City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (novels to read .txt) 📗

All the time I was in France, with muddy shell holes, shredded trees, and the overwhelming scent of death everywhere, I distracted myself by remembering views like this of our desert oasis so far away across an ocean and a continent, so at peace. Not too much distraction, mind. That could get you killed, especially by infiltrating stormtroopers.

One night a German soldier dropped into my trench, not even seeing me at first. My rifle was stupidly propped too far away, and I ran my trench knife into his gut, twisting it. He wasn’t a stormtrooper but a lost boy who looked younger than me, blond and blue-eyed like me, terrified like me. He died hard. Later, when the adrenaline faded, the homesickness kept me sane.

Now it was as lovely and peaceful as I remembered it. “American Eden,” the promoters called it, and rightly so, hundreds of thousands of acres reclaimed by the Theodore Roosevelt Dam on the Salt River, followed by four more.

I was born with the century, so I had no memory of the terrible times in the 1890s, when another depression combined with drought and floods almost destroyed Phoenix, with no dam to catch the snowy runoff. But our parents told us. Roosevelt himself visited in 1911 for the dam’s dedication. I caught a glimpse of the Rough Rider in an open-top car with Dwight and Maie Heard. He doffed his hat to a cheering crowd. Now he’s been in the ground for thirteen years. And after I became a cop, I learned how many snakes populated this Eden.

A little past grandly named but two-lane Chicago Avenue, far out in the county now, I saw Don’s car parked beside the road. Down a drive was a two-story hacienda surrounded by dense plantings of orange and grapefruit trees, walled off by tall oleanders. I pulled over and stopped, shut off the engine, stuck a nail in my mouth and lit it, and waited. After fifteen minutes, my brother came stalking out with that long-legged Hammons strut. If you saw us walking at a distance, you couldn’t have told us apart. He saw me and shook his head.

“What the hell are you doing here?” He sat in the passenger seat and slammed the door shut.

“Navarre said I could find you here.”

“They reported their daughter missing two weeks ago. But they got a letter here a day ago. She’s in Hollywood. Wants to break into the pictures. She’s the only missing person on file who would fit the description of the girl by the tracks. Pretty blonde. If they want somebody to bring their live daughter back home, I recommended you.”

“Thanks, but how old is she?”

“Twenty-one.”

“Age of consent.”

“Whatever. Like I said, her description matched our body, so I hoped I could clear this case in a hurry.”

I didn’t like that it was “our body.” I said, “What do you know about Navarre?”

He opened a new pack of Luckies—Al Jolson’s brand—and lit one, taking a long drag.

“Frenchy’s a decent cop,” he said, exhaling out the open car. “He can be a hard cop. Tough on the nigg—.”

I cut him off. “Why do you use that word, Don? That’s not the way we were raised.”

“Okay, Mommy.”

I shook my head. “Would you trust Frenchy to have your back?”

He gave me a long appraisal, his eyes like a lighthouse fixed on a ship at sea.

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“What if I told you he had bought a meat cleaver and a boning saw at the restaurant supply store in the Deuce? Those are exactly the tools that were probably used to cut up that girl. So maybe he’s a cook off duty. Or maybe he’s a thrill killer who wants to frame me.”

“This is my problem, Gene. I pulled your business card from her purse. You’re in the clear, unless you really know her and gave her that card and you’re lying to me.”

I shook my head. “Well, maybe you’ll help me with another problem,” I said. “Gus Greenbaum.”

Don stared hard at me. “And why is he your problem?”

I told him about being hired by Marley. He laid out what I already knew about the gambling wire service.

I said, “Marley wants leverage over Greenbaum.”

“There is no leverage,” he said. “You need to understand that Gus Greenbaum is a dangerous man. You’re an idiot to take that case, I don’t care how much money you need. You were an idiot in the first place to get kicked out of the department. You’re an idiot to have your business card found in the purse of our body. Goddamn, Gene, am I even related to you?”

I used to idolize my brother. When he joined the Army in spring 1917, I lied about my age so I could go with him. We lived through it and joined the police department together. But I rose faster, made detective first, and was assigned to focus on the toughest murders. I cracked big cases, got plum assignments, and Don didn’t try to hide his resentment. He was especially angry that I was named to be Amelia Earhart’s “bodyguard” when she visited Phoenix in ’30 and gave me a ride in her aeroplane. These things and his drinking and cocaine use strained the relationship, made me see him in a new light. I loved my brother, but much of the time I didn’t like him. I did still get postcards from Amelia.

After a long silence, I went back to the original order of business. “First it’s ‘our body’ and then it’s ‘you’re in the clear.’ So, which is it?”

He ground out the Lucky in my ashtray.

“When are you going to make an honest woman out of your Dolores del Rio lookalike?”

“Victoria is prettier than Dolores del Río, and she’s already an honest woman.”

“You know what I mean. All that churchgoing and you’re making love to that Mexican girl.”

I chuckled. “Don Hammons, the paragon of marital fidelity, giving me advice. Look, I’m not a moralist. Stay out of my private