J. Jance - Kiss the Bees

And it did have an impact. Mitch Johnson knew that from personal experience.

One day in August of the previous year, Andrew Carlisle had returned from another brief stay in the prison infirmary holding a small glass container in his hand.

"What's that?" Mitch had asked, thinking it was probably some new kind of medicine that would be used to treat Andrew Carlisle's constantly increasing catalog of ailments.

"I've been wondering all this time exactly how you'd manage to make off with the girl. I think I've found the answer." Andy handed the glass with its colorless liquid contents over to Mitch. He opened it and took a sniff. It was odorless as well as colorless.

"I still don't know what it is," he said.

"Remember that article you were reading to me from the Wall Street Journal a few weeks ago? The one about the Burundianga Cocktail?"

"That's what the drug dealers down in Colombia used to relieve that diplomat of his papers and his money?"

Carlisle smiled. "That's the one," he said. "And here it is."

Over the years, Andy had clearly demonstrated to Mitch that sufficient sums of money available outside the prison could account for any amount of illegal contraband inside.

"Where did you get it?" Mitch asked.

"I have my sources," Andy answered. "And you'll find plenty of it with your supplies once you're on the outside. It isn't a controlled substance, so there were no questions asked. But it made sense to me to make a single large buy rather than a series of small ones."

"But how exactly does it work, and how much do I use?"

"That's the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn't it," Andy had replied. "There may be a certain amount of trial and error involved. You should use enough that she's tractable, but you don't want to use so much that she loses consciousness or even dies as a result of an overdose."

"You're saying we should do a dry run?" Mitch asked.

"Several dry runs might be better than just one."

Mitch thought about that for a moment. Andy's health was so frail that he certainly couldn't risk taking anything out of the ordinary.

"I guess I'd better be the guinea pig then," Mitch said. "No telling what a shot of this stuff would do to you."

Andy nodded. "We won't give you that much," he said reassuringly. "Just enough to give you a little buzz so you'll know exactly what it feels like."

"When should we do it?"

"This afternoon. You'll have a soda break with a little added kick."

That afternoon, at three o'clock, Mitch Johnson had served himself up a glass of scopolamine-laced Pepsi. They used only half the contents of that one-ounce bottle. From Mitch's point of view, it seemed as though nothing at all happened. He didn't feel any particular loss of control. He remembered climbing up on the upper bunk and lying there, feeling hot and a little flushed, waiting for the effects of the drug to hit him. The next thing he noticed was how everything around him seemed to shrink. Mitch himself grew huge, while a guard walking the corridor looked like a tiny dwarf. When Mitch came to himself again, he was eating breakfast.

"What happened to dinner?" he asked Andy irritably. "Did something happen and they skipped it?"

"You ate it," Andrew Carlisle told him.

"The hell I did. I lay down here on the bed just a little while ago…" Mitch stopped short. "You mean dinner came and went, the whole night passed, and I don't remember any of it?"

"That's right," Andy said. "This stuff packs a hell of a wallop, doesn't it? Since the girl is physically so much smaller than you are, you'll have to be careful not to give her too much. It makes you realize why some of those scopolamine-based cold medicines caution against using mechanical equipment, doesn't it?"

They had been silent for some time after that. Mitch Johnson was stunned. Fifteen hours of his life had disappeared, leaving him no conscious memory of them.

"Did I do or say anything stupid while I was out of it?"

"Not stupid," Andy replied. "I found it interesting rather than stupid."

"What do you mean?"

"I've always wondered whether or not those three wetbacks were the first ones. And it turns out they weren't."

Mitch shoved his tray aside. "What the hell do you mean?"

"You know what I mean, Mitch. I'm talking about the girl. The 'gook,' I believe you called her. The one you raped and then blew to pieces with your AR-sixteen."

Mitch Johnson paled. "I never told anyone about that," he whispered hoarsely. "Not anyone at all."

"Well," Carlisle said with a shrug. "Now you've told me, but don't worry. After all, what are a few secrets between friends?"

After I'itoi found the center of the world, he began making men out of mud. Ban-Coyote-was standing there watching. I'itoi told Ban that he could help.

Coyote worked with his back toI'itoi. As he made his men, he was laughing. Because the Spirit of Mischief is always with him, Coyote laughs at everything.

After a whileI'itoi- the Spirit of Goodness-finished making his mud men and turned to see why Coyote was laughing. He found thatBan had made all his men with only one leg. But still Coyote continued to laugh.

At last, when they had made enough mud men,I'itoi told Coyote to listen to see which of all the mud men would be the first to speak.

Ban waited and listened, but nothing happened. Finally he went to I'itoi and said, "The mud men are not talking."

ButI'itoi said, "Go back and listen again. Since the Spirit of Mischief is in your men, surely they will be the first to speak."

And this was true. The first of the spirits to speak in the mud men was the Spirit of Mischief. For this reason, these men became theOhb, the Apaches-the enemy. According to the legends of the Desert People, the Ohb have always been mean and full of mischief, just the way Coyote made them.

When all the mud men were alive,I'itoi gathered them together and showed them where each tribe should live. The Apaches went to the mountains toward the east. The Hopis went north. The Yaquis went south. But theTohono O'othham- the Desert People-were told to stay in that place which is the center of things. And that is where they are today,nawoj, my friend, close to Baboquivari,I'itoi's cloud-veiled mountain.

And all this happened on the First Day.

At four o'clock in the afternoon, Gabe Ortiz climbed into his oven-hot Crown Victoria, turned on the air-conditioning, and sat there letting the hot air blow-dry the sweat on his skin. He loosened his bola tie and tossed his Stetson into the backseat, then he leaned back and closed his eyes, waiting for the car to cool.

All the back-and-forth hassling was enough to make Gabe long for the old days, before the election, when most of his contacts with the whites, the Mil-gahn, had been when he towed their disabled cars or motor homes out of the sand along Highway 86 and into Tucson or Casa Grande for repairs.

Why was it that Anglo bureaucrats seemed to have no other purpose in life than seeing that things didn't happen? Delia Chavez Cachora was a fighter when it came to battling the guys in suits, but even she, with her Washington D.C.-bureaucrat experience, had been unable to move the county road-improvement process off dead center. Unless traffic patterns to the tribal casino could be improved, further expansion of the facility, along with expansion of the casino's money-making capability, was impossible.

Delia was bright and tough-a skilled negotiator whose verbal assertiveness belied her Tohono O'othham heritage. Those traits, along with her D. C. experience, were what had drawn Gabe Ortiz to her during their first interview. He was the one who had championed her application over those of several equally qualified male applicants. But the very skills that made Delia an asset as tribal attorney and helped her forward tribal business when it came to dealing with Anglo bureaucracies seemed to be working against her when it came to dealing with her fellow Tohono O'othham.