But I fought dirty. When he reached for the pistol, I grabbed one of his fingers with both my hands and torqued it in a direction nature didn’t intend. I felt the finger snap, heard the bone and cartilage separate. He screamed, lurched back, and fell out of the car, landing on his back. I rose right up after him, leaped out of the car-without even opening the door. I had a foot on his chest and the big Python in his face. Freckles was also in my field of fire, raised up on his elbows staring at me, blood streaming out of his nose.
Kate was being pulled from the car by the big guy. She had received a nasty blow to one eye, and I could see him reaching for her holster, with her desperately trying to keep his hands away. High-voltage panic shot up my spine.
There was no time for negotiation. I kicked Muscle Man in the nose to stun him, took a chance on Freckles staying down, and ran to the other side of the car for a clear shot. I got within five feet, dropped into a combat stance and leveled the Colt Python at the chest of the big Tenor. I did some quick arithmetic: six.357 hollow-point bullets, three targets, shaky hands, and my Speedloader reloading magazines were in the glovebox. And all that assumed nobody from the shadows decided to get a piece of us.
I was not articulate: “Die, asshole.”
He stared at me, stared at the gun. A large drop of sweat materialized on his forehead and ran to his eye.
He sighed. “Fuck.”
He let go, and Kate used her suddenly free arm to deliver a nasty haymaker. He sprawled on the asphalt, holding his face. I noticed Freckles was on his feet, thinking about intervening. When I moved my gunsights to his chest, he took off to the south toward Lincoln. I could see Kate tense, ready to give chase.
“Let him go,” I said. “We can find him through his buddies here.”
The Tenor looked at me mournfully. Kate had a wild look and had retrieved her semiautomatic and handcuffs.
“Face down on the ground,” I ordered, keeping my finger on the Colt’s finely machined trigger.
I looked around: the street was empty. Everyone was gone. I said merrily, “Toll booth is closed.”
But Kate mouthed something silently, looking at me. If I had been a lip reader, I would say she called me a bastard. And she said, “You’ll pay.”
Chapter Six
“Dave, I continue to be amazed…” Lindsey paused to watch Luis Gonzalez slam a single past the second baseman. She cheered like a banshee, took a sip of beer, and continued. “I am continually amazed that a bookworm like you gets into such trouble.”
It was Saturday night and we had our usual nosebleed seats at Chase Field, our way to take in the Diamondbacks-unless Peralta was treating and we could enjoy his season tickets two rows above the home dugout. One of the surprises about getting to know Lindsey was to see her evolution into a rabid baseball fan. This night the D-Backs were six runs ahead of the Braves headed into the eighth inning, a margin comfortable enough even for a fatalistic fan like me.
“You haven’t been a street cop since you were in your early twenties.” Lindsey continued, a carefully kept scorecard on her lap. “So how come you get in a confrontation with some drug dealers and you know how to save your bacon?”
“Luck,” I said. “And truck knowledge.”
Lindsey said, “Truck what?”
“Truck knowledge,” I said. “It’s the stuff you know so deep that you can get hit by a truck and still remember. Like good training at the Sheriff’s Academy. You learn moves that kick in even if you’re tempted to panic. That’s truck knowledge.”
“I like that.”
“It was a phrase I learned from Dr. Milton.”
“He must have been a character,” she said. “I wish I could have had a chance to meet him.” She put a hand on my leg. “But your scrapes with the wild side of Phoenix scare the hell out of me. You need to stick to the library; History Shamus.”
I could still feel a stranger’s rough fingers digging into my neck. Rolling my head from side to side only exaggerated the soreness. Lindsey was right, of course. We had been lucky as hell. The confrontation beneath the overpass could have turned out very differently, very unhappily. Somehow I had a gene in me that let me remember my training, and fight back when I was scared-even though most people living comfortable, middle-class lives would have been terrified into paralysis. And I had been lucky.
I sat back high above home plate, surrounded by 30,000 friendly strangers, and felt glad to be alive. Phoenix had come a long way from the dusty little farm town that my great-grandparents discovered when they came to Arizona before statehood. In good ways, with big-city amenities like the beautiful downtown ballpark, with its retractable roof, air-conditioning, and right-field swimming pool. And bad: with the rough characters like the kind Kate Vare and I encountered the day before.
They were in Peralta’s jail now, wearing stripes and eating green baloney. But a fleeting hope that they might somehow be connected to the old FBI badge-what with the one scumbag’s comment about taking and selling Kate’s badge-had led to nothing. They were ordinary drug dealers and low-life generalists seeking whatever criminal opportunity presented itself. So we were still nowhere on the investigation. The medical examiner was behind on autopsies and cranky, so we didn’t even know if the old guy in the pool was a homicide. My request to see the FBI file on John Pilgrim’s death was somewhere in the outer rings of bureaucratic perdition. There was nothing to do but turn off our pagers and cell phones and go to a baseball game.
When the game ended in triumph, we spilled out with the crowd, down the big escalators, past the murals with scenes of Arizona, past the dedication to the People of Maricopa County. That was when two burly uniformed deputies intercepted us.
“You David and Lindsey Mapstone?”
I asked what the problem was.
“Sheriff Peralta needs you in Scottsdale immediately.”
I started to protest, but they were already hustling us into a service elevator. “We’ll drive you,” one said.
“We couldn’t reach you on pager, sir,” his partner said.
“Can’t I just call Peralta on the phone?” I asked.
“No, sir. He was very specific. He wants us to bring you.”
“What’s in Scottsdale?”
“I don’t know, sir. We were just told to bring you.”
I tried to imagine what was on Peralta’s mind. The sheriff’s personal security detail cost the taxpayers of Maricopa County more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. So much for the High Noon sheriff making a lonely stand. So I could see him going to extravagant lengths to lasso me, if I had given fresh cause for annoyance. But I had duly updated him on the nowhere status of the Pilgrim case, and endured his amusement and critique of the fight with the drug dealers beneath the overpass. This errand was surpassing strange.
As we drove east on the Red Mountain Freeway using emergency lights, I knew this was no Peralta highjinks. Lindsey knew before me. She had fallen into a watchful silence that was so Lindsey. We sat on the slick vinyl of the backseat, closed in behind the prisoner screen, behind two silent deputies. She held my hand tightly. The city slipped by, the lights of three million people. The lights of airliners taking off and landing from Sky Harbor. The lights of the squad car reflecting off the freeway underpasses. City of lights. In the hot and smoggy ugly seasons, when we were short of spectacular sunsets and clear mountain views, nighttime favored Phoenix. Exit signs to the Piestewa Freeway north, the Chinese Cultural Center, Papago Park, and downtown Tempe. The Papago Buttes looming in the twilight. We rejoined the street grid at Rural Road, kicked in the siren, and headed north into Scottsdale.