South Phoenix Rules

by Jon Talton

  Now I was running cold, just like training had taught me. I kept him in the gun sight. “There’s not going to be a next time you like, homes. You people aren’t going to be the only ones watching. I’m going to be watching. You won’t know when or where. I’m going to be watching this street, and if I have to blow away some felons, nobody’s going to bother me about it.”

  “If you have the valor to pull the trigger.”

  “You don’t want to find out. Better for everybody that we just drop it.”

  “They won’t drop it, chingaso. They never do.”

  “If they don’t, Estás chingado, hombre.” You’re fucked, man.

  My legs were going stiff, but I went on with it. “Now, you be a good messenger boy and get the hell out of here.” He raised himself with difficulty and fell back into the driver’s seat. I said, “If I see your hand come out of that window, I’ll kill you. If the truck turns around and comes at me, same deal. Drive away. Don’t come back.”

  He looked at me with sad eyes.

  “My wallet…”

  “Adios, asshole. I might need to know your name so I make sure it gets on the street that you talk to cops.”

  He thought about it. He thought about it again. Then he sighed, closed the door, and started the truck. It drove slowly down to the corner and turned north.

  I picked up the TEK 9. He also left his matches. The matchbook was yellow and said Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop, with an address on Bell Road. I put them in my pocket and slowly walked home, my butt and lower back aching, my nerves drained. When I crossed Third, I could make out a pair of taillights several blocks past the traffic circle at Encanto Boulevard, moving slowly away.

  Inside the house I sank gingerly into one of the leather chairs in the darkened living room, sweat against my chest, and my hands shaking so badly I had to put them under my arms. Nausea flooded my middle. I looked at the bookshelves in an urgent attempt to hold onto something steady: the shelves with grandfather’s books and mine, lifetimes of reading and reflection. It was a few minutes before I could will my legs into the bedroom, where I stowed the TEK 9, replaced the Python on the nightstand, and got into my sweatpants for bed. I missed sleeping in the nude. I missed a lot of things about my old life. I sure as hell didn’t know the person who had just done that take-down on the street. Was I willing to shoot the banger? Yes, I was.

  An hour later I was still lying flat on my back staring up at the ceiling. Robin’s door opened quietly and I watched her pad across the landing that separated the two bedrooms. She wore boxer shorts and a T-shirt. Her nipples were obvious even in the semi-darkness. I let her climb into the bed and lie down next to me, resting her head on my shoulder. Neither of us said a word. She put her hand on my bare chest and I fought any feeling. I did not know myself or what I was capable of. It was nearly three a.m. in Washington. I turned away from her and this time I was the one crying while she held me close, her front to my back. I tried very much not to notice the contour of her body against mine, head-to-toe, or to remember how it felt that night on the landing when we were both naked holding onto each other, or how it had felt the other time, when she first came into our lives. My wedding band weighed on my left hand, the room grew cooler and after a long time it dissolved into sleep.

  10

  The man who stood before me at the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop was a middle-aged Anglo with short, gray hair and skin the color and texture of a scrubbed potato. The Arizona sun will do that. His face was unremarkable except for the fact that he lacked one eye. He didn’t wear a patch, frosted glasses, or any kind of prosthetic. Instead, his eyelid hung half-open like a stuck garage door, inviting you to stare into the cavity beyond. His good eye was yellow. He was at least a hundred pounds overweight, which was accented by the tight T-shirt encasing his folds of flab. The front of the shirt proclaimed in yellow capital letters, PEACE THROUGH SUPERIOR FIREPOWER. The butt of a revolver stuck out of his shoulder holster.

  “Colt Python?” I asked.

  “One of my faves, bro.”

  One can always find common ground.

  He stood behind a display counter that ran what looked like a third the length of a football field. It contained every firearm goodie I could think of and quite a few I had never even seen. The old days of a reliable few brands and types of revolvers and some nine-millimeters were long gone. The pistols under the glass were varied and bad-ass looking, plenty of semi-automatics, and a couple that looked like pistol-sized shotguns.

