Jon Talton - Dry Heat

My old friend from grad school days had come through. The envelope contained five sheets of a typed report, from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1975. The pages were black with the now familiar war paint of redacted information. But the report was clear enough. In 1944, a Soviet agent named Georgi Antonov came to Phoenix and set up a cover life as a refugee from Poland. He took a job as a waiter in a local restaurant. His real work was to pass along secrets from the American atomic weapons program at Los Alamos, New Mexico. By 1947, Antonov, who used the code name “Dimitri,” was spying on the nuclear test site in Nevada, always returning to his haven in the small city of Phoenix. A year later, Dimitri was ordered to return to Moscow. He remained in the United States-defecting to an FBI agent in Phoenix. The agent’s name was lost in a horizontal black slash. Dimitri died in 1972, having run a hat shop in Cincinnati for many years.

Dimitri didn’t kill Pilgrim. Dimitri defected to Pilgrim.

I said out loud, “Fuck!”

The wind responded with a loud moan, as if it were sweeping my theories down Cypress Street.

Soon I was caressing the spines of the books, recalling forgotten volumes. Lindsey and I had been reading McCullough’s John Adams before our private civilization had been invaded by the Russians. I could pick a hundred flaws in the book, but I had no grudge against popular history, as my colleagues in the professoriat did. McCullough got rich while the rest of us published obscure, unreadable papers-or went to work for the sheriff’s office. My finger lingered on the spine of Middlemarch , one of Lindsey’s favorites. I found one of Dan Milton’s books misshelved-with the novels rather than history. It was his insightful look at social change in the 1920s, Coolidge Jazz , a book that made me realize how much everything is connected, how nothing happens in isolation. Soon this reverie propelled me into the kitchen, where I made a martini-using Lindsey’s favorite Plymouth gin instead of my Bombay Sapphire-and then I settled in the big leather chair before the picture window. The closest firearm was in another room. I let it be.

The men came in with amazing ease. They were in the room before I could even move out of the chair. Somebody gave a command in Russian, and a tall man with a goatee and sad eyes aimed a clunky yellow plastic gun at me. Panic locked my legs in place. I tried to turn and roll out of the chair but it was too late. The Taser darts hit me straight on. My legs, starting to stand, collapsed as if the bones were suddenly liquefied. My abdomen was consumed in a great spasm. Men’s faces studied me with curiosity. The tall man held a straight razor, the blade rusty and chipped. I felt a wave of bile coming up my throat, then the room closed around me, black.

I usually know when I’m dreaming. Not this time. My eyes opened when the sweat from my forehead dropped into my lashes. The house was silent except for my panting and the soft whoosh of the air-conditioning.

Suddenly three cars materialized on the street. Two sheriff’s cruisers and a shiny black Crown Victoria. It was no dream. I bolted up from the chair, even as a pounding came on the front door.

“Let’s go,” Peralta ordered, looking cool in a cream-colored suit, the coat cut roomy to accommodate his Glock semiautomatic pistol. I stared at him for a long moment to make sure he was real. I started out the door but his meaty hand struck my chest.

“Bring your gun, Mapstone. You’re on the job.”

So I retreated back into the house, retrieved my Python and Speedloaders, locked up, and then followed him. He walked to the Oldsmobile.

“You drive,” he said. “I want to make sure you’re taking good care of county property.”

We sped over to the Piestewa Freeway and turned north, following the two sheriff’s cruisers. The speedometer needle was pushing against ninety, me driving and Peralta saying nothing. A quarter of a century ago, when we were partners, it was no problem to play the silent guy game and barely speak for an entire shift. But this time I was cranky after a few miles.

“If we’re on the job, where are we going?”

“DC Ranch.” One of the silver spoon developments in the McDowell Mountains. We sped on, climbing through Dreamy Draw and the North Phoenix Mountains and quickly reaching the 101 beltway. The big Olds engine seemed barely challenged; my foot had plenty of room between the accelerator pedal and the floor. I tried again.

“And what’s at DC Ranch?”

“Yuri.”

I felt an involuntary shiver. I glanced at Peralta, who stared ahead.

“If our intelligence is correct, we’ll find Yuri in the Page-Frellick House. Ever been there?”

“Nope.”

“It’s a custom job that backs up to Thompson Peak. When they built it in ’98, it was priced for $3.7 million, and a retired executive from Canton, Ohio, bought it. I went there once for a Christmas party, bunch of Republican bigwigs. The fireplace was bigger than my first apartment. Anyway, it’s been vacant for a year or so. The economy, you know. So they rented it out…”

“How did we find this out?”

“Your wife, Mapstone. She gets results.”

We got no closer than a command post just off Scottsdale Road. The parkway was blocked, and deputies and city cops were turning away homeowners in their Ferraris and Rolls Royces.

Peralta walked over to a redone bus that held the sheriff’s mobile command center. Beside a large golden badge, lettering proclaimed MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE, and in smaller letters below, MIKE PERALTA, SHERIFF. My old friend had done OK. I slid my badge onto my belt, borrowed a pair of binoculars, and wandered around. This had been empty desert even when I was an undergraduate. As a kid, I would come out here with Grandfather to hike and target shoot. I remembered the preternatural silence, where even a buzzing fly sounded loud. Now it was the province of the superrich, retired CEOs looking for anonymity and Lasik surgeons from Minneapolis looking for a winter home. The houses dotted the rocky hillsides and perched above dry washes and arroyos. Walls and gates reminded anyone who forgot that this was private property.

For the moment, at least, the sheriff had suspended property rights. The air was full of screeching tires and revving engines as angry residents were turned away. It mixed in with the traffic sounds from Scottsdale Road and the occasional scream of Lear jets taking off from Scottsdale airport. My eye went to a group of men in black uniforms, Kevlar helmets, and vests. They were saddling up on all-terrain vehicles, with exotic-looking weapons slung over their shoulders. Emblems on their backs said FBI. In a moment, they drove single-file across an expanse of sand and rock, then disappeared down a bank into a wash. The ATVs were amazingly silent.

“An FBI team,” Peralta said, reappearing behind me, with his suit coat gone and his shoulder holster prominent. “It’s their operation.”

Eric Pham walked up behind us and nodded. He had covered his starched white shirt with a Kevlar vest bearing the letters FBI.

“I think we’ve got them, David,” he said.

“All we have to do is hope the dust storm doesn’t hit,” I said. So far, the wind was up, whipping us with occasional sand, but the sun was still out and we had at least an hour’s daylight.

“All we have to do,” Peralta said, “is sit here and enjoy the show.”

Even the binoculars didn’t provide a very good view of the house. I saw native stone, a wall of tinted glass, and a roof set at a rakish angle. Then I didn’t see much. The storm came on, cloaking the mountains and then the scattered houses in dusty haze. At this time of day it almost looked like the fog in San Francisco, except for my persistent coughing. Back to the west, Camelback and Mummy mountains were barely visible. I heard some deputies cursing. I made my way quietly into the command post, where two rows of consoles were being monitored by deputies and FBI agents wearing slender headsets. TV screens showed a view of the desert, then the house-apparently the assault team carried cameras so the brass could watch the fun. An agent turned to Pham, Peralta, and a Scottsdale police deputy chief: “Team Blue is in place.” In another minute: “Team Red is in place.”