Читать книгу The Fallen - Jefferson Parker - Страница 10

The fog rolled in around six as I drove toward Imperial Beach. To the west I saw the Silver Strand State Park campground, where not long ago a seven-year-old girl was taken by her kidnapper. Later he killed her. Her name was Danielle. I thought of her every time I made this drive, and probably will for the rest of my life. A lot of people will. I was thrown from the Las Palmas about three weeks after her body was found.

I didn’t need the Chargers cap. I stood alone at the foot of the Imperial Beach Pier and watched the waves roll in and the lights of the city coming on in the twilight. A public sculpture of acrylic surfboards glowed faintly in the fog. Imperial Beach is the southernmost city on our coast. You can see Mexico right across the Tijuana River. In some odd way, you can sense an end of things here, the end of a state and a nation and the Bill of Rights and a way of living. Then you think of Danielle and wonder if it all means what you thought it did.

Six-thirty came and went. I called Gina again and we talked for a few minutes. She said she felt bad about last night and I said I was sorry about breaking our date for tonight. Funny how two people can live together, have no children, but have so little time together. Sometimes it seems like I hardly see Gina. I’m not so sure she misses my company the way I miss hers, but then I don’t know how she could.

I retrieved a message from Samuel Asplundh, Garrett’s older brother and next of kin, who was due to arrive in San Diego this evening.

I retrieved a message from Patrol Captain Evers saying that they had collected three more witnesses who had seen a car parked off to the side of Highway 163 the night Garrett was killed. All said the car was red. One said it was a sports car, like a Mustang or maybe a Corvette. Another thought he saw a man loitering in the bushes nearby, which is what Retired Navy had told us early that morning.

Next I returned a call from Eddie Waimrin, our Egyptian-born patrol sergeant. He told me that the accent on the taped call to headquarters was probably Saudi. He said the speaker was almost certainly foreign-born. I asked him to put out feelers for Saudi men who drove red Ferraris, on the not-so-off chance that the caller was Mr Red Ferrari himself.

‘I know one for sure,’ he said. ‘Sanji Moussaraf, a student here at State. Big oil family in Saudi Arabia. Big, big dollars. Popular kid. I’ve got his numbers for you.’

‘Maybe you should talk to him first,’ I said.

Three of the nineteen September 11 hijackers were living here when the doomed jets took off. One of the hijackers had inquired about attending a flight school here. Several of the first arrests in connection with that attack were made right here in San Diego – two of the arrested men were held for nearly three years before being deported in 2004. There was some local trouble right after the suicide attacks, too – spray-painted insults on a local mosque, curses shouted at people who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, vandalism at restaurants and businesses, some very intense police questionings in the days and weeks that followed.

Eddie Waimrin – who speaks Egyptian, Arabic, Lebanese, French, and English – was often called in to conduct interviews and to translate words and customs. He came to this country when he was eleven years old, sent by his father to keep him from the strife and poverty of Egypt. Since then Eddie has brought his father, mother, and two sisters to the United States. He’s an outgoing officer, quick with a smile and active with the Police Union.

Since San Diego’s large Middle Eastern population has been watchful and very cautious ever since September 11, I didn’t want to spoil a good source if Eddie Waimrin had a better shot at getting information from him.

‘I’ll see what I can do,’ he said.

I thanked him and punched off.

I was about to call Carrie Ann Martier when light suddenly hit my eyes and a woman’s voice came from the fog.

‘Brownlaw?’

I slid the phone onto my belt.

‘Robbie Brownlaw, Homicide?’

‘Put the light away.’

The beam clicked off and a woman stepped into the faint light of the pier lamps. She was small and pretty, mid-twenties. She had shiny straight blond hair not quite to her shoulders, and bangs. She wore a black down jacket over a white T-shirt, jeans and suede work boots. A small suede bag hung cross-shoulder so you couldn’t pull it off and run.

I showed her my badge and thanked her for coming. ‘You didn’t have to and I appreciate it.’

‘I don’t know if I can help you and I don’t have much time.’

‘We can walk,’ I said.

‘I’d rather not.’

‘Then we’ll stand. Did you see him night before last?’