  Behind him was a wall of shotguns and assault rifles, as well as another low counter stocked with ammunition. When Barack Obama was elected president, there was such a run on Phoenix gun shops that even the cops had a hard time finding ammo. They obviously didn’t look here. Around me was the equivalent of a big-box gun store, with tables and shelves full of holsters, magazines, Speedloaders, scopes—every accessory a shooter could want. Combat knives were abundant in another display case. Overhead signs marked each merchandise area. It was the largest gun store I had ever seen, exuding the vibe of a porn shop crossed with a hardware store.

  The sound system was playing tunes from the seventies. “Brandy” was on at that moment, and I cursed to myself—now I’d have it in my head for a week or more.

  The spaces on the wall that didn’t contain firearms held a large American flag hung horizontally and a six-foot-long stained wood plaque reciting the Second Amendment. Bumper stickers also abounded: Illegal aliens SUCK, Stop the Invasion, Every Juan Please Go Home, and Illegal Alien Hunting Permit among them.

  “I see you have good taste, too.” He eyed the Python on my hip. “May I?”

  Never give up your gun, Peralta taught. The night before I had almost carelessly lost it. Now I unholstered it, opened the cylinder, and dropped the shells into my palm. Then I handed it across the counter to him.

  He snapped the cylinder back in, pointed it at me. “Bang!” He laughed with a strangely high-pitched voice, like a boy soprano, and his belly tectonically undulated the folds of his T-shirt. His bad eyelid fluttered then froze again grotesquely in place.

  “You’re not the jumpy kind, huh?”

  “You just caught me on a slow day.” I watched him evenly. He examined my gun.

  “Nice action. You’ve taken care of it. Want to sell it?”

  I told him no, which was a shame, he said, considering they weren’t made any more and he’d give me top dollar.

  “Shoot it much?”

  “Every now and then. Helps me relax.”

  “You bet your ass.” He handed the gun back to me. “I’m Barney.”

  “David.”

  We shook hands. He was one of those guys who wanted to hurt you with a handshake. I returned the grip back at the same intensity. He appraised me freshly with his good eye and the handshake ended.

  “So what can I do you for?”

  “Never been in. Looks like a great store. I had a friend pass on one of your matchbooks and I thought I’d check it out.”

  “I got a hundred boxes full of ’em. Help yourself.” He tapped on the open cardboard container of matchbooks by the cash register.

  “But you’re not a pawn shop?”

  “Used to be. But the chains drove me out of it. Everybody’s pawning shit, the economy’s so bad now, but an independent outfit has a really hard time making it. Anyway, I get better margins on guns. Now, if you’re a revolver man, I’ve got everything your firepower-seeking heart would desire. If you want more, got a special going on Sig Sauer P238 Equinox. Sweetest little concealable you’d ever want.”

  “They’re nice.” I knew: Lindsey had one. “I’m just kind of browsing for home defense.”

  “I got you,” he said, poking his eye-socket with a stubby finger. “Like to say to folks, ‘I got my eye on you!’ ” This brought more child-like laughter. “I don’t always look like this. Usually have in my glass eye. But last night I went down to this club, see. That one down on Indian School? The St
uffed Beaver, with all the neon out front? Was buying this stripper drinks—Jager shots—and she’s never seen a glass eye before. Get it? Seen a glass eye?” I was in the presence of comedic genius. “Anyway, I pop it out and show it to her and she fools around with it and puts it in her mouth and next thing you know, shit, she swallows it! Fuck, that eye cost real money!”

  Up until now, he had been speaking in a flat, Midwestern accent. Suddenly, a little Southern came in. “I was fixing to get real mad, started yelling at her, and she turns green and runs to the bathroom. I run after her. Well, kinda wobbled—I was three sheets. I go right into the ladies room behind her, and she runs into one a the stalls, bends over and, hell… Throws up! My glass eye right there in the toilet with all that barf from drinking all day and not eating, guess ’cause she has to keep her figure.”

  “Not good,” I ventured.

  “Damned straight. She also heaved up her dentures. Girl can’t be more than twenty-five. Pretty little thing. Named Destiny. And she’s got false teeth.” He sighed. “What can you do? So here I am without my eye.”

  At least he didn’t call himself “Deadeye.”

