City of Dark Corners

by Jon Talton

  He sighed. “You turned into a hell of a detective.”

  “And now I have your prints.”

  After a long silence punctuated by the locomotive whistling ahead, the familiar brogue resumed. “I never figured you’d get that far, lad. But you did, and so you might say this rendezvous between the two of us was inevitable.”

  Muldoon pointed at a vast shimmering body of water off to the west. “That’s the Salton Sea. Sits below sea level. Happened by accident, you know, when a canal broke and the Colorado River poured water in here for two years. It was never meant to happen. But there it is. Surprising but inevitable.”

  “Here’s the piece I don’t understand, Turk. The gold pocket watch. How did that end up at an Okie camp east of town?”

  “Baby Girl gave it to me as a gift in better times. Later… Well, I knew it was too risky to keep it, so I gave it to a drifter. He looked like he could use some luck, move out of town, and nobody would ever find the watch.”

  “But I did find it. You taught me well, Liam.”

  He tossed the nail over the observation car’s three-foot-high brass railing and it flew out into the night like a red comet. “I miss those good times, lad, the ones with you and me. Catching the strangler. I’d admit to feeling a bit jealous of what a smart and capable detective you’d turned out to be, and so quickly.”

  “But why would you kill your child?”

  “She wasn’t pregnant. That was a ruse to manipulate me.”

  “She was pregnant. Don had a postmortem carried out.” I took a risk and continued. “She made her lovers use rubbers, but you refused. Only you could have been the father.”

  He stared at me. “Oh, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…”

  Then he came fast, very fast for a big man, and ripped me up from the chair. Next, I was hanging backward over the railing with his hands around my throat.

  “Go easy, lad, and at this speed it will be over in no time at all. Only a little pain, then sweet oblivion.”

  But I wasn’t going easy. I brought my knee up and connected with his groin. He let go. I gasped sweet breath and rose to my feet as he threw a haymaker in my direction. But he was off-balance, hurting in his balls, and I easily evaded the punch. I delivered a series of my own sharp jabs to his eyes and gut and kneed him in the groin again for good measure. He was bent nearly to the floor, groaning.

  “Stay down. I’m taking you back to Phoenix under arrest.”

  He moaned, “That will never happen, lad.”

  In an instant he threw himself past me and was over the brass railing. I don’t know if my punches had blinded him or if this was deliberate, suicide. Then he had second thoughts and grasped the railing desperately.

  I braced myself and brought my arm toward him. “Reach up, Liam, and take my hand!”

  The ties and ballast flew beneath him. His eyes were full of terror.

  “No, lad. But thank you for trying.”

  He let go.

  I watched his body tumble hard onto the railbed, roll and roll, arms and legs akimbo, until it was devoured by darkness.

  Author’s Note

  Barry Goldwater became a Phoenix City Councilman in 1949 at the urging of Harry Rosenzweig, running as a reform candidate. In 1952, he was the surprise winner of a seat in the U.S. Senate. Goldwater’s Department Stores was sold in 1963. Barry Goldwater is widely credited with being a pivotal figure in the rise of modern American conservatism. He was the Republican nominee for president in 1964, losing to Lyndon Johnson. Although never officially connected to organized crime, Goldwater enjoyed the company of a fast crowd. When he died in 1998, Barry Goldwater was the most beloved figure in Arizona. He maintained a long friendship with Gus Greenbaum, who attended his funeral.

  Gus Greenbaum enjoyed a long career in organized crime, becoming legendary as a turnaround artist for Las Vegas casinos. He was dependable and professional, “master of the skim”—where the mob stole money from casino winnings before it could be recorded and taxed. Greenbaum didn’t want to leave Phoenix and repeatedly asked to retire so he and his wife could enjoy their home there. But the Outfit kept calling him back to fix problems at casinos. He was torn between a desire to live full-time in Phoenix and his love of the Las Vegas excitement—and being a big man in the town. Greenbaum became an alcoholic and a heroin addict. The Outfit began to question his reliability. This proved true when they found the master of the skim was skimming himself, and too much to be tolerated. In 1958, he and his wife were assassinated in their Encanto-Palmcroft home in Phoenix. The crime was never solved.

