Cactus Heart

by Jon Talton

  “Why didn’t he…?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe he wanted to do the right thing, but he could never make the case.”

  “You cops,” Heather said. “Always sticking together. Can’t you do anything, Mapstone? This woman was a victim! She never got justice. Don’t you care?”

  I just listened. Anything I said would seem insincere.

  “Mapstone?”

  “I’m here. I do care, Heather. That’s why I’m asking these questions. I just can’t figure out what would have caused Frances to keep silent.”

  Heather said, “I can think of one thing.”

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  The rap on the door was tentative, almost like someone made a mistake. Still absorbing the news from Heather Amis, I wanted to let them walk on. Whoever it was couldn’t want me that bad. But I set aside my notes and went to the door.

  Before me stood a small, dark man in a starched white shirt and a bola tie. His face looked as lined and cracked as the desert itself, but his hair was vividly black and slicked back on his scalp. He carried a Stetson in one hand, a large, powerful-looking hand for such a small man.

  “I am Luis Paz.”

  I invited him in and sent Carl down to the marriage license bureau to get him a cup of coffee. Carl wouldn’t like it, but I was afraid the old man might walk out if I kept him waiting. Or he might just disappear like the apparition he seemed to be. I led him to one of the straight-back wooden chairs and invited him to sit. He put the Stetson on my desk.

  “My son gave me your card.”

  I told him that I appreciated that.

  “He didn’t want me to come here. To open up things that should have been closed so long ago.”

  “But you came anyway,” I said. I sat cautiously behind my desk. He regarded me in a long appraising glare.

  “You work for Chief Peralta?”

  I said I did.

  “He’s a good man. I knew his father, the judge.”

  “Mr. Paz, you worked as gardener…”

  “I worked for Mr. Yarnell for nearly twenty years.”

  “Hayden Yarnell?” I coaxed.

  Paz stiffened. “There is only one Mr. Yarnell,” he said. “His older sons were…” He let the sentence hang between us, as if only a fool would not understand.

  “After he died, I started my own lawn business.” He relaxed a millimeter, no more.

  “Sir, may I ask how old you are?”

  “Ninety-three,” he said.

  “You don’t look it.”

  He smiled a little. “I feel every year,” he said. “But I am not here about me.” He sighed and looked across the desk, then met my eyes. “What happened in 1941, all those years ago, I’ve carried it in my heart.”

  We fell into quiet that seemed endless. It was a taste of the silence the Yarnell twins must have felt, an absence more frightening than their cries for help, the silence of Jack Talbott before the executioner did his job, or the endless years for Frances Richie. But I didn’t dare break it. Finally, Paz did.

  “At first I could tell myself stories, that maybe I was mistaken about what I had seen and heard. And then it didn’t seem to matter, so much had gone wrong it couldn’t be made right.”

  I spoke into the next long gap. “What couldn’t be made right?”

  “You don’t understand. They were so powerful…”

  “The Yarnell family?”

  He nodded slowly. “First they told me to keep my mouth shut, that Mr. Yarnell wanted it that way. I couldn’t believe that, but he became so sick, and I couldn’t talk to him.” He sighed heavily. “I was afraid. I had my own family, and I was afraid. Later, when the Yarnells offered me money to start my own business, I took it.”

  His hands bunched into gnarled, hard-time fists that sat on his knees like holstered weapons. “Do you know what it is like to hold something terrible in your heart for so many years?” he asked. “Do you know how heavy it becomes?”

  Carl stepped in and put the coffee on the desk. He started to say something. Then he saw Paz’s face, and walked quietly out, closing the door without a sound.

  Paz sipped the coffee. “They tell me I should not have caffeine, or anything else I love. Am I going to live another twenty years? I hope not. A man can live too long.”

  I didn’t try to guide him. I just sat and listened.

  “Mr. Yarnell could have lived forever but he died of a broken heart,” Paz said. “I was so young and stupid then, I would not have believed such a thing. But I watched it happen.”

  “When his grandsons were kidnapped.”

