The Fallen

21

Abel Sarvonola rose slowly from his chair and shook McKenzie’s hand, then mine. His skin was cool and he was stooped but there was an assessing gleam in his eye. His hair was white, with comb tracks fixed by wax. He wore the same loose black suit he’d worn a few hours earlier at the funeral.

“Please sit,” he said.

He lowered himself stiffly back into his chair as his receptionist brought in coffee and bottled water. Sarvonola smiled at her but said nothing as she set out the drinks and closed the door behind her. His teeth were large and yellow.

We exchanged pleasantries about the funeral, the weather, and the privilege of living in San Diego.

“I know Garrett disliked my policies,” he said suddenly. “We didn’t agree on how certain things should be done. He wanted more money for Ethics, but we gave them all that we could, under the circumstances.”

“He wrote about those disagreements in his investigation notes,” I said.

Sarvonola nodded and stared at each of us in turn. He had the patience of a man used to being listened to.

“And I know about all that sex stuff he recorded — Fellowes, Mincher, Rood, and that prick Stiles — all of it. Even our little bond-rating friend from New York. Yeah, Garrett sat right there where you are and showed me some highlights. Made me wish I was young again. He asked me what I thought he should do with it. I appreciated that about Garrett. You could talk to him. He cared what you thought.”

It was interesting that Sarvonola told us about the sex videos before we’d even mentioned them. How did he know we’d seen them?

“What was your advice?” I asked.

“I said first get the whoremongers together and show them the video. Tell them we can’t have that kind of thing going on. Tell them if they do it again, they’re fired — end of discussion. And if they squawk, threaten to tell the Union-Tribune why they got canned. That’ll shut them up, believe me. Then break up that disc and flush it down the nearest toilet, which is out the door and down the hallway ten steps.”

“Garrett wouldn’t do that,” said McKenzie. “He’d want to do more than just slap their wrists.”

“True,” said Sarvonola. “We had two very different opinions on what this city needs. Which is what you’d expect from an ethics investigator like Garrett and a policy maker like myself. Garrett wanted a legal solution — grand jury indictments, criminal charges, rolling heads. I can understand that. It has logic and the flair of retribution. But it would have dragged our city through the sewer. It would cost us hundreds of thousands of dollars to prosecute those men, it would dirty the face we show to the world, and it would slow the flow of dollars that keeps us all alive and healthy and happy. It would open the door to state or federal regulation, which is clearly unnecessary. For example, because of its scandals of years ago, the Los Angeles Police Department is now overseen by federal monitors. Ours is not. We will not let it be. We’ll monitor ourselves. We’ll take care of our own problems. In our city you good police are free to enforce the laws. We’re America’s Finest City, not America’s Horniest City. In spite of what Mr. Asplundh’s videos depict.”

I thought about Abel’s approach, and I pulled out a page I’d printed from Garrett’s notes.

“What’s that?” asked Sarvonola.

“Garrett wrote this,” I said. “‘Think about it for one second, Stella. Sarvonola says no more money for Ethics. Just like there was no more money for fire protection while half the county burned and the firefighters didn’t have enough batteries for their walkie-talkies. And don’t forget we’ve got good honest city workers with a failing pension after some of them paid into it for thirty years. These are just more examples of the collapse that’s coming, Stella. The crash that nobody will talk about.’”

“He was a Boy Scout, an altar boy, and an alarmist,” said Sarvonola. “San Diego won’t crash.”

“Why not?” asked McKenzie. “If we’re spending more than we’re taking in, then do the math.”

“I have, and we’ll just do what we’ve always done,” said Sarvonola. “Raise taxes, cut services, sell off prime real estate holdings to developers for pennies on the dollar and float billions in bonds. Then we can afford to buy batteries and fill up the pension buckets that we’ve been emptying for years to balance the budget. It’s boom and bust. Simple.”

“That just makes the next generation pay for the mess,” said McKenzie.

“So?” asked Sarvonola. “What are kids for?”

He smiled his large, yellow smile again.

“I should know — I’ve got eight children, twenty-four or — five grandkids, and six great-grandchildren. And do they care about San Diego’s debt? Hell no. I’ll tell you what they care about — it isn’t debt, and it isn’t batteries for walkie-talkies, and it’s not some library full of outdated books when they can get everything they need online anyway, no — it’s new stadiums and teams and really good parks and recreation programs. It’s clean air and water and perfect beaches and high property values. It’s plenty of good stores and discount warehouses. It’s zoning out the useless and the unsuccessful and working with business that will bring in dollars. Bring in dollars. It’s development, then redevelopment, then replanning, then rezoning, then more development all over again. That’s prosperity. Prosperity. That’s what I work for. That’s what I represent — the policy of prosperity.”

