How Do You Like Your Blue-Eyed Boy? (Phoenix Noir Book 1)

by Graham, Barry

  She had a real problem with my background. She was a pacifist, and couldn’t stand even the idea of violence. The fact that I’d killed people scared her, and it scared her even more that I didn’t have a guilt trip about it. She told me vaguely that she’d seen a lot of violence in her childhood—a family thing she didn’t want to talk about—and that consequently she’d always chosen placid or timid men who’d never even gotten into playground brawls in grade school. She said she couldn’t believe she’d ended up living with a trained killer, a professional. I was shocked when she said that, because I’d never thought of myself that way. But, when I considered it, I couldn’t logically deny that it was true. And it freaked her out when I admitted it and told her that I still wasn’t ashamed of it.

  “You can deny it to yourself if you like,” I said to her once. “But I’m not that unusual. There’re lots of people around who seem just like you. But they’ve killed people, and now they’re just trying to make it.”

  When Mara was killed and I started the classes, Janine was disgusted. We couldn’t even argue about it, it was all so black and white to her. She said I was training people to be no better than whoever had killed Mara. I told her that kind of sermonizing was the indulgence of a well-fed, overprivileged white girl. She got angry and said that we shouldn’t discuss it any more. And, most of the time, we didn’t.

  THREE

  It was a Saturday. Sometimes I worked on Saturday afternoons, but never in the mornings. I liked to sleep late. The band met for practice on Sunday mornings, so Saturday was the only day I could do it.

  That morning, though, I was awake. I was supposed to have breakfast with Tim. Since I’d stopped working for him, we’d made a point of getting together at least once a week. I got up at nine—Janine was still asleep – dressed, and drove South to Cafe Arte.

  Tim didn’t show. I called his house a couple of times, and got his machine. When he was nearly an hour late, I realized he wasn’t coming and I got irritated. I wondered if he’d flaked on me or if something had come up. I called my place to see if he’d left a message. Janine answered and said he hadn’t. Fuck it. I had a bagel and some tea and then left. When I got home I went back to bed and slept until one. When I got up, I got into my sweats and drove to Leininger’s Dojo on 32nd Street to work out. It was just after five when I got home.

  “Have you seen the news?” Janine asked me as I walked in the door.

  “No. What’s up?”

  She came over and hugged me. “Thank God. If you have to hear it, I wanted you to hear it from me.”

  “What?’

  “Sit down.”

  “Quit the drama. What’s going on?”

  “This isn’t drama. Sit down.”

  I sat on the couch. She sat next to me and held my hand.

  “Tim’s dead.”

  I just sat there and looked at her. Then I said, “He didn’t show up this morning.”

  “I know. I’m so sorry.”

  I didn’t know what to do, if I should say something, if I should cry. “What happened to him?”

  She hesitated, not wanting me to hear it. “Somebody shot him. He was murdered.”

  “By who?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do the cops know?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Laurie called. She heard something on the news.”

  I went to the bathroom and pissed. The piss was colored orange by the vitamins I took every day. Then I sat down and took a shit. Afterwards I wiped my ass, then washed my hands in the sink. I looked at myself in the mirror on the medicine cabinet. I wasn’t old. At thirty-four, I sometimes felt younger than I’d felt ten years earlier. But I’d lost two friends in the space of eight months. More than a young man should. In my life I’d seen so many friends killed. I didn’t know how many and I was afraid to count.

  I called the cops and asked them about Tim. They wouldn’t tell me shit. So I called Spike.

  Spike was a journalistic legend, up there beside Woodward and Bernstein. Not that he’d ever brought down a government. His fame wasn’t based on one scoop, but on the countless major ones he’d pulled during fifty years in the business. An Englishman, he was already a respected investigative reporter in his own country when he emigrated to the US in his late twenties. He picked up a succession of awards, including a Pulitzer, and worked for newspapers and magazines on both coasts. He wrote feature articles as easily as he cranked out hard news copy, and was as likely to be assigned to interview a musician or actor as he was to be sent to a war zone.

  Part of his legend involved Marilyn Monroe. He was one of a bunch of journalists who’d arranged to interview her at a hotel in LA. When his turn came, there were about a half-dozen others awaiting theirs. Spike went into her suite and didn’t come back out. After the scheduled twenty minutes, Monroe’s press agent went in to find out what was going on. He found Monroe and Spike talking and laughing. She said everything was okay and told her agent not to interrupt again. Spike stayed with her for seven hours. The agent and the journalists could hear them talking. Then there was just silence. But the press party was far from silent. Was Spike fucking her or something? When Spike eventually emerged, he just apologized to them for keeping her so long, then left. The press agent went into the suite, then came out a few minutes later to announce that Monroe wouldn’t be doing any more interviews that day.

  Spike never told anyone what had happened. When his interview was published, it turned out to be a standard celebrity profile that gave no hint of anything personal between interviewer and subject.

  Forty years later, he told me what had happened. Or hadn’t happened. He’d really hit it off with Monroe, and, when he’d finished the interview, they just drank and talked. Eventually she fell asleep in her chair. And for a long time he just sat and watched her sleep, just watched her and wished he could help her be happy. Then he stood up quietly and left.

