The Fallen

16

Chet Fellowes was a large, poorly shaped man who gave off an air of self-serving intelligence. He had sloping shoulders, long arms, and small, quick eyes. He played for Bogle on the department golf team and was rumored to be a scratch golfer and a cheat.

I’d never been in his office. He sat behind his desk and watched McKenzie examining the Fellowes family photographs by the window. Behind him were college and academy diplomas, commendations, and awards. Fellowes slumped down and crossed his hands over an ample gut.

“Bad,” he said. “Garrett Asplundh was, what, thirty-nine years old?”

“Yes,” I said.

“And he wasn’t robbed?”

“No. He was shot from about two inches away. They left his cash, cards, vehicle, everything.”

“Prints on the gun?”

“Wiped clean with Tri-Flow.”

“You bring your own Tri-Flow to clean up the gun, that’s an execution.”

“That’s what we’re thinking,” I said. “Did Garrett make enemies here?”

Fellowes eyed me flatly. “You bet he did. Professional Standards, with an attitude like his? A lot of people, they really disliked him and I can’t blame them. Like having a... what’s the word? Being around Garrett was like having a hawk following you all around. When he went to the Ethics Authority everybody was relieved.”

“Who in particular was relieved?” I asked.

He shook his head. “You two are way off if you’re looking for a suspect in this department. Come on.”

“Captain Fellowes, enemies are enemies,” I said. “As an Ethics Authority investigator, he had come up with videodiscs of men buying sex from prostitutes. Some of those men are powerful in this city. Some are cops.”

Fellowes’s mouth hung slightly open. It looked like he had to halt facial movement in order to complete his thought.

I watched him closely.

“Who?” he asked.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” I said. “Captains Villas and Sutherland are fully informed.”

His eyes shifted from me to McKenzie then to me again. Fury makes a small room smaller. I could sense the captain’s anger spike, then settle down to a manageable temperature.

“I thought you probably knew about all of it, sir,” I said. “Since you’re a captain in Vice.”

“Of course I knew about it.”

The red squares of deceit spilled out of his mouth and floated out over his desk. His face was almost gray. “I’ll take care of any problems within Vice. We take care of our own in Vice.”

“And we’ll find out who murdered Garrett Asplundh,” I said.

My words seemed to hang in the air of Chet Fellowes’s office. He shifted his big body in the chair. I was surprised by the level of menace that emanated from a man who looked hapless and uncoordinated. But Fellowes called on some inner strength while he considered me, and I could see in his eyes that he would be merciless if given the opportunity.

“We also wanted to talk to you because you were at the Asplundhs’ Fourth of July party,” said McKenzie.

Fellowes fixed her with a flat, small-eyed stare. “That’s ancient history. You put things like that out of your mind if you can.”

“Tell us about it,” I said.

“Why? It has no bearing.”

“You’re sure of that?” I asked.

Again, a look from Fellowes that told me he would get me someday.

“That was a bad day,” he said. “I mean, really — three years old. What a shame. Nothing we could do. A dozen adults all hovering over this pale little thing Garrett had fished from the pool.”

“How did it happen?” asked McKenzie.

“About sundown everybody left the pool area to go set off some fireworks in the street. I remember Garrett standing by the gate that guards the pool, and he waited for all of us to file on through, and I was the last guy out, me and Phyllis, my ex-wife. And I clearly remember Garrett snapping that lock into place and spinning the combination dial and pulling on it once or twice. Then it was fireworks.”

“Out in the driveway, right?”

