When It All Comes Down to Dust (Phoenix Noir Book 3) (3 page)

She made a pot of coffee, poured a cup, sat at the desk in her bedroom and turned on her computer. Tubby Franklin jumped onto her lap and sat there, purring. “Well,” she said to him. “I guess I better figure out how I’m gonna pay for the cat food and keep a roof over your stripy ass. You don’t seem worried, so I guess I shouldn’t be either.”

She wrote a group email to about ten of her former colleagues.

Hey, guys –

You probably know by now that I no longer work there, as of today. I’m not going to get maudlin on you, but I just want to let you know that I had a great time during the past two years, and if you’re on the list for this email, you’re a part of the reason. So, thanks, and let’s stay in touch.

Laura

There was a knock on the front door. She went and answered it, and saw David Regier, the reporter who’d approached her after Frank’s parole hearing.

“Hey,” he said. “Remember me?”

“Yeah. I remember telling you to go fuck yourself. Consider yourself told again.” She shut the door.

There was another knock a few minutes later. Okay, she thought, I’m just in the mood. She yanked the door open.

It wasn’t Regier. It was a woman selling carpet cleaner. She was a few years older than Laura, and had a professional smile on her exhausted face. She was dressed neatly, but the clothes were cheap and she was sweating hard.

“No, thanks,” Laura said. “My vacuum cleaner does the job.”

The woman pointed to a patch of carpet just inside the door that was darker than the rest. “Come on. You call
that
doing the job?”

Laura was about to tell her she had just crossed the line from pushiness into rudeness, but something about the woman’s desperation stopped her, and she just said, “Yep.”

“And you couldn’t help out a working single mom?”

“Sorry. No.”

Not having to pretend anymore, the woman switched off the smile, turned and walked away without saying another word. Laura shut the door, and, with no warning, started to cry.

––––––––

B
oone lay on the couch in his apartment, with the door wide open. He’d have preferred to sit outside, but none of the chairs he could have sat on were comfortable with his leg in the mess it was in. They’d given him some Demerol for the pain, so it wasn’t hurting as much anymore, especially with the beer he was throwing down on top of it.

He was going to haul his ass to the fridge to get another beer, but he heard footsteps outside, and was glad, because he thought it meant Destiny was getting back from the store, and he could get her to do it for him.

It wasn’t Destiny who walked out of the sunshine and into the gloom of the apartment. It was a young cop, and he walked in as though it was his goddamn office or something, and he could walk right in the door without even thinking about it or even looking around.

“What’s up,” the cop said, a little bit of a Mexican accent to his voice. As he spoke, he sat down on a chair across from the couch.

“Who said you could come in here?”

“Nobody.”

“You got a warrant?”

“Nope. You can call and complain if you want to.”

“I will. What’s your name?”

“Ain’t got one of those either.”

“What do you want?”

“Just doing some community policing.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I came over to see how you’re doing, make sure you’re okay, after what happened.”

Boone wanted to tell this fucking beaner to get out of his apartment, and he wanted to start yelling for help if he didn’t obey, but something told him that wasn’t a good idea.

“I’m fine,” he said. “What do you want?”

“Good. I’m glad you’re fine. I’m fine too.” The cop smiled. “You know why I’m fine? I got a great job. I can do anything I want.” He looked at Boone and waited to see if he was going to say something, but he didn’t. “Like, if I want to pull out this gun and shoot you right now, you know what the law says has to happen first? All that has to happen is that I’m fearful that my life might be in danger. It doesn’t say what has to be happening for me to be feeling like that, just that if I happen to
be
feeling like that, I can pull out my gun and blow you the fuck away. That’s not exactly what the book calls it. It’s called ‘
use of deadly force.’
Pretty cool, huh?”

Boone prided himself on being mouthy, but he really didn’t feel like saying anything at all.

