Phoenix Noir

by Patrick Millikin

  “You got that right,” Monk mumbled. Transfixed by the literate rabbit, he became gradually aware that he was in motion. He had a hold of the steering wheel. The radio speaker fuzzed and Henry Ford spoke. No, Monk listened closer and realized it was Ann Sothern as My Mother the Car. She was trying to tell him something about pedestrians and traffic lights, but the horizon flipped over and everything came to a thundering halt.

  Propelled forward, Monk cracked his head open on the windshield. Blood dripped into his eyes and he blinked them clear as he stumbled from the wrecked vehicle. The car had jumped the curb, plowed over a mailbox, and finally came to a stop when it smashed halfway through the side of a building. Martians and creatures with tentacles for arms lunged at him and he ran, so happy he remembered how to make his legs work. He knew what they really were beneath their disguises.

  Canadians. Canadians terrified him. Sneaky infiltrating bastards. On he ran through the jungle and into the desert, his heart thudding in his ears, drowning out the sirens and the yelling and the cursing. He ran and ran and stared crying. Suddenly, he stumbled across an arid landscape where the snouts of crocodiles stuck out of the sand like cacti, their fearsome crooked teeth snapping expectantly.

  Monk stepped tippy-toe around them and came upon the squatting marble statue of the Great Aztec Toad. Only it wasn’t a statue but the living toad god Tlaltecuhtli. The Earth Mother toad opened her maw, and after hesitating for a moment, the Canadians getting closer with their monkey sirens, he dove into the black. He swam and crawled through the murk, panicked that he’d never find his way out. It was then, at his lowest, that he saw his dead father, Sergeant Monk, Mechanic Monk, Husband Monk, stepping out of a door from nowhere.

  Monk’s dad held out his big calloused hand. “Come on, Ivan, you can do it. Come on, son. Just a little further and you’ll be safe.”

  “Wait for me, Pop.” Crying and bleeding, he ran and leapt through the doorway.

  Dr. Justine Mumford’s private room at the Northcross Manor rest home smelled faintly of gardenias and hyacinths, her favorites. The flowers commanded the room in various baskets and vases, and her attendant had already filled three paper shopping bags with Get Well cards. There was to be no recovery for the civil rights icon, but just as she had confronted adversity, threats, and violence in her life, she faced death with bravery and aplomb.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Mrs. Mumford said, her voice barely audible above the humming of the respirator.

  Nazeen Loveless cried softly, holding onto the old woman’s hand. Age and illness had diminished the elderly woman’s physical shell but her voice yet reflected her power of conviction.

  “It’s been three days and the cops are still looking for him,” Charles Estes whispered. He stood further back from the bed, where Loveless and Minnie Thaxton hovered. He switched off the radio he’d tuned to local news.

  “Soon it won’t matter,” Thaxton said.

  “What won’t matter?”

  The three turned and stared mutely at Monk, who stood in the doorway. He had crashed his Galaxy 500 into some boarded-up storefronts, just down the block from the long-defunct Express Tracks recording studio. The police had been called but he’d run away howling before they arrived. He’d spent several hours hidden in a Port-a-Potty at a strip-mall construction site. At some point he pissed himself as the hallucinogen in his system wore off. Assuming the cops were looking for him, he’d waited until nightfall to sneak away. Monk had collect-called L.A. and asked Jill Kodama to wire him money for toiletries and a room at a hot-sheet motel, since it wouldn’t be safe to return to the Ramada Inn.

  Estes started forward and Monk said calmly, “I’m not high now, Charles. You want to jump bad, I’ll be swinging back this time.” Estes paused. “We don’t want to disturb Mrs. Mumford, but you three need to do some ’fessin’.” There was complete silence other than the old woman’s breathing. “I do have a guess.” He pointed at her. “She killed her son, didn’t she? And you got Parchman to take the fall.”

  The other three gaped.

  “As I came down from my trip,” Monk continued sardonically, “a lot of clarity percolated up. I became fixated on comments from you two,” he indicated Thaxton and Loveless, “about when Mrs. Mumford had entered the studio that day.”

  Loveless blurted, “We were exact.”

