South Phoenix Rules (13 page)

18

I started on the case the next day. Case? No, a research project. I was not a deputy any longer, not a private investigator. I was just a guy at loose ends.

We had a long lunch with Judson Lee at the Phoenician, poolside at the Oasis Bar & Grill. The dismal economy seemed far away, but like nearby Scottsdale, the resort had a dull falseness to it. Miami depended on tourists, too. But it was sexy, edgy, and authentic. Phoenix just had a lot of people, and in the places where most people lived, no soul. Nobody would ever do “CSI Phoenix” for television.

The server, an attractive brunette in her twenties, seemed to know him well and he flirted relentlessly with her. The posh surroundings were a shock when compared with our recent sojourns. The clientele were all white, all rich. Add in all the people in Maricopa County who were white, poor, and desperately looking for someone, anyone, to blame for their straits—a substantial demographic—and this was the constituency of the new sheriff. I tried to set the thought aside.

Lee asked what I knew about Harley Talbott. I asked him how many hours he had. But after his smile faded I went through the basics. The multi-millionaire had died in 1990. He bridged the eras between old and new Phoenix, coming out of a pioneer Arizona family, building the city's largest liquor distributorship, owning land, cattle, and a cotton-seed company. The rumors about Talbott's connections to organized crime went back decades. His liquor business—and alleged bookmaking operation—was said to have had its start in Talbott's friendship with the remnants of the Al Capone mob. He owned senators, congressmen, and judges, thanks to his political contributions.

“How much of this is true?” Lee wanted to know. “I'm from Chicago, so I can tell you about Al Capone. Phoenix, there's history I don't know.”

“I suspect a lot of it was true,” I said. “This was a wide-open town back in the old days. As the city grew, the line between the establishment and the mob was very porous. There are old rumors about Del Webb, the man who built Sun City. The same is even true with Barry Goldwater. It was a mobbed up town, and everybody touched it one way or the other. But you'll still find Talbott defenders even today.”

“I don't want his defenders,” Lee said. “As you can understand, my loyalty is to my client, and I help solve problems.”

“And Mr. DeSimone's problem is the prison stretch his grandfather did back in the 1940s?”

“Yes. As you saw from the newspaper clippings, a liquor store was firebombed. It was a store that wouldn't play by Harley Talbott's rules. Paolo DeSimone was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned. It's true Paolo worked as a driver for Talbott. But he always maintained his innocence. My client wants to know if that's true. If it is, we have the resources to try to clear his name.”

“If he did it for Talbott, it doesn't make sense that Talbott couldn't get him off,” I said. “He pretty much owned the cops and the courts.”

Robin asked what became of Paolo.

“That's the tragedy. He got out of prison and lived just three more years. Cancer. He died broken, almost penniless, his family destitute. Harley Talbott lived to be ninety-two.”

“How awful.” When Robin said it, Lee reached out his old leather hand and tapped her comfortingly.

My heart was not in this. That morning's
Republic
had the west-side killings inside the Valley & State section. “Four men found shot in parking lot.” The editors just couldn't bring themselves to bump the latest health news or feel-good story about 100 jobs at a solar-panel factory off page one. They probably all lived in Ahwatukee or Chandler and had no idea of what was really happening in the city. If a white person had been killed in Scottsdale, it would have been Page One news. Why did I care about this case? But watching Lee's friendly, imploring face, I agreed to take it on. I warned him that I might not be able to find any new evidence, with virtually every player in the case dead by now, and the condition of records uncertain. I also said the facts would speak for themselves.

“It might be that Paolo was guilty. Families have secrets, and Nick might find out things he really doesn't want to know.”

“If that's the case, so be it.” He said it without pause and went back to telling the server what pretty eyes she had. She rubbed his tanned, bald head and he smiled and flicked out his tongue like a contented lizard.

“Mr. Lee is such a charmer,” she said.

***

My cell rang as we were getting the car from the resort's valet. It was Peralta. Come to his office. It wasn't a request.

So I drove out of the surreal green expanse of the Phoenician: designed, manicured, beloved, flowers and bright green grass under perfect palm trees. Then through the comfortable old wealth of the lush Arcadia district, past Biltmore Fashion Park, now hideously “modernized,” west on Camelback Road as the real estate became seedier and seedier, land not beloved, places not built to be cared about. Poor people waited in large clusters at bus stops for the city's evermore diminished transit. The sun beat on them with an intensity that belied the eighty degrees on the thermometer. In thirty minutes, we turned on the broad diagonal of Grand Avenue and then bumped into what passed for Peralta's parking lot.

“It would be really cool if he restored the neon,” Robin said, indicating the Easy 8 Auto Court sign. I studied its odd shape and realized it had once shown a cowboy throwing a rope.

“I'll let you tell him that.”

