By Dashiell Hammett, Jr., Professor of Criminology, San Francisco State University

October 14, 2013: Yuma, AZ — The best of towns, the worst of towns.  The cleanest of towns, the dirtiest of towns.  A town of believers, a town of skeptics.  A town filled with light, a town hidden in the dark.  A town of hope, a town of despair.  A town with a great future before, a town with a sordid past behind.  One step away from heaven, on the border of Hell.  The last place I wanted to be, yet here I was.  Yuma.

I climbed down the steps from the small commuter plane I’d boarded in Las Vegas – the nearest commercial airport to Yuma; well, the nearest of any size – and stepped onto the tarmac.  I felt like I’d stepped back in time: no jetway, no sign of TSA security, luggage waiting at the side of the plane, and the desert furnaces pumping 110° heat in your face.

I was tempted to turn around, climb back into the plane and hijack it back to Vegas, civilization and air conditioning.  But the two thugs in black suits escorted me to a waiting limo.

“How do you survive this heat in those suits?” I asked, wiping the sweat from my forehead.

“Air conditioned,” they said.

“The suits?”

They laughed.

“Where are you taking me?”

“To Mr. Goode’s,” they said.

“David Goode’s?” I asked.

“No, his father’s.”

“Of course,” I said.  “David’s playing ball.”

“Season’s been over for a month.  Speakin’ a’ which,” the smaller said – if giants can be said to be smaller – “where you been?  We expected you the first week in September.”

“I got waylaid.”

They laughed.

“Why’s that funny?” I asked.

“It ain’t,” the bigger giant said.  And laughed some more.

“Then why—?” I started to ask, but thought better of it.

The limo turned off the pavement and onto a dirt road that wound through cactus toward a cluster of what are euphemistically called mobile homes.  Nothing mobile about them.  They looked like they’d been baking in the desert sun for decades. The bright reflective colors they once wore proudly in the sales lot had faded to silver.  Just looking at them made me thirsty.  Even the saguaro cactus lining the dirt road looked thirsty.  I was thinking maybe Mr. Goode would offer me a drink when I noticed the name on the mailbox hanging from the aluminum siding.

“I thought you said you were taking me to the Goode’s place.”

“This is it.”

“But the name on the—”

“The names have been changed to protect the innocent,” the smaller one said.  “Remember that?”

“Dragnet,” I said.

“Very good, perfessor,” he said.

“But why?” I asked.

“It ain’t only the innocent who get relocated in Yuma, okay?”

“You mean—”

“You got it,” he said and the way he turned abruptly back to face forward made it clear there’d be no more discussion.

Which left me wondering what I’d gotten into.  Was this some sort of protective custody for gangsters?  And if so, how was David Goode’s father involved?  And what about David himself?  Was he…?

It was at that moment that the idea first sidled up to me and whispered in my ear, a seductive voice, like Lauren Bacall telling Bogey,   “You know how to whistle, don’t you?”  It was an idea that would cause me no end of trouble.  An idea better never to have been thought at all.  But once you think something, you can never un-think it.

Did David Goode have ties to the Mob?  Did that explain his exorbitant salary?