The Fallen

17

Chupa Junior — the Squeaky Clean Madam’s bouncer with his own moral code — had been arrested at three that morning on suspicion of driving under the influence. While I’d been zooming through Barstow, Chupa Junior was blowing a .24 blood-alcohol count, over double his legal limit.

Patrol Officer Ron Mincher had left a message for me that Chupa had been busted, and thought I might want to see him. I was thankful for Mincher’s tip but not surprised by it. He was a young man who’d gotten himself into some understandable trouble and now he was trying to get himself back out of it.

Chupa Junior glowered at me as I walked toward his cell. A normal man would have been in the drunk tank but Peter Avalos was six-four, three hundred, and not normal. I’d learned from his jacket that he’d been questioned and released in two murders before I came to Homicide. They thought he was good for them but couldn’t get anyone to talk. They did, once, and she was found in Glorietta Bay one morning just like McKenzie had said, strangled and three ribs broken. Chupa had done his prison time for carjacking, armed robbery, and multiple assaults. Like a lot of creeps, Chupa had no problem selling out other creeps. He’d turned a few dollars informing for us, even slipped out of yet another assault rap when he snitched out a La Eme — Mexican mafia — boss, which could have gotten him killed and still might.

He was as big as Vic Malic, just shaped differently. Malic is a wrestler, all shoulder and back. Chupa was big in the legs and middle. His small, shaved head crawled with tattoos, and his black eyes stared at me with open violence. He was slumped on the metal bed and looked half drunk. I was happy to have the bars between us. Two hours of sleep leaves the dreams still trying to get in and out of you. I felt wobbly.

“I’m Detective Brownlaw, Homicide,” I said.

“Then get me out of here, big man.”

“Jordan told me to say hello. She says you’re a good guy, have your own sense of right and wrong, do some bouncing for her at the club.”

“She’s the one.”

“Guess you drank a little too much last night. Wish I could have, but I was driving down from Las Vegas.”

He looked at me as if he was sizing me up for a knife.

“I like the rooms at the Venetian and the rubdowns at Bally’s,” he said. “They use old fight men, really got the hands.”

“My brother is a dealer at Excalibur,” I said.

Chupa thought about this, as I knew he would. I wanted to give him something personal to keep him off balance and talking. Not that I would ever tell him anything truthful, because I could see that Chupa was already looking for a way to use this new information. One thing about genuine bad guys is, they never overlook an opportunity, and to them everything is an opportunity.

“What’s his name?”

“Bill Brownlaw.”

“Make good money?”

“It’s all tips, but he does okay. The good-looking women do better.”

“You and him got a little system going at the tables?” asked Chupa.

“I’d never mess with him or a casino.”

He looked at me like he didn’t believe me.

“Funny time of night for you to be driving in from Vegas,” he said.

“You make better time.”

“So what are you doing here, man?”

“Asking you about Garrett Asplundh.”

A spark of pleasure twinkled in his black eyes. “The cop in the car with the brains all over?”

“He wasn’t a cop. He was Ethics Authority.”

“He used to be a cop. He popped me back in ’98 for an assault I didn’t do. Want to know how to tell I didn’t do it?”

“Because the guy lived.”

“Fuckin’ right.”

“You got dynamite in both hands, from what I hear.”

He stood up and lumbered over. He moved like an elephant, with a tonnage that was slow but not unwieldy. His ears were stacked curves, like hourglasses, lobes big and round, with black hair growing from the canals.

“Why am I talking to you, man?”

“The Ethics guy. I want to know what he was up to with Squeaky Clean.”

He clamped two big hands to the bars. The tats on his forearms were a black jailhouse jumble of Celtic letters, chupacabras, and demons that wrapped around to his underarms. One of the demons jammed his claw up a woman’s dress as he drank the blood gushing from her severed neck. Chupa Junior burped beer at me.

“Why would I tell you?”

“I’m rich,” I said. “I’m influential.”

