The Fallen

9

Garrett Asplundh and Carrie Ann Martier had kicked ass and taken names and put it all on his laptop. He had Captain Chet Fellowes from Vice with three prostitutes. Three different girls, three different times. It was surreal to see the naked, ununiformed version of a superior I’d worked around during my almost ten-year career. It was interesting that Fellowes didn’t pay, though he was very specific and sneering about what he wanted the girls to do.

Garrett also had a young Motor Patrol officer on film, though he did pay — one hundred dollars. I knew little about him other than his name was Mincher or Mancher or something and he was a recent hire.

There was also a fire department sergeant whose name I didn’t know but whose face I recognized. And City Councilman Anthony Rood and his aide, two-fisted Steve Stiles.

All caught on video, having the times of their lives with Squeaky Clean girls. Some paid and some didn’t.

“This is bad,” said McKenzie.

“Bad enough to get you in serious trouble,” I said. “If you did the wrong thing with it.”

There were three men that neither McKenzie nor I could identify, though a couple of them looked familiar to both of us. One looked eighty. One looked terrified. One was young and dark-haired and wore a shiny wedding ring and a dog-tag necklace that dangled into Carrie Ann Martier’s face as he looked down at her with an air of entitlement.

We skipped through most of the videos. It doesn’t take much to get the point across. The money part — when payment was required — was direct and explicit. The action itself was strenuous and somewhat comic. It’s odd for a man to watch recorded fornication with a woman beside him, partners or not. None of the comments I might have made to a buddy seemed appropriate.

It saddened me again to see Carrie Ann Martier with the married councilman. He paid nothing. She rolled her eyes at the camera as he did his thing. She got a two-hundred-dollar tip from him when it was over and Rood told her he had a decent apartment she could rent cheap if she needed a place to live. Maybe trade some partying for some rent, he said.

April came into the room, fresh in her SeaWorld uniform. Luckily, a print file was on-screen by then. She looked so innocent and young and I suddenly fully understood what a good thing Asplundh had done for her. She handed me a key and asked me to give it to Davey on our way out.

“I hope you get whoever killed Jimmy,” she said. “I’ll do anything to help. You can call me anytime if you have more questions.”

“Call us if you think of anything,” I said. I wrote down her cell phone and driver’s license numbers. She took my card with a nod and walked out.

I sat back down next to McKenzie in front of the laptop.

Garrett had collected more than just dirty videos. Print files on his laptop included names and numbers, addresses, job descriptions, biographies, even financial and medical information on the johns. I wondered if he’d hit up Hollis Harris for a few free hidden threat assessments to help protect America’s Finest City. Holding together these informational paragraphs were Garrett’s own comments and notes and questions, easily identifiable in a large, bold typeface. Some of the pages looked like the Bible with Christ’s words in bold type that my parents gave me when I was twelve and baptized. There were thirty-two print documents and some of them went on for almost a hundred pages.

Into one file Garrett had scanned phone bills from the Squeaky Clean girls, apparently trying to close the loop between them, the johns, the spot callers, and the madam herself.

Tough job, because none of Jordan Sheehan’s six phone numbers appeared in any of the girls’ bills, although the numbers of three spot callers did. But there was no way to prove what any of them were talking about without a wiretap, and Garrett had noted caustically that Abel Sarvonola says the city doesn’t have the money to buy the Ethics Authority one piece of phone-intercept equipment, but it can pay for empty seats at Chargers games.

He rambled on about the wiretap problem for a while, then this interesting paragraph:

“He’s pissed at Sarvonola,” said McKenzie. “Because the Budget Oversight Committee calls the money shots at City Hall. And Abel Sarvonola rules the Oversight Committee.”

“Because Sarvonola values a losing football team over the Ethics Authority,” I said. I’d always thought that the Budget Oversight Committee was too eager to please the wealthy businessmen who profit so hugely from our city.

Garrett angrily went on to note that his attempts to get any SDPD Vice recordings between the Squeaky Clean Madam and her business associates had been denied, twice, by Captain Fellowes, whom we’d just seen on disc.

“He’s even pissed at us,” said McKenzie. “His old employer.”

“You can’t have cops doing stuff like that,” I said.

But my comment made me think again of decking the muscular husband after claiming Gina’s engraved Hikari shears. I had broken the law, too.

Another line in Garrett’s voluminous notes caught my eye, largely because I’d seen part of it before:

“What do you think he meant by this?” I asked McKenzie. I turned the monitor to face her.

“He means if the state attorney general gets involved, the cure may be worse than the disease.”

That put Garrett in an interesting situation, I thought: He wanted to clean up the dirt without hurting the city. Could you really do that? That was the trouble with corruption. The bigger the players who went down, the bigger the headlines got and the worse the city looked. So it was always the little ones — the ones mixed up in things they didn’t necessarily ask for, the ones who wouldn’t be missed — who were sacrificed. And the big fish eased back under their rocks to let the storm blow over.

