Zuni Stew: A Novel (14 page)

The stranger’s face was cobalt blue against the darkness of the room. The man was well-dressed, down to his shiny laced brogues.

“What can I do for you? Is there an emergency?” asked Bill. “I’ll call...”

“No. Don’t call anyone. I’m here to see you.” Without extending his hand, he said, “I’m Jack’s uncle, Gabriel D’Amico.”

“You’re here to see him?”

“Of course, didn’t he tell you I was coming?”

“No, he didn’t. I didn’t even know he had an uncle. Are you from Chicago as well?” Suspicion was obvious in Bill’s voice. He didn’t care.

Gabe sat down. Bill remained standing. “Yes. Has Jack told you much about his family?”

“No, not really. He said his father has a restaurant. He didn’t mention you.”

“Well, when he left home in the middle of the night, not even saying goodbye, I got worried. His mother isn’t well, a bad bout of asthma. My brother had to take her to a specialist in Canada.”

“That explains things.” No way. Not one thing matches Zeller’s report.

“What do you mean?”

“Jack’s been unable to reach his family.” Bill relaxed a little. “I’ll tell him. It will make him stop worrying.”

“I’ll tell him myself.” His eyes glistened in the subdued light. “Also, I brought something for him.”

“He’s away right now.”

“When do you expect him back?”

“Don’t really know, my boss didn’t say.”

“Then where is he? I want to tell him about Rose.”

“I don’t know where he is, sir. I wasn’t told. Military rules. I don’t ask questions.”

Gabriel D’Amico stood up, his expression cold. “Once more, Doctor Newman, where’s Jack? I’ll be back in the morning. I suggest you refresh your memory.”

Bill paced the office. Why did that bastard lie? If he really was Jack’s uncle, why didn’t he know about the murders? He looked at his watch. Only a few hours until the piece of shit would be back.

26

B
efore daybreak she dressed in a short-sleeved shirt, cargo pants, hiking boots. FBI badge in her pocket. A denim work shirt hid her Bureau revolver. Mirror in her backpack. She took the housekeeping stairs, walked briskly back toward the side street where she had left the van.

Drunks sleeping off binges were still out cold, sprawled, curled, or propped up in alleys. A woman looked up at her with dead eyes, then rolled back into her cardboard shelter. A small hand appeared from the darkened box, palm up. Lori folded a ten, pressed the bill into the child’s hand. The little boy’s eyes were huge, his expression blank.

As she drove away she wondered where the money would go. Food or booze? Approaching the pueblo, the light was flat, grey upon grey with no warmth. She scanned the surrounding cliffs. Louis Paul said she should face the new day. East-facing cliffs. Also sheltered. On high. Defendable. She was about to turn back to Black Rock when she spotted several cliffs south of the road, all facing east. She left the road, dipping down to a non-maintained dirt road. Very quickly the road disappeared, turning into a single track. She would have to hike.

Glancing at the glimmer of sun, she set a course paralleling the cliffs, so she could angle the mirror to catch the light. Anyone watching would see flashes. Maybe signal back.

Suddenly the grey vanished, warm light spread around her. Slipped on sunglasses. It took her an hour and thirty minutes to reach the second, and highest, cliff. She was in superb shape. Climbed most of the 14ers in Colorado by the time she graduated. Still, she had to stop to get her breath, mainly because of the heat. As a freshman and sophomore, she couldn’t afford a car, so she bicycled around campus, packing in a nineteen-hour academic load and working in the canteen on weekends. Not that she didn’t party, but soon tired of flat-assed drunk frat boys passing out on derelict couches lined on the front porches of Boulder’s collegiate hangouts. A stint waitressing at the Catacombs got her enough money to buy a used Jeep which could access every base trail in the state.

Prickly burrs clung to her. She set the mirror on a boulder, rolled down her sleeves, pulled her hair into a knot, and wrapped a bandana around her forehead. The mirror caught sunrays. She swung to her right, mentally tracking the line of sight from her position to the cliff.

Nothing but the sound of a male quail calling out. She was close enough to see his curved black crown.

