South Phoenix Rules

by Jon Talton

  The purple car ran up behind and came over into the next lane. It was a Kia. The black-tinted back window came down and a gun barrel came out. I slammed on the brakes, fighting the Prelude as it shuddered, and pulled to the right. My speed dropped in half to forty, and I heard the tires scream behind me. The Kia shot ahead momentarily. It lacked a license tag. That came from a forward glance I made while trying to watch the five lanes of freeway I was trying to thread. The back of a semi came within inches of the front bumper, then I slid into a slot between two more trucks, changed lanes again, and hit the Sixteenth Street exit. A cascade of horns followed my moves. I thought I heard a collision behind me. Where the hell was a cop when you needed one?

  “David?”

  “Stay down.”

  I swung south on Sixteenth and blew past Roosevelt doing seventy, swerving between cars. Unfortunately, the rear view gave me no peace.

  “Fuck.”

  I don’t know how he crossed that many lanes of freeway after overshooting me by ten car-lengths, but the purple car was a block behind, the streetlights making it glow. The driver was expert. And determined. I unholstered the Python and set it on the seat.

  Shooting the driver might slow them down.

  Then I hit on a better plan.

  Phoenix’s traffic lights are generally set so that if you do the speed limit, you’ll hit green. So I doubled the speed limit and went effortlessly through Van Buren, Washington, and Jefferson, then crossed the railroad yards on the narrow overpass. Our pursuers easily matched me and bumped us twice. But I kept changing lanes. He wasn’t going to get alongside, or get ahead and pull a PIT maneuver: Tactical ramming.

  All I needed was one more intersection and in a few seconds Buckeye Road flashed past. Susie’s Mexican food was closed and dark. Another half mile and I turned right into the central city precinct of PPD. It was close to shift change and cruisers were coming and going. Scores of marked units were parked and off-duty cops were walking to their civilian cars. The Kia continued on south, not changing speed.

  They knew they’d get another shot.

  It took a long time before my heart rate dropped down or before I would allow Robin to get in the front seat. It took even longer before we ventured out, behind a police SUV heading north.

  “Aren’t we going inside? Report this?”

  I said no. I had no license tag or decent description of the suspects, and I didn’t want to spend the rest of the night in Kate Vare’s clutches. I followed the PPD unit all the way to Roosevelt. It was one a.m. and no purple car was behind us. At Roosevelt, I turned left and slipped through the dense old Garfield district, then past the darkened art galleries on the other side of Seventh Street, bumped over the light-rail tracks by Trinity Cathedral, and headed home. I circled the house twice with the car lights off. Our PPD minders were off tonight. The street seemed empty. Then I took the chance of turning down the alley, where we could be hemmed in and ambushed. I kept the lights off. But the only commotion was the barking dog two doors down.

  Later, after some time spent on the computer, I lay in bed in a T-Shirt and sweatpants. The Python under my pillow, the Five Seven on the nightstand, and I went through the events of the evening and tried to formulate a plan. How had they picked us up at the Sonic? I didn’t see any tail when we had first pulled out of the garage into the alley, then onto the street. Nobody had been watching us; my late-night walks around Cypress told me that. I had missed something, screwed up…what? I lost it in a deep sleep. When I woke up, Lindsey was next to me. But it wasn’t Lindsey. It was Robin, curled against me, facing away, with her hair in my face. It was soft and fresh smelling. I wasn’t startled and thought about running her out, but I could hear her quietly crying, feel her chest shaking and heaving. I put my arm around her and pulled her closer, felt her warmth radiate against me, and we were both quiet. In the morning I was alone on the mattress and sure I had imagined the whole thing.

  9

  Kate Vare stood on the doorstep a little after nine. She held a coffee travel mug with the city of Phoenix logo wrapped around it. She said she was there to take the evidence seal off the garage apartment. We could use it again. I led her up the stairs and she pulled the label off the door.

  “So this means what?”

