Phoenix Noir

Rhonda drove down one of the side streets and parked, then Mike hopped out, headed for the parking lot. I slouched in my seat, a drunk snoring off a bender. Through slit eyelids I watched him saunter toward the back of Applebee’s, and for an instant he looked straight at me. It was dark, some serious distance separated us. Even so, I sat stock-still, wondering if I’d been made.

He turned away and ducked inside the concrete dumpster enclosure. Two other men with eyes on the door reported they had visual, and we had a man out front too, in case Mike tried to run that way. Surveillance units got in position to take down Rhonda when the time came.

At half past 11, the kitchen crew trooped out, propped the back door open, and dragged out their slimy black mats, sudsing them up, hosing them down. I kept up my ruse, dripping with sweat but not moving, sipping air through the window crack. Mike stayed put too, even after the kitchen crew vanished again, leaving the door open as they mopped the floors. After midnight they humped on out again, collected their mats, and dragged them back inside.

A whisper crackled on the radio, “What’s he waiting for?” Another whisper snapped back, “Off the air.” We were all raw from the heat, testy from sitting still so long. Over the next hour, the employees came out in ones or twos, lingering for at most a smoke before driving away. Finally, the manager trudged out, locked up, not carrying a deposit bag—he’d left it in the safe—then got in his car and left.

Mike waited another fifteen minutes before sliding out of the dumpster enclosure. Hands in his pockets, he meandered across the parking lot, shooting one last glance in my direction. Minutes later, surveillance confirmed that he and Rhonda were headed back home.

We waited in place another two hours. Mike might come back, I thought, try to burglarize the place, clip the trunk line on the alarm, pop the safe. Finally, I called in to Rooney, the graveyard sergeant, to report. “I want everybody to stay put, Roon. The money’s all there, he’s coming back in the morning when they open up.”

“I’m calling it off,” Rooney said. “Your guys have been stuck in their cars for six hours now. It’s still what, ninety-five degrees outside? Besides, from the sound of it, you got made.”

“The sound of what? You’re not sitting here.”

“I need a team to report to the rail yards. Call just came in. Somebody made off with two dozen cases of Heineken.”

I almost spit. “You’re pulling my guys off because a pack of kids rifled a boxcar?”

“We’ve got a squeaky victim.”

“Meaning who?”

“Meaning the Westbrook family.”

The Westbrooks, wholesale distributors throughout the state, in-laws at the statehouse, a cousin in Congress. Somebody asks you what it’s like to be a cop, I thought, tell them this story.

I got home to my apartment about 3, showered the sticky grit off my skin, and crawled into bed. I still wasn’t used to sleeping by myself back then and I lay awake awhile, puzzling the whole thing through. Get a cop alone, find him on a day he wants to be honest, he’ll tell you the cases that bothered him most always involved a suspect who someway, somehow, reminded him of himself. And I knew Mike Gallardi pretty well, I thought. Down deep, where it mattered, he was weak. That’s why he liked power, not just over Rhonda but the people he robbed—gunpoint, the terror in their eyes. Do what I tell you. Like a cop, or his bent idea of one: a guy who gets what he wants, even hammers his wife, and never pays. I was going to change that. I’d be the one who finally made sure he suffered, if only for the chance to tell myself I was different. I was better.

Eventually, I drifted off and dreamed I stood in the doorway of a house off in the desert somewhere. A wounded dog limped toward me through the moonlit chaparral. As it drew close, I looked into its eyes, and saw my son looking back at me.

The next thing, the phone was ringing.

It was Rooney. “I don’t know what to say, Nick. Apple-bee’s got hit this morning, 8 o’clock.” Some throat-clearing. “Just like you said.”

I rubbed my face, checked my watch. 8:30. “How much?”

“Twelve grand.”

Hardly a take worth risking your freedom for, I thought. But this wasn’t just about money. I wondered if Mike had driven back alone, or if he’d dragged Rhonda along with him again. And maybe she didn’t feel bullied at all. Maybe, for the first time in a long, long while, she felt married.

“We’re never gonna catch this guy without a wire.” I was laying out my case to John Tally, the county attorney. “He’s getting cocky—cocky crooks get sloppy and that’s when people get hurt.”

Tally tented his hands, rocking in his chair, sunlight flaring in the windows behind him. An ASU man, politician to the bone, he was tan and fit, pompous, cutthroat. “I’ll approve a wire,” he said finally. “And a task force, but I want hard numbers on bodies.”