  I never met the man of the legends. By the time I met Spike, it was all over for him. In his seventies, he had arthritis, so he’d moved to Arizona for the climate. His marriage had collapsed and he had an alcohol problem so severe that he sometimes became delusional.

  In spite of the mess he was in, the Arizona Republic hired him. Even if he was of no practical use to them, just having him on their staff gave them the kind of kudos that’s rarely the province of papers outside of New York, LA, Chicago or DC. They didn’t put him on any major stories—he mostly wrote political commentary or movie and theater reviews.

  The reason for his nickname reflected the fact that he was an anachronism. In the Dark Ages of journalism, before the arrival of computers, they’d used a device called a spike to save articles that weren’t going in the next edition of the paper but might be used later. It was a short metal pole on a solid base. Journalists would keep it on their desks, and if a story was to be “spiked” they’d impale the typewritten pages on it.

  Spike never learned to use a computer. He still used a manual typewriter. And he still used a spike. The typewriter and the spike sat on his desk along with two mugs—one for coffee and the other for whiskey.

  I met him during my time at the Phoenix Weekly. It was at a press club awards dinner. I was there to pick up an award, and Spike was guest of honor. What a come-down for him—from Pulitzers and National Book Awards to regional affairs hardly better than high school prize—givings.

  But if he was bitter he didn’t show it. After I’d gotten onstage and accepted my award and gotten back offstage, Spike came to the table where I was sitting with Tim and Janine. He politely introduced himself, told Tim that he really liked the magazine, and told me that he especially liked my stuff. “There are things that need to be said in Phoenix,” he said as he shook my hand. “I’m glad someone’s saying them.”

  He gave me his card and told me to call him sometime. I did, and we met and had dinner or coffee pretty regularly. Sometimes he’d insist that we meet
in a bar. I don’t drink alcohol, so on those occasions I’d sip soda and listen to him as he got drunk. I think he became quite fond of me, but mainly he liked getting to hang out with a young guy who admired him enough to tolerate his bullshit and humor his delusions.

  “Spike? It’s Andy Saunders.”

  “Hello, Andy.” After nearly fifty years in the US, his English accent still made him sound like he was just off the boat. “I’m very sorry about Tim.”

  “Me too. That’s why I’m calling you. How much do you know about it?”

  “Probably more than you.” He didn’t sound like he’d been drinking. I knew he had—he always did—but he didn’t sound like he was drunk. “What do you know?”

  “Almost nothing. Just that he was shot. And of course the cops won’t tell me anything.”

  “Mmm. They said plenty to me, though. I’m not working on the story, but of course I wanted to know. So I spoke to our heroic law enforcers.”

  “Who did it?”

  “They don’t know. And they don’t expect to find out. Apparently it was a professional job. A contract killing.”

  “No shit?”

  “None whatsoever. And I agree with the cops—they’ll never find the killer.”

  “How come?”

  “Because he most likely drove up from LA or Nogales, did the job and left. How are they going to investigate? He’d have been long gone by the time Tim’s body was found.”

  “Who found it?”

  “Dumb Jerry Voach.” Jerry was mentally handicapped, and was the magazine’s gopher. “He says he saw Tim’s car outside the house, so he was sure he hadn’t gone anywhere. He looked in the window and saw him lying on the floor. Thought he was sick, so he dialed 911.”

  “Did the cops suspect Jerry?”

  “No. They took him in for questioning, but they let him go.”

  “Who do you think wanted Tim dead?”

  He laughed. “A lot of people. Probably the same number who’d like to see you dead. It goes with the territory when you publish the real news. The question is—of those who wanted Tim dead, which would have the wherewithal to have it done?”

  “Okay, how about that, then? Talk to me, Spike. I’m still in shock about this. I’m not really thinking. Is there stuff I should see that I’m not seeing?”

  “Well, there seems to be some disagreement regarding the most likely candidate. The kids at the Republic seem to think Governor Symington is the boy.”

  “But you don’t?”

  “I think the idea is ludicrous. Symington hires lawyers, not hit men. Besides, if he wanted to kill all the people who write bothersome things about him, he’d have to hire a platoon and get them to have at it full-time.”

  I laughed, for the first time in hours. “True.”

  “Personally, I think it has to be Fallowell.”

  That was so obvious it hadn’t occurred to me. Tony Fallowell owned a chain of day-care centers for children. kids in his care were treated so badly that he could have been considered the Joe Arpaio of the kindergarten industry. Tim had run an article on him and he’d lost his license to operate in Maricopa County. But he’d gotten around that by declaring his wife to be the owner, and the centers stayed open. You might have expected him to clean up his business after that, but Tim was able to follow up with a series of articles detailing both awesome incompetence by Fallowell’s staff, and the kind of punishment of little kids that was supposed to have gone out along with top hats and tails.

  The daily papers didn’t investigate, and neither did the local TV stations. I don’t know whether Fallowell bought them off or scared them off. I do know that he tried to buy Tim’s silence, and was told to fuck himself. Tim didn’t leave him alone after that—he reported new findings in just about every issue of the Weekly, and if there were no new findings that week then he summarized all that had happened so far. Fallowell tried threatening him, and found that to be as effective as his attempts at bribery.

