South Phoenix Rules (21 page)

Felix shook the big head sparingly several times. “She was a sweet girl.”

“Did she have enemies?” I asked.

“Of course not.” It was the first time his voice had showed anything other than a careful detachment.

I asked other questions. When was the last time he had spoken to her? Two days before her death. How was she? Everything seemed fine. No change in her voice? Nothing new going on in her life?
No. No.
His voice grew more taut.

Expanding on my winning interpersonal skills, I continued.

“What was she doing in Zisman's condominium?”

“What the hell business is…?” He stopped himself.

“We're going to need to know.” This from Peralta's deep, authoritative voice, before which the toughest cops had quailed.

Felix allowed the slightest sigh. “I don't know. I know what you're thinking. I didn't even think she knew the man. She had a boyfriend in San Diego. I can give you his name.”

Peralta leaned back and said nothing. Felix rolled his head and knocked out a kink with such force that his neck emitted a sharp pop and I wondered for a second if he might have injured himself.

He was fine. “Money won't be a problem.” He floated the fee schedule back across Peralta's desk.

Peralta tapped his pen against the pad. He didn't need a case. Sharon, his ex, had made sure he was set up with money for life and his only vices were guns and beer. I did. I was already digging into savings that had never been plentiful. Lindsey had a good job and her paycheck dropped into our joint checking account every two weeks. But I was reluctant to use her money. I had never thought of her money and my money during our marriage, but that was before the
annus horribilis
we had gone through. Money would be nice right now, but I wasn't sure I wanted it from this particular case.

“Let me take down a little more information and we'll make a preliminary investigation,” Peralta said. “After that, I'll decide if we're going to continue.”

“Fair enough,” Felix said.

The “little more information” took another forty-five minutes.

Afterward, Felix pushed across a thick envelope. “I hope ten thousand is enough for a retainer.”

My greedy heart leapt. My nervous leg didn't celebrate by calming down.

Peralta studied the contents. I could see hundred-dollar bills.

“I didn't want to wait for a check to clear,” Felix said. “I'd appreciate it if you can start now.”

Maybe Peralta nodded, but the man stood. He handed each of us a card with his name and number. No address.

“What's your line of work, Mister Smith?”

“Between jobs.”

Peralta didn't push the question so I let it be.

Felix shook our hands. He gave me a long, vise-like shake. I gave it back as hard as I could and met his stare full on. If he was packing, my peripheral vision wasn't good enough to pick it up.

“I hope you don't mind if I also check you out.” Peralta's voice snapped the moment.

“Not a bit.”

Felix pivoted and pulled out a platinum money clip. From this, he handed the big man a driver's license. When Peralta had written down what he wanted, he gave it back and thanked him.

Felix let the money clip fall into his pocket. “You can't be too careful.”

He turned and walked to the door. As he opened it, a hot gust from the outside caught his left cuff, raising it briefly. Above the pricey loafer on his foot, I saw something that looked like it was out of a
Terminator
movie. A lower-limb prosthetic, very high-tech, titanium and graphite. He definitely hadn't received it through the average health-care plan. I had read about ones embedded with a microprocessor that were worn by wounded soldiers.

When I looked up again, I saw him watching me watching him. The yellow eyes hated me.

3

“Feeling guilty?”

I did a little. I walked to the front window and raised the blind. Felix the Cat was sitting in a Mercedes Benz CL, silver, new, insolently bouncing back the sun's glare. The driver's window was down. Who needs air conditioning when it's only 108? He had a cell phone against his head and he was talking animatedly, very different from the stone-like expression he had mostly shown us. He didn't look happy.

“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 southeast 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.