  Sharlot Hall came to Arizona Territory as a child in 1882. In 1906, she was active in efforts to prevent Congress from making Arizona and New Mexico one state. Her epic poem, “Arizona,” was placed on the desk of every congressman. She served as territorial historian from 1909 to 1912, when Arizona became a state. When Calvin Coolidge won the presidency in 1924, Hall was deputized as the elector to present Arizona’s three Electoral College votes in Washington, D.C. In 1927, she moved her extensive collection of documents and artifacts to the old territorial Governor’s Mansion in Prescott and opened it as a museum. The Sharlot Hall Museum continues to operate in downtown Prescott.

  Winnie Ruth Judd’s death sentence was commuted, and she was sent to the state insane asylum (Arizona State Hospital). She escaped six times between 1933 and 1963. After her final escape, she became the live-in maid for a wealthy San Francisco Bay Area family using a false name. Once unmasked, she was returned to Arizona. After a legal fight including famed defense attorney Melvin Belli, Judd was paroled by Governor Jack Williams. A radio announcer who had gained fame broadcasting coverage of the original Judd trial, Williams went on to become mayor of Phoenix and three-term governor of Arizona. Journalist Jana Bommersbach wrote a book about the Judd case, arguing convincingly that Ruth was railroaded by the Phoenix establishment.

  Kemper Marley became the richest man in Arizona thanks to his liquor business and extensive landholdings, which became very valuable as Phoenix emerged into a major city and spread out. Marley eventually got a part of the Outfit’s gambling-wire business when Greenbaum was called away to Las Vegas. Marley was suspected of orchestrating the bombing death of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles in 1976, but it was never proved. Most Arizonans today know of him from the Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation, which has placed his name on institutions around the state.

  Father Emmett McLoughlin ministered in some of Phoenix’s most destitute areas, becoming a leading advocate of public housing and other assistance for the poor. His efforts at slum clearance brought federal funds to build the Matthew Henson Homes at Seventh Avenue and Buckeye and other projects. He was also named the first chairman of the city’s Housing Authority and founded St. Monica’s Hospital. He left the priesthood after his superiors accused him of neglecting his pastoral duties and demanded he resign as superintendent of the hospital. For many years, McLoughlin remained Phoenix’s foremost advocate of the poor.

  Frenchy Navarre continued on as a detective until he shot and killed Phoenix Police Officer David “Star” Johnson in 1944. Johnson was a popular African American patrolman walking a downtown beat. Although Navarre was acquitted, Johnson’s partner arrived at police headquarters and confronted Navarre. After a wild gunfight, Frenchy was killed. In life, he was friends with Gus Greenbaum and other mobsters.

  Harry Rosenzweig became the founder of the modern Republican Party in Arizona, leading it to dominate a state long run by the Democrats. For decades, he was the political boss of Phoenix. In addition to his jewelry business, Harry and his brother, Newton, developed the high-rise Rosenzweig Center office-hotel complex in Midtown Phoenix. Harry’s connections to organized crime were suspected but never proven.

  Wing Ong graduated at the top of his class at the University of Arizona law school. In 1946, he was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives, the
first Chinese American to reach this milestone in America. He was elected to the state senate in 1966.

  Carl Sims succeeded as a gardening and painting contractor. He went on to work for the Highway Department and become a Maricopa County deputy sheriff. In 1950, Sims was one of the first two African Americans elected to the Arizona House of Representatives.

  Del Webb became the most successful contractor in the Southwest and a very wealthy man. Webb’s projects ranged from the Poston Relocation Center, where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II, to Sun City. He was also a co-owner of the New York Yankees. In 1946, mob boss Bugsy Siegel hired Webb to oversee construction of the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

  Read on for an excerpt from The Bomb Shelter

  another exciting book by Jon Talton, available now!