Chupa smiled. Small teeth, pale gums.

“I saw them together at the Indigo. That’s Jordan’s place.”

“When?”

“Six months ago. I was working the door. Tried to pat him for guns on his way in and I thought he was going to tear my head off. Try to anyway. Could have gotten messy. Jordan pushed him past me, told me he was VIP. I said, ‘Yeah, very important pig.’ He gave me the mad dog, the look, you know, so I owed him.”

In gangland’s code of honor, you answer a mad dog with a bullet. If you don’t, you’re not respected.

“Yeah, you owed him a bullet, didn’t you?”

He was already shaking his head. “Someone beat me to it.”

“What did Jordan and Garrett do that night you saw them together?”

“Drank at a booth in the back. Watched the people dance. About an hour, then he left.”

“Without her?”

“Alone, man. On the way out he came up behind me and whispered some shit in my ear.”

“What, exactly?”

“I just ran out of memory. What a time.”

We were on closed-circuit TV, of course. But I’d asked the sergeant at the Professional Visits window if I could offer the arrestee a small amount of cash to pay for material comforts in the jail. The sergeant had agreed.

“Here’s twenty,” I said.

“Forty.”

“Don’t get greedy, Junior.”

I folded the bill over twice and watched his hand closely as it unlocked itself from the bar, reached through, and took it.

“He said if I ever touched another Squeaky Clean girl he’d put a cap in my ass and dump me in the bay,” said Chupa.

“Wouldn’t that just be great?” I asked.

He gave me a confused smile. It’s funny how simple, straightforward sarcasm can throw a street-smart thug like Chupa Junior. But his smile quickly became genuine, full of mirth and violence.

“How many of those girls have you touched?” I asked.

He shook his head. “None. Don’t know where that pendejo got his ideas.”

“But everybody knows you smack the girls around when they get out of line,” I said.

“Man, I’m going to tell you what I’m going to tell you. I don’t know anything about Squeaky Clean girls. I don’t know anything about Squeaky Clean except that her name is Jordan and she pays me thirty an hour to keep the Indigo smooth, quiet, and making money.”

The red squares of deception rushed out of him. They were bigger than most I’d seen, and their sides were slightly dipped, concave, as if bowing from Chupa’s enormous weight. They just kept coming.

“What are you looking at?”

“Nothing, Chupa.”

“Call me Mr. Avalos.”

I looked at him. I like tough guys who give you trouble better than the weaklings who roll over and tremble and stab you when you turn your back for one second. With guys like Chupa, you always know where you stand and what your mission is.

“You weigh three hundred?” I asked.

“What do you care?”

“I just wondered, how much did you drink to blow a point two-four?”

“Most of a case of Bud.”

“Wow.”

“Couple shots of tequila.”

“Ouch.”

“Some bourbon.”

Chupa Junior gave me another flat, contained stare, then turned and went back to his cot. The flesh piled up on the back of his shaved neck like a folded set of bath towels. The steel bed squeaked with his weight.

“I worked the Indigo the night your boyfriend got his mind blown. Stayed around for drinks after. Girl named Dolly came home with me. She’s one of the waitresses. Ask Jordan. She was there.”

“I’ll be checking that story, Chupa.”

“You do that, man.”

“Vice would love to make you a deal for Squeaky Clean,” I said. “They’d make this DUI disappear in a hurry.”

“Roll over on a friend for a DUI? What kind of man does that? Jordan’s right. I got my own sense of right and wrong. Even if I wanted to lay her out for you, I couldn’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never seen a Squeaky Clean girl. Know what this Squeaky Clean shit really is? It’s what the hos make up on slow nights to give themselves a little shine. Makes them feel like they’re part of a secret organization and the organization has got this big mean fucker who’ll rip ’em up if they don’t follow the rules. Chupacabra, man, a goatsucker. It’s made up. It isn’t true. There’s no such thing. It’s the same as in the ’hood when you’re a kid, man — there’s always the monsters and the stories and the bullshit. It’s all a bunch of bullshit, man. You ought to know that.”

