bore you.”
We ordered drinks. Bobby wanted a kir royale, and instructed the waiter meticulously on its construction. I settled for a Bombay Sapphire martini, straight up, one olive.
Bobby was full of pleasantries and solicitations, asking about Peralta, giving me best wishes at such a trying time for the Sheriff’s Office. Peralta had only spent the past fifteen years trying to put Bobby in prison forever. I had been close enough to see that Bobby’s elegance masked a cruel gangster, a man who rose from an Iranian exchange student to become one of the richest men in Phoenix. Bobby’s American dream had been paid for with drugs, prostitution, and murder. But he was undeniably charming, and not with the bad-boy musk of criminals. No, Bobby was a learned man, a cultured man. He gave to all the right local charities. Once he had saved my life.
“I don’t understand why you didn’t want to come here,” he was saying as the drinks arrived. “Durant’s is a Phoenix institution. Grown-up. Classy. Fully of history. Just like you, Professor. Or, I should say, Sheriff.”
“Well, Bobby, I guess it was a reluctance for the media to see the acting sheriff having dinner with a disreputable character like you.”
His lips maintained their curl of amusement but a flush crept into his fine cheeks. “What is the country song? ‘All my rowdy friends have settled down.’ That is why I have kept my distance as you took over as sheriff. People would not understand. But, Dr. Mapstone, you called me this afternoon, remember? You may be ashamed of me, but I know you need me.”
And he was right.
“Bobby, you used to own that place down in the riverbed, Terry’s Swedish Message Institute, right?”
Bobby sampled his kir royale. “Very nice,” he said. “Do you know the Ayatollah Khomeini spent years in Paris before coming back to ruin Persia? Me, I would have stayed in Paris…” He sipped again. “Why are you asking me this?”
Lindsey said, “He’s calculating whether various statutes of limitations have run out.”
Bobby ignored her. He leaned forward on the table and fixed me in his black eyes.
“David, you are starting to acquire some of Chief Peralta’s quirks, no? This fascination with character assassination. Combined with your fixation on the past. If I had ever owned Terry’s”-he sipped again-“that would have been many years ago. Back in the era of disco in America and revolution in my homeland.”
He reached forward quickly, and I could sense Lindsey tense her arm toward the holster concealed on her right thigh. But he only wanted bread. He broke off a piece and daintily buttered it, careful to set his knife at a precise angle on the bread plate.
“Did you see the profile of me in
I said, “Well, if you had owned Terry’s Swedish Message Institute-just hypothetically speaking-I imagine you would have run across the name ‘River Hogs.’”
The waiter reappeared and we ordered dinner. This would be an interesting expense to walk through the department’s financial services bureau. After the man went away, Bobby regarded me with something new in his eyes.
“You know, David, the essence of dramatic irony is conveyed by the play
I sipped my martini. Bobby liked to talk.
“River Hogs,” he said. “I have not heard that name for many years. Not since I…” A flock of snowbirds went past on the way to a table, a flash of pink and green and laughter. Back home in New Jersey the landscape was gray and the temperature was in the 20s.
“And?” Lindsey said.
“Let me ask you a question, David,” he said. “Where have you heard this name? Why is this important to you now?”
“It’s connected to a major investigation,” I said. “You know I can’t say more.”
He sat back and nodded his head. “Of course.”
“The River Hogs,” I prompted.
“Well, David, they were your people,” he said. “The River Hogs was a gang of deputies.”
“Maricopa County deputies?”
He nodded.
“And this was, what, a pinochle club?”
Bobby shook his head, lightly jostling his movie-star hair. It was starting to go gray, which made him look even better.
“That was a long time ago,” he said. “But one heard things. And they were not good. The River Hogs offered protection to certain kinds of businesses, in exchange for certain kinds of, let us say, reciprocity.”
I reached for my drink too fast. “This is absurd. I worked in the East County patrol district.”
“David, you asked me,” he said. He paused, then added, “Now you know why my relationship with the police has always been so-what is the right word? — textured.”
“Then why didn’t I ever hear about these rogue deputies?” I demanded.
He said, “Maybe we moved in different circles.”
I realized my shoulders were rigid bars against the banquette. I made myself lower them, relax. “Are these people, these deputies, still in business?”
“I would not know that,” he said. “And, because I know you will ask, let me emphasize that I heard things, only that, I made it a point never to know more, and never to know the identity of individuals. It seemed like the way to maintain a healthy lifestyle.”
After dinner, I just had to drive. I launched the BMW into the river of headlights flowing east on Camelback Road, and we passed 7th Street, 16th, 24th, headed in the direction of Scottsdale. It was definitely high season, the streets crowded with tags from Ohio, Ontario, Minnesota, New York, and Massachusetts, and Arizona tags on the kinds of cars so bland that they could only exist in the fleets of rental-car companies. Lindsey held my hand and we took comfort in the alchemy of silence and city lights.
“I turned the log over to Internal Affairs,” I said as we missed the signal at 44th Street.
“What else could you do, Dave?”
I just shook my head. “I didn’t even want to know who else was in the book. There’s such a thing as due process. Even if this stopped twenty years ago, we’ve got evidence that could tarnish good cops. Who the hell was Dean Nixon? A bad cop. I owe it to everybody to make sure we do this right.”
“You sound like you’re trying to convince yourself.”
“Maybe it’s not badge numbers,” I said, not believing it. “Maybe it’s something else.”
“Partial zip codes?”
I took a left at Arcadia Drive. The oleanders and citrus trees gave way to the arched mass of Camelback Mountain, sitting blacker than the night sky, directly ahead. The road began to rise.
“I need to stay out of this and let IA do its job. The feds might get involved, too. I just need to stand aside.”
“But you won’t,” Lindsey said quietly, proudly.
Arcadia made a hard right, turning into a street called Valle Vista Road. Off behind us you could see why. The city lights expanded grandly behind us, an electric empire flowing out to the far mountains.
“Oh, I love this view,” she said, turning in her seat to take it in. Her hair glowed darkly in the reflected light.
I came to a closed gate, immersed in rock and hedges. The car sighed into park. “This should be it.”
“What is it, Dave? Your old college make-out spot?”
“Look.” I pointed through the landscaping to a modish adobe house perched out on a crag. “It’s Camelback Falls.”
“Wow. Pretty cool spot. Doesn’t look like anyone’s home.” The house was as dark as the street was deserted. “Do you know who owns it now?”
“No. I just wanted to see it. In a way, this is the last message I have from Peralta.”
The city twinkled back at us. Across the Valley, the TV towers on South Mountain beat a tempo in red lights.