I held the door for Robin and walked in talking, telling Peralta that I was taking on the work for Judson Lee, even though it was probably a waste of time. Then I noticed Antonio, the Mexican cop, sitting on the other desk, slowly swinging his leg, smoking a thin cigar. He had on the same jeans and blue blazer. Expensive lizard-skin boots had been added to the ensemble. I shut up.

“It's been a productive morning,” Peralta said after we were seated. “A joint agency task force raided a house in a gated community in Mesa this morning.”

I waited, suddenly pulled out of corrupt 1940s Phoenix. But I couldn't resist. “How many Mormons did you nab?”

“We arrested three men. All Mexican nationals. All heavily armed.”

“Did they…Last night?” Robin let it hang.

“It's a good probability. One is a former Mexican Army airborne sniper. Now he's working for the Sinaloa cartel. This was an assassination squad.”

“Did you find a rifle?”

“Not yet,” Peralta said. “We will.”

“So they were avenging La Fam's hit on El Verdugo?” I said.

Neither man spoke.

I could see Robin's expression cloud over. She had taken comfort in Mero Mero saying he had nothing against her, didn't know her.

She said, “He wasn't El Verdugo.” I gave her points for loyalty.

The room smelled of mildew, no easy thing in Phoenix. It was a smell that mingled with cigar smoke and congregated in my senses as nobody spoke for several minutes. Peralta and Antonio exchanged glances.

Then Antonio said, “That's true.”

“What?” Robin sat up straight.

“He wasn't El Verdugo.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because I killed El Verdugo in Juarez a year ago.”

“Oh, my God.” She cupped her face in her hands. “Then, who…”

“Let's get something straight.” Peralta's tone was harsh. “What we're about to tell you is off the record. You can never tell anyone.” He stared at me.

I struggled to keep my anger in check—all the lies they had casually told us, when Robin's life was at risk. I slowly nodded.

“El Verdugo was alone when I caught up with him,” Antonio said. “He drew, I was faster.
Adios, chingaso
. We buried him in Juarez in an unmarked grave, kept the information from the other cops. His buddies never knew, either. So we hijacked his identity.”

Antonio gently set the cigar in a large glass ashtray. “We made it seem like he'd disappeared and gone rogue. Every now and again, I'd get to a killing first—an easy thing in my country—and use that snake's-head ring on the victim. Just to keep the stories and rumors coming. Sinaloa went crazy. Their man was killing them. But the Gulf boys had no comfort. El Verdugo was killing them, too. And killing Los Zetas.”

“But not really,” Robin said. “You were just faking it.”

“Precisely.” Antonio said. “But it was useful. Sow chaos. This was a very closely held secret, especially among my colleagues, but even with my friends the Americans, who have shown they have a weakness for cartel bribes, too.”

“Three months ago,” Peralta said, “we picked up intel that a subject in Phoenix was shopping for a hit man. He met with an undercover officer, but wouldn't bite. He wanted the best. He wanted El Verdugo. Asked for him by name.”

“Who was this party?” I asked.

Peralta pursed his lips. “Barney. At the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop.”

I softly said, “Guns, knives, ammunition.”

Antonio said, “ATF inserted a deep undercover agent to pose as El Verdugo. He was one of their best. I gave him the snake's head ring. You knew him by his real name, Jax Delgado.”

I heard Robin's throat catch. My stomach burned. “You've known this all along? Damn you to hell, Mike.”

“The A.G. wouldn't let me tell you.” Peralta folded his arms. “And ATF sure as hell wouldn't. Amy Preston went nuts after you showed up at her house asking about the gun shop.”

“Why are you telling us now?”

“It just seems right,” Peralta said. “With this arrest, I think we're going to be able to close the case. These guys somehow picked up Delgado's trail and killed him. Maybe it was because they thought he was the real Verdugo and this was payback time. Maybe they sniffed out his cover.” He noticed my expression. “When they were torturing him, maybe he talked about Robin. Or maybe they followed him and knew where she lived.”

“The autopsy on Delgado said he'd been tased,” Antonio said. “That may have been how they initially took him down. These guys had a Taser. We're going to show their photos to the staff at the FedEx shop where his head was shipped from.” His tone made it sound like so much freight. “See if anybody can pick them out.”

I said, “What about last night?”

“Because La Fam is working with the Gulf cartel to move arms,” Antonio said, “the Sinaloans also took out Mero Mero and his crew. They probably followed you last night. This hit squad was up here on serious business. My guess is Barney would have been the next patient on the torture table, for doing business with the Gulf cartel and La Fam. Maybe he'd get off easy. Lose a finger or an ear and have to keep supplying Sinaloa.”

“Slow down,” I said. “Jax made contact with Barney?”

