City of Dark Corners

by Jon Talton

  “Just an innocent woman with those gorgeous blue eyes and auburn hair.”

  “I don’t know if she was innocent. But the evidence—remember evidence, Don?—the evidence was not consistent with premeditated murder or her acting alone. My best guess is that she’s a little crazy, she was pressured into a hasty confession, and Halloran has powerful friends.”

  “He was indicted. His trial is coming up.”

  “You know the fix is in.”

  “And your testimony wasn’t introduced in Ruth’s trial. Poor Clean Gene.”

  I felt my face flush. “I wasn’t allowed to testify, Dirty Don, even though I was the first detective on the scene. And I didn’t pull the pin. I was laid off, remember? Budget cuts, they said. Four patrolmen and one detective were cut loose.”

  He smiled, unflappable. “You wouldn’t have been the one detective if you’d been willing to go along. McGrath really tried to save you.”

  A couple walked by, arm in arm. After they passed, Don said, “You were always stubborn. The first rule of life is to get along you have to go along.”

  “Spare me the philosophy.”

  Of course, he wouldn’t.

  “All you had to do was keep your head down, do the job your bosses asked you to do, and you’d still be on the Hat Squad,” Don said. “Now you’re out of a steady job making a hundred-ten dollars a month, and they’re going to hang her. Wonder if Ruth will end up doing an Eva Dugan?”

  Eva Dugan, a housekeeper, was convicted in Pinal County for murdering her employer and apparent pimp. The whole thing was sordid as Caligula’s Rome without the grand buildings. Don and I were sent by the Phoenix Police as witnesses to the execution, even though the crime occurred in an adjacent county.

  Don chuckled. “I’ll never forget when that long drop decapitated her. Eva’s head rolled right up to our feet. Five of the witnesses fainted. Same thing is coming for your girlfriend. Pop goes the head!”

  “She’s not my girlfriend!”

  Don was Dr. Jekyll with most people. He was Mr. Hyde with me, always trying to goad me or worse. I should have been used to it, but I was seething, not least because after talking to him I couldn’t walk home with Isaac Watts in my ears.

  I stood to leave.

  “Hang on there, Clean Gene. We’ve got work to do.”

  I reared on him. “Since when is there a ‘we’?”

  “There’s cold meat down by the railroad tracks, and I need your assistance.”

  “Are you paying? Because, as you keep reminding me, I don’t carry a buzzer anymore.”

  He stood and stretched. “Fucker.” He dug a sawbuck from his wallet and handed it over.

  * * *

  We drove south in his 1930 black Chevy sedan, then turned east on Van Buren Street, passing gas stations and on the north side, the stately new buildings of Phoenix Union High School.

  “Are we collecting tonight?”

  Don laughed. “The protection money from those whorehouses and gambling dens prop up the City of Phoenix treasury, especially at a time like this. You know that.”

  “And the detectives who collect and protect them get a piece of the action, too.”

  “Don’t act like you never played. Anyway, I’m not handling much vice anymore. A convenient opening came up to take the lead in homicide cases. Thanks, little brother.” He clapped me on the leg, then stared straight ahead as if he was alone in the car. I was happy to let the silence accompany us.

  At Sixteenth Street, he turned south past Eastlake Park until we were at the mouth of the Southern Pacific railroad yard, then he wheeled east again along a dirt road north of the tracks. A switch engine huffed past us, the headlight offering momentary artificial daylight for what lay ahead. I dug my fingers into the seat as the locomotive came close.

  Two of the new Phoenix Police radio-equipped cars were parked beside the railroad, their spotlights aimed at the ground. About twenty feet north, I could see the blood seeping through a white sheet that looked like a madman’s abstract art.

  “What the hell?”

  “I’m paying for your consultation.”

  Stepping out, I pulled my fedora to eye level, not the jaunty look Victoria preferred. I lit another cigarette and took a deep pull. The last thing I wanted was to see any of my former colleagues, to have them see me. My job loss humiliated me, but I could put on a mask, never let them see. We walked past a police ambulance along the cinder-strewn dirt toward the scene. I took one more drag and stomped out the nail.

