Skin of the Wolf

by Sam Cabot

  “And nothing is?”

  “Not that I could see. Detective Hamilton sneered her way through the holding room. As though any piece we have here is already, I don’t know, ruined.”

  The elevator opened again and three blood-smeared, Tyvek-suited men came out, laughing at something. Carrying boxes and backpacks, they quickly tried to make their faces solemn when they saw the group in the lobby. One of them said, “You can go up now.” A blast of cold air blew in through the doors as they wrestled their gear out.

  “Well,” Estelle said, watching through the glass until they’d loaded their van. “I guess I’d better get started. Katherine?”

  “Of course.”

  “Livia and Father Kelly, you really don’t have to come.”

  “I don’t know these pieces, particularly, but I’m an art historian,” Livia said. “I may be able to help.”

  Thomas said, “And I make good coffee.”

  Together, they walked to the elevator.

  24

  Michael? I personally am finding this situation a touch absurd,” Spencer said quietly, “but may I ask why you’re grinning like a baboon?”

  Under his breath, Michael answered, “A vampire and a werewolf walk into a bar? Come on, Spencer, the possibilities are endless.” He started to laugh, but took a deep breath and calmed himself. Spencer understood: pain, exhaustion, and worry had brought Michael to the edge. Spencer wanted to put an arm around his shoulders, to squeeze his hand, to do something to let him know he wasn’t alone. He did not. Spencer had lived nearly five centuries as a homosexual. In some times and some societies, that identity was accepted, even celebrated. He’d spent some marvelous years in Shogun-era Japan, for example, and a few lovely decades in Constantinople around the time this new America was shrugging off British rule. Ah, the perfumed flowers, ah, the water flowing in the secluded gardens! In other places at other times, though—most of them, if truth be told—his desires had been as necessarily hidden as his Noantri identity, each revealed only when he sensed he was among his own.

  In the cab on the way uptown, Spencer had asked Michael, “I felt this too delicate a question to bring up in the presence of the others—as much for Father Kelly’s sake as yours—but I shall ask it now: Is your choice of romantic partners among your brother’s complaints against you?”

  “It never has been, but he hasn’t met you yet. Seriously, no. Edward’s straight himself, but he’s radically old-school. Pre-contact good, post-contact bad, no discussion. Pre-contact, a man like me would’ve had a place in the tribe. Two, actually—among the warriors, and among the women. Though when they found out I can’t cook they’d have chased me back to the battlefield.”

  “I’d have taught you.”

  “Thanks. No, my being gay has never been a problem for Edward, but my being with white men has. It’s just more proof that I’m throwing away my heritage. Accepting the identity the white world forced on us.”

  “Have you ever felt that you are? Accepting that false identity?”

  Michael gave Spencer a searching look. “Boy, is that a question for a long evening by the fire.”

  He fell silent, and Spencer did the same, watching the city streets roll by, people wrapped in scarves and hunched into coats hurrying through the dark.

  “Spencer.” A new tone rang in Michael’s voice.

  “Yes?”

  Michael threw a glance at the cabdriver, who was absorbed in the upbeat music from the radio. “You said you’d have taught me to cook. You could have, couldn’t you? Pre-contact. You could have been there. You could’ve come with Champlain, with the Jesuits. When our nations and our cultures were whole. You’d have seen us, known us. Spencer, my God, were you—?”

  Spencer shook his head. “I’m sorry. No. First: my affection for Father Kelly notwithstanding, I’d have gone nowhere with the Jesuits. Second, though it’s true I’ve traveled extensively, the appeal of a continent as rife with physical privation as this one was reported to have been was lost on me. It’s said there were Noantri among the earliest Europeans to arrive, but I was not one. I’d never touched toe to American soil until last October, a few weeks before you and I met.”

  The taxi slowed and rolled tentatively to the curb at a desolate Washington Heights corner. The driver turned to announce, “GPS says we’re here. You sure this is where you want to be?” Spencer, peering out at the closed auto body shops, the shuttered check-cashing storefront, and the one open bodega, thought the question entirely reasonable and the answer “No.” Michael, however, paid the fare without a word and got out. Spencer sighed and followed. A few steps along the side street brought them to a steel door beside a window lit with Budweiser neon. Without hesitation Michael pulled the door open and stepped inside.

