One for My Baby (Phoenix Noir Book 4)

by Graham, Barry

  The guy in the ski mask and dark clothes came in, stood in front of the door, swept the room with the pistol. There were screams, and people cowered, but the guy didn’t shoot. “All right, everybody stay still.” His voice was loud, but less than a shout.

  Everyone froze, except for Linda. She walked toward the guy. “Stop pointing that gun at me!”

  He hadn’t been pointing it at her specifically, but now he did.

  She kept moving toward him. “Stop pointing that fucking gun at me!” she screamed.

  “Don’t move,” he said. “I’m warning you.”

  She screamed again, and ran at him. He didn’t shoot, and she flailed at his face, pulling off the mask. He punched her jaw, and she sat down hard on the floor.

  Now he was the one who screamed. “Nobody look at me! Anybody who looks at me is dead!”

  They all looked away from him. Except for Linda, who sat there on the floor, looking up at him, one hand on her jaw, the other holding his mask.

  “Stop looking at me, you bitch! Do you want to die? Want me to shoot you in the face?”

  She kept looking at him.

  “Give me that!” He grabbed the mask from her hand, then pushed her face down toward the floor so she couldn’t see him. He put the mask on again. Her coworkers huddled against the bar, silent.

  “Who’s the manager?” Mark said.

  “I am,” Joel said.

  “All right. Get the fucking money. Now.”

  Mark was buttoning his shirt, about to put his tie on, when he heard the sirens.

  He started the car and tore out of the Green Life parking lot. The sirens got louder, closer. He went South on Scottsdale Road, swung right—West—on Indian School, hit the gas even harder, ran two red lights, heard the sirens fade and then get close again, saw the police car in the distance but getting closer, made another turn, then another, came to the bridge over the canal, stood on the brakes, fishtailed, threw the bag containing the money, mask and gun out of the window and off the bridge, heard the splash, got moving again, and was slowing down when two squalling cop cars appeared behind and beside him. He briefly considered trying to outrun them, knowing it was impossible, and then let that thought go when he heard the chattering of the ghetto bird directly above him. As its spotlight found his car, he pulled over and sat there with his hands on his head.

  Linda had stopped shaking. She sat on the couch in Green Life, the one she had lain on her first time with Joel. The cop who was taking her statement had stood in front of her at first, but her throat was so raw from screaming that she couldn’t speak loud enough for him to hear her that way, so he was forced to come to her level and sit beside her on the couch.

  “You can definitely identify him? You’re sure?” he asked her.

  “If somebody stuck a gun in your face and threatened to kill you, would you forget what he looked like?”

  “Okay...”

  “I can see his face in my mind right now. If you’ve got him, I’ll identify the son of a bitch.”

  The room in the Scottsdale cop shop had no furniture other than a table and a couple chairs. Mark sat on one of the chairs, still handcuffed. A uniformed cop sat on the other, and his partner stood. They were silent until the door opened and a plainclothes came in. This was Detective Owen Rankin.

  The uniform in the chair started to get up to allow Rankin to sit, but Rankin motioned to him to stay where he was. He stood next to Mark and looked at him. Mark didn’t return his stare.

  “Well,” Rankin said. “All right. So this is our restaurant-robbing buddy? It’s nice to finally meet you. You’ve been a busy boy.”

  Mark gave no response.

  “Not talking? Oh, well. Be like that.”

  “He hasn’t said a word since we brought him in,” the other uniform said.

  “We’ve got a cure for that,” Rankin said. “But no rush.” He sat on the edge of the table and addressed Mark. “I took a look at the coat and hat you had in your car. You’ve got good taste. Now, let me see if I can guess—you go to a bar dressed like that so people will notice you and remember you. Then you leave, change your clothes, rob a restaurant, and then get yourself dolled up again—so if we stop you, you can say you don’t know what the hell we’re talking about, you’ve been in the bar, just ask anybody that was there... How am I doing?”