  As we got closer, I saw the white sheet had siblings: three more laid separately a few feet away in geometric precision.

  It started to sprinkle again, and I slid on my own trench coat, tightened my tie, armoring up. Just in time. “What the hell is he doing here?” I heard a whisper from a uniformed sergeant meant to be heard and ignored it.

  “Railroad bull found this earlier tonight,” Don said. “Unfortunately, it’s in the city limits. Barely.”

  The uniforms had tramped around so much that any chance of identifying suspect footprints in the moist soil was lost. Typical. I looked at Don and he nodded. Back in the saddle again.

  Lifting the first sheet, I found the torso of a woman. The only reason I knew this was that she was busty and wearing a smart pink suit. Besides decapitation, her arms had been removed halfway between the elbow and shoulder. Her legs had been taken off in a similar fashion. Without a ruler, I guessed the spot was five inches below the pelvis. That would have meant cutting into the femoral artery, a real bleeder. But the suit was only lightly stained.

  The limbs were nearby, as if an angry child had disassembled a doll.

  Another sheet concealed two legs in nylons and pink pumps. The arms were beneath yet another sheet; her hands were delicate, her fingers lacking any rings, including a wedding ring. I felt like a stagehand ringing up the act curtains on a ghastly play. Finally, another sheet was raised in a dome shape. Don shone his flashlight on the head that had belonged to a woman in her twenties, with blond bobbed hair, bright lipstick, and blue eyes frozen open. The same was true of her mouth, caught in a scream when she was cut apart. Alive, she would have been a looker. I let the sheet drop and stood.

  “The bull said she fell from a train. The westbound Sunset Limited came through about six, running late.”

  I rolled my head, trying to unstiffen my neck and shoulders.

  “That’s all wrong,” I said. “The body parts are a good twenty feet from the tracks. And train fatalities typically lose an arm or leg or get mangled. If it’s an amputation, the cut is usually clean from the flanges of the train-car wheels. This woman was completely dismembered. But it was done so purposefully. Check the marks. Her head, arms, and legs were hacked off. Like with an axe or a saw. No defensive wounds on her hands or arms. And it looks like she was arranged.”

  Maybe it was my imagination, but Don seemed to suppress a shiver.

  “Give me your flashlight.”

  He handed it over, and I walked up to the ballasted roadbed where two sets of tracks ran east-to-west; a quarter mile to my right, they opened into the mouth of the railroad yard. No trains were coming, so I walked fifty feet in each direction, Don trailing behind me.

  “Impressions?” he asked.

  “No blood on the rails or ties, no body parts up here,” I said. “She definitely didn’t fall or jump from a train—I’ve seen what that looks like. She was killed somewhere else and brought here. The dismemberment would have left a lot of blood, more than what’s down there.” I nodded toward the crime scene.

  “Maybe.” He retrieved his light and we walked back.

  “No maybe,” I said. “It’s a homicide. Maybe Ruth Judd broke out of Florence and did it.”

  He snorted.

  “What about a purse, or was that on the train?”

  Don pointed the light to t
he base of a mesquite ten feet to the north. The handbag was small and pink, with a gold border on the rounded top. “We found it neatly propped against that tree. Uniforms waited for me to open it. No identification. Two tubes of lipstick, compact, handkerchief, rosary, Sheaffer’s fountain pen. Fifty dollars neatly folded, two twenties, two fives. Fifty cents in coins. And this...”

  He held up a piece of paper. It was one of my business cards. Now it was my turn to suppress a shiver.

  He put a hand on my chest. “Do you know this woman?”

  “No,” I said. “I have no idea how she got my card.”

  “Take this.”

  I hesitated.

  “That’s evidence, Don.”

  “You want to end up as a suspect and in jail?”

  I shook my head, held the card by the edges, and let it fall into my pocket.

  I said, “This was a very personal killing.”

  “Aren’t they all?”

