Phoenix Noir

Five minutes later, I dropped off the train into the rocky ballast and found my footing. The air tasted like dust and locomotive oil. There wasn’t much out here: the single main line that ran through the desert to Yuma and Los Angeles, a few Mexican houses, the Jewish cemetery. Then there were the fields, regimented rows of green with lettuce, cabbage, and alfalfa running out along the table-flat ground until it met the mountains and the sky. Stands of cottonwood bordered the irrigation canals where I used to swim on the oveny summer days. Now, in January, the air was dry and cool and familiar. I couldn’t believe it was already 1943.

The town was changing. It had slept through the Depression like a kid in a fever dream, but the new war had brought Air Corps training bases, a new aluminum plant a ways from town, a camp for Kraut POWs, and endless streams of troop trains. Patton had trained his tank corps down by Hyder. The paper said Phoenix’s population was now an unbelievable 65,000. Out here Van Buren petered down into a two-lane road, concreted over by the WPA. I could see somebody had gotten past the shortages and rationing to throw up some temporary housing a little north of the tracks, ratty little one-story jobs made of cinder blocks. They would probably tear it all down once the war ended.

I adjusted my hat and tie and walked toward the crowd a hundred yards back down the tracks. It didn’t look good. Too many suits, and not the Hanny’s special I had on, but nice ones, and men in them who were all looking at me. Fifty feet away, on the other side of the track, stood a new Lincoln and, outside it, four tough-looking guys carrying Thompsons. Just a routine job. Before I got far, Joe Fisher walked up, moving fast on his wide, thick legs.

“Bull, what’s all the company about?” He nodded toward the men in suits.

“Beats me, but looks like Espee brass.”

“Your problem,” Fisher smirked. His face wasn’t built for it. It was thick and immovable, the color and texture of adobe.

“Who are the ones with the Tommy guns?” I asked.

“I was going to ask you that.”

Fisher was a Phoenix homicide dick, and he wasn’t a bad guy when you compared him to his pals, one of whom awkwardly crossed the tracks and poked me in the chest.

“Jimmy Darrow.” He spoke my name accusingly. “This ain’t a railroad problem. Take a powder.”

Frenchy Navarre’s coat was open so you could see the two revolvers he carried in shoulder holsters. He wanted you to see them. He had a failed boxer’s face and a killer’s heart. I’d seen a lot of guys like him in the war, the Great War. My war. I pushed his hand away just slowly enough, tossed aside my cigarette, and walked past him.

More railroad honchos than I’d ever seen in little Phoenix, Arizona, surrounded me. The introductions were perfunctory: the general manager, a vice president, the head of the mechanical department, and the chief special agent. Names I had only seen on company stationery and timetables.

The chief special agent did most of the talking. “Darrow, you need to work with these local officers to get this cleared up, and I mean soon.”

“Sure,” I said. Best behavior. “Any dope you can give me on this?”

Heads shook adamantly.

“Son, we need you to double-check everything on this line, make sure it’s shipshape.” This was the basso of the general manager.

“Yes, sir.” I stood awkwardly, waiting to be dismissed.

The chief drew me aside. He had the type of kindly face that I had grown to hate on sight.

“It’s wintertime, see, and all the bosses are here for the nice weather,” he said conspiratorially. “So they have nothing to do but go out and do our jobs for us, get it?”

“Sure.”

In a louder voice, he said, “We need to make sure this line is secure. I want a report by tonight. Let’s make it 8 p.m. Sharp.

I’m at the Hotel Adams.” I said my yessirs all over again. The chief took my arm. “Remember, serve in silence.” I waited for them to climb into a shiny black Caddy, then I lit a Lucky.

Another train trundled slowly by, the big grimy 2-8-0 locomotive making the ground shake. Southern Pacific Lines, proclaimed the tender. It must have had twenty cars, old Harriman coaches, faded black from smoke. Through the open windows, I saw the passengers. Black and brown faces in olive green. Colored troops. They looked with curiosity at our little party. The locomotive smoke sent me into coughs that made my lungs feel like they were on fire. For a moment, I bent over with my hands on my pants legs while my head stopped spinning. I felt better when I took a drag on my cigarette. After the train passed, I crossed over to where Fisher and Navarre had parked their Ford.

“Here it is,” Fisher said, standing by the open trunk.

He pointed to an old citrus crate. Big Town Oranges, the label said. Inside I found a bulging, bloodstained towel. They let me unwrap it.

“You find it this way?”