  “To me, it’s misdemeanor homicide,” she said. “Asshole-on-asshole crime. Now we have one less asshole in the world. I’ve got plenty of cases where real people have been hurt or killed.”

  She was enjoying this way too much.

  “And what about Robin? She’s a real person.”

  “If she’s telling the truth, we don’t have any further questions.”

  “A beheaded Sinaloa cartel hit man and no further questions?” I stared past her, taking in the view at treetops from the walkway. The air was yellow brown. “What happened to your big media event? Your major case?”

  “Things change, Mapstone.” She cocked her head and looked up at me. “Do you see any media? I don’t see any media. Meanwhile, we’ve got a new round of layoffs coming.”

  “I’m sure Wal-Mart will hire you.”

  “Oh, I’ll be around,” she said, sipping her coffee.

  So I told her about the chase the night before with the Kia. She shrugged.

  “Did you file a report?”

  I shook my head.

  “Maybe it was a robbery attempt.” One eyebrow went up. “Maybe you imagined it all. You look fine now. So if you’re worried, file a report. Meanwhile, if Ms. Bryson remembers anything she wants to tell us, call me.”

  Vare turned like a figurine on a music box and stalked away. I swear she was smiling.

  “She’s told you the truth.” Mostly. “Do your damned job, Kate!” I spoke to her back, which disappeared into the house.

  I spent the day writing a grant proposal, to fund a history I wanted to write of Phoenix. If I was going to make my re-entry into academia, I needed to publish again. And the histories of the city were lacking. Brad Luckingham’s book left out so damned much and VanderMeer’s wasn’t even in print any longer. I fretted about my future. Every job was being chased by six unemployed persons, and the competition was much greater among people with advanced degrees in the humanities. The situation was even worse in Phoenix, by far the largest city with only one real university. I hated to be at the mercy of ASU. Although I had gone there as an undergrad, I had long since moved on. But I really needed this job. And they had come after me, several high-ranking folks urging me to apply for the job after Peralta lost the election. By the end of the day, my eyes hurt from so much computer time. Robin did yoga in the guest room and stared out at the interior courtyard, saying little.

  In the afternoon, she wanted to know about the family photos on the bedroom dresser. There were my grandparents in black-and-white, around the time they married: 1912, when Arizona became a state. They looked pleasantly unsmiling at the camera, he in his narrow tie and coat, she with raven black hair and wearing a high-necked blouse. The mother and father I never knew were in several photos, my father a surprise baby born to grandmother when she was in her thirties, when they didn’t think they could have children. One picture showed him in the war, in his fighter pilot’s jacket and a P-51 Mustang behind him. “Dashing,” Robin commented. All these people looked impossibly young. Another photo: my parents and me as a baby, taken a few weeks before they flew off to Denver and never arrived. I told her stories that didn’t cut too deep.

  “You’re lucky to know your past,” she said. “I don’t know anything about my dad. I only knew Linda’s mother a little, we were on the road so much.” Linda being her and Lindsey’s mother, always referred to by her first name.

  She sighed and looked at the pictures. “When I was sixteen, one of Linda’s alcoholic boyfriends burned down our garage. All the family photos were lost. You should have seen Lindsey Faith. She was the beauty. I was the ugly duckling.”

  “I doubt that,” I said. “I wish I would have
asked more when my grandparents were still alive. Grandmother knew the entire family history.”

  “So no brothers or sisters,” she said. “What about other family?”

  “My grandmother had a sister. She had a beautiful acreage on Seventh Avenue, when it had irrigation ditches on either side and big trees. But she died in 1976.”

  “God, you really are alone.”

  I sprang up and dug into the closet. “Take a look at this.” I showed her a scrapbook that Grandmother had kept, page after page of old postcards from Phoenix in the 1930s and 1940s. One showed a narrow Central Avenue lushly bordered by palm trees and manicured grass. Other postcards were from places they had visited, plus miniatures of the labels that went on the citrus crates that were shipped out when this was a farm town. “Arizona Beauty.” “Big Town Grapefruit.” “Desert Call.” “Westward Ho.” “Kathy Anne Melons.” All were colorfully, lusciously illustrated in the style of the day.

