The Fallen

A few minutes later Stella showed us to the door and we rode the slow elevator back down. On Island, lights twinkled in the trees and the streetlamps glowed. Over on Fourth the hostesses stood outside their restaurants.

A pretty woman in a white VW Cabriolet pulled over to talk with a guy. I wondered why she had the top down when it was cool like this, figured the heater was cranked up.

‘I like the Cabriolets,’ said McKenzie. ‘But they’re a little doggy in the horsepower department. I spun one out on a test drive once, totally freaked the sales guy. What did you think of the almost-ex?’

‘Wrung out,’ I said.

‘Yeah. Like a vampire sucked her blood.’

Before going home we stopped by my office to hear the recording of the anonymous tip. It was made at 3:12 on the morning of Wednesday, March 9.

DESK OFFICE VILLERS: San Diego Police.

MALE VOICE: I heard a gun fire near the Cabrillo Bridge on Highway 163. There is a black vehicle such as a truck or sporting vehicle. Maybe a murder, I don’t know.

DESK OFFICER VILLERS: Your name, sir?

MALE VOICE: This will not be necessary.

DESK OFFICER VILLERS: I need your name, sir.

The caller’s voice was male, middle-pitched, and slightly faint. His words were clear but accented. There was a hesitation before he hung up.

‘Arabic?’ asked McKenzie.

‘I think so,’ I said. ‘Eddie Waimrin can tell us.’

Waimrin is one of two San Diego police officers born in the Middle East – Egypt. He’s been our point man with the large and apprehensive Middle Eastern community since September of 2001. I tried Eddie Waimrin’s number but got a recording. Patrol Captain Evers told me Eddie had worked an early day shift and already gone home. I told him I needed help with the Asplundh tip tape and he said he’d take care of it.

‘Did Garrett kill himself?’ asked the captain.

‘I don’t think so.’

‘Garrett Asplundh was tough as nails. And honest.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘We talked to a guy this morning who saw a red Ferrari pulled over to the side of Highway 163 that night. Not far from where we found Asplundh’s vehicle. Said he saw someone moving in the trees. Maybe Mr Red Ferrari saw something. Who knows, maybe he pulled the trigger.’

I could hear him tapping notes onto his computer.

‘Tell the U-T,’ said Captain Evers. ‘Maybe they’ll run a notice or something.’

‘That’s my next call.’

‘Let me see what I can find out, Brownlaw.’

I called a reporter acquaintance of mine who works for the Union-Tribune. His name is George Schimmel and he covers crime. He’s a good writer and almost always gets his facts right. During my brief celebrity three years ago, I’d given him a short interview. Since then George has told me many times he wants to do a much longer piece or, better yet, wants me to tell my own story in my own words. I’ve declined because I’m not comfortable in the public eye. And because of certain things that happened, and didn’t happen, during that fall from the hotel. I feel that some things are private and should stay that way.

‘So are you ready to sit down and give me a real interview?’ he asked, as I knew he would.

‘Not really, but I could use a favor.’

I told him about the red Ferrari parked off to the side of the south-bound 163 on the night of the murder. I gave him Retired Navy’s name and number.

‘What was the very last thing you thought about?’ he asked. ‘Before you hit.’

‘Gina, my wife.’

‘That’s so human, Robbie. I mean, wow.’

‘Thanks for the red Ferrari.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

By the time I got home Gina had already left. Her note said that she’d be with Rachel, probably downtown or in La Jolla. Just dinner was all, and maybe one drink after – she’d be back early. Rachel and Gina are best friends. Their chairs at Salon Sultra are next to each other. They pretty much carry on like they did before Gina and I were married but Rachel resents me. At times Gina feels torn between her best friend and me, which is understandable. Rachel drunkenly hit on me one night just before we got married. I drove her home and didn’t tell Gina about the offer, just that Rachel was too drunk to drive herself. Rachel has ignored me since then, which is pretty much what she did before that.

