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

by Barry Graham

  That day:

  Frank selling a car.

  Laura’s tears soaking the tape over her mouth until it started to loosen, but not enough to come off.

  Frank eating lunch by himself at a diner. Fried chicken, French fries, green beans.

  Laura having to piss, not able to hold it. Relief and disgust.

  Frank laughing with a customer.

  Laura rolling herself off the soaking bed, landing on her feet, then falling to her knees, then on her face, feeling the nylon carpet tearing at her skin.

  Frank talking with a co-worker.

  Laura dragging and rolling herself across the floor, slithering in her sweat, twisting herself from side to side. Reaching the front door, rolling herself against it, trying to make a noise. Twisting onto her back and slamming her bound feet against the door, again, again, again.

  Frank drinking coffee in the break room, reading The Arizona Republic. Nothing about Laura.

  Streaks of blood on the panels of the door from the raw flesh of Laura’s heels. Too sore now to pound anymore. Feeling like she was going to shit right there where she lay.

  Frank selling a car.

  Laura lying on her back, looking up at the living room window. Wondering if her feet could reach it. Moving, moving, sweat, carpet under her. Feet against wall, move closer, feet higher, touching window, pull back, kick.

  Feet going through window. No feeling, but sound of glass breaking. Feet outside of window, legs inside. Ankles on broken glass, glass going in, blood spilling out. Laura going to sleep, wanting Frank or somebody to love her.

  Frank driving home.

  Laura sleeping, not scared anymore.

  Frank walking to his apartment door. Blood on the concrete, blood and broken glass. Cops. “Is this your apartment?” Frank pushed against a wall. Handcuffs. Hot stucco.

  The hospital. Laura’s parents coming to visit. Laura saying nothing to them. Laura finding out that they hadn’t reported her missing.

  The trial. Laura being told that she didn’t have to testify. Laura saying she wanted to. Delivering her testimony without crying, without her voice shaking at all. Frank crying, Laura looking right at him.

  They couldn’t get Frank for the dead girl, because they only had Laura’s word on it, and there was nothing to link him to any of the girls who disappeared, in Phoenix and in LA. They tried, but all they could get him for was Laura. The judge knew there was more, though, and he said so, and he gave Frank the maximum possible sentence, and he told him he wished he could give him more.

  Laura didn’t daydream in school anymore. She couldn’t believe in daydreams. She hated everything, especially her parents. She paid attention in class, because all she wanted was to get away.

  She didn’t take part in debate club anymore. There wasn’t one in her grade school – Mr. Crossan had lost his job because Laura’s parents had complained that he’d seen her at the school on the Saturday when she disappeared, and that he hadn’t called them. The fact that he didn’t know she’d disappeared because they hadn’t reported it didn’t make a difference.

  There was a debate club in the high school she went to, but she wasn’t interested. Nobody asked her why, and she wouldn’t have been able to tell them if they had.

  She went from high school to Arizona State University. She dropped out for a year after being disgusted when a professor of women’s studies didn’t know that hysterectomy used to be given as psychosurgery. After a year of working retail, she went back to school, sucked it all up and got her Bachelor’s in sociology. At graduation, her friends talked about going on to grad school, or to careers in social work. Laura said she was going to be a cop. They all thought she was joking.

  PART III: LOVE

  TEN

  Laura and David were bickering about a toaster oven.

  The elements on David's toaster oven had burnt out. David thought maybe they just needed to be replaced, like light bulbs, but Laura was adamant that he needed to just buy a new one. David said he was skeptical that toaster ovens wore out so quickly, and he said he couldn't imagine that there was a huge landfill of old toaster ovens somewhere.

  Laura kept arguing, more and more intensely.

  "Do you care about this, or do you just want to be right?" David said.

  "What do you mean?"

  "I think you're just trying to prove me wrong, trying to win."

  "You are wrong."

  "Yeah, so what? You think I care? I don't mind being wrong. I don't even care if I'm wrong about big things, like if there's a god or if life has meaning or whatever. So you think I'm going to weep and moan if I'm wrong about a toaster oven?"

  “Well, if you can’t make toast, what do I get for breakfast?”

  “I can make toast. I’ll put it under the broiler.”

  “Hurry up. I need to get to work. Remember work?”

  “While you’re getting paid to sit in an office and surf the Internet today, I’m gonna be trying to get you a better job.”

  Bob Headman was a criminal defense lawyer, and he and David had been friends for a few years. They’d met when David was covering a murder trial in which the accused, who was obviously innocent, would still have been convicted if Bob hadn’t represented him pro bono.

  Bob weighed about three hundred pounds, and the suit he wore in court was too tight. As he gave his closing argument, he turned to face the judge, and all the members of the press and public were able to see that the seat of his pants had torn, and his ass, encased in blue briefs that had ridden up his crack, was hanging out of them.

  When the trial was over and Bob’s client had been acquitted, David wrote up the story without making any mention of Bob’s ass. He was tempted to, but he knew he couldn’t live with himself if he embarrassed a guy who’d donated his services for free to keep an innocent man from going to Death Row. Bob was grateful, and they became friends, although there would never come a time when David would stop giving him shit about what had happened in court that day.

