South Phoenix Rules (17 page)

I could have told him that Italians had once been held in the contempt now shown Hispanic immigrants, but what was the point? I asked him what Moretti supplied to the cartel in return?

“Money, lots of money.” He puffed up his chest. “And guns. I've never seen so goddamned many guns.”

“Where does he get them?”

“They don't tell me. Really, I swear to god.”

I pulled out the image of the hit woman and held it in front of his rapidly swelling face.

“Who is this?”

“Sabrina.”

He said it too easily to be dissembling. I wanted her last name.

“I think it's Cobb. Talk about a skank.”

“What's her connection to Moretti?”

He said he didn't know.

“Then how do you know her?”

“I took a package to her, okay?”

“Heroin?”

“She'd a rather had that,” said this straight-A product of what passed for the well-funded suburban schools. “But it wasn't.” He tried to smile but it hurt too much. “I checked it, 'cause my ass would have been on the line, you know? It was ten thousand dollars. Hundreds and twenties. I made her count it, too, so she couldn't say I'd stolen anything.”

I reached into the back and pulled out my old metal clipboard, which I'd carried as a uniformed deputy and had to dig out again when Peralta put everybody on standby for uniform duty because of budget cuts. Pulling his driver's license out of his wallet, I started writing up an incident report. It was mostly for show. The kid's name was Jonathan Zachary Grady. I wrote down his name, date of birth, address. He kept sniffling and suppressing his bawling.

“You're in a shitload of trouble, Jonathan.”

“They call me Zack.”

“I don't give a fuck. Are you following me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The old man is under surveillance as of an hour ago. I'm going to temporarily let you go because you cooperated. Do you skateboard?”

“What?”

His head crashed into the unyielding sun-baked polymer surface once again, hard this time. Blood spattered like July Fourth fireworks. He screamed.

“Yes, yes, goddamn, yes, I skateboard. Please don't hurt me!”

“Then it's too bad you fell off your skateboard,” I said. “Don't go back to the old man's house. You'll go to jail and you'll be tried as an adult, then you'll go to prison. I'll make sure the prison gangs know you were a snitch, and by the time they finish passing your virgin asshole around…”

Out of his rapidly swollen face, he looked at me with growing terror.

“Don't go back to Moretti's house. Don't contact him. All his phones are tapped. Don't say anything to your buddies. We're watching them, too. This is a big case for the feds and they don't give a shit who your parents are.”

He tried to nod vigorously but it hurt too much. He kept saying “yes” until I told him to shut up.

I ordered him to lean forward and unlocked the handcuffs. They had left no cuts or bruises on his wrists. He put a wad of McDonald's paper napkins I gave him up to his nose.

“Now get the fuck out and walk. And thank you for your cooperation.”

26

I used surface streets to return home. The stop-and-go gave me time to assess new information. Sal “the Bug” Moretti—Judson Lee—in Chandler, comfortably relocated thanks to our tax dollars, and now running new criminal enterprises. Selling black-tar heroin to affluent high-school kids. Somehow involved with the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop, selling guns to the cartels. This was what had showed up on our doorstep, peddling himself as an attorney with a bogus story.

Why? What was his role in the beheading of Jax Delgado? The answer ate at my insides all along the length of Baseline Road, as I passed the cheap, fake Tuscan-Spanish architecture of apartments and subdivisions, profaning the land that once held the Japanese gardens whose images so enchanted Robin. He wanted to get close to Robin. Maybe he had wanted to see how effective our defenses were. Maybe…I didn't know.

I had let this happen.

Beyond that, it was all little things. Holden wanted to kill us that night, but Moretti had held him back? Why? Had Tom Holden been the long-rifle shooter who had taken down La Fam as we watched stupefied? What was the Bug's angle in that killing? I cursed so long, loud, and profanely that I fogged the inside of my sunglasses.

The drive gave me time to assess new information about me. The packets of wet wipes Lindsey kept in the glove box did an adequate job of cleaning the blood off the inside of the car and my hands. But I had seen my own capacity back there with Jonathan Zachary Grady, middle-class teen drug dealer. I had enjoyed it, this darkness that had been growing in me suddenly let out into the sunlight. I kept wiping my hands long after the little cloths were dry, kept wiping them until my skin was raw.

