Phoenix Noir (30 page)

When he woke up he was cold, but he was alive. He looked at his watch. It was 7 in the morning. He stood up, stretched, took a piss. He wished he had a book to read, something to pass the time. He was still tired, but not tired enough to sleep anymore. He walked around in the woods, sometimes jogging a little, until he was warm. He wasn’t hungry, but he was very thirsty.

He wondered if Miguel would come. He wondered why he had told him 9 o’clock, rather than earlier or later. It had just come out of his mouth like that. Several minutes before 9, he headed back to the spot where Miguel had fallen. He wondered if Miguel would remember exactly where it had happened.

Then he heard his friend calling his name.

“Hey,” he yelled back. A moment later, Miguel came in sight.

They stood there in the grass among the trees and looked at each other, Miguel in his suit and tie, Luis in his bloody jeans and jacket.

“Jesus Christ, man,” Miguel said.

“You hear what happened?”

“Yeah. I didn’t know what the fuck you were talking about when I got your message, but it was on the news this morning. Three people, shit … Did you really do it?”

“Yeah.”

“What
for
, bro?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know. You kill three people but you don’t know.”

“One guy clamped my car …”

“Yeah, it said so on the news.”

“And then I robbed the 7-Eleven. But I really don’t know.”

“I don’t even know what to say.”

“Thanks for coming here.”

“Fuck you. What am I supposed to do, just forget about you?”

“I didn’t know if you would.”

“That’s because you don’t know shit.” Miguel started to cry.

“I need clothes,” Luis said.

“I brought you some, like you asked. They’re in my car. Wait here and I’ll get them.” Miguel walked to the road, got a backpack from his car, headed back into the woods. Luis was now sitting on the ground. Miguel dropped the backpack in front of him.

“Thanks,” Luis said.

“You better head for Mexico. There’s no way you can beat this. They got you on video at the 7-Eleven, and they got a body laying next to your car. White people. You’re looking at death row for sure.”

Luis didn’t say anything.

“Get to Mexico. You can just disappear there, they’ll never find you. The narcos’ll cover your ass if you work for them. But go. You gotta go.”

“I know. I’m gonna go.”

“How?”

“I’ll steal a car.”

“You know how to hot-wire?”

“No.”

“You gonna kill somebody to get a car?”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

Miguel was crying hard. He took out his car keys and threw them at Luis. “Asshole. Asshole. Take my fucking car.”

“Miguel …”

“Shut up. Take the fucking car. I’m still paying it off, so I guess insurance’ll cover it, maybe. I’ll wait a couple days before I report it stolen. At least you won’t get pulled over driving a hot car.”

“Thanks. You know the cops’ll probably figure it out that you helped me.”

“Fuck them. They got to prove it.” Miguel sat down on the ground beside Luis. “Asshole. What happened? I thought I was gonna be best man at your wedding for sure.”

“You would’ve been.”

“I know. And you would’ve been
my
best man. Oh my God. My God.”

They sat there together for a few minutes, not looking at each other and not saying anything. Miguel stopped crying, wiped his face with his tie. Then Luis said, “Hey, Miguel?”

“What?”

“Listen, it’s gonna be all right. I’m gonna be all right.”

“Sure you are.”

“No, I mean it. I don’t want you to be worried. I don’t want you to worry about anything. It’ll be all right.”

Miguel stood up, and then Luis did the same. Luis held out a dirty, bloodstained hand, and Miguel squeezed it. “You gonna be in touch sometime?” Miguel asked. “At least let me know you made it?”

“Don’t worry about anything.”

“You got money?”

“Yeah.”

“Shit. You got it from the 7-Eleven.”

Miguel walked away. He didn’t look back.

Luis opened the backpack and searched inside it. There were two pairs of jeans, two T-shirts, a thick shirt, a wool jacket, boxer shorts, socks, a pair of running shoes. He stripped off his own clothes, the cold making his teeth chatter, and put on Miguel’s. The shoes were a little bit too big, but they would do. He spat several times on the shirt he had taken off, and used it to wipe his hands and face. He bundled his discarded clothes together and hid them under a bush. Then he picked up the backpack and walked to the road.

