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:
He looked at me briefly, shaking his head. “You first.”
“Talk to me.”
“I’m a stupid guy.”
We continued on but Mincher was lost in himself.
“Did Garrett talk to you about this?” I asked.
“No.”
I waited for the proof of his lie but it never came. And again I wondered exactly what Garrett was planning to do with the discs he had collected from Carrie Ann Martier and her friends.
“He never showed you the videos?”
“Never.”
“He never told you what he had?”
Mincher shook his head.
“Did you suspect you’d been recorded?” I asked.
“No. The girls were always so... professional.”
“What did you do to get such a deal? You were paying a hundred for what usually costs a grand.”
Mincher looked at me again. We turned south onto Fifteenth. “I’m getting myself into some huge trouble here.”
“No, you’re already in it.”
“Who else do you have?”
“Fellowes, if that’s what you’re after.”
“Oh, man,” he said quietly. “He’s not going to like this one bit.”
“Did he proposition you?” I asked.
We walked awhile, and then Mincher nodded.
“Tell me about that.”
He said nothing for a few steps. “Help me.”
“Here’s the only help I can offer you, Ron: You tell me everything you know, and I don’t arrest you right here on the spot. Good enough? I’m armed and I’ve got my cuffs. Your stuff is back in that new yellow pickup. I’ll subdue you right here on this street, cuff you, and walk you into the jail in front of the guys you work with. Then you’ll have to tell your whole story anyway, to a defense attorney.”
He stopped walking and stared at me. He was a little taller and heavier than me but I saw no fight at all in his eyes. I thought for a second he might actually run away. I’m not fast but I have endurance. I can run mile after mile after mile.
“I played for the golf team, is how I met Fellowes,” he said. “He’s a captain with weight, you know, and I’m a twenty-four-year-old new hire. We get along okay. He’s always asking about my love life. I’m young and single and new to town and he wants to know how I’m getting along. He’s too interested. At first I thought he might be hustling me. Then one day he says he knows some classy girls who like cops. And I was just the kind of good-looking young cop they’d love. You know the type of woman he’s talking about — the cop groupies, right? So I didn’t think much about it, but he kept talking up these girls, and one day four of us met in a restaurant up in La Jolla after work. Classy girls? They were two of the prettiest women I’d ever seen. They were bright and sassy and drove cool cars. A drink and an hour later, Fellowes and his date were gone. Another drink and another hour later, I was in the Valencia Hotel watching Allison take my clothes off. After, she said it was supposed to be four hundred for the room and six for her, plus whatever extra if I liked her, but for me a hundred would cover things this once. I only had eighty on me and she laughed and took it. I went home that night and thought about what I’d done and couldn’t believe it. Ron Mincher doesn’t do things like that. Ron Mincher was a good Southern Baptist. Ron Mincher’s idea of a wild time was two six-packs and a poker game. Ask anybody. But I’d done it. I’d jumped on that whore just like I had good sense.”
“And you were about to pay a lot more than eighty bucks,” I said.
“Well, yeah. That night Fellowes came by my house and we took a little walk like we’re doing now. He said there was more where that came from, girls prettier than Allison and they’d do just about anything to make me happy. All I had to do was look out for the girls in the little convertibles while I was on patrol. Discourage my patrol friends from bothering them. Never talk to them when they had dates. If there was some dispute with hotel security, tell hotel security you’d handle it, and make sure the girl got back to her car and out of there. Later I started fingering his own Vice teams for the girls so they wouldn’t get pinched. Fellowes would let me know where the stings were being set up and I’d let the Squeaky Cleans know in advance. He said there were plenty of other whores to throw in jail. He said we weren’t easy on prostitution like they are in some cities, but you can’t shut all the girls down. So why shouldn’t we get to decide who works in America’s Finest City and who doesn’t? It was like he was providing a service.”
It made a perverse kind of sense. If you were Chet Fellowes, you could convince yourself that you were fighting crime by committing crime. And his underlying logic was sound: You can’t stop prostitution, you can only control it.
“What about cash?” I asked. “Fellowes must have been on Squeaky Clean’s payroll for more than just fun.”
“I got a couple hundred a week. And two dates. After that it cost me the hundred.”
“Sweet deal,” I said.
“Until about ten minutes ago.”
“What was Fellowes taking down?”
“I didn’t ask,” he said.
“Did you ever deal with Jordan Sheehan personally?”
“I’ve never met her.”
“What about Fellowes?” I asked. “Did he ever talk about her?”
“He called her the ‘head whore.’ Didn’t say much more than that about her. He said she’d make a great politician if she wasn’t head whore.”
“Did you run across Chupa Junior?”
“Heard of him.”
“From the girls?”
Mincher had his head down, nodding. “He’s like a nightmare to them. Something that can just happen when you don’t expect it. Squeaky Clean makes a lot of money for her girls, and they make a lot of money for her. But she holds Chupa over their heads.”
“Fellowes lets him operate?”
“Yeah,” said Mincher. “We’re the protection. Chupa’s the fear.”
“I’m going to make sure Fellowes gets his butt thoroughly kicked for this.”
Mincher looked at me, then away.
We walked onto the headquarters grounds. The lights of the city were clear against the night sky. I could tell that this crisis had surprised Ron Mincher. It had come up behind him like a fast car on a dark night. All he saw was a wash of light in front of him and by the time he turned there was nothing to do but try to dive off the road. He was still blinking.
“Maybe this is okay,” he said. “My soul was rotting. I tried to tell myself it was just consenting adults and all that. But you get brought up a certain way and it sticks. I knew what I was doing was wrong. But it was just so easy. And the Squeaky Cleans. Oh, man.”
“Forget about them right now. So what about this Model 39 that vanished from New Orleans Property Annex not once but twice?”
“I don’t know a thing about it. I remember the annex got hit by some junkie burglars one night, but I thought we got all the stuff back.”
“Most of the stuff. The Model 39 that was used to kill Garrett Asplundh was returned, signed in, then disappeared.”
“No,” Mincher said softly. “I’ve got my own weapons. I don’t need to steal somebody else’s. I’m not much of a gun guy anyway.”
“What were you doing last Tuesday night, the night Garrett got it?”
We had come to Mincher’s new yellow truck. He hit the key fob and the alarm chirped and the door lock snapped up.
“I worked that day, then went to the driving range out in La Mesa. Hit three buckets, had the chicken basket, and drove back downtown. I had some drinks at Dick’s. I know one of the bartenders, Parry Songrath. He’ll vouch for me.”
“Until how late?”
“Only ten or so. I went to bed early because I like to get my workouts in before shift.”
“You were alone the rest of the night?”