City of Dark Corners

by Jon Talton

  The waitress brought coffee, and I ordered a hamburger. Across the room, a dozen legislators were debating around a large, round table. Voices raised, then whispers, arms gesticulating emphatically. The subject was the governor and the highway commission. Cigar smoke pumped above them like a factory going full out. When I looked back, the man standing before me wasn’t my brother but John J. McGrath, the chief of Ds. I reflexively stood and came to attention.

  “Sit, Gene.” His voice was gentle and his manner professorial. It was a devastatingly effective personality trait in gaining confessions. The only things that made him look different from the faculty at the teachers’ college were the shoulder holster and a pair of handcuffs and a nipper in his belt beneath the off-the-rack suit of an honest cop. The nipper was a neat tool, a nonlethal item used to whip around a suspect’s wrist and tighten to put pressure on a nerve in the hand and cause compliance. They disappeared as he buttoned his coat and sat, ordering coffee.

  I sat. “I was waiting for Don.”

  “I know,” he said. “Your brother asked me to talk some sense into you.”

  “How thoughtful of him.”

  McGrath smiled sadly. “Oh, my young friend, I am so sorry about the way things turned out. I had such high hopes for you.”

  McGrath had been on the force for more than twenty years, possessed a photographic memory, and had introduced modern scientific investigation methods, including a department identification bureau. He had always played straight with me—until the Judd case.

  “I’m doing okay,” I said.

  “That’s what I hear. But I want you to know that I really fought for you. I tried. Wanted to make you take two weeks’ vacation during the trial. Get you out of the line of fire when the testimony started. But the higher-ups were afraid Ruth’s lawyers might call you, or the Hearst press in L.A. might have gotten to you. The layoff was forced on me.”

  “It’s okay, Captain. I’m a happy ending kind of guy. The bigs got their conviction, even though the evidence showed she acted in self-defense, and there was no way she could have cut up those bodies and stuffed them in trunks by herself. I’m not sure Judd’s lawyers were even smart enough to call me. And I got to start a new business in the worst economy in American history.” I smiled.

  “This came for you at headquarters.” He passed over an envelope. I could tell from the regimented stationery, if you’d apply such a genteel term as “stationery,” that this was from an inmate in the State Penitentiary at Florence. Hoping like hell it wasn’t from Ruth Judd, I opened it, relieved to find my jailhouse correspondent was Jack Hunter.

  I arrested him for a holdup, and he was doing a fifteen-to-thirty-year bounce for intent to commit murder. Jack had escaped five times. I read:

  Detective Gene,

  Come see me. We can talk about the train girl, Carrie. It will be worth your time.

  I stashed it. “Jack Hunter, can’t be important.”

  “Ah, the escape artist.” McGrath smiled, but the expression didn’t last. “Don tells me you have a client who wants to find a missing girl, and she might be the one who fell from the Sunset Limited.”

  “She didn’t fall from the Sunset,” I interrupted. “She was brutally murdered.”

  He continued: “I won’t ask the client’s identity. But what have you found?”

  I opened up the file, laid out the photos, and told him. It took fifteen minutes and several bites of my hamburger.

  When I was through, he waited a good five minutes. Then he said, “You’ve been a busy boy. No wonder I gave the toughest homicide cases to you.”

  “I appreciate that, Boss. But this is where you say ‘thanks’ and ‘we’ll take the investigation from here.’”

  He shifted uncomfortably. I felt as if a nipper had wrapped around my wrists.

  “What?” I said.

  “It’s not that simple.” He pulled out a pipe and meticulously filled the bowl with tobacco, tamped it down with a silver pipe tool, and slowly lit it.

  “Don has explained to you how the commissioners and the chamber of commerce don’t want Phoenix back in the national spotlight for another lurid murder. I don’t agree, but I have to take orders, same as everyone else.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Behind a haze of cherry-flavored tobacco, he said, “It means the case is classified as a suspicious death.”

  “So that’s it?”

