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“Quit screwing around,” Lindsey said, her fair skin flushing with anger. “What are you talking about?”
“What they call ‘the word on the street,’” Bobby said, momentarily surprised to have be
en challenged out of his circuitous conversational ways. “The word on the street is that Sheriff Mapstone is a dead man.”
“Why?” Lindsey demanded.
“It seems to be something to do with your River Hogs,” he said. “It seems that you are into something very dangerous. A man named Nixon, a former deputy sheriff, was murdered, no? And the shooting of Chief Peralta. My sources tell me this is not the work of this escapee, O’Keefe, as your press conference said. As a good citizen, and a friend, I felt I should pass this information along.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Lindsey said. “Good citizen, my ass.”
Bobby’s perfect posture took subtle offense. “Yes, Miss Lindsey. A good citizen and a friend. This isn’t a game. These are killers.”
“Who are these people?” I asked. “Cops? Deputies?”
“Contrary to Sheriff Peralta’s tiresome obsession, I am not plugged in to the underworld.”
“But obviously you hear things.”
He faced out, staring at the street, content to let us stew in Bach. I looked at Lindsey. Her hair glowed blackly in the reflection of the streetlights. Her eyes looked tired.
“Professor Mapstone,” he said, “What was this affair in Guadalupe, in May 1979?”
I studied his face, suspicion in me like a high fever. “It was a shooting. Two old deputies stopped a car with two prison escapees. They killed the deputies. Peralta showed up and killed the escapees.”
“I thought you were there?”
“I was. How do you know that?”
“Everyone seems to know,” he said. “That word on the street again. Do you really remember what happened there? Twenty years is a long time.”
“I remember it all.”
He nodded his head slightly. “What happened after the shooting?”
“It was a cop shooting,” I said. “Lots of paperwork, lots of Internal Affairs.” I felt like I was stuck in an essay test I hadn’t studied for. What the hell was he getting at? I knew if I pushed him too far, I’d end up with nothing.
“Why were those two deputies in Guadalupe?” he asked, his voice soft, contemplative.
“It was a traffic stop gone bad. That was obvious when Peralta and I rolled up.”
“Really?” he said. “Obvious. Well, eyewitnesses can be unreliable, can’t they? That’s why we need historians who can sift the evidence with more detachment. Quite an irony for you, Professor Mapstone.”
“Shit,” I said. “I give up, Bobby. If this is your help, it’s not much.”
“You give me too much credit,” he said, stroking his fine jawline. “I don’t know all the answers. Only some of the questions to ask. That ought to be enough.”
Lindsey popped the door handle and stepped out. But Bobby gently took my shoulder. “I know this much: You have the trusting nature of the reflective man, the man who wants to live the life of the mind.” He looked hard at me, his eyes empty of humanity. “Your department is not what it seems, Sheriff. Remember the Roman emperors who trusted the Praetorian Guard. Trusting will get you killed.”
Chapter Twenty
The Crown Plaza Hotel sat at Adams and Central, a big, tan box with half-moon windows, another homely remnant from Phoenix’s 1970s building boom. When the Hotel Adams sat on this block, it was a lovely Spanish Mediterranean landmark where the state legislature met informally in the coffee shop, and its awnings shaded Central Avenue from the summer heat. It was built after the first Hotel Adams burned in 1910, the most famous blaze of frontier Phoenix. When I was a little boy-this was 1964-I sat in a car with Grandmother and watched a bank robber chased down by the cops in the alley right beside the hotel. But by the early 1970s, the old Adams was a fleabag, its rooftop neon sign struggling in red letters to say HOT ADA S. It sounded like a whorehouse. The block had history.
Tonight it was so deserted it was as if everyone in the city had silently evacuated, that only Lindsey and I hadn’t gotten the word. Spending time in the hospital only added to the sense of oppressive isolation. The doctors were worried about Peralta’s lungs. It didn’t take a medical degree to know that being flat on your back with a machine doing your breathing was not exactly the way the human body was built to run. Tests showed the beginning of pneumonia in one lung. We sat with Sharon while three doctors gave her a grim catechism of the limitations they were up against with Peralta in a coma. She didn’t cry anymore. Her face had taken on the quality of a latex mask atop dangerous emotions. She didn’t need to know what I knew. I didn’t even know what I knew, if Bobby Hamid was to be believed.
After the hospital, we drove home, drank martinis with olives, and ate baked potatoes with cheese and salsa while we talked about the day. Lindsey wondered about Peralta and his father, how hard it must have been to measure up to a father of such accomplishment and yet such exacting expectations. I wondered about the Peralta stubbornness and fear of showing emotion, keeping both men apart for years I really wanted to go to bed and have her read to me; then I would read to her. But we locked up the house at 8:45, switched to the BMW-I needed to fill up at the 24-hour gas station down on Roosevelt-and drove slowly back downtown.
We drove around the block taking stock of our paranoia.
