The Night Detectives

by Jon Talton

  “And it’s a huge human trafficking problem.”

  “That, too.”

  Back in El Centro and the heat, we went through the Wendy’s drive-thru and pulled to an empty part of the parking lot to eat.

  “So,” Peralta said, “what didn’t you tell the police?”

  He had parked the truck so we could see anybody coming into the lot and escape through two different driveways. His caution was good.

  “Fuck!”

  My concussed brain coughed up something essential.

  “I forgot the flash drive. I forgot to give them the flash drive.”

  Peralta was silent.

  “I’ve got to get it to them.”

  “Anything else?”

  Yes, there was. I unpacked another chamber of my addled brain and told him about the writing on the wall: our names written in blood. Of course this critical piece of evidence didn’t survive the blast.

  He paused mid-bite. “How would the suspect know about us?”

  “I gave Tim our card.”

  Peralta was silent and it was a long time, for him at least, before he resumed eating. About fifty seconds.

  Many things about this case were unknown, but one was becoming clearer. The killers weren’t only after our clients. They might be after us. I stroked the ugly little rifle beside me, glad that Peralta was into this kind of heavy metal.

  “What should I do about the flash drive?”

  “Keep it,” he said. “Let’s see who’s on it.”

  We finished our meal and stopped at a truck stop, where I bought a cheap cell phone to get me by until I could order an iPhone. Then we returned to the Interstate, one of America’s great accomplishments of the past century. Today the nation refused to do great things but that didn’t keep people from crowing about our “exceptionalism.” I had bigger problems than the fate of nations, but I let Peralta mind the rearview mirror.

  Who knew how many killers roamed the anonymous Interstates of America tonight? How many truck-stop prostitutes would disappear tonight, meeting terrifying deaths, mourned by none? Except for the infrequent tractor-trailer rig, I-8 was mostly empty and carbon dark, as though the moonless night was trying to steal the beams our headlights threw ahead. Above was a vault of stars that most urban humans rarely saw in person. In my grandparents’ generation, it had merely been the night sky. Against it, my problems seemed very small. We were only here for nanoseconds of cosmic time. Inside the cab of Peralta’s super-truck, there was no song of the wind or moan of the engine, no sense that our onrushing feet rested only a few inches above the pitiless land.

  16

  Back in Phoenix, our office was in what passed for perfect shape. Every tube on the neon sign out front was operating flawlessly. The house on Cypress appeared safe, too. Even the air was better, the smoke from the forest fires clearing out while we were gone. Nobody had left a message on the answering machine. A neighbor had neatly stacked the newspapers beside the front step. Only the New York Times was on my daily routine now.

  I couldn’t stand to read the Arizona Republic any more, the stories about the antics of the new sheriff and the other buffoons that had taken over state politics. I didn’t like the way the writers referred to the place as “the Valley,” using the touristy Valley of the Sun, not even the geographic Salt River Valley. Here we had one of the most magical city names in the world: Phoenix. And yet the suburbanites insisted on “the Valley.” Silicon Valley? The Red River Valley? Shenandoah Valley? And these were the same people who moved from suburban Chicago but said they were “from Chicago.” It drove me nuts. The local papers went straight to recycling.

  Then I unpacked the flash drive and plugged it into my Mac laptop to see Grace tease me again. The ghost in the machine.

  Lindsey could get into the drive but Lindsey was gone.

  In the living room, I laid it behind a volume of Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization on the top bookshelf by the staircase. It wouldn’t survive an extensive search of the house, but this dusty spot would do for now.

  In a few months, I had gone from a deputy sheriff with a clean record to a civilian, a “private dick,” as Robin teased me with her delightful lascivious smile, concealing evidence. The top of the book held a sheen of dust. I didn’t blow it off. This had been part of my grandparents’ library passed on to me. When I was gone, it would be broken up in an estate sale or tossed in the dump.

