Dry Heat (9 page)
Driving east on Encanto Boulevard, I passed the brick mansion where the mobster and his wife were murdered. Another unsolved case in my town. The house sat amid lovely landscaping and innocence, its history brooding silently in the memory of a few old cops and crime aficionados. A crime that had happened before I was born, but after John Pilgrim had been dead for years. Harrison Wolfe had been a strong man in his prime, careless of his heart. Dan Milton would have been a promising postdoctoral student. A pair of kids would become Lindsey’s parents, a troubled life before them. A pair of lovers in their late twenties would become my parents. Only the house remained.
The car swap was wearing on me. But I dutifully drove the Olds toward its hiding spot. Spring gardeners were out in Willo, despite the early heat wave. I resisted the impulse to drive down Cypress. Fifth Avenue took me south, across McDowell and into the older bungalow neighborhood of Roosevelt. This was where the rich and powerful leaders of Phoenix lived nine decades before. I wondered about George Weed. He ran an elevator in the early ’60s, sometimes pitched tips to Harrison Wolfe. Did he carry the badge even then? Was he a cop wanna-be? I would have been satisfied to know how he got John Pilgrim’s badge and why it was important enough to hide in a jacket he wore like second skin.
Yuppies from the apartments were out in the narrow grassy strip of Portland Park walking their dogs. As I slowed to let an athletic woman with short blond hair pull a golden retriever across the street, I noticed a black SUV about a half block behind me. It had been in my rearview mirror at least since I crossed Seventh Avenue. I coughed a little paranoia tightness out of my throat and continued slowly toward the entrance to the parking garage. The SUV followed at a distance.
The garage was several stories tall, meant to handle the apartments, Trinity Cathedral, and some retail shops. I swung into the first level and stopped. This was church and retail parking, and at this time of day it was nearly deserted. The Olds engine echoed off the concrete and I kept watch in the rearview. Maybe fifteen seconds later the SUV crept by, but didn’t turn in. It was huge and black, a Hummer H2. The windows were tinted so dark I couldn’t see anything inside. Then it was gone. I had a decision to make: drive around some more, or turn right up the ramp and swap cars.
Just then the Hummer reappeared in the alley to the south, heading into the other side of the garage. My hand was ahead of my brain. I slammed the gearshift into reverse and backed out onto Portland. I was being too careful, but I felt an irrational fear. Surely the product of two weeks spent in hiding, two weeks to contemplate the bloody work done to Lindsey’s colleagues on the sidewalk in downtown Scottsdale. I laughed out loud at myself and the laughter dissipated into the noise of the air-conditioning. The blonde smiled at me and tossed the ball for her dog. I put the car into drive and slowly moved toward Central. The Hummer would be driving up the garage to park and disgorge its passengers. I would drive around the block and laugh at myself again. Then I would go home and teach myself to relax.
Only the Hummer came out of the driveway. Just enough for the driver to keep an eye on me. The big convertible was built for pleasure, not security. I felt a sudden rush of vulnerability.
I pressed the accelerator and the 442 engine responded instantly. A gray Honda was bearing down on me on Central but I slid in front of him and sped away. I blew through the yellow light at Roosevelt and followed the road as it swung over to a one-way on First Avenue. A block farther on I wheeled left and sped through downtown streets, crossing Central, First, Second, and Third Streets, then left and back across Roosevelt heading north. When I could refocus on the rearview mirror, the Hummer was a block behind me. When it crossed Roosevelt against the red light, I felt a stake of dread in my stomach.
What the hell was going on? I was half tempted to pull over and step out. Wait for the SOB to pull up behind me. He’d probably go around. It was probably some kids playing. At worst, it was some dumb carjackers scoping out my automotive relic. Pull over—why play games? And yet, something elemental stopped me. It said, Stay in the car. Keep moving. I thought about the blond man, improbably out of place at the park with his tie and shirt. Did I just imagine that his face appeared different, something Slavic in his features?
In a block I took the on-ramp to the Papago Freeway. The rush-hour mess was starting, but the big engine quickly had me up to seventy, sailing out onto six lanes of eastbound concrete. Overhead the wind became a gale rattling the ragtop. I crossed lane after lane, swerving past the thickening clots of cars, SUVs, minivans, and pickups. The Twelfth Street overpass swooped above me. Then we passed Sixteenth and bore into the Short Stack, where the Red Mountain Freeway hove off to the East Valley. Traffic was stopped, backing up. I slid over to the shoulder and ran around it, provoking a chorus of honking. Then I was past the jam-up, heading east. The speedometer said eighty-five, but the big car felt as if it were doing about forty. Behind me, I could see the Hummer trying to catch up. I fumbled for my cell phone.