On Central, I turned north, crossed the canal, passed Sue's Fashions, and took in the brown cloud hovering over the skyline. In the historic districts, everything was blooming and lovely. This was the garden city of my youth, the green oasis, what was left of it anyway. It was lost on me. I was almost home when the cell rang. It was Peralta. This time I picked up.

“How's Casa Grande?”

“Why aren't you answering your phone?”

“I've needed quiet time.”

“You're a really crappy liar. I heard about the gunfire at your house. You need to get out of there. Come see me and gun-up.”

“No.”

The line was silent for several seconds. “Do you still have the wallet you took off the banger watching your house?”

I hesitated.

“Because he's a DEA agent,” Peralta said.

It was eighty-five outside but I felt chill.

He continued, “Don't start on me. I just found out myself. So don't fuck this up. Bring me the wallet and the TEK-9.”

“I don't have a…”

“Crappy liar, Mapstone. I need the gun back before Amy Preston sends me to Guantánamo or you murder somebody with it.”

“Fine. Fuck you. What was a DEA agent doing watching our house before I ever got in the middle of their investigation?”

He had already hung up. That answer, of course, was obvious: their man, Jax Delgado, had been killed and his head sent to the Spanish revival house on Cypress Street.

The next call came two hours later.

“Mapstone, it's Demetrius. Thanks for your help back there. You have good moves. I hope you got the misguided lad home safely.”

“Where are you?”

“Sorry, my man, but I just crossed the state line. Ditch pig will be safely in jail in Bakersfield when you need him, and I'll be thirty-thousand-dollars closer to paying my daughter's tuition at UCLA.”

I just let the microwaves carry silence until he said my name again.

“Did you make him do the phone call?”

“He did it just the way you wanted. Sorry about the rest, but California called.”

I put up a fuss, made it a good one. But I was satisfied. Demetrius Smith had not let me down.

Now I sat in the living room and looked around the house. “Just get me to the night.” I said it over and over, as if it would stop the tachycardia that was overwhelming me. The only thing that helped for a few moments was to lie in bed, where the sheets still had Robin's scent.

***

The address the high-school kid gave me went to an old, single-story row of apartments on 15th Avenue north of Missouri. This part of the city had developed slowly, the cursed subdivisions creeping in on the acreages and farms. Some properties still had horse privileges in the zoning code. But I was not going to horse country. The apartment was in the middle, behind a fading white door that had no peephole in it. There was no back exit and the lights were on. It was full dark.

I walked through the smell of citrus blossoms that only fed my blood lust and gave the hollow-sounding door three knocks.

“Who is it?” A female voice.

“FedEx.”

The door cracked and I pushed through, raising the barrel of the Python to her face.

“Oh, shit!”

She turned to run and I grabbed her by her hair, smashed her into the wall, and dragged her inside, kicking the door shut behind me.

“Who else is in the apartment?”

“Nobody”

I told her we'd double check. With her hair pulled painfully and the big Colt against her back, I made her do a walk-through, to the bedroom, the bathroom, the closet. Then I pushed her back into the living room and threw her to the floor.

It was the same woman: thin, pallid face, long dark hair, wearing dark shorts and a teal top. In the light, she looked about five feet tall. She stared up at me with terror. In the light, her face was prematurely crisscrossed with lines and her skin carried the unhealthy pallor of an addict. I sat in a chair and kept the gun on her.

“Why?”

“Oh, mister, please, I'm begging…”

“I'm going to ask again.” My voice was quiet, unfamiliar. “Why?”

“He said he'd pay me, okay? My old man's in jail and I was trying to get him out.”

“How did you find him?”

“He found me, I swear to god.”

“Who found you?”

“Mister Lee!”

So he had played the same game. She didn't know who he was or where he lived. She might have been the woman who had lunched with him at the Phoenician, who, recounted the server Lisa, felt out of place.

“My old man had done some work for him before. When Mister Lee called here I was desperate to raise that bail money. There was nothing I could do and I asked for his help. He said I had to do this.”

“Why?”

“He said you'd shot and killed his son, that both of you were drug dealers, and he wanted justice.”

“Why didn't you shoot me?”

She stared at the wall. “The gun jammed.”

“Where is it?”

“Under the sofa cushion. He said he'd pick it up. But that kid who brought the money wouldn't take it.”

I told her to get the gun, hold it by the barrel, and put it on the coffee table. She pulled up a black .22 semi-auto with a silencer attached to the barrel and set it next to a stack of “Real Simple” magazines. I ordered her to lie back down on the floor.