  Mark continued to ignore him.

  “Look at me when I’m talking to you, you little prick.”

  Mark did not.

  Rankin grabbed him by the face, pinching violently, forcing Mark to make eye contact, but Mark’s eyes showed nothing and he said nothing.

  “Well, you can sit there and keep quiet all you want, son. We’ve got you. You’re nailed. The lady you terrorized with a damn gun isn’t scared of you. She’s ready to identify you. Now, do you want to say anything before I bring her in here?”

  Mark said nothing.

  “Suit yourself.” He let go of Mark’s face by shoving him to the floor. Then he walked out of the room. Neither of the uniforms made a move to help Mark to his feet, though the handcuffs made it hard for him to stand up by himself. He managed it, rolling to a kneeling position, then stood, then sat on the chair again.

  In the corridor outside, Rankin told Linda, “You don’t have to go in there and face him if you don’t want to.”

  “Oh, I want to.”

  “We can do it through a mirror. He’ll never even see you.”

  “He’s already seen me. Anyway, I want him to have to look in my face.” She fingered her bruised jaw. “Let’s see how brave he is without his gun.”

  They went into the room. Mark didn’t acknowledge their arrival.

  “Hey, Jesse James. Look who’s here to see you. You not gonna say hello?” Rankin said. “Well, you don’t have to talk. She’ll do the talking.” He looked at Linda. “You okay?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Good. Now, take your time. Get a good look at him.” He turned to Mark. “You! Look up!”

  Mark raised his head, without making eye contact with anyone. Linda stared at him.

  “Don’t like it, huh?” Rankin said. “Not such a big man now?”

  “It’s not him,” Linda said.

  The uniforms looked at each other, and at Rankin. Rankin was looking at Linda. “What?”

  “It’s not him. This isn’t the guy.”

  Rankin tried to keep it from showing in his face, and almost managed to. “Are you sure?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Look at him again. Take your time.”

  “This isn’t the guy. He looks nothing like him.”

  Rankin just stood there and stared at her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “Can I go now?”

  Rankin sighed so hard it was almost a hiss. “Yes.”

  As Linda turned to go, Mark spoke. “Hey.”

  Everyone looked at him, but he only looked at Linda.

  “Thanks,” he said.

  Linda walked out.

  Mark looked at Rankin. “According to the officer who arrested me, the guy you’re looking for had a gun, a mask and a bag of money. I don’t.”

  “You ditched it somewhere.”

  “And your witness says I don’t even look like the guy. So, I accept your apology. These things happen.”

  “You prick.”

  “I think I’ll be on my way now. If you want me to stay here any longer, I’ll have to ask you to get me a lawyer.”

  It was close to dawn when he got home. The cops had kept asking him questions, and he’d kept demanding a lawyer, until they’d accepted that they weren’t going to get anything from him, and then it had taken a while to get his car.

  Pangur Ban was glad to see him, and he’d never been so glad to see Pangur Ban. “I thought I might not be seeing you again for quite a while,” Mark said as he sat on his bed and petted him. “And I don’t think I have any more idea what the hell happened tonight than you do.”

  FOUR

  Linda had thought s
he wouldn’t be able to sleep, but when she got home she barely managed to get her clothes off and flop on her bed before she passed out. She slept heavily until around ten in the morning, when her phone woke her. She didn’t answer it, and was most of the way back to sleep when it rang again. Without looking to see who it was, she switched it to silent mode and then slept until noon.

  When she woke, she found three text messages from Joel, each one asking if she was okay and asking her to call or text him. There was a voice message from him asking the same.

  She texted him: “I was sleeping, no thanks 2 u. I’m fine. See u tonight.”

  He texted back: “Wanna have lunch?”

  She answered: “No. See u tonight.”

  When Mark woke, it was so late in the afternoon that it was almost time for happy hour at the Duck and Swallow. He showered, drank coffee, ate a couple bananas, then walked over there.