  I told her about the rich agricultural valley this had once been, even when I was young. We grew oranges, grapefruits, lettuce, cabbage, summer squash, tomatoes, beets, strawberries, cucumbers, watermelons and more. Just add water to the alluvial soil of the Salt River Valley and almost anything could flourish, especially with the ingenuity of our farmers and the water from our mighty dams and canals. Phoenix had one of the nation’s largest stockyards and major packinghouses. We shipped our produce all over the nation in long trainloads. It had almost all been lost to tract houses and shopping strips. Without a ten-thousand-mile supply chain, this city would starve. I was grateful my grandparents hadn’t lived to see it.

  “What’s this?”

  She pointed to a post card showing long red, pink, and white rows of flowers, framed by palm trees and the South Mountains. I told her about the Japanese flower gardens that once ran for miles along both sides of Baseline Road. The way the north side of the flower fields swept down toward the city, interrupted by citrus groves and ranches in what was then a largely rural south Phoenix. How my grandparents took me down there most Saturdays, were we would buy cut flowers for the house from one of the simple tin, open-faced buildings facing what was then a two-lane highway.

  “It’s so beautiful,” she said. “And they plowed it all under to build houses and apartments. I can’t believe it.”

  Neither could I.

  The pictures and the postcards entranced Robin. I left her and she spent two hours with the scrapbook.

  As the evening advanced to ten, I told her I was going for a walk and to stay in her room. I set the newly installed alarm and didn’t want her to come out and trip the motion detectors. She said to be careful. It was midnight in Washington and Lindsey hadn’t called. She had never gone three days without calling.

  I dressed in black and had the Python on my hip. I took the alley west to Fifth Avenue to avoid rousing the dog. The night was chill and the air tasted dusty. It was so quiet I could hear a train whistle from the yards over at Nineteenth Avenue, nearly two miles away. Instead of walking around the block as I had done before, I walked to Vernon, two blocks north, then moved fast back to the east, popping out of the pedestrian entrance in the wall that closed off the street near Central. The bell and whoosh of a light-rail train went by. I cut back down to Cypress and came in from First Avenue, moving toward the house from the block to the east. I had made a wide circle around our house, the better to see the perimeter.

  The pickup truck sat against the north curb, near the far corner. It was a compact job, dark paint, and it was occupied. As I got closer, I could see an arm dropping out of the driver’s side with a glowing cigarette. Closer, near the house where the state appeals court judge lived—he and his wife had a musical group on the side—I made out the tag and memorized it. It was not law enforcement. Whoever was in the truck had a perfect view down Cypress to our house, and could see if we drove out the alley onto Third Avenue. It was also parked in front of the two corner houses that were for sale and unoccupied—a great spot if you didn’t want to attract attention. This was how they had picked us up last night.

  I counted on two advantages: my quiet old Nike’s, and the hope that he would be staring ahead. I had other hopes: that he might be bored and careless. But you can’t live on hope. I pulled the big Colt and walked with the barrel pointed down.

  As I got to the left rear of the truck he dropped the butt on the street, where it joined a dozen of its colleagues. Almost immediately, a match flared in the cab, illuminating only one occupant, then it went dark and the hand flicked it out the window.

  “Smoking’ll kill you.”

  He still had the cigarette in his mouth and his arm outside the cab when I got to his side. I stood just behind him so he couldn’t really see me, just like they teach about handling a traffic stop. The difference was that I had the Python’s barrel pointed at his head. He turned and bumped into it with his cheek.

  “And so will I. Put your right hand on the dash.”

  My finger was on the trigger guard, but he didn’t know that. I didn’t want to accidentally blow his head off. I was taking a chance, though. If his left arm had been inside, he had the opportunity to open the door suddenly and knock me to the ground. I could almost see the thought bubble above his head.

  “Keep your left arm where it is.”

