High Country Nocturne

by Jon Talton

  “There’s one more thing,” she said. “When he called, I heard a train in the background. Very distinct.”

  We were breaking through the forest and entering Flagstaff, so I took the exit into downtown. It was three thirty Saturday morning and few cars were on the streets. Our FBI escort had disappeared.

  At 6,900 feet above sea level and sitting beneath the San Francisco Peaks, Flagstaff in daylight was one of the most scenic places in the Southwest. At this time of night, we had to settle for the appealing little downtown with its pioneer-era brick and masonry buildings. Unlike so many places in Arizona now, it felt authentic.

  It had been real to me when I came here as a child with my grandparents. It was cool and beautiful, like a small town out of a storybook. Flag was a real place with gritty jobs in timber and the railroad, along with a little college.

  It had trains to delight the young me, all those Santa Fe Railway streamliners that stopped at the handsome depot with its Alpine chalet roof. Not only the young me. Anyone who really knew me understood that I still loved trains and especially the Flagstaff depot.

  Now the town had spread out into the pines with subdivisions and shopping strips, a mall, and a Walmart Supercenter. The college had grown into Northern Arizona University. But the city had done a decent job saving downtown from the bulldozers, with the exception of erecting a hideous new city hall that looked like a second-rate suburban office building. Babbitt’s was still here, gone from Babbitt Brothers Trading Company, to Babbitt’s Backcountry Outfitters.

  The old business district that ran along and north of Santa Fe Avenue—old Route 66—had been cleaned up. The cheap hotels that catered to railroaders had been spiffed up into offices or boutique lodgings. The smoky risky bars frequented by drunken Indians were gone. Even the seedy Hong Kong Café was now a more upscale cantina.

  But the railroad remained. I pulled into the parking lot of the station. The Southwest Chief, the only passenger train left, had come and gone. Although the depot was lit, it was likely locked up until the next train came later this morning. Ours was the only car in the lot.

  “David, you really believe he’s on a special assignment…”

  Sharon let the sentence hang, not quite a question.

  “Don’t you?” I said.

  “Mike and I have had our bad times. You know that.”

  “You divorced him once.”

  She smiled and nodded.

  I said, “I still haven’t heard the story of why you two decided to get back together. The daughters are grown and gone.”

  “It’s a long story. Maybe on another night drive. But you really believe he’s a good guy, too, right? Still?” Although her voice was gentle, her eyes were black with emotion.

  It seemed to be a moment requiring a speech to buck us both up, about Peralta’s unwavering integrity, even when he could also be demanding and domineering and difficult as hell to work for. But the ground started shaking and suddenly intense light came out of the east, followed by six thundering locomotives and a freight train doing at least fifty.

  When it was bit quieter, as container cars full of the scrap from de-industrializing America heading for Asia swept past us, I kept my response simple. “I do.”

  Then I ran through the scenarios, which were basically two. Either he was working a case for a law-enforcement agency that required him to go deep undercover. Or he was under coercion to steal those diamonds for reasons and persons unknown.

  He must have had different license tags on the truck when he got to the mall—there wouldn’t have been time to change them in the immediate aftermath of the shooting and robbery. So something didn’t suddenly happen to cause his trip to the High Country. It was planned.

  For whatever reason, the media still didn’t know that the diamond thief was former Maricopa County Sheriff Peralta. He was one of the better-known people in the state. Merely walking into a mini-mart to use the restroom would be taking a chance. That this information hadn’t been released made me think he was on assignment.

  But one he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, tell me about.

  Then there was the empty gun case. That made no sense under either scenario.

  Finally, I told her about the woman who had stopped us earlier, what really happened behind the car as her finger was on the trigger of the semiautomatic pistol, and my doubts that she was really a DPS officer.

  “Then,” she said, “ don’t you think you should do as Mike wrote on the card, and as he said when he was playing Paco? Let it alone. Let it play out.”