  “Yes!” Paz erupted. “Yes, it killed Mr. Yarnell.”

  “You were there the Thanksgiving they were kidnapped?”

  He nodded.

  “And you stayed with Mr. Yarnell until he died?”

  “I was there the entire time,” he said. “I didn’t understand all that was happening. I didn’t know how to help Mr. Yarnell. There was no straight course that I could see.”

  “You cared about Mr. Yarnell.”

  Paz stared at his fists, opened them and stared inside, as if the lifelines on his palms could translate for him.

  “Do you understand what I am trying to say?” he demanded.

  “I think I do,” I said. “But I need you to tell me in your own words, from the beginning.”

  He sat for a long time in that death silence, the big room swallowing up even the sound of our breathing. Then he set the coffee cup carefully on my desk and began to talk in a strong voice.

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  The rain stayed all week, under a sky that looked like boiling lead. On Friday morning, I walked across Jefferson Street to the sheriff’s administration building, showed my ID at the deputy’s entrance and used the back hallway to reach the private entrance to Peralta’s office suite. His space held the comfort of the familiar: the big Arizona flag furled in its coppery sunset behind his desk; the framed photos of a storied career on the wall; a bulletin board on wheels with the latest case reports; a wall-sized map of Maricopa County; the contrast of his credenza piled high with files, law books, and used legal pads with the utter emptiness of his big modern desktop. He was leaning back in his chair, black cowboy boots on his blotter, sipping a caffeine-free Diet Coke.

  “Where have you been? I’ve eaten all your leftovers at home.”

  I dropped a two-inch-thick file folder beside his boots. I said: “Progress.”

  He lifted his dark brow a quarter of an inch. I sat down and gave my report.

  In the end, he wanted to talk to Luis Paz himself. All the way down, Peralta quizzed me rapid-fire. Turned my ideas on their head. Turned my words against me. Questioned the sequence. Questioned the motives. He could demolish the careless truth-seeker in one sentence, and I needed that. He reminded me we would face tougher questions from the county attorney—and from Superior Court Judge Arthur C. “ACLU” Lu, if we were to get the court order we must have.

  But after spending an hour with Paz in the living room of the modest, well-kept home, Peralta was uncharacteristically silent. All the way back downtown he was as pensive as Mike Peralta can get. Only when we got to a dark booth in a deserted corner of Majerle’s did he speak.

  “I’ll go to Judge Lu for a court order this afternoon,” he said. “How do you want to play this?”

  I laid it out and he listened with his eyes closed and his hands folded, a massive tent of fingers on the tabletop. He asked a couple of questions. Made a couple of changes. Finally, he gave a sniff, set his face and hardened the dark eyes.

  “You’d better fucking be right.”

  I just shut up and sipped my beer.

  Chapter Forty

  Gretchen’s apartment was dark except for the yellow-blue flame in the fireplace. It was just cold enough outside, otherwise she would have had to use the air conditioning. I came in at the sound of her voice, closed the door behind me and locked it—it had one of those old deadbolts, turned by a delicate T-shaped
latch in the hardware. Then there was Gretchen, standing in the archway, backlit by a gentle lamp in the kitchen and the remnants of a scarlet sunset, wearing a short black cocktail dress and carrying martinis. Was that Coleman Hawkins on the stereo?

  “I know you like these,” she said, holding out a drink.

  “Definitely the whole package,” I said. I crossed the room and kissed her passionately, toasted her, and then felt the gin on my lips, cold and warm at the same time. She smelled vaguely of old rose petals and clean bedsheets.

  She had a body made for the look: long and leggy. Right down to the expensive black pumps. I’d never seen her in a short skirt before, and as much as I appreciated the rough-gentle denim she wore like a uniform, this was something else again. Gretchen!

  “Are you close to solving your case, deputy?” she asked, sipping her drink, animating those lips and dimples.

  “I think so,” I said.

  “I’m very proud of you,” she said. “I’m very honored to know you.”

