Looks At Nothing had been in hospital rooms before, but this one was worse than most. As always, he was shaken by the sharp, unpleasant odors assailing his nostrils. Mil-gahn medicine was not pleasing to the nose, but in this room there was something more besides-a sensation so fraught with danger that it filled the old man's heart with dread.
'Nawoj,' he said softly, testing to see if Hejel WFithag was awake.
'Friend.'
'Nawoj,' she returned.
Guided by the sound of her voice and tapping the ironwood cane, he made his way to the bed. When he was close enough, she reached out and grasped his hand.
'Thank you for coming.'
'It is nothing,' he said. 'I am always happy to help little Dancing Quail. I know you are troubled.'
'Yes,' she responded. 'Would you like a chair?'
Looks At Nothing pulled his hand free from hers and felt behind him until he located the wall. 'There are no other patients in this room.'
It was a statement, not a question.
'Two other beds,' Rita told him, 'but no one is in them.
'We're alone.'
'Good.' Looks At Nothing eased his wiry frame down the wall. 'I will sit here on the floor and listen. You must tell me everything.'
And so she did, a little at a time, from the car wreck to the buzzards.
Looks At Nothing opened the leather pouch he wore around his scrawny waist and smoked some of the hand- rolled wild tobacco cigarettes he carried there.
Gradually, the pleasant Indian smoke overcame the Milgahn odors in the room. He listened, nodding thoughtfully from time to time. When Rita finished, he sat there in silence and continued to smoke.
'Tell me about this Anglo boy,' he said at last, 'the one you call Olhoni.'
Rita told him about Davy then and about Diana Ladd, a mother who, like the Woman Who Loved Field Hockey, was so busy that she neglected her own child. As the hours went by, she told the medicine man everything she could remember, weaving together the threads of the story in a complicated pattern that had its beginnings with Gina's murder.
At last there was nothing more to tell. Exhausted by the effort, Rita closed her eyes, while Looks At Nothing staggered unsteadily to his feet.
'Where does your nephew live?' the old man asked.
Rita frowned. 'Fat Crack? He lives behind the gas station in one of those new government houses. Why do you ask?'
'I must go see him,' Looks At Nothing said. 'Together we will decide what to do.'
Johnny Rivkin, the well-known Hollywood costume designer, was slumming.
Fresh off the set in Sonoita, he had come to Tucson to have some fun & over the weekend. Hal Wilson, the director, had warned him that Johnny's particular brand of entertainment wouldn't be tolerated by the locals in the several small southern Arizona towns where they were filming Hal's latest Americanized spaghetti western. A search for other outlets brought Johnny straight to the Reardon Hotel.
Larry Hudson, Johnny's lover of some fifteen years' standing, had recently thrown him over in favor of a much younger man. Johnny's ego damage was still a raw, seeping wound. In public, he tried to shrug it off, to act as though it didn't matter, but it did-terribly.
For years, Johnny Rivkin had successfully negotiated the treacherous costuming end of the movie biz, but despite .having a name for himself, he was still basically shy. He didn't like the meat-market pickup scene. He didn't like shopping around, making choices, and maybe being turned down. He still looked good. He had the plastic- surgeon receipts to prove it, but truth be known, the hunks were all out looking for younger stuff these days.
This is Tucson, he reminded himself, trying to ward off discouragement.
He hoped that since the place was a real backwater, maybe he'd be able to find someone not quite so jaded as those back home in L.A. Maybe one or two-two would be much nicer than one-would be dazzled enough by Johnny Rivkin's name and connections that they would follow him anywhere, opening up the possibilities for a long-term menage d trois.
That was what he wanted--the illusion of permanence with a little excitement thrown in for good measure.
Outside the Reardon, Johnny paused at the bar's dismal entrance with its broken neon sign. No one would ever mistake the place for a Hollywood glamour spot. From inside, he heard the sound of intermittent laughter, smelled the odor of stale smoke and the sour stench of spilled beer.
For the hundredth time, or maybe the thousandth, Johnny Rivkin cursed Larry Hudson for throwing him out for forcing him back into the open market. Johnny was too old to be out making this scene again, to be playing the game, searching for warm bodies. He wanted his old life back-his comfortable, boring, settled life. This was too much effort.
Steeling himself for the ordeal, Johnny pushed open the door. The bar was long and smoky and dimly lit. A series of shabby booths lined one side of the room. All occupied, they were filled with small groupings of men in twos, threes, or fours talking in low voices. A televised baseball game flitted across the color screen above the bar, but the sound was off. No one except the bartender was paying any attention to it.
When the door opened, an uneasy silence filled the room as the regulars noted and evaluated the newcomer.
