Dry Heat

by Jon Talton

  “Sounds like Pilgrim could have made a lot of enemies,” I said.

  “He did. Look, Pilgrim was no saint. He liked drink and he liked women. Hell, he loved women. It was a different kind of world then. But he was a damned good agent. We got an indictment against the one commissioner, Duke Simms. We sent some of the local cops to prison, and we slowed down the mobsters.”

  I noted the name Duke—Pilgrim’s son had mentioned a Duke. I said, “What about Dimitri?”

  “Disappeared. After John was shot.”

  “And you don’t buy the suicide theory.”

  “No.”

  “His son seems to believe it. The Bureau definitely does.”

  “They didn’t know him the way I did. Look, Pilgrim told me he was going to meet a guy. Somebody who had information about Dimitri. That was the last I saw him. He turned up dead two days later.”

  “Why didn’t you go with him?”

  “I was a newlywed, Mapstone. It was the weekend, and I wanted to be with my wife.”

  I unconsciously looked at the photo of his wife. Renzetti continued. “If it was a suicide, why did Pilgrim’s car turn up in downtown Phoenix, miles from where the body was found? Why did his badge and gun disappear?”

  “Wait,” I said. “I didn’t know his gun wasn’t found. That wasn’t in the report.”

  “I know,” Renzetti said.

  “So you’re saying the FBI covered this up?”

  Renzetti stared at his bony fingers folded in his lap. “I’m saying they didn’t know what happened. Everything about this case was embarrassing, and the Bureau under Mr. Hoover was very averse to being embarrassed. Get it? We interviewed over a thousand people, and never could even find a suspect to bring in. The guy we came to bag escaped, maybe back to Russia. But there’s more to it. John was his own man, did things his own way. The bosses didn’t like him, and there were things I didn’t like, either. Maybe the brass was afraid they’d find he was dirty, and they didn’t want to know.”

  “Was he?”

  Renzetti’s head moved from side to side with finality. “No way. John drank too much and womanized way too much. But he was a great FBI man.”

  “So Dimitri killed him?”

  “Yes,” he said emphatically. Then his arms slowly extended, hands palms up. “I can’t prove anything. It’s always haunted me. After John was killed, I was transferred to the Bay Area, and I spent my career here.”

  Here seemed a lonely place now. A picture palace of beloved dead. Men like Vince Renzetti had always made me feel small, in an admiring way. They had served their country in combat in a great cause, something most Baby Boomers would never know. Strong, taciturn men who knew whether they were cowards or not. They walked to a Sousa march, “Semper Fidelis,” perhaps. Peralta was such a man. Finally, I was always dumbstruck in their presence. When nothing more could be said, I was tempted to ask if there was anything I could do for him, anyone I could call. But he hadn’t invited that intimacy. So I gathered up my trench coat and, thanking him, walked away into the rain.

  Chapter Twenty

  I rode the train back to San Francisco feeling the weight of too many Russians in my life. Yuri, the shadowy cyber-criminal who had a contract out on my wife. Dimitri, the spy, who may have killed John Pilgrim. But my list of questions was only growing, topped by: how did the badge get from the murdered G-man to the jacket of the dead homeless man? Had it been passed from person to person over the years, perhaps bringing a cursed fate to the bearer? Or had it always been on George Weed? Rainwater dashed against the train’s windows, spreading and trailing back. I studied the geography of the clouds, feeling further from the answer than ever. The only thing to do was fly back to Phoenix and face Peralta’s wrath.

  I must have been dozing. The car rocked a little as another train swept past us. I opened my eyes enough to see the Palo Alto depot washed by the rain. Maybe I could get a job as a lecturer at Stanford. Lindsey and I could live in the city, and I could ride the train to work. Maybe pigs would fly. Maybe I was a protégé of Dan Milton, but the world had too many well-credentialed history professors wanting to find sinecures at top universities. Still, it was a nice daydream. I let my head settle into the softness of the seat and closed my eyes again, day-dreaming about Lindsey. Nicer daydreams. Taking her out on the town. Having her read me a classic in bed. The times she would wear black pumps and nothing else…

  But when the train lurched forward again my eyes fluttered open just enough to see the face in the window of the door that led to the next train car. The face was looking at me. It was a blond man, with his hair slicked back. I kept my head down and my eyes nearly closed. I didn’t believe it. Maybe he had just intruded in my dozing. I closed my eyes tightly for a second. But when I opened them again, he was there.

