Phoenix Noir

I used her fancy shower and felt better than I had in a month. Downstairs, I stopped at the smoke shop and nearly made it out the door. But he was fast for a fat man and suddenly his big saggy face was inches from mine.

“Well, Frank Darrow’s son. How’s Strawberry Sue this fine day?”

I moved back a step so I didn’t have to smell his cologne. “I’m sure she’s good.”

He laughed, a disconcerting gurgling sound, and offered me a cigar. I shook my head. Duke Simms was in his fourth term as a Phoenix city commissioner, but he wore suits and smoked cigars that didn’t come with a municipal paycheck. I wished I’d never met him.

“Who are all these people?” I indicated the crowded lobby.

“Businessmen, entrepreneurs. You know what that word means?”

“Friends of yours?”

“Yes, indeed. This is a business-friendly city, Jimmy.”

“Why the hell aren’t they in the service?”

“Now, don’t be that way. They’re supplying the air bases, building our defense plants.” His chest swelled and he ran his stubby fingers down his lapels. “This town is changing, son. You’re not even going to recognize it.”

I shook my head and tried to walk past him, but he blocked my way.

“Come outside, son,” he drawled, “I was just thinking of you.” He wrapped an arm around me and steered me out onto the sidewalk, far enough away from the door to give us some privacy. Simms wore a bright red tie and had a matching handkerchief in his coat pocket. An American flag sprouted from his lapel. “What’s going on down at the Espee these days?”

“What do you want, Simms?”

“Such a blunt young man, and after having had a good time just now.”

My fingers ached from making a fist.

“I need a little reciprocity,” he went on. “Just a little shipment coming to the freight station tonight.”

“Things are different,” I said. “It’s wartime.”

The gurgling came again from the back of his throat. “Is that why I had to pay to bring in thirty new clean girls from Texas and Oklahoma? Wartime, yes, indeed. Now, son, we have an understanding.”

“Tell me about a girl who had her foot cut off by a train west of town.”

He ignored me and put his hand on my bad shoulder, digging his fingers in. I set my face so the pain wouldn’t show. “Our understanding is you get to be entertained by Miss Sue complimentary, and you do some things for me. It’s worked out well. And it’s not as if Strawberry Sue is a spring chicken. Get it? If you went back on our deal, who knows …?”

He released my shoulder and the sensation of knitting needles probing somebody else’s flesh replaced the pain. I managed, “You’re a son of a bitch.”

“I am,” he agreed. “But you have to live with certain disagreeable realities.” He smiled through yellow teeth. “Here’s what I need.”

I rode a crowded streetcar back downtown, then waited for a long string of boxcars to be pulled along Jackson Street before I could walk the block to the depot. They told of faraway places: Baltimore and Ohio, New York Central, Pennsylvania, Frisco, Missouri Pacific, Burlington, Denver, and Rio Grande Western. Anywhere but here. The station sat at the end of the street, gracefully reigning over the surrounding hotels and warehouses. Mail and Railway Express Agency trucks crowded before the long building adjacent to the waiting room.

The Western Union sign hanging from one arch of the building was like a beacon for me. I wasn’t sure what the hell the brass wanted me to do about the girl attached to the foot, but I could send wires to station agents east-and westbound from Phoenix. Had anyone reported a passenger who didn’t arrive? Had any conductors noticed anything funny on their trains? Later, I’d take a car and check the rail yards, the Tovrea stockyards, Pacific Fruit Express icing docks, the bridge over the Salt River—make sure the line was secure, whatever the hell that meant. It didn’t seem to have much connection with the severed foot. Logan was conveniently gone.

When I was finished, I walked back downstairs to the waiting room which was nearly deserted. Out on the tracks, a switch engine was moving baggage and mail cars, but the next passenger train wasn’t due to depart until 4:30. The high ceiling of the room held a fog of cigarette smoke and dust, caught in the rays of the sunlight. Over by the newsstand, a couple of young GIs were horsing around, their uniforms new, their faces untouched by death. For just a second I saw myself in a magic mirror, May 1918, and my shoulder throbbed and everything in the world seemed broken. A bird colonel brushed past, glaring at me as if he expected to be saluted. The big wooden benches looked lonely. On one of them, a bum pretended to snooze under a sweat-stained Panama hat. One of the ticket agents watched me from under his eyeshade, then cocked his head as if he were trying to toss it as a shot put. From that direction, two women were coming my way.

“You’re the railroad police?”