  Monk replied, “That’s the point. Given the excitement of the moment, witnesses routinely don’t recall events in the same sequence. If it’s too tight, too rote, something’s up. And in both your accounts, to me and to the newspapers, you used identical phrasing.”

  Loveless and Thaxton looked at each other.

  Monk rubbed his lower jaw. “By the way, was that a Colorado River Frog at the gym? Used the toad skin as a chaser in the Timothy Leary cocktail you slipped me?” Not only had he reread the news accounts, but he’d also studied up on toads, frogs, and bufotenine, a hallucinogen the croakers and some plants produced, at the library. Monk found that if you were quiet, off in a corner doing your own thing, the library made for a nice hideout.

  He came further into the room. “You must have also used some substance to get your witch’s brew into my bloodstream quicker. Now, you could have given me a heart attack or psychotic breakdown … But I ain’t mad at you,” he added sar-castically, suppressing his anger. “I suppose you brainiacs discussed my outright kidnapping first, huh? Anything to get me out of the way long enough for the lady here to pass on and any questions I raised to be discounted.”

  Loveless deflated.

  Mrs. Mumford moved and said, “Help me sit up.”

  “Justine …” Minnie Thaxton started.

  “No, no, please.” She held out a hand and Thaxton used the control to raise the top portion of the bed. “Come over here, young man.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” He stood by the side of her bed, hands clasped before him.

  “I did it,” Justine Mumford said, looking beyond the walls, then back at Monk. “I came down to the studio to talk with Hayzell that day. The drugs, the sex, those things of course disappointed me. But I knew at the bicentennial celebration, where his father and I were to be honored, he was going to sing that song.”

  Monk frowned. “‘Blazin’ on Broadway?’”

  She closed her eyes. “Yes, the damned hit of his. Part of the lyrics talk about a certain woman the singer meets and falls for. He was referring to a real woman. Someone his father knew …”

  “Someone he had an affair with?” Monk hedged.

  “It had happened in the early ’60s,” Minnie Thaxton said hoarsely. “She was a member of the church and a young widow. Her son and Hayzell went to Sunday school together, and the son had spied the reverend tippin’ in one night.”

  Loveless glared at her for being so coarse in front of the dying widow.

  “I forgave him,” Justine Mumford said, “but Hayzell never did. As he grew up and they grew more apart about everything from baseball teams to the Vietnam War, he wrote that section of the song to get back at the man he considered to be a hypocrite.”

  “Justine hushed the affair up around the church,” Loveless said. “The woman and boy left town.”

  “But the band knew, cause Hayzell made a point of telling us,” Thaxton added. “It was a big joke to him.”

  “So it was you two arguing in the backroom of the studio?” Monk asked the old woman.

  She gave a brief nod. “The church was the landlord of that property. Gospel used to be recorded there. Imagine. I had a key and came in the back way to try and talk to him away from the others. As we argued, Burris heard us and rushed in, trying to get him to calm down. Hayzell was medicated, as was usual then, and pulled his gun on Burris. They fought and the gun dropped to the ground.

  “I picked that pistol up,” the old woman proclaimed. “I suppose I thought to scare him.” Her eyes got wet. “But he taunted me, belittled his father and spat on all that we’d worked so hard for. He said he was going to enjoy singing that song to all t
hose who’d be there for his father, and he threatened to tell everyone how he came to write it … How could my own son be so hateful?” Thaxton handed her tissue paper. She sighed and said, “Yes, I killed him, murdered the flesh of my flesh. I committed the greatest sin there is.” She turned her head away to the wall.

  “We covered it up. We had no choice,” Minnie Thaxton explained. “It was one thing for one dope-fi end musician to shoot another. But the woman who was the symbol of Arizona civil rights? We just couldn’t give that kind of ammunition to the crackers.” She looked pleadingly at Monk. “We just couldn’t.”

  Dr. Justine Mumford passed away peacefully two weeks later. Luminaries such as Jesse Jackson and former president Bill Clinton attended her august funeral. Several legal entanglements were hanging over Monk in Phoenix, but the prestigious law firm that represented Greater First Congregational was providing its services pro bono.

  Ardmore Antony had a lot of unanswered questions, but the rights to his compilation were secured. The CD was eventually released, with extra tracks and updated liner notes, including recent remorseful quotes from Burris Parchman. The tragic story of Hayzell Mumford’s demise remained unaltered.