  “No. Sometimes people murder for money and don’t know the victim. But this girl’s purse is full of cash. Sometimes people murder on the spur of the moment. But our guy planned this with great care. He killed and cut her up somewhere else. Then he brought her here, displayed her in new clothes, and moved her just inside the city limits. Then he placed my business card in her purse. He’s sending a message.”

  “You’re a smart one,” Don said.

  Then a fist suddenly connected to my stomach. It wasn’t a hard punch, and from our many fights, I knew he could hit much harder. He leaned in and whispered. “Bend over like you feel it.”

  “Ugh…you bastard!” Under my breath, I told him to get Victoria Vasquez out here to get good photographs of the scene, including close-ups, with copies for me. He nodded, then he pushed me away.

  “Get the hell out of here, Gene,” he yelled. “You’re not a cop anymore. Quit tagging after me.”

  The others watched in amusement as I pretended to stagger off. Out of sight, my gait turned normal and took me north to Washington Street, where I caught the trolley back to town. I felt punched in the gut all right, but not by my brother’s fist.

  * * *

  The rain had stopped by the time I reached my second-story apartment in a newer building called La Paloma. It faced the slender, block-long park encased by one lane in each direction of Portland Street between Central and Third avenues.

  I hung my trench coat on the coat hanger just inside the door to dry, but not before carefully removing the business card Don had given me and slipping it into an envelope. Without my access to the police lab, I didn’t know how I would check it for fingerprints. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

  I loosened my tie and poured a glass of fine Canadian whiskey. It was part of the stash from my days with the cops—when we would confiscate liquor per the Volstead Act. We were supposed to pour it down the sewer, and we did sometimes, with newspaper photographers shooting. But we always kept a few bottles of the best stuff for ourselves.

  So much for Clean Gene.

  Prohibition. It was one of the dumbest things ever tried in the United States. Both Don and I had been part of the occupation troops in the Rhineland after the war, then had spent time in Paris and London deciding what to do with our lives when we received word that both Mother and Father had died in the influenza pandemic.

  Neither of us was going to take up the miserable work of farming or work for the railroad. How ya going to keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree! But after being discharged, we drifted back to Phoenix and became police officers.

  Honestly, it was hard to tell hooch was against the law here, even though the state had outlawed it in 1915. The stuff was abundant in a Southwestern town far from the Treasury Department. People such as Kemper Marley kept every place from the speakeasies to the best hotels well supplied. Al Capone built a bloody empire back in Chicago thanks to appetites that couldn’t be outlawed. I wouldn’t be sorry to see Prohibition repealed.

  Pouring a second glass, I was well beyond humming any hymns, I put a Bennie Moten band record on my RCA Victor phonograph and fell into the sofa. Moten had a hot, young pianist named Basie who put stomp into the Kansas City Stomp style.

  All I lacked was a dance partner and some energy.

  This was not supposed to be my job anymore, but I was in the middle of a murder again and not protected by a badge. Don giving me the business card didn’t sit well, but he was right. If anyone else knew it was in the victim’s purse, I would be the prime suspect.

  The memory of the woman’s severed head lingered through the second pour. Alive, she would have turned heads, with that Norma Shearer face and Marlene Dietrich fair hair. Hollywood stars liked to come to Phoenix in winter, stay at the San Carlos or even at the rentals on my street or one block north on the Moreland parkway. I saw Clark Gable and Carole Lombard a couple of times.

  Three times I worked as a bodyguard for George Raft. It wasn’t what it seemed. George could take care of himself, and sober he was a good guy, tipped well, paid me generously. But he was a brawler, and my job was to keep him out of trouble. Maybe the stars knew the identity of my dismembered problem.

  The phonograph was scratching and otherwise silent when a knock at the door startled me awake.

  Victoria stepped in, holding a manila envelope.

  “I figured you’d want this sooner than later.” She brought her lips up to mine, her coat fell to the floor, I met her kiss and pulled her inside, tossing the envelope of photographs on a table. They could wait.

  I was glad once again that the landlord didn’t live in the building.

