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

by Barry Graham

  “I know. He said so in the article.”

  At nearly midnight, restless, she drove to a Denny’s. She sat at the counter and read the whole of the article as she drank coffee. The guy hadn’t gotten a single detail wrong, she had to admit. But a long article tracking her history of violence wasn’t going to make it easier to get a job in Phoenix.

  And, as she looked around her in that Denny’s, looked at the mirrors and the fluorescent lights, she knew she didn’t want to leave Phoenix. She’d done it once before. After she quit the police department, she wasn’t sure what to do next, so she decided to blow town. She wandered for a while, took whatever jobs she could get, and ended up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She got a job as a receptionist, and for about three months she liked it there. There were down sides – nearly everyone was a Christian, few of whom believed in anything Jesus Christ taught, and nearly everyone who wasn’t rich seemed to live in poverty. It was the only place Laura had ever been to where people were proud of being ignorant, and actually bragged about how little they knew or had experienced.

  But, unlike Phoenix, it had a real downtown, a place you could walk around in, and a good public transport system. In Phoenix, there was nowhere to walk – many streets didn’t even have sidewalks – and a bus service that barely existed. She lived in an apartment on a hill overlooking downtown Chattanooga. It was in a cold, generic complex the size of a village, with high rents and high bills and draconian penalties for late rent payments or refusal to commit to a long lease. The apartment buildings all looked the same, and each apartment had the ambience of the waiting area at a county clinic. At the entrance to the complex were signs that read “WELCOME HOME” and “WE LOVE OUR RESIDENTS.”

  But at night she could look out of her living room window and see the city’s lights reflected on the Tennessee River. The bars opened late, and there was always someplace with live music within walking distance. It was the rudest, most unfriendly town she’d ever been to – nobody wanted anything to do with anybody they weren’t related to, or didn’t go to church with, or hadn’t grown up with, anybody who wasn’t exactly like them. But she wasn’t looking for friends, so it was an easy place to live.

  One Sunday morning, she got up, ate breakfast and decided to take a walk. As she walked down the hill, the breeze brought the sound of the city as a warm whisper across her skin. She walked to the Walnut Street Bridge, which was claimed to be the longest pedestrian bridge in the world, though it wasn’t even the longest one in America. That day it was busy, with families sitting on the benches, couples holding hands as they strolled, other people jogging or walking. An old man sat on a portable stool, blowing on a saxophone.

  About halfway across the bridge, Laura stopped and leaned on the rail and looked down at the river. It was as beautiful as she could have wanted, and as peaceful as she could have wanted, and she just didn’t want it.

  She didn’t know why, but she knew that what she wanted was Phoenix. She wanted its furious dry heat and its sprawling ugliness and its kaleidoscopic mix of people and its sense that, every time you stepped outside your front door, you might get laid or get killed or anything in between. She wanted the Dairy Queen and the Denny's. Although she wanted to live, she also wanted the bars where swarthy men with bad mustaches will kill you just for something to do. She wanted the blues clubs, full of men in sharp clothes that later fall from their bodies like broken promises. She wanted the dark nights that are as hot as summer days elsewhere, and she wanted the sound of mariachi music and police sirens that blast through the still air. She wanted the brown landscapes, flat and empty except for advertising billboards. She wanted the indifferent mountains. She wanted the pickup trucks and the mesquite, wanted the sprawling development that ate up the desert at the rate of one acre every hour. She wanted the stories of the place, ghost stories, work stories, stories of killing and loving. She wanted the Virgin of Guadalupe, wanted the lowriders, wanted the geckos crawling on the walls of apartment buildings, wanted the men with dark skin and white cowboy hats, their women with big hair and big dangling earrings and tight clothes. She wanted the wide streets and constant sunshine. She wanted it and loved it, loved it like the heat of the Phoenix summer that threatens to make everything melt.

  She wanted it, and she didn’t want this beautiful river or this historic bridge or the lazy music of the saxophone.