  Now that door swung shut behind them, cutting off the icy air and replacing it with warmth and the aroma of beer, whiskey, and something that smelled distressingly like the lavatory in the rear, where a good many drunks probably missed their target. And sweat, as many discrete strands as there were people in the room—eighteen, perhaps twenty—plus, Spencer thought, two or three who’d recently left. How much of this was Michael also picking up? How lupine were his senses, and how different in his human and Shifted states? Michael used reading glasses, which had struck Spencer as odd for a man in his thirties; but wouldn’t vision be a wolf’s weakest sense, far outweighed by hearing and smell? Michael was a lover of nature, as well, a passion not shared by Spencer, and up until tonight ascribed by Spencer to Michael’s reservation childhood and the culture of his people. Which might still be true, but an entirely new dimension of that affinity had now been revealed. And Michael loved music: classical, which Spencer also enjoyed (sometimes remembering his own first reactions to pieces now revered but startlingly avant-garde when he’d heard them premiered in some palace or drawing room); and jazz, to which Spencer was allowing himself to be introduced. At the clubs Michael favored, he preferred the quiet styles to the brass-heavy larger ensembles. Spencer didn’t love loud brass or powerful percussion himself, a distaste shared by many Noantri because of the acuteness of their hearing. Were Michael’s reasons the same? And though it was true Michael couldn’t cook, he did have a discerning appreciation, possibly based in his olfactory sense, of fine cuisine—and a trencherman’s appetite.

  A few heads turned when the door opened. A jukebox was playing a sad ballad, of the style Spencer had come to learn was “country.” Some nods and lifted beer bottles of recognition came Michael’s way, some skeptically raised eyebrows were directed at Spencer. Many of the faces, both men and women, shared Michael’s sharp nose, his high cheekbones. Others Spencer might have passed on the street and thought black or white; at the table in the back was a man he’d have sworn was Asian. But this place—inexplicably called “Stonehenge”—was, Michael had assured him, an Indian bar.

  Michael greeted the bartender with a casual offhandedness that impressed Spencer, suiting as it did neither the pain he must be in nor the gravity of his brother’s presumed crime.

  “Must I drink this?” Spencer asked sotto voce, taking the bottle of Budweiser Michael handed him. “Or is it merely a prop?”

  Michael grinned without answering and headed toward the back table, where he nodded Spencer to a chair. They both sat. Michael took a long pull on his beer.

  “Hey, Doc,” said the oldest of the men there. Lines webbed his dark face and he wore his gray hair loose and long.

  “Pete.” Michael responded to the greeting, then pointed his beer bottle at the other two men in turn. “Harry. Lou. This is Spencer. So far he only knows me. I thought it was time I brought him here to meet some real Indians.”

  Spencer settled back in his vinyl-covered chair and said, “Pleased to meet you, gentlemen.”

  At his words, the man called Harry snickered, while Lou, the Asian-featured one, rolled his eyes.

  “S
hit, listen to you,” Pete said, pulling on his beer. “You come to invade us again?”

  Spencer shook his head. “That didn’t work out very well the first time.”

  “For us. You made out like bandits. Hell, you were bandits.”

  All three men laughed, though without rancor; even Michael smiled. Michael drank some beer and said, “I’m looking for my brother.”

  Pete nodded, and Lou said, “He was here, yeah.”

  “Tonight?”

  “No. Three days ago. Maybe four.”

  “Do you know where he’s staying?”

  “Didn’t say.”

  Pete said, “Last time he was down he went to Donna’s.”

  “She keeps that place open through the winter?” Michael asked. “I didn’t know that.”

  “There are Indians stupid enough to stay on, even in February.” Pete indicated the group of them. “Englishmen, too, I guess.”

  Spencer raised his bottle in acknowledgment and took a drink.

