Jon Talton - South Phoenix Rules

“Hey, don’t do that. I’m straight, so don’t think I’m gonna suck your cock or anything.”

Dr. Johnson said, “Nothing so focuses a man’s mind as the knowledge that he is to hang at dawn.” Lacking a rope, I had to use the tools at my disposal. My hand went gently behind his head and slammed it violently into the dashboard, which had been hardened by years of exposure to the Arizona sun. He was handcuffed and his abdominal muscles didn’t even put up token resistance to the sudden forward movement.

“Ahhhhhhhhheeeeee!”

Blood came out of his nose but he otherwise looked fine except for a vague, terrible comprehension in his eyes.

Still, he put up a brave front. “Do you know who my dad is? You’re out of a job, asshole.”

“I don’t give a fuck.” I bounced his face into the dashboard again, harder this time, provoking another wail. Now he was bawling.

“Son,” I began, momentarily taken back by the word. I had never used it before in my life to refer to someone. “We’re going to have a conversation, and you have a choice. Either answer me honestly or I’ll beat the shit out of you, literally. You people wanted a tough new sheriff. Now you’ve got him. If you get blood on my car, I’ll shoot you and plant a gun on your dead ass. See what daddy thinks about his little junior then.”

He sniffed hard and painfully.

“What’s the old man’s name?”

“Fuck you!” It was said more from surprise than bravado. “I’ll get killed.”

I reached for his head again to continue to build rapport with the suspect.

“Okay, okay. Sal Moretti. His name’s Sal Moretti.”

Something fired inside my brain. “Sal ‘the Bug’ Moretti?”

“That’s right, motherfucker.” He was still weepy. “Now you’re gonna get yours.”

“That dashboard really likes your face.” I banged him into it again with slightly less force, but with all his pain centers running on high I might as well have thrown him off an overpass.

“Please! Arrrrrrrwwwwwwwwwwwwwwggggggg…”

“What the fuck is Sal the Bug doing in Chandler?”

“Witness relocation. But he got bored playing golf. He’s a real-time gangster.”

“What a little honor student,” I said. “Now ace the test. What…is…he…doing…here?”

His wet eyes were now full of fear at having his perfect nose irrevocably vandalized. “Black tar heroin, dog. He’s got a hell of a connection. We sell it around to the high schools. What the fuck? There’s ten of us. He picked us all by hand. All our parents have money and they’re bored shitless with their lives. They don’t give a fuck what we do. Anyway, we’re all straight-A students, go to church, that shit. Cops ain’t gonna bother us.” He sniffed his bloody nose, making a disgusting sound. “You haven’t even read me my rights. I’m a juvenile. My dad’s gonna sue the county for a hundred million dollars…”

I moved my hand and he shut up. “I can drive an hour and there’s a hell of a lot of desert where they’ll never find your body. And if they do, they’ll just think you’re another illegal who died coming norte . The animals out there eat everything but your bones. You’ll be just another wetback buried in an unmarked county grave.” My voice wasn’t hard; more of a reverie, which sounded scarier, even to me.

He was crying hard by this time. “What do you want?”

“Why did you follow us that night, outside the Sonic on McDowell?”

“Mr. Moretti wanted us to cruise by your house at night, just check on things. We saw you leave. So we waited near the Sonic. Tom wanted to do you both. Not, me, dog, I was scared, honest to god, I didn’t want to be involved in a killing. But two of the older guys had guns, too.”

“What stopped you?”

“Mr. Moretti. Tom called him and he said to chill.”

“Where does the black tar come from?”

“Tom said the Sinaloa cartel.”

“Oh, bullshit. Washed-up Chicago gangster and some teenagers who can’t get dates running heroin for the Sinaloa cartel…”

“Real shit, dude! The demand is unbelievable. I’m making so fucking much money and that’s just me. All I have to do is make some deliveries every week. Why should the fucking spics make all the money? Mr. Moretti’s a legend and a real American.”

I could have told him that Italians had once been held in the contempt now shown Hispanic immigrants, but what was the point? I asked him what Moretti supplied to the cartel in return?

“Money, lots of money.” He puffed up his chest. “And guns. I’ve never seen so goddamned many guns.”

“Where does he get them?”

“They don’t tell me. Really, I swear to god.”

I pulled out the image of the hit woman and held it in front of his rapidly swelling face.

“Who is this?”

“Sabrina.”

He said it too easily to be dissembling. I wanted her last name.

“I think it’s Cobb. Talk about a skank.”

“What’s her connection to Moretti?”

He said he didn’t know.

“Then how do you know her?”

“I took a package to her, okay?”

“Heroin?”

“She’d a rather had that,” said this straight-A product of what passed for the well-funded suburban schools. “But it wasn’t.” He tried to smile but it hurt too much. “I checked it, ’cause my ass would have been on the line, you know? It was ten thousand dollars. Hundreds and twenties. I made her count it, too, so she couldn’t say I’d stolen anything.”

I reached into the back and pulled out my old metal clipboard, which I’d carried as a uniformed deputy and had to dig out again when Peralta put everybody on standby for uniform duty because of budget cuts. Pulling his driver’s license out of his wallet, I started writing up an incident report. It was mostly for show. The kid’s name was Jonathan Zachary Grady. I wrote down his name, date of birth, address. He kept sniffling and suppressing his bawling.

“You’re in a shitload of trouble, Jonathan.”

“They call me Zack.”

“I don’t give a fuck. Are you following me?”

“Yes, sir.”

“The old man is under surveillance as of an hour ago. I’m going to temporarily let you go because you cooperated. Do you skateboard?”

“What?”

His head crashed into the unyielding sun-baked polymer surface once again, hard this time. Blood spattered like July Fourth fireworks. He screamed.

“Yes, yes, goddamn, yes, I skateboard. Please don’t hurt me!”

“Then it’s too bad you fell off your skateboard,” I said. “Don’t go back to the old man’s house. You’ll go to jail and you’ll be tried as an adult, then you’ll go to prison. I’ll make sure the prison gangs know you were a snitch, and by the time they finish passing your virgin asshole around…”

Out of his rapidly swollen face, he looked at me with growing terror.

“Don’t go back to Moretti’s house. Don’t contact him. All his phones are tapped. Don’t say anything to your buddies. We’re watching them, too. This is a big case for the feds and they don’t give a shit who your parents are.”

He tried to nod vigorously but it hurt too much. He kept saying “yes” until I told him to shut up.

I ordered him to lean forward and unlocked the handcuffs. They had left no cuts or bruises on his wrists. He put a wad of McDonald’s paper napkins I gave him up to his nose.

“Now get the fuck out and walk. And thank you for your cooperation.”

I used surface streets to return home. The stop-and-go gave me time to assess new information. Sal “the Bug” Moretti-Judson Lee-in Chandler, comfortably relocated thanks to our tax dollars, and now running new criminal enterprises. Selling black-tar heroin to affluent high-school kids. Somehow involved with the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop, selling guns to the cartels. This was what had showed up on our doorstep, peddling himself as an attorney with a bogus story.