Jon Talton - South Phoenix Rules

“Don’t give up.” Robin went back to her half of the record.

We kept at it for three days. The police records betrayed a slipshod investigation. McNamara himself said he believed Talbott had ordered his store burned because he wouldn’t pay the extra “taxes” demanded for Talbott’s liquor. The cops never interviewed Talbott. The tip from Eugene Costa and the “confession” by Paolo kept them on a single, simple theory: one drunk Italian burned down the liquor store.

At the Arizona Room of the central library, we went through old city directories and phone books. Eugene Costa was listed from 1939 through 1948 and then he disappeared. Phoenix was a city of transients. I called around to the law firms to see if they had any information on the man who had defended Paolo-it was a long shot and came back empty. The fire department’s arson records from 1940 were long gone. I couldn’t find any manuscripts or diaries about Harley Talbott during this period. He had probably donated a fair amount to the library.

“So give me something else to do.” Robin gathered up the legal pad on which she had been making notes. The Arizona Room hours had been cut back again and we were being told it was time to leave.

I admired her passion and persistence, saw something of myself in her. So I let her go down to the county offices to research land transactions from the period involving any of the principals we were tracking: Paolo, Talbott, Costa, Frenchy, the judges and lawyers involved. I would go home to Cypress where I would start to write a very incomplete report for Judson Lee. I would feel bad about taking his money. She kissed me goodbye beneath the shade screens of the light-rail station. She took the train south and I waited for the one heading north. I realized it would be the first time she was out of my sight since that last week in December.

We worked together on the computer to finish the final report. We couldn’t exonerate Paolo DeSimone. We could give a history of the case, from the initial firebombing to Paolo receiving a ten-year sentence and then being paroled after five years. The report also had background on Paolo working for Talbott as a driver and the power that the big man wielded in the city, as well as some of the allegations that dogged him past the grave. Most critically, we listed the investigative errors and inconsistencies, including Paolo wanting to take back his confession-given under duress to one of the most famously nasty cops in Phoenix history. Robin had added an appendix that painstakingly listed properties that Talbott owned in 1940, and some land bought by the otherwise mysterious Eugene Costa a few years later.

Judson Lee read quickly through the report, lingering on a few pages, and pronounced himself pleased. I told him not to bother with the money-I didn’t believe we had earned it. In my old job, I had actually cleared cases. Peralta wouldn’t have been satisfied with this. I handed the unsigned check back and said this was on the house.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit, Dr. Mapstone,” he said. “You know this city.”

I thought about our recent travels into gangland. “I’m not sure anyone knows this city.”

He scrawled his signature on the check with his small, sun-browned hand and passed it back. “Utter, ultimate, truth may be beyond the finest historian. This should be more than enough for my client to make a start to clear his grandfather’s name.”

I took the check. He shook my hand. Did his old-world kiss of Robin’s hand and she laughed. I continued to apologize as he left, wishing we had found more, giving Robin credit for the good stuff. He waved it off, moving with surprising spryness.

“Anyway.” He turned to face us on the front step. “Napoleon said, history was nothing but a fable agreed upon.” Then he drove away in a new cream-colored Cadillac.

“It’s five grand and nothing to sneeze at.” Robin was reading the look on my face. “Let’s go out and celebrate tonight.” The smile took over her face. “I’ll wear a skirt even.”

I relented and felt my shoulders relax.

“You get to choose the place.”

“Good. First, give me the keys to the Prelude.”

I handed them over and asked her where she was going. It was an innocent enough question.

“Girl stuff.” She walked out of the study laughing that wonderful, house-filling laugh.

A little after midnight Robin wanted to go outside and see the stars. We pulled on clothes and walked into the backyard, where the oleanders and citrus trees provided dark, sheltering masses around us. We sat in the old chairs by the chiminea that Grandfather had built so long ago. She lolled her head, sending her hair cascading down the chair back.

The vault of sky overhead had been degraded when they built the big freeway ten blocks south and by the pollution of four million people, but it was still clear and dark enough to make out the Big Dipper and dozens of companions. There was no moon and the scent of orange blossoms lingered for probably its last week this year.

“There’s Polaris,” she said. “Regulus…Arcturus.”

I told her about my Boy Scout merit badge in astronomy, how I had forgotten nearly everything. How one year we came out at night and watched one of the Gemini capsules soar over us. This was before she was born.

“You must have been an adorable little boy.”

“I felt like a freak.” I smiled about it now. “Always had my head in a book. They made fun of me about my last name. I didn’t have a mom and dad like the other children. My little friends always told me how ugly I was.”

“I’ve seen the photos, David. You were a beautiful little boy.” She laughed, the slight breeze carrying her big, happy sound. “Handsome, I should say. Adorable. I love those pictures of you.”

She asked if I had played in this yard and I told her stories. We fought in the alley: oranges and dirt clods if the conflict was among friends, rocks if things got serious.

“Your own little street gang,” she said.

We played in the yard. One year we spent the spring assembling discarded wood and building a boat that we intended to sail to India. I was nine and have no idea how the destination was chosen. But the map told us we could sail down the Salt River to the Gila, then into the Colorado and out into the sea at the Gulf of California. I was a child map nerd. The only catch was that the rivers here were dry, so we would have to wait for a flood. My grandparents were indulgent with our enterprise, even if the boat never touched water. Robin laughed and held my hand.

“So no play dates, no bus to school, no mini-van…”

“Nope,” I said. “It seems like another country.”

“It sounds like an idyll, even if your friends were mean to you.”

“I learned to fight in seventh grade,” I said. “So I owe ’em.”

“I learned to fight, too,” she said. “But not that way. I always envied the kids who could walk to school, live on a street with sidewalks, go to the same school for more than two years straight.”

I squeezed her hand. “You turned out good.”

We stayed out there for at least an hour, sometimes talking, often enjoying a communion of silence. The dull whoosh of the freeway and the occasional bell of a light-rail train were the only intrusions. The stars and planets seemed comfortingly fixed, whatever the reality of our orbiting world and expanding universe. A couple of airplanes circled toward Sky Harbor, but not one police chopper or siren disturbed our little universe.

“I’ve always loved the stars,” she said. “Looking at infinity. Wondering why we’re here, what’s our purpose and destiny…”