I closed the document and scanned down the menu of videos again. One of the available videos caught my eye because it was so short.

JS Live was listed at just eight seconds long.

So I clicked play and rubbed my eyes and sat back.

First a blond woman, fortyish, sat down at what appeared to be a restaurant bar and smiled at the camera. She wore a lacy white blouse under a black blazer and her straight thick hair was cut just above her shoulders.

“Oh, Garrett, what’s this?” she asked brightly. Her smile was generous. Pretty teeth and lips. She fingered her hair behind one ear, revealing an earring the shape of a crescent moon with a small jewel on the inside of the curve.

She was still smiling as her hand left her hair and came toward the camera.

“My window on the world,” said a man, probably Garrett.

“You must think I’m a real idiot.”

Then everything got noisy and the picture went black.

I played it back again.

“Squeaky Clean herself?” I asked.

“That’s her,” said McKenzie. “Jordan Sheehan.”

I played the fragment several more times.

“Didn’t take her long to find the hidden camera,” I said.

“Eight seconds,” said McKenzie. “That was the Onyx Room, by the way.”

“Never been.”

“The tourists haven’t discovered it yet,” said McKenzie. “But you gotta be cool to go there. Not some happily married guy who likes to stay in at night.”

I thought of Gina again, maybe on her lunch break by now. I thought of all the men who’d like to take her out for that lunch. Her boss, Chambers, was boldly homosexual, which made me feel only slightly better. Watching the videos had filled me with a fresh wave of longing for Gina and made her departure even sharper and more punishing. For the first time since she’d left, I believed it was possible — though I believed it only for one terrifying moment — that I’d never see her again.

“Maybe Hollis can drive you there in his red Ferrari,” I said.

“Robbie, I have to confess, that car turned me limp in one block. Luckily, I recovered walking into Dobson’s.”

“He didn’t carry you?”

She smiled. “I don’t think he’s strong enough.”

Her cell phone beeped and she put a hand on my shoulder and stood.

McKenzie and I rarely banter about personal things like this. I think that viewing the lewd material had left us both a little thankful for each other’s unlewd company, as if we’d come through something difficult together.

I heard her writing as she listened, thanked somebody, and rang off. I looked at the picture of the river tacked to the wall under the window. It took me a minute to really see that picture.

“Finally,” she said. “Verizon Security. Those 212 calls made on Garrett’s cell phone the week he died were to Trey Vinson of New York, New York. Never heard of him. But I got his stats from warrants and records.”

While McKenzie made the call, I checked Garrett’s e-mail directory and found Trey Vinson.

Garrett had his e-mail and two phone numbers and the name and address of his company in New York City — Jance Purdew Investment Services. I knew them from my days in Fraud. They were one of the big credit-rating agencies on Wall Street, up there in size with Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s. Jance Purdew helped keep investors from getting ripped off by unscrupulous issuers of stocks and bonds.

I opened three of Garrett’s longest files and did a word search for “Trey” and “Vinson.”

I found just one reference, from a document last updated on Sunday, March 6, two days before Garrett was killed.

Vinson’s name appeared in a brief paragraph that followed ninety pages of City of San Diego financial reports and disclosures, some of which went back to 1995, and eighteen pages of budget abstracts.

McKenzie clipped her phone back to her belt and told me Vinson had come up clean on the warrant check.

I told her Vinson worked for a big rating agency and pointed to his name on the screen.

She read over my shoulder. “If the city cooked the books and Vinson found out, that would kill our credit. No credit, no bonds, no money. Bankruptcy.”

“But he might hold,” I said.

“Why?”

“Pressure? Money? The wonderful San Diego weather?”

I knew from my brief stint in Fraud that a city’s credit rating governed the amount of interest that would have to be paid to investors. If a city’s rating was high, it could successfully issue municipal bonds and pay a relatively low rate of return. But if the rating was lower, the city would have to offer higher interest to attract bond buyers. To a city the size of San Diego, the difference between an A and a B rating on, say, a $100 million bond could be $3 or $4 million. I knew also that the city had issued roughly $2.5 billion in municipal bonds in the last ten years. If the city was caught “cooking the books,” the penalties, fines, and refinancing costs would send us deep into bankruptcy.

I stood and let her tap her way out of the programs. I looked again at the picture of the river. It was a photograph on photographic paper, not something cut from a magazine. It was in color, though I was reasonably sure that Garrett had taken it. It was held up with tape now but there were holes in each of the four corners.

