The Fallen
- Автор: Паркер Т. Джефферсон
- Год: 2006
- Язык: английский
- Год: William Morrow
- ISBN: 978-0-06-056238-0
- Жанр: Криминальные детективы
Электронная книга - «The Fallen». Краткое содержание книги:
“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.
10
I spent the early part of that Friday afternoon at my desk with the coroner’s report on the death of Garrett Asplundh. McKenzie sat across the aisle with her own copy. The day was cool but clear, and the city was beautiful as I looked downtown to the new ballpark and the glassy condos and the silver-gray water of the bay.
The city has changed a lot in my twenty-nine years. When I was a boy there was no Gaslamp Quarter, just a rough borough of bars and porn shops and tattoo parlors and cheap hotels overrun with sailors on leave and a lot of down-and-out people. I remember an inordinate number of wig shops. The hairpieces looked so strange in the dirty windows, displayed on the sleek, faceless mannequins. The joke was, you didn’t stroll through this part of downtown, you ran. When I got older, I thought it was interesting to find that this area had always been rough and tumble. Back at the turn of the century it was nicknamed “The Stingaree,” and it was filled with saloons, opium dens, and gambling houses. Wyatt Earp ran a place called the Oyster Bar, while upstairs in the same building was a brothel called the Golden Poppy. Ida Bailey was one of the locally famous madams, from whom Jordan Sheehan had borrowed and updated a marketing strategy — parading her girls around town in the latest mode of transportation. The cops were slow to shut Ida down because some of them were her best customers. Funny how history was repeating now. Same truths, different people. They named a restaurant after Ida. There was plenty of trouble in the Stingaree but until a few years ago, no gas lamps. They were put there by the city for character.
There was no “East Village” either. Just big warehouses and weekly hotels and odd businesses that seemed to be dead or dying. Trash in the street blowing in the bay breeze. Plenty of homeless people and services to get them back on their feet, or at least out from under other people’s feet. Our current police headquarters was built right in the middle of it, like a church in the middle of a pagan village. With the ballpark now in and millions of dollars committed for redevelopment, San Diegans say that East Village will someday be the crown jewel of downtown.