The Prostitutes Ball

Chapter 47.

I arrived home twenty minutes behind Alexa. It was almost half past midnight. We agreed to finish a few more work items and meet in fifteen minutes for a nightcap on our patio before bed.

I sat in the big chair in our den and began to make notes in my casebook about what I'd learned that day. I made a chronological list, starting with what Jose Del Cristo had told us about London Good Delivery Bars and gold bullion, followed by my meeting at Sheedy's house, the trip into the West Valley, and finally Rancho San Diego.

Next I went on the Internet and Googled Diego San Diego. He was not too widely written about. You had to make a concerted effort at anonymity to be that wealthy, own a multimillion-dollar Arabian horse ranch, breed thoroughbreds, and at the same time stay nearly invisible to the press. However, the few stories I did find proved thought-provoking. As I read the meager selection, I accumulated some interesting facts.

Originally from one of the hill towns above Cartagena, Colombia, Diego San Diego came to the United States as a teenager in the early forties. Cartagena is the capital of Colombia. It is a known haven for drug dealers and money launderers and is one of Farvagny-le-Grand s main marketing centers. I was beginning to wonder if the Farvagnyle-Grand jewelry company was actually some kind of elaborate Colombian drug laundry.

San Diegos business interests sounded semi-legit, unless you'd spent the last two days investigating the Vulcuna case. He'd been a polo player, which was only interesting because it hinted at too much disposable income, a little like those South American drug lords who build zoos in their backyards. Diego had also been a show-business financier all through the nineties, and a commodities broker since 1978.

As I read all of this, it seemed to hit all the right hot buttons. My Colombian mystery man was quickly rising in this twenty-five-year-old pool of yellow shit.

In an article about a cancer fund-raiser in 1998,1 found an out-of-focus picture of him obviously taken without his permission. His left hand was thrown out toward the lens, partially blocking the shot. The article noted that he was notoriously publicity shy and abhorred being photographed. Interestingly enough, it was a personality quirk shared by A1 Capone, Carlos the Terrorist, and a dozen other killers and world-class criminals.

I searched around and found another photo taken in 2004. The quality of that one wasn't very good either. He was moving in the shot, causing it to blur at the edges. His back was slightly turned to the camera, so he was caught in a three-quarter profile.

From what I could see, Diego San Diego appeared to be a very tanned, fit man in his mideighties. He had a full head of steel gray hair. His teeth looked big and strong, reminding me again of the Amazon River crocs and those foolish birds that wandered into the jaws of death to feed.

The story under the photo stated that Arabian horse breeder Diego San Diego had been a large benefactor of the City of Hope Oncology Center since the death of his wife, Maria Elaina Blanca San Diego, from breast cancer ten years earlier.

Diego was continuing to gain energy as the primary focus of my investigation. But I was so tired I couldn't plot a decent course of action. My head felt like a ball of cotton.

I shut off the computer, grabbed a bottle of Corona beer from the fridge, and went out to the backyard. Alexa was just finishing her e-mails so I sat in one of the metal chairs to enjoy the view while I waited for her.

My thoughts quickly turned away from the beautiful moonlit water and fresh ocean breeze to more venal, monetary concerns. For instance, where was my twinkling jeweled carpet of city lights? How come I had no large bubbling Jacuzzi at my elbow and no plate-glass windows that looked down on the clouds?

Hitch parked his expensive sports car under a porte cochere while my leased Acura was pulled up next to my neighbor's trash cans.

I was trying not to let any of those pesky flies land on me when my wife came out holding a cold beer and sat down. She also looked extremely tired. It had been a long day for us both.

"My detective commanders all got their estimated budgets in late," she said. "It gets worse every year."

"Well, they have divisions to run," I replied, wondering as I said it if Jamie Foxx would really agree to star in Prostitutes Ball, doubling our potential domestic gross.

She sighed. "It's getting way tougher to make a decent financial plan with all these city budget cuts."

"Right," I agreed as I sipped from my bottle. Corona is good beer, I thought, but just for the hell of it, maybe I should pick up a few six-packs of that imported German lager that Hitch drinks.

"How's the armored car case coming?" Alexa asked.

"We have a person of interest. Two, if you count Stender Sheedy Sr."

She looked at me and raised an eyebrow, so I brought her up to date. I also filled her in on the few things I'd just learned about Diego San Diego.

"Sheedy is the nexus," she said, cutting to the bottom line, like she always did. "He touches both cases. He was making noise in the eighties and he's still barking."

"Yeah."

Alexa sat for a moment thinking about the case. Then she turned and looked directly at me.