Really all you could see was rippled water. No bank or rocks or horizon or anything to give size or perspective. Just four by six inches of yellow-green ripples. It could have been a close-up of something else. Or an abstract painting. But I knew why Garrett had taken it because I could just barely discern the fish lying beneath the shimmering surface. I had to look slightly to the side of the animal, like viewing a shape in the dark. Just a faint vertical tail line was all that gave it away, but once you had seen the line, you saw the fish.

“What?” said McKenzie.

“It’s a picture of a fish.”

“No fish I can see.”

I pointed to it and she looked at me.

“I wonder if that’s what Garrett used to look at from his workbench out in the garage,” I said. “Remember? The tacks on the wall where something used to be?”

She nodded. “All those hours looking at something that’s not even there.”

“It’s there.”

“Okay, Robbie. Okay, Garrett. Okay, fish dreamers. You guys see what you want to see. In the meantime I’ll just try to live a normal kind of life. It bugs me that Garrett’s secret girl looks a lot like his wife.”

“Bugs me too.”

“How about lunch?”

“Would you mind just dropping me off at Gina’s work? She’ll bring me to headquarters.”

McKenzie gave me an analytical look. “Sure. Say hi for me. You two have a good thing, Robbie. You’re lucky.”

I walked through the Sultra doors trying to look casual while my heart beat hard in my ears. I strolled to the reception desk and waited while Tammy talked on the phone. I smiled across the travertine floor at Gina, who smiled faintly back, her Hikari Cosmos poised over an older woman with her hair clipped into sections. Gina looked almost unimaginably beautiful. One chair over, Rachel glanced at me as if she were fed up.

I sat in the waiting area and waited for Gina to finish. My heart kept beating extra hard. I didn’t expect her to just drop everything and run over to me, though I wouldn’t have minded. I didn’t stare at her but rather looked up from my hairstyle magazine every few seconds as if imagining a certain cut on myself. Tammy asked if I were a walk-in, not remembering who I was.

It took Gina quite a while to finish the cut, another while for the dry and style, another while for the woman to leave the chair and head in my direction. Finally Gina looked at me again for the first time since I’d walked in, held up a be-right-with-you finger then walked quickly off toward the bathrooms in the back.

I set down the magazine and waited. I looked out the white shutters to the street. The sun had broken through and now threw soft, cool light onto the travertine. I wondered what to say to Gina. I wondered what she’d say back. I wondered how she could possibly take so long in the bathroom. I waited another few minutes then went back to see if everything was okay.

A woman came from the bathroom and I waited another minute, then opened the door slightly and called her name. Just an echo.

So I tried again.

Silence is silence no matter how long you wait.

“Give her some space, Robbie. It’s all you can do.”

Rachel pushed the door all the way open and swept into the women’s room, the door closing behind her with a faint feminine breeze.

Down the hall I saw the rear exit door ajar and felt like a world-class fool. I went out the back way, too.

I walked back to headquarters, looking around for Gina as I went, but knew I wouldn’t see her. It took forty minutes and nothing registered. I didn’t see, hear, or smell anything. It’s interesting how quickly forty minutes can pass, how quickly they can drop from the memory of your life.

The next thing I knew the seven concrete-and-blue stories of police headquarters stood before me and I realized that if Gina was really gone, this job would be just about my whole world.

I found my captain in his office, eating alone and looking out his window. His name is Jim Villas and he has my respect. He’s a career San Diego cop, started when he was twenty, just like I did. He’s late fifties now, a grandfather and an accomplished handball player.

Captain Villas always wears his uniform on Fridays. He grew up a street kid and began as a street cop and he’s proud of that. He was picking a crumb off his navy trousers when I knocked on the doorjamb.

“May I close the door, sir?”

“Sure. Come in, Robbie.”

We talked for a minute about the cool, foggy weather and about an upcoming handball tournament. Then he asked me what was up.

“Captain Fellowes has been enjoying himself with working girls,” I said. “Some of Jordan Sheehan’s girls got him on video and Garrett Asplundh ended up with it.”

Villas stared at me for a moment. “This is not an early April Fools’ joke.”

“It’s not.”

“You’re positive it’s Fellowes?”

“Unless the video has been tampered with. I don’t think it has. Fellowes it is, sir, nothing on but his socks and a sneer.”

“How did you get it?”

I told him about Garrett’s secret National City apartment, April Holly, the spare room, the laptop. I told him about the other cop and everyone else I’d recognized.

“Councilman Rood and his aide?”

I nodded.

“Who else knows?”

“McKenzie. Possibly the girls in the video. I’m not sure if they knew who their clients were.”

“And Fellowes was the only one who appeared to be getting his fun for free?”

“The other men paid different amounts. The Vice captain got his for free.”

Villas stood and went to the window. The view was north toward Balboa Park. “This Sheehan woman, she’s the one Vice calls the Squeaky Clean Madam?”

“Yes, sir. That’s also what people on the street call her.”