  After lying awake a long time, I slept badly with two guns to keep me company. Many dreams interrupted my sleep but the details were gone after I opened my eyes. If Tim and Grace had shown up as new dramatis personae, I couldn’t recall. Robin was there. I couldn’t remember what she said. I got up in the night to check the Amber alert and the San Diego media Web sites several times. Nothing was new.

  By half past seven Sunday morning, a hitherto ungodly hour for me, I opened the automatic gate and pulled into the office, then shut it behind me. The high temperature was only supposed to be in the nineties today, the old normal for May when the dry heat was bearable and even pleasant in the shade. At this hour, the air was cool. No bad guys were waiting inside, merely a stale odor and the same old furniture. I dropped my briefcase on the floor and my Panama hat on my desk, crown down, and flopped onto the sofa to drink my mocha and eat a bagel. Remembering Sharon’s reaction to my gaunt appearance, I tried to make a commitment to eating more regularly.

  Peralta arrived fifteen minutes later wearing a Stetson and jeans. He peered at me over his sunglasses, surprised that I had beaten him into work.

  “How ya feeling?” He tossed the cowboy hat on his desk, letting it fall where it landed.

  I told him San Diego had been a blast. He didn’t smile, disappearing into the Danger Room to either bring out more weapons or admire his prizes or whatever he did in there. How was I? I hurt like hell and the tension inside me was thrumming like a tuning fork. Otherwise, I was great.

  When he returned, he leaned against the doorjamb, all six-feet-five of him. Maybe half of a supermodel could have squeezed through the remaining space.

  “I’d like to bring Sharon into our practice. Is that all right with you? What the hell are you smiling at?”

  That last part was more like it. I wasn’t accustomed to Peralta being solicitous of my opinion. In the old days, he barked orders and made demands, alternating between the “good” Peralta who was a natural leader and inspiring peace officer, and the “bad” Peralta, who could be manipulative, micromanaging, and Vesuvius when he didn’t get what he wanted.

  In my office on the fourth floor of the old courthouse, I had been somewhat insulated from the worst of his personality. Getting laid had obviously done him a world of good. And his term “our practice” sounded both professional and ironically on target. We were definitely practicing. I told him none of this. Why was I smiling?

  “You,” I said. “Of course, great if Sharon joins us. I love Sharon. Why would she want to work with us?”

  “We need her expertise. She’s been consulting for San Francisco PD, you know.”

  I didn’t. I knew she had moved there to be closer to their grown daughters. She had stopped her popular radio show and quit writing the best-selling self-help books that had made her a wealthy woman.

  “So you don’t mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  “We can put Lindsey on the payroll when she comes back, too.”

  That should have made me smile. We had no payroll besides the ten grand from Client No. 1 and Tim Lewis’ five hundred. Outside of business cards, our practice was only getting started. But I didn’t smile or answer directly. Lindsey wasn’t coming back, except to get her things and move away permanently to be with her lover or lovers to come.

  “Are you and Sharon getting back together?”

  He evaded.

  “Now I want you to think about this, M
apstone. Every police agency in Southern California is looking for that baby. It’s a big deal and we’re going to get in the way. The feds are investigating the explosion, who got his hands on a Claymore, and if we get in their way, we could compromise an undercover operation.”

  “We have other strands we can follow,” I said. “Grace’s friend and parents. Her list of johns. Tim’s parents. Larry Zisman.”

  He nodded. “But we’re going to make enemies if we get on the wrong side of law enforcement. We might get prosecuted. Are you sure you want to stay on this case?”

  I was momentarily confused, recalling his insistence that we couldn’t allow our clients to be killed. But it didn’t last long. “I do.”

  “Why?”

  I repeated his rationale back to him. Then, “I remember our names painted in blood on the apartment wall. Whoever set that Claymore was counting on me coming back. They watched me go into the apartment and get well inside it before they set it off. So we’ve made enemies whether we want them or not. Then there’s the little matter of withholding evidence. You didn’t tell the Phoenix cops about our client. I didn’t tell the San Diego cops about Grace’s business, or about the flash drive.”