  “Hey, Englishman, you like that?” Pete asked. “Bud?”

  “In fact, no.”

  “Doc, why are you making your friend drink that shit? Frankie,” he called to the bartender. “Get this guy a Labatt’s. Doc’s a city Indian, forgot how to drink beer.”

  “That’s why I come in here, Pete. To be reminded of the traditional ways.”

  Spencer thought it an odd joke, but the other men laughed.

  “You want one too, Doc?” the bartender called.

  “No, I’m good.”

  “No one’s good drinking that shit,” Pete said, a sentiment Spencer would not have expressed in that fashion but with which he couldn’t help but agree.

  The bartender opened a bottle and set it on the bar. Michael started to get up for it but a woman with curly hair slipped down off a barstool and brought it to the table.

  “Hey, Doc,” she said. She put the beer in front of Spencer, turned around a chair from the next table and sat. Harry scraped his chair along the floor to make room for her.

  “Ivy. Spencer, this is Ivy Nell.”

  Spencer and the woman acknowledged each other. She looked at Michael critically and said, “What the hell happened to your face? And what’s wrong with your arm?”

  “I fell on the ice, got banged up.”

  “Want me to look at it?”

  “No, thanks. A friend took care of it already.”

  Spencer wasn’t sure whether Ivy Nell, or any of the men, believed Michael’s story, but the subject was not pursued. Ivy Nell said, “I heard you say you’re looking for Eddie.”

  “Have you seen him?”

  “Didn’t know he was down.”

  “I didn’t either. Heard from someone else.”

  Ivy shook her head. “Such crap,” she said. “Your only family, and you treat each other like this. I saw you at Midwinter. Nine days, you didn’t speak a word.”

  “It’s Edward whose back is turned,” Michael said quietly.

  “So what? He’s your brother! Find a way.”

  Michael didn’t respond. None of the other men at the table said anything. The music on the jukebox changed, another mournful ballad following the first.

  Ivy picked at the label on her beer bottle. Without looking up, she said, “He’s in trouble, Doc. I don’t think he knows it, but he is.”

  Spencer wondered whether she referred to the killing at Sotheby’s. If so, how did she know? He didn’t react, though, remaining as impassive as the others.

  Michael asked, “What kind of trouble?”

  “He’s been hanging around with a white man. Braids, cowboy hat, turquoise. Feathers and shit. You saw him, Lou. Harry, you too.”

  “Don’t know him, though,” Harry said. “Those guys from the Wannabe tribe, they all look alike.” He and Pete laughed.

  But Lou nodded. “Yeah. Eddie was in here with him, September, October.”

  “You know his name?” Michael asked.

  Lou shook his head.

  “No,” Ivy said, adding, “he calls himself ‘Abornazine.’”

  Michael’s eyebrows rose.

  Harry said, “What’s that mean?”

  “The baby-naming websites will say ‘Keeper of the Flame,’” Michael said. “In Eastern Abenaki. But that confuses a couple of things. The real meaning is ‘random archer.’”

  “That fits. If I saw that guy with a bow and arrow, I’d run.”

  The men all laughed and Lou said, “Wonder what he thinks it means?”

  “This guy . . .” Ivy, unsmiling, looked at Michael. “He’s bad news. He’s trouble.”

  “What kind?” Michael asked.

  “I don’t know. Big. Bigger than just Eddie. Lots of people . . . He needs to be stopped. Eddie’s not trying to stop him, though. He’s trying to help him.”

  “Help him do what?”

  Ivy paused. “I don’t know, Doc. I had a dream.”

  It seemed to Spencer that all four men sharpened their attention, focused on Ivy Nell more closely.

  “People running,” she said, gazing at the scarred tabletop. “Screaming. Through the trees, then in a city. Then eagles, wolves, deer, but crazy, like something was wrong with them. And then fire.”

  The men all waited, but she didn’t go on.

  Michael asked, “Edward was there?”

  “He was . . . somewhere. You were, too. You and Eddie . . . it’s about you, but not about you. I don’t know. I don’t know what it means.”