  That evening, she ate dinner by herself at a Thai restaurant on Market Street, then walked to her apartment. Two of her neighbors were lying on a blanket on the grass outside, gazing at the sky. Laura looked up, and saw nothing. The sky at night in Chattanooga is dark and dead, like the screen of a computer that’s been disconnected. The night sky over Phoenix, though dark, pulses and glows, like a screen that’s just on “sleep”.

  She had a truck in those days, an ancient Chevy. The next morning, she loaded her stuff into the bed of it, and what she couldn’t fit she just left behind. She gave a pissed-off Tubby Franklin a sedative she got at the vet, put him in a cat carrier, and put the carrier on the passenger seat. She drove right across Tennessee, North to Nashville and then West to Memphis, then took Highway 40 through Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico. She stopped only for food and gas and sleep, and to feed Tubby Franklin and let him piss and shit. She always ate with her truck in sight. While still in Tennessee, she’d parked at a rest area and slept for a few hours in the driver’s seat, and then woke to find an entire family – Mom, Dad and some kids – trying to take things from the bed of her truck. When she jumped out and yelled at them, they didn’t even seem perturbed. They just stood there and looked at her. Then they found themselves looking at her gun as she pointed it at them, and they turned and walked away, got into their own truck – adults in the cab, kids in the bed – and took off.

  Three days after she left Chattanooga, she rolled into Northern Arizona. In Flagstaff, she got on Highway 17 and headed South. When she pulled onto Camelback Road in Central Phoenix, it was rush hour, and the city seemed to roar and rear up like a huge brown animal. The windows of the truck were down, but that didn’t stop her from screaming and whooping at the top of her lungs.

  She went to the Denny’s on Camelback and Seventh Street, drank a root beer float, and wondered what to do now, who to call, which friend she should ask if she could stay with until she found an apartment and a job. She knew it would be a hassle doing all that, but she wasn’t worried, just as long as she was back in Phoenix.

  And it had been all right. She’d found an apartment, a cheap one, quickly. And then, before her money ran out, she’d gotten hired by the Federal Public Defender’s Office. The money wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible, and she was soon able to move to Tempe, to an apartment complex near Mill Avenue. The day she moved into that first apartment, she had to make a phone call, and her phone hadn’t been connected yet. She went out to look for a public phone, and when she saw two older women walking on the street, she asked them if they could tell her where the nearest one was. “Is it a local call, mija?” one of them said. Laura told her it was. “Then you can use my phone.”

  Some people would kill you and some people would help you, for no reason at all.

  It was the same city she’d left, but it wasn’t the same life she’d returned to. She realized how randomly a person’s life becomes the way it is, the scenes they become part of when they move to a new city, or move back after being away. The life she lived after moving back to Phoenix was created by the chance decision to apply for the job at capital habeas, which led to her hanging out in blues clubs because some of her colleagues were devoted to the music, which in turn brought her a community and a routine and a way of experiencing the city that bore little resemblance to the life she’d had as a cop.

  Now, as she sat in another Denny’s, not much different than the one she’d gone to the day she’d arrived back in town, she knew she wasn’t going to leave Phoenix again. For all that was wrong with the place – and it had more wrong with it than any
other American city she could think of – it was hers.

  She paid her bill and left the Denny’s. As she stepped out of the air-conditioned cocoon, the hot air of the night fell on her like a net, like a trap, but a trap she wanted to be in.

  In the morning she called a bunch of temp agencies. A couple of them gave her appointments for later that day. She hoped they weren’t staffed by people who read the weekly paper.

  At the first one, they interviewed her and gave her a typing test, which she passed easily enough, but she could tell she wasn’t going to hear from them. When she filled out the forms they gave her, she found a part that asked her to list any special skills. She barely resisted the temptation to write, “proficient with most handguns and several other weapons, skilled at interrogation, can fight like a pissed-off alley cat.” Judging by the lack of enthusiasm the staff showed her, she might as well have done it.