I heated up a pot pie and opened a can of asparagus for dinner. I drank a beer. After dinner I opened another beer, sat down at the tying table in our garage and tied some fishing flies. I’ve been working on a little pattern to catch the wild rainbow trout in the San Gabriel River above Pasadena. The San Gabriel is my closest river for trout, actually more of a stream than a river. The fish can be picky, especially in the evenings. I’ve invented two flies to attract the fish: Gina’s Mayfly and Gina’s Caddis. Come late springtime – another month or two – and I’ll be able to see if they work. Part of the fun of tying a fly is fooling a fish with it. The other part is sitting in my chilly garage with the radio on in winter, imagining the currents and pools and eddies and riffles of the San Gabe on a summer morning, and picturing my little fake bug bounce along on the surface above the fish. There is a specific joy to coaxing a wild thing from the river and into your hand, then back into the river again. I can’t explain it. Gina good-humoredly says the whole thing is boring and pointless. I certainly value her opinions and understand that fly-fishing isn’t for everyone.

Later I worked the digital camera out of Garrett’s Halliburton case and looked at the pictures he’d taken. There were only two. One was a close-up of Samantha Asplundh’s headstone. It was red granite, simple and shiny. The other was a shot of Stella, with her hands up, protecting her face from the camera. She wasn’t smiling. I put the camera back and looked at the tape recorder, saw that there was no cassette in it.

Then I surveyed Garrett Asplundh’s datebook. His next-to-last appointment on the day he was murdered was with HH at HTA in La Jolla. Five P.M. There was a phone number.

His last appointment was with CAM at Imp B. Pier at six-thirty. The Imperial Beach Pier, I thought. Odd place for a meeting. Another phone number. I sat in our little living room and leafed through his datebook. Garrett Asplundh kept a busy schedule.

I called the La Jolla number and got a recording for Hidden Threat Assessment. I called the CAM number and got a recording that told me to leave my name, number, and a brief message. I didn’t.

It was odd to flip ahead in Garrett’s datebook and look at the appointments he’d never make. One caught my eye because it was underlined twice: Kaven, JVF & ATT GEN.

It was set for next Wednesday, March 16.

Our crime lab director called just after seven to tell me that the gunshot-residue test on Garrett Asplundh had come back negative. They’d tried everything for residue – fingers, thumbs, hands, shirt cuffs, jacket sleeves. Left and right. No GSR at all. But lots of it on and around his right temple, because the gun had been discharged close to his head. They’d found gunpowder burns, tattooing, the works. Two inches close, is how it looked.

He also told me that the Smith & Wesson nine-millimeter autoloader in the Explorer had been reported stolen in Oceanside, San Diego County, back in 1994. It yielded no latent fingerprints and had been recently wiped with a product such as Tri-Flow, a popular protectant for firearms.

‘Cool customer, to pack a stolen gun and his own wipes,’ said the director.

I thanked him and called McKenzie and told her she owed me fifty bucks.

Gina got in late and hungry so I whipped up an omelet with bacon and cheese and made some guacamole for the top of it. She stood in the kitchen and told me about her evening and drank a vodka on the rocks while I cooked. When Gina is excited about something she can talk for paragraphs without a comma, but that night she didn’t have much to say. Her soft red hair was up but some of it fell over her face and down her neck and I kissed her. I smelled perfume and smoke and alcohol but tasted only my wife. There is no other taste like it. I actually thought about that taste as I fell from the Las Palmas, though, to be honest, I thought of millions of things in a very short period of time.

She giggled softly and pulled back. She smiled. She has green eyes but the corners were slightly red that night.

‘Wow, that omelet looks good!’ she said, swaying on her way to the breakfast nook.

By the time I got the pan soaking and the dishes rinsed, Gina was in bed. I lifted the covers and settled them over her shoulders. I remembered doing very much the same just that morning after the lieutenant had called about Garrett. Her snoring was peaceful and rhythmic. I held her close. After a few minutes she gasped and turned her head away from my chest, breathing deeply and rapidly, as if she’d been running.

I placed a hand on her hot, damp head and told her she’d be okay, just a bad dream or maybe a little too much to drink. I lifted a handful of hair and blew on her neck. A minute later she was snoring again.

4

The next morning I parked in front of the San Diego Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit headquarters, a stately two-story Edwardian on Kettner. The day was bright and cool and you could smell the bay two blocks away.

‘I can’t believe they fight bad guys from here,’ said McKenzie. ‘It used to be a bakery.’

‘The family lived upstairs,’ I said. ‘Italian.’

‘Yeah, and the owner, he’d park the black Eldo with the whitewall tires right out front. He made his son wash it every single day.’

