastiana, the skeleton in the cart who came with her bow and arrow to claim her victims, but a cold, detached death. Cold space, cold air, the kind of death one might expect in a
laboratory. Disembodied, without mercy, without feelings.

  A cold death. He felt cold. He was shivering. Death was the presence the baboon felt as it huddled in its cage, whimpering.

  Sonny tried to turn his head, but his neck muscles were stiff, locked in place.

  “Agh—ah—” he called. Help.

  The baboon responded with a guttural cry.

  Sonny closed his eyes and allowed a cold, sleet-driven wind to envelop him. He was too weak to resist. He could hardly breathe; the cold seemed to freeze his tongue. Whatever blood was left in his veins had turned to ice. His body was a mass of trembling convulsions.

  A glowing light drew his attention, a luminous ball of light rising over his body. He smiled when he recognized his soul rising from his body. His body was growing cold and dying, but the warm ball of light rising above the body was alive. It could look down and see the body it was leaving behind. He was no longer in the mass of quivering flesh, he was rising above the world of the flesh, into the whisper of the wind.

  “Better to die,” Tamara whispered, her voice a flutter in the wind. Yes, better to die, he agreed. The release of the soul was so pleasant.

  He looked down and saw a spring of fresh water by the river, green with watercress, the tunnel into the world of spirits, there where his guardian spirits waited. So dying was a dream, a return to childhood, a return to the world of nature he had known along the river as a child.

  He saw Lorenza. She was waiting for him, her arms open to receive him. “The medicine,” she whispered, “use the medicine of the guardian animal. Fly with Coyote.”

  “Trust her,” Rita said.

  “Trust us,” he heard his mother’s voice.

  Ah, they were telling him to take hold of the guardian spirit, the coyotes that had helped him defeat Raven. There was help in the world of spirits, guides waiting to take his hand.

  Pozo, he thought. The hole into the underworld was also his grave. Better to die.

  Let me die, he screamed, but only a growling sound came from his lips.

  Something that he thought was his heart opened like a red flower, a pomegranate, red-seeded and juicy, bleeding. From the wound his soul was rising into the air.