I noticed the car in the rearview mirror, so close I couldn’t even see his front bumper. Then he switched lanes and roared next to me. My stomach tightened. Down came the passenger window, and I could see the face of a thirtyish man in a polo short.
“Get out of the way, you asshole!” he screamed with a bucket-shaped mouth, his face suddenly crimson. Then he sped north on Third and soon disappeared. His back bumper held an American flag sticker with the words, POWER OF PRIDE.
I used to like this town. Phoenix was a sunny, dull place with no culture or ambition, but it had a sweetness and a good heart. Now we’ve got malls stuffed with people from Iowa and Wisconsin, low-wage workers in the call centers and landscape outfits and service joints, Indian casinos, mass-produced subdivisions, bigger money than you could imagine in Paradise Valley and North Scottsdale, 250 golf courses. But it’s a big hardboiled place where ordinary guys carry around their rage like an overstuffed wallet and everybody calls someplace else home.
I made it home with the horizon turning white and the wind picking up. A FedEx envelope was leaned up against the stucco wall. Lock the door behind me, feel the blessed air-conditioning, make a sweep of the house…back door locked, courtyard doors secure, closets clear, nobody hiding under Grandfather’s mahogany desk in the study. Out the picture window, the wind began slapping the palm trees insistently. I coughed instinctively, sat on the staircase with its floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, and stared out at the familiar old neighborhood. The envelope showed a return address from the University of California at Berkeley.
My old friend from grad school days had come through. The envelope contained five sheets of a typed report, from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence from 1975. The pages were black with the now familiar war paint of redacted information. But the report was clear enough. In 1944, a Soviet agent named Georgi Antonov came to Phoenix and set up a cover life as a refugee from Poland. He took a job as a waiter in a local restaurant. His real work was to pass along secrets from the American atomic weapons program at Los Alamos, New Mexico. By 1947, Antonov, who used the code name “Dimitri,” was spying on the nuclear test site in Nevada, always returning to his haven in the small city of Phoenix. A year later, Dimitri was ordered to return to Moscow. He remained in the United States-defecting to an FBI agent in Phoenix. The agent’s name was lost in a horizontal black slash. Dimitri died in 1972, having run a hat shop in Cincinnati for many years.
Dimitri didn’t kill Pilgrim. Dimitri defected to Pilgrim.
I said out loud, “Fuck!”
The wind responded with a loud moan, as if it were sweeping my theories down Cypress Street.
Soon I was caressing the spines of the books, recalling forgotten volumes. Lindsey and I had been reading McCullough’s John Adams before our private civilization had been invaded by the Russians. I could pick a hundred flaws in the book, but I had no grudge against popular history, as my colleagues in the professoriat did. McCullough got rich while the rest of us published obscure, unreadable papers-or went to work for the sheriff’s office. My finger lingered on the spine of Middlemarch, one of Lindsey’s favorites. I found one of Dan Milton’s books misshelved-with the novels rather than history. It was his insightful look at social change in the 1920s, Coolidge Jazz, a book that made me realize how much everything is connected, how nothing happens in isolation. Soon this reverie propelled me into the kitchen, where I made a martini-using Lindsey’s favorite Plymouth gin instead of my Bombay Sapphire-and then I settled in the big leather chair before the picture window. The closest firearm was in another room. I let it be.
The men came in with amazing ease. They were in the room before I could even move out of the chair. Somebody gave a command in Russian, and a tall man with a goatee and sad eyes aimed a clunky yellow plastic gun at me. Panic locked my legs in place. I tried to turn and roll out of the chair but it was too late. The Taser darts hit me straight on. My legs, starting to stand, collapsed as if the bones were suddenly liquefied. My abdomen was consumed in a great spasm. Men’s faces studied me with curiosity. The tall man held a straight razor, the blade rusty and chipped. I felt a wave of bile coming up my throat, then the room closed around me, black.
I usually know when I’m dreaming. Not this time. My eyes opened when the sweat from my forehead dropped into my lashes. The house was silent except for my panting and the soft whoosh of the air-conditioning.
Suddenly three cars materialized on the street. Two sheriff’s cruisers and a shiny black Crown Victoria. It was no dream. I bolted up from the chair, even as a pounding came on the front door.
“Let’s go,” Peralta ordered, looking cool in a cream-colored suit, the coat cut roomy to accommodate his Glock semiautomatic pistol. I stared at him for a long moment to make sure he was real. I started out the door but his meaty hand struck my chest.
“Bring your gun, Mapstone. You’re on the job.”
So I retreated back into the house, retrieved my Python and Speedloaders, locked up, and then followed him. He walked to the Oldsmobile.
“You drive,” he said. “I want to make sure you’re taking good care of county property.”
We sped over to the Piestewa Freeway and turned north, following the two sheriff’s cruisers. The speedometer needle was pushing against ninety, me driving and Peralta saying nothing. A quarter of a century ago, when we were partners, it was no problem to play the silent guy game and barely speak for an entire shift. But this time I was cranky after a few miles.
“If we’re on the job, where are we going?”
“DC Ranch.” One of the silver spoon developments in the McDowell Mountains. We sped on, climbing through Dreamy Draw and the North Phoenix Mountains and quickly reaching the 101 beltway. The big Olds engine seemed barely challenged; my foot had plenty of room between the accelerator pedal and the floor. I tried again.
“And what’s at DC Ranch?”
“Yuri.”
I felt an involuntary shiver. I glanced at Peralta, who stared ahead.
“If our intelligence is correct, we’ll find Yuri in the Page-Frellick House. Ever been there?”
“Nope.”
“It’s a custom job that backs up to Thompson Peak. When they built it in ’98, it was priced for $3.7 million, and a retired executive from Canton, Ohio, bought it. I went there once for a Christmas party, bunch of Republican bigwigs. The fireplace was bigger than my first apartment. Anyway, it’s been vacant for a year or so. The economy, you know. So they rented it out…”
“How did we find this out?”
“Your wife, Mapstone. She gets results.”
We got no closer than a command post just off Scottsdale Road. The parkway was blocked, and deputies and city cops were turning away homeowners in their Ferraris and Rolls Royces.
Peralta walked over to a redone bus that held the sheriff’s mobile command center. Beside a large golden badge, lettering proclaimed MARICOPA COUNTY SHERIFF’S OFFICE, and in smaller letters below, MIKE PERALTA, SHERIFF. My old friend had done OK. I slid my badge onto my belt, borrowed a pair of binoculars, and wandered around. This had been empty desert even when I was an undergraduate. As a kid, I would come out here with Grandfather to hike and target shoot. I remembered the preternatural silence, where even a buzzing fly sounded loud. Now it was the province of the superrich, retired CEOs looking for anonymity and Lasik surgeons from Minneapolis looking for a winter home. The houses dotted the rocky hillsides and perched above dry washes and arroyos. Walls and gates reminded anyone who forgot that this was private property.