‘We met here, at six-thirty.’

‘What was the purpose of the meeting?’

Carrie Ann Martier sighed and looked out at the surf. ‘Let’s walk.’

You couldn’t see the end of the pier in the fog. You couldn’t see the waves either but you heard them thrashing against the pilings underneath. I felt their strength and it unbalanced me in a way I did not enjoy. Overhead the light fixtures were studded with nails to keep the birds from nesting and the nails threw toothy shadows onto the stanchions. Through this joyless scenery walked Carrie Ann Martier, wholesome and fresh as a model for a vitamin supplement.

‘You know he was a detective for the Ethics Authority,’ said Carrie. ‘Well, a city employee was dating a friend of mine and my friend got beaten up. Pretty badly. This was a month ago. She wouldn’t file a complaint with the cops because she’s from a good family and the guy’s married. She didn’t want the scandal. I took one look at her and went to Garrett because he’s a watchdog, right? I talked to him. Someone had to. Two days later she received four thousand dollars in cash, a very nice set of pearl earrings and a note of apology in her P.O. box. Garrett told her that the jerkoff had “listened to reason.”’

‘Who’s the employee?’

‘Steven Stiles, the councilman’s aide.’

I remembered the name from Garrett’s handwritten notes.

‘And your friend?’

‘Ellen Carson.’

I didn’t remember hers.

‘Were you a witness?’

‘No. I saw her after it happened. Bad.’

We continued out over the invisible ocean. There were a few bait fishermen with their rods propped on the railing and their lines disappearing into the fog. I could feel the tiny drops of moisture on my face. A fish slapped in a plastic bucket.

‘Tell me more about Ellen,’ I said. ‘What does she do? What’s her profession?’

Carrie Ann Martier, hunched into her jacket, took a long and sharp look at me. I could see that she was deciding something. ‘She’s a student at UCSD. And a working girl, part-time. High end, fast dollars.’

‘Which is how she met—’

‘Stiles.’

‘Are you a student, too?’

‘English major, prelaw. And no, I’m not a working girl. I do proof-reading for McGrew & Marsh here in San Diego – we publish automotive-repair books.’

I watched the red squares of deception tumble from Carrie Ann Martier’s mouth. I’d already guessed that she was ‘Ellen,’ but it was nice to get a second opinion.

‘Those are good books on car repair,’ I said. ‘I bought the Volkswagen one years ago. The proofreading was excellent.’

‘Oh. Good.’

‘What was your meeting with Garrett about?’

‘A videodisc. Evidence of other men enjoying the company of Ellen and some of her coworkers. It was the third collection Ellen had given me for Garrett.’

‘How many other men?’

‘I don’t know. I’ve never seen them.’

More red squares, bobbing in the air between us. I was barely aware of them. But I was very aware that Garrett’s interest in the videodisc could only mean one thing. ‘City people?’

She nodded. ‘That’s what Ellen and her friends say. All sorts – City Hall, cops, fire, politicians, administrators. And also the guys who do business with the city – contractors, service people, company owners.’

‘That’s a bomb waiting to go off.’

‘I think it did, with Garrett. That’s why I agreed to meet you.’

‘I need to talk to Ellen,’ I said.

‘No. She can’t risk that. It’s your job to put people like her in jail. She did her part for you, Mr Brownlaw. Don’t ask for more.’

‘I don’t care what Ellen does in her spare time. I care who killed Garrett Asplundh and I need to talk to her.’

She fixed me with a cool stare. Funny how she could appear so clean and fresh, but hard. ‘I knew you’d pull that.’

‘It worked on you once,’ I said. ‘And maybe it will work on you again because you liked Garrett. And you knew he was a good man trying to do the right thing and it probably got him killed.’

‘My time is valuable. Are you prepared to pay me for it?’

‘No.’

‘Garrett Asplundh did.’

I had to dodge the red squares.

I smiled at her because I really admire hustlers. Something about the courage to tell a lie and not know if you can get away with it. You run across some great hustlers in fraud, which I enjoyed immensely. Maybe because I could never tell the smallest fib without my face lighting up. Mom and Dad would just laugh and shake their heads.

