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

by Barry Graham

  “You sure you’re okay?

  “Fine.”

  “And you’re not mad at me about what happened?”

  “Oh, shut up. You’re right, it’s all about you. Me assaulting people didn’t even come into it.”

  “Okay. So I’m forgiven?”

  “No. There was nothing to forgive you for.”

  Pat’s girl appeared at his side, giving Laura the death ray glare. Pat introduced them, and then Laura excused herself. She went outside for a few minutes to get a break from the smokiness of the club. It was close to midnight, and she considered heading home. But then she heard Burnside start to play again, scratching the air with the romance of desolation, and her mood changed. She went back inside, listened until he finished, and wound up buying a hat with the words BURNSIDE STYLE emblazoned on the front. She was wearing it when she walked to her car and found David Regier waiting for her.

  He was standing near the driver’s door, and he started to walk towards her when he saw her coming. “Cool hat,” he said.

  “You’re really pushing it now, you know that?”

  “Hey, I was just hoping to talk to you.”

  “What part of ‘fuck off’ do you not understand?”

  “I understand it. I just keep hoping you’ll change your mind.”

  “Why would I? Look, you wrote your goddamn article. Go mess with somebody else’s life now.”

  “Would it make any difference if I promised never to write about you again?”

  She looked at him. “If you’re not going to write about me, why would you want to talk to me?”

  “I don’t know. Well, I do know. Because I’m curious.”

  “About what?”

  “About you.”

  She burst out laughing. He smiled at her.

  “Get out of my damn way,” she said. She walked past him and began to unlock her car door.

  “You going home?” he said.

  “Where the hell else would I be going?”

  “To get some coffee or something with me, I was hoping.”

  “You are unreal, you know that?”

  “So I guess that’s a no?”

  She laughed again. “You know where Jerry’s is? On Thomas?”

  “You like that place? Okay, okay,” he added quickly when he saw her look. “Yeah, Jerry’s is great, I love Jerry’s...”

  “I’ll see you there, then.” She got in her car, and David watched her drive away.

  Jerry’s was a downscale 24-hour restaurant whose liver and onions Laura found addictive. As she drove there, she kept telling herself to turn around, get on the freeway, go home. Just for once, be smart.

  Then she was walking into the restaurant. She’d already ordered by the time David came in and sat down facing her in the booth. When the waitress asked what he wanted, he said, “Just coffee, please.”

  “I can’t believe I’m sitting here with you,” Laura said. “I need professional help.”

  He laughed. “I can’t believe it either. I’d given up. But, when I saw you there tonight, I thought I’d give it one more try.”

  “You sure you didn’t tail me there?”

  He laughed again. “I’m not that good.”

  “Oh, you’re pretty good. You got most of my damn life without any help from me or my friends.”

  “Whoa... that sounds almost like a compliment. But, since your friends wouldn’t talk to me, I didn’t get the answers to the questions I really wanted.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like you beating up your ex. Who, by the way, I thought was a major jackoff when I talked to him.”

  “You’re right.”

  “So, what happened with that?”

  She looked at him suspiciously. “We’re off the record, right?”

  “Yeah, I told you. Look, we can talk about something else, if you want. I’m just amazed that I got you to come hang out with me...”

  “Not half as amazed as I am.”

  “So I ain’t too particular about what we talk about. I’m curious, though.”

  “Why?”

  “Well, when I was putting that article together, I was thinking about you for most of my waking hours. But that’s my job. Thing is, after I was done with the story, I was still fascinated. I just wanted to hang out with you.”

  “Because I’m so fascinating. My ass wasn’t a factor, huh?”

  “Sure it was. But not the only factor.”

  “Do you hit on everybody you write about?”

  “No, I wait until after I’ve written about them. Believe it or not, you’re the first.”

  “Not a shy boy, are you?”

  “Nope. So, you gonna tell me about throwing down with your ex? Come on – you know you want to.”

  “Okay. Well, it was a while ago. We’d broken up, and I’d moved out. We were talking on the phone about me coming over to get some of my stuff, and – can you guess what he asked me?”

  “Uh... If you’d slept with anybody else yet?”

  “You got it. So I asked him why it mattered, and he said it didn’t matter, he was just curious. So I said, yeah, there had been a couple guys, just one night things, nothing serious. And he just screamed at me, ‘You fucking whore, we’ve only been broken up for three weeks, you fucking whore...’”

  “I can imagine him saying it.”

  “Yeah, I’ll bet. So... I told him to watch his mouth, and that I was gonna come over and get my stuff and he’d better not get in my face. So, I go over there, and the first thing he says is, ‘Fuck anybody on your way over?’ And I just, you know... I’d been dealing with his crap for so long, and that was it. So I slapped him, and he slapped me back, and then I just started punching him.”

  David was smiling. “And then what happened?”

  “He tried to fight back, but I just beat the shit out of him.”

  “You broke his nose and closed both his eyes.”

  “Yeah. We fought for a couple minutes, and I just wailed on him till he ran out the door. Then I got my stuff and left.”

  “But he called the cops on you.”

