Phoenix Noir

“No, genius,” Frenchy said. “We gotta save it. Evidence. You see that train, Fisher? More niggers than in Nigger Town and they’re giving ’em guns.” His small, dark eyes focused on me. “What the hell are you doing here, goddamned bull? Go roust some lowlifes down at the yards.” He stalked off.

“It was found in the middle of the tracks, right back there.” Fisher pointed to where the brass had been standing. “Cut off neat as can be. Mexican found it.”

It had been a pretty foot once, pale, petite, with tiny well-shaped toes and the kind of ankle that gives men the shakes when it’s attached to a live woman. It was held in a new strap-around black shoe, with a medium heel made of leather. And all had been sliced off at the shin. A railroad car will do that. This was no hobo.

“Where’s the rest of her?”

Fisher spat into the dust. “Beats the hell out of me. We’ve been a mile up and down the tracks in either direction, looked in the ditches, nothing. There was blood on the tracks but no woman. Trail of blood didn’t even go as far as the road.” He pulled out a handkerchief and ran it over his forehead before replacing his fedora. “She musta been a looker.”

The Westward Ho Hotel was the tallest building in Phoenix. It had sixteen stories and refrigeration. When I walked in a little after noon, the lobby was crowded with men in pricey suits and expensive cigar smoke. There wasn’t a single uniform. You’d think the world was at peace and nice girls weren’t getting their feet cut off by trains. Actually, I wasn’t sure she was a nice girl, which was one reason I had come to the hotel. I crossed the lobby and told the elevator operator, an ancient colored man, to take me to the eighth floor. I walked down the hall past three doors on carpet so soft it massaged my feet through the soles of my shoes. I put my hat in my hand and knocked on the fourth door once.

Strawberry Sue might have struck you as the prettiest girl you’d ever seen, if you saw her from behind and the dress fit right—and maybe twenty years ago it would have been true from the front too. But the sun had ravaged her skin, leaving her face rough and cut with lines and creases. Her face looked like the desert. I thought her figure was nice, but it went out of style in the ’20s. She was small, so thin I could almost touch my middle fingers if I wrapped my hands around her waist, and her hair was bright orange, worn unfashionably in a ponytail like the child of the ranch she was. Her real name was Ruby, but she hated it. The radio was talking about the big Allied landings in North Africa. I asked her to turn it off. She poured me a Scotch while I took off my shoes. As I sipped the drink, she pulled down her hair and took off my tie real slow.

Afterwards, we lay on the soft bed and I stroked her hair while she had her head in the notch where my neck met my shoulder. “My spot,” she called it. She didn’t seem to mind the scar there that looked exactly like the shape of the Grand Canyon. I had to smoke Chesterfields because that was what Sue smoked and I was out of my brand.

“You could fall asleep and get some rest, Stuck-On,” she said. “I’d take care of you. You wouldn’t have to be scared of nothing.”

“I’m doing good, Sue.” I let out a long blue plume of smoke and talked a little business.

“She doesn’t sound like the kind of girl I associate with.” Sue was like that, using big words, reading books, trying to better herself. I admired it.

“She looked like she could have been a high-end call girl, from what I saw of her. Nice shoe. Pale, nice skin.”

“Why would she end up under a train?”

“Maybe she steamed up a certain friend of yours.”

She made a small, indeterminate sound.

“He’s done it before, when a girl crossed him,” I said.

She stroked the hair on my chest with her small hands. “Don’t talk about that now, Stuck-On … You know why I call you that?”

I knew why but just ran my hand against the softness of her red hair and tapped some ash in the direction of the ashtray.

“Cause I’m stuck on you, silly,” she said. “Why don’t you get a real job and we can run away?”

Instead of answering her, I climbed out of bed and walked to the window. It faced north and I studied the palm-lined streets below, where neat bungalows had crew-cut lawns. They gave way to citrus groves and fields, dairies and livestock, and finally the desert. Camelback Mountain was miles away but it looked like I could lean just a little out the window and touch it. Phoenix was an oasis. It was a shame, some of the people an oasis attracts.

“What about it, Sue?”

She lay there naked, her small arms wrapped around her smooth young-girl breasts. “I haven’t heard anything, Stuck-On. Honest. I’d tell you. There’s lots of new people in town. Maybe it was the Japs?”

I looked back out at the crisp blue sky. “Most of the Japs are gone, you know that. They sent ’em to the camps. Their land’s just dying out there.”

“Maybe it doesn’t have anything to do with call girls, or him.”