  “You gave them the pimp.”

  “Sure, but only that he was a guy threatening Tim when I showed up. I told them that’s all I knew. Seems to me, if we’re not pro-active, the bad guys will come to us, and if we don’t solve the case, the good guys could come to us, too, and not in a good way.”

  He sighed. “I guess my point is, that I can take this one, if you want to bow out.”

  Now he hurt my feelings. It was that petty and selfish on my part.

  I said, “No way.”

  “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  I told him that I was sure.

  He strode over to his desk and picked up his hat.

  “Then bring your breakfast and saddle up.” He pointed to my desk. “You might want to leave your fancy headgear here.”

  17

  Up Grand Avenue, we had a fast ride cutting northwest through the checkerboard street grid of Phoenix and Glendale.

  “So where are we going?”

  “To see a guy I know,” Peralta said.

  “A guy you know?”

  He nodded. It was going to be that kind of day.

  “I want to talk to Larry Zip,” I said.

  “Not yet. Read the report. Then I want us to strategize before we interview him.”

  With that, he fell into his customary silence. What he was feeling from the contradictory events of the past few days, I wouldn’t hazard a guess. Peralta’s emotions were a deep ocean trench where leviathans stirred.

  I distracted myself with the ritual obligation of memory.

  I remembered when produce sheds and the remains of icing platforms for refrigerator railcars lined the Santa Fe railroad that ran parallel to the highway. I remembered passenger trains. Farm fields separated Phoenix from what was then the little town of Glendale. In grade school, we rode the train to the Glendale station. I even recalled one or two dilapidated farmhouses sitting right across the tracks.

  Now it had all been filled in. Although the railroad was still there, the area around it mostly consisted of tilt-up warehouses, along with anonymous low-slung buildings, most with for-lease signs, and a gigantic Home Depot. Passenger trains were long gone. So, too, was the agricultural bounty that the Salt River Valley growers sent back east by rail. The children and grandchildren of the farmers who owned this land were living in places like San Diego thanks to the profits made selling it for development.

  The road soon clogged up and stayed that way for miles. Much of Grand Avenue in the city of Phoenix had been turned into flyovers, back when the planners, such as were allowed here, thought about turning it into a freeway to Las Vegas. Like so many Phoenix dreams, this one didn’t work out.

  As a result, when we reached the “boomburbs” of Peoria, Sun City, Sun City West, and Surprise—yes, that’s the town’s name—Grand hit a six-point intersection at least every mile and other stoplights in between. And nearly every light was red. Traffic was miserable. The built landscape was new, cheap, and monotonous—made to speed by in an automobile. Smog smudged the views of the mountains.

  Most of these had once been little hamlets on the railroad, but now they were home to hundreds of thousands populating the subdivisions that had been smeared across the broad basin that spread out from the actual Salt River Valley toward the White Tank Mountains and was labeled, incorrectly, “the West Valley.” They came from the suburban Midwest or inland California and most thought life couldn’t be better.

  The metropolitan blob was slowly working its way northwest to Wickenburg, a combination quaint former mining town and home to celebrity rehab centers. I loved Wickenburg. It was authentic and charming, everything suburban Phoenix wasn’t. As a young deputy, when I was working my way through my bachelor’s and master’s degrees, I had worked a patrol beat out here. The state had about four-and-a-half million fewer people and the land was empty, majestic, and mysterious. Wickenburg and the other little desert towns huddled to themselves. A lone deputy had many square miles to cover, usually alone, and traffic stops were always risky. So were family fights, where a husband and wife that had been trying to kill each other a few moments before were suddenly united in trying to kill you.

  But we weren’t going as far as Wickenburg today. Peralta turned left into the shabby little desert village of Wittman and drove west. After five miles or so and several turns, the last remnants of settlement were gone, the roads turned to dirt, and we were surrounded by desert. The smog hadn’t reached this far north today, so the Vulture Mountains stood out starkly ahead. Go far enough and you’d find the fabled and long-ago played-out Vulture gold mine and who knows what else hiding in the desert. We bounced over the bed of the meandering Hassayampa River, dry this time of year. As a Boy Scout, I had learned the legend that if a person took a drink from the Hassayampa, he would never tell the truth again.