  They met for lunch at Mrs. White’s.

  “So, what’re you going to do now that you’re no longer a gentleman of the press?” Bob said as he shoveled fried chicken into his face.

  “Don’t know yet. But I’m gonna have to think of something damn soon.”

  “I could use an investigator.”

  “You mean you actually have a vacancy, or you’d be doing me a favor?”

  “Neither. I haven’t been actively looking for somebody, but I’ve been meaning to. It’s yours if you want it. Might only be part-time at first, but it’d be steady.”

  “I really appreciate it, but I’ll take a pass.”

  “Should I be offended?”

  “Not at all. And I’ll probably regret saying no when I’m trying to figure out how to make my rent. But I’m saying no for the same reason I quit the paper – I just want to get away from crime.”

  “Criminal stuff isn’t all I do, you know.”

  “But it’s most of what you do. And it’s mainly what you’d need me for, right?”

  “Right.”

  “If you really do need somebody, though, I know somebody who might be interested. And she’s good.”

  “Do tell.”

  “Laura Ponto. She used to work for the Federal Public Defender’s Office.”

  “And got fired for assaulting somebody. And then got the cops to look the other way. And, as you reported in your story, when I was so disgusted that I offered to represent the guy pro bono, the cops intimidated him until he changed his mind. You’re still in touch with her?”

  “I’m dating her.”

  “Good God.”

  “Shut up. I’ve heard it all already.”

  “You write an expose, and she becomes your girlfriend? Only you, David. Only you.”

  “Blow me.”

  “I’ll pass on that. But I actually might be interested in your girlfriend. For the job, I mean,” he added quickly. “What’s she doing now?”

  “Workin
g a job she hates. Clerical stuff.”

  “She sounded pretty crazy in your article.”

  “She’s not.”

  “Hell, she’s dating you, so how sane can she be? Tell her to give me a call. I don’t have a lot that needs done right now, but I’ve got some.”

  “Cool. Thanks. She’s got a lot of experience. She used to be a cop, and she did well when she was with the F.P.D. She’s still friends with those guys.”

  “She doesn’t routinely assault people she interviews?”

  “Not if you ask her not to.”

  “I’m guessing she’s ugly, right?”

  “Far from it.”

  “Then how come she can’t do any better than you?”

  “I ask myself that every day.”

  Anyway... if you’re done with journalism, and you don’t want to be an investigator, what are you gonna do?”

  “Like I said, I don’t know.”

  “Have you thought about copywriting or something like that?”

  “Yeah, I’ve thought about it. But I’m not a very good writer. I know my stuff looked good in print, but that was after a lot of editing. You should have seen my first drafts. I’m good at getting a story, and I think I’m pretty good at telling the story, but what I write ain’t literature.”

  “So you didn’t quit the paper because there was something else you wanted to do?”

  “Nope. I quit the paper because I wanted to quit the paper.”

  “How are you doing for money?”

  “Managing.”

  “If you need some, let me know, okay?”

  “Sure. Thanks. I hope I won’t have to take you up on that, but I might.”

  “Just say the word if you need it.”

  “If you throw some work Laura’s way, I’ll just get her to pick up the tab every time we go out.”

  It was a security job at a car dealership, and Frank was afraid that he wouldn’t like it or that he wouldn’t be good at it, but he enjoyed it and it was easy. It wasn’t like the dealership he’d worked at all those years ago; it was much bigger, with so many different types of car, and it was Frank’s job to walk around and keep an eye on things and report to his supervisor on his radio. It would take him about a half-hour to make each of his rounds, and the only thing he didn’t like about it was having to walk in the heat wearing a shirt and tie. He soon got used to it, though, and stopped noticing even when the temperature was well over a hundred.

  He had to remember to drink plenty of water, because dehydration can hit you hard before you even realize it. He found that out on his second day on the job when he finished walking around the place and went to his supervisor’s office to ask him a question. Frank felt fine, but when he opened his mouth to speak, nothing came at first. His mouth was so dry, he could barely move his tongue. His supervisor laughed. “Water and sunscreen are your best friends around here,” he said. “Check this out.” He showed Frank a red scar on his forearm. “Skin cancer. That’s what happens to us whiteys if we don’t wear sunscreen on the job.”

  Frank took his advice. Every morning, he slathered sunscreen over his face, neck, ears, hands and forearms, and he drank a pint of water each time he finished walking around the dealership, which he thought must be the size of a small neighborhood. It was nice to walk around undisturbed, just smiling and saying hello to people. There were few incidents that he had to do anything about.

  In the evenings, he’d watch T.V. It was a different world than the one he’d grown up in. The reality shows fascinated him. He’d never seen people behave so dramatically, even in fiction, and he wondered if anybody really did behave that way. Then he found that they did.

  There was a young man who worked as a salesman at the dealership, and he’d somehow screwed things up badly enough that they were going to have to fire him. The manager told Frank, because it was company policy to have a security guard present to escort a person off the premises after they’d been fired.

  The guy was about 22. He came into the manager’s office, where the manager sat behind a desk and Frank stood just inside the door. The manager told the guy he was fired, and explained why. The guy stood up, and Frank said, gently, “Okay, let’s go. You ready?”

