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“How does that sit with Cyrus Cleveland?” He was the most powerful colored gangster in Phoenix.
“Sits fine with Cyrus,” Zoogie said. “Greenbaum had a talk with him. Cut him in on the action. Now all his shine bookies are part of Greenbaum’s network. Cleveland will do fine. He has other rackets: procuring whores, selling heroin and terp.”
I lit my own nail and let that sink in. “Does Navarre know you’re my snitch?”
“No.” A vigorous shake of the head. “I swear.”
“Good. Keep it that way.” I let five beats pass. Then, “Is he a killer?”
He stared out the window. “A month ago, I saw Frenchy do a beatdown on a bookie who was holding money back. Used a sap, you know, a blackjack. I heard bones breaking. Teeth flew out of his mouth. When he turned to me I hightailed it, but not before I saw that look in his eyes. Same look I saw on the faces of the murderers in Florence.” He flicked an ash out on the sidewalk. “Draw your own conclusions. What are you going to do? Go after a brother officer? That’ll be the day. You guys stick together like flies on flypaper. Kill people. Beat confessions. Plant evidence.”
“Does he have a girlfriend?”
“He’s married.”
“So? Young thing. Blonde. Pretty.”
“What do you want from me, Hammons? Want me to make things up?”
I shook my head, peeled
off twenty dollars, and handed it over. “I want you to nose around about that dead girl. Quietly.”
“That’s the only safe nosing with Frenchy,” he said.
I let Zoogie go, and he wandered west on Van Buren Street, past auto courts that should have been full of tourists this time of year but were barely hanging on. I slipped into a phone booth, closed the door, fed in a nickel, and shared information with Victoria. She had used her police connection to wander around headquarters and, when the Hat Squad was out, dig through files. Unfortunately, she hadn’t found much, not yet at least. No missing person report on Carrie. None on similar young women. The file on Carrie’s murder held one sheet of paper.
Next I called my brother. Driving downtown, I took stock.
Frenchy the bagman. Payoffs were a necessary evil in keeping the peace. Cops collected from selective illegal enterprises, and the money went to politicians, the city treasury, and other cops. The bribes were an incentive to look the other way, but also served to contain, monitor, and control illegal activity that was going to happen anyway. This maintained an equilibrium between otherwise law-abiding citizens and their vices. That was the old theory, at least. I tried to stay away from vice cases—other detectives, including my brother, thrived on them. But I had to take my share of the cut. Otherwise, I would have been suspect and might not have gotten backup when I needed it, or worse. Now it was my nest egg.
But Greenbaum was a new element, with plenty of money and juice from Chicago. And Frenchy Navarre was his bagman.
Eleven
I took a table at the Hotel Adams coffee shop to wait for Don and read to distract myself. The paper had a story about the Navy successfully staging a mock surprise attack on Pearl Harbor by planes from the carriers Saratoga and Lexington. Honolulu residents who witnessed the war game were reportedly “thrilled.”
It was more interesting than Phoenix’s daily diet of news about debt negotiations with Britain, what President-elect Roosevelt might do come March, and the Japan-China conflict. The local newspaper had barely a peep about the dire economic situation. Will Rogers’s two or three paragraphs on the front page mentioned the Depression more than the news columns. The rare “good news” business story received big play. But nothing about people starving, the county relief fund empty, or the businesses closing every month right here. Nothing about the refugees from the Midwest desperately moving through town—if they could avoid Kemper Marley’s welcoming committee. And not even the peep of a peep about dead Carrie Dell.
The waitress brought coffee, and I ordered a hamburger. Across the room, a dozen legislators were debating around a large, round table. Voices raised, then whispers, arms gesticulating emphatically. The subject was the governor and the highway commission. Cigar smoke pumped above them like a factory going full out. When I looked back, the man standing before me wasn’t my brother but John J. McGrath, the chief of Ds. I reflexively stood and came to attention.
“Sit, Gene.” His voice was gentle and his manner professorial. It was a devastatingly effective personality trait in gaining confessions. The only things that made him look different from the faculty at the teachers’ college were the shoulder holster and a pair of handcuffs and a nipper in his belt beneath the off-the-rack suit of an honest cop. The nipper was a neat tool, a nonlethal item used to whip around a suspect’s wrist and tighten to put pressure on a nerve in the hand and cause compliance. They disappeared as he buttoned his coat and sat, ordering coffee.
I sat. “I was waiting for Don.”
“I know,” he said. “Your brother asked me to talk some sense into you.”
“How thoughtful of him.”
McGrath smiled sadly. “Oh, my young friend, I am so sorry about the way things turned out. I had such high hopes for you.”
McGrath had been on the force for more than twenty years, possessed a photographic memory, and had introduced modern scientific investigation methods, including a department identification bureau. He had always played straight with me—until the Judd case.
“I’m doing okay,” I said.
“That’s what I hear. But I want you to know that I really fought for you. I tried. Wanted to make you take two weeks’ vacation during the trial. Get you out of the line of fire when the testimony started. But the higher-ups were afraid Ruth’s lawyers might call you, or the Hearst press in L.A. might have gotten to you. The layoff was forced on me.”
“It’s okay, Captain. I’m a happy ending kind of guy. The bigs got their conviction, even though the evidence showed she acted in self-defense, and there was no way she could have cut up those bodies and stuffed them in trunks by herself. I’m not sure Judd’s lawyers were even smart enough to call me. And I got to start a new business in the worst economy in American history.” I smiled.