  Michael drank, looking across the room, to old black-and-white photos and a small drum that hung on the wall.

  “You find that white wannabe,” Ivy said. “You find that Abornazine, you’ll find Eddie.” She looked up and held Michael’s gaze. “It’s important. Not just Eddie. And Doc? Soon. You need to find him soon. Whatever it is, if you don’t . . . You’ve got to stop them. Soon.”

  “All right.” Michael pushed back his chair and stood. Spencer also rose. “Anyone sees him, will you call me?”

  Pete said, “Sure thing, Doc.” The others nodded, and Spencer followed Michael to the door.

  25

  Livia leaned back, sipping the coffee Thomas had just brewed. The group had been in the holding room for two hours, examining and sorting: what was unharmed, what could be cleaned with mild soap and water—a task Livia took on, with assistance from Thomas—and what required serious conservation. They’d all stopped, daunted, when they’d opened the door, overwhelmed by the fallen boxes, scattered precious objects, and the fingerprint dust that covered everything like snow. They were relieved, in the end, to find little actual damage. Sotheby’s didn’t have its own conservation staff but it did have a Disaster and Damage Protocol, which Estelle had followed with precision and efficiency. Owners had been contacted, permission requested and received. Conservators in wood, paper, textile, stone, and pottery had been awakened and were standing by, ready to rush to their labs and receive whatever Sotheby’s sent.

  “All right, I suppose I’d better report in.” Estelle removed her cotton gloves and smoothed her hair. “Reporting in” involved going up to the executive floor, where the managing director and the head of public relations fidgeted and fretted along with a crisis-management consultant. They’d been fending off reporters since police scanners had first squawked the discovery of Brittany Williams’s body. New York loved nothing better than a juicy crime involving people with lots of money. If sex and passion were part of it, so much the better. And, Livia reminded herself, that’s what this still might be: a lover’s fury, not a shapeshifter’s rage. For Michael Bonnard’s sake she hoped it was.

  But she didn’t think so.

  Estelle stood. She’d spoken to the managing director on the phone twice already and had gently escorted him back to his office when he’d come to inspect the situation firsthand. As sh
e gathered her notes, Katherine asked her, “Are they still planning to go ahead with the sale?”

  “Not today’s.” Estelle checked her watch; it was just past two. “They’ve put out a press release that all auctions are canceled today out of respect for the deceased. Whose name they had to ask me, by the way. They’re folding today’s pieces into tomorrow’s sales. We’ll be open for viewing, though. They still want me to install the Ohtahyohnee and everything else that hasn’t been shown yet, so they can open at ten.”

  “My God, Estelle, by yourself? That’s impossible!”

  “They’re lending me an assistant and an intern,” Estelle said wryly. “From Impressionism.”

  “Will the police allow it?” Livia asked.

  “Unless they impound the whole building they can’t stop it, and apparently the mayor would rather they didn’t do that. Anyway, Detective Framingham thinks the killer might come back, to be here during the sales.”

  “Why?”

  “To see where the objects are going. He thinks maybe the point was to get blood on them, so now they’re cursed, and the people who buy them will be cursed.”

  “That’s not any native thinking that I ever heard,” Katherine said. “And most of the blood ended up on the boxes, not the objects.”

  “The Lenape detective wasn’t impressed, either. But she’s interested to know if any of our employees don’t show up for work or are acting strange. I’ll try not to be upstairs long. Katherine, can you get that rug boxed and ready to send to Brown’s, and the map packaged for Reba Fishman at the Morgan?”

  “And the kachinas? You want them to go to Ted Morse?”

  “Of course.” Estelle and Katherine both smiled wearily. Katherine turned to Livia and Thomas. “Inside joke. Ted Morse is the best wood restorer in the country for Native art. He’s part Iroquois, which he claims gives him an instinct for these pieces. His business cards say, ‘Morse, of course.’”

  Estelle said, “Thanks so much, all of you,” and pushed out the door.

  “Well”—Katherine looked around—“it’s not as awful as it could have been.”