South Phoenix Rules

by Jon Talton

  That was true enough, too. But I was pissed. “You’re either incompetent or you’re holding back, Kate. It’s one or the other. Which one is it?”

  Her eyes betrayed surprise.

  “I guess incompetent.” Two beats later. “That, plus they’re keeping you out of the loop because you’ll be facing a grand jury. Ain’t case management a bitch?”

  She slapped her portfolio closed.

  “God, I wish I had enough to hold you.” She stormed to the door and turned back. “It won’t take me long to get it.” Then, to someone outside, “Cut the son-of-a-bitch loose.”

  ***

  A sympathetic uniform gave me a ride home, where I found that a neighbor had cut a piece of plywood and placed it over the bedroom window. Aside from the eighty-year-old glass lost and the bullet holes in the bedroom wall, the main casualty of the overnight mayhem had been a mature myrtle planted years ago by Lindsey, now dead by hand grenade. The area below the window was black and some of the stucco had been blown off.

  My cell rang. It was Demetrius Smith.

  “How fast can you be here? I think we can get him.”

  I could get there in fifteen minutes, the freeways running lighter thanks to the recession. I met him in the parking lot of a shopping center near the grandly named Chandler Crossing Estates, which was just more suburban schlock no matter the moniker. I found the Mercedes and climbed inside.

  “They’re in there, grocery shopping.”

  “They must have good taste and lots of money.” It was an A.J.’s, the upscale food store in town. Its parent company, the last locally owned grocer in Arizona, was in bankruptcy reorganization.

  I noticed he appreciated firepower: a .44 magnum Colt Anaconda with a six-inch barrel sat underneath his sport coat. It was the big brother of my Python.

  “He’s only got one of these kids with him. So we ought to be able to take him. But don’t take anything for granted, Mapstone. He’s dangerous. Hell, these young ones today are dangerous.”

  And here they came, thankfully macho, grocery bags in both hands, paper not plastic. They walked toward a Kia, purple with black-tinted windows. We got out and made as if we were walking toward the store. We were one parking row away and they didn’t even notice as we passed them, then we quickly cut over and came up behind them.

  “Freeze.” I said it in a conversational voice, my hand on the butt of the Python but the weapon in the holster. Tom Holden turned his head, betraying high, wind-burned cheekbones and cold, light-blue eyes. He tossed a sack at me but that was the oldest move in the world, one you learn as a young deputy serving warrants. I sidestepped it, moved quickly to his side and put a foot behind his leg before I pushed him backwards. He fell hard to the pavement and expensive victuals fell all around him.

  Smith stood over him with the long-barreled .44 magnum. It’s a very unpleasant view for someone on the receiving end. Holden didn’t move.

  “Hello, Tom.” His voice carried an amiable lilt. “Susie’s Bail Bonds sends her greetings.” He swiveled the barrel toward the teenager, whose face was pasty with fear between two grocery sacks. “Kid, if you even move, I’ll blow your guts all over this parking lot.”

  I heard a murmur behind me. A pair of elderly women was watching us. I pulled the wallet and flashed my P.I credentials. “Maricopa County sheriff’s deputy. Stand back, please.” They complied. To Smith, in a lower voice, “get moving.”

  “I know my job.” He already had Holden on his stomach handcuffed. Smith removed a semi-automatic from the thug’s waistband, then painfully lifted him off the ground by his bound hands and marched him toward the Benz.

  “Remember our deal.”

  He gave a little wave.

  I was using the car keys that had spilled out of Holden’s hand to check the trunk. I found what I had hoped for. “I’ll give this young man a ride home.” I ordered the teenager to walk to the Prelude carrying the grocery bags. It didn’t look as if he was armed but you never knew.

  Once he was in the passenger seat, I used an old pair of cuffs that Lindsey kept in the glove box to shackle his hands behind him, locked the door, walked around to my side, and drove. The entire operation had taken maybe three minutes.

  “Where are we going?”