  “Aren’t you worried?”

  She put her hand on my wrist. “I’ve never been more worried in my life.”

  “Me, too. What about his diabetes?”

  “All his insulin is gone. So is his blood-sugar meter.”

  “So he planned this.” The thought gave me no comfort.

  Then I checked the rearview mirror and saw it—a pay telephone across the street.

  The mile-long train was still loudly passing through as I whipped the convertible around, turned onto Santa Fe Avenue, made an illegal U-turn, and stopped in front of this artifact of twentieth-century communications technology. I was even old enough to remember phone booths. This was a simple hooded stand that held the phone.

  I put on the flashers and stepped out. It had gotten colder. The hard plastic receiver was freezing, battered, would not pass a health-code inspection—but it carried a dial tone. I slipped it back in the cradle and looked around.

  The slip of paper was slid into the top of the phone casing, sheltered from the wind by the minimalist stand. It was actually a business card. My business card. They got around. And to think I had wondered if I would even need them when I became Peralta’s partner. I turned it over and read the familiar draftsman printing:

  FIND MATT PENNINGTON

  I pocketed it and stepped off the curb as a Flagstaff cop cruised slowly past. By the time I slid into the driver’s seat, he had picked up a call and sped off silent code three, emergency lights but no siren.

  I showed Sharon the card. “Ever hear him mention this name?”

  “No. It doesn’t sound familiar at all.”

  My phone vibrated. A message from Lindsey with three numbers.

  It was time to get back to Phoenix.

  Ninety minutes later and a mile lower, we passed through the enormous freeway interchange on the north end of the metropolitan area. Sharon was asleep. Some civic wrecker had climbed onto an overpass and written in black capital letters: OMENVILLE.

  Chapter Six

  The Westin was the one of the new swanky hotels in downtown Phoenix, occupying the lower floors of the bland Freeport-McMoRan building. The glass-sheeted box had been finished as the Great Recession blew up.

  In the go-go years before the crash, one in three jobs had been connected to real estate. It was the only conversation at my gym in the basement of Central Park Square. Even the woman who cut my hair was flipping houses. For me, it was like Joe Kennedy’s anecdote about shoeshine boys trading stock tips in 1929. Anybody could see it coming if they cared to look.

  The result in Phoenix had been a straight-up Depression. Now it had mellowed into a prolonged recession, whatever the boosters said. Phoenix had seen nothing like it since the bad years of the 1890s. The perpetual-motion growth machine had broken down.

  Thousands of people were still underwater on their mortgages, owing more than the houses were worth. Thousands more had simply walked away. Entire subdivisions within the “master planned communities” of suburbia had been empty. Then Wall Street had moved in and bought the houses as rentals. Even this didn’t stop the economy’s bleeding and many of the rental houses, already built on the cheap, turned shabby fast. Wall Street flipped the properties to new slumlords. Talented young people and empty-nest baby boomers with means were moving to cities with real downtowns, pl
aces like Seattle and Portland. Fewer retirees had the money to move to Phoenix and brag about not having to shovel sunshine.

  Phoenix embodied Eric Hoffer’s remark, “Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.”

  But the Westin’s lobby looked modishly elegant, if empty, when I walked in at six a.m. The friendly young woman at the registration desk said hello and I responded as if I belonged there and went to the elevators.

  When I stepped out on the eighth floor, the hallway was empty. The space was quiet. Not even a sound of a couple making early-morning love. I walked to the room number Lindsey had texted and knocked.

  The door opened two inches, the security latch in place.

  “House gigolo,” I said.

  “Please come in. I called hours ago.”

  Then she was in my arms and for that moment the world was right and safe. I felt the contours of her body through the plush white robe she wore.

  I felt the hard plastic inside one part of the robe, “Is that a baby Glock in your pocket or are you glad to see me?”

  “Both.”

  I kissed her and un-mussed her pin-straight dark hair. My eyes stayed on the simple diamond of her wedding ring.