  Four

  The new office buildings were struggling to find tenants. Several building and loan institutions had failed, and even the biggest banks were teetering. The good news was that rents were low; the bad news was that nobody had much money.

  When I set up my private detective agency, I got a great deal on the top floor of the three-story Monihon Building at First Avenue and Washington. This, a pre-statehood structure with a mansard roof, sat in the same block as Newberry’s, Kress, and J.C. Penney. Neon signs proclaimed Boehmer Drug Store and Funk Jewelry (“Confidential Credit”) on the first floor and Dr. Mapstone’s dental practice on the second. It lacked the art deco grandeur of the new Luhrs Tower with its uniformed elevator operators, but I could afford it.

  The rain was gone and the sun bright. The sky was cobalt blue and the mountains, miles away, looked as if you could reach out and touch them. Awnings were down in the fronts of the buildings to shade the stream of pedestrians while cars jockeyed for parking spaces and streetcars clanged past. A couple of sidewalk elevators by stores were open and workers loading merchandise for the trip into the basement. My shoes stepped over the heavy glass embedded in the sidewalk to bring light into those underground spaces.

  Even in the twenties, you’d still see horse-drawn wagons, but they were gone from downtown now. The stream of humanity was a mixture of businessmen, ladies shopping, and workmen from the produce sheds and warehouses to the south. It was almost as if a Depression wasn’t happening.

  On Washington, the main commercial drag of Phoenix, the signs were more subtle: The man against the wall with “Brother, can you spare a dime” written on a scrap of paper, desperate faces and furtive eyes darting from business to business like dying flies, seeking jobs that weren’t there. Uniformed cops moved along hoboes who had wandered up from the railroad tracks. The sound of Rudy Vallee singing “As Time Goes By” wafted out a doorway. Walk around downtown and you’d see permanently closed doors from the places that had been forced out of business, a third of the city’s banks and thrifts closed, much of the music gone.

  After paying for an Arizona Republic at the newsstand out front, I took the stairs to the third floor.

  I shared a secretary with an accountant in the adjoining office. Gladys Johnson had a strained face that
reminded me of my child-hating fourth-grade teacher. She oddly favored the flapper clothes and hairstyle that were already anachronisms in this more austere decade. Presiding over the outer office, she wore an out-of-fashion cloche hat and a sequined dress. It was like having a silent movie or paper shirt collar as my reluctant assistant.

  She was machine-gunning the Remington typewriter when I came in, but looked up and nodded toward my door, where “Gene Hammons, Private Investigator” was etched in the frosted glass.

  “You have a client waiting.”

  She said it as if such a thing never happened.

  I paused to open the newspaper. All caps across the top of the front page: FIVE ESCAPE COUNTY JAIL. So much for the lockup on the top floor of the nearly new county courthouse. The prisoners walked out at five in the afternoon, blending with the crowd.

  Otherwise, it looked like the Japs and Russians might go to war. The City Commission was in turmoil again. Will Rogers had a quick unfunny take about banks and Japan taking more of China. Down at Fort Huachuca, the Army was investigating whether voodoo caused a colored private to kill two captains and their wives. On page four, I scanned “Little Stories of Phoenix Daily Life” in search of potential clients, but none revealed themselves.

  Quickly paging through, I finally found a three-paragraph story deep inside, bottom of the page: “Woman killed in fall from train.” I read it slowly, saw nothing remarkable, and stuck the paper under my arm.

  Stepping inside my office and tossing my fedora on the coatrack, I saw Kemper Marley seated in one of the secondhand chairs facing my secondhand desk. He turned his unsmiling face to me.

  “You’re late.”

  “I didn’t know we had an appointment.”

  “I told you to come see me.”

  I eased myself into my swivel chair.

  Marley was wearing a Western shirt, dusty jeans, and cowboy boots, as if he had been riding the range rather than supervising a beat-down in the hobo jungle. His legs were spread wide beneath the Stetson on his lap.

  He regarded me with coffee-colored marsupial eyes. “I want you to find some information on a man named Gus Greenbaum.”