Jon Talton - The Night Detectives

In a few seconds she was back in the cruiser, where she executed a U-turn over the rounded curbs and zoomed back out toward the exit of the subdivision. I turned off the dome light and tried to breathe normally again.

I drove back to the center city on surface streets, sick that Peralta’s plan didn’t seem to be working. My phone was charged and had plenty of time left. It wasn’t ringing.

Through downtown Tempe on Mill Avenue, across the Salt River, Galvin Parkway took me through Papago Park, the two iconic buttes backlit by the city, preserved desert all around. I thought about what Amy Taylor had said-not the “call me sometime” part, but about Zisman having a son. That was another new angle. Or it was Occam’s Razor and Zisman was the john, even if he wasn’t on the flash drive, and Grace had tried to blackmail him exactly as Detective Sanchez had said.

But did that explain why Tim Lewis had been tortured, every finger broken? Somebody thought he had information. Information to kill for. If it were simple blackmail, the problem would have been solved with Grace’s supposed suicide. “Death solves all problems,” said Joseph Stalin, who had yellow eyes. “No man, no problem.” Well, no woman, but there was still a problem. Larry Zisman, former football player, could easily have subdued Grace and thrown her over the balcony. The torturing of Tim Lewis had taken a crew.

At McDowell, I turned left and entered the Phoenix city limits, then drove uphill between the buttes and was greeted by the dense galaxy of lights stretching all the way to the horizon. Phoenix was beautiful at night. On the downhill drive, the iPhone rang.

“I think I’ve got your tail,” Peralta said.

My pulse kicked up. “Do tell.”

“A truck followed you though Tempe, made every turn, and then kept going as you went up Galvin through the park and turned on McDowell. He’s probably a mile behind you. A black Dodge pickup. California plate. He’s got a tag frame that says ‘I love Rancho Bernardo,’ with a heart thing instead of love, you know.”

I did know. It was the truck that had passed me the night I got out of the cab in Ocean Beach, the one I thought was simply looking for a parking space.

“Let’s box him in,” I said. “Do a felony stop.”

After a long pause, Peralta’s voice came back on. “No.”

“Why?”

“First,” he said, “because we’re not the cops anymore. Second, because when I hired you many years ago, I hired your whole toolbox, not just the hammer. Since a year ago, all I get is the hammer.”

Now it was my turn to be silent. His words stung. His words were accurate.

“So what’s the plan?” I asked, and he gave it to me.

“Stay on the phone,” he said.

I drove back through downtown and went north on wide, fast-moving Seventh Avenue. Numbered avenues and drives run north and south west of Central; numbered streets and places run north and south east of Central. Now you know how to get around Phoenix. I assumed the pickup driver was learning this from our excursion.

At Northern, I turned west again and after about two miles reached the Black Canyon Freeway, which ran in a trench below grade level. A Motel 6 sat a few blocks up the southbound access road. Getting to it required turning north into the K-Mart parking lot, then passing through the Super 8 parking lot, and finally reaching the Motel 6 parking lot. We didn’t even need streets with so many seas of asphalt.

I parked away from the motel building and stepped out into the heat. I had a cell phone in each pocket as I walked the fifty feet to a room on the ground floor right in the middle of the ugly four-story box. It had none of the charm of the old motels that had once lined Grand and Van Buren with their Western themes and neon signs.

Three other cars were parked in the lot, all of them empty.

Precisely as Peralta had said, a key card was slipped into the edge of the door all the way down at ground level. I retrieved it, unsnapped the holster holding the Colt Python but, against my better judgment, left the gun there. I popped the card into the lock and stepped inside.

Nobody shot me.

Turning on the light switch, I surveyed a cheap motel room looking like every other cheap motel room in America. It had been the scene of countless assignations. Bring in an ultraviolet detector, and the pattered orange bedspread would have revealed an army of old semen stains, dead in mid-slither.

I spoke into the headset. “Where’s my tail?”

“He’s backed off. But don’t spend too much time there. I don’t have a good feeling about this. Remember, he can track you on a computer. He doesn’t have to see you.”

I looked at the bed again. The spread looked ruffled, as if a couple had finished and moved on moments before I got there. I sat in a chair and waited for a call on the other cell. The device was a little Sphinx made in a foreign sweatshop.

Then I saw it, sitting on the low chest of drawers. It wasn’t a Claymore mine, but somehow it stuck a spike of dread into my throat.

I studied the Zero Halliburton briefcase with its tough aluminum construction. Somewhere I had read this was the brand of case that a military aide carried at all times with the president. Inside was the “nuclear football” containing the launch codes to end the world. And this one looked that sinister.

“What the hell is this?” My voice sounded strange alone in the room.

He knew what I was talking about without describing the flashy case that looked so out of place in the shabby room.

“Sharon bought it today. Open it up.” He gave me a code. I dialed open the lock and unlatched it.

Inside were some men’s clothes, legal pads and pens, and a shaving kit.

“Look in the socks,” he said.

Sure enough, inside one of the rolled-up pairs of socks was a flash drive.

He was inviting them to steal it.

“Is this the real flash drive?”

“Of course not,” he said. “But Lindsey encrypted it so it would take even a good techie hours to break in.”

“But…”

“Mapstone, why don’t you hang there for a few more minutes, then find a place to stash the case, and call me when you’re back in the car.” He hung up.

The motel room felt close and hot around me. I used the bathroom, checked to make sure the door was locked again, and searched for some artful spot to place the briefcase. The bed was on a solid wood frame, so that wouldn’t work. The drawers would be too obvious: better to make them think I was trying to hide it. So I arranged it under the pillows and remade the bed with military neatness.

Back in the car, sweating and worried, I started to go out to the access road, but changed my mind.

Instead, I cruised north through the alley behind the motel, turned around, shut off the headlights, and slowly drove back the way I had come. I nosed out behind the building in time to see another car: a new white Chevy Impala coming around the front of the Super 8. There are thousands of lookalike Impalas. But this one looked exactly like the one that I saw on the security camera earlier in the day outside our office, right down to the Nevada tag.

Wishing the Prelude were not so damned white, I watched as the Impala sped up to the door I had left minutes before. If he noticed me, it didn’t show. He was moving so fast, I thought he might ram through the wall. But, no, he slammed to a stop at the last second. If I had the brake-shop monopoly in Phoenix, I would be a rich man.

I dropped the emergency brake enough to slide another couple of feet beyond the edge of the building. The security lighting on the outside of the motel was impeccable. Back where I sat was relative darkness.

Out of the Impala stepped the high-and-tight haircut who had been searching the Prelude earlier in the day. He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt, carrying something in each hand. One something was a gun. He headed straight to the motel room door without even looking in my direction. If he were a soldier or a former soldier, it was poor situational awareness, but it worked in my favor.