South Phoenix Rules

by Jon Talton

  “A rig like he had on his leg would only be issued to a disabled veteran.” Peralta made more notes as he spoke, his large head and shoulders hunched over the desk.

  I let the blind fall and turned back toward him. “The cartel could afford it.” I told him about the car, which was not issued by the V.A.

  He looked up. “Mapstone, you see Zetas and Sinaloa in your sleep.” His tone softened subtly. “Which is understandable, after what you went through.”

  Yes, I was jumpy. But I saw other things in my sleep.

  “I can guarantee you that Chapo Guzman doesn’t even know who you are,” Peralta went on. Chapo was the boss of the Sinaloa federation. And maybe he didn’t. But his lieutenants did.

  “Did you catch the tat?” I asked.

  He nodded and went back to writing. “Everybody has tattoos now.”

  “Do you?”

  “Maybe.” No smile. This passed for raucous Mike Peralta humor. I didn’t laugh.

  “We shouldn’t take this case.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I prowled around the small room, absently slid out a file drawer, closed it. “He paid in cash.”

  Peralta opened the envelope and counted. He peeled off five grand and held it out to me. The bills looked as if they had come out of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving that morning. I made no move to retrieve them. Someday soon I would need to set up an accounting and tax system in the computer if we were actually going to have a PI business.

  Peralta gently tapped the Ben Franklins. “Paying clients are nice.”

  “Cash,” I persisted. “Who pays in cash? A criminal.”

  “That’s why you’re going to run a background check.”

  This was a man who until recently had bossed around hundreds of deputies and civilian employees. Now only I was available. I made no move to pick up the phone. “He says his last name is Smith. Smith? Right.”

  “Some people are actually named Smith.” He left my share of the retainer on his desk and slid the envelope containing the remainder into his suit-coat pocket.

  “And his sister has a different last name?”

  “Families are complicated nowadays. Lindsey and Robin had different last names.”

  Bile started up my windpipe. Lindsey and Robin. I wanted to curse him. I bit my tongue, literally. It worked. I gained deeper knowledge about the provenance of a clichéd expression. And I said nothing.

  Peralta, typically, bulled ahead. “How is Lindsey?”

  “Fine.” How the hell should I know? She’s only my wife, a continent away physically and even further in the geography of the heart.

  “When did you talk to her last?”

  I told him I called her on Sunday. I called her every Sunday, timing it so I would catch her around noon in D.C.

  “She’ll get tired of Washington and Homeland Security,” he said. “It’s a temporary gig, right?”

  “I guess.”

  It was a temporary position that seemed to have no end.

  “When she’s ready to come home, we could use her here.”

  I said nothing. Yes, she was the best at cyber crimes. That was the job she did for Peralta when he was sheriff. But the last place my wife wanted to be was back in Phoenix.

  I started coughing again. Three wildfires were burning in the forests north and northeast of the city. The previous year had been the worst wildfire season on record and we were off to an ambitious start now. It was the new normal. Yesterday the smoke had combined with the usual smog to obscure the mountains. Somebody flying into Sky Harbor would never know why this was called the Valley of the Sun. The gunk was sending people with asthma to emergency rooms and making me cough. Quite an irony for a place that once claimed clean, dry air that had made it a haven for people with lung ailments.

  But that was the least of the reasons why Lindsey didn’t want to be here.

  Sitting back down, I said again, “We shouldn’t take this case.”

  Peralta’s obsidian eyes darkened further. “Why?”

  “Felix the Cat in his fifteen-hundred-dollar suit, paying you in hundred-dollar bills. He’s hiding something. Maybe Zisman had a mistress or not. Maybe Felix is using us for some vendetta against Zisman. The guy’s pretty clean from what I remember. He actually came back home to Arizona after making it big and has tried to help out poor kids. Now here’s some dude in an expensive suit who wants us to play morals police.”

  “He only asked us to investigate a suspicious death,” he said. “Remember, Felix bridled when you implied Grace was involved with this Zisman.”

  That was true. Why was I fighting against taking this case?

  Peralta swept his arm wide. “Half the bigs in Phoenix stash their mistresses in San Diego condos. Big deal. But we have our first paying client. Have a sense of celebration, Mapstone. This might not lead anywhere. It probably won’t. If not, we’ll refund most of his money. Bringing the family comfort and closure is a big thing. We can get out of town for a few days, go to a nice, cool place.”

  I was still about to gasp from Mike Peralta using the word closure. I managed, “You go. I’ll hold down the fort. Who knows, we might get another client.”

  “You’re coming with me. You know San Diego.”

  “It’s changed a lot since I lived there.”

  “Well, you used to live there.”

  I tried not saying anything.

  “You won’t see Patty.”

