"It's business!" Dov said. He was surprised at his own tone of voice, pleading so abjectly for Sam's understanding and approval.
"What kind of business makes you put your family second? From there it's just one small step to forgetting you've got any family at all."
The words stung like scorpions. For an instant, Dov forgot that he was here to curry Sam's favor and gain his backing for the takeover. "Oh, like your family must be so proud of how your selling their culture by the pound to a bunch of yuppies?" he snapped.
"They're not," Sam replied, his voice cold. "Most of them no longer count me as kin. Some don't even count me as alive, but I'm both. Even if they pretend I'm not there, I still do what I can to stand by them. That twenty dollars I put down back there in the Blue
Coyote? Our waitress is my great-niece. She doesn't speak my name, I don't try to make her, but I go there every day for breakfast and I always leave her plenty. I know she needs it."
Sam pulled the Jeep over to the side of the road and turned off the engine. He looked Dov right in the eyes and said: "When I was growing up, we couldn't afford a lot of things. Regular dental care was one of them. You see what my teeth look like? I could change that if I wanted, now, buy me a smile that would blind an army, but I don't. I leave it the way it is so I'll never forget where I came from, or how it made me who I am."
He got out of the Jeep and walked a little way into the roadside scrub. Dov followed him, not really understanding why he felt compelled to do so. When the shaman had gone far enough away from the car for his liking, he tilted his head back and began to chant. Dov listened, and something inside him stirred, something told him that this was not the same sort of flimflam that Sam fed to his willing marks. This was the real thing. This came from the heart, from the soul, from the earth itself. Dov didn't know the words, but he could pick up the tune, and he did his best to hum along. He didn't feel stupid for trying.
When Sam finished his song, he looked at Dov. "Here," he said, reaching into the small leather pouch that hung from his belt. He pressed something into Dov's hand. "Charms to guard her. Send these to your mother, since you can't be bothered to bring them to her yourself. Tell her that Sam Turkey Plucker sang for her spirit and also sends her his promise that he will perform a healing ritual for her body."
"Sam, you know what the company means to Mom—" Dov began.
"Kid, if you're fishing for my endorsement to have you take over E. Godz, Inc., forget about it."
"You mean my sister already saw you?" Dov silently cursed Peez for a shifty-souled varmint.
"I mean I'm not saying yes or no to you or your sister or anyone until I have to. Your mother's still alive; don't be in such a rush to divvy up what's still hers."
"I didn't mean to—"
"Hey, spare me the speech about how you're really doing all this for her, okay?" Sam started back for the Jeep. "My people have a long history of white folks telling us how whatever they do to us, with us, at us, it's all for only the best reasons. You know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions?" Dov nodded. "Well, look around you." Sam's gesture embraced the endless miles of glorified goat tracks crisscrossing his home turf. "Not a lot of paving done out here at all."
* * *
"Ahhhh, decent air conditioning at last!" Ammi rested on the armrest tray of Dov's seat and basked in the blessed coolness of the L.A.-bound jet's first-class cabin. "No offense, boss, but your pants pocket was starting to smell like a prairie dog's armpit."
Dov said nothing. He was gazing out the window, watching the blood red mountains slip away beneath them.
"Hello?" Ammi probed. "Earth to Dov! Please tell me you're not deciding to go off on one of those cockamamie Vision Quest scams yourself! I can come up with about twenty- seven better ways to drop five grand over a weekend, and I'm just jewelry."
"It's not always a scam," Dov said absently. "He can do the real thing, but that's not what the customers want. They'd throw a fit if you served them coffee that wasn't hand- picked, hand-roasted, hand-ground and hand-brewed, but when it comes to spiritual fulfillment, they want it instant or not at all."
"Whoa. Sounds like he got to you big time." Ammi clicked his nonexistent tongue.
"I think he did." Dov pressed his forehead against the window.
"So does that mean we're heading back? Going to visit Edwina, see how she's doing?"
"And give Peez a chance to snatch the company right out from under me?" Dov sat up straight and knocked back his glass of single malt. "No way."
Chapter Eight
Peez stared out the window of her hotel room at the prospect of downtown Seattle. To the north, in the distance, the unmistakable shape of the Space Needle towered over the many and varied attractions of the great metropolis on Puget Sound. Flowers bloomed in a riot of gay colors in the city parks, museums bided patiently as drowsing dragons over their treasure troves of art and artifact, and if you listened really, really hard, you could swear that you heard the strains of all the different kinds of music that the city nurtured and enjoyed. Had she taken the trouble to go up to the rooftop restaurant, her journey would have been rewarded by a view of Mount Rainier, so far away yet somehow seemingly so close.
Peez did not bother. She had other matters on her mind.
"It's raining," she said.
"Gee," Teddy Tumtum said, trying not to sound too sardonic and failing miserably. "It's raining. In Seattle. In the springtime. Color me shocked. My gracious goodness me, what were the odds? And this just in: It is somewhat dry in the Sahara Desert."
"There's no need for you to get sarcastic with me." Peez scowled at the small stuffed cynic.
"Someone better," Teddy Tumtum countered. "It's the only thing that ever seems to motivate you.'
"How the hell is sarcasm a motivational tool?"
"Simple: You piddle around a task, not really doing anything about achieving it, I sneer that you'll never get it done because you haven't got what it takes, you get all hot to prove how wrong I am, and that's when you put your butt in gear and actually get the job done! It's been this way since you were in grade school, missy. I know; I was there, and what a long, boring trip it's been."
"That's not true!" Peez objected. "I'm a highly motivated self-starter."
"Buzzwords, bah! Then why have you been hanging out in this hotel room for the past twenty-four hours instead of going out there and making your next business call? Don't bother to answer, you'll only waste more time trying to come up with a lot of self- justifying blather. I'll tell you why: It's because Fiorella shot you down in flames and you're afraid that this next guy—whatzisname—is going to do the same. That'd mean two strikes on you, and you're totally convinced that your baby brother's been batting a thousand in the meantime."
To Teddy Tumtum's surprise, Peez didn't jump back at him to point out that Fiorella might have snubbed her, but Ray Rah and the Chicago mob had given her their wholehearted support. Instead she subsided into a hunched-over knot of glumness and muttered, "Yep. You're right, Teddy Tumtum. That's exactly why I've been putting off my next call. Sure, I told myself it was just because I was jet-lagged, but I couldn't even fool me with that one. Not when I've known how to do a Jet-lag Begone spell from the time I was twelve."
"What?" Teddy Tumtum's glass eyes almost bugged out of his head. "I must have a really big ball of loose stuffing in my ears. I could swear I just heard Peez Godz admitting defeat. That's not the girl I sleep with talking! So the witch-queen blew you off; so what? You've got those Egyptian guys on your side."