City of Dark Corners

by Jon Talton

  I thought about Ezra’s actions the day before. “Wasn’t he left-handed, Chief?”

  The chief looked at the straight razor in the man’s right hand and bit into his cigar. His his face turned red. After a long pause: “Yes, yes, he was. Goddamn.”

  I pointed to the wound. “Look at the steady cut all the way across, including to the end on the right side of his neck. I’ve never seen anyone cut his throat and be able to complete it that way.” Going to the back side of the chair, I pantomimed how a killer would hold Ezra’s head up and neatly slice his throat open, hitting the carotids on both sides. “This is what happened.”

  “Well, shit. It’s a homicide.”

  “Yes, sir.” I asked him about Carrie. Once again, I heard how wonderful she was. “Prettiest girl in Prescott. You knew she was going places. What a terrible thing. Only child. Now the entire family snuffed out.”

  I asked if his people had checked the rest of the house.

  He shook his head, and I immediately went to Carrie’s bedroom. Someone had obviously tossed it. Drawers were open, the mattress was disturbed as if the intruder had been looking underneath it, pillows askew, the trophy on its side. Beyond the door, I heard Victoria return and start to take photos.

  I’d brought more than bad news. I’d brought a killer, who followed us. Sometime after we left Ezra alive, he knocked on the door. Thinking it was us returning, Ezra opened it without his previous…caution. Then the killer had tried to pry information about Carrie, about what we had told him. He was gathering intelligence, tying up loose ends.

  Maybe he pretended to be a cop or was one. However it went down, Ezra appeared seated trustingly as the man kept talking, walked behind him, produced the razor. Or maybe Ezra had drunk himself asleep when the killer arrived. Either way, it was over quickly. And it was a damned good bet this was the same man who left the threatening note for me at the hotel.

  To satisfy myself, I went into the bathroom. Sure enough, Ezra—who hadn’t seemed to have shaved in months—had his own straight razor, sitting peacefully inside the medicine cabinet. I pointed all this out to the chief, who ordered his minion to take notes.

  “What now?” he asked.

  I was on my haunches, looking around the living-room furniture, under tables and beside chairs.

  “Yesterday, Ezra greeted us with a Tommy gun,” I said. “It’s gone.”

  The young cop stared at his boss, whose cigar had long gone cold.

  Fourteen

  We returned to Phoenix overdressed and overheated in time for me to read that Jack Hunter had been stabbed to death at Florence Prison. A fight with another inmate. A baseball bat was involved, too. Otherwise, nobody saw anything or knew the origin of their quarrel. The shiv that killed him hadn’t been found.

  This would be routine as prison violence goes if not for the note Hunter had sent me at Police Headquarters, promising information about “the train girl, Carrie.” He wanted me to visit, writing that it would be worth my time.

  Now there would be no visit, unless I wanted to commune with a corpse. I was left to speculate. He knew her name and, apparently, something about her murder. Prisons were rich in gossip and intelligence. Did Jack know her killer’s identity? Had another prisoner spilled to him, leading him to write the detective who helped put him away? Would he want a deal—privileges, reduced sentence—if he informed?

  I would never know.

  Somebody was tying up loose ends. Three murders, and the case was still classified as a suspicious death. I was plenty suspicious all right.

  Jack Hunter. Twenty-six and he’d never reach twenty-seven. What a waste.

  The newspaper also reported that eleven men were jailed for violating narcotics laws. Somebody hadn’t been paid off. But, as McGrath assured me, crime was down during the Depression. Another article celebrated that thirty-five hundred men were employed in state mines as of this past December. Nowhere in the story did it tell how many thousands of miners were unemployed. I put Ezra Dell’s watch in my safe and dictated to Gladys a report for Captain McGrath on my Prescott assignment.

  Not for the last time, I wondered if it was time to stop. I had performed the death knock. My work should have been done. Could have been. But, no. I was a stubborn SOB.

