Phoenix Noir (2 page)
From the very beginning, Phoenix has always had a darker side. It is a city founded upon shady development deals, good ol’ boy politics, police corruption, organized crime, and exploitation of natural resources. Close proximity to the Mexican border makes the city a natural destination spot for illegal trafficking of all kinds—narcotics, weapons, humans. These days, “America’s Toughest Sheriff” Joe Arpaio routinely makes headlines for his vigilante-style hunting of illegal aliens and his casual disregard of human rights. And he keeps getting reelected.
Modern-day Phoenix is a textbook case of suburban sprawl gone unchecked. Endless cookie-cutter housing developments, slapped up on the cheap, metastasize outward into the desert, soaking up energy and water that we don’t really have. All of that concrete and asphalt traps the heat, raising temperatures to apocalyptic extremes. During the summer, these “heat bubbles” can be lethal (during one record-breaking month in 2004, fourteen people died from heat exposure, most of them homeless).
The city recently overtook Philadelphia to become the fifth largest city in the country, and the Phoenix metro area now rivals Los Angeles County in size. As in all major cities, the gulf between Phoenix’s haves and have-nots continues to widen with the steady decline of the middle class. The affluent northeast valley—Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Carefree—has little in common with the sunburned working-class neighborhoods of South Phoenix and much of the west valley, though the developers are trying to change that with gentrification. The population of the city continues to grow and morph, but the legacy of the early ward system, in which much of the political representation resided in the wealthier—and whiter—first and second wards, lives on to this day.
What does all this mean? Crime, and lots of it. The stories collected in this anthology provide a revealing glimpse of a dark underbelly that the tourists rarely see. Novelist and veteran journalist Jon Talton provides a masterly portrayal of WWII-era Phoenix, back when The Deuce, our old skid row, was in its heyday and the city’s corrupt power structure already firmly entrenched. Edgar Award–winning author Megan Abbott offers a stylish interpretation of the notorious Bob Crane murder, and brilliantly captures the mellow, sun-baked vibe of Scottsdale during the 1970s. Diana Gabaldon takes the lid off contemporary Scottsdale with a dark and sordid tale combining such disparate elements as squirrel genocide, an illegal orchid smuggling operation, and a murdered Welsh botanist. Investigative reporter Robert Anglen gives us a tour de force of noir depravity about a career loser from East Mesa who is forced to live his miserable life … backwards. Up-and-coming Phoenix scribe Kurt Reichenbaugh delivers the goods with a lean and nasty tale of betrayal along downtown’s storied Grand Avenue. Longtime Phoenicians will dig Gary Phillips’s contribution, in which L.A. detective Ivan Monk comes to town to investigate some loose ends surrounding the early-’70s murder of a local soul singer. The story was inspired by the real-life slaying of Arlester “Dyke” Christian of funk/R&B group Dyke and the Blazers, whose big hit “Funky Broadway” few realized was based on the main drag in South Phoenix. And then there’s Navajo writer Laura Tohe’s bad-ass riff on the femme fatale convention when her womanizing protagonist meets his match with a lady who just ain’t human. This is but a sampling of the dark and diverse tales you’ll find in
Phoenix Noir
.
I hope you enjoy this collection. The stories represent our city in all of its contradictory glory, the good and the bad, urban blight and stark natural beauty, everything jumbled together and served up smokin’ hot, just the way we like it.
Patrick Millikin
Phoenix, AZ
July 2009
I
should have been suspicious when Logan said it was a routine job. It wasn’t that there were no routine jobs, only that Logan lied routinely. He was a short man with toad lips and a head that was bald and blotched except for a small tuft of dark hair just above his forehead. Always sitting behind his desk made him appear even shorter.
“Get out to Twenty-seventh Avenue, know where it is?”
He knew I did. I was one of the few people who had actually been born in Phoenix. I tamped out my Lucky Strike in the big ashtray on his desk. “It’s just fields out there.”
“Yeah, well, they found a foot at milepost 903.”
That sounded pretty routine. People fell under trains and lost things. It had been a lot worse a few years ago, during the Depression, with all the bums and alkie stiffs.
“The Golden State will drop you off.”
