Dry Heat (David Mapstone Mystery 3)

“I am an inquiring man, Dr. Mapstone, as are you. We live in momentous times: the great contest of the Cold War, the sudden collapse of the Soviet Union, the former Warsaw Pact joining NATO…things we never would have believed possible. The revolution that ruined Persia, that killed my family. Look at your hometown, David, utterly changed from when you were a boy. The clash of civilizations, Islam versus modernity. A new age of lawlessness, so many soldiers from the losing side with nothing to do but become mercenaries on the marketplace.”

I declined to let myself be drawn in. I said, “What were you doing at the towers that night? When we shared the elevator?”

Bobby’s economical features gave way to a thin smile. “Visiting a friend,” he said. “I might ask what you were doing? You seemed very nervous. Maybe it’s this case of the poor homeless man you’re so obsessed with.”

“Goddamn it!” I said, loud enough to wake some neighbors. I ratcheted my voice down. “No games, Bobby. I don’t have time. If you want to help, you’ll tell me where Yuri is.”

Bobby’s voice was calm. “Like the sheriff, you ascribe much more of a connection to the underworld than I really merit.” He dropped the cigar to the street and crushed it with his boot.

“Wonder why?”

“How is Sheriff Peralta?” Bobby said. “It must have been a blow to lose his father. And his wife moving out.”

I tried again. “Why is Yuri trying to kill cops? Seems like a ticket to prison or the morgue, even for a Russian.”

“Maybe he doesn’t see it that way,” Bobby said. “I only know what I read, of course. Some say Yuri was a Red Army captain, decorated many times for bravery. That he served in Chechnya in the Russian Army, and he was so effective that the Chechen guerrillas tracked down his wife and daughter, raped and murdered them. But others say Yuri is not a Russian at all.”

“None of this is helping,” I said.

Bobby absently pulled a handkerchief out of his pocket and polished the chrome on the bike, a Harley that nevertheless had a kind of sinewy sleekness to it that seemed to go with Bobby Hamid.

“David,” he said, fixing me with a new intensity in his eyes, “if I were in your position, I would get as far away from here as possible. I would let the government do whatever it will do to protect you and Miss Lindsey.” He daintily adjusted his leather jacket. “You see, Miss Lindsey cost Yuri and his brigade many billions of dollars. And Yuri has creditors of his own, creditors who won’t be willing to just send impolite letters and ruin his credit report. This is capitalism for keeps, Dr. Mapstone. This is the real global economy.” Bobby licked his lips. “I would say Yuri’s potential for vengeance is unlimited.”

I watched him talk, feeling something cold on the back of my neck. For a moment I felt my legs were paralyzed in place, rooted into the cool sidewalk. But then I thought about Lindsey, and a different feeling came over me. I’d never been given to tough-guy speeches, but it came out with a certain cold anger.

“Bobby,” I said,” “do you know if I thought you were Yuri, and you meant any harm to Lindsey, I would kill you right here?”

Bobby watched me for a long time, something new in his opaque eyes. At last, he said, “Yes, David, I believe you would.”

I was still standing on the street a long time after the noise from Bobby’s Harley had faded from the neighborhood.

Chapter Twenty-four

I was on the freeway by nine that morning, making good time going south while in the opposite direction the army of suburbanites from the East Valley and Ahwatukee-the cops and firefighters call it “All-White-Tukee”-crept toward the city. As much as I loved riding trains and trolleys in Portland and San Francisco, in spread-out Phoenix I sometimes needed to drive in order to clear my head. After Bobby had left the neighborhood hours before, I had gone out to the Olds, put down the top, slid in a CD from Frank Sinatra’s Columbia years, then I had driven slowly through darkened city streets.

Walt Whitman’s “huge and thoughtful night” was all around, but Frank sang “One More for My Baby.” “Let’s just leave,” my baby had said, as we lay nude, legs entangled, surrounded by barracks walls, and beyond them armed guards. “Let’s just leave and start over, in a wonderful place. The government will have to resettle us, give us new identities. Can you leave Phoenix, Dave?”

“Can you leave your garden, Lindsey?”

“It’s your home, Dave.”

“I came home by accident. I had to find you…”

“I found you.” She laughed. “You were too shy.” It was nice to hear her laugh again. She said, “We can do anything we want. We can make a new future.”

Our future would have to wait. I let the towers of Central Avenue sparkle down on me while I tried to figure out why the FBI was digging through my office, with Kate Vare in tow and with Peralta as tour guide. Too bad for them: most of my Pilgrim notes were in my old briefcase, sitting next to me on the car seat. Maybe Peralta was looking after my interests-but if that were true, why didn’t he call me? Peralta had gone from badgering me with ultimatums to ignoring me while…what? It was enough to make you listen to talk radio and believe the conspiracy kooks who called in.

I let the big car take me through the forlorn streets of the inner city. People were sleeping in vacant lots and on street corners. They could have been mistaken for piles of rubbish. I idly looked for the woman named Karen. I had fresh questions about George Weed and his precious jacket. The Reverend Card’s building looked dark and shut down. Prostitutes beckoned me from the gloomy sidewalks of Van Buren Street. I turned north, past streets that reminded me of a small safe town sheltered by citrus groves and pristine mountains: Mariposa, Cheery Lynn, Glenrosa, Montecito. A sign painted decades ago pointed to “Susan’s Apartments.” Gangbangers looked me over, seeing if I might be an easy victim. I drove and brooded, and that finally led me to another drive, this one out of town.

Once I got past Green Valley, the retiree tract houses and golf courses gave way to clean air and blessed emptiness. It was the West of my youth, rather than the overcrowded West of my adulthood. By noon, I had reached Tubac, the storied town north of the Mexican border. The land east rolled out to the massive Santa Rita Mountains. On my right was another rugged range, which I recalled as the Tumacacori. They were not my familiar Phoenix mountains. The history lay deep and fertile here, the conquistadors and padres and Piman peoples. Silver strikes and gunslingers and the coming of the iron horse. Off the interstate, I felt the high-desert air as cool tickling around my eyes.

My journeys of late were tying history into neat circles: San Francisco was founded by Spanish colonists from Tubac. In 1774, they were led by Col. Juan Bautista de Anza across El Camino del Diablo, the Devil’s Road, west to California. The great world city that I had enjoyed lately was seeded by the little Arizona town sitting quietly off Interstate 19. Neat circles except in the history I was trying to understand.

I was down to playing hunches, and remembering tips. I remembered that Lorie Pope had told me I would find A.C. Hardin, crime buff, obsessed by the Pilgrim case, here in Tubac. In the chaos of the past month, I had forgotten Hardin. But I was a little surprised that he hadn’t called me after the media exposure the case had received. Maybe it took awhile for the news to reach Tubac.

The place was not “done” like a Taos or Sedona, but it had aspirations. Art galler

ies lined the old dusty streets, a subdivision uglied up the south edge of town and the local paper promised rising property values and development. Tubac had survived 400 years of history, often bloody, but I found myself wondering if it could survive the Arizona growth machine. I asked directions at a coffee shop and used a little bridge to cross the Santa Cruz River. There was water in the river. A dirt road diverged through a thick stand of cottonwoods, then rose up a slight hill covered in brittlebush. Through the brush, I could make out a shack-it was no more than that. Four unpainted adobe walls, a window, a door, and a dilapidated roof. A rusty mailbox sat sideways on an old railroad tie, with “Hardin” painted in black letters. It looked like a scene out of one of those “forgotten West” books. But it made me feel uneasy. I was a man with ambiguous relations with the FBI and maybe with the sheriff of Maricopa County. My relations with the Russian mafia were fatal. I came unannounced.