High Country Nocturne (David Mapstone Mystery 8)

The toffs who made it a point of pride never to go south of Camelback, or even Bell Road many miles to the north, called this area “the Sonoran Biltmore,” a slur for the changing demographics.

The real Biltmore was getting closer. We hit green at Indian School, Campbell and Highland, then the fancy midrise condos, offices, and Ritz-Carlton at Twenty-fourth and Camelback Road loomed up.

Camelback turned red and I slipped onto a residential side street behind the glassy Esplanade office tower. The low-slung houses here once had views of the mountains. Then a future governor, developer Fife Symington, built towers terribly out of scale with their surroundings and this street began a slow decline. Symington later got in trouble with the law but he’d made his money and wrecked a neighborhood. So very Phoenix.

For me, the street provided a sanctuary as I turned off the lights and did a one-eighty, then slid slowly back toward Twenty-fourth.

The light was green now and the Chevy was a block ahead, passing Biltmore Fashion Park. Where the hell was she going?

Less than half a mile on, I got the answer: She turned right into the entrance to the Arizona Biltmore. I saw that the guardhouse was unmanned and flipped off the headlights again. The Chevy drove on. We were enveloped in shadowy trees, perfectly manicured lawns, and very expensive real estate.

The hotel was some distance from the street. Many people thought it was the work of Frank Lloyd Wright, but the architect was actually his former student Albert Chase McArthur. Either way, the resort was a jewel. Fancy houses surrounded it, too. The Chevy took a right on Biltmore Estates Drive, a parkway that wound a lazy half-circle around the golf course and was lined by expansive older mansions. Plenty of diamonds here. Historic diamonds. Conflict diamonds. Legitimate diamonds.

What the hell was Strawberry Death doing here?

A few years ago, some of the local leaders had convened a series of salons to discuss big ideas for Phoenix’s future. They had been held at a developer’s house on this street and I had been invited as the token historian. Not much had been accomplished other than good booze and company. This particular house had hosted Ronald and Nancy Reagan as guests in the 1950s.

We drove past that place and the Chevy slid into a circular drive of another property. I coasted to a halt, car lights still off. I was unable to see through the landscaping but soon lights started coming on in the house. Making note of the address, I turned around and left, amazed that this fifteen-year-old Honda Prelude hadn’t attracted attention.

A mile south, back in the Sonoran Biltmore, I pulled into the parking lot of a tumbledown shopping strip and tried to figure out my next move. The answer came with a tap on the driver’s window. It was a skinny young man in a hoodie, an Anglo. I almost shot him.

“Do you have any cash to spare?”

“No.”

“Is there anything I could do to earn it?”

I looked him over. He couldn’t have been more than twenty years old but he was getting by hustling on the streets.

“Get in the car,” I said. As he walked around, I stowed the carbine in the back seat.

He sat in the passenger side and used his hands to slick back his onion head of dark hair.

“Are you a cop?” He zeroed in on the Python in its holster on my belt.

I shook my head. “Do I look like a cop?”

He studied me. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe you’re a cop.”

He pulled up his hoodie and shirt. “I ain’t wearing no wire. I’m not the police. I used to be a student.”

“Why did you quit?”

“The money ran out,” he said. “I got to like the meth way too much. Let’s drive somewhere private.”

“We can do this here. How much?”

“Twenty-five bucks to suck your cock, forty if you want me to swallow. It’s better than you’ll get from your wife.”

I doubted that. As I wrote on a notepad, he shivered in the seat. I peeled off four twenties and held them out.

r /> I said, “You have a phone?”

“Yeah.”

“You can have the money if you call this number and read these words, only these words, and then hang up.” I flipped on the dome light.