“Yeah, over twenty people there, counting the kids. Stella had Samantha in her arms. I remember because I held my daughter at that age. Samantha was a real go-getter, I remember that, too. Running everywhere, laughing and playing, a happy kid. It was a nice evening. Real warm and kind of humid, and up and down the block you could hear the fireworks going off. Just little stuff, you know — Smokey Joes and Piccolo Petes and sparklers for the kids. The air smelled like sulfur. Twenty minutes, half an hour went by. And I saw Stella go into the house. She wasn’t carrying Samantha anymore. A minute or two later she came back out, walking fast, head up, you know, worried about something. Garrett, then, he came out behind her, calling for Samantha. Some of the adults followed them into the garage, then around the side of the house looking for her. Phyllis and I stayed where we were but I kept looking back toward the house, and then someone yelled for Stella. I mean, really yelled loud. You knew something had happened. Then I heard Stella scream from the backyard. And this short kind of... uproar of voices, a bunch of people yelling at once. The only words I clearly remember hearing were ‘breathing,’ and ‘911.’ Phyllis turned an ankle running for the backyard, which didn’t help things any. When I got back there, Garrett and Van Flyke had Samantha laid out on a chaise by the pool. Garrett was already doing CPR. Stella had just gotten the gate unlocked so most everyone was still on the other side of the fence. Garrett had jumped it to get to his daughter. I think maybe some other men had jumped it, too. To help, you know. Sam, Garrett’s brother, he was the one who pulled her out.”

Fellowes unlocked his hands and leaned forward in his chair. He rubbed a hairy forearm and sighed. “Really, what’s any of this got to do with Garrett?”

“I don’t know yet,” I said. “How did Samantha get back to the pool without anyone noticing?”

“Garrett put the chronology together later,” Fellowes said. “He told me that when the fireworks started going off, Samantha didn’t like the noise. She had told her mother to let her down so she could go get Dad. Garrett was in the house rinsing some of the dishes, shooting some video of the fireworks through the window, drinking a beer. He didn’t see Samantha get down and come looking for him — she was hidden by the adults. And she didn’t look for him in the house. Instead she scooted over to the side gate, pulled the string, and let herself into the backyard. Garrett told me that side gate was usually locked, too, but they’d taken off the lock so the party guests could circulate. Anyway, Samantha climbed the pool fence to get in. It was five feet high, made out of that rubberized chain link, so climbing it wouldn’t have been hard for a determined three-year-old. Later we found her doll floating and the pool skimmer sunk to the bottom. You know, the long-handled ones you use to whisk off the leaves and stuff. She must have dropped the doll in earlier, then remembered where it was and tried to fish it out with the skimmer before going to get her father. If there wasn’t so much noise from the fireworks, somebody might have heard something. Stella thought Samantha was with Dad. Dad thought she was with Mom. A brave three-year-old climbs a fence, tries to get her doll out of the pool, and it’s over.”

I imagined the tragedy unfolding as Fellowes described it. A hundred ingredients, a hundred things that had to go exactly wrong for it to happen. I tried to imagine how Stella felt, having had last custody of her daughter. And how Garrett must have felt, having missed her escape from the fireworks noise by so little — not by yards and minutes but by inches and seconds.

“It changed everything,” said Fellowes. “Garrett and Stella fell apart. Garrett became very intense and humorless and driven to catch bad guys. Blamed himself for everything. I didn’t blame him. I don’t blame him for anything that happened then or after. But I couldn’t be around him. I guess the end of our friendship was the least of Garrett’s problems. Stella? I see her around. She always smiles, puts on the face. But she looks empty if you ask me.”

“How did it affect you, Captain?” asked McKenzie.

He sat back, looked at McKenzie and me with his quick little eyes. “You learn to turn it off, like a lot of other stuff in this business. I don’t have to explain that to you two. Me and Phyllis split up a week later.”

McKenzie and I took the elevator down. We were alone.

“Fellowes didn’t know that Garrett had him on video,” I said.

“Now he suspects. Be careful of him, Robbie. I don’t like the look in his little eyes.”

“Why didn’t Garrett show Fellowes his evidence?” I asked. “Why collect if you don’t use?”

“I don’t know,” said McKenzie. “There’s enough on his hard drive to cause ten city scandals and ruin a dozen people. But he doesn’t seem to have done anything with it.”

