The bedraggled, single-story building on Grand Avenue looked somewhere between sixty and eighty years old, with a single door and a square window on each side. All were covered by bars that might once have been painted. The square structure itself was bleached brown, done in cracking stucco to resemble adobe, and it sat atop the remains of an asphalt lot. It had once been the office to a motel in the golden age of driving, and this was the highway west out of town.
A battered sign on a pole near the street read, very faintly, Easy 8 Auto Court and beneath that, Air Conditioned—It’s Cool Inside!, but all the cottages were long gone. Now the office sat by itself, surrounded by barren lots on either side that held dirt and rocks the same color as the building. The only signs of newness were a twelve-foot-high security fence, a couple of halogen lights aimed from the roof, and Peralta’s silver Dodge Ram pickup parked in front. The Prelude bumped across the perimeter of the open gate. We got out, went inside, and found Peralta.
“I can’t believe this.” Those were my first words.
“What, Mapstone? You don’t believe in entrepreneurialism? It’s the American dream.”
He stood from behind an ancient metal desk, came around, and hugged Robin.
To me, he said, “What’s that growing on your face?”
A second desk sat at an angle across the room. Two institutional armchairs with green-cushioned seats that might have been new during the Eisenhower administration flanked both, and tall gray metal filing cabinets took up one wall. The floor was old linoleum, the color of coffee with three creams. The sheriff’s cigars had augmented the musty smell. Behind Peralta’s desk was a framed poster that proclaimed “Diversity.” It was meant to look exactly like one of those insipid motivational placards, but the image was of a dozen mean-looking assault rifles laid out neatly on white sand.
“Why are you not in some luxury suite in north Scottsdale?”
“Fake tits on a stick, not my style,” he grunted as he sat. To Robin, “Sorry about my language.”
She smiled at him.
“And you turned down how many high-powered offers to be corporate chief of security or a national consultant?”
“Thirteen,” he said. “But it’s a slow job market. I wanted to be on my own.”
“You must be crazy. You have a law degree, for god’s sake.”
He actually smiled. “Res ipsa loquitur.” The thing speaks for itself.
We sat in the chairs. He didn’t look much different. He wore a starched white shirt, red tie, and black slacks, with his usual firearms accessory.
“I’m a private investigator now, Mapstone. It’ll be fun. I don’t need to make much money. My ex has been very indulgent with her book royalties. But business comes anyway. I just got back from Douglas. Client wasn’t satisfied with how the police handled her brother’s murder. So I put some fresh eyes on it. Got out and saw a beautiful part of the state.”
I repeated, “I still can’t believe this. Why here?”
“I like it. The freight trains go by. I’m near my people. You know, I’m just a simple campesino.”
“Who went to Harvard,” Robin said.
He lowered his head and squinted at me. “Where’s your cannon?”
“I’m learning to love the Five-Seven.” The semi-automatic was tucked in my jeans, in the small of my back, concealed by my shirt. February, which was once the sweetest month in Phoenix, had come in hot, with today’s temperature near ninety. I wished that I had worn a short-sleeve shirt.
“Good.” He reached in a desk drawer and slid across a laminated card. “You won’t need this once the Legislature makes everything connected to guns legal, but here’s your concealed weapons permit.”
“But I didn’t…”
“Sure you did. I had you sign the paperwork for it the day you resigned.” I was irritated but reached over and took the card. He said, “So, give me an update?”
It didn’t seem as if there was much to tell. We had survived January, with no more scares, no more watchers sitting on the street at night. Sometimes I had seen a marked PPD unit drive down the street, but it could have been routine patrol. Vare had not even checked in with a phone call. When I called her to get an update, I was told to leave a message. It was, of course, never returned.
He put his elbows on the desk and folded his fingers in front of his face as I talked.
In a way, the lack of action had made the tension worse. But I had kept my anxieties to myself. Robin had become more comfortable, the trauma of opening the FedEx box receding. We held long discussions about the Great Depression—she knew much about the art and artists of the era—and comparisons with things now. She laughed more easily. She had a great laugh, uninhibited and delightfully distinctive. I could find her in a crowd just by her laugh. Although we relaxed some of the house rules—I was getting the mail and newspapers now—I tried not to let us get careless. I wouldn’t let her sunbathe outside and she complained that her tan was fading, but the result was quite attractive, at least to me.
…Oh, and I’m sleeping with my sister-in-law…Just that, although sometimes she caresses me in the night and I smooth back her soft hair and when I lie behind her, my front to her back, she knows how I feel about her, unfaithful bastard that I am…I’m not myself. Am I?
The only big news was the email I had received from ASU, blowing me off because of a new round of budget cuts. After all the in-person courting that I received after the election, I lost the job via an email. And it was just to be an adjunct professor, the minimum-wage counter help of academia.