  One

  At 11:10 on the morning of Friday, June 2nd, 1978, Charles Page spun the platen knob of the Smith Corona Classic 12 typewriter on his desk at the Arizona State Capitol pressroom. It advanced a roll of gray newsprint that fed in from the back. He pecked out a short sentence and spun the knob again so the words were visible above the paper holder. They read:

  Mark Reid, 11:30 a.m., Clarendon House.

  Page slid a reporter’s notebook in his back pocket, picked up his briefcase, and walked a block to his car. A mile away at the newspaper building, the presses were about to start their run, putting out his afternoon paper, the Phoenix Gazette. He didn’t have a story in today’s edition. The committee hearing he covered this morning hadn’t produced news.

  Outside, the temperature was already more than a hundred degrees, headed to a forecast high of 103. After stopping to make small talk with a state senator, he walked quickly across the plaza that separated the two chambers of the Legislature.

  Page was a good-looking man, six-foot-two, still as slender at age forty-eight as he had been at twenty. His wavy hair was light brown, styled in an old-fashioned pompadour with more trendy sideburns. He favored leisure suits.

  It couldn’t have taken him more than five minutes to reach the parking lot, where his nine-year-old red GTO was parked in a space reserved for the press.

  His mother and father called him Charlie. But when he flew for the Air Force in Korea, he gained the nickname Buzz. This had less to do with being a pilot of F-86 Saber fighter jets than the fact that his squadron already had two other men named Charlie. One stayed Charlie, the second became Chuck, and he was christened Buzz. Charlie and Chuck were later shot down in dogfights against Russian-piloted MiGs near the Yalu River, both killed. He survived fifty-six combat missions, came home, graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and, after working at some small papers, found his spot at the Gazette.

  There he made a name writing stories on land fraud and organized crime. He regularly scooped the bigger morning paper, the Arizona Republic. Even though both newspapers were owned by the Pulliam family, each competed fiercely against the other. His success on the land-fraud beat and the other prominent stories he wrote earned him another nickname, “Front Page,” from admiring colleagues. In recent years, he delved into RaceCo, a sports concession that ran the state’s greyhound dog racing tracks and had connections to organized crime. And in 1975, he produced “Strangers Among Us,” a five-day series of stories on the two hundred Mafia figures who had relocated to Phoenix in recent years. He named names, and how some were close to political leaders. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and enhanced Page’s national standing among his peers.

  He wore the acclaim lightly. Buzz was unassuming, a good listener who seemed shy outside his circle of friends who knew him for his loud laugh and practical jokes. This caused the targets of his investigations to underestimate him, which was an advantage. But the results he got made him enemies. All the years of going through documents and sitting at a typewriter also cost him his fighter pilot eyesight. As a result, he wore black, horn-rimmed glasses. Women liked him.

  Then the bosses suddenly moved him to cover the Legislature. That had been a year ago. The demands of investigative reporting cost him his first marriage. People who didn’t know him well believed he was happier to be out of the pressure cooker and the regular threatening phone calls and letters that came with his old beat. He stopped his ritual of putting scotch tape where the GTO’s hood met the fender—if the tape was broken, someone might have tampered with the engine, even placed a bomb there. Or that was what he told his friends and colleagues.

  In fact, he hated the change. He was mostly bored. Nor did the capitol job keep him out of controversy. When the governor named the wealthy rancher Freeman Burke, Sr., to the state Racing Commission in 1977, Page wrote several stories on Burke’s unsavory past and how he had been the biggest contributor to the governor’s campaign. The Legislature refused to approve Burke for the board that regulated, among other things, dog racing.