Lindsey answered on the first ring.
“Are you OK?”
“Yeah, Dave. Are you?”
I told her what I knew. She promised to call the deputy down at the front desk. I promised her I’d alert the communications center and get some backup. I assured her I had the Python and some Speed-loaders holding extra ammo. It wouldn’t come to that. It was probably just a coincidence and a case of nerves. Still, I was glad that every second we moved farther away from the Central Corridor and the hideaway condo. I told her I loved her.
It was a beautiful day for a drive. One of the sad ironies of the urbanization of Phoenix was that the best place for average folks to see the mountains now was from the freeway. Camelback sat spectacularly off to the north, the afternoon sun making it glow in a rich red. The smog was light enough to see the gentle undulations of the McDowell range off to the northeast, and beyond them, Four Peaks soared through the haze. At the Fortieth Street exit, I raised the Sheriff’s Office communications center and, after a long wait on hold, explained things to the watch commander. It looked like a hundred thousand other SUVs on the streets of Phoenix. No, I didn’t have a license tag. By that time downtown Tempe was flying by on my right, and the black Hummer was a half dozen car lengths behind me.
Then it was gone. I swerved to avoid a slow-moving junk truck. Then I slowed to around sixty. I checked both mirrors and the Hummer had disappeared. As I updated the watch commander, I pulled off on McClintock and headed south into Tempe. She told me to keep the line open. So I set the phone on the seat and drove slowly across the Salt River, then turned west on University. My heart was still beating too hard. But the road behind me was devoid of anything that looked like my pursuer.
I cruised past the Arizona State campus, slow enough that cars sped around me angrily. Now I regretted not bagging the guy. He was gone and we didn’t know what the hell he wanted with me. Another voice in me said it was just as well. The street behind me remained safe. I made a loop and retraced my route. How did he just disappear? I could have sworn he was still with me past the exit to Priest and downtown Tempe…Could he have exited at Rural? I cursed myself for not finding a way to get behind him, get his license number.
Then I took a sharp, involuntary breath. I told the watch commander I’d call her back, and hung up even as she was protesting. I speed-dialed Lindsey’s cell.
The phone rang five times, and her voice mail picked up. I dialed again, irrationally checking the display to make sure it was, indeed, Lindsey’s number. Still nothing. I pulled over into a parking lot, forgetting to signal or check my mirrors. I dialed the landline into the condo. It rang fifteen times. Next I tried the line to the concierge desk. Again, no answer.
I cursed under my breath. I almost mumbled aloud something about how this couldn’t be happening. The car was already moving. I sped out of the parking lot and went north to the freeway. In a couple of minutes I was headed back toward the city, the sun in my eyes, my foot jamming the accelerator into the floor.
“There’s no answer,” I was yelling into the phone, trying to make the dispatcher understand me. I gave my badge number for the second time, gave the address. She put me on hold. I wanted to throw the damned phone out of the window.
The siren could be heard even above the wind coursing over the top of the car. Behind me, a DPS cruiser was closing fast. The highway patrol.
“Goddamnit!”
The speedometer read one hundred and twenty-five. The speedometer stopped at one hundred and twenty-five.
I flew low-altitude across the Short Stack and descended into the center city, staying in the HOV lane, heading to the Third Street exit. Now the trooper was right on me. I could see sunglasses and a grim expression. Another DPS cruiser was behind him. A buddy. Everybody ought to have a buddy. I held up my badge like a fool. I didn’t slow down.
The Olds surged off the freeway doing a responsible eighty miles per hour, as I tried to raise the communications center on the cell phone. Behind me, the trooper’s siren insisted I pull over. I gunned it through the yellow light at McDowell and heard screeching tires off to the left. I didn’t want to look. Somewhere in my mind the moving violations were adding up: speeding, reckless driving, refusing to stop. I was half a mile from Lindsey.
Then I was at Central, heading north. A couple of Phoenix PD cars had joined the chase now, and I led a festive little procession up the northbound fast lane, past the Phoenix Art Museum, the Viad Tower, and the church where we had been married. Sure, something inside told me I wasn’t thinking straight. I was thinking only of Lindsey right at that moment. And I felt like I had been kicked in the stomach when I could see emergency lights outside the condo tower.
Something wrong.
Something bad.
