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:
“It’s important to throw the right fools in jail,” I said. “That’s why we have the Ethics Authority.”
Sarvonola looked at me as if I’d failed to understand something obvious.
“Trey Vinson said you introduced him to some of Jordan Sheehan’s girls,” I said. “You told him to have a good time with them and give San Diego a good credit rating when he got back home.”
Sarvonola sat back, furrowed his brow, and looked at each of us in turn. “Horseshit.”
“Not according to Vinson.”
“You really want to talk about this?”
“We really do,” I said.
“Trey Vinson is a pathetic little worm who couldn’t get a date on his own in a thousand years. So I introduced him to some friends of friends.”
“He’s also married,” said McKenzie.
“What do I care? You’re missing the point, which is that Vinson’s dates were all party girls. They were not professionals. They were not Jordan Sheehan’s girls or anybody else’s. They were young San Diego women out for a good time. They were our daughters and our sisters and our nieces. No money changed hands between Vinson and any girl on that video — none that I saw.”
“Maybe it didn’t change hands on camera,” I said. “But somewhere it did. Somewhere along the line, Jordan Sheehan and the girls got paid. And since you’re the one who told Trey Vinson to have a good time, you probably know exactly where and when and how much.”
Three red squares of deception slipped from his mouth. When he smiled again, a dozen more wobbled out from between his big teeth and floated over his desktop.
“I never saw one penny of it.”
Sarvonola stared at me again. I watched him behind the red squares, squinting menace into his eyes. I waited awhile and said nothing. Nothing annoys a liar more than silence.
“Not one penny.”
“Did you see Garrett the night he died?” I asked.
“I hadn’t seen him in a week.”
The red squares had melted into space and no new ones spilled out to replace them. I waited again and watched Abel Sarvonola sit back and lock his arms across his chest.
Finally I looked at McKenzie and stood. “Thanks for your time, Mr. Sarvonola. We’ll be in touch.”
“Are you threatening me? I’ve told you nothing but the truth,” said Sarvonola.
“You can lie to us all you want about paying Squeaky Clean and her girls,” I said. “But I’d work on my presentation if I were you. Because if you lie in court it’s called perjury and you go to prison.”
“You’re much worse than Garrett.”
“Thank you.”
Sarvonola squinted at me, eyes shining from deep within his heavy black brow. “Garrett was smart. He kept things to himself until he could understand the implications. But you two took what he found and lost control of it. You show it around to everyone. You leave yourselves open. You’re dangerous to yourselves and everyone around you.”
“Sounds like you’re threatening us now,” said McKenzie.
“I can’t change the course of prosperity.”
“Then enjoy the rest of your day,” I said.
He worked himself up from the chair and extended a pale finger at me. His face was white and his back was bent.
“You’re nothing but a mediocre detective who got thrown out of a building and landed on an awning instead of the sidewalk. You’re not brave, you’re lucky. You’re not supposed to be alive. They promote you in order to create a hero. It shows how desperate they are.”
I stood up straight and took a deep breath, as my father had taught me to do in the face of threat.
“And you’re a parasite with a good shot at doing time for pandering and bribery,” I said.
“The chief will hear about this.”
“He’ll hear about the girls you got for Vinson, too,” I said.
“I will defeat you.”
“Bring help,” said McKenzie.
I spent the rest of the afternoon calling Hummer dealers in San Diego County. Since I believed I was looking for a white Hummer that still had the temporary tag taped to the windshield, I asked each dealer to go back three months to check sales. The normal time for the DMV to send the metal plates is more like eight weeks, so I left myself a cushion.
Seven Hummer dealers in San Diego had sold or leased a total of twenty-one new white Hummers between late last year and now. These included both 2004 and 2005 models. Two of the dealers asked if they could call back with the information.
Four of the sales managers and one owner were cooperative and gave me the names of the buyers or lessees. The others couldn’t give out that information, though they both said that if I had a specific name they might be able to confirm a vehicle purchase or lease. One of the sales managers offered me a cash rebate of five hundred dollars and 0 percent “VIP” financing over five years on a new 2005 Hummer, “the most secure vehicle” I could ever drive.
None of the names of new Hummer drivers caught my eye. To the reluctant dealers I offered the names Fellowes, Mincher, Rood, Stiles, Jordan Sheehan, and Peter Avalos, but none of them were on the buy/lease lists. And I wasn’t convinced that any of them had both the motive and opportunity to kill Garrett.
Fellowes didn’t know that Garrett had him naked on tape until we told him. Mincher had half an alibi and did not strike me as capable of murder. Rood and Stiles were at the “exploratory fund-raiser” aboard the carrier Midway.
Jordan Sheehan and Chupa Junior claimed to have worked the Indigo that night from eight until midnight, which checked out. McKenzie had even tracked down the waitress, Dolly, who admitted to being with Chupa at his house from about 1:00 A.M. until noon the next day.
If Sanji Moussaraf was right, Garrett Asplundh had been shot dead at 8:52 that night, give or take the ten thrashing, bloody seconds it took him to rip off a fingernail on his killer’s clothing.
I looked out the window at the falling evening and imagined Garrett dressed in his suit and good-luck blue necktie, sitting alone in his Explorer, parked in the rain where he’d proposed to Stella ten years before. I knew what he was thinking about: seeing Stella in just a little while and trying to rebuild the life they had shared before the drowning of their daughter. And I began to wonder if his murder was really connected to sex videos, Squeaky Clean girls, municipal-bond ratings, and corrupt city employees. From the beginning I had assumed it was, but by now I saw that Garrett hadn’t done anything with what he knew. The meeting with the state attorney general? Maybe that was a motivation for murder, but who knew what Garrett would present to the attorney general and what he would withhold? Sarvonola understood that Garrett wanted to protect the city he worked for and loved, and Garrett’s enemies must have known it, too. After all, Garrett Asplundh was one of them, one of us: a city employee, a man with problems and opportunities, a man of both power and weakness. Kill him on a hunch he was about to spill their secrets? Maybe, but maybe not.
I wondered if his murder was more personal than that.
22
My luck changed for the better on the drive home. I took a small detour to go past Sultra on the slim chance that Gina had driven back from Nevada and returned to work. I pulled over for just a moment. The salon blinds were open to the late afternoon and I saw a tall blonde at Gina’s chair. This made my heart ache inordinately so I drove away. The detour landed me on Hawthorn Street where I passed a downtown car-rental company called Dream Wheels. I’d driven by it a thousand times. But I saw a new black Hummer on the lot and decided to stop and ask about a white one.