  I ignored him and got out of the parking lot fast, then crossed the freeway into Phoenix jurisdiction, just in case the old ladies weren’t so trusting of counterfeit authority. If Chandler P.D. rolled in, my move across the city limits would complicate things. The downside: I was in the Ahwatukee district, or All-White-Tukee as the cops and firefighters called it, the world’s biggest cul-de-sac with only three ways in and out, all from the east.

  “Am I under arrest?”

  I didn’t answer. He was tall and skinny with a dusting of acne on his nose, the barest stubble on his chin, and curly brown hair. Just an all-American boy.

  “I’m only sixteen.”

  I found another shuttered Washington Mutual branch and swung behind it. There was nothing but empty parking lot and a side view of the South Mountains over red-tile-roofs. Turning to him, I took his wallet and gave him a more complete pat-down.

  “Hey, don’t do that. I’m straight, so don’t think I’m gonna suck your cock or anything.”

  Dr. Johnson said, “Nothing so focuses a man’s mind as the knowledge that he is to hang at dawn.” Lacking a rope, I had to use the tools at my disposal. My hand went gently behind his head and slammed it violently into the dashboard, which had been hardened by years of exposure to the Arizona sun. He was handcuffed and his abdominal muscles didn’t even put up token resistance to the sudden forward movement.

  “Ahhhhhhhhheeeeee!”

  Blood came out of his nose but he otherwise looked fine except for a vague, terrible comprehension in his eyes.

  Still, he put up a brave front. “Do you know who my dad is? You’re out of a job, asshole.”

  “I don’t give a fuck.” I bounced his face into the dashboard again, harder this time, provoking another wail. Now he was bawling.

  “Son,” I began, momentarily taken back by the word. I had never used it before in my life to refer to someone. “We’re going to have a conversation, and you have a choice. Either answer me honestly or I’ll beat the shit out of you, literally. You people wanted a tough new sheriff. Now you’ve got him. If you get blood on my car, I’ll shoot you and plant a gun on your dead ass. See what daddy thinks about his little junior then.”

  He sniffed hard and painfully.

  “What’s the old man’s name?”

  “Fuck you!” It was said more from surprise than bravado. “I’ll get killed.”

  I reached for his head again to continue to build rapport with the suspect.

  “Okay, okay. Sal Moretti. His name’s Sal Moretti.”

  Something fired inside my brain. “Sal ‘the Bug’ Moretti?”

  “That’s right, motherfucker.” He was still weepy. “Now you’re gonna get yours.”

  “That dashboard really likes your face.” I banged him into it again with slightly less force, but with all his pain centers running on high I might as well have thrown him off an overpass.

  “Please! Arrrrrrrwwwwwwwwwwwwwwggggggg…”

  “What the fuck is Sal the Bug doing in Chandler?”

  “Witness relocation. But he got bored playing golf. He’s a real-time gangster.”

  “What a little honor student,” I said. “Now ace the test. What…is…he…doing…here?”

  His wet eyes were now full of fear at having his perfect nose irrevocably vandalized. “Black tar heroin, dog. He’s got a hell of a connection. We sell it around to the high schools. What the fuck? There’s ten of us. He picked us all by hand. All our parents have money and they’re bored shitless with their lives. They don’t give a fuck what we do. Anyway, we’re all straight-A students, go to church, that shit. Cops ain’t gonna bother us.” He sniffed his bloody nose, making a disgusting sound. “You
haven’t even read me my rights. I’m a juvenile. My dad’s gonna sue the county for a hundred million dollars…”

  I moved my hand and he shut up. “I can drive an hour and there’s a hell of a lot of desert where they’ll never find your body. And if they do, they’ll just think you’re another illegal who died coming norte. The animals out there eat everything but your bones. You’ll be just another wetback buried in an unmarked county grave.” My voice wasn’t hard; more of a reverie, which sounded scarier, even to me.

  He was crying hard by this time. “What do you want?”

  “Why did you follow us that night, outside the Sonic on McDowell?”

  “Mr. Moretti wanted us to cruise by your house at night, just check on things. We saw you leave. So we waited near the Sonic. Tom wanted to do you both. Not, me, dog, I was scared, honest to god, I didn’t want to be involved in a killing. But two of the older guys had guns, too.”