“Maybe he thought there was more to know.”

“Maybe he was just about to do something with it,” she said. “The meeting Wednesday — he was going to lay it all on the state attorney general.”

“Then his killing was proactive.”

“Yeah,” said McKenzie. “No matter what Van Flyke said about that meeting being routine. They knew Garrett was going to meet with the attorney general, and they couldn’t let him do that.”

“Who is ‘they’?”

“I’m working on it, Robbie.”

Ron Mincher worked the patrol shift that day, which ended at 6:00 P.M.

I waited for him near the walkway that leads from the locker room and showers to the officers’ parking lot. I told McKenzie I’d talk to Mincher alone. One reason was that a Homicide team is unmistakably a Homicide team, whereas one detective can mean anything from a Police Union solicitation to an invite to join the bowling league. The other reason is, I knew she was eager to get to Hollis Harris and his fast red car.

Mincher came down the walk about quarter to seven, freshly showered and in his street clothes. He had his sidearm, ammo, belt, badge, and probably handcuffs in a small cloth duffel.

Seeing Mincher made me remember my own days on patrol. It was nice to leave the job behind when you got off work. When you make detective, you start taking it home with you. I thought of hustling down this same walkway, showered up just like Ron and in a hurry to get home to Gina. I could usually make Normal Heights by six forty-five or seven. Stepping through our front door was like stepping into heaven itself. No criminals, no BS, no lies. Just you and the beautiful woman you loved and six or seven hours with nothing to do but enjoy each other until you conked out, slept hard, and woke up to do it all over. I’d love to be young like that again.

Mincher held my eye as he approached. He was twenty-six, six feet and well built. His hair was brown, matched by a neat cop-style mustache.

“Ron, I’m Robbie Brownlaw from Homicide.”

“I know who you are, sir.”

“Don’t need the ‘sir’ stuff. Talk a minute?”

“Absolutely.”

“Let’s take a walk.”

He locked his duffel in a snappy yellow Ford pickup and we left headquarters on the Fourteenth Street side, then headed east on Broadway.

“I’ve got two things bothering me,” I said. “One of them I have to do something about. The other one I’m going to let slide for now.”

“What’s on your mind?” he said with a very small smile. “Doesn’t sound good.”

Mincher had that same casual southern tone of voice that Dale Payne had.

“How are you liking San Diego?”

“Oh, it’s fine. New Orleans was too humid.”

“I’m working the Asplundh murder.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“He got it with a nine-millimeter Smith that went missing from the New Orleans Property Annex a couple of months before you left that city and came here.”

Mincher looked at me. “Interesting coincidence,” he said.

“But it ties into the other thing that’s bothering me,” I said. “And that is, Garrett didn’t get killed for his money or his credit cards or his car or his weapons. He got killed for something he knew.”

We walked along Broadway. I could smell the ocean and see the red trolley making its way south to the border. The city lights twinkled, and the new baseball stadium stood out beautifully against the black sky.

“And Garrett knew a lot of things,” I said. “For instance, he knew you were buying Squeaky Clean girls.”

Even in the streetlights I could see his face go red.

“One of them had a hidden camera. Garrett was working with her. It’s all on DVDs, good quality. You weren’t alone, if it’s any consolation. I printed a still image that’s right here in my pocket if you don’t believe me. Want to see it?”

“Guess I better.”

It was a full page, folded three times. He opened it, glanced at it, then folded it and put it in his pocket.

He looked at me briefly, shaking his head. “You first.”

“Talk to me.”

“I’m a stupid guy.”

We continued on but Mincher was lost in himself.

“Did Garrett talk to you about this?” I asked.

“No.”

I waited for the proof of his lie but it never came. And again I wondered exactly what Garrett was planning to do with the discs he had collected from Carrie Ann Martier and her friends.

“He never showed you the videos?”

