Jon Talton - Cactus Heart

Peralta was sitting with Hawkins in an unmarked car. Both of them were wearing flak jackets. I parked the BMW and climbed in the back seat of the cop car.

“Hey, Mapstone,” Hawkins greeted me like his best friend in the world. “Just thought you’d want to be in on the bust.”

“Bust?”

“The guy who did Max Yarnell,” Peralta said, sounding subdued.

I sat back on the slick vinyl of the seat. “How do we know?”

“Confidential informant,” Hawkins said. “You guys at the S.O. ought to try it on the Strangler case.”

“Eat shit,” Peralta growled. “Suspect is Hector Gonzalez, age twenty. Has a long record for burglary and assault. He was in county jail Wednesday night for beating up his girlfriend. He started talking shit in jail, and the informant heard him talk about killing somebody named Yarnell.”

Hawkins crowed, “A burglar, Mapstone. ‘Yarnell curse,’ my ass.”

Peralta went on, “He’s apparently crashing with some friends at one of these scummy little motels that has been turned into apartments. It’s about two blocks west of here.”

“In the city of Phoenix,” Hawkins added.

Peralta passed back a jail mugshot of a young man with exotic eyes and a sullen, small mouth.

Hawkins smiled. “When the cavalry comes, we’re going after him.” He eyed me. “Stay back and don’t get in the way.”

Peralta winked and handed me a vest. I strapped it on and wished I had brought Speedloaders for the Python. I was supposed to stay back. Six rounds should be enough.

The cavalry came in the form of four more unmarked police cars. We formed up in the lot, listened to some redundant instructions from Hawkins, then drove leisurely two blocks to where Hector Gonzales, age twenty, was supposedly waiting for us.

Behind a faded neon sign that proclaimed “Thunderbird Auto Court” stood two long, low brick buildings overlooking a concrete parking lot that had been patched too many times. We bumped over cracked pavement and deep chug holes, coming to a halt in front of a door labeled 1-A. Instantly, half a dozen cops in flak jackets jogged to the sides of the door and headed around to the rear of the building. Peralta and Hawkins took up positions right by the door, guns drawn. I stayed behind the car, maybe ten feet away, and knelt down behind the fender.

We were too late. A dozen young Hispanic men dashed out of the back and scattered across Buckeye, bringing shrieks of tires and car horns from the traffic. Hawkins rose and kicked in the door, shouting commands in English and Spanish. He was knocked backward suddenly and landed face up on the pavement just as the roar of a shotgun blast reached my ears. I hit the ground and drew the magnum. A spray of machine-gun fire erupted out of the room, echoing weirdly under the eaves of the little motel. Then there was silence.

From under the car, I saw Hawkins roll to the side and then be pulled away by other cops.

“I’m fine, goddamnit!” he rasped. They had him off to the side of the door, sitting upright in the dirt. He had a tight little pattern of birdshot in the middle of his vest. I leaned in the car door, grabbed the microphone and gave the radio code for “officer down, needs assistance.”

Then it was over, just as suddenly as it started. I heard some voices calling out in Spanish, then some guns were tossed out. Two guys who looked no older than fourteen swaggered out, all cheap machismo. They were dragged to the ground and handcuffed by the cops. Peralta planted a knee in one suspect’s back and his Glock at the base of his head. Neither kid looked like Gonzales.

“Secure. Code four,” a male voice called from the motel room.

I got on my feet, dusted myself off and walked over to Hawkins. He had the air knocked out of him, at the least. I pulled the flak vest off, and he moved his head in a little circle, looking around. The shot hadn’t penetrated the vest, but raising his T-shirt, I could see an ugly purple bruise on his chest from the impact of the round. Like mom always said, never go out without your bulletproof vest.

“We get the little bastard?” he demanded in a slurry voice.

“Not yet.”

“What do you mean not yet?” He focused on me. “I told you to stay out of the way.”

I leaned him against the wall again and stood.

I walked south along the building to work a charley horse out of my calf. Behind me, I could hear sirens coming down Buckeye. In about three minutes, half the cops in the district would be here, along with paramedics, firefighters, and the TV stations.

The Thunderbird Auto Court was still and silent now. But I could feel eyes watching us from behind the dirty window screens. One partly opened door was carefully closed again. The place was oppressive in its layers of age and dirt and despair. Then I passed a little carport marked by a large pool of ancient grease and Hector Gonzales was standing just inside.

I drew down on him. “Deputy sheriff,” I said in a shaky voice. “Policia!”

But he already had the drop on me. As my eyes adjusted to the relative shade of the carport, I could see he held a silver-plated revolver in his right hand, and the barrel was on a disconcerting trajectory to my head.

“Fuck you,” he said. “I ain’t goin’ back to jail.”

“Nobody’s dead or hurt yet,” I said, hearing the sirens getting louder, wondering if anybody even knew I was back here.

“Oh, yeah?” The exotic eyes were bright. “Well, put down your gun, then.” He wore filthy cargo pants and he had no shoes on.

“That’s not going to happen.” It was Peralta’s first rule: You never give up your piece. Never.

“Why did you have to walk back here?” he demanded, his eyes turning sleepy.

“Just bad luck,” I said, doing a quick calculus of armed standoff: with my heavy-grain, hollow-point.357 rounds, I could drop him with one shot. With luck, it would have enough force to keep his finger from squeezing a round into me. I needed to do it now. The longer I waited, the more things fell to my disadvantage. A huge lake of sweat opened up down my back. The precise, twin sights of the Python were aligned on his heart. I didn’t take the shot.

“What do you know about the Yarnell killing?”

“What the fuck?” he said. “I didn’t kill nobody. Yarnell, he…”

“Drop your weapon!” It was Peralta. “Drop your weapon!”

“Back off, Mike,” I shouted, keeping the drop on the kid, who took a harder aim at me. “What do you mean?” I shouted at him. “What do you mean you didn’t kill anybody?”

“Don’t make us kill you, kid!” It was another cop, off to my right. I couldn’t see anything but that silver-plated barrel. I had to take the shot.

“Tell me!” I shouted.

He shook his head slowly, his front teeth biting into his lower lip, a tear falling down his cheek. He raised the revolver.

“Drop it now!” More cops.

“Do it now, son!”

“Put the gun down!”

Just as I took in a breath, they opened fire. I expected a bullet in return but it never came. He did an absurd little dance, and a spray of dark blood ejaculated from his back, and the exotic eyes were still staring at me as his body crumpled backward onto the dingy concrete.

I swam in the ocean at night. Me, a desert rat who refused to swim in places where I couldn’t see the bottom. But I had lived seven years in San Diego, where the ocean was always in your sight or your nostrils. One night, on a first date luminous with connection, conversation, and laughter, my new friend and I had gone for a walk along the beach. When we came to a little cove, she had stripped off her clothes and run straight into the surf until only her blond head had been visible in the blackness of the waves. Then I had waded into the blackness, too, casting aside my native caution, letting the seaweed sweep against my legs and the fish bump me. I am a strong swimmer, so I had no trouble keeping up with her as we swam against the sea until finally we had become part of the swell and tide ourselves. When we were maybe a mile out, she had pointed back toward the land. I had turned to see, from our vast solitude, a dazzling necklace of lights on the horizon.