  After a pause for another puff: “What if I authorized you to go to Prescott and do the death knock? I’ll put together a hundred dollars from petty cash. The girl’s parents deserve to know what happened.”

  “I’d want that authorized in writing.”

  “You don’t trust me?”

  “I trust you, Boss. But I don’t trust the people who sign your paycheck. You have to take orders, same as everybody else, remember?”

  “I’ll send over a letter this afternoon.”

  “And what happens then?”

  He looked at me like I was the stupid boy in class, repeating that the case was classified as a suspicious death.

  I pushed back, trying to keep my voice calm and measured. I felt anything but that inside. “Cap, this girl was sawed apart elsewhere, and her body parts were dressed, dumped, and arranged, moved just inside the city limits. Her purse had money but no identification.” I neglected to mention that my business card was also in her purse.

  I continued: “She was obviously murdered somewhere else and placed near the tracks. Now, maybe she fell in with the wrong people and this was a one-off. She and her family still deserve justice. You taught me that everybody matters. Or, we have a savage murderer on the loose, and he’ll kill again. He won’t give a damn what the chamber of commerce thinks.”

  “It’s been more than two weeks since that happened,” he said.

  “You know that doesn’t mean anything. The University Park Strangler only killed when new moons coincided with Catholic martyred saints’ dates. Thank God the chamber wasn’t so touchy then or we would have ignored that, too.”

  He winced. “You know, crime has actually fallen during this Depression.”

  I stayed on the subject. “Who knows what sets this monster off? We do know Carrie was killed by an expert blow to the head. Like from a sap or a blackjack. Like from a rogue cop. Maybe the same cop who got her pregnant.”

  McGrath sighed. “You’ve obviously given this a lot of thought. I’m not saying you should investigate this suspicious death…”

  “Murder.”

  “Murder. I’m not saying you should investigate it. You could let it go. That would be the smart thing. But I know you. So, my point is, if you’re determined to go off the reservation…”

  He reached in his pocket and placed a folded handkerchief on the table. Inside was my old badge.

  “Maybe that will open some doors,” he said. “But tread lightly, Gene. It doesn’t mean you’re back on the force.”

  “I understand.” But I didn’t.

  He reached across and touched my sleeve. “Don’t forget Haze Burch.”

  “I never would.”

  “This work can bite you when you least expect it.”

  After he left, the phoenix bird on my gold detective shield stared at me for a long time before I slipped it in my pocket. Over at the round table, the lawmakers were sounding lubricated, laughing and joking.

  I thought about the chief of D’s last words. Haze Burch was the first Phoenix Police officer killed in the line of duty. On February 5, 1925, he came upon two men siphoning gasoline from a car. They shot him at Eighth Street and Jefferson, then got away. I was on duty and was one of the responding officers. He was dead by the time we arrived. The pair were not petty thieves. They had previously murdered two cops, in Texas and Montana. Haze was killed by what he didn’t know.

  I pushed away the half-eaten
hamburger, feeling very alone.

  * * *

  Ten minutes later, I was back at the Monihon Building, where a postcard from Amelia Earhart was awaiting me: She was speaking before a group in Seattle. Signed, “Missing you” and her first name signed like an airplane’s loops across the sky. I missed her, too. Gladys also informed me that Harry Rosenzweig called and wanted me to come by.

  I walked up First Avenue to the jewelry store and stepped inside. Barry Goldwater waved from the far end of the counter and went back to a hushed conversation with a well-dressed man. Del Webb was visiting with Harry, who waved me in.

  “How’s the private eye business?” Webb asked. He was dressed in one shade of khaki: slacks, shirt, and zip-up coat. He even had a khaki hat.

  “Murder,” I said.

  “Mine, too,” he said. “Only twenty-six building permits issued in all of January. When I finish the mansion that I’m building in the Country Club neighborhood, I’m tapped out. But I have high hopes for FDR. Get federal money flowing into this town for roads, public buildings—I told Carl Hayden we need an underpass for Central at the railroad tracks—and I’m going places.” Hayden was one of our U.S. senators. Webb started singing, “Happy days are here again…” off-key.

