City of Dark Corners by Jon Talton (easy novels to read .TXT) 📕

last year, and I’ll be supplying them when the stupid Eighteenth Amendment is gone this year.”

“And why would the State of Arizona grant you this? You’re just a kid.”

He struggled to hide his irritation. “Because important people patronize the disorderly house I own on the east side. And they wouldn’t want their wives to know about it, especially about the pretty colored girls they consort with. I have photographs.”

He let out a high-pitched laugh like a girl’s, a sound I never wanted to hear coming from him again.

“I see.”

“And it will be in your interest to have me as a friend and client.”

I didn’t think Marley had any more friends than a Gila monster. The difference was that the big lizard was prettier and shy. Having him for a client seemed freighted with corruption and complications. When I said nothing, he pulled a wad from his jeans pocket and peeled off five C notes, slapping them on my blotter. I hated to admit it, but now he was talking more persuasively.

“Consider it a retainer.”

My considerations were these: Marley was a punk, a thug, maybe a killer. I saw that in action when his bully boys took baseball bats and gasoline to the Okies. On the other hand, I didn’t need him as an enemy, especially not with a dismembered blonde carrying my business card hanging over me. What if one of the clients of Marley’s “disorderly house,” as he called it, was the county prosecutor? I might end up hanging like Ruth Judd. That could disorder my life in a hurry.

Also, clients were sparse now that I had the wire that Samuel Dorsey had reached Chicago. I still needed to pay seven bucks a week for my share of Gladys’s resentful time, fifteen a month for the office, another twenty for rent at my apartment, plus some walking-around money for haircuts and shaves, shoeshines and newspapers, and taking Victoria dancing.

The bills were new and crisp. Benjamin Franklin regarded me distantly, offering no wisdom. I felt like Eve in the Garden of Eden with the snake in cowboy boots.

“I have faith in you, Hammons,” the snake said.

“That makes me feel peachy.”

He dug in his pocket and produced a coin, slapping it on the desk. “Just so you know I’m serious in these hard times.”

It was a shiny twenty-dollar gold piece, Lady Liberty beckoning me. I was always a sucker for a woman in a robe.

Pulling out a pad and pencil, I wrote “Gus Greenbaum” at the top and underlined it. In fact, I’d heard the name when I was a cop, not much beyond that. I asked him to tell me more.

Marley said, “Greenbaum runs a gambling wire for the Chicago Outfit that serves the entire Southwest.”

“I thought you were tight with the Outfit thanks to Capone and the liquor business.”

“Smart guy,” Marley said, his lips barely moving. “That’s the point. Times change, and I want a piece of Greenbaum’s action.”

“So, ask your friends in Chicago.”

He broke his glare and looked into his lap, suddenly appearing younger.

I said, “They refused?”

“Looks that way.” When he looked up again his face was hard again, full of pride. “That’s why I need some leverage to get my way.”

When I didn’t respond, he continued.

“That where you come in, Hammons. This is my town!” He paused. “This is our town, I mean. Phoenix had forty-eight thousand people in the 1930 Census, a hundred fifty-one thousand in the county. That’s more than double where we stood in 1920. Way past Tucson now. We’ve got thousands of acres under cultivation—we help feed the country. This city is going places, provided Roosevelt can save the country as his supporters believe. We’ve been losing population in the Depression, but that’s not going to last. Someday this will be a metropolis!”

I didn’t believe it. “I rather like it as it is.”

“Of course, you do. But change is inevitable and better to be on the right side of it. That’s why I don’t want some hood from Chicago to control our future.”

I didn’t want a local hood, either. Nor did I have anything against Chicago. Dwight Heard was from Chicago, although born in Massachusetts, and he had been one of our leading citizens. His death in 1929 was a calamity, seeming to presage the hard times to come. The Wrigleys were building a mansion on a knoll north of town. Everybody likes chewing gum.

“So, will you help me, Hammons? I can open doors for you.”

Suppressing a sigh, I pulled over the currency and wrote Marley a receipt.

“Plus expenses,” I said. “Of course, you’ll get a refund if I can’t get decent information. And this is a one-off. Don’t expect me to swing a baseball bat for you.”

“Of course not. You’re a gentleman. You have ethics. I respect that.”

I doubted that he did.

“You ever been hit with a horsewhip, Hammons?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“My father used one on me, you know. Sometimes he’d give me a beating in the morning, say it was for what I was going to do, not what I did.”

“He sounds deranged.”

“Not at all.” Marley drew himself up, the son of the father. “He was a fine man. Made me tough. Gave me what I needed in this world.”

“If you say so.”

We sat for another half an hour, Marley philosophizing about his visions for Phoenix as I tried to steer the conversation back to Gus Greenbaum. I was desperate for a cigarette. When he was gone, I lit up but also wanted to take a shower. Instead, I told Gladys that I didn’t want to be disturbed and went back inside my office. I locked Marley’s money in the safe I had inherited from the previous tenant—banks weren’t trustworthy now.

I called a former colleague, Detective Turk Muldoon, and asked him about Gus Greenbaum.

“Gustave, his given name,” Muldoon said. “He came up under the wing of Meyer Lansky in New York, then he started working for the Chicago Outfit. Showed up here in ’28 running a wire news service.”

“Why am