Jon Talton - High Country Nocturne

As if I didn’t know.

They could have been brothers. Both were about five eleven, wearing cheap Dockers and polo shirts to show off their biceps. Both had thinning-hair crew cuts. They looked like personal trainers at a second-rate health club. Gordon’s partner was giving me the cop squint.

Gordon said, “The sheriff wants to see you.”

I did not walk out to the Crown Vic without consideration.

They wouldn’t say what “the sheriff” wanted of me-and it felt like a metal file being dragged across my teeth even to hear the title connected with anybody but Mike Peralta, certainly not this pretender.

Don’t think I didn’t consider that they might not really be deputies. Too much was in flux: Peralta on the run, his messages to me, and the mysterious traffic stop early this morning. But I recognized the car and I knew Gordon from my days with the department.

I decided to take the chance, but not before I excused myself. In the bedroom, I slipped my easily concealed BUG-backup gun-into a holster in the small of my back and covered it with a blue blazer. The Smith & Wesson 442 Airweight revolver held five potent.38 special hollowpoint bullets. If the worst came about, it would be my last resort.

Back in the living room, I looked at Lindsey. She smiled and winked at me, See what they want .

I paused in the long twilight to admire the cool breeze, and then I climbed inside. The personal trainers even let me ride in the front passenger seat, with Gordon driving.

“I didn’t even know this neighborhood existed, Mapstone.” Gordon took in the elegant period-revival houses as we went west on Cypress and then turned south on the one-way that was Fifth Avenue. On the other side of McDowell Road were bungalows more than a century old and beautifully restored.

“Thought everything downtown was a slum, but this is something. Reminds me of back home in Minnesota, the old houses and front porches.”

“It’s not downtown.” My voice was friendly. “It’s Midtown. Downtown only goes as far as Fillmore.”

My pedantry shut Gordon up. We were passing Kenilworth School, where I had passed kindergarten through eighth grade, when I heard Gordon’s partner behind me.

“So how is Miss Cheerleader Legs?”

In the history department, his query would have led to a disciplinary action for using sexist language and objectifying a woman, followed by sensitivity classes and perhaps therapy.

In the cop shop, the proper response would have been, “Your wife looked fine after I fucked her this morning, kid. Thanks for asking.”

But I wasn’t a cop any more.

I didn’t answer.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Gordon give his partner a “back-off” glance and the voice behind me fell silent.

The kid was too stupid to stay on an elite detail. Soon enough he would find himself alone on a dark road with a guy less forgiving than me. One who would cause him much pain and require years of facial reconstruction and he would squint because it hurt to open his eyes.

Dark road-I thought again of Strawberry Death. I was still not persuaded by Lindsey’s explanation.

At Van Buren Street, we jigged east to First Avenue. I dreaded seeing the new occupant in Peralta’s former office suite, where I had spent many sessions hearing his demands for progress on a case. That seemed like another person’s life now.

But the car turned left on Jefferson Street and pulled in to valet parking for the Hotel Palomar.

Nobody said anything. We merely got out and I followed them inside.

The Palomar was the crown jewel of CityScape, the latest attempt to revive a downtown that the city had nearly killed in the sixties.

The development had been presented in the newspaper with renderings of audacious skyscrapers. The reality was vapid and suburban, turned in on itself instead of recreating a walkable downtown commercial district. Still, it was better than the brutal empty plaza it had replaced, and Lindsey and I spent as much as we could at the limited selection of shops. We tried to be civic stewards, supporting downtown rather than driving to Scottsdale or the Biltmore.

Inside the hotel was another matter. The Blue Hound restaurant and bar had a flashy LA feel, with dark wood, swag lamps, large mirrors hung at menacing angles over the tables, leather sofas in front of a fireplace that was lit even in the summertime, textured walls, and a big crowd.

I followed the plainclothes deputies past the fun to the elevators. We rode up in silence.

The car opened onto a rooftop bar called Lustre. With the temperature still above seventy, it was a beautiful night to be here. But the place was empty. A sign said, “Reserved for Private Party.”

That would be the casually dressed man at the bar with a messenger bag on the floor beside his feet. He stood up and smiled at me. Then he extended his hand.

And I shook it.

He saved me the impossibility of speaking his title by saying, “Call me Chris.”

Then he dismissed the detail with a “thanks, guys” and led me to a table.

Christopher Andrew Melton was completing his first year as Maricopa County sheriff. Not being a big television watcher, especially what passed for local news, this was my first opportunity to really see him.

He was my size and my height. I had so hoped he was a short little guy. I had dreamed most of his hair had fallen out, leaving only dust bunny tufts. But, no, it was still there, golden and expensively cut. His voice was measured and harmonized with education, not the redneck twang I expected. He was further helped by the kind of limpid blue eyes that were ubiquitous in British costume dramas.

He had moved to Sun City West after finishing twenty-five years with the FBI. He invested in some houses and made top dollar before the real-estate crash. With his federal law-enforcement pedigree, he won consulting work for the homebuilders and the rock products association-the trade group that lobbied for the asphalt, concrete, and aggregate producers-doing what, I didn’t know. I did know they were two of the most politically powerful entities in the state.

Then he ran for sheriff. An “impossible bid,” the pundits had said. “Mike Peralta will be sheriff as long as he wants the job and then he can be governor.” That was what they had said.

But Melton found his issue and his timing with illegal immigration, something Peralta was supposedly “soft” on, even though the Sheriff’s Office had no authority over federal enforcement of immigration laws.

It was a dirty campaign, with Melton’s surrogates playing to Anglo fears and emphasizing that the sheriff was “soft” because he was “a Mexican himself.” “What part of illegal doesn’t he understand?” one bumper sticker read, with Peralta’s face on it.

Melton beat Peralta by ten thousand votes in the Republican primary where the turnout was twenty percent. The county’s population was four million.

And now he sat across from me.

“I know this is awkward,” he said.

The server arrived and saved me from saying many unhelpful things. In addition to the campaign, I could have mentioned the Justice Department investigation of the Sheriff’s Office, brought on by Melton’s highly publicized “sweeps” to round up illegals. This had destroyed years of effort by Peralta and the Phoenix Police to build cooperation in a community that was often victimized by crime. Now it was back in the shadows.

With deputies playing immigration police, response times had risen around the county, even for priority calls. Violent crime in the areas policed by MCSO was increasing. There were allegations of failure to investigate sex crimes. Jail conditions had deteriorated and prisoners had been abused. The county had already paid out three million dollars to settle lawsuits against the department. Local wags were already calling him “Sheriff Crisis Meltdown.”