South Phoenix Rules

For Susan

Prologue

The August heat in Phoenix has a color. It is not red or orange or any searing hue that could be imagined by you or me or Dante, even though this earthly inferno clocked in that day at one hundred fourteen degrees, the reading on a thermometer safely in the shade at Sky Harbor International Airport and the temperature reported across the radio by announcers sitting in air-conditioned studios. On the pavement, under the midday sun in a city where we all longed for the night, a ground temperature sensor would show one hundred forty degrees, and the cloudless sky was the color of bleached concrete.

It had been a dreadful summer, another record-breaker, and that was before one of the two gasoline pipelines that feeds the autopia that is America's fifth most populous city ruptured. The fireball that consumed the errant backhoe and its operator was only the start of the trouble. Gas stations ran dry. People started classic hoarding behavior, topping off their tanks any time they saw a station with supplies. It made the shortages worse. The newspaper carried stories about price gouging. It reminded me of an article I had read, saying that MI5, Britain's security agency, has a maxim that society is “four meals away from anarchy.” This was especially true in a city so dependent on driving, so isolated, so based on complex systems in such an unnatural place to sustain four million people. A vibe of barely contained panic could be felt.

By the second week of the interruption, people followed tanker trucks, hoping they carried a full load and were on their way to a filling station. The county was stockpiling gasoline for uniformed units. Guys like me, we had our county credit cards. We had to do the best we could—with the rule that we had to return the vehicle on full. I wish the deputy who drove the car before me had been so mindful of the regs. The fuel gauge of my unmarked Ford Crown Victoria showed an eighth of a tank.

That day I seemed lucky as I drove out of Maryvale on Thomas Road, headed downtown. Half a block ahead, I saw a long tanker turn left into a gas station. I pulled in behind the truck, landing third in line for one set of pumps, although not close enough to get the shade of the overhang. The plastic bottle of water that had been frozen at nine a.m.—Lindsey and I kept a dozen in the freezer along with the gin during the summer months—was now completely thawed, yet was still cool. I took a last swig.

It was a typical corner station and mini-mart, a squared-off building along a wide avenue of other homely boxes. Twelve lanes crossed the intersection. Two other corners had abandoned gas stations, their remains fenced in. The fourth corner held a check-cashing outlet. Campaign signs clustered on each corner, including one of the wide Peralta Sheriff signs he had been using every election. Peralta was in white, along with a white star, against a blue and red field. Next to it was a sign for his primary opponent, with the subtitle: Stop illegal immigration! The primary would come and go, but the immigrants would come, no matter the condition of the economy. How many had died in the desert this year? Last count: one hundred twenty. None of the Anglos in Phoenix took notice.

At the gas station, the cars quickly lined up, then spilled out onto Thomas. Horns honked. Nobody ever used to honk in Phoenix.

A white Dodge van edged up behind me. Inside were a pretty Anglo mom and a little girl with curly hair. They were in the wrong part of town, but, hey, I was a cop. They'd be safe. My gaze lingered in the rearview mirror and I smiled.

It took away the nastiness of the morning, where I had backed up a uniformed deputy as we evicted a family from their home. The scruffy lawn ended up littered with furniture, clothes, and brightly colored children's toys as we looked on. It's not my job. I was officially the historian of the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, but I'm also a sworn deputy. Everybody's work had changed since the real-estate crash sent the local economy into a depression. Anyone could have seen it coming, anyone except the majority of Phoenicians who made their living off the growth machine. A columnist in the
Arizona Republic
repeatedly warned it was unsustainable; he was pushed out of a job. Even law enforcement was a victim of the worst government budget cuts in the state's history. So Peralta made me work uniformed shifts, serve warrants, and now throw a family out of its house. My pile of cold cases grew higher. “They can wait,” he said.

So I sat there, sweating even though the air conditioning was on high, and smiled at the mother and her little girl waiting behind me.

Then the gun fell.

It clattered to the cement loud enough to be heard inside the car. I made it for a Glock 17, black and blocky, just like many cops carry. My pulse shot, making my temples throb. My hand automatically went to the Colt Python .357 magnum in the Galco high-ride leather holster on my belt.

The kid reached down and picked it up as if nothing more than a crescent wrench had fallen out of his pocket. He slid it into the waistband of his jeans at the small of his back and covered it with his T-shirt. He was maybe twenty, Hispanic, with close-cropped black hair and long limbs. His arms were black with tattoos, and he had bracelets on one wrist. He also had four friends. They were in the car ahead of me, a tricked-out, low Honda. I wondered how they all had fit inside. In front was a blue Chrysler PT Cruiser with another four Hispanic men. One was tall, his muscles showing out of a white wife-beater, the back of his shaved head bearing an elaborate tattoo with two large ornate letters and a line of script below it. This was gang territory and I had parked right in the middle of a meeting. They stood agitated around the cars, brassy
banda
music loudly pouring out of the Cruiser. They were waiting for the gas to flow.

