City of Dark Corners

But which bank?

Start at the best. I walked up Central to Monroe Street, where the imposing new Professional Building hulked over the southeast corner. On the bottom floor was the lobby to the Valley Bank & Trust, the strongest such institution left in Phoenix.

The lobby looked like a high temple of money, with soaring ceilings, art deco carvings, sleek hanging chandeliers, and walnut teller counters and benches so beautiful they made me feel every inch the imposter. It was almost enough to make you trust banks again. The armed guard was a retired patrol sergeant, so that greased my skids to the vault manager after a few minutes of small talk.

The manager wore a conservative suit and toupee that wasn’t fooling anyone. I could use my badge but that might raise issues of warrants, so I decided to brazen it out.

“Leonce Navarre.” I shook his hand. “I’d like to get my safe-deposit box.”

I held up the key.

“Of course, Mr. Navarre,” he said. “Come this way.”

Barely believing my luck, I followed him as he waddled to a gate, unlocked it, and did the same with a sturdy polished steel door. Then we passed an immense open vault door and soon were inside a long room filled floor-to-ceiling with boxes. Each had two keyholes.

“I believe you’re 1207,” he said.

“Sounds about right.” I was about to say something about not having been here for a while but who knew? Maybe Frenchy had been here last week and dealt with someone else. I held my breath. The man produced a key and inserted it in the correct box. I did the same with mine. And it turned. The little steel door opened, and he pulled out a long rectangular box. Carrying it to a table in the middle of the room, he said, “I’ll leave you to it. Let me know when you’re done.”

Then he was gone.

For a moment, I stared at the walls containing money, gold, jewelry, important documents—and secrets. Tamping down my curiosity, I focused on the little fortress in front of me and opened the hinged top.

Inside was money: Seven neatly bound packs of hundred-dollar bills. A quick flip through the C-notes in one pack made me sure Frenchy had at least ten thousand dollars hidden away here. I set them on the table. And saw the brown manila envelope.

I carefully undid the string and let a heavy handkerchief fall to the tabletop. Unwrapping it slowly, I saw a blood-caked straight razor. It had been dusted for fingerprints and inside the envelope were four neat latents on an o

fficial police form. They were clear partial prints. But no name was listed on the paper. No suspect, no investigating officer.

The packs of money went back in the safe-deposit box. I wrapped the blade in the handkerchief, careful not to leave my own prints, and put it and the paper with partial fingerprints back in the envelope. That went in my suit coat pocket.

As I walked back to the office, it was time to reorder my thinking.

If Frenchy really murdered Zoogie Boogie, why keep the straight razor? The immediate answer was so that he could plant it on the Negro suspect of his choice. But if that were the case, why dust it for prints, lift latents, and put both in a safe-deposit box? That made no sense.

No, Frenchy found Zoogie dead—arriving at the junkyard ahead of Muldoon—and took the razor. Then he claimed the killing to get Kemper Marley off his back. This went a long way to untangling his convoluted explanation about the murder of a man who was secretly collecting for him in Darktown. Someone else did the killing and Frenchy either knew who he was or he was protecting the evidence until he could match the prints.

Back at the office, I locked the envelope containing the razor and prints in my safe. No more carelessness like the kind that had cost me Carrie’s diary and letters.

McGrath hadn’t responded to my report. On the plus side, he hadn’t demanded my badge back.

Some unrelated business came in. A few weeks ago, I would have welcomed it. Now it was an unwelcome distraction.

Barry Goldwater put me on retainer for the Williams Investment Company, which was formed by his family with two hundred thousand dollars of capital stock. What they intended to do—maybe purchase land—and why they might need a private eye were mysteries to me. I felt as if he was taking pity on me. But the four-hundred-dollar retainer fee he offered helped my dwindling treasury. A few weeks ago, I would have stuck the money in the safe and celebrated with a shave and haircut from Otis Kenilworth, a shoeshine, and a movie and prizefight with Victoria. The shave and haircut would have to do.

A man named Street hired me to help him in a dispute with the city. He didn’t want to pay an assessment on his property at Twelfth and Van Buren streets, claiming the contract was awarded illegally. It was boring by my standards but it was fifty bucks and easy money. The job entailed working up background on the contractor, the Phoenix-Tempe Stone Company.

As part of the Street case, I attended a city commission meeting in the sparkling new commission chambers at City Hall. I sat in the back and took notes as the city attorney discussed Street’s case.

The four commissioners were R. E. Patton, J. B. Guess, David Kimball, and O. B. Marston. These worthies were behind my layoff from the force. I wondered how many saw me sitting there. I wondered how many were in compromising photos taken from the wall peek in Kemper Marley’s whorehouse. A case like this gave my mind plenty of time to wander.

Once the meeting ended, I grabbed a late lunch at the Busy Bee Café and got back to the office. Removing the Carrie Dell file from the locked filing cabinet, I turned to the call log for Summer Tours and started dialing.

As a police detective, I quickly learned that there were basically two kinds of cases. One set were obvious, with the suspect already apprehended or easily identified. Most murder victims knew their killers. The second kind were rarer but more interesting. They were cases that appeared random and evidence was scattered, requiring many hours, days, even months of work plus creativity. That was certainly true back in 1929.

Twenty-Three

On Monday, March 11, 1929, the next new moon, the entire force was mobilized to apprehend the University Park Strangler before he killed again. All vacations and leaves were canceled. Twelve-hour shifts with overtime were authorized.