Phoenix Noir

“Okay,” said Luis. “I’ll take you there, but I ain’t got time to wait for you and bring you back.”

“That’s okay, that’s no problem. I just need you to take me there. Thank you.”

The drive took about five minutes. The guy clumsily tried to make conversation, and Luis went along with it. “Okay, right here,” the guy said, pointing to an apartment complex. Luis slowed down and the guy got out. “Thanks a lot, man. Really.”

“Sure,” said Luis. The guy tried to pay him for the gas, but Luis shook his head and drove away.

The neighborhood was nicknamed Gangs R Us, and the cops were going there more and more often, trying to show a presence. Luis passed a police car waiting at a corner. When the cop saw the New Mexico plates, he thought Luis might be either a visitor who’d gotten lost or a drug dealer doing some interstate networking. Either way, he fell in behind him and turned on his lights.

When Luis saw the lights, the panic rose up inside him like vomit, and he fought to control it. He knew Miguel hadn’t reported the car stolen yet, but even if it was just that he had a light out or something, the cop would ask to see a driver’s license.

Luis pulled over and turned off the engine. He watched the officer get out of the car and walk toward him. When the cop was almost to his window, Luis started the car and took off.

He turned a corner, hit the brakes, jumped out of the car, and ran. He heard the cop car approach behind him. Luis ran harder, shrieking air into his lungs, looking for cover, a place to hide. There wasn’t any.

“ Hey, asshole! Stop right now or I’ll shoot!”

Luis stopped. Raised his hands. Turned around.

The cop had gotten out of his car and was pointing a gun at him. “Lie down and put your hands behind your back.”

The concrete warm against his cheek. The handcuffs closing around his wrists.

Madison Street Jail was only a short distance from the bar where he’d spent the evening. He was booked in and finger-printed and put in a cell.

It was known as the Horseshoe, and it was like no jail Luis had ever heard of. People would be rotated from cell to cell so that they lost track of time. The cells they put him in were completely covered with men. There were men sleeping curled around the toilet that had shit dripping off the sides and piss all around the floor. Men were sleeping on top of other men. Some were using toilet rolls as pillows. They lay on the trash that was scattered everywhere from the sack lunches that were provided. The smell was like a kick in the face by a dirty foot.

No one is sure how long Luis stayed there, but it wasn’t very long.

Jeremy Ruvin should have been a cop. He loved cops, and cops loved him. Like many veteran cops, he was a legend in his own lunchtime. But Ruvin wasn’t a cop. He was a reporter.

He had spent twenty years at the Phoenix Weekly, a free sheet that was distributed throughout the city. It was part of a national chain of weekly papers, and it regarded itself as the only real news outlet in the valley. This wasn’t much of a boast; Phoenix was a city without a real newspaper. The main daily, the Arizona Republic, was almost devoid of news and existed to further the interests of the corporations that were developing the city. Its rival, the Tribune, had a publisher who openly supported the banning of reporters—including the paper’s own—from government meetings to discuss whether public money should be given to aid corporate development. A famous local swindler once observed that in Phoenix, when you try to sell people out, they take the first offer.

The Phoenix Weekly was a tabloid full of long, turgid stories that few people read. But Ruvin’s stories won Arizona Press Club awards every year, and had been doing so for as long as anyone could remember. Although his stories were as slanted as those of his peers, they were packed with lurid detail. The cops gave him access that they gave to no one else. Because, no matter what the facts might be, Ruvin would always make them look good.

This was something they needed. Phoenix was among the leaders of the country when it came to unjustified police shootings. The city had to pay out millions in lawsuits, and more were pending. But in the world of Ruvin, every cop on the force was a heroic figure who only shot or beat up un-armed civilians when it was strictly necessary. He never actually lied in print—he just stayed away from stories that might show the police department as it really was.

Ruvin had few hobbies. The only thing he cared about was his identity as a reporter, and the only people he hung out with were the cops and prosecutors he wrote about. In his mind he was famous, his world a black-and-white movie in which he wore a raincoat and fedora with a tag that read PRESS, and talked out of the side of his mouth. He imagined the raincoat and fedora so vividly that when you were in his presence you felt like you could almost see them.