“It’s not solved,” Pham said, his voice dropping an insistent octave. “Look, this whole thing sucks, OK?”
He stared at me. All the win-win consultant lingo fled from his voice. He spoke so softly I could barely hear him.
“When the badge was found, I had no idea what I was getting into,” he said. “I acted in good faith bringing you in. I wanted this case solved. I’d never heard of it before. But I absolutely wanted to run it down. I knew you’d help us do that.”
He paused and stared at me. I stared back, and after a few beats he continued, his lips barely moving.
“As it turns out, the John Pilgrim case is still a sensitive matter in Washington. My bosses didn’t like the press conference any more than you did. And now they want the whole thing to go away.”
I thought about what Lorie Pope had told me of sealed records and stone walls, even though the case was more than fifty years old. I said, “There’s a chance to solve the murder of an FBI agent, and they just want it to go away?”
Pham nodded slowly.
I asked why.
Pham leaned in as if he were going to share a confidence. It was the kind of body language that makes the listener lean forward, too.
“Phoenix is a strange place, isn’t it?”
There were too many lines to read between. I said, “It’s an acquired taste, Eric.”
“I came here a year ago from Seattle,” he said. “The real estate people said the only place to be is North Scottsdale. So I live behind a wall-‘gated community,’ they call it-and I don’t know any of my neighbors. The homeowners association is like the Soviet Union, watching every aspect of how you landscape or roll out the recycling. The whole front of the house is taken up by a garage door-and this isn’t a cheap house. It’s all strange.”
“I live a mile from here,” I said, “on a real street, with front porches and neighbors who know each other and look out for each other. That’s the side of Phoenix I prefer.”
“I know,” he said, setting his silverware with military precision on the plate. “You live in the same house where you grew up. Although you haven’t been home for two weeks…”
I felt the illogical rush of the paranoid. It must have shown in my face.
“I wanted to check you out, Dave. To know that I could trust you.”
I just looked him over. I had always liked Lindsey’s use of “Dave”; somehow it foreshadowed greater intimacy to come, something I had greatly desired with her. With others, I had never cared for “Dave.” I was not a “Dave.” except with Lindsey.
Pham said, “John Pilgrim killed himself.”
I shifted my weight in the chair. My eyes wandered to other tables. Jerry Colangelo, the owner of the Diamondbacks, was in a hushed conversation with a very tall, expensively dressed black man. The president of Bank One walked by, followed by her pin-striped assistants. China rattled back in the kitchen.
I said, “If that’s true, why did the records indicate this was an open homicide investigation?”
“In J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, the special agent was supposed to be a superman,” Pham said. “His integrity, above reproach. His steadiness, unquestioned. In reality, John Pilgrim was a problem. He was a drunk and a disciplinary nightmare who was sent to Phoenix to clean up his act. He had symptoms of what we’d call depression. He’d threatened to kill himself before.”
“How do you know this?”
“It’s what my bosses told me,” he said. “Get it? Pilgrim was bad for the FBI’s image. They wanted this case forgotten as quick as possible in 1948, and nothing’s changed.”
“That’s nuts,” I said. “That was fifty years ago. The FBI’s had a few problems since then that are worse than an agent killing himself. Why is this such a big secret?”
“Because it’s a family secret,” Pham said. “And you’re not family. No offense. But you’re not only local law enforcement, you’re unorthodox, and an outsider. I find that appealing. But this wasn’t my call to make.”
“So Pilgrim stands in front of a canal, shoots himself, and falls in?”
Pham shrugged. He had his orders.
“And the badge just floated away,” I said. “Somebody picks it up, and it begins this wondrous journey around the pawn shops, junk drawers, and secondhand jackets of Phoenix.”
“That could be just what happened,” Pham said.
“Don’t you think that if the average person found an FBI badge, he would call the police and report it?”
“Maybe he thought it was a toy,” Pham said, unconvincingly. “Anyway, Kate says the homeless man might not have even known the badge was in his jacket. Kate says he probably got the jacket second- or thirdhand.”
Ah, yes. Kate. Bonnie Kate. I said, “The homeless men I notice are very aware of any fungible wealth they might come into contact with They check every pay phone coin return. And they’re not going to feel something sewn into a Levi’s jacket? The detectives found it first thing when they examined the body in Maryvale. Maybe George Weed had carried that badge around for years. Maybe Weed somehow came in contact with John Pilgrim. He would have been ten years old when Pilgrim was shot.”
“Look.” Pham said. “I don’t like this any more than you do. That’s why I said it sucks.”
I let the waiter take my plate away. “Fine,” I said. “End of story. Maybe Pilgrim doesn’t even have family left, anybody who would care what happened.”
“There is still family,” Pham said.
“Maybe I can talk to them,” I said.
“Impossible.”
“What about his partner, Renzetti?”
“No way, Mapstone,” Pham said. I had lost first-name status.
“So Renzetti is alive?”
Pham’s eyes widened when he was exasperated. “You don’t know when to quit,” he said quickly.
“Let’s just say I have a very demanding boss. He’s not going to care that the Bureau has changed its mind about me being on this case. Pilgrim and George Weed were both found dead in Maricopa County. I think he’d say that you don’t have a say in my involvement.” David Mapstone, doing his part for interdepartmental relations.
“Eric,” I said, forcing a slower, easier tone in my voice. “I don’t want to cause you trouble. But you won’t let me see the FBI files on the case. You don’t want me on the case. What harm would be done if you called retired Agent Renzetti and asked if he might speak to me?”
Pham said nothing. He faced his plate and absentmindedly ate the bread from the remains of his club sandwich.
Chapter Fourteen
The carousel at Encanto Park was empty. But, at the command of a maintenance crew, it spun around to calliope music, dispensing old-time joy for a PlayStation and DVD world. This was another part of Phoenix that up-and-comer professionals like Eric Pham never saw: the lovely old city park nestled into the Palmcroft neighborhood about half a mile from my house. What did it say about me that I preferred a habitat from the jazz age rather than the sprawl age?
On Tuesday afternoon, the park was nearly empty. Instead of families picnicking under the stately old trees, lovers lingering on the foot-bridges or kids fishing the lagoon, a few homeless men lounged on the grass. I lingered at the locked gates of Enchanted Island, watching the workmen at the carousel, remembering a ten-year-old’s memories in this park. Then, the little train ran every day, the lagoon was stocked with fish, and no one seemed afraid.
My legs and middle were still giggly sore from loving Lindsey two hours before. Somehow all the uncertainties and worries of the past two weeks had made us hornier, and we were in the process of having sex in every room, and on every piece of furniture, of our unknown host’s elegant tree house. Pictures of memory kept rerunning deliciously in my head. I came into the living room to find her sitting in a big leather chair. She wore a black summer dress with a quiet flower print and dainty black shoulder straps. I’m sure it was a demure dress, until Lindsey wore it. She was drawn up in the chair reading, a paperback propped on her naked knees, the dress riding up on her thighs, falling just right in the front to show a hint of cleavage. I put down whatever forgotten work I was doing and knelt down in front of her. Then, my hands stroking the soft, warm, taut skin of her leg. Her giggles turning into soft moans. Sliding the fabric slowly up her thigh, kissing her perfect smooth knees, pulling off the black flip-flops, sucking her toes. Gently, slowly, removing one tiny strap from her pale shoulder, then the other. The exquisite construction of her shoulder blades, her collarbones, her breastbone, her slender form. Dark tresses of hair fell into her face as she looked down at me, one renegade black strand trying to get in the side of her sweet mouth. She was wearing very white cotton panties.