Dry Heat (4 page)
I let my eyes again take in our surroundings. The street around us was really not much more than an alley. Old warehouses rose up on either side of us. Traffic rolled over us on the overpass. In the distance I could hear jets taking off from Sky Harbor. A train whistle came from the west. We might as well have been a hundred miles from any help.
“You hear?” said Muscle Man. “We don’t want to get lost.”
“Maybe we’ll take this car, understand what I’m sayin’,” said the thin man.
It was a curious expression, “understand what I’m sayin’.” Was it born of unempowered people desperate to be heard, accustomed to the powerful classes failing to “understand”? That would be a fine politically correct paper to present at the Modern Language Association—my amused subconscious was actually thinking this. My conscious felt the heavy butt of the handgun against my concealing hands as the thin man walked up beside my door and leaned a dirty arm on it. He had large black freckles on his face, large, expressive eyes. His hands were scarred and sinewy.
“Maybe we’ll take her badge,” said the Tenor. “Badge like that bring some good money on the street. Shit, maybe we’ll take her.” He slouched against Kate’s side of the car, giggling “Pay the toll to the troll.”
Someone from the shadows repeated, “Pay the toll to the trolls.”
Another voice from the gloom: “Kill him and rape the bitch!”
This is how it was going to go down: the Muscle Man was on my side of the car, joined by the thin guy with freckles. On Kate’s side, the giant Tenor, his hat cockeyed. The chorus surrounded us at a distance, the monochrome street people watching the little drama, maybe ready to join in if we appeared weak enough.
I was watching the hands of the three surrounding the car. Nobody seemed armed, but I couldn’t really tell. I kept my hands in my lap, feeling a huge lump of panic in my middle.
A little bit of long-ago training bubbled up. I turned the ignition and put my hand on the gearshift. “’Bye, trolls,” I said.
But in that instant, Muscle Man dove at me. I wasn’t fast enough. Strong, rough fingers closed around my throat. I almost blacked out right there, but turned my head a little sideways, sucked in some air, and drove my arms up viciously to break his grip. He fell back. I heard an ugly murmur from the shadows, and before I could get out of the damned seat Freckles came at me. I slammed the heel of my hand into his nose and he snapped back, falling on his ass. But Muscle Man dove over the door, grabbing for the gun. He had all the leverage of a strong, standing man fighting a man who was pinned down in a car seat. I could feel myself losing the fight. Didn’t want to imagine the consequences. Couldn’t.
But I fought dirty. When he reached for the pistol, I grabbed one of his fingers with both my hands and torqued it in a direction nature didn’t intend. I felt the finger snap, heard the bone and cartilage separate. He screamed, lurched back, and fell out of the car, landing on his back. I rose right up after him, leaped out of the car-without even opening the door. I had a foot on his chest and the big Python in his face. Freckles was also in my field of fire, raised up on his elbows staring at me, blood streaming out of his nose.
Kate was being pulled from the car by the big guy. She had received a nasty blow to one eye, and I could see him reaching for her holster, with her desperately trying to keep his hands away. High-voltage panic shot up my spine.
There was no time for negotiation. I kicked Muscle Man in the nose to stun him, took a chance on Freckles staying down, and ran to the other side of the car for a clear shot. I got within five feet, dropped into a combat stance and leveled the Colt Python at the chest of the big Tenor. I did some quick arithmetic: six .357 hollow-point bullets, three targets, shaky hands, and my Speedloader reloading magazines were in the glovebox. And all that assumed nobody from the shadows decided to get a piece of us.
I was not articulate: “Die, asshole.”
He stared at me, stared at the gun. A large drop of sweat materialized on his forehead and ran to his eye.
He sighed. “Fuck.”
He let go, and Kate used her suddenly free arm to deliver a nasty haymaker. He sprawled on the asphalt, holding his face. I noticed Freckles was on his feet, thinking about intervening. When I moved my gunsights to his chest, he took off to the south toward Lincoln. I could see Kate tense, ready to give chase.
“Let him go,” I said. “We can find him through his buddies here.”
The Tenor looked at me mournfully. Kate had a wild look and had retrieved her semiautomatic and handcuffs.
“Face down on the ground,” I ordered, keeping my finger on the Colt’s finely machined trigger.
I looked around: the street was empty. Everyone was gone. I said merrily, “Toll booth is closed.”
But Kate mouthed something silently, looking at me. If I had been a lip reader, I would say she called me a bastard. And she said, “You’ll pay.”
“Dave, I continue to be amazed…” Lindsey paused to watch Luis Gonzalez slam a single past the second baseman. She cheered like a banshee, took a sip of beer, and continued. “I am continually amazed that a bookworm like you gets into such trouble.”