She continued to climb horizontally, grabbing thick blue gramma grass for a hold. Three hours passed. She was sweated out. Decided to give up when she hit a patch of thick, ropy pahoehoe lava. The dark, glassy surface was extremely rough and jagged. Disgusted with herself, she wondered if her hunch was wrong. She gave herself fifteen minutes of rest. Intrigued with the lava, she tapped the butt of her weapon on the surface. Rapped again. Harder. Harder. Realized the thickness of the crust was thin. A foot deep or less. She carefully lifted herself up and around the flow. Shifted her body to stabilize herself. Slipped. Lava rock ripped at her body. Tearing her shirt, her hands. It happened so fast she didn’t even have time to make a defensive move to protect her face. Sunglasses went flying.

A tenacious piñon clinging to the cliff face stopped the fall. Jutting precariously at a right angle, she was able to snag a hold with one leg on the trunk. Damage assessment. Shredded skin on both hands. Nasty slash under her chin. Bleeding, but she knew facial cuts do that. Her cargo pants were torn. Bloody knees. But she could climb. She checked her backpack for the mirror.

A flash, though fleeting, came from up high. She quickly adjusted her focus with the mirror on the uppermost terrain.

Another flash, then another.

Looking above, she could see horizontal stratas disappear into a fissure, a rupture with a small opening, barely high enough to stand. Standing on the horizontal tree trunk, she swung a leg up and over the edge. Straining, praying the roots would hold, she pulled her torso up. Up. Up. Breathe. Up again. Her cheek rested on cool rock.

A barely audible sound came from the blackness beyond the opening. Scratching. No—it was scraping. She struggled to her bloody knees, looked up into the bearded face of a man with two searing blue pinholes in sunken eye sockets.

“Jack?”



Tito was smiling when he climbed out of his father’s pickup. The surgeon had insisted he be examined again in Gallup. He was amazed by the new X-rays of the nearly severed arm. Bone, muscles completely healed. Full function.

He rapidly climbed the ladders up to his father’s house. Found him in the kitchen, working alongside his wife.

Without turning around, Louis Paul asked, “Recognize this?”

Summer began late, the annual grasses were behind schedule. Tito looked at the tied bundles. Long, broad, rough-leaved blades. Smooth sheaths. Hairy seeds in the center.

“Wild oats. Young.”

“Correct.” Louis Paul had already filled a bowl with the seeds. Now poured one-hundred-per-cent Vodka over them. Stirred. The concoction grew milky, smooth. “Book on my work bench. Put recipe in your memory.”

THE HANDBOOK OF PHARMACY AND THERAPEUTICS
—1929.

Eli Lilly Co.

Tincture of Green Wild Oats

This medicine is used for many ailments, but is perfect for treating the depression of strong, masculine, self-assured people when their strength is burnt out. Some event happens in their lives which is of great importance, such as the death of a loved one, or breakup of a marriage. The medicine gives internal peace and calm, clear thinking, helping the patients to accept the loss, allowing their minds to plan, to organize thoughts and action.

“Where did you find this?” asked Tito.

“My Father passed it to me. Another medicine taken by white men.” He poured the tincture into the
chuleya:we
. Mutton, potato, red chile, garlic, cilantro, water. Simmered for hours.

Tito dipped a finger, tasted the broth. No change of aroma or taste.

“Put in jars for doctor. We feed his soul so his mind will be cured. Otherwise, his grief will devour him.”



Jack was completely still, eerily still. Not what she expected. Finally he said in a raspy voice, “Am I hallucinating or is it really you? I’m so tired...”

“Jack, come here, come to me.” She held his head in her lap and leaned against the cave wall. “Sleep, Jack. Sleep. We’ll talk later.”

He closed his eyes, shivered involuntarily. Relaxed ever-so-slowly.

Hours later, he munched on peanut butter crackers from her pack. She sliced an apple, handed him a piece. He looked at it before he ate it.

“You haven’t slept since you got here, have you?”

“No, but I’m okay. I can’t explain it. Somehow I knew I was supposed to wait for you—you need to tell me something.”

“News from Chicago. Do you feel good enough to answer some questions?”

