Phoenix Noir Read online

  This collection is comprised of works of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the authors’ imaginations. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2009 Akashic Books

  Series concept by Tim McLoughlin and Johnny Temple

  Phoenix map by Sohrab Habibion

  ePub ISBN-13: 978-1-936-07041-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-85-9

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009922933

  All rights reserved

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  ALSO AKASHIC NOIRS SERIES:

  Baltimore Noir, edited by Laura Lippman

  Boston Noir, edited by Dennis Lehane

  Bronx Noir, edited by S.J. Rozan

  Brooklyn Noir, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Tim McLoughlin

  Brooklyn Noir 3: Nothing but the Truth

  edited by Tim McLoughlin & Thomas Adcock

  Chicago Noir, edited by Neal Pollack

  D.C. Noir, edited by George Pelecanos

  D.C. Noir 2: The Classics, edited by George Pelecanos

  Delhi Noir(India), edited by Hirsh Sawhney

  Detroit Noir, edited by E.J. Olsen & John C. Hocking

  Dublin Noir(Ireland), edited by Ken Bruen

  Havana Noir(Cuba), edited by Achy Obejas

  Istanbul Noir(Turkey), edited by Mustafa Ziyalan & Amy Spangler

  Las Vegas Noir, edited by Jarret Keene & Todd James Pierce

  London Noir(England), edited by Cathi Unsworth

  Los Angeles Noir, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Manhattan Noir, edited by Lawrence Block

  Manhattan Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Lawrence Block

  Mexico City Noir(Mexico), edited by Paco I. Taibo II

  Miami Noir, edited by Les Standiford

  New Orleans Noir, edited by Julie Smith

  Paris Noir(France), edited by Aurélien Masson

  Portland Noir, edited by Kevin Sampsell

  Queens Noir, edited by Robert Knightly

  Rome Noir(Italy), edited by Chiara Stangalino & Maxim Jakubowski

  San Francisco Noir, edited by Peter Maravelis

  San Francisco Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Peter Maravelis

  Seattle Noir, edited by Curt Colbert

  Toronto Noir(Canada), edited by Janine Armin & Nathaniel G. Moore

  Trinidad Noir, Lisa Allen-Agostini & Jeanne Mason

  Twin Cities Noir, edited by Julie Schaper & Steven Horwitz

  Wall Street Noir, edited by Peter Spiegelman

  FORTHCOMING:

  Barcelona Noir(Spain), edited by Adriana Lopez & Carmen Ospina

  Copenhagen Noir(Denmark), edited by Bo Tao Michaelis

  Haiti Noir, edited by Edwidge Danticat

  Indian Country Noir, edited by Liz Martínez & Sarah Cortez

  Lagos Noir(Nigeria), edited by Chris Abani

  Lone Star Noir, edited by Bobby Byrd & John Byrd

  Los Angeles Noir 2: The Classics, edited by Denise Hamilton

  Moscow Noir(Russia), edited by Natalia Smirnova & Julia Goumen

  Mumbai Noir(India), edited by Altaf Tyrewala

  Orange County Noir, edited by Gary Phillips

  Philadelphia Noir, edited by Carlin Romano

  Richmond Noir, edited by Andrew Blossom,

  Brian Castleberry & Tom De Haven

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Introduction

  PART I: THE BIG HEAT

  JON TALTON Downtown

  Bull

  CHARLES KELLY Hassayampa Valley

  The Eighth Deadly Sin

  DIANA GABALDON Desert Botanical Garden

  Dirty Scottsdale

  ROBERT ANGLEN Apache Junction

  Growing Back

  PART II: WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS

  LUIS ALBERTO URREA Paradise Valley

  Amapola

  LEE CHILD Chandler

  Public Transportation

  PATRICK MILLIKIN Tovrea Castle

  Devil Doll

  LAURA TOHE Indian School Road

  Tom Snag

  PART III: A TOWN WITHOUT PITY

  JAMES SALLIS Glendale

  Others of My Kind

  KURT REICHENBAUGH Grand Avenue

  Valerie

  GARY PHILLIPS South Phoenix

  Blazin’ on Broadway

  MEGAN ABBOTT Scottsdale

  It’s Like a Whisper

  PART IV: THE CRY OF THE CITY

  DAVID CORBETT Tempe

  Dead by Christmas

  DON WINSLOW Van Buren Strip

  Whiteout on Van Buren

  DOGO BARRY GRAHAM Christown

  By the Time He Got to Phoenix

  STELLA POPE DUARTE Harmon Park

  Confession

  About the Contributors

  INTRODUCTION

  SUNSHINE IS THE NEW NOIR

  Phoenix is a young city, even by Arizona standards. The desert metropolis, easily the largest in the Southwest today, wasn’t established until 1867, much later than Tucson, Prescott, and other Arizona towns. As the legend goes, fortune-seeker and former Confederate soldier Jack Swilling noticed the ruins of the extensive Hohokam canal system while passing through the Salt River Valley and recognized the economic potential in getting the irrigation ditches up and running again. Centuries earlier, the Hohokam Indians had disappeared, no one really knows why, but the elaborate canal system they left behind provided the foundation upon which a new city would arise. Swilling battled alcoholism and opiate addiction and would later die in Yuma Territorial Prison under suspicion of highway robbery (he was posthumously cleared of the charge).

  Although historians debate whether Swilling or fellow pioneer Darrell Duppa first named the town “Phoenix,” the idea it evoked, a new civilization rising out of the ashes of a previous culture, is revealing. It implied new beginnings, a place where hard-working young families from the East could start over anew. Of course, it wasn’t always such a great deal for the nearby Pima and Maricopa Indians.

  Early boosters promoted Phoenix as a desert paradise, a lush resort town where health-seekers could enjoy the benefits of clean dry air and warm winter weather. The burgeoning city was quickly so infested with “lungers”—people suffering from tuberculosis and other respiratory ailments—that alarmed citizens pressured advertisers to downplay the palliative effects of the environment. Magazine ads from the ’40s and ’50s show squeaky clean white families enjoying the “relaxed pace” of desert living: children playing in the sunshine, Dad practicing his golf swing or sipping a highball by the swimming pool.

  From the very beginning, Phoenix has always had a darker side. It is a city founded upon shady development deals, good ol’ boy politics, police corruption, organized crime, and exploitation of natural resources. Close proximity to the Mexican border makes the city a natural destination spot for illegal trafficking of all kinds—narcotics, weapons, humans. These days, “America’s Toughest Sheriff” Joe Arpaio routinely makes headlines for his vigilante-style hunting of illegal aliens and his casual disregard of human rights. And he keeps getting reelected.

  Modern-day Phoenix is a textbook case of suburban sprawl gone unchecked. Endless cookie-cutter housing developments, slapped up on the cheap, metastasize outward into the desert, soaking up energy and water that we don’t really have. All of that concrete and asphalt traps the heat, raising temperatures to apocalyptic extremes. During the summer, these “heat bubbles” can be lethal (during one record-breaking month in 2004, fourteen people died from heat exposure, most of them homeless).

  The city recently overtook Philadelphia to become the fifth largest city in the country, and the Phoenix metro area now rivals Los Angeles County in size. As in all major cities, the gulf between Phoenix’s haves and have-nots continues to widen with the steady decline of the middle class. The affluent northeast valley—Scottsdale, Paradise Valley, Carefree—has little in common with the sunburned working-class neighborhoods of South Phoenix and much of the west valley, though the developers are trying to change that with gentrification. The population of the city continues to grow and morph, but the legacy of the early ward system, in which much of the political representation resided in the wealthier—and whiter—first and second wards, lives on to this day.