My suspicion made me light up another cigarette. “The Golden State Limited is going to slow down to let a bull get off two miles from here?”
He pulled the cigar from his mouth. A string of saliva kept it tethered to his fat lips.
“
Bull
. I hate that shit. You’re a special agent for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Have some pride.”
I took a drag and drew it down to my shoelaces. I walked to my desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out my Colt .45 automatic, taking my time about slipping on the shoulder holster and replacing the jacket.
“Go, you son of a bitch!” he hollered, spitting tiny tobacco leaves across the room. At the door, I heard his voice again: “And be on good behavior for a change. Got it?”
I got it, all right. I took the back stairs out of Union Station, avoiding the mob of young guys in uniform in the waiting room. I crossed the brickwork of the platform and made it to one of the dark green Pullmans on the Golden State just as the whistle screamed highball and the big wheels under the cars started moving. I flashed my badge at the conductor and he let me on, giving me a vinegar look. He didn’t want to be slowing down for any damned bull. I let him brush past me and I stayed in the vestibule. It wouldn’t be a long ride. The town passed by out the door. Over the red tile roof of the Spanish-style station, the Luhrs Tower marked downtown. If I turned the other way I could have seen the shacks and outhouses south of the tracks. Warehouses and freight cars gradually gave way to open track.
Five minutes later, I dropped off the train into the rocky ballast and found my footing. The air tasted like dust and locomotive oil. There wasn’t much out here: the single main line that ran through the desert to Yuma and Los Angeles, a few Mexican houses, the Jewish cemetery. Then there were the fields, regimented rows of green with lettuce, cabbage, and alfalfa running out along the table-flat ground until it met the mountains and the sky. Stands of cottonwood bordered the irrigation canals where I used to swim on the oveny summer days. Now, in January, the air was dry and cool and familiar. I couldn’t believe it was already 1943.
The town was changing. It had slept through the Depression like a kid in a fever dream, but the new war had brought Air Corps training bases, a new aluminum plant a ways from town, a camp for Kraut POWs, and endless streams of troop trains. Patton had trained his tank corps down by Hyder. The paper said Phoenix’s population was now an unbelievable 65,000. Out here Van Buren petered down into a two-lane road, concreted over by the WPA. I could see somebody had gotten past the shortages and rationing to throw up some temporary housing a little north of the tracks, ratty little one-story jobs made of cinder blocks. They would probably tear it all down once the war ended.
I adjusted my hat and tie and walked toward the crowd a hundred yards back down the tracks. It didn’t look good. Too many suits, and not the Hanny’s special I had on, but nice ones, and men in them who were all looking at me. Fifty feet away, on the other side of the track, stood a new Lincoln and, outside it, four tough-looking guys carrying Thompsons. Just a routine job. Before I got far, Joe Fisher walked up, moving fast on his wide, thick legs.
“Bull, what’s all the company about?” He nodded toward the men in suits.
“Beats me, but looks like Espee brass.”
“Your problem,” Fisher smirked. His face wasn’t built for it. It was thick and immovable, the color and texture of adobe.
“Who are the ones with the Tommy guns?” I asked.
“I was going to ask you that.”
Fisher was a Phoenix homicide dick, and he wasn’t a bad guy when you compared him to his pals, one of whom awkwardly crossed the tracks and poked me in the chest.
“Jimmy Darrow.” He spoke my name accusingly. “This ain’t a railroad problem. Take a powder.”
Frenchy Navarre’s coat was open so you could see the two revolvers he carried in shoulder holsters. He wanted you to see them. He had a failed boxer’s face and a killer’s heart. I’d seen a lot of guys like him in the war, the Great War. My war. I pushed his hand away just slowly enough, tossed aside my cigarette, and walked past him.
More railroad honchos than I’d ever seen in little Phoenix, Arizona, surrounded me. The introductions were perfunctory: the general manager, a vice president, the head of the mechanical department, and the chief special agent. Names I had only seen on company stationery and timetables.
The chief special agent did most of the talking. “Darrow, you need to work with these local officers to get this cleared up, and I mean soon.”
“Sure,” I said. Best behavior. “Any dope you can give me on this?”
Heads shook adamantly.
“Son, we need you to double-check everything on this line, make sure it’s shipshape.” This was the basso of the general manager.
