Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

Peralta tapped an inch of ash into an amber glass ashtray. “I’ve thought about all that, Ed. Quit stalling.”

“The Claymore is a different matter entirely.” He cocked his head. “Is this connected to the explosion in San Diego on Friday night?”

So much for being cut off from the world.

Peralta said, “You know it is, so quit playing games.”

To me, he said, “How far did you get into that apartment before you realized you were in the danger zone?”

I told him.

He let out a long whistle.

“So you see,” Peralta said, “This is personal and it might get a hell of a lot more personal.”

Cartwright set the rifle in his lap.

“Do you know how far my ass is already in a sling even by talking to you?” he said. “Even by you being here?”

“I don’t care.” Peralta swiveled his head.

“So give me something to work with?” Cartwright folded his hands over the assault rifle. “Who was killed with the AK?”

“Anglo, thirty-five or so,” Peralta said and went on to describe our first client including the expensive prosthetic leg and the multiple names and identifications.

“Nobody I know,” Cartwright said.

I said, “He had yellow eyes. Very well dressed. And he had a silver Desert Eagle on his passenger seat when he was killed.”

Cartwright shook his head slowly, but I caught the involuntary tic of his left eye.

“Didn’t do him much good,” he said. “You’re probably lucky he got killed when you weren’t in the line of fire. One less dirtbag in the world and the kid here survived. What’s not to like? Now I need to take a nap.”

Suddenly, a fury rose in me. Tim Lewis’ face hovered in my mind. And the baby I had held in my arms.

Cartwright asked me what I was doing.

“How do you set this thing off?” I was fiddling with the Claymore.

“You can’t.” He smiled at me like I was an idiot. “It’s disarmed.”

That did it. I threw the Claymore straight at his face. When he reached to catch it, I was up, crossed the eight feet separating us, and picked up the AK-47 from his lap.

“What the…” He let the dummy Claymore fall. It clattered on the wood floor. Next he reached for the pistol on his belt.

I chambered a round in the AK-47, although I didn’t aim it at him. Yet.

Peralta said, “I wouldn’t move, Ed. Mapstone here had a run-in with Los Zetas where they tried to put a hand grenade in his mouth, so he’s PTSD’d to the moon.”

Through his teeth, Cartwright said, “Why is he alive then?”

Peralta spoke softly. “That’s why I wouldn’t move.”

He spoke quietly, “How do you even know how to work that thing, kid?”

“A million child soldiers in Africa can work it. Want to take a chance that I can’t?”

He studied me through angry but uncertain eyes, his hand still on the butt of his sidearm.

If Cartwright had even started to pull the weapon, I would have pumped several shots into him before anything like judgment could have caught up with the rage I felt. A savage stranger’s voice started speaking. It was coming from my mouth.

“You listen to me, old man.” I spat out the last two words. “I’ve got two young people murdered and a missing baby. Now I’ve got an armed whacko survivalist sitting in front of me who thinks he can get off a shot before I send him to hell. Who knows how many weeks before they find your body? What I don’t have is time to waste finding that baby, and that means you don’t have time.”

“All right, son. Please calm down.”

I swung the barrel to his chest.

“Now you have ten seconds less time.”

He saw my finger was on the trigger and a sheen of sweat appeared across his forehead.

“A dozen Claymores went missing from Fort Huachuca last month,” Cartwright said.

Peralta shook his head. “That’s an intelligence installation. What are anti-personnel mines doing there?”

“The military has this stuff everywhere. Makes it hard as hell to track. Who knows how much walks away from bases and nobody ever knows?”

I wanted to know who took it.

“Word is, soldiers.”

“Active-duty soldiers?”

He nodded. I didn’t lower the weapon.

He swallowed. “White supremacists are in the military. That’s not new. You remember a guy named McVeigh in Oklahoma City. Now there’s more of them. We’ve spent more than a decade at war, and we’re sending home killing machines.” He sighed. “Anyway, the word is, that’s who took the Claymores. I don’t know if it was to sell or to use.”

“What about prostitutes? Are they involved in running high-end whores?

“That’s all I’ve heard, son,” he said. “Do what you please.”

He closed his eyes and in the terrible silence that followed he put his hand in his lap. I lowered the assault rifle.

Peralta said, “Give me that and wait for me at the truck.”

My blood was still up but I did as he asked.

Before I walked out, I heard Cartwright’s voice.

“You have an unusual name, kid. I read a book by somebody with that name once, about the Great Depression.”

“He wrote it,” Peralta said.

“It wasn’t bad,” he said. “But you should have written more about the effect on the tribes.”

He was right. I closed the door behind me.

Half an hour later, we hit solid pavement and Peralta spoke for the first time since he had returned to the pickup truck.

“There was a day when he would have killed you.”

I let my breathing return all the way to normal before speaking.

“Ed? As in Edward? America’s Finest Pimp thought I was the enforcer of some guy named Edward. He was afraid of Edward, and he didn’t strike me as the kind who was afraid of many people. The man he described as Edward’s muscle sounded a hell of a lot like Felix.”

“That’s not this Ed,” Peralta said.

“How do you know? Did you see the ‘tell’ when I told him about Felix? He was lying.”

“He had a loaded AK-47 being held by a crazy man, Mapstone. That’s not a ‘tell’ you can trust.”

“Maybe. His name is still Edward.”

“Ed was a decorated FBI agent before his end-of-the-world fetish got him in trouble and he was fired. Only that’s not the whole story. He’s quietly enjoying his FBI pension and an honorable retirement.”

“So tell me the whole story.”

“Being known as a disgraced, bitter former special agent gives him cred. He deals guns to skinheads and bikers, cartels, Mexican Mafia, whoever pays. Gives ‘em training, if they need it. And any takedowns happen so far down the line that nobody suspects crazy old Ed Cartwright.”

“I never heard of him.”

“You wouldn’t,” Peralta said. “He doesn’t work for the FBI, doesn’t work for Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He reports to higher authorities. Maybe where your wife works, Mapstone. Nobody else in Phoenix law enforcement even knows about him, except as another reclusive old coot living out in Wittman with his guns. That’s the way it’s supposed to work.”

“Why would white supremacists deal with somebody who has brown skin?”

“They must dig the whole Apache noble savage thing.”

My breathing return to normal. It would have helped if Peralta had given me the whole story before we went visiting, to know what his play was. That kind of non-disclosure was like the old Peralta. It would have helped if Cartwright could have done a better job of connecting the Claymore to an apartment in San Diego, a young woman’s fall out of a condo tower, and her boyfriend’s violent death. Was he her boyfriend or husband? I didn’t even know. How nuts was that?

“We’ve got white supremacists in the armed forces,” I said. “I thought that was the least racist institution in America.”