  What does all this mean? Crime, and lots of it. The stories collected in this anthology provide a revealing glimpse of a dark underbelly that the tourists rarely see. Novelist and veteran journalist Jon Talton provides a masterly portrayal of WWII-era Phoenix, back when The Deuce, our old skid row, was in its heyday and the city’s corrupt power structure already firmly entrenched. Edgar Award–winning author Megan Abbott offers a stylish interpretation of the notorious Bob Crane murder, and brilliantly captures the mellow, sun-baked vibe of Scottsdale during the 1970s. Diana Gabaldon takes the lid off contemporary Scottsdale with a dark and sordid tale combining such disparate elements as squirrel genocide, an illegal orchid smuggling operation, and a murdered Welsh botanist. Investigative reporter Robert Anglen gives us a tour de force of noir depravity about a career loser from East Mesa who is forced to live his miserable life … backwards. Up-and-coming Phoenix scribe Kurt Reichenbaugh delivers the goods with a lean and nasty tale of betrayal along downtown’s st
oried Grand Avenue. Longtime Phoenicians will dig Gary Phillips’s contribution, in which L.A. detective Ivan Monk comes to town to investigate some loose ends surrounding the early-’70s murder of a local soul singer. The story was inspired by the real-life slaying of Arlester “Dyke” Christian of funk/R&B group Dyke and the Blazers, whose big hit “Funky Broadway” few realized was based on the main drag in South Phoenix. And then there’s Navajo writer Laura Tohe’s bad-ass riff on the femme fatale convention when her womanizing protagonist meets his match with a lady who just ain’t human. This is but a sampling of the dark and diverse tales you’ll find in Phoenix Noir.

  I hope you enjoy this collection. The stories represent our city in all of its contradictory glory, the good and the bad, urban blight and stark natural beauty, everything jumbled together and served up smokin’ hot, just the way we like it.

  Patrick Millikin

  Phoenix, AZ

  July 2009

  PART I

  THE BIG HEAT

  BULL

  BY JON TALTON

  Downtown

  Union Station

  I should have been suspicious when Logan said it was a routine job. It wasn’t that there were no routine jobs, only that Logan lied routinely. He was a short man with toad lips and a head that was bald and blotched except for a small tuft of dark hair just above his forehead. Always sitting behind his desk made him appear even shorter.

  “Get out to Twenty-seventh Avenue, know where it is?”

  He knew I did. I was one of the few people who had actually been born in Phoenix. I tamped out my Lucky Strike in the big ashtray on his desk. “It’s just fields out there.”

  “Yeah, well, they found a foot at milepost 903.”

  That sounded pretty routine. People fell under trains and lost things. It had been a lot worse a few years ago, during the Depression, with all the bums and alkie stiffs.

  “The Golden State will drop you off.”

  My suspicion made me light up another cigarette. “The Golden State Limited is going to slow down to let a bull get off two miles from here?”

  He pulled the cigar from his mouth. A string of saliva kept it tethered to his fat lips.

  “Bull. I hate that shit. You’re a special agent for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Have some pride.”

  I took a drag and drew it down to my shoelaces. I walked to my desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out my Colt .45 automatic, taking my time about slipping on the shoulder holster and replacing the jacket.

  “Go, you son of a bitch!” he hollered, spitting tiny tobacco leaves across the room. At the door, I heard his voice again: “And be on good behavior for a change. Got it?”

  I got it, all right. I took the back stairs out of Union Station, avoiding the mob of young guys in uniform in the waiting room. I crossed the brickwork of the platform and made it to one of the dark green Pullmans on the Golden State just as the whistle screamed highball and the big wheels under the cars started moving. I flashed my badge at the conductor and he let me on, giving me a vinegar look. He didn’t want to be slowing down for any damned bull. I let him brush past me and I stayed in the vestibule. It wouldn’t be a long ride. The town passed by out the door. Over the red tile roof of the Spanish-style station, the Luhrs Tower marked downtown. If I turned the other way I could have seen the shacks and outhouses south of the tracks. Warehouses and freight cars gradually gave way to open track.

  Five minutes later, I dropped off the train into the rocky ballast and found my footing. The air tasted like dust and locomotive oil. There wasn’t much out here: the single main line that ran through the desert to Yuma and Los Angeles, a few Mexican houses, the Jewish cemetery. Then there were the fields, regimented rows of green with lettuce, cabbage, and alfalfa running out along the table-flat ground until it met the mountains and the sky. Stands of cottonwood bordered the irrigation canals where I used to swim on the oveny summer days. Now, in January, the air was dry and cool and familiar. I couldn’t believe it was already 1943.