During the first part of Chupa’s monologue, the air was vibrant with his concave red squares. By the time he got to the end of it, they were gone.

“I guess the Squeaky Cleans I talk to are just swamp gas,” I said.

“And all you are is a sucker who laid out twenty for nothing. That’s all you’re going to get from me. Unless, you know, the situation is perfect.”

“Talk to me about perfect.”

“Some night when everything’s right, man, maybe I catch you alone in your car, reach in with a piece and do some window painting with your brains.”

“That’s a knee-slapper. Tell me another one.”

“Cost you forty.”

“My wallet’s as empty as your future, Chupa. Enjoy the hangover.”

I stopped by the office of San Diego Monthly magazine and bought the January issue, which had a photo spread on December’s “Fifty San Diegans to Watch” party. If that was really where Jordan Sheehan had lost the earring that ended up in Garrett’s Explorer, maybe I could figure out who had picked it up. The idea of a killer’s being among the Fifty San Diegans to Watch intrigued me but seemed highly unlikely.

Back at my desk, I looked at the pictures and read the article. I had been named such a person back in 2003, having miraculously survived the Las Palmas fall and been promoted twice within six months.

Gina and I attended the party at the end of that year, and we were treated wonderfully by the publishers of the magazine, the other “Fifty,” and the many partygoers. Gina pretty much stole the show away from me, for which I was thankful. She was at her best, simply beautiful, full of radiant nonchalance and smart-aleck attitude. When people found out she was a Salon Sultra stylist, many of them wanted to know what she would do with their hair. Stylists often run across this at parties, just as doctors are asked about ailments and stockbrokers for hot picks. So Gina delivered her hairstyle tips that night with plenty of chipper comments about who was cutting their hair now and what were they trying to accomplish — No, no, no, don’t answer that — but nobody took offense and over the next week Gina actually got several calls from society-type San Diego women who wanted her to style their hair.

My parents were there, though they huddled together in a corner almost the entire night, dazzled by the local celebrity. That was the only time I’d ever seen my mother too nervous to smile for a picture. I’ll never forget the pride in their faces as I was introduced as one of the Fifty San Diegans to Watch, though Mom told me later she was really just glad I was still alive. Dad said it was one of the top ten events of his life, and we had a revealing discussion one night about the other nine. Gina and I celebrated privately after the party in a suite at the Hilton, which cost us almost four hundred dollars and was totally worth it. She had arranged for a bottle of Dom Pérignon to be there waiting for us but that was the least of the pleasures I remember.

I looked out the window of the Homicide room and thought about that night. Because of what had happened at the Las Palmas, I was no longer surprised by how quickly things can change. John Van Flyke certainly had that right. But I thought of Gina at that party two years ago, and I thought of her now, and I couldn’t help but feel flabbergasted that something so large and precious and wonderful in her could have gone away in what seemed an instant.

The pictures from this year’s Fifty San Diegans to Watch party looked very much like the ones taken two years ago. Society pages often seem to have repeating faces, or facial types. Among the fifty were an outfielder, a relief pitcher, a defensive end, four actors, eight lawyers, a dozen businesspeople, a new TV weatherman, and a painter.

I was not surprised to see that Abel Sarvonola, chair of the Budget Oversight Committee, was an honoree. The article said it was his third appearance on the list in as many decades. He was by far the oldest person pictured and he looked withered but eternal in his tux. His wife’s hair could have used Gina’s sensible touch.

I was surprised to find that councilmanic aide Steven Stiles had been named a “San Diegan to Watch.” According to my sources within City Hall, his career was undistinguished and he was considered to be overly ambitious. He smiled broadly at the camera, his wife on his arm and a glass of bubbly in the other hand. I wondered if he was smiling like that when Garrett Asplundh asked him about hitting Carrie Ann Martier. I also knew that of all the men captured on the sex disc, Stiles and now Mincher were the only two who knew for certain they’d been caught. But the Fifty San Diegans party was held before Stiles had bruised Carrie’s ribs. Could he have picked up the lost earring out of curiosity, then later skewed the crime scene by dropping it into the mix? It was a stretch, but it was possible.

