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* * *
On Monday, I enjoyed breakfast as usual at the Saratoga and got into work at nine. Gladys was at her Remington, hammering out the report I had dictated last week—my findings on Gus Greenbaum for Kemper Marley. It wasn’t worth five hundred dollars. Short answer: Chicago organized crime was nesting in Phoenix. Greenbaum had an office in the Luhrs Tower, probably holding his bulky wire service equipment, too. Prohibition had been bad in so many ways, not least because it had provided additional rackets for the mob. Now they were looking for new
ways to make money once liquor was legal again.
It was rich that Marley feigned outrage, considering his soon-to-be-legal booze empire was seeded by Al Capone’s organization. And his indignation wasn’t about lawbreaking—only that he wasn’t getting his cut of a lucrative new hustle. He wanted leverage against Greenbaum, and I had found none, unless he could out-bribe the local officials, and that threatened his ambitions with the Outfit. It was a dirty business, and I regretted ever taking the case. Once again for Gladys’s amusement, I had to tell the quick version of the gun battle outside the citrus groves. I was sick of it, but Gladys was entranced, for once happy to be working for a private eye as well as a dull accountant. I wished I were a dull accountant.
Inside my private office, the morning mail was waiting for me. Mostly bills, except for one. I used my silver letter opener to slit it open.
The telegram was from Prescott and read:
GENE HAMMONS=
MONIHON BLDG PHOENIX AZ.=
WE WISH TO ENGAGE YOU TO FIND OUR DAUGHTER CARRIE A STUDENT AT ARIZONA STATE TEACHERS COLLEGE. WE HAVE NOT HEARD FROM HER SINCE JAN. 5. PLEASE WIRE YOUR ACCEPTANCE=
EZRA THAYER=
HOTEL ST. MICHAEL PRESCOTT AZ=
A Western Union money order for a hundred dollars was attached.
Usually, I would celebrate the prospect of new business. But I physically backed away from the paper as if it were a live hand grenade. Ezra Thayer’s inquiry might be routine, the kind of thing that was the heart of my PI practice. But I feared the worst: That Carrie was the murdered girl beside the railroad tracks. The homicide that the “Valley of the Sun” bigwigs were trying to conceal.
I put the Republic atop it and scanned the news: “Hitlerite Regime in Prospect,” read the headline on the top left. Marley would be pleased. Communists and Nazis were battling in Berlin’s streets. A prospector had been murdered near Casa Grande and his body thrown down a well. Half a million Chinese troops were trying to eject the Japanese from Manchuria without success.
Only after smoking an entire Chesterfield and slowly walking twice around the office did I sit back down, reread the telegram, compose a response, and call Gladys on the intercom to summon a Western Union boy.
* * *
The next day, a Railway Express envelope arrived at my office. Prescott was once the territorial capital and the center of a rich mining district. I asked Thayer to send me a photo of Carrie by train—it was the fastest way. In the meantime, I distracted myself by taking the Greenbaum report down to Kemper Marley at his spread on Fourteenth Avenue near Broadway, south of town. His wife, Ethel, was a charming woman who served us tea and made me wonder how she ended up with a thug like Kemper. I guess no man could be a son of a bitch all the time. After she left the room, he read the report like a predator stalking dinner.
“He lives at 321 West Almeria. Nearly new house. But I don’t see anything I can use to lean on him.”
I handed him an envelope. “That’s why I’m returning your five hundred. I’ll keep the gold piece for my trouble. Greenbaum seems untouchable, even for you.”
“Why can’t you do private detective things? Follow the man? Maybe he’s a rape-o who likes jailbait. Or a weenie wagger? That would be rich. Or better yet, a homosexual. Why not try?”
“Because I don’t want to make enemies of the Chicago Outfit or a guy who came up under Meyer Lansky.” I thought about that car parked across from my apartment in the middle of the night. It might have had nothing to do with me. Or everything.
I said, “We’re talking about a stone-cold killer here. Look, Kemper, people come to the West to reinvent themselves. Maybe that’s partly Greenbaum’s story. You’re going to be richer and more powerful with your liquor distributorship. If you want a piece of Greenbaum’s action, you need to negotiate with Chicago. Offer them a piece of your liquor action.”
“What’s mine is mine, and I’m keeping it. That’s why we have to be vigilant about the communist threat. Do you listen to Father Coughlin on the radio?”
“No.”
“I never trusted Catholics, but the man makes good sense about the Reds and the Jews. America needs to wake up. You don’t approve of my methods, but what we did to that camp sends a message that Phoenix won’t tolerate this. It’s bad enough that we’re stuck with the lungers in their tents up in Sunnyslope, with that rich do-gooder from Cleveland, John Lincoln, protecting them at the Desert Mission. The more money he gives, the more we’ll attract these sick vagrants. It’s too damned bad the Klan died out here.” When I didn’t respond, he gave a reptilian smile. “By the way, what really happened with that young lady who was found dead by the tracks?”
I fought to keep my expression neutral, forced a casual shrug. “I read about it in the newspaper. Sad thing.”
“Might be worse than that. I heard she was murdered.”
“Where did you get that?”
“I have my sources, Hammons. I own some city detectives; don’t think I don’t.”
I didn’t doubt it. I asked why, if this were true, he didn’t ask them to help with his Greenbaum problem.