“That must have pissed you off.” He leaned back and folded his hands behind his head. The only item of luxury in the entire office was where he sat, in a new executive office chair.
“History teaches humility and skepticism.”
“Right. Told you that you couldn’t go back to that P.C. shit. And that they wouldn’t have you. When Jennifer was at Stanford…” This was his oldest daughter. “…she said to me, ‘Why do I have to study something called HIS-story. What about HER-story?”
I could have pointed out that the word came from the Greek for inquiry and had nothing to do with pronouns, but he was right about the broader issue. I was mad as hell. Hurt, too. Me, the guy who couldn’t get tenure at San Diego State University, for God’s sake. Now I was rejected for a part-time teaching gig when I knew they were still taking on kids with half my credentials. I felt like even more of a failure, that I let down Lindsey, too. A couple of times I went off on Robin, although I immediately apologized. She accepted my outbursts with surprising equanimity, considering that I always imagined her to be someone who would cold-cock anybody who crossed her. But I had learned new things about her and we had grown closer. She would say, “You’re not yourself, David.”
Peralta spoke. “I hear you went to visit Amy Preston.” He dropped it light as a feather.
“That’s true.”
“Why were you out there at that gun shop?”
“He misses the cops,” Robin chimed in, gently punching my shoulder.
“I don’t doubt it,” Peralta said. “How’d you like Barney?”
“Barrel of laughs.”
“He’d kill you in a heartbeat. Did it occur to you that ATF might have an operation going?”
“Actually, no.” I felt the anger start to pulse in my temples. “If PPD wasn’t going to protect Robin, why wouldn’t I try to follow a lead and get ahead of the bad guys? Kate Vare takes this from a major case to the circular file and I’m just supposed to let it be?”
Peralta stared at me and grunted. Then, “Let’s go for a ride.”
He didn’t ask about Lindsey. But considering he was a good friend of the former Arizona governor who was Secretary of Homeland Security, he probably knew more about my wife than I did. I looked down, feeling my face burn.
***
The three of us fit easily into his pickup, which sat high off the road. He drove down 35th Avenue past warehouses and the entrances to half-century-old subdivisions of faded ranch houses. This was Maryvale, Phoenix’s first automobile suburb, laid down starting in the late 1950s. It was aging badly, like most of the city. This was a hunter-gatherer place, and when one location was used up the people with means simply moved farther out. They left behind thousands of tract ranch-style houses that could never be rehabbed as historic homes, could usually not even justify a home-improvement loan. Maryvale would never be gentrified.
In ten minutes, we pulled into a dilapidated shopping strip. But every store was occupied. One sign promised “celulares,” while another went with a thriving carniceria, a butcher store. One of the ubiquitous 99-cent stores held down the far end. Peralta parked directly in front of the yerberia.
For most of its history, Phoenix had not been a Hispanic city—that was Tucson, where roots went back to the Spanish conquest, even though an Irishman technically founded the Old Pueblo. Phoenix was the brash newcomer, established by Civil War veterans and assorted fortune seekers in the late 19th century. While it always had a Mexican-American population with its own proud history, the city maintained much of its Southern roots into the early 1960s. Then it started to change with enormous population growth from the Midwest. Tucson was culturally Hispanic and old. Phoenix was mostly Anglo and new.
That distinction started to change with the massive migrations from Mexico and Central America that began in the 1980s. Millions of new immigrants came through Phoenix and many stayed, working in restaurant kitchens, landscaping services, and building houses. If that wasn’t enough to destabilize the old Mexican-American population, the city razed many of the poor but historic old barrios to expand the airport. City Hall didn’t give a thought to bulldozing Santa Rita Hall, where Cesar Chavez began his hunger strike in 1972. All that was left there now was the Sagrado Corazón church, surrounded by a chain-link fence. The large Hispanic population moved into Maryvale as the Anglos bought new houses on the city fringes. As a result, Maryvale, the whitest of suburbs in the 1960s, was now almost entirely Latino. The same thing was happening all over the older parts of the city except in the Anglo historic districts. If you hadn’t been in Phoenix since 1980, you’d be amazed at the Spanish-language signage alone—including that marking the ubiquitous herbal healing stores called yerberias.
This one proclaimed its name in red letters across the plate glass, promising yerbas medicinales de todo del mundo y articulos religiosos. Herbal remedies from around the world and religious articles. We walked in to the sound of a long electronic beep, a sweet scent, and found a typical yerberia: long counters backed by floor-to-ceiling shelves of colorful devotional candles, and containers and bottles of all shapes and sizes. Incense was burning in a metal box at the feet of a statue of Jesus.
