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

Nook burger joint. “Twenty-Four-Hour Service,” a 7-Up sign proclaimed. A crossing guard held us up as a covey of coeds crossed, laughing and talking, making me think of Carrie aka Cynthia and her cop friend. Then I went south to Washington Street and turned west, brooding over what Muldoon wanted of me.

At Seventh Avenue, I waited for a long freight train then crossed the seventeen railroad tracks and pulled into the junkyard. I saw Turk’s broad back and Frenchy Navarre, along with some uniforms. I took a deep breath, set the brake, and stepped out onto the hard soil. The uniformed officers nodded and let me pass.

“Geno!” Frenchy clapped me on the arm. He was wiry and intense, with a precise manner. He could be fussy and autocratic on the job, but if he liked you, he was pleasant. “I’m glad they found you. We put out a dragnet. A friendly one!” He laughed, high-pitched and sinister, but maybe I was imagining the last part.

Turk Muldoon came over. He was angular and lanky at six-foot-three, possessing hooded icy-blue eyes. His gaunt face was grim.

“Take a look at this.”

He led me to the wreck of a Model A and pointed to a body resting against the old car’s rust-caked door. The man’s throat had been neatly slashed and his head pushed to the left, with blood on his cream sport coat and flannel slacks.

Zoogie Boogie.

His legs and arms were in the perfect posture of rigor mortis.

“I thought you’d want to know,” Muldoon said. “Him being your snitch and all. When was the last time you saw him?”

“His trial,” I lied, not knowing quite why. “I didn’t realize he’d gotten out.”

Muldoon sighed. “He might have been safer in Florence, lad, even with what happened to Jack Hunter. We hear Zoogie was collecting gambling money in jigtown.”

“Coon probably robbed and killed him,” Frenchy said. “They all use razors. If it was nigger killing nigger, it’d be misdemeanor murder.” He roared with laughter.

Muldoon rolled his eyes and winked at me. I was two places at once: Here, and back in Prescott, where Ezra Dell had been murdered. The colored population there was negligible.

I reached under Zoogie’s shirt and found a money belt. Inside was a wad of bills. I counted ninety bucks.

I held it out. “And your colored killer left this?”

Nobody spoke as I handed the money to Turk. I walked around the car, following furrows in the dirt, and a few feet away behind another junk car was a lake of blood with several spurts from where the blade first hit the artery.

“He was killed over here, see?” I said. “Then the killer dragged him to the car and leaned him against the door. Make it easier to find him.” I walked back to the body and examined his hands and arms. “No defensive wounds. Whoever killed him took him from behind. Either he was surprised or he knew the killer and felt safe turning his back. It was at least four hours ago, see the rigor setting in?”

“This is another reason we needed the best homicide detective on the force,” Turk said. “Or used to be on the force. Dumb move by the bosses, letting you go.”

I shrugged. “Lot of detectives here for a colored slitting the throat of an ex-con.”

“It’s the first homicide in the city this year,” Frenchy said, propping up his fedora and pulling his pocket watch from a chain that went to his vest, checking the time.

“Second,” I corrected. “The girl who was dismembered by the railroad tracks.”

“I heard she fell from the train,” Turk said. I let it be. He said, “You hear that Jimmy Allen died?” He was the night captain. “Dropped dead in his chair, talking to Joe Youngblood one minute and the next he’s gone. Bad heart, but only fifty-five. Maybe that leaves an opening for you to come back.”

“I doubt that.”

“Never know,” Turk continued. “The Chief likes you. Everybody does.”

I was skeptical about that, too.

Leaning back down, I closed the lids over Zoogie’s dead eyes. First Ezra Dell, then Jack Hunter, now this. Tying up loose ends. Preventing men from giving me information. This was why detectives didn’t believe in coincidences.

As Frenchy and Turk examined the blood spatter, I reached in Zoogie’s other pocket and found a slip of paper and a key. I thought for a second, then clandestinely pocketed them.

“He was your friend?” This came from an unfamiliar voice. I turned to see a young priest.

“I guess I was as close to a friend as he had. His name was Henry Porter, Father…”

“McLoughlin,” he said. “Call me Emmett. Do you know if he was Catholic?”

“I don’t know.”

“No matter.” He knelt beside the blood sinking into the hard soil and began administering last rites in a quiet voice. “Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy…”

“Two cops, a private eye, and a priest,” Frenchy said. “Sounds like the beginning of a joke. All we need is a rabbi.” He chuckled in a low voice. “I say we go brace the first suspicious jig we see, beat a confession out of him, or get him to roll on somebody. Case closed. Can’t be letting white men be knifed in Phoenix, even no-account shitbirds like Zoogie Boogie. Sends a bad message.”

I put my hand on his shoulder and walked him a few feet away. “What do you know about voodoo, Frenchy?”

This time he bent over laughing, holding his ribs.

“Geno, you got me in stitches.” He switched to a bayou accent. “You thing yo’ Cajun friend from N’Awlens know about de Ouanga an’ de spells, de dragon sticks an’ de gris-gris?” He pronounced it GREE-gree. And laughed hard. Then he pulled the watch from his vest pocket again, checking the time once more.

I was quite the comedian, but looking back at the dead body propped against the junk car, I was filled with a mixture of sadness and anger. I knelt down and from memory drew a crude representation of the