  I repeated, “Home defense.”

  “Got it.” Now he was from Iowa or Nebraska again. “Here’s this little Kel Tec number back here.” He pointed to one of his guns on the wall. It looked like something from a science fiction movie. “Gas piston. Ten rounds, but I can give you a deal on a thirty-round mag. Sweet. Just remember, if you do ’em in the yard, drag the body inside your door. Self-defense. Now, ’course if you’re a traditionalist, which it looks like you are, I recommend a Remington 870, twelve-gauge, with a pistol grip…”

  While he went on, I nodded, and checked the place out more. It was retail space that had gone through many incarnations. The drop ceiling looked as if it hadn’t been replaced since LBJ was president, and it had dark yellow water stains in some spots. At the back of the long room was an alcove and scarred double doors. Still, a new surveillance camera was mounted in one corner, inside a saucer-like cowling that allowed it to swivel to different angles. I watched it as it turned. Also at the back was a mirror, probably one-way glass. He was the only worker visible in the store but I sensed he wasn’t alone. I was the only customer, which seemed odd, even if it was the middle of a workday and Phoenix was in its worst recession in history.

  “Let me think about it,” I said, told him he owned a great store.

  “I’m proud of it.” He rubbed at his missing eye. “Been out here twenty years and seen what they did to this place. Tax and spend. Open borders. A goddamned invasion. Islamo-fascists coming, too. No wonder people are scared and need to buy guns for home defense. At least we got rid of that spic sheriff.”

  Something primal inside cocked my muscles to reach across the counter, pull his head down into the glass display case by his ears, and add to his facial deformity. I could have done it before he ever got his fat hand to his gun. I did a quick relaxation exercise Sharon Peralta had taught me. I took a deep, grateful breath. The past was gone and the future was unknowable, even if I couldn’t face it. All I had to do was be in that moment. My lungs filled with air.

  “You okay, mister?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m just thinking about how much money I’d like to come spend here.”

  He smiled wide, showing a set of teeth right out of Hollywood. “Don’t let the old lady know. She’ll want you to buy furniture or some such shit. But if she’s a shooter, bring her by! Got an underground range!”

  I thanked him and walked out the door, the laser sensor sounding a loud tone back in the store. From the speakers, Warren Zeavon was kicking in “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

  Robin was sitting in the car when I got back. Her hands were covering the Chief’s Special that sat between her legs. Today she had refused the protective vest and I hadn’t argued.

  “Any trouble?”

  “Just sitting out in this suburban hell. Maybe that’s unfair. Somebody built this, sweated over it, maybe was proud of it. I sat here wondering if anyone could paint this as a landscape…capture the desolation. How small it all is under the sky. I wish I had the talent to paint. I don’t, so I studied the ones who did.”

  “You’re not through yet,” I said.

  She smiled slightly. “What now?”

  “Let’s sit awhile and watch.”

  “I’ve never been on a stakeout. But why are we doing this?”

  “Following a clue.”

  “Why not let the lady cop who hates you do it?”

  I shrugged.

  “Because she doesn’t give a damn. She thinks you’re hiding something, and she wants to squeeze you.” That’s why we sat here. A connection between Jax/Verdugo and the gun store might be tenuous. It might be important. I had contacts beyond Kate Vare. I couldn’t protect Robin alone. Maybe I was a fool to think I could protect her at all. They won’t drop it, the scumbag had said last night. They never do.

  Robin said, “Do you believe me?”

  “Yes.”

  I said it with a certainty that I rationally had confidence in. It wasn’t because of the nights we had spent side-by-side. I told myself that. The silence lasted long enough for the mood to change.

  “You miss the cops, David. You do. Don’t deny it.”

  She smiled wide, making her face beautiful, and starting to resemble her sister. I set that thought aside and pulled across the street into the lot of another decaying set of storefronts, then parked beside some clothing-donation containers. To the south, Shaw Butte and the North Mountains were befogged in the dirty air of three million cars. When I was in high school, Bell Road had been a two-lane highway through a mix of flat desert and used-car lots. The city planners had vowed it would be the northern boundary of Phoenix for decades to come. Now it was six lanes wide and the city limits were many miles farther north. The growth machine had come and gone, a freeway paralleled it a quarter mile north, and Bell had been left seedy for much of its route from Sun City across Phoenix until it became more prosperous-looking near the Scottsdale city limits. Every place changes. I wondered why my city had to change mostly for the worse.