“This is amazing!” Robin said.
A woman about my age with long black hair and a white blouse ran to Peralta and gave him a hug. Magdalena was the owner, apparently, and introductions were made. She and Peralta conversed in rapid-fire Spanish, of which I could make out about every third word. I heard “pall of death,” but realized they were talking about the Phoenix economy. Which was true enough: a city that lived by real estate and low-wage jobs was now slowly dying. Her sons and nephews had worked in construction and now they couldn’t find any work. Her daughter had bought four rental houses during the boom and had now lost them all to the bank. She asked Peralta if he wanted a tarot reading and he declined.
“Then come on back,” she said. “They’re waiting.”
We followed her through a door into a small office with cinder-block walls painted baby blue. One man was seated behind a desk and another lounged on a sofa.
“El sheriff!” The man behind the desk came around and shook Peralta’s hand with both of his. He was middle-aged and thickset, with short hair, prominent eyebrows, and a faded Mexican eagle tattoo poking out beneath the sleeve of one arm. Again, a long exchange in Spanish, the vowels colored with warmth.
“An old friend?” Robin asked.
Peralta leaned his head toward us. “I put him in prison for ten years.”
“And it was the best thing that ever happened to me!” The stocky man shook our hands and said his name was Guillermo Gris. “But call me Bill.”
The man on the sofa slowly stood and put his hands on his hips. He was my height, six-two, and his broad shoulders tapered into a slender waist. He was darker than Bill, with an unlined face, and hair so black it had a shine. He wore a blue blazer over jeans and a light-blue shirt.
“Sheriff Peralta.”
Peralta said, “It’s good to see you again, Antonio.” There was less warmth here, unlike with Bill. They spoke to each other respectfully, in businesslike voices.
Bill unfolded two metal chairs and we all sat, me beside Antonio on the sofa. I could see the butt of a pistol under his blazer.
“This is the young lady?” he asked.
“Call me Robin.”
He reached over and took her offered handshake, and he didn’t look as if he was about to kiss her hand.
Peralta said, “I’d like for you both to tell what’s happened the past few weeks.”
Robin hesitated and so did I, not knowing either of these men, one of them armed. As often was the case, Peralta was working several steps ahead and not deigning to tell me what was going on. But I nodded to her, and she began with the rainy evening when she opened the parcel. I took over when it seemed appropriate and we alternated back and forth in the retelling. Neither Bill nor Antonio spoke. Antonio stared at the blue wall. Bill smoked a cigarette.
“What do you think?” Peralta directed this at Bill.
He stubbed out the cigarette, exhaled the last plume of smoke, and rubbed his mouth. “These two are alive because they want them to be alive. No other reason.”
I asked about the chase on the freeway, the gun barrel coming out of the window.
“They were just fucking with you, letting you know they can do you whenever they want,” Bill said.
So much for my heroics.
“Describe the men you saw at the gun shop.” Antonio’s voice was deep and rich, his English barely accented. I did the best I could, but we had been sitting across a parking lot and a street without binoculars. I couldn’t see faces. He gave small, precise nods and said nothing more.
“Sounds all fucked up, though,” Bill said. “If La Fam really killed El Verdugo, they probably did it for Los Zetas.” He looked at us. “Zetas, the enforcers for the Gulf cartel. Take down a Sinaloa cartel guy.”
“Maybe,” Peralta said. “But the alliances change all the time. Could have been MS 13; the Salvadorans are spreading fast. Could have been a hit ordered from prison by the new Mexican Mafia.”
“Not like back in the day,” Bill said. “We always had gangs in this town. Blacks in their ’hoods, and Latinos in theirs. Remember the Pachucos? We had gangs in Sono. Even the sheriff remembers that. He was Sono, too, before his dad made it and he moved out to Arcadia.” Bill was referring to La Sonorita. Like Golden Gate, Cuatro Milpas, El Campito, Harmon Park and Grant Park, it was one of old Phoenix’s barrios. Now they were almost all gone. La Sonorita, anchored by Grant Park, El Portal restaurant, and St. Anthony’s Catholic Church south of downtown, amazingly survived.
“By the time I came up,” he said, “we fought over geographic territory. It wasn’t no picnic, you know? The blacks had the Bloods and Crips. We did what we had to do.” His voice whooped, “Wedgewood Chicanos, forever!” Then his face turned wistful. “But there was a code, you know? A brotherhood. We were there to protect our own. Now, man, everybody’s fighting over everyplace. It’s all about drugs. The cartels are in it and it’s all fucked up. Glad I got out of the life. Glad the big man here got me out.”
Antonio looked bored.
Peralta sensed it. “The question is what we’re dealing with here? El Verdugo in little Phoenix, Arizona. Don’t like the look of that. This is not small-time.”
