City of Dark Corners

As we concluded the last run-through, I heard clapping off to the side and saw my brother. All the comfort and inspiration drained out of me.

Don Hammons was tall and broad-shouldered like me, but he had Mother’s dark-brown hair and eyes. It was like looking at myself through a distorted mirror. A trench coat was draped over his arm as he brought his hands together. But even his applause sounded cynical. This didn’t stop my fellow choir members, especially the women, from surrounding him. Of the two Hammons brothers, Don was definitely the charmer. And the dresser: a soft cream glen-plaid cashmere jacket, tangerine patterned necktie, coral pocket square with a leaf pattern, dark woolen trousers, and wingtip oxford shoes in stone and dark tan.

We walked outside in silence and sat on the steps of the imposing new church building. The nearby Hotel Westward Ho, the tallest building between El Paso and Los Angeles, looked about half full. Like the Hotel San Carlos, Luhrs Tower, and other dramatic projects—the Professional, Title and Trust, Security, and City-County buildings—it was one of the gifts of the Roaring Twenties that gave Phoenix a skyline. We were hardly New York City or any of the big cities I came through on my way to and from the war. But it swept away the remnants of Phoenix as a frontier town. The central school we attended was demolished. The shady Town Ditch where we swam as kids in summertime was paved over.

Those boom years now seemed like a lifetime away, only the elegant art deco structures and inviting neon remaining. The globes of the streetlights resembled collections of full moons orbiting hidden planets. A light rain had fallen, and the pavement reflected the luminescence. The unique pleasing smell of wet desert was in the air.

“Remember when we went to church in the little brick building down at Monroe?” Don said. “Now it’s gone, and they’re talking about merging our M.E. South with the northern church. Our Confederate forebears wouldn’t be pleased.”

He pulled out a Lucky Strike and offered me one. He lit us both.

“I can’t believe you’re still singing there,” he mused. “You have a beautiful voice and all, but how could you believe in God after all we saw in Europe, and then the flu? Millions and millions dead. What kind of God would let that happen? No God I’d want anything to do with.”

I tried to conceal my sigh. “Humans caused the war, not God, who gave us free will. And the good guys won the war.” I was instantly sorry I had taken his bait.

“You think so?” he said. “The Versailles Treaty that forced the Germans to accept total responsibility for starting the Great War? You can count on this, little brother, it only set up a twenty-year armistice, and another war will come. My boys could be fighting the Germans again. Wait and see. I sure as hell hope not. We should have stayed neutral in the big one, and we should stay neutral next time. These are Europe’s quarrels. Let them sort it out. How did Wilson’s grand plans as savior of the world turn out? Badly. What an arrogant asshole.”

He said all this in a lazy Western drawl that dampened the anger behind the words. It helped Don get away with plenty of abuse. His voice was part of his charisma, and a dangerous weapon when he was a detective interrogating a suspect.

“How’s Mary?”

He let out a long plume of blue smoke. “Bigger bitch than ever. Bad marriage getting worse.”

“She’s a nice woman, and things might get better if you tried. You have two young sons to think about, Don. If you didn’t go to Chinatown for the dream wax…”

Don smiled. “Clean Gene, Clean Gene, Clean Gene Hammons,” he singsonged. “Not very Christian of you to be so

judgmental.”

“I care about you.”

“Spare me. You just have different vices. Anyway, I’m not using opium anymore.”

I raised an eyebrow.

He broke a wide smile. “Cocaine is better.” He held up a hand. “Gene, I need it because I hurt, and use it only occasionally, you bastard. I was wounded, shrapnel’s still inside me. I’m no hophead. And, by the way, I’m still on the police force, while you’re trying to make ends meet as a peeper, sneaking around to catch cheating husbands. And in the middle of the Great Depression. What a shit job, Mr. Perfect.”

I didn’t take those kinds of cases. But I said, “Then I’m not so perfect, am I?”

But he wouldn’t let up. “Going to church doesn’t give you a right to judge me, Clean Gene.”

“I’m not judging you.” But I was starting to get sore.

He tossed the nail away and watched it roll like a sparkler across the wet sidewalk. “I’ll never figure you out. You were the best detective we had.” That was an astonishing admission by my brother.

He continued: “You rose quick and caught the University Park Strangler. Hell, you could have become chief someday. McGrath loved you…” That would be chief of detectives John J. McGrath, officially a captain. “But you fell in love with Winnie Ruth Judd when you and the sheriff brought her back from Los Angeles. You should have stuck with Amelia Earhart.”

“I didn’t fall in love with her. The brass shoved a shoddy conclusion on us and withheld evidence.”

“So pure, Clean Gene. You pulled the pin to save your precious integrity. You think she was innocent?”

“The evidence was consistent with her claim of self-defense. And there’s no way she had the strength to dismember two women, put them in trunks, and take them to the train station. She’s five-five and a hundred-ten pounds. ‘Happy Jack’ Halloran helped her. You know that. But the evidence that would have implicated him was never introduced.”

“Just an innocent woman with those gorgeous blue eyes and auburn hair.”

“I don’t know if she was innocent. But the evidence—remember evidence, Don?—the evidence was not consistent with premeditated murder or her acting alone. My best guess is that she’s a little crazy, she was pressured into a hasty confession, and Halloran has powerful friends.”

“He was indicted. His trial is coming up.”