investigate some loose ends surrounding the early-’70s murder of a local soul singer. The story was inspired by the real-life slaying of Arlester “Dyke” Christian of funk/R&B group Dyke and the Blazers, whose big hit “Funky Broadway” few realized was based on the main drag in South Phoenix. And then there’s Navajo writer Laura Tohe’s bad-ass riff on the femme fatale convention when her womanizing protagonist meets his match with a lady who just ain’t human. This is but a sampling of the dark and diverse tales you’ll find in Phoenix Noir.
I hope you enjoy this collection. The stories represent our city in all of its contradictory glory, the good and the bad, urban blight and stark natural beauty, everything jumbled together and served up smokin’ hot, just the way we like it.
Patrick Millikin
Phoenix, AZ
July 2009
PART I
THE BIG HEAT
BULL
BY JON TALTON
Downtown
Union Station
I should have been suspicious when Logan said it was a routine job. It wasn’t that there were no routine jobs, only that Logan lied routinely. He was a short man with toad lips and a head that was bald and blotched except for a small tuft of dark hair just above his forehead. Always sitting behind his desk made him appear even shorter.
“Get out to Twenty-seventh Avenue, know where it is?”
He knew I did. I was one of the few people who had actually been born in Phoenix. I tamped out my Lucky Strike in the big ashtray on his desk. “It’s just fields out there.”
“Yeah, well, they found a foot at milepost 903.”
That sounded pretty routine. People fell under trains and lost things. It had been a lot worse a few years ago, during the Depression, with all the bums and alkie stiffs.
“The Golden State will drop you off.”
My suspicion made me light up another cigarette. “The Golden State Limited is going to slow down to let a bull get off two miles from here?”
He pulled the cigar from his mouth. A string of saliva kept it tethered to his fat lips.
“Bull. I hate that shit. You’re a special agent for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Have some pride.”
I took a drag and drew it down to my shoelaces. I walked to my desk, opened the drawer, and pulled out my Colt .45 automatic, taking my time about slipping on the shoulder holster and replacing the jacket.
“Go, you son of a bitch!” he hollered, spitting tiny tobacco leaves across the room. At the door, I heard his voice again: “And be on good behavior for a change. Got it?”
I got it, all right. I took the back stairs out of Union Station, avoiding the mob of young guys in uniform in the waiting room. I crossed the brickwork of the platform and made it to one of the dark green Pullmans on the Golden State just as the whistle screamed highball and the big wheels under the cars started moving. I flashed my badge at the conductor and he let me on, giving me a vinegar look. He didn’t want to be slowing down for any damned bull. I let him brush past me and I stayed in the vestibule. It wouldn’t be a long ride. The town passed by out the door. Over the red tile roof of the Spanish-style station, the Luhrs Tower marked downtown. If I turned the other way I could have seen the shacks and outhouses south of the tracks. Warehouses and freight cars gradually gave way to open track.
Five minutes later, I dropped off the train into the rocky ballast and found my footing. The air tasted like dust and locomotive oil. There wasn’t much out here: the single main line that ran through the desert to Yuma and Los Angeles, a few Mexican houses, the Jewish cemetery. Then there were the fields, regimented rows of green with lettuce, cabbage, and alfalfa running out along the table-flat ground until it met the mountains and the sky. Stands of cottonwood bordered the irrigation canals where I used to swim on the oveny summer days. Now, in January, the air was dry and cool and familiar. I couldn’t believe it was already 1943.
The town was changing. It had slept through the Depression like a kid in a fever dream, but the new war had brought Air Corps training bases, a new aluminum plant a ways from town, a camp for Kraut POWs, and endless streams of troop trains. Patton had trained his tank corps down by Hyder. The paper said Phoenix’s population was now