“He wasn’t El Verdugo!” Robin said, frustration wrinkling her brow.
“Tell me again how you knew this Jax?” Antonio asked. Robin went through it once more, how they had met at a gallery on Roosevelt Street. Antonio wanted to know which gallery. I could sense tension entering her voice and she started nervously playing with her hair, but she gave the same details I had now heard a dozen times. Was Antonio a cop, FBI, or a P.I. like Peralta? Maybe he was ATF, working for Amy Preston.
“What makes the most sense is that he was killed by the Gulf cartel or by Los Zetas,” Antonio said. “Maybe he was on a job here and they found him. Maybe he was trying to leave the life. Either way. Wouldn’t surprise me if they contracted it out to La Familia in the U.S. La Familia’s gone out on their own since 2006, but they used to have ties to the Gulf organization.”
“What about the gun shop?” Peralta asked.
“Zetas were a private army for the Gulf Cartel,” Antonio said. “Now the old alliance between the two is falling apart. They’re becoming rivals.” It was hard to keep things straight. My brain wandered off into analogies with the contending parties of Renaissance Florence, the Guelfi and the Ghibellini, or of the petty German states before the Napoleonic wars. Nothing really changes, except this was all about bloody crime and America’s insatiable hunger for drugs and cheap labor.
Antonio’s rich voice continued. “Los Zetas recruited from some of the best of the Mexican army. Airborne soldiers. Special forces. The pay is more than those soldiers can make in a lifetime with the government. Now they need weapons, lots of weapons.”
“This is the place to get ’em,” Bill said.
“It’s not enough,” Antonio said. “The existing supply is dominated by the Sinaloa cartel.”
“So the Gulf cartel or Los Zetas wants its own supply,” Peralta said. “Did Vega come out of the Mexican army?”
Antonio shook his head. “Nobody knows where he came from. But he’s been connected to at least thirty hits on high-value members of rival cartels. And always, the snake’s head is left imprinted on the victim’s forehead. Hell of a calling card.”
Bill said, “Alla entre blancos.” Let the white men settle it.
“No,” Antonio said. “This is destroying my country. It’s destroying your city.”
Robin said, “I can’t believe any of this.”
I spoke up. “So why are they letting us live?”
Bill looked at me and then at Peralta. He set his meaty hands flat on the desk blotter and shrugged.
After a silence, Antonio coughed. “Good question.”
Peralta said, “Give me a minute with these guys.”
We left, me reluctantly. Out in the shop, Robin browsed and settled on a thick, tall blue candle that promised “Peace and Protection.” She wanted a tarot reading but Peralta appeared and said there wasn’t time.
As we pulled away into the street, I wanted to know everything. But also I knew from experience that Peralta wouldn’t be pushed. He sat like a pickup-truck Buddha, saying nothing. I settled for a first question, asking about Antonio.
“He’s with the Mexican Ministerial Federal Police,” Peralta said. “That’s the elite national agency. If there’s an honest cop in Mexico, he’s it.”
***
We drove back to Peralta’s office in silence. The Maryvale ranch houses sat behind low walls and spiked fences that had been added by the new occupants. Bars, usually painted white, covered the windows. The elaborateness of the enclosures seemed an indicator of relative prosperity. This was one of the most dangerous parts of the city, but not because of most people who lived here. They worked hard and played by the rules, as the saying went. Except that they were mostly cut off from the economic and social mainstream, especially now. Who knew where it would end.
But like south Phoenix and the growing footprint of poor, ethnic neighborhoods, Maryvale was a hotspot of gang violence. I knew the basics: at least 35,000 gang members in the metropolitan area, almost all Hispanic and black. Thirty percent of the state’s inmates belonged to a street or prison gang. In many cases, the gang involvement went back two generations or more, and the generational nature of the problem was getting worse. My professorial brain wanted to linger on the many social, economic, and political reasons why. Maybe when all this was over, I’d apply for a grant to write about that. But the gun pressing against the small of my back reminded me that this daydream was a luxury I didn’t have. The gangs dealt in drugs, weapons, and human cargo. They stole identities and carried out armed robberies. And they fought each other. If a middle-class Anglo civilian like Robin was on their list…
She sat between us and turned to Peralta. “Mike, what is this about the bad guys letting us live? I don’t know what that means…”
He crossed the railroad tracks and swung onto Grand Avenue before he replied.
“It means,” he said, “that they may want to grab you alive. They haven’t been able to do that yet because they know that Mapstone here would go down blazing. He learned one or two things from me.”
She stared into her lap, rubbed her hands along the stone-washed denim of her jeans. “They want me alive because they want to do the same things to me that they did to Jax.”