“Lead me, Lori. I’m not connecting too well. Like there are dead circuits in my head. When the electricity does come back on, my brain overheats and I blow a breaker again. I can’t make small talk. What do you want from me? What do I know?”

“I talked to Bill. About the radioactivity around here. You weren’t at Black Rock long, did you and Bill talk much—other than patient care?”

“Yes, he told me a lot. He’s obsessed, and rightfully so, with what happened here.” He pulled off his T-shirt.

“You’ve lost weight. How much?”

“I wrestled in college, a welterweight. Had to stay about one-hundred-and-sixty pounds.”

“You’re no welterweight now—you’re about one-forty.”

“That’s the least of my worries. I want revenge, Lori, and I don’t know where to go first.”

“Re-focus your hatred. Work with me. You said Bill was obsessed with what happened here. Talk it out, maybe something will light up.”

He looked at Lori, his eyes steady. “I think I know where you’re going. Bill told me about all the birth defects and lung cancer around here.”

“Birth defects?”

It began with the children. Chronic lung disease. Blood dyscrasias. Leukemias. The children played on piles of fill, actual tailings from the mines. Extremely radioactive, emitting among other things, radon gas.

“And here were these kids, Bill said, playing ‘King of the Mountain.’”

Simulated nuclear devices were developed at Los Alamos. Bill found out government scientists detonated nukes in what they had the nerve to call ‘wasteland.’ Their purpose was to track radioactive fallout patterns.

“The PhD. told him more than he should. The tests were strictly hush-hush, but strontium residues were left all over northwestern New Mexico. Much of the contaminated property was reservation land,” Jack said. “He laid out the scenario for me.”

Indiscriminate tests were carried out involving Tabun—ethyl N-dimethyl phosphoroamido-cyanidate—a chemical normally stored in silver-lined glass vessels for safety. When orders came down to discontinue work on Tabun, the vessels were dropped from low-flying planes over Zuni Salt Lake. The scientists chose the drop site after learning the Russians deep-sixed their stockpiles of Tabun in the ocean, allowing the salt in the water to deactivate and destroy the deadly substance.

“I stayed at Bill’s house the other night. Not with him. He told me someone eventually found an unbroken vial out there, took it home where this little kid played with it and accidentally broke it. The four-year-old died in three hours,” said Lori.

“Inhalation and absorption through the skin and oral mucus membranes, “ said Jack.

“Extremely toxic. Bill called it blatant genocide. He said he’d started drinking because of it.”

“And the lung cancer?”

“Strange, isn’t it. All this clear blue sky, clean air, star-filled nights.”

“More apple?”

“Thanks. He talked about the mining east on Navajo land, near Mount Taylor.”

“For uranium?”

“Right.

Lori thought back to the intel. The Mob was buying uranium ore in Canada. Transporting it across Lake Michigan—maybe to Chicago. Or Gary, Indiana. Possibly the Wisconsin coast. She decided not to press him further.

Time to get Jack to a new location. If she could find him, others could.

27

“
T
ime to move,” said Lori.

“Follow me,” he said, not looking back. At the top, Lori surveyed the terrain. “Looking for something?” Jack asked.

“There it is, perfect—that small lake.”

“I spotted it before, wondered if it was contaminated, but I’ve seen cattle and sheep grazing there. Let’s go,” he said.

Closer to the lake, they found a sheepherder’s hut made of thick timbers with a hide hanging over the entrance. It was protectively tucked into a hollow in a rock wall, shaded by a cottonwood tree.

“We stay here,” said Lori.

“You can, I’m heading back to Zuni.” He was already jogging backward. “I know the way—I memorized landmarks from the air.” He spun around and sprinted away.

Lori broke into a run, caught up, grabbed his arm. “No!”

He jerked free of her grip, wildness had returned to his eyes. A twitch in his right cheek.

“I’ve got to tell you something.” She hesitated, wondering if he could handle more. “This is complicated. We know the Chicago Mob is buying uranium-rich ore from Canada. Once the ore makes it to Chicago, it’s processed, concentrating it into yellowcake. We think they plan to store the cake until they can sell it. Probably a foreign country. A terrorist group.