  The walk got him so sweaty he could have used another shower. He was sitting at the bar, wiping sweat from his face with a napkin, when English Tony saw him.

  “What’s up, Mark? You haven’t come to rob us, I hope.”

  Mark looked at him. “Huh?”

  “Aw, come on, mate. I saw the news.”

  “What?”

  “You getting arrested last night.”

  “What the fuck was on the news? I wasn’t charged.”

  “Didn’t stop New Times from putting it on their website.”

  “Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “I’d be lying if I did.”

  “Jesus.”

  “They’ve got your mugshot on there. If you put out a record, you should use that as the cover photo.” Tony laughed, but Mark didn’t. “Sorry, mate—it’s just that the thought of you doing stick-ups is funny. Why did they think it was you? I wouldn’t have thought they were that daft.”

  Mark shook his head. Said nothing.

  “Anyway, sorry, like I said. Newkie Brown?”

  “Yeah. And fish and chips.”

  “Right you are.” Tony handed him a bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. “Only Yanks will drink this. When I was still in England, you couldn’t even get it on draught in bars in Newcastle.”

  “How come?”

  “It wasn’t worth their while to stock it, since not enough folk were desperate enough to drink it.”

  “Well, this is the Wild West.”

  “You should know, mate.” Tony made shooting gestures with his fingers, and, laughing, went to serve other customers.

  Mark got out his smart phone and looked at the New Times news blog. There it was—his mugshot, and a short account of how the police had made an arrest in the latest in the series of restaurant robberies, but the suspect, Mark Sharpton, a musician known locally for his lounge gigs, had been released when the only witness had failed to positively identify him.

  “Failed to positively identify him.” Not “positively identified him as looking nothing like the robber.” Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  He wondered if the piece was motivated by vindictiveness on the part of Rankin, or just laziness on the part of the reporter. For decades, New Times had been the best newspaper in Arizona, but in recent years the owners had gutted it, replacing professional journalists with low-paid amateurs and replacing costly investigative reporting with cheap innuendo. Had Rankin asked the paper to run the story, or had the reporter just heard about what happened from a cop and used it to fill space?

  As he waited for his food to arrive, Mark emailed a friend, an attorney in New York, who had been a public defender in Phoenix: “In Arizona, if you're wrongfully arrested, and released without charge the next day, how long does your mugshot and arrest information remain a public record?”

  He was halfway through his beer when the reply came. “For ever.”

  He wrote back, explaining what had happened, leaving out the fact that he was guilty, and asked, “What can I do about this? Surely it can’t be legal to do this to someone who wasn’t charged.”

  “Let me get this straight. They put web cameras in the female inmates’ toilet and you're surprised about the popo releasing mug shots? There are some states, and I believe Arizona is one, where the law provides that someone can ask a court to seal their arrest records upon a showing of actual innocence. It is at the complete discretion of the judge. But, unless you take the affirmative step to request this relief, the arrest record remains public forever, at least in Arizona.”

  His food arrived. He wanted to leave it, not eat it, leave the bar, but he forced himself to keep sitting there, and to eat. His lawyer friend had once remarked, in a late night bar-room conversation, “People don’t go to prison for breaking the law. They go to prison for being stupid. They don’t keep their mouths shut, or they get paranoid and fuck up. Innocent people go to prison because they talk to cops, but I know lifelong career criminals who’ve never done any time, because they stay calm and don’t talk.”

  So Mark decided to stay calm, eat his food, drink his beer, behave like a law-abiding citizen instead of following his impulse to rush back to his apartment and see what he needed to move in case the cops showed up with a search warrant. He chewed and swallowed and made a mental inventory of what he had at his place that he wouldn’t want anyone to know about. His Glock was in the canal along with the money, and the current would have carried it far by now. There was about a few thousand in cash in one of his drawers. Could he explain that as money saved from tips at his gigs? He had used public computers, with no login required, to search for information about suitable targets, and everything on his own machine was encrypted.