It was Saturday night and we had our usual nosebleed seats at Chase Field, our way to take in the Diamondbacks—unless Peralta was treating and we could enjoy his season tickets two rows above the home dugout. One of the surprises about getting to know Lindsey was to see her evolution into a rabid baseball fan. This night the D-Backs were six runs ahead of the Braves headed into the eighth inning, a margin comfortable enough even for a fatalistic fan like me.
“You haven’t been a street cop since you were in your early twenties.” Lindsey continued, a carefully kept scorecard on her lap. “So how come you get in a confrontation with some drug dealers and you know how to save your bacon?”
“Luck,” I said. “And truck knowledge.”
Lindsey said, “Truck what?”
“Truck knowledge,” I said. “It’s the stuff you know so deep that you can get hit by a truck and still remember. Like good training at the Sheriff’s Academy. You learn moves that kick in even if you’re tempted to panic. That’s truck knowledge.”
“I like that.”
“It was a phrase I learned from Dr. Milton.”
“He must have been a character,” she said. “I wish I could have had a chance to meet him.” She put a hand on my leg. “But your scrapes with the wild side of Phoenix scare the hell out of me. You need to stick to the library; History Shamus.”
I could still feel a stranger’s rough fingers digging into my neck. Rolling my head from side to side only exaggerated the soreness. Lindsey was right, of course. We had been lucky as hell. The confrontation beneath the overpass could have turned out very differently, very unhappily. Somehow I had a gene in me that let me remember my training, and fight back when I was scared—even though most people living comfortable, middle-class lives would have been terrified into paralysis. And I had been lucky.
I sat back high above home plate, surrounded by 30,000 friendly strangers, and felt glad to be alive. Phoenix had come a long way from the dusty little farm town that my great-grandparents discovered when they came to Arizona before statehood. In good ways, with big-city amenities like the beautiful downtown ballpark, with its retractable roof, air-conditioning, and right-field swimming pool. And bad: with the rough characters like the kind Kate Vare and I encountered the day before.
They were in Peralta’s jail now, wearing stripes and eating green baloney. But a fleeting hope that they might somehow be connected to the old FBI badge—what with the one scumbag’s comment about taking and selling Kate’s badge—had led to nothing. They were ordinary drug dealers and low-life generalists seeking whatever criminal opportunity presented itself. So we were still nowhere on the investigation. The medical examiner was behind on autopsies and cranky, so we didn’t even know if the old guy in the pool was a homicide. My request to see the FBI file on John Pilgrim’s death was somewhere in the outer rings of bureaucratic perdition. There was nothing to do but turn off our pagers and cell phones and go to a baseball game.
When the game ended in triumph, we spilled out with the crowd, down the big escalators, past the murals with scenes of Arizona, past the dedication to the People of Maricopa County. That was when two burly uniformed deputies intercepted us.
“You David and Lindsey Mapstone?”
I asked what the problem was.
“Sheriff Peralta needs you in Scottsdale immediately.”
I started to protest, but they were already hustling us into a service elevator. “We’ll drive you,” one said.
“We couldn’t reach you on pager, sir,” his partner said.
“Can’t I just call Peralta on the phone?” I asked.
“No, sir. He was very specific. He wants us to bring you.”
“What’s in Scottsdale?”
“I don’t know, sir. We were just told to bring you.”
I tried to imagine what was on Peralta’s mind. The sheriff’s personal security detail cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. So much for the
High Noon
sheriff making a lonely stand. So I could see him going to extravagant lengths to lasso me, if I had given fresh cause for annoyance. But I had duly updated him on the nowhere status of the Pilgrim case, and endured his amusement and critique of the fight with the drug dealers beneath the overpass. This errand was surpassing strange.
As we drove east on the Red Mountain Freeway using emergency lights, I knew this was no Peralta highjinks. Lindsey knew before me. She had fallen into a watchful silence that was so Lindsey. We sat on the slick vinyl of the backseat, closed in behind the prisoner screen, behind two silent deputies. She held my hand tightly. The city slipped by, the lights of three million people. The lights of airliners taking off and landing from Sky Harbor. The lights of the squad car reflecting off the freeway underpasses. City of lights. In the hot and smoggy ugly seasons, when we were short of spectacular sunsets and clear mountain views, nighttime favored Phoenix. Exit signs to the Piestewa Freeway north, the Chinese Cultural Center, Papago Park, and downtown Tempe. The Papago Buttes looming in the twilight. We rejoined the street grid at Rural Road, kicked in the siren, and headed north into Scottsdale.
“Dave, I have a bad feeling,” Lindsey said.
Her premonition hardened as we came up Scottsdale Road and turned east on Fifth Avenue, winding around the Galleria. A ribbon of flashing red, orange, and blue lights waited at the end of the street. The deputies cut out the siren and coasted past the bland single-story buildings that contained, among other establishments, a bar called the Martini Ranch.
