Jon Talton - South Phoenix Rules

“I got a hundred boxes full of ’em. Help yourself.” He tapped on the open cardboard container of matchbooks by the cash register.

“But you’re not a pawn shop?”

“Used to be. But the chains drove me out of it. Everybody’s pawning shit, the economy’s so bad now, but an independent outfit has a really hard time making it. Anyway, I get better margins on guns. Now, if you’re a revolver man, I’ve got everything your firepower-seeking heart would desire. If you want more, got a special going on Sig Sauer P238 Equinox. Sweetest little concealable you’d ever want.”

“They’re nice.” I knew: Lindsey had one. “I’m just kind of browsing for home defense.”

“I got you,” he said, poking his eye-socket with a stubby finger. “Like to say to folks, ‘I got my eye on you!’ ” This brought more child-like laughter. “I don’t always look like this. Usually have in my glass eye. But last night I went down to this club, see. That one down on Indian School? The Stuffed Beaver, with all the neon out front? Was buying this stripper drinks-Jager shots-and she’s never seen a glass eye before. Get it? Seen a glass eye?” I was in the presence of comedic genius. “Anyway, I pop it out and show it to her and she fools around with it and puts it in her mouth and next thing you know, shit, she swallows it! Fuck, that eye cost real money!”

Up until now, he had been speaking in a flat, Midwestern accent. Suddenly, a little Southern came in. “I was fixing to get real mad, started yelling at her, and she turns green and runs to the bathroom. I run after her. Well, kinda wobbled-I was three sheets. I go right into the ladies room behind her, and she runs into one a the stalls, bends over and, hell… Throws up! My glass eye right there in the toilet with all that barf from drinking all day and not eating, guess ’cause she has to keep her figure.”

“Not good,” I ventured.

“Damned straight. She also heaved up her dentures. Girl can’t be more than twenty-five. Pretty little thing. Named Destiny. And she’s got false teeth.” He sighed. “What can you do? So here I am without my eye.”

At least he didn’t call himself “Deadeye.”

I repeated, “Home defense.”

“Got it.” Now he was from Iowa or Nebraska again. “Here’s this little Kel Tec number back here.” He pointed to one of his guns on the wall. It looked like something from a science fiction movie. “Gas piston. Ten rounds, but I can give you a deal on a thirty-round mag. Sweet. Just remember, if you do ’em in the yard, drag the body inside your door. Self-defense. Now, ’course if you’re a traditionalist, which it looks like you are, I recommend a Remington 870, twelve-gauge, with a pistol grip…”

While he went on, I nodded, and checked the place out more. It was retail space that had gone through many incarnations. The drop ceiling looked as if it hadn’t been replaced since LBJ was president, and it had dark yellow water stains in some spots. At the back of the long room was an alcove and scarred double doors. Still, a new surveillance camera was mounted in one corner, inside a saucer-like cowling that allowed it to swivel to different angles. I watched it as it turned. Also at the back was a mirror, probably one-way glass. He was the only worker visible in the store but I sensed he wasn’t alone. I was the only customer, which seemed odd, even if it was the middle of a workday and Phoenix was in its worst recession in history.

“Let me think about it,” I said, told him he owned a great store.

“I’m proud of it.” He rubbed at his missing eye. “Been out here twenty years and seen what they did to this place. Tax and spend. Open borders. A goddamned invasion. Islamo-fascists coming, too. No wonder people are scared and need to buy guns for home defense. At least we got rid of that spic sheriff.”

Something primal inside cocked my muscles to reach across the counter, pull his head down into the glass display case by his ears, and add to his facial deformity. I could have done it before he ever got his fat hand to his gun. I did a quick relaxation exercise Sharon Peralta had taught me. I took a deep, grateful breath. The past was gone and the future was unknowable, even if I couldn’t face it. All I had to do was be in that moment. My lungs filled with air.

“You okay, mister?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I’m just thinking about how much money I’d like to come spend here.”

He smiled wide, showing a set of teeth right out of Hollywood. “Don’t let the old lady know. She’ll want you to buy furniture or some such shit. But if she’s a shooter, bring her by! Got an underground range!”

I thanked him and walked out the door, the laser sensor sounding a loud tone back in the store. From the speakers, Warren Zeavon was kicking in “Lawyers, Guns and Money . ”

Robin was sitting in the car when I got back. Her hands were covering the Chief’s Special that sat between her legs. Today she had refused the protective vest and I hadn’t argued.

“Any trouble?”

“Just sitting out in this suburban hell. Maybe that’s unfair. Somebody built this, sweated over it, maybe was proud of it. I sat here wondering if anyone could paint this as a landscape…capture the desolation. How small it all is under the sky. I wish I had the talent to paint. I don’t, so I studied the ones who did.”

“You’re not through yet,” I said.

She smiled slightly. “What now?”

“Let’s sit awhile and watch.”

“I’ve never been on a stakeout. But why are we doing this?”

“Following a clue.”

“Why not let the lady cop who hates you do it?”

I shrugged.

“Because she doesn’t give a damn. She thinks you’re hiding something, and she wants to squeeze you.” That’s why we sat here. A connection between Jax/Verdugo and the gun store might be tenuous. It might be important. I had contacts beyond Kate Vare. I couldn’t protect Robin alone. Maybe I was a fool to think I could protect her at all. They won’t drop it, the scumbag had said last night. They never do.

Robin said, “Do you believe me?”

“Yes.”

I said it with a certainty that I rationally had confidence in. It wasn’t because of the nights we had spent side-by-side. I told myself that. The silence lasted long enough for the mood to change.

“You miss the cops, David. You do. Don’t deny it.”

She smiled wide, making her face beautiful, and starting to resemble her sister. I set that thought aside and pulled across the street into the lot of another decaying set of storefronts, then parked beside some clothing-donation containers. To the south, Shaw Butte and the North Mountains were befogged in the dirty air of three million cars. When I was in high school, Bell Road had been a two-lane highway through a mix of flat desert and used-car lots. The city planners had vowed it would be the northern boundary of Phoenix for decades to come. Now it was six lanes wide and the city limits were many miles farther north. The growth machine had come and gone, a freeway paralleled it a quarter mile north, and Bell had been left seedy for much of its route from Sun City across Phoenix until it became more prosperous-looking near the Scottsdale city limits. Every place changes. I wondered why my city had to change mostly for the worse.

As cars sped by doing sixty, I told Robin about how empty it once was up here. My buddies and I launched model rockets in the empty desert a few miles to the east. “I wish I could have seen it back then,” she said. I heard Lindsey, in her former voice, saying, “Tell me a story, History Shamus,” and my heart gnawed at my breastbone.

My eyes stayed on the ugly building across the street. The gun store anchored an aging, low-slung shopping strip with a discount smoke shop as the only other tenant. Its sign was gigantic: JESUS IS LORD PAWN SHOP in five-foot black letters against a bright yellow backdrop. Beneath those: GUNS, KNIVES, AMMUNITION. The meek shall inherit the earth but not Bell Road.