  He finished his meal and paid his tab—enduring a couple more jokes from Tony—and left.

  The restaurant was busier than usual. Linda wondered if it was because some people wanted to see the scene of the robbery the night before. At one point, without warning, she began to shake, and, holding back tears, told Joel she needed a break for a few minutes. She went to the rest room, locked herself in a cubicle, expected to cry, but the tears didn’t come. The shakes continued. She waited for them to stop. They didn’t, but when they reduced to tremors, she went back to work. Joel asked her if she needed to go home, and she said she was all right and that she needed the paycheck and tips. He put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed. She could tell that he was enjoying playing protector, and she wondered if another poem was on the way.

  Casci was sitting at the bar. He had been there since she arrived, but, aside from a smile and a hello, hadn’t spoken to her. Joel had tried to chat with him, but Casci didn’t seem to be feeling talkative. He sat there drinking Bloody Marys and reading on his tablet.

  As Linda finished delivering food to a table and started to walk back to the kitchen, she saw that another man had joined Casci at the bar. It was Detective Rankin.

  Mark was in bed, listening to the purring of Pangur Ban on the pillow next to him. He was almost lulled to sleep when he heard the sound his phone made to let him know he had a new text message.

  It was from Suzanne: “Ryan knows everything.”

  No, he doesn’t, Mark thought. He may know about you and me, but he doesn’t know my last name or where I live, and neither do you.

  Another message arrived. It was from Suzanne’s number, but it wasn’t from her: “Hey Mark I have your name, phone number and email. Don't ever contact my wife again!! I'm not one to take this lightly! I have ur pic too. Unless you want a piece of me! Loose her number asshole!”

  Mark responded, “Grow up. And learn to use commas and spell while you’re at it.” He set the phone to silent and fell asleep.

  When he woke, he had a message on Facebook. It was from Linda.

  FIVE

  He waited for her in Lux, the coffee shop on Central in Uptown. They’d agreed to meet at four, but he got there a half-hour early, wanting to survey the place, but not knowing what he was looking for. He got a cup of green tea that cost more than he would have expected from the setting with its shabby, mismatched chairs and tables with un
even legs. He sat in a chair and pushed its back against a wall. He took a Kindle from his messenger bag and pretended to read it.

  She was a few minutes early. When she stepped inside the door, she took off her sunglasses and looked around. He waved to her and she came over.

  “Hey,” he said, and mustered a smile.

  “Hey.” She didn’t smile and she didn’t sit down.

  “Can I get you something?” he said, standing up.

  “No, thanks. I’ll get it.” She walked to the counter. He sat down again.

  He was pretending to read when she came with a cup of coffee. She sat in a chair facing him. “Service isn’t very friendly here,” she said.

  “I know. If I wanted to be condescended to by tattooed posers, I’d have gone to college.”

  “I did go to college. This is worse.”

  “I thought you must like it here, since you suggested it.”

  “I hardly ever come here.”

  “Where do you like? Where do you usually go?”

  She shook her head, and he realized she had suggested this place because she didn’t want him in her regular place.

  “Okay,” he said.

  “Have you ever had anybody else message you on Facebook after you stuck a gun in their face?”

  He smiled. “I’d say sorry, but I don’t know how you apologize for something like that.”

  She surprised him by smiling too. “You mean there isn’t a standard etiquette for how to follow up an armed robbery?”

  He laughed, but didn’t say anything. Then he just said, “Sorry.”

  “Are you worried that I might be recording you? Is that why you’re not saying anything specific about it?”

  “It occurred to me, of course.”

  “I’m not.”

  “I believe you, but I can’t think of any other reason you’d want to meet me.”

  “I didn’t need to do this if I wanted you in jail. I had my chance, and I lied to the cops. Do you want to know why I did that?”