  Diamonds.

  So much trouble.

  “You look exhausted, History Shamus.”

  “Staying up all night doesn’t have the appeal that it did when I was fourteen years old.”

  She led me into the room. It was a good deal nicer than a Holiday Inn, with expensive furniture and floor-to-ceiling windows looking north onto Central Avenue.

  Phoenix is on the farther edge of the Mountain Time zone, so it was still dark outside. The view showed tired city lights but one of the first light-rail trains of the day was heading up the street. It was a view we didn’t get from our house in the historic districts.

  Neither of the queen-sized beds had been slept in. I slid off my jacket and collapsed onto one of the beds. Lindsey curled up next to me and I told her everything that had happened.

  She was skeptical about my traffic-stop reaction, which irritated me.

  “I’m not making it up.”

  “I know. But your tale…I’m sorry. Your description of the night has a dream quality to it. You were under tremendous strain. You were tired.”

  “That woman was going to shoot me.”

  “Strawberry Death.” She gave me that ironic half-smile. My testiness evaporated. Lindsey had the ability to tease without hurting.

  “She had strawberry blond hair, yes.” I thought about it. Had I overreacted? “So you’re pissed that I made you leave home?”

  She propped herself on her elbow and swung a long, naked leg over me. Her skin was not quite porcelain, but very fair, a beautiful contrast with her nearly black hair.

  “I’m never mad when you’re concerned about me, Dave. This is a pretty nice safe-house, too.”

  “But you didn’t sleep…”

  “Could you have slept? You were a long way away and I didn’t hear a word from you.”

  “I was afraid they were listening in.”

  “Dave, I altered your cell to make it a totally dark device. The data are encrypted and your conversations are scrambled. Nobody can listen in. Not even the feds.”

  She was right. She was put out with me. But she didn’t move her leg. She was five feet eight and I was six two and we had the same inseam. I stroked the soft, perfect skin of her thigh.

  She said, “Peralta obviously ditched his cell so they couldn’t track him. He shot a guy in one of the most crowded malls in town and made a clean getaway. Mike Peralta, international jewel thief. Kinda sexy.”

  “Lindsey, this is serious.”

  “You have to smile or you’ll cry, Dave. I don’t think you have to worry about Strawberry Death. She was only a scared rookie on a traffic stop facing my dark dangerous lover. You’re very intimidating, you know. You don’t realize it.”

  She sat up on her haunches. “Take a shower and let’s go home.”

  It sounded like a good idea.

  I stripped down, stepped into the commodious shower, and let the hot water sluice off my aching body. In a few minutes, Lindsey joined me, and we got friendly.

  Afterwards, we got in bed long enough to watch the sun come up. It was worth it. Light revealed Camelback Mountain, Piestawa Peak—formerly Squaw Peak—and the North Mountains. Sunrise draped a coppery glow over the Viad Tower, the only interesting skyscraper in the city. The air was clean enough that we could see the Bradshaws, the muscular blue mountain range where the High Country began. It made me think of my travels last night. Dreamlike, yes.

  Once the sun was higher, it showed off the emerald carpet of trees running north to the bare mountains and Phoenix didn’t seem so bad.

  Lindsey had taken a cab to the hotel and Sharon had dropped me off. So we rode the light rail up to Park Central and ate breakfast at The Good Egg. While Lindsey waited at our table, content with the house coffee, I walked next door to Starbucks for a venti mocha. I smiled involuntarily at all the times Peralta had made fun of me for ordering the drink, wondering where he was now and whether he was safe.

  Then I saw the stacks of Arizona Republics and the top headline on page one, “Peralta Linked to Gem Heist.”

  I was angry before I read the subhead, “Former sheriff shoots diamond courier at crowded Chandler mall.” I bought a paper and got my mocha.

  Lindsey read it on my face before she saw the newspaper. I tossed it into an empty chair. “I can’t stand to read it.”