“Being a person of color, what I like the best about this city is that it ain’t as racist as it could be. I’m Mexican-American, if you didn’t know, and people always ask me if it bothers me that we shoot and kill so many unarmed
vatos
. Truthfully, it doesn’t, because we kill our fair share of unarmed niggers and white boys too, so it evens out. Like, you hear about the nigger in a wheelchair we choked to death? A lot of people said the reason the officers involved were cleared was because of the victim’s race, but I can tell you that it’s just not true. They were cleared because we get to do whatever we feel like. You ain’t black and you ain’t brown, but when I kill you right here in your shitty-ass apartment, nothing’s gonna happen to me. I might even get a commendation for bravery. Do you think for one minute that I’m joking?”

Boone shook his head. It was hard for him to talk, but he forced himself to. “Why are you gonna kill me?”

“Because I don’t like cocksuckers who talk to lawyers. And you’ve been talking to lawyers about suing Laura Ponto, haven’t you?”

“No, I won’t...”

“Bob Headman ain’t a lawyer? He was the last I heard. You gonna tell me you ain’t been talking to him? I don’t like lying sacks of shit either. Being lied to makes me fear that my life might be in danger.”

“I did talk to him, but I won’t any more. Somebody told me I should see about a civil lawsuit, and he said he’d work for me for a cut of whatever money he got me. She smashed my fucking knee.”

“Does it hurt?”

“Yeah.”

“Did they give you something for it?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me see what they gave you.”

“Why?”

“Let me see what they gave you.”

“They gave me Demerol.”

“I didn’t ask what they gave you, I told you to let me see it.”

The bottle of pills was on the dirty carpet by the couch, lying there next to Boone’s nearly-empty Budweiser. He picked it up and tossed it to the cop, who caught it and looked at the label.

“Demerol, sure enough. Nice to know you can read. I used to party on this shit a while back when I broke my thumb. You find it helps your knee?”

“Yeah, it helps.”

The cop put the bottle in his pocket, then looked at his watch. “Five-thirty. I’m guessing your doctor’s office is closed by now, so you won’t be able to call them for another prescription. Not that they’d be likely to believe you when you said you lost what you had. I’m gonna be feeling good tonight...”

“Come on. Please. It’ll hurt like a bitch without the pills.”

“Well, if you’re hurting, at least you know you’re alive. And that won’t last for long if you talk to any more lawyers. Feel me?”

“Yeah.”

“Have a nice day. I’m very glad to see that you’re doing well. Please think of your neighborhood police officers as your friends, and call us if you need anything.”

As the cop walked to his car, he took out a cell phone and made a call. “Ponto, it’s Diaz. Looks like everything’s cool.”

––––––––

T
he weekly paper came out, and the cover story was about Laura. It was long, and she didn’t read all of it, but she skimmed it enough to see that it included her testimony at the parole hearing, her threat against Frank, her assault on Boone, and her firing from her job. It accused the Phoenix Police Department of covering up for a former one of its own, and of intimidating Boone to keep him from pursuing charges. It contained anonymous quotes from cops who had worked with Laura during her own time in a uniform, and an account of how she once beat up an ex-boyfriend.

Thank God the photos of her they’d found were so fuzzy. At least she could probably go out without being recognized.

Pat called her. “Hey, how you doing?”

“Okay,” she said.

“You see the paper?”

“You call that a paper? Yeah, I saw it.”

“I didn’t talk to him. Nobody here did.”

“I know. He said so in the article.”

At nearly midnight, restless, she drove to a Denny’s. She sat at the counter and read the whole of the article as she drank coffee. The guy hadn’t gotten a single detail wrong, she had to admit. But a long article tracking her history of violence wasn’t going to make it easier to get a job in Phoenix.

And, as she looked around her in that Denny’s, looked at the mirrors and the fluorescent lights, she knew she didn’t want to leave Phoenix. She’d done it once before. After she quit the police department, she wasn’t sure what to do next, so she decided to blow town. She wandered for a while, took whatever jobs she could get, and ended up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. She got a job as a receptionist, and for about three months she liked it there. There were down sides – nearly everyone was a Christian, few of whom believed in anything Jesus Christ taught, and nearly everyone who wasn’t rich seemed to live in poverty. It was the only place Laura had ever been to where people were proud of being ignorant, and actually bragged about how little they knew or had experienced.