I looked out at the former residence that now housed the Ethics Authority Enforcement Unit. Although we call ourselves America’s Finest City, there is a long tradition of collusion and corruption here in San Diego. Some of it once reached high enough to taint an American presidency – Richard Nixon’s. Some of it is low and squalid and oddly funny – a mayor in bed with a swindler, councilmen charged with taking bribes from stripclub owners in return for easier rules on what the strippers can do. There is probably no more greed and graft here than in most other large American cities, but our mayor and council thought it was time to meet the problem head-on, so the Ethics Authority was formed and gunslinging Judge Erik Kaven was named director.

About a year after the Authority was established, Kaven hired John Van Flyke away from the DEA in Miami to run the Enforcement Unit. Van Flyke had never lived in San Diego and had visited just once, I’d read. He had no family here. This was exactly what the city wanted – an ethics enforcer with no vested interests in the city. Van Flyke was never photographed by the papers or videotaped for the TV news. His staff appeared in the media only rarely. All we knew about him was that he was forty-two years old, single, secretive, and incorruptible. George Schimmel of the Union-Tribune had nicknamed him ‘The Untouchable.’ McKenzie had quipped that no one would want to touch him.

The downstairs lobby was small and chilly. It offered two chairs and a dusty, unsteady glass table with sailing magazines on it. An elderly woman sat behind a large desk with a clean blotter pad, a ringed desktop calendar, and a gleaming black telephone on it. There was also a small vase with faded paper poppies. Her hair was gray and pulled into a tight bun. The cowl collar of a faintly green sweater came up nearly to her chin. She wore a headset with a very thin speaker arm extending from ear to mouth. She pushed a button on the phone console.

‘Detectives Cortez and Brownlaw are here,’ she said. Her voice was clear and strong, and it echoed in the old former residence. ‘Yes, sir.’

She pushed a button on her phone and looked at me. The lines in her face were an unrevealed history. Her eyes were brown with soft blue edges. The nameplate near the edge of her desk said ARLISS BUNTZ.

‘Up the stairs and to your right,’ she said.

‘Thank you.’

It was odd climbing stairs to an appointment. It struck me as old-fashioned, and I couldn’t remember the last time I’d done it. Our foot-steps echoed up around us in the hard, drafty building. I know that the federal government would require an elevator for handicapped people in a public building, but I saw no sign of one. I wasn’t sure what I thought about the Ethics Authority’s ignoring the rules.

I looked down over the banister at the uplifted face of Arliss Buntz.

Van Flyke was tall and well built. Dark suit, white shirt, yellow tie. He was big-faced, like many actors or professional athletes are, and his red-brown hair was combed back from his face with brisk aggression. His hand was dry and strong.

A quiet young man in a shirt and tie appeared with a tray and coffee for three. He had suspenders over his shoulders and an automatic holstered at his hip. He handed McKenzie her cup with a brief smile, then left. The room was washed in sharp March light and through the windows you could see taller buildings and a slice of bay and a palm tree. McKenzie flipped open her notepad and propped it against her knee.

Van Flyke sat forward and studied each of us in turn. His hands rested on two green folders. ‘Have you run the GSR test?’ His voice was deep but soft.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Negative.’

‘No chance of suicide?’

‘Very little.’

‘How many rounds left in the gun?’

‘Eight,’ I said. ‘We recovered an empty from the dashboard of the Explorer.’

‘Did they take anything?’ he asked.

‘He wasn’t robbed,’ McKenzie said, writing. ‘Not that we know at this point.’

Van Flyke lifted his cup of coffee and looked at McKenzie. His brow was heavy and his eyes were blue and set deep. ‘This is difficult. Garrett was a very close friend. He was my best investigator, I was hurt by what he and Stella had been through with their little girl. Truly hurt. You didn’t know him, did you?’

‘We’re getting to know him,’ said McKenzie. ‘If we knew what he was doing for you, it would help a lot.’

‘I’ll bet it would. Witnesses?’

‘Maybe,’ I said.

Van Flyke’s expression brightened, like a dog catching a scent. ‘Oh?’

I told him about Mr Red Ferrari standing off in the bushes.

‘What time?’

‘We’re not at liberty to discuss that,’ said McKenzie.

Van Flyke deadpanned her. ‘Here’s something we can discuss.’

He handed each of us a green folder.