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “From your lips to God’s ears.”

  Harry gestured me to the counter.

  “I sent a query to Hamilton for the watch you brought in. With the serial number, they had a record of the original buyer. Don’t know if this helps, but…” He handed me a slip of note paper with I. Rosenzweig & Sons letterhead. Written neatly was “Ezra T. Dell” along with a purchase date of 1917 and a jewelry store in Prescott.

  “Does it help?” Harry asked.

  “I believe it does.” I slipped the paper in my pocket. He went to the back room and returned with a Rosenzweig’s box. It held the watch I had found in the dirt of the burned Okie camp, now polished and sitting on a bed of felt.

  I added it to my pocket. “How much do I owe you, Harry?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Come over here, Gene.” Barry beckoned me to the far end of the store. He was clean-shaven now. I thanked Harry, wished Del good fortune, and they went back to gossiping.

  Barry said, “Gene Hammons, meet Gus Greenbaum.”

  I took in a sharp breath but kept my cop face as I shook the hand offered by a man with a tough face, wide-set eyes, big ears, and a flamboyant gold pocket square hanging like a tongue out of his front suit coat pocket. He had an iron grip, and I returned it. This was a long handshake as each of us took the measure of the other. He wore expensive gold cuff links. His nose looked like someone had inserted a lightbulb in the end of it.

  “Your legend precedes you, Hammons,” he said, an expensive Cuban double corona in his mouth. “The homicide cop who was fired because he knew the truth about Winnie Ruth Judd, the trunk murderess.”

  We let go at the same time. My hand ached, but I didn’t let it show.

  “Don’t believe everything you hear, Mr. Greenbaum,” I said. “What’s your line?”

  He painted an image in the air with the cigar. “Sporting news. Everybody loves sports.”

  “He’s a real-life gangster,” Barry blurted, impressed. Greenbaum smiled wider.

  “Don’t pay any attention to him.” Greenbaum’s dark eyes were fixed on mine, trying to assay my reaction. “Goldwater here has a very vivid imagination.” He looked me up and down. “You’re a private dick now. That’s good. I could use a man like you.”

  “I appreciate that, Mr. Greenbaum…”

  “Gus!” He made a punctuation point with the cigar.

  “I appreciate that, Gus. But I’m not taking any new clients at the moment.”

  “Well, if you change your mind…” He reached inside my suit coat and slipped a business card in the pocket. It was close enough for him to feel the M1911 Colt in its shoulder holster. His smile never changed.

  Twelve

  Two days later, Victoria and I took the Santa Fe Railway to Prescott. The city—pronounced “PRES-cut,” although some used “Pres-kit”—was a mile high, and we dressed for the weather. Or so we thought. My father, the loyal “Ess-pee” conductor, would have been horrified by us riding the rival AT&SF, but it was the only way north aside from a rough and, especially in winter, dangerous highway.

  This railroad from Phoenix made a long climb all the way to Ash Fork, where it connected to the Santa Fe main line running to Los Angeles and Chicago. We left the oasis and desert as the sun was setting, charging through Wickenburg, which was holding its annual rodeo, climbing into High Country meadows and pine forests that we could barely see in the dark. At Skull Valley, it seemed as if the whole town came out to meet our train. The food in the dining car was excellent, per Santa Fe Fred Harvey standards.

  Victoria, her black hair tumbling out from beneath a stylish slouch hat, bought a Fortune magazine at Union Station and read it as we rolled along.

  “Look at this!” She folded over a page. It held a photograph showing a spectacular view of New York City and a steel eagle perching out, with an opening at the top and a woman halfway out the opening, holding a camera.

  “That’s the new Chrysler Building,” she said. “And the photographer there is Margaret Bourke-White. She’s a staff photographer for Fortune.”

  “You could do that.”

  She smiled and hugged me. “I believe I could.”

