The Night Detectives by Jon Talton Page A

the little matter of withholding evidence. You didn’t tell the Phoenix cops about our client. I didn’t tell the San Diego cops about Grace’s business, or about the flash drive.”
    â€œYou gave them the pimp.”
    â€œSure, but only that he was a guy threatening Tim when I showed up. I told them that’s all I knew. Seems to me, if we’re not pro-active, the bad guys will come to us, and if we don’t solve the case, the good guys could come to us, too, and not in a good way.”
    He sighed. “I guess my point is, that I can take this one, if you want to bow out.”
    Now he hurt my feelings. It was that petty and selfish on my part.
    I said, “No way.”
    â€œAre you sure you want to do this?”
    I told him that I was sure.
    He strode over to his desk and picked up his hat.
    â€œThen bring your breakfast and saddle up.” He pointed to my desk. “You might want to leave your fancy headgear here.”

17
    Up Grand Avenue, we had a fast ride cutting northwest through the checkerboard street grid of Phoenix and Glendale.
    â€œSo where are we going?”
    â€œTo see a guy I know,” Peralta said.
    â€œA guy you know?”
    He nodded. It was going to be that kind of day.
    â€œI want to talk to Larry Zip,” I said.
    â€œNot yet. Read the report. Then I want us to strategize before we interview him.”
    With that, he fell into his customary silence. What he was feeling from the contradictory events of the past few days, I wouldn’t hazard a guess. Peralta’s emotions were a deep ocean trench where leviathans stirred.
    I distracted myself with the ritual obligation of memory.
    I remembered when produce sheds and the remains of icing platforms for refrigerator railcars lined the Santa Fe railroad that ran parallel to the highway. I remembered passenger trains. Farm fields separated Phoenix from what was then the little town of Glendale. In grade school, we rode the train to the Glendale station. I even recalled one or two dilapidated farmhouses sitting right across the tracks.
    Now it had all been filled in. Although the railroad was still there, the area around it mostly consisted of tilt-up warehouses, along with anonymous low-slung buildings, most with for-lease signs, and a gigantic Home Depot. Passenger trains were long gone. So, too, was the agricultural bounty that the Salt River Valley growers sent back east by rail. The children and grandchildren of the farmers who owned this land were living in places like San Diego thanks to the profits made selling it for development.
    The road soon clogged up and stayed that way for miles. Much of Grand Avenue in the city of Phoenix had been turned into flyovers, back when the planners, such as were allowed here, thought about turning it into a freeway to Las Vegas. Like so many Phoenix dreams, this one didn’t work out.
    As a result, when we reached the “boomburbs” of Peoria, Sun City, Sun City West, and Surprise—yes, that’s the town’s name—Grand hit a six-point intersection at least every mile and other stoplights in between. And nearly every light was red. Traffic was miserable. The built landscape was new, cheap, and monotonous—made to speed by in an automobile. Smog smudged the views of the mountains.
    Most of these had once been little hamlets on the railroad, but now they were home to hundreds of thousands populating the subdivisions that had been smeared across the broad basin that spread out from the actual Salt River Valley toward the White Tank Mountains and was labeled, incorrectly, “the West Valley.” They came from the suburban Midwest or inland California and most thought life couldn’t be better.
    The metropolitan blob was slowly working its way northwest to Wickenburg, a combination quaint former mining town and home to celebrity rehab centers. I loved Wickenburg. It was authentic and charming, everything suburban Phoenix