Arizona Dreams (David Mapstone Mystery 4)

She nodded slowly. “Then he came up with the blackmail story. It was a lie. But, my God, I never knew you would be in any danger…”

She took my hands. “David,” she said. “I’m so sorry! I wanted to tell you the truth. That night, when I told you I had to meet you in Carefree, I was going to tell you everything. But Tom came home early. He started quizzing me, where was I going. I blurted something out. He told me he would kill me if I told anyone. David, I believed him.”

She stared at me, eyes bright with tears.

“Please help me,” she pleaded.

“OK,” I said, reading her eyes.

And she leaned over and kissed me.

In a few minutes I paid the bill and I walked the soccer mom to her SUV. The wind was still gusting, but the dust had passed and the night was clear and hot and evocative. I walked back toward the door to Portland’s, and to the old white Honda Prelude that was parked directly in front. I opened the door and slid into the passenger seat.

Lindsey smiled at me and poked me in the side. “You’ve really got to stop kissing strange women, Dave.”

I tousled her bangs. “Did you get it?”

“Every word,” she said, patting the DVD recorder sitting on the back seat. “And,” she said, “I’ve finally met someone who lies more than my sister.”

37

Dana’s gray SUV pulled out of the parking garage and turned south on Central. Lindsey slipped the Prelude into drive and fell in about a block behind. Lightning shot across the eastern sky, but the wind had died down and the air only smelled vaguely of dust. The ballpark glowed under its closed roof. Thirty thousand Diamondbacks fans were inside, in the air conditioning, and until the game wound down the streets of downtown would be deserted except for a few pedicabs and cops. At Van Buren, Dana dutifully signaled, slowed, and turned right.

“This isn’t the straight path back to the suburbs,” Lindsey said. She followed, and we drove west through the northern edge of what city boosters hopefully called the Capitol Mall district, because of its proximity to the state capitol. Once it had held some of the loveliest houses in town, including most of Phoenix’s small stock of Victorian homes. That was before the seventies and eighties, when abandonment and drug dealers had turned it into a war zone. Blocks of houses had been leveled. While other cities had been saving their painted ladies, Phoenix, so new, so much land, saw no reason. Now the area was slowly coming back, but nothing could replace the loss. On Van Buren, we passed a darkened car wash, the old bakery, a liquor store, a park fenced off as securely as a military installation, another liquor store. My old girlfriend Gretchen had an apartment near here, in a building that dated from territorial days.

Dana crossed Nineteenth Avenue and the railroad tracks, and the street became progressively poorer. The signs changed to mostly Spanish: La Raza Motors, Llanteria Hispania, Yerberia San Francisco. But people were out on the narrow sidewalks, and appearing as dark phantoms in front of car headlights as they jaywalked. This was definitely not Dana’s part of town. After Twenty-Seventh Avenue she drove slower, and home boys in their low-slung custom Hondas buzzed around her. At Thirty-Fifth Avenue, she turned around in the parking lot of a Taco Bell. There were only five taquerias on every block in this part of Phoenix, and yet here was Taco Bell. Maybe the new migrants wanted to eat like real Americans, at a Taco Bell. On another night I would be telling all this to Lindsey. But my middle was tight with anxiety as Dana turned back onto Van Buren and headed east. Where the hell was she going? After a few blocks, she turned into an old drive-in.

“Jimmy Jacks?” Lindsey said.

“It was a hangout when I was a patrol deputy.”

“I didn’t even know they had cars back then, Dave.”

“It was a horse drive-in. A gallop-in.”

“This is very weird,” Lindsey said, passing the drive-in, and turning into an alleyway. Indeed, here was Dana getting out in her suburban clothes from Kohl’s and walking over to the window to order a Coke. Around her were immigrant men in their cowboy hats, and young Latinas in T-shirts and miniskirts. Dana’s body language didn’t look uncomfortable. Only five minutes passed when a cream-colored vintage Porsche coupe pulled into the lot and Dana got in. Jared Malkin was driving.

“Seems like a lot of trouble to meet your boyfriend,” Lindsey said.

“Not if you’re going to report what happened in your meeting with Mapstone,” I said.

This time there was no leisure driving. Malkin gunned the Porsche east on Van Buren and Lindsey had to goose the Prelude to keep him in sight. He raced through the yellow light at Nineteenth Avenue veering north and Lindsey blew through the red as her tires screeched in protest at the tightness of the turn. He turned again on Roosevelt and Lindsey followed, letting space gather between the cars. In a few blocks, the little cream car did another of its sudden tacks.

“He’s going into that alley,” I said. Lindsey shut off her lights and pulled to the curb. We sat in silence on the otherwise deserted street. A few abandoned shopping carts sat nearby.

“You’re pretty smart for a propeller-head.”

“You’d better hope I’m right,” she answered quietly.

I watched cars cross in the distance at Grand Avenue, and soon enough time passed that I began to worry. But then a creamy blur came back out of the alley with his lights off, came in our direction.

“Get down!”

We both tried to scrunch down around the console. Neither of us had the presence of mind to simply drop the seat back.

“This is pretty intimate,” I said.

Lindsey said, “I always knew undercover work could be fun.”