When It All Comes Down to Dust (Phoenix Noir Book 3)

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When It All Comes Down to Dust (Phoenix Noir Book 3) Page 2

by Barry Graham


  Neither woman spoke as they walked to Laura’s car. Laura wanted to ask Destiny why she let the guy bully her, but she was aware that she had just bullied Destiny herself, ordering her to come with her. Laura knew she had just proven herself a more powerful bully than Boone because Destiny thought she was obligated to do what an official in a suit told her to do.

  By the time they reached the Denny’s at Camelback and 24th Avenue, Laura wasn’t feeling like her suit gave her much power. It was drenched in her sweat, and she could feel wet drips falling from her ears and nose. Destiny was wearing a gray sweatshirt, and its underarms and shoulders were soaked almost black.

  The Denny’s was so cold it felt like their sweat would turn to ice. They sat down, ordered coffee, and Laura opened her notebook and began asking questions. She got the answers she’d hoped for – Timmie Dave Mobley’s father had sodomized him with a baseball bat while his mother watched, had once sat him naked on a hot stove-top... It was nothing that Laura hadn’t heard before, in other interviews with family members of other clients. As Destiny described it, her tone of voice was almost casual, like someone describing a kid being grounded. Laura took notes automatically, still seething about the encounter with Boone. When she’d finished, she drove Destiny back to the apartment complex.

  “Does your boyfriend ever hit you?” Laura said as she drove.

  “No.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Destiny just looked ahead and didn’t say anything.

  When Laura parked the car, she gave Destiny her business card. “You ever get sick of him and need any help finding someplace to live, call me, okay?”

  “Thanks. I’m all right.”

  “Well, thanks for taking the time to talk to me. We’ll be in touch.”

  “Okay.” Destiny got out of the car. As she did, Laura saw Boone walking towards them.

  “You,” he yelled at Destiny, “Get up those fucking stairs.” He spat on Laura’s windshield. “You. Get the fuck out of here, and don’t come back.” He turned and walked away, pushing Destiny in front of him.

  Laura got out of the car and followed him. “Hey,” she said. When Boone turned around to face her, Laura had a can of mace in her left hand and a spring-loaded cosh in her right.

  She maced Boone in the eyes. He yelled in pain and shock, staggered, covered his eyes with his hands. Laura knew she should have stopped at that point, but she also knew she wasn’t going to.

  She swung the cosh low, into his kneecap. She thought she actually heard the bone shattering, just before his scream blew away every other sound. Destiny ran for the apartment, crying. Boone lay on the hot concrete, unable to stop screaming. He grabbed at his knee, and that made it hurt even worse.

  “I told you,” Laura said. “If I wanted to talk to you, I’d break your leg. But you know what, homes? You suck at conversation.”

  The next morning, Laura and Pat sat in Pat’s office.

  “I don’t even know what to say, Laura.” Pat raised his hands. “Tell me. What am I supposed to say to you right now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Well, that helps a lot. That’s great. Okay, here’s what I’m going to say. You’re my friend, but right now I’m not talking to you as your friend. I’m talking to you as the Federal Public Defender...” He trailed off and they sat and looked at each other.

  “Am I fired?” Laura said.

  “You just assaulted somebody. You’re lucky your cop friends kept you out of jail. I mean, tell me again – what the fuck did you hit him with?”

  “A cosh.”

  “A cosh. Where did you get a goddamn cosh? Soldier of Fortune magazine?”

  She started to laugh, but held it back. “I ordered it off the Internet.”

  “So, as an investigator for this office, you go to interviews armed like some military thug from a banana republic?”

  “The cosh is legal for me to carry. I have a concealed weapons permit.”

  “Yeah, I know. I’m sure you had a gun as well, so maybe I should be grateful you didn’t just shoot the guy.”

  They looked at each other, and this time they both had to swallow laughter, though it was tinged with hysteria.