“Never.”

“He never told you what he had?”

Mincher shook his head.

“Did you suspect you’d been recorded?” I asked.

“No. The girls were always so... professional.”

“What did you do to get such a deal? You were paying a hundred for what usually costs a grand.”

Mincher looked at me again. We turned south onto Fifteenth. “I’m getting myself into some huge trouble here.”

“No, you’re already in it.”

“Who else do you have?”

“Fellowes, if that’s what you’re after.”

“Oh, man,” he said quietly. “He’s not going to like this one bit.”

“Did he proposition you?” I asked.

We walked awhile, and then Mincher nodded.

“Tell me about that.”

He said nothing for a few steps. “Help me.”

“Here’s the only help I can offer you, Ron: You tell me everything you know, and I don’t arrest you right here on the spot. Good enough? I’m armed and I’ve got my cuffs. Your stuff is back in that new yellow pickup. I’ll subdue you right here on this street, cuff you, and walk you into the jail in front of the guys you work with. Then you’ll have to tell your whole story anyway, to a defense attorney.”

He stopped walking and stared at me. He was a little taller and heavier than me but I saw no fight at all in his eyes. I thought for a second he might actually run away. I’m not fast but I have endurance. I can run mile after mile after mile.

“I played for the golf team, is how I met Fellowes,” he said. “He’s a captain with weight, you know, and I’m a twenty-four-year-old new hire. We get along okay. He’s always asking about my love life. I’m young and single and new to town and he wants to know how I’m getting along. He’s too interested. At first I thought he might be hustling me. Then one day he says he knows some classy girls who like cops. And I was just the kind of good-looking young cop they’d love. You know the type of woman he’s talking about — the cop groupies, right? So I didn’t think much about it, but he kept talking up these girls, and one day four of us met in a restaurant up in La Jolla after work. Classy girls? They were two of the prettiest women I’d ever seen. They were bright and sassy and drove cool cars. A drink and an hour later, Fellowes and his date were gone. Another drink and another hour later, I was in the Valencia Hotel watching Allison take my clothes off. After, she said it was supposed to be four hundred for the room and six for her, plus whatever extra if I liked her, but for me a hundred would cover things this once. I only had eighty on me and she laughed and took it. I went home that night and thought about what I’d done and couldn’t believe it. Ron Mincher doesn’t do things like that. Ron Mincher was a good Southern Baptist. Ron Mincher’s idea of a wild time was two six-packs and a poker game. Ask anybody. But I’d done it. I’d jumped on that whore just like I had good sense.”

“And you were about to pay a lot more than eighty bucks,” I said.

“Well, yeah. That night Fellowes came by my house and we took a little walk like we’re doing now. He said there was more where that came from, girls prettier than Allison and they’d do just about anything to make me happy. All I had to do was look out for the girls in the little convertibles while I was on patrol. Discourage my patrol friends from bothering them. Never talk to them when they had dates. If there was some dispute with hotel security, tell hotel security you’d handle it, and make sure the girl got back to her car and out of there. Later I started fingering his own Vice teams for the girls so they wouldn’t get pinched. Fellowes would let me know where the stings were being set up and I’d let the Squeaky Cleans know in advance. He said there were plenty of other whores to throw in jail. He said we weren’t easy on prostitution like they are in some cities, but you can’t shut all the girls down. So why shouldn’t we get to decide who works in America’s Finest City and who doesn’t? It was like he was providing a service.”

It made a perverse kind of sense. If you were Chet Fellowes, you could convince yourself that you were fighting crime by committing crime. And his underlying logic was sound: You can’t stop prostitution, you can only control it.

“What about cash?” I asked. “Fellowes must have been on Squeaky Clean’s payroll for more than just fun.”

“I got a couple hundred a week. And two dates. After that it cost me the hundred.”

“Sweet deal,” I said.

“Until about ten minutes ago.”

“What was Fellowes taking down?”