  It was the blond man from Encanto Park. He saw me see him. The face disappeared and I could see the door to the next car open and close. A burst of adrenaline lifted me to my feet and propelled me toward the door.

  The train was picking up speed, gently swaying side to side. My feet found purchase with the rocking motion, and I slipped quickly to the end of the car. Then I opened the sliding metal door that went into a small, enclosed vestibule where the cars connected. Around me, the train sounds were louder, the air cooler. I looked through the glass of the next door. The car was full of Silicon Valley commuters going home to towns on the Peninsula or in the city. Faces regarded me with the wary disinterest of city people. I stayed in the vestibule, watching. No blond man. For reassurance, I felt the Colt Python in the nylon holster on my belt, and then I pulled the door open and stepped into the next car.

  These were double-decker commuter cars. So I had the best view of the people sitting on the first level, where the seats were two abreast on either side of the aisle. Stepping forward, I could also see the seats above, single chairs that overlooked the car’s central hallway and were set off by a railing. It became clear what I couldn’t see: the stairways up to the second level.

  I moved quickly up the winding stairs. But just as my head came up enough to see down in the car, a figure moved out of the staircase at the opposite end, pulled open the door, and disappeared forward into the train. It was the blond man. He was again well-dressed, in a dark blue suit, red tie, and white shirt. His suit coat was roomy enough to conceal a large firearm. I fought to slow my breathing as I crossed the carpeted aisle on the second floor, tramped down the metal stairs, and followed him through the next door. I could hear a conductor calling out the stop at Redwood City and the train was slowing. I couldn’t let my blond-headed watcher get away.

  Then I was face down, my nose mashed into the cold metal floor of the vestibule. My brain was about two steps behind events, fighting desperately to catch up. He’d used a neat move on me, waiting just the other side of the vestibule, then coming at me from behind once I stepped through. He must have stepped into the back of my knee to bring me down, then pulled my trench coat and suit coat over my arms to disable me while shoving my face into the floor. I admired the hell of out his little move as I struggled to swing myself around, worried that a bullet might come into the back of my head, my hand struggling to feel the butt of the Python, my mouth full of cottony fear. I was conscious of all the metal grinding against metal around me, as the train cars rubbed against each other. But I was alone in the vestibule.

  By the time I got on my feet, the blond man could have been a mile from the train. We were moving again, and I could see nothing out the window but drizzle-mussed lights fading rapidly behind us. I limped back to my seat, avoiding the eyes of a conductor who was paying too much attention to me. My knee was feeling as if it were constructed of Jell-O, and for some reason my stomach was queasy, too. I slumped into my seat, feeling foolish and vulnerable. The blond Russian slimebag had played me like I was a rookie. No, like a civilian. I was a joke.

  Then I became conscious of the frantic pounding against my breastbone, a sense of constriction, my breath gathering in
side me. The old familiar sense of dread, that death could be at hand. But I knew this was no heart attack. It was a bad brew of brain chemistry, that’s all. Or maybe it was the melancholy and fatalism of Celtic and Welsh genes stewing around inside me, the knowledge that history would eventually work against me. I tried to ignore it.

  My injured pride rocked along with the train as we passed through Hollister, San Bruno, and the grassy empty land that was once the city’s main rail yard. The car was silent except for the beat radiating from the headset of the kid sitting across from me. The Russian couldn’t be after me to get to Lindsey—unless he thought she was in San Francisco with me. Or his mission was somehow to grab me as a bargaining chip. Either thought was unsettling. At least she was safe. I prayed she was safe. Wherever the hell she was. With Patrick Blair, with his waterbed eyes. I visibly shook the junk of brooding thoughts out of my head as the train slowed. We stopped at a forlorn little shelter at the foot of a hill. We were back in the city now, but outside the landscape looked abandoned. Gentrification had apparently not reached this far into San Francisco’s underbelly.