‘Garrett was looking into two different areas for me,’ said Van Flyke. ‘One was the antiterrorism watch – Homeland Security R&D contractors, mostly out in Spook Valley. Right now there’s more money than sense out there. About seven billion federal dollars, nationwide, just looking to get spent. Spook Valley is after its share. Erik – our director, Erik Kaven – believes it’s a potential hot point. Garrett was also looking into the Budget Oversight Committee – Abel Sarvonola’s group. Dull stuff, but big money. Lots of hands out, lots of paths that cross.’

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘We appreciate this.’

I got the Homeland Security file. It started with a long list of companies addressing security problems. Most dealt in information, security, and biomedical technology and software, but there were also makers of personal flight modules, solarpowered biohazard warning systems and ‘hit-stop’ handguns. Names, phone numbers, addresses. Typewritten and handwritten notes followed – I assumed they were Garrett Asplundh’s.

I traded files with McKenzie. Now I was looking at a list of departments and commissions, boards, committees, councils, and authorities. This was Abel Sarvonola’s brew for sure. His powers as Budget Oversight Committee chairman were well known enough to be joked about at moneyconscious PD headquarters. When does a dollar disappear on its own? As soon as it’s Abel’s. And so on. His appointment to the Budget Oversight Committee was part-time and paid only a small per diem when the committee was in session. Sarvonola was a big part of the La Costa Resort development in north county back in the seventies. There had been talk of Teamster pension funds and mob involvement in the building of that swank resort, but Sarvonola had come through it very clean and extremely rich.

I saw that in addition to being involved in the many arms of San Diego’s government, Garrett Asplundh also knew the players in San Diego’s biggest industries – hospitality, development, entertainment, and consumer technology. There they were, the sports owners, financiers, tech billionaires, land developers, biomedical-research companies, and old money that ruled the city. This was the powerful private sector that the Ethics Authority was entrusted to keep from getting too chummy with the various branches of the city bureaucracy.

‘Why would an Ethics Authority investigator rent a Testarossa at four-fifty a night?’ asked McKenzie.

‘An occasional expense for cultivating his sources,’ said Van Flyke. He raised a heavy brow as if entertaining his own answer.

‘Cultivating his sources,’ I said.

‘Of course. Or, in some cases, maybe he was trying to foster an impression of corruptibility.’

I heard McKenzie’s pen racing to get those words down. I hadn’t thought of using Ethics Authority investigators that way – trying to lure someone into doing something illegal. Such law-enforcement tactics are proactive and dangerous. But I knew that Van Flyke’s days at the DEA had certainly taught him how to orchestrate an entrapment that would stand up in court.

‘You let your investigators do that?’ asked McKenzie.

‘I give my investigators trust, respect, and independence.’

Van Flyke’s remote blue eyes went from me to McKenzie and back to me again. ‘He was a good man.’

Neither McKenzie nor I spoke.

‘A person’s life can change so fast,’ he said quietly. ‘A pivot. A moment. An event that takes a fraction of a second but lasts a lifetime. Garrett comprehended that. It gave him depth and understanding.’

He sighed and looked out the window.

‘Are you talking about the death of his daughter?’ I asked.

‘Of course I am.’

In the back of each folder was a list of complaints filed, fines issued, convictions won, or indictments handed down based on Garrett Asplundh’s investigations. Most of the offenders were city contractors, some were city employees themselves. There were fines for violations of the Business and Professions Code, the Government Code, and the Civil Code. A city Building Department supervisor was discharged for taking a bribe. A city Purchasing Department employee was reprimanded for the ‘appearance of favoritism.’ I didn’t see anything worth killing a man over, but I hadn’t been fired or called down.

‘Were his current investigations heating up?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ said Van Flyke. He had returned his attention from the window and now stared at me. ‘Garrett was making progress in both areas. I printed and attached Garrett’s notes to the end of each file. You can get a feel for where he was, how people were reacting to us.’

‘Are those his complete notes?’ I asked.

‘Yes. Everything he submitted.’

I watched a hawk with something in its beak fly into the palm tree outside. The fronds shimmered in the winter light and the hawk disappeared into them. I thought for a moment. I pictured Garrett’s apartment. It still seemed to me that something was missing. There just wasn’t enough, not for a man as orderly and intensely focused as Garrett Asplundh seemed to be. For someone who, as his ex-wife had said, went through so much. I thought about the checks made out to Uptown Management. The hawk dropped out of the tree, spread its wings, and rose straight over us. I saw the stripes on its tail and the gleam of its eye.