“Did you bail out your husband?”

She shook her head.

“Where's the goddamned money!”

Her eyes grew wide. She pointed to a black satchel sitting against the giant flat-screen television set.

“You didn't smoke it?”

“No, no! I've been thinking about leaving, starting over. Donnie beat me anyway, so I thought, maybe this was my shot. Let him stay in jail.” She held bony hands against her face. “I know I did a bad thing. I know I did wrong. All I ever did before was turn a few tricks. I was in jail for that but nothing else. I swear to god, mister. I wasn't raised…”

She suddenly stopped talking when I held up my hand.

“Do you have a dishrag?”

I had to repeat myself.

She nodded and pointed to the kitchen. It was wet and draped over the 1960s-era faucet. I picked it up and tossed it to her.

“Put it in your mouth.”

She hesitated until I cocked the Python. The move is not necessary in a double-action revolver, but the sound gets attention. “Please, Mister…” I aimed. She started to eat the dirty rag, tears running down her cheeks. She lay on the floor, raised on her elbows, staring at the madman over her. I replayed that night in the back yard, Robin hit and falling. I felt shrapnel rubbing up against my heart.

I holstered the Python and pulled out the latex gloves from my pocket. I slid one on each hand and then examined the .22. The magazine still had ammunition. I worked the action to make sure it wouldn't jam and slapped the ammo back into the gun.

“I know you've studied your Northern Ireland history,” I said. “The Irish Republican Army used to do something called ‘a six pack.' A bullet in each ankle, knee, and elbow. You'll probably live, if you can stand the pain, and you don't bleed out. I don't care.”

Here I was lying, because I intended to put the last bullet between her eyes. Muffled words. Steady streams of water coming down her face.

“You killed an innocent woman. You didn't kill me. Two strikes and you're out.” I hefted the cheap, poisonous manufacture in my gloved hand.

My cell rang. I made the mistake of looking at the caller I.D.: Lindsey.

***

Inside the Lincoln Memorial, where he sits in his chair watching what has become of the republic he did what was required to preserve, words are carved into the walls. Among them,

The inscription never fails to move me. But as Lindsey and I stood there that night, barely noticing the light crowd around us, I began to weep full-out.

We had walked the length of the mall. I had been once again trying to coax a talk about the natural disaster that had befallen us. Lindsey, once again, had been silent. None of this was new, nor was my inability to leave it alone. Inside, I tried to imagine the events of grievance, misunderstanding, and disregard that, beyond losing the baby, were pulling her away from me. It was a fool's errand, of course, worse than asking for trouble. I didn't understand why we had to mourn separately, or why we couldn't talk any more. Once again, I suggested that we try counseling, together or separately.

At this she had turned to me and nearly snarled, “I don't even know who I am!” before stalking ahead.

It had become clear that the distance separating us was one that couldn't be crossed with an airplane ride. How we had gone so far off course, little by little, was probably beyond either of us that night.

And I cried there before the engraved words, not knowing how to save my union. She wasn't wearing gloves and put the hand without the wedding rings on my arm.

“Dave, I don't know how to tell you…” Her voice was nearly a whisper. “The last thing I want to do is add to your sorrows or be cruel to you….”

“Just say it, Lindsey.” My gut tightened.

She said, “I'm not sure I want to be married to you.”

***

Now I let her call go to voice mail. The woman was imploring me with wide eyes, a shaking head, and making small, animal-like sounds through the dishrag.

My left hand pulled back the action and chambered a round. I would start with her kneecap, supposedly the most painful wound. Her right kneecap that was two feet away. I slipped my finger inside the trigger guard, lined up the sights, and took a breath, started to let it out slowly. This moment had been imagined in my sleepless nights and days a hundred times, T.S. Eliot hammering in my brain, “After such knowledge, what forgiveness?”

But that moment I heard Lindsey. And I heard Robin. Voices as clear and insistent as if they were sitting next to me. They would not let me be.

I put the gun on the table and walked out into the cool night.

On the sidewalk, I called PPD and told them I had just seen the woman who had murdered Robin walk into an apartment. The first units showed up in three minutes. I could clearly identify her and would have great credibility on the witness stand as a decorated former deputy sheriff. The murder weapon and money were there as evidence. I would take my chances with the justice system I had spent so many years serving. This time.