by Jon Talton
“So the Bureau sent Pilgrim here to get him clean.” Wolfe said, and snorted without humor. “Fat chance. Phoenix brings out the worst in people.”
He turned back to the lagoon, picked up a stone, and skipped it across the water—one, two, three, four skips before it gave up to gravity. “Pilgrim was ancient history when I joined the department in 1955,” he said. “Detective bureau didn’t consider it an active case.”
I asked why.
“You’ve been dealing with the Fucked-up Bureau of Instigation, so you know the answer to that. Mapstone. They don’t want local law enforcement sticking its nose in. Scuttlebutt was that Pilgrim shot himself. Yeah, it was the only unsolved killing of an FBI agent in Arizona history. But that’s just interesting for civilians. The cops know what really happened, and they move on to the next mayhem. What really happened was that Pilgrim shot himself.”
“And nothing in your years in homicide made you doubt that?”
“Never gave it a second thought,” he said. His eyes blinked rapidly, uncharacteristically. “But I never knew they hadn’t recovered his badge…”
“There’s a lot not to know,” I said. “Somebody’s gone through the local files. They’ve removed the ballistics report, God knows what else.”
“So ask your friends at the Bureau.”
I said nothing. Wolfe said, “It’s always a one-way street, running to the feds’ benefit.”
“They didn’t take everything,” I said. “I found a detective’s notebook, a guy named Dan Bird.” I watched Wolfe’s expression, but he knew he was being watched now and he just bored his eyes into me, waiting. I went on, “Bird’s notebook said Pilgrim didn’t have any gunpowder residue on his hands. That’s not consistent with a suicide. He had a single .38 slug in his heart. He was dead before he hit the water. He floated several miles in the canal.”
“Dan Bird was still in homicide when I went to work,” Wolfe said. “You could trust his report.”
“Another place in the notebook, there’s an interview with a farmer out by Seventh Street and the Arizona Canal. He says the night before Pilgrim was found dead, he sees some people up on the canal. One of them looks like Agent Pilgrim. But it’s dusk and the farmer has work to do, and he moves on. A few minutes later, he hears a gunshot and sees a car tearing down the canal bank.”
“Too bad for you Bird died in 1971, “Wolfe said.
I went on, “Here’s another thing: for a washed out loser, John Pilgrim had spent a lot of time on very sensitive cases.” Maybe I couldn’t get the FBI files, but Bird’s notes and the newspapers told me some things. Pilgrim was assigned to counterspy work during the war, and after 1945 he led successful investigations of corrupt state and city governments in New Jersey, Maryland, and Illinois. He held five citations for bravery.
Wolfe watched a foursome in the distance, lugging golf clubs. They were undeterred by the hundred-degree temperature. He said, “I guess I’d trust Dan Bird’s notes more than the say-so of some G-man.
What about PPD? Can they help you?”
“Kate Vare is their cold case person. She hates my guts.”
“She wants to be chief,” he said simply “Don’t give me that look. I keep up with the department. Talk about ambitious.”
I was surrounded by ambitious men and women. Lean and hungry looks, dressed for success.
“Mapstone,” he said quietly. I watched the sun-dug lines on his face deepen. “How much do you know about old Phoenix?”
It sounded like a trick question. I started cautiously, as if I were defending a paper before a panel of hostile—and jealous—professors. “The city had fewer than one hundred thousand people then. The industries were the Five ‘C’s—copper, cattle, citrus, cotton, and climate. In 1948, Phoenix hoped to surpass El Paso as the leading business city of the Southwest. But it was still an upstart.”
“Very good, professor,” Wolfe said. “Now, look deeper. Phoenix has always been a corrupt city.”
My chamber-of-commerce native pride made me protest. The mob had been in Vegas and Tucson, after all.
“Jesus, you’re naïve for an educated man,” he said, his voice giving off no more edge than usual. “In the mid 1950s, when I came here from the LAPD, the feds had identified five hundred known mobsters in Phoenix. That was more per capita than in New York City.”
I didn’t say anything. My mind just processed this new information.
Wolfe just shook his head as if he was instructing a child. “Remember Gus Greenbaum?”
I remembered. He was the former Las Vegas mobster, living under an assumed name in Palmcroft. One day in the fifties, he and his wife were killed at home in a mob hit. The house was still there, on Encanto Boulevard. I could barely make it out through the trees.
“The Greenbaums were cooking steaks,” Wolfe said. “So after they were killed, the hit men sat down and ate their dinner. Bet you didn’t know that.”
