City of Dark Corners

“No. Sometimes people murder for money and don’t know the victim. But this girl’s purse is full of cash. Sometimes people murder on the spur of the moment. But our guy planned this with great care. He killed and cut her up somewhere else. Then he brought her here, displayed her in new clothes, and moved her just inside the city limits. Then he placed my business card in her purse. He’s sending a message.”

“You’re a smart one,” Don said.

Then a fist suddenly connected to my stomach. It wasn’t a hard punch, and from our many fights, I knew he could hit much harder. He leaned in and whispered. “Bend over like you feel it.”

“Ugh…you bastard!” Under my breath, I told him to get Victoria Vasquez out here to get good photographs of the scene, including close-ups, with copies for me. He nodded, then he pushed me away.

“Get the hell out of here, Gene,” he yelled. “You’re not a cop anymore. Quit tagging after me.”

The others watched in amusement as I pretended to stagger off. Out of sight, my gait turned normal and took me north to Washington Street, where I caught the trolley back to town. I felt punched in the gut all right, but not by my brother’s fist.

* * *

The rain had stopped by the time I reached my second-story apartment in a newer building called La Paloma. It faced the slender, block-long park encased by one lane in each direction of Portland Street between Central and Third avenues.

I hung my trench coat on the coat hanger just inside the door to dry, but not before carefully removing the business card Don had given me and slipping it into an envelope. Without my access to the police lab, I didn’t know how I would check it for fingerprints. But that was a problem for tomorrow.

I loosened my tie and poured a glass of fine Canadian whiskey. It was part of the stash from my days with the cops—when we would confiscate liquor per the Volstead Act. We were supposed to pour it down the sewer, and we did sometimes, with newspaper photographers shooting. But we always kept a few bottles of the best stuff for ourselves.

So much for Clean Gene.

Prohibition. It was one of the dumbest things ever tried in the United States. Both Don and I had been part of the occupation troops in the Rhineland after the war, then had spent time in Paris and London deciding what to do with our lives when we received word that both Mother and Father had died in the influenza pandemic.

Neither of us was going to take up the miserable work of farming or work for the railroad. How ya going to keep them down on the farm, after they’ve seen Paree! But after being discharged, we drifted back to Phoenix and became police officers.

Honestly, it was hard to tell hooch was against the law here, even though the state had outlawed it in 1915. The stuff was abundant in a Southwestern town far from the Treasury Department. People such as Kemper Marley kept every place from the speakeasies to the best hotels well supplied. Al Capone built a bloody empire back in Chicago thanks to appetites that couldn’t be outlawed. I wouldn’t be sorry to see Prohibition repealed.

Pouring a second glass, I was well beyond humming any hymns, I put a Bennie Moten band record on my RCA Victor phonograph and fell into the sofa. Moten had a hot, young pianist named Basie who put stomp into the Kansas City Stomp style.

All I lacked was a dance partner and some energy.

This was not supposed to be my job anymore, but I was in the middle of a murder again and not protected by a badge. Don giving me the business card didn’t sit well, but he was right. If anyone else knew it was in the victim’s purse, I would be the prime suspect.

The memory of the woman’s severed head lingered through the second pour. Alive, she would have turned heads, with that Norma Shearer face and Marlene Dietrich fair hair. Hollywood stars liked to come to Phoenix in winter, stay at the San Carlos or even at the rentals on my street or one block north on the Moreland parkway. I saw Clark Gable and Carole Lombard a couple of times.

Three times I worked as a bodyguard for George Raft. It wasn’t what it seemed. George could take care of himself, and sober he was a good guy, tipped well, paid me generously. But he was a brawler, and my job was to keep him out of trouble. Maybe the stars knew the identity of my dismembered problem.

The phonograph was scratching and otherwise silent when a knock at the door startled me awake.

Victoria stepped in, holding a manila envelope.

“I figured you’d want this sooner than later.” She brought her lips up to mine, her coat fell to the floor, I met her kiss and pulled her inside, tossing the envelope of photographs on a table. They could wait.

I was glad once again that the landlord didn’t live in the building.

Four

The new office buildings were struggling to find tenants. Several building and loan institutions had failed, and even the biggest banks were teetering. The good news was that rents were low; the bad news was that nobody had much money.

When I set up my private detective agency, I got a great deal on the top floor of the three-story Monihon Building at First Avenue and Washington. This, a pre-statehood structure with a mansard roof, sat in the same block as Newberry’s, Kress, and J.C. Penney. Neon signs proclaimed Boehmer Drug Store and Funk Jewelry (“Confidential Credit”) on the first floor and Dr. Mapstone’s dental practice on the second. It lacked the art deco grandeur of the new Luhrs Tower with its uniformed elevator operators, but I could afford it.

The rain was gone and the sun bright. The sky was cobalt blue and the mountains, miles away, looked as if you could reach out and touch them. Awnings were down in the fronts of the buildings to shade the stream of pedestrians while cars jockeyed for parking spaces and streetcars clanged past. A couple of sidewalk elevators by stores were open and workers loading merchandise for the trip into the basement. My shoes stepped over the heavy glass embedded in the sidewalk to bring light into those underground spaces.

Even in the twenties, you’d still see horse-drawn wagons, but they were gone from downtown now. The stream of humanity was a mixture of businessmen, ladies shopping, and workmen from the produce sheds and warehouses to the south. It was almost as if a Depression wasn’t happening.

On Washington, the main commercial drag of Phoenix, the signs were more subtle: The man against the wall with “Brother, can you spare a dime” written on a scrap of paper, desperate faces and furtive eyes darting from business to business like dying flies, seeking jobs that weren’t there. Uniformed cops moved along hoboes who had wandered up from the railroad tracks. The sound of Rudy Vallee singing “As Time Goes By” wafted out a doorway. Walk around downtown and you’d see permanently closed doors from the places that had been forced out of business, a third of the city’s banks and thrifts closed, much of the music gone.

After paying for an Arizona Republic at the newsstand out front, I took the stairs to the third floor.