Jon Talton - Dry Heat

“I assaulted him? Jesus!” I wished I were facing toward the window. As it was, all I could see were hostile faces in golfing shirts. “You assholes decided to have him tail me-how smart is that?”

“Answer the question, please.”

“I was sightseeing,” I said. “Am I under arrest?”

Silence. Bureaucratic brains processed. I was sure if I tried, I could hear the clanking. Assistant Director Davies’ makeup looked odd, with rough meeting points for base and rouge. Hell, I was no expert. I stood and walked to a window. The gigantic pools were stocked with beautiful people and not so beautiful people with fat bankbooks. Others meandered on the putting green and bowling lawn. They were loving the ninety-nine-degree weather-back home it was probably forty-five degrees and the sun hadn’t shined for a month. If you could spring for several hundred dollars a night, you could live better than a Roman emperor.

I tried again, “What are you guys afraid of? That I’ve found photos of J. Edgar Hoover in a dress plotting the Kennedy assassination?”

That set them all off.

“…highly sensitive…”

“Who have you told about this case?”

“…national security…”

“…court order to check your hard drive…”

“OK,” Davies said. “Let’s hear it from the top. From the moment you last met Eric. Everything you’ve done. Including your meeting at the park with the retired Phoenix detective, Wolfe.”

I gave them a sanitized version, but even so it took about an hour with their questions. I left out some of Wolfe’s conversation and lots from Renzetti. I didn’t tell them my sightseeing was across the Bay, to the University of California library’s special collections. One of the archivists was another protege of Milton. It was a valuable connection. When I was finished telling the story, it didn’t seem as if I’d accomplished much at all. They seemed to agree, if you could judge by the bored faces in the room. All except Pham, who looked as if he had been constipated for a month.

But Davies wasn’t done.

“Weren’t you once involved romantically with a newspaper reporter?” she demanded.

“Yes, about twenty-five years ago,” I said. “Is that the best you can do? What the hell are you so afraid of?” My worry instincts told me these folks could use some new antiterrorism statute to toss me in jail forever. I pushed past them and said, “I thought the Bureau was convinced that John Pilgrim was a suicide.”

“That’s correct,” Davies said, a note of discomfort creeping into her voice.

I continued, “So I’m just looking for the way his badge ended up on a homeless guy in Maricopa County. And right now I’m not making any progress.”

Davies gave a chilly smile. “I don’t know if there’s progress to be made, Dr. Mapstone.”

“I could make more progress if I could get Bureau help in tracking down records on Pilgrim’s death.”

She shrugged. “Sometimes we just have to live with mysteries.” Then she nodded toward Biff and Muffy, who put hands on my shoulders. “These agents will drive you home, Dr. Mapstone. Thank you for your time.”

***

I had just lugged my bags inside the house on Cypress Street when there was a banging on the front door. I clipped the holstered Python on my belt and walked quietly in the direction of the banging.

It was Peralta in full dress uniform, his star gleaming in the sun.

“Let’s go.”

“Where?” I was tired and annoyed.

He was already halfway to the street, where his familiar black Crown Victoria was idling.

“So what’d you do to piss off the FBI?” he asked, once we were rolling. After I told him a Reader’s Digest version of the past week, he said the Feds were demanding I be taken off the case. He was smiling.

“I thought you said not to worry about Eric Pham.”

“They’re pretty mad,” Peralta said. “You can make people mad, Mapstone.”

“I just have an inquiring mind. John Adams said an inquiring mind is God’s greatest gift.”

Peralta grunted.

In thirty minutes, we were on the far west side of the city, past the old suburb of Maryvale and into the new sprawl of Avondale and Goodyear, heading toward the White Tank Mountains.

“Where are we going?”

“Are you ready to offer a theory?” he demanded.

“Not yet. Where are we going?” The sun sent heat waves off the freeway, the mirages of the auto age. Late April and the newspaper said every day of the month had been above normal temperatures. I angled some air conditioner vents on me and finally started to cool off.

His deep set, lively black eyes looked me over, then returned to the road. He said, “Patience.” That was to my question. He had none. “How does all this connect with your homeless guy?”

I said, “Patience.”

He shifted his bulk in his seat. “We don’t have a lot of time, Mapstone…”

“What?” I said. “My wife is being chased by the Russian mafia and I can’t even see her. I don’t have a clue how our life is going to be from now on. That’s urgency I can understand. This fifty-year-old murder case is-”

“Important,” he said.

Then we were at the gate of Luke Air Force Base, where heavily armed Air Police in camouflage fatigues waved us through the maze of concrete barriers.

“I’ve had my fill of feds today,” I said. Peralta ignored me as we passed the main administration buildings, then anonymous brick maintenance and barracks buildings. Luke was the largest fighter training base in the world-but the subdivisions kept creeping closer, and soon it would be forced to shut down. We eased the car past more guards, barriers, and concertina. Peralta stopped the car and we both were ordered out for a search. As an airman used a mirror on wheels to check the underside of Peralta’s cruiser, we handed over our firearms and signed on a clipboard. The Air Police were young, superbly fit, and unsmiling. Then we were loaded into an olive Humvee-not the luxury civilian kind that had chased me. An Air Police officer in back slid a hood over my head.

“What the hell?” My heart rate shot up instantly.

“Just relax, sir. Please leave the hood in place for security reasons.”

“I’m not relaxed.”

“C’mon, Mapstone.” I heard Peralta’s voice. “Do yourself a favor.”

I felt movement, air coming through the open windows, the distant blast of F-16 jet engines. The fabric of the hood was rough against my face, and it was hot. Things were getting too strange. What secret history had I stumbled onto in the embalmed living room of Vince Renzetti, in the archives at Cal-Berkeley? What unlucky amulet was the lost badge of John Pilgrim? Somehow it fit together: the Russian agent in dusty old Phoenix; the Chicago Outfit, consolidating their crime empire; the young FBI man with a love of trouble and women, who nevertheless was very good at his job. A single shot beside an irrigation canal. A missing badge. And then five decades…

Lindsey would help me make sense of this. Lindsey would shield me from my dark moods and my night fears and the consequences of my inquiring mind. I needed Lindsey right then, right that second.

And when the Humvee stopped and they pulled off the hood, she was there.

My federally arranged conjugal visit lasted a little less than sixteen hours. Too soon, I was in a sheriff’s cruiser, piloted by a quiet young deputy, headed back to the center city. I used the silence of the ride to think about how welcome Lindsey’s flesh had been against mine. I noticed how thin and even frail she seemed to feel in my arms, how the hours let things shift back and forth between us, who was strong, who was scared. She felt guilty over Rachel Pearson, that she was somehow responsible. She dreamed about Rachel’s death.