  “Yeah. I had to take an anger management class.”

  “Did anybody ever teach you to fight? Like, any training?”

  “Not really. Just standard police brutality stuff. I’ve always been in good shape, and I just hit and hit.”

  “Your ex got pretty upset when I asked him how humiliating it was to have to tell the cops his ex-girlfriend came over and beat him up.”

  “You asked him that?” She clapped her hands as she laughed.

  “Yeah. He said the interview was now over.”

  “Cool. I wish I could have seen his face.”

  “You know, I really don’t think I’m a macho asshole or anything... but I don’t believe I could ever bring myself to admit to anybody that I got my ass kicked by a woman – let alone call the cops and ask them to arrest her for it.”

  “The cops who came to bust me were laughing their asses off at him. I was almost embarrassed for him – and embarrassed for myself, that I got so involved with such a prick.”

  “Why did you?”

  “Who knows? Sometimes you just get hooked up with an asshole, and everybody can see it except for you, and then you realize they’re an asshole and you still don’t want it to be over. And when it is over, you’re scared shitless and you don’t know what you’re going to do now. And then you feel relieved.”

  “Yep. I’ve been there. So... you dating anybody now?”

  “Nope. Just as well, I guess. If I had been, I’m sure you’d have found him and interrogated him for your story.”

  “This is so cool – you think I’m so much smarter than I actually am.”

  “How about you?”

  “Huh?”

  “You dating anybody?”

  “As of a month ago, no.”

  “You were before that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How long for?”

  “Two years.”

&nb
sp; “Sorry it ended. But, since you’ve put so much effort into getting me here, I’m guessing you weren’t too heartbroken.”

  “No, it was time.”

  “What happened?”

  “Why?”

  “Just curious. Hey, if you get to ask me questions, I get to ask you questions...”

  “Fair enough. I don’t mind talking about it. It just isn’t as good a story as yours. She didn’t beat me up.”

  “Should she have?”

  “That’s not my call.”

  It wasn’t dramatic, but Laura still found it interesting to hear about. The woman was Japanese, and David had met her while she was temporarily living in the U.S. By the time she went back to Japan, it was more serious than either of them had intended, and so they did the long distance thing. They visited each other, talked on the phone, emailed and instant-messaged, made mix C.D.s for each other and sent each other books. They tried to have faith, and for a while they did, but the faith couldn’t bridge the distance. It wasn’t feasible for her to move to the U.S. permanently – she had a life in Japan, and, since David had fewer ties in America, it would have made more sense for him to be the one to move. But, as much as he loved the woman and liked Japan, as much as he liked to lie in bed at night reading the novels of Kawabata, dreaming of the rainy season and hearing her voice as she read to him over the phone... he couldn’t do it.

  He couldn’t learn the language, learn to write kanji, figure what he’d do for a job over there. It was too much. In his late thirties, he was too old. He told her that, and he hoped she’d say something to change his mind, but she didn’t. They said goodbye, and what had seemed real was gone, just a memory of Tokyo nights, neon kisses, soba noodles in the rain.

  “That sucks,” Laura said. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. Like I said, it was time. And like you said, if I was that broken up about it I wouldn’t have been bugging you to come and hang out with me.”

  Pause. Both of them wondering what to say next.

  David spoke first. “Is it my turn to ask a question now?”

  “I guess.”

  “Okay, the other thing I really want to know – what made you become a cop, and what made you quit?”

  She told him the short version.

  She didn’t know why she’d grown up wanting to protect people, she only knew that she had. Some friends had told her it must be because of what had happened with Frank, but she thought that was too easy.

  She was twenty-two when she decided to become a cop, and it was an almost instant decision. It was a Saturday night, and she was in Tempe with a group of her friends, hanging out on Mill Avenue. In those days, Mill was still a place to go. It was the only street in the Valley where you could walk around, and bands like the Gin Blossoms played in the bars every weekend. As Laura and her friends strolled, she noticed a young guy walking by himself. As he walked past a band of roving frat boys, one of them smiled and casually reached out, trying to burn the guy’s face with his cigarette. The guy dodged it and just kept walking, and the frat boys just laughed and didn’t pursue him, but something about it changed who Laura was, or maybe just made her realize who she had been all along and not known it.

  It was the combination of somebody wanting to do that to somebody else, for no reason at all, and the other person being so used to it that it never occurred to him not to take it. The arrogance on the one side and the resignation on the other made her so crazy that her friends had to stop her from going over and saying something.

  “And that made you want to be a cop, just like that?” David said. “It was that simple?”

  “You don’t have to believe me, but, yeah, it was that simple.”

  “I’m not saying I don’t believe you.”

  “I just kept thinking about it, and I wanted to be able to stop people from doing things like that. I mean, it must have been in me anyway, obviously, but that’s when I realized it. So I went and became a cop.”

  “So why did you quit?”

  “Because people getting fucked over makes me crazy. And crazy doesn’t make for good police work.”

  “Crazy how?”

  She laughed. “Nothing that would surprise you, considering what you know already.”

