Peyote Wolf
A Fernando Lopez Santa Fe Mystery
James C. Wilson
Dedicated to Cindy and Sam, my wolf pack.
Preface
I came of age reading the detective novels of Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. I loved how these stories evoked a sense of place, especially Raymond Chandler’s Los Angeles. Chandler’s The Long Goodbye is still one of my favorite novels. I also loved how these novels could reveal the fractures in the societies they represented: that is, the cultural, ethnic, and class conflicts that divided people.
Living in Santa Fe during the 1970s provided me with much the same material and inspiration. During that turbulent decade the entrenched Hispanic social and political fabric of the city came under siege by an influx of wealthy Anglos from the East and West coasts and from a wide variety of activists and revolutionaries demanding change and seeking power. Among these groups were La Raza and Native American activists and the counterculture movement personified by Dennis Hopper and his followers who invaded Northern New Mexico. I sometimes refer to this decade as the “fighting seventies.”
Peyote Wolf, the first of my Fernando Lopez Santa Fe mysteries, attempts to expose some of the social fractures that still exist in Santa Fe while telling a whopper of a tale.
The Peyote Ceremony
Michael Soto took the bag of peyote from Cedar Chief. He chewed one brown button and passed the bag to the next person in the circle, a woman whose face was partly concealed by a red shawl. Road Chief sat in the rear of the teepee leading the ceremony with his eagle-bone whistle and bag of sage. Taking them down Peyote Road.
The fire provided the only light in the teepee. Fire Chief poked and prodded the coals, then tossed another piñon stick on the fire. He watched the smoke drift up to the open flap in the top of the teepee and dissolve into the blackness. Beyond the opening he could see a patch of night sky, the stars framed by the ends of the teepee poles. As the fire hissed and snapped, the woman beside him began to moan and rock from side to side. Diagonally across the teepee, an Indian boy sitting next to Fire Chief slumped back against the canvas with his eyes closed. The young man from San Ildefonso Pueblo might prove a useful connection in the future.
Road Chief stood, a tall ungainly man with red hair and a handlebar mustache. When Road Chief blew his whistle and began to sing, Drummer Chief joined in, shaking his rattle and beating the ceremonial drum slowly at first, then faster.
It was then he noticed that Road Chief’s wife, who served as Peyote Woman, wasn’t singing. Instead, she was staring directly at him. Did she know he was only pretending to sing along?
Suddenly he felt nauseous, the peyote beginning to take effect. With his eyes closed, he lost all sense of time. His mind skipped over certain moments, then stuck on others. He heard singing and drumming and talking and the constant background noise of the fire crackling and the bodies shifting on the sand. He didn’t open his eyes until he felt someone touch his left arm, an excruciating sensation. Trying to focus, he saw Cedar Chief passing a small bag of sage. He took a pinch of the dusty green leaves and rubbed it on his arms. He felt another wave of nausea swell in the pit of his stomach.
The attacks of nausea were what he hated most about the ceremonies, but somehow he always managed to suffer through them. Truth was, the peyote meetings were essential to business. Many of the tribal objects he sold in his Santa Fe gallery came from the locals he met at the meetings. So he doubled over and waited for the feeling to pass.
Gradually his perception shifted. He sensed movement around him, gradually becoming aware of the silence in the teepee. How long since the singing had stopped? He decided it must be midnight, time for the ceremony known as the Midnight Water Call.
Confirming this, Fire Chief got to his feet, stretched his legs, and followed Peyote Woman outside to get the pail of water used in the ritual. By now he knew the routine well enough.
Road Chief would sing a song of purification, followed by prayers from the other three officials. Next, water would be poured on the ground, the drum, and the altar. Only then would the holy water be passed around the circle for them to sip. They were supposed to take just enough to ease their dry throats, but he always took more. The next chance to get a drink would be at sunrise during the Morning Water Ceremony that concluded the official part of the meeting.
While they waited, they heard unexpected footsteps approaching the teepee, followed by a loud, angry voice. Had an intruder come to disrupt the meeting? Before any of them had time to react, Fire Chief came stumbling through the opening in the teepee and fell on top of his pail, spilling water on the fire. Steam hissed from the wet coals.
“What is it?” Road Chief glanced angrily from Fire Chief to the open canvas flap.
Suddenly a man with the head of a wolf stepped out of the darkness into the teepee.
Cedar Chief screamed at the sight of the wolf mask, with its rows of white teeth, its red tongue and snarling mouth.
The wolfman scanned the frightened faces, his small dark eyes peering out of twin openings in the mask, then raised his arm and pointed a long bony finger directly at him.
For a moment he felt paralyzed by fear. The mask looked like the head of a real wolf. Instinctively, he grabbed a handful of sand and tossed it at the intruder’s eyes. Then he jumped to his feet and pushed past the wolfman outside where he stumbled into the woodpile and fell heavily to his knees. A burst of adrenaline gave him energy and cleared his mind. Ignoring the pain in his legs, he struggled to his feet and took off running across the desert. His car was parked about a hundred yards away, over near José Padilla’s house. The shortest route would take him across a flat, open stretch of chamisa and piñon. That wouldn’t do, too much visibility there.
Instead, he ran toward the deep arroyo offering protection that circled around behind Padilla’s house. He could walk along the sandy bottom out of sight until he came to within twenty or thirty yards from his car. When he was sure the coast was clear, he could make a dash for it and get out of this place, Jacoñita. Away from the man with the wolf mask, whoever he was.
Finding the arroyo turned out to be easier than he expected once his eyes adjusted to the light of the half moon. He plunged down the steep bank and fell forward, sprawling on the cool sand. He paused a few moments to listen for the wolfman. Not a sound, so he scrambled to his feet and crept along the soft floor of the arroyo, being careful to avoid rocks. Several minutes later he took a look around, then climbed to the top of the arroyo and glanced back toward the teepee.
What he saw startled him. The fire inside the teepee illuminated the translucent white canvas from within, creating an eerie lantern effect. He could see shadows of the people inside, silhouetted against the glowing white canvas. The sight puzzled him. Why had the others stayed in the teepee? Where had the wolfman gone?
Something seemed wrong. He wondered if he was being double-crossed. Maybe Road Chief wanted the business all to himself. The bastard. He’d never trusted Reno. Not wanting to waste any more time, he walked faster, hurrying to get to his car. To the east he could see the distant lights of Santa Fe about twenty miles away. Much closer loomed the imposing mass of Black Mesa.
When the arroyo turned south, he knew he was getting close to where he needed to be. Close enough. He clawed his way up the crumbling bank and looked over the top at Padilla’s house. Moonlight reflected off the dark windows and the pitched tin roof of the old adobe. He saw the square shape of Road Chief’s van parked in the gravel lot beside the house. Then his black Porsche, no more than a hundred feet away, just beyond a patch of chamisa. An easy run.
He pulled himself out of the arroyo and, crouching low, moved out into the open. Moonlight and shadow, with strange noises everywhere. He heard the sound of small animals,