Peralta nodded. “No Arizona jury is going to convict a licensed gun dealer for selling firearms, no matter how many people they kill in Mexico. With Jax, we had Barney on hiring a hit man. We thought we could get more. Evidence that he was selling firearms in bulk to the Gulf cartel. We could shut him down forever.”

Robin clasped her arms tightly around her chest. “Does this mean we're safe?”

Both men said “yes” simultaneously.

“They ought to just legalize drugs,” Robin whispered. “All this death, and for what?”

Antonio said, “This isn't about drugs anymore. This is about power.”

I was drowning in the bucket of information they had just dumped on us. “If he was on the job, why would he tell us his real name?”

Peralta shrugged. “Maybe he met somebody he cared about.”

Robin abruptly stood and strode out across the ancient linoleum.

I had many questions, but followed her out. She fell into my arms by the car and sobbed hard, her tears soaking through my shirt while a freight train trundled past, steel slamming upon steel.

19

The clippings from the old
Phoenix Gazette
told of how McNamara's Liquors on Van Buren Street burned in the early hours of September 20th, 1940. The fire marshal said it was arson. Within two weeks, police had arrested Paolo DeSimone for what was now being called a “fire bombing.” The newspaper displayed a booking photo of a slender, hatchet-faced man with a pencil moustache. It listed him as an “itinerant laborer” and gave his age as twenty-eight. He had signed a confession, and unlike today, the case rapidly moved to trial within a month. DeSimone didn't take the stand. The jury convicted him of arson and he was sentenced to ten years at the State Prison in Florence. That was the end of the news, and if the reporting was halfway accurate, things didn't look good for Paolo.

But we would try.

My large office in the old County Courthouse had been full of police and court records from the 1910s through the 1940s. The county hadn't been much interested in them, and over the years with Peralta I had amassed a wonderful library of old Phoenix crime. It was my anti-Google and had done right by me in dozens of old cases. Except for the boxes I had brought home in Lindsey's car that December day, I had left most of it behind. And a quick check of the files I had showed little of utility. The Phoenix Police logbook showed a notation, written in efficient script, that the east-side squad car had been dispatched to a fire at McNamara's Liquors at 2:21 a.m. on September 20th. It was still a fairly new innovation to have two or three radio-equipped cars out in the city late at night. The population of Phoenix was 65,414. The area within the city limits was maybe twelve miles.

The new cases were online, the old ones stored away in paper files. In theory, at least. I made a call and a friend from the county got me into the deep storage of the Superior Court clerk.
Arizona v. DeSimone
was not there. It felt strange being down at the county office buildings, seeing the line of prisoner buses parked and the corrections officers smoking outside the Madison Street Jail, except the sign had a stranger's name on it as sheriff. I had no desire to have lunch, as I so often once did, at Sing Hi. I didn't want to run into old colleagues from the S.O. or the county attorney's office and have to make explanation, much less get angry over the treatment of Peralta.

It was a relief to be sent over to the State Archives, near the capitol. The building was new but the state's financial troubles had cut the hours to nearly nothing and the crackpots in the Legislature were trying to take its space. Criminal transcripts might eventually make their way here, both for historical value and because the defendant had a right to appeal. In reality, the records were often a mess. This would especially be true for the DeSimone case. It lacked the notoriety of, say, Winnie Ruth Judd. Fortunately, we came at the right time; the archives were open. Within forty-five minutes a helpful archivist found the files we were seeking. Not much was left: maybe an inch of paperwork. We paid for copies to take with us.

Robin seemed happier after the catharsis of learning Jax's true identity. She had been right about him. We would probably never learn more. Robin suggested that I give the dog tags to Amy Preston, the ATF supervisor; perhaps she could pass them onto Jax's family. I had forgotten about them, and the idea alarmed me. This was, after all, evidence in a homicide investigation that we both had knowingly concealed. Better to let it be. She hadn't argued.

But we talked a great deal those days, about ourselves, about history and art. She was a good companion. Our lives were complicated and yet simple. It felt as if we had been friends on a deep level for many years. Her presence eased the sting of not getting the ASU job, the gaping absence of Lindsey, and I didn't worry too much about the future. Robin downloaded Chalino Sanchez songs from iTunes and we listened to them. I went running with her, starting to get into the best shape I had been in for several years. We made several visits to the art museum and I felt centered enough to read Kennedy's book on the Depression and World War II. Light rail took us down to Portland's for cocktails made by Michelle, the owner. The outside world didn't hold its former menace.

We read the newspaper together. In addition to the news of the dreadful economy, the Legislature slashing everything from health care for children of the working poor to closing state parks, and the silly features written to make readers feel better, it contained several stories about the “cartel hit squad” arrested and facing charges. It didn't mention's the hit squad's alleged murder of ATF agent Jax Delgado, of course. The reporter and editors also seemed oblivious to the larger implications of the arrests. So did the millions living here. Tea Partiers protested outside the Capitol against taxes, immigrants, and the government. They were too ignorant to know Arizona wouldn't even exist as a habitable place without aggressive government action. Every day a new real-estate project slipped into foreclosure.