  I could feel my cheeks warming. “This has nothing to do with Patty.”

  “I know you,” he said.

  Yes, he did. He had known me as a young deputy he trained. And then all the years I was away teaching, finally ending up in San Diego. And he had known me when I was married to Patty in San Diego. One marriage dead. Another on life support.

  “It’s been a long time, Mapstone. She probably doesn’t even live there any more.”

  I stared at the wall. Patty would never part with that house in La Jolla.

  The room was still. Only the sound of intermittent traffic on Grand Avenue penetrated the walls. Then a short train rumbled past and the sun started coming through the blinds. Peralta pretended to ignore me.

  “Fine. I’ll go. Fuck you.”

  The gunfire put me on the floor.

  It was a loud and mechanical sound. One long burst, chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka-chucka. Then two short bursts. I pulled out my heavy Colt Python .357 magnum with a four-inch barrel, rolled away from the door, assumed a firing position, and waited for the shooter to break in. He would be looking at his eye level. I would be below him and put three rounds into his torso before he could take his next breath.

  An engine revved and tires screamed against pavement. Then all I heard was silence. The eighty-year-old glass of the windows was untouched. The front door was secure. I wasn’t sweating anymore. The ancient linoleum floor was cool. It smelled of old wax and fresh dust.

  When I glanced back, Peralta was emerging from the Danger Room. In his hands was the intimidating black form of a Remington 870 Wingmaster shotgun, extended tube magazine, ghost sights.

  He racked in a round of double-ought buckshot, producing the international sound of Kiss Your Ass Goodbye.

  “That was an AK-47,” he said.

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I was shot at enough by AKs in Vietnam that I’d never forget the sound.”

  I stood and moved along the wall toward the door.

  “Mapstone.”

  I turned.

  “Let’s go out the back door.”

  4

  We stood away from the jamb as Peralta opened the back door. Nobody poured AK rounds through. He tossed a black duffel bag out to draw fire. Nothing. He nodded and I knew what to do.

  I stepped outside into the oven and ran along the southea
st wall while Peralta went around the other side. It was like the academy so many years ago. The carport was on my side and gave me cover to slide between the cars unseen from Grand Avenue. Felix’s Benz was stopped in the closest traffic lane. Nobody else was around. Across the median, a small car zipped by going toward downtown without changing its speed. No traffic was headed in the other direction.

  Both hands on the Python, I swept the parking lot and made a slow trot toward the Benz. The sun was in my eyes and the scrunchy pavement was loud under my shoes. Peralta was coming from the other edge of the building in an infantryman’s crouch, moving quickly and with a grace that belied his big frame. We reached the car at the same time.

  Felix the Cat was very dead.

  His face was gone. The nice suit was plastered in blood and bone fragments. More blood, brains, and miscellaneous gore were sprayed across the seat and interior of the car. One bubble of tissue had fallen halfway out of his skull and it took me a few seconds to realize that beneath the blood was an eyeball. His left hand still clutched the cell phone I had seen him holding while he talked in our parking lot. In the passenger seat lay the silver bulk of a Desert Eagle, a nasty semiautomatic pistol. It had done Felix no good. His right hand was in his lap. He had never even been able to reach for the gun. Maybe he had it on the seat when he was still in our parking lot. Or maybe he pulled it out when the other car came beside him.

  There was something else: the shooter had been so close and so skilled that no shell casings scattered on the pavement. Not one. I had counted at least nine shots.

  I did one more look-around and holstered the .357. Whoever had done the shooting was good. Felix had pulled out onto Grand Avenue when they caught him. His driver-side window was still down; no glass shards were to be found. And only one round had penetrated the fine paint job of the car door. The others went right to target.

  I turned to Peralta and asked if he had any evidence gloves.

  “I want to see that cell phone and the last number he called.”

  He shook his head. “Give me your gun.”

  “What?”

  He held out his hand.

  I hesitated, and then I slipped off my holster and handed it to him. One, two, three cars sped by.

  “I’m going back inside,” he said. “You’re going to call 911 and sit on the curb. We’re not the law any more.”

  I dialed as he trotted back to our office. The excitement over, my body resumed sweating.

  In the distance, I heard sirens.

