South Phoenix Rules (David Mapstone Mystery 6)

“GiGi, I’ve never heard this before.”

“What was the point? We knew we couldn’t get justice in Phoenix. The other Japanese on Baseline tried to help us, but they were just getting re-established. Most of the whites didn’t care. Oh, we grew so many things. The South Mountains shielded us from the frosts. The whites just said we were taking the best land. What was the point in carrying around such bitterness.” She nodded to Christine. “None of you young ones knew. Except…well, he read Johnny’s letters, so I eventually told him.”

It was only then that GiGi wanted to know, so politely, how I had found Johnny’s dog tags.

29

After the mandatory hassles at Sky Harbor, I was back in the Prelude by six that evening. The sunset was ordinary. As I took the exit out the east side of the airport, Peralta reached me.

“Where have you been?”

“Scholarship.”

He silently weighed my answer. “We’re taking down the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop. Want a front-row seat? You can sit in the command van with me and the A.G. Those guys you saw loading guns into the SUV? They work for Antonio. We’ve got probable cause. We’ve got the buy on tape, the fake paperwork. We’ve got enough now to shut down the new supply route. All the muckety-mucks from Washington signed off at last. So we’re finally going in. It’ll be fun to watch Barney frog-marched off to prison.”

I told him no thanks.

“Why not?” It was a demand, not a question.

“I’m just trying to put all this out of my mind.”

“Good luck,” he said.

On the freeway south, I made another call. I had an obligation to repay and the clock was running against me.

***

The walnut with eyebrows opened the door himself. He stood, slight inside his loud golf shirt, blinking at me.

“May I help you?”

I just pushed my way past him. “Where are your punks?”

He stepped outside, did a careful check of the street. The only vehicle in sight was Lindsey’s Honda Prelude. He turned back.

“I don’t even know you. Why have you forced your way into my house?”

It was a good act and he kept it up in his old-man voice, even after he had produced the Beretta and begun a careful search of me, not just for a weapon but also for a wire. When he was satisfied, he used the gun barrel to prod me into the Arizona Room.

“Now, Dr. Mapstone, you have become an intruder on my property, so I can shoot you at will and be perfectly within Arizona law.”

“But you’re curious why I’m here.”

“You do surprise me. Sit.” He hospitably waved the pistol toward a leather sofa. The room was large, decorated at some expense but still vulgar: cowboy paintings, a bejeweled saddle on a stand, a grandfather clock encased in faux adobe, and gigantic leather furniture.

I dropped into the sofa and he gingerly sat across from me, his hips barely on the seat, as if he needed to be ready to spring up at any moment.

We seemed alone, but I asked again about his teenage henchmen.

“Back home for dinner with their families. I wouldn’t want them falling in with the wrong crowd.”

“And what a mentor they’ve found. Salvatore “Sal the Bug” Moretti.”

He cocked his head in mirth.

“If we had the time, I’d love to know how you found me.”

Part of my brain sized up that angle: He didn’t know that I had followed him from the Stuffed Beaver. The honor student I interrogated with the dashboard: I told him Moretti’s house was under surveillance and his phones were tapped; if he went back or warned Sal, he’d be arrested. Tom Holden had made the call I wanted—with the persuasion of Demetrius Smith—that a California bounty hunter was after him and he needed to lay low and not risk bringing the cops to Moretti’s house. Too many days had passed, so Sal had assumed that his identity and location were secure. But he didn’t strike me as someone who would be introspective in the face of the crisis now sitting on his leather sofa. As he said, if we had the time…