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

Kemper Marley became the richest man in Arizona thanks to his liquor business and extensive landholdings, which became very valuable as Phoenix emerged into a major city and spread out. Marley eventually got a part of the Outfit’s gambling-wire business when Greenbaum was called away to Las Vegas. Marley was suspected of orchestrating the bombing death of Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles in 1976, but it was never proved. Most Arizonans today know of him from the Kemper and Ethel Marley Foundation, which has placed his name on institutions around the state.

Father Emmett McLoughlin ministered in some of Phoenix’s most destitute areas, becoming a leading advocate of public housing and other assistance for the poor. His efforts at slum clearance brought federal funds to build the Matthew Henson Homes at Seventh Avenue and Buckeye and other projects. He was also named the first chairman of the city’s Housing Authority and founded St. Monica’s Hospital. He left the priesthood after his superiors accused him of neglecting his pastoral duties and demanded he resign as superintendent of the hospital. For many years, McLoughlin remained Phoenix’s foremost advocate of the poor.

Frenchy Navarre continued on as a detective until he shot and killed Phoenix Police Officer David “Star” Johnson in 1944. Johnson was a popular African American patrolman walking a downtown beat. Although Navarre was acquitted, Johnson’s partner arrived at police headquarters and confronted Navarre. After a wild gunfight, Frenchy was killed. In life, he was friends with Gus Greenbaum and other mobsters.

Harry Rosenzweig became the founder of the modern Republican Party in Arizona, leading it to dominate a state long run by the Democrats. For decades, he was the political boss of Phoenix. In addition to his jewelry business, Harry and his brother, Newton, developed the high-rise Rosenzweig Center office-hotel complex in Midtown Phoenix. Harry’s connections to organized crime were suspected but never proven.

Wing Ong graduated at the top of his class at the University of Arizona law school. In 1946, he was elected to the Arizona House of Representatives, the first Chinese American to reach this milestone in America. He was elected to the state senate in 1966.

Carl Sims succeeded as a gardening and painting contractor. He went on to work for the Highway Department and become a Maricopa County deputy sheriff. In 1950, Sims was one of the first two African Americans elected to the Arizona House of Representatives.

Del Webb became the most successful contractor in the Southwest and a very wealthy man. Webb’s projects ranged from the Poston Relocation Center, where Japanese Americans were interned during World War II, to Sun City. He was also a co-owner of the New York Yankees. In 1946, mob boss Bugsy Siegel hired Webb to oversee construction of the Flamingo Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas.

Read on for an excerpt from The Bomb Shelter

another exciting book by Jon Talton, available now!

One

At 11:10 on the morning of Friday, June 2nd, 1978, Charles Page spun the platen knob of the Smith Corona Classic 12 typewriter on his desk at the Arizona State Capitol pressroom. It advanced a roll of gray newsprint that fed in from the back. He pecked out a short sentence and spun the knob again so the words were visible above the paper holder. They read:

Mark Reid, 11:30 a.m., Clarendon House.

Page slid a reporter’s notebook in his back pocket, picked up his briefcase, and walked a block to his car. A mile away at the newspaper building, the presses were about to start their run, putting out his afternoon paper, the Phoenix Gazette. He didn’t have a story in today’s edition. The committee hearing he covered this morning hadn’t produced news.

Outside, the temperature was already more than a hundred degrees, headed to a forecast high of 103. After stopping to make small talk with a state senator, he walked quickly across the plaza that separated the two chambers of the Legislature.

Page was a good-looking man, six-foot-two, still as slender at age forty-eight as he had been at twenty. His wavy hair was light brown, styled in an old-fashioned pompadour with more trendy sideburns. He favored leisure suits.

It couldn’t have taken him more than five minutes to reach the parking lot, where his nine-year-old red GTO was parked in a space reserved for the press.

His mother and father called him Charlie. But when he flew for the Air Force in Korea, he gained the nickname Buzz. This had less to do with being a pilot of F-86 Saber fighter jets than the fact that his squadron already had two other men named Charlie. One stayed Charlie, the second became Chuck, and he was christened Buzz. Charlie and Chuck were later shot down in dogfights against Russian-piloted MiGs near the Yalu River, both killed. He survived fifty-six combat missions, came home, graduated with a journalism degree from the University of Missouri and, after working at some small papers, found his spot at the Gazette.

There he made a name writing stories on land fraud and organized crime. He regularly scooped the bigger morning paper, the Arizona Republic. Even though both newspapers were owned by the Pulliam family, each competed fiercely against the other. His success on the land-fraud beat and the other prominent stories he wrote earned him another nickname, “Front Page,” from admiring colleagues. In recent years, he delved into RaceCo, a sports concession that ran the state’s greyhound dog racing tracks and had connections to organized crime. And in 1975, he produced “Strangers Among Us,” a five-day series of stories on the two hundred Mafia figures who had relocated to Phoenix in recent years. He named names, and how some were close to political leaders. It was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and enhanced Page’s national standing among his peers.

He wore the acclaim lightly. Buzz was unassuming, a good listener who seemed shy outside his circle of friends who knew him for his loud laugh and practical jokes. This caused the targets of