  Victoria and I divvied up next steps. I would go to the Arizona Biltmore and ask about Carrie’s summer work there. Victoria would return to Tempe and try to find Carrie’s possessions, left behind at the end of the previous semester. First, she needed to complete a commercial job for the McCulloch Brothers. Commercial photography paid the best, and the McCullochs had the business cornered, so when they tossed her an assignment, she always took it. This one was for photographing a car dealership.

  I put on my best suit, a fedora, and a topcoat. We brought the cold with us from Prescott. Certainly not as cold as up there, but cold for Phoenix. High of forty-eight and low of twenty-five, the kind of chill that only happened a few times a year here. The heater in the Ford made short work of the outside weather as I drove north. Crossing the Arizona Canal, I left the oasis behind and was in the desert. Nothing out here but the tuberculosis camps at Sunnyslope, a few played-out mines, and this new hotel amid the saguaros and beneath Squaw Peak.

  The Biltmore was impressive, four stories tall with stylized geometric bricks, the work of architect Albert Chase McArthur and influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright. It opened at the height of optimism, a few months before the stock market crashed. Now, I came up the curving concrete driveway flanked by plantings and surrounded by winter grass, then slipped the valet a quarter and let him take the car.

  Inside, I went to the front desk and discreetly showed my badge to the clerk, asking for the manager. I wondered how many times I could flash that button before it backfired. McGrath had authorized me to poke into this case. But he had deniability. Nobody had my back.

  Half a dozen guests were gathered in the swank lobby wearing expensive new Stetsons. They were grousing about the weather. Soon an officious little man in a gray double-breasted suit appeared and led me to his office. He was using a pearl cigarette holder. I took off my fedora and followed him.

  “I hope there’s no trouble, Detective…”

  “Hammons.”

  “We scrupulously follow the liquor laws, Detective Hammond, even though Prohibition is on the way out.”

  I thought about correcting him. Hammons was an unusual name. But I let it be. I said, “Scrupulously, except for the Men’s Smoking Room on the second floor.”

  He smiled. “Oh, you know about that.”

  “And I know about the red beacon on the roof you turn on when there’s a raid, and the secret passages that let speakeasy guests exit to their rooms. As I recall, a nearby suite was favored by Clark Gable and Carole Lombard.” Some of the best booze I kept at home was appropriated from periodic raids at the Biltmore.

  “Look, Detective Hammond, we don’t want any trouble. The Depression is trouble enough…”

  I cut him off. “I’m not here about hooch. It’s about her.”

  I slid across a photo of Carrie. It was a straight-on shot taken from Ezra’s house in Prescott and showed her to best advantage, straight blond hair with bangs, expressive eyes, a white button-down blouse, and knees showing below a tan skirt.

  “That’s Cynthia,” he said. “Lovely girl. She worked here last summer as a waitress. The slow season but we have air-conditioning. She was a good employee. Never missed a day. She’s in college in Tempe.”

  Cynthia.

  I slid the photo closer. “This girl was Cynthia? You’re sure?”

  He flicked ash off his cigarette. “Yes, of course.”

  Not only was she staying in Phoenix instead of going home, she was using a false name.

  I asked him for her address, but he told me she was allowed to use a room at the hotel itself, deducting the rent from her earnings
. It was off-season, so the Biltmore had extra space.

  “Did she have gentlemen callers?”

  “Absolutely not.” He drew himself up to his full height, which was a good head shorter than me. “We have rules, and she always abided by them.”

  “Like the rules about liquor.” I smiled. “Did she serve in the speakeasy?”

  He nodded.

  Then I asked to speak with anyone who worked with her and might have been a friend.

  “I hope Cynthia is okay…”

  “I’m afraid not. This is a homicide investigation.”

  He went pale. “Oh, my.”

  In a few minutes, he produced a willowy brunette named Margaret. She sat in the chair beside me.

  “This is Detective Hammond,” he said. “Of the Phoenix Police. I’m afraid something has happened to Cynthia.”

  “Oh, dear,” she whispered, her plain face contorted in a frown.

