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He thought for a moment. “Last week, though, a man came in and bought both a meat cleaver and a saw. Nobody I knew.” He shook his head slowly, as if recalling the face or conversation or something more. “He gave me the fantods.”
“Fantods?”
“The creeps.”
Learn a new word every day, as my pop said. I asked what he looked like.
Carl hesitated. “I don’t want trouble, especially not now that I’m about to go out on my own.”
“What would get you in trouble?”
He sighed. “I wasn’t exactly honest. He was a cop, and I know him. You’ve always treated me real well, Detective Hammons. But you’re the exception. Colored folks don’t get an even shake from the police, not even from the colored officers.”
“Hell, Carl, I don’t even like the cops myself.”
He stared past me a long time. Then: “Frenchy.”
“Frenchy Navarre?”
He nodded. “Man scares me.”
“Frenchy Navarre bought those butcher tools?”
He looked me in the eye. “Yes sir, he did.”
Seven
I knew two men in Phoenix nicknamed Frenchy.
One was Frenchy Vieux, real first name Marcellin, who made a fortune as a sidewalk contractor during the 1920s building boom. Walk down nearly any sidewalk in the newer parts of town and you’ll find his name stamped in concrete. He lived in a majestic Italian villa–style home with a sweeping veranda on Portland Street, a couple of blocks west of me in the swank Kenilworth district.
The other was Frenchy Navarre, given name Leonce, a Phoenix Police detective. He was a few years older than me. We had never worked closely together, and I didn’t know much about him. But his custom-made suits and expensive silk ties from Goldwater’s and Hanny’s made me suspicious he was at least a little bit dirty. Perhaps had I misappraised the man, and not in a good way.
I walked up to Jefferson Street and slipped into Jones Drugs in the new Fox Theater building, the city’s best movie palace—and with cool refrigerated air to boot. They didn’t need it today with the temperature hitting a tourist-pleasing 70 degrees. Past the soda fountain, I stepped into a phone booth, closed the door, and called Don at police headquarters.
“Detective Bureau, Detective Navarre speaking,” came the unexpected voice.
My paranoia meter shot up several notches, and I hesitated, tempted to hang up.
“Hello?”
I forged ahead. “Hello, Frenchy, it’s Gene Hammons.”
“Geno!” The voice was friendly. “We miss you down here. I’m stuck on the dragnet for those escapees. It was the county’s fuckup. They didn’t get out of the city jail.”
I contained my boredom and anxiety as he went on. The two jails were on the same floor.
“How’s the peeper business?”
“Ups and downs. Is my brother around?”
“No. He’s checking a lead on that dead skirt. You hear about it?”
“I read something in the paper.”
“Well, she didn’t fall from a train. She was sliced up and dumped.”
“Nasty business.” I fought the temptation to ask him if he’d been using a cleaver and saw lately.
