"Nope," Coyote said.

The cabdriver leaned on the horn. Sam signaled for him to wait, ran around to the other side of the limo, and got in.

"Go," Sam said.

"What about the cabdriver?"

"Fuck him."

"That's the spirit." Coyote started the limo and peeled away. He checked the rearview mirror. "He's not following."

"Good."

"He's talking to his radio. Got a smoke?"

Sam dug a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket pocket, tapped one out, and lit it. "Where's my car?"

"I sold it."

"You can't sell it without the title."

"I got a good deal, five thousand."

"Are you nuts? Five thousand wouldn't buy the stereo."

"I needed to win my money back. I won a lot of money on the machine you put the cards in, but a shaman with a stick won it back from me."

Sam butted his cigarette in the ashtray and hung his head in his hands, trying to let it all sink in. "So you sold my car for five grand?"

"Yep." Coyote snatched the mashed cigarette and relit it.

"And where is that money?"

"The shaman had strong cheating medicine."

"That's the kind of thinking that got Manhattan sold for a box of beads."

"So they still tell that story? It was one of my best tricks. They gave us many beads for that island. They didn't know that you can't own land."

Sam sighed and slouched in his seat, thinking he should be angry, or worried about his car, but strangely he was more concerned with catching Calliope. They were on the highway now. Sam glanced at the speedometer. "Slow down to the speed limit. We don't need cop trouble. I'm assuming you stole this car."

"I counted coup: stealing a tethered horse."

"Tell me," Sam said.

Coyote told the story of Minty and the limo, turning it into a fable full of danger and magic, making himself the hero. He was coming to the part about the car phone when it rang.

Sam reached for the answer button and pulled back his hand in disgust. "What's this gunk all over the phone? It looks like-"

"I'm not to that part of the story yet."

"Then you answer it."

"Speak," Coyote said, and the phone lit up and clicked. "Is that you, Brandy?"

A very deep, calm voice came over the speakerphone, "I want the car back, now. Pull over and stop. I'm a couple of minutes behind you. The police are-"

"Off," Coyote said. The phone hung up. Coyote turned to Sam. "This is a good car. You can talk to the phone. Her name is Brandy. She's very friendly."

"Uh-huh," Sam said.

"That wasn't her."

"Pull off at the next exit."

CHAPTER 27

Food, Gas, Enlightenment, Next Right

King's Lake, Nevada

The exit sign said, King's Lake, but when they pulled off and followed the ramp around the base of a mesa, there was no lake, no life at all, just a dirt road and a strip of gray wooden buildings with faded facades. A weathered wooden sign read, Emergency, Nevada. The population had been crossed out and repainted a dozen times until, finally, someone had painted a big zero at the bottom and the words We gived up. Coyote stopped the car.

"What do you want to do here?"

"I don't know, but we had to get off the highway before they caught up with us." Sam got out of the car and peered down the empty dirt street, shielding his eyes against the sun with his hand. A prairie dog scampered across the road and under the wooden sidewalk. "This road continues out of town. Maybe it joins up with another major road somewhere else. We need a map."

"No map in the car," Coyote said. "We can ask someone."

Sam looked around at the empty buildings. "Right, let's just stop in at the chamber of commerce and ask someone that's been dead for a hundred years."

"Can we do that?" Coyote asked, with complete sincerity.

"No, we can't do that! It's a ghost town. There's no one here."

"I was going to ask that prairie dog." Coyote walked to where the prairie dog had disappeared under the walkway. "Hey, little one, come out."

Sam stood behind the trickster, shaking his head. He heard a squeak from under the walk.

Coyote looked to Sam. "He doesn't trust you. He won't come out unless you go away."

"Tell him we're in a hurry." Sam couldn't believe he was being snubbed by a rodent.

"He knows that, but he says you have shifty eyes. Go over there and wait." Coyote pointed down the sidewalk.

Sam walked past a hitching post and sat on a bench in front of the abandoned saloon. He watched the road leading to the highway, waiting for the dust cloud from pursuing police cars. The road remained empty. He watched the prairie dog scamper out from under the sidewalk and stand on his hind legs as Coyote talked to him. Maybe he had been a little hasty in thinking Calliope nuts for talking to her kitchen pals. They probably thought he had shifty eyes as well.

After a few moments of talking and chattering Coyote threw his head back and laughed, then left the prairie dog in the street and came to where Sam was sitting.

"You've got to hear this one," Coyote said. "This farmer has a pig with a wooden leg-"

"Hey," Sam interrupted. "Does he know where the road goes?"

"Oh, yeah. But this is a really good joke. You see-"

"Coyote!" Sam shouted.

Coyote looked hurt. "You're nasty. No wonder he doesn't trust you. He says that he saw an orange sports car go by a while ago. He says that there's a repair place down the road."

"Tell him thanks," Sam said. Coyote headed back toward the prairie dog. Sam dug into his windbreaker for his cigarettes and found a chocolate mint he had taken from the hotel room pillow the night before. "Wait," Sam called. He ran to Coyote's side. The prairie dog bolted under the sidewalk. "Let me talk to him."

Sam bent down and placed the mint in the dirt by the sidewalk. "Look, we really appreciate your help."

The prairie dog didn't answer. "I'm not a bad guy once you get to know me," Sam said. He waited, wondering what exactly he was waiting for. After a minute he started feeling really stupid. "Okay then, have a nice day."

He went back to where Coyote stood looking at a sign on the saloon door. No Indians or Dogs Allowed.

Coyote said, "What do they have against dogs?"

"What about the Indians part?"

Coyote shrugged.

"It pisses me off." Sam yanked the sign off the door and threw it into the street.

"Good, you're still alive. Let's go." Coyote turned and headed for the car.

"I'll drive," Sam said.

Coyote threw the keys over his shoulder. Sam snatched them out of the air. As they pulled away the prairie dog dashed into the street and grabbed the mint thinking, That pig joke works every time.

They drove for twenty minutes, bouncing the big Lincoln over ruts and rocks, and pushing it through washed-out, wind-eroded terrain where the road was reduced to the mere suggestion of tire tracks. The cellular phone rang twice more, but they did not answer it. Sam was suspecting that, once again, Coyote was playing some sort of trick when he spotted the corrugated steel building sticking up out of the desert. The building consisted of one story, roughly the size of a two-car garage. The steel walls were striped with rust and pulling away from the frame in places. The area around the building was littered with abandoned vehicles, some dating back fifty years. Above the doorway, a ragged hole that had been cut with a torch, hung an elegantly hand-lettered sign that read, Satori Japanese Auto Repair. In the doorway stood a slightly built Oriental man in saffron robes, grinning as they pulled up. Calliope's Z was parked in front.

Sam stopped the car and got out. The Oriental man folded his hands and bowed. Sam nodded in return and approached the man. "Do you know where the girl is that was driving that car?"