Maybe Peralta nodded, but the man stood. He handed each of us a card with his name and number. No address.
“What’s your line of work, Mister Smith?”
“Between jobs.”
Peralta didn’t push the question so I let it be.
Felix shook our hands. He gave me a long, vise-like shake. I gave it back as hard as I could and met his stare full on. If he was packing, my peripheral vision wasn’t good enough to pick it up.
“I hope you don’t mind if I also check you out.” Peralta’s voice snapped the moment.
“Not a bit.”
Felix pivoted and pulled out a platinum money clip. From this, he handed the big man a driver’s license. When Peralta had written down what he wanted, he gave it back and thanked him.
Felix let the money clip fall into his pocket. “You can’t be too careful.”
He turned and walked to the door. As he opened it, a hot gust from the outside caught his left cuff, raising it briefly. Above the pricey loafer on his foot, I saw something that looked like it was out of a Terminator movie. A lower-limb prosthetic, very high-tech, titanium and graphite. He definitely hadn’t received it through the average health-care plan. I had read about ones embedded with a microprocessor that were worn by wounded soldiers.
When I looked up again, I saw him watching me watching him. The yellow eyes hated me.
3
“Feeling guilty?”
I did a little. I walked to the front window and raised the blind. Felix the Cat was sitting in a Mercedes Benz CL, silver, new, insolently bouncing back the sun’s glare. The driver’s window was down. Who needs air conditioning when it’s only 108? He had a cell phone against his head and he was talking animatedly, very different from the stone-like expression he had mostly shown us. He didn’t look happy.
“A rig like he had on his leg would only be issued to a disabled veteran.” Peralta made more notes as he spoke, his large head and shoulders hunched over the desk.
I let the blind fall and turned back toward him. “The cartel could afford it.” I told him about the car, which was not issued by the V.A.
He looked up. “Mapstone, you see Zetas and Sinaloa in your sleep.” His tone softened subtly. “Which is understandable, after what you went through.”
Yes, I was jumpy. But I saw other things in my sleep.
“I can guarantee you that Chapo Guzman doesn’t even know who you are,” Peralta went on. Chapo was the boss of the Sinaloa federation. And maybe he didn’t. But his lieutenants did.
“Did you catch the tat?” I asked.
He nodded and went back to writing. “Everybody has tattoos now.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe.” No smile. This passed for raucous Mike Peralta humor. I didn’t laugh.
“We shouldn’t take this case.”
“Why not?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” I prowled around the small room, absently slid out a file drawer, closed it. “He paid in cash.”
Peralta opened the envelope and counted. He peeled off five grand and held it out to me. The bills looked as if they had come out of the U.S. Bureau of Engraving that morning. I made no move to retrieve them. Someday soon I would need to set up an accounting and tax system in the computer if we were actually going to have a PI business.
Peralta gently tapped the Ben Franklins. “Paying clients are nice.”
“Cash,” I persisted. “Who pays in cash? A criminal.”
“That’s why you’re going to run a background check.”
This was a man who until recently had bossed around hundreds of deputies and civilian employees. Now only I was available. I made no move to pick up the phone. “He says his last name is Smith. Smith? Right.”
“Some people are actually named Smith.” He left my share of the retainer on his desk and slid the envelope containing the remainder into his suit-coat pocket.
“And his sister has a different last name?”
“Families are complicated nowadays. Lindsey and Robin had different last names.”
Bile started up my windpipe. Lindsey and Robin. I wanted to curse him. I bit my tongue, literally. It worked. I gained deeper knowledge about the provenance of a clichéd expression. And I said nothing.
Peralta, typically, bulled ahead. “How is Lindsey?”
“Fine.” How the hell should I know? She’s only my wife, a continent away physically and even further in the geography of the heart.
“When did you talk to her last?”
I told him I called her on Sunday. I called her every Sunday, timing it so I would catch her around noon in D.C.
“She’ll get tired of Washington and Homeland Security,” he said. “It’s a temporary gig, right?”
“I guess.”
It was a temporary position that seemed to have no end.
“When she’s ready to come home, we could use her here.”
I said nothing. Yes, she was the best at cyber crimes. That was the job she did for Peralta when he was sheriff. But the last place my wife wanted to be was back in Phoenix.
I started coughing again. Three wildfires were burning in the forests north and northeast of the city. The previous year had been the worst wildfire season on record and we were off to an ambitious start now. It was the new normal. Yesterday the smoke had combined with the usual smog to obscure the mountains. Somebody flying into Sky Harbor would never know why this was called the Valley of the Sun. The gunk was sending people with asthma to emergency rooms and making me cough. Quite an irony for a place that once claimed clean, dry air that had made it a haven for people with lung ailments.
But that was the least of the reasons why Lindsey didn’t want to be here.
Sitting back down, I said again, “We shouldn’t take this case.”
Peralta’s obsidian eyes darkened further. “Why?”
“Felix the Cat in his fifteen-hundred-dollar suit, paying you in hundred-dollar bills. He’s hiding something. Maybe Zisman had a mistress or not. Maybe Felix is using us for some vendetta against Zisman. The guy’s pretty clean from what I remember. He actually came back home to Arizona after making it big and has tried to help out poor kids. Now here’s some dude in an expensive suit who wants us to play morals police.”
“He only asked us to investigate a suspicious death,” he said. “Remember, Felix bridled when you implied Grace was involved with this Zisman.”
That was true. Why was I fighting against taking this case?
Peralta swept his arm wide. “Half the bigs in Phoenix stash their mistresses in San Diego condos. Big deal. But we have our first paying client. Have a sense of celebration, Mapstone. This might not lead anywhere. It probably won’t. If not, we’ll refund most of his money. Bringing the family comfort and closure is a big thing. We can get out of town for a few days, go to a nice, cool place.”
I was still about to gasp from Mike Peralta using the word closure. I managed, “You go. I’ll hold down the fort. Who knows, we might get another client.”
“You’re coming with me. You know San Diego.”
“It’s changed a lot since I lived there.”
“Well, you used to live there.”
I tried not saying anything.
“You won’t see Patty.”
I could feel my cheeks warming. “This has nothing to do with Patty.”
“I know you,” he said.
Yes, he did. He had known me as a young deputy he trained. And then all the years I was away teaching, finally ending up in San Diego. And he had known me when I was married to Patty in San Diego. One marriage dead. Another on life support.
“It’s been a long time, Mapstone. She probably doesn’t even live there any more.”
I stared at the wall. Patty would never part with that house in La Jolla.
The room was still. Only the sound of intermittent traffic on Grand Avenue penetrated the walls. Then a short train rumbled past and the sun started coming through the blinds. Peralta pretended to ignore me.