Dry Heat dmm-3

by Jon Talton

  I prowled the house, nude except for the big revolver, conscious of how often I was drawing down lately. “Size matters,” I would have joked to Lindsey. But Lindsey wasn’t there. Pasternak met me outside the bedroom door and followed me, agitated just like me. Only a fool would keep living in this house after his wife had been targeted by the Russian mafia. We didn’t even have an alarm. I stepped into the living room and leaned against the wall, listening. The light flowed blue-white through the picture window. Everything looked normal, the high ceiling, the heavy iron chandelier, stairs that opened onto a walkway that led to the garage apartment, the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.

  Grandfather had built this house only twelve years after Arizona became a state. It had been the physical manifestation of his flourishing dental practice. And the place where he would bring his baby son, named Calvin because Grandmother liked the name, and it was the president’s name. Grandmother, whose first name was Emma, had come to Arizona from Indian Territory in 1910, because her brother was farming near Phoenix. She was black-haired and vivacious. By the time I knew her, her hair was white and the sun had turned her skin into a wrinkly parchment, but she still had the spirits that beguiled Grandfather. They had loved this house.

  Cal Mapstone had flown B-17s in World War II, and came home to take his part of the great Arizona boom. But schooled in Grandfather’s ideal of service, he became a physician, attending medical school in Los Angeles. He came back to Phoenix in the ’50s and worked in the VA Hospital. He had married late, by the standards of the day, at age thirty-two. His bride was named Laura and came to Phoenix to be near her father, who was dying at the VA. They married in 1958, and a year later I came along. A year after that, my father and my mother were lost in a small plane on a trip to Colorado. Grandfather always said the plane would have been safe if Cal had been flying. But it had been another pilot. And the baby David came to this house, where he had been raised by his grandparents. Death and loss attended this house tonight.

  Tread carefully in the past, Dan Milton told me, more than once. And so when I came back to Phoenix, I knew ghosts would be there to welcome me home. Mostly, they had been a comfort, with only the occasional heartache. But as I leaned against the wall, I realized that all the feelings that had been gathering inside me for the past two months were watered by more than the Russians and a vague sense of restlessness. It was more than a yearning to be a “real” historian. More than the sense it was time to let Phoenix go and move on. It was the terrible truth that adults hide from children, that drives the reflective soul to religion or philosophy. We are born to die. Our time here is so brief. Dan Milton, Judge Peralta, George Weed. Lindsey’s colleagues who went off for a fun night of drinks in Scottsdale and ended up dead. Vince Renzetti, with his fading photos and the awful knowledge that when he died all those memories would die with him. Now I faced the real possibility that Lindsey could be killed. Or I could. This will never be over, Lindsey had said. I wanted to believe that I only wanted to survive to take care of her, my wife who knew some measure of grief and loneliness before we found each other. But, in truth, I was afraid, too.

  I made myself walk. Better to walk than to dissolve into self-pitying existentialism. Out the window, the street looked safely deserted. The rain had moved on earlier in the evening, allowing for one of those Phoenix sunsets that make you weak in the knees. This one began with wavy scarlet streaks across the sky, and ended thirty minutes later with an emphatic red and purple vortex on the western horizon, precisely at the foot of Indian School Road. I was a connoisseur of Phoenix sunsets, but I had never seen anything like this. It looked as though if I could drive fast enough, I could enter the expressionist dimension of that sunset moment. Phoenix sunsets inspired such thoughts.

  Into the study, I found nothing but the small light indicating Lindsey’s printer was plugged in. The enclosed courtyard in back needed sweeping, but otherwise looked benign. The house was silent except for the familiar creaks and plumbing noises. I walked halfway up the stairs and sat, perusing book titles and petting the cat. That’s when I saw it.

  Out the window, on the street, just beyond the low hedge of the house next door. A glow. A cigarette glow. I closed my eyes tightly, not believing it at first. But the glow came again, unmistakably.

