Jon Talton: The Night Detectives

He said, “We have a name, D.O.B., Social Security Number and photo…”

“Right, and she’s a sweet girl who went to Chaparral High in Scottsdale, was a student at San Diego State, worked part-time at the Nordstrom perfume counter at Horton Plaza. She had a boyfriend and somehow she ended up at Larry Zisman’s condo on the night of April twenty-second.”

“See how much you know?” He lazily draped his arms over the steering wheel despite the tangled road we climbed.

I slumped in my seat. “If any of it is true.”

“David.” He never called me David. “You have a gift for history. I never thought you’d be happy as a professor. You’re a cop down in your bones. But you’re a historian, too. You look at a case the same way a historian studies the secondary sources and published material on a subject. You talk to the primary sources, read their recollections. Then you apply a historian’s skepticism and diligence, come up with new interpretations, dig out fresh facts, add context, shine the light in a different direction seeking the truth. It’s what you do.”

It shut me up. Even made me feel better about myself for the moment.

When we crested Laguna Summit, he spoke again.

“Here’s something else to consider, Mapstone. We don’t know why Felix was shot to hell. Maybe it was because of this girl, or something else in his life that made him carry that Desert Eagle that was on the car seat.”

He had been there so briefly, it surprised me he had time to notice and identify the gun on the passenger seat of the Benz. But that was Peralta.

“But,” he went on, “he might have been killed because he came to see us. And I don’t want the word on the street to be that you can kill our clients. It’s bad for business. And it might encourage the wrong kind of people to reach out and touch us.”

I let him alone. It was a reminder that there were three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and Peralta’s way. Soon we would begin the long descent to San Diego, through the lovely little meadows of eastern San Diego County that looked as if they hadn’t changed for a hundred years, back up to Alpine at the edge of the Cleveland National Forest, then dropping and curving into El Cajon, massive Silverdome mountain dominant on our right, the cool sea air coming up to kiss away the memory of the desert, the city swallowing us up, the freeway packed with traffic, and the ocean straight ahead. San Diego: my adopted hometown. I would need to pack my emotions tight.

Among the benefits of being the former sheriff of one of America’s most populous counties was cooperation from other law-enforcement agencies even after you were out of office. An added perk was that Al Kimbrough was a San Diego Police commander. I first met him when Peralta had hired me back at MCSO and Kimbrough had been a detective. He could have stayed and become chief of detectives, but San Diego made him a better offer, one that didn’t include 108-degree May days. Peralta scheduled a meeting with him downtown and complained about the overcast.

“It’s the onshore flow,” I instructed. “The June Gloom.”

“It’s not June.”

I rolled down the window and looked over the bay at one of the aircraft carriers moored at North Island. “It’s cool. I’m happy.”

He handed me a copy he had made of Grace Hunter’s photo. “Why don’t you take the truck and go talk to the boyfriend? Here’s the address.”

I didn’t breathe for about five seconds and handed the address back to him.

“What, you’re showing off your photographic memory to an old man?”

“No,” I said. “I used to live there.” I sat for a few minutes in silence as a big jet going into Lindbergh Field rattled the cab. Sometimes coincidences were serendipity. Not this one. This was creepy. But there was a job to do. “Drop me off at Old Town. I’ll take the bus.”

“That’s nuts.”

“I couldn’t find a parking place, especially for your beast.”

“You can always find a parking place if you’re patient.”

“Not in O.B.”

As I gave directions to Old Town, he shook his head and shrugged. “You’re one weird guy, Mapstone.”

Fifteen minutes later, I was on a half-full 35 bus, rolling down Rosecrans Street, turning onto Midway Drive for the ride across the hump of Loma Portal and into Ocean Beach. Behind us was the bay, ahead was the ocean. I counted twenty Arizona license tags and quit counting. This time of year, San Diego was Phoenix West. Native San Diegans hated the invasion. When I lived here and rode this bus almost every day, I learned not to let on where I was from. The bus started downhill, with the sun beginning to burn off the clouds behind me, toward downtown. But ahead, it was still gray, the vast expanse of the Pacific a sheet of lead blending into the overcast. The Pacific played a trick of the eye, seeming to rise into the horizon, even though we were merely descending a long slope to the ocean.

If you stay on Interstate 8, you’d run right into O.B. But most tourists didn’t. They went north of the San Diego River to Sea World, Mission Bay and the more popular neighborhoods of Mission Beach or Pacific Beach, or they went south on I-5 to downtown. San Diego had changed substantially since I had lived here, but Ocean Beach looked much the same: the narrow streets, quaint and pricey cottages, one-story businesses lining Newport Avenue and the long municipal pier jutting into the ocean. I had lived two lives in San Diego: pre-Patty in Ocean Beach and with Patty in La Jolla.

It reminded me of the old days, getting off at Cable and Newport, and then walking past the business district down to Santa Cruz Avenue. A couple of guys carrying surfboards walked past me, going west. Seagulls passed overhead making their distinctive calls. The old apartment building was still two stories, painted white, and shaped like a U surrounding an interior swimming pool. My unit had been on the second floor. The boyfriend’s apartment was directly beside it. I felt an involuntary urge to check my mail, smiled at it, and walked up to No. 205. The windows were open, as was common here, and the drapes were drawn and partly hanging out.

The loud, angry voice coming from the apartment wasn’t surprising, either. O.B. was an eclectic place, where CPAs lived alongside bikers. Once I had been kept up all night when one of the latter had engaged in an all-night screaming fight with his old lady. Now I would put a stop to it, but I was different then.

The voice was deep and menacing, the dispute involving a woman, money, and perhaps more. The dialogue was generally, “I want Scarlett, motherfucker, and your white ass is out of excuses. Where is she? I need her ass back out making money,” on and on. “You think you can hide from me? Nobody gets away from me. I own her sweet little booty. Now where the fuck is she? Tell me now or I stomp your white ass to death and find her my own self.”

My mind momentarily thought of search warrants and probable cause, but, as Peralta said, we weren’t the law anymore. When I heard a fist connect with flesh, cartilage snap, and a man squeal, I opened the door.

“What the fuck?”

The voice belonged to a very large man with caramel-colored skin, mustard-yellow driving cap, delicately manicured beard, eyes way too small for his face. A Bluetooth device was attached to the left side of his head. He was my height and about a third wider. He wore a black T-shirt proclaiming RUN-D.M.C. Below his shorts were heavy stomp-your-white-ass boots.

“Who the fuck are you?”

“Life insurance.” I smiled.

He raised his shirt so I could see the butt of a semiautomatic pistol in his waistband. Then he advanced toward me, one step, two…