  “What stopped you?”

  “Mr. Moretti. Tom called him and he said to chill.”

  “Where does the black tar come from?”

  “Tom said the Sinaloa cartel.”

  “Oh, bullshit. Washed-up Chicago gangster and some teenagers who can’t get dates running heroin for the Sinaloa cartel…”

  “Real shit, dude! The demand is unbelievable. I’m making so fucking much money and that’s just me. All I have to do is make some deliveries every week. Why should the fucking spics make all the money? Mr. Moretti’s a legend and a real American.”

  I could have told him that Italians had once been held in the contempt now shown Hispanic immigrants, but what was the point? I asked him what Moretti supplied to the cartel in return?

  “Money, lots of money.” He puffed up his chest. “And guns. I’ve never seen so goddamned many guns.”

  “Where does he get them?”

  “They don’t tell me. Really, I swear to god.”

  I pulled out the image of the hit woman and held it in front of his rapidly swelling face.

  “Who is this?”

  “Sabrina.”

  He said it too easily to be dissembling. I wanted her last name.

  “I think it’s Cobb. Talk about a skank.”

  “What’s her connection to Moretti?”

  He said he didn’t know.

  “Then how do you know her?”

  “I took a package to her, okay?”

  “Heroin?”

  “She’d a rather had that,” said this straight-A product of what passed for the well-funded suburban schools. “But it wasn’t.” He tried to smile but it hurt too much. “I checked it, ’cause my ass would have been on the line, you know? It was ten thousand dollars. Hundreds and twenties. I made her count it, too, so she couldn’t say I’d stolen anything.”

  I reached into the back and pulled out my old metal clipboard, which I’d carried as a uniformed deputy and had to dig out again when Peralta put everybody on standby for uniform duty because of budget cuts. Pulling his driver’s license out of his wallet, I started writing up an incident report. It was mostly for show. The kid’s name was Jonathan Zachary Grady. I wrote down his name, date of birth, address. He kept sniffling and suppressing his bawling.

  “You’re in a shitload of trouble, Jonathan.”

  “They call me Zack.”

  “I don’t give a fuck. Are you following me?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The old man is under surveillance as of an hour ago. I’m going to temporarily let you go because you cooperated. Do you skateboard?”

  “What?”

  His head crashed into the unyielding sun-baked polymer surface once again, hard this time. Blood spattered like July Fourth fireworks. He screamed.

  “Yes, yes, goddamn, yes, I skateboard. Please don’t hurt me!”

  “Then it’s too bad you fell off your skateboard,” I said. “Don’t go back to the old man’s house. You’ll go to jail and you’ll be tried as an adult, then you’ll go to prison. I’ll make sure the prison gangs know you were a snitch, and by the time they finish passing your virgin asshole around…”

  Out of his rapidly swollen face, he looked at me with growing terror.

  “Don’t go back to Moretti’s house. Don’t contact him. All his phones are tapped. Don’t say anything to your buddies. We’re watching them, too. This is a big case for the feds and they don’t give a shit who your parents are.”

  He tried to nod vigorously but it hurt too much. He kept saying “yes” until I told him to shut up.

  I ordered him to lean forward and unlocked the handcuffs. They had left no cuts or bruises on his wrists. He put a wad of McDonald’s paper napkins I gave him up to his nose.

  “Now get the fuck out and walk. And thank you for your cooperation.”

  26

  I used surface streets to return home. The stop-and-go gave me time to assess new information. Sal “the Bug” Moretti—Judson Lee—in Chandler, comfortably relocated thanks to our tax dollars, and now running new criminal enterprises. Selling black-tar heroin to affluent high-school kids. Somehow involved with the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop, selling guns to the cartels. This was what had showed up on our doorstep, peddling himself as an attorney with a bogus story.

  Why? What was his role in the beheading of Jax Delgado? The answer ate at my insides all along the length of Baseline Road, as I passed the cheap, fake Tuscan-Spanish architecture of apartments and subdivisions, profaning the land that once held the Japanese gardens whose images so enchanted Robin. He wanted to get close to Robin. Maybe he had wanted to see how effective our defenses were. Maybe…I didn’t know.