The next two names that jumped out at me were Hollis Harris and Garrett Asplundh.

Harris was pictured with HTA comptroller Elsa Shnackenburg, who looked like a movie star. She stood half a head taller than Hollis, who seemed not to care as he smiled tiredly into the camera. The article said that “the 28-year-old Harris’s Hidden Threat Assessment company will not only make the nation a safer place this year but will bring in over $45 million in sales for systems designed, built and maintained right here in America’s Finest City.” I pictured Hollis bending down to pick up an earring dropped by Jordan Sheehan. Why not return it to her right then? If he didn’t know it was hers, why hang on to it? Why not turn it in to hotel security? More importantly, why would Hollis Harris kill Garrett Asplundh?

Garrett was pictured alone, and the article mentioned no companion at the party. He looked oddly nonfestive for such an event, more like a losing defense lawyer caught leaving a courthouse. I could make out Abel Sarvonola talking with John Van Flyke in the dark background of the photo. Neither was identified in the caption. What sense did Jordan Sheehan’s earring make in the hands of Sarvonola or Van Flyke? None that I could see. Garrett disagreed with Sarvonola’s political and budgetary policies, but was that enough to shoot someone point blank? Garrett was Van Flyke’s employee and friend.

The article said, “Garrett Asplundh, former star investigator for the SDPD’s elite Professional Standards Unit, was suddenly hired away by the city’s Ethics Authority in an attempt to clamp down on corruption, collusion and crime. Does he have what it takes? Former boss and SDPD Captain Roger Sutherland once described Asplundh as ‘the most principled man I’ve ever worked with.’ And what will it take besides principles to monitor ethics in our bustling city of over a million people? ‘Endurance,’ said Mr. Asplundh, with just a hint of a smile.”

Jordan Sheehan was pictured twice. In the first shot, she stood between a new Padres relief pitcher who was supposed to help us win the National League West and a TV actor who played a New York cop and lived part-time in Rancho Santa Fe. In the second she was part of a group that included Steven Stiles, the chef of the city’s hottest new restaurant, and “visiting Jance Purdew financial wiz Trey Vinson.”

I tried to picture scrawny, unimpressive Trey finding the fallen earring and saving it for his murder of Garrett Asplundh. It was hard to do.

McKenzie met me at ten for our interview with Vinson. I drove to La Jolla and found a place to park. We headed down the sidewalk toward Vinson’s hotel. I could smell the ocean in the warming March breeze and hear the sharp cries of the gulls wheeling through the perfect blue sky.

“How was your date with Harris?” I asked.

“Fast. I drove us in his car to the range in Oceanside. Taught him how to handle Death and Destruction. Then dinner, drinks, dessert.”

“Death and Destruction” is McKenzie’s nickname for her sidearm, which is a Glock nine-millimeter. Under the old chief, we were told what weapons to carry, but now we have greater latitude. The Glock is a workhorse that rarely jams or misfires, though it is on the large side of “concealable.”

“He’s an okay guy, Robbie.”

“Good.”

“It’s like I’ve known him a long time. Did you feel that way when you first started seeing Gina, like you’d known her forever?”

“No, she seemed totally alien to me.”

“He asked me to spend the weekend with him and some friends out in Jackson, Wyoming. He charters a jet to get there, and his house, you can ski from the porch right to the lift. Leave Friday noon and be back Monday night.”

I thought of my stationary Mammoth Mountain skiing adventure. “That would be nice, McKenzie. Have a ball.”

“You need me, Robbie, I’m on that plane in five minutes and landing at Brown Field less than two hours later. I told him that could happen, and he’s down with it. He knows what my priorities are.”