  Immediately ahead, the country turned hilly and rugged, good terrain for saguaros. I was glad I brought two frozen bottles of water. But even in the air-conditioned truck cab, they were already half melted. It was only ninety-eight degrees outside. Inside my body, I was sore everywhere from my dive out of the apartment. Even my face hurt.

  The bare impersonation of a trail appeared on the right and Peralta took it. Another mile and we reached a rusted metal gate. Peralta honked six times: three short, three long.

  “Get down in the seat,” he commanded.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  I did as I was told as he shut off the engine, opened the door, and stepped out. He raised his hands high and his voice boomed. “Don’t you shoot me, you paranoid son of a bitch. We need to talk.”

  This didn’t seem promising.

  The longest pause came to an end with a shout from the distance, “Go away!”

  “I’m coming in if you don’t come out!”

  “Is that you, Peralta? Go back to your lettuce field, beaner! I’m done with the law. Got nothing to say.”

  Peralta shouted back: “Why aren’t you on your reservation and cleaning toilets at a fucking casino, bow-twanger? Get your redskin butt down here!”

  “If I do, it’s only gonna be to kick your wet-back ass!”

  “Good luck trying, wagon-burner!”

  “Watch me do it, spic!”

  “Bring it on, breed!”

  It was, needless to say, not faculty-lounge language. And although Peralta was my least politically correct acquaintance, the outburst seemed out of character. Suddenly the yelling stopped. After too long a silence, I reached for the Colt Python and prepared for the worst. But when I rose up, the gate was open and Peralta and another man were shaking hands and embracing.

  “Who’s the
white eyes?”

  “David Mapstone, meet Ed Cartwright.”

  The shorter man beside Peralta was stocky in jeans and a Western shirt, with a long mane of lead-colored hair pulled back in a ponytail. His face looked like the Indian in the environmental ad way back, with a tear running down his face from the damage we had done to the land. He was tearless in appraising me. When we shook hands, I noticed the pistol on his belt. He handed me a business card with only his name and a phone number. I gave him one of my new private detective cards. The ones I once carried, with the gold badge, were only for my scrapbook.

  I followed the two of them as they walked through the gate along a rutted, dusty trail to an adobe house that sat on a rise maybe a quarter of a mile away. Beside it, in a carport, was a restored Chevy El Dorado with a bumper sticker that read, AMERICAN INDIAN AND PROUD OF IT. The sun was frying my skin and I wished we could have driven the distance.

  “Still waiting for the apocalypse, Ed?” Peralta asked.

  “Yup.”

  “Show Mapstone your bunker.”

  That didn’t sound like a good idea but pretty soon we were trekking off into the desert while Peralta stayed behind. The land was lush with sage, prickly pear, thick stands of cholla—jumping cactus—and ancient, towering saguaros with four and five arms. Those saguaros had watched the procession of humanity through this land for hundreds of years. Unlike their brothers in places such as Fountain Hills, they had avoided the bulldozers, at least for now. The silence was surreal and healing, except for the temperature and the fact that I was on high rattlesnake alert, walking heavily so the vibrations of my tread would give the poisonous snakes plenty of time to get out of our way. Cartwright was spry and walked fast. I worked to keep up and the muscles in my legs and back burned with pain.

  Before we reached another hill, he led me around a lush palo verde tree. Beyond was a well-concealed cut that was obviously man-made. It led down until it was below ground level and zigzagged. It reminded me of the way trenches had been constructed on the Western Front in World War I. They zigzagged so an enemy soldier couldn’t stand above the trench and take out an entire company with his rifle. We were on the verge of the hundred-year mark of that cataclysm that changed the world, but few Americans paid any attention to the past.