South Phoenix Rules (David Mapstone Mystery 6)

“Love is complicated,” she said. “Anyway, she released you from it.”

I looked away.

“I know what she said to you in Washington. I know it word for word.”

I met her gray eyes. “How can you know that? Lindsey and I were alone, walking on the mall.”

“Because she told me.”

15

Contingency is the great trickster of history. Abraham Lincoln might have given in to the South and let the warring sister go in peace, but he refused. In the desperate months between the election and inauguration of Franklin Roosevelt, when the country faced depression and potentially revolution, a gunman fired at the president-elect. He missed. Housing prices were supposed to go on rising indefinitely, justifying all manner of risk and financial mischief, especially in Phoenix. Only they didn’t. And after a long, long dry spell, last May—the causes were the prosaic ones that settle into marriages, even when love and affection persist, and I was as much to blame as she… After that long drought, Lindsey and I had made frenzied love with the air conditioning washing over our bodies. She didn’t take time to put in her diaphragm but she thought it would be safe.

When she told me she was pregnant, I withheld my reaction.

“Are you struck dumb?” she asked. “You’re the talker in the family, the passionate man whose opinions get him in trouble.”

That was true enough, especially in this situation. Yes, the news was so comprehensively staggering that I was struck dumb. But I also knew that Lindsey didn’t want children, probably especially not since she had turned forty that year.

But as her dazzling blue eyes grew wet, I just said it. “I’m so happy!” And we embraced tightly, for a long time, laughing until we cried, hugging like silly kids at an eighth-grade dance, our pelvises eight inches apart as if any pressure would somehow damage the life that was growing inside my wife’s womb.

“I am too,” she said, sobbing and kissing me all over my face. “I didn’t know, Dave. I didn’t know if I could handle it, a child…” Her voice skipped between weeping. “But, God, I want this child. I want this child with you. You, my true love. My true north.”

Now it was my turn to cry, from deep down inside chambers of my emotions and history that I didn’t even know existed.

“I want to quit and stay home, be a real mom,” Lindsey said. “Will you think less of me? Think I’m Donna Reed?”

“I had a thing for Donna Reed.”

“Bap, bap, bap.” She shadowboxed my face.

Of course, it was all right. Lindsey had always loved the house and the garden more than her job at the Sheriff’s Office, talented as she was. The house was paid off. We had some savings. I would still be employed by Peralta. We would make it work.

I wanted to make martinis to celebrate, but of course that was out, at least for Lindsey. As she joked and danced around me in the kitchen, I made one for me, and put shaken cold water in a glass for her.

It was the beginning of the three happiest months of my life.

***

Peralta called the next night. He said to be ready to go out at ten.

“Go where.”

“To meet La Familia. Did you think I was just taking you on a free tour of gangland yesterday? Arrangements had to be made.”

I let the phone sit silently by my ear, bad feelings coursing through me despite the merry blue Peace and Prosperity candle sitting on the desk.

He said, “Make sure Robin wears her vest. And bring your friend, Mister Five-Seven. Bring the Colt Python, too.”

“Maybe we can

let Robin stay at your house,” I said.

“No. She has to come. That’s part of the deal.”

“What deal?” I demanded.

But he had already hung up.