“If a Vice captain is involved, that could explain why nobody’s touched her. Does Fellowes know he was recorded?”

“I’ve got no way of knowing, sir. Nothing on the discs suggests that.”

“Are they dated?”

“Yes. His last romp was two weeks ago.”

“Is there any mention of Fellowes in Asplundh’s notes or journals?”

“Yes, sir. He said the captain had become ‘flabby, dull, and an easy mark.’”

“Sounds like Fellowes, actually,” he mumbled.

Captain Villas dug a finger under his shirt collar and worked his neck around, like the shirt was too tight. He shook his head, sat back down. For a long while he looked out in the direction of Balboa Park.

“Okay,” he finally said. “I’ll handle it. Keep it to yourself for right now. This is not going to make your life easier, Robbie.”

“My life is fine.”

“I’ll have to talk to Internal Affairs and Professional Standards.”

“I understand, sir. And I need to talk to Fellowes.”

“Why?”

“If he knew he was on video, that’s motive.”

Villas just stared at me. “What, Garrett takes him for a little ride to tell him what he knows, and Fellowes blows him away? Calls Mincher or one of those other guys to give him a ride home?”

I shrugged. It sounded very possible to me. It had the one thing that a successful premeditated murder needs: audacity.

“That’s one of the ugliest things I’ve heard all day,” said Villas.

“Asplundh wasn’t killed for what he had,” I said. “He was killed for what he knew.”

“Yes. Okay. Talk to Fellowes.”

Back at my desk, I briefed McKenzie and called Captain Fellowes’s office. I got his machine and left a message that I wanted to talk. I had the feeling Fellowes would not be eager to see me or anyone investigating the murder of Garrett Asplundh.

Next I called Sally, a friend over at City Hall who works for Human Resources. She knows everybody. She’s usually happy to help me because years ago I frightened her young son with a “don’t do drugs” lecture and walked him through the county jail after she’d caught him with marijuana. It seemed to help the boy because she’d never found any drugs since. At any rate, I asked Sally if she could discreetly determine if Ninth District Councilman Anthony Rood had made a public appearance on the nights of either March 7 or 8. Ditto his aide, Steven Stiles. I could tell by her hesitation that she had instantly connected one of the dates with the murder I was investigating. I asked her to please keep this to herself and she said she would.

I also called Abel Sarvonola’s office and made an appointment to see the chairman of the Budget Oversight Committee. His secretary sounded pert and happy but Abel and his wife were vacationing in Las Vegas. The secretary made an appointment for me on Wednesday, Abel’s first available date.

Then I tried Trey Vinson of Jance Purdew Investments in New York City. His secretary told me that Mr. Vinson was on the West Coast now and I said that was great, because I was too. After asking several questions about my reasons for talking to Mr. Vinson, she unhappily set up a time for us to meet.

Stella Asplundh called a few minutes later. Her voice was soft but clear. “I read in the paper that Garrett was found in his car near the Cabrillo Bridge,” she said.

“Just north of it, off the 163.”

“That is significant.”

“Please explain.”

“That was where he proposed to me ten years ago. It wasn’t at night and we weren’t in a car. It was springtime and we’d taken off our shoes to walk in Balboa Park. We crossed the bridge and wandered down through the trails. Garrett said we needed a bridge like that one. I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ and he said, ‘To connect you to me and me to you, something solid and beautiful and useful. Like a marriage,’ he said. He had a ring in his pocket. I almost knocked him over. Since then, a couple of times a year, we’d go back to that spot and look at the bridge and remember things. Sometimes during the day. Sometimes at night, in our car.”

We were both quiet for a moment.

“You were supposed to meet at Delicias in Rancho Santa Fe,” I said.

“At nine o’clock.”

“So why would he park at your special place by the bridge before going to meet you?”

“I talked to him earlier in the day,” she said. “On the phone, I mean. He said he was going to say a prayer at the bridge. I didn’t mention it to you before because I didn’t realize that’s where you’d found him.”

“A prayer at the bridge? Explain that.”

She paused. “We were trying to start over. It was important to us. I told you.”

“Is there anyone else he’d take to your special place?”

“No,” she said. “I hope not.”

“Who knew that Garrett proposed to you under that bridge?”

Another silence. “My mother and father. I told several friends back when it happened. It was romantic.”

“Did you tell any of them that you two still went back to that spot sometimes?”

“I... yes. I’m sure I must have.”

“Did Garrett?”

“How could I possibly know that?”

“Did Garrett ever go there without you?”

“He said he went there alone sometimes. To remember and to think.”

I pictured Garrett in his SUV at his special place under the Cabrillo Bridge. Was he alone? Garrett would be seeing Stella later. He was hoping for a reconciliation with her. After the death of their daughter, the heartbreak of their separation, and months of heavy drinking, he was finally catching a break.

Or so he thought.