Valley of lights

  Stephen Gallagher

  Stephen Gallagher

  Valley of lights

  PART ONE

  The Shell Game

  ONE

  I was within two blocks' drive of Paradise when the call came over the air. It was a 927, a general code meaning to investigate unknown trouble. The dispatch girl was offering it to Travis and Leonard, both of whom were checking IDs for warrants in the scrubby little park around the Adult Center on Jefferson; knowing that I could have them as backup in three minutes or less if the 'unknown trouble' turned out to be something bigger than anticipated, I cut in and took the call. Squad Sergeant responding, one minute or less.

  The Paradise Motor Court was one of those places that could make a weekend break at the Bates Motel look halfway attractive. It was on the fringe of that section of Phoenix known as The Deuce, an area of old warehouses and railyards which they reckon got its name during the war from the two-dollar tricks on offer around the streets. I'd first been thrown in there some twelve years before, fresh out of the Academy with my Police Officer 1 grade, and I'd found it to be shabby and scary and inexplicably exciting. As Skid Rows went it hadn't grown any prettier, but my main thought as I pulled onto the Paradise forecourt was to wonder whether the 927 was going to bring me any surprises. I could usually count on a couple of surprises on a good day, even now; some were welcome, some less so.

  The clerk was outside and waiting for me, waiting to flag me down. He wore a Hawaiian shirt that was both too large and too loud for him, and he was hopping around like he'd been wired to a battery.

  'Sergeant Volchak,' I said. 'What's the problem?'

  'Something here you ought to see,' he said. 'But come and listen to this, first.'

  He disappeared into his office, and I followed him. I had a vague memory of the place from when it had been called something else, but nothing clicked. He was already behind the counter as I came through the door, lifting the handset from the twenty-line switchboard and holding it out to me. One of the board lights was on, but I could see that the key wasn't down. I took the handset and listened, holding it close to my ear but not touching.

  I could hear breathing, hoarse and difficult. Nothing else. It sounded like someone sleeping off a long, rowdy drunk. I looked at the clerk, who was wiping his hands nervously on his trousers, and said, 'You've tried calling?'

  'I've tried calling, I've tried knocking. Nothing works, it's like they're all deaf.'

  'They?'

  'Come on, I'll show you.'

  And then he was moving again, quick and jittery like before, dodging around me as if he was afraid I might grab him. I left the handset on the desk, and went out again into the hot desert air with its taints of asphalt and auto fumes. The steady drone of the Maricopa Freeway in the middle distance was almost being drowned out by a ghetto-blaster playing loud Donna Summer in the first of the units; windows open, screens unbolted, it was obvious that the Paradise didn't run to air conditioning. Even through the music I heard a panicky scramble as I passed by and the people inside caught a glimpse of the uniform. Give it about five seconds, I was thinking, and then somebody's stash would be making a fast trip down the toilet.

  I'd also remembered the last time I was here. It had been about two years into my service; a local prostitute had been found in one of the rooms, stripped naked and strangled on the bed. She'd had what appeared to be two pieces of cotton wool, one placed neatly on each breast; closer inspection showed that her nipples had been clipped off with shears, and the cotton wool was the breast tissue protruding through. It was something so unusual that the ten of us on the squad shift had all invented excuses to call by and take a look, one team at a time, until the shift commander had put a stop to it. I'd begun to wonder if the desk clerk was going to lead me down to the same unit, but then I realised that we'd already passed it. Whatever he was going to show me, I doubted that it was going to be as unusual as what I'd seen on that last visit.

  Just goes to prove how wrong you can be, doesn't it?

  'I'm new at this,' he said back over his shoulder as we turned the corner by a defunct-looking Pepsi machine. 'I need somebody to tell me what to do.'

  'What about the owner?'

  'I don't even know who the owner is. I've got an emergency number, but nobody's answering.'