  The other place seemed more promising at first. The person she talked to seemed intrigued by her background. Again there was a typing test, and also spelling and filing tests, all of which were easy for her. Then they gave her a basic math test. Math had been her weakest subject in school, and in the years since then she’d never attempted the simplest arithmetic without using a calculator. When she took the test, the problems made so little sense to her that she had to guess at the answers. Her guesswork was good enough that they told her she’d only failed by a small margin, so they let her try those problems again.

  She guessed again, and still failed. The interviewer smiled sympathetically. “I’m sorry, but if you fail the math test, you have to wait thirty days to take it again. If you like, we can keep your information on file, and you can try again next month...”

  “Yeah. Okay. Thanks.” She didn’t even know what she felt, anger, humiliation or something else. She tried to laugh it off. “That’s assuming I can count up to thirty.”

  The interviewer smiled again. “I’m sorry. It’s not my rule.”

  “Thanks.” Laura walked out of there feeling like the biggest loser ever born.

  She went to a restaurant, ate, and forced herself to look through the job ads in the newspaper. She knew she had to keep herself in motion or she was going to sink into depression. She couldn’t pass a damn test to get a temp agency to take her on – what the hell was she going to be good for? Come on, Ponto, think positive. Not everybody knows you’re retarded. You can probably bullshit somebody into hiring you before they notice that you drool and count with your fingers.

  She circled some ads, called the numbers on her cell phone. All but one said the positions were filled. The other told her to come for an interview.

  It was a small firm of accountants. They needed someone to type, file, answer the phone. She was interviewed by the two owners. The woman didn’t seem to feel one way or the other about her, and she could tell that the man was attracted to her but would never have the balls to put the moves on her if she worked for him. She gave them the best line of bullshit she could muster, lying by leaving things out, and they told her they’d be in touch one way or the other. They both gave her their business cards, which she took to be positive sign.

  When she got home, her suit was almost dripping with sweat. She stripped naked and wiped herself down with a towel, then sat at her computer and wrote an email to the people who’d just interviewed her.

  Dear Todd and Linda,

  It was good to meet with you both today. I think it would be fun to work for you, and I hope to get the chance. In any case, thanks for taking the time to meet with me.

  Best regards,

  Laura Ponto

  She read it over. Amazing how sincere you can be when your rent depends on it. She hit send.

  She debated what to do about dinner. She was craving sushi, and she knew why. She never had strong preferences about food or entertainment unless she was broke or worried about being broke. When she had money, she was rarely extravagant. But if she was strapped for cash she always had a compulsion to eat at the most expensive joints, splurge on clothes, whatever. There had been times when she’d given in to it and had wound up living on baked beans for days, while enviously eyeing Tubby Franklin’s cat food.

  Not this time, she told herself. You’re going to be smart. You haven’t done that in a while. Until you know you’re gonna earn some cake, you’re gonna stay home and cook.

  She managed the cooking part, anyway. She put together a stir-fry, and ate it at the kitchen table while she read the paper. When she turned to the music section, she saw that R.L. Burnside was playing at the Rhythm Room that night.

  Burnside was an old bluesman from the North Mississippi hill country who was finally becoming known, touring with the Beastie Boys as well as doing smaller shows of his own. He came through Phoenix every once in a while, but Laura had never made it to any of his shows. Broke or not, she decided she wasn’t going to miss him this time.

  She got to the Rhythm Room just before ten, and it was so busy it took her a while to find a parking space. When she got inside, the crowd was wall to wall and shoulder to shoulder. Burnside wasn’t onstage yet, but Laura recognized the guy who was —T-Model Ford. She didn’t know he was touring with Burnside, so this seemed like a bonus. Life suddenly seemed a little better.

  She waited in line at the bar and got a beer, then stood near the dance floor and listened to T-Model. She loved the Rhythm Room. It was just a small, dark, faded-looking club with a few tables, a dance floor and some seats at the bar, but it was part of the city’s musical folklore. It was one of those places in central Phoenix that was beyond any demographic, any class or race or generation. Lawyers danced with taco vendors, drug dealers drank with computer geeks, retired carpenters talked with former dot-com millionaires.

