Coyote blue

some sunglasses." Coyote loped off.

Chapter 11 – The God, the Bad,
    and the Ugly Santa Barbara
    During the short drive to his office Sam decided that if Gabriella gave him the least little bit of shit he would fire her on the spot. If his life was going to fall apart before his eyes there was no reason to suffer the slings and arrows of ungrateful employees. There were also twenty younger agents who worked under him, and as long as he held partnership in the agency he held the power to hire and fire. Let one of them mouth off , he thought. Let one of them look sideways at me and they're going to be a distant memory, taillights on the horizon, gone, out, shit-canned, pink-slipped, instantly unemployed.
    He walked into his office with his temper locked, loaded, and ready to fire, but was immediately disarmed when he saw Gabriella tilted back in her chair, skirt thrown up around her waist, her legs spread wide and high heels alternately pumping in the air and digging into the back of the naked Indian, who was on his knees in front of her, wheeling her chair back and forth, thrusting into her with greedy abandon and yipping with each stroke as counterpoint to the monkey noises that escaped Gabriella in rhythmic bursts.
    "Hey!" Sam shouted.
    Gabriella looked over the Indian's shoulder at Sam and held one finger in the air as if marking a point, then pointed to the message pad on the desk. "One call," she gasped. The Indian pulled her to him in a particularly violent thrust and Gabriella grabbed his shoulder with both hands, popping her press-on nails off and across the room like tiddlywinks.
    Sam shook off his shock, ran forward, and caught the Indian around the neck in a choke hold. The Indian pumped wildly in the air as Sam dragged him off Gabriella and across the outer office. He fell over backward into his office with the Indian still squirming in his grasp and it occurred to him that unless things turned quickly to his advantage he was in serious danger of being humped. He rolled the Indian over on the carpet and pinned him, facedown, while he looked around for a weapon. The only thing in reach was the big multiline phone on his desk. Sam released the choke hold and lunged for the phone, catching it by the cord. He swung around with it just in time to hit the Indian in the face as he was rising to his hands and knees. The phone exploded into a spray of electronic shrapnel and the Indian fell forward onto his face, unconscious but twitching against the carpet in petit-mal afterhumps.
    Sam looked at the broom of colored wires at the end of the cord where the phone used to be, then dropped it and staggered to his feet. Gabriella was standing by the door, smoothing her skirt down. Her lipstick was smeared across her face and her hair was spiked into a fright wig of hair spray and sweat. She started to speak, then noticed that one of her breasts was still peeking out of her dress. "Excuse me." She turned and tucked herself in, then turned back to Sam. "I'll hold your calls," she said officiously, then she pulled the door closed, leaving Sam alone in the office with the unconscious, naked Indian.
    "You're fired," Sam whispered to the closed door. He looked down at the Indian and saw a bloodstain spreading around his head on the carpet. He didn't seem to be breathing. Sam fell to his knees and felt the Indian's neck for a pulse. Nothing.
    "Fuck, not again!" Sam paced around the desk four times before he fell back in his leather executive chair and clamped his hands on his temples as if trying to squeeze out a solution. Instead he thought of police and prison and felt hope running through his fingers like liquid light, leaving him dark with despair.
    A growling noise from the floor. Sam looked over the desk to see the body of the Indian moving. He started to breathe a sigh of relief when he realized that the body wasn't moving at all, it was changing. His eyes went wide with terror as the arms and legs shortened and grew fur, the face grew into a whiskered muzzle, and the spinal column lengthened and grew into a bushy tail. Before Sam could catch his breath again he was looking at the body of a huge black coyote.
    The coyote got to its feet and shook its head as if clearing its ears of water, then it leapt on the desk and growled at Sam, who rolled his chair back until it hit the wall behind his desk.
    Sam pushed himself up by the chair arms until he was almost standing against the wall, desperately trying to put even a