Mapstone. I tell nobodies like Mike Peralta what to do. I can step on you just like a bug.”
“I don’t doubt it,” I said. “Which made Copeland even more puzzling to me. Why would somebody like you need muscle when you have all this power?”
“Well, what on earth do you theorize, Professor?” he asked with extravagant sarcasm. “Pray tell me what you see.”
I looked at him hard and said, “I see a loser in debt to the mob.”
I expected him to shout or break down, but he just leaned back and regarded me with a disdainful patrician calm. “You are a fool, David. Two minutes ago, you could have had a cushy job-teach a couple of classes, fuck the beautiful young coeds, draw a check from the taxpayers. Now…”
He paused and sipped his drink. Then he cut his food and began to eat.
“Now,” he said pleasantly, “I am going fuck you like you have never been fucked. You won’t be able to find work as a school janitor when I get through. And then one night, when your guard is down, dear socially challenged Dennis will be back, and you will die. He has a real sadistic streak.”
I said, “The Rico Verde Cattle Company, Brent.…”
He shook his head and laughed softly. “You are very persistent, David.”
“I have a thirst for knowledge.”
“Yes, I suppose you do,” he said. “Rico Verde was very good to me. My name wasn’t associated with it, of course. But I made a tidy profit, which is essential for a young man with political ambition and no money.” He was picking apart the dried-flower arrangement.
“What about your family’s money?”
He snorted. “There was none. A college trust fund, tightly controlled. Then nothing. That was my old man. In the 1960s, everybody in America made money, except him. A former governor no less. He refused to profit from his name or connections. He was weak. Sam wasn’t weak. Sam knew money and power. If that put him into debt with unsavory people, it was worth it.”
“And if thousands of people bought Rico Verde land that didn’t exist?”
“I guess I don’t feel anything for them,” McConnico said. “I hope they voted for me. I remember calling that year for very strict sanctions against the real estate frauds that were ruining our state.”
“So you are a hypocrite as well as a crook.”
“Oh, David, to ascribe hypocrisy is to assume there is a just God and a moral universe. We know that doesn’t exist. If it did, where is my punishment? Where is your justice? History is written by the victors-isn’t that what they say?”
“And what about your cousin, Rebecca?” I asked, feeling a numbness in my feet. “If you’re a victor, how do you live with that, McConnico? Just a kid, really, came out west thinking she could get a little freedom but still be safe with her family. Easy prey for your ‘strong man’ Sam, right?”
He blinked at me twice, then blinked twice again. “Nobody knows what happened to Rebecca. You said it was a serial killer. I believe that.”
“I believed it once,” I said. “Then I found out about Rebecca’s secret lover, a distinguished man who visited only at night. And I found out she was pregnant when she was killed. And I found out Sam Larkin came by his mob connections by marriage, so leaving his wife wouldn’t have been healthy-even if he intended to do it.”
“Sam helped her,” he said, a hint of pleading in his voice. “When Dad got her the job at the law firm, she couldn’t even type.”
“Helped himself,” I said harshly. “And when she came back from Chicago, knowing she was pregnant, she decided to confront him.”
“He couldn’t leave Aunt Louise!” he hissed. “Rebecca knew that!”
“First they made love. She’d been gone a month, after all. Then she told him she was pregnant. They fought. He flew into a rage.”
“He never meant for it to happen!” McConnico hissed, boring into me with his eyes. “I’m the only one he ever told-when I was thirty years old. How do you think it made me feel! It was like this ‘thing’ I carried around inside me all these years. I wanted it all to go away-Jesus, I was a kid when this happened-and I thought it had. Then you show up.”
There was a movement behind him, and Peralta slid out a chair and sat. McConnico looked disoriented. He looked at me and then at Peralta. For a long moment, all we heard was the luminescent hush that attaches to conversations in very expensive restaurants. McConnico’s face grew so red, I thought he was going to have a stroke.
“You were recording this, weren’t you?”
Peralta said, “Senator, you have the right to remain silent.…”
“Don’t you Mirandize me, you son of a bitch!” he shouted. A waiter discreetly cocked his head in our direction.
“Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law.…”
“Peralta, your career is dead if you go through with this. Do you hear me!”
“You have the right to an attorney.…”
“If you want a future in politics in this state, Peralta, you are to forget this ever happened!”
“If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you.”
“I own your ass!” McConnico cried. “You do what I tell you! You are to leave this room and get the tape and bring it to me. If you don’t…”
He stared at Peralta, who was impassive and grim. McConnico was breathing faster. “Senator,” Peralta said, “let’s step outside quietly.”
More time passed. McConnico started to sob silently. “This isn’t what you think, Mike.”
“It’s time to go.”
“He’s twisted everything,” McConnico wagged a finger in my direction. “I had nothing to do with any of this!” He was outright bawling now, snot and tears running down his face. Peralta’s expression hardened.
“Senator,” he said. “Since you own my ass, you know that if you don’t get out of that chair and walk outside quietly with me and Deputy Mapstone”-Peralta looked at me and his eyes smiled-“I’m going to handcuff you and carry you out like the sorry sack of shit you really are.”
Peralta nodded to the waiter, who approached timidly. “Check, please.”
Chapter Twenty-six
The next night, a big storm swirled in from the south and east. Thunderheads congregated over the Superstition Mountains and spilled north to the peaks of the McDowells. But they just hung in the sky, looking fat with rain and promise. I pulled off the Red Mountain Expressway and turned north into Scottsdale, cursing the unchanging heat in the city. Maybe we would end up like the Hohokam. Maybe all our cleverness couldn’t overcome the eternal logic of the desert. The wind pushed a tumbleweed across the expensive cross-walk brickwork of Scottsdale Road. I veered onto Goldwater Boulevard and found the address Lorie Pope had given me.
It was an old adobe house, set back from the exclusive galleries that lined the street. A relic of the old farm village of Scottsdale, soon to be gobbled up by the wealthy appetite of the world-famous resort city. I drove slowly past, pulled around the corner, and got out. I had the Colt Python and two speed loaders on my belt. I didn’t have to do this alone. Shouldn’t have, by Peralta’s later reckoning. But somehow, the past month had created its own little obsessive clockwork inside me. I was ready to see things through now-wherever they led.
The door to the adobe was ajar. I was about to push my way through, when I heard men’s voices.
“I can’t believe you’re still alive. You’re like some devil that won’t die.” It was an old-man’s tenor voice, driven as much by breath as by vibration of vocal chords. I sank back into the shadows of the porch.
“None of this had to happen,” the voice said. “If that Mexican sheriff and that goddamned history teacher hadn’t gotten back into it. In my day…” He chuckled, an odd, unsettling rumble. “Well, in my day, you knew what would happen.”
Silence. A very long silence. The wind whipped against the door and made it creak. The adobe felt rough and reassuring against my hand.