  “I couldn’t have done anything without the help of the city archaeologist’s office. Specifically, one archaeologist…”

  She started unbuttoning my shirt with one hand. She was good with one hand: long, elegant fingers dominating the buttons of a man’s shirt. She should have played the piano. Instead, she dug up the remains of ancient civilizations.

  “I don’t want to know more,” she said. “I won’t put you on the spot. I can read about it in the newspaper, and then I can smile to myself and say, ‘I know that man.’”

  She slipped her hand in my shirt and caressed my chest, teased my nipples.

  “I have more plans for you,” she said, taking another ounce of gin.

  I set my glass down and took hers, too. “Maybe I have plans for you,” I said.

  I lightly kissed her lips. Her tongue came out to meet me, but my mouth moved on to her high, aristocratic cheekbones, to her long, warm neck, to the loamy-smelling province where her neck met her shoulders. She pressed herself against me and gasped. I could feel her nipples harden like pebbles under the dress.

  Men underestimate the sensual power of kissing. For a long time, I just kissed her—long and deep, short and teasing and anticipatory. Using the tongue, a circle and a thrust. The subtle turns and tenses of the lips. Gentle bites on her lower lip. Nothing much else. Not much caressing or hugging, yet. The room felt ten degrees hotter. Then she let me push her to the sofa, and slowly ease her down. She smiled a far-away smile. Her pupils were black and wide. I knelt down and used my tongue.

  “Oh, my,” she gasped.

  This was my show. Starting at the ankles—the exquisite planes and facets of the ankles of a woman gifted with athleticism and good DNA. Moving up to the smooth, taut surfaces of the calves. Behind the knees…The intimate, dangerous, tender skin of the inner thighs. Then starting all over again on the other leg, slowly moving up.…

  ***

  She came awake with a start. We were on the rug in front of the fire. It had cooked to embers, like a little burned village. I pulled her back down to me, smoothed her mussed hair, and pulled the comforter back up.

  “That wasn’t like me…” she whispered.

  “You were wonderful.”

  “I have a hard time giving up control.”

  “You sounded like you had fun.”

  “I’m very loud,” she said. “My previous boyfriend didn’t like that.”

  “I love it,” I said, wondering about this previous boyfriend. So much I didn’t know about Gretchen Goodheart.

  “I had a dream about you,” she said. “About you and those two little boys trapped in the wall.” She shivered against me.

  “What was it about?”

  “It’s bad luck to tell a bad dream. You’ll make it come true.”

  She stood and put on a Lucinda Williams CD, the volume low. The fireplace snapped and sizzled. Then she came back and nuzzled against me. I held her tight. The old building creaked. A train whistle sailed through the window.

  “Why did they put that woman in prison and keep her there her whole life?”

  “I don’t know,” I said quietly.

  “The Yarnells had all the power. Frances had no power at all.”

  “They didn’t have enough power to stop the kidnapping,” I said. “I guess none of us is safe.” I thought of Bobby Hamid: None of us in the world…

  “Do you believe in justice, David?” She raised up and looked at me. Her eyes were bright with imagined starlight.

  “I wouldn’t do this if I didn’t.” Women were asking me about justice this week.

  “I mean real justice.”

  I thought about that. I said something lame. Something egghead-stupid about fallible human institutions, the rule of law, and the razor edge between justice and vengeance.

  “I believe in vengeance,” she said, a catch in her throat. “Don’t you, really?”

  Before I could answer, she had me on my back and was pulling my clothes off. Then she straddled me, guiding me inside her with one sure move.

  “Come here, my cactus heart.”

  “What?” I was into more than hearing at that moment.

  “You know what I mean.”

  She rode me gently, an achingly tight sensation coursing up from my groin. She still had on the cocktail dress. I moaned and stroked her smooth knees and forgot about thinking.

  “Could you ever love me like you do Lindsey?” she whispered.

  “I…” She slid down on me with a twisting motion.

  “Don’t lie to me, David.”

  “You feel so goddamned good,” I gasped.

  “That’s better.” She kissed my chest, circled my nipples with her tongue.