  She read the article. “Ah, they’re calling it the ‘crime of the century.’ Don’t we have a few more decades to go? Hey, doesn’t your old girlfriend work at the Republic?”

  “They pushed her out in a reorganization years ago,” I said. “You know that.”

  “You know the drill, Dave. Keep asking the same question and try to trip up the suspect. Don’t be so serious. An omelet will do you good.”

  “Showering with you did me good.”

  She smiled, then her brow furrowed. “Did you try to convince Sharon to leave town for awhile? She could be with her daughters in San Francisco.”

  “I did. She won’t go. Said she wants to take care of you and me. Anyway, the FBI is staked out in front of their house.”

  “The media are going to be camped out for her, too.”

  “She’ll be all right.” I sampled the mocha. It had exactly the right amount of chocolate. I hoped Sharon would be all right. Even if the feds weren’t there, the Peraltas’ house, perched on a bluff overlooking Dreamy Draw in north Phoenix, was like a fortress and Sharon was a decent shot.

  We were at a table on the front patio with the heaters going. It was in the fifties, nippy for Phoenix. I would have been comfortable taking my jacket off but I needed it to conceal the Python.

  Birds sat expectantly on nearby bushes and light poles. The bird issue was large enough that the restaurant had resorted to putting sugar and other condiments in plastic containers to keep them from being carried off.

  The other tables were occupied and the conversations loud. They were talking real estate at one table. At another, I heard a man say, “The bankers got away with the crime of the century and my family lost almost everything. I don’t blame Peralta if he decided to cash in.”

  I didn’t know any of the other diners, a good thing that day. My partner was front-page news. I was nobody. We were also the only diners reading a newspaper. It was unsettling…say, if you hoped to sustain a civilization or democracy.

  Lindsey asked if I could stand talking about the “gem heist.” I nodded.

  “You’re convinced Peralta is working deep cover.”

  “Yes.”

  She studied me. “Even though this new SAC you met said it’s not true.”

 
“He wouldn’t tell me. He might not know himself.”

  The server brought our food with the place’s customary efficiency. Lindsey had soft-scrambled eggs, bacon, and tomatoes in place of an English muffin. I had my usual Sun Devil omelet.

  Lindsey ran her finger along another headline: “Texting While Driving, Woman Impaled Through Buttocks.”

  She said, “So, History Shamus, if Peralta really is on a case, wouldn’t he have let you know beforehand? Somehow?”

  I hadn’t thought this through last night. Now I was glad she was encouraging it.

  After a bite and some reflection, I said, “Not if it came up suddenly. He went into the office early yesterday, same as always. He texted me at nine to say he was going on a diamond run. By the time I got there, he was gone.”

  “Peralta texted?”

  “Old dog, new tricks.”

  “Had he texted you before?”

  I stopped with the fork in midair, then set it back on the plate. No, he had never texted before. I hadn’t thought much of it because I was getting ready for the day and he had done half-a-dozen of these diamond jobs since we had become private detectives.

  “So all you know is that the text came from his phone.”

  “True.” I chewed eggs and second thoughts.

  She ate and talked at the same time without it ever seeming unladylike. But I was partial.

  “So if it was him, and this new undercover case came up suddenly, and all he could do was text you…” She paused. “That doesn’t make sense for him. Not somebody who has never texted before. Somebody like that will stick with habit and call. The next you know, the FBI shows up at the office with a search warrant. That’s the first you heard of the robbery.”

  “Yes.”

  “They interviewed you there, right?”

  “Two hours worth, while they went through the files. Some nerd spent time with Peralta’s computer before taking it.”

  “We nerds are useful, History Shamus. It’s curious they didn’t take your computer.”

  “That made me think this was all for show.” I glanced at the newspaper. Maybe releasing his name to the press was for show, too. They didn’t release Peralta’s involvement yesterday when someone might have identified him driving to Ash Fork.