  He looked Hispanic and about my age, with a large head and black hair combed straight back. He was wearing jeans and a checked short-sleeved shirt, with tats on his lower arm. He slowly tossed the smoke out the window and laid his hands on the dashboard.

  “Where’s your weapon?”

  I nudged him again with the barrel and he said, “Right on the seat beside me. I’ll be happy to show you if you’re willing to fight like a man.”

  “Hand it out. Use your weak hand.”

  He started to move his left and I cracked his temple with the barrel.

  “You’re a lefty, asshole. I saw you light the cigarette.”

  “Chingaso.”

  “With your mother, asshole. She liked it a lot. Hand out the gun very slowly. Keep your left hand where it is.”

  The gun came up and I took it. A black TEK 9, one of the old gang-banger weapons of choice, no doubt converted to full-automatic fire. I moved back two steps, clicked on the safety, and tossed it on the asphalt behind me. The street was empty and the lights were off in most of the houses. No cars even came by on Third Avenue.

  I pulled on the door handle.

  “Out and on the pavement, very slowly.”

  He obliged grudgingly, dropping to his knees, then lowering himself face down with his arms straight out. He knew the routine from much experience. Everyone should have a career, and here was a career criminal. A chain dangled down from his neck holding a silver cross. I did a quick pat-down, finding nothing but a wallet. I stuck it in my pants.

  “You robbing me?”

  “Sure. What are you doing here?”

  “Smoking.”

  “Why are you watching the street?”

  Suddenly the streetlights went sideways and I was on my back, barely avoiding the hard pavement with the back of my head. His bulk was immediately on top of me. I fought to breathe as he grabbed with both hands for the revolver. Stupid, stupid rookie mistake, standing too close, not watching—he had reached for my ankle and pulled me down. He was strong. Years doing weights in prison will do that. And I only held control of the Python in one hand. I had just enough strength to toss it out of his reach.

  He tried to scramble for it and that’s when I brought my knee into his balls. I felt a satisfying fleshy connection and he made an “oomph” sound. It gave me enough time to flip him over and slam the heel of my hand into his nose. I heard cartilage snap and a glob of blood spurted in his upper lip. I sprang up and got hold of the Python again, turning around in time to see him crawling for the TEK 9.

  “Don’t!” I was panting and bouncing on the balls of my feet, adrenaline sending me ten feet in the air. He looked
back and studied me.

  “You had to think about it,” he huffed, pain pinching his face. “That’s the thing about guys like you. You hesitate. You think.”

  I was in a two-handed shooting stance now, his upper torso lined up in the Python’s precision sites, three feet away. I said, “Don’t make me think too long.”

  He put his head on the street and brought his legs up, giving in to the agony down in his crotch.

  “Motherfucker.”

  I took the opportunity to kick him in the side.

  “Fuuuck! I’m filing against you, homes, police brutality.”

  So he knew who I was. This was no small-time burglar or car thief prowling the neighborhood.

  “Guess what, genius. I’m not a cop anymore. I’m just another concerned citizen.” His head rose and he watched me closely. His pupils seemed to dilate despite the streetlights.

  “I’m asking you again: Why are you watching the street?”

  His bit his lip to fight the pain. “You know the drill, homes. I got nothing to say.”

  “You sound like somebody using dialogue out of an eighties gang movie.” I forced myself to ratchet down the barely controlled hysteria inside me. I had almost lost my gun. “You’re not coming back here. And I want you to send a message to your keepers, asshole. The woman who lives down the block didn’t have anything to do with anything.”

  “Says you.”

  “That’s right. And you’re going to have to take my word for it. She doesn’t know anything. She doesn’t have anything. She hasn’t crossed anybody. No venganza.” Revenge. “Your friends didn’t even kill the right guy. They killed an innocent civilian and the cops aren’t going to just drop it.”

  “Not what I hear,” he muttered.

  Now how did he know that? I poked his sore side again with my shoe and he winced.

  “You kicked me in my balls, man!”

  “You’re lucky I didn’t just shoot your ass.”

  “Next time, homes. Next time. I won’t hesitate.”