  I made myself descend the stairs silently, as if any errant step would instantly be heard outside. In the bedroom, I pulled on some sweats and running shoes. I needed to be ready for anything. Still carrying the gun, I went to the bedroom window, which had a better view of the western end of the street. But the glow was gone. I stood in the dark, with the curtain barely pulled back, watching. A long minute went by, and I thought I had talked myself into seeing things. Then, just beyond the black bulk of the hedge, an orange tip flamed again. Someone was standing there, smoking. At 3:30 in the morning.

  I reached for the phone and started to dial 9-1-1. I only got to the “9” and stopped. What if it was my neighbor, outside smoking. Only she was seventy and didn’t smoke. I placed my hand on the phone. The worst that can happen is the cops find a vagrant sitting by the curb. Or a Russian hit team ready to take me out. I picked up the phone. I set it back on the nightstand.

  “I can’t live in fear,” I said aloud, walking to the back of the house.

  I let myself out the back door, crossed the yard, and then unlocked the gate that led into the alley. It was so dark it took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust. But then I was able to make good time down the gravel that led to Fifth Avenue. Once on the sidewalk, I quickly doubled back to Cypress Street. Somewhere in the distance I heard the rhythmic whisper-clack of a lawn sprinkler, the timer ignoring the recent rain; a train whistle coming from the Santa Fe line by Grand Avenue. I moved into the lawns, close to the fronts of the houses, and walked back toward the source of the glow. The grass gave way under my tread, but I moved quietly enough. The air was cool and dry, just the hint of a breeze from the High Country. As I got closer, I discerned the form of a man sitting on a motorcycle, watching my house. I had the cell phone in my pocket. But I held the Python in my hand.

  “Don’t even breathe,” I said, making a show of cocking the Colt, an unnecessary piece of theater to actually firing a double-action revolver. But the decisive click of metal on metal carried its own important information.

  “Dr. Mapstone, what are you doing out at this hour?”

  It was Bobby Hamid.

  His feline eyes glittered from the light of the street lamp. His casual posture on the motorcycle barely changed. He was wearing a supple leather jacket that on anyone else would have invited touching. A black knit top and black jeans completed the ensemble. I let the gun’s hammer down and slid it into my waistband.

  “No sleep tonight, Dr. Mapstone?” he said. “Virgil called sleep the brother of death. That has always stayed with me.”

  I didn’t know whether to be worried or angry or relieved. “What if I told you the police are on their way?”

  “This is a public street,” he said. He took a drag from a small cigar, producing the glow I had seen from the house. “And I am talking with my friend, the history professor.”

  “I always wanted to have a gangster as a friend.” I sighed.

  “Oh, David, those are old wives’ tales from the cop shop-one of those wonderful Americanisms, ‘cop shop.’ Sheriff Peralta doesn’t understand me.”

  “He understands your connection to half the meth operations in the Southwest,” I said. “Along with assorted murder and mayhem.”

  “And you know,” he said amiably “that I have never been convicted, despite Sheriff Peralta’s best bigoted efforts. These may be bad times for men with Middle Eastern backgrounds living in America, but as you know, Dr. Mapstone, I am a naturalized citizen, an Episcopalian, and a venture capitalist. All quite legitimate. I never even bought Enron stock.”

  I didn’t laugh. “What are you doing here, Bobby?”

  He adjusted one of his rich locks of hair. “Looking after you. It’
s no secret the Russians are after Miss Lindsey. You must be missing her. And who wouldn’t? So beautiful, with that watchful, poetic quality to her. I can see her, before she found you, of course, as the smart girl surrounded by good-looking but stupid men. Thus her armor of irony and sarcasm…”

  He watched me and paused.

  “I don’t quite understand why you are being so reckless,” he went on. “Yuri’s brigade-they call their cells brigades, so many are former Red Army officers-Yuri’s brigade is known for its ruthlessness.”

  I let my eyes sweep the street. “For a venture capitalist, you know a hell of a lot about Yuri.”

  “I am an inquiring man, Dr. Mapstone, as are you. We live in momentous times: the great contest of the Cold War, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Warsaw Pact joining NATO…things we never would have believed possible. The revolution that ruined Persia, that killed my family. Look at your hometown, David, utterly changed from when you were a boy. The clash of civilizations, Islam versus modernity. A new age of lawlessness, so many soldiers from the losing side with nothing to do but become mercenaries on the marketplace.”

