South Phoenix Rules (David Mapstone Mystery 6)

“Don’t we all?”

“I suppose. Every family has its skeletons. Ours was a skeleton festival.” She said it without humor. “I don’t know how we survived.”

I said, “Lindsey blames me for what happened.”

She rubbed her hands gently on her jeans. “That’s not true, David. You blame yourself. She blames herself. She wanted so much to give you a child, so your DNA could carry on in the world.”

“And hers.”

After a long silence, Robin said, “I remember after we first met, we went out one night. I think I put the moves on you. Tall, smart men always get me going.”

“Sexual competition again?”

“Oh, I’m a free spirit, David. I make no apologies. But I do remember telling you that Lindsey had a baby when she was in high school.”

I did remember, all of it.

“You just thought I was messing with you. But it’s the truth. She got pregnant. The father was one of the high-school hoods, but she had a crush on him, and was so naive. And she got pregnant. Now I think it was a cry for help, as they say. Anyway, Linda wouldn’t let her keep the baby. She put it up for adoption. Lindsey Faith never got over that. So in her mind, she’s lost two babies.”

I fought the tightness in my throat.

“It’s been an awful night,” Robin said. “I’ve never seen anyone killed before. I was so afraid for you. Let’s go to bed.”

I looked at the photo again.

“I can’t call her to say we’re okay, can I?”

“No,” Robin said.

“Because she won’t talk to me, or because she’s not even at her apartment?” She’s not wearing her wedding band.

Robin gave me a look, her eyes sleepy and her mouth in something like a half-smile. Then she looked away. “David, you’ve given me a great gift. You’ve brought out a gentle side I never knew I had. You’ve watched out for me. With all that happened tonight, I felt safe and taken care of. When you covered me with your body, you were willing to die in order to save me.” She reached down and mussed my hair. “It’s so much more than that. You’ve let me into you. I would never betray that trust.”

Now it was my turn to look away. I felt so sad and strange. And so suddenly aware of how dependent I had become on protecting Robin, on being the knight in, well, tarnished armor, and, yes, I had let her in. Dr. Sharon wouldn’t approve.

Robin hadn’t given me a straight answer about Lindsey. But, of course, she had.

18

I started on the case the next day. Case? No, a research project. I was not a deputy any longer, not a private investigator. I was just a guy at loose ends.

We had a long lunch with Judson Lee at the Phoenician, poolside at the Oasis Bar & Grill. The dismal economy seemed far away, but like nearby Scottsdale, the resort had a dull falseness to it. Miami depended on tourists, too. But it was sexy, edgy, and authentic. Phoenix just had a lot of people, and in the places where most people lived, no soul. Nobody would ever do “CSI Phoenix” for television.

The server, an attractive brunette in her twenties, seemed to know him well and he flirted relentlessly with her. The posh surroundings were a shock when compared with our recent sojourns. The clientele were all white, all rich. Add in all the people in Maricopa County who were white, poor, and desperately looking for someone, anyone, to blame for their straits—a substantial demographic—and this was the constituency of the new sheriff. I tried to set the thought aside.

Lee asked what I knew about Harley Talbott. I asked him how many hours he had. But after his smile faded I went through the basics. The multi-millionaire had died in 1990. He bridged the eras between old and new Phoenix, coming out of a pioneer Arizona family, building the city’s largest liquor distributorship, owning land, cattle, and a cotton-seed company. The rumors about Talbott’s connections to organized crime went back decades. His liquor business—and alleged bookmaking operation—was said to have had its start in Talbott’s friendship with the remnants of the Al Capone mob. He owned senators, congressmen, and judges, thanks to his political contributions.

“How much of this is true?” Lee wanted to know. “I’m from Chicago, so I can tell you about Al Capone. Phoenix, there’s history I don’t know.”

“I suspect a lot of it was true,” I said. “This was a wide-open town back in the old days. As the city grew, the line between the establishment and the mob was very porous. There are old rumors about Del Webb, the man who built Sun City. The same is even true with Barry Goldwater. It was a mobbed up town, and everybody touched it one way or the other. But you’ll still find Talbott defenders even today.”

“I don’t want his defenders,” Lee said. “As you can understand, my loyalty is to my client, and I help solve problems.”

“And Mr. DeSimone’s problem is the prison stretch his grandfather did back in the 1940s?”

“Yes. As you saw from the newspaper clippings, a liquor store was firebombed. It was a store that wouldn’t play by Harley Talbott’s rules. Paolo DeSimone was arrested, tried, convicted, and imprisoned. It’s true Paolo worked as a driver for Talbott. But he always maintained his innocence. My client wants to know if that’s true. If it is, we have the resources to try to clear his name.”

“If he did it for Talbott, it doesn’t make sense that Talbott couldn’t get him off,” I said. “He pretty much owned the cops and the courts.”