The palm trees hurtled past. Then I was slowing, stopping suddenly, slamming the gearshift into park, running toward the entrance to the building. Men were milling about. Men with guns. They noticed me and started out the door.
“Lindsey!” I yelled. “Where’s Lindsey?”
Behind me I heard voices, commands.
Then a great weight fell on me from behind. The ground came up fast. I felt sharp pain, sudden force. I was losing altitude. Then I wasn’t really there. It was only in a little closet of my consciousness that I noticed my arms being pulled in an unnatural direction, and I heard a sound that reminded me of handcuffs locking.
“You’re gonna be OK. You just got the air knocked out of you.”
“Do you know what day it is?”
“Don’t try to talk. Just breathe.”
“Do you want to go to the hospital to get checked out?”
“He’s fine. He doesn’t need to go.”
People were having a conversation in a language I didn’t quite understand.
“He’s a deputy. He’s on the job. Take those off.”
I inhabited a hidden control room just behind my eyes, working an air machine of some kind, vaguely aware of things going on around me. I was attached to something heavy. Then everything turned sideways and my stomach was headed up my throat…
“Don’t try to stand up. That’s right. Keep your head down. Just concentrate on breathing.”
“Lindsey!”
“She’s OK, she’s OK. Just sit there.”
I came around. “There” was the grass in front of the condo tower. I was surrounded by redwood-sized men, a couple of paramedics, three Phoenix cops, two sheriff’s detectives whose names I could remember if you gave me a few minutes without my passing out. A DPS trooper was glowering at me, putting away his cuffs. I squeezed my hands just to make sure they were still there. He must have weighed 280 pounds, and I suddenly felt every one of them on my back and ribs. My left arm was swelling painfully, in the grasp of a large man in a blue T-shirt.
I came around enough to notice the SWAT officers arrayed around the entrance to the building. Men in black jumpsuits, black Kevlar helmets and goggles, black bulletproof vests. My mouth thick with dread, I asked my question again.
“She’s safe. She’s gone. Just sit there and take it easy.”
I focused on Chief Deputy Kimbrough, looking dapper in tan slacks, blue blazer and a rep bow tie on a blue and white striped Oxford shirt. The paramedic peeled the blood-pressure cuff off my arm and called out a number to his partner—at least I wouldn’t die of high blood pressure.
“She’s safe,” Kimbrough repeated. “We had to move her. There was a security breach.”
“What the hell?” I got on my knees and tried to stand, wobbled, then found a lamppost to support me. Every joint in my body felt swollen and stiff. I asked, “What breach? Why do you have SWAT teams here?”
“Somebody tried to get into the building,” Kimbrough said. “After you called Lindsey she called down to the deputy in the lobby. He called backup, and they found a ladder leaned up against the building.”
“What?”
“Just listen and breathe, Mapstone. You look like you’re about to pass out. We found a ladder that had been leaned up against a second-story balcony. Nobody was home in that apartment, but the balcony door had been pried, and the door to the hallway was unlocked. We got her out. Now we’re searching the building. Our friends from PPD think it might just be a burglary or a careless maintenance man. But the sheriff didn’t want to take a chance.”
I shivered in the warm breeze blowing down Central. “Show me.”
I limped along the front sidewalk, then through some hedges to the south of the entrance. Sure enough, around a corner and just out of view, an aluminum ladder was raised to the balcony. A SWAT officer on the balcony glared down at me.
“So much for the safe house,” I said.
“Peralta thinks Yuri found it by following you.”
I stared at the chief, too sore to argue. He went on, “Whoever followed you this afternoon might have been trying to keep you away from here. So they could make their move. They want Lindsey.”
“I guess they succeeded in keeping me away,” I said quietly.
“Obviously it’s not just Yuri. He’s got help.”
“And we can’t seem to do anything to stop him.”
“Did you get a tag?” Kimbrough asked.
I shook my head, a jolt of pain driving into my shoulder blades. I ran through what happened, from the time I noticed the Hummer on my tail. Then Kimbrough wanted it again, from the time I left the condo that morning. I was certain I wasn’t being followed. Yes, I had gone through all the agreed upon procedures. No, I couldn’t be sure that the blond man at Encanto Park was a bad guy. When I was done, I just wanted to go to Lindsey.
“You can’t,” Kimbrough said.
I asked why.
“It’s a federal case. The FBI has taken over, moved her to a secure location.”
“Sounds like a kidnapping.”
“Don’t be a smart-ass, this is serious. This was a close call.”
“No shit,” I said. “How do you know she’s safe now?”