‘Actually, he didn’t pay you for your time, Ellen.’

Her stare went from cool to cold. ‘Fuck yourself, cop.’

‘Well, okay. But what’s the difference between talking to Garrett and talking to me? Besides that someone blew his brains out two nights ago after he met with you?’

‘He was cute and sad and a totally great guy.’

I thought about that. ‘I’m not cute or great, but I’m sad sometimes. One out of three, though, that’s three-thirty-three, and if the Padres could—’

‘I hate people like you.’

I shrugged but didn’t take my eyes off her because I figured she might make a break for it.

‘Look, Carrie,’ I said. ‘Or Ellen or Marilyn or Julie – I don’t care what your name is. I don’t care how you make a living, though I hope you get health care and a decent retirement plan.’

She sighed, pulled her little suede bag around and unzipped it. ‘Your judgment means nothing to me. I do the same thing your wife does but I get paid cash up-front and I can say no anytime I want.’

‘Oh, man, do I have to respond to that?’

Her lips began a smile.

‘Help me out here,’ I said. ‘Help Garrett.’

‘Okay, o-fucking-kay. Just get me out of this fog and buy me drink, will you? I’m freezing. And to tell you the truth, maybe I need to talk to a cop.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m really kinda scared, Robbie.’

She pulled a pack of smokes from her little bag, offered one to me. I shook my head.

‘Light?’ she asked.

‘Sorry.’

‘Men were better in old movies.’

‘Our stock is down.’

‘Then, here. Learn something useful.’ She pulled a lighter from her bag and held it out to me.

I smiled but didn’t move.

‘What?’ she asked. ‘What’s so funny?’

‘Okay, whoever you are. I’ll learn something useful.’

I walked to her slowly but grabbed her wrist fast and gave it enough of a turn to smart.

She yelped.

The lighter fell to the wooden beams of the pier and I watched it roll to a stop. She watched it too.

I picked it up and she didn’t try to kick me and run. Sure enough, it was a lighter. But the other end was a pepper sprayer. I’d heard about them from some of the Vice officers.

‘Come on,’ I said. ‘Let’s get that drink. I’ll drive.’

She flexed her wrist. ‘I wasn’t going to use that on you. Swear to God, man—’

‘I think you were.’

‘Give it back.’

‘I’ll give it back later.’

‘Garrett would have lit my cigarette.’

‘Maybe that’s why he’s dead.’

At the Beachside she drank Irish coffees and I had a beer. I asked her what her name was and she said Carrie Ann Martier worked just fine. She said she grew up in San Diego, rich family, though her father was a bastard and her mother was kind but insane.

‘Schizophrenia, with a paranoid subtype,’ she said. ‘Not a good combo when you’re married to a sneak like him.’

She told me Steven Stiles, an aide to Ninth District Councilman Anthony Rood, had punched her in the body twice and stiffed her because he couldn’t get it up. This was back in February. Two bruised ribs – he really laid into her. His wedding band had scraped her skin, which she found ‘highly ironic,’ along with the fact that it was the day before Valentine’s Day. She leaned toward me and waited until I leaned toward her.

‘And, Mr Brownlaw,’ she whispered, ‘nobody treats Carrie Ann Martier like that.’

She said that after getting hit, her ribs had tensed with pain every time she breathed or talked. Laughing was worse, but sneezing and coughing took the cake. She missed two weeks of work. She told me she’d gone to Garrett because Garrett wasn’t a cop and she knew he’d be interested in city employees and contractors buying girls. She wasn’t about to go to the police and she still was not willing to file a criminal complaint, though her ribs still hurt every time someone told her a good joke, which wasn’t often.

She said she’d made the discs for Garrett with a video cam hidden in her flop. She used a room at the Coronado Oceana Hotel, had ‘good relationships’ with security out there. Two girlfriends had similar recording setups, not because Stiles had beat them too, but because they were ‘pissed off at Jordan’ and thought they should be able to show a solid connection between Jordan’s phone calls, which they’d recorded on the sly, with actual men paying for actual sex.

‘Tell me about Jordan,’ I said.

‘You don’t know anything, do you?’

