Jon Talton - South Phoenix Rules

“I’ll let you tell him that.”

I held the door for Robin and walked in talking, telling Peralta that I was taking on the work for Judson Lee, even though it was probably a waste of time. Then I noticed Antonio, the Mexican cop, sitting on the other desk, slowly swinging his leg, smoking a thin cigar. He had on the same jeans and blue blazer. Expensive lizard-skin boots had been added to the ensemble. I shut up.

“It’s been a productive morning,” Peralta said after we were seated. “A joint agency task force raided a house in a gated community in Mesa this morning.”

I waited, suddenly pulled out of corrupt 1940s Phoenix. But I couldn’t resist. “How many Mormons did you nab?”

“We arrested three men. All Mexican nationals. All heavily armed.”

“Did they…Last night?” Robin let it hang.

“It’s a good probability. One is a former Mexican Army airborne sniper. Now he’s working for the Sinaloa cartel. This was an assassination squad.”

“Did you find a rifle?”

“Not yet,” Peralta said. “We will.”

“So they were avenging La Fam’s hit on El Verdugo?” I said.

Neither man spoke.

I could see Robin’s expression cloud over. She had taken comfort in Mero Mero saying he had nothing against her, didn’t know her.

She said, “He wasn’t El Verdugo.” I gave her points for loyalty.

The room smelled of mildew, no easy thing in Phoenix. It was a smell that mingled with cigar smoke and congregated in my senses as nobody spoke for several minutes. Peralta and Antonio exchanged glances.

Then Antonio said, “That’s true.”

“What?” Robin sat up straight.

“He wasn’t El Verdugo.”

“How do you know?” I asked.

“Because I killed El Verdugo in Juarez a year ago.”

“Oh, my God.” She cupped her face in her hands. “Then, who…”

“Let’s get something straight.” Peralta’s tone was harsh. “What we’re about to tell you is off the record. You can never tell anyone.” He stared at me.

I struggled to keep my anger in check-all the lies they had casually told us, when Robin’s life was at risk. I slowly nodded.

“El Verdugo was alone when I caught up with him,” Antonio said. “He drew, I was faster. Adios, chingaso . We buried him in Juarez in an unmarked grave, kept the information from the other cops. His buddies never knew, either. So we hijacked his identity.”

Antonio gently set the cigar in a large glass ashtray. “We made it seem like he’d disappeared and gone rogue. Every now and again, I’d get to a killing first-an easy thing in my country-and use that snake’s-head ring on the victim. Just to keep the stories and rumors coming. Sinaloa went crazy. Their man was killing them. But the Gulf boys had no comfort. El Verdugo was killing them, too. And killing Los Zetas.”

“But not really,” Robin said. “You were just faking it.”

“Precisely.” Antonio said. “But it was useful. Sow chaos. This was a very closely held secret, especially among my colleagues, but even with my friends the Americans, who have shown they have a weakness for cartel bribes, too.”

“Three months ago,” Peralta said, “we picked up intel that a subject in Phoenix was shopping for a hit man. He met with an undercover officer, but wouldn’t bite. He wanted the best. He wanted El Verdugo. Asked for him by name.”

“Who was this party?” I asked.

Peralta pursed his lips. “Barney. At the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop.”

I softly said, “Guns, knives, ammunition.”

Antonio said, “ATF inserted a deep undercover agent to pose as El Verdugo. He was one of their best. I gave him the snake’s head ring. You knew him by his real name, Jax Delgado.”

I heard Robin’s throat catch. My stomach burned. “You’ve known this all along? Damn you to hell, Mike.”

“The A.G. wouldn’t let me tell you.” Peralta folded his arms. “And ATF sure as hell wouldn’t. Amy Preston went nuts after you showed up at her house asking about the gun shop.”

“Why are you telling us now?”

“It just seems right,” Peralta said. “With this arrest, I think we’re going to be able to close the case. These guys somehow picked up Delgado’s trail and killed him. Maybe it was because they thought he was the real Verdugo and this was payback time. Maybe they sniffed out his cover.” He noticed my expression. “When they were torturing him, maybe he talked about Robin. Or maybe they followed him and knew where she lived.”

“The autopsy on Delgado said he’d been tased,” Antonio said. “That may have been how they initially took him down. These guys had a Taser. We’re going to show their photos to the staff at the FedEx shop where his head was shipped from.” His tone made it sound like so much freight. “See if anybody can pick them out.”

I said, “What about last night?”

“Because La Fam is working with the Gulf cartel to move arms,” Antonio said, “the Sinaloans also took out Mero Mero and his crew. They probably followed you last night. This hit squad was up here on serious business. My guess is Barney would have been the next patient on the torture table, for doing business with the Gulf cartel and La Fam. Maybe he’d get off easy. Lose a finger or an ear and have to keep supplying Sinaloa.”

“Slow down,” I said. “Jax made contact with Barney?”

Peralta nodded. “No Arizona jury is going to convict a licensed gun dealer for selling firearms, no matter how many people they kill in Mexico. With Jax, we had Barney on hiring a hit man. We thought we could get more. Evidence that he was selling firearms in bulk to the Gulf cartel. We could shut him down forever.”

Robin clasped her arms tightly around her chest. “Does this mean we’re safe?”

Both men said “yes” simultaneously.

“They ought to just legalize drugs,” Robin whispered. “All this death, and for what?”

Antonio said, “This isn’t about drugs anymore. This is about power.”

I was drowning in the bucket of information they had just dumped on us. “If he was on the job, why would he tell us his real name?”

Peralta shrugged. “Maybe he met somebody he cared about.”

Robin abruptly stood and strode out across the ancient linoleum.

I had many questions, but followed her out. She fell into my arms by the car and sobbed hard, her tears soaking through my shirt while a freight train trundled past, steel slamming upon steel.

The clippings from the old Phoenix Gazette told of how McNamara’s Liquors on Van Buren Street burned in the early hours of September 20th, 1940. The fire marshal said it was arson. Within two weeks, police had arrested Paolo DeSimone for what was now being called a “fire bombing.” The newspaper displayed a booking photo of a slender, hatchet-faced man with a pencil moustache. It listed him as an “itinerant laborer” and gave his age as twenty-eight. He had signed a confession, and unlike today, the case rapidly moved to trial within a month. DeSimone didn’t take the stand. The jury convicted him of arson and he was sentenced to ten years at the State Prison in Florence. That was the end of the news, and if the reporting was halfway accurate, things didn’t look good for Paolo.

But we would try.

My large office in the old County Courthouse had been full of police and court records from the 1910s through the 1940s. The county hadn’t been much interested in them, and over the years with Peralta I had amassed a wonderful library of old Phoenix crime. It was my anti-Google and had done right by me in dozens of old cases. Except for the boxes I had brought home in Lindsey’s car that December day, I had left most of it behind. And a quick check of the files I had showed little of utility. The Phoenix Police logbook showed a notation, written in efficient script, that the east-side squad car had been dispatched to a fire at McNamara’s Liquors at 2:21 a.m. on September 20th. It was still a fairly new innovation to have two or three radio-equipped cars out in the city late at night. The population of Phoenix was 65,414. The area within the city limits was maybe twelve miles.