  I declined to let myself be drawn in. I said, “What were you doing at the towers that night? When we shared the elevator?”

  Bobby’s economical features gave way to a thin smile. “Visiting a friend,” he said. “I might ask what you were doing? You seemed very nervous. Maybe it’s this case of the poor homeless man you’re so obsessed with.”

  “Goddamn it!” I said, loud enough to wake some neighbors. I ratcheted my voice down. “No games, Bobby. I don’t have time. If you want to help, you’ll tell me where Yuri is.”

  Bobby’s voice was calm. “Like the sheriff, you ascribe much more of a connection to the underworld than I really merit.” He dropped the cigar to the street and crushed it with his boot.

  “Wonder why?”

  “How is Sheriff Peralta?” Bobby said. “It must have been a blow to lose his father. And his wife moving out.”

  I tried again. “Why is Yuri trying to kill cops? Seems like a ticket to prison or the morgue, even for a Russian.”

  “Maybe he doesn’t see it that way,” Bobby said. “I only know what I read, of course. Some say Yuri was a Red Army captain, decorated many times for bravery. That he served in Chechnya in the Russian Army, and he was so effective that the Chechen guerrillas tracked down his wife and daughter, raped and murdered them. But others say Yuri is not a Russian at all.”

  “None of this is helping,” I said.

  Bobby absently pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and polished the chrome on the bike, a Harley that nevertheless had a kind of sinewy sleekness to it that seemed to go with Bobby Hamid.

  “David,” he said, fixing me with a new intensity in his eyes, “if I were in your position, I would get as far away from here as possible. I would let the government do whatever it will do to protect you and Miss Lindsey.” He daintily adjusted his leather jacket. “You see, Miss Lindsey cost Yuri and his brigade many billions of dollars. And Yuri has creditors of his own, creditors who won’t be willing to just send impolite letters and ruin his credit report. This is capitalism for keeps, Dr. Mapstone. This is the real global economy.” Bobby licked his lips. “I would say Yuri’s potential for vengeance is unlimited.”

  I watched him talk, feeling something cold on the back of my neck. For a moment I felt my legs were paralyzed in place, rooted into the cool sidewalk. But then I thought about Lindsey, and a different feeling came over me. I’d never been given to tough-guy speeches, but it came out with a certain cold anger.

  “Bobby,” I said,” “do you know if I thought you were Yuri, and you meant any harm to Lindsey, I would kill you right here?”

  Bobby watched me for a long time, something new in his opaque eyes. At last, he said, “Yes, David, I believe you would.”

  I was still standing on the street a long time after the noise from Bobby’s Harley had faded from the neighborhood.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  I was on the freeway by nine that morning, making good time going south while in the opposite direction the army of suburbanites from the East Valley and Ahwatukee-the cops and firefighters call it “All-White-Tukee”-crept toward the city. As much as I loved riding trains and trolleys in Portland and San Francisco, in spread-out Phoenix I sometimes needed to drive in order to clear my head. After Bobby had left the neighborhood hours before, I had gone out to the Olds, put down the top, slid in a CD from Frank Sinatra’s Columbia years, then I had driven slowly through darkened city streets.

  Walt Whitman’s “huge and thoughtful night” was all around, but Frank sang “One More for My Baby.” “Let’s just leave,” my baby had said, as we lay nude, legs entangled, surrounded by barracks walls, and beyond them armed guards. “Let’s just leave and start over, in a wonderful place. The government will have to resettle us, give us new identities. Can you leave Phoenix, Dave?”

  “Can you leave your garden, Lindsey?”

  “It’s your home, Dave.”

  “I came home by accident. I had to find you…”

  “I found you.” She laughed. “You were too shy.” It was nice to hear her laugh again. She said, “We can do anything we want. We can make a new future.”