But, unlike Phoenix, it had a real downtown, a place you could walk around in, and a good public transport system. In Phoenix, there was nowhere to walk – many streets didn’t even have sidewalks – and a bus service that barely existed.  She lived in an apartment on a hill overlooking downtown Chattanooga. It was in a cold, generic complex the size of a village, with high rents and high bills and draconian penalties for late rent payments or refusal to commit to a long lease. The apartment buildings all looked the same, and each apartment had the ambience of the waiting area at a county clinic. At the entrance to the complex were signs that read “WELCOME HOME” and “WE LOVE OUR RESIDENTS.”

But at night she could look out of her living room window and see the city’s lights reflected on the Tennessee River. The bars opened late, and there was always someplace with live music within walking distance. It was the rudest, most unfriendly town she’d ever been to – nobody wanted anything to do with anybody they weren’t related to, or didn’t go to church with, or hadn’t grown up with, anybody who wasn’t exactly like them. But she wasn’t looking for friends, so it was an easy place to live.

One Sunday morning, she got up, ate breakfast and decided to take a walk. As she walked down the hill, the breeze brought the sound of the city as a warm whisper across her skin. She walked to the Walnut Street Bridge, which was claimed to be the longest pedestrian bridge in the world, though it wasn’t even the longest one in America. That day it was busy, with families sitting on the benches, couples holding hands as they strolled, other people jogging or walking. An old man sat on a portable stool, blowing on a saxophone.

About halfway across the bridge, Laura stopped and leaned on the rail and looked down at the river. It was as beautiful as she could have wanted, and as peaceful as she could have wanted, and she just didn’t want it.

She didn’t know why, but she knew that what she wanted was Phoenix. She wanted its furious dry heat and its sprawling ugliness and its kaleidoscopic mix of people and its sense that, every time you stepped outside your front door, you might get laid or get killed or anything in between. She wanted the Dairy Queen and the Denny's. Although she wanted to live, she also wanted the bars where swarthy men with bad mustaches will kill you just for something to do. She wanted the blues clubs, full of men in sharp clothes that later fall from their bodies like broken promises. She wanted the dark nights that are as hot as summer days elsewhere, and she wanted the sound of mariachi music and police sirens that blast through the still air. She wanted the brown landscapes, flat and empty except for advertising billboards. She wanted the indifferent mountains. She wanted the pickup trucks and the mesquite, wanted the sprawling development that ate up the desert at the rate of one acre every hour. She wanted the stories of the place, ghost stories, work stories, stories of killing and loving. She wanted the Virgin of Guadalupe, wanted the lowriders, wanted the geckos crawling on the walls of apartment buildings, wanted the men with dark skin and white cowboy hats, their women with big hair and big dangling earrings and tight clothes. She wanted the wide streets and constant sunshine. She wanted it and loved it, loved it like the heat of the Phoenix summer that threatens to make everything melt.

She wanted it, and she didn’t want this beautiful river or this historic bridge or the lazy music of the saxophone.

That evening, she ate dinner by herself at a Thai restaurant on Market Street, then walked to her apartment. Two of her neighbors were lying on a blanket on the grass outside, gazing at the sky. Laura looked up, and saw nothing. The sky at night in Chattanooga is dark and dead, like the screen of a computer that’s been disconnected. The night sky over Phoenix, though dark, pulses and glows, like a screen that’s just on “sleep”.

She had a truck in those days, an ancient Chevy. The next morning, she loaded her stuff into the bed of it, and what she couldn’t fit she just left behind. She gave a pissed-off Tubby Franklin a sedative she got at the vet, put him in a cat carrier, and put the carrier on the passenger seat. She drove right across Tennessee, North to Nashville and then West to Memphis, then took Highway 40 through Arkansas, Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, New Mexico. She stopped only for food and gas and sleep, and to feed Tubby Franklin and let him piss and shit. She always ate with her truck in sight. While still in Tennessee, she’d parked at a rest area and slept for a few hours in the driver’s seat, and then woke to find an entire family – Mom, Dad and some kids – trying to take things from the bed of her truck. When she jumped out and yelled at them, they didn’t even seem perturbed. They just stood there and looked at her. Then they found themselves looking at her gun as she pointed it at them, and they turned and walked away, got into their own truck – adults in the cab, kids in the bed – and took off.