  And Pat was there.

  She saw him on the dance floor in front of the stage, dancing with a chola ten years younger than him. The cheap suit he wore on the job had been replaced with a Diamondbacks T-shirt that showed the Route 66 tattoo on his arm. Laura laughed, and, as she did, Pat looked her way and saw her. He said something to his dance partner, and headed towards Laura.

  She’d wondered if seeing him would be awkward, but it wasn’t. He said, “Hey” and she hugged him and the events of the past few days didn’t seem real.

  “I didn’t know you were gonna be here,” he said.

  “I just saw in the paper that Burnside was playing. I’d heard a couple weeks ago, but I spaced it.”

  “I’m half in the bag.”

  “What else is new? You got a ride home?”

  “Uh... I might have. I just met her.”

  “Slut.”

  “I am not a slut.”

  “I know, it’s just a malicious rumor spread by all the women you’ve slept with. You better get back to her.”

  “Is everything okay with you?”

  “Yeah, fine.”

  “How’s the job hunt?”

  “I’m looking. I’ll get something.”

  “Okay. See you in a bit.”

  He went back to the dance floor. She stood at its edge and listened to the rest of T-Model’s set. When he’d finished, she went to get another drink, and found herself standing at the bar next to David Regier.

  “Hey,” he said, smiling at her. “How are you?”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Okay. I’m sorry if my article upset you. I was just doing my job.”

  “Fuck off.”

  He nodded, turned away from her and got himself a drink. Then he walked away and she lost sight of him in the crowd. When she got her beer and tried to pay for it, the bartender shook her head. “The guy who was in front of you already got it.”

  If Regier was still nearby she’d have refused it, but there was no point in making a gesture he wasn’t going to see. She nodded to the bartender, took the beer then went and staked out a spot near the stage.

  R.L. Burnside shuffled into view, wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, suspenders and a baseball cap, his black skin seeming
tinged with gray, his face looking battered and ancient, his long, thick fingers curled around a tall glass with a straw. Laura knew from articles she’d read that the glass contained a Bloody Mary, which Burnside sometimes drank instead of Jack Daniel’s when he felt that he needed to eat some vegetables. The crowd went into near-hysteria, roaring and punching the air, before he’d played a note or said a word. He stood there, grinning – showing more gums than teeth – and gazing through eyes so heavy-lidded they looked almost Asian. In his seventies, he looked older and younger at the same time. He sat down on a chair and picked up his guitar as the two guys who played with him took their places behind him.

  Burnside played two sets of his furious, grinding blues. In between songs, he’d say, “Well, well, well...” and then tell a joke or go into another song. Laura had never seen as laid-back a performer get a crowd so worked up; she half-expected a mosh pit to get going. There was a surreal moment when a crowd of big-haired Scottsdale women walked in, reeking of ignorance and money. One of them approached the stage, asked Burnside to play “Happy Birthday” for one of her group, and tried to tip him. Burnside just sat there and stared at her, and she suddenly seemed to realize where she was. She took off with her friends a few minutes later, and Burnside took a break.

  Laura found Pat standing in line at the bar. “Can you fucking believe that?” he said. “Treating R.L. fucking Burnside like a busker or something?”

  “Oh, I could believe it,” Laura said. “I grew up in this town, remember?”

  “That’s your problem. Want a beer?”

  “Yeah, I guess I can drive on one more.”

  He got a beer for her and another Jack Daniel’s for himself. “You gonna be able to get yourself home?” she said.

  “No.” He winked. “But I won’t have to.”

  “Ah...”

  “Yep.”

  “It’s gonna fall off someday.”

  “How about you? Get any offers tonight?”

  “Some looks, but no offers. That’s fine with me. I just want to listen to Burnside and then go home.”