“I didn’t ask,” he said.

“Did you ever deal with Jordan Sheehan personally?”

“I’ve never met her.”

“What about Fellowes?” I asked. “Did he ever talk about her?”

“He called her the ‘head whore.’ Didn’t say much more than that about her. He said she’d make a great politician if she wasn’t head whore.”

“Did you run across Chupa Junior?”

“Heard of him.”

“From the girls?”

Mincher had his head down, nodding. “He’s like a nightmare to them. Something that can just happen when you don’t expect it. Squeaky Clean makes a lot of money for her girls, and they make a lot of money for her. But she holds Chupa over their heads.”

“Fellowes lets him operate?”

“Yeah,” said Mincher. “We’re the protection. Chupa’s the fear.”

“I’m going to make sure Fellowes gets his butt thoroughly kicked for this.”

Mincher looked at me, then away.

We walked onto the headquarters grounds. The lights of the city were clear against the night sky. I could tell that this crisis had surprised Ron Mincher. It had come up behind him like a fast car on a dark night. All he saw was a wash of light in front of him and by the time he turned there was nothing to do but try to dive off the road. He was still blinking.

“Maybe this is okay,” he said. “My soul was rotting. I tried to tell myself it was just consenting adults and all that. But you get brought up a certain way and it sticks. I knew what I was doing was wrong. But it was just so easy. And the Squeaky Cleans. Oh, man.”

“Forget about them right now. So what about this Model 39 that vanished from New Orleans Property Annex not once but twice?”

“I don’t know a thing about it. I remember the annex got hit by some junkie burglars one night, but I thought we got all the stuff back.”

“Most of the stuff. The Model 39 that was used to kill Garrett Asplundh was returned, signed in, then disappeared.”

“No,” Mincher said softly. “I’ve got my own weapons. I don’t need to steal somebody else’s. I’m not much of a gun guy anyway.”

“What were you doing last Tuesday night, the night Garrett got it?”

We had come to Mincher’s new yellow truck. He hit the key fob and the alarm chirped and the door lock snapped up.

“I worked that day, then went to the driving range out in La Mesa. Hit three buckets, had the chicken basket, and drove back downtown. I had some drinks at Dick’s. I know one of the bartenders, Parry Songrath. He’ll vouch for me.”

“Until how late?”

“Only ten or so. I went to bed early because I like to get my workouts in before shift.”

“You were alone the rest of the night?”

“Yeah.”

“No Squeaky Cleans?”

He smiled. “No. And just when I could use an alibi.”

On my way home I drove past the Salon Sultra. The lights inside looked warm and inviting in the cool March night. The stylists were snipping and curling and weaving and chattering but Gina’s chair stood vacant, the light around it dim. I wondered how long it would take them to lease that chair. I knew there was a waiting list to get into Sultra. I knew that Chambers could replace her in little more than an instant. My throat went hard, like it had turned into steel. It hurt. I pulled over across from the salon and waited for that familiar flash of anger, but it never came. Instead a small, optimistic glimmer of hope came to my heart and I wondered if there might be something I could do to make Gina want to come back.

When I got home I called her parents — Vince and Dawn Brancini — in Las Vegas.

They’re good people. Vince is a pit boss at Binion’s, and Dawn is a wedding coordinator for Caesars Palace. I met Gina because they had all come to San Diego for a celebration just after Gina had turned eighteen and graduated from high school. They brought her best friend, Rachel, too.