Miguel’s car was a white Camaro. Luis got in and looked at himself in the rearview. There was still some dried blood on his face and in his hair. He licked his fingers and rubbed it off his face, then ran his fingers through his hair, brushing the red flakes away. Then he put on his sunglasses and started the car.

As he drove down the road into Santa Fe, he saw Miguel walking quickly. He honked the car horn, and Miguel waved a little. Luis watched him in the rearview until he couldn’t see him anymore.

He drove at the speed limit to Albuquerque. The car had a quarter tank of gas left. He wondered whether it would be safer to stop at a busy gas station there in town where he might be recognized but probably wouldn’t be noticed, or in a quiet one outside of town where he was less likely to be recognized but more likely to be noticed and remembered. Somehow it felt as though a gas station in town would be safer, but he just didn’t want to get out of the car, so he pulled onto the I-40 going west and filled up with gas at a place about ten miles out of the city.

He kept thinking about his apartment, about the things it contained, his plates and cups and skillets, Catboy. His life with Vanjii. He wished he had asked Miguel to take care of Catboy.

In the early evening, he crossed the Arizona state line. When he reached Flagstaff, he got on I-17 and headed south, until the pines gave way to cacti.

When Vanjii got home from work, Jaimie told her that her dad had called twice. She called him back, and he told her what he had seen on TV. Vanjii yelled at him, then said she was sorry. She hung up. Then she found Miguel’s number and called it. Miguel didn’t want to talk because he was afraid his phone might be tapped. He didn’t tell Vanjii that, he just said he had to go out somewhere. She was angry with him, but he called her from a public phone about ten minutes later and they talked for a long time.

By the time he got to Phoenix, it was around 8 in the evening. Luis exited on Seventh Street, turned onto Roosevelt, and followed it to Grand. When he saw the Bikini Lounge, he wanted to stop there just because it was someplace he had heard of.

The place wasn’t busy, even though you could get some brands of beer for a dollar a bottle, and a pitcher for three dollars. A guy was deejaying, playing soul standards from the 1970s. Luis ordered a beer and sat at the bar and listened.

At the beginning of a Curtis Mayfield song, a woman and a man got up and started to dance, standing right in front of the deejay’s booth. They danced slowly, holding each other close. The man was balding and the woman had gray in her hair and Luis somehow knew they had been together for years. It felt like a knife in his spine.

Jaimie was in the living room working the phone, talking to men as they jacked off. Carlos, as usual, wasn’t home. Vanjii was in the kitchen drinking coffee and staring at the table. She hadn’t told Jaimie anything, and didn’t think she was going to. She didn’t even know how to tell it to herself.

A fly landed on the table. It sat there, eyes sending images to the brain, lungs receiving oxygen, heart beating with certainty. Vanjii didn’t think, she just slapped with her hand, coming from behind so the fly saw nothing, and then the fly was crushed flat, just a stain on the wood. Vanjii washed her hands and made more coffee. She wondered when she’d be able to cry.

When Luis left the bar, he walked around for a few minutes. At 1 in the morning, it felt hardly less warm than a summer afternoon in Santa Fe. A person slept in every other doorway. Luis wanted to walk farther, but he could find nowhere to head to, so he went to his car.

He was almost out of gas. He stopped at a Circle K on First Avenue and Van Buren. As he was pumping the gas, a guy came up to him. “Hey. Excuse me …”

Luis looked at him and didn’t say anything.

“Listen,” the guy said. “I need a favor. My little girl’s sick, and she’s on East Fillmore, and I need to go there and see her tonight, but I got no car. If you can just give me a ride up there, I’ll give you five bucks for the gas.”

Luis didn’t question the guy’s story, because he could see right through it. The reason the story wasn’t more credible or better explained was because the guy was junk sick, and he wanted to go visit his dealer.