Lindsey said quietly, “Oh, no.” She checked her ankle holster, which discreetly held her baby Glock semiautomatic. Her blue eyes seemed to have turned an intense black. I felt a deep dread in my middle. Peralta’s face loomed in the window.
“Where the fuck have you been?” he demanded. He was wearing black jeans and a long Guayabera shirt, supernaturally white.
“We went to the D-Backs,” I said as we emerged from the backseat. “I didn’t know I had to clear my movements with you.” The night was warm and dry. Crime scene tape was festooned along the street. Peralta lasered me with his expression.
“I got two cops dead here, smart-ass,” he said. “From here on, your movements belong to me.”
We followed him past a row of parked cars and SUVs, through a cordon of khaki-clad Scottsdale cops. Bright TV lights flooded us from across the street.
I heard Lindsey’s voice catch in her throat. Beyond the car bumpers, a couple of tarps barely concealed two bodies and a lot of blood, congealed on the hot sidewalk. One of the bodies was wearing cowboy boots, the other sneakers. The feet of the dead were splayed at strange, sudden angles. Lindsey bent down and examined both bodies. They were men in their thirties. One had a flamboyant red beard. The other was clean-cut, bald-headed, and boyish. Both were marred with multiple wounds and blood. Lindsey gave me a stricken look. I was not the cop. I was the husband. I came up behind her, put my hands on her shoulders, and pulled her back to me.
“What…?” she began.
She lunged toward Peralta. “Why aren’t the paramedics here!” she demanded, her hands outstretched. “Why aren’t you doing CPR?”
He shook his head. She looked over the bodies again and then sagged against me. I walked her a little ways down the sidewalk. Peralta followed us.
“Talk to me, Lindsey,” he said.
She stared out at the night, the streetlights gleaming in her tears. “The guy with the beard is named Jim Britton. He’s with Treasury. The other one is Gary Reece, Department of Justice.” She looked at me. “They worked with me on the credit card case. They were part of the task force.”
“What were they doing here?” Peralta demanded, his big head leaning in to face her.
“They were celebrating,” she said. “They invited me to have a drink tonight. I turned them down because Dave and I had tickets…”
Peralta muttered profanities and walked to his black Ford Crown Victoria. He popped the trunk, dug around inside, and walked back with something in his hand. He held out a flak vest to Lindsey.
“Put this on,” he said.
She hesitated. “You think it’s a hit?” she asked.
Peralta was silent. Lindsey stared at him. She said, “You think this is the Russian mafia?”
Peralta stared at the sidewalk. “I don’t know what I think. But I don’t want to take chances. Scottsdale cops have some witnesses inside. They said the victims were at a table inside when another dude comes in and joins them. The conversation gets a little loud. Britton and Reece pay and get up to go. Next thing anybody remembers there’s gunfire like this is a war zone. When somebody gets up the nerve to look outside, these two are dead on the sidewalk and whoever did it is gone.”
“Do we have a description on the third man?” she asked. Peralta shook his head.
She slipped the vest over her T-shirt and fastened the Velcro. I glanced uneasily around Scottsdale’s little downtown office district. A crowd of yuppies and beautiful people was being kept at a distance by SPD. They couldn’t see the bodies lying this side of the parked cars.
I could see bullet holes gouged into the white paint of one Chevy Suburban, the shattered glass of a Toyota parked beside it, and more bullet holes chipped into the wall of the bar. A lot of bullet holes. I had counted to thirty holes when I heard Peralta’s voice again.
“Where the hell is your firearm?” he growled.
“I don’t take it to baseball games. Sorry.’
He just worked his heavy jaw and shook his head slowly. “Mapstone, do you have any idea how much…”
“Shit!” Lindsey yelled. “What about Rachel?!”
Peralta just stared at her.
“Rachel Pearson!” Lindsey said. “Deputy Rachel Pearson. She works for you in Cybercrimes. She was invited tonight. Has anybody seen her?”
Peralta shrugged. “I guess she didn’t come tonight, like you.”
“She said she was going to come.”
Alarm flickered briefly across Peralta’s face. He stabbed a thick finger into my chest. “Stay here.” He disappeared into the bar.
Lindsey looked at me, and we followed him inside. The room was dark and comforting, with an old Bonnie Raitt song on the sound system. “‘Push comes to shove’,” Bonnie sang. In this old watering hole I had salved a hundred bad days, lubricated a hundred entertaining evenings. But I had no appetite for a drink. We stood on the threshold. Nearby, Peralta conferred with a Scottsdale police captain, then turned to a pair of civilians, clad in the expensive Euro-trash outfits of Scottsdale’s trendy needy wealthy. The conversation grew more animated. Two young Scottsdale cops ran past us out the door. Peralta noticed us, and walked heavily to the top of the stairs.
“It’s a new scenario,” he said grimly. “The female officer may be missing. Those witnesses remember a woman who went out to the street with the men. Nobody’s seen her since the shots were fired.”
