The Fallen

Exactly for what, I wasn’t sure. But logic told me that Jordan Sheehan was connected to almost everyone we had interviewed regarding the death of Garrett Asplundh. She was connected to the police through Fellowes and Mincher, to the city government through Rood and Stiles, to business through Sarvonola and Vinson. She was connected to the streets through her girls and their johns and Chupa Junior. She wasn’t a work-at-home financial adviser who just partied with the city players for fun. Her connections were the very ones that Garrett Asplundh had been hired to keep clean, polished, and in working order.

An hour and a half later, around eight, Jordan came down the steps of her house. She wore a sunny yellow dress with a shiny belt and buttons that ended high enough to show her legs. Over it draped a silky gray overcoat. She unlocked the car and got in, and a moment later the powder blue Porsche revved hoarsely, then backed out of the driveway.

I let her get almost to the avenue, then turned on my lights and swung a U-turn. I let two cars between us. The taped-off taillight made her easy to follow and oddly enough, Jordan Sheehan was a conscientious driver who signaled her turns well ahead of time.

On the outskirts of town she picked up Interstate 5 north. I stayed four cars back and a lane over, my eyes keyed on the one-lighted Porsche. She got off at Lomas Santa Fe and doubled back south into Solana Beach, then Eden Gardens. Then east into the hills and up a grade.

There was just one car between us now — a gas-electric hybrid of all things — and I could see the Porsche eating up the incline ahead of us. I couldn’t pass the hybrid without getting Jordan’s attention, and the hybrid couldn’t keep up with the Porsche. We were past the homes and offices now and the hills were dark against a darker sky. Far ahead she swerved right then took a left turn fast and disappeared into the darkness of the upper canyon.

I goosed the Chevy around the hybrid car and floored it up the grade. The gearbox kicked down into second, then third, and then the V-8 found its power band and the car ate asphalt. I broke the back tires loose around the turn that the Porsche had made so nimbly and tried to accelerate through it without making too much noise. Ahead of me I saw nothing but a vanishing white line and a glimmer of taillight moving beyond the hillside brush.

I let the incline slow me down and set the shifter for third. I followed a sweeping curve, still climbing, then straightened out briefly, then curved back the other way. Ahead I caught a flash of lighted windows and the shapes of buildings.

Squeaky Clean hit her brakes, signaled, then turned left into a wide entryway with a guardhouse and an ornate white gate blocking the way. The guardhouse was not lit. I saw her arm extend from the car window as I drove past, continued a hundred yards up the road, then made a sweeping U-turn and crept back down toward the guardhouse in second gear.

The gate was just closing and the Porsche was already far past it, moving into the neighborhood of huge, dramatically lit homes. I watched the little car make a right and vanish behind a house the size of a multiplex theater. When the gate settled into position I read the words formed by the white iron: EDEN HEIGHTS. I thought how different it looked from Normal Heights. The homes were several times larger and much more spectacular than in the old neighborhood where I lived.

I pulled off to the side of the drive, killed the lights. Twenty minutes later an exotic-looking roadster that McKenzie would probably drool over came flying up the road, then swerved into the entryway at the last second and stopped at the gate. The driver reached from the window and slid a white card into an electronic box set in a slate stanchion. Music and a woman’s laughter floated into the night. The gate rolled back and the exotic car rolled through it as I guided my land yacht of a Chevy into Eden Heights.

Mr. Exotic went the same way Squeaky Clean had gone. I drove slowly toward that first turn. I had browsed just enough home and architecture magazines in my life to realize that places like this were where they got their cover shots. Everything was outsize and lit from the bottom. There was no wood construction, no stucco. Just stone, plaster, and glass. Majestic palms swayed overhead in the cool, gentle breeze. Fountains trickled within expansive courtyards. Each home sat on a big lot, recessed from the street, with a planted slope in front. Some of them faced the street and others faced one way or the other, like people trying to avoid eye contact.

I made the turn. More bashful mansions. At the end of the cul-de-sac, set off from the other homes by space and height as if it were royalty, sat a two-story Italianate villa with a grand circular drive designed around a big fountain spraying blue lighted water into the air. Squeaky Clean’s car sat in the drive, tucked up close to the house. There were several other cars, too, and four of them were Cabriolets. Mr. Exotic got out of his roadster as I drove past. I recognized him — Anthony Rood, Ninth District councilman with an eye on an assembly seat, a soft spot for sports teams, and for throwing public money at depressed areas so poor people couldn’t afford to stay. And a special friend of at least three Squeaky Clean girls. Still another girl now unfurled from the passenger side of his car. All I saw was the flash of a silver dress as I went by.