Concrete Desert by Jon Talton

Author:Jon Talton [Talton, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General, C429, Kat, Extratorrents
ISBN: 1590583779
Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
Published: 2011-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

I should have gone to see Peralta Wednesday morning. Instead, I called his secretary to put off our meeting. She said he had been called to a meeting with the county supervisors and was in a very bad mood. “So it’s probably just as well,” she said. Just as well: She didn’t know the half of it.

The morning paper had news of a gunfight between rival gangs in Maryvale, which once upon a time not so long ago was a neighborhood synonymous with suburban safety and blandness. And there was the obituary of the veteran TV anchorman who had read the evening news when I was growing up. My grandparents would let me watch the ten o’clock news, and this man with a blond pompadour and black plastic glasses had been a figure of reassurance, a bookend on the days. He had been retired for years, of course. But I had been away. Little by little, everything in my past in this city was passing.

I tried to act normal. I went over to Phoenix College and lectured to my students in the survey course on the origins of the Civil War. Faces—hot, eager, bored, distracted. Most of the younger students were hearing this for the first time, so rotten is the teaching of history in high schools. Once, that would have motivated me or depressed me, but that day I just wanted to get through it. Slavery, states’ rights, the passing of the compromisers from the scene. “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.” I kept seeing the faces of Rebecca Stokes and Phaedra Riding. I am the keeper of murdered souls.

All I had wanted was a summer at home to get my bearings and some easy work from Mike Peralta. Instead, I was in the middle of—what? Three unsolved murders. Two warnings to quit looking into something. Thoughts of Lindsey—too many thoughts. Too many questions. You wouldn’t think anxiety and paranoia would grow so much in a city of endless sunny days, tanned goddesses, and opulent resorts. You would be wrong. It was a concrete desert and this was high summer.

I went to a gun shop and bought two sets of speed loaders for the Python and three boxes of rounds heavy enough to drop a gorilla. I wore extra-extra-large shirts, attempting, with little success, to conceal the bulk of the gun on my hip. So I just started clipping my star on my belt all the time and carrying openly.

I finished cleaning up the mess at home. After work, Lindsey came over and we drank Bloody Marys and listened to Billy Strayhorn and Charlie Parker CDs. It would have seemed reassuring if I hadn’t felt the constant heavy tug of the Colt Python on my belt. Lindsey carried a baby Glock 9-mm automatic in her purse, nine rounds compactly held in the magazine, “ready to rock ’n’ roll,” as she put it.

That night, we sat out in the garden and defied the heat, listening to the cicadas and the city noise.

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