“I know!”
“Where is she?” I knew I was babbling. I couldn’t stop myself.
“I don’t know,” he admitted. “They won’t even tell me.”
“Then how do you know anything?”
“My detectives took her to a rendezvous with the feds. One of our men will be with the federal agents. You remember Patrick Blair, from Robbery-Homicide Division? He’ll stay with her.”
“Damn it!”
“You don’t have to shout,” Kimbrough said.
Amid all that was coming at me, I realized my ears were ringing loudly. In a lower voice, I asked, “When can I see her?” Kimbrough said nothing, and the frustration made every ache worse.
I tried it another way. “What if she’s asking to see me?”
“She’s being told the same thing,” Kimbrough said. “Every member of her team is now in protective custody.”
“So she doesn’t have civil rights, just because she works for the Sheriff’s Office? This is nuts. You promised this would be for two weeks. Now, she’s gone God knows where, and you have nothing to say to me?”
“I don’t have the answers, David. Wish I did. You’re lucky you’re not in jail after what you pulled on the freeway with DPS. You’ve got to be a professional about this. Lindsey is at risk, and any of us could bring her into danger without even realizing it. I feel like I had a role in this, too, finding a way for you two to stay together when maybe that wasn’t such a smart thing. Now we’ve got to let the people with the real experience deal with this.”
A city cop came up and told Kimbrough the building was clear. Whoever had used the ladder was gone. The cop was all of twenty-five, with a dirty blond crew cut, and he kept calling Kimbrough “dude.” Kimbrough glared at him each time, but the kid was oblivious to social skills, protocol, or any breaches thereof.
Kimbrough watched the cop walk away. Then he reached in his coat, and his features relaxed into a benevolent smile. “Here’s a voucher for the Hyatt. We’re shutting down this safe house. You need some rest. The sheriff will get with you tomorrow. I know he’s interested in the progress of your case. He’s at a fund-raiser at the Boulders, or he’d be here now. I promise we’ll get you some information about Lindsey as soon as possible.”
I waved the envelope away. “Nothing personal, Chief,” I said. “You’re a good guy. But this situation is fucked. I’m going home.”
Kimbrough gave me an alarmed stare. “You can’t. . .”
“Yes, I can,” I said. “I’m going upstairs to get the cat.”
I pointed down Cypress Street, into the lush old trees of the Willo district. “Then I’m going home.”
***
A fleet of thunderheads over the South Mountains was set ablaze by the fading sun. The sunset seemed to electrify the prism edges of the Bank One Center, tallest building in downtown, until the tower was defined by the bright straight lines of reflection from the west. Airliners took off from Sky Harbor, two by two, flashing in the last of the sunlight as they made their turns. Gradually, the sky gave way to an infinite, India ink blue-black, silhouetting the palm trees against the incandescent twilight.
Under this vault of big sky, I was a puny human sitting on his front porch, in front of the 1924 stucco house with the big picture window. The porch was dark and the house behind it was dark. I was in a dark way, not feeling quite human, aware of the comforting bulk of the submachine gun on my lap. The grass needed cutting and mail had gathered inside the door. Lindsey’s old Honda Prelude—the bumper sticker read
KEEP HONKING. I’M RELOADING
—needed washing. Otherwise, the house looked much as we had left it more than two weeks before. Just to make sure, Lindsey’s old gray tabby, Pasternak, prowled every room. That left me to assess the damage of a large highway patrol trooper hitting me from behind at speed, sandwiching me in between him and the pavement. The knees of a pair of Tommy Hilfiger chinos were a lost cause, and beneath them David Mapstone’s knees weren’t doing much better. The small of my back felt on fire, with devilish little arsonists spreading the blaze to each vertebra. My earlobes hurt—go figure that out.
I thought about whether I had really put Lindsey at risk. Whether I had been protective or selfish in demanding to be with her after the Scottsdale shooting. “Protective,” my heart said, for this was apparently an open-ended threat, and our friends in law enforcement had proven remarkably inept in dealing with it. My head stayed silent in the debate, preferring to concentrate on its headache.
All these SWAT cops in their paramilitary attire, what did this mean for the health of American civil society? Like surveillance cameras everywhere, pre-employment drug tests, and other subtle assaults on the Constitution. Was it this way with the Roman Republic, the gradual loss of liberty under the guise of continual warfare? Cicero, eloquent, impotent…(Yes, David, distract yourself with a Big Thought.)
A pickup truck roared down the street. It was one of those two-story-tall four-by-fours, and he was doing at least sixty. My finger went automatically to the gun trigger. He raced by, heading to Seventh Avenue, no more able to stop for a pedestrian or a wayward child than a supertanker. People drove with such rage in my town. Maybe it was true everywhere now. I wondered: was this the way we would live now, Lindsey and me? Under constant threat, mistaking any speeding blockhead for Yuri or his agents.
Patrick Blair. Patrick Fucking Blair. Some personal history here: Lindsey and I split up once. It was after we’d been seeing each other for a year, and under pressure of circumstances and personal griefs, we just stopped seeing each other. There was no grand announcement. But jealousy is a powerful, primal thing, and I knew at the time Lindsey was working with a handsome young detective named Patrick Blair. We had never talked about those two months apart. And my hands weren’t clean, either. But that’s another personal history story. . .
My eyes were on a big man lumbering west on Cypress, crossing Third Avenue. He was walking with a pronounced limp.
“Just sittin’ on the porch with an automatic weapon, eh?” Peralta emerged from the heavy twilight. He was wearing brown uniform pants with oversize cargo pockets, and an MCSO polo shirt. The cargo pockets were so full they made him look a bit like a cavalryman wearing jodhpurs. He was holding something to his face.
“I thought you were schmoozing campaign donors in Carefree?”
He sat heavily in the other chair. “Stopped to help some deputies,” he said. “Haven’t been in a fight like that for quite a while.” He was holding a cold pack to his left cheek, mashing the flesh against his temple. “Dirtbag was already arrested, and he broke out the window of a patrol car and took off. So they ran him down a little off Bell Road, and he’s fighting like a son of a bitch. Bites a deputy. Hits me square in the face, I mean nails me. So I had to change and get cleaned up. Another one of your misunderstood homeless guys. . .”
He adjusted the cold pack and looked at me. “Did you tell her you love her this morning?”
“What?”
“Did you tell her you love her?”
“Of course.”
“We do dangerous work, Mapstone. You, me, the same as these deputies this afternoon who had a prisoner fight them. I live with that burden for an entire department. Some days good men and women aren’t going to come back.”
“When the hell did you decide to become compassionate?” I was still feeling less than human. I stared out at the street, where the houses were starting to light up with a merry hospitality I didn’t feel.
Peralta refused to take easy bait. Instead, he ordered me to fix drinks. So I set aside the gun and went into the kitchen. In five minutes I returned with a shaker and glasses, and filled a Gibson for Peralta and a martini for me. He had moved only enough to produce two cigars, his favorite Anniversario Padrons. He clipped one and handed it to me. We each lit a cigar in silence, watching the flame become a corona around the tip. I am only an occasional cigar smoker, mostly with the sheriff. We last smoked cigars after his father’s funeral, smoked and sat in silence in Peralta’s study.
Now I let the smoke waft across my palate, and my muscles relaxed notch by notch. Peralta lifted his glass and gently clinked mine.
“
Salud
,” he said. I added gin and vermouth to the taste of fine Dominican tobacco.
“Patrick Blair is protecting my wife,” I said finally, instantly feeling adolescent and small.
He grunted. “Why, don’t you trust her?”
“Fuck you.”
He sighed and sipped. “David, sometimes you can be a real asshole. You probably don’t even know when you’re doing it.”
Fair enough, I thought. I sipped the gin, feeling the cold liquid burn my throat. All my aches felt instantly better.
“Separation is good for a marriage,” he ventured.
“Is that the way it is for you and Sharon?”
He ignored me. “You act like I’m all-powerful, like I can control and fix everything. . .”
“That’s an impression you strive to convey,” I snarled, angry from two weeks of hiding, two weeks of a toy investigation into the fate of an FBI badge. I was still nursing wounds from his angry lecture after Kate’s press conference.
“Get it straight,” he hit right back. “Yuri, the Russian mafia, the shooting in Scottsdale, Rachel Pearson’s kidnapping—that’s all new. I can’t snap my fingers and fix it.” He let an inch of fine ash fall off the tip of his cigar.
“So what you’re telling me is that I may never see my wife again, and nobody can change that, and you don’t give a shit.”
Frustration was talking. And a little booze. Once again, though, he declined to escalate the war I was trying so hard to start. And, deep down, I knew I was safe bitching. Peralta’s temper was like a nuclear weapon. You couldn’t detonate it by hammering on it. You had to know the physics. You had to have the codes. So we drank and smoked, wrapped in a smoky haze as the neighborhood surrendered to full darkness.