  And a well-dressed man gingerly stepped off the train and walked toward the shelter.

  The Russian.

  David has good judgment—that’s what people always said. As a teenager, I was mature and careful. The older cops appreciated that I wasn’t a hotdog, and the older professors commented on my thoughtful nature. As a bachelor, I never radiated the danger that can attract so many women. Nope, I was predictable, prudent…ponderous, as one old girlfriend said as she was getting restless. Yep, David doesn’t do stupid impulsive things. Usually.

  I bolted up and ran for the exit, nearly flattening an elderly Asian woman trying to find a seat. The door was just about to shut. I jammed my fist against the rubber edge and the door stopped and opened again. A little alarm rang. My foot was already on the wet asphalt. I stepped out of the streetlight and felt the train pull away. Then the spot became as silent as the primeval forest.

  I surveyed my surroundings. The shelter sat in a little depression, down a hill from what looked like some apartments. A long footpath ran down the hill from the apartments to the station. In one direction the tracks ran into a tunnel, and above that some darkened industrial buildings. Behind me, old warehouses crowded right up to the tracks. The air smelled of the bay and something heavy and sour, maybe an oil refinery. There was not another person or car within sight. Then I saw the Russian. He was already two-thirds of the way up the footpath, passing through a cone of light, walking rapidly.

  There was only one way out: the footpath. I took the chance he wouldn’t look behind him, and ran as fast as I dared along the rain-soaked concrete. He was already past the buildings and out of sight by the time I had covered the hundred yards that took me to the cone of light where I had first spotted him. It was a tough climb from the tracks, and the moist heavy air burned in my lungs. When no gunshots came from the direction of the apartments, I continued on, hoping he hadn’t seen me get off the train.

  In minutes I was on a street. Looking right, I saw the Russian was two blocks ahead, walking slower now, his shadow bobbing off a wall. This was definitely not the part of San Francisco the tourists saw. From cracked pavement on the street and sidewalks to the big empty buildings with their broken windows and graffiti-stained walls, it had seen better days. The historian in me appreciated what I was seeing: the remains of the old industrial city, when railroads and manufacturing and union jobs defined upward mobility for most Americans. The buildings around me were substantial, brick and stone, several stories tall, with elaborate machinery sprouting out of roofs and sides. One wall had collapsed, revealing a nave and transept of an abandoned industrial cathedral. Remains of railroad tracks ran down the middle of the street, and the cracked curbs were matted with old trash. Here and there, a working warehouse remained, trucks coldly illuminated by harsh yellow-orange security lighting. Elsewhere, sparse streetlights radiated a cool gloom.

  As I walked, I became aware of old cars parked in empty lots. But they weren’t abandoned. I saw movement inside. A cook fire flared beside one ruined van. People living in their cars. A little colony, in sight of the soaring towers of downtown. And two men in suits walking past.

  I drew closer to the Russian. If he had seen me he wasn’t showing it. At one point he looked behind him, but I had stepped into the dead space of a wall that jutted close to the street. It was dumb luck but I took it. Then there was the matter of what I would do when I caught up with him. Or, my panicky insides reminded me, what he would do with me. My cell phone was in my trench coat. So easy to call the local authorities and…what? I couldn’t prove anything. And considering that I was wandering outside my jurisdiction without having checked in with the San Francisco PD…I let the cell phone be.

  At an intersection overgrown with weeds, the Russian pivoted on his heels and turned left. I was close enough that I could hear the broken glass and rocks grinding under his shoes. The panic attack was long gone. All my nerve endings were back in service and focused on the moment. I took a chance and sprinted up an alley that ran behind a brick warehouse. Alley cats and other critters scattered in my wake as I really put on the gas. My hamstrings and calves burned in protest. I pounded across chuckholes and broken concrete, then slowed to a walk and consciously made myself breathe normally. Trying, this time, to recover a little of my long-ago training. I was conscious of the whiteness of the fog moving high above.

