Free Whirlwind by Charles L. Grant

me hanging there like a goddamn Peking duck!"
    Sparrow was patient.
    "Okay." Ostrand shifted uncomfortably, lips pulling away from his teeth in a grimace. "Okay.
    So I was a little drunk, I admit it. But that's not why I crashed."
    "No, you crashed because some kind of myste-rious vehicle, so low you couldn't see it out your window, deliberately forced you off the road."
    Ostrand looked at him angrily. "That's right."
    "And then it tried to kill you when you were hanging from your seatbelt."
    The artist shrugged, winced at the pain that exploded in his shoulder, and sighed capitulation. "Okay, okay, so it was a stupid coyote, okay? So I was so damn scared it scared the hell out of me. It would have scared anybody. But it wasn't a coy-ote that ran me off the damn road!"
    "Good." Sparrow nodded sharply. "Now we're getting somewhere." He glanced down at the small notepad he held in his left hand, chewed on the eraser end of his pencil for a moment, and said, "Now, about that invisible vehicle ..."
    The Coronado Bar was unoriginal in both name and decor. As Bernalillo inexorably changed from an outpost on the Rio Grande into an Albuquerque bedroom community, the Coronado just as stubbornly refused to change with it. A long bar on the right-hand wall, tables and booths everywhere else, and a jukebox that muttered country-western all day long. The TV on the wall in back never played anything but sports, minor
    league baseball tonight from Southern California. Smoke and liquor in the air, as many cigarette butts on the bare floor as in the aluminum ash-trays. It catered neither to the tourists nor the newcomers, and didn't much care that business didn't boom. It did well enough, which was well enough for its regulars.
    Indian Territory was at the back.
    Although there were a handful of exceptions, most of the men who drove in from the pueblos stuck to the two last booths and three last tables. There was nothing belligerent about it; it just happened that way. Even the Spanish stayed away.
    Especially when the Konochine came to town.
    Leon Ciola nursed a long-neck beer in the last booth. He was alone, seated under a wall lamp whose bulb he had unscrewed as soon as he'd taken his seat. He didn't like the light, didn't like the way the Anglos tried not to stare at the web of scars across his face or the scars on his knuckles.
    It was better to sit in shadow.
    It was also better to face the entrance, so when the man came in, Ciola would see him first and lift a hand in greeting, before a question could be asked or a voice raised. What he didn't need tonight was talk, debate— What's the matter with your people, Leon, don't they believe in the twentieth century? The time for that was past. The others— Nick Lanaya, Dugan Velador, fools like that—
    they could do their best to keep the talk alive, to deal with Anglo crooks like that Falkner woman and sell the People down the river without an ounce of guilt. Not him. He had plans.
    They thought he was beaten. They thought his time away would change him.

    He drank, not sipped.
    It had.
    It had changed him.
    It had made him worse.
    Just before eleven the man came in, spotted him right away, and dropped heavily into the booth.
    Ciola tugged on the beak on his cap, a greeting and an adjustment. "You're late."
    "Shit truck wouldn't start. Wasn't for you, I wouldn't make the effort."
    Ciola watched him, hiding his distaste by empty-ing the bottle and waving it over his head, so the waitress, such as she was, would bring him another.
    The other man didn't ask for one, and one wasn't offered.
    "So?" Leon said.
    The man lifted one shoulder. "So they brought in some FBI, straight from Washington. They came in this morning. One man, one woman."
    Ciola coughed a laugh. "You're kidding."
    "They're supposed to be experts."
    "A woman?"
    The man nodded, and offered a lopsided grin. "Gets better. They're Anglos."
    The empty bottle was taken away, a full one left in its place. The man grabbed it before