“You’re a good partner, McKenzie. I’ll be fine.”

“The big money makes me feel strange,” she said. “The Enzo trees me because I’m a car chick, but all the other stuff makes me wonder. And the way they live — way busier than I’m used to. To Hollis and his friends, a weekend is a time to fly somewhere special and play. For me it’s laundry and the cat. I get my car washed on Saturdays, you know — I don’t go buy a new one.”

When we walked into the beautiful lobby of the Valencia Hotel, I thought of Ron Mincher and Allison, and Mincher’s comment that his soul was rotting. It couldn’t have started in a nicer setting. There was an enormous vase in the entryway, overflowing with big tropical blooms and flowers. The floors were the shiniest gray marble I’d ever seen. The registration desk was small and neat and staffed by a neatly groomed man about my age and a pretty woman a notch older.

In person, dressed in tennis whites and inviting us into his ocean-view suite, Trey Vinson looked less pathetic than when he was fornicating with working girls on video. He still had an air of entitlement, the look of a man who believed he deserved everything around him. He wore his shiny wedding ring.

Vinson offered us something from a fruit basket, but we both said no. He took a red apple and reclined on a cream-colored chair. The apple popped when he bit in.

I told him that we were investigating the murder of Garrett Asplundh and had discovered Asplundh’s notes. We found some of them intriguing.

I read to him:

“City cooked the books. Now up to Vinson. Diminished to negative. If he holds we’re alive, if he folds we’re not.”

“Well,” he said. “He got straight to the center of it, I’ll say that.”

“Center of what?” asked McKenzie.

“Being up to me. The city’s bond rating. I’m the one who brings the information back to New York so Jance Purdew can formulate its ratings. I assess the municipality, talk to its accountants and legal teams, review its books, investments, holdings, assets, et cetera. My recommendation is heavily weighted.”

Pop went his apple.

“So did San Diego cook its books?” I asked.

“A case could be made that it did,” said Vinson. “It goes back almost ten years. A city’s bond rating is based on the things I just mentioned. The city government must keep its books with accuracy and transparency. Disclosure is everything. Back then the city failed to disclose that its pension fund was one billion dollars underfunded. ‘Underfunded’ means that they had taken pension dollars owed to employees and used them to balance the city budget to get a high rating. I said one billion dollars, Detectives — not one million, not one hundred million or six hundred million. There were piles of errors and omissions in city financial reports. ‘Egregious’ is the word often used to describe those errors and omissions, and it’s a good one. Well, that same pension fund is still underfunded by a billion dollars but now everyone knows it. And the city is bleeding red ink every day. Your PD needs new cars and new officers. The fire-rescue department needs hundreds of millions of dollars, unless you want another disaster like you had three years ago. The new library is on hold. But San Diego is trying to keep its rating up. I told them I could only be so optimistic on their behalf. I told them they were probably looking at a rating diminishment from ‘stable’ to ‘negative.’ I had no choice.”

“When is your report due back in New York?” I asked.

“May fifteenth,” said Vinson. He looked thoughtfully at the apple and took another bite. “I leave a week from Friday. I’ve got more meetings, but I don’t see any way around the negative rating. Sorry. I know you guys need your bullets and guns.”

I thought about the underfunded pension and the nondisclosure. “So when Garrett wrote, ‘If he holds we’re alive, if he folds we’re not,’ he’s saying that if you recommend to keep the old rating—”

“Right. If the City of San Diego is seen as stable, the bond rating remains attractive. If I diminish it to negative, it’s going to either prevent the city from issuing bonds at all or cost San Diego many millions of dollars in higher bond-interest payments.”

“How many millions?”

“Fifty million, plus or minus twenty. Lots can happen.”

Vinson arched his apple core toward a black enamel wastebasket. It went long, bounced off a beautifully papered wall and dropped in. He got up, swiped a tissue from a desktop, and patted down the wall.