I was twenty-three at the time, working my last month as a uniformed patrolman before my first plainclothes assignment with Fraud. It was a warm August night and I was walking in the Gaslamp and I noticed this young woman with wispy red hair wearing a black dress. She was walking uncertainly because of her high heels. I stayed behind her for a few steps, convinced that I was going to be needed. She was with another young woman and a middle-aged couple. They decided to jaywalk in front of the Rock Bottom nightclub. She stepped off the curb, turned her ankle badly, and fell. I saw it coming and caught her before she hit. She was light. I carried her inside the Rock Bottom and put her in a chair. I examined the ankle very gingerly and told her to ice and stay off it. I advised ibuprofen for pain. I was half in love with her by the time she blew me a kiss and promised to call as I walked out. I knew she wouldn’t. I could smell her perfume on the collar of my summer-weight uniform later that night as I undressed in the locker room. The next day she left a message for me at the station and that night she and Rachel took me to dinner. Her ankle was slightly swollen and she limped. I took them to a very nice restaurant for dessert after but wouldn’t let them buy alcoholic beverages, which Rachel found condescending and Gina found funny. My heart was one hundred percent hers by the time we said good-bye. The moment we met was a scene her mother loved describing later — this surprised young cop with a moaning/laughing redhead in his arms. She said it was her favorite “cute meet,” which was saying a lot given her line of work.

Now on the phone Dawn sounded distracted. I could hear the pop of a cork from a bottle and the clink of glass hitting glass, then a gurgle. Then again. I told her Gina had packed some things and left because she thought there must be more to life.

A moment of silence. Then, “Oh, Robbie. Oh, damn. Are you... are you sure?”

“I’m pretty darned sure, Dawn. The closet’s half empty, she quit her job and had Rachel tell me good-bye.”

“But are you okay?”

“I’m fine but I need to talk to her.”

“But... I can’t believe she’d just — You mean she packed and... Are you sure she...? Have you been fighting or maybe...”

Dawn usually has an orderly mind. She has hundreds of things to track and coordinate with every wedding. I thought about the two clinks of glass on glass and thought I understood what was wrong. The little coal of hope inside me burst into a small flame.

“May I speak with her?” I asked.

“She’s not here, Robbie. There’s no way she—”

“Put her on, Dawn,” I said.

“What? No, Robbie, she’s not—”

“Dawn, you and I have known each other for, what, almost six years? I can tell when you’re fibbing or upset, and right now you’re both.”

A long pause, then a quiet, “Goddamn it.”

“Exactly.”

“I don’t see why I—”

“So just put her—”

“Damn it, Gina, honey. Just come over here and talk to your husband, will you? I can’t—”

Then a clacking sound as the cordless phone smacked a table or counter.

“I’ll be gone by the time you make the airport,” said Gina. Her voice sounded frail but determined. “Or by the time you hit Escondido if you try to drive here.”

“I won’t come, then. Just stay where you’re safe. I won’t bother you but I need to know one thing.”

“Liar. Good-bye, Robbie. You shouldn’t have called.”

“Is there any—”

But she clicked off and when I hit redial I got a busy signal.

Of course I was lying. I called two airlines for their Lindbergh — to — Las Vegas flights that evening but the times were too soon and too late.

I filled up my gas-guzzling slickback and used the toll lanes on northbound I-15, which actually deposit you directly into the worst of the commuter traffic when they merge back into the freeway south of Escondido.

Slowly floating down this river of red brake lights toward Gina was one of the most frustrating things I’d ever done. My heart was beating like a runner’s but my car was hardly moving. Once, when I was ten years old and a first-time skier, I tried to ski in a snowstorm on Mammoth Mountain. I launched down the beginners’ run ahead of me and I flung myself into the swirling whiteness, goggleless and determined. I was soon blinded — I could see nothing but white — but I could feel the snow slapping against my face and the strong wind biting through my cap and I remembered to keep my knees bent and I got into a rhythm with my skis like the instructor had said and I headed into that storm until there was a lull in the white fury around me and I regained my vision to find that I’d been standing still the whole time. But now, inching along in the northbound traffic, I didn’t even have the luxury of my own illusions.

