The bedraggled, single-story building on Grand Avenue looked somewhere between sixty and eighty years old, with a single door and a square window on each side. All were covered by bars that might once have been painted. The square structure itself was bleached brown, done in cracking stucco to resemble adobe, and it sat atop the remains of an asphalt lot. It had once been the office to a motel in the golden age of driving, and this was the highway west out of town.
A battered sign on a pole near the street read, very faintly, Easy 8 Auto Court and beneath that, Air Conditioned-It’s Cool Inside!, but all the cottages were long gone. Now the office sat by itself, surrounded by barren lots on either side that held dirt and rocks the same color as the building. The only signs of newness were a twelve-foot-high security fence, a couple of halogen lights aimed from the roof, and Peralta’s silver Dodge Ram pickup parked in front. The Prelude bumped across the perimeter of the open gate. We got out, went inside, and found Peralta.
“I can’t believe this.” Those were my first words.
“What, Mapstone? You don’t believe in entrepreneurialism? It’s the American dream.”
He stood from behind an ancient metal desk, came around, and hugged Robin.
To me, he said, “What’s that growing on your face?”
A second desk sat at an angle across the room. Two institutional armchairs with green-cushioned seats that might have been new during the Eisenhower administration flanked both, and tall gray metal filing cabinets took up one wall. The floor was old linoleum, the color of coffee with three creams. The sheriff’s cigars had augmented the musty smell. Behind Peralta’s desk was a framed poster that proclaimed “Diversity.” It was meant to look exactly like one of those insipid motivational placards, but the image was of a dozen mean-looking assault rifles laid out neatly on white sand.
“Why are you not in some luxury suite in north Scottsdale?”
“Fake tits on a stick, not my style,” he grunted as he sat. To Robin, “Sorry about my language.”
She smiled at him.
“And you turned down how many high-powered offers to be corporate chief of security or a national consultant?”