  “You have just the right amount of chest hair,” she said. She rode me slowly, then fast and deep, tossing back her head, brushing that straight, fine hair against her shoulder blades.

  “I love to play with you,” she said, slowing down again.

  “I love to play with you.”

  “I believe you,” she smiled, her white teeth gleaming in the half-dark.

  She moved up and down, met my stroke, tensed and released. I grasped her hips, syncopated our movements.

  “I want you to love me, David,” she said, quickening her pace a bit. I reached up and caressed her breasts through the fabric of the dress.

  “Don’t be afraid. Don’t you see what kind of life we could have together?” She put her hands hard against my chest for purchase and moved against me with more urgency. My God, what a feeling!

  The fire popped. “I want your heart.” She was breathing faster. “The heart you hide behind all those books and thoughts. You keep it from me right now.” She gasped and shuddered. Then, “It has thorns around it because you’ve been hurt before, and you are very conflicted now. I can feel that. You hold back.

  “But I know it’s a good heart, like mine is a good heart…” She giggled. “Goodheart.”

  She moved faster, an irresistible rhythm. Lucinda Williams sang “Right in Time.”

  “I want you to come back to me when this is all over, and let me in David’s cactus heart…”

  “Gretchen…”

  “I love the way you say my name!” A moaned anthem. “I love you, David!”

  I knew I was too far gone. I was ready to say anything. And I did.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Saturday the sun returned to a sky scrubbed flawlessly blue by the rain. It would take Phoenix at least a day to dirty up the air again. Downtown was deserted as usual on a non-sports weekend. I was sitting on the old broken curb in front of the Triple A Storage Warehouse when a gleaming new silver Mercedes drove past, parked and disgorged a tall, snowy-haired driver.

  James Yarnell walked up. “I could be through nine holes by now, Mapstone. On the other hand, it’s good to know I can be out in the world and nobody’s trying to kill me. What’s this all about?”

  “I think you’ll agree it’s worth your time,” I said. “Let’s g
o inside.”

  I led him through the side door into the old building. It smelled different after the rain: dust stirred on bricks, ashes tamped into mud, a vague scent of rot and disuse. Our footsteps echoed in outsized sounds. Inside, the big room was once again visible thanks to bare bulbs, far overhead. A strand of temporary lighting followed a heavy orange cord down into the elevator shaft.

  “This is where you found them?” Yarnell said, putting his hands on the hips of his tan chinos and looking around. His eyes followed the orange cord to the frame of the freight elevator and to the square hole in the concrete.

  “Come down,” I said.

  He hesitated.

  “It’s not far,” I said, walking to the ladder. I started down, and after a minute James Yarnell followed me.

  Then we were down in the passages. It was noticeably colder, the cold of a violated grave. Every six feet, a small fluorescent light attached to a spindly aluminum stand beat back the blackness. We tramped down the main tunnel, made the now-familiar turn, came to where the bricks had fallen away. Yarnell stepped around me and just stared at the opening. The only sound was a slight hum from the lights.

  “Is this how you spend your weekends, Mapstone?”

  “Actually, I’ve been spending my time trying to figure out this case.”

  “I didn’t think that was in doubt. The handyman was tried and convicted.”

  “That’s what everybody keeps telling me,” I said. “But the more I looked, the less made sense. Talbott couldn’t have kidnapped the twins. He was in jail that night.”

  “He was? How do you know that?”

  I told him about the booking and release records. “I’m not saying he wasn’t involved somehow. He just couldn’t have been the initial kidnapper. Then I heard about Bravo Juan, who ran the numbers in the Deuce. It seems your uncle Win was in debt to him.”

  “My God, do you think he was the one?” Yarnell was absently scratching his forearm. “Let’s get out of here. You can tell me more upstairs.”

  I just let the dusty creepiness of the place be. “Bravo Juan’s real name was Juan Alvarez. I spent a lot of time finding out about him. You see, Mr. Yarnell, there weren’t a lot of records left about this case. So I’ve had to run a lot of stuff down. And I thought I had hit a brick wall.” I said it without irony. “I thought I’d never get the information I needed.”