  As cars sped by doing sixty, I told Robin about how empty it once was up here. My buddies and I launched model rockets in the empty desert a few miles to the east. “I wish I could have seen it back then,” she said. I heard Lindsey, in her former voice, saying, “Tell me a story, History Shamus,” and my heart gnawed at my breastbone.

  My eyes stayed on the ugly building across the street. The gun store anchored an aging, low-slung shopping strip with a discount smoke shop as the only other tenant. Its sign was gigantic: JESUS IS LORD PAWN SHOP in five-foot black letters against a bright yellow backdrop. Beneath those: GUNS, KNIVES, AMMUNITION. The meek shall inherit the earth but not Bell Road.

  We sat for an hour with the windows open, a gentle breeze blowing between us, the winter sun in our eyes. Half a dozen customers came and went, always solitary, middle-aged white men in pickup trucks or SUVs. I engaged in profiling and was not disappointed. For a place whose matchbook was found on a Hispanic banger, this was not exactly an oasis of diversity. One man carried a rifle into the store and came out empty-handed. The others carried out white plastic bags weighed down with guns or ammunition.

  Finally, I spoke into the cool air. “We can’t keep doing this.”

  “I know. I want lunch.”

  “You know what I mean. We’re headed for trouble.”

  “It feels good” She brushed back her hair and smiled at me. “I like it. You do, too. You haven’t done anything you have to feel guilty about or confess to Lindsey Faith.”

  I stared into the pawnshop. It had windows tinted aluminum and bars across them. Small planes flew overhead, coming into Deer Valley Airport.

  “Nothing’s going to happen unless you want it to.” Her voice was even and damnably soothing. “And if it does happen and afterwards it bothers you, that’s your hang-up.
I decided a long time ago that I don’t like to be alone, and I don’t have to be, so I won’t be. I sure as hell am not going to feel guilty.”

  “Robin, you’re my sister-in-law.” I looked at her again, the sun turning her hair to a rich gold color.

  “David, we have slept together. Literally. Didn’t they do that on the frontier all the time…”

  “Not that way.”

  “Whatever. If you have an erection that persists more than four hours, as they say in the ads.” Her smirk was brief. “Things happen between people. Chemistry, passion. Lindsey Faith is my half-sister and the truth is, your marriage is falling apart.” She put her hand firmly on mine. “Now don’t get pissed off. It’s just the truth. You’ve both been through a lot. When was the last time you made love to her? When was the last time she really wanted to make love to you?”

  I wasn’t angry with Robin. I did fight to keep my throat from closing off.

  “There’s a lot about my sister that you don’t understand,” she said.

  It ate me up, but I had to admit she was right.

  Another pickup pulled in and another white guy got out, walking with a wide stride into the store. “Anyway,” she went on, “You don’t have to worry. I’m not going to fall in love with you.” Her hand left mine. “Which doesn’t mean I don’t like you. I do. I love the feeling of your body against mine. I just don’t intend to get under your spell. That would be trouble.” In a different tone, she said, “Check this out.”

  The long black Chevy Suburban bumped loudly from the street into the lot and drove straight to the front of the gun shop. It didn’t use a parking space but pulled up just ahead of the door. Two muscular Hispanic men got out. They weren’t bangers. Both wore suits without ties. The driver did a subtle scan of the surroundings and then they both went inside. They moved with a limber, professional gait. If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were cops.

  Another half hour passed, enough time for the other customer to leave. Soon after, the driver came out and opened the back of the Suburban—it had double doors. Then my new pal Barney wheeled out a cart stacked with long, thin boxes. The three men hefted them into the SUV. The operation took ten minutes at the most, but it was enough for three loads on Barney’s cart. The three men shook hands and the Hispanics sped away. Unless they were buying ammunition for local law enforcement, they were definitely not cops. At least not friendly ones.