  When she heard the dispatch on her radio, at first she thought she was mistaken. She headed for the address, which was a few blocks away, but she didn’t turn on her lights or her siren. She got there quickly anyway, but other cops had gotten there first. As she walked into the yard of the house, she recognized one of the cops who was handcuffing people – Joe Diaz, who she’d hung out with a few times and semi-dated.

  There were about twenty young men in the yard, and four cops asking them questions. The smell that came from the barbecue grill told Laura she hadn’t misheard her radio.

  “What’s up?” she asked Diaz.

  “Oh, hey, Ponto. Can you believe this shit?”

  “What?”

  “This piece of shit.” Diaz motioned at a chubby guy in shorts and a tank top who was handcuffed and arguing with a cop. “Seems like when his buddies come over for a party, their idea of fun is to put a kitten on the grill.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I wish I was. Check it out.”

  The kitten was lying on the ground beside the grill. It was so tiny that Laura might not have noticed it if Diaz hadn’t pointed.

  “Oh, fuck. Did somebody call a vet?”

  “We were going to. It was alive when we got here. But it died right after we took it off the grill.”

  Laura picked the kitten up. It stuck to her fingers. She looked at its face and felt her bowels twitch. Not knowing what else to do with it, she gently put it back down on the ground. Diaz reached to put an arm around her, but she was already walking towards the guy in handcuffs.

  “Hey,” she said, and then Diaz saw that she had pulled her gun.

  “Ponto! Shit! Come on –”

  Laura ignored him. As she reached the guy, she swung her pistol in a huge arc, swung it with such force that the momentum would have carried her off her feet if it hadn’t been halted by the weapon hacking into the guy’s face. He went down hard, and lay there, stiff with shock, fighting for breath, blood and teeth stuck to his face.

  Laura knelt on his heaving chest and raised the gun to hit him again, but Diaz had her arm before the blow could fall.

  “What would you have done if they hadn’t stopped you?” David said.

  “I like to think I’d have stopped myself. But I might have shoved his face into the grill and asked him how he liked it.”

  “I’d have felt the same way. I’m not saying I’d have done something to him, but I’d have wanted to.”

  “It was... I could just imagine that little kitten coming to him, trusting him, you know?”

  “Yeah.”

  He looked at her hands, one on the table, the other holding a cup. He wanted to touch her, but he didn’t.

  “So, they made you quietly turn in your badge?”

  “God, no. This is the Phoenix Police Department we’re talking about. They just made it go away. But...”

  He was a young man who’d killed three people in New Mexico and come to Arizona on the run, hoping to find refuge with his ex-girlfriend. When he showed up, he found that she wanted nothing to do with him, and he left. The cops were at the girl’s place, talking to her, when the phone rang. He was calling from the barrio at 15th Avenue and Grand, telling the cops to come to an empty lot down there so he could kill them.

  Laura was one of the cops dispatched to the scene, and even before she got there she didn’t think the kid was planning to kill anybody. She thought he was trying suicide by cop, and she knew it for sure when she arrived and saw him sitting on the ground, waiting.

  Six cops, including Laura, stood in a semi-circle, guns drawn, and the guy in charge yelled at the kid to lie on the ground and put his hands on his head. Instead, he stood up and acted like he was reaching for a gun. Laura didn’t beli
eve him, and she didn’t shoot. The other cops did, and, after he was down, they kept on shooting. There were bullet holes in the soles of his feet. Other bullets ended up in the apartment complex nearby, the tenants throwing themselves on the floor as the bullets tore through the flimsy rented walls.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing, of course. This is Phoenix. Everybody was confined to their desk for a couple of days, but that’s standard procedure for a cop who’s involved in a shooting. It’s just to let your nerves settle down before you go back on the street.”

  “Nobody got in trouble at all?”

  “No. They got the same treatment I got when I stepped over the line. It all just went away. Who was gonna care? The kid was a killer. Better yet, he was a killer with no money who wasn’t white.”

  “Why did that make you quit?”

  “Because it was murder, and I couldn’t say a thing, because these guys were only getting the same benefit I’d been getting. And they really weren’t any worse than I was. It was only dumb luck that I never killed anybody when I lost my temper.”

  “So you just walked?”

  “No. I’m not that principled. I wasn’t about to put myself out of a job over it. But the job just didn’t feel the same. I was taking a lot of time off, showing up late, stuff like that. They counseled me that I’d better get it together, and I realized I didn’t really want to get it together.”

  “Did you ever think about going to the press with what happened that night?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  “You know damn well. The old blue wall. I’m not going to snitch on a cop, ever, even a bad cop. Hell, I was a bad cop, and these are guys who always had my back. Anyway, if I had snitched, there was plenty that I’d done that would’ve come back on me.”

  David didn’t say anything.

  “You think I’m a jerk.”

  He considered it. “No, I don’t. I’m trying to, but it’s not happening.”

  “I can’t believe I’m telling you this shit.”

  Two hours later, they were still in the restaurant. He was answering her questions now.

  “You like your job?”

  “Not much. The profession attracts idiots. And it’s a crummy paper, and the pay sucks.”

  “Why don’t you go to another paper?”