  “You think it’s him?” I said lamely.

  “I’m certain it’s him.”

  “But he’d been threatening Tim for months, and nothing happened.”

  “Something’s happened now.”

  “But why leave it so long? Why do it now instead of months ago?”

  “Why do it months ago instead of now? Because he’s not a professional, Andy. He’s just a thug with money. So people normally do as he tells them. He’s used to getting his way. He’s not like Symington. Symington’s every bit as evil, in my opinion, but I don’t believe it would even occur to him to have a person murdered. Not because he’d have any moral compunction about it, but because it’s not what he does. He’s a politician, a professional. He doesn’t let his ego get involved. When you publicly call him a scumbag, he doesn’t react—because he knows he’s a scumbag. He expects to be reviled, and he doesn’t care. Fallowell, however, isn’t used to being stood up to, in public or in private. Tim’s articles weren’t really much of a threat to him—there are plenty of legal maneuvers that would allow him to stay in business—but he still threatened him. He didn’t like these things being said. He wanted Tim shut up.”

  “Have you told the cops what you think?”

  “I mentioned it to them. Whether they take it seriously is up to them. The police don’t like journalists telling them their business.”

  I don’t know how seriously the cops took Spike’s theory. Janine didn’t take it seriously at all.

  “So Spike’s a psychologist now,” she said when I told her.

  “You think he’s wrong?”

  “He may be absolutely right, for all I know—and for all he knows.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean it may be Fallowell who did it, just like Spike says. But there’s no reason to think so. Look at it—Spike’s come up with a whole story, motive, the lot. But he doesn’t know Symington, and he doesn’t know Fallowell. He’s making up psychological profiles and deciding who did what. But is he qualified to do that?”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Look, I know he convinced you. But think about it. You really want to believe him, or believe something, just so it makes sense. You really respect Spike—I think he’s kind of your hero. But look at him—he’s just a sad old man. He’s kind of pathetic, and he knows it. I don’t even know if he really believes what he told you—maybe he just feels important if he can pretend he knows for sure who the killer is, and have somebody as smart as you take him seriously.”

  I nodded. “Yeah. You’re making more sense than he did.”

  She put her arms around me. “Nothing about murder makes sense, babe. Stop trying to understand it.”

  We went out that evening. I didn’t want to, but Janine said she wasn’t going to let me sit home and brood. We went and saw a movie, then met up with some people at the Five and Diner. George and Ricky Retardo were there, and Laurie showed up later. We just hung out, ate and talked. I didn’t want to be anywhere but at home. There was a weird kind of full moon atmosphere that night, a constant air of threat, of something about to happen.

  There were two young guys waiting to be seated. They kept yelling at people to hurry up and vacate their tables. When they finally got a table, they had to pass ours on the way to it. One of them ran a hand over my cropped head and said, “Hey, fuzzy.”

  I just smiled. I was used to it. In spite of my size, I’ve always been a hostility magnet. I don’t have to do anything—just let me sit passively in a room full of people, and some asshole will pick on me.

  “Tell me something,” I said to him. “Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal savior?”

  He gave me a look, but seemed to decide I was too weird to be worth picking on. He went and sat with his friend.

  A few minutes later, Janine got up to go to the toilet. As she came back, one of the guys said something to her. She said something in reply. The guy stood up, and made to touch her.

  It seemed unreal, like a cartoon. It was al
l over before I’d taken it in. Janine dodged his grip, picked up the glass of Coke on the guy’s table and smashed it over his head. Then she shoved the broken end of it into his face. Without pausing to look at what she’d done, she headed for the door. As she passed our table she said, “I’ll head round the block. Follow me and pick me up.”

  There was hysteria in the restaurant. The guy’s face was spurting like a water-pistol, blood spraying out with each beat of his pulse. I stood up. “I think I’m out of here,” I told my companions. “If you’re going to wait for the cops to show, you don’t know who we are, okay?”

  They decided not to linger. They followed me outside. No one tried to stop us from leaving. I don’t think the waitresses were sure who was with who, or what had really happened. I got in my car, started it, drove around the block until I saw Janine, the picture of innocence, strolling along the street.

  “Take me home,” she said as she got in the car.

  “What the fuck happened back there?”

  “He was talking shit to me. I could tell he was doing it so he could get a fight with you. I wasn’t going to play his game. You’ve been through enough today. When he grabbed me, I knew you’d come over to help me, which is what he wanted. So I took care of it first.”

  “You certainly did. Hell.” I drove a few blocks, expecting to see flashing lights appear in my rearview. It didn’t happen. Maybe we were clear. “Did you have to stick the glass in his face after you brained him with it? He’s probably blind.”

  “I didn’t think. It was just a panic thing. Besides, since when were you a pacifist?”

  “I’m not criticizing you, I just thought it was kind of extreme. You’re supposed to be the pacifist.”

  “Doesn’t mean I have to take abuse from some cracker in a diner. Or let him abuse you.”

  I laughed. “You criticize my classes, but maybe you should be teaching them.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “You acted tonight the way I teach my students to act.”