  Our future would have to wait. I let the towers of Central Avenue sparkle down on me while I tried to figure out why the FBI was digging through my office, with Kate Vare in tow and with Peralta as tour guide. Too bad for them: most of my Pilgrim notes were in my old briefcase, sitting next to me on the car seat. Maybe Peralta was looking after my interests-but if that were true, why didn’t he call me? Peralta had gone from badgering me with ultimatums to ignoring me while…what? It was enough to make you listen to talk radio and believe the conspiracy kooks who called in.

  I let the big car take me through the forlorn streets of the inner city. People were sleeping in vacant lots and on street corners. They could have been mistaken for piles of rubbish. I idly looked for the woman named Karen. I had fresh questions about George Weed and his precious jacket. The Reverend Card’s building looked dark and shut down. Prostitutes beckoned me from the gloomy sidewalks of Van Buren Street. I turned north, past streets that reminded me of a small safe town sheltered by citrus groves and pristine mountains: Mariposa, Cheery Lynn, Glenrosa, Montecito. A sign painted decades ago pointed to “Susan’s Apartments.” Gangbangers looked me over, seeing if I might be an easy victim. I drove and brooded, and that finally led me to another drive, this one out of town.

  Once I got past Green Valley, the retiree tract houses and golf courses gave way to clean air and blessed emptiness. It was the West of my youth, rather than the overcrowded West of my adulthood. By noon, I had reached Tubac, the storied town north of the Mexican border. The land east rolled out to the massive Santa Rita Mountains. On my right was another rugged range, which I recalled as the Tumacacori. They were not my familiar Phoenix mountains. The history lay deep and fertile here, the conquistadors and padres and Piman peoples. Silver strikes and gunslingers and the coming of the iron horse. Off the interstate, I felt the high-desert air as cool tickling around my eyes.

  My journeys of late were tying history into neat circles: San Francisco was founded by Spanish colonists from Tubac. In 1774, they were led by Col. Juan Bautista de Anza across El Camino del Diablo, the Devil’s Road, west to California. The great world city that I had enjoyed lately was seeded by the little Arizona town sitting quietly off Interstate 19. Neat circles except in the history I was trying to understand.

  I was down to playing hunches, and remembering tips. I remembered that Lorie Pope had told me I would find A.C. Hardin, crime buff, obsessed by the Pilgrim case, here in Tubac. In the chaos of the past month, I had forgotten Hardin. But I was a little surprised that he hadn’t called me after the media exposure the case had received. Maybe it took awhile for the news to reach Tubac.

  The place was not “done” like a Taos or Sedona, but it had aspirations. Art galler
ies lined the old dusty streets, a subdivision uglied up the south edge of town and the local paper promised rising property values and development. Tubac had survived 400 years of history, often bloody, but I found myself wondering if it could survive the Arizona growth machine. I asked directions at a coffee shop and used a little bridge to cross the Santa Cruz River. There was water in the river. A dirt road diverged through a thick stand of cottonwoods, then rose up a slight hill covered in brittlebush. Through the brush, I could make out a shack-it was no more than that. Four unpainted adobe walls, a window, a door, and a dilapidated roof. A rusty mailbox sat sideways on an old railroad tie, with “Hardin” painted in black letters. It looked like a scene out of one of those “forgotten West” books. But it made me feel uneasy. I was a man with ambiguous relations with the FBI and maybe with the sheriff of Maricopa County. My relations with the Russian mafia were fatal. I came unannounced.

  As it turned out, A.C. Hardin was a she. Later I learned that A.C. stood for Amelia Caroline, and she cared for neither name. At that moment she didn’t care for the tall stranger walking toward her house, and her displeasure took the form of a double-barreled shotgun aimed at me. She was twenty feet away but the barrels looked only slightly smaller than a pair of howitzers. I felt a huge pool of sweat gather on the small of my back. I wondered whether I stood a better chance if I identified myself as David the historian, or Deputy Mapstone the cop.

  “I know who the hell you are,” she shouted. Her voice had a little trill-did I detect just a hint of hysteria in the vocal cords? I noticed her finger was inside the trigger guard, putting me one spasm of her knuckle from kingdom come.