  Nearly forty years after its original release, “Blazin’ on Broadway” by Hayzell and the Sugar Kings enjoyed a renewed run on the R&B charts.

  IT’S LIKE A WHISPER

  BY MEGAN ABBOTT

  Scottsdale

  The thing about Bob,” she said, and her fingers snapped the ties on Julie’s cocktail apron, “he’s so American. He’s so American.”

  Julie nodded. It was good to see Brenda again, and she liked looking at her. She had a Clairol-girl face and silver-blond hair washed twice a day, but things were happening behind those glinting blue eyes and you could feel her winking at you all the time.

  Julie looked across the lounge at the man in the beige denim shirt and slacks sitting on one of the low chairs and it was Bob Crane, just like switching a television channel.

  “Look at his face,” Brenda was saying, and she slid her fingers under the sash on Julie’s apron and pulled her close, so she could hear her. “It’s so blank. It’s like a billboard.”

  Julie didn’t know what Brenda meant, but this was how she always talked. Brenda liked to dance and she made the scene in Phoenix at Bogart’s, B.B. Singer’s, Chez Nous, Ivan-hoe’s, where she’d introduced herself to Bob. She was always meeting people and she said it was her special energy. You could like it or not, but Julie liked it.

  “So let’s make it happen,” she was saying and she took Julie’s arm and they walked toward Bob Crane, their heads nearly bobbing together, matching blond locks to their waists and smiles popping. Bob was watching them, watching them and smiling, and what man in the Registry lounge wasn’t?

  “Who’s the tomato?” Bob said as he rose. He was handsome and, old as he was, almost as old as someone’s dad, he didn’t look like a dad. The way he turned toward her, so casual, so knowing, like he’d been waiting for her.

  When he looked at her, something sharpened in his eyes, sharpened into a spark, and then his face lit, like a camera flashing, and there he was, Bob Crane. He was giving her Bob.

  “This is Julie Sue, Bob,” Brenda was saying. “She’s got tits you’d serve soft at Dairy Queen.”

  Bob looked down at Julie’s chest in a funny, sly way, and she felt like Fräulein Helga. “Well, nothing wrong about that,” he said. “So, Julie Sue,” and he bent forward just slightly so she would know she was the only one he wanted to talk to, “are you going to be my friend?”

  “Yeah, Bob,” Julie replied, and she could feel a tickle in her knees. This would be something. “I’m going to be your friend.”

  She told them she had to work until close and Bob said she could meet up with them later. They’d be at the Safari coffee shop and then back to Bob’s place. He wrote his address on a napkin and gave it to her.

  Brenda leaned toward her and whispered in her ear, “Do you think he can handle us?” Bob was looking at them and he folded his arms across his chest, just like on the show. Just like Colonel Bob Hogan. “He does that on purpose,” Brenda added, “it’s a gas.”

  “What a picture you two make,” Bob said, grinning. “My blond babies.”

  And she and Brenda leaned into each other, necks bent, heads touching, smiling tangerine lipsticked smiles.

  “Like Siamese blondes,” he said, and he made a sound like laughing.

  Carl came by an hour before close, a little high. He was drinking a screwdriver at the bar.

  “Baby,” Julie said, “I have to break our date. Brenda came by. I’m meeting her for breakfast.”

  Carl gave her a long look. “Brenda’s back,” he said, smiling a little. “Hey, that’s your scene, babe.”

  “I’ll see you later,” Julie said, and Carl’s face looked so shiny. His mustache was slightly wet. She remembered it was the suit he wore when they met about seven months ago, at the Bombay Club. He sold synthesizers and wore those woven sandals, huaraches.

  She watched him stir his drink with his finger and flick it dry. “Go with God, Julie Sue,” he said. “That chick is bad news.”

  He turned and faced the bar. They’d partied at Brenda’s once and Brenda had read the tarot and told Carl that he was letting his hang-ups hold him back and that secrets were being kept from him. Later she told this story of how Linda Kasabian, the Manson girl, was her old babysitter. She said Linda read her cards once and told her she would die young, stabbed against a white wall. Everyone at the party freaked out a little and Carl said she was bad news.