“Garrett Asplundh wasn’t a financial wizard,” said Vinson. “But he understood lying and its consequences.”

“Meaning what?” I asked.

“He was one of the only city guys who wasn’t trying to influence me to keep the rating high.”

“It was his job to prevent that kind of thing,” said McKenzie.

Vinson shrugged, checked his watch and sat down again. “Ethics people aren’t immune to money and pressure. Believe me.”

He cited several city and county governments for their craven dishonesty and eagerness to “pander” to ratings agencies. I thought pander was an interesting choice of words, considering what we were about to reveal to him. He said investment-rating companies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s and Jance Purdew saved investors billions of dollars a year by bringing undisclosed risks to the light of day. He said he loved San Diego but he couldn’t compromise his standards or shade his findings. He’d be honest, and quite frankly, it was going to be a very difficult recommendation.

“So you don’t know what it will be?” asked McKenzie.

“Isn’t that what I just said?” He looked at her with a bored arrogance.

“Did you know that Garrett Asplundh had you on video with three of Jordan Sheehan’s working girls?” I asked.

Vinson’s arrogance went brittle. He stared at me. “Jordan Whoosies whatsies?”

I said it again.

“Bullshit.”

“I’ve got a laptop here in my briefcase,” I said. “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

He stood, looked at McKenzie, then at me again. “What is this?”

“You and some working girls you didn’t pay for. Here — you tell us what it is.”

“Sit down, Mr. Vinson,” said McKenzie.

Vinson sat irritably.

I brought out the laptop and showed him a few seconds.

“Enough,” he said.

“Your part doesn’t last long,” said McKenzie.

“Just turn it off.”

For a moment we all sat there in the beautiful room. I listened to the waves crashing below and watched a pelican float in a perfectly straight horizontal line across a window.

“What do you want?” he asked.

“Answers,” said McKenzie. “Who introduced you to the girls?”

“It was never a crime. I never paid money. They were San Diego bimbos. Party girls looking for a good time.”

“And you’re a good time?” asked McKenzie.

I chuckled quietly, happy to add to Vinson’s humiliation and glad that McKenzie wasn’t grilling me.

He stared at McKenzie with an odd, glazed look of captivity. “I can’t believe this is happening.”

“Believe. Who introduced you?”

“I want my lawyer.”

“You don’t get one until we arrest you,” I said.

He stood.

“Sit,” snapped McKenzie.

Trey sat.

“Who introduced you to the girls?” I asked. “Someone did, because someone expected something in return. They weren’t really free, and you knew it.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said.

“Trey,” said McKenzie, “we’re your only chance. We don’t want to ruin you. In fact, we want you to like us. We want you to go home and ask for a stable rating for our wonderful city. We want the goodies you can help us get — more ballparks and stadiums and downtown development. Ethics needs telephone bugs. We need new radio cars and helicopters and bulletproof vests. But we’re more than happy to make your life miserable and ruin your career if you’d like. We want the big guys. Talk to us.”

“Nobody asked for anything. I was never asked to do anything but my job. Not one thing.”

“But you understood, didn’t you?” asked McKenzie. “You knew you didn’t get girls like that for nothing. You knew you were being provided a service.”

I listened to the waves crash. Down the hallway a door slammed with a muffled thud. I looked out the window and wondered if I’d have survived a fall from it.

“Robbie, let’s just call New York,” said McKenzie. “We’ll e-mail Jance Purdew a clip of Trey’s leading-actor performance. Just to show them how San Diego is treating their guy.”

Vinson was pale and wet-eyed.

“I’ll do it, Vinson,” said McKenzie. “I don’t like the pouty way you think you own the world. They can fire you for all I care. Christ, you punk — you’re married.”

“Abel Sarvonola,” Vinson said quietly. “He said not to worry, these girls know how to have a good time. He said just go home happy and tell them things look good out here. Excuse me — I gotta use the bathroom.”