“Who was this party?” I asked.
Peralta pursed his lips. “Barney. At the Jesus Is Lord Pawn Shop.”
I softly said, “Guns, knives, ammunition.”
Antonio said, “ATF inserted a deep undercover agent to pose as El Verdugo. He was one of their best. I gave him the snake’s head ring. You knew him by his real name, Jax Delgado.”
I heard Robin’s throat catch. My stomach burned. “You’ve known this all along? Damn you to hell, Mike.”
“The A.G. wouldn’t let me tell you.” Peralta folded his arms. “And ATF sure as hell wouldn’t. Amy Preston went nuts after you showed up at her house asking about the gun shop.”
“Why are you telling us now?”
“It just seems right,” Peralta said. “With this arrest, I think we’re going to be able to close the case. These guys somehow picked up Delgado’s trail and killed him. Maybe it was because they thought he was the real Verdugo and this was payback time. Maybe they sniffed out his cover.” He noticed my expression. “When they were torturing him, maybe he talked about Robin. Or maybe they followed him and knew where she lived.”
“The autopsy on Delgado said he’d been tased,” Antonio said. “That may have been how they initially took him down. These guys had a Taser. We’re going to show their photos to the staff at the FedEx shop where his head was shipped from.” His tone made it sound like so much freight. “See if anybody can pick them out.”
I said, “What about last night?”
“Because La Fam is working with the Gulf cartel to move arms,” Antonio said, “the Sinaloans also took out Mero Mero and his crew. They probably followed you last night. This hit squad was up here on serious business. My guess is Barney would have been the next patient on the torture table, for doing business with the Gulf cartel and La Fam. Maybe he’d get off easy. Lose a finger or an ear and have to keep supplying Sinaloa.”
“Slow down,” I said. “Jax made contact with Barney?”
Peralta nodded. “No Arizona jury is going to convict a licensed gun dealer for selling firearms, no matter how many people they kill in Mexico. With Jax, we had Barney on hiring a hit man. We thought we could get more. Evidence that he was selling firearms in bulk to the Gulf cartel. We could shut him down forever.”
Robin clasped her arms tightly around her chest. “Does this mean we’re safe?”
Both men said “yes” simultaneously.
“They ought to just legalize drugs,” Robin whispered. “All this death, and for what?”
Antonio said, “This isn’t about drugs anymore. This is about power.”
I was drowning in the bucket of information they had just dumped on us. “If he was on the job, why would he tell us his real name?”
Peralta shrugged. “Maybe he met somebody he cared about.”
Robin abruptly stood and strode out across the ancient linoleum.
I had many questions, but followed her out. She fell into my arms by the car and sobbed hard, her tears soaking through my shirt while a freight train trundled past, steel slamming upon steel.
19
The clippings from the old Phoenix Gazette told of how McNamara’s Liquors on Van Buren Street burned in the early hours of September 20th, 1940. The fire marshal said it was arson. Within two weeks, police had arrested Paolo DeSimone for what was now being called a “fire bombing.” The newspaper displayed a booking photo of a slender, hatchet-faced man with a pencil moustache. It listed him as an “itinerant laborer” and gave his age as twenty-eight. He had signed a confession, and unlike today, the case rapidly moved to trial within a month. DeSimone didn’t take the stand. The jury convicted him of arson and he was sentenced to ten years at the State Prison in Florence. That was the end of the news, and if the reporting was halfway accurate, things didn’t look good for Paolo.
But we would try.
My large office in the old County Courthouse had been full of police and court records from the 1910s through the 1940s. The county hadn’t been much interested in them, and over the years with Peralta I had amassed a wonderful library of old Phoenix crime. It was my anti-Google and had done right by me in dozens of old cases. Except for the boxes I had brought home in Lindsey’s car that December day, I had left most of it behind. And a quick check of the files I had showed little of utility. The Phoenix Police logbook showed a notation, written in efficient script, that the east-side squad car had been dispatched to a fire at McNamara’s Liquors at 2:21 a.m. on September 20th. It was still a fairly new innovation to have two or three radio-equipped cars out in the city late at night. The population of Phoenix was 65,414. The area within the city limits was maybe twelve miles.
The new cases were online, the old ones stored away in paper files. In theory, at least. I made a call and a friend from the county got me into the deep storage of the Superior Court clerk. Arizona v. DeSimone was not there. It felt strange being down at the county office buildings, seeing the line of prisoner buses parked and the corrections officers smoking outside the Madison Street Jail, except the sign had a stranger’s name on it as sheriff. I had no desire to have lunch, as I so often once did, at Sing Hi. I didn’t want to run into old colleagues from the S.O. or the county attorney’s office and have to make explanation, much less get angry over the treatment of Peralta.
It was a relief to be sent over to the State Archives, near the capitol. The building was new but the state’s financial troubles had cut the hours to nearly nothing and the crackpots in the Legislature were trying to take its space. Criminal transcripts might eventually make their way here, both for historical value and because the defendant had a right to appeal. In reality, the records were often a mess. This would especially be true for the DeSimone case. It lacked the notoriety of, say, Winnie Ruth Judd. Fortunately, we came at the right time; the archives were open. Within forty-five minutes a helpful archivist found the files we were seeking. Not much was left: maybe an inch of paperwork. We paid for copies to take with us.
Robin seemed happier after the catharsis of learning Jax’s true identity. She had been right about him. We would probably never learn more. Robin suggested that I give the dog tags to Amy Preston, the ATF supervisor; perhaps she could pass them onto Jax’s family. I had forgotten about them, and the idea alarmed me. This was, after all, evidence in a homicide investigation that we both had knowingly concealed. Better to let it be. She hadn’t argued.
But we talked a great deal those days, about ourselves, about history and art. She was a good companion. Our lives were complicated and yet simple. It felt as if we had been friends on a deep level for many years. Her presence eased the sting of not getting the ASU job, the gaping absence of Lindsey, and I didn’t worry too much about the future. Robin downloaded Chalino Sanchez songs from iTunes and we listened to them. I went running with her, starting to get into the best shape I had been in for several years. We made several visits to the art museum and I felt centered enough to read Kennedy’s book on the Depression and World War II. Light rail took us down to Portland’s for cocktails made by Michelle, the owner. The outside world didn’t hold its former menace.
We read the newspaper together. In addition to the news of the dreadful economy, the Legislature slashing everything from health care for children of the working poor to closing state parks, and the silly features written to make readers feel better, it contained several stories about the “cartel hit squad” arrested and facing charges. It didn’t mention’s the hit squad’s alleged murder of ATF agent Jax Delgado, of course. The reporter and editors also seemed oblivious to the larger implications of the arrests. So did the millions living here. Tea Partiers protested outside the Capitol against taxes, immigrants, and the government. They were too ignorant to know Arizona wouldn’t even exist as a habitable place without aggressive government action. Every day a new real-estate project slipped into foreclosure.