Sarvonola, as chairman of the Budget Oversight Committee, was afforded a rather nice office in City Hall. I looked through his window at the clear, sunny day. We were seven stories up. I could see some of the bay, and Point Loma beyond it, then the unhurried Pacific all the way to the horizon.

“What Garrett represented was the policy of honest government and honest business,” I said. “Without that, everyone defaults to the lowest common denominator — they start thinking like you.”

Sarvonola’s dark eyes shone with apparent mirth. He smiled again. “Exactly, exactly, Detective. That’s why we hired him and that’s why it’s such a tragedy he’s gone. So let’s just pick up the pieces and try to go on with the business of living our lives. That’s what Mr. Asplundh would have wanted us to do.”

“We pesky cops are paid to find out who killed him,” said McKenzie.

Sarvonola sat back and stared at McKenzie, then at me. “Look, I’m sorry he got killed. I always liked him. We’d talked just a few days before. And I’m sorry his daughter drowned. So little and innocent — that’s a tragedy. And I’m sorry for the wife he left behind, though I imagine she’ll find a way to be well taken care of. In fact, she’ll get some of his city pension someday, if she qualifies.”

“If there’s any money left in the pension,” I said.

“We’ll fill that pension fund back up,” said Sarvonola. “You watch.”

“Did you discuss those sex videos with anyone?” I asked. “Did you tell anyone about them?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “You gotta be kidding. Garrett came to me for advice. I gave it. I knew he wouldn’t take it. He knew he wouldn’t take it.”

No red squares.

“Why did he talk to you about what he’d found?” asked McKenzie.

“Didn’t you notice? Because I’m the only heavy hitter who doesn’t have at least one associate on Garrett’s videos. The mayor? He’s got Rood and Stiles. The chief of police? Fellowes and Mincher. Fire department, City Hall — all present and accounted for. But the Budget Oversight Committee? We’re clean.”

Sarvonola smiled as if for a camera.

“Did Garrett tell you exactly what he planned to do with the videos?” I asked.

“Naw,” said Sarvonola. “He kept his cards close. He lobbied me for more money for the Ethics Authority next year. Said they needed phone-intercept hardware, more cars, a better phone system in the Enforcement building. Then we talked Chargers for a while, then baseball. You know, for having his knickers in a knot about what the city spent for the new ballpark, Garrett really liked the Padres.”

“But you understood that Garrett was going to have to deal with those people in the video?” asked McKenzie.

“Of course I did. It was in his nature to deal with such people. I told him good luck if he wanted to bust them all, but it was the worst thing he could do for this city. And you know what? That got his attention. It bothered Garrett Asplundh because he was a good man and he loved this place and he understood that the damage done by a few fools doesn’t stop when you toss them in jail.”

“It’s important to throw the right fools in jail,” I said. “That’s why we have the Ethics Authority.”

Sarvonola looked at me as if I’d failed to understand something obvious.

“Trey Vinson said you introduced him to some of Jordan Sheehan’s girls,” I said. “You told him to have a good time with them and give San Diego a good credit rating when he got back home.”

Sarvonola sat back, furrowed his brow, and looked at each of us in turn. “Horseshit.”

“Not according to Vinson.”

“You really want to talk about this?”

“We really do,” I said.

“Trey Vinson is a pathetic little worm who couldn’t get a date on his own in a thousand years. So I introduced him to some friends of friends.”

“He’s also married,” said McKenzie.

“What do I care? You’re missing the point, which is that Vinson’s dates were all party girls. They were not professionals. They were not Jordan Sheehan’s girls or anybody else’s. They were young San Diego women out for a good time. They were our daughters and our sisters and our nieces. No money changed hands between Vinson and any girl on that video — none that I saw.”

“Maybe it didn’t change hands on camera,” I said. “But somewhere it did. Somewhere along the line, Jordan Sheehan and the girls got paid. And since you’re the one who told Trey Vinson to have a good time, you probably know exactly where and when and how much.”

Three red squares of deception slipped from his mouth. When he smiled again, a dozen more wobbled out from between his big teeth and floated over his desktop.

“I never saw one penny of it.”

Sarvonola stared at me again. I watched him behind the red squares, squinting menace into his eyes. I waited awhile and said nothing. Nothing annoys a liar more than silence.

“Not one penny.”

