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:
“When is your report due back in New York?” I asked.
“May fifteenth,” said Vinson. He looked thoughtfully at the apple and took another bite. “I leave a week from Friday. I’ve got more meetings, but I don’t see any way around the negative rating. Sorry. I know you guys need your bullets and guns.”
I thought about the underfunded pension and the nondisclosure. “So when Garrett wrote, ‘If he holds we’re alive, if he folds we’re not,’ he’s saying that if you recommend to keep the old rating—”
“Right. If the City of San Diego is seen as stable, the bond rating remains attractive. If I diminish it to negative, it’s going to either prevent the city from issuing bonds at all or cost San Diego many millions of dollars in higher bond-interest payments.”
“How many millions?”
“Fifty million, plus or minus twenty. Lots can happen.”
Vinson arched his apple core toward a black enamel wastebasket. It went long, bounced off a beautifully papered wall and dropped in. He got up, swiped a tissue from a desktop, and patted down the wall.
“Garrett Asplundh wasn’t a financial wizard,” said Vinson. “But he understood lying and its consequences.”
“Meaning what?” I asked.
“He was one of the only city guys who wasn’t trying to influence me to keep the rating high.”
“It was his job to prevent that kind of thing,” said McKenzie.
Vinson shrugged, checked his watch and sat down again. “Ethics people aren’t immune to money and pressure. Believe me.”
He cited several city and county governments for their craven dishonesty and eagerness to “pander” to ratings agencies. I thought pander was an interesting choice of words, considering what we were about to reveal to him. He said investment-rating companies like Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s and Jance Purdew saved investors billions of dollars a year by bringing undisclosed risks to the light of day. He said he loved San Diego but he couldn’t compromise his standards or shade his findings. He’d be honest, and quite frankly, it was going to be a very difficult recommendation.
“So you don’t know what it will be?” asked McKenzie.
“Isn’t that what I just said?” He looked at her with a bored arrogance.
“Did you know that Garrett Asplundh had you on video with three of Jordan Sheehan’s working girls?” I asked.
Vinson’s arrogance went brittle. He stared at me. “Jordan Whoosies whatsies?”
I said it again.
“Bullshit.”
“I’ve got a laptop here in my briefcase,” I said. “A picture is worth a thousand words.”
He stood, looked at McKenzie, then at me again. “What is this?”
“You and some working girls you didn’t pay for. Here — you tell us what it is.”
“Sit down, Mr. Vinson,” said McKenzie.
Vinson sat irritably.
I brought out the laptop and showed him a few seconds.
“Enough,” he said.
“Your part doesn’t last long,” said McKenzie.
“Just turn it off.”
For a moment we all sat there in the beautiful room. I listened to the waves crashing below and watched a pelican float in a perfectly straight horizontal line across a window.
“What do you want?” he asked.
“Answers,” said McKenzie. “Who introduced you to the girls?”
“It was never a crime. I never paid money. They were San Diego bimbos. Party girls looking for a good time.”
“And you’re a good time?” asked McKenzie.
I chuckled quietly, happy to add to Vinson’s humiliation and glad that McKenzie wasn’t grilling me.
He stared at McKenzie with an odd, glazed look of captivity. “I can’t believe this is happening.”
“Believe. Who introduced you?”
“I want my lawyer.”
“You don’t get one until we arrest you,” I said.
He stood.
“Sit,” snapped McKenzie.
Trey sat.
“Who introduced you to the girls?” I asked. “Someone did, because someone expected something in return. They weren’t really free, and you knew it.”
“I didn’t know that,” he said.
“Trey,” said McKenzie, “we’re your only chance. We don’t want to ruin you. In fact, we want you to like us. We want you to go home and ask for a stable rating for our wonderful city. We want the goodies you can help us get — more ballparks and stadiums and downtown development. Ethics needs telephone bugs. We need new radio cars and helicopters and bulletproof vests. But we’re more than happy to make your life miserable and ruin your career if you’d like. We want the big guys. Talk to us.”
“Nobody asked for anything. I was never asked to do anything but my job. Not one thing.”
“But you understood, didn’t you?” asked McKenzie. “You knew you didn’t get girls like that for nothing. You knew you were being provided a service.”
I listened to the waves crash. Down the hallway a door slammed with a muffled thud. I looked out the window and wondered if I’d have survived a fall from it.
“Robbie, let’s just call New York,” said McKenzie. “We’ll e-mail Jance Purdew a clip of Trey’s leading-actor performance. Just to show them how San Diego is treating their guy.”
Vinson was pale and wet-eyed.
“I’ll do it, Vinson,” said McKenzie. “I don’t like the pouty way you think you own the world. They can fire you for all I care. Christ, you punk — you’re married.”
“Abel Sarvonola,” Vinson said quietly. “He said not to worry, these girls know how to have a good time. He said just go home happy and tell them things look good out here. Excuse me — I gotta use the bathroom.”
18
That evening I walked through our house again, much as I had done after Gina first left. I felt different now. I knew for a fact that she was gone and did not want to come back. I also knew that my anger had passed. I still had that ticklish little ember of hope inside, though, a hope that I might be able to come up with some way to make her want to return. It was difficult for me to be here in a place bristling with her magnetic power, with so much of my life and our history stamped onto every object.
When my schizophrenic Aunt Melissa died, Uncle Jerry told me their house had suddenly developed “different weather.” He said the drafts came from different directions, lightbulbs gave off substantially more or less light, that the house cooled on hot afternoons, and that rain came through half a dozen leaks in a roof that hadn’t leaked in fourteen years. He bought buckets to catch the drips and an indoor thermometer to prove he wasn’t going crazy. He recorded some “very strange” temperature patterns in the old North Park house. He said they gradually subsided, as did the lightbulb fluctuations and roof leaks, though three years of San Diego drought followed Melissa’s death.