“I been asking lots of people, and they all said no. I really need to see her, man.”

“Okay,” said Luis. “I’ll take you there, but I ain’t got time to wait for you and bring you back.”

“That’s okay, that’s no problem. I just need you to take me there. Thank you.”

The drive took about five minutes. The guy clumsily tried to make conversation, and Luis went along with it. “Okay, right here,” the guy said, pointing to an apartment complex. Luis slowed down and the guy got out. “Thanks a lot, man. Really.”

“Sure,” said Luis. The guy tried to pay him for the gas, but Luis shook his head and drove away.

The neighborhood was nicknamed Gangs R Us, and the cops were going there more and more often, trying to show a presence. Luis passed a police car waiting at a corner. When the cop saw the New Mexico plates, he thought Luis might be either a visitor who’d gotten lost or a drug dealer doing some interstate networking. Either way, he fell in behind him and turned on his lights.

When Luis saw the lights, the panic rose up inside him like vomit, and he fought to control it. He knew Miguel hadn’t reported the car stolen yet, but even if it was just that he had a light out or something, the cop would ask to see a driver’s license.

Luis pulled over and turned off the engine. He watched the officer get out of the car and walk toward him. When the cop was almost to his window, Luis started the car and took off.

He turned a corner, hit the brakes, jumped out of the car, and ran. He heard the cop car approach behind him. Luis ran harder, shrieking air into his lungs, looking for cover, a place to hide. There wasn’t any.

“
Hey, asshole! Stop right now or I’ll shoot!”

Luis stopped. Raised his hands. Turned around.

The cop had gotten out of his car and was pointing a gun at him. “Lie down and put your hands behind your back.”

The concrete warm against his cheek. The handcuffs closing around his wrists.

Madison Street Jail was only a short distance from the bar where he’d spent the evening. He was booked in and finger-printed and put in a cell.

It was known as the Horseshoe, and it was like no jail Luis had ever heard of. People would be rotated from cell to cell so that they lost track of time. The cells they put him in were completely covered with men. There were men sleeping curled around the toilet that had shit dripping off the sides and piss all around the floor. Men were sleeping on top of other men. Some were using toilet rolls as pillows. They lay on the trash that was scattered everywhere from the sack lunches that were provided. The smell was like a kick in the face by a dirty foot.

No one is sure how long Luis stayed there, but it wasn’t very long.

Jeremy Ruvin should have been a cop. He loved cops, and cops loved him. Like many veteran cops, he was a legend in his own lunchtime. But Ruvin wasn’t a cop. He was a reporter.

He had spent twenty years at the
Phoenix Weekly
, a free sheet that was distributed throughout the city. It was part of a national chain of weekly papers, and it regarded itself as the only real news outlet in the valley. This wasn’t much of a boast; Phoenix was a city without a real newspaper. The main daily, the
Arizona Republic
, was almost devoid of news and existed to further the interests of the corporations that were developing the city. Its rival, the
Tribune
, had a publisher who openly supported the banning of reporters—including the paper’s own—from government meetings to discuss whether public money should be given to aid corporate development. A famous local swindler once observed that in Phoenix, when you try to sell people out, they take the first offer.

The
Phoenix Weekly
was a tabloid full of long, turgid stories that few people read. But Ruvin’s stories won Arizona Press Club awards every year, and had been doing so for as long as anyone could remember. Although his stories were as slanted as those of his peers, they were packed with lurid detail. The cops gave him access that they gave to no one else. Because, no matter what the facts might be, Ruvin would always make them look good.

This was something they needed. Phoenix was among the leaders of the country when it came to unjustified police shootings. The city had to pay out millions in lawsuits, and more were pending. But in the world of Ruvin, every cop on the force was a heroic figure who only shot or beat up un-armed civilians when it was strictly necessary. He never actually lied in print—he just stayed away from stories that might show the police department as it really was.