  The guy dropped to his knees, and stretched both arms upwards in supplication. “Why? Why? Why?” he shouted. He didn’t seem to be addressing the manager or Frank. “Why me? Why is everybody against me?”

  Nobody answered him, and after a moment he stood up and let Frank walk him to his car. Frank wished him luck, and he just nodded and drove away.

  “That was like reality T.V.,” Frank said to the manager later.

  “I know,” the manager said.

  “I didn’t know folks acted like that,” Frank said.

  “You know what I think?” the manager said. “I don’t think people used to act that way. I never saw anybody act that way before reality T.V. Now you see it all the time. I think they’re copying it.”

  That made sense to Frank. He thought about how when he was young he got his cues for how to talk and act from his family and from movies and T.V. In those days, the people you saw on T.V. acted like normal people, only a lot nicer. That was how he wanted to be now.

  David called Laura just before she left work. “Hey, you hungry?” he said.

  “I will be soon. Why?”

  “I’ve got a pot roast cooking. Want to come over and eat with me?”

  “What time?”

  “I want to let it cook for another couple hours, but come as soon as you want.”

  “Okay, I’ll go home and feed Tubby Franklin, then come over. How much beer do you have?”

  “Probably not enough for you. Bring some.”

  “Sure. See you in a bit.”

  When they got off the phone, David went to his kitchen and checked the pot full of meat and vegetables simmering in stock. He thought about Laura, how the two of them would soon be eating together, and, for no reason he understood, he felt tears in his eyes and an anxious churning in his stomach. The feeling only lasted a few seconds, and then when he looked for it, curiously trying to feel it again, it was gone so completely that he wasn’t sure that it had ever been there.

  He put place mats on the dining table, added napkins and silverware. He lit a candle, and turned down the light in the dining area. He went to the stereo and put on Alejandro Escovedo’s A Man Under the Influence. He was singing along with the first song – “Some are rich, some are poor./Some want less, some want more” – when Laura walked in.

  “You’ve made it so nice,” she said, looking at the table. She’d changed from her office clothes into shorts, sandals and a Powerpuff Girls T-shirt. Her hair was tied back, and she held her purse in one hand and a 12-pack of Samuel Adams in the other.

  David took the beer and put it in the fridge. There were a few bottles in there already, and he took out two of them, opened them, and handed one to Laura. “I’m glad you’re here,” he said.

  “Me too. I couldn’t wait to get out of that damn office. I swear, I feel like I have two lives. There’s this – hanging out with you, all this – and there’s the time I spend listening to these people bitch about each other and stab each other in the back.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve felt that way about a lot of jobs.”

  “I mean, I’m glad I actually have a job –“

  “Yeah, rub it in.”

  “But I wish I didn’t just sit there for eight hours waiting for it to be over.”

  “I know. Well, it might have been a crappy day, but the rest of it doesn’t have to be.”

  She kissed him. “I’m sure it won’t be. Did you talk to Headman?”

  “Yep, I had lunch with him. He wants you to call him.”

  “No shit? Cool.”

  “Don’t get too excited. He says he doesn’t have much going on right now, so you might not make enough to be able to quit your job.”

  “Thanks, babe. Just the thought of getting to do something interesti
ng is all I need right now.” She laughed. “Now you just need to find a job for yourself.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “You haven’t seen anything?”

  “Nothing today. I looked online, and there was nothing I’m remotely qualified for.”

  “How worried are you?”

  “Pretty worried, but not enough to regret quitting the paper.”

  “Any ideas about what you’d like to do long-term?”

  “Now that you mention it.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s just a thought. It occurred to me this afternoon when I came back here and started cooking. You know, I really do love to cook...”

  “You want to be a chef or something?”

  “Hell, no. I’ve worked in enough restaurant kitchens. It’s bad enough washing dishes. One week of being a chef, my nerves would be so shot I’d go back to newspapers. Anyway, I don’t want to work nights. But, check this out...” He opened a cupboard and took out a loaf of bread. He put it on a cutting board. “I baked this a few hours ago,” he said as he cut a slice. He put the slice of bread on a plate, buttered it, and handed it to Laura.

  “Damn, that is good,” she said. It was brown, wholesome but light, with a flavor of garlic and some herbs she couldn’t identify.

  “Yeah, I know. I’ve always been good at it. And, thinking about it today, I realized there are only two things I really like enough to never get tired of, and I did them both today. I had lunch with Headman, and then came back here and cooked. I realized that I like talking to people, and I like cooking, and I’ve always been into both of those things. So, I could either spend the rest of my life cooking or being a therapist, and being a therapist would mean spending a lot of years in school, which I ain’t crazy about.”

  “But you don’t want to be a chef.”

  “Right. But I bake good bread. So I wonder if I can start my own business doing that.”

  “Have you looked into it yet?”

  “Give me a chance, I just thought of it today. I’ll have to see how much it would cost, and whether I could get a loan. I don’t even know if it’s realistic, but I’m gonna find out.”

  “If that doesn’t work out, since you like talking to people, you could always learn to cut hair.”