  I nodded at the manager. “Would you mind giving us a few minutes?” He hesitated. I added, “Alone.” He reluctantly shuffled out, closing the door.

  “Margaret, I want you to be straight with me.” I leaned in. “Nobody needs to know anything you tell me.”

  She nodded.

  “Tell me about Cynthia.”

  “Well, she was good at her job. She very nice to me. I wasn’t used to such a pretty girl treating me well. She gave me money when I was broke. She always seemed to have cash.”

  “Where did she get this money?”

  “Her father was in mining. I don’t know why she had to work. But she was a hard worker, never made out like she was a rich girl.”

  I took a chance. “Her last name was…?”

  “Thayer.”

  Like father, like daughter? Had Ezra Dell come up with this scheme, or had Carrie taught him to use it?

  Margaret caught my mind wandering. “What’s going on, Detective?”

  “As I said, this is a homicide investigation. Someone attacked…Cynthia…last month and then dismembered her body. She was also pregnant at the time.”

  The shock radiated down Margaret’s body. I asked her if Cynthia had any enemies, anyone who might wish her harm, any grudges. No, no, and no. Perfectly loved Carrie/Cynthia.

  “I don’t buy it.”

  She looked away, but I cupped her chin with my hand and made her look at me.

  “Come on, Maggie.”

  “That’s what my friends call me.”

  “Then think of me as a friend.”

  Tears began. “Men like her,” she said. “Liked her, I mean. Cynthia went out a lot at night, when the manager had gone home.”

  “Where did she go?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me. But a man always came to get her. He’d bring her back late.”

  “What man?”

  Now she was crying full out. “I don’t want to get in trouble.”

  “You’re not going to get in trouble. What man? What did he look like? Did you know his name?”

  After a long silence, she gave a massive shrug. “All I knew was what she told me. He was a policeman. He wore a hat like yours.”

  * * *

  I was almost back to town on Seventh Street when a police car came behind me, turned on his siren, and pulled me over. My first thought was that I had used the damned buzzer once too often, and I would be carted off to jail in handcuffs.

  “Detective Hammons,” the uniform said, bending into my rolled-down window. We shook hands.

  “Hey, Watkins. What’s up?”

  “Detective Muldoon has us looking for you. The squeal just came over the radio. You know where the Triple-A junkyard is?”

  “Yep. Seventh Avenue and the tracks, right?”

  “That’s the place.”

  I gunned it south before Watkins even got back to his car. I stayed on Seventh Street past Van Buren, where the Phoenix Union High School students were lined up at the Nifty Nook burger joint. “Twenty-Four-Hour Service,” a 7-Up sign proclaimed. A crossing guard held us up as a covey of coeds crossed, laughing and talking, making me think of Carrie aka Cynthia and her cop friend. Then I went south to Washington Street and turned west, brooding over what Muldoon wanted of me.

  At Seventh Avenue, I waited for a long freight train then crossed the seventeen railroad tracks and pulled into the junkyard. I saw Turk’s broad back and Frenchy Navarre, along with some uniforms. I took a deep breath, set the brake, and stepped out onto the hard soil. The uniformed officers nodded and let me pass.

  “Geno!” Frenchy clapped me on the arm. He was wiry and intense, with a precise manner. He could be fussy and autocratic on the job, but if he liked you, he was pleasant. “I’m glad they found you. We put out a dragnet. A friendly one!” He laughed, high-pitched and sinister, but maybe I was imagining the last part.

  Turk Muldoon came over. He was angular and lanky at six-foot-three, possessing hooded icy-blue eyes. His gaunt face was grim.

  “Take a look at this.”

  He led me to the wreck of a Model A and pointed to a body resting against the old car’s rust-caked door. The man’s throat had been neatly slashed and his head pushed to the left, with blood on his cream sport coat and flannel slacks.

  Zoogie Boogie.

  His legs and arms were in the perfect posture of rigor mortis.

  “I thought you’d want to know,” Muldoon said. “Him being your snitch and all. When was the last time you saw him?”