  Then I had the Python out and in his face. This time the nice little move had been mine, cutting him off as he started up the new street. I dropped into a combat stance, both hands on the revolver.

  “Move and I’ll blow you to the fucking moon.”

  The Russian stared open-mouthed, his hands in front of him as if he had just struck an absurd pose. Even in the streetlight, his hair was almost surreally yellow, and his skin was pink. His swimming-pool blue eyes orbited under yellow slashes of eyebrows. His mouth was small, but his lips were delicate. This was definitely the guy from Encanto Park. Presumably the one who followed me in the Hummer, who lured me away from Lindsey while his crew tried to get into the condo.

  We just stared at each other. Finally, I was able to generate enough saliva to get my tongue to order him onto the ground.

  “Deputy, you’re making a mistake,” the Russian said in English. Indeed, it was the best imitation of a Mississippi accent I could imagine.

  “I’m FBI,” the Russian said. “I’m on the job.”

  My brain heard that but I stayed in the combat stance. I let him reach slowly into his coat and produce an oversized black wallet. Inside were credentials, and a badge that looked very much like the one we pulled from the pool in Maryvale.

  “Good forgery,” I said.

  “No, listen…” he fumbled. I could see sweat shining on his pink forehead. Being on the business end of the Python will do that. “I work for Eric Pham,” he blurted.

  “Why?” It was all I could think to say.

  “He just wanted me to keep an eye on you. That’s it!”

  “You were at the park,” I said.

  “Yes.”

  “And you followed me, in a black Hummer?”

  “What? That wasn’t me, man. You think the Bureau would spring for a Humvee?”

  “You’re sure? You didn’t follow me out on the freeway?”

  “I know what I did. I broke off contact after you left the park.”

  I kept the gun on him but snatched the badge case and examined it under the light. The credentials had all the holograph stuff shining through that I had seen on Pham’s men in Maryvale. This ID said the blond man was Special Agent Danny Maddox. I relaxed my stance and handed back the badge case. I holstered the Python and cursed.

  “He just wanted to keep you out of trouble,” Maddox said.

  It was just another way to say he wanted someone spying on me. I was learning fast why local cops mistrusted the feds.

  ***

  Ma
ddox and I shared a cab downtown. He was just a guy doing his job. Then I walked alone past the shining shop windows of the stores around Union Square, still mad as hell—at Pham, at Peralta, at everybody. I ended up in a bar called John’s, where the menus proclaimed some tie between the place and the Maltese Falcon. I let the bartender make me a martini, then another. More than ever, 1 didn’t want to be on this case. More than ever, I wanted to find Lindsey and run away. Maybe to Portland, where Dan Milton spent happy years. She didn’t like the rain as much as I did.

  An envelope was waiting for me back at the hotel. Inside was a sheet of fax paper, with my name and address in the upper right corner of the page. As I unfolded it, I saw it was blank except for a prominent smudge close to the center. Exactly the shape that lipsticked lips would make if they kissed the paper. Exactly the shape of Lindsey’s sensual lips. Exactly off center, from a woman who mistrusted symmetry. That was all—not a word written. The margins, where a sending fax number might appear, only held a series of dashes and asterisks. But my lover had found me nevertheless. I touched the kiss, folded the paper into my jacket, and went upstairs.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  They met me just beyond the security checkpoint at the Gold-water Terminal at Sky Harbor. While other people were greeted by expectant friends, smiling lovers, or goo-gooing children, I was welcomed back home by two FBI agents. They were generically good-looking—he had been the dark-haired high school quarterback, she the blond cheerleader who had also led the honor society. All they wanted from me was a quiet walk to the car. I kept my firearm. We were all conspicuously armed. A half dozen white-shirted TSA guards were chatting amiably with each other, occasionally glancing in our direction.