Five hours and thirty-seven minutes later, I pulled into the driveway of the Brancini residence in south Las Vegas. My heart fell when I didn’t see her car, just the empty driveway and the open garage door. Dawn and Vince’s two cars were in the garage. To my surprise, Vince sat in a folding chair behind his Cadillac with an electric heater glowing red at his feet. An empty chair sat beside him. Gina’s car was nowhere to be seen. Good to her word, she had probably left here by the time I was stuck in the Escondido traffic.

I sat in the folding chair next to Vince and we talked for a few minutes. He poured me a cup of coffee from his thermos. I was surprised how cold it was out here in the Nevada desert. To the south the stars were bright and close.

Vince apologized for his daughter’s “flightiness” and said he’d worried about things just like this when she’d announced her marriage plans at age eighteen. What could he have said or done? He had loved his daughter. He had liked me. Gina was happier than he’d ever seen her. Dawn was already talking gown material, floral motifs, and a way to trim the sit-down dinner costs.

“I’ve got a PI friend here in town,” he said. “Between the two of us, we’ll keep an eye on her.”

“Did you call him already?”

“Soon as she left, Robbie.”

“Where’d she go?”

“Don’t ask.”

I knew she had friends here from high school. I knew that some of them had found trouble. I knew that Gina had considered herself a candidate for trouble and that moving out to San Diego to marry me was part of making sure that didn’t happen. She liked to call me her “big, square hero.” Beneath all of Gina’s gaiety and mirth is a heart closely attuned to what can go wrong. I think her lightness and darkness get strength from each other, like the roots and branches of a tree.

“I can’t just let her go, Vince.”

“No. But for now you have to. Go home. Do your job. She talks to her mother and me, kind of. I’ll keep you in the loop. Things change, Robbie, and then they change again. You know what I’m saying.”

That sounded both ominous and hopeful. I held my hands up to the glowing heating element and rubbed them.

“I love her,” I said.

“You’re lucky.”

It was an odd statement but I knew he was right.

“Most people, they just drift apart, vanish on each other,” said Vince. His words were soft and heartfelt and I wondered about him and Dawn. After all, Vince was sitting alone in a cold garage rather than in a warm house with his wife.

“This is fuckin’ fucked,” I muttered. I rarely swear and have no skill at it.

Vince laughed. “That’s one way to put it. I’m sorry, Robbie. I don’t know what I can do.”

I sat for a while and looked at the stars. I could see the lights of the city a few miles north.

“How come you’re sitting in the garage, Vince?”

“I miss the outdoors.”

“I’m serious.”

“Me, too. I grew up in Buffalo, you know? Sometimes I miss the woods and the stars and the cold.”

“Well, you’ve got two out of three tonight.”

He looked at me but said nothing.

“See you and thanks, Vince,” I said.

“It’s almost one o’clock. I made up the spare just in case.”

“Love to Dawn.”

“She wanted me to apologize for her not waiting up. Actually, she didn’t think you’d race over here but I knew you would.”

Vince gave me a big, strong Italian-style hug, which I appreciated.

“How’s the head?” he asked. Vince is the one person who has never shown me any great sympathy for what happened at the Las Palmas. He seems to believe that it was a fairly common event in my line of work, the kind of thing that most cops have to endure sooner or later. I like that attitude, because it takes attention away from me.

“Hard as ever.”

“You’re a good man, Robbie.”

“Who’s the PI?” I asked.

“Get in your car and drive carefully,” said Vince. “I’ll call you when I’ve got something you need to know.”

“I don’t want to just drift apart, Vince. I don’t want her to vanish on me.”

“I don’t either.”

“You know, we have it pretty good. I can’t understand what she wants. I was thinking, though, maybe I can do something that will make her want to come back.”

“She doesn’t know what she wants, Robbie. She’s young. She’ll figure it out.”

I looked up once more at the glittering stars.

“The Mobil down at the corner’s got the best prices,” Vince said. “But stay away from the slots.”

I was back home in bed around sunrise. I slept for two hours, showered, shaved, and went to work.