  I tried to reassure him. 'Whatever's going on,' I said, 'I'm telling you, it's not the strangest thing you're likely to come across in this business.'

  He looked at me bleakly. 'Don't bet on it,' he said.

  We came to the last of the units. Beyond this was some empty parking space and then a high cinderblock wall topped with wire. Not a place, on the whole, that I'd have cared to spend any time in. The desk clerk stood out front and gestured me towards the window as if to say take it, I don't want it, the responsibility's all yours. I was aware that, some distance behind me, one or two people had emerged and were watching to see if anything interesting was going to happen. I stepped up to the window and looked inside.

  The sash was open an inch at the top, and some faint stirring of the air had caused the drapes to part down the middle. The bug screen and the darkness inside made it difficult to see anything at all, but as my eyes adjusted I began to make out shapes. Something that had at first looked like a bean bag resolved itself into a human form, slumped, halfway out of a low chair as if he'd fainted while sitting. The details weren't clear, but also in my line of sight across the room was the end of the bed with somebody lying on it. I could see a pair of soiled tennis shoes for this one, not much more.

  Just drunks sleeping off a party, I thought, remembering the heavy breathing that was being picked up by the dislodged phone, and I turned to the clerk and said, 'Who's the room registered to?'

  'A little s…' he began, but then he caught himself. 'A Hispanic guy. I don't think he's even one of them.'

  'Well… all I see is people sleeping. I don't know what's so unusual in that.'

  'For four straight days? It could have been longer. He registered weeks ago, he closed the drapes on day one and he musta sneaked the others in when no-one was watching.'

  'What about the maid?'

  'We're residential, maid service comes extra. She just leaves the towels and sheets outside, doesn't go in. What do you think?'

  I felt a definite stirring of interest. I said, 'I think you should get your pass key so we can go inside and find out what the problem is.'

  'And that's legal? I mean, I'm all square with the owner if I do what you say?'

  'Get the key, all right?'

  We went inside; or rather, I went inside and the little monkey in the technicolor shirt hovered in the doorway behind me. My first expectation, which was of the smell of opium smoke, turned out to be wrong; what hit me instead was a rank odor like bad breath and drains. I crossed the room and opened the window as wide as it would go, and then I turned to look at the place in the harsh angles of daylight.

  Nobody had moved. There were three of them. Slumped in the low chair opposite the window was a man in a grey business suit, an expensive-looking summer lightweight with the pants stained dark where his bladder had let go. He was the one who'd fallen against the phone and dislodged the receiver, as if he'd been propped awkwardly and hadn't stayed that way. The soiled tennis shoes on the bed belonged to a short, muscular-looking man in his late thirties, while over in the other chair by the key-operated TV sprawled a black teenager in a leather jacket.

  All three of them were inert, like corpses; but I checked for a pulse on each one, and they were all alive and steady. The arms of the man on the bed, who was wearing a T-shirt, showed no fresh needle marks or even old scars.

  I said to the clerk, 'Did you move anything when you came in before?'

  His face was that of an animal that had just been stunned prior to slaughtering. Perhaps he thought I'd read his mind; he probably didn't realise that he'd already given himself away.

  'No,' he finally managed. 'I didn't move a thing.' And then; 'Is it drugs?'

  'I don't know. How do I phone out from here?'

  'I have to connect you at the board,' he said, almost gratefully, and promptly disappeared.

  I eased the receiver out from under the man in the grey summer suit, and replaced it. He didn't react. I gently hauled him upright, and his breathing became better; I was also able to reach into his jacket now and take out his wallet, which proved to be empty apart from half a dozen credit cards which were all in different names and some of which were as much as two years out of date. Putting the wallet back – and fighting the gag reaction at the closeup odor – I noted that his skin was pale and almost translucent-looking, the way skin can go if it's kept in a cast or under a bandage for too long. It reminded me of worm flesh.

  The phone gave a single ring, and I picked it up. 'Okay,' the desk monkey said, 'just go ahead and dial,' so I did.

