The Fallen

McGinty’s Pub on India Street downtown is Gina’s and my favorite Irish bar in San Diego. It’s not the oldest, biggest, or most popular, but we have spent many a Friday evening there having drinks and sometimes dinner before heading out to party with our friends. For an Irish pub, McGinty’s is an oddity because it sits in the middle of Little Italy. Gina’s maiden name was Brancini but her mother’s maiden name was O’Hara, so maybe an Irish pub in the middle of Little Italy is perfect for us. Me, I’m German-English and one-eighth Irish from my mother’s side. McGinty’s is a friendly little place, just a few blocks from the Ethics Authority Enforcement building, where Garrett Asplundh was employed.

I walked in and had to duck through the ribbons attached to festive green and silver balloons bouncing against the ceiling. And the streamers of green crepe paper wavering down. St. Patrick’s day was next week, so McGinty’s had all the standard decorations, plus posters promoting a lucky green pint and Harp-battered fish and chips for $9.99.

I squeezed into the last open stool at the bar and sat down in front of a giant brandy snifter half filled with small green marbles. They were minis, like I collected as a boy. Smaller than shooters and just a small fraction the diameter of boulders.

Mike the bartender came over, and I asked him for a beer and the fish and chips.

“Gina coming?”

“Not tonight. She’s out with friends.”

I stared at those marbles.

“Been a while since I’ve seen you two,” Mike said.

“We’ve been busy, all right.”

“Garrett Asplundh yours?”

I nodded.

Mike shook his head as he dried off the pint glass. “Cold work, Robbie.”

“Yes, it was.”

In the glittery green marbles, I saw the shattered glass of the Explorer’s window. And Garrett slumped down into the space between the seat and the door like something that had leaked.

“Take some marbles if you want, Robbie. They’re promotional. Little shamrocks and Irish lasses inside, see?”

He handed me a few. Sure enough, there were dark green shamrocks inside some, and little lasses with curly orange-red hair inside others. The images were suspended in the middle of the glass, like a cat’s eye. The girls looked like Gina.

I detached myself from the marbles for a moment. “You know, Mike, how about a Johnnie Walker to go with that beer? That was Garrett’s drink, I believe. In his honor.”

“It sure was — Johnnie Walker Black on the rocks. Doubles. I’ll lift one to Garrett if you’re asking me to join you.”

“On me, Mike.”

“Not in my bar it isn’t. On me.”

The double scotch hit me hard because my stomach was empty and I’m not a drinker. It made me feel unbalanced in a harmless way, suddenly light and amused in spite of what was happening with my wife. I’m always amazed how Gina at 110 pounds can drink so much and appear normal. I outweigh her by eighty pounds, match her drink for drink on a Friday night, and wake up with my brain wrapped in sandpaper while she goes to an early workout at the gym. I’m lucky to drag myself out of bed by noon.

I ate the fish and chips and ordered a shepherd’s pie to top it off. I’m one of those tall, wiry guys who eats a ton and doesn’t put on weight. Alcohol makes me even hungrier. The pint vanished ahead of schedule so I asked for another.

“So, Mike, where do you get the promotional marbles?”

“Mexico. Fourth year in a row we’ve put them out. People take them by the pocketful. Had a fresh load brought up Tuesday, I think it was. Why?”

“I like them.”

“You’re not alone,” said Mike. “But we lost half of our new shipment before they even got here. Truck tipped over and something like fifty cartons of them spilled. Five thousand of them is what I heard. Talk about losing your marbles.”

“Now that’s interesting.”

“It’s different anyway. I kept picturing guys sliding around on them and falling. You know, like a slapstick routine.”

“I keep seeing cars running them over and getting them caught in their tire treads,” I said.

“That could happen,” said Mike.

“When did this spill take place?”

“Tuesday, it was.”

Garrett’s last night, I thought.

“And exactly where, Mike?”

“Right around the corner, Kettner and Hawthorn.”

About halfway between here and the Ethics Authority Enforcement building, I thought.

“What time did it happen?” I asked.

“Let’s see. I’d been here three hours when Donovan came in and told me about it. So the spill must have been, oh, seven o’clock or so.”

I put that into Garrett’s timeline on the night he died. It was well after he’d left Hollis Harris at HTA, “preoccupied” and “distracted.” It was one and a half hours after he met Carrie Ann Martier at the Imperial Beach Pier and received another sex video. It was one hour before he left his not-quite-secret National City apartment, wearing the blue necktie he’d changed into. And two full hours before he was going to meet Stella in Rancho Santa Fe for a date that was supposed to be a new beginning for them.

I made a note to check with our Traffic Division and get the exact time for the accident. I was certain that because of the downtown location, the marble spill would have been reported to us.

What it looked like was that Garrett’s vehicle had picked up a spilled marble a half block from where he worked at the Ethics Authority Enforcement office sometime after seven that night.

And sometime soon after that, Garrett Asplundh’s plans for the evening had taken a turn drastic enough to make him miss a date with the ex-wife he still loved and was trying to reconcile with.

“Did you see Garrett that night?” I asked.

“No. No Garrett that night. The week before.”

Which tallied up with a blood-alcohol level of zero.

I ate the shepherd’s pie, ordered another beer and took it back to the dartboards. I played a long time, though I don’t remember my opponents or any bull’s-eyes I might have thrown.

Later I sat at the bar again and considered the green marbles. I took a handful of them and put them in my coat pocket. A pocketful of Ginas and lucky shamrocks. I got one more of Garrett Asplundh’s doubles and drank it quickly. I felt suddenly horrible, like I was a big-screen TV with the vertical hold slipping over and over. Mike had one of the busboys take me home and I fell onto the bed sometime around midnight after checking the machine for messages, but nobody had called.