  The town was changing. It had slept through the Depression like a kid in a fever dream, but the new war had brought Air Corps training bases, a new aluminum plant a ways from town, a camp for Kraut POWs, and endless streams of troop trains. Patton had trained his tank corps down by Hyder. The paper said Phoenix’s population was now an unbelievable 65,000. Out here Van Buren petered down into a two-lane road, concreted over by the WPA. I could see somebody had gotten past the shortages and rationing to throw up some temporary housing a little north of the tracks, ratty little one-story jobs made of cinder blocks. They would probably tear it all down once the war ended.

  I adjusted my hat and tie and walked toward the crowd a hundred yards back down the tracks. It didn’t look good. Too many suits, and not the Hanny’s special I had on, but nice ones, and men in them who were all looking at me. Fifty feet away, on the other side of the track, stood a new Lincoln and, outside it, four tough-looking guys carrying Thompsons. Just a routine job. Before I got far, Joe Fisher walked up, moving fast on his wide, thick legs.

  “Bull, what’s all the company about?” He nodded toward the men in suits.

  “Beats me, but looks like Espee brass.”

  “Your problem,” Fisher smirked. His face wasn’t built for it. It was thick and immovable, the color and texture of adobe.

  “Who are the ones with the Tommy guns?” I asked.

  “I was going to ask you that.”

  Fisher was a Phoenix homicide dick, and he wasn’t a bad guy when you compared him to his pals, one of whom awkwardly crossed the tracks and poked me in the chest.

  “Jimmy Darrow.” He spoke my name accusingly. “This ain’t a railroad problem. Take a powder.”

  Frenchy Navarre’s coat was open so you could see the two revolvers he carried in shoulder holsters. He wanted you to see them. He had a failed boxer’s face and a killer’s heart. I’d seen a lot of guys like him in the war, the Great War. My war. I pushed his hand away just slowly enough, tossed aside my cigarette, and walked past him.

  More railroad honchos than I’d ever seen in little Phoenix, Arizona, surrounded me. The introductions were perfunctory: the general manager, a vice president, the head of the mechanical department, and the chief special agent. Names I had only seen on company stationery and timetables.

  The chief special agent did most of the talking. “Darrow, you need to work with these local officers to get this cleared up, and I mean soon.”

  “Sure,” I said. Best behavior. “Any dope you can give me on this?”

  Heads shook adamantly.

  “Son, we need you to double-check everything on this line, make sure it’s shipshape.” This was the basso of the general manager.

  “Yes, sir.” I stood awkwardly, waiting to be dismissed.

  The chief drew me aside. He had the type of kindly face that I had grown to hate on sight.

  “It’s wintertime, see, and all the bosses are here for the nice weather,” he said conspiratorially. “So they have nothing to do but go out and do our jobs for us, get it?”

  “Sure.”

  In a louder voice, he said, “We need to make sure this line is secure. I want a report by tonight. Let’s make it 8 p.m. Sharp.

  I’m at the Hotel Adams.” I said my yessirs all over again. The chief took my arm. “Remember, serve in silence.” I waited for them to climb into a shiny black Caddy, then I lit a Lucky.

  Another train trundled slowly by, the big grimy 2-8-0 locomotive making the ground shake. Southern Pacific Lines, proclaimed the tender. It must have had twenty cars, old Harriman coaches, faded black from smoke. Through the open windows, I saw the passengers. Black and brown faces in olive green. Colored troops. They looked with curiosity at our little party. The locomotive smoke sent me into coughs that made my lungs feel like they were on fire. For a moment, I bent over with my hands on my pants legs while my head stopped spinning. I felt better when I took a drag on my cigarette. After the train passed, I crossed over to where Fisher and Navarre had parked their Ford.

  “Here it is,” Fisher said, standing by the open trunk.

  He pointed to an old citrus crate. Big Town Oranges, the label said. Inside I found a bulging, bloodstained towel. They let me unwrap it.

  “You find it this way?”

  “No, genius,” Frenchy said. “We gotta save it. Evidence. You see that train, Fisher? More niggers than in Nigger Town and they’re giving ’em guns.” His small, dark eyes focused on me. “What the hell are you doing here, goddamned bull? Go roust some lowlifes down at the yards.” He stalked off.