  I had let this happen.

  Beyond that, it was all little things. Holden wanted to kill us that night, but Moretti had held him back? Why? Had Tom Holden been the long-rifle shooter who had taken down La Fam as we watched stupefied? What was the Bug’s angle in that killing? I cursed so long, loud, and profanely that I fogged the inside of my sunglasses.

  The drive gave me time to assess new information about me. The packets of wet wipes Lindsey kept in the glove box did an adequate job of cleaning the blood off the inside of the car and my hands. But I had seen my own capacity back there with Jonathan Zachary Grady, middle-class teen drug dealer. I had enjoyed it, this darkness that had been growing in me suddenly let out into the sunlight. I kept wiping my hands long after the little cloths were dry, kept wiping them until my skin was raw.

  On Central, I turned north, crossed the canal, passed Sue’s Fashions, and took in the brown cloud hovering over the skyline. In the historic districts, everything was blooming and lovely. This was the garden city of my youth, the green oasis, what was left of it anyway. It was lost on me. I was almost home when the cell rang. It was Peralta. This time I picked up.

  “How’s Casa Grande?”

  “Why aren’t you answering your phone?”

  “I’ve needed quiet time.”

  “You’re a really crappy liar. I heard about the gunfire at your house. You need to get out of there. Come see me and gun-up.”

  “No.”

  The line was silent for several seconds. “Do you still have the wallet you took off the banger watching your house?”

  I hesitated.

  “Because he’s a DEA agent,” Peralta said.

  It was eighty-five outside but I felt chill.

  He continued, “Don’t start on me. I just found out myself. So don’t fuck this up. Bring me the wallet and the TEK-9.”

  “I don’t have a…”

  “Crappy liar, Mapstone. I need the gun back before Amy Preston sends me to Guantánamo or you murder somebody with it.”

  “Fine. Fuck you. What was a DEA agent doing watching our house before I ever got in the middle of their investigation?”

  He had already hung up. That answer, of course, was obvious: their man, Jax Delgado, had been killed and his head sent to the Spanish revival house on Cypress Street.

  The next cal
l came two hours later.

  “Mapstone, it’s Demetrius. Thanks for your help back there. You have good moves. I hope you got the misguided lad home safely.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Sorry, my man, but I just crossed the state line. Ditch pig will be safely in jail in Bakersfield when you need him, and I’ll be thirty-thousand-dollars closer to paying my daughter’s tuition at UCLA.”

  I just let the microwaves carry silence until he said my name again.

  “Did you make him do the phone call?”

  “He did it just the way you wanted. Sorry about the rest, but California called.”

  I put up a fuss, made it a good one. But I was satisfied. Demetrius Smith had not let me down.

  Now I sat in the living room and looked around the house. “Just get me to the night.” I said it over and over, as if it would stop the tachycardia that was overwhelming me. The only thing that helped for a few moments was to lie in bed, where the sheets still had Robin’s scent.

  ***

  The address the high-school kid gave me went to an old, single-story row of apartments on 15th Avenue north of Missouri. This part of the city had developed slowly, the cursed subdivisions creeping in on the acreages and farms. Some properties still had horse privileges in the zoning code. But I was not going to horse country. The apartment was in the middle, behind a fading white door that had no peephole in it. There was no back exit and the lights were on. It was full dark.

  I walked through the smell of citrus blossoms that only fed my blood lust and gave the hollow-sounding door three knocks.

  “Who is it?” A female voice.

  “FedEx.”

  The door cracked and I pushed through, raising the barrel of the Python to her face.

  “Oh, shit!”

  She turned to run and I grabbed her by her hair, smashed her into the wall, and dragged her inside, kicking the door shut behind me.

  “Who else is in the apartment?”

  “Nobody”

  I told her we’d double check. With her hair pulled painfully and the big Colt against her back, I made her do a walk-through, to the bedroom, the bathroom, the closet. Then I pushed her back into the living room and threw her to the floor.