"You know, for two smart guys, there's one thing here you and Hitch aren't dealing with, but you should because it makes absolutely no sense."

"The abandoned gold."

"Exactly. You've got this guy, Diego San Diego, who you think may be a big-time Colombian money launderer, making him a time-sensitive cash broker, yet he leaves fifteen million in gold bullion parked in that well house for over twenty-five years?"

"I know, but Jose said…"

"I don't care what Jose said. Jose seems a little flaky to me anyway. Something this out of whack has to be wrong."

"You think it's counterfeit?"

"It's gotta be counterfeit," she said, and set her beer down. "Look, it's not my case, it's yours. But I was one of the primary responders on the triple that got this whole thing started. My opinion is, get a second assay opinion."

I took another sip of Corona and thought about it. She was right.

"Hang on a minute," Alexa said. Then she got up, went into her office, and returned a moment later with a slip of paper. There was a name and number written on it.

"Who's Materon Smith?" I asked.

"She's the contact person I talked to at the Jewelry Mart. She gave us Jose Del Cristo. I took him because he was immediately available. That doesn't mean he's necessarily the best. There are others who do gold assays down there. She said I could call her anytime, day or night."

I was still holding the slip of paper when Alexa pulled her cell out of its holster and handed it to me. I dialed and got Mrs. Smith. She sounded like she'd been asleep, but after I told her who I was, she said it was okay, she was used to taking midnight calls from their brokerage contacts in Europe.

"I think we need another assay done for the purpose of legal verification," I told her somewhat vaguely.

"I have three more firms I can call for you."

She read off the names. One was the Latimer Commodities Exchange in downtown L. A. She told me they just went into that business a few years ago. I put Materon Smith on hold and looked over at Alexa.

"Latimer just started doing assays."

"Go for it," Alexa said. "Might tell us something."

"Can you set me up an appointment with Latimer first thing in the morning?" I said into the phone.

"They open at seven. How's seven fifteen? I can meet you there."

"Perfect." I hung up, then handed the cell back to Alexa. "Seven fifteen tomorrow morning," I told her.

"Good. You should probably call Jeb and have an armed patrol officer get one of the gold bricks out of the evidence room and meet you there."

I made the call, waking Jeb up too. But he wasn't ticked off either because this case was now weighing down on all of us.

After I hung up, Alexa looked at me and said, "I'd like to come up with something else, but my mind is putty."

"Mine too."

"Race you to the bedroom."

I didn't know what she had in mind, but I got up and headed that way. I was going about as fast as a man who'd only had five hours of sleep in seventy-two could go.

Naturally, she beat me.

We made love in our big queen-sized bed. It calmed my nerves and raised my spirits, lightening my mood. When we finished we lay in each other's arms. She didn't speak and a few minutes later I realized the reason. She was already asleep.

I looked up at the ceiling, then pushed my thoughts about the case into a cupboard in the back of my head and slammed the door shut to wait for morning.

As I often did before sleep, I lapsed into a confusing personal inventory of my assets and liabilities. It was something I'd been doing since I was in the Huntington House group home as a child. Back then, I would sit on the toilet in the big, shared bathroom in Sharon Cross Hall with the door locked and my meager collection of stolen treasures on my lap.

I would look at my money, most of it lifted from the purses of social workers at the group home. I would count it, then stuff it in my pocket. Each time I examined the broken gold watch that I'd filched off some guy's towel at the beach I'd wonder if I got it fixed what it might be worth. A few rings and trinkets completed the stash. It was a collection of questionable worth, because I had paid for most of it with my own loss of self-esteem.

Lately these bedtime inventories tended to be more psychological than material, but now, all these years later, I again found myself fantasizing about wealth. It felt like lost ground. Was I still building my castles too close to the water?

As I lay in my bed listening to Alexa's rhythmic breathing I suddenly realized that I was having a midlife crisis. I was nearing the end of my police career and had very little set aside. As a child, my life had only been about me. I was the most important part of every equation. As I got older, I felt smaller and smaller inside my surroundings. This whole movie deal seemed to have kicked these hidden insecurities into overdrive. Now I tried to put things into a better perspective.

Sure, it would be nice to be wealthy, to drive a Carrera and have a huge house with a city view. But I knew if I wanted to have true happiness, I needed to rein all that bullshit in. It just wasn't me. At least not anymore. I had built this castle in exactly the right place.

It wasn't on Mount Olympus. It was in Venice Beach, California. That was my reality. And you know what? That reality was pretty damn good.

There were no angels singing, but I got to hold one in my arms.

As I fell asleep I was thinking not many guys got to do that.