Robin and I pulled our small, contented world closer around us. I told her more stories about old Phoenix and learned about some of her adventures. I took her to the old cemetery just west of the Black Canyon Freeway, and, under the canopy of its old trees, we left flowers on the graves of my grandparents and the parents I never knew. We took the rough brush from the car—meant to wipe off snow—and used it to scrub the dust from the headstones. We sat in the grass, and she leaned her head on my shoulder. Lindsey called every four or five days and talked to each of us. She talked to Robin far longer. Our talks were unbearably light considering the deep-soul talks that had been our sustenance for years. What was she listening to? Carrie Newcomer, Heather Nova, and Dar Williams. What was she reading? Marcus Aurelius and Camus.

When Robin and I emerged from our research at the State Archives that day, it had been raining and a very faint rainbow was visible behind the downtown towers.

***

Lindsey loved rainbows. She seemed to bring them out. I had seen more Arizona rainbows since I had met her than I had seen in my entire life. She would call me to the window to watch them, where we lingered while she painted the scene with her words, her arm around my waist. The summer of her pregnancy, the monsoon season was poised to be the new strange normal. When I had been a boy, the summer rainstorms had come into the city regularly from mid-July through early September. The lightning and thunder were spectacular. The rain constituted the majority of the precious seven inches a year that made the Sonoran Desert lush and unique in all the world.

When I moved back, I found a metropolitan area that had become a 2,500-square-mile concrete block. The summers were becoming hotter and longer, and the monsoons strange and unpredictable. In this strange new normal—all that most of this city of newcomers knew—the big thunderheads stayed beyond the mountains, as if they were gods surveying the mess that man had made of their timeless Salt River Valley. And when the storms rolled in, they were often violent. One storm two years before had been so savage that it knocked the telephone poles on Third Avenue straight down and ripped off some roofs. The meteorologists talked about microbursts and the collision of the weather front with superheated concrete, especially in places like Sky Harbor airport. I thought about how those storm gods might be releasing their kindled anger.

But while last summer had been hot and scary with the broken gasoline line, the monsoons had been as before. In addition to the obligatory dust storms and dramatic nighttime lightning shows, several times a week we had gotten real rain. And real rainbows.

One afternoon I had come home early and found Lindsey and Robin together in the upstairs apartment. Lindsey stood at the window as the clouds moved away and the room lightened.

“Oh, my God,” she said. “It's a double rainbow.”

It was: twins soaring all the way through the boiling sky toward Camelback Mountain.

“It's a good sign,” Robin said.

An hour later, Lindsey started bleeding.

***

What is the dark matter that controls our fates, that brings catastrophes upon us suddenly? We are fools to even consider it. And what of the losses that we can never fully purge, never grieve away? Never make right. Never atone for. Never even hold a funeral or let our friends know what has collapsed us. Our child was gone without ever having breathed this fated atmosphere, without even a name.

My wife was only saved from bleeding to death by a procedure that meant she could never have children of her own. It was just another moment on a planet of tragedies, but it was our tragedy, our world knocked off its axis, taking with it all the tomorrows we had so vainly believed in. Later, when she was awake, Lindsey had demanded to know what had happened to her child. That was how she phrased it, “my child.” The doctor was not delicate: the fetus had been disposed of in the hospital incinerator. That was the way it was. Lindsey had nodded once and stared ahead dry-eyed.

I looked back on those three months with Lindsey as golden. But the complexion of the time was more complicated than that, as any historian would tell you, more shaded, nuanced. Someday when I could bear it, I might see it with greater clarity. We had grown closer together than ever, and yet mysteriously also drawn apart, as if making room for someone. Lindsey became very dependent on Robin, and now it was clear that having lost her job and facing the worst recession since the Depression, Robin embraced being needed. They denied that they were going shopping for baby things. “I don't want to jinx it,” Lindsey said. The poetic watchfulness in her that had first so attracted me became something more. She worried. She was acutely aware of changes in her body, even as the doctor reassured her. A few days before the miscarriage, she had said, “Something doesn't feel right,” and the doc reassured her again.

But she would never be set at ease. These were the first days when I had seen her grow suddenly angry with me over seemingly like small things. But, in her mind, nothing was small. Although the breach was quickly healed, this was a new side of my love. And me? I probably did a hundred things wrong. Maybe the worst, that day when she first saw the blood in her panties, was to say, like a towering ass, “I'm sure it's nothing.”

Now I was lost in the past as the rainbow faded over the Chase Tower. Robin lightly touched my shoulder. “Just be with me in this moment, David.”

I nodded and we started to walk to the car.

She said, “It's all we really have.”