I shook my head. Actually, I knew a little. Vice had been working up a case against Jordan Sheehan for months.

Jordan was the ‘Squeaky Clean Madam,’ said Carrie. She got the name because years ago she actually started a maid service called that. She had made some good money, gotten popped for illegals, labor violations, and back taxes. She did her time, and when she got out she discovered that sex paid more than custodial skills and she didn’t even have to buy mops and vacuums if her girls were pretty enough. Now she ran fifty or sixty girls, more for conventions and special events like the Super Bowl. She had some kind of investment-counseling business as a cover, some fakey name like Sheehan & Associates or something. She had associates, all right. Jordan’s girls dressed like corporate receptionists, they looked like the girl next door, they had to have good manners and pretty smiles, and they cost a lot. Hotels couldn’t even spot them if they rotated right. Pure class and plenty of rules, she said – nothing kinky, nothing rough, no toys, no drugs, no pain or threesomes. Never in a car. They were not allowed to wear risqué clothing. No ‘CFM shoes’ and no pierced body parts except the ears. No swearing, no smoking. No girls over thirty. Every girl had a pager. You never talked to Jordan because the madam was like the top of a pyramid and beneath her were the ‘spot callers’ who told you when and who the John was. Jordan lined them up by the dozen. She had this way about her, pure and simple. Jordan owned men. Jordan could turn a priest into a paying customer in five minutes. The girls did their own marketing, too; they didn’t just wait around for the pager to go off. Jordan told them to drive VW Cabriolet convertibles so the guys could get a look at them. The fleet manager at Mission Center VW was a friend of Jordan’s and would make them deals on the Cabriolets. It was just automobile advertising, like for pizza or exterminators, only for women. Jordan got the idea from Ida Bailey, the old madam in the Gaslamp who used to parade her girls around in carriages so the guys could see the choices and pick. So you got fifty total foxes zooming around San Diego, and guess what happens when you whistle or wave, man, they pull right over and make you a deal. An hour later you’re a grand poorer but you’ve been Squeaky Cleaned. Jordan got four hundred per contact, the ‘meet tax.’ The girls got what they bargained for over that. A thousand was ‘industry standard’ for a Squeaky Clean but sometimes you had to take less. If you were with a city guy, one of Jordan’s ‘special clients,’ then you got a lot less, just the tip, but some Johns thought twenty bucks was a tip. If you tried to cheat on the meet tax Jordan had this huge guy called Chupa Junior with a tiny shaved head and tats all over him and he is not nice. Why cheat though? Could make an easy thousand plus on your lunch hour – you’d be surprised how good lunchtime could be – and afternoons, too, with the flex hours a lot of men worked. And a good night you got home before the sun came up with three or four grand in your purse, sometimes more.

‘Except me,’ she said. ‘I go straight to the ATM and deposit my winnings. That’s where the trouble starts for working girls – they spend faster than they save and some nights you don’t work at all. Sometimes a whole week you won’t work. But you wouldn’t believe the stuff they buy. Jewelry and electronics and clothes and trips and dope – they party like crazy when they’re off duty, just like everybody else. But not Carrie Ann Martier. Nope. I shop catalogs for my work clothes because I look good in anything. I shop Costco for bulk stuff because I’m sole proprietor of my own business. I happen to think that’s funny. And so what if I have two gallons of hair conditioner under the sink? I’m saving for a place in Maui and I’m going to get it before I’m thirty. I am going to get it. After that, it’s aloha Squeaky Clean Madam. I’m leaving the life. I’m going to surf and garden and learn to make my own sushi.’

‘Wow, that’s quite a plan,’ I said. ‘Good luck.’

She shrugged and a faraway look came to her eyes, which were blue. ‘Whatever.’

‘No, I really mean it.’

She studied me. ‘I think you’d pop me in a second if you could get a raise or a promotion out of it.’

I sipped the beer. She had a point, though it had nothing to do with money or status. The law was just the law. Sometimes a cop could look the other way, for the greater good, you know. Sometimes not. I thought back to the white VW Cabriolet I’d seen outside Stella Asplundh’s place and the red one coming from the HTA parking lot earlier that day. Both driven by attractive young women.