“You ought to teach history,” I said.
“Most of the good stuff happened before I got here.” Wolfe said. “We had a good chief in the fifties. He was absolutely honest. So after he took over, things might still go on. But they had to go around the chief, do it where he couldn’t find it. But this has always been a town for strange crime. Winnie Ruth Judd, the trunk murderess. The Republic reporter who was blown up. Bob Crane killed in Scottsdale, and then all his porn videos were found. Remember the woman who cuts off her husband’s head and limbs and stuffs his torso in the dumpster? I’d rather that a lady just walk out on me. Remember the father out there in Mesa, takes his baby girl out on Christmas Eve to watch the lights, but he sets her on fire and kills her?”
“Yeah, no need to remind me.” The music from the carousel no longer sounded innocent.
“So, if you ask me, ‘Did Pilgrim kill himself?’ Until now, I had no reason to doubt it. But this town is just weird enough that anything’s possible.”
A youngish blond man walked by and paused to lean over the bridge railing. He had peroxide yellow hair, long but slicked back over his ears. His eyebrows were blond, and his lips small and curled, like the mouths in eighteenth-century portraits. He was wearing a blue shirt and a tie as yellow as his hair. We stopped talking, and in a moment the blond man walked on.
Wolfe said, “I can tell you this. I remember a guy named George Weed.”
I stared at him as if he had revealed the location of the Lost Dutchman Mine.
“Don’t look so surprised, Mapstone. I’m old. I’m not stupid.”
“Where? When?”
“I remember a guy named George Weed from the 1960s. Skinny guy. He ran the elevator at the old Greater Arizona Savings Building.
Remember, at Central and Adams? With the big radio antenna on the roof.”
I nodded.
“Back then elevator operator was steady work. And he was one of my snitches. He’d tell me things, things he heard and saw. I had lots of guys like him around. You didn’t need a whole day to drive across the city. You walked four blocks and talked to people.”
“Did he have family? Where did he live?”
“Well, my memory’s not that good. It’s been forty years. He was the elevator man, Mapstone. Like the scissors sharpener and the guy selling candy in the courthouse lobby. I don’t even know where those people are now. Maybe on welfare, or wandering the streets. Anyway, you saw him every day. He was part of the landscape.”
“I had an address for him, an apartment on Second Avenue,” I said.
“That’s the guy,” Wolfe said.
“What ever happened to him?”
“They automated the elevators—this was sometime in the early sixties—and there was no more need for elevator operators. So I think he went to work down in the produce district. Oh, where the hell was it? McMackin Produce, over at Buchanan and Second Street. Just cleaning up. The guy wasn’t a brain surgeon, OK? He was nice enough, but seemed simple. He wasn’t going to live out in Arcadia with the bankers and the lawyers.”
“Did he se
em like the kind of guy who would be wandering around with an FBI badge sewn in his coat?”
Wolfe snorted. “Nobody ever seems like the kind who will do what they eventually do. Just ask your common everyday serial killer. People will surprise you. I know one guy…see him at the bar every now and then. He’s just some old man in raggedy clothes. He’s a goddamned millionaire.” Wolfe shook his head. “The guy drove a Greyhound bus for thirty years, and never did anything but save his money. He lives on oatmeal. So who knows what was underneath George Weed.”
We both leaned on the bridge railing, watching the park. The crew was finished at the carousel, the music gone.
“My heart is shot, you know.”
I stared at him, asked what he’d said although I had heard him perfectly.
“They won’t let you have a transplant if you’re an old bastard like me. So I’m sorry I can’t do more for you.”
“I’m sorry, Wolfe.”
“Don’t be.” He shrugged. “I’ve had a hell of a life. And I’ll tell you this, if I live long enough I’m going to be a real pain in the ass. I might just get Peralta to hire me as your partner.”
I looked at him anew. Looking for signs. Was the skin around his eyes more ashen than I remembered it? I resisted an impulse to touch my own chest. We go through most of our lives thinking the old are a different species from us, that we won’t become them. I said, I’ll look forward to it.”
It seemed time to go. I was about to shake hands when Wolfe’s hard cop voice returned. “When I was first on the force we didn’t allow that.”
I followed Wolfe’s eyes to a lump of dirty clothes on the grass that contained a dark-skinned man.
“They stayed in the Deuce or we ran ’em in,” he went on. “It was a simpler world.”
Chapter Fifteen
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 Hum
mer 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.