Jon Talton: South Phoenix Rules

“All I ever wanted was you,” I said. “And truth and bone, as you once said.”

She laughed lightly. “Easier said than done, I guess.”

I wanted to say that her history hadn’t made her worthless. Far from it. But I wondered who she was now. She spoke first.

“Did you fall in love with Robin?”

In love . Such a loaded word, especially for women. I had grown to like, admire, and probably love Robin. If I lingered too long in that contemplation, it would be unbearable. I said, “I cared for her.”

She put her arms around me. “You care too easily.” That weightless laugh again, then a sob. “Robin built a lot of walls to protect herself. But I can tell you…”

She swallowed hard. “I can tell you, she cared for you right back.”

The broken shards sitting against my vital organs again shifted painfully. When I could speak again, I said, “I’m in love with you. With you, Lindsey. I think I was from the first moment I saw you.”

“I know.”

Draw me a map of the human heart. I am lost.

“I’ve failed you so much, David. I lost our child. I failed Robin.”

“No. Never.”

“It’s true. My life is a failure.”

I stopped for a moment. A light rain baptized my forehead. “Turn off your Linda Unit, Lindsey Faith.”

Now she laughed fully, my old Lindsey, if only for a moment.

Five minutes later I gathered the courage to ask, “Do you love him?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. No hesitation. After a long pause: “I just wanted to feel something again.”

The shrapnel sliced against my heart. How long before I would just bleed to death?

I said, “You left me once before.”

“I know.”

And that was all she said. We were both damaged.

The rain was falling hard and straight now, seeping through our clothes. It felt fine. We watched as Robin’s ashes vanished into the grass and the timeless soil.

“Oh, God.” Lindsey choked it out.

We held each other and cried a long time in the precious spring rain. I prayed that we would all be together again in the morning. Then I helped her up and she kept her index finger in my hand as we walked together through the darkness, trying to find our way out again.

Peralta was tapping slowly on a laptop computer when I walked into his office the next afternoon. He looked up, unsurprised.

“You think you’re real clever, don’t you.”

I shrugged.

“You could have gone to jail.”

“I know.”

“You could have been killed.”

“That would have been fine.”

“Have you ever considered…” He stopped, for he probably knew I had considered everything. My dirty hands were at my side, my academic detachment lost like luggage thrown out on a distant highway. I almost said: maybe I’ve become more like you . But I didn’t say it because I didn’t know what I was becoming. Whatever it was had no regrets over the rough justice meted out to Sal Moretti or Tom Holden. The detached part of me that remained knew it wasn’t quite right. But if I looked too long in the rearview mirror this would be the least of the demons chasing me. Peralta leaned back, straining his luxurious executive chair.

I looked around the place. It was as homely as it was austere. But this was where he had decided to make his stand. And it occurred to me, amid all the madness, that he was my oldest friend. Lindsey didn’t know what she wanted. Robin was gone. My hometown wasn’t home any longer. But my oldest friend was here, making his stand. So I would make the stand, too. I desperately needed to make this stand. So I said I was ready to go to work.

“About goddamned time!” He barked it but his face radiated relief.

“Two conditions.”

“Oh, fuck.” He closed the laptop and opened his arms: hit me.

“First, I want a decent chair, like you have.”

He nodded. “What else?”

“Restore the sign out front, neon and all.”

“Do you know how much that would cost?”

I stood there with folded arms.

He mashed his lips together. Then: “Mapstone, you’re a real bastard. All right, we’ll do the goddamned sign. Now I’m in the historic fucking preservation business, and all to provide a welfare-to-work program for a washed-out professor who’s a not-bad lawman…”

I let him keep talking as I settled behind the other desk.

Somewhere I heard Robin laughing.

Once again, I called upon my police brain trust, especially Cal Lash and Bill Richardson; as usual, they provided invaluable help. Frank “Paco” Marcell, retired from the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office and now running Crime Assessments LLC, is Arizona’s leading expert on gangs. He was very generous with his time in guiding me through the labyrinthine passages of gang land. David William Foster, regents’ professor at Arizona State University, Virginia Foster, professor emerita at Phoenix College, and Deputy Maricopa County Attorney David R. Foster assisted me with everything from the history of the city’s barrios and cleaning up my rusty Spanglish, to keeping my firearms protocols straight. Talk about a family with talent. For help with the Japanese internment, I’m grateful to Jack August, Jr., research professor at the University of Arizona and the best historian in the state, as well as Emily Thompson of the University of Georgia. John Bouma of Snell & Wilmer, a great lawyer and a man of living history, aided me in recalling other pieces of old Phoenix. As usual, blame me for any errors, deliberate changes, or inconsistencies. Finally, as should be clear, America has a treasure in the independent Poisoned Pen Press, and my thanks go to Robert Rosenwald, Jessica Tribble, Nan Beams, Marilyn Pizzo, and Annette Rogers. Most of all, my editor Barbara Peters helped bring it on home with her customary skill and grace-without resorting to South Phoenix Rules.

Jon Talton is a fourth-generation Arizonan who grew up in the same Phoenix neighbourhood that David Mapstone calls home. A journalist of more than twenty years, he now lives in Washington state where he is the economics columnist for the Seattle Times and writes the Rogue Columnist blog.