  'And don't listen,' I said as it was ringing out at the other end of the line, and I heard him hurriedly hang up before I got through.

  I requested ambulances, and also for a message to be passed along to the narcotics bureau. Something like this, I didn't see how it could be anything other than a drugs-related matter, although I'd no idea what kind of jag could produce this kind of total inertia. The three of them looked wasted, as if they'd been like this for ages; the black kid even looked as if he'd lost weight inside his clothes.

  And that was something else, I thought as I went outside to wait in air that was a little fresher. The three o
f them made a weird set; the only thing that they appeared to have in common was that they had nothing in common. A middle-class businessman, a sharp young black, and a white manual worker, probably unskilled. I had that cop buzz going in my mind, the feeling that I get sometimes when I think I've seen everything and then I run up against something new.

  The narcs got there before anybody else, screaming into the court in their confiscated white Porsche and doing a sliding stop on the gravel. They hopped out, leaving the doors wide open; Morrell and McKay, I knew them both slightly. To look at them you'd guess that, if they hadn't grown up to be drug cops, they'd probably have become users instead. Morrell wore an ear-ring, and was first inside; McKay stopped long enough to tell me that their sniffer dog had gobbled up the merchandise in the last dealer's apartment that they'd searched, had ruined their case against the man, and had put itself out of action for more than a week. Lieutenant Michaels, my shift commander, arrived in his unmarked white St Regis a couple of minutes after that, and as I was bringing him up to date the first of the ambulances finally made it and the forecourt really began to look busy. Lieutenant Michaels went inside, and I went over to the crowd of about six that had gathered and said, 'Okay, go about your business, this isn't a zoo,' and everybody moved back maybe a foot. The desk monkey pushed his way through with the registration card for the unit; Gilbert Mercado, the signature read. He'd paid up once a week, in advance, and in cash.

  Five weeks.

  Morrell and Lieutenant Michaels had to come out so that the paramedics could get in with a stretcher. The lieutenant was shaking his head and saying, 'I never saw anybody so stoned.'

  'Stoned?' Morrell said. He was looking considerably paler than when he'd gone in. 'Those guys are practically comatose. I started to turn one of them over and he just stopped breathing. Scared the shit out of me, just like he'd died. Then when I rolled him on his back, he started up again. What could do that to someone?'

  'You're supposed to tell us.'

  Morrell looked around at the logjam of official vehicles that was now blocking the court, and said, 'Well, as soon as the circus here gets out of the way, me and McKay are going to wait inside for the tenant.'

  'You better,' one of the paramedics said as he emerged with the front end of the stretcher. I could see straight away that they'd taken the man from the bed first, because his tennis shoes were the first part of him to emerge. 'Because these birds are all done singin.'

  That's what always gets me about paramedics; they turn up as jaunty as anything even at the worst carnage, and the whole subtext of their manner is that Your bad news is our good business.

  Morrell said, 'That's your expert opinion, doctor?' Laying heavy on the doctor.

  'I know brain-dead when I see it,' the paramedic said, unfazed. 'I'd a thought even a detective would recognise his own kind.'

  They were only going to be able to get two of them in the one ambulance, but there was another on call. If that came in the next couple of minutes then the court was going to get even more crowded. Lieutenant Michaels came over and said, 'You want to leave it with me now, Alex?'

  'Sure,' I said. I'd been there for more than half an hour already, and I had a squad to check on.

  I was almost at the corner with the rusted Pepsi machine when I heard the desk monkey shout from behind me, 'Hey, that's him! That's Mercado!' I looked up and found myself face-to-face with a small Mexican-looking guy who was just coming around the corner the other way. He was wearing an army surplus green T shirt and a baseball cap, and he was carrying a brown paper sack of groceries. He seemed strong and compact, someone who probably took regular exercise; he spent maybe a second looking at my uniform and then at the scene behind me, and then he simply dropped the sack and ran. He was out of sight even before the sack had hit the ground.