  Available now

  Paying My Debts

  Once again, I called upon my police brain trust, especially Cal Lash and Bill Richardson; as usual, they provided invaluable help. Frank “Paco” Marcell, retired from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and now running Crime Assessments LLC, is Arizona’s leading expert on gangs. He was very generous with his time in guiding me through the labyrinthine passages of gang land. David William Foster, regents’ professor at Arizona State University, Virginia Foster, professor emerita at Phoenix College, and Deputy Maricopa County Attorney David R. Foster assisted me with everything from the history of the city’s barrios and cleaning up my rusty Spanglish, to keeping my firearms protocols straight. Talk about a family with talent. For help with the Japanese internment, I’m grateful to Jack August, Jr., research professor at the University of Arizona and the best historian in the state, as well as Emily Thompson of the University of Georgia. John Bouma of Snell & Wilmer, a great lawyer and a man of living history, aided me in recalling other pieces of old Phoenix. As usual, blame me for any errors, deliberate changes, or inconsistencies. Finally, as should be clear, America has a treasure in the independent Poisoned Pen Press, and my thanks go to Robert Rosenwald, Jessica Tribble, Nan Beams, Marilyn Pizzo, and Annette Rogers. Most of all, my editor Barbara Peters helped bring it on home with her customary skill and grace—without resorting to South Phoenix Rules.

  About this Book

  Phoenix, Arizona in August. The sky’s the colour of bleached concrete and it’s 114 degrees in the shade… and it’s going to get even hotter for David Mapstone.

  Jax Delgado, a New York professor in Phoenix to research his next book has been tortured, murdered, his head severed and sent to his girlfriend. It shouldn’t be an assignment for a cold-case investigator like Mapstone, but the girlfriend in question just happens to his sister-in-law, Robin.

  Delgado’s murder has all the hallmarks of drug cartel execution, and Mapstone fears Robin could be the next target. But is she as innocent as she claims? Is she hiding something? And why would a professor be targeted by a drug cartel?

  If there are answers, they lie deep in South Phoenix – the city’s gang-infested hinterland where the police fear to tread. Mapstone’s investigation will compel him to cross this line, to enter a world that plays by a different set of rules: South Phoenix Rules.

  Reviews

  “A great read!”

  Michael Connelly

  “A strong new voice in contemporary hard-boiled fiction.”

  Washington Post

  “Talton has created a richly complex character in Mapstone... a well-crafted, nuanced series.”

  Booklist

  “A haunting noir story vividly rendered by Talton’s white-hot prose... original... impressively unyielding.”

  New York Journal of Books

  “Talton crisply evokes Phoenix’s New West ambience and keeps readers guessing with unexpected plot twists.”

  Publishers Weekly

  About this Series

  PHOENIX COLD CASES

  David Mapstone: ex-cop, ex-history professor.

  As a cop, Mapstone learned never to trust anyone. As a historian, he learned that the past is never past and everything is connected.

  Now he’s digging into Phoenix, Arizona’s secrets. Buried secrets that the city is not about to give up easily.

  Just as well he’s armed with a .357 magnum Colt Python

  1. Concrete Desert

  A young woman’s body is found dumped in the desert in circumstances identical to those of an infamous 40-year-old unsolved murder.

  Concrete Desert is available here.

  2. Cactus Heart

  Mapstone unearths the skeletons of a pair of four-year-old twins, the victims in a notorious Depression-era kidnapping case. But what should be a matter of tying up loose ends quickly becomes something more sinister, more personal… and more deadly.

  Cactus Heart is available here.

  3. Camelback Falls

  When Sheriff Peralta is shot by a sniper, Mapstone must confront his own past and the deadly consequences of a small-town shoot-out in 1979 that left Peralta and Mapstone standing over four dead bodies.

  Camelback Falls is available here.

  4. Dry Heat

  Half a century after the unsolved murder of an FBI agent, the victim’s missing badge is found on the body of a dead transient. The trail leads Mapstone into the Arizonan desert, and eventually to San Francisco, as he slowly uncovers the bloody secrets surrounding the FBI badge.

  Dry Heat is available here.

  5. Arizona Dreams

  Mapstone receives a letter confessing to a forty-year-old murder and providing directions to the body. But things are never what they seem in Phoenix. There’s a body right where the letter said it would be – but it’s only weeks old, not years...

  Arizona Dreams is available here.

  6. South Phoenix Rules

  Phoenix, Arizona in August. It’s 114 degrees in the shade but it’s going to get even hotter for cold case investigator David Mapstone when he starts investigating a drug cartel execution.

  South Phoenix Rules is available here.

  7. The Night Detectives

  Mapstone and Peralta are Phoenix’s newest private detective agency. But someone is killing their clients, killing everyone connected with their cases, and is now coming for them. Why?

  The Night Detectives is
available here.

  About the Author

  Jon Talton is a fourth-generation Arizonan who grew up in the same Phoenix neighbourhood that David Mapstone calls home. A journalist of more than twenty years, he now lives in Washington state where he is the economics columnist for the Seattle Times and writes the Rogue Columnist blog.

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  The story starts here.

  First published in the UK in 2012 by Head of Zeus Ltd.

  Copyright © Jon Talton, 2010

  The moral right of Jon Talton to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.