  “His trial,” I lied, not knowing quite why. “I didn’t realize he’d gotten out.”

  Muldoon sighed. “He might have been safer in Florence, lad, even with what happened to Jack Hunter. We hear Zoogie was collecting gambling money in jigtown.”

  “Coon probably robbed and killed him,” Frenchy said. “They all use razors. If it was nigger killing nigger, it’d be misdemeanor murder.” He roared with laughter.

  Muldoon rolled his eyes and winked at me. I was two places at once: Here, and back in Prescott, where Ezra Dell had been murdered. The colored population there was negligible.

  I reached under Zoogie’s shirt and found a money belt. Inside was a wad of bills. I counted ninety bucks.

  I held it out. “And your colored killer left this?”

  Nobody spoke as I handed the money to Turk. I walked around the car, following furrows in the dirt, and a few feet away behind another junk car was a lake of blood with several spurts from where the blade first hit the artery.

  “He was killed over here, see?” I said. “Then the killer dragged him to the car and leaned him against the door. Make it easier to find him.” I walked back to the body and examined his hands and arms. “No defensive wounds. Whoever killed him took him from behind. Either he was surprised or he knew the killer and felt safe turning his back. It was at least four hours ago, see the rigor setting in?”

  “This is another reason we needed the best homicide detective on the force,” Turk said. “Or used to be on the force. Dumb move by the bosses, letting you go.”

  I shrugged. “Lot of detectives here for a colored slitting the throat of an ex-con.”

  “It’s the first homicide in the city this year,” Frenchy said, propping up his fedora and pulling his pocket watch from a chain that went to his vest, checking the time.

  “Second,” I corrected. “The girl who was dismembered by the railroad tracks.”

  “I heard she fell from the train,” Turk said. I let it be. He said, “You hear that Jimmy Allen died?” He was the night captain. “Dropped dead in his chair, talking to Joe Youngblood one minute and the next he’s gone. Bad heart, but only fifty-five. Maybe that leaves an opening for you to come back.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Never know,” Turk continued. “The Chief likes you. Everybody does.”

  I was skeptical about that, too.

 
Leaning back down, I closed the lids over Zoogie’s dead eyes. First Ezra Dell, then Jack Hunter, now this. Tying up loose ends. Preventing men from giving me information. This was why detectives didn’t believe in coincidences.

  As Frenchy and Turk examined the blood spatter, I reached in Zoogie’s other pocket and found a slip of paper and a key. I thought for a second, then clandestinely pocketed them.

  “He was your friend?” This came from an unfamiliar voice. I turned to see a young priest.

  “I guess I was as close to a friend as he had. His name was Henry Porter, Father…”

  “McLoughlin,” he said. “Call me Emmett. Do you know if he was Catholic?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “No matter.” He knelt beside the blood sinking into the hard soil and began administering last rites in a quiet voice. “Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy…”

  “Two cops, a private eye, and a priest,” Frenchy said. “Sounds like the beginning of a joke. All we need is a rabbi.” He chuckled in a low voice. “I say we go brace the first suspicious jig we see, beat a confession out of him, or get him to roll on somebody. Case closed. Can’t be letting white men be knifed in Phoenix, even no-account shitbirds like Zoogie Boogie. Sends a bad message.”

  I put my hand on his shoulder and walked him a few feet away. “What do you know about voodoo, Frenchy?”

  This time he bent over laughing, holding his ribs.

  “Geno, you got me in stitches.” He switched to a bayou accent. “You thing yo’ Cajun friend from N’Awlens know about de Ouanga an’ de spells, de dragon sticks an’ de gris-gris?” He pronounced it GREE-gree. And laughed hard. Then he pulled the watch from his vest pocket again, checking the time once more.

  I was quite the comedian, but looking back at the dead body propped against the junk car, I was filled with a mixture of sadness and anger. I knelt down and from memory drew a crude representation of the distorted cross I had found at the crime scene where Carrie was laid out.