  Me, I can't move so fast. I've got strength, but I'm not light on my feet. Mercado was like a bullet. He was out of the court and into the street before I was even halfway to my car, and I knew that if I didn't get wheels under me then I had no chance of ever catching him. I was in the car and rolling, making the tight turn towards the street; and then in the next moment I was standing hard on the brakes as the second ambulance swung in and blocked my way, and we narrowly missed tangling radiators as we stopped nose-to-nose with less than a foot to spare.

  I popped the siren and the ambulance backed off, leaving me a clear run to the street, but I knew that I was already too late. Phoenix is mostly a city of wide roads and open spaces where a runner or even a walker is something unusual and easy to spot, bat none of that applied in the Deuce. I cruised out into the hot afternoon sun and made a circuit of the block, but Mercado had been swallowed up somewhere in the maze of side-roads and warehouse blocks. There was no point in stopping and asking for witnesses; everyone, I knew, would have been looking somewhere else.

  I drove back to the Paradise, calling in a description on the way but not expecting much to come of it. There was one significant detail that put a little hope into the action, however; Mercado was going to find it very hard to disguise the fact that he'd taken a serious beating sometime in the last few days. One side of his face around his eye had been swollen so much that the skin had seemed to be ready to split over his cheekbone. Fast as he was, somebody had been faster.

  Morrell and McKay were crouching over the busted grocery sack when I got there, taking samples from the broken jars and knotting them into little plastic bags. As far as I could see, the jars were all of some kind of baby food.

  'Jesus,' Morrell said as he scrabbled around in the dirt, 'look at me. My mother thinks I spend all day being a hero.'

  Lieutenant Michaels, who was standing over them and watching, said, 'How can babies eat that shit? No wonder they cry all the time.'

  'You find anything?' I said, but the lieutenant shook his head.

  'Nothing you could recognise. Maybe the lab'll find something.'

  'I don't think so,' Morrell said from down at ground-level. 'This is just goo-goo food. None of the jar seals is even broken.'

  I looked at the split sack again. It was just a mass of glass shards and colored pulp, like some smashed crystal insect with its insides all oozing out. Chocolate, peach, apple and banana.

  'So,' I said, 'we got a mystery?'

  'We got a mystery,' the lieutenant agreed.

  Travis and Leonard were still taking IDs when I caught up with them in the park, and they didn't exactly look as if they were loving every minute of it. It's dull, haphazard work, but sometimes it can throw up a result; closeness to the freight lines and the Plasma Center and the Salvation Army building gives the area a heavy turnover of transients, and random ID samplings have been known to turn up even outstanding homicide warrants in the past. Leonard was off somewhere on the phone to the headquarters computer room, and Travis was standing by their car chatting easily to the people who were waiting for their cards to be returned. One of them, an Indian girl named Maria whom I'd seen around a few times before, was offering to inlay Travis's belt buckle with turquoise. The three young men with her said that they were going over to the employment office to get their cards endorsed so that they could get jobs in Mesa… picking fruit, anything. Travis was staying quiet and letting them talk; friendly, but not forward.

  I asked, but nobody knew any Gilbert Mercado. Nobody had heard anything about a man of his description getting a beating, either. One of the young men started to tell me about an accident he'd seen two days before, a man hit by a state truck and thrown about sixty feet, a hole in his side the size of a thumb and pouring blood. One of the others said, suddenly, 'I had a coat ripped off over at the mission,' as if the grief of it had only now caught up with him. Their good nature was running down into nervousness as Leonard's absence with their documentation lengthened. The boy who'd seen the accident said that if there was nothing doing in Mesa, perhaps he'd move on down to Tucson and try there.

  Leonard came back – nothing outstanding – handed them their cards, and thanked them all. 'Hey, Phoenix,' I heard one of them saying as they drifted away, 'isn't that some kind of a bird?'

 

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