  “The cosh might be legal, but what you did with it wasn’t. And, even if you hadn’t used it at all, carrying a weapon is a violation of FPD office policy, which you’re well aware of. Laura... this is so fucked up. Go have lunch and let me think about what to do.”

  “Okay.” She had always assumed that Pat knew she carried weapons, and that he just preferred to look the other way, hoping he would never have to deal with it. When they’d hung out socially, they’d sometimes argued about the gun laws. Pat favored gun control, which Laura opposed. She approved of the fact that in Arizona anyone who wasn’t a convicted felon could carry a sidearm, as long as it wasn’t concealed. If you wanted a concealed weapons permit, you had to put in a few hours on the range to prove that you knew how to shoot. Laura had never understood the reasoning behind that regulation, but she didn’t really care, since she was a good shot and had no problem passing the test. She had once told Pat that the only reason she bothered concealing her weapons was that they clashed with her clothes if she didn’t. She was only half-joking; the other half was that she didn’t like the way a visible weapon attracted stares. Now she wondered if Pat had thought all of her comments had been in jest. She decided not to ask him.

  She drove to Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Café, a soul food place on Jefferson Street. She’d started going there when she’d started hanging out with blues musicians. It was always crowded, but she got a table and ordered the smothered pork chops. As she waited for her food to arrive, she looked out of the window and thought about the things that had happened on that street, things she had seen during her time as a cop, and things that had been done by some of the clients whose lives she now worked to save. To Laura, it sometimes seemed like everyplace in the city was a crime scene.

  As she ate, a hand touched her shoulder. It was Pat.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “Hey. I thought you might be here.” He sat down, and the waiter came over with some iced tea. When the waiter asked him what he wanted to eat, Pat said, “Nothing today, thanks,” and Laura knew.

  “So you’re done thinking?” she said.

  “Yeah.” He took off his sunglasses. “I don’t have any choice, Laura. I wish I did.”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “I hate this.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’ll pay you through a week from Friday. Is that okay?”

  “I guess.” She felt numb. “So you don’t want me to work out any notice?”

  “No, I don’t think so. You can use the paid time to get your bearings and find something else.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hey, can I suggest something to you? As a friend?”

  “Sure.”

  “You might want to think about getting some help... I don’t know, like therapy or something. I don’t want you to get angry and end up being one of my clients.”

  One of my clients. Not one of our clients. She wasn’t on the team anymore.

  She said nothing.

  “It’s just a thought. I’m not trying to tell you how to live your life.”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  She stood up, bent over and kissed Pat on the cheek. “I’ll let you pay for my lunch,” she said. He nodded. As she walked out of the restaurant, she looked back and saw that his eyes were becoming red. He put his sunglasses back on.

  Laura drove back to the Federal Public Defender’s Office. Instead of going to the parking garage, she parked on the street near the entrance to the building. As she rode the elevator, she wondered how many people in the office already knew. As she walked in, she tried to act as though nothing were amiss, but she immediately began clearing out her office. It didn’t take long. Some of her colleagues decorated their offices with as much care as they did their homes, but all Laura had w
as a few pictures on the walls, some paperwork on her desk, some books and magazines. She went through the paperwork, and most of it was stuff she wouldn’t need anymore. She took the pictures from the walls, and assembled the books and magazines into a pile. She found a box, and the stuff she wanted to take with her only half-filled it.

  She left her office keys on her desk, along with all the documents she didn’t need. She picked up the box and walked out. As she walked through the bullpen, she looked straight ahead. She didn’t know if Pat had come back to the office yet. She heard someone call her name, but she pretended she hadn’t heard, and she kept walking. She got in the elevator before anyone could catch up with her.

  She was putting the box in the trunk of her car when she heard her name being called again. Lee Cetrine, one of the lawyers, was practically jogging towards her.

  “Hey, dork,” he said breathlessly. “You just gonna take off and not say goodbye to anybody?”