I snapped the holster secure and decided to let things be. Maryvale, Scaryvale. The onetime suburban dream had turned to linear slum and the daily shootings usually didn't even make the newspaper. The tanker driver slid down out of his cab. He set out orange traffic cones around the massive two-trailer rig. I tried not to imagine a scenario where it exploded here. Next, he slid on thick gloves and used a hand-held bar to remove the heavy steel covers embedded in the concrete that led to the underground storage tanks. They clanged loudly. After pulling out a long pole to measure the tanks—a pointless exercise considering the station was dry—he finally began inserting pipes into the ground receptacles, then towed a heavy hose, connecting the tanker and the tanks.

The driver was short and broad-shouldered, with a wide, red-bearded ruddy face, and arms covered with tats. Inked flames shot up his neck—I hoped not indicating a death wish, given his profession. A snakeskin design that completely covered one exposed upper arm made room for an eagle and the words “Aryan Brotherhood, Florence Arizona.” Strapped to his hip was a holster holding a blue carbon steel revolver. Perfectly legal in Arizona, unless he was a felon—and we had legislators who would fight for that right as well. He eyed the Latinos and they stared back at him. The connecting of pipes continued, followed by some work with dials and levers, and the driver walked back to the end of the tanker. He pulled out a red hardpack of Marlboros and lit up.

Safety first.

After taking a deep drag, he let the smoke drift out into the sunlight as he kept the cigarette hanging from his lips, folded his massive arms, and stared at the Latino kids. The revolver sat heavily on his belt.

Until then, the lane on the other side of the pumps had been empty. Now a sparkling black Cadillac SUV drove in, facing me. It had hubcaps like scimitars. They kept revolving after the vehicle came to a stop. Doors opened and five young black men stepped out into the heat. Unlike the Hispanics in their jeans and wife-beaters, they were dressed in the long-short pants that make a man look like a giant infant. None of them looked like a baby.

The closest one was taller than me and as wide as a mature tree back east, with skin the color of almonds. He ran his credit card, tugged on the gas hose, stuck it into the tank, and nothing happened. He called over to the tanker driver. The white man took another drag and showed him the finger. The black guy returned what must have been a gang sign and the Hispanics noticed.

A raised concrete island maybe three feet wide and the gas pumps separated the two groups.

Now the representing began: rival gang signs, elaborate walks toward each other only to be halted momentarily, profanities in English and Spanish. Along with this, I counted four guys raising their shirts to show firearms. Hip-hop was cranked up to compete with
banda
. More black guys appeared from another car that had parked behind the SUV: two, no, another three. All were waiting with desperate empty gas tanks, already jumpy, no doubt psychopathic, and full of tribal grudges, but they might move on if they could just fill up. They hadn't noticed me sitting there in a sedan that screamed “Unmarked Police” with my deputy's star on my belt, along with the Colt Python and one Speedloader with six extra rounds. Gasoline smells penetrated the cab of the car and a fresh sheet of sweat covered me. The Aryan tanker driver looked on impassively, finished his cigarette, and tossed it away from the vicinity of the flowing petroleum.

It was going to be a bad day all day.

I looked back at the mom, who was chatting on her cell phone, not seeming to notice the menace a few feet away. The little girl appeared more knowing, staring at the lethal theater ahead of her. I could call for backup, but people would be dead by the time the first police unit arrived. I could step out and show my badge, be the “peace officer” that Peralta once taught me, but there was no peace, not in this part of the city, not at this moment. At this moment, I should have been plotting what Peralta called a “tactical solution”: which asshole I would take down first, hard enough to get the attention of the others; which assholes I would shoot, in order of their likely capabilities, if things turned to gunplay.

But, I realized, I had more assholes than I had bullets.

Peralta has said I'm good in a crisis, for an egghead. Yet my lungs throbbed with fear. The reason was simple: outside of this wide intersection of hell, I had never had more to live for.

If representing turned to violence, I had no good options, only one risky hope. One hope—for me and the little girl and everybody who would go up in the conflagration that would result that hot day. I wondered for a nanosecond if the young cops even knew the term any longer. I unhooked my badge and slipped off the holster. I untucked my dress shirt, rose up in the seat, and slipped the Python uncomfortably into my slacks behind my back. If representing turned to violence, there was only one response:

South Phoenix Rules.

I filled my lungs, reached for the car door, and started to open it when the tanker driver ambled over, unhooked his hose, and miraculously the gas pumps started to work.