  The locomotives faced an especially hard lift getting to Prescott, which was a major subdivision point on the railroad. Fortunately, our coach windows were closed, so we didn’t get showered by soot from the engines. In summer, the Phoenix elite that didn’t flee to California came to nearby Iron Springs to flee the heat. The last time I had come here, Prescott’s railyard was clogged with locomotives and cars filled with ore. But that was before ’29.

  Now, as we stepped out before the imposing passenger depot, the yard was nearly empty. A full moon showed Thumb Butte standing to the west covered by stubby piñon trees, but otherwise the rich mining district around Prescott was in as deep trouble as the one in south-central Arizona around Globe and Morenci. The United Verde Mine in Clarkdale had closed in ’31, and the others nearby had shed workers as the price of copper collapsed.

  The crew pulled off the locomotive to add water and fuel oil while express and mail were unloaded from the baggage car. A slushy, dirty snow was on the ground as we walked to the waiting room, gusts of cold mountain wind hitting our faces. High mounds of snow were piled nearby. Inside, a woman immediately approached us. Older, slender, bent at the back, wearing a furry turban.

  “You don’t look like you’re from here.”

  I made introductions.

  “I’m Miss Sharlot Hall,” she said, giving a firm handshake, but not like Greenbaum’s viselike grip. “I’m the town historian. You’re from Phoenix. You stole our capitol.”

  “You can have it back,” Victoria said.

  Miss Sharlot Hall gave a shoulder-bobbing laugh. I asked her how things were in Prescott.

  Her face grew serious. “The closing of the copper mines has put thousands of people out of work in the state. It’s no different in Yavapai County. Likely worse.” She made a sweeping gesture with her right hand. “We have unemployed miners in the hills trying their hands at placer mining. Sometimes they make a few cents, a dollar at the most. Gold played out here long ago. We have gas moochers come through. The city offers to let them work off their expenses by chopping weeds and doing odds and ends. But very few accept the offer. Banks are in trouble.”

  “It’s the same in Phoenix,” I said.

  “President Hoover sent Prescott fifty thousand dollars in work relief,” she said. “Reconstruction Finance Corporation. We used it for local men only. That was important. And it ran out. At least we got the courthouse walls washed.”

/>   The RFC funds didn’t last long in Phoenix, either. I changed the subject to Carrie Dell.

  “Such a sweet girl, smart and beautiful, too,” Hall said. “She’s at the teachers’ college in Tempe.”

  “When was the last time you saw her?” I said.

  “It’s been almost a year. She didn’t come home last summer. I heard she got a summer job at the Biltmore Hotel outside Phoenix. Just as well.”

  “And why’s that?”

  She squared her small shoulders. “I’m the town historian, not the town gossip!”

  I flashed my buzzer, and her dudgeon collapsed.

  “Oh.”

  “We’re looking for Carrie’s father.”

  She shook her head. “Ezra. It’s no wonder Carrie didn’t want to come home. That man. Ezra Dell is a drunk.” She huffed. “We’ll have plenty more when Prohibition is over.”

  Victoria gently asked where we could find him, and she gave us an address. It was different from the one I’d copied from the college records.

  “I tried to get him in the Pioneers’ Home. But they wouldn’t take him, because he wouldn’t stop his drunkenness and cavorting with bootleggers.” She looked us over. “I hope you brought warm clothes.”

  We thanked her and started out.

  “I’m so glad Carrie is all right,” she said. “It’s better that she’s away from here.”

  Town historian or gossip, I saw no need to set her straight. She would find out soon enough.

  * * *

  Outside the station, at the foot of Cortez Street, Prescott looked like a prosperous little city, despite the hard times and having one-tenth the population of Phoenix. Paved streets, sidewalks cleared of snow, streetlights, solid multistory buildings leading toward the Yavapai County Courthouse. More people were in Western wear, and not for show. It was how they dressed. A couple of horse-drawn wagons competed with automobiles for space at the curbs. These had mostly disappeared from Phoenix in the ’20s. The town was winding down for the night.