  “I like Brenda and I haven’t seen her in a while,” Julie said. Brenda was so much fun. And there was Bob Crane.

  “Keep your head,” Carl advised, looking in the mirror above the bar. “You know what I’m saying.”

  The Safari was one of her favorite places. Once she saw Angie Dickinson walk through the lobby in a white bikini. But the coffee shop was quiet that night and she didn’t see Brenda and Bob. “They were here, but they left,” the waitress said. “He’ll probably be back later.”

  Julie looked at the napkin for Bob’s address, then decided to drive over to the Winfield Apartments.

  On the way, she tried to remember the Hogan’s Heroes theme song. It kind of made you want to march. What was that thing the fat guy in the helmet always said on the show, “I hear nothing, I see nothing, I know nothing …”? She wondered if Bob was still friends with the Family Feud guy. Maybe he’d come to town too.

  Brenda really knew how to make a scene. Julie’d met her by the pool at the Camelback Inn awhile back. Brenda was stomach-down on a deck chair, barelegged, wearing a Mott the Hoople T-shirt and sunglasses. Purple eye shadow smeared across one temple.

  “Hey,” she’d said, twisting around to talk to Julie, cross-legged on a beach towel. “I know you.”

  “I don’t think so,” Julie answered.

  “No, no, man, I know you,” she said, propping herself up on her elbows. “You have freckles behind both knees.”

  Julie smiled. “You just saw that when I was doing my back.” But she knew she hadn’t turned over yet.

  “It was awhile ago,” Brenda said, grinning. “You had the sharpest tan lines. You had the swimsuit with the keyhole in the front.”

  Julie didn’t say anything.

  “You shouldn’t have let him do that,” Brenda said, and she shook her head.

  “What?” Julie started, feeling dizzy, wondering if she had sunstroke. “What are you talking about?”

  Brenda shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t you.”

  They’d gone swimming and then to one of the rooms where Brenda was staying with two musicians. They were high and they had a bottle of rum and Julie drank some. They told the girls to get in the shower together and they did. It was fun and Brenda was beautiful with that long twisting hair, and it’d been a good time. They got free tickets to the concert at Feyline Field.

  The air conditioner was going. It wa
s cool in the apartment and there was one floor lamp on and the television set.

  “Join the party, Julie,” Brenda said. She was naked and her white dress was on the floor. Julie felt overdressed in her uniform, though it was so short she couldn’t bend over, even to reach behind the bar.

  “Welcome to Casa Bob,” Bob said, standing up in his un-dershorts.

  There was a buzzing sound. She thought it was the air unit, but it wasn’t. It was the camera running in the corner, on a big tripod.

  “Look,” Brenda said, pointing to the television. “Bob’s on TV again.”

  “I never left,” Bob said.

  Julie glanced over at the television and it was Bob and Brenda having sex on the sofa. Brenda’s head was in Bob’s lap, her blond hair white on the screen and spread in all directions.

  “Julie,” Brenda said, “Bob can help so you too can make it on the big screen. Or small screen.”

  “Baby, I can make you a star,” Bob said, smiling at Julie.

  “Can I have a drink?” Julie asked. She thought a drink would be a good idea.

  “She likes Southern Comfort,” Brenda said, tucking her legs beneath her on the striped sofa.

  “I’m sorry,” Bob said. “I just moved in and I don’t drink. But I want to make Julie happy. Someone brought me some Scotch at the theater. Do you like Scotch, Julie?”

  “I like Scotch, Bob.”

  He smiled again and said he was glad. “I like that place,” he added, talking about the Safari. “Did you ever roast cocktail weenies in that big charcoal fireplace?”

  Julie grinned and drank her Scotch. Brenda was tugging at the back of her uniform, trying to drag the zipper down. Julie tried not to giggle. “Carl sure couldn’t handle this,” she said.

  “I go there every night,” Bob said. “I like the coffee shop.”

  Julie felt the cold air hit her shoulders and breasts. Brenda ran her hands down Julie’s stockings and hooked her fingers underneath to pull them off.

  Julie peered at Bob, who was sitting on the arm of the sofa, wearing his glasses so he could look back and forth between the television and her.