“Did you see Garrett the night he died?” I asked.

“I hadn’t seen him in a week.”

The red squares had melted into space and no new ones spilled out to replace them. I waited again and watched Abel Sarvonola sit back and lock his arms across his chest.

Finally I looked at McKenzie and stood. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Sarvonola. We’ll be in touch.”

“Are you threatening me? I’ve told you nothing but the truth,” said Sarvonola.

“You can lie to us all you want about paying Squeaky Clean and her girls,” I said. “But I’d work on my presentation if I were you. Because if you lie in court it’s called perjury and you go to prison.”

“You’re much worse than Garrett.”

“Thank you.”

Sarvonola squinted at me, eyes shining from deep within his heavy black brow. “Garrett was smart. He kept things to himself until he could understand the implications. But you two took what he found and lost control of it. You show it around to everyone. You leave yourselves open. You’re dangerous to yourselves and everyone around you.”

“Sounds like you’re threatening us now,” said McKenzie.

“I can’t change the course of prosperity.”

“Then enjoy the rest of your day,” I said.

He worked himself up from the chair and extended a pale finger at me. His face was white and his back was bent.

“You’re nothing but a mediocre detective who got thrown out of a building and landed on an awning instead of the sidewalk. You’re not brave, you’re lucky. You’re not supposed to be alive. They promote you in order to create a hero. It shows how desperate they are.”

I stood up straight and took a deep breath, as my father had taught me to do in the face of threat.

“And you’re a parasite with a good shot at doing time for pandering and bribery,” I said.

“The chief will hear about this.”

“He’ll hear about the girls you got for Vinson, too,” I said.

“I will defeat you.”

“Bring help,” said McKenzie.

I spent the rest of the afternoon calling Hummer dealers in San Diego County. Since I believed I was looking for a white Hummer that still had the temporary tag taped to the windshield, I asked each dealer to go back three months to check sales. The normal time for the DMV to send the metal plates is more like eight weeks, so I left myself a cushion.

Seven Hummer dealers in San Diego had sold or leased a total of twenty-one new white Hummers between late last year and now. These included both 2004 and 2005 models. Two of the dealers asked if they could call back with the information.

Four of the sales managers and one owner were cooperative and gave me the names of the buyers or lessees. The others couldn’t give out that information, though they both said that if I had a specific name they might be able to confirm a vehicle purchase or lease. One of the sales managers offered me a cash rebate of five hundred dollars and 0 percent “VIP” financing over five years on a new 2005 Hummer, “the most secure vehicle” I could ever drive.

None of the names of new Hummer drivers caught my eye. To the reluctant dealers I offered the names Fellowes, Mincher, Rood, Stiles, Jordan Sheehan, and Peter Avalos, but none of them were on the buy/lease lists. And I wasn’t convinced that any of them had both the motive and opportunity to kill Garrett.

Fellowes didn’t know that Garrett had him naked on tape until we told him. Mincher had half an alibi and did not strike me as capable of murder. Rood and Stiles were at the “exploratory fund-raiser” aboard the carrier Midway.

Jordan Sheehan and Chupa Junior claimed to have worked the Indigo that night from eight until midnight, which checked out. McKenzie had even tracked down the waitress, Dolly, who admitted to being with Chupa at his house from about 1:00 A.M. until noon the next day.

If Sanji Moussaraf was right, Garrett Asplundh had been shot dead at 8:52 that night, give or take the ten thrashing, bloody seconds it took him to rip off a fingernail on his killer’s clothing.

I looked out the window at the falling evening and imagined Garrett dressed in his suit and good-luck blue necktie, sitting alone in his Explorer, parked in the rain where he’d proposed to Stella ten years before. I knew what he was thinking about: seeing Stella in just a little while and trying to rebuild the life they had shared before the drowning of their daughter. And I began to wonder if his murder was really connected to sex videos, Squeaky Clean girls, municipal-bond ratings, and corrupt city employees. From the beginning I had assumed it was, but by now I saw that Garrett hadn’t done anything with what he knew. The meeting with the state attorney general? Maybe that was a motivation for murder, but who knew what Garrett would present to the attorney general and what he would withhold? Sarvonola understood that Garrett wanted to protect the city he worked for and loved, and Garrett’s enemies must have known it, too. After all, Garrett Asplundh was one of them, one of us: a city employee, a man with problems and opportunities, a man of both power and weakness. Kill him on a hunch he was about to spill their secrets? Maybe, but maybe not.

I wondered if his murder was more personal than that.