I asked Van Flyke about the underlined entry in Garrett’s datebook for next Wednesday, March 16. From my notes I read it back to him: Kaven, JVF & ATT GEN.

‘That would translate as Director Kaven, myself, and a lawyer from the state attorney general’s office. Garrett was going to present his findings. Together we were going to decide which cases to intensify and which ones to drop.’

‘If the attorney general was involved, Garrett must have had some serious evidence,’ I said.

‘Not necessarily,’ said Van Flyke. ‘The meetings are semiannual and routine.’

‘The underline looked more than routine,’ I said.

‘I can only tell you what I know,’ said Van Flyke.

‘Did you issue him a laptop computer for work?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ said Van Flyke. ‘We all got new ones about two months ago.’

‘We haven’t found it,’ said McKenzie. ‘It wasn’t in the Explorer or his apartment.’

Van Flyke stared at her. ‘It’s not here either. Maybe he was robbed after all.’

McKenzie scribbled.

‘His last two meetings were with HH at a place called Hidden Threat Assessment in La Jolla and with CAM at the Imperial Beach Pier,’ I said.

‘HTA is a Spook Valley company,’ said Van Flyke. ‘HH is Hollis Harris, who started it. CAM at the Imperial Beach Pier? I have no idea about who that might be.’

‘May we see his workplace?’ I asked.

‘Sure.’

Van Flyke wrote his cell number on the back of a business card and handed it to me. Then he led us out of his office and into what once must have been a bedroom for the Italian bakers. There was a partition through the middle of it. A desk and an empty chair on each side. Garrett’s desk had a framed black-and-white photograph of Samantha and a coffee cup with a picture of a rainbow trout on it. On the wall was a pictorial calendar of San Diego. This month’s featured site was the pretty Casa del Prado building at Balboa Park, which stands just a few hundred yards from where they’d found Garrett Asplundh’s body.

I shook hands with Van Flyke and thanked him for his time. McKenzie did neither.

She went down the stairs ahead of me. Arliss Buntz was standing now, as if she’d been waiting for us to come down. Her headset was still on and her sweater still pulled up for warmth. Her blue-brown eyes locked on to mine.

‘He was a man headed for trouble,’ she said.

‘How do you know that?’ I asked.

‘Look at his high ideals!’

She sat and pivoted her chair, giving us her back as she bent to open a drawer.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked her.

‘He was too good for the people around him,’ she muttered without turning.

McKenzie drove while I called Hollis Harris and CAM. Hollis had heard about Garrett’s death and agreed to give us one hour of his time. CAM’s computer-generated message told me once again to leave a name, number, and short message, but again I didn’t. I wanted CAM live. Lots of people won’t return calls to Homicide detectives, but very few will hang up on one.

I called Gina to make sure she was up and doing okay. She answered halfway through the greeting. She apologized for last night. Said she’d had one too many. Rachel got fully toasted. I told her not to worry about anything and maybe we could go out to dinner that night and I loved her.

McKenzie kissed the air as she gunned the car toward the freeway.

Spook Valley is a nickname given to a cluster of La Jolla companies specializing in nuclear-weapons technology, strategic defense, border control, industrial security, and military surveillance. Many of these are secret, or ‘black,’ programs, funded directly by the CIA or the Pentagon or the Department of Homeland Security. Some of the companies started back in the early 1990s, but a lot of them have sprung up since 2001. I thought of John Van Flyke’s figure of $7 billion of R&D money from Homeland Security alone and what share of it came to San Diego.

Spook Valley isn’t spooky at all. It’s everything Southern California is supposed to look like – swaying palms and twisted coastal pines and jaggedly beautiful beaches under blue sky. The green hills tumble down to the Pacific like spilled loads of emeralds. The architecture in La Jolla is a vivid mix of Mediterranean, Spanish Colonial, Spanish Revival, Craftsman, Prairie, California Rancho, postmodern, contemporary – you name it. Even the ‘Tuscan’ monstrosities have caught on here, though they look overweight, hunkered on their tiny but expensive lots. But the Spook Valley companies cling quietly to the top-secret shadows while the rest of La Jolla basks in the light, and everyone comes together at the fancy restaurants on the bluffs to watch the sun go down.