Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

His agitation grew as he talked and he paced over to the gun cabinet and I placed a hand on the butt of my Python. My spinal cord was filling with ice.

“We got seven billion people on the planet, climate change, ebola and diseases we don’t even know about that can’t be killed by antibiotics. Your people did this.” His expression was accusing, his voice angry. “Couldn’t leave well enough alone. Had to conquer nature, but she won’t be conquered, kid.”

He sighed. “Anyway, it might not even go down that way. You take away the power and gasoline from five million people in Phoenix in high summer, and watch what happens. I’ll be fine.”

I had no doubt.

After fifteen minutes of this cheery conversation, we arrived back at the adobe, where Peralta was standing under the shade of the porch, smoking a cigar, and surveying the jagged treeless mountains on the horizon.

“You got another Cuban, Sheriff?”

Peralta produced a cigar and Cartwright ran it under his nose, inhaling like a connoisseur. “You people wouldn’t even have tobacco if it wasn’t for us.”

“Apaches didn’t have tobacco,” Peralta said.

“Well, then we would have killed the Indians that did and taken it. Thanks for the cigar. Now I don’t have to kill you.” He carefully slipped the stogie into his front pocket. “I see the kid here is a revolver man.” He pointed to the Colt Python in the Galco high-ride holster on my belt.

“He doesn’t trust semi-autos, thinks they might jam.” Peralta raised an eyebrow, an act of raucous comedy coming from that face.

“It can happen,” Cartwright said. “May I?”

Every instinct told me to decline, yet I handed the heavy revolver over, butt-first. He opened the cylinder, dropped out the six rounds in his left palm, and dry-fired it against the wall: click, click, click.

“The Combat Magnum. Listen how clean that action is.” His tone was that of a wine connoisseur. “It was the first gun to be bore-sighted with a laser, you know. Finest mechanism you’ll ever find in a revolver. Tight cylinder. Highly accurate.” He handed the gun and ammo back. My pulse pulled off the fast lane. I was fortunate that the house was air conditioned and dark inside, to cool me down and conceal my apprehension.

The living room was furnished with handsome leather chairs and sofas. Books were everywhere: in floor-to-ceiling shelves, on tabletops, and sitting in stacks on the hardwood floor. They were not of the Anarchist’s Cookbook genre. Instead, literature, philosophy, poetry, political science, and, of course, history filled the room. Classics and new, important works. I’ll admit it: I took stock of a person by the presence of books and their titles, and I almost started to let down my guard. I could see no television or newspapers. He might not even know that Peralta was no longer sheriff.

Cartwright returned from the kitchen with bottles of Modelo Especial and we sat.

“What brings you out to my humble outpost, Sheriff?”

“One guy shot and killed earlier in the week with an AK-47.” Peralta took a swig and a puff. “Then my partner here almost bought it with a Claymore.”

Cartwright made a tisk-tisk-tisk kind of sound. “Walk down memory lane, eh? Did you tell him about the way we used Claymores to ambush the slants back in the day?”

Peralta nodded. “Whoever did the shooting with the Kalashnikov was damned good. Pumped ten rounds into the victim sitting in a car. The shooter was in another car. Only one shot failed to hit the target. And this was daylight, right on Grand Avenue down in town.”

“Sounds interesting.”

Peralta waited.

Cartwright sighed. “I’m retired, Sheriff.”

“Bullshit. You know things. You know more than me when it comes to assholes seeking illegal weapons.”

“Is there such a thing as an illegal weapon in Arizona anymore?”

“If there is, you’re selling it,” Peralta said.

So he was an arms dealer.

“Not true,” Cartwright said. “Drive back to Wittman or Circle City or Mesa for that matter and you’ll find guys who can fix you up with anything you want.”

Peralta sat back, wreathed in cigar smoke, his expression losing its amiability.

He said quietly, “They can’t fix you up with a Claymore.”

Cartwright spoke softly, too. “I’m not a rat. Never have been.”

Peralta had handled the tribulations of the past several months better than me. Of course, some of them hadn’t affected him quite so personally. Still, I was the one who seemed angrier about his loss of the election and the ugly, racist campaign that preceded it. He had turned philosophical and, if such a word could be applied to him, mellow.

But watching his face now, I could see the flickering of the old anger and impatience. Cartwright spotted the launch signal, too, and knew it wasn’t a glitch. Still, he tried to escape.

“You know I’m not in the game anymore. Give an old man a break. I’m tired now. I need to rest.”

“You were up to your ears in Fast and Furious,” Peralta said, referring to the federal operation meant to disrupt the flow of guns to Mexico that had gone horribly wrong. It had cost the U.S. Attorney his job, brought hearings in Congress, and even become an issue in the presidential campaign.

“My part worked.” Cartwright glared back at him.

The two dark stone faces faced off. Cartwright’s was cut with gullies in geometric precision, while Peralta’s aging congregated around the crow’s feet beside his eyes. His hair was still naturally jet black. He was actually better looking than he’d been at thirty-five. He wore distinguished well.

Neither seemed willing to give. I tried to imagine them as young infantrymen, fighting for a country with a poor record of treatment for Apaches or Mexican-Americans and yet there they were, brothers in arms, in Southeast Asia. That bond showed in their expressions, too.

Finally, Cartwright stood and walked slowly at first, as if his hip hurt. Then he strode out of the room. In five minutes, I heard his tread and something landed in my lap. It wasn’t as heavy as I imagined.

“Your boy’s pretty cool,” Cartwright said.

Peralta watched me. I can’t tell you why I didn’t make the jump of the startled or run screaming from the house once I saw he had dropped a Claymore on me. Instead, I carefully studied it: “FRONT TOWARD ENEMY” the same as the one in Tim and Grace’s apartment, two sets of extendable legs, and a small housing on top where wires, or another kind of detonation mechanism, could go.

Cartwright eased himself into a chair across from me. “You’re lucky to be alive, son.”

He hefted an AK-47 in his hands. “Mikhail Kalashnikov’s baby. Cheap to make, easy to use. One of the first true, mass-produced assault rifles. Seventy-five million of ’em all around the world.” He quickly field stripped it and put it back together, his pudgy fingers working expertly. Anybody who watched television had seen AKs in the hands of freedom fighters or terrorists, take your pick.

“How do you know your guy was killed with an AK? Was the weapon recovered?”

“No,” Peralta said. “I heard it.”

Cartwright nodded. He understood.

“Anybody can buy an AK. You know that. Using it with such precision is another matter. And why would you want to? There’s too many good, modern weapons available. Maybe your suspect has a thing for the gun? Maybe it’s his bad-ass signature. You should run that through ViCAP.” The FBI’s violent criminal database. “It’s probably not some disgruntled ‘Nam vet. We’re getting too damned old. But the older we get, the tougher we were.”

He chuckled. Peralta didn’t.

I was half-listening to the ordnance talk. The Claymore sat a few millimeters from my genitals. I kept looking at the instructions stamped on the front. Such a funny thing. So you don’t forget and aim it wrong. I shouldn’t even be here right now. Why did I get over that apartment railing and into the pool with only seconds to spare, when Robin hadn’t been safe in our back yard? Contingency was the god damndest thing. Robin would have made the better mark on the world if she had lived and I had died.