  “No, I’ll call everybody later. I just didn’t want a big goodbye moment right now.”

  “Well, the gang wants me to bring you back upstairs...”

  “I’m really not up to it right now.”

  “I can understand that. You know we all hate it that you’re leaving.”

  “I know. Me too. Listen, it’s hot. I’m gonna hit the road.”

  He said nothing. They hugged, and she got in her car.

  By the time she got home, there was a message on her machine from Lee. “Okay, you skank, once things are less frantic around here, we’re having a going-away party for you. If you try to get out of it, we’ll come and get you. We’ll be in touch when further details are available. That is all.”

  She made a pot of coffee, poured a cup, sat at the desk in her bedroom and turned on her computer. Tubby Franklin jumped onto her lap and sat there, purring. “Well,” she said to him. “I guess I better figure out how I’m gonna pay for the cat food and keep a roof over your stripy ass. You don’t seem worried, so I guess I shouldn’t be either.”

  She wrote a group email to about ten of her former colleagues.

  Hey, guys –

  You probably know by now that I no longer work there, as of today. I’m not going to get maudlin on you, but I just want to let you know that I had a great time during the past two years, and if you’re on the list for this email, you’re a part of the reason. So, thanks, and let’s stay in touch.

  Laura

  There was a knock on the front door. She went and answered it, and saw David Regier, the reporter who’d approached her after Frank’s parole hearing.

  “Hey,” he said. “Remember me?”

  “Yeah. I remember telling you to go fuck yourself. Consider yourself told again.” She shut the door.

  There was another knock a few minutes later. Okay, she thought, I’m just in the mood. She yanked the door open.

  It wasn’t Regier. It was a woman selling carpet cleaner. She was a few years older than Laura, and had a professional smile on her exhausted face. She was dressed neatly, but the clothes were cheap and she was sweating hard.

  “No, thanks,” Laura said. “My vacuum cleaner does the job.”

  The woman pointed to a patch of carpet just inside the door that was darker than the rest. “Come on. You call that doing the job?”

  Laura was about to tell her she had just crossed the line from pushiness into rudeness, but something about the woman’s desperation stopped her, and she just said, “Yep.”

  “And you couldn’t help out a working single mom?”

  “Sorry. No.”

  Not having to pretend anymore, the woman switched off the smile, turned and walked away without saying another word. Laura shut the door, and, with no warning, started to cry.

  Boone lay on the couch in his apartment, with the door wide open. He’d have preferred to sit outside, but none of the chairs he could have sat on were comfortable with his leg in the mess it was in. They’d given him some Demerol for the pain, so it wasn’t hurting as much anymore, especially with the beer he was throwing down on top of it.

  He was going to haul his ass to the fridge to get another beer, but he heard footsteps outside, and was glad, because he thought it meant Destiny was getting back from the store, and he could get her to do it for him.

  It wasn’t Destiny who walked out of the sunshine and into the gloom of the apartment. It was a young cop, and he walked in as though it was his goddamn office or something, and he could walk right in the door without even thinking about it or even looking around.

  “What’s up,” the cop said, a little bit of a Mexican accent to his voice. As he spoke, he sat down on a chair across from the couch.

  “Who said you could come in here?”

  “Nobody.”

  “You got a warrant?”

  “Nope. You can call and complain if you want to.”

  “I will. What’s your name?”

  “Ain’t got one of those either.”

  “What do you want?”

  “Just doing some community policing.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means I came over to see how you’re doing, make sure you’re okay, after what happened.”

  Boone wanted to tell this fucking beaner to get out of his apartment, and he wanted to start yelling for help if he didn’t obey, but something told him that wasn’t a good idea.

  “I’m fine,” he said. “What do you want?”

