“You know the fix is in.”
“And your testimony wasn’t introduced in Ruth’s trial. Poor Clean Gene.”
I felt my face flush. “I wasn’t allowed to testify, Dirty Don, even though I was the first detective on the scene. And I didn’t pull the pin. I was laid off, remember? Budget cuts, they said. Four patrolmen and one detective were cut loose.”
He smiled, unflappable. “You wouldn’t have been the one detective if you’d been willing to go along. McGrath really tried to save you.”
A couple walked by, arm in arm. After they passed, Don said, “You were always stubborn. The first rule of life is to get along you have to go along.”
“Spare me the philosophy.”
Of course, he wouldn’t.
“All you had to do was keep your head down, do the job your bosses asked you to do, and you’d still be on the Hat Squad,” Don said. “Now you’re out of a steady job making a hundred-ten dollars a month, and they’re going to hang her. Wonder if Ruth will end up doing an Eva Dugan?”
Eva Dugan, a housekeeper, was convicted in Pinal County for murdering her employer and apparent pimp. The whole thing was sordid as Caligula’s Rome without the grand buildings. Don and I were sent by the Phoenix Police as witnesses to the execution, even though the crime occurred in an adjacent county.
Don chuckled. “I’ll never forget when that long drop decapitated her. Eva’s head rolled right up to our feet. Five of the witnesses fainted. Same thing is coming for your girlfriend. Pop goes the head!”
“She’s not my girlfriend!”
Don was Dr. Jekyll with most people. He was Mr. Hyde with me, always trying to goad me or worse. I should have been used to it, but I was seething, not least because after talking to him I couldn’t walk home with Isaac Watts in my ears.
I stood to leave.
“Hang on there, Clean Gene. We’ve got work to do.”
I reared on him. “Since when is there a ‘we’?”
“There’s cold meat down by the railroad tracks, and I need your assistance.”
“Are you paying? Because, as you keep reminding me, I don’t carry a buzzer anymore.”
He stood and stretched. “Fucker.” He dug a sawbuck from his wallet and handed it over.
* * *
We drove south in his 1930 black Chevy sedan, then turned east on Van Buren Street, passing gas stations and on the north side, the stately new buildings of Phoenix Union High School.
“Are we collecting tonight?”
Don laughed. “The protection money from those whorehouses and gambling dens prop up the City of Phoenix treasury, especially at a time like this. You know that.”
“And the detectives who collect and protect them get a piece of the action, too.”
“Don’t act like you never played. Anyway, I’m not handling much vice anymore. A convenient opening came up to take the lead in homicide cases. Thanks, little brother.” He clapped me on the leg, then stared straight ahead as if he was alone in the car. I was happy to let the silence accompany us.
At Sixteenth Street, he turned south past Eastlake Park until we were at the mouth of the Southern Pacific railroad yard, then he wheeled east again along a dirt road north of the tracks. A switch engine huffed past us, the headlight offering momentary artificial daylight for what lay ahead. I dug my fingers into the seat as the locomotive came close.
Two of the new Phoenix Police radio-equipped cars were parked beside the railroad, their spotlights aimed at the ground. About twenty feet north, I could see the blood seeping through a white sheet that looked like a madman’s abstract art.
“What the hell?”
“I’m paying for your consultation.”
Stepping out, I pulled my fedora to eye level, not the jaunty look Victoria preferred. I lit another cigarette and took a deep pull. The last thing I wanted was to see any of my former colleagues, to have them see me. My job loss humiliated me, but I could put on a mask, never let them see. We walked past a police ambulance along the cinder-strewn dirt toward the scene. I took one more drag and stomped out the nail.
As we got closer, I saw the white sheet had siblings: three more laid separately a few feet away in geometric precision.