‘Why were your friends mad at Jordan?’

‘For raising their meet tax to six hundred.’

‘Why’d she do that?’

‘To make room for the younger girls. The younger ones get a little lower contact charge to get them started and locked in. Young is what the Johns want. Cost of business goes up the older you get. Six, seven, eight hundred per meet. Pretty soon you’re either working all for Jordan or you’re not working.’

‘So you and your friends sneak the videos and make some discs. You give copies to Garrett for his investigation because you got beat up by a politician’s aide and Garrett has made it right for you. But what about the two other girls? What were they going to do with their copies? Blackmail Squeaky Clean for the higher taxes?’

‘It isn’t blackmail if you’re being ripped off.’

I thought about two young working girls trying to run a hustle on their own madam. It sounded perilous. ‘Does Jordan know about the videos?’

‘She couldn’t. If Jordan even suspected we’d done that, she’d have pulled the plug on us by now – she’d never call. Or worse.’

‘Chupa Junior?’

She looked at me and drank the last of her second Irish coffee. ‘Yeah. There’s talk. Always talk, you know? Then something happens. One day a girl is working, then she’s gone. Maybe she crossed Jordan. Shorted her one too many times. Tried to get the Johns calling her direct. Made a scene. Disappointed or pissed off somebody important. Chupa shows up here. Chupa shows up there. Like something out of a nightmare. It makes you wonder.’

‘Have you ever met Jordan Sheehan?’

‘Not face-to-face. Not many of the girls have, unless she recruited them personally. Those are mostly the spot callers. Maybe that’s why Squeaky Clean is still in business. She lives in La Jolla somewhere, running her little investment company. Ha, ha.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Why?’

‘I’m curious,’ I said.

‘Trying to figure what I’m worth?’ She squared her shoulders, frowned, and shook her head once. Her shiny blond hair flared with light, then settled back into place.

‘I’m twenty-nine,’ I said.

‘You’re not selling.’

‘That must be kind of weird. Selling yourself. I don’t mean any offense by that.’

‘You can’t offend me, Robbie. You’ll wear out someday, too. We’ll both end up in the same trash pile.’

I thought about that, about everybody ending up in the same condition. I’d often had that thought and could never figure out if it was a reason to cry or to smile until I was thrown from the Las Palmas. Somewhere on the way down I realized that the fact that you’re going to die is a reason to smile. Every second you live, you’re getting away with the biggest prize there is.

‘You look familiar,’ she said. ‘TV or something?’

‘No.’

‘Magazine?’

‘No.’

‘I’ve seen you. I’m sure.’

‘A lot of people think that. I’ve got a common face. Sorry.’

She looked at me hard again and nodded. She began a smile, then turned it off.

‘I can take you back to your car,’ I said. I paid up and we walked into the foggy night.

‘I checked you out with the PD. And with some of my friends who do a little business with the PD once in a while. You came back clean. Bet you never thought a whore would run a check on you, but I didn’t know what I was going to run into on that pier tonight. Maybe someone who enjoyed Squeaky Clean girls. Maybe someone who knew what Garrett had. Maybe they figured I’d be better off quiet, too. That would make one less person to tell this wretched little story.’

I liked the way Carrie Ann Martier, or whoever she was, tried to take care of herself. I liked her aloneness and her bravery. Her foolishness worried me.

‘Don’t try to run a number on Squeaky Clean,’ I said, ‘You can’t win.’

‘I’m not suicidal.’ ‘Why don’t you just get out of this business?’

‘Stay off my side, Robbie.’

I drove us back to the pier. It wasn’t more than

a few blocks. The acrylic-surfboard sculpture still glowed in the darkness, its colors dampened by the fog. I could tell that Carrie Ann was looking at my profile, trying to locate a memory to go with it.

Her car was a yellow VW Cabriolet convertible, in keeping with her employer’s wishes.

‘When do I get my lighter back?’

I dug it out of my coat pocket and gave it to her.

‘You remind me of Garrett,’ she said.

‘I’m not cute and sad and a totally great guy.’

‘Yes you are. Even if you did get thrown out of that hotel. You lied to me. You’re the Falling Detective. You’re famous.’