  “Good. I’m glad you’re fine. I’m fine too.” The cop smiled. “You know why I’m fine? I got a great job. I can do anything I want.” He looked at Boone and waited to see if he was going to say something, but he didn’t. “Like, if I want to pull out this gun and shoot you right now, you know what the law says has to happen first? All that has to happen is that I’m fearful that my life might be in danger. It doesn’t say what has to be happening for me to be feeling like that, just that if I happen to be feeling like that, I can pull out my gun and blow you the fuck away. That’s not exactly what the book calls it. It’s called ‘use of deadly force.’ Pretty cool, huh?”

  Boone prided himself on being mouthy, but he really didn’t feel like saying anything at all.

  “Being a person of color, what I like the best about this city is that it ain’t as racist as it could be. I’m Mexican-American, if you didn’t know, and people always ask me if it bothers me that we shoot and kill so many unarmed vatos. Truthfully, it doesn’t, because we kill our fair share of unarmed niggers and white boys too, so it evens out. Like, you hear about the nigger in a wheelchair we choked to death? A lot of people said the reason the officers involved were cleared was because of the victim’s race, but I can tell you that it’s just not true. They were cleared because we get to do whatever we feel like. You ain’t black and you ain’t brown, but when I kill you right here in your shitty-ass apartment, nothing’s gonna happen to me. I might even get a commendation for bravery. Do you think for one minute that I’m joking?”

  Boone shook his head. It was hard for him to talk, but he forced himself to. “Why are you gonna kill me?”

  “Because I don’t like cocksuckers who talk to lawyers. And you’ve been talking to lawyers about suing Laura Ponto, haven’t you?”

  “No, I won’t...”

  “Bob Headman ain’t a lawyer? He was the last I heard. You gonna tell me you ain’t been talking to him? I don’t like lying sacks of shit either. Being lied to makes me fear that my life might be in danger.”

  “I did talk to him, but I won’t any more. Somebody told me I should see about a civil lawsuit, and he said he’d work for me for a cut of whatever money he got me. She smashed my fucking knee.”

  “Does it hurt?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they give you something for it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Let me see what they gave you.”

  “Why?”

  “Let me see what they gave you.”

  “They gave me Demerol.”

  “I didn’t ask
what they gave you, I told you to let me see it.”

  The bottle of pills was on the dirty carpet by the couch, lying there next to Boone’s nearly-empty Budweiser. He picked it up and tossed it to the cop, who caught it and looked at the label.

  “Demerol, sure enough. Nice to know you can read. I used to party on this shit a while back when I broke my thumb. You find it helps your knee?”

  “Yeah, it helps.”

  The cop put the bottle in his pocket, then looked at his watch. “Five-thirty. I’m guessing your doctor’s office is closed by now, so you won’t be able to call them for another prescription. Not that they’d be likely to believe you when you said you lost what you had. I’m gonna be feeling good tonight...”

  “Come on. Please. It’ll hurt like a bitch without the pills.”

  “Well, if you’re hurting, at least you know you’re alive. And that won’t last for long if you talk to any more lawyers. Feel me?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have a nice day. I’m very glad to see that you’re doing well. Please think of your neighborhood police officers as your friends, and call us if you need anything.”

  As the cop walked to his car, he took out a cell phone and made a call. “Ponto, it’s Diaz. Looks like everything’s cool.”

  The weekly paper came out, and the cover story was about Laura. It was long, and she didn’t read all of it, but she skimmed it enough to see that it included her testimony at the parole hearing, her threat against Frank, her assault on Boone, and her firing from her job. It accused the Phoenix Police Department of covering up for a former one of its own, and of intimidating Boone to keep him from pursuing charges. It contained anonymous quotes from cops who had worked with Laura during her own time in a uniform, and an account of how she once beat up an ex-boyfriend.

  Thank God the photos of her they’d found were so fuzzy. At least she could probably go out without being recognized.

  Pat called her. “Hey, how you doing?”

  “Okay,” she said.

  “You see the paper?”

  “You call that a paper? Yeah, I saw it.”

  “I didn’t talk to him. Nobody here did.”

 

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