“Yes, sir.” I stood awkwardly, waiting to be dismissed.
The chief drew me aside. He had the type of kindly face that I had grown to hate on sight.
“It’s wintertime, see, and all the bosses are here for the nice weather,” he said conspiratorially. “So they have nothing to do but go out and do our jobs for us, get it?”
“Sure.”
In a louder voice, he said, “We need to make sure this line is secure. I want a report by tonight. Let’s make it 8 p.m. Sharp.
I’m at the Hotel Adams.” I said my yessirs all over again. The chief took my arm. “Remember, serve in silence.” I waited for them to climb into a shiny black Caddy, then I lit a Lucky.
Another train trundled slowly by, the big grimy 2-8-0 locomotive making the ground shake.
Southern Pacific Lines
, proclaimed the tender. It must have had twenty cars, old Harriman coaches, faded black from smoke. Through the open windows, I saw the passengers. Black and brown faces in olive green. Colored troops. They looked with curiosity at our little party. The locomotive smoke sent me into coughs that made my lungs feel like they were on fire. For a moment, I bent over with my hands on my pants legs while my head stopped spinning. I felt better when I took a drag on my cigarette. After the train passed, I crossed over to where Fisher and Navarre had parked their Ford.
“Here it is,” Fisher said, standing by the open trunk.
He pointed to an old citrus crate.
Big Town Oranges
, the label said. Inside I found a bulging, bloodstained towel. They let me unwrap it.
“You find it this way?”
“No, genius,” Frenchy said. “We gotta save it. Evidence. You see that train, Fisher? More niggers than in Nigger Town and they’re giving ’em guns.” His small, dark eyes focused on me. “What the hell are you doing here, goddamned bull? Go roust some lowlifes down at the yards.” He stalked off.
“It was found in the middle of the tracks, right back there.” Fisher pointed to where the brass had been standing. “Cut off neat as can be. Mexican found it.”
It had been a pretty foot once, pale, petite, with tiny well-shaped toes and the kind of ankle that gives men the shakes when it’s attached to a live woman. It was held in a new strap-around black shoe, with a medium heel made of leather. And all had been sliced off at the shin. A railroad car will do that. This was no hobo.
“Where’s the rest of her?”
Fisher spat into the dust. “Beats the hell out of me. We’ve been a mile up and down the tracks in either direction, looked in the ditches, nothing. There was blood on the tracks but no woman. Trail of blood didn’t even go as far as the road.” He pulled out a handkerchief and ran it over his forehead before replacing his fedora. “She musta been a looker.”
The Westward Ho Hotel was the tallest building in Phoenix. It had sixteen stories and refrigeration. When I walked in a little after noon, the lobby was crowded with men in pricey suits and expensive cigar smoke. There wasn’t a single uniform. You’d think the world was at peace and nice girls weren’t getting their feet cut off by trains. Actually, I wasn’t sure she was a nice girl, which was one reason I had come to the hotel. I crossed the lobby and told the elevator operator, an ancient colored man, to take me to the eighth floor. I walked down the hall past three doors on carpet so soft it massaged my feet through the soles of my shoes. I put my hat in my hand and knocked on the fourth door once.
Strawberry Sue might have struck you as the prettiest girl you’d ever seen, if you saw her from behind and the dress fit right—and maybe twenty years ago it would have been true from the front too. But the sun had ravaged her skin, leaving her face rough and cut with lines and creases. Her face looked like the desert. I thought her figure was nice, but it went out of style in the ’20s. She was small, so thin I could almost touch my middle fingers if I wrapped my hands around her waist, and her hair was bright orange, worn unfashionably in a ponytail like the child of the ranch she was. Her real name was Ruby, but she hated it. The radio was talking about the big Allied landings in North Africa. I asked her to turn it off. She poured me a Scotch while I took off my shoes. As I sipped the drink, she pulled down her hair and took off my tie real slow.
Afterwards, we lay on the soft bed and I stroked her hair while she had her head in the notch where my neck met my shoulder. “My spot,” she called it. She didn’t seem to mind the scar there that looked exactly like the shape of the Grand Canyon. I had to smoke Chesterfields because that was what Sue smoked and I was out of my brand.