  I would learn later that “Front Page” was quietly working on a project that would get him back as the Gazette’s top investigative reporter. The week before, he had run into a colleague at a grocery store. He told her he was wrapping up “the story that will bring it all together, blow the lid off this town, finally.” Page was not given to bragging or superlatives. I would also learn that he was keeping a sheaf of sensitive material, too hot to keep in his desk at the capitol bureau or in the Gazette newsroom, much less unattended in his apartment. He moved it around, to hiding places only he knew.

  He was on his way to meet a source at the Clarendon House Hotel in Midtown Phoenix, a couple of blocks north of Park Central shopping center. Buzz Page didn’t know what to make of Mark Reid. He was cautious. Reid was an enforcer for his old nemesis, Ned Warren. Page’s stories helped put Warren in prison on multiple counts of land fraud and bribery. This after years of well-documented crimes and foot-dragging by the County Attorney. Another red flag was that Reid hung out at the dog tracks. Page was convinced that pressure and threats from RaceCo had forced his bosses to send him to the Siberia of the capitol bureau.

  On the other hand, Reid promised Page a piece of information that was critical to his big story. If he never talked to riffraff, he wouldn’t have half as many sources.

  Their relationship went back two weeks, when a source of Page’s at the courts connected him with Reid. They met at The Islands, a bar on Seventh Street in Uptown. Reid said he had evidence that would connect organized crime and RaceCo to prominent local leaders: Congressman Sam Steiger, Senator Barry Goldwater, and Harry Rosenzweig, a long-time Republican boss and businessman. Page was skeptical. Steiger had been a good source on his land-fraud stories. Goldwater had always been friendly.

  But his gut told him to see what Reid had to say. That meeting provided little. Reid said he needed time. He would contact the reporter when a man from Los Angeles visited. The mystery man had the details Reid had dangled. More than that, Reid seemed clued in when Page asked vague questions about his current story. Not enough to show his hand, but to elicit more information from Reid than the reporter gave away. The strand seemed promising.

  The call came that morning. “Meet me at the Clarendon.”

  Page probably avoided the straight shot north. That held too many bad memories. Not long before, his girlfriend Cindy had been killed by a train at the railroad crossing west of the six-points of Grand Avenue, Nineteenth Avenue, and McDowell Road. Friends said he stayed away from that intersection as if it were radioactive. They didn’t know how he continued to work, he was so grief stricken over her death.

  Instead, he went east to downtown, ran a quick errand, and then, back in the car, drove north on Third Avenue. It was a little more than a mile and a half to the Clarendon, through the old residential neighborhoods that were declining—at some point the Papago Freeway was coming through. Midtown, with its new high-rises along Central Avenue and busy Park Central mall, was vibrant, the place to be. Sometimes Page went to the Playboy Club, drank bour
bon on the rocks and looked out at the lights of the city. More often, he had lunch at the Phoenix Press Club. Unless it was necessary to meet a source, he tended to stay away from the nearby bars where the mobsters and lawyers drank.

  Around 11:30 a.m., Page swung the GTO into the second line of spaces behind the hotel and parked. It was an unshaded surface lot like most of those in Phoenix, no tree to keep the car cool as with his capitol parking spot, but nothing could be done. The asphalt lagoon was empty of people and only about one-third full of cars. No sign of Reid. The lunch crowd had yet to arrive.

  Reid wasn’t inside, either.

  Page waited inside the lobby for fifteen minutes and then heard his name being called from the front desk. He picked up the white courtesy phone and heard Mark Reid’s voice.

  “The meeting’s off for today,” Reid said. “The guy from LA chickened out. Maybe I can talk him into it later.”

  “Well, thanks for calling at least. Let me know if he changes his mind.”

  Page put the phone down and walked back out into the heat. There was time to have lunch at the Press Club. He slid into the GTO, started the car, and backed out. The car rolled fifteen feet in reverse when the explosion came. It ripped upward, slightly ahead of the driver’s seat, blowing out the glass of the driver’s side window.