Peyote Wolf
Описание книги
A man in a wolf mask bursts into a teepee in the middle of a sacred ritual, a peyote ceremony, and kills Michael Soto, the owner of Sabado Indian Arts on the Santa Fe Plaza. The next morning Detective Fernando Lopez, a member of an old Santa Fe family, receives a complaint from two Zuni that an important tribal object, a carved wooden war god called an ahayu:da, has been stolen from their pueblo. They show him an anonymous letter sent to the Zuni Tribal Council saying that Michael Soto was trying to sell it for fifty thousand dollars. Shortly after they leave, the police dispatcher reports that Michael Soto has been murdered. Establishing what happened and who was present at the peyote ceremony proves difficult. One witness says three men and one woman from Whitewater near Zuni attended the ceremony. Another says it was four men from Whitewater. One witness blames a skinwalker or a werewolf for Michael Soto’s murder. Detective Lopez’s investigation exposes the cultural and ethnic fractures in Santa Fe, a city of Native American, Hispanic, and Anglo cultures. The investigation also leads into the dangerous underworld of buying and selling stolen Indian artifacts. Along the way he encounters looters and grave robbers, rich gallery owners who buy and sell priceless tribal objects on the black market, and artisans who produce fake replicas of the objects to sell. The search for answers comes to a startling end in a violent confrontation at a trading post just north of Zuni Pueblo, when the truth is finally revealed. Includes Readers Guide.
Отрывок из книги
Peyote Wolf
A Fernando Lopez Santa Fe Mystery
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Arms folded across his chest, he sat at his desk studying the peyote button he’d found at Jacoñita. The button looked harmless enough—brown, wrinkled, and no larger than a dried apricot. He knew peyote came from a small, blue cactus that grew wild in parts of southern Texas and Mexico. The cactus produced white flowers, as well as mushroom-like crowns that contained mescaline, a naturally occurring psychedelic drug that produced vivid hallucinations and deep introspection and finally nausea. Members of the Native American Church prized the dried crowns and used them in their all-night meetings. When chewed during the meetings, peyote induced extraordinary physiological and psychological effects such as visions, bright colors, and dramatic changes in time and perception. Some people argued that peyote unlocked the door to a separate, higher reality.
He knew peyote could be a potent drug, because he’d made the mistake of eating a couple of buttons one fourth of July afternoon at Cañjilon Lakes. It seemed like a million years ago—1968, or maybe 1969. The Lopez family—including an assortment of aunts, uncles, and cousins—had gone up to Cañjilon for a weekend of camping and fishing. His cousin Manuel, who was a member of the Native American Church, brought a bag of peyote and shared it with him and some of the older cousins. He could still remember wandering off by himself to lie